by alex seymour
Not long after our return to the camp, it was time to gather for the next ceremony. As we sat in a semicircle around Humberto, having already taken the foul brew and waiting for its effects, I heard Reuben groan and say, “Oh, I feel so full of ayahuasca! I need a break.”
This was his twenty-third ayahuasca ceremony in nearly as many consecutive nights, and I sympathized. Soon enough, Reuben was purging, and when he seemed to have emptied himself completely, he again inquired about his mother’s well-being. Humberto assured him she was fine, and Reuben settled down, although he occasionally erupted in wracking coughs that sounded horrendously painful.
Suddenly, the village dogs started barking. Humberto leapt out of his rocking chair and ran over to the window. He shouted something in Spanish to Richard, and then in the near darkness of the maloca, his eyes wide, he ran and grabbed one of the three rifles that were propped against a wall by the door. In an instant, Richard was by his side, and just before he ran from the maloca, he stopped to throw me what looked like an ancient musket. “Here, use this if you have to!” he said, and then he disappeared after Humberto into the night.
I had to stop myself from laughing. A musket! I squinted down, inspecting it more carefully and realized it wasn’t quite as primitive a firearm, but not by much. I checked the breach—empty. I remembered seeing some shotgun cartridges lined up on the window ledge, so I staggered over, lurching at every step, and grabbed a handful, stuffing them into my pocket. The loading procedure on this weapon couldn’t have been any simpler—just shove a cartridge into the barrel and snap it shut. No safety catch, so it’s good to go. But what good would it do? The weapon had to be a hundred years old. If I pulled the trigger, the barrel might burst open, peeling back like a banana skin.
The gun was up and ready, the butt tucked firmly into my shoulder. I peered into the jungle, covering the two men already out on the ground, and wondered what the threat could be. I figured it was either bandits or a jaguar, and I didn’t know which of those possibilities I preferred. My blurred vision was straining in the darkness. The dogs were still going crazy, barking and running around the perimeter of the camp where it met the jungle. I was unsteady on my feet and still hallucinating hard. A threat to our lives—this was the last thing I expected. I hadn’t come all the way from Afghanistan to get killed by bandits in a gunfight in the Amazon, or for that matter, eaten alive by a big jungle cat. I realized that up until now, I’d hardly seen the wilder side of Peru.
Out the window I could see Humberto holding his torch parallel with his rifle barrel, the gun tucked in his shoulder, while he patrolled along the edge of the jungle, switching from shaman to soldier.
I stumbled out through the door and into the night, the safety of the lodge behind me, my mind racing. You have got to be fucking joking. I’m off my tits here, probably about to tackle a beast that tears lesser animals to pieces with its very face, while I’m having, like it or not, some kind of communion with an unknowable Oversoul entity—and now you’re laying this on me? Come on!
I glanced up from peering down the barrel to see Richard waving his arm wildly, gesturing that I should move around the perimeter in the opposite direction to him. We parted, stalking in opposing directions—he moved right, I skirted around to the left. One of the dogs rushed past me on my left shoulder and stopped at the edge of the last hut, barking into the blackness of the camp perimeter. The lights from the camp didn’t extend more than five meters into the jungle. My eyes were straining, and then I saw it—a beast of a cat, magnificent! It’s coat just like a leopard’s, its eyes big and wide staring right back at me, no trace of fear. Fuck me.
“Richard, it’s here. Jaguar! Over here. I think it’s a young one,” I hissed.
I brought the barrel up and took aim. A wishful thought flashed: more than anything, right now I wanted one of the zombie-killer pump-action shotguns we’d used in Afghanistan. No chance. But by this time Richard and Humberto were both by my side. I nodded toward the fallen log at the jungle’s edge that the jaguar crouched behind. They followed my gaze, then burst out laughing.
“It’s an ocelot! An ocelot, and it’s not even full-grown!” said Richard.
Humberto was pissing himself with laughter, saying something in Spanish in between his cackles. I lowered the barrel of the shotgun and looked at Richard sheepishly. “What’s he saying,” I asked, nodding toward the shaman.
