Graham Hancock and the War on Consciousness
The War on Consciousness – Graham Hancock (The talk that gave TED indigestion)
My friend, Graham Hancock, was recently given the opportunity to speak before a TEDx conference about the mysteries of consciousness and how ancient plant teachers and traditions are critical to our evolution, even as our current society does everything in its power to suppress them. TEDx got more than they bargained for, and they decided to take Graham’s and colleague Rupert Sheldrake’s talks down from their site. This caused a huge backlash against TED and they are now capitulating to the extent they are allowing Graham to post his talk online if he blurs out the TEDx branding (logos). [Unadulterated versions of the speech are available elsewhere on YouTube and the web.]
Graham posted the talk at this link (or click the images).
When phenomena are experienced by large numbers of people, it calls for examination. All science is based initially on discovery and speculation. We ask, “Here is a phenomena. What if this is true or that is true? Then, let us experiment and test it.” It is not “unscientific” to gather information and to assess it, but most scientists today do so within a tightly restrained culture of specialization and orthodoxy. When someone brings together and synthesizes information from a wide array of human experience (in this case, shamanistic effects of using visionary plants), presents reports on his own encounters (tests) with those plants, and then speculates on the possible importance of this to all of humanity, he is operating outside of those orthodox conventions – and the gatekeepers want to shut him down.
Graham rightly complained about TED’s censorship decision. TED did publish his rebuttal, and now Graham and Rupert have challenged them to a neutral debate on the issues.
Graham is not the first to understand or advocate for the things he speaks about in this area, but his public profile and oratorical skills makes him one of the more important presenters of the importance of humanity’s relationship to visionary plants. I encourage you to watch.
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Ayahuasca and Pioneering the New Frontier
Ayahuasca is the great Spirit Medicine of the Amazon. It brings one directly into a different realm of reality. Whether one wishes to name that state as another dimension, a spirit or spiritual realm, or simply non-ordinary and alien, it is the most amazing transformation any human can safely experience and still remain on this planet in this human form.
After seven years of life reaction to my first Ayahuasca journeys (for which story see here), and processing and integrating the life changes it caused for me (all challenging but totally necessary to heal me and re-create me into a better man), I’m making plans to return to the Upper Amazon this summer or fall to continue my studies and explorations with that supreme medicine of the jungle. In doing so, my goal is to re-engage with the spirits of the plants and learn what I can about the things that I do not know. Sounds simple enough, right? However, this is a bit like saying, “I think I’ll go to Mars next month and do particle physics research.” The trip is extremely challenging, and the knowledge one is after is esoteric and in many ways alien to our current understandings or way of being.
Even though that is so, it is what I and others who work with Ayahuasca attempt. It’s exhilarating, to say the least, to cast one’s self into the raw frontiers of human perception – a pioneer in a fragile human ship, tossed by waves and seeking a comprehensible and attainable shore. It is even more remarkable when said pioneer suddenly realizes he is being guided by an interested, even friendly hand, but a hand that is distinctly and obviously not human. This force, this spirit, seems to want the pioneer to understand this new and intimidating realm and to help him or her process the information. This spirit also seems to want to influence the explorer’s own human life, both to heal the body and to affect the life path they take from that encounter going forward.
This is what has happened to me, and I’m thrilled with the prospect of setting sail once more and, hopefully, encountering that elemental spirit in some form again.
(Click any photo for full size.)
I was brought up as a Christian and I took it very seriously for over 40 years, even to the point of writing an influential book on New Testament interpretation. Taking the path of shamanism and exploring beyond the borders of current knowledge (religious, political, societal, and scientific) is viewed askance by those still embedded in orthodox structures of belief. It is often judged as a negative moral choice, influenced by the devil or the “world.” For the person who seeks knowledge beyond those structures, however, the process has nothing to do with moral choices. The acquisition of knowledge (especially “new” knowledge from unknown and untapped sources) leads to completely different and unexpected perspectives on everything, especially our worldview and the philosophies that worldview engenders in us.
In my search for What Is Real, the old orthodox religious worldview is simply inadequate and it has been left behind me as I have grown into new paradigms. Now, I and others like me, seek knowledge where it is most different from what I know. We seek not what is known, but what is unknown. This is the mantra of science and of humanity.
