“It all happened so rapidly that I had no way to even adjust. He indicated a direction, and when I looked there, I saw a crow flying. Suddenly, he emitted three song-tone-like utterances, in rapid succession. The first one obliterated my identity. The second one grabbed my center of perspective and accelerated it suddenly toward and into the bird. Chaos. Senseless chaos of input like my mind was storming. Then he emitted the third tone.

I was the crow. And myself. I was myself, inside the crow as the crow. It’s mind was so beautiful… so alien… I … was ..flying… And it wasn’t an action! It was a -conversation- between me, all beings that ever flew, and the sky, and I wasn’t a participant -in- that conversation… I -was- that conversation, and that was what flying was. I saw a world and ways of seeing… beyond anything I can here express, nor would I try, any more than I would attempt to convey the experience of a kiss with a bullet.

I later was able to ascertain that the tones, though catalytic, were not the mechanism of the process. That is, in part, why copying them is completely useless.”

— an anonymous teller of tails