Ayahuasca

I wrote the following report in 2003.

Ayahuasca Retreat In Peru

Here in Vancouver it is easy to get the materials to make Ayahuasca, the potent plant based brew used by indigenous people in the amazon for millennia for healing and spirit journeys. However, wanting to go closer to the source for my introduction to this plant teacher, I recently traveled with two close friends to attend an Ayahuasca retreat in Peru. The retreat took place at the Corto Maltés Amazonia Lodge, on the banks of the Madre de Dios River. We were surrounded by the amazon rain forest, with its amazing diversity of plant and animal life. Being away from the stress and distractions of modern life was healing in itself and definitely enhanced the experience. There were no media available during the retreat, and not knowing what was happening in the outside world helped me to realize that everything important was happening right there – it was the inner work we were doing that really mattered. The Ayahuasca experience itself is hard to describe; it felt something like dreaming or dying.

The Ayahuasca session is a crucible in which psychological and spiritual processes occur at a much greater level of intensity than is typical in everyday life, enabling one to learn rapidly and deeply about life, mind, relationships and spirit. Members of the group reported a wide variety of experiences. Some people had visions, for others the trip mostly involved their thought processes or emotions. One person felt she was dying, surrounded by white light, her body dissolving into nothingness. Another reported feeling enlightened in the present moment, for the first time – after years of serious Zen meditation. A few people battled inner demons in one way or another. One person felt that Ayahuasca was essentially an artificial alteration of his perceptions, though most people felt that Ayahuasca revealed deeper truths about life. Each person had a unique experience, in fact each session for each person was unique.

We did three sessions altogether. Each time we would gather in the dining area of the retreat center, with a pillow, blanket, water, and whatever else we would need for the overnight session. We would walk together down a dark path into the forest, lit by small torches about every two to three meters. We gathered in a special building called a malocha used only for Ayahuasca sessions. Diego, the leader of the group, would say some prayers, and then one by one we would go to him to receive the medicine. When the Ayahuasca started to take effect, Diego would begin to chant and play his guitar. His beautiful chanting was very soothing and centering, and was a valuable and helpful part of the sessions.

For me Ayahuasca brought up whatever I needed to experience in the present moment. I found it to be a very harsh teacher. Whenever I tried to resist what was being shown to me, the experience would become more intense and unpleasant – one of the central lessons for me is that it is better to let go, to surrender to the experience. Some concepts that I had understood in an abstract way I experienced at a much deeper level. One of these concepts is impermanence. I had grasped that concept on a superficial intellectual level, but didn’t really understand it. During my first and third Ayahuasca sessions, I entered into states of intense suffering that I was absolutely convinced would never end – even death would not release me. Yet those states did pass. At another point I found myself spontaneously breathing out love into the world. It was a subtle experience but very distinct. This is something I had practiced in the past, but which I hadn’t really felt before. What had been an intellectual exercise before became an experiential reality during the Ayahuasca session. Since then I’ve occasionally been able to practice this technique and genuinely feel it. Ayahuasca also helped me to see that a great deal of what I experience is a projection of my mind, which interferes with my ability to see the world – inner or outer – with clarity. I had read and thought about being centered and experiencing the moment as it is, without trying to grasp or resist. Under the influence of Ayahuasca, this quality of mind is vitally important, and I believe I am now more capable of manifesting that quality in daily life.

In the second session one of my friends was having a very intense, difficult time, and at one point all of us gathered around her and were chanting for her. It felt wonderful to be part of a circle of caring, giving love and attention to a friend in need. During the first session I had a very difficult time, and others helped me; now I found myself on the other side of that equation and it felt wonderful to take that role for her. During the third experience, when I was suffering intensely regarding karma from past actions - basically feeling emotions I needed to feel but had always avoided - I feel I was “burning karma,” doing some of the suffering I needed to do. I feel clearer now, as if my karmic load has lightened a bit. (For those who prefer psychological jargon: I achieved a cathartic release of repressed emotion.)

No matter how difficult the session was, when the effects started to wear off – when I was no longer tripping – I felt happy and centered. So glad to be alive, to breathe, to be in this space with people I love. This, for me, is a wonderful aspect of the Ayahuasca experience. First I go through the difficult part, then I feel wonderful – it’s the exact opposite of taking a drug, feeling good for a while, then experiencing some sort of hangover.

