Into the Abyss:

Have you ever heard of Ayahuasca? I hadn’t until 2011/2012 when I came across a lecture by Terrence McKenna (An author specializing in reporting his adventures with Ayahuasca and Magic Mushrooms in 1970s South America). After this I became somewhat obsessed with learning more about this mysterious brew composed of two plants: The banisteriopsis caapi vine, and the Psychotria viridis shrub. There are many variations on the second ingredient, as that is the one that contains the main hallucinogen; Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) while the first ingredient contains several alkaloids that act as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). It is the vine that is actually referred to as the Ayahuasca vine or known locally as “The vine of souls, or the vine of the dead”. It is native to the Amazon Rainforest and has been used by indigenous peoples there for millennia. Since it contains DMT, it is known to produce visionary states that can heal, be used to “cast spells” intended to cause harm, or to enhance learning about the self/universe.

The more I researched it the more fascinated I became, which has been a theme for me with all of my passions, particularly those that involve plant medicines/psychedelics. Like Terrence, I too had a strong interest in these substances from a young age. I can still remember my parents and I watching Forrest Gump for the first time when I was 6, and watching the scene where the love interest Jenny, is sitting with a group of hippies eating a sugar cube, while Tom Hanks narrates that she “found ways to expand her mind”. That phrase really struck a chord within me and I immediately was sucked into a lifelong passion of studying two key questions: One, what does it mean to “expand ones mind?” And two, what was so special about the sugar cube that it could do that to/for her? My father is a PHD of Pharmacy and spent considerable time working with drug/alcohol addicts, as well as researching and writing about various substances, including some psychedelics. So of course at the age of 6, I was asking him “what was so special about that sugar cube?” I was raised in a very conservative household and it was waved off as “they are doing drugs and I should stay away from that”. So I went to other adults that worked with my father at the hospital and asked them, I was greeted with the usual response of “you should ask your father”. This only deepened my fascination with the subject, as I had the feeling it was something that would prove to be quite profound once understood. I spent the rest of my childhood doing whatever I could to learn more about LSD, cannabis, mushrooms, and various other hallucinogenic substances. Learning about the culture surrounding them, from the exotic geographical origins, to their profound impact on the western counterculture of the mid 1900s. Everything I could find I would want to read and understand. So when I came across ayahuasca, I felt that is was something definitely worth exploring.

I began to watch documentaries about peoples experiences with the brew, reading what literature I could get my hands on. The more I read the more torn I felt about the whole subject. Here was something I felt could be quite helpful for so many, myself included. Yet, I had tremendous respect for the plant as well as a great deal of trepidation regarding the culture of shamanism surrounding it. For example, I learned that one of the largest centers for westerners traveling to South America, were the areas of the Peruvian rainforest Pucallpa, and Iquitos. The primary tribes providing the opportunity to drink with them, the Shipibo. Now, through my research I found that the Shipibo have a reportedly high rate of “witchcraft” especially with ayahuasca. Even being known to add other plants typically not in the brew, such as: Brugmansia and Datura, as a means of taking advantage of unsuspecting tourists. For these plants contain various alkaloids that have proven to be dangerous when used improperly. Although, sometimes they are used to simply enhance the visionary qualities associated with Ayahuasca. Those who have consumed the drink with these two plants added in often report very dark and scary trips and visions. Taking into account what I had learned about the nature of “the world unseen” meaning the “reality outside of visible light”. It made sense to me how all of this “witchcraft” with plant medicines could affect a energetically vulnerable individual. Seeing how these substances can open up ones energetic body/field/chakras. Knowing this made me feel a great deal of hesitation when it came to me considering imbibing the drink myself. I truly desired to ingest it and experience what “healing” it could offer me, but I had the feeling of “I don’t want to be taken advantage of/cursed”. So that put me off the idea of drinking it for several years until 2019.

In November of 2019, I had reached a point in my life where I knew something dramatic within me needed to change. I had spent the last 21 years of my life feeling as if I was slowly sinking deeper into either depression, or various states akin to what I would consider “a problem”. To further explain it I need to go back to the beginning of my life real quick.