The unknown exists beyond the borders of our paradigms. We must seek it by traveling to and beyond the true frontier. Wish me a good journey and I promise to report any curious sightings in the new worlds beyond the veils of our mundane lands.
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Emerge
Now,
I am in the greater void.
Reborn. Discontent.
Infused with intensity,
Straining for sustenance,
Comforted by reason.
Overjoyed by love,
Amazed by the newly seen,
Grasping for a higher throne
Made solid by the hand and mind
Of my recast soul.
There is much I would like to know about the nature of God,
but I should be satisfied with startling him.
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Ritual
“A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.”
- Joseph Campbell
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Shaman Path
“As I walk, as I walk, the Universe is walking with me.”
(from the Navajo rain dance ceremony)
Digital artwork by David P. Crews
The shamanic path gives us direct, personal experience of non-ordinary as well as everyday reality. These shamanic experiences underlie all our religious ideas. I believe it represents the source experiences that establish our core humanity. It is our birthright, available to all who wish to experience the universe rather than just read about it.
Virtual Everything and Speaking to Aliens
DataFerns ___ Digital Artwork by David P. Crews
I want to pass along a couple of links, first to a fine essay speculating on the true nature of Ayahuasca and other psychedelic visions. It’s from Teafaerie, titled “Virtuality,” posted on Erowid’s site HERE. Teafaerie talks about visions and even our own everyday reality as composed of sets of information and data, but no matter what form or format one postulates for the emergence of sophisticated and unexpected, complex imagery in visions and dreams, the data must reside somewhere! Very interesting rabbit chase along some intriguing paths.
Found a link to this essay from another interesting article titled “Can Psychedelic Drugs Help us Speak to Aliens?” by David Jay Brown on the SantaClaraPatch site, HERE.
My main zone of interest regarding Ayahuasca visions centers around ontology: the consideration of what is real vs. what is imagined (and all the possible crossovers of that). You can read about my own experiences with Ayahuasca in the Amazon in my five part series, Ancient Songs and Green Magic, starting HERE. In it, I explore my own psyche-newbie intellectual’s approach to the ontological question after experiencing a set of strong and truly amazing visionary encounters.
Light, Visions, and the Pineal Gland
Lucia No. 3 Is A Mind-Melting, Psychedelic Art Experience
[Article on the Creators Project by Kevin Holmes]
The pineal gland, located deep inside the brain, has been the subject of interest and speculation by many cultures over centuries because it is the physical link to mystical experiences. Presumed to be vestigial, it is the physical Third Eye, actually sensitive to light. Dr. Rick Strassman has postulated in his landmark book, DMT – The Spirit Molecule, that the pineal is the link, gateway, and/or trigger to the spirit dimension and plays a role in what happens to us at death. Many mystic traditions have used light and light effects to stimulate the pineal gland and obtain visionary experiences without the help of add-on entheogenic substances like DMT or Ayahuasca, but now a couple of men, Dr. Dirk Proeckl and Dr. Engelbert Winkler, have created a programmed light projection system combined with software that produces a strong vision experience to users. It is being presented as an art display in London and elsewhere, called Lucia No. 3. Users sit with eyes closed and listen to masking music while the light is projected onto their face.
The article is here, with more images.
I’m always fascinated by the scientific ties to spirit or mystic experience. This is the frontier of the Unknown in science and there are many false trails and misleading data, but it is clear that there is a true connection between the pineal gland, the endogenous (naturally occurring within us) presence of DMT, and mystical or spiritual visionary experiences. Traditions worldwide going back thousands of years have trained and used it to achieve certain states. From the article:
“The pineal gland is strange part of our brain and has been linked with the esoteric third eye, which has been written about in every mystical tradition—Gnostic, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and many more. Advanced yogis are able to use it, and it’s supposed to suspend our linear notion of space-time and take you on a trip into the cosmic mind hole. If this all sounds a bit hippyish, that’s because it hasn’t been explored by many others outside of the mystical traditions and the sub/countercultures they inspired.”
I would love to experience this and I hope they will exhibit in my part of the world. The entire idea of bringing modern scientific technology to this ancient insight and practice bears much more research and experiment.