It seems to me – I can't stress this enough - that the best way to do Ayahuasca is in this sort of ritual setting. The medicine can teach a lot about relationships, and how to give and receive love. Sharing the experience with my fellow travelers afterwards was as significant as the Ayahuasca session itself. The chanting and singing were important aspects of it and the opening and closing of the ceremony helped to put the experience in context. I believe that Ayahuasca, used properly, can be a catalyst to accelerate personal and spiritual growth. You still have to go through your process, but this medicine can speed things up. It shows you what you need to work on and puts you in a state where you can do some intense learning. Ayahuasca, in my experience, works very well in the context of an ongoing spiritual practice such as meditation. I would recommend the Ayahuasca experience to anyone who is seriously interested in spiritual or psychological work. More information about the particular retreat that I attended may be found at http://www.Ayahuasca-wasi.com.

Re: Ayahuasca

The following report by Robert Augustus Masters is from his book Darkness Shining Wild; here he describes a nondual experience resulting from ingesting Ayahuasca, a medicine used in the Amazon rain forest for millennia.

The ayahuasca I took - ayahuasca varies according to its preparation - was very thick, satiny, and brownish-black, heavily imbued with a pungently sweet, semi-sickening odor. It tasted much like it smelled, but I managed to down two hundred milliliters of it. Nothing significant happened for maybe half an hour…

Before I could do much…the ayahuasca kicked in. It was extremely strong, and getting stronger by the second. I remember saying something about how powerful it was, and then I…was so overwhelmed that I lost almost all contact with the world I'd known a minute earlier. As that world and its sustaining views - including those rooted in longtime spiritual practices - very quickly became but a fleeting speck on the periphery of the impossibly rich revelatory domain into which I'd been blasted, I buckled with huge awe and equally huge terror.

I thought of leaving the room, but could not move more than a few feet. So I remained sitting up, quivering with an indescribably strange feeling of recognition, periodically fearing that I'd made a fatal mistake in taking the ayahuasca. Who I had been before swallowing it was but the flimsiest and most unreal of memories. Nancy and I seemed to be not observers of – nor even participants in – what [was] happening. Rather, we were it – and had, it seemed, never really been other than it – the shockingly visceral and now devastatingly indisputable realization of which maddened what was left of my mind.

My world had not so much been altered as decisively replaced, both externally and internally…All we could do was ride out the storm.

For its first third (an eternity of about three hours) my ayahuasca journey was extremely harrowing, partly because of the considerable strain it placed on my body – I shook uncontrollably for almost two hours, violently vomiting a number of times – but mainly because of the often terrifying, unspeakably alien yet rivetingly familiar Wonder that was manifesting within and all around me.

The dazzling presence and implications of this Wonder, this reality-unlocking Unspeakableness, and my relationship to it made me reel; I could not convincingly stand apart from it, not even for a second, and strongly intuited that I never really had. When I somehow managed for a moment here and there to recall my life before ayahuasca, none of it carried any real depth or significance. That this didn't terrify me would terrify me for a moment, then bend me with animal awe, then pass from consciousness.

What was now my world – and seemingly always had been, while I'd been dreaming that I was elsewhere – pulsed with a power and knowingness that surpassed anything I'd ever before experienced. No outside, no inside. No time. Flames sprouted from the leaftips of my plants with shapely brilliance. The trees outside the sliding glass doors, blazingly vivid and so, so alive, were fused with the sky, as if all drawn with the same vast undulating brush strokes. The objects in the room were no different than the space between them.

There I sat crazily swaying and trembling, transfixed in an imagination-transcending, overwhelmingly sentient Chaos in which everything, including the nonphysical, was inseparable from everything else. The sky, dripping with terrible beauty, poured into my room like a tsunami, my body seemed to be about to die again and again, my mind frothed insanely, and I felt through all of this an enormous, intensely emotional knowingness, a primordial intimacy and recognition – at once prehuman and posthuman – that shook me like a rag doll in the jaws of a rabid monster.

Looking into Nancy's eyes was no different than looking into the room or out the windows. It was all, all, the same self-replicating, self-aware Unspeakbleness, beyond any conceivable framing. As its perspective and mine merged, I felt as if I'd never really been elsewhere. The Open Secret of it all only affirmed and deepened its Mystery. I was alternately terrified and awestruck. I wanted to escape it all, and I wanted to get down on my knees before it all.