I was born in Southern California, to a woman who was reported to be emotionally and mentally unstable. She had a long family history of abuse (including substance abuse) and had been a victim of various types of physical abuse growing up. She had been raised in foster care and once she was 18, had left that situation, only to return a few years later when she was pregnant with me. I don’t have any conscious memories of her as I was 11 months old when she gave me up for adoption. I was adopted by two very loving parents with medical backgrounds who had adopted a girl two years prior. They were preparing to leave the United States to do Humanitarian work in the Middle East (which they had been doing for some time before meeting each other overseas). So I was whisked away to the exotic land of Yemen at only 13 months of age and had the great fortune of being able to travel the world and explore places like: Jordan, Egypt, Cyprus, France, and many others. We lived in Yemen during their civil war, and had to be evacuated during the war via military cargo planes. After the war we returned and after serving the beautiful people of Yemen, we moved to Oman which shares a border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia. I spent a total of 17 years in those countries and am proud to call them home. During my childhood, I increasingly felt that something was “not right” with me. I felt a great deal of depression and I knew a little bit about my mothers history and had been informed that it was very likely I could “suffer” from mental conditions as she had. This persisted from age 7/8 until age 29, when I decided to journey to Peru to finally partake in a 2 week long Ayahuasca retreat in the heart of the amazon jungle. I was at a point where I had been married for 10 years and had two children and still was going in and out of depressive like states. More importantly, I was working to integrate various understandings of the nature of reality, such as those described in the Hermetic text called “The Kybalion” by Hermes Trismegistos. I knew that everything was mind, that the universe is mental, and that what we think, we become. That like attracts like, and so on. I desperately wanted to allow myself to be rid of old habits of negative thinking, as it had taken a great toll on myself as well as my family. I had done everything from completely changing my lifestyle and eating habits as a means to act out healthy body, healthy mind, healthy soul. I had a beautiful loving family and I knew there wasn’t anything actually “wrong” with me or my situation. However, I felt that there was something more I could do to help integrate this knowing that everything is always fine into the foreground of my consciousness. So here I was, depressed, anxious, and mutually agreeing with my wife that if I couldn’t figure out how to let go and move on from all the pain/trauma I had experienced as a child from being born into a stressful environment to living in dangerous situations overseas, and that had carried over into me creating situations that were stressful for my family. That we needed to figure out how to separate from each other and move on with our lives, for the good of our family. I was even at the point where I decided that I didn’t really care about how it was affecting those around me, I wanted to heal myself for me. If I couldn’t I had already planned out my suicide, which I would carry out upon my return from Peru. So I booked my tickets reserved my place at the retreat, packed my bags, and headed off to Pucallpa Peru.

When I got to the retreat center, I didn’t know what to expect from the plants I would be consuming which were: Nicotiana rustica, or Mapacho, a wild jungle tobacco which I would mainly smoke, but would later start to drink and have blown up my nose as a snuff (more on this later). Echinopsis pachanoi, also known as San Pedro, a visionary cactus that contains the hallucinogen Mescaline, and of course Ayahuasca. Here is the first account of my ayahuasca adventures:

