"No; because I did not leave you. I sipped of the liquid, and then you moved on with me from this spot; we were together, until at last we were separated on the edge of the cave of drunkards."
"Listen," said he; "I neither left you nor went with you. You neither went from this spot nor came back again. You neither saw nor experienced my presence nor my absence; there was no beginning to your journey."
"Go on."
"You ate of the narcotic fungus; you have been intoxicated."
"I have not," I retorted. "I have been through your accursed caverns, and into hell beyond. I have been consumed by eternal damnation in the journey, have experienced a heaven of delight, and also an eternity of misery."
"Upon the contrary, the time that has passed since you drank the liquid contents of that fungus fruit has only been that which permitted you to fall upon your knees. You swallowed the liquor when I handed you the shell cup; you dropped upon your knees, and then instantly awoke. See," he said; "in corroboration of my assertion the shell of the fungus fruit at your feet is still dripping with the liquid you did not drink. Time has been annihilated. Under the influence of this potent earth-bred narcoto-intoxicant, your dream begun inside of eternity; you did not pass into it."
"You say," I interrupted, "that I dropped upon my knees, that I have experienced the hallucination of intoxication, that the experiences of my vision occurred during the second of time that was required for me to drop upon my knees."
"Yes."
"Then by your own argument you demonstrate that eternity requires time, for even a millionth part of a second is time, as much so as a million of years."
"You mistake," he replied, "you misinterpret my words. I said that all you experienced in your eternity of suffering and pleasure, occurred between the point when you touched the fungus fruit to your lips, and that when your knees struck the stone."