3

After the purge and ayahuasca, Adam Brown and Dr. Mabit visit Takiwasi’s jungle chacra (swidden garden) where Brown’s dieta will take place. Translated from French.

BROWN: This is the preparation we saw the other day. The grated bark …

MABIT: Ajo Sacha (Wild Garlic).

BROWN: So what should I expect … what will it do to me ?

MABIT: Ajo Sacha is traditionally considered a male plant. What does that mean? It means it gives strength. It also enables one to define oneself, and to make decisions based on that. In times of doubt, when we don’t know which direction to take, this plant will stimulate the psychological masculine functions, to enable us to see which way to go, what to do. Physically, the plant’s action is on the immune system. The immune system is to our bodies what our personality is to our mind. In a sense, the immune system is our physiological identity.

BROWN: That’s a good way to explain it.

MABIT: The immune system allows our body to distinguish what is ours and what is alien to us, so the body can reject what is strange and recognize what is good for itself. This is done on a physical level, the identification of what is mine and what is foreign. But the same effects happen also psychologically, on the mental plane, asking: What is really mine? What belongs to me? What is not mine?

BROWN: In terms of life background?

MABIT: Yes, fears, anxieties, projects, desires. Are these really my desires? Or are these the desires of my family? Is this distress mine, or is it the distress that my mother, or society, has transmitted to me? So Ajo Sacha helps with that work of defining, understanding and better comprehending our personal identities.

Essentially it’s a plant that helps people to better define and differentiate themselves, in order to come meet themselves. It does this physically by stimulating the immune system. So if you have asthma or allergies, it has an effect on that level. But in the work we do at Takiwasi, of course, what interests us more is the impact in terms of one’s self-knowledge.

BROWN: I see. And what’s the link with my ayahuasca experience, which allowed me to see many things about myself, things that are both moving and give me new perspective on the past? Will this help me interpret these ideas?

MABIT: Yes, it will help with the interpretation. In the ayahuasca session we can see what the main issue is for each person. For example: Is this person overtaken by fear? Or, does this person have identity problems? Or is this person too much inside his or her own head, and need to be more grounded? For each one of these issues, a specific plant will work. These plants have psychological effects. This is something interesting that traditional medicine has, and we are only discovering: the fact that the dieta plants are teaching plants. We call them plant teachers because they do teach, but they teach in a specific psychological direction. It’s as if we had a group of psychologists, specializing in specific issues. So the ayahuasca session allows us to see what the main issue is for this person. What is it, is it fear that blocks this person? Is it lack of self-confidence? Is it lack of life direction? Is it..? According to what we see, we prescribe the adequate dieta plant. So although all plants are medicinal, we will start with plants to treat what seems to be the most important issue at hand.

BROWN: Ok. So, what quantity do I take? And how long will the dieta last?

MABIT: Generally, a dieta in Takiwasi lasts eight days, and the plant is taken twice a day. Ajo Sacha is a fire plant, meaning there is a hot energy. It burns when you drink it and it will heat you. You will need to bathe in the river after taking the plant. It will probably give you dreams as well, but luminous dreams. It is a plant of sun, of light, with dreams that become much more luminous, much more clear.

BROWN: During the night?

MABIT: During the night.

BROWN: So these are not hallucinations.

MABIT: No. Ajo Sacha does not cause any specific visions, but during the night, or during the day, there can be some insight, some awakening of consciousness. You might be relaxing in your hammock, and suddenly experience an insight. It just comes to the mind.

BROWN: Am I supposed to look for answers, or should I wait? Will the answers come by themselves?

MABIT: No, you’re not supposed to look for it, you shouldn’t rack your brain over it. This doesn’t help. That’s the Western tendency to intellectualize everything.

BROWN: Yes. That’s it … [Laughs]

MABIT: Plants work by themselves. It’s a bit like when you cut yourself, there’s a wound. You need to treat the wound with a minimum of hygiene, but the wound will heal naturally by itself: even if you don’t know anything about biology, or physiology, it will heal.

Psychologically it’s the same; there is a degree of self-healing that operates. There’s no need to complicate what is a natural process, by looking for something. There’s a need for a minimum of hygiene: this is the dieta, and it has rules. You are alone, in nature, you can’t eat pork; you can’t eat, for instance, sugar; you won’t have salt… it’s a very bland, neutral diet.

BROWN: Is this because of the biochemical reactions? Or is it something else?

MABIT: It’s all of it, physical and mental. These are never separate. Separation is the Western way of thinking.

BROWN: Yes, I need to learn this type of approach.

MABIT: There is a physical impact (of the dietary restrictions) because it happens in our body, but there are also psychological effects, or energetic effects, which are a wider phenomenon. So these different types of food can disturb you physically – diarrhea, vomiting, headaches – but also psychologically. The dieta is a very rigorous process, very delicate, and if we do things correctly, it’s very easy.

BROWN: It works by itself.

MABIT: It works by itself. But if we don’t do things right, it can be very hard. It can also be a very dangerous technique, if badly done.

BROWN: How?

MABIT: Because if someone takes the plant…for example, you will take it for eight days, and then if you don’t follow the restrictions, for example with perfumes, which carry very strong energies, they will make you sick.

BROWN: Are we very sensitive to odors?

MABIT: Yes, all senses will be more sensitive. During the dieta, there is a total suppression of salt, this opens the energetic body, that is to say you will feel very sensitive. Your eyesight will be enhanced, you will observe nature better, your hearing will be enhanced, all your senses… It’s a form of hypersensitivity. You become open. That’s why it has to be done in protected places, where there is no noise, no distractions, no smells, etc. When the dieta is finished, we need to re-close the energetic body, by eating salt again, blowing tobacco, and some other techniques to close the dieta. Then all that you will have assimilated during the dieta – the energies of the plant, the energies of nature, the energies of the soplada, as we call it when we the healer blows tobacco over the patient – all these things will be inside your body, and will remain in your body. They will settle themselves for 15 days – one month, we call it post-dieta – and then they can remain inside, sometimes for years. With a gradual integration, insights, dreams, psychological changes.

BROWN: Are we still learning, in these processes after the dieta is done?

MABIT: It can last for a very long time; it can last for years if we are taking care of these energies. So it’s an incorporation of the energies of the dieta, which remain in the body.

BROWN: Interesting.

MABIT: Opening the energetic body during the dieta opens the door for the assimilation of good things, good energies – but it’s also an opening to the elimination of bad energies. So it’s also a cleansing process, a purging process. Sometimes, it’s possible you will vomit.

BROWN: It’s a kind of purge as well?

MABIT: Yes, a physical and psychological purge. This is the interesting thing, that concomitantly, you’re vomiting physical material, but you’re vomiting your anger, or your pride, or you’re vomiting your fears, or your depression. In that sense Ajo Sacha is an interesting plant for depression, for sadness, for melancholia, for nostalgia: all that relates to an excess of sentimentality, or a sentimentality that is too profuse, for people who are drowning in their emotions.

BROWN: Ok.

MABIT: It might not be your case, but there are always things to fix in this matter.

BROWN: Yes, true.

MABIT: But now, choosing this plant for you is mainly to focus on what you are going to do in your life.

BROWN: Ok- what am I going to do? What does this mean, “to do in my life”? Live as an individual? Or what is my path?

MABIT: Your path, your mission, how you can fulfil yourself. What is the place you can fulfill yourself. It may be work, family, friends, projects… What is essential to you? Your profound vocation; the fundamental thing that is calling you. Finding that will enable you to be happy, even if it’s something difficult, because it is for you.

BROWN: I have to go through it.

MABIT: Well, you are not obliged, but …

BROWN: But it helps.

MABIT: But it’s better, because it is there that you will be happy.

BROWN: When you talk about this liberation, or this vocation in life, does it imply that it’s something already inside of us – or is it supposed to come from the outside? What is the process that this plant goes through?

MABIT: The work with plants is a process of revelation, a revelation of what we have inside. So plants do not create anything, they don’t bring something from the outside; they only reveal what we are carrying inside of us. The personal work we have to do is to minimize the distractions, the false feelings that family, friends, society have transmitted to us…to finally rediscover what it is we are really carrying within.

BROWN: Like an elimination of the noise, in order to hear the truth?

MABIT: Yes.

BROWN: Ok, interesting.

MABIT: Although this noise is particularly strong in Western society. So strong that it becomes difficult to get to this internal voice.

BROWN: Yes, so many things distract us from the truth. I think I experienced a little bit of what you refer to during the ayahuasca, when I really sensed I had a direct communication with my subconscious. Is it related to this?

MABIT: Yes, ayahuasca somehow visually illustrates what happens in real life. Some revelations occur, but these revelations are interfered with, obscure. The ayahuasca enables one to visualize, but it has a limited effect, for a few hours.

The relevance of the dieta is that it will be on a longer term, eight days, with a real awakening of consciousness – but this time not for a few hours during the night, in instability and sometimes in the torment of the ayahuasca, but in continuity, in calm and solitude. And this part is particularly interesting in the dieta, this meeting with oneself.

BROWN: So, because I’m not doing the traditional dieta, I’m not here to have the complete treatment, I’m going to do a mini version of one day …

Will I be able to feel these effects at all, in such a short time?

MABIT: It is short, it is short. In order to do interesting work, you need at least three or four days.

BROWN: Three or four days.

MABIT: To start.

BROWN: Yes.

MABIT: Then we can also do eight days, fifteen days. Plants also do their work through integration. Because everything that will manifest, be revealed, come to your consciousness, then has to be integrated. You will have to figure out “what am I doing with it, concretely?” This is a problem with ayahuasca; many people from the West take ayahuasca to sort of “watch a show.” This show can be really beautiful, very attractive, but at the end of it, what was the point? If the ayahuasca isn’t followed by a work of integration, through a dieta or psychotherapeutic accompaniment, there’s a risk of the experience becoming just a collection of memories, a sort of show, like a fantastic 3D film. But not bringing major or lasting change in the person’s life.

Ayahuasca enables us to access the understanding that there are other dimensions to our lives, unconscious dimensions, spiritual dimensions, if we can say so. But in a therapeutic context, such as at our center, it’s important that the experience be continuous, and happen in a context of integration. So that the ayahuasca experience does create a show, but one that really transforms the person.

BROWN: It’s like an analysis then? An analysis of the ayahuasca process, or the ayahuasca experience?

MABIT: Part of it is the work the patient does. That is to say, the patients work on themselves, but there are also a number of external interventions: by the plants and by the curanderos (healers). It’s a bit like if you go…your car is broken, you take it to the mechanic, you don’t know anything about engines. The mechanic opens the hood, does some work, closes the hood, and the car works. You don’t know what happened. The curanderos can do things like this. They can operate on certain aspects of your psyche and your body without you being conscious of it while it’s happening, and they can modify and heal certain things.

Then there are the insights; the moments of conscious awakening that come through the dieta. You don’t really know how it happens, because the self-healing processes, the internal repairing processes are automatic, natural.

So there’s a natural process (of self-healing) stimulated by the plants, the dieta and the curandero. In fact, the patient doesn’t have to do much, except drink what’s in the cup. And then, stay throughout the dieta, follow the rules and not leave before the end of the treatment… [laughs]

BROWN: Because of course, since I’m only here for a very short time, I don’t really know what to expect. But my friend Jerónimo told me about his experience here, staying in this very cabin, you call it the “tambo”, right? He stayed here for about three weeks right? I’m sure it’s something special, to spend so much time in such an isolated place, in the middle of the jungle. How does this contribute to the experience?

MABIT: There is a state… as the plants operate on us, the state of concentration becomes more and more powerful. So we end up forgetting the outside world a little bit. So we face our boredom, our anger that arises; we face fear, sadness…and in this moment, we can be in it. That is to say, we can explore and see what this anger is, what this fear is, what is … It comes; it rises with a mental clarity.

The fasting, eating very little, going without salt or sugar, gives us a mental clarity, it gives an ability to concentrate, and things come up, often tied to emotions. We may cry, we may have anger. It may manifest itself physically as well, through pain, physical pain, or by feeling hot, or cold, etc. But, step by step, we will manage to be in this state without being distracted. In our normal lives, we give ourselves five minutes to think, half an hour, one hour. But to spend entire days and nights alone, in silence? So finally it arises: “Who am I? What am I doing here? What is the purpose of my life? Where am I going?” All these questions come to the mind, and sometimes the answers as well. This is the interesting thing: that some answers come up.

BROWN: So we’ve climbed up a mountain to arrive here. What’s the meaning of the location, to do this? Is it partially an elimination process, also eliminating the distractions?

MABIT: Yes, on one hand to eliminate distractions, and on the other hand, to be in nature. We’re trying to eliminate all possible energetic interference. It’s going to be … your energetic body will be extremely open, so all disruptive energies can interfere with your process. What do we mean by disruptive energies? For example, people who may be negatively emotionally charged, or people wearing perfume. It may be noise, vehicles, the city, an excess of electric light….

BROWN: Could we call these city-related manifestations, then?

MABIT: Not only from the city. It’s also people themselves, that is to say, if you’re here and someone randomly comes here and is under the effects of alcohol, his energetic body will be very unbalanced, and you are very open and vulnerable to that.

BROWN: That will disturb the process.

MABIT: It could even be dangerous, with certain dieta plants. So we need to be very cautious, to make sure the dieta, which is your opening, takes place in the healthiest way possible. Trying to have the healthiest relations; and nature is also important because every plant, every tree, every stone, everything around us, is alive.

BROWN: Jerónimo told me that when he did the long dieta, he met a lot of forest animals who came to visit…Is this part of the experience?

MABIT: For us Western people, a threshold is crossed. Indeed, we step outside the personal and egoistic dimension, and realize we are bound to nature. Then nature manifests itself. And yes, as the person takes the plants, surprising phenomena happen: animals come closer, wild animals.

BROWN: They can sense it?

MABIT: Yes, they sense. They are attracted. There is an energetic transformation that attracts animals. In fact, when people do long dietas, they gain something appealing, they become attractive, there is light in them. Animals can sense this, and they approach.

BROWN: And this, this impacts the experience.

MABIT: Yes. There is a sensitivity that enables us to be open to this too, to the animals, and there is an exchange, a communication with nature. This is important because we rarely have the opportunity to enter in direct contact with nature, with animals, or with plant energies. For example, we have a very high tree right here called Ojé: this is a tree with a particular force. It is a very powerful tree. And when we do long enough dietas, we can hear the tree, we hear the sounds, we hear certain music.

BROWN: It communicates with us?

MABIT: Yes. There is a communication happening… How to explain it? I’m not sure, but there is a presence that we human beings will sense, for example, through sound phenomena. It may sound like drum rhythms, or voices, or whispers, or chants. This is how the chants, the ikaros, which curanderos use during the sessions, “come” to them. They come from the perception of nature during the dietas and the ayahuasca sessions. It’s not something… the chants are not an aesthetic creation aiming to relax people. They have a therapeutic function.

BROWN: I think I sensed this in detail, that the music was really something central to the experience, to direct the experience, and the emotions as well.

MABIT: This is the main role of the ikaros. They’re there to orient the effects of the ayahuasca, to orient them in the direction we want them to go: in our case, in a therapeutic direction. Ayahuasca can be used in other directions, for example for visualization. Indigenous people often used it to see where they should hunt or fish, for instance, or to see where the game was. This is a very practical function; it was key for the survival of the community. But this is not really the main focus for us at Takiwasi: we are oriented towards a therapeutic and individual use of ayahuasca, within the Western framework of better knowing ourselves.

BROWN: Will the experience then be unique, according to our needs? In the sense that if we’re hunters, we need to know how to hunt?

MABIT: The plant itself, its preparation and dosage, obviously delineate the effects of the ayahuasca. This is the first fact. Beyond that, the most important thing is the person’s intention: why are they drinking ayahuasca?

After that comes the intention of the healers or guides, that is to say, how they orient the effects of the ayahuasca session. It can be oriented towards a therapeutic direction, or in a direction that aims to resolve the community’s problems, or for hunting and fishing; there are many possibilities, but the intention is crucial. So when people drink ayahuasca out of curiosity, nothing much happens: it can remain very superficial. But if we come to ayahuasca to resolve a very specific problem, we find very specific answers arise.

BROWN: Yes, I could perceive this. At first I was trying to approach it, taking the ayahuasca as an observer: to see what the effect was, to try to understand, at least partly. But when I was told that starting with an intention could help direct the process towards discovering or re-discovering myself, I decided OK, I’ll try to see something about myself. And I was absolutely surprised how much this idea opened doors, in ways I wouldn’t have expected.

MABIT: Yes, because there is a teaching happening, a teaching that goes beyond the subconscious. We discover this step by step with ayahuasca: first that there is indeed a deep, profound, inner self, and then that there is more, there’s also a contact with something that transcends us, that is transpersonal or trans-cultural. This, of course, is a spiritual experience, because we are in communication with something that goes beyond our own intelligence, our own understanding of the world, and that gives us significant and consistent information that we could not even imagine before. With this information, mythological images can arrive, other cultures, cultures we ignore, will appear. There is a universal knowledge that can be accessed through this.

BROWN: Yes, I have to recognize that I didn’t see new elements like this, images I’d never experienced before. I’d say in my experience, everything I experienced was familiar, but it revealed new perspectives: perspectives I either had been ignoring, or hadn’t previously been able to see.

MABIT: As I said, ayahuasca is a process, it takes several sessions. So, as in your case, at first we see things a certain way, we focus on our life, we get explanations, understanding about our existence. At this level ayahuasca mainly provides a sort of perspective switch. We see things that we knew about, but we see them differently, from other perspectives. This brings new answers or solutions to problems that sometimes seemed unsolvable, because we can see them from another angle. This part is extremely interesting.

