When I was 19 years old, I spent 3 months in the Amazon rainforest with Indians and rubber tappers. There I had my first drug experience on the rainforest hallucinogen ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a foul tasting liquid which is made from boiling in a large pan a leaf and vine collected from the forest. At times, I took the brew with rubber tappers in a forest clearing, as they sang their song to the Queen of the Forest and to the Virgin Mary. At other times, I sat high on the river bank with an Indian tribe, the Kampa. The shaman led the ritual, singing songs to call the spirits to protect the community from evil spirits and sickness. The morning after my third ayahuasca experience, I wrote as much as I could remember from the evening before.
I feel drained and empty. The beautiful reality I lived last night is now in the realm of thought. I still know of its existence, but I am not feeling it. Last night, the inverse happened: I lived and believed in this other reality fully. I could still "see" as much as I wanted of the other reality, my past life, but it had no real existence.
The experience lasted 4 hours or so.
We drank the foul tasting potion, a bottle I brought down river from the Kampa Indians. It was incredibly strong - I felt it through my body immediately.
My body became non-existent. I knew of its existence only through the hardness of the ground against it. I saw at first nothing in particular. Very visual patterns. Lots of flashes of objects, animals and trees.
Macedo's [the rubber tapper leader of ceremony] song was reaching the sky. As time went on my reality switched mode. At first it was worrying: the world I knew no longer existed. My past life had no meaning. I could visualise anything and anybody, but they did not exist. Be it home, school, Sao Paulo. I "saw" all my petty struggles (existential crises, upsets at bad school results and such) - all was meaningless.
Probably because during all this time I was feeling queasy and vomiting a little, past inner physical pain kept its existence. Not as pain but as a sensation. The gush of bodily pain at seeing Chico's arm tighten around his dance partner (the emotion of pain and jealousy that I had felt at the time though no longer existed - only the physical pain), the stomach pain at my former love abandoning me (even though I could no longer feel his existence). I did not exist either.
"So what does exist?" I kept asking myself. "I want to exist!" I did not like not existing! I got worried. What is? I visualised things - they went away. They weren't.
"What exists?" I asked Macedo. He answered: "dreams, love, music". Exactly! As he sang, his song existed. My desire to make love with him existed.
I began to become increasingly euphoric and ecstatic as a beautiful reality unfolded. Love. My love for Mauro. Goodness. A flower. The forest. The river. Spirit.
It was hard to concentrate. But I was determined to answer my questions. "If reality is pure goodness, what is evil?" I tried to visualise bad things, but they went away. I could see them, but they had no meaning, no presence. Like a reflection in the water. Next to me was Joao, who was recently stabbed. I tried to visualise a knife - it withdrew from me. A rose however would grow, very big, gigantic. A war, I could not picture at all.
By now I was in pure ecstasy. Smiling a lot and laughing. For, now I was living in reality - I had found what existed. And it was exquisite. In my old world [i.e. before taking the drug] I could imagine a world of spirits, the existence of perfection, the non-existence of the material world (as in Indian philosophy, Maya, etc.), eternity, etc., but they had no reality and existence for me - they were only concepts. What existed, in my old world, was a world of confusion, of men exploiting other men, of evil, of hurt, of objects, of love too, of pettiness.
Now, these realities swapped around. The old world of materialism and evil ceased to be real, only a picture. The other world, where material objects did not exist, where there was pure unity, was real. I felt so happy. I thought of Davi Yanomami's spirits pulling out an illness from his arm - yes I could "see" it now [before when he had spoken of spirits, I could not relate to his words].
After finding peace with my reality, I began to let myself hallucinate. I held this image of a hand holding the rotating earth in its palm, in the black darkness of space. Or I saw my body: my veins were the rivers of the Amazon, my heart the rotating planet, my body full of forest trees, the full moon my groin and in my head Macedo sitting cross-legged singing his songs.
I asked myself again at this point: "what is the meaning of life?" After a while - it was hard to concentrate as I kept on being carried away by the images - I found an answer: Beauty, the planet. The forest. Love. Life is to realise these within oneself. To be. To love. To live outside of confusion. To hold the image of the planet.
And I was doing just that. I was jubilant. I was experiencing reality. Living fully. And I loved it!
These insights are of course nothing original. I knew them all before, and already believed in them. But what was brilliant was the level of perception. Before, all this was concepts, in my mind. Now it existed more deeply than that: it was my one and only reality.