Telling myself I had taken a drug – which I only could remember every ten minutes or so – had about as much effect on me as trying to stop a train by placing a marshmallow in its path. One moment I was convinced I'd gone completely insane and would shortly find myself strapped down in the local hospital ward, and the next I would gasp wonderstruck at what was being revealed. Finally, the intensity of it all faded a bit, and I was on somewhat familiar ground, albeit still highly psychedelic territory, grateful to have survived. The last two thirds of the journey were quite joyful, which perhaps accounts to some degree for what followed.

Not long after my ayahuasca experience was over – and it took days – I was ready for more. Sure, I had been very frightened in the earlier stages, but it had turned out very well, hadn't it? I felt profoundly enriched by the whole experience, and wasn't about to stop. My memory of times in the trip when my body became other than human or even mammalian – sometimes to the horrifying and seemingly very real point where I appeared to have no breathing apparatus, and was therefore about to die – were of little concern to me. Some of this was just hubris… -Darkness Shining Wild, pp. 14-16

In his Q&A thread on this forum I asked Robert some follow-up questions.  The following quote is from Q&A Part Two (March 13, 2006).

Arthur Gillard asked on March 13, 2006: Your Ayahuasca experience, as described in Darkness Shining Wild, clearly took place outside a traditional ceremonial setting, and seems to have involved a truly heroic (or perhaps foolhardy?) dose. I have several clarification questions about it. Was anyone taking care of you and Nancy, or was it just the two of you? What do you feel led to the extreme power of the journey, and it's particular quality of nondual awe/terror: was it the non-traditional nature of the setting? The dosage? The spiritual work you had done previously? What kind of experience did Nancy have – was it a similar nondual experience?

4. What advice would you have for people, such as myself, who participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies as part of their spiritual path?

Robert Augustus Masters answers:

Let me begin by saying a bit about the nondual:

To nondual being, the inherent inseparability of all that exists is neither a concept nor an experience, but an obviousness beyond understanding, consistently recognized to not only always already exist, but also to be none other than the consciousness that “knows” it. That is, not only is awareness naturally aware of itself here, but it also is knowingly not apart from whatever may be arising, be such manifestation gross or subtle, ephemeral or long-lasting, peaceful or, yes, fearful.

No dissociation from phenomena, no strategic withdrawal from life, nowhere to go, no one to be, while “showing up” as all form, forever and everywhere — such phrases, blooming with mind-transcending paradox, point to the unimaginable yet omnipresent reality of the nondual, and point with unavoidable inaccuracy, given that there is not a fitting language for the nondual (because of the inevitably dialectical nature of language, not to mention the need for an ear that can “hear” nondual statements). What perhaps speaks most eloquently and precisely here is silence — not just the absence of sound, but the primordial chant of Eternity, the presence of which, when felt and truly “heard,” may catalyze a recognition outdancing its every translation.

The reality of non-separation is never not here, never not available, ever “inviting” us to awaken from the entrapping dreams we habitually animate. We may conceive of it as a place, a stage, an achievement, a reward — but it is simply what we forever already are, already transcending (and simultaneously including) every would-be “us” that would attempt to assume the position of self.

The personality is no longer the locus of self, but it still persists — and why shouldn’t it? If one is Being-centered, at home “in” (and as) the nondual, then personality, like everything else, is but one more non-binding expression of Being, asking not for annihilation, but for acceptance. To the realizer of the nondual, everything, everything, is God — anger, joy, duality, personality, fear. There is only God, only the Self, only the Real. So what problem is there, really, if fear arises? From a nondual perspective, such arising is, to put it mildly, radically nonproblematic.

In the nondual, fear is not what is transcended; what is transcended is what was done with fear in nondual states or stages.

Now on to the questions:

3. It was just the two of us. “What do I feel led to the extreme power of the journey, and its particular quality of nondual awe/terror?” The dosage; the lack of guidance; the timing; the psychospiritual work I’d done; and, especially, my unacknowledged readiness to break free of the guru-centric trap in which I’d gotten myself so deeply enmeshed. I’m not sure if Nancy’s experience was similar to mine, other than knowing right to her core that there was nothing, nothing she could hang on to.