‘DMT: The Spirit Molecule’ Film – Free viewing
DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2012) – available for free viewing on Hulu (only in US for now). Click HERE or on title below:
This is an excellent film made by a friend of mine here in Austin, Texas, Mitch Schultz. It was inspired by the seminal book by Rick Strassman, M.D., by the same title. Strassman conducted the first DEA approved clinical research into DMT in the early 1990′s. (Book highly recommended, btw!)
The film is “An investigation into the long-obscured mystery of dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a molecule found in nearly every living organism and considered the most potent psychedelic on Earth.”
The film features interviews and commentary from some very interesting and well-known writers and explorers like Graham Hancock and Dennis McKenna.
DMT is an integral component of the Ayahuasca tea – the great spirit medicine of the Amazon. You can read my series on my own amazing Ayahuasca experiences in the Upper Amazon in this blog, beginning here: Ancient Songs and Green Magic, Part I.
Here lies the luminous and numinous edge of the continent of mankind’s knowledge. Many fear the great Unknown and recoil from it. Others venture out to explore, to learn, and to bring back untold treasures for themselves and all of humanity. We must not allow the fearful to forbid the brave, or we may lose our birthright and our heart.
Petroglyphs at Capitol Reef NP, Utah
Petroglyph-Capitol Reef NP, Utah __ Photo ©2012 David P. Crews
“Could the prehistoric artists have been hallucinating and painting their visions? And was it possible that such practices could lie at the foundation of art and religion, the most exalted achievements of mankind?”
Graham Hancock, Supernatural – Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind (Canada: Doubleday Canada, 2005) p. 158
Petroglyph-Capitol Reef NP, Utah __ Photo ©2012 David P. Crews
Petroglyph-Capitol Reef NP, Utah __ Photo ©2012 David P. Crews
Petroglyph-Capitol Reef NP, Utah __ Photo ©2012 David P. Crews
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Author with Graham Hancock in Southern Utah, 2010.
Dr. Luis Luna on Amerindian Shamanism
Amazon Green ____ Photo ©2012 David P. Crews
Towards an exploration of the mind of a conquered continent.
Sacred plants and Amerindian epistemology
By Luis Eduardo Luna, Ph.D., Dr. H.C., F.L.S.
[article here]
This excellent essay by Dr. Luna about shamanism and the use of sacred plants in the Americas, was recently posted on my friend, Graham Hancock’s, website. In it, Luna gives a useful overview of shamanism and its role in the pre-Columbian Americas and how it was repressed by the European influx (and is still repressed today).
In one of the most interesting aspects of this essay, Luna talks about how the Amazon is not the primeval wilderness we all think of, but is largely the result of massive human cultivation and manipulation over long periods of time. He says:
“The people of the Amazon live in one of the areas of the largest biodiversity on the planet. It is becoming increasingly evident that the biodiversity of the Amazon is to a great extent the result of the natural resource management of the pre-Columbian people. . . . To a certain extent the Amazon is an anthropogenic forest, a gigantic garden partially created by human beings through millennia of interaction with the natural environment.”
He also includes an interesting section on Shipibo shamanism and their wonderful geometric artwork. It’s one of the best explanations of the origin and function of the fractal-like designs I’ve read.
He also talks about the powerful cognitive transformations that can occur with plant teachers like ayahuasca. He relates an ayahuasca shape-changing vision that occurred to a French anthropologist, Dr. Françoise Barbira-Freedman, who took on the form of a jaguar (a common theme and experience in ayahuasca visioning). She said:
“Nothing I ever read about shamanic animal metamorphoses could have prepared me for the total involvement of my senses, body, mind in this process. . . . This vision engaged my whole self experientially in a phenomenological approach, which was blatantly at odds with the empiricist standpoint I intellectually favoured.”
He also relates Dr. Dennis McKenna’s transformation into a sentient water droplet who then directly experiences photosynthesis within a plant. Luna states that these kinds of experiences, “point to a new alter-ego, to an alternative epistemology: the gaining of knowledge through a radical self-transformation, by taking an alternative – non human – point of view, by cognitively merging with the focus of one’s attention.”
He concludes by stating that even though our science has explored the depths of space and the tiniest realms of quantum matter, “the exploration of consciousness is still a forbidden realm, vastly explored by shamanic societies yet neglected in contemporary science due to a great extent to religious preconceptions carried throughout centuries.”
I recommend this and other articles by Dr. Luna and also highly recommend Graham Hancock’s excellent book on shamanism entitled “Supernatural”.