The first two times I drank ayahuasca I didn’t experience much in terms of visions. It did however, make me extremely tired, to the point I had to lie down about 70 minutes after swallowing the thick earthy syrup and promptly fell asleep. I actually slept harder and deeper than I had in years, maybe ever. I didn’t even hear the shaman singing their icaros (Amazon Shaman magic/medicine songs). I was processing a lot in my sleep and especially for the first 1-2 hours upon waking up the following morning. The third time I drank I had that same experience of feeling the effects start to come on about 15-20 minutes after drinking and the strong desire to lie down. I later learned when the need to lie down is so strong it is because the Ayahuasca “spirit” was telling me to relax, something that I knew was an innate part of my being but I had felt a struggle to consciously do for years. So once I couldn’t handle sitting up straight any more (I was instructed to sit upright to stay focused and present on the lessons that Mother Ayahuasca would present to me) I proceeded to lie down. Once I settled the lead shaman, an 85 year old Shipibo man named Leonardo, began to sing his icaro. As he sang I started to sink in the floor. I could physically feel myself being lowered into a black abyss that has opened up beneath me and soon realized that there were rows upon endless rows of tiny red semi skeleton looking spirits pulling me down into this abyss. They looked like little scrawny red hob goblins with 3-4 sharp pointy fingers. The top row would pull and then push me down to the next row, and so on and so forth. It seemed to go on forever with endless rows of these creatures. When this was happening all I could relate these spirits to were what we in the west might considers little demons. I had read from books and various sources of information that had showed me not all “scary looking” spirits are negative or what might be called “evil” as I don’t personally believe that anything is evil as everything is divine I kept telling myself “everything is fine, just relax”. The longer this experience of being pulled into the darkness continued the more my stomach began to fill with fear and doubt. I said to myself “this shaman is singing songs to conjure up evil spirits to steal my soul and pull it into what could be called Hell”. At this time Leonardo began to laugh (as I did more ceremonies with him I would see that he laughs in and off during his icaros) and I knew he was able to read my mind/feel my energy as during ayahuasca ceremonies it has been reported that those with deep insight and experience with the plant can see/manipulate the energies of the world unseen. These are skills the shamans learn from plant spirits and he had drank ayahuasca too and therefore, was plugged into everyone in the room. I thought “Oh no! This guy knows that I know what he’s doing and is laughing because it is his way of telling me that I am completely screwed. I have slipped into the grasp of his devil icaros and there is nothing I can do!” I quickly opened my eyes and got up to go to the composting outhouse right outside the Maloka. This bathroom is connected to the Maloka via a bridge as both of these buildings are raised up pretty high. I would spend a lot of time on this bridge during my stay, realizing so much about myself and life, but more on that later. I got into the outhouse and proceeded to purge by having diarrhea. The more I physically released from my bowels the stronger these thoughts/fears became as if the physical act of purging was pulling the fears out of the recesses of my mind and into the forefront. I began to think “My father was right! The shaman work with evil spirits and I should just grab my things and go to the airport, he said he would buy me a ticket immediately if I ran into trouble.” This started a whole back and forth conversation within myself as the more rational part of my soul fought to free me from the irrational and confining fears I had absorbed my whole life being raised devout Southern Baptist. I told myself “This is just irrational fears, my soul wouldn’t bring me somewhere that I could have anything negative happen to me. I rationalized that even if I wanted to leave I was in the middle of the jungle at night in a country I am not familiar with, I don’t speak much of the language, and I am so high on DMT and therefore cannot really walk let alone run at this moment. If I could get to the airport in Pucallpa, it is so small it definitely doesn’t have a flight anytime soon and the only thing that I actually can do is surrender and relax. All this trying to convince myself and self assure is just fighting against something that isn’t worth fighting over.” I knew from various conversations with others more experienced with the local culture and with ayahuasca shamans in general that once the brew is drunk and the energy body is open, certain shamans (often Shipibo shamans) who are predatory In nature, (due to their cultural views), begin to “cast spells” on unsuspecting/vunerable “patients”. All of this made me realize that the best course of action was to just relax, trust in myself that everything is always fine and exactly what I need at the time. That everything just is as it should be. So, I took a deep breath and decided it was best to go back into the Maloka, lie down and surrender. Once I was back inside sitting on my mat I had a strong desire to eat. So I turned to fellow guest and asked if he had an apple, he handed me one and I could only take a few bites before I heard the icaro Leonardo was singing change and it was as if he locked into me and sang to coerce the fears out of my mind/body and into my stomach and I began to feel sick. So I grabbed my vomit bowl and positioned myself over it on all fours. It then seemed that he cast an invisible fishing line into my stomach, hooked these fears and then with a yank similar one used in fly fishing, he pulled them out of me. This made me immediately vomit and the fears left me in that moment. The funny thing is that the guest who was next to me, began to purge at the same time and we both stopped at the same time. He calls this the moment where we became ayahuasca brothers, as we were both connected in that moment of purging. I disconnected from my body for an indeterminate amount of time and what brought me back to my body was the smell of my vomit. I realized I was hovering over the bowl grinning ear to ear and wondering “how long have I been hovering here? I’m not going to vomit again, I should lie down and relax.” As I made my way into a more comfortable position I couldn’t help but feel so much love, respect, gratitude, and appreciation for Leonardo. I felt at this time that he was a true healer and had a hand in liberating me from fears that held me back. Not only from surrendering to the experience I just had, but had been holding me back from surrendering to myself my entire life. I didn’t realize how much of a hold some Christian beliefs still had on me. Even though I had renounced that religion and the constraints it places on so many “believers”, I was still harboring self limiting aspects of it.

So after I purged and was relaxing for a bit I decided to go back out side and stand on the bridge and watch the skies. I was out there alone staring at the stars when I felt that someone was about to come out. I thought it would another guest named Chris who had previously let me know he had something important to tell me that he realized in Huachuma/ San Pedro three days prior. He told me he knew I would be outside and I had been on his mind this whole time since he drank the medicine. He knew it was the right time to relay the message told to him by San Pedro. He started out by telling me that I had achieved a level of self discipline that is very sought after by many and that my intense focus on diet and clean/strict living had helped me cultivate this valuable asset but now it was becoming almost a curse. It had taken over my life and I had become so intertwined with it that I wasn’t allowing myself to relax ever. I am so analytical and hungry to learn as much as possible that I was taking things too seriously and he told me that life isn’t that serious. For example, the San Pedro had told him the dietary “requirements” for ayahuasca isn’t necessary. It is there to bring a person closer to a certain level of consciousness within their lifestyle, diet, and spirit. Basically a stepping stone, and that at a certain point it’s time to move past base level rules and guidelines and realize that we are divine and can control all things with the mind. Food, drink, and everything else can become filled to the brim with positive energy and life force by mere thought and belief before it even touches our lips. Chris said that he had been dealing with similar issues regarding lifestyle and that it was the plant spirit was telling him that he and I both were ready to move on to this mindset of none of it really matters as it is all in the mind. Since the all is mind, then what we think/believe truly shapes the reality around us. So much so that it showed him how even drinking something considered poison, does not have to hurt the body at all. It all comes down to the meditative state of ones being. At this moment I truly saw and felt that he was a reflection of myself in this moment. I already knew all of this information. I had read it in books like the Kybalion, but it took him, a person that appeared to be separate from myself (when we in fact are one and the same) to tell me in a way that it could finally sink in. He bestowed true wisdom unto me that night and it forever changed me. In the following days I would eat grains like rice, corn, and wheat for the first time in 4 years because before they would make me feel low energy, sleepy, and irritable. After that night I could eat these things feel full of energy and train my physical disciplines better than ever before.

After he and I finished speaking about this, Andre came out and we all hugged each other truly connecting and sharing with one another how much we appreciated, valued, and loved each other. It was such an amazing feeling to truly be able to love people (besides my family) for the first time in my life. A feeling that has since never left me.

One by one the guys left and I was standing outside alone again just reflecting on everything that had just happened, especially the conversation between me and Chris. I began to notice that the intricate geometrical patterns that the Shipibo had on their clothing and painted in there buildings was the patterns of invisible light connecting the stars. Invisible to the sober eye that cannot see beyond the spectrum of visible light but in the ayahuasca mindset, seeing beyond visible light is the norm and I realized that these patterns are always there connecting not just the stars but everything. This was told to me/confirmed by one of my peers the next day who had a similar experience with ayahuasca and had noticed that these patterns connect everything around us. It reminded me of experiences I have had after ingesting Psilocybin mushrooms, where I would become aware of what I call “the net of light”. Which I have experienced as this infinite net of rainbow light surrounding me. It always looks like a fishing net with small holes, and it is constantly connecting everything.

After this night I began to realize the true power of the psychedelic experience, that the journeys I had taken before with entheogens were only the top of the tip of the iceberg. Over the next year I would still be seeing how far the rabbit hole can go.This was truly just the beginning of my journey into learning about Amazonian Shamanism.

Until next time,

Baba Jatin