Original subtitles

me

i was expecting

lightning and angels and trumpets in the

sky and all i got was a bunch of trees

and the geese flying in the air

and i thought how funny is this

it just took me to like a really heavy

place i struggled with that and i knew i

had to either vomit or or cry

and so finally i ended up being able to

cry and really let it go

it was completely overwhelming sense

that there was something much bigger and

that i was

you know a small little ant

in this much bigger divine organization

of the universe and then i needed to pay

attention to that

it's gotten me in touch with my spirit

which i had like no concept of before

it's opened my heart in a way that i

never had it open before ever

i

committed to her that i would she would

be a teacher of mine for my life

the source of the experience of which

these people speak is not a faith a

belief in things unseen

it is simply this

an herbal brew made in the jungles of

peru by native shamans

they call it ayahuasca which means vine

of the soul

it's a tea or or what herbalist would

call a decoction meaning a strong tea

it's always made from two plants

one of which contains the hallucinogen

dimethyltryptamine or dmt

dmt is what i call a true psychedelic

it's one of the class that includes lsd

psilocybin

masculine

[Applause]

in the amazon ayahuasca is a legally

recognized sacred medicine

indigenous people have used it for

centuries to heal physical and

psychospiritual ills

it's an essential part of the culture

woven into the fabric of their lives

beyond the amazon the legality of

ayahuasca is a gray area

the globalization of ayahuasca is a

challenge for modern drug control

authorities

the people who are using it outside of

its traditional context are not the

criminal element that is associated

traditionally with illegal drug use

these are people like my parents my

friends doctors lawyers people in the

health field

who are passing along knowledge word of

mouth

and it seems to be spreading

in the last 10 years thousands have

tried ayahuasca seeking healing and

spiritual growth

the notion that there is a spiritual

component to healing

has been totally excised from

biomedicine spirituality and healing

what does spirituality have to do with

healing

we live in a culture that's spiritually

very deprived very empty

we live in a culture that's very

material based in other words we live in

a culture that does not give human

beings what they really need

that leaves a huge hole in people

most people in north america and the

western world

are not as connected as people who live

in the jungle and live in nature you

know every day 365 days a year

shaman guillermo arevalo believes

everyone can reclaim this connection

through ayahuasca

which he calls a plant teacher

he says the vine of the soul actually

teaches you what you need to know

what is there to share about ayahuasca

can it really heal our minds and spirits

two people are about to journey to the

amazon to find out

rob works as an accountant for a media

company

it's a good job and pays the bills

it's not something you walk away from on

a day-to-day basis feeling satisfied for

the most part

how long is the plate

uh it's around

i think it's eight hours into lima and

then another three hours to quitos

if uh

everything goes well i'll be a

completely different person next

thursday

will we be able to still recognize you

oh yeah i'll just be glowing

i will

going down to peru at this point in my

life makes a lot of sense to me

partially because i'm now entering

middle age

and there's a lot of reevaluating that i

believe should go on i mean if you're

uncertain of what you believe in then

you have to start questioning all things

that are currently in your life and

seeing maybe another path to take

gerste is a doctor of naturopathic

medicine

you have a referred pain pattern up on

your left side in my neck here

yeah

i've just started as a healer myself and

i think it's a good time for me in my

life to go down and experience this

because if it's in in any way shape or

form going to be a part of my life

whether academically or in terms of i'm

able to use it with patients i would

never do that unless i myself have been

through the experience

are you ready to go rob let's do it

in a nutshell what is missing in my life

is spirituality i could say that with

almost complete certainty

we had

very very slight religious upbringing

that just seemed to have no foundation

or no basis for me in my life

it's not that i don't understand that

the best way to live is to be right and

be right with others but i don't have a

guiding light per se

while rob has never been to the amazon

the rainforest has already shaped

kirsty's life

i did a lot of traveling both for work

and in a volunteer capacity and i also

was a guide

in the amazon and was exposed to

an enormous amount of plant medicine

i've read an awful lot about

ayahuasca and i'm just

really interested in its implications

for a lot of people with severe chronic

disease

from what i understand it really can

open up a lot of energetic barriers that

everyone has and if those barriers are

opened up you can live more optimally

in the past rob has used recreational

drugs to search for greater meaning in

his life without

success

i guess my biggest fear is simply just

getting high again for two or three days

and really not having it come to any

fruition

it can't be anything remotely similar to

recreational use that's what i'm sick of

and i certainly don't have to go to peru