“He said no one ever got harmed by an ocelot, hombre, and that you look like you just shit yourself.”
Not fair. How was I supposed to know the difference when I’m tripping my balls off on some crazy hallucinogenic jungle juice? Bastards. Richard joined in the laughter with Humberto, both of them exchanging jokes in Spanish.
“What’s he saying now?” I asked Richard.
He had no answer, or chose not to tell me. Quite clearly the joke was on me. I looked back toward the jungle and the “big” wild cat was gone.
No bandits, no jaguar—an ocelot. Richard and Humberto were still giggling like idiots as we returned to the lodge. We all settled back down into our places and resumed the ceremony. Within minutes it was like nothing had happened. Humberto was singing his heart out, and the icaros were doing their job of massaging our consciousness and shifting the visions.
I know Richard had our best interests at heart, but this place was no picnic, and it had a kind of Wild West feel about it.
Reuben was intelligent, unquestionably the brightest nineteen-year-old I’d ever met. Norwegian was his native language, but he was fluent in English, approaching fluency in Spanish, and could get by in French. He was extremely well read and had an encyclopedic knowledge of all sorts of authors of esoteric books and their theories. Terence McKenna, Eckhart Tolle, George Orwell, hermeticism, gnosticism, alchemy, the ancient Greek Elysian mysteries—he knew about them all, and he had learned most of it from the Internet. He was full of amusing witticisms and nuggets of wisdom. “Worrying is just the unnecessary investment of the imagination” was one of my favorites.
But his graphic description of his addiction was disturbing. He had had a chronic skunk (strong marijuana) addiction while also intravenously abusing ketamine and amphetamines—every single day. For more than a year he’d maintained this lifestyle: doing drugs and hardly eating anything or seeing anybody. His descriptions of the comedowns from the highs, curled in a fetal position and wracked by involuntary shakes and shivers for up to five hours, sounded horrendous. I asked him the obvious question, but I was still curious to hear his answer. “Your parents must have told you that if you inject recreational drugs intravenously it’s a one-way ticket to the Badlands?”
“Yeah,” he deadpanned, “they told me. But I did it anyway.”
Eventually, he had reached rock bottom emotionally and physically. He stumbled across information about ayahuasca as a therapy to help treat drug addiction and decided that this was his way back to sanity and freedom. His mother had accompanied him to South America, handed him over to Richard, and flown back to Norway. So here he was, getting clean. As Reuben told us his story, his voice broke and croaked, as if he were a tired old man. His addictions had sapped the energy from him. I compared him with the young marines I had served with, marveling at how different human beings can be. I had no doubt that a comparison of Reuben’s physical capability compared to marines of the same age would have been pitiful. But he was certainly deeper than most of them philosophically.
During one of the quieter, reflective moments in a ceremony, Reuben asked Richard if he would say a prayer. Richard said, “Sure,” and immediately in his warm baritone voice prayed aloud:
Om, Almighty, Omnipresent, Loving Father, I am your humble son, Thy will be done. Please guide us now to the Light of Truth and shine away the darkness of egoic illusion. Please cause all bodies to vibrate at the frequency of Love, dissolving all impediments to the natural, spontaneous, free, direct experience and expression of Your unconditional divine Love. Please guide our little wills to be aligned
at all times with Your divine will, Father, causing every thought, word, deed to be in service to the greatest and highest good of all life everywhere.
I am love, for this I am in truth. I am light, I am love.
I am the power and the peace of light. I radiate these qualities in all directions to all beings across all times, dimensions, and planes for the upliftment of the whole, that all Your children, our brothers and sisters, may find their way home to You, Father.
For I have learned the folly of these ways and know now from experience that in and of the little self there is no power and certainly no peace, for All unfolds only by virtue of Your divine grace and presence; the true immortal Self.
Therefore we pray for You to guide us from illusion to truth, from ignorance to wisdom, from darkness to light, and from death into immortality, for Yours is the only Power, Light, and Love illuminating the way, Father.
Blessings be unto one and all, for all are one and one is all.
Om Namah Shivaya. Om mani padme hum. Om shanti, shanti, shanti om! Gloria in excelsis deo!
Reading the words of this prayer now, starkly on the page, diminishes the power that they had at the time I actually heard them. The three of us were bathed in an aura of union and grace. Upon hearing the request, Richard had delivered the prayer spontaneously, tenderly, without a moment’s hesitation. There in the darkness, with ayahuasca lingering in our systems, senses heightened, and our hearts open, the prayer carried a power and beauty that I believed could have the potential to resonate with anyone, of any faith.
During the ceremonies Richard’s mind was lucid compared to my inability to hold the simplest of thoughts consistently for more than few seconds. His mental acuity seemed near perfect. Evidently, his longtime use of ayahuasca hadn’t adversely impacted his ability to concentrate. He and Humberto were both exemplars that the use of entheogens could be successfully assimilated into everyday life.
We sat for a while in silence and contemplation. In this place and at moments like these, I realized we shared something sacred. I felt it. Something was happening to me. I was changing.
During the ceremonies I quickly fell into a routine of contemplation while waiting for the onset of the visions. After drinking the brew I’d spend twenty to thirty minutes meditating on all the things for which I was grateful: My wife. My children. Friends. My physical health. My mental health. My relationship with my best friend of thirty years. My mother. My rekindled relationship with my biological father. My dog. The five senses that bring me so much pleasure. My country (Great Britain—politically and geologically stable, no earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis). My good fortune with work. My attitude toward life. My attitude toward death. My neighbors and community. The experiences I’d had while traveling to so many places around the world. The Internet. My ability to make friends. My experiences with ayahuasca and psilocybin—glimpses into an awesome cosmos. Delicious food to eat every day. Freedom to go wherever I want and to think and speak whatever I want. The ability to work from home. Support from everyone I meet. A bright future. The fifty days a year when the weather is beautiful where I live. A family history to be proud of. The list went on and on. I could easily spend half an hour listing all the things I was grateful for, by which time the ayahuasca would begin taking effect.
After two weeks of ceremonies, it was time for me to leave. Richard was the real deal. On the final night Humberto had said that he thought I was “good.” Meaning, I think, that my energy was relatively clean. I was pleased to get this shamanic tick in the box and felt that I could move on to the next stage of discovery. The Mythic Voyage sounded like an opportunity too good to miss—its pull nothing less than gravitational on a planetary scale. It shone like a lighthouse illuminating the way to more mystery, mysticism, and mind-melding weirdness. Count me in. After all, after what I had already been through, what could possibly go wrong?
The day before departure I was lying in a hammock reading, when I heard Reuben shout, “Alex, come and see this!” I trotted up in my shorts and flip-flops and saw that he was gazing up, grinning at the sky. I followed his gaze and could hardly believe what I was seeing. A double rainbow. A double rainbow right here in the jungle! My first. So beautiful—a marvel. And a synchronicity since I had started this trip with the YouTube video and had shared it with Miley.
For me there was now an unshakable conviction that the ayahuasca ceremonies developed by the Shipibo were some kind of portal to a new level of consciousness, as if dormant antenna neurons had been activated. This was not merely another drug, a diversion. To call this special tea that the Natives brewed a “drug” was an abomination. It was more like a kind of technology.
In the Hindu tradition the Creator or Universal Intelligence—the Source and Essence of everything—is called Brahma; in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God; in one of many Chinese traditions, the Tao. Here in the Amazon regions, it is the Forest Mother. The creator spirit is feminine. In the fecundity of the rainforest, this is no surprise. I was beginning to become deeply attached to the Amazon. Looking at that double rainbow, I became acutely aware of how we in the West generally cut ourselves off from nature and spirit. We live in cities—everything is increasingly man-made and nature is kept at a distance. We have lost our affinity for the spiritual aspects of nature. We are detached from the Source as an organic spiritual presence in everyday life. The Amazon seemed to vibrate with energy, and it was impossible not to be impressed and affected by it.
14
Journey to the Middle of Nowhere
I kicked back in Iquitos for a couple of days after leaving