And what fun I had in this new reality! I went back into my life and called in turn different people. They entered my world, with a circle of light around their head, laughing. I laughed with delight (making the others in the room collapse in hysterics!) at my love for each one and for the pure goodness. Everybody from Mum to Dr Gwyther [my Chemistry teacher], from Mauro [a recent lover] to little Anna Paula who helped me with Portuguese in London. Each arrived in the light and we laughed together.
I could visualise anybody or anything I wanted to. Any past life episode, any part of the world, I could enter any room or travel to the highest mountain. The world is so beautiful.
Time and space lost all meaning. Only "now" existed for me. At the same time as all this, I was still struggling with the existence of my own body. I often shook an arm, or pinched myself, moved around to verify that I did still exist.
My body danced a lot too to the music, which I could feel inside me.
Perhaps the most beautiful image that occurred last night was this. I was filled with pure delight, and still am, recalling it.
I was experiencing this beautiful reality of goodness and truth and love. I was experiencing the meaning of life - the realisation of this beauty, the eternal vision of the hand holding the planet. And then I saw a little girl sitting in a dingy room in the middle of a block of flats in the inner city. She too could have this experience. She too could understand the meaning of life and leave the world of confusion to see the eternal vision. The beauty of life is open to all. To the little girl in the inner city to Joao Tezza [a rancher, destroying the rain-forest], to everybody.
After returning to England, and starting at University, I suffered intensely for nearly two years. The beautiful reality that I had lived during my ayahuasca sessions, which remained "real" to me while the forest, even after the effect of the drug wore off, was difficult to retain alongside the busy-busy life of a Cambridge undergraduate. I had frequent panic attacks. I succeeded in functioning in normal life by erecting a glass wall around myself so as to not let myself experience too deeply, because when I did, I fell into a surreal void. Here is an extract from my diary.
"I have done less work even than yesterday. It scares me so much. I should get up, go out. My chest is all knotted up. My stomach hurts. My eyes are wet with tears. Books and paper everywhere. I hate the room because the walls fall in on me. It is a prison. I can't leave because outside seems even worse. Outside is big, is harsh. I can't cope with outside. I am all alone. Terrified by my environment: the buildings, cars, chairs, etc. I know that everybody still exists, but I cannot feel them. All there is is pain and fear. Nothing exists around me, so there is nothing to hold onto. Even my own body does not exist. Only the torment. [...] All day I have tried to engage in [my books]. I could read and reread. All there would be was words. Words in succession. With no meaning.. [...] my frustration grew and my world diminished and fell on me a little more and the words were further away."
The easiest way for respite was to get stoned because then I could "travel" back to the ayahuasca experience, where the other world which haunted me by day was beautiful once more.
"I am stoned. Everything is lifted. Me too. The objects don't really exist. That bed there could just as well not be. It would be the same. The chair too. There is no difference to it being there or not. I still exist, as does the light of my candle. Material objects have no real existence. I could touch them and they would disappear. And it would be the same. My hand could go through because they are not solid. I travelled a while. I was sitting at the cross roads of a path in the forest. I saw the trees, the leaves. The energy and power of the trees."
Occasionally, I had moments of lucidity:
"I hate the softness. The fatness. The complaint. The lethargy. The inaction. The pride. The glamour. The searching. Why search? I know. I know. Life is about helping my ayahuasca garret girl to see the vision. To remove the obstacles to her living. For her to live, not just to survive. To help the one little girl of my visions. Why the messing about searching? Why the anguish? I know. I know to do each step on the path of helping my friend as it comes. To take the step. To write the fund-raising letter, the essay. To hold the spirit and walk through the world. To walk with the planet in my hand. Holding the vision and doing. Holding the vision and writing the essay. Smiling at the bore. Consuming only what I need. Let the horrors go. Hold the vision. It is real. The planet rotating. The little inner city girl in ecstasy. The oneness. Step by step with the planet in my cupped hand. My spirit to stop men chainsawing the legs of the planet. My spirit to guide me to stop them. My vision to live in me. The planet to be spinning inside. The planet is my heart and I tick with it. Following its pace. Walking in time with the planet's beat. Life on the curve of a musical not as the intensity curves through a smooth peak. Life becomes so easy. A passage, a ride along a musical note. A few planet heart beats. As few ecstatic little girls. And the means are also the end. To write an essay in time with the planet. To smile with the vision. To enjoy with the vision. To live with the vision."
My full recovery happened one afternoon in Cambridge in June 1991 (again with the help of drugs!). I got very stoned with a very spiritual friend of mine. For the first time, the two worlds were united in my vision. Buildings, the streets, the material world around me did exist and was important, but so too did the other one, the world where all was unity. I had succeeded in integrating the two worlds.
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