to experience it are you actually

holding the theft if you need me

i do feel some trepidation around what i

will experience and what i might

discover about my own energetic

blockages but about ayahuasca i'm not

going through this life and not doing

ayahuasca

there is no way

after a long trip rob and kirsty finally

arrive at the rustic retreat on the edge

of the jungle

guillermo was there to greet them

along with an international group of

fellow travelers

ayahuasca

dave a healer from canada began his

apprenticeship with guillermo five years

ago

as soon as i started i thought this is

exactly what my whole life was about i

knew that this was my life path but i

still had doubt whether i could actually

accomplish it

my first experience with guillermo was

extremely extremely profound very very

deep

i remember him saying to me that i was

david and i was gonna have to face

goliath and goliath being the fear

inside of me

jose

david

espiritu

prender

the land

guillermo has been a shaman to the

shipibo people most of his life

but only recently opened a retreat for

westerners

importante acerlo

is

all organisms on the planet are

parasites on plants because plants

are the only thing that make their own

food and they make their food out of

sunlight water and carbon dioxide

and because of that they are running the

show

i'm extremely excited about tonight

we're at the birthplace where the plants

are from and just being under an

accomplished master like guillermo

has to be just a once in a lifetime

experience

throughout the day i think i went

through a lot of different

emotions and thoughts about it you know

some of which were sort of anxiety am i

a bit too tired to be doing this at the

moment

but i actually feel as i have since i

arrived really pretty peaceful so

hopefully that bodes well for me

as darkness falls all who wish to

partake in the ayahuasca ceremony join

guillermo and his assistant corondero

francoise

when i was asked for my intention i felt

i didn't really had one or maybe i

hadn't given it enough thought and it

kind of concerned me a little bit

thinking that here i was in this great

center for healing and i didn't come

down with a specific problem

my intention was it was a hard decision

because there are a lot of things that i

would like to work on but the thing i

elected to sort of work on was difficult

for me to

see as yet how

i can integrate this

on a professional level

i spoke to guillermo and just said can

you help me to understand because i feel

intuitively that there's a reason that

i'm here

i was aware of many things happening all

the time because all of my senses were

so heightened

you sit there and you wonder whether or

not it's taking effect and then as soon

as you allow the chanting in it pretty

much takes you

normally at the beginning the energy is

a little heavy

so you need to clear that

so you start to sing and you bring light

doing this

it pushes out the negative energies

and clears the space

it makes people perch

purging prepares the mind and body for

the inner journey ahead

the chanting then carries people into a

realm beyond the five senses

this person becomes you

you become him

you know you create that relationship

with the chanting there is a link

because you are such in a high state of

consciousness you become super aware of

the other and the author becomes super

aware of your energy

you can see it it manifests in your own

visual state

the chanting was

transformational i actually don't even

have the words to describe that

i could feel plants quivering and i

could feel everything breathing and i

could feel the earth groaning and i

could hear every single bird and just

this blissed out

insanely powerful connection with the

earth and with plants and with animals

i felt

a lot of joy

the feeling is just

sublime i don't know how to explain it

almost every little thing you do with

your body a simple head stretch a deep

breath

just feels so life affirming because you

seem to be in complete harmony with

everything around you

you just know that you're connected to

something larger

most religions make a great deal about

how you must have faith you must believe

in god you must believe in what we tell

you even though there's no evidence to

support it no evidence for what we're

telling you but you must have faith

what's interesting

about ayahuasca is you don't have to

have faith

it's the perfect tool for skeptics

don't believe me don't believe what

anybody tells you take it have the

experience evaluate it for yourself make

of it what you will

last night

because we've been looking forward to it

for quite a few weeks now

i had a lot of expectations built up and

the ceremony itself was very impressive

but i think i didn't have a strong

reaction to the ayahuasca itself

it would be nice if it was a little

stronger and i don't mean to be cocky in

saying that because it's not for

amusement or entertainment

but i'm ready to kind of go a little

deeper into myself to see what else

comes out

i think the big difference between the

use of ayahuasca today and the use of

other substances in the 1960s

is a very strong understanding of the

importance of ritual and a ceremonial

element

in fostering a therapeutic or

spiritual experience

it's not a party drug in the way that

other substances have been used

the wisdom of learning through plants is

a cultural tradition that goes back

hundreds if not thousands of years

for me

my

experience of botanical medicine is very