4. Do in-depth, psychospiritual, integrally-informed therapeutic work before (and also after) such ceremonies; the same with meditative practice. Make sure you have a deep, abiding trust in your guide(s). Be as intimate as possible with your deepest fears. - Robert Augustus Masters

I have found that since I started working with Robert, the nature and depth of my experiences with the medicine have qualitatively changed; I find working with both Robert and the medicine (separately - he's had no further direct involvement with this plant teacher) to be powerfully synergistic.  At this point, if I were going to do a ceremony, I would ideally want to do sessions and/or workshops with Robert before and/or afterward.

spiral out,

arthur

Re: Ayahuasca

North American Ayahuasca Users Sought for Research Study:

Psychologist Rachel Harris is conducting a research study about North Americans and their ayahuasca experiences. She is exploring whether their ayahuasca experiences change their lives in terms of behavior, decisions, beliefs, moods, and attitudes. This is the first study of its kind to explore these areas of ayahuasca’s lasting effects on North Americans. A recent study by another researcher found no evidence for a decline in the neurocognitive skills of US subjects who use ayahuasca in the Santo Daime religion.

Harris’s early training was as a Residential Fellow at the Esalen Institute in the late 1960's. She is the recipient of a National Institute of Health New Investigator Award. She has operated a private psychotherapy practice for over thirty years.

Persons who have used ayahuasca in North America are encouraged to download and take Harris’s questionnaire (PDF) and then email it to her anonymously to ensure confidentiality.

~

source: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)

Re: Ayahuasca

I posted a Q&A exchange with Robert about a possible case of spiritual bypassing associated with Ayahuasca use here.

In addition to the potential for spiritual bypassing, another common confusion in Ayahuasca circles is the Pre-Trans Fallacy.

~


Check out the following an entertaining report by visionary artist Alex Grey:

Alex Grey On Ayahuasca (5:26) (April 9, 2008)

“Alex Grey, visionary artist, talks about an ayahuasca experience he had in Brazil.”

The MAPS Bulletin vol. 8 number 3 August 1998 issue has several articles on Ayahuasca.  Below I've posted a good one by Benny Shannon which gives some idea of the range of Ayahuasca phenomenology.  (If you want to read a fascinating, exhaustive account of the phenomenology of this medicine, check out Shannon's book The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience.)

Ideas and Reflections Associated with Ayahuasca Visions

Benny Shanon, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology
The Hebrew University

AYAHUASCA IS FAMOUS for the visions it generates. These have been discussed in the anthropological literature, and increasingly, they receive attention in the non-scientific, popular press.

In an earlier report in MAPS as well as elsewhere (Shanon, 1997) I have made the case for a systematic study of the contents of these visions and presented data pertaining to them. These data indicate that common content items appear in the visions of individuals from different personal and cultural backgrounds. The most salient of these are serpents, the large cats (jaguars, tigers and pumas, but not lions), birds and palaces. Other frequently seen items include beings of all sorts, scenes pertaining to ancient civilizations (notably Egypt and the pre-Colombian American high cultures), open landscapes (e.g., large meadows and savannas) as well as celestial and heavenly scenes. Most of the objects seen in the visions are made of gold and gilded material, crystal, precious stones and white cloth. The corpus of ayahuasca visions depicted in Ayahuasca Visions (Luna & Amaringo, 1993) exhibit similar patterns. From the point of view of cognitive psychology, such findings are significant because they seem to attest to a level of cognitive universals of a totally new kind. Unlike the universals normally considered in the psychological literature, which have to do with schemes of thought and formal structures, the commonalities manifested in ayahuasca visions have to do with content. Moreover, the content items are specific - they are not general patterns of the drama of human life. In this respect the images differ from the Jungian archetypes which pertain to the different manifestations of themes such as the great mother, the adventurous youth, the hero, the wise old man, birth and death. Such themes are, of course, part and parcel of the human saga, regardless of place, time, socio-economic affiliation, intellectual level or cultural and educational background. The items commonly found in ayahuasca visions are categorically different. They are specific and non- reducible to the psychology of personality dynamics. As suggested by Huxley (Huxley, 1972), they may be regarded as indicative of layers of the psyche, or perhaps facets of ontology, which have nothing to do with individual psychology.