The Amazon River ___ ©2012 David P. Crews
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Ancient Songs and Green Magic (Part V – Conclusion)
ANCIENT SONGS AND GREEN MAGIC– A Search for What Is Real in the Amazon Jungle of Peru
By David P. Crews
Don Rober prepares.
PART V
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FINAL AYAHUASCA CEREMONY
A Vision of the Spirit and Heart
Note: This longer post concludes my Ancient Songs and Green Magic series on Ayahuasca. Please read beyond the fold for the final extraordinary visions and my Five Years Later postscript.
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VISITING THE MURRAY HUITOTO TRIBE
from my trip journal:
The Amazon River
Today, we boarded the boats to travel down the Rio Momón and on to the true Rio Amazonas: the Amazon itself. We rode a short way downriver from Iquitos to take a longer jungle hike and meet the Murray Huitoto people. This tribe lives a couple of miles inland from the great river, so we landed at a rough riverfront town and hiked through the beautiful dense jungle to find them.
The tribe was happy to dance for us and invite us in to see their world. We also delivered some needed medical supplies.
Huitoto Dances
The chief was very welcoming, and although he spoke only Spanish to me, and I spoke none, we still had a very friendly conversation.
Author with Huitoto Chief
We swam in the small river here, enjoying the cool water and also the soothing mud from the banks – an exclusive facial and body treatment that would be costly in any big city salon! Rufus, don Howard’s red uakari monkey, joined us for some fresh jungle fruit and kept us laughing with his constant antics.
Rufus!
Back at the tribe’s camp, the matron of the group showed us their ayahuasca vines, planted at the base of certain trees and growing strong. As the vine is used, it is important to keep it cultivated.
Huitoto woman-cultivated Aya vine.
Huitoto Chief
Back at our lodge once more, it was time for our third and last ceremony.
THIRD AYAHUASCA CEREMONY
There is an ancient practice or technique in shamanism called “soul retrieval.” It is a healing for someone who has lost part of their spirit – their spiritual body. Perhaps they simply wandered away into a spiritual place and part of them did not return to our everyday reality. Perhaps someone stole that part of the person, or borrowed it and never returned it. Now the person is ill with a kind of emptiness or depression that cannot be cured by normal means. The shaman goes into trance state and travels off into the past or alternate realities, finds the part that is missing and invites it back. He or she recovers that spirit essence and reunites it with the ill person, making them whole and happy once more. This kind of healing is something a human shaman does, but it may not always be a human who heals.
“Anything will give up its secrets, if you only love it enough.”
– George Washington Carver
As my final opportunity to experience the tea approached, I re-evaluated my set of Intentions for it. After thinking about it, I realized I had been unconsciously self-centered in my original intentions. Instead of being completely open in my heart, I had been trying to get what I wanted while couching the request in careful language. I had been requesting, as if off a menu, to be shown the visions I desired. I wanted to see and learn what I wanted.
Magic Tea
This time, I let go. I decided to simply open myself up and let Ayahuasca take control and lead me where, perhaps, I did not know I needed to go. She certainly did that in the first session! Having confronted Fear itself and then allowed to get my bearings in session two, I felt like I was oriented enough now to trust her and not be anxious or fearful this time. My new intention was: “Open me up. Show me Love. Let me be love.”
The Ayahuasca tea seemed slightly more viscous tonight. Once again, I felt fortunate that the drink went down rather easily and I had no problem with it. Since this was our final ceremony, don Howard and his wife Reyna placed wonderful little bead necklaces around our necks, each with a small pendant of Ayahuasca vine. Now, we waited in the darkness once again – waited for our next inexorable leap into the true unknown.
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“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrifying.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
As we waited for the onset of Ayahuasca space, don Rober began his icaros. Several of the other participants were inclined to join in, and then many of the tribespeople in and outside the molloca also began to sing along, with a group energy that I found myself caught up in as well. It was a wonderful antiphonal surround-sound beginning to tonight’s ceremony and it boded well for the nature of this journey.
