2

The next day Adam O. Brown and Jacques Mabit continue their conversation in Mabit’s office.

BROWN: It seems to me it’s one thing to hear about all these plants, and another to live it oneself. So I think it’s important for me to have my own experience, to know what it’s about…what will you be prescribing for me?

MABIT: Yes, I think it’s important to go from Western objectivity to subjectivity. In the Amazonian tradition, there are three types of plants: first, the purga (purgative) plants, which serve to purify, to cleanse on the physical level and at the same time on the psychological, emotional level. That’s what’s interesting, that the action happens simultaneously on the physical plane and the energetic plane – to employ a term everyone can understand.

Then there’s a second group of plants, which are psychoactive, plants that induce an altered state of consciousness. There are many, but Ayahuasca is the main one we use in Takiwasi.

And then the third group of plants, the dieta plants or “teacher plants”, which also have psychoactive properties, but require a particular context to be properly integrated, so we can digest, metabolize the experience in a certain period of time – generally a week, in isolation.

So these are the three great chapters of plants. That’s how it works all over the Amazon, for treatments of general ailments, as well as for the initiation of healers. And that’s what we use here with our patients who are addicts. However the same process can generally be used for anyone who is seeking to resolve psychological, emotional, existential problems, etc.

I’m glad you want to undertake this experience, I think it’s much better to live it oneself than to talk and ask questions about things that are difficult to imagine.

BROWN: I’m enormously curious, but yes, it’s hard to grasp what that could be like.

MABIT: So what I propose is that you undertake this process in the short time we have, by taking a purga plant, doing an ayahuasca session and at least the beginning of a dieta, to at least have an idea of the process, and that you can experience the effects, on the interior level.

BROWN: And it happens in that order?

MABIT: Yes. The purga is essential because the key concept in Amazon medicine is to purify, to cleanse, at the physical level first: purge all intoxications, bad food, contamination, etc., so that the body can be liberated. When that point is reached, other processes begin automatically, processes of comprehension, integration. Even just with the purges, we have a psychological advance taking place. Also, the cleansing of the purga allows the organism to prepare for a better assimilation of the psychoactive plants, such as ayahuasca, which will then have a much stronger effect. We’re able to enter more deeply into the experience.

Ayahuasca, as they say, shows the way, provides orientation. It tells us where we are going. It asks: What is most important at this moment for me? What is essential? And what question is being asked in my life, here where I find myself?

Once we have this information, we can orient the dieta based on the direction which interests us. Because we will choose a dieta plant which best corresponds to the goal which appeared in the ayahuasca session. For example, one might need to work on one’s relationship with others, or one’s emotional stability, or one’s relation to the meaning of life, one’s fears, etc. There are different dieta plants indicated for each of these cases.

So the plants have specific effects on the psychological level, which correspond to personal problems. We can choose from our “catalogue” of plant psychologists, each specialized in a different psychological function.

BROWN: Do these things come of their own accord, or can we actively seek them ourselves?

MABIT: In general, healers won’t explain anything to you. They say “Here, take this.” You don’t know what will happen, you discover. In the context of Westerners, we always need some words to be reassured. So here we explain a bit: what will happen in general. Individual reactions vary, but it permits people in some way to orient, to position themselves. I tend not to explain very much, usually just very general things. Afterwards, when I review the experience with the patient, I also try to allow for the discovery to come from the patient, especially with ayahuasca.

BROWN: But I imagine for the typical patient here, they have a specific goal, or question to resolve? Would that be the case for the majority of people here?

MABIT: Yes and no. We need to remain in ‘saying without saying’. Suggesting, orienting, but allowing the person to find their own way. Because if we say too much, people are conditioned; they seek the experience or path they think we promised them, and that’s not good. What we provide is a general sense of orientation, following a sort of rules of accompaniment, but the subject discovers himself what the path is. So our policy, and way of working in Takiwasi, is that you will encounter the plants, and everything they contain: their energy. The relation is not so much between patient and therapist. It’s the relationship between a person and plants, and everything that is revealed through plants. My job is to accompany, to create a context of security, of protection, so if the person really gets lost, or is in danger, I will intervene.

BROWN: What kind of danger?

MABIT: Well, for example, if someone is going to take their visions literally – this is especially common with Westerners. Often they’re not used to all the visions or information that come to them from the plants, and they don’t have the capacity for interpretation, because they’re not accustomed to interpreting the symbolic or the imaginary. Sometimes, if they are taking what they saw literally, I have to intervene because people might take as factual, information that is symbolic, analogic.

