All Kinds of Magic: One Man's Search for Meaning Across the Material World (32 page)

We had a few more hours before we had to return to the river. I wasn’t to drink the vine that day, but I wanted to learn as much about it as possible. There was something in the old man’s manner that seemed to radiate authority. Like Amrabati, the
sadhu
who had spent years with his hand tied about his head, the shaman exuded the strength of one who has moved through fire and survived. He had nothing to prove, no questions to ask. He was, perhaps, the most entirely ‘present’ individual I had ever met. Time in India had made me attentive to the qualities that deep practice brought.

Over Nescafé in cracked glasses, I learned a little. Endless insects swarmed in the damp heat about our faces. The old man’s frankness surprised me, actually. Afterwards, Juan told me that Westerners had been to speak to the old man before, and he considered it perfectly acceptable to discuss his life with us. ‘If the planet is to survive,’ Juan translated, ‘then my father believes as many people as possible should drink ayahuasca. It is a medicine for what is happening now, against the ego, against chopping down trees, against war.’

If all that seemed a heavy burden of expectation to lay before a humble plant, I was certainly interested to hear more. Clearly, as with the yogic practices of India, Buddhist meditation and Sufi
zikr
, shamanism provides a framework by which to move beyond conventional understandings of reality. Perhaps it was
this
that the old man spoke of. If we could learn to disidentify with cumbersome ego structures and become comfortable in the visionary realms, could it not be possible that we would return fundamentally changed, more awake, better human beings?

‘When one drinks the medicine,’ said the old man, facing Juan and me from his rickety chair, ‘one comes to learn that what one considers reality and non-reality is completely false.’ Hints of a grin. ‘Even one drink can show us the futility of the way in which we have been living. Sometimes people come here with big drug problems – cocaine, heroin – and they give up after one dose of ayahuasca. Can any other plant do this?’

‘Why did you call ayahuasca the
mother
of all plants?’ I asked him.

‘Because she is the mother teacher. Drinking ayahuasca we learned, thousands of years past, about the jungle. She told us what we could eat, what we could plant, which herbs and barks are good for disease. She told us which plants we could mix her with to take us into the spirit world. Even now, when there is something I want to know, the mother tells me. She is the gateway to that realm where all questions are answered.’

The notion of ayahuasca as the mother plant is common amongst all the Amazonian and Andean tribes who consider it sacred. And although it’s hard to imagine how a plant might offer such specific knowledge to its user, it can’t be denied either that the likelihood of ever accidentally mixing
Banisteriopsis caapi
and
Pschotria viridis
in the midst of the richest, most diverse ecosystem on the planet is extraordinarily remote, hundreds of thousands to one at best. Certainly, it could be coincidence, but is the other answer so impossible?

Later I would read an extraordinary article by a Jewish academic, Benny Shannon, printed in the
Guardian
, in which he hypothesises that many of the visionary experiences reported in the Old Testament might be put down to the use of psychoactive plants. He even hints that the Tree of Knowledge itself may refer to such a plant. And while, predictably, Israeli radio stations and chat rooms flew into overdrive in the aftermath of his article, with accusations of ‘heresy’ flying about, the notion may be entirely plausible. We know that many ancient civilisations (South American, Indian, Australian, African, Chinese, to name a few) evolved cosmological theories directly influenced by narcotic plants. Is it so impossible that ours too owes something to the power of nature?

‘During my training I went into the jungle on my own for several years,’ the shaman continued. ‘I built a small shelter of leaves and bark, and a fire to brew my ayahuasca on. I drank it every other day, as well as many other sacred plants. I ate only what I hunted or picked from trees. I learned to master sorcery, to speak with the spirits of animals, I learned the magic songs, the
icaros
. When I returned, I was a shaman.’

His account was a few sentences at best, and yet it seemed to hint at a training of almost unfathomable difficulty. Why would anyone put themselves through such an ordeal?

‘But what does that mean?’ I asked. ‘To be a shaman.’