Once more, and to my relief, I entered Ayahuasca’s dimensions easily. As my head and extremities began to hum and vibrate with the powerful electric energy of the medicine, it grew in strength, then leveled off and remained a neon body buzz throughout the session. I saw some geometric patterns and some colors, but they were muted. Visual effects are easier to describe than other more internal effects, but now I noticed a different internal feel to this space from the previous ceremonies. The vine felt strong and it was deepening into me moment to moment. After some time, I was very deep, indeed, and I drifted on into another dimension.
Without warning or sign, I realized that something was coming towards me. There was no sound. As it drew near, it looked like a train or subway vehicle, which now pulled up at my left side and came to a stop. This seemed like an obvious invitation to board, but the train was too small to enter it. I thought, though, that I could probably get on top of it and ride it the way they do rail cars in India, so I climbed up and onto the top of the second car from the front. In a twinkling, as I did so, the train changed its form – morphing into a gigantic snake. I knew it was common in Ayahuasca visions to encounter these huge Ayahuasca snakes or jaguars or other elemental animal forms. It is sometimes a challenging test, but this seemed straightforward enough. I was going to ride the Snake!
The Raimondi Stela and Chavin Shamanism
“The Chavin Stela Raimondi is to some the most profound expression of core sacred plant consciousness in the history of mankind ..”
- Otorongo Blanco
http://www.biopark.org/peru/huachuma-journeys/huachuma-chavin.html
Estela Raimondi – photo by David Crews
These are my photographs of the famous Raimondi Stela (carved stone panel) now located in Lima in the National Museum of the Archaeology, Anthropology, and History of Peru. It is seven feet high and made of highly polished granite. The image is done in a shallow incised form called contour rivalry, where the design is made to be viewed from more than one direction, giving a deeper, multiple meaning to the imagery.
Estela Raimondi detail – photo: David Crews
This image is from the ancient Chavin civilization of northeastern Peru, specifically from the great Chavin de Huantar temple complex. It depicts an indigenous shaman or deity of this peaceful and wise culture. The Chavin revered and used the sacred cactus we call San Pedro – a vision producing cactus that contains mescaline, similar to the peyote of North America. This amazing entheogenic plant was a central sacrament and highly ritualized by the Chavin peoples going back as far as 3,000 BC and beyond.
San Pedro Cactus
The stela was not found in situ, but rather fortuitously in a peasant’s hut by the noted Italian historian, archeologist, adventurer, and author, Antonio Raimondi, in 1874. The story is that as Raimondi was searching through the area, he was invited into a peasant’s hut for a meal. He was intrigued by the very strong and long stone table the peasant was using, and when he ran his hand under the bottom surface, noticed that it was carved. He obtained the stela, which now bears his name.
The rich shamanic culture of the Chavin has been deeply studied and is being recreated and restored by my friend, don Howard Lawler, in Peru today. Information on Chavin, the sacred sacrament of Huachuma, and more (including authentic Ayahuasca work) can be found at his site:
http://www.biopark.org/peru/huachuma-journeys/huachuma-chavin.html
Chavin Shaman holding San Pedro Cactus
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.png "EstelaRaimondi_updown")
Raimondi's drawing of stela-both directions
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A Fortune of My Own Design
I often pay attention to various random systems that appear in my life’s path – systems that can operate as synchronicity tools. This can be anything from the most sophisticated of these tools, the I Ching, to something as ridiculous as a fortune cookie.
I had Chinese for lunch today, and though I really dislike eating the cookie part, I always pull out the “fortune” to see if there is any synchronicity meaning or indications I can pull from it. There rarely is, of course, but today was different.
I opened the cookie, and . . . there was no fortune inside it at all.
I began to laugh. Mistake or message? One can say what one may. I choose to view it as a not-so-subtle message from the wider universe.
Casteneda’s Don Juan said:
“Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same – they lead nowhere. . . If this path has a heart, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere, but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”
___________________- Carlos Casteneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of KnowledgeThere is no fortune or misfortune that we are destined for. Of course, there is happenstance, but we choose our paths and continue to choose them every hour of every day. Is our path one of value? – of goodness? – of Heart? If not, we have only ourselves to blame and only ourselves to call upon to alter our path to one that encompasses these values.
Misfortune? Good fortune? No “fortune” at all, except for what we create internally in our hearts and externally in the path we choose to walk. This is the message I take from today’s very interesting after-dinner treat. It was, perhaps, the most revealing fortune cookie message I’ve ever received.