Other effects of ayahuasca
Salient as the visions are, they (along with the non-visual “hallucinations” that the brew induces) are not the only effects that ayahuasca induces. Another important facet of the phenomenology of the ayahuasca experience are ideas, insights and reflections. Many individuals report that the brew makes them think faster and be more intelligent. Some persons with extensive experience with ayahuasca even indicated that with time, these ideational effects are more meaningful than the visions. In general, under the effect of ayahuasca, people report that they are more insightful and given to new ideas than usual. Furthermore, it seems that the intoxication makes people more involved with deeper psychological analyses and with philosophical contemplation.

Naturally, the subject matter of thoughts that pass through a person's mind during the intoxication are prone to reflect the interests and concerns this person normally has. Very often, when consuming the brew, people ask for answers or solutions to specific questions or problems that actually bother them in their lives. They often gain insights with respect to personal questions, find answers or solutions that are subsequently applied in their lives, and also find comfort and solace.

One person with extensive experience with ayahuasca told me that what the brew gives one is access to what he characterized as “divine wisdom.” This term, he further explained, denotes all that can be known on any subject. The knowledge to be gained by any particular individual will depend on the interests and wishes of the person in question. “If the person is interested in philosophy he will learn more about philosophy, he wishes to gain understanding about the nature of the human mind he will become wise on that, if what interests him is being a thief, it is this in which he will become more knowledgeable.”

This insight notwithstanding, it seems that as with the visions, the ideas entertained during ayahuasca intoxication exhibit some common, interpersonal features. These pertain to the domains being reflected upon, the general types of contents that become significant, and the overall perspectives from which things are being viewed. To my knowledge, this is a topic that has not received any attention or treatment in the scientific literature, neither anthropological nor psychological. The cognitive import of this phenomenon cannot, I think, be overstated.

Subject group demographics
As indicated in a previous MAPS report ( MAPS Bulletin 7(3) pp 13-15. ), in my work I have interviewed many subjects in different places, in different contexts of ayahuasca use, and with different levels of experience in its consumption. Here I focus on one group of subjects which I characterize as “independent drinkers.” All are residents of Brazil, most of them of Rio de Janeiro and almost all are of the middle class. Ayahuasca is a central facet of their lives, and all partake of it regularly. At the time of the interview, none were members of any institutionalized group or sect. This group of informants is comprised of 21 persons, 15 males and 6 females. The characterization of the informants as a group pertains to the design of the research; while some of these people know each other, most do not and they do not constitute a group in any social or interpersonal sense.

By and large, the ideas of a non-personal nature reported by these informants pertain to the following main categories: metaphysical reflections about the ontology and the structure and meaning of reality, reflections about nature and the phenomenon of life, insights regarding the human predicament and the meaning of life, ideas concerning the nature of knowledge, the mind and consciousness, ideas pertaining to human history and its meaning, ideas having to do with the nature of the Divine and the relationship between God and the world, thoughts of religious and spiritual character, reflections regarding ethical values and proper human conduct, and insights on the nature and praxis of healing.

Philosophical ideas
Of the various philosophical ideas entertained by the informants, the most prevalent concerned metaphysics - 13 of the members of the independent group entertained thoughts regarding the ultimate nature and structure of reality. Furthermore, without exception, all these ideas exhibited one particular metaphysical view, one which I would characterize as monistic idealism. Specifically, people feel that there is an aspect or level of reality which is non-material and that this defines the essence or the foundation of all Existence. They felt that all things are interconnected, and that in their totality they constitute one harmonious whole. With this, people appreciate that there is sense and reason to all things and that reality is invested with great, heretofore unappreciated, meaningfulness. Significantly, some specific expressions reoccurred in the words of different individuals. Those which appeared most often are “everything is spirit,” “everything is interconnected,” “all is one,” “this world is an illusion,” “everything has meaning,” “the different levels and aspects of reality exhibit the same essential structure.” My own first-hand experiences with ayahuasca reveal similar patterns.