The old shaman looked me directly in the eyes for the first time. They were empty, like a fire that has burned itself out. ‘It means we can travel to the other worlds,’ he said. ‘To the magic worlds – at will. We understand the language which is spoken there. And that we can help others make the same journey, if they have the courage to try.’

Back in London, the experiences of the jungle quickly faded. The almost impossible vitality and effervescence of the Amazonian ecosystem was replaced by a neutral, slightly heavy feeling. The material plane of existence held forceful sway here, and the consensual logic was that ‘this’ was reality: these red buses, tax return forms, career ladders. Tapping ‘ayahuasca’ into Google, however, provides immediate perspective: this is not exclusively the case. Just as the Eastern religions have their Western converts and high priests, a huge shamanic subculture exists throughout North America and Europe. Scores of people, it seems, spend their time obtaining rare South American cacti and plant materials with serious spiritual intent.

All of this, plainly, was part of the great process of re-enchantment that I’d been exploring from the start. And yet suddenly it seemed that ‘re-enchantment’ was an unsatisfactory term after all. What was going on was not some return to an Edenic innocence, or to a pre-industrial unity. It was something entirely novel: the beginnings of a new world order, perhaps, or a new epoch in human evolution. Like the children of the 1960s, not content with the behavioural patterns and ideologies of their parents, a new generation was seeking these experiences not merely out of some outdated desire for kicks, but to conquer and supersede the limitations of our normal mind states.

I had once called this feeling ‘magic’, but the journey thus far had deepened that notion. Magic was but a facet of the state touched upon by the mystics from every tradition, and which William James called ‘the universal saintliness, the same in all religions’. It was what the nineteenth-century psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke called ‘cosmic consciousness’ after he found himself – subsequent to an evening discussing poetry with his friends – ‘wrapped as it were by a flame-coloured cloud’. It was the stillness and exultation that characterised all life’s peak experiences, in which one is simply ‘being’ rather than ‘becoming’, suddenly at one with the Absolute.

If I had already been exploring unconventional ideas, this new suspicion made me more uncomfortable still. Was I in danger of becoming one of those madmen on the outer fringes of society, espousing outlandish ideas with little or no basis in reality? For many scientists even the notion of a collective consciousness is absurd. That human beings, like schools of fish, should share a cognitive awareness of some kind, even if that awareness lies beyond our line of sight, is an idea spoken of by mystics but beyond that unproven.

But if one held that all the different schools of mysticism were moving towards the same thing, and counted the millions of men and women, to varying degrees, who were a part of that process, it wasn’t so far-fetched after all. For the philosopher Jean Gebser, whose work has been increasingly considered seminal since his death in 1973, such a process was well under way. Gebser believed that the stress and chaos in Europe from 1914 to 1945 were the symptoms of a structure of consciousness that had run its course. In his masterpiece
The Ever Present Origin
Gebser hypothesised that a new form of human consciousness (integral consciousness) was in the process of emergence.

In any case, it was time to try the Vine of the Souls for myself. Amongst my old yoga crowd in London, several had already drunk the brew, and it proved easy enough to book myself into a ceremony. In two weeks I would fly to Barcelona, drive to a secret location and meet an Ecuadorian shaman who would guide me through the experience.

Steve, an Iyengar yogi of many years, lent me books on the subject and hand-wrote a list of foods it was preferable to avoid for a week before drinking.

‘When you first drink, you’ll probably vomit a great deal,’ he explained. ‘The medicine cleans you out, physically and emotionally. Indians called it
la purga
. So before you put yourself through such an experience, you can lighten the load by eating as purely as possible. No onions, garlic or chilli – eat what the Indians call a sattvic diet. And then, depending on which school of shamanism you’re following: no vinegar or fermented foods, nothing too acidic, no coffee or alcohol. And no sex.’

‘Sex?’

‘Sexual energy is the same primal stuff that you need to work with ayahuasca,’ said Steve. ‘But traditionally, the shamans say the plant is jealous if it knows you’ve been with another. Failing to respect it can make it angry.’ He laughed. ‘And
believe
me, you don’t want to do that.’

