505 - Ayahuasca Stories From 1989

Program Notes

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Today we pick up on the third section of a Terence McKenna workshop that was held in December of 1989. An interesting feature of this session is a report that Terence asked one of his friends to give about the state of ayahuasca use in Amazonian Peru. As one of the earliest accounts of what a Westerner will encounter when searching for an ayahuasca experience, we get to hear what it was like in the jungle before the plague of ayahuasca tourism took hold. One of the interesting ways in which he describes an ayahuasca vision is this it is a manifestation of one’s own intuition. We also get to hear Terence describe what he calls “tingling-lip ayahuasca”.

[NOTE: The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“If you take tingling-lip ayahuasca then you are one macho hombre.”

“I don’t like the drugs that absolutely destroy the witness. I think the witness is important.”

Transcript

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Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic

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Salon.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And this past week, I’m pleased to report that we’ve received donations from Joseph T. and Justin R.,

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both of whom are also now participants in our Psychedelic Salon forums.

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And if you’ve noticed a small addition on our homepage at psychedelicsalon.com,

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And I’ll have more to say about that in future podcasts.

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But getting back to our donors, I want to thank you both once again for your help in

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And also, I’d like to acknowledge the help of another anonymous Bitcoin donor.

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And thanks to a recent rise in its price, this year’s Bitcoin donations have already risen by about 20% in the last couple of months.

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So your Bitcoin gifts just keep on giving.

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Now, today we’re going to listen to more of a December 1989 workshop led by Terence McKenna.

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It begins with him answering a few questions that lingered from that morning session,

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but then he turns the floor over to one of the participants who tells what Terence calls a fieldwork story

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about a recent trip that he made to the Peruvian Amazon to investigate ayahuasca.

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a recent trip that he made to the Peruvian Amazon to investigate ayahuasca.

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Now, keep in mind the fact that this talk takes place over 25 years ago, and at least in the part of the country where I was living at the time, I’ll bet I couldn’t have found

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more than a handful of people within 100 miles of me who had even heard the word ayahuasca.

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I guess there may be more early detailed talks about the state of

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ayahuasca use in the Amazon than this one, but I’ve never come across one myself. Now, while I’m

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not at liberty at the moment to say anything more about the man who did this field work and gave the

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talk, there will probably be several hundred of our fellow salonners here who know and love this amazing person.

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And while he does his best to remain behind the scenes, the work that he does there has

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been every bit as significant as that of Sasha Shulgin, Terrence McKenna, or any of the other

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famous elders that you can name.

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And as you listen to him tell his story, try and think about where you actually were in December of 1989,

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so as to better place this talk in its historical setting.

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First, though, you’re going to hear Terrence say that when a person begins having deep psychedelic experiences,

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that you set off cascades of synchronistic events.

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And when we get to that point in about five minutes,

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I think that you may amaze yourself if you pause this podcast for a few moments and see if you can

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find a cascade of synchronicities that led you from your first deep psychedelic experience to

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where you are now listening to a podcast from the psychedeledelic Salon. I know that when I did that, it revealed a chain of events that

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now seem to me as if I’ve been well led to this moment in time

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that you and I are spending with one another. Or,

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or, maybe I’m just getting carried away

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with myself again. I’ll let you decide for yourself. So, now let’s

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join Terrence McKenna

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on a Saturday afternoon in December of 1989.

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Okay.

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Well, is there anybody who was left unbalanced

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by the brutal truncation of this morning’s session

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and needs to ask a question?

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We can talk a little bit about this morning’s session and needs to ask a question. We can talk a little bit

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about this morning’s session

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and then I thought,

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if he’s still game,

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that Ken,

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who is a regular attendee

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at these things,

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he has a sort of interesting

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fieldwork story to tell

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that would be inspiring.

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And then we could talk about that or other issues,

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or if it went flat, I would synthetically create a focus.

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So, okay.

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Is there anything left over from this morning

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or any line of discussion that needs to be pursued on that.

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I think we took it up to the notion of virtual reality being promising for the production

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of a kind of higher-order logos of communication

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that would be beheld rather than heard.

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This is a fave theme of mine because the way i finally interpreted

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what was happening inside the dmt experience was that these creatures were speaking in this

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visibly beheld language and i had never even conceived of such a thing I mean I just assumed language is something

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you hear with your ears but it turns out no that’s just one way to do it and another way

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is this visual input model and it seemed to me it’s a true form of telepathy. It’s not telepathy as we might have anticipated.

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My notion of telepathy was always,

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I hear what you think,

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not I see what you mean,

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and you see it too.

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And we contemplate it as a three-dimensional object.

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So virtual reality is interesting for that.

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See, I think that the engineers and the people who are putting this together don’t realize how odd the insides of our minds are

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and what a revolution it will make when we can show the insides of our minds to each other and the imagination can leave a trail as it were so that each imagine if

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each trip of every one of us could be set on a stacker here and we would just move among the cuts

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and say well here’s ken in the, an hour and 20 minutes into his,

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and here’s McKenna five years ago on X, Y, and Z,

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and have these things discussable as objects, as media.

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Well, this looms, I think, and it will empower the creation of a language

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and a community of understanding about these things that will be, you know,

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lighting a wildfire of shamanic awareness.

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I mean, it’s approaching critical mass,

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the ability to talk about this other reality

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in 20th century English.

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It’s approaching critical mass

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and when it bubbles over,

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then it will be a reality.

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Then it will be something.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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You know, my idea

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of the real state of balance

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that you could achieve

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if you were able to perfect

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what psychedelics promise

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is a kind of state of mind

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where it was perceived as ego

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but it was Tao.

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In other words,

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that you come so into phase

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with the how-ness of things

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that your wishes are the wishes that would be there in your absence almost.

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So that you are invisibly merged with the flow.

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And when this happens, and for some reason,

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I mean, this is really an interesting subject,

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and I confess that my best guesses are not very creative.

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This thing that everybody talks about, which is when you first start using psychedelics,

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the deep ones, you set off cascades of synchronistic events.

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And some of these are what psychologists call delusion of reference, in that every license

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plate, if you live in California, seems to convey a unique message designed for you. But some of it

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cannot be so easily dismissed. Some of it actually appears to be disruption of the statistical flow of

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causuistry in the so-called three-dimensional world. And, you know, getting a handle on that

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or getting a theory about that is pretty elusive. Does it mean that causality

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itself

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is something embedded

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in our language

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and that when we dissolve the boundaries

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of language what we ordinarily

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think of as the laws of

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physics or at least the laws

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of statistical probability

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begin themselves to break

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down that actually you know I think a lot of people statistical probability, begin themselves to break down.

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That actually, you know, I think a lot of people in our ven of thought pay lip service to the notion that the world is made of language.

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But the question is how to take that idea and ride off on it.

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You know, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Well, if the world is made

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of language, we should be able to construct stallions of syntax and just ride on down the

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road. Is this possible? Is it worth entertaining the idea? The forward escape

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that is going to be necessary

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to save the planet

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or even save our own skin

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is going to be extraordinarily creative

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it’s not a stopping of anything

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it’s not a managing of anything. It’s not a managing of anything

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because nothing can be managed.

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I mean, you have just the unleashed rapaciousness

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of five billion intelligent human beings

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spreading out over the planet.

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So the breakthrough is going to have to come

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in a major reconceptualizing of reality.

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How can it be done?

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Are we to shrink ourselves down to the size of fruit flies

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and all live in an arcology on the dark side of the moon?

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Is that a reasonable alternative?

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is that a reasonable alternative how can we manage the present population

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back down to a population

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that could be in balance on the earth

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in the monkey body

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it would take a thousand or more years

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to get us down to a billion people I would think

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so the breakthrough has to be

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a kind of deus ex machina

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or more a homo es machina

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in other words man must create

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a way out of the impasse

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and obviously the umbilicus

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of reality is tied

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somewhere in the cerebral cortex of the monkey.

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It’s all put together in there.

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And the trick then is to tease out

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the real operational constraints

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that set up the parameters of apparent existence.

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And what shamanism is,

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what the psychedelics are,

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is simply heaving brickbats into the still water of consciousness and then analyzing the wave mechanical perturbations that result from this and trying to create some kind of linguistic transform that allows you to map it back

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onto something you can understand.

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But someone said,

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who isn’t here unfortunately,

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that he completely rejected

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a notion very dear to my heart,

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which is that we’re living

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in unique times,

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that history is a compressive force that is moving toward a conclusion, and that this conclusion is now not that far in the future.

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And he said he didn’t believe this, and that he was a steady stater, and so on. But you see, the presence of ourselves

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is the indication that an extraordinary event

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is about to take place on planet three.

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We have emerged out of animal organization

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over the past 100,000 years.

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We have emerged out of tribalism

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in the last 10,000 years.

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The fact that we are undergoing this informational foment,

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this self-reflection of the universe and recoding and recasting of it

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that spins off technologies and languages like a pinwheel,

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and languages like a pinwheel.

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This signifies that something unusual is going on in the bio-social dynamics of the planet.

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It’s history.

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History is some kind of phase transition.

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It’s a highly temporary state of disequilibrium

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where mind in nature undergoes a kind of birth out of itself

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through the intermediary of technically creatures with technical ability and language. And trying

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to get in tune with this and understand this and have a place in it, is what shamanism has always been about.

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And because it’s always had this urgency,

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because on a planetary scale, you know,

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a process of 50,000 years is virtually nothing.

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I mean, it’s just the wink of an eye.

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A mood has come over the planet,

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and lo, it forces out of itself

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it extrudes from biology

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a whole new level of organization

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that is confounding to ontology

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I mean, what are we?

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how can we be?

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what is the place that we occupy in nature? Well, you can think about this

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in your armchair, or you can perturb the field, as it were, with these hallucinogens, and

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I think they centrally address the issue. I mean, I’ve compared them to what the telescope was for astronomy in the 16th century

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or what the atom smasher and particle accelerator was

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for the study of the primary structure of matter.

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I mean, here is a tool that, you know, you get phenomena when you apply this tool to mind.

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this tool to mind. It isn’t a stilled surface

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or you aren’t caught

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in the insect mechanics

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of social games,

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but instead, you know,

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you really begin to penetrate

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to the more profound levels.

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Well, Ken, would you like to tell

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what you’ve been up to recently

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in as much or as little detail as you care to?

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Ken is a very sharp guy.

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He’s run a Fortune 500 corporation,

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speaks excellent Spanish, one thing and another,

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and he’s lovable for sure.