technical and medical and scientific and

we do learn about the energetics of

plants but it's much more dominated by

the science and so

i've always reached out to have

opportunities to

integrate both

and so that's

that's my goal you see uh the healing

aspect of this medicine

well what can you relate about it in

terms of ayahuasca

i need to do it many more times many

many more times to

be able to speak to that because i'm not

i can't

integrate that or apply that with other

people until i've integrated it with me

i just can't

i think it's not for everybody

you know i think ayahuasca

is a very powerful medicine

but it has to be placed and used in a

proper way but if they don't know how to

do that it can create a psychological

shock that would leave a trauma

at a ceremony 15 years ago francois used

ayahuasca to help kick an addiction to

heroin

i had this particular ceremony where i

could see my veins crying

and my body expressing the pain that he

had received through the use of

addiction and needles

lots of cleaning you know in my head had

to be done

addiction comes from a sense of

deficient emptiness and trying to

complete yourself from the outside is

the essence of addiction

with ayahuasca one is an opportunity to

experience oneself as whole and complete

if you can actually get that you're

holding complete

what is there to be felt from the

outside anymore

there's just no need for it

i ask you can hear people see that

in two or three ceremonies

if it's the appropriate shame and the

leader and if it's the right environment

well that is a potential to heal

addictions

i think ayahuasca has

to function with self-discovery and

trying to understand better who you are

and also it helps you to connect with

the invisible world with the spirit

world it could be related to nature you

know the meaning of god

having a clearer sense of what it means

for you in your life so it helps you to

redefine yourself in relationship to

that

ayahuasca is used for many reasons

for a corondero like dave ayahuasca is a

teacher of the healing powers of plants

my home

please take off your shoes before you

come to my home please

ayahuasca is in many ways like the key

to the door that allows you to plant

teacher world ayahuasca allows you to

access the other plant teachers in in in

a more profound way

a planned teacher is i mean the best way

to look at it is you look at a plant as

a being as you would as a friend

each plant has a personality as each

human does

you take on the traits of a plant you

know and plants are very sensitive and

very intuitive

and you know

in healing you need to be very sensitive

and very intuitive

so we take these plants yeah to learn

from them and in a way to become them

i came here with the intention of

you know

gaining more strength in my work so i'm

on a diet now with

a bunch of different plants and trees to

give me more strength more protection

it's a mix of 25 30 different plants

that i drink it every day

you know it really breaks down the body

at the beginning to

open up i feel a little bit uh my body

feels a little bit you know out of

balance and a little bit weak but

the most important thing is i feel good

in my mind

after a day of reflection rob and kirsty

returned for their second ceremony

again it was just wanting to experience

so much so quickly it was probably

overestimating my level what ayahuasca

wanted to show me at that time

in a way i kind of wanted to take more

but in in a way i didn't you have to

respect ayahuasca she was she was

telling me something

it was totally different from the night

prior i was restless and sort of

agitated

a part of ayahuasca is the purging

aspect

i you know sort of had always just

thought that meant vomiting but it can

it's just can be a lot of different

bodily

things going on in noises and belching

and like

it was

unbelievable

i got cagey kind of and i tried to leave

the room entirely actually at one point

but i sort of got stuck

standing there

it was just it was frustrating kind of

when i did go outside

i found rob

i left all of that

insane cacophony

i've always heard the folks

i would i would say

in it

okay

oh my god

we saw the sky and it was just

staggering it was just

astonishing how beautiful it was and i

saw a huge shooting star which

blew my mind

and then we left and when i came back to

my cabin

i kind of laid down and i closed my eyes

and

like a lot of times when you close your

eyes you see some light imagery and then

it began to swirl together and it

created this little eddy right in front

of my field of vision and then bit by

bit little images would appear out of

this eddy come out and go back in come

out and go back in

when i was ready to write off the

evening as somewhat of a a rejection or

uh a negative she pulled me right back

and then put me to sleep

it's really a therapy you have one

ceremony it's like going to

psychotherapy for two years

colin from vancouver attended ayahuasca

ceremonies for a year before coming to

peru

he's hoping to heal a troubled marriage

for me i'm just want to be the father

that i know i can be and the husband i

can be and support my wife as family

comes first right

we had been on and off and are

continuing in kind of a power struggle

stage we have done couples therapy

counseling but it doesn't quite

i mean it works for a little bit but

there's a deeper issue

when i came here i knew i wanted to go a

little deeper

for me the one word that came up was

acceptance acceptance of myself