Similarity with Western philosophies
These ideas are reminiscent of ideas put forth by many thinkers of both the East and the West. Of the latter, ones that especially come to mind are Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza and Hegel. Huxley referred to these by the umbrella term “perennial philosophy;” Huxley's book by this name (Huxley, 1944) is based on a comprehensive study of various religious and mystical traditions. Ideas of this kind are also encountered in contemporary reports based on the experiences of various individuals with psychedelics (not including ayahuasca); classical examples are Huxley's own reports based on experiences with mescaline (Huxley, 1959) and Watts' The Joyous Cosmology (Watts, 1962) which is based on experiences with LSD, mushrooms and mescaline. Interestingly, William James, while under the effect of another psychotropic substance, nitrous oxide, arrived at a similar idealistic world-view. By no means was this a simple matter for James - the philosophical ideas he conceived under the influence were reminiscent of the ideas of Hegel, a philosopher whose view James, as a philosopher, opposed (James, 1882). I should note that in no case were metaphysical ideas that would be associated with another philosophical line expressed. Given the theoretically possible space of philosophical ideas, this pattern is significant.

Similarities to classical Western philosophical ideas are not confined to metaphysics. They may also be related to epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of knowledge. Let me give just one example; this one too is taken from the interviews of independent drinkers. The person in question presented a whole metaphysical picture which he said came to him from ayahuasca. It was a radical idealistic view. When probing him with respect to the origin and possible veracity of this view, the man told me: “You are a professor so you think that you teach me, that you pass information to me. But this is not so. You only talk to me, and through this come up ideas and knowledge that are there, stored in my own mind. It is all there and, in effect, you teach me nothing.” Plato's Menon, of which this person had never heard, strikingly entered my mind and I was baffled. I shall add that some ayahuasca drinkers who did have acquaintance with Western philosophy did, in fact, report to me that their visions were akin to Platonic idealism. In no case did anyone mention another philosopher to me. I, too, thought of Plato several times in the course of my journey with ayahuasca. This was not a simple, straightforward matter. My professional work in cognitive psychology follows a strong anti-Platonistic line (Shanon, 1991). One of the most important effects ayahuasca has had on me is a serious entertainment of a Platonistic world-view. How the two tie together is a topic that I leave for another discussion. It is perhaps not irrelevant that Plato participated in the mysteries of Eleusis, where a psychotropic substance was probably consumed (Wasson, Ruck, & Hofmann; 1978).

How are the ideas and insights produced?
Often, the experience is like that indicated above - the mind works fast and one's reflective and creative faculties are significantly enhanced. On other occasions, the person feels that information is communicated to him or her, usually in a kind of telepathic non-verbal manner. (Interestingly, this mode of communication and knowledge are featured centrally in the esoteric writings of Blake and Swedenborg). However, very often the ideas are directly related to perceptual, hallucinatory effects that the person experienced under the ayahuasca intoxication. Here I consider two patterns; both types were reported to me by many individuals, both I have experienced personally as well.

The web of interconnectivity
The first has to do with the appreciation that all of reality is interconnected and that there is a force that makes it all exist and gives nourishment and sustenance to it all. Very often, this force is interpreted by people to be the Divine or the anima mundi and is characterized as being the fountain of everything - life, wisdom, health as well as intellectual and artistic creation. Personally, I have come to the ideas of this kind in conjunction with seeing what I called “the web” - translucent strings, like the threads of a spider web, that tie everything which is seen under the intoxication with open eyes. Afterwards, I have heard such an image mentioned many times by different individuals. The description of the visual effect was invariably the same and many persons used the identical phrase, “a web,” to describe it. For instance, one of the independent informants told me that the most important teaching she has received from ayahuasca was the appreciation that the Divine does indeed exist. Asking her how she had arrived at this conclusion she answered by presenting a description of the translucent web that interlinks everything and sustains all of existence.

The case of the web may be characterized as literal, for in it the vision presents what to the person under the influence seems to actually be a certain facet of reality not perceived in the ordinary state of consciousness. By contrast, the second pattern is metaphorical. Functionally, the visions in question are similar to the images or visualization that often open parables in the Bible: An image will appear and the person under the intoxication will decipher it as a message. In the following example the message is personal, having to do with insights regarding the person's personal life, but similar patterns are also encountered in conjunction with spiritual and philosophical ideas. Recounting her first ayahuasca sessions, one Brazilian middle class woman told me that she saw herself covered all around with a transparent plastic. Whenever she moved, the cover moved with her. She realized that in fact she is living her life separated from other people. Even though it seems that she is in contact with other people, in essence she is insulated and has no direct contact with anyone. The realization made this person change her attitude vis à vis human interpersonal relations. Another example is a vision of a building that was shabby and dilapidated. Apparently, the person having the vision understood, originally the building was well-designed and well constructed. Seeing this, the visioner realized that the building was him/herself and took it to mind that he/she had to make some basic change in his/her life. I use the compound masculine/feminine terms for indeed, I have heard of such a vision from two different persons - the first a Peruvian man of a low social class, the second a European woman visiting South America.