Toé Blooms
©2012 David P. Crews
It is a stunningly beautiful but quite dangerous plant, used with great respect and reserve by highly experienced ayahuasceros. Every part of the plant is potent and is poisonous if used incorrectly.
These were in a private garden in Ollantaytambo, in the Sacred Valley area north of Cusco, Peru.
©2012 David P. Crews
. . .
At Night in Capitol Reef
“Upon Awakening at 2 a.m.”
With my eyes fresh from sleep
Like the naive gaze of a child,
I look out at the world beyond my simple bed.
The dry air is delicious.
The moonlight is delicious.
The sigh of the soft night breeze is delicious.
The stars are delicious.
The backlit clouds are delicious.
One thin veil of cloud has a fish’s shape and a star
Shining through it, just so placed to be its bright eye.
The spirits of the night sky are watching me sleep.
The Freemont Indians would have understood.
“Moon”
If I reached out my hand and held the Moon within it,
Would it burn me? Is its bright face hot or cold?
Would it, perhaps, freeze me so that I would
Quickly let go and drop it in its old track?
Would it scold me, then, in its dusty old voice
For having been so bold?
It is by the Moon’s cool light only that I write these musings,
So perhaps he would just gaze down upon my tiny form,
Then smile and sail away.
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©2012 David P. Crews
Horizons 2011: Stephan Beyer, Ph.D. – “Ayahuasca, Cognitive Psychology, and the Ontology of Hallucination”
A very interesting lecture by Steve Beyer, author of one of the most comprehensive books on Ayahuasca shamanism, “Singing to the Plants.” [2009, University of New Mexico Press]
His discussion here at the Horizons conference focuses on my area of highest interest: ontology, or what can be determined as real vs. not real as experienced in the visionary spaces of Ayahuasca. Some of his points include the idea that there may be more “buckets” than just those two (real and unreal), and that Ayahuasca teaches us that the spirit world or dimension is here now and we are in it. Many who work with and teach shamanism often believe or assert that it is somewhere “away” that we travel to.
BTW, Steve’s book is one of the very best reference and explanatory books on Ayahuasca, especially the mestizo style work in the Upper Amazon. He studied with Ayhascero Don Roberto Jurama, whom I also had the opportunity to work with in 2006. Highly recommended.
Ancient Songs and Green Magic (Part II)
ANCIENT SONGS AND GREEN MAGIC
– A Search for What Is Real in the Amazon Jungle of Peru
By David P. Crews
PART II
“Ayahuasca is a symbiotic ally of the human species; its association with our species can be traced at least as far back as New World prehistory. The lessons we have acquired from it, in the course of millennia of coevolution, may have profound implications for what it is to be human, and to be an intelligent, questioning species within the biospheric community of species.”
– Dennis J. McKenna, Ph.D., Ayahuasca: An Ethnopharmacologic History
(Ayahuasca; ed. Ralph Metzner, (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1999) p. 207.
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One reason I took years to study Ayahuasca before working with it was to be as certain as I could be that this was an authentic and valuable encounter that would take me beyond what I know and can see, and not merely a drug encounter. There are powerful chemicals involved in the Ayahuasca tea, but taking this brew is the farthest thing one can imagine from a recreational drug experience.
One takes Ayahuasca advisedly and with the help of experienced leaders and supporters. It requires commitment and some sacrifices to experience it safely and authentically. For many who work with it, Ayahuasca is the most intense event they have ever experienced. At times, it is physically demanding and difficult. It has the potential to be extremely frightening. However, it can also give a person the most beautiful, glorious, joyful, and richly fulfilling experience of their lifetime. Its healing and teaching effects extend into the life one leads afterwards and affects the quality of that life. It can be genuinely life changing.
I had to be certain I knew what I was doing and with whom I was going to work because I am not actually a very likely or typical person to explore psychoactive medicines. My father is a pharmacist and I was conservatively raised to respect drugs and to never abuse them for “fun.” Also, I’m a teetotaler. I have never used alcohol – ever. Nor have I smoked tobacco – ever. A virgin to mind altering substances, I set out for the Amazon to ingest the most powerful one there is. Why would I want to take such a radical path from the one I was on?
