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Ayahuasca
As a backdrop, or background, appearing spatially as a low cloud cover, stretching from horizon to horizon, lay one half of the vision that would occupy my attention for the next several hours. Honeycombed completely (6 sides?, 5?, 8?,), each cell containing its own patter, yet each cell identical. Not shimmering, but perhaps vibrating. On occasion waves passed through like waves through a field of tall grass. On occasion a wave would leave behind a fresh pattern with fresh colors. Colors neon, day glow, typical of psychedelic visions. Red, yellow, green. Ever changing and shifting. Geometric patterns. Cells within cells. A central dot? Thousands. Small yet individually perceptible. To say only that it (they?) held my attention would be unfair. They held my attention with a fierce death grip.
Except when my attention was drawn to the other half of the vision. Ethereal, sinuous, serpentine, tubular rivers of points of light flowing, rushing, receding into the distance at one end and approaching me closely then out of my field of vision. Brilliant, yellow it seems, or white. Flowing towards me and past me. Before these two halves together I could only stand in awe.
The vision was controlled, or coordinated, by the music. The faster the music the more energetic the vision became. When the music stopped the vision lost form and became dull, purplish blotches. The Shaman chanted continuously, and this also had some effect on the vision.
When the experience reached its peak the music nearly died away and the Shaman’s chant, along with the dry rattle produced when he shook a bunch of dried herbs and flowers, dominated the night. "Now is the hour." "Open your heart." "Ayahuasca has cleansed you." "Ayahuasca has opened you." "ayahuasca the subtle will help you." "Now is the hour." "Open your senses." "Open your heart."
Around the room he danced and chanted. Rattling his dried herbs. Blowing the powerful jungle tobacco onto each person´s crown, and into the room in general. A woman was crying softly. The Shaman knelt before her, blowing smoke on her and around her. Speaking softly.
Immediately prior to the ceremony the woman next to me confessed that she hadn´t taken the ritual flower water bath. I could smell her now. Not sweet like a flower. Pungent like a woman. I wondered if she could smell me. My senses were completely open. No doubt the flower bath was meant to prevent distractions like this. But what a distraction!
The music picked up and the Shaman receded to the background, still chanting. The vision recovered its full power. "Now is the hour." "Open your heart." "Ayahuasca will help you." "Now is the hour." I knew that this was the hour, and wanted desperately to open my heart. Wishing didn´t work. Willing didn´t work. I reasoned that with an open heart, something, presumably love, would leave my heart and enter another open heart. Love would leave that heart and enter mine. That was at once a giving and a taking on both sides, and both sides won coming and going. But reasoning didn´t work, either.
Time passed and the vision began losing power. People became restless. The Shaman shut off the music and set out candles. Until now the darkness had been near total, with just enough light to permit the Shaman to do his work. During the vision most people had been lying down, some sitting in Lotus. Now most were sitting up. There were some 20 of us, spaced evenly around a large living room. The Shaman occupied one end. It was 4:30 A.M. We had drunk the ayahuasca around 11:30, and began seeing the vision in 30-
Before long it was full light. People were outside having their first cigarette of the day. The Shaman and his helper left for their hotel. The only topic of conversation was "how did your trip go?" I was surprised to find that a substantial number of people were not satisfied. Watching a joint go around, I suggested to my friend that perhaps there were so many other drugs in his head that the ayahuasca couldn´t find room. (I myself am quite clean, having taken only the occasional social toke for years, and none for 5-
Ayahuasca is a quechua Word which means, when broken down, spirit vine or soul vine. As a backdrop, or background, appearing spatially as a low cloud cover, stretching from horizon to horizon, lay one half of the vision that would occupy my attention for the next several hours. Honeycombed completely (6 sides?, 5?, 8?,), each cell containing its own patter, yet each cell identical. Not shimmering, but perhaps vibrating. On occasion waves passed through like waves through a field of tall grass. On occasion a wave would leave behind a fresh pattern with fresh colors. Colors neon, day glow, typical of psychedelic visions. Red, yellow, green. Ever changing and shifting. Geometric patterns. Cells within cells. A central dot? Thousands. Small yet individually perceptible. To say only that it (they?) held my attention would be unfair. They held my attention with a fierce death grip.
Except when my attention was drawn to the other half of the vision. Ethereal, sinuous, serpentine, tubular rivers of points of light flowing, rushing, receding into the distance at one end and approaching me closely then out of my field of vision. Brilliant, yellow it seems, or white. Flowing towards me and past me. Before these two halves together I could only stand in awe.
The vision was controlled, or coordinated, by the music. The faster the music the more energetic the vision became. When the music stopped the vision lost form and became dull, purplish blotches. The Shaman chanted continuously, and this also had some effect on the vision.
When the experience reached its peak the music nearly died away and the Shaman’s chant, along with the dry rattle produced when he shook a bunch of dried herbs and flowers, dominated the night. "Now is the hour." "Open your heart." "Ayahuasca has cleansed you." "Ayahuasca has opened you." "ayahuasca the subtle will help you." "Now is the hour." "Open your senses." "Open your heart."
Around the room he danced and chanted. Rattling his dried herbs. Blowing the powerful jungle tobacco onto each person´s crown, and into the room in general. A woman was crying softly. The Shaman knelt before her, blowing smoke on her and around her. Speaking softly.
Immediately prior to the ceremony the woman next to me confessed that she hadn´t taken the ritual flower water bath. I could smell her now. Not sweet like a flower. Pungent like a woman. I wondered if she could smell me. My senses were completely open. No doubt the flower bath was meant to prevent distractions like this. But what a distraction!