acceptance of my past and acceptance of

my wife was probably the

the number one thing to her that was

the big blockage in our relationship

there is something that's obviously

keeping us together

but there is some kind of

something we keep coming up against

i realized that i've had this sense of

sadness within me affecting multiple

things from past relationships people

that have passed in my life to sadness

around things around my childhood and

being unhappy with my sort of place in

the world so i'm sad about it at times

after each ceremony guillermo encourages

participants to talk about their

experiences

i feel myself attached with the with a

bit of a dark spirit which came to me

last night and it's all

linked to an ex-girlfriend

who has died she's since died but she's

still

there's lots of there's lots of love

there there's a lot of lightness but her

dark side is sort of still hanging onto

me she was a very manipulative woman and

it was almost the first woman in my life

i woke up this morning you know very

early and very still very high with the

ayahuasca and

and he had some nightmares a lot of

sweating

during the night almost like my body's

trying to

to uh to move it through

jose

is

m

professionally in terms of work as a

naturopathic doctor i sort of feel

confused

to

employ this medicine even in a limited

capacity probably takes a lot of

personal journeying

period for me

i need to talk it through with dave

how he

operates because the ceremony is crucial

and

the training is crucial ayahuasca

and powder

ah yeah

ayahuasca

it's important for people to know that

the ayahuasca acts as a teacher and it

allows you to discover yourself through

your own knowledge through your own

experience

these are all the plants we use for uh

bathing here bring love attract love

good luck yeah and all these medicines

up here are all for uh for men to get a

little extra energy oh

yeah

it means seven

times seven seven times per night

the other thing

that dave says was that ayahuasca is

going to meet you where you're at in

terms of what needs to happen and

potentially to go very

deep into your own fears and

challenges and personal growth

i think next time i'm ready to go

even if it's challenging i'm ready to

sort of have a bit more and go deeper

and

just face what i find

what kirstie and rob will face on this

their third ceremony is unknown and

unknowable

the mysterium tremendous is as you can

tell from the term a tremendous mystery

it is

at the core

of all true religious or mystical

experience the feeling of being at one

with the universe

and yet it's the experience that most

religions are frantic to deny

it's not for the ordinary person it's

something you know the interpretation

has to come through the church through

the priesthood through the hierarchy or

whatever and we'll tell you what this

means

and i think that's one of the

interesting things about ayahuasca it

gives you a

tool

to actually approach this phenomenon

experimentally and some people wait all

their lives and spend years in

meditation and all sorts of aesthetic

experiences and never have a mystical

experience

you can be just a kind of an ordinary

schmuck

and under the right

circumstances psychedelics can trigger

this kind of experience

just experiencing everything possible

that's in life

at any given moment and you're just

taking it all in

without trying to state how you feel

last night was just the culmination of

finally being at home down here good

medicine

and just listening to guillermo and

everyone chant

it was everything

that it could possibly be i think it was

just perfect

it's my strongest visions at the very

beginning were

like a multi-level

dimension

and it's like a door being open to this

but it's constantly being opened it's

constantly being open and it never goes

away because it's new again and so it's

nature just showing you

at times i feel like

she could actually control my head and

tilt it different ways and look around

and so i would look

that guillermo it's just

oh

i don't know how

but it was so nice and it was maternal

even when looking at guillermo suddenly

i wasn't a younger person in guillermo i

was older looking at him

like he was a child and you're so proud

of this child look at what he's doing

she was saying that as she looked at

guillermo look at all he can do

and it was just a sense of awe and

renewed innocence all the time but that

was partly from her and

it's the most spiritual thing i've ever

felt

in my whole life

well i could tell kirsty wasn't quite

having as great a time as i was

the ceremony

last night was um

exceptionally hard

i just couldn't get a nice peaceful

vision or experience

there were just moments where i just

couldn't even

bear it like it was just unbelievably

hard

i felt a lot of dark

things and

it was it's this sounds very dramatic

but

it was pretty demonic like there were

some pretty like

terrifying

moments where like i thought i was gonna

die

i thought i was gonna shut like shut

down as a self-protection mechanism

because it was i was way way beyond

dealing with it

and then

it literally was like a miracle because

dave appeared

what happens in a strong experience with

ayahuasca like that is that you lose

control an ego is about having control

you can't control ayahuasca you know you

can work with it but if you try to

control it and get into a powerful start

with ayahuasca that's where she's going

to come on stronger to try to

have that egoic death or spiritual death

there were

emotional sort of components to it to do

with my family

people would come to me different people

in my life whom i love which come to me

and try to communicate to me and then

would be sucked away and i would try to

communicate with them and and then it

would be sucked away

it was truly truly

indescribable the horror

i

i was so terrified of losing him because

it was like a lifeline

and i was like

i will i will drag myself

i don't care what it takes

and he

helped me get over there and then

he just he did

chanting he was doing reiki

she's lost in this like

great big vast sea so i'm there to throw

her a line in a way

because she was getting drowned in her

you know her experience

i'm there to find her path

and find the way that she got there and

so i do the chanting find her and then

bring her back in her body and back and

with her connection and then the healing

will start to happen under its own

process

if that isn't the most humbling thing i

have ever done

i hope my ego just stays away and leaves

me alone i just

piss off i won't do that

i don't want to deal with it

and dave said okay you're going to go to

cairo go to guillermo and i was like can

i crawl

so i dragged myself

he

addressed

my issues at multiple different levels

through the ecosystem chanting

oh i just i was so grateful because they

didn't let me go until i was able to go

like they passed me down the chain

and i just cried and cried because i

felt its insane level of gratitude

like

i don't even have words for it

i felt this

a kind of love that i that i don't think

i've ever felt in my life

it was not from here

i would turn slightly

and just kind of let her know i was

there

but that's all you can do i mean you

can't verbalize that sort of thing i let

her know that i was aware of what she

was going through

because we were we really sort of bonded

he was quite close to me sometimes so

his

bald head was like

so if i didn't know him i would have

been like

dude

go have your party like three feet to

the side like what are you doing but i

was like i could i was comforted by

rob's presence

he just was awesome he just was like

he was there the whole time

we went outside and it was dawn so it

was that magic time when everything's

blue

and we kind of trotted around because we

were we were just sort of used to being

together

i really am so still so foamal

slow motion it takes so much out of you

it's crazy

oh my god

i was so glad rob that you were there

that literally broke me open

like that literally

annihilated me i don't yet know what it

means

when you when you think you're gonna die

the part of that is part of the healing

is that when you when you do

come out of the experience you're just

happy to be alive

and that's the way we need to live every

day of our life

part of the enjoyment of living life is

just be grateful for your life

is there a key insight that you

get

after you've taken lots of ayahuasca

well it sounds trivial but the inside is

you

don't know

we know very little

about

the way the world is put together about

how the universe really is about our

role in it

and what's really going on you know you

monkeys only think you're running the

show you know you don't and not only are

you not running the show you don't even

know what the show is

so

be humble

remember that you don't know much

integrating the insights learned from

ayahuasca can be a difficult task

colin is still working to heal the

relationship with his wife nina

hi

hi

my wife is my soul mate and i really do

want to see that relationship reaches

full potential and it can be a rocky

road you know it's got its ups and downs

it's not all bliss it's a process and

you've been part of that process a big

part of that process but i finally

accepted things on a level that

what he gets from ceremony is he really

gets in touch with himself of

a place of acceptance of himself

acceptance of me just letting go and not

needing to control

and then it will last a month and then

it explodes into of not being happy and

unhappy in this relationship and

complete opposite i'm trying to just be

accepting of it but

it's hard to

completely

accept it i'll call in because i've put

a lot of

the same kind of stuff before

just gonna take some time till i

i see some

i actually see it as opposed to words

i think colin sometimes feels that he

just needs to live ayahuasca ayahuasca

ceremony ceremony but you can't just

live in that world your world is

family or

job

whatever it may be

well the most important part of

ayahuasca is the actual integration into

your life

if you're not integrating that there's

no point in it this is a spiritual path

unless we're doing it we're wasting our

time

it was staggering the extent to which i

needed to process

what happened in peru

it wasn't until halfway through it

that i realized

with incredible certainty like a

lightning bolt that

i had almost missed the point entirely

which was that i wasn't there for work

i mean the true purpose in terms of why

i was there had nothing to do with any

of those things

it was only for me

it was really hard for me to articulate

what had happened and

how i felt about it

i became defensive of it because i think

the go-to thought for people is oh

you're going getting high

psychotropic plants in the jungle and it

almost is a bit offensive if you have

any experience with ayahuasca to

think of it that way or refer to it in

that way so i would find it frustrating

to sort of try to explain it to people

so

