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Ayahuasca is often informally called the Sacred Vine of the Amazon. Despite (or because of) the hallucinogenic properties the brew can engender it is popular in the Upper Amazon area as a valid (and legal) accompaniment to religious ceremonies. It is made from the stem of a jungle vine and in most areas it contains at least one more additive: the leaves of a DMT-containing plant. From the Upper Amazon the tea has spread throughout South America and each country, and each religious group within that locale, has an idiosyncratic approach to the preparation and consumption of ayahuasca, which is the name of both the vine and the finally prepared brew. It was made popular to non-natives by Terence McKenna.
One of the more interesting properties of ayahuasca, the tea, is that it is designed to overcome the problem that DMT, the active ingredient, is in fact inactive when taken orally by itself as it is immediately destroyed in the gut and liver. By combining it with harmine, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), the DMT is able to cross the blood-brain barrier and begin acting on serotonin receptors in the brain. Quite how the Amazonian Indians came to understand this hundreds of years ago is a mystery.
Users believe that it is the brew itself that is the teacher. Although each session is overlooked by an experienced leader, he is not the teacher, only the guide and supervisor. He will suggest that a simple diet be undertaken leading up to the session accompanied by sexual abstinence. This process itself leads to a mild altered state of consciousness and can bring about lucid dreaming (dreaming while being aware that you are doing so).
The actual experience of taking ayahuasca varies from participant to participant. Set refers to the pre-existing psychological makeup of a user while setting describes the environment the hallucinogenic is taken in. Both affect different subjects in different ways and a change in set or setting can produce profoundly different reactions to the psychedelic in the same user. In addition different strengths of ayahuasca also produce different results from mild to extreme. The experience then is not fixed and not uniformly common to all people.
On the other hand, taking the hallucinogenic with a strong enough potency does allow everyone to enter mysterious altered states of consciousness where a person may confront the great questions and find appropriate answers. It is here that the psychedelic experience can become a sacred one. Other users are seeking answers to questions and issues that are more personal and less universal. For example, perhaps they are experiencing great change in their lives and seek some guidance, or wish to develop their creativity or find a way to examine their own psyche. Others want some kind of healing experience or to overcome a feeling of shame they may have been carrying with them for a considerable length of time. With use those original aims may come to be supplanted with desires that are a little more vague but equally compelling: wanting to go deeper into the psychedelic experience, wanting to let go completely or discovering where anxiety comes from.
Despite the potential for variety among people and the different motivations for wanting to take ayahuasca in the first place, it is nevertheless true that certain motifs are reported again and again by different people at different times and in different situations. A common, and very interesting phenomena, is contact with “alien” beings and visits to worlds of high technology.
One such (condensed) report is from a forty five year old American male, who had the following experience while under the influence of ayahuasca.
In my case my abduction did not take place in the physical world, as we normally know it. It took place on another level…All of a sudden, I was bathed in this white light from above, it felt like antigravity energy that lifted me up and out of my bed, and through the roof…It seemed to separate me in two and life and ethereal duplicate of my body.
I was transported into a room within a ship, very clean, very sterile, well maintained, stainless steel and white, very muted white lighting, full spectrum. I was on a table…I was strapped down by the arms and legs…Right away I felt that my consciousness was being sedated, but whatever it was that was sedating me was not enough. I immediately became conscious of my surroundings and tried to sit up and look around; at that point I became acutely aware of these beings – tall, skinny, kind of lanky, very thin-featured but with a praying mantis head, triangular and very bug like. I got the feeling they were very conscious and technologically advanced…
Around me, around this table were instruments, tools of some kind, probes, strange manipulating instruments…At some point they started adjusting the instruments and moving closer with them. I felt a little fearful but they assured me that it would be OK…I am not sure if they inserted devices or not. I get the feeling they were just looking and checking and taking some small biopsies and some blood and sperm and samples from my gut and bacteria that were in my body. Every time I felt uneasy, they somehow seemed to soothe my brain…I said, “I have to go”. They said, “OK”…I was quickly transported back…and merged back with my self.
The subject was subsequently “abducted” twice more on the same trip. The second abduction was not so comfortable and the subject had to threaten his hosts with violence to force them to control their experiments on him. He described them as looking reptilian with elephant-like, tough grey skin, with very little hair. They had large eyes and stood around 3.5 to 4.5 feet in height. They had little arms and a large, cylindrical body with webbed feet and little claws. In the third abduction the beings were around seven foot tall with “octopus” heads.
More typically, while under the effects of ayahuasca a subject may first see geometrical patterns appearing in front of the inner eye. Using intention these patterns can be penetrated to enter a three- or four-dimensional space of unearthly beauty. I will note in passing here the importance of these geometrical patterns because a strong theory to have emerged is that ancient cave art is, at least in part, a record of such visions…which means our ancestors were experiencing hallucinations in the same manner to us, and this may provide an explanation for the rich tapestry of spiritual and religious life that has come to be a hallmark of human culture. I will return to this subject in more detail in a future article. Hallucinations may also be auditory and tactile and all can be interacted with and navigated through. Having clear intentions about the purpose behind each trip seems to play an important role in the process. In this way repressed memories can surface from as far back, it is held, as in the womb.
This journey into the psyche can turn into one of the most significant events that a subject may experience in his or her life. A session can literally be life-changing and many assert that they receive answers to questions that they posed, hence the view that “The plant told me…” Many find new meaning to their lives, feeling that they are connected to everything. They perceive patterns in creation that they could not before and believe they have accessed dimensions beyond the one we normally consciously experience. Many become more ethical; others more creative. Some find that addictions to alcohol and tobacco, to name two examples, come to an end. Sessions are not always positive. The second of the abduction experiences detailed above indicates that. Users may enter a shadow land – a type of hell in Christian parlance - and confront the darker nature of themselves where the innermost fears are confronted and, hopefully, understood and resolved.
Unfortunately nothing is free. The tea is unanimously described as being vile and an ayahuasca session will most likely see the subject suffering physical ailments ranging from vomiting and diarrhea to extreme bodily weakness to the extent they are unable to summon the energy to move. Others may even faint for a short time. Veteran users may avoid these side effects altogether.
These side effects are held to be a useful part of the ceremony and bestow a great deal of respect, awe and reverence to the brew that is being taken and the process of discovery. The vomiting and diarrhea cleanse the body by detoxifying it while the DMT cleans the psyche. The result is that the subject feels tremendously at peace with himself and his surroundings following a good night of sleep after the ceremony. The expectation of these side-effects quietens people before participation and can even provoke fear among new users.
Conclusion
Despite typically negative views of hallucinogenics in first world industrialized nations, ayahuasca is seen as a valid prop to profound spiritual and religious experiences, and it has been so for a long time before it was discovered by Westerners. Usage consistently leads to the experience of altered states of consciousness (though the details may vary from user to user) and these altered states are comparable to those resulting from meditation (static or dynamic) and even, on occasion, “alien abductions”.
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Interview with Tony Wright (author of Left in the Dark)
Yamaoka Tesshu Zen Warrior
The Origin of Consciousness
Jesus, Mohammed and Zen
Graham Hancock and the Sacred Vine
