The most surprising part of my ayahuasca retreat came about when the 30 or so participants attempted to explain their experience in the integration session in the morning after having imbibed the medicine the night before. I never suspected that one substance could have such diverse effects on a group of what I took to be 'everyday people.' Practically everyone had had a very different experience to report from that of their neighbor. One felt nothing except for an upset stomach. Another had psychedelic visions but of a very negative kind indeed. Yet another reported that she existed in a state of absolute bliss thanks to ayahuasca. A fourth said she had heard the voice of her deceased grandmother consoling her. Another said he felt a sense of great power. Another that she cried throughout the experience, but that they were tears of wistful joy. And yet another reported that he had screamed loudly and insistently, an outburst that I well remembered and thanks to which I thought for a few minutes that the entire retreat was going to be shut down by the materialist police at any moment.
These accounts all differed from my own exciting but peaceful experience, in which I saw multicolored circus scenes that were eternally morphing into new arrangements, and threatening at any moment to reveal the ringleader, whom I sensed to be a female who was hiding chameleon-like beneath the intricate geometrical patterns, her facial features occasionally becoming clear at the corner of the scene, as if she were peeking at me from behind her colorful handiwork. I took this surreptitious surveillance on her part to mean: 'I've got more to teach you if you will only come closer. That's it, just let yourself go, and I can show you so much more!' It was an enticing offer, but it was worrisome at the same time, since her initially alluring grin would occasionally morph into something less friendly, in which she seemed to be laughing at me and not with me. This reminded me of the trickster god of the American Southwest or of the notoriously equivocal verdicts of the Oracle at Delphi. (By 'multicolored,' I do not mean to say that one perceived object was red, another blue, and yet another green. All discernible objects, or even mere points thereof, were pulsing with light and emitting a rainbow of luminescence, thanks to which the picture as a whole made one think of a house at Christmastime for which the homeowner is spending a fortune on electricity with the express goal of catching the attention of passersby. In other words, I could easily see why Terence McKenna 1 called ayahuasca 'the television of the rainforest.')
But the biggest takeaway for me was the sheer malleability of reality - how any existing arrangement could be morphed with the help of an inspired mind into something uplifting and powerful. I found that I could control what I was seeing, at least to some extent, by mere willpower, by merely WILLING to see THIS rather than THAT. There was a small framed picture at the retreat whose caption caught this feeling I was having with the words 'Thought becomes things.' I think that this is what the guy probably meant when he said that ayahuasca gave him a sense of power. It takes our existing reality and does all sorts of fancy tricks with it, like a magician turning our handkerchiefs into endless novel shapes and patterns - thereby implicitly telling us: 'Hey, you can make your own reality, you do not have to accept the definitions of others.'
This would surely not have been the takeaway message for ritual use of ayahuasca by Andean tribespeople themselves, but perhaps it is inevitable that a westerner, raised in the values of humanism, would read the medicine-inspired message in this way.
More about my experience
During the beginning of the intoxication phase 'on ayahuasca,' I made an observation that I am sure Joseph Campbell would have appreciated:
It was not just myself personally who was dragging his feet and trying to avoid taking the ayahuasca medicine seriously: I felt the weight of the entire western colonialist mindset bearing down on me, trying to keep me from 'going native.' I was a westerner after all, shouldn't I behave like one? And yet if I wanted to take my experience to the next level, if I wanted to hear from the Goddess herself and not just look at her organically stylized face, I felt that I needed to stand up and move to the pounding percussion and live the experience fully in bodily action - which would be a response so unusual for me as an introvert that I would no doubt have needed to get to know my neighbors far more intimately before thus engaging with the medicine on that more visceral level. Besides, the retreat was really not organized in a way that would encourage such self-expression. We were free, at least in theory, to stand and dance, but the floor was crowded with attendees, each on their own sleeping pad, each of whom had their own private vomit bucket within reach, and the last thing I wanted to do, even in my intoxicated state, was to knock over one or more of these buckets and thus dampen the experience for others in more ways than one.
True, we were invited to go out back, where there was a bonfire surrounded by candles which delineated a safe area for congregating, but it was a frosty night and so the few who took that option quickly made a beeline for the fireside camping chairs.
Some other revelations 'on ayahuasca'
I felt at some point that the music WAS the drug. When the music ceased temporarily, I started entertaining sober thoughts... but when the drums, flute and guitar kicked in again, with the powerful Spanish-language vocals of curandero Taita Jhon, I felt like I was being given another 'shot of the drug.' As the drums crescendo'd, the medicine's effects rose inside me as well. The music WAS now the drug itself and its effects could be turned on and off - and/or directed - by the musicians themselves.
One other observation
The vividness of the visuals increased dramatically in the process of purging, that is, as I was throwing up into the cot-side bucket provided for that purpose. In the process of doing so, I saw (or sensed) a highly stylized smiling face looking on approvingly amidst a background of complex leaflike imagery. It was as if the goddess (if I may give her that appellation at least provisionally) was pleased to see that I was 'playing ball' and was more than ready to reciprocate by supplying potentially educational visions, tailored, apparently, to my own personality -- given the previously stated fact that no two attendees seem to have experienced the same thing while under the influence of 'the medicine.'
Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
Many prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. Drugs cannot be judged up or down. Prohibition is the problem. Say otherwise and you open the door to endless substance demonization by politicians.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
(There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.
Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.