In Plato’s famous cave, the allegory can be interpreted to depict humanity seeing the universe only as if by shadows cast on the wall by a great pyre of light. It is a light and a true world existing behind us that we can never turn and perceive directly. In studying religions, I’ve come to understand them as the human-made shadows we project from a greater reality – the reality that Ayahuasca can show to us. Ayahuasca gives us the opportunity, for the very first time, to turn our heads and look outside the cave into a greater view of What is Real.
So, this is a journal of my particular experiences in the Upper Amazon in Peru in 2006. I was determined to conduct this direct experiment in ontology. Knowing from my deep research that I would be physically safe, my intention was to see for myself what I might make of the visions and information that would come with working with Ayahuasca in a controlled, sacred, indigenous, and ritual setting. This would be a journey to try to determine what is real and what might simply be illusion or masterful creativity.
SHAMANISM – THE PROCESS OF SEEING
In 1951, Carl Jung wrote:
“In psychology, one possesses nothing unless one has experienced it in reality. Hence, a purely intellectual insight is not enough, because one knows only the words and not the substance of the thing from inside.”
C. G. Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (p. 33)
I was determined to go “inside” and see for myself. It would turn out to be an intense set of experiences – one that challenged my physical body through limiting diets, strong physical exertions and purging, and more to the point, challenged my mind and spirit on levels that can only be described as awesome and unexplainable.
This general approach to gathering information about things outside our everyday world by direct personal experiences is what we generally refer to as Shamanism. It is the oldest spiritual practice of humankind, stretching back tens of thousands of years and still being practiced in tribal and modern societies all across the globe today. Shamanism is not a religion, but a practice or a set of techniques that are used to investigate non-ordinary realms or states in order to learn and gather information useful to us in this world. Modern religions have emerged out of these practices with many specific personal shamanic stories becoming reduced to historical myths. These myth stories are often presented as magical proof texts for followers of a particular religion – those who are not afforded the opportunity to experience the magic for themselves.
Shamanism is the opposite of religion’s controlled beliefs and limited access to personal experience. Instead, it is defined by personal, direct experience of “spiritual” realms, beings, and other mystical encounters without relying on any other person’s testimony or doctrines or information. In a shamanic practice, each person goes through the process in order to see for themselves. Each person has to make up their own mind what the information consists of and whether it is meaningful or actionable. No one else can gainsay what you see or what I see in a shamanic state. We can compare notes afterwards and begin to draw maps of the realms we enter. Some knowledge has emerged by consensus over the millennia, but it is still a direct personal experience by nature. Please read the rest of Part II here.
Delicate Arch
Delicate Arch -- ©2012 David P. Crews
Delicate Arch is waiting. Standing on the edge.
More than the effort of crumbled and windblown stone,
It is like a letter in some unknown alphabet
Set glowing and hard on the desert wall
Quietly hidden until it is sought, or,
More likely still, an entire word –
A statement waiting for some reader.
Is it then a symbol,
Spoken in a language not of words?
Is the speaker also the audience,
Or does he speak to men?
Does he utter such a thing
That shapes the land in reddened art,
Or say some other thing that lies
Beyond the sand and sky?
Delicate Arch remains, silently ringing.
.
©2012 David P. Crews
A poem I wrote many years ago, inspired by the incomparable Delicate Arch in Arches NP, Utah.
I once took my father up the trail there to see the arch and I read this out loud. It was very wonderful.
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I Am Earth
One of the greatest of the negative effects of the teachings and worldviews of the received religions is the idea that humankind is separate from the earth. We are taught that we are “masters” of the earth, and “live on” the earth, and we are surely not here for long, so we must not be of the earth – merely visiting. We have a manifest destiny, they say, to dominate the earth and to use it as we will. If we should deign to care for the earth, then we are doing so as external service providers (in residence).
Many in the shamanistic nature and spirit community also tend to see us as “connecting with” the earth and sense it as a separate holistic being: a Gaia or a Pachamama – a Mother Earth. We are like children, perhaps, or stewards or guardians or even tricksters. We are those who do not know; those who look upon the earth with wonder; those who are sometimes selfish and other times simply happy, sometimes very aware and observant of the earth yet often lost in our own sense of Self.
In almost all human philosophies, however, there is this distinct sense that we are somewhat apart from the thing we admire and that we emerged from – the earth itself. It seems to be a distinction we attach to animals.