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Here, go for this.

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Well, sometimes I think that Terrence is a sort of an instigator of dormant curiosities.

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So he certainly has stirred up my curiosity in the ayahuasca experience.

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I’m fine.

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So through, and he asked me to tell you a little bit about what I’ve just come back from,

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and through a series of sort of coincidental happenings,

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a couple of friends and I went down to Peru last month and spent some weeks in the Peruvian Amazon.

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One of the friends is here with us tonight as well,

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and I’d ask him to add whatever he wants to what I’m telling you.

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But the purpose of our going down there was simply to come with direct contact

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with the ayahuasca experience and the way it’s practiced there

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and the way it’s used and the purpose for

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which it’s used there.

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So we had a very surprising and rewarding trip, and we came into contact with the local

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native Peruvians there and the Amazonian Peru that use this stuff on a regular basis.

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that use this stuff on a regular basis.

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And I guess I’ll just make some descriptions of what happened there and maybe stop and ask whatever.

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But what we found there was simply that these people are using this thing

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on a very regular basis in the area of the Peruvian Amazon.

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It is not organized in any way. It is not, at least there, it is not a religion. It is not an organization in any way. This is just individual practitioners. Their practice and their technique varies a lot between one and the other. And there is varying beliefs, although generally the thing is used more or less in

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the same way.

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There are many ayahuasqueros or curanderos, what they call them in Spanish, which is literally

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healers.

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And these healers have sessions as often sometimes as three times a week in which they welcome

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patients of different kinds and these patients come sometimes for physical reasons.

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They have a pain or an ache or a disease of some sort.

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Sometimes it’s for emotional reasons.

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They’re distraught or they’re depressed

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or they’re afflicted in one way or another.

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Often it has to do with relationships.

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She’s not getting along with her husband

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or the husband doesn’t relate to the kids or what have you,

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so they come to them for that purpose.

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Now, I guess to put the thing in context,

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you have, I should say, that what I found there,

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along with my friends too,

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was that these people live in what you might describe

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a magical context.

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They believe very strongly in magic.

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And by that I mean nothing in their system

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is coincidence or coincidental.

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Everything has a reason.

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And usually the reason has to do with, at their level, is somebody’s trying

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to harm you, or somebody’s trying to take power from you, or somebody’s envious of you,

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and this is the reason for some of the diseases.

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Their other explanations are that you have, for example, been in contact with people that have a negative charge for whatever reason,

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or a bad charge,

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and then in some way you picked up this negative charge.

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In some other cases, you know,

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somebody is distraught for whatever reason,

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and then even without knowing them,

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you come across them or you’re in contact with them

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and you pick up this bad vibe, so to speak.

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So the purpose of the healer, the curandero,

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is to remove either these bad charges

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or to remove the deliberate intent that somebody has placed upon you

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with deliberate intent to harm you.

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And that’s a function of the curandero.

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Now, their system is strongly influenced

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by all these magical things.

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And to give you an idea

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of how surreal the whole thing,

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I think most of you have,

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or some of you may have heard

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about this book

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written by Bruce Lamb,

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you know,

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The Wizard of the Upper Amazon

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and Rio Tigre and beyond and so forth.

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Well, this was a story about a man that was captured by Indians

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and lived a lot of his life as a healer in a native tribe,

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and then he finally returned to Iquitos.

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Well, there was a Spanish book published about him, too,

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which I don’t think has been translated into English

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but it was interesting because

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for example some of the chapters there

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in the book describing this fellow

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and his native name was Ino Moxo

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Ino Moxo was the name

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his Spanish name was Manuel Cordoba

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but for example some of the chapters,

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and this is to put the thing for you in context,

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how the belief in magic permeates their whole environment.

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And, for example, some of the chapters are titled

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Where We Shall See That Masks Are Always Below the Face.

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masks are always below the face and another chapter is it is how certain healers create persons and another chapter is master enomokso. You know, this guy disappears blowing smoke.

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So it’s a very poetic thing, you know.

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These things are very magical.

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And they have not sort of left that magical level yet.

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So with that context, what happens is they have these sessions, and they gather together maybe anywhere from six to ten people in any one session.

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The sessions take usually place at night, after nightfall.

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They have a very strict belief in diet prior to taking ayahuasca.

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And the diet consists of different periods of abstinence from a number of things.

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And depending on what your purpose is and what you are intending to do,

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it may be seven days of diet, it may be 15 days of diet, it may be 30 days of diet.

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And the diet you have to abstain from things like salt, anything sweet, any pork or lard or anything close to pork or lard, no heavy greasy things of any kind, and also no sex.

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and also no sex.

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No sex is very important.

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And in their view,

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that doesn’t mean you have to be celibate,

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but it means that if you are intending to take ayahuasca

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for a certain specific purpose,

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you should be celibate

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for a day or so many days

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as the Master prescribes.

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And the reason in their view

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is that if you have any sex,

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this is nothing wrong.

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It just simply takes away your energy.

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And in the explanations that we were given there,

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the plants will not talk to you

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if you violate the diet.

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So, the sessions happen after night.

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They recommend that you do not eat anything. They recommend that you do not eat anything.

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They recommend that you adhere to certain diets.

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And you take this potion, which is a relatively small amount.

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The brew is a boiled down mixture of several components.

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And one of the aspects of it is that it is not particularly palatable.

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It is not nauseating, but it is not something too palatable.

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And when it goes down, you feel a certain reaction to it, some nausea.

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It varies between different people.

00:25:48 ►

In some cases, people throw up at some point during the session.

00:25:52 ►

They just vomited out.

00:25:54 ►

In their view, this is A, normal, to be expected, natural.

00:26:00 ►

Many of them consider the vomiting as positive

00:26:04 ►

in the sense that they look upon it as a purge.

00:26:07 ►

It says that if you vomit during the session,

00:26:12 ►

A, it doesn’t detract from your experience,

00:26:15 ►

and B, it means that you have been purified,

00:26:18 ►

that you’re getting rid of some of the poisons, toxins,

00:26:25 ►

bad things that you have in your body.

00:26:27 ►

So in their view, the vomiting isn’t negative.

00:26:32 ►

They do not, everybody does not absolutely vomit.

00:26:36 ►

I mean, it happens occasionally here and there,

00:26:38 ►

depending with experience.

00:26:40 ►

And these sessions last anywhere from four to six hours.

00:26:46 ►

So if you begin at seven o’clock or something,

00:26:48 ►

the thing is usually over by two in the morning, three in the morning.

00:26:53 ►

And the purpose of the session is, there are several purposes.

00:27:02 ►

They do it, A, of course, to heal.

00:27:02 ►

there are several purposes.

00:27:04 ►

They do it, A, of course, to heal.

00:27:09 ►

And healing means, in their view,

00:27:12 ►

a very specific thing,

00:27:15 ►

at least the people that we were in contact with.

00:27:19 ►

They say that the vine,

00:27:21 ►

the brew itself,

00:27:26 ►

empowers you and gives you the vision.

00:27:33 ►

Specifically, it gives the healer the vision as to what is wrong with a person,

00:27:35 ►

if it’s a case of disease.

00:27:41 ►

But curiously enough, that the actual healing is not done by the vine.

00:27:46 ►

They firmly believe that the healing is done by the chanting.

00:27:49 ►

And this gets a little complex.

00:27:52 ►

The healer during the course of the session pronounces or sings these what they call Icaros.

00:27:58 ►

And the Icaro is a chant.

00:28:01 ►

It’s like a song.

00:28:02 ►

It’s like a sing-song thing.

00:28:04 ►

The chants are only occasionally

00:28:07 ►

have a word of Spanish here and there.

00:28:10 ►

Most of it is either in Quechua,

00:28:13 ►

the local Indian language,

00:28:15 ►

or often they are nonsense syllables

00:28:17 ►

like dee-dee-dee or na-na-na

00:28:19 ►

or something like that.

00:28:20 ►

But they go in a musical up and down.

00:28:25 ►

Now, in their view, the plants,

00:28:29 ►

each individual plant,

00:28:30 ►

and of course you have to realize

00:28:32 ►

that there in the Amazon

00:28:34 ►

there are zillions of plants.

00:28:36 ►

They all have different uses

00:28:38 ►

and they all know the uses of the different plants.

00:28:41 ►

I mean, it’s just like an open pharmacopeia.

00:28:45 ►

They’re all over the place to do what to do. the uses of the different plants. I mean, it’s just like an open pharmacopeia.

00:28:46 ►

They’re all over the place as to what to do.

00:28:48 ►

But then they believe

00:28:51 ►

that the healer,

00:28:54 ►

under the influence of the ayahuasca,

00:28:57 ►

contacts either the ayahuasca plant

00:28:59 ►

or any other plant that he wishes,

00:29:04 ►

converses with that plant,

00:29:06 ►

brings out what they call

00:29:07 ►

the mother of the plant,

00:29:09 ►

which is another way of saying

00:29:11 ►

the spirit of the plant

00:29:12 ►

or the genius of the plant,

00:29:14 ►

and that that spirit of the plant

00:29:16 ►

will teach the healer

00:29:17 ►

how to sing that particular song

00:29:23 ►

of that particular plant

00:29:24 ►

and what that song will heal

00:29:27 ►

and what that plant, if given as a leaf or a tea

00:29:31 ►

or another combination, will cure.

00:29:35 ►

So the healer’s function then is

00:29:38 ►

to take the ayahuasca along with the patient.

00:29:41 ►

They will both take it.

00:29:43 ►

The healer’s function then uses the ayahuasca

00:29:45 ►

to acquire power and to see.

00:29:49 ►

And then, once identified what the problem is,

00:29:53 ►

selects the ikaro, the song,

00:29:55 ►

to sing to do the healing.

00:29:58 ►

And the ikaros, as you sit there,

00:30:00 ►

and of course you’re under the influence of the ayahuasca,

00:30:02 ►

the ikaros under the high become

00:30:07 ►

very powerful and they’re almost like a hypnotic thing that they in their opinion and in my

00:30:15 ►

experience increases the effect of the drug so it potentizes the effect of the drug and did you find that these Icaros

00:30:25 ►

are actually you see them

00:30:26 ►

because they drive

00:30:28 ►

the fabric of the hallucination

00:30:31 ►

yes

00:30:32 ►

and they talk about it this way

00:30:34 ►

they talk about it

00:30:35 ►

they call it painting

00:30:36 ►

to chant it’s painting

00:30:39 ►

that’s right you see them

00:30:41 ►

you’re hearing and in fact

00:30:44 ►

you’re seeing them and in fact you’re touching them.