For example, a patient during an ayahuasca session feels bad, and he faces fears; he may project that fear onto others, saying “It’s not because I’m afraid, it’s because such-and-such person wants to harm me,” or “the healer is trying to manipulate me, to drive me crazy.” This is what can happen in the projective imagination. So there, the work behind the projection needs to be deciphered, so the person can understand what is happening.

The psychological accompaniment is important, but I’d say it’s more important after the session than before. Before, we tend to let things be as they are, so people discover: they’re accompanied through the process, of course, but the bulk of the conversation will happen afterwards, set things out, express them, to integrate and understand them.

BROWN: So the analysis comes afterwards.

MABIT: It comes after. Indigenous people already have a foundation for this. They have legends, myths, stories they’ve heard since childhood, so for them all this is written in a worldview which is theirs, and where there is a place for these things already. But for a Westerner, everything is new: there are no points of reference, and there we might need someone to help them interpret the experience and position it, so it doesn’t distort, turn into a delirium, or an imaginary integration.

I’ll give you a simple example: Someone will see energy coming out of their hands and think that ayahuasca is telling them they’ve become a shaman.

BROWN: That’s not good.

MABIT: No. We can have a talent for music, for example, but that doesn’t make us a great composer. In the work with plants there is an amplification of consciousness that must result in humility. It’s problematic when, on the contrary, it results in the inflammation of the ego. That’s always a bad sign.

BROWN: When you say there’s a whole symbolic level we’re not accustomed to seeing, is it all like this? Or can there also be direct, tangible things we can understand in our context?

MABIT: Yes, with plants, there can also be very direct, precise information. But plants tend to function with the right brain, the right hemisphere, which is the symbolic hemisphere. Whereas in our Western society, what we develop is the left brain: the rational abilities, categorization, systems – in these things, we’re very good. But we’re not educated, not ‘trained’ in our right brain: there’s a disappearance of the sacred, the world of religious forms, of knowledge of the symbolic, and processes of initiation. So we have a left brain that’s hypertrophied, and a right brain that’s atrophied. With the traditional indigenous cultures I’ve known, it tends to be reversed. My teachers had a hard time expressing things in words, or in a linear way. Which means the discourse, the exchange, the dialogue between us is sometimes difficult, because it’s not happening on the same wavelength, there’s no fluid connection. So there’s a whole work of interpretation, codification, to be done in order to understand exactly what’s being said by the shamans. That’s a work of joining, a bridge to be built, which we try to do here at Takiwasi, which is not easy: Westerners taking ayahuasca, and indigenous healers dealing with Western psychological problems. This is tricky because it’s not their way of approaching things: they don’t approach the interior world with our kind of analysis of mental processes. They approach all phenomena of altered consciousness as exterior phenomena first and foremost – plant energies, energies of other healers, animal energies, spirits, etc. – things that come from the outside. We have the reverse approach, it’s the interior that counts. Mental processes, childhood traumas, etc. – it’s foremost an exploration of ourselves, so we don’t have the same discourse. We need to understand each other, and that takes sustained effort.

BROWN: Amazing. Does that mean the experiences will be different, whether it’s a Westerner, or an Amazonian native for example?

MABIT: Yes, they will be different. Generally, Indians and people from Amazonia enter more easily into the experience. The problem they often have is the difficulty integrating this experience on the individual, personal level. Westerners, on the other hand, have more resistance to the experience: we rationalize it, objectivize it. This gives us a certain protection, but also blocks us. So we need to dissolve that.

BROWN: Barriers.

MABIT: Yes. That’s why the first purge we’ll give you is Rosa Sisa. We don’t just use plants from the Amazon, but also found throughout the world, including gardens in Europe and North America. Rosa Sisa is a plant from India. Its principal function is to unblock everything that’s happening at the level of the head, both on the mental and also the physical level. For example people who have sinusitis, blockages of the respiratory system, runny nose, eyes … it will decongest. That is the physical level, also important, but not what interests us most at first in Takiwasi. We mostly use Rosa Sisa when we want to unblock too much thinking, too much mental activity.

BROWN: So for my purge …

MABIT: We will choose the Rosa Sisa. It will allow you to enter the ayahuasca session being a bit more open, liberated of these blockages we’ve been talking about.

BROWN: OK. But when we say purge, what should I expect, will my nose be running? Will it be just in my head? The processes, what will it look like?

MABIT: First you will take the plant. Then you will need to drink water, around 3-4 liters.

BROWN: Four liters?

MABIT: Yes, sometimes as much as four liters.

BROWN: My God!

MABIT: That will induce vomiting.

BROWN: Vomiting?

MABIT: Vomiting that may last an hour, an hour and a half.

BROWN: Really?

MABIT: So, the concept of vomiting is important, because in classical Western thinking, vomiting means being sick..

BROWN: It’s not very pleasant …

MABIT: In the Amazon, vomiting means being liberated. It’s a therapeutic induction. So we use a natural mechanism of the organism for evacuation, for liberation. That also has emotional effects. There are no psychoactive effects with this plant, you won’t have visions, but you might feel a certain charge maybe, certain pains or heaviness, until the moment when you start to vomit, and then things will start to free up, you’ll feel more at ease, and then a gradual entrance into a state of rest.

There are some dietary rules: no eating until the next morning. During the night there can be more intense dreams, because as soon as we start to cleanse with plants, we unblock on the mental level, there is dream stimulation. The world of the unconscious will re-manifest itself, and dreams return, things begin to find meaning.

BROWN: You say it’s us who make the association between vomiting and being sick. But it seems to me vomiting is an objectively unpleasant experience. Is it part … is pain part of the experience, or is that just how it is, there’s no other way?

MABIT: No, the objective is not to make people suffer… [laughs] … the word in Spanish for vomiting is devolver which actually means to return, to put back. Everything we swallow – food, but emotionally too – we incorporate, we keep. It’s a form of retention, it does not circulate. It’s like this on the physical level, contamination we breathe, bad food we eat, etc. but also on the emotional level. We “swallow” our fear, anxiety, tension, and sadness. We don’t know what to do with these emotions, so we tend keep them, store them. The purga consists of opening up and letting all this flow, so energy can re-circulate.

That’s why during the purge, sometimes there are zones of tension that may be revealed, we can have pain, we may feel cold, even feel a bit depressed. All these feelings are things that are coming up to be evacuated by the purge.

But, to answer your question, it’s not particularly painful. There are purges that are much stronger. Indigenous people use some extremely strong and violent purges. But we don’t use them because for us, it’s a bit…

BROWN: Hard to recover?

MABIT: A bit hard, yes. We need to go step by step.

BROWN: OK. And this purge will prepare for the next day? When we will take ayahuasca?

MABIT: Yes. The next day, ayahuasca. So the body will be more relaxed, the mind more open, a bit more connected with the emotions. We are introduced into the experience with plants. After the purge there will be a heightened sensibility, and that way ayahuasca can work better.

BROWN: OK, and during this experience where we expect to see visions that will show us our path, our needs, during this time, going into this, do I need to prepare myself mentally, know what to expect?

MABIT: What will affect your ayahuasca experience is preparation, the quality of your approach, the context, but especially your intention. What is your intention in taking ayahuasca? The intention is like a directive you give to your subconscious. That will be your conscious intention. We always have subconscious intentions as well, expectations, fears, etc. All these things will also play a part. For example, some people might have the conscious intention to resolve a problem with their partner. But they might find, for example, that first they might need to resolve a problem with their mother. This comes first, and then you can resolve the relationship problem. The person might feel like they wanted to work on something, but the ayahuasca took them on a detour. In fact they were being redirected, reorganized in some way. Ayahuasca showed them that to arrive at their relationship, they first needed to go in the opposite direction.

BROWN: So we can expect that there will be certain, say, tangential truths which will appear, that will be unexpected, that will contribute to this narration?

MABIT: Ayahuasca is always surprising. It never repeats itself – neither the information, nor the visions.

BROWN: So when you say this kind of truth comes to the surface, tangential to our original intention, am I on the right track if I try to interpret this as…a bit like our subconscious having a conversation with our conscious self?

MABIT: Yes and no. It’s like that, but it’s not like that. That is to say, yes, there is mental material which comes from our subconscious, from everything we’ve lived and recorded, and from our connection with the symbolic world: we are symbolic beings by definition. But there is also something else at play; our relationship with the larger living world of nature, of all creation. There is consciousness everywhere, which expresses itself, speaks to us, that’s why when healers say that plants speak, it’s not just a figure of speech. It’s true, plants can reveal subconscious things that are inside of us. But there is also something else, a connection with an intelligence that is greater than us. That is often surprising for Westerners, because we have a tendency to explain the whole experience as psychological material, as our subconscious coming through, which is true. But there are also other things: there is a real teaching, and we might be surprised by the information that arises. Information that might be beyond what we can imagine, or believe, or think, or know. Information from faraway in time and space, not things we’ve read in books, or things we have a memory of which has been suppressed and now revealed. There is something else at play and that’s what’s extremely healing: the realization that there is an order in the universe that transcends my small self. “I am no longer enclosed in my psyche. I am no longer trapped, there is something bigger, which I am connected to.” And this something bigger has a structure, an order, makes sense, is great and beautiful. This realization does us a great deal of good, to see that when we align ourselves in harmony in a way, we will find an order within ourselves, and we enter in synch, in harmony, in synchronicity with this transcendental order. And then, yes, we feel much better; we carry much less weight on our shoulders, because things begin to make sense. The suffering begins to make sense. The difficulties begin to make sense. The ordeals begin to make sense. Because it’s a journey toward this kind of ideal harmony, which is never completely achieved, but towards which we can journey.

So with ayahuasca, and in the course of the dietas, there will be not only information in the form of visions. We Westerners are very drawn to the visual. We live in a world of images, TV, computers… But ayahuasca will also express itself in other ways that are not visual. First through the body, by physical sensations, there is an extraordinary range of physical sensations which go well beyond our usual sensations. Then through all the senses, our hearing: we can hear things, we can communicate. We can feel connections with important members of our family who are deceased, parents, grandparents… So of course, seen from the outside, it’s easy to tell ourselves “Well it’s something from inside us, the subconscious, we’re talking to ourselves.” But when we experience it, it’s not at all like that, there is a real relation with those beings. And once the pending issues have been addressed with those people; once the problems that hadn’t been formulated come out, the forgiving which hadn’t been done, the goodbyes, the expressions of love etc. – once that’s done, those people no longer appear. Sometimes they tell us things, give information which the subject himself doesn’t know. So we are very much confronted, in these multiple experiences, by something which goes beyond the framework of rationality, the paradigm in which we function – which makes us question some of our Western perspective on the world. We can find explanations and connections in our own traditions, the Judeo-Greek-Christian traditions, all these things already exist. But for that we need to first reconnect to our lineage, our own traditions, from which we are generally separated and often at war with, in the Western world.

BROWN: And this conversation all happens internally, or do we speak it, communicate?

MABIT: Well, it happens within us. The way we approach it at Takiwasi, we focus on the inner world, in trying to understand what is happening in the inner world. So during the session we encourage the most complete silence from patients. Inside we might be screaming, crying, hearing things, but externally there should be silence. That being said, in the first ayahuasca sessions where people don’t know the experience, there can sometimes be a loss of control, where people can get so far into the vision that they forget they took ayahuasca, they experience things as in a dream, the kind we live completely until we wake up, and then realize we’ve been dreaming. So certain people might, especially in their first sessions, exteriorize with words, gestures, all kind of external manifestations. With time this will change, those are the first steps in what is, in fact, long-term work. The ideal is to be still, in deep contemplation, to really live completely in our interior, and to be able to metabolize, digest, fill the experience with meaning. For that we can’t be simply in a state of immediacy – without distancing ourselves.

BROWN: OK, so after all this we have a new perspective, we have a vision about our mission… and so what’s the role of the dieta, long-term?

MABIT: In this area of the jungle people call ayahuasca ‘la purga’, that is to say the purge…it’s also a liberation, there will eventually be vomiting or diarrhoea, but the vomiting will come when the person reaches things in their ayahuasca experience that are extremely intense on the emotional level. For example we may be very afraid at a certain moment, and the fear is so intense that we imagine we’re going crazy, that we will die…and at that moment, we vomit. We vomit that fear. When we do that, in that moment or a few moments later, we realize: “What was I afraid of?” “Ah, I was afraid of dying. So I’m afraid of dying, I’m afraid of going crazy, afraid of being mistreated, I’m afraid…” etc. Those thoughts will bring us back, in this moment rapid connections are being made, in a state of extreme concentration. We can associate all kinds of scenes from our life, our lived experience. We understand there has been a common thread which led us to hold this fear, for example, this anxiety, this anger. There is a very fast association that occurs, and there we find understanding, comprehension.