Rocks, water, and even plants all make up what we rightly would call “the earth.” They are earthy in nature and tend not to move about very much. Animals roam around and though associated with and coming from earth, they are not usually described as “the earth.”
It might be an interesting idea to play with then, to understand that everything that has ever manifested upon this beautiful spinning ball since it first twirled out of a dusty cloud is properly named Earth. Every dinosaur, every volcano, every breeze through a palm frond, every bug and bunny, and every human being that has ever been are all not only of the earth, we ARE EARTH itself. We are far more than just earthlings. We are as much the planet as any stone or leaf.
Try that out for a while and see if it changes how you think of yourself. “I am Earth.”
——–
In Goblin Valley
I placed my hand on a huge sandstone boulder, perched on an unlikely column of mud and dirt. Within its stony layer, it has been lifted up to this position over millions of years. Dinosaurs once disturbed the dirt from which it was formed. Now, it has appeared here on its pedestal, emerged out of its matrix of mud which is being dissolved away with every infrequent rain and every howling wind.
Some say you can speak to stones, so I address this one directly. “I know you are slow of time and I am quick, but can you speak to me and tell me of your story? Time is long for you and quick for me, but time is just an illusion – a quirk of space and gravity. Space and gravity are what made you and brought you to this precarious position, but surely we can set time aside so that we may speak to one another? Time is nothing, really.”
After a long pause, wherein only my heartbeat could be heard, the stone answered with a distant and soft voice in my mind, “Time is everything.”
—————-
Goblin Valley, Utah
From a website I made a few years back called “A Circle in the Desert”
It can be found here:
http://www.newrational.com/circle/index.html
Another Geometry
A poem and music track from my first album, Cave of the Jaguar.
Truth in a Strange Land
Truth alone shall appease this needful thirst.
Aloof and intimate.
Content with only that roaring revelation –
Hard and cold.
It stings like disappointment – the price
extracted from my past.
Closing and opening.
Deep and serious mystery. Clear light glory!
Laid out before me – seeker and supplicant to
That God only.
I shed my dear beliefs as rent clothing
slipping from straining muscles.
Naked.
The new Truth is old. Shining and disturbing.
Old and very new.
Raw-nerved, I reach forward to hold, delicately,
The next awe –
An unexpected vista stretching on to newer rules.
Another geometry.
————————————
Here is my original music track for this piece:
http://www.jaguarfeather.com/resources/Another%20Geometry.mp3
Information on this album, “Cave of the Jaguar” here:
http://www.jaguarfeather.com/cotj.html
Childlike Encounters with Spirit Beings
When we humans are first toddling around, we spend a great deal of our energy trying to understand the overwhelmingly complex adult world we have been thrust into by virtue of being born. It strikes me as the equivalent of one of us adult humans being thrust into an advanced alien society, and spending much energy trying to adapt ourselves and our understandings – our worldview – to accommodate this new and far more complex reality.
The four year old child does this by constructing a simplified, childlike, cartoon version of the adult world that surrounds them. We adults tend to find this pleasing, amusing, and wholesome. We help this along by giving our kids toys, children’s books and games, and so on. Eventually, we know they will grow and expand their knowledge and the sophistication of their perceptions of the adult world that they will soon join in full.
When we enter the spirit realms directly through the sacred use of entheogens and plant medicines like Ayahuasca, we often encounter intelligent beings that interact with us. They are certainly different from us and may be quite alien – very “advanced” – compared to us. When we try to enter that realm, it seems to me we are like the four year old. We construct for ourselves simplified, cartoon interpretations of what we are being shown or exposed to. We see visions that we define in a way that must, to the spirit beings we encounter, seem childlike.
It is amazing to have such an encounter and feel the sincere interest and even love that comes from many of these Others. They may teach us harsh lessons, but also may give us gifts that seem like toys to us, but are actually much more meaningful in ways we are not developed enough to comprehend. Kind of like a four year old human.
The Mystery Behind Anesthesia – Technology Review
The Mystery Behind Anesthesia – Technology Review.
I recently had major surgery where I was given Propofol for anesthesia. This article talks about that drug and how some researchers are studying patients undergoing anesthesia for clues to understanding consciousness.
The Propofol experience was very strange and so completely opposite of what I experienced with Ayahuasca. It was like an off, then on switch. Nothing in between.
This is a blog about the Big Questions, Life, Travel, and Creativity.
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