00:30:48 ►

And they have an emotional texture as well as a chroma. I mean, it’s hard to explain. It’s very rich.

00:30:58 ►

I’d like to just read you in that regard one of the other titles of the chapters that I was referring to

00:31:07 ►

a minute ago.

00:31:07 ►

And then,

00:31:08 ►

the guy says,

00:31:09 ►

Inomoxo says that words

00:31:11 ►

are born,

00:31:13 ►

they grow,

00:31:15 ►

and they reproduce themselves.

00:31:18 ►

But not in Spanish.

00:31:23 ►

You have to do them in Quechua.

00:31:24 ►

All right. This is the reason for the Ikaros

00:31:27 ►

so as you go into the session

00:31:30 ►

there are different phases I guess

00:31:32 ►

which are quite different from

00:31:34 ►

they vary from person to person I presume

00:31:38 ►

but you go through a

00:31:39 ►

what I would describe as a sort of

00:31:43 ►

discomfort area

00:31:47 ►

or a phase in which you sort of don’t feel too good

00:31:51 ►

and you feel a little nauseous and so forth.

00:31:54 ►

You progress on to a second phase.

00:31:57 ►

And, of course, I’m generalizing,

00:31:59 ►

and this would vary according to people,

00:32:01 ►

but you progress on to what you might call the terror phase.

00:32:08 ►

And at that point, the horror, the terror, all right?

00:32:14 ►

And that, I think, has to do with fear of the loss of ego.

00:32:19 ►

You lose control, and pretty soon you realize

00:32:21 ►

you’re on a roller coaster that is totally out of your control or power to do anything about.

00:32:28 ►

And, of course, that instills trepidation, shall I say.

00:32:33 ►

Then you move on to a third phase, which I guess would be the circus.

00:32:36 ►

And in the circus you generally see incredible, beautiful gardens,

00:32:41 ►

colors, entities, variations in architectural detail.

00:32:46 ►

I mean, it’s an incredible, and you sit there in dazed wonder looking at this beauty, and

00:32:54 ►

you wonder how the world can be so beautiful.

00:32:58 ►

And then you finally go into a sort of a contemplative phase, which is probably the longest in duration,

00:33:05 ►

in which you have gone through

00:33:08 ►

all of these other trepidations

00:33:12 ►

and then go into this phase

00:33:14 ►

in which you contemplate,

00:33:15 ►

you see yourself.

00:33:18 ►

Peculiarly enough,

00:33:19 ►

you see other people around you in the session

00:33:24 ►

and quite often you see them under a different guise

00:33:29 ►

than they normally would be.

00:33:32 ►

And that was a common experience for me anyway.

00:33:34 ►

And by that I mean, for example,

00:33:38 ►

you would have somebody sitting next to you,

00:33:41 ►

and during this contemplative phase,

00:33:44 ►

you would open your eyes

00:33:45 ►

and see somebody with human legs but the body of a bird or you would see somebody else which

00:33:56 ►

i’m describing actual visions that i had seated down there as a monk with a shaved head and of

00:34:03 ►

course you know he’s not a monk and he’s not dressed as a monk

00:34:06 ►

and he doesn’t have a shaved head,

00:34:07 ►

but that’s what you’re saying.

00:34:08 ►

And this is not a daydream.

00:34:12 ►

Well, when you ask them about it

00:34:14 ►

and you ask the healer,

00:34:15 ►

they explain that what you’re saying really are,

00:34:19 ►

it’s like a super-developed intuition.

00:34:25 ►

You know, we all have intuitions.

00:34:27 ►

A real intuition.

00:34:28 ►

Right?

00:34:28 ►

We all have intuitions about people we meet

00:34:31 ►

and we feel, well, I don’t like that person

00:34:33 ►

or this person looks angry or whatever.

00:34:35 ►

Well, this is sort of like that intuition

00:34:37 ►

elevated to a super-sensitivity

00:34:40 ►

in which you’re not sort of intuiting it.

00:34:42 ►

You’re actually seeing a manifestation.

00:34:44 ►

So if you’re seeing somebody as a monk with a shaved head,

00:34:49 ►

you’re looking at an aspect of that person’s personality.

00:34:52 ►

And these can be quite revealing and quite surprising.

00:34:56 ►

And you often see people as animals.

00:34:58 ►

That’s another situation.

00:35:01 ►

Well, the other thing that they use during the sessions

00:35:04 ►

is the healer that is in

00:35:08 ►

charge is sort of like a presiding person. He controls the session. He can control the session

00:35:15 ►

in many ways, and some of the things that they use are camphor water. They put some camphor in

00:35:20 ►

water, and of course the camphor only partially dissolves in the water, but it gives it a sort of a camphor smell.

00:35:27 ►

And they also use sort of like an old cologne

00:35:31 ►

that’s been running around Latin America for a long time.

00:35:35 ►

Old agua de Florida.

00:35:38 ►

Florida water.

00:35:39 ►

Florida water.

00:35:40 ►

Agua de Florida.

00:35:41 ►

They drink this stuff.

00:35:43 ►

Yes.

00:35:45 ►

Did you drink

00:35:47 ►

it?

00:35:47 ►

Well,

00:35:47 ►

actually,

00:35:48 ►

I didn’t drink

00:35:49 ►

it,

00:35:49 ►

but many of

00:35:50 ►

them put a

00:35:50 ►

little bit

00:35:51 ►

in the

00:35:51 ►

brew.

00:35:51 ►

Oh,

00:35:52 ►

yeah.

00:35:52 ►

And the

00:35:53 ►

purpose of

00:35:53 ►

that is to

00:35:54 ►

disguise some

00:35:55 ►

of the

00:35:55 ►

unpleasant

00:35:56 ►

smell.

00:35:58 ►

Now,

00:35:58 ►

a Florida

00:35:58 ►

Florida is

00:35:59 ►

just,

00:35:59 ►

in effect,

00:36:00 ►

a cheap

00:36:00 ►

cologne.

00:36:01 ►

It’s like

00:36:01 ►

a cologne

00:36:02 ►

with some

00:36:03 ►

clothes and some spices. It’s not unpleasant,ologne with some, you know, cloves and some spices.

00:36:05 ►

It’s not unpleasant.

00:36:07 ►

But anyway, they use that and they believe that as a powerful cleanser.

00:36:11 ►

And the other thing they use is fresh tobacco.

00:36:16 ►

It’s not the tobacco that we know here from cigarettes and pipes.

00:36:20 ►

This is just the raw leaf cured a little bit, chopped up.

00:36:24 ►

And it’s a very clean smell.

00:36:27 ►

I don’t smoke and I don’t particularly like smoking, but to me this is a very powerful,

00:36:32 ►

and they believe it’s a very powerful curing agent. In fact, one of the better ones in their

00:36:36 ►

opinion. So they use the tobacco smoke. Not at all. No, it’s a very clean, very pure smell.

00:36:46 ►

So in these sessions, the healer would, you know, pass the brew around.

00:36:52 ►

Some healers have, since this is really not only, you know, pure jungle,

00:36:57 ►

they’ve been citified to some degree.

00:36:59 ►

Some of them have a strong Christian influence.

00:37:02 ►

So some of them recite prayers, invoke the Virgin, certain saints.

00:37:07 ►

Many of them don’t,

00:37:08 ►

and many of them are really

00:37:10 ►

not into the Christian part at all.

00:37:12 ►

Many of them have,

00:37:14 ►

they’re simply, you know,

00:37:16 ►

they don’t talk about prayers,

00:37:17 ►

they just sing the songs.

00:37:19 ►

After they distribute the brew,

00:37:21 ►

they blow, or they blow the tobacco smoke.

00:37:24 ►

They believe that blowing the tobacco potentiates the brew.

00:37:30 ►

And after…

00:37:32 ►

They don’t ask you to smoke.

00:37:33 ►

No, that’s right.

00:37:34 ►

They blow it.

00:37:35 ►

Does it get you high different than, say, is it like marijuana or is it more like tobacco?

00:37:40 ►

No, no, it’s just plain tobacco.

00:37:42 ►

It’s not a weed or anything.

00:37:43 ►

It’s just tobacco, so it doesn’t get you high.

00:37:45 ►

It’s just the smell and the smoke.

00:37:46 ►

They see it as a purifying, as a cleanser, as an empowering agent.

00:37:51 ►

So in the session, you know, you sit in a circle.

00:37:54 ►

The healer would distribute the potions to everybody after blowing tobacco smoke on it.

00:38:00 ►

And then nothing much happens for about 45 minutes or somewhere around there.

00:38:04 ►

And then nothing much happens for about 45 minutes or somewhere around there. And then these four or five phases that I described before begin to take effect.

00:38:11 ►

And during that time, the healer goes around, often individual person after individual person,

00:38:19 ►

and he blows smoke on your head, on your back, on your front.

00:38:23 ►

And he blows smoke on your head, on your back, on your front.

00:38:30 ►

He puts some of the agua de florida or the camphor water or both in his mouth and sort of blows some of that down your back and your head.

00:38:37 ►

And let me tell you that it’s a very powerful experience

00:38:41 ►

because when you’re under the influence on these things,

00:38:47 ►

you begin to see the healer not as he is in person,

00:38:51 ►

but you begin to see the healer as somebody quite different.

00:38:54 ►

And you may see him as an animal,

00:38:56 ►

you may see him as a bear,

00:38:57 ►

you may see him as a…

00:38:58 ►

So this is coming, different things at different times.

00:39:02 ►

It’s shifting, yeah.

00:39:04 ►

And then he would come around to you

00:39:08 ►

and the purpose of the smoke

00:39:10 ►

and the eye welfare

00:39:12 ►

is to increase,

00:39:14 ►

to send you higher.

00:39:16 ►

So he would come around

00:39:17 ►

and of course there are different styles

00:39:19 ►

and different ways,

00:39:20 ►

but the blowing of the smoke

00:39:23 ►

or the blowing of the camphor water goes something like this and

00:39:28 ►

i’m not a shaman so i can’t imitate it but i can give you an idea of how powerful it can be

00:39:33 ►

especially if you are already under the influence but he would come around and

00:39:39 ►

blow on your head and you know if this is my head, he would go like…

00:39:49 ►

So if you’re sitting there…

00:40:02 ►

Or perhaps a giant mantis waddling across the shed to suck on your anterior font now.

00:40:07 ►

All of the above.

00:40:08 ►

All of the above, right?

00:40:10 ►

Yeah, I know.

00:40:13 ►

He moves around

00:40:15 ►

and repeats that with everybody.

00:40:18 ►

In some cases,

00:40:19 ►

if you have a problem

00:40:20 ►

that you tell him ahead of time,

00:40:22 ►

he will call you in front of him.

00:40:26 ►

You will sit in front of him and he will chant directly the Ikaros to you according to the problem that you have. And he

00:40:35 ►

will spend 10-15 minutes with you alone and blowing smoke and spreading the camphor water.

00:40:43 ►

mowing smoke and spreading the camphor water.

00:40:44 ►

Did you have a problem after?

00:40:50 ►

Well, I did it myself because I didn’t feel anything physically wrong.

00:40:56 ►

But many people go to these sessions not only for a physical or an emotional problem. They go to complete themselves, to learn more, to contact another reality.

00:41:04 ►

So it is not necessarily a disease-oriented thing.

00:41:08 ►

They’re learning.

00:41:09 ►

They’re learning, right.

00:41:12 ►

You mentioned the entities in the part after the rush.

00:41:17 ►

Was it like an extended DMT flat?

00:41:20 ►

Yes, when you were describing the DMT this morning, about all of the entities and this incredible, indescribable reality, it was that, except extended over a much longer period of time.

00:41:36 ►

And were these things relating to you?

00:41:39 ►

To some degree, and I think that that’s different for each person.

00:41:43 ►

Maybe some, Thomas can expand on that but for example if you ask a question one of my

00:41:53 ►

experiences what for example I asked a specific question and then I had all of

00:42:00 ►

these long arms coming out after me with sheets of paper.

00:42:07 ►

And there were things written in the sheets of paper in these…

00:42:11 ►

Facts on the astral plane.

00:42:14 ►

And, of course, I was trying to read these things.

00:42:16 ►

Some I could, some I couldn’t.

00:42:18 ►

Languages are seen and touched and heard.

00:42:21 ►

And was there English printed on these papers?

00:42:24 ►

No, this was no English.

00:42:25 ►

No English.

00:42:27 ►

And the entities, were they steady in image

00:42:32 ►

or were they transforming and geometric?

00:42:35 ►

What was their character?

00:42:37 ►

Well, I would describe them as very active,

00:42:40 ►

moving around all over the place.

00:42:41 ►

They’re absolutely clear.

00:42:43 ►

I mean, it’s no blur.

00:42:44 ►

You’re not seeing blur. i think one way of describing them is

00:42:49 ►

the influence the chemical influence of the vine is so strong that you almost feel less if this is

00:42:59 ►

some magnet in front of you that that is drawing you into it, and by that I mean it’s a very strong

00:43:06 ►

effect on your body. As you do more of these things, I found that if you were to surrender

00:43:14 ►

to this magnet, you would lose most of the experience, because most of the interesting

00:43:20 ►

things were going around in the periphery. So I felt that the best way to handle it, and I think this you learn after a little

00:43:28 ►

bit, is to, yeah, be drawn by the magnet, but pay attention to all of the things that

00:43:33 ►

are going around.

00:43:34 ►

And what’s going around is such a variety of things that you have to be alert to catch

00:43:39 ►

them, you know?

00:43:40 ►

Did you ever totally surrender to the magnet?

00:43:43 ►

I think if you do, you probably miss part of the experience

00:43:47 ►

because it’s so powerful that it’s…

00:43:48 ►

But you didn’t do that?

00:43:49 ►

No.

00:43:49 ►

Did you speak to anyone who did?

00:43:51 ►

Yes.

00:43:51 ►

Well, in the first experiences, the initial ones, yeah,

00:43:54 ►

because what happens is you…

00:43:56 ►

It’s like you get flown away so far

00:44:00 ►

that you’re just sort of almost unconscious

00:44:02 ►

and you’re not aware and then you miss and then you remember.

00:44:05 ►

It becomes almost like anesthesia.

00:44:08 ►

And in fact, if the dose is really intense,

00:44:12 ►

your lips will tingle

00:44:14 ►

as a symptom of the onset of anesthesia.

00:44:17 ►

Did you notice that at all?

00:44:18 ►

Yes.

00:44:19 ►

Well, if you take tingling lip ayahuasca,

00:44:22 ►

then you are one macho hombre.

00:44:28 ►

Some people take more than once.

00:44:31 ►

I did not, and I didn’t find it necessary.

00:44:34 ►

And I ate one dose more than once.

00:44:36 ►

How much is a dose?

00:44:37 ►

Is it a jiggerful, a cupful?

00:44:39 ►

Well, that varies too a little bit

00:44:42 ►

because, of course, this is an individually boiled and concentrated thing.

00:44:46 ►

But usually some of the sessions we were taking one-third of a cup.

00:44:53 ►

After you take it for a while, they believe, and I think that that is correct,

00:44:58 ►

that you need less in amount to get the same effects.

00:45:04 ►

So instead of your body getting immune to it,

00:45:08 ►

it works the other way around.

00:45:09 ►

You need less to get to the same place.

00:45:12 ►

See, it’s running on DMT and beta-carbolines like harmine,

00:45:19 ►

and these things all occur endogenously in the human brain.

00:45:23 ►

So it’s the closest thing to a cocktail of neurotransmitters

00:45:29 ►

that you could get to.

00:45:32 ►

None of these compounds are invasive at all.

00:45:34 ►

They’re all part of normal metabolism.

00:45:37 ►

It’s just that the ratios are now going to be shifted radically

00:45:41 ►

by the fact that you’re doing so much of it.

00:45:46 ►

What sort of group were you with?

00:45:49 ►

There wasn’t any group.

00:45:50 ►

We just had the good luck of coming across an active Peruvian shaman who invited us to

00:45:59 ►

go down there.

00:46:01 ►

And then he introduced us to different masters and teachers that he had had. So that was

00:46:07 ►

really as simple as that. Did your experience change on repetitive exposures? Were you able

00:46:15 ►

to control the situation more on the second or third exposure than you were on the first?

00:46:22 ►

that exposure than you were on the first?

00:46:23 ►

Yeah, two things.

00:46:29 ►

They individually prepare the brew in different ways.

00:46:31 ►

Some may add some more mixtures.

00:46:32 ►

They may add other plants.

00:46:33 ►

Some may not.

00:46:37 ►

So the brew from master to master changes.

00:46:40 ►

So your experience also changes.

00:46:43 ►

In some cases, you don’t have too many visions.

00:46:45 ►

In some cases, you feel in an altered state but in a lesser degree in some cases you have a very powerful

00:46:50 ►

experience depending on who prepared it and what concentration what I oh yeah

00:46:58 ►

you can really get taken to the cleaners if you don’t speak Spanish and you don’t

00:47:02 ►

know what you’re doing you can drink a lot of swill before you get to anything good right the other thing that i found too was in answer

00:47:12 ►

to your question was that the more you take it the more you relate to it and the more productive

00:47:21 ►

the experience is and the more you learn from it. In the first experiences, you’re almost overwhelmed by the thing.

00:47:28 ►

I mean, it’s just your mind is blown out of the bathtub.

00:47:31 ►

And as you take it more, then you begin to deal with it more,

00:47:35 ►

get more out of it, learn more from it, and it becomes much more productive.

00:47:40 ►

Did you see it as a little frightening after your first time to do it the second time?

00:47:44 ►

Or was the overall feeling like you’d like to do it again?

00:47:49 ►

Well, I’d like to do it again, but I’ll tell you, every time I took it, I was terrified going into it.

00:47:54 ►

There’s no question about it.

00:47:56 ►

And you feel as if you’re just going to absolutely go berserk.

00:48:00 ►

Now, this is a subjective experience because, in fact, nobody goes berserk from it.

00:48:05 ►

And there’s no, to my knowledge, there’s really no danger in the sense of as long as you do it within a prescription.

00:48:13 ►

But it inspires terror every time you go into it.

00:48:17 ►

And afterwards, though, do you feel?

00:48:19 ►

Yes.

00:48:20 ►

Do you feel, wow, that was good, I did that, and I did it right?

00:48:22 ►

Yes, yes, you do. And also, in most of our experiences, the next day, you know, contrary to some other stuff you take,

00:48:31 ►

you do not generally feel hungover or drawn out or depressed or weak.

00:48:36 ►

In fact, you feel energized.

00:48:38 ►

And in addition to that, let me tell you that they see it, in their view, it is, as it’s like a purge it’s like an energizer it’s like it’s not only they don’t see it as a

00:48:50 ►

visionary drug they see it also as a physical purge to help your body it’s

00:48:55 ►

like an energizer like a tonic and some of these fellows have three sessions a

00:49:00 ►

week and they’ve been doing this for 20 years so you can see that good well and do they want

00:49:08 ►

something from you for this service of being your guide and your kind of your healer do they

00:49:14 ►

well many of these fellows well these fellows that live as a healer of course they generally

00:49:20 ►

do nothing else that’s their function it’s like being a doctor now there are good ones and there are bad ones like anywhere else I think we were

00:49:29 ►

lucky in that the ones that we came across with they were really a number

00:49:35 ►

one people and they had the feeling that you know they were doing this because

00:49:40 ►

they wanted to help that they wanted to, that that was their function. It’s

00:49:45 ►

like a doctor not interested in money.

00:49:47 ►

They don’t have a set fee or anything?

00:49:49 ►

No.

00:49:49 ►

Do you give them something?

00:49:50 ►

Yes, yes. They live by it, and they have these patients that come to them. So now you realize

00:49:57 ►

that this is a low-income society. So, I mean, this is not a lot of money from anywhere,

00:50:02 ►

but yes, they do pay sometimes in money.

00:50:05 ►

They don’t pass a basket or anything?

00:50:06 ►

No, no, no.

00:50:06 ►

They just find a way to give them something that’s good to you?

00:50:10 ►

Right.

00:50:10 ►

There is no fee, incidentally.

00:50:12 ►

They have no fee.

00:50:13 ►

Did you have prior experience with psychedelics?

00:50:17 ►

And if so, is there any contrast

00:50:19 ►

compared to other experiences that you’ve got clearly?

00:50:24 ►

Well, I think the closest one that I could describe would be DMT.

00:50:29 ►

You had done DMT prior to that.

00:50:32 ►

Was that the only one you had done?

00:50:34 ►

No, but this would be the closest, I think.

00:50:36 ►

You said something about surrendering to the magnet.

00:50:40 ►

Well, the physical effect that you feel from the brew is very powerful.

00:50:45 ►

And I mean physically.

00:50:46 ►

I mean, you feel the thing in your stomach, and you feel a little bit of nausea, and your body feels, you know.

00:50:53 ►

Every time it rounds a bend in your intestine, it’s a metaphysical revelation.

00:51:02 ►

And there are many bends in your intestines.

00:51:08 ►

Do you get diarrhea from this?

00:51:12 ►

Some people do.

00:51:13 ►

I did not.

00:51:15 ►

But I’m sorry, to get back?

00:51:16 ►

Is that like just being accepting and just going with it?

00:51:20 ►

Well, what happens is the physical effect is very strong,

00:51:22 ►

and then the onset of the effect on the brain is quite strong.

00:51:27 ►

So you feel like something foreign is taking you over.

00:51:32 ►

That’s what I mean by the magnet.

00:51:35 ►

Like in all of these things, I think you have some degree of control.

00:51:39 ►

Now, if you get absorbed or you get focused in what’s happening to you physically or emotionally

00:51:47 ►

in the sense of this effect physically on the gut or this control that takes you over,

00:51:54 ►

this power that takes you over, then you sort of lose the experience because this is what I mean.

00:51:59 ►

You get drawn into that magnet and then you worry about it and you get nothing else.

00:52:04 ►

drawn into that magnet and then you worry about it and you get nothing else. Meanwhile, the visions are happening and in the periphery of that magnet or that physical

00:52:10 ►

and emotional thing that’s going on, you’re beginning to see visions and these things

00:52:15 ►

are revealing and they’re telling you things so you have to deal with the physical part

00:52:20 ►

and at the same time not be absorbed by it.

00:52:23 ►

And the psychology is like a roller coaster.

00:52:26 ►

If you’re going to ride a roller coaster,

00:52:29 ►

it does you no good whatsoever to clench your body.

00:52:33 ►

It’s beyond that.

00:52:35 ►

You might as well just open yourself up

00:52:38 ►

because it’s bigger than you are.

00:52:40 ►

And resistance is just resistance.

00:52:44 ►

and resistance is just resistance.

00:52:51 ►

Well, you try to cling to that and I don’t like the drugs

00:52:55 ►

that absolutely destroy the witness.

00:52:59 ►

I think the witness is important.

00:53:01 ►

Certain drugs so totally take the world away that it’s a breakthrough

00:53:06 ►

to be able to figure out that

00:53:08 ►

you’re on a drug.

00:53:10 ►

If you know that place,

00:53:12 ►

it happens on ketamine

00:53:13 ►

where you go through all these contortions

00:53:16 ►

and then you say, oh now

00:53:18 ►

I remember, I’m a person

00:53:20 ►

on ketamine.

00:53:22 ►

That’s what this is.

00:53:24 ►

And say, wow, now I…

00:53:25 ►

Well, what this means is that you’re coming down.

00:53:28 ►

But these tryptamines,

00:53:30 ►

psilocybin, ayahuasca,

00:53:32 ►

DMT, though they totally

00:53:34 ►

distort your sensorium

00:53:36 ►

and carry you into this alien

00:53:38 ►

world, the observing

00:53:40 ►

self doesn’t lay a glove

00:53:42 ►

on it. Not a glove.

00:53:44 ►

You’re all there, observing all your fears all your hang

00:53:48 ►

ups all your humor it’s don’t you find that absolutely you’re there it’s just that my god

00:53:54 ►

what has been set loose you know it’s like trying to make sense of a of a world gone mad when the ayahuasca is really strong the way I experience it

00:54:05 ►

it’s like a moving wall

00:54:08 ►

sort of angry

00:54:11 ►

criss-crossing, chattering

00:54:13 ►

mechanical stuff

00:54:15 ►

which just backs me up

00:54:17 ►

and then it just breaks loose

00:54:19 ►

like a flood

00:54:21 ►

and I’m swept away

00:54:23 ►

the early phase, you described it perfectly.

00:54:25 ►

There is this phase where the boundaries dissolve,

00:54:29 ►

everything comes to pieces.

00:54:31 ►

I mean, it literally shakes your reality to pieces

00:54:34 ►

until there’s not even three-dimensional space left.

00:54:37 ►

And then the impression I had was of being carried by a wave

00:54:42 ►

and then just finally left

00:54:45 ►

on a beach somewhere

00:54:47 ►

with my face buried in the sand

00:54:50 ►

and just, you know, washed up.

00:54:53 ►

And then I sat up,

00:54:56 ►

smoked a joint,

00:54:58 ►

and visions stabilized deep,

00:55:02 ►

this DMT thing.

00:55:03 ►

And then, as Ken says, this long

00:55:06 ►

come down, this long cerebral

00:55:09 ►

thoughty come down over several hours where

00:55:12 ►

you just feel most comfortable and

00:55:15 ►

stabilized and reflective on

00:55:18 ►

what has happened. And everybody else seems like

00:55:21 ►

that too. And what I found was my Spanish

00:55:24 ►

in that phase would just flower.

00:55:27 ►

And I could express myself and say things

00:55:30 ►

and we could delve into places with these people

00:55:33 ►

that were otherwise utterly unattainable.

00:55:35 ►

And that’s different from DMT, coming down from DMT?

00:55:40 ►

Well, see, DMT lasts five minutes and you smoke it.

00:55:44 ►

The genius of these Amazonian shamans Well, see, DMT lasts five minutes, and you smoke it.

00:55:48 ►

The genius of these Amazonian shamans is that they figured out how to take DMT,

00:55:51 ►

which ordinarily would be destroyed in your gut,

00:55:55 ►

and combine it with another plant,

00:55:57 ►

which turns off the enzyme system in your gut

00:56:02 ►

that would ordinarily destroy the DMT.

00:56:05 ►

And instead the DMT becomes orally active.

00:56:09 ►

This wasn’t even understood by Western pharmacology until 1956.

00:56:15 ►

These people have been doing it for millennia.

00:56:17 ►

So then the DMT, instead of hitting with this tremendous rush

00:56:22 ►

and then being quickly quenched,

00:56:25 ►

which is what happens with the smoking.

00:56:27 ►

Instead, it unfolds over about,

00:56:30 ►

the most intense part can be about two hours,

00:56:33 ►

and then you come down off of it.

00:56:36 ►

So it gives you time then,

00:56:38 ►

is that what you’re saying?

00:56:39 ►

You were saying it’s more productive than later on,

00:56:42 ►

time to deal with things and find things?

00:56:45 ►

Yes, and the thing which is most disturbing

00:56:47 ►

to people about smoking DMT

00:56:49 ►

is the kind of hysterical speed

00:56:52 ►

of the whole thing.

00:56:53 ►

I mean,

00:56:55 ►

the fact that you go from

00:56:57 ►

ordinary reality to the

00:56:59 ►

raging peak of the intoxication

00:57:02 ►

in under a minute.

00:57:04 ►

And then you’re just left to deal with this

00:57:07 ►

thing for two minutes or so to try and get your wits together in the midst of this maelstrom

00:57:13 ►

of elf language and all this other stuff. And then you tumble off this narrow plateau,

00:57:19 ►

down, down, down, forgetful. But the ayahuasca you retain

00:57:25 ►

long time

00:57:26 ►

long period

00:57:27 ►

of time

00:57:27 ►

remember what

00:57:28 ►

you saw

00:57:29 ►

I made a little

00:57:30 ►

list that may be

00:57:30 ►

interesting for you

00:57:31 ►

I asked them

00:57:32 ►

why do you

00:57:33 ►

take ayahuasca

00:57:34 ►

why do people

00:57:35 ►

come to you

00:57:36 ►

and these are

00:57:37 ►

the things that

00:57:38 ►

they mention

00:57:38 ►

they say

00:57:39 ►

to preserve

00:57:40 ►

health

00:57:41 ►

to manipulate

00:57:42 ►

the supernatural

00:57:44 ►

to travel up here of course

00:57:47 ►

to predict I want to see the future to discover thieves and to discover

00:57:55 ►

infidelity a lot of people come to them and they say my wife or my husband is as being can you tell me if that’s true to ask for wisdom to heal disease to

00:58:10 ►

discover the unknown to reach the essence of things and then finally as a

00:58:18 ►

purge as a tonic all these things are part of the and they last you know the

00:58:24 ►

other thing I wanted to tell you is that they have, you know,

00:58:28 ►

this strong belief in evil and good, of course.

00:58:32 ►

And a lot of the things that happen to you is because somebody’s…

00:58:36 ►

And then if you talk to some of the more enlightened of them

00:58:40 ►

and that are a little more psychologically aware,

00:58:42 ►

and that are a little more psychologically aware,

00:58:45 ►

you realize that this thing is,

00:58:50 ►

you can’t discount it as being a very primitive or, you know, very stupid, uncivilized thing.

00:58:55 ►

Not at all.

00:58:56 ►

It’s a very sophisticated system.

00:58:58 ►

And what they say is, you know,

00:59:00 ►

that there are good and bad people like everywhere else. That many of the

00:59:07 ►

people that get into the power that ayahuasca gives them, you know, we all have good and bad

00:59:14 ►

things inside of us. That people that are not aware of this thing, they have some of the bad

00:59:21 ►

things inside them come out, and they don’t want to admit

00:59:26 ►

that it’s part of their dark side,

00:59:28 ►

part of their negative side.

00:59:30 ►

So when you can’t admit that that is part of you,

00:59:33 ►

then of course the only other explanation is

00:59:36 ►

it was put there by somebody else

00:59:39 ►

and that somebody else must be something evil

00:59:42 ►

that is trying to harm me.

00:59:45 ►

And that in a primitive, original environment,

00:59:49 ►

when this was in the jungle and the Indians were not yet citified,

00:59:58 ►

that it was all good because the healer either healed diseases or cured troubles and so forth,

01:00:04 ►

because the healer either healed diseases or cured troubles and so forth,

01:00:10 ►

or in case that he was trying to defend himself from the other tribe,

01:00:16 ►

he was also good because he was defending his own people against the other enemy, the other tribe.

01:00:21 ►

But that now in a citified environment, of course, where it’s partially civilized, and there is no other tribe. So the other tribe is somebody evil.

01:00:25 ►

So you can’t really…

01:00:29 ►

The thing works a little bit less well,

01:00:32 ►

but that’s their sort of viewpoint.

01:00:34 ►

You have to deal.

01:00:35 ►

And then if you’re dealing with the good people,

01:00:37 ►

the good-centered shamans,

01:00:40 ►

they say that you have to learn all of these powers,

01:00:44 ►

but that you use them only to protect yourself

01:00:47 ►

that you don’t use them to harm anybody else

01:00:50 ►

that the function you have to learn all of the power

01:00:53 ►

and then you use the power only to benefit people

01:00:56 ►

or to protect yourself but not to harm somebody else

01:01:00 ►

when this was first discovered in the 1910

01:01:06 ►

to 20 period,

01:01:08 ►

they called the alkaloid in

01:01:09 ►

Banisteriopsis copy telepathy

01:01:12 ►

because

01:01:13 ►

they actually believed that

01:01:16 ►

these people were

01:01:17 ►

experiencing some kind of group

01:01:19 ►

state of mind induced

01:01:21 ►

by this stuff.

01:01:23 ►

Then later it was discovered that it was

01:01:25 ►

conspecific to Harmin

01:01:27 ►

which had been isolated earlier

01:01:29 ►

from Pergamon Harmala

01:01:31 ►

and the law of nomenclature

01:01:34 ►

dictates you take the earlier

01:01:35 ►

name but Ken’s list

01:01:38 ►

is interesting

01:01:39 ►

things like observing the future

01:01:41 ►

finding lost objects

01:01:44 ►

determining infidelities.

01:01:47 ►

What all this means in mathematical terms

01:01:50 ►

is a higher dimensional perspective,

01:01:54 ►

a perspective from which the closed doors of this world are open doors.

01:02:02 ►

And Ralph Abraham, who some of you may know,

01:02:05 ►

has suggested that one way to model the psychedelic experience

01:02:10 ►

is to take seriously the possibility that

01:02:13 ►

because we live in a three-dimensional matrix,

01:02:17 ►

the incoming data about the world

01:02:19 ►

is neurologically processed into a usable three-dimensional map.

01:02:24 ►

But under the influence of psychedelics, is neurologically processed into a usable three-dimensional map.

01:02:27 ►

But under the influence of psychedelics,

01:02:33 ►

higher dimensional mappings of the same data are provided,

01:02:36 ►

and this would entail the possibility of,

01:02:40 ►

if not predicting the future,

01:02:44 ►

at least finding lost objects and seeing behind closed doors and knowing the hidden motives of people’s actions,

01:02:48 ►

which would be a very powerful thing in the hands of someone

01:02:53 ►

who understood magical psychology.

01:02:57 ►

I wonder to what extent there’s communication or exchange among the Indian groups.

01:03:03 ►

With what you described, I went on a trip about 10 years ago to Ecuador.

01:03:07 ►

We had sort of the same kind of mechanics

01:03:09 ►

and they also spoke in Ketcha,

01:03:11 ►

how we pronounce that.

01:03:13 ►

And I just wondered how far this tradition extends

01:03:15 ►

and whether the Indian tribes

01:03:16 ►

communicate with each other about these techniques.

01:03:20 ►

I don’t, I’m not sure.

01:03:21 ►

I can’t answer that myself.

01:03:23 ►

I’m not there long enough.

01:03:24 ►

I think it’s huge that probably this ayahuasca curing religion

01:03:30 ►

is probably the world’s largest psychedelic religion.

01:03:34 ►

I mean, we’ve talked to people about it,

01:03:36 ►

trying to estimate the numbers of people involved in this,

01:03:40 ►

and it’s, you know, in the several million anyway.

01:03:47 ►

I mean, every village in Peru,

01:03:49 ►

every river town,

01:03:53 ►

has at least one practicing Ayahuasca,

01:03:55 ►

even if people deny it to you.

01:03:58 ►

I mean, it is happening all around you.

01:04:00 ►

And now it’s spreading down into Brazil.

01:04:05 ►

These groups like Unión Vegetal and Santo Daime are revitalization

01:04:07 ►

movements in the context of the

01:04:10 ►

Brazilian social situation

01:04:12 ►

that are using

01:04:13 ►

ayahuasca to create

01:04:16 ►

a new

01:04:18 ►

syncretic religious form

01:04:20 ►

there, yeah

01:04:21 ►

does ayahuasca have a meaning?

01:04:23 ►

it means vine of the dead.

01:04:26 ►

And the

01:04:27 ►

name, the

01:04:28 ►

scientific name

01:04:29 ►

for the

01:04:30 ►

plant is

01:04:31 ►

Banisteriopsis

01:04:33 ►

copy.

01:04:34 ►

Banisteria

01:04:35 ►

refers to

01:04:36 ►

the pattern

01:04:38 ►

of growth

01:04:38 ►

of the vine

01:04:39 ►

that the

01:04:40 ►

leaves are

01:04:41 ►

always directly

01:04:42 ►

opposed to

01:04:42 ►

each other

01:04:43 ►

like a

01:04:44 ►

ladder.

01:04:45 ►

So if we were to translate its name into English,

01:04:48 ►

we would say it’s ladder vine,

01:04:51 ►

ladder vine, ayahuasca, banisteriopsis,

01:04:54 ►

and copy, the generic, or I mean the species name,

01:04:59 ►

is the word for it in a native language.

01:05:03 ►

It’s called copy.

01:05:04 ►

It’s also called yaje in Colombia.

01:05:08 ►

But Ken made a good point

01:05:11 ►

that it’s made by somebody.

01:05:14 ►

See, this isn’t like peyote or mushrooms

01:05:18 ►

or something where it’s in its natural state,

01:05:22 ►

the consumable drug.

01:05:24 ►

This has to be made by somebody

01:05:26 ►

and they can make it well or badly

01:05:29 ►

and

01:05:29 ►

so it’s much more open to

01:05:32 ►

manipulation and

01:05:34 ►

the influence of the human factor

01:05:37 ►

yeah

01:05:37 ►

the image you describe of the

01:05:40 ►

opposing leaves and so forth

01:05:42 ►

and the spine of the death

01:05:44 ►

did you find that

01:05:47 ►

from listening to the DNA

01:05:48 ►

did you find that

01:05:49 ►

oh yeah all of these things

01:05:52 ►

we have many fantasies

01:05:54 ►

about ayahuasca being down there

01:05:57 ►

and we saw

01:05:57 ►

some of the information

01:06:01 ►

that the plants were telling us

01:06:03 ►

was so incredible that I don’t advance

01:06:06 ►

it as fact, but

01:06:08 ►

the drift of the fantasy

01:06:10 ►

when you’re in the jungle

01:06:11 ►

is you begin to see it as

01:06:14 ►

under the influence of psychedelics

01:06:16 ►

you begin to see it as some kind

01:06:18 ►

of very highly integrated

01:06:19 ►

data transfer

01:06:21 ►

it’s like a

01:06:23 ►

coral reef.

01:06:26 ►

And certain organisms are playing major roles

01:06:31 ►

in the moving of this stuff around.

01:06:33 ►

So that the Banisteriopsis liana

01:06:36 ►

that grows up to 300 meters long through the jungle

01:06:40 ►

and has its tissue laden with these highly bioreactive beta carbolines

01:06:45 ►

is like an antenna.

01:06:48 ►

It’s a molecular antenna picking up and broadcasting

01:06:52 ►

submolecular and quantum mechanical perturbations in the bottom.

01:06:58 ►

This is not just chirping, you understand.

01:07:00 ►

This is what appears to be going on when you stand there

01:07:04 ►

stoned on fire very often. Ask yourself what be going on when you stand there stoned on fire

01:07:05 ►

very often ask yourself

01:07:07 ►

what’s going on

01:07:08 ►

did you get enough into the jungle

01:07:11 ►

can’t it hear these

01:07:12 ►

waves of insect sound

01:07:15 ►

that move across

01:07:17 ►

well these things are intense

01:07:19 ►

I mean it goes from

01:07:20 ►

you know relative silence

01:07:23 ►

to many decibels of sound in a moving wave.

01:07:28 ►

And it’s shrill sound.

01:07:30 ►

It’s the kind of sound that a square wave generator puts out

01:07:33 ►

when you’re trying to pump the chemical solution to a higher state of reactivity.

01:07:38 ►

And here are these insects sweeping the jungle

01:07:42 ►

with these screeching waves of synergistic sound.

01:07:46 ►

That’s never been studied.

01:07:48 ►

The level of pheromonal regulation,

01:07:51 ►

the fact that everything is shedding odor molecules into the air

01:07:55 ►

and everything is integrating and communicating,

01:07:59 ►

it’s quite intense.

01:08:02 ►

It’s like a brain.

01:08:04 ►

It’s like a mind. It’s like a mind.

01:08:06 ►

It’s like a super organized individual.

01:08:09 ►

And there you are, creeping around inside of it.

01:08:12 ►

I have a couple of questions.

01:08:14 ►

How long did you usually fast for before taking that lesson?

01:08:19 ►

In a regular session, I found, at least in my case,

01:08:23 ►

that if I ate anything after breakfast,

01:08:26 ►

I would have trouble keeping it down.

01:08:29 ►

So you really have to do it, at least for me, that day.

01:08:32 ►

Now, if they talk about,

01:08:35 ►

if you really want to get into some of the higher levels,

01:08:39 ►

higher level means bringing forth the spirit of the plant

01:08:44 ►

and getting deeper into the thing then you have

01:08:47 ►

to fast for longer times that just one day but one day fast at least for me was enough to be

01:08:55 ►

able to take the brew without throwing up if I ate anything during the day I just couldn’t keep it down. Did you get to observe different healers preparing?

01:09:06 ►

Did you get to see the proportions that they were using?

01:09:10 ►

No, we prepared one batch ourselves with one healer, so I know how he did it.

01:09:17 ►

We asked the other ones.

01:09:19 ►

We did not see any other ones.

01:09:21 ►

But there are some variations in the

01:09:25 ►

additional plants that they put on

01:09:27 ►

or not, in the time of boiling,

01:09:30 ►

what proportions they

01:09:31 ►

put on. Yes, there are variations.

01:09:34 ►

There seems to be two

01:09:35 ►

schools of thought.

01:09:37 ►

One of them is that you just put

01:09:39 ►

the ayahuasca vine itself

01:09:42 ►

and the

01:09:43 ►

cicotria, which is the DMT-containing plant.

01:09:46 ►

And the other school seems to be that you use those and also a species of datura type.

01:09:55 ►

And so there are two ways of doing it.

01:09:58 ►

Now, also, most of them add, and again, this varies because it’s a very individual thing, but some of

01:10:06 ►

them tell you that they put a little sugar to modify the bitterness as it goes, you know,

01:10:11 ►

when you take it.

01:10:12 ►

Some of them put a little of the agua florida to modify the smell, and it’s not enough.

01:10:19 ►

I mean, agua florida is mostly alcohol, but it’s not enough to really affect, you know,

01:10:23 ►

give you an alcohol high.

01:10:25 ►

It’s a few drops only.

01:10:27 ►

Some of them put an odor control, too,

01:10:33 ►

and they tell you that they put rue, like regular, the rue, the herb to control the aroma,

01:10:40 ►

which is a little unpleasant.

01:10:42 ►

But these are minor additives, so there are all kinds of variations within that.

01:10:46 ►

So when you were going around to the booths,

01:10:48 ►

did you actually keep track of,

01:10:50 ►

to correlate the experience that you had

01:10:53 ►

with the basically different recipes?

01:10:57 ►

At least I found that the ones prepared

01:11:02 ►

with the datura added,

01:11:06 ►

the brogmancia added,

01:11:10 ►

tended to be more visionary and more powerful than the ones prepared without.

01:11:14 ►

Now, the other ingredients,

01:11:16 ►

you really don’t know how much agua de florida they put in

01:11:20 ►

or how much roux or how much sugar.

01:11:22 ►

That’s really minor stuff.

01:11:23 ►

How much datura did they actually use?

01:11:24 ►

Well, usually what we saw prepared there

01:11:28 ►

was a final amount of one liter.

01:11:32 ►

And for that they used 15 leaves,

01:11:36 ►

relatively large-sized leaves of the detour.

01:11:39 ►

For six acres?

01:11:42 ►

Well, one liter would probably give you enough for 10 to 15 people.

01:11:48 ►

So basically one leaf per kid.

01:11:53 ►

But it’s not detourer.

01:11:55 ►

It’s a frugmense that they call toer.

01:11:59 ►

But it’s very strongly solanaceous.

01:12:01 ►

When you roll the leaf in your hand, it smells just like detourure. It’s a bush. It’s a tree, datura. It’s not a creeper.

01:12:12 ►

How many times did you experience it?

01:12:16 ►

Well, while we were down there, it must have been at least eight times or so.

01:12:21 ►

Are these compounds and plants all scheduled?

01:12:28 ►

Interestingly, beta-carbolines have never been scheduled,

01:12:32 ►

but DMT is, of course, scheduled.

01:12:35 ►

But I wonder if there’s some type of…

01:12:37 ►

No, the harmin, harmaline, tetrahydroharmin,

01:12:40 ►

and 6-methoxyharmalan are all psychedelic,

01:12:44 ►

and none have been scheduled.

01:12:46 ►

What does scheduled mean?

01:12:48 ►

Scheduled means put on the DEA’s list of very bad drugs.

01:12:53 ►

If something is Schedule 1,

01:12:55 ►

it’s treated like cocaine, heroin, LSD, psilocybin, DMT.

01:13:01 ►

These are the Schedule 1 drugs.

01:13:03 ►

Then there’s a Sched schedule 2 and a schedule 3

01:13:06 ►

and so forth

01:13:07 ►

but beta carbolines have not

01:13:10 ►

been scheduled

01:13:11 ►

another interesting thing about

01:13:14 ►

ayahuasca that makes it

01:13:16 ►

very powerful in the environment

01:13:18 ►

where it’s operating is

01:13:20 ►

it kills

01:13:21 ►

intestinal parasites

01:13:23 ►

very effectively

01:13:25 ►

worms especially

01:13:27 ►

this is a major problem

01:13:29 ►

in the tropical third world

01:13:31 ►

we even brought some back

01:13:33 ►

and at UC Med Center

01:13:35 ►

they used it to kill

01:13:38 ►

the trypanosomal phase

01:13:40 ►

of the life of the malarial organism

01:13:43 ►

well if it’s even slightly retardant of malaria

01:13:47 ►

and it has a proven ability to retard intestinal parasites,

01:13:52 ►

it’s definitely, for that alone,

01:13:54 ►

it’s probably extending the lifetime of its users

01:13:57 ►

by a significant percentage.

01:14:01 ►

I have another question about preparation.

01:14:04 ►

I have another question about preparation.

01:14:11 ►

The ayahuasca, do they use the dry form or do they use the fresh?

01:14:14 ►

No, what we saw there was used fresh,

01:14:22 ►

and they simply cut foot-long pieces of maybe anything up to an inch in diameter.

01:14:29 ►

And then they mash it and boil it down in water with the cicotria.

01:14:37 ►

Well, it’s probably a four to one, four ayahuasca to one of the cicotria. And then they do not add the brugmansia until the very end.

01:14:42 ►

The other question I have is in reading Lamb’s work

01:14:46 ►

among the Cordova,

01:14:48 ►

at least in the

01:14:50 ►

tribal situation,

01:14:51 ►

it seems that

01:14:52 ►

ayahuasca is a

01:14:53 ►

substance that’s used

01:14:55 ►

for men.

01:14:56 ►

You know,

01:14:57 ►

that the men

01:14:57 ►

come together

01:14:58 ►

and they use that

01:14:59 ►

in their visioning.

01:15:00 ►

And later,

01:15:02 ►

when he goes back

01:15:03 ►

into his hometown

01:15:07 ►

and is a healer, there are definitely women who take to be healed,

01:15:13 ►

but I never got the sense that there are actually women healers who used.

01:15:19 ►

I was curious if you ran across any of these.

01:15:21 ►

No, the people we met there were generally,

01:15:24 ►

I mean it was not in a strictly jungle environment.

01:15:27 ►

This is really in city-fied,

01:15:30 ►

and they’re usually not pure Indians.

01:15:32 ►

They’re sort of mestizos, Indian white mixtures.

01:15:36 ►

We did not see a woman healer.

01:15:38 ►

We did hear that there were women healers.

01:15:42 ►

What we did see that the patients that were coming to the healers

01:15:45 ►

that we were with,

01:15:47 ►

many of them were women

01:15:48 ►

participants.

01:15:49 ►

But when you heard

01:15:50 ►

of the women healers

01:15:51 ►

did they,

01:15:52 ►

was ayahuasca

01:15:52 ►

their drug of choice?

01:15:54 ►

Yes.

01:15:55 ►

Okay.

01:15:56 ►

We did not see any.

01:15:57 ►

In some cultures

01:15:58 ►

there’s a split.

01:16:00 ►

There’s a famous

01:16:01 ►

woman healer

01:16:02 ►

in southern Peru

01:16:03 ►

called Maria

01:16:04 ►

Juana Gonzalez Obi.

01:16:07 ►

And as a girl of 18, she had lost her toes and fingers to leprosy

01:16:13 ►

when she finally found, I think, Manuel Cordoba Rios.

01:16:18 ►

And he cured her with ayahuasca.

01:16:22 ►

How this is possible, who knows?

01:16:25 ►

But apparently he did this.

01:16:26 ►

And she went on to be a renowned ayahuasquera

01:16:30 ►

in the Tingo, Tingo Maria area.

01:16:37 ►

Did you see the people that came to be healed?

01:16:41 ►

Were they healed of whatever they went there for? Did they get what they

01:16:45 ►

went for? I don’t know because, of course, these are total strangers and the sessions

01:16:51 ►

we were there, some were and then some were not at the next one and so forth. But we,

01:16:56 ►

you know, heard about, you know, one thing that these people do, the healers, and I’m

01:17:01 ►

not saying that that’s bad, but they like to boast about their prowess.

01:17:07 ►

They like to say how strong they are, how many people they have healed and all that.

01:17:12 ►

And that may not be entirely bad because if it instills in the patient a faith that they

01:17:18 ►

can be healed, maybe it helps in the healing, but they like to talk about them and we have met one kid there that

01:17:27 ►

the maestro that we were working with there said that that was one of his big successes and he said

01:17:37 ►

that the kid had suffered from intermittent fevers for more than a year and the doctors couldn’t cure him. And then he was feeling

01:17:47 ►

better and the fevers had disappeared. And we talked to the kid a little bit and he said,

01:17:51 ►

yeah, and so forth. Interestingly enough, the kid at the time was sort of weak and not

01:17:56 ►

in very strong physical condition. So he was attending the sessions but not taking ayahuasca

01:18:05 ►

was attending the sessions but not taking ayahuasca himself but you see the theory is what heals is the song not the vine so he didn’t take he didn’t

01:18:12 ►

necessarily take the brew he was being healed by the singing the tobacco and

01:18:17 ►

the water and so forth

01:18:22 ►

you got what you went for, right?

01:18:23 ►

Absolutely, sure.

01:18:27 ►

And how is your life now different? I don’t know if this is exactly how to ask this,

01:18:29 ►

but how do you feel now,

01:18:31 ►

I mean, as opposed to before?

01:18:33 ►

How do you see differently?

01:18:36 ►

Well, I just came back,

01:18:37 ►

but, you know, I think that for me anyway,

01:18:42 ►

what the purpose in this was like,

01:18:45 ►

I think many of us are in,

01:18:47 ►

is like attaining a higher consciousness,

01:18:50 ►

expanding your…

01:18:52 ►

Do you feel like you have a great sense

01:18:53 ►

of the mystery that you didn’t have before?

01:18:58 ►

Yes, to some degree, sure.

01:19:00 ►

I don’t think I’m quite getting my question out there.

01:19:02 ►

The other thing maybe to answer your question is,

01:19:05 ►

during this contemplative phase,

01:19:08 ►

after all of the shenanigans are over,

01:19:13 ►

you really begin to see other people, as I described,

01:19:17 ►

intuitively on very special things like birds and animals,

01:19:21 ►

but you also see yourself and you also reflect

01:19:24 ►

and you also see your own psyche in a very different way.

01:19:29 ►

And you learn from it, at least I learned a lot from that,

01:19:32 ►

because you see things that you normally would not be able to be aware of in your ordinary state.

01:19:39 ►

So you see things about your own life and your own behavior and your own psyche

01:19:43 ►

that are sometimes terrifying

01:19:47 ►

and sometimes very good, but both in any case enlightening. So I think that’s where you learn.