Seeing and knowing
In closing, let me return to the visual aspects of the ayahuasca experience and comment on the more general relationship between seeing and knowing. In the traditional Amerindian context, an intimate affinity between the two is encountered. As reported by Langdon (Langdon, 1992), the Siona Indians consider “seeing” to be the major characteristic of high level ayahuasqueros. Further, in the practice of ayahuasca healing, the ayahuasca is said to enable the healer to see the inner parts of his patient and thus establish a diagnosis. Similarly, on the basis of experience with mescaline, Castaneda repeatedly says that what entheogenic plants do is make “one see” (Castaneda, 1971). Does the traditional healer “really” see what other people cannot see or is it only that his intuition and insight are enhanced? In interviews conducted with several traditional curanderos, I have tried to clarify this issue. Some have insisted that the brew literally enables them to see the inner parts of their patients' bodies. Yet empirically there was no way for me to objectively verify these claims. Perhaps the difference between these two possibilities is less than seems to be at first glance. Perhaps deep down, there comes a point where a clear cut distinction between perception and comprehension is impossible to make or even meaningless. It is not at all an accident that in many languages, as in English, the phrase “I see” is commonly used in the sense of “I understand.” The relation between perception and knowledge is a fundamental issue in cognitive thought. A school of thought that has greatly minimized the distinction between the two is that of ecological psychology founded by James Gibson (Gibson, 1979); for a most readable introduction and overview, the reader is referred to Michaels and Carello (Michaels & Carello, 1981). In a book in progress, I discuss this topic further, both from a cognitive- psychological and from a philosophical perspective.

References
Castaneda, C. (1971). A Separate Reality. London: Arkana.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Huxley, A. (1944). The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row.
Huxley, A. (1959). The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell. Great Britain: Penguin Books.
Huxley, A. (1972). Visionary experience. In: The Highest State of Consciousness. White, J. (ed.). New York: Anchor Books.
James, W. (1882). On Some Hegelisms. Mind, 7, 186-208.
James, W. (1929). The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Modern Library.
Langdon E. J. (1992). Dau: Shamanic power in Siona religion and medicine. E. J. Langdon and G. Baer (eds.). In: Portals of Power. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Luna, L. &. Amaringo, P. (1993). Ayahuasca Visions. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Michaels, C. &. Carello, C. (1981). Direct Perception. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Polari, A. (1984). O livro das Miracoes. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record.
Roberts, T. (1983). New Learning. In: Psychedelic Reflections. Grinspoon, L. &. Bakalar, J. (eds.). New York: Human Sciences Press, Inc.
Shanon, B. (1991). Le Menon: Une conception de psychologie cognitive. In: Le Paradoxes de la Connaisance. Canto-Sperber, M. (ed.). Paris: Editions Odile Jacob.
Shanon, B. (1997). A cognitive-psychological study of ayahuasca. MAPS Bulletin, 7(3).
Tart, C. (ed.). (1969). Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Wasson, R. G., Hofmann, A., & Ruck, A. P. (1978). The Road to Eleusis. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Watts, A. (1962). The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness. New York: Pantheon Books.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by MAPS. I thank Rick Doblin for his encouragement and support. Amit Hagar and Nurit Shacham helped with the compilation of the data and its analysis and Nurit Shacham and Yoel Strimling helped with the preparation of this manuscript.

- Benny Shannon, Ph.D.

~~~

Re: Ayahuasca

Hi Arthur and All

Thought you might like to see this fictional Ayahuasca Trip from the movie Blueberry: Renegade (haven't seen it mentioned around here…)

Enjoy the ride!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ42SqtLlLE

Sha

Re: Ayahuasca

Thanks for the wild video clip, Sha.  My own journeys were never quite so visual…

spirals,
Arthur

Re: Ayahuasca

MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies) has a new book out on the subject: