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What does ayahuasca do?

GABOR: The plant works on, obviously a physiological level, which has to do with the nuances of brain chemistry, neurotransmitters like serotonin, chemicals in the brain like DMT, dopamine and so on – and certain things that have to do with insight, awareness. On the psychological level, it gets underneath the screen of personality, and the screen of egoic defenses that people build up in response to childhood loss or childhood trauma…which allows them access to parts of themselves that have been sequestered or repressed, isolated, and made unconscious. So psychedelic – and ayahuasca is amongst the psychedelic substances, or plants – simply means “mind-manifesting”. So ayahuasca manifests the mind. And that includes the unconscious mind. Which usually, for most people, is inaccessible. It’s inaccessible – and yet it runs our lives in significant ways.

It’s very often the unconscious beliefs – and perception, and self-image – we hold, that actually determines our life decisions, our relationships, our behaviour. So the plant gives you access, in the right context. To parts of yourself, that you haven’t been aware of.

On a deeper spiritual level, it also enables, or permits some people- to recognize truths that spiritual teachers have always maintained…but for many of us, are difficult to have access to- which is the unity of everything and everybody – and the presence, if you will, of a less ephemeral, less form-based essential self – that is not an isolated ego, but a flowing part of everything.

So on the physiological, on the psychological, and on the spiritual levels – the plant can afford access to experiences that most people would have difficulty gaining and opening to otherwise. It’s not the only way to do it, but those are its possibilities.

Most of us identify ourselves with our behaviour, with our beliefs about ourselves, with our unconscious beliefs about ourselves…so that, if a person, in childhood for example, was not well-treated, that person concludes that he’s not worthy to be treated well, or he compensates by wanting to be treated as something special.

Both of those dynamics, whether in a politician like Donald Trump, or somebody who is an abject street addict – are compensations. And the plant can show you that you’re not your sense of yourself. You’re not identical to whatever belief you have about yourself. You don’t have to puff yourself up…and you also don’t need to put yourself down, because you are who you are. And underneath all those beliefs, those compensatory mechanisms of the ego, and all those defences…all those forms that we identify with…there’s a truer authentic self. That once we contact, life becomes a lot more comfortable. Because you’re not longer trying to satisfy urges from the outside, that can only be met from within.

Now, you know, I’m giving you the idealized view – and it’s not a question of “drink this plant and you’re going to get these experiences.” But these are the potentials. And under the right guidance, again, this is not the only way to have those experiences and have those insights, find those truths. It happens to be one particular, very – rapid way, for a lot of people, and particularly inspiring one. But what I’m talking about is not unique to the plant, and it’s something that’s very much inherent in the human potential. So the ayahuasca is one more pathway, towards realizing that human potential.

The visions that people have under the effect of the plant can be beautiful – they can be scary, they can be even full of dread. But we don’t live in a society that deals with archetypes. We don’t live in a society that deals with symbols that express the unconscious. We don’t have a language for it. Most people don’t have the language to even talk about their emotions in any articulate way.

So having these experiences with the plant, unless they are interpreted in a way that makes sense to that individual’s life experience, and in language that he understands, can be bewildering in some cases. And I have met people who were bewildered by their ayahuasca experience. Which is not to say there was anything wrong with their experience…it simply means that they haven’t had help to interpret what happens. They haven’t had help to interpret the symbols, in a meaningful way – and haven’t had help to understand what and why those symbols came along at that particular time, in ceremony. So that’s the work that I’ve developed an interest in doing, is helping people integrate and interpret their experiences. By integration I mean, not just intellectual understand, but what lessons follow from that in terms of one’s personal life, and what paths have opened up now that may not have been open to you before.

The plant can only open the door. It cannot make you go through it, and it cannot make you stay on the path. That’s with any spiritual discipline- whether it’s yoga, meditation, whatever it is- it takes practice; it takes ongoing commitment, to applying the lessons to your own personal life.

Jacques Mabit talks about the potential dangers of interpreting the initial visions?

The experience with the plant can be confusing, and again that’s because of our lack of familiarity with symbols, and the lack of language. I don’t usually find it difficult to help people interpret their experiences. It’s really a matter of helping people tap into a part of themselves, from which their experience came. But of course, sometimes the plant will simply ask a question, in the form of a vision. It may set you a puzzle – and it may not give you an answer right away. Quite probably because you’re not ready for the answer. It’s a matter then of maintaining the curiosity, and maintaining the openness- “OK now, what next,” and being totally open to what arises.

Usually, with the proper guidance, and given genuine curiosity on the part of the individual- the answers arise. And they arise in their own good time – but in my experience, that time never needs to be very long – and like with any journey, there are stages in it. So you get to a certain stage, and you might have to spend some time there for a while, in your life. And then, at some point, and you’ll know when…you’re ready for the next stage. Whether that next stage needs to involve ayahuasca, that’s up to the individual. But it can. So as long as we don’t think in terms of final destinations…and actually put the attention on the journey, rather than the goal – that our preconditioned mind images – there’s going to be progress. There’s going to be a shift, there’s going to be learning, a deeper wisdom.

Was there a moment when you found the medicine, where you realized its potential?

Well, if I look back now on my experience with the plant and what I did with that experience – I would not advise myself to do exactly how I did it. Because I had my first experience – was a powerful opening, to a quality of love that I had not experienced internally, in a very deep, beautiful way – but if somebody met me, and told me that they had that experience, I would advise them that this is something very important to explore for you, so stay in that journey of exploration.

I went into my doctor mode. And my immediate question became, this is fantastic…how can I use this to help other people. So my work became, working with the plant to help addicted people, to help people who are stressed, people who are alienated from themselves, people who are disconnected – people who are struggling with anxiety, depression, physical illness…and that’s been great work, it’s – amongst the many things I do, it’s one of the most exciting aspects of what I do, because the results are so gratifying. And so fairly rapid. But that also meant that I’ve ignored my own personal transformation- to the point that my wife Rae would have real resistance to the work I was doing- because she would say, well you’re doing all this work, all these great experiences…how come nothing changes at home? And of course, I wasn’t doing the work on myself. So I related to it in my role as a healer – which means I was so identified with my role, that I didn’t look more deeply at OK, what do I have to learn here? Which is not to say that I haven’t learned…I’m just talking about the trajectory that I followed. You might say there’s wisdom in everything…and I’ve had to learn, over time, that I have to learn. And that’s OK. But that’s what I did with it, when I first became aware of it.

I don’t have one single dramatic moment where I said OK this is great, or this is epiphany. I’ve seen as many experiences of people getting tremendous insight…about their cancer, about the multiple sclerosis, about their ALS, about their depression, about their anxiety, about their relationships, about themselves. Many such moments. The moments sometimes happen in ceremony…and then the job is to help that person process and integrate that. Or sometimes they happen as they relate their experience in ceremony, with some bewilderment, some questions – but in the conversation, becomes clear what that experience meant. Many, many such moments. And one of the best statements, or most meaningful statements I remember- is somebody who came to a ceremony or retreat, and he said- this is a young man of 24- and he said, aha, now I remember myself. And that forgetting of the self, the true self, is actually what ails all of us. So if you want one dramatic moment, that was a statement of a deep truth.

Well, babies are not tabula rasa. They’re not an empty board with nothing on it, that’s not true. What is true is that we come into life with vulnerable openness, the heart is wide open, our minds are completely curious – deeply dependent on attaching to emotionally present caregivers – so that that curiosity can maintain itself, so that the mind can expand, and so that the heart can stay open, so that our emotions continue to reflect reality.

So our essential self is one of openness and presence. Infants are completely present: not thinking about the past, they’re not thinking about the future, they’re just there with whatever is. They’re infinitely curious, and very vulnerable. That’s human nature. When things hurt us, our heart hurts too much, we close it down, so we’re no longer in touch with deep love, we’re no longer in touch with our deep selves…when a lot of difficult things happen, the mind begins to shape a view of the self that’s very limited, that’s based on fear, based on having to defend against pain…now we’re not as curious, now we enter the future, dragging the past behind us, and we’re not in the present moment. And that vulnerability becomes too dangerous. So then we develop the personality, in many ways, to compensate for what we’ve lost.

So in significant ways, what we think of as the personality is actually a compensatory mechanism. And it has all kinds of implications, in terms of physical health, and emotional health…the deepest implication is that we end up not knowing who we are- and for reasons unknown to us, we are uncomfortable in our own skin. Unless we are engaged in all kinds of diversions and distractions, which this society is willing to manufacture and sell us, in large quantities, at great expense.

At a certain point, that doesn’t become enough, and a person says, who am I anyway? Not everybody comes to asking that question, but many people do. And they’re very distressed by the gap between their real self and who they think they are. And that becomes increasingly uncomfortable. And then the journey becomes, how to get back to the self. And that journey has to go through the layers and compensations and defences that we’ve built up. Because when we were ourselves, in the beginning, we got hurt so badly. Now we have to have the courage to go back there. Which inevitably brings up pain for people. And it’s because we don’t want pain that we end up compensating, and staying in our addictions, and staying in our behaviours, and our relationships – and our jobs, everything else that doesn’t work for us. So that loss of the self is a compensatory event which, initially, helps us stay out of pain- and then in the end, creates more pain, more suffering, and then the journey back begins.

Talk about your experience at Takiwasi.

Dr. Jacques Mabit at Takiwasi, of course, is a world pioneer in the application of plants, including ayahuasca, but far from only ayahuasca – to the treatment of addictions. So he’s taking a non-disease perspective on addictions. And he’s looking for that healing that is available inside people, by their nature, rather that I’m going to cure you- you’re going to cure yourself, with our help. And that help includes shamanic experiences with ayahuasca, which for reasons we’ve already covered, help people recover. And by the way, recover what, recover themselves…what word do we use in addictions, for healing, we call it recovery. What does recovery mean, you find something, what do you find, you find your true self.

So he’s established, and he was called to establish this institution and partake in this work, because he was inspired by his own plant experience. That was never his intention. But he was called, as he told me once, to do this, by the plant. And he followed the call. And so the clinic now offers, as you know, several months or up to nine months stay- sometimes maybe longer- where you work the land, where you do therapy, where you do dietas with certain plants, where you eat in a healthy way, and where you do ceremonies. And the results they get are far from a hundred percent- but far more encouraging than the results that the Western modalities are able to achieve…and for reasons that have to do with everything we’ve been talking about, and the power of the plant, and the power of a healthy context, to call people back to themselves.

Well first of all, as a physician, I just found it interesting to see such a different model…a model that, from the perspective of my Western medical training, would have been unthinkable. In the personal sense, with Jacques, I found myself in the presence of somebody who I don’t even think necessarily is older than I am. I don’t know how old he is…OK, he’s younger than I am. But nevertheless, the experience I had was of being with a paternal figure, somebody who’s got strength and wisdom and a quiet confidence about him. So there was safety, and there was trust. And at one point in ceremony with him, I actually experienced, as if it was my father blessing me, in a way that I could receive. So I also found the chanting, which was in a different edition that the one I’d been used to in ceremonies that I’d participated in, I found the chanting very beautiful- it was a combination of native languages along with Spanish, Catholic, liturgy, or at least musical forms…so it was both beautiful and personally life-enhancing, to be there and to drink with Jacques.

Well I certainly saw the possibilities there, of the plant. But you know, in terms of learning, I have to say that I had to develop my own way of working with the plant- simply because I work in a completely different context. So the things that they do at Takiwasi, where people stay for months- it’s a very different experience than I can offer people in a weeklong retreat. Without all those resources, without the physical plant that surrounds him. And so they can do things that I can’t- in the context that I work in- which is, for example, take people in deep addiction, and help them detox. In my work, I can’t have somebody coming in who’s detoxing, because it would disrupt the work with the group. They’re set up for that. So it’s very contextual, if I could imagine a reality, I’d love to see, instead of this utterly dark-minded, ignorance-based illegalization of this plant in North America- I’d love to see somebody in authority just look at the literature, just listen to people who’ve had the experience, just recognize that there’s absolutely nothing dangerous or addictive about it- which incidentally, is not controversial. And allow us to work with it. And then we could establish centres, where people could come and detox, where people could come and stay for months. Where people could work with the plant legally, and openly. The potentials are vast- and we could redeem so many more people than we’re doing so right now. But if I did have that context, then I’d be much more eager to go back to Takiwasi and learn about specifically what they do, and how they do it, and how can I apply that in a North American context. But again, the holding environment doesn’t exist for that. Therefore I have to work with it the way I’m able to…which limits its application. It’s a limitation, but at the same time, there’s still plenty of potential here – it’s only that that specific model needs a context where the law is not against us but for us.

Talk about the long-term results of the series of ceremonies we followed in the film. 

So the ceremonies that I participated in, and the work that I did with the people brought together for the purposes of this documentary – they showed me what’s possible, because even the most difficult and most drug-addled patients had moments of opening. Moments of insight, moments of inspiration, glimpses of themselves and some of them did very well for quite some time. And some of them are still doing very very well, actually. This is 4-5 years later.

Others did well for awhile – but inevitably, they went back to their life, and relationships, and the context where they existed before – and they were pulled back into addiction, back into dysfunction. Which for me in no way invalidates the work – it simply says that more work needs to be done, and the context has to be there for it. In addition to that, my work with the plant, and the work of the shamans I work with, has inevitably deepened and broadened since those experiences. And so even what we could offer them then, was limited by our relative inexperience at that time, compared to for example right now. So to sum it up, that work showed possibilities – it was a very randomly and quickly, necessarily brought together group of people – with no preparation beforehand, together for a very short period of time. And I think, given those limitations, I think it was a real positive, inspiring glimpse into the potentials – and in some cases, resulted in long-term benefits. In other cases those benefits attenuated over time, which is exactly what one would expect. It was a really good exercise, but not by any means a full illustration of what’s possible.

Well shortly, in fact a week before [The Jungle Prescription] aired on CBC, I received a letter from Health Canada, who had heard, mistakenly, that I was conducting clinical trials with ayahuasca; I wasn’t. I was involved, however, in an observational trial, with a native band in British Columbia, a highly traumatized population, these people have been tormented for 100 years by the residential schools…multi-generational trauma, multi-generational sexual abuse, all initiated by colonialism and the residential school system. And these people desperately called out to us, would you come and work with ayahuasca with us. And people from University of Victoria and elsewhere, they came to study the effects. Which in the short term, were very positive- we did some very deep work, over 2 or 3 days with these people. It was an observational study. Somehow Health Canada heard, and I don’t know who, either with naive intention, or ill intention, I have no idea- as a result of which, I get this letter reminding me that the plant is illegal, and working with it is illegal, and should I persist, they would have to turn the case over the RCMP. Well, I have no intention of being a martyr, and so I said yeah, I’m not going to work with it in Canada anymore.

So the truth is that I’ve participated in ceremonies in Canada, but I have not conducted work with it. We’ll see how that goes – the reality is that I don’t believe it’s a primary issue for drug enforcement in this country to hunt people who get together ceremonially and drink ayahuasca once a month, or twice a year. Nobody sells anything, or distributes anything, or is involved in crime. I mean, there’s worse drug issues in this country than that- people are quite happily doing ceremonies, but of course nobody talks about them publicly, nobody advertises them, and so on.

So the work that I do, for that and other reasons, I do it out of the country. Which also means that for people who can’t afford to go out of the country…it’s not available. So, thank you Health Canada for depriving people of yet another possibility of healing. Because I can tell you that I’ve witnessed people heal of cocaine addiction, from sex addiction, from alcohol addiction, and from all kinds of other health issues. So it’s no question in my mind that the officials who sent me that letter weren’t trying to do harm, they were just doing their jobs…their jobs were mandated by the law. And the people I spoke to in Health Canada were very supportive, they said yeah, we’d love to see you do clinical studies, we’ll send you the information on how to do clinical studies.

But when I got the information, it took me one second before my eyes glazed over…because the rules and expectations are prohibitive, and the cost would be in the many hundreds of millions. There’s no pharmaceutical company that’s going to back me to do million-dollar study on ayahuasca- because there ain’t no money in it. And therefore, the idea that these plants should be studied the same way you’d study some pharmaceutical manufactured in a factory – is ridiculous. Totally out of touch with reality. So as long as those rules are imposed, on clinical research – with a plant like ayahuasca – it’ll be very difficult to do meaningful research.

So, with all due respect to the officials who are doing their job- the application of their job was to deprive people of something that I can guarantee will help, far from everybody, but may. And these are people to whom the Western medical system offers no hope whatsoever.

How has your work with ayahuasca evolved since you started?

Both for the shamans I work with, and myself – experience itself brings wisdom. As long as your eyes are open, and your mind is open. So, I know now far more how to be with people’s experience, without intellectualizing about it too much. I know far more how to recognize the essence of the experience, and to help people recognize that essence. I know far more not to impose my expectations or agenda, on their healing process. I’m also more familiar with the visions and the images and the teachings, that the plant gives people, and how to interpret them. The people I work with, they know more deeply how to read people’s energies and needs and emotional states during ceremony. So they’re much more able to go and put hands on, and chant to them in a way that speaks to that person’s experience at that moment. So really it’s a matter of having had another 4-5 years of experience- in my case, dozens more ceremonies- in the case of the people I work with, hundreds more ceremonies, that’s what they do…we’re more experienced, we’re more present with what needs to happen. The results we’re getting are also correspondingly gratifying.

But again, the people I would really like to see come- which are people like the people in the film, the people in the deep throes of addiction- they’re precisely the ones who can’t have access to it. Because of the legal absurdity that governs us.

You know when I work with the plant, and I facilitate these retreats, many people get into relationship with the plant in a very deep spiritual sense – so much so that the plant even shows up as the mother, the madre, the spirit of ayahuasca. As you heard in my talk today, what shows up for me is usually a stomachache and sometimes some nausea, and nothing by way of visions, no spirits, no nothing. Mother why can’t you show up for me sometimes? You know… And I’m totally OK with that- the plant gives you exactly what you need to have, when you need to have it. So I’m not impatient for anything, and I don’t need anything. Just going into it with curiosity. It does give me clarity. I do into those ceremonies really present and clear. I’m able to see myself in a more pristine, less opaque way. I do have experiences, I would be dismissing the validity of my own experiences if I didn’t…I have experience of ego-death, like I literally go under, say OK, the only way I’m going to get through this is if I just get myself out of the way…and then my ego relaxes its hold, and I’m just falling, or flowing, or whatever is going on. So while there’s no entity that shows up for me- nobody’s speaking to me, as many people do experience…I do have my own ways of relating to the experience, and I do go through phases and states and insights and immersions, a different kind of truth. It’s just that in my case, it doesn’t take the form of an entity that shows up.

I don’t personally have the sense of being in conversation with an intelligence, with anything…I’m just inside my own experience, but imp not relating to an interlocutor, a partner in conversation. It does happen to many people I work with. Whether it’ll never happen to me, or whether it will…we’ll see, I’d be very curious – but you can’t make it happen. And so, it’s how it is.

But you know, again, that’s the experience of a particular person, and a particular person whose main role is to help others in that situation.

Mabit talks about us having 2 levels of the experience- physical, energetic, and spiritual level…but these things are related, what happens inside the body is just a first clue.

The nausea is not a bad thing, it’s simply a sign that something is going on – and it usually reflects some resistance on my part. And when you find that urge, it’s not like you’re sick – it’s not like nausea is a sickness, it’s not. It’s a sign, in this case. And very often there’s a purging that happens…and after the purging there’s tremendous clarity. So the nausea usually represents some resistance on my part. So you work with whatever arises. You don’t make anything wrong. You don’t prefer to be in this state as opposed to that state. You just go with whatever’s going on, and you stay curious. And you say OK there’s nausea here – how am I creating this. What is this trying to tell me? What have I swallowed, that isn’t true for me. What do I need to purge myself of? So yes, every manifestation of a plant experience, whether pleasant to the mind and body, or unpleasant to the mind and body, has a meaning- and given that it’s meaning that we enter the experience for, if we resist the experience, we’re also resisting the meaning.

I’ve been working with 2 people, who are shamans, although they are far too modest, and maybe culturally reticent, to call themselves shamans- they’ve been trained by a shaman. They are very dedicated servants of the plant…I’ve met a whole number of people who work with the plant. And when I meet somebody who works with the plant, I look for, how much ego are you bringing into the work? And these people, they don’t. Or if they do, they’re aware of it, and they work to clear it up. Other people I’ve seen work, they do beautiful chanting, and they can help some people, or people – but that’s not who I want to work with.

The healers you work with in ceremony, how does your work complement each other’s?

So the people I work with are committed that their egos, their issues, their false needs – will not stand in the way of the work. And I had that awareness the first time I worked with them. I didn’t have to ask any questions. One just knows. I knew. They’re both Canadians, they’ve both had tremendous suffering in their lives…one of them was pregnant at age 14, abandoned by family – the other suffered tremendously as well, in his family of origin. And it was that suffering that led them to the plant – and it was that healing that they received from the plant, that guided them to become healers themselves. And they’re constantly learning, they’re constantly deepening themselves- and I’ve seen that happen. I’ve been working with them now for 7 years, and I’ve seen tremendous changes in how they approach the work. And in the depth of the results that they achieve, as well. They come to the process in circles that I facilitate – that is, when they have the energy, because they were working the whole night, so they need some sleep as well…and what is always interesting to me, is how the insights that I garner or intuit, in my work with my people in the circle…even if they don’t come to circle, when they work with people at night, they’ll see exactly the same things, exactly the same dynamics.

Now the difference is, when I work with people, I’m talking with them with them, they’re talking with me- I’m reading their faces, their body expression, the tone of their voice…I’m paying attention to how they formulate sentences, how their voice changes from one sentence to the other – the body stance, and I have certain awareness, or intuition, about what’s happening with them, and how I need to address them.

The ayahuasquera, or ayahuasquero, these two people I work with- they don’t talk during the ceremony, they chant. And it’s dark, so they’re not even looking at people – you don’t see people, except in a murky outline. But they read energies from across the space. And invariably, and inevitably, they find the same things that I find, doing my circle work. And this is without me having told them. And there’s tremendous synchronicity.

How it complements my work, is that they put hands on. They work energetically. Now energetically is not something that makes sense to a Western medical mind…but they do sense people’s energies, whether it’s open or closed, whether there’s a blockage, whether there’s flow, whether there’s pain, whether there’s ease. And they know where to direct their hands on; they also know where to direct the chanting. Which then opens people up tremendously…and opens up channels of thought and emotion and body experience. Which then enhances and facilitates, and makes possible my work the next day. Which in turn, allows people to get deeper with themselves…which means when they go into the next ceremony, they go there with more insight, more openness, more awareness… more curiosity, and with a more clearly defined intention.

So the work that I do complements theirs, and the work that they do complements mine…it’s really a working relationship that I couldn’t have imagined, it’s just happened. But I’m tremendously grateful for it.

In your work, is there a relationship with “spirit”?

I find it difficult to articulate any ideas around spirit. And spirit’s got nothing to do with ideas. It’s actually an experience. Or it’s a reality that people experience. And so, I don’t mean to be reticent about it…it’s only that, I talk about the things that I’ve experienced myself, and the things that I’m confident about. When people talk about “the spirit of the plant”, or spiritual experiences- the words ‘spiritual’ or spirit themselves, are so fraught with interpretation. That are we even talking about the same thing. So I don’t go there too often.

I really like Eckhart Tolle’s view of spirituality, which is simply: a dis-identification from the programmed mind – and thought forms, or emotional forms, or even physical forms, that we assume to be our solid reality – and be in touch with a deeper core of reality, of essence, of connection, of oneness. Spirit in that sense makes every sense to me; I would say I have sufficient faith in it, so as to indicate to me that I’ve had experiences of it. I’ve never had the big bang: God has never spoken to me- there’s been no trumpets, no angels, no entities, no vastly infinite experience of groundedness and oneness…but I’ve seen people have those experiences, I totally believe their report of it, it’s congruent with my understanding of things…and it really doesn’t matter, whether I have or whether I don’t have a direct experience of that. If I’m meant to I will, if I’m not meant to I won’t, doesn’t matter. What really matters is that the plant, amongst other modalities, but it’s a very powerful modality…it helps people dis-identify from those forms, and to see that there is something truer, deeper, eternal about themselves- and they don’t have to live lives that are governed by the identification with those forms. So that’s, for me, a good working definition of spirituality.

What challenged me most in my work with the plant is when I get too attached to the results – which is to say, when I project my own ego into the situation…and when something, somebody I’m working with does, that triggers my own unresolved emotional stuff. And in a split second I can go from being very present, and very conscious, and very helpful…to being triggered, in which case what shows up is a hurt little kid, in the form of a leader who’s very angry, because he doesn’t like feeling that way. So the challenge for me is to really, really be conscious of what’s arising for me.

When I am able to be present, I don’t have to do the work. It just flows through. I don’t “do” it. I may have some particular gifts, that help me channel the gifts – but I don’t create the gifts, I don’t know where they come from. This is not just true with the plant; it’s any kind of work that I do. With or without ceremony. When I’m with people, if I’m able to be present- that is to say, my ego is not in the way – then it’s quite astonishing what can happen. And that’s the experience of many people that work with people: that is, when they are not in the way, the work just happens.

What are the next steps in the work you’re doing?

The next step for me in this work is to train others so they can carry on the work. I want there to be an expansion of this work, I want more people to be trained, to help people with the plant. So that ceremonies are more than just individual events, that they’re also possibilities for integration and processing. And people need training in that, I’ve met good people that are willing to, and eager to be trained – so that’s my next step, and that’s happening. And these are people who are, some of them are doctors, psychiatrists, some are therapists, some are naturopaths, whoever they are, I don’t care about their title so much, as much as I care about their commitment and their capacity to work with the plant. So that’s happening…

The other thing that’s happening, not initiated by me but I’m glad to participate – is more encouragement for research. And the third thing that’s happening is, there’s an international movement now, recognizing that integration and post-ceremony living with the consequences and the insights, is what’s missing right now- we’re actually developing online resources and structures, to help people all over the world, wherever they might be. If they have ceremony, there’s people they can contact and receive help from, processing and integrating their experience. That’s a tremendously exciting development, I’m not the initiator of it, but I have been invited to participate, and I’m really happy to do so.

So, there’s now a sense that more needs to be done, and it’s going to have a worldwide web dimension to it. It’s not clear to me when exactly it’s going to be ready, but the initial steps have been taken, and there’s more and more conversation around it. So there are some exciting developments.

What does the forest know, that we have forgotten?

You know, there was an article in the New York Times a couple of months ago – will the indigenous people of the jungle even survive. So what’s happening is that the ego-driven, acquisition-driven western mind…is destroying the source of the spirit. The palpably present, source of the spirit. The trees, the plants, the jungles- where the shamans have developed this wisdom. And have fine-honed this experience. And we’re actually threatening these people with economic extinction, and cultural extinction. And we continue to do so- it’s like we haven’t learned a thing, except how to get more and more and more, at their expense.

Now if I simply take my own experience, and I haven’t had big visions and entities and so on – but if I just take what I’ve learned from the plant, and if I subtract what I’ve learned, from my life – there’s a sense of loss, and something missing. Let alone the experiences that I’ve seen many people have.

Now, it’s well known what the environmental benefits of the jungle are in terms of protecting the climate, protecting the atmosphere; as a source of inspiration, it has always been a rich fountain of inspiration, for other human beings. As a domicile for people that hold into a way of life, for all its technological primitiveness, is aligned with a deep wisdom that human beings in the civilized world have really lost touch with – the forest, the jungle is an invaluable treasure. And it’s just more of our madness, driven by our unconscious sense that we’re not enough, and we can never have enough, we need to take more, and have more. It’s that egoic-driven madness that is destroying the very thing that is the source of our salvation.