So what exactly
would
happen when I drunk this potent hallucinogenic brew? Interestingly, it is the chacruna rather than the ayahuasca which appears to contain the active ingredient. Chacruna contains the indole alkaloid DMT, a powerful entheogenic compound, already present in the human brain in small amounts. By ingesting a quantity of DMT, the user experiences intense visions, or by another reckoning gains access to the shamanic reality. Some people I spoke with said they’d met alien beings, spoken with the gods or found themselves plunged into specific moments of their own history. Somehow, unlike the earlier claims of my psilocybin mushroom buddy, I believed them.

Steve, a serious man not liable to wild claims, said he went further in one ayahuasca experience than in ten years of yoga. ‘I’m not knocking yoga,’ he added. ‘It’s another powerful tool. But comparatively speaking, it’s the middle path. It works slowly, over years of patient practice. Ayahuasca is the fiery path. It’s the fast track to enlightenment. Sometimes it can be truly hellish. But always you come out cleansed, feeling like you’ve just shifted some stuff that’s been holding you back for years.’

Despite all this advice, my mood seemed to worsen in the week before the ceremony. I got flu and found myself in bed, staring at the ceiling, my whole body in revolt. More than anything in the world, I didn’t want to go through with this experience. Why thrust a sharp stick into an already angry hornets’ nest? What if I lost my mind completely? Or spun off into some psychic hell realm from which no one would be able to pull me back? These days I never smoked marijuana and drank far less than I had, merely for fear of rocking an already fragile mind. Devoid of anything to compare it with, I imagined a complete psychological meltdown, the snapping of some vital pathway.

Whether I was actually ill, or merely vehemently trying to escape the coming experience, I never found out. But pulling myself out of bed in the pre-dawn for my flight to Barcelona was one of the most gruelling experiences of my life. My limbs moved like lead. My brow gave off an icy sweat. I was terrified, with every fibre of my being, of what was to come.

Barcelona: La Purga

At Barcelona airport I met Agata, a Chilean woman living in Spain, who was organising the retreat. She was seven months pregnant, full of vitality, and with a reassuring matter of factness about the experience to come.

‘You are still a little sick,’ she said, as we sped through the drizzle. We were leaving Girona and, on either side, commuters flocked home through the suburbs. ‘But even on a purely physical level the ayahuasca will help you. It is a total medicine. You’ll see.’

When I told her about the strict diet I’d been on, culminating in a total fast for the last twenty-four hours, she laughed melodiously. ‘Certain foods are best to avoid, sure. But you need some energy too. We’d better stop and get you something. You’ll need your strength for tonight.’

As the light bled from the sky, we pulled off the motorway and on to the empty, pastoral lanes of Catalonia. It was October and the sunflowers drooped limply in the fields. There were vineyards, rich woodland, a shepherd with a stick reminding us of an older world still hanging on. As the 1970s Volvo lit the lanes with its feeble headlights, I seemed to enter a state of calm acceptance. Like a man heading for the noose, I resolved to meet my fate with a smile.

It was ironic, I thought, too, that after several years in India and elsewhere, searching for this esoteric knowledge, the mountain, so to speak, had come to me. Shamans who would once have lived solely amongst their communities in the Amazonian and Andean regions of South America were now being invited to bring their knowledge abroad. How many other gatherings like this one, I wondered, were happening even now?

How the shamans brought their plants with them, though, was another matter. Ayahuasca’s legal status remains ambiguous at best. By American law, the plants themselves are not illegal, but a plant brew which contains DMT is. France classifies both plants as controlled substances. A Brazilian church called Santo Daime, for whom ayahuasca is a holy sacrament, has been challenging this notion in many countries around the world on the basis of religious freedom. At the time of writing, several legal cases remain open, with a US trial date set for 2009. The outcome of this, I suspect, is unlikely to be a good one for the Ayahuasceros, and yet, of course, the practice will continue. The modern world seems unlikely, just yet, to accept the imbibing of hallucinogenic plants as a valid tool for spiritual experience.