what do you think the ayahuasca did for

you how did it change your perception of

the world it just makes you realize that

you're part of a much larger hole all

the time whether it's nature or

the other people in your life you know

i'm kind of conflicted because it sounds

like it's a shortcut to meditation or to

spiritual awakening i'm not sure if if

that shortcut then has the long-term

effects that say discipline and

meditation would have you know i'd have

to think about that some more

i live alone

everything i do is solitary for the most

part

when i came back it was on the tip of my

tongue that i should be in closer

contact with my family hey how's it

going

excellent i mean you can't pretend to

understand the bosom of ayahuasca

cradling you unless you realize that you

also have friends and family that mean a

great deal to you and you have to take

the love that she shows you there and

spread that around to your family and

friends

have a safe trip in tomorrow and i'll

see you in the morning cheers we'll see

you there take care

even my brother i mean we're cut from

the same cloth we've always been kind of

guarded distant people and just to see

him almost gushed this morning it was

just really nice

over the weeks and months following i

realized that i had never in my life

felt

vulnerable the way that i did in that in

that moment because i had never allowed

it

and ultimately what i've realized is

that to really receive love you have to

be able

to be vulnerable

ayahuasca gave me a different

way of

feeling in my body a different way of

being a different way of viewing myself

in the world

that it

is staggering in that it allows you to

sort of

have a second chance

at being yourself

there's been a trend i think in western

medicine to recognize that alternative

healing practices can be a useful

adjunct to modern western approaches

so i think ayahuasca can be a valuable

component of treating such things as

psychiatric conditions depression

anxiety addictions

things that modern western medicine i

think hasn't really done a good job of

addressing

i don't have a whole lot of optimism

that within my lifetime some like

ayahuasca will be seriously unemployed

if it runs counter to people's

innate prejudices

it's not incorporated

heretical it is to say it in a medical

context

and i don't need decades of research to

tell me that something is good

but i know that it is

how's it going bro

i've seen you

how you

thank you

good to see you

this medicine is giving me my life my

life path

i'll be doing this until i'm old and

gray that's that's never been a doubt in

my mind it's always been whether or not

i could actually accomplish it

just thank creator for nourishment and

nourish our body our spirit their mind

help us be strong and work in a good way

with the medicine tonight

it's given me a whole community of

people

it's given me dear friends it's given me

a purpose

it's given me

confidence you know just to be able to

acknowledge that like i

i can do something you know for people

and helping people

at dave's northern wilderness retreat

rob and kirsty meet for the first time

since their trip to peru

i didn't know rob before this but i now

know rob and rather an intimate way

it was just like some kind of crazy

natural wedding where we just

a union of our souls and she was a

little on the downside i was a little on

the up but by the end of the evening

we're exactly the same place

so we're all going to be drinking

ayahuasca tonight

trust yourself

you've heard the call you felt the call

to be here

some people talk about

you know the chemical it's not a

chemical i was a spirit

so approach ayahuasca with you know

obviously respect

with reverence

and also with gratitude

i'm always checking in with my intention

what is my intention for carrying this

work

has to be to share and to have that

experience that you can get in the

amazon with traditional healers but have

it here

when we drink ayahuasca outside of the

amazon we're not surrounded by the

plants so it's also a different

experience but you can still take the

spirit of the plant with you

i have the spirit of the plants inside

me and the spirit of the jungle and i

tried to share that with the people

dave and others like him are spreading

the gospel of ayahuasca through

ceremonies around the world

my intention is is to help people in

their healing the healing of our

communities here

the healing of the planet

this is why i think

ayahuasca has left the amazon

we're impacting the planet in certain

areas like the amazon is a good example

we're

basically raping the amazon but maybe

this is sending you know waves of alarm

in some sense through the rest of the

biosphere and then no sense am i

invoking consciousness here but it's a

defensive strategy for self-preservation

on the heart of not only ayahuasca but

in you know in some ways almost

on behalf of everything that's living on

the planet

maybe this is the last

desperate ploy of gaia to

sort of hit us upside the head

and say you know wake up you monkeys

you're really screwing things up

i mean if ayahuasca was to be described

as a religion or a faith it's

it's all about

the earth and all of the beings all of

the beings in it

but in an experiential way

it's one thing to intellectualize

something and it's another thing

entirely

to touch it and to experience

other

bigger

energies

that are intelligent it's very much like

being held to uh

the bosom of the mother of everything

and it's very much about love

period

on