BROWN: Yes. This is indeed what I saw, it was really an extraordinary experience…

[looks at Ojé tree again] So is the tree going to communicate with us during the experience?

MABIT: It can communicate; it depends on the person, the sensitivities. But you do have a good sensitivity.

BROWN: Do you think so?

MABIT: Yes.

BROWN: I hope.

MABIT: You have a feminine sensitivity.

BROWN: Really? What does that mean?

MABIT: It means you are… you easily get in symbiosis, in empathy. For a communication job such as yours, it means having an easy empathy. So, then, you have to balance this with something that belongs more to the masculine. That is to say: organization, discipline, rigor – which is what is missing, a little bit. [laughs]

BROWN: You can see into me very well, of course… It’s unbelievable. And indeed, when… actually it’s funny because when I started the ayahuasca experience, I was asked to have an intention, and I told myself that I wanted to look for more humility, for more compassion. You’re telling me I already demonstrate this… In fact, in my life. I feel this lack of structure and  organization to be very present, but it seemed to me it was just chaos, to do too much of…

MABIT: There are roots to this, which could be found. But this would require a longer process, where it would be important to find out where things come from. For example the relation with everything that belongs to the masculine, the father’s line of descent, major events that happened there have to be considered. The longer the process, the better we’d be able to get to the root issues. This is the process. Of course, it takes some time to reach this, because some things can be difficult or painful to see or to understand. But this work cannot be done in a flash. It has to be done gradually.

[There is a long silence]

BROWN: Interesting. So this is where I will spend my day.

MABIT: Yes, in calmness, in the hammock. There is nothing to do. Just to be there.

BROWN: Be there. And not even think…

MABIT: No, just let it go, see what comes up. If you think, you think. You may sleep, you may … well, just let it go. Let it go, the plant is working. You just need to be here.

BROWN: It’s less…how can I say? It’s less stressful then. The ayahuasca is very intense.

MABIT: Yes, but dieta plants can be intense too, it depends on the plants we give.

BROWN: The purge was also intense.

MABIT: The purge is a preparation we do before all ayahuasca sessions. Why? First of all because there is a certain physical poisoning that accumulates through bad food, medicines, everything that we ingest, the contamination. So the purga is a preparation. This cleansing will allow the ayahuasca to go in easier, to have space to enter. Also we can see the psychological position of people during the purge: people who have fear, people who are stressed, people who are at ease. And so we will be already able to see what type of plant we can give for the dieta, according to what we observe in the psychological structure. The way people vomit is a very interesting diagnostic sign.

BROWN: Really?

MABIT: Having watched a lot of people vomit over the years, we can see people’s psychological structure through the way they vomit. Some people are very dramatic, others are very shy, others are violent. So there are some clues for analysis in this. In Traditional Amazonian Medicine, the purge is fundamental as a purification work. As people cleanse themselves, what’s inside of them will come up and be revealed. These external interferences we talked about before, plus the interferences caused by all we’ve ingested, all the psychological interferences, all that’s related to the body… The purge will start to reorganize these things, and to open the body, and clean the digestive track for a better assimilation of the plants and their effects.

BROWN: So it sounds like you’re saying the purge is not only helpful for us, allowing us to cleanse and prepare ourselves to have the purest and most direct experience, but it’s also helpful for you guys to know how to treat us.

MABIT: Yes. The main purpose is that the person cleanse himself. But it also helps us, because while the purge happens we observe, and it gives us indications.

BROWN: Your role will be to help us, so it helps you to know how…

MABIT: Yes, also because the purge works not just physically, but in conjunction with the ritual. Ritual is a technology of the sacred. A technology that helps with integration, that will explore the potential of the plant on many levels. There won’t only be a physical effect, but also a psychological, energetic and spiritual one. The ritual is very important; it’s very different to take the Rosa Sisa purge alone at home than to take it in the context of a ritual, as you had it, or in a dieta. The effects are totally different, and are ten or fifty times stronger. So the ritual aspect is extremely important. It’s not only an aesthetic effect, or a relaxing effect, or a folkloric effect that enables us to observe a tradition. There is real efficiency to it.

BROWN: This is what we could call the theatre environment, using a medical term. It is significant for the whole experience.

MABIT: Yes. And it works on all levels simultaneously. This is the interesting thing with our therapeutic system; it works on the physical level and also on the psychological, affective, emotional and spiritual levels. By spiritual I mean semantic, the level of meaning: What is the meaning of things? What is the meaning of life? This is the spiritual level.