The music picked up and the Shaman receded to the background, still chanting. The vision recovered its full power. "Now is the hour." "Open your heart." "Ayahuasca will help you." "Now is the hour." I knew that this was the hour, and wanted desperately to open my heart. Wishing didn´t work. Willing didn´t work. I reasoned that with an open heart, something, presumably love, would leave my heart and enter another open heart. Love would leave that heart and enter mine. That was at once a giving and a taking on both sides, and both sides won coming and going. But reasoning didn´t work, either.
Time passed and the vision began losing power. People became restless. The Shaman shut off the music and set out candles. Until now the darkness had been near total, with just enough light to permit the Shaman to do his work. During the vision most people had been lying down, some sitting in Lotus. Now most were sitting up. There were some 20 of us, spaced evenly around a large living room. The Shaman occupied one end. It was 4:30 A.M. We had drunk the ayahuasca around 11:30, and began seeing the vision in 30-
Before long it was full light. People were outside having their first cigarette of the day. The Shaman and his helper left for their hotel. The only topic of conversation was "how did your trip go?" I was surprised to find that a substantial number of people were not satisfied. Watching a joint go around, I suggested to my friend that perhaps there were so many other drugs in his head that the ayahuasca couldn´t find room. (I myself am quite clean, having taken only the occasional social toke for years, and none for 5-
Its scientific name is Banisteropsis caapi. In the Columbian Amazon the vine is known as yage. This must be mixed with either chagropanga (Diplopteris cabrerana) in the Columbia area, or chacruna (Psychotria vididis) further south. Chemists consider the visionary component of the experience to be the result of dimetheltriptomine (DMT) which is contained in the chagropanga and charuna. When taken orally this is broken down by an enzyme in the digestive tract known as monoaminoxidas (MAO) unless it is accompanied by a MAO inhibitor, which is provided by the ayahuasca-
As the product of a secular society I chose to discount non-
For the greater part of four hours I stood in awe before the spectacle passing before my vision. I didn´t analyze it. I didn´t think to myself "what a great show this is". I didn´t think at all. That is the great objective of all mystical practice. People spend years and decades in meditation practice and never spend as much as one hour in complete thoughtlessness. Never having been involved in more than sporadic and extremely sketchy practice I can´t speak from experience, but I speculate that in meditation one is in the same psychological state as is found in prayer, and that state I was in during the ayahuasca vision was akin to prayer and meditation in that all three there is a complete and total openness to the unknown. And that the unknown is, almost by definition, the sub-
Why would anyone want to go into a ceremony like this chained to concepts created and assembled by the conscious mind? Concepts which are the closest approximation to reality a given language group has been able to create, but which are not reality. Chained to a consciousness which has had plenty of time, and much overtime, to work its problems out, but has failed. Let go of the conscious mind for one evening just to see what happens. Perhaps the unconscious mind (which I sometimes think of as the animal mind) has some wordless wisdom which it would impart if it could only get past the constant chatter of the conscious mind. When in the pre-
The discomfort was caused by a gnawing feeling of a task left unfinished. The task of opening the heart, or to say it another way, of cultivating empathy. Empathy: The projection of one´s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better; the ability to share in another´s emotions or feelings. During the contemplation of the visionary experience the mind became a blank slate onto which the Shaman projected the suggestion to cultivate empathy. In the simplest words he introduced the most profound task. Open your heart. Love one another.
Into the sophisticated secular world, benumbed by the abuse of the products of 10,000 years of civilization from alcohol to tobacco to caffeine to sugar and all manner of mind altering substances in between; bemused by the shallow entertainment that leaves nothing behind but the satisfaction of having killed a little time; befuddled by politicians who make a difficult job easy by catering to the populist desire to lead the most comfortable life with the least work. Into this world comes a medicine with the power to return to us the ability to enter into the psychological state akin to prayer or meditation in which the power and the knowledge of the unknown is able to make itself insistently known to the conscious mind.
Now is the time to open your heart. Now is the time to love one another. Now is the time to shed all complacency. Ayahuasca can help you. Ayahuasca the subtle. Ayahuasca can open you. Ayahuasca can cleanse you.
Fifteen days since the ceremony, and I woke up with the B.B. King song, The Thrill Is Gone, and knew that today I would write that the strong horse that I have been riding is nearly out of energy. I no longer feel the urge to open my heart welling up from below, but I am reasonably sure that the experience left a trace on my conscious mind that will not soon go away, even if perhaps it is filed along with universal peace and brotherhood. But no, the urge to universal anything has never made itself insistently known to me, as has the urge to open my heart. Even if it was drug (medicine if you will) induced, the knowledge (faith if you will) that there is something to be induced, some love one another gene, neuro transmitter, molecule, incipient neuro ganglion, or whatever it is that the ayahuasca works on, gives me some solace that our animal inheritance will not be able to trump our saintly inclinations into the infinite future.
And it is well that chemical love will not soon be synthesized or commercially available, as mans attempts at social engineering turn into Faustian bargains on a regular basis, and the thought of a Commissar of Love is so repugnant, so Orwellian, that only the most rabidly bureaucratic place seeker would even think of paving that road to hell. The conservative, post Jonestown, wisdom holds true, don’t drink the cool aid. This is not a repudiation of ayahuasca, of my experience with it, or of the Shaman who brought it to me, all of which I view in a most positive light. It is a justified of a centrally planned or consumerist distribution of such a powerful drug on a mass basis.
That there are people whose visionary experience would lead them to coercion or violence is inevitable. Our ancestors were animals, and we carry that in our DNA. But good has triumphed over evil so far, always managing to beat it back, if not extirpate it root and branch, and I see no reason for the future to be different from the past.