So the ayahuasca session will give us a different perspective, let’s say, a different psychological panorama. It shows us simply which direction we need to take. So ayahuasca shows us the way, but after that, it doesn’t spare us the work. We need to make those changes happen in our lives, we need to take those steps. It’s not a magical solution. It’s not like after I drink ayahuasca there will be nothing else I need to do. On the contrary, ayahuasca shows us things that need to be done, very concrete changes that need to happen. If we don’t change these things, the ayahuasca experience will remain as a memory, and nothing else. So ayahuasca does not exempt us from the long, patient, persistent work necessary for our lives to evolve. Ayahuasca is not a magical solution. It’s a very violent punch, a kind of operation, that reveals things. After the revelations comes the real work. That’s exactly where the dieta comes in.

The dieta takes eight days, so we are not simply experiencing something for 4 to 7 hours in the dark, in a kind of uterine world where we search for answers. The dieta happens in the light of day, for a period of time long enough that we can really integrate the lessons we learned during the ayahuasca. What did this mean? What is this? Where am I at, now? There is an anchoring in the body and the plants we take, these dieta plants, in that particular context of forest retreat, isolation, dietary restrictions, it allows these plants to really assimilate, incorporate, so the structure, the personality, or our energetic structure changes, is modified. And that’s what is amazing, to see how a person undergoes this process. Someone who had a kind of narrow structure before, emerging will be different; something in this person has changed. It’s so true that in general people don’t realize, it’s others who tell them: “But you’re so much calmer than before.” “Ah yes, it’s true!” Yes, before you would have reacted more aggressively in this situation, now you don’t react, you’re less aggressive.

During the dieta there’s an incorporation, a structural change in the personality. There are things that really disappear, and things that appear. So there is a restructuring of some kind, internally.

We can understand it because these psychoactive plants like ayahuasca are not strangers to our organism. We ourselves produce these substances. We have ayahuasca within us. endo-ayahuasca, as certain researchers say, through the pineal gland in particular. So these are natural mechanisms of the organism: we have simply forgotten how to use and control them, how to stimulate them. All the Western traditions of fasting, diet, initiation, religion, prayer, rituals, dance – all these techniques, these approaches, we have known these things before, but we’ve forgotten how to use them. So I think traditional medicine, Amazonian or other, helps us return to our lineage, to find our roots and reconnect, to reconcile with our past, reconcile with our culture, with our heritage, seeing its faults, its errors, but also the wealth that comes, for example, with our Judeo-Greek-Christian tradition.

BROWN: This all seems very interesting. Fascinating. Is it normal to be afraid? On one hand I don’t really want to vomit for hours, on the other hand it seems to me, this idea of visiting our demons to arrive at something … I can clearly see why I, and probably others, would have a tendency to want to resist this opportunity, to avoid it, not to want to submit to that experience.

MABIT: It reassures me when people are scared. Because if we’re not scared, it means we’re not conscious. The fact of being afraid, having a certain apprehension, means there was a realization that something serious is happening. It’s something important. I’m approaching fundamental things in my life, or life in general, and it’s appropriate to be in a state of alertness. Obviously if the fear becomes paralysing, so that we’re completely blocked, that’s difficult. But I don’t think that’s the case for you. And so I believe it’s good to have a certain prudence, to be alert, without it becoming a complete roadblock.

The main counter-indication for taking ayahuasca is when the person doesn’t want to take it. One must never force someone to take ayahuasca, it really must be a personal desire that comes deeply from our interior, because if we don’t have this, not only does it not serve any purpose, but mentally we can have a very difficult experience, even sometimes useless or dangerous. So when people drink ayahuasca – this has happened before – to please someone in their family, or to appear as if they’re not afraid, or weak – “I will do it anyway, I’ll force myself…” that’s really not good.

But the fact that you have a certain apprehension, a certain resistance, seems to me a good thing, a good element, a good sign for the session.

BROWN: OK.

MABIT: The Cashinawa Indians, when they drink ayahuasca together, they don’t say “We are drinking ayahuasca together” but rather “We’re going to share the fear. We’re going to be scared together.”

BROWN: And so there’s strength in the group, it’s less frightening if we’re not alone.

MABIT: Yes, we’re embarking on an adventure together.

BROWN: Ok. Well, I’m ready to try it, but I admit, with some apprehension, although I’m open to seeing what this experience might look like. And hope I can use it in the way you talk about, applied to my life.

MABIT: Well, when the physical and psychological conditions are met – it’s important that there be no counter-indications – and the context is a safe one, controlled and accompanied, there is no problem, everything will go well.

BROWN: You reassure me, at least a little bit.

[Laughs]