01:19:53 ►

Is this creating a more aware society down there for these people? Are they…

01:19:58 ►

Spreading.

01:19:59 ►

Are they, you know, are they noticing peace or something that we would all like to have in this place?

01:20:06 ►

Well, I don’t know how to answer that,

01:20:12 ►

but on an individual level, the people that we dealt with down there,

01:20:16 ►

I found to be extremely simple, honest, sincere, clear, grounded, beautiful people,

01:20:26 ►

you know, on an individual level.

01:20:29 ►

These people were, it’s like a block of crystal.

01:20:30 ►

You could see right through them,

01:20:34 ►

and there were no jealousies and envies.

01:20:38 ►

Now, these were a very limited sample.

01:20:41 ►

Now, of course, the country itself is in a complete turmoil. You know, politically, it’s just a disaster,

01:20:46 ►

and there’s very little order order and the place is chaotic.

01:20:48 ►

So, but that’s the only things

01:20:50 ►

I could tell you.

01:20:51 ►

But the people we were dealing with there,

01:20:53 ►

especially the healers,

01:20:54 ►

are, you know,

01:20:56 ►

were very clear,

01:20:57 ►

very centered

01:20:58 ►

and very sincere

01:20:59 ►

and very honest

01:21:00 ►

and enormously helpful people.

01:21:02 ►

You know, they were turned outside

01:21:04 ►

to help, to help, to help.

01:21:06 ►

And did this make a closer connection for them with nature?

01:21:11 ►

They’re very close to nature, and they talk a lot about plants.

01:21:14 ►

They use it.

01:21:15 ►

They talk about protecting it.

01:21:18 ►

They’re worried about the cutting down of the trees.

01:21:21 ►

They’re close to animals.

01:21:23 ►

So they’re very close to that, absolutely.

01:21:26 ►

Very aware of that, absolutely. Very aware of that too.

01:21:27 ►

Information that wasn’t coming to you from the outside?

01:21:31 ►

Yes.

01:21:32 ►

A couple of examples of that is, there’s usually this, what people call the DMT zing or buzz,

01:21:41 ►

and when you’re in this high initial period in there, you definitely hear that zing or buzz and when you’re in this high initial period in there

01:21:45 ►

you definitely hear that zing

01:21:47 ►

it’s like zzzzz

01:21:49 ►

you know, kind of thing

01:21:50 ►

for a while

01:21:53 ►

and that sort of disappears

01:21:54 ►

there’s also

01:21:55 ►

what we were talking about

01:21:58 ►

if you hear language

01:22:00 ►

or something like that

01:22:01 ►

you hear the language

01:22:04 ►

you see it

01:22:04 ►

and you see it,

01:22:05 ►

and you touch it.

01:22:06 ►

So it’s a sort of the sensory stimuli

01:22:08 ►

are all crossed.

01:22:09 ►

You’re seeing, hearing,

01:22:10 ►

and touching the same thing.

01:22:12 ►

Also the Icarus,

01:22:15 ►

when they sing the songs,

01:22:17 ►

you know,

01:22:18 ►

when he begins

01:22:19 ►

and you’re only getting

01:22:21 ►

into the influence,

01:22:22 ►

it’s just a regular sing song,

01:22:23 ►

you know,

01:22:23 ►

it goes up and down

01:22:24 ►

a little bit like a Gregorian chant or something like that. But when you really are into the influence. It’s just a regular sing song, you know, goes up and down a little bit like a Gregorian chant

01:22:26 ►

or something like that.

01:22:27 ►

But when you really are into the high,

01:22:30 ►

then the songs become very powerful.

01:22:32 ►

And when you hear the song,

01:22:36 ►

it’s more than just music.

01:22:37 ►

It’s like you’re touching it

01:22:39 ►

and you’re being affected by it.

01:22:42 ►

The thing works in reverse too.

01:22:44 ►

They can also, if, and we saw that demonstrated there,

01:22:48 ►

if a person is too high and too far gone

01:22:52 ►

and is too afraid or is too terrified by this thing

01:22:57 ►

and it can happen,

01:22:58 ►

they can also bring the high down in that person,

01:23:02 ►

either by singing a specific Icaro

01:23:05 ►

or more specifically,

01:23:08 ►

he comes around the healer

01:23:09 ►

and with agua de florida

01:23:14 ►

or camphor water in his mouth,

01:23:16 ►

he comes around and he sucks

01:23:18 ►

on the head of the person

01:23:21 ►

that needs to be brought down

01:23:22 ►

and then spits that water in a bucket

01:23:24 ►

and he does that several times.

01:23:26 ►

And in three minutes,

01:23:29 ►

that person that was way out there

01:23:31 ►

is right back down and, you know,

01:23:35 ►

calmed down, quieted down,

01:23:36 ►

so they can do it both ways.

01:23:39 ►

But they would come around and, for example,

01:23:43 ►

the healer would come around and in front of

01:23:48 ►

one person and he would you know blow the tobacco smoke and the water and so

01:23:53 ►

forth and sometimes he would say I see this or I see that you know in the same

01:24:00 ►

way that you’re seeing other people as different things. He would come and I say, I see this,

01:24:06 ►

and he would tell the person what he’s seeing.

01:24:10 ►

Parents, are these vines and stuff growing in other parts of the world besides South America?

01:24:14 ►

Only where they’ve been taken.

01:24:16 ►

This is, you know, propagated.

01:24:18 ►

It’s native to South America.

01:24:20 ►

This whole complex is definitely

01:24:25 ►

South American

01:24:26 ►

is this brew available

01:24:29 ►

for export?

01:24:31 ►

well

01:24:32 ►

these Santo Dime people seem

01:24:34 ►

quite interested in propagating

01:24:37 ►

their new religion

01:24:38 ►

and seem to be holding

01:24:40 ►

sessions, I don’t know what their

01:24:42 ►

production capacity is

01:24:44 ►

people are using it in psychotherapy experimentally seem to be holding sessions. I don’t know what their production capacity is.

01:24:47 ►

People are using it in psychotherapy,

01:24:50 ►

experimentally, and holding sessions.

01:24:51 ►

In the United States?

01:24:53 ►

In the United States.

01:24:54 ►

It’s very hush-hush.

01:24:57 ►

But this kind of thing does go on.

01:25:01 ►

It’s very promising, I think. You know, MDMA,

01:25:04 ►

the idea there was that it was an empathogen introducing this new word of inducing empathy. I think ayahuasca is like an empathogen except that instead of bonding and relating to the immediate people that you’re with, you actually relate to suffering humanity.

01:25:27 ►

I mean, it’s very heart-opening.

01:25:30 ►

It’s interesting that it can be so much like mushrooms chemically,

01:25:35 ►

and yet the experience is quite different.

01:25:38 ►

Mushrooms are this titanic, alien, planetary perspective

01:25:44 ►

that’s very off-planet.

01:25:48 ►

And the ayahuasca perspective is,

01:25:51 ►

it’s about running water and plants

01:25:54 ►

and birth and death and soil

01:25:57 ►

and all this.

01:26:00 ►

Didn’t you feel that?

01:26:01 ►

Very much so.

01:26:01 ►

And the songs, when they sing the songs,

01:26:04 ►

you have this insight.

01:26:06 ►

You understand what they’re singing about.

01:26:08 ►

And what they’re singing about is the river

01:26:11 ►

and the light and the flow.

01:26:15 ►

And that’s what it is.

01:26:17 ►

It’s a bonding to the living earth.

01:26:21 ►

It’s very interesting that the rainforest

01:26:23 ►

is tremendously imperiled.

01:26:26 ►

There’s all this political focus on it.

01:26:28 ►

Then there’s the cocaine thing,

01:26:30 ►

which is a whole other level of complication

01:26:33 ►

and hysteria and gangsterism.

01:26:35 ►

And then there is this transcendental speaking vine

01:26:40 ►

that makes people sing themselves to help.

01:26:47 ►

So maybe the answer is there,

01:26:53 ►

and it’s just a question of who gets there first. What shall it be, the salvation of the planet or plywood?

01:26:59 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one

01:27:04 ►

thought at a time.

01:27:07 ►

So, what’s it to be? The salvation of the planet or plywood?

01:27:12 ►

Those prophetic words by Terence McKenna were spoken over 25 years ago.

01:27:18 ►

But do we have an answer yet?

01:27:20 ►

From outward appearances, the Amazonian jungle continues to be diminished by slash and

01:27:26 ►

burn agriculture that seems to be devoted mainly to feeding a never-ending supply of hamburgers to

01:27:33 ►

overweight Americans. But on the other hand, in the years since this talk was given, there has

01:27:38 ►

been a significant amount of interest raised about the ayahuasca experience. Although I was aware of the ayahuasca brew around

01:27:46 ►

the time that this talk was given, my primary source of information about it came from William

01:27:51 ►

S. Burroughs’s book, The Yahé Letters, and a few other little articles here and there.

01:27:57 ►

Now out there where I was living on the edge of the tribe at the time, I still hadn’t even heard

01:28:02 ►

about Terence McKenna or DMT for that matter,

01:28:06 ►

yet there was just enough information about ayahuasca that I kept searching for a way to

01:28:11 ►

experience it. Well, it took until Good Friday in 1999, 10 years almost after this talk was given,

01:28:18 ►

before I finally made contact with Lady A and had my own first experience. And if you’ve been here

01:28:24 ►

with us in the salon for a while,

01:28:26 ►

then you already know what a life-changing experience ayahuasca has been for me,

01:28:30 ►

and for thousands of others, by the way.

01:28:33 ►

I don’t know about the Antarctic continent,

01:28:36 ►

but I understand that since this talk was given in 1989,

01:28:39 ►

that ayahuasca ceremonies have now been performed on every other continent on the planet.

01:28:46 ►

Well, as much as I’d like to cover one more topic today, I’m instead going to sign off so that I can

01:28:51 ►

give a little bit more thought to it myself. But just to give you a little hint of what I plan on

01:28:57 ►

talking about a few weeks from now, I want to remind you of something that Terence said at the

01:29:02 ►

beginning of the talk that we just listened to. He said, and I quote, does it mean that causality itself is something embedded in our language?

01:29:12 ►

End quote. And for the geeks among us, that sentence speaks volumes.

01:29:20 ►

But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

505 - Ayahuasca Stories From 1989

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Program Notes

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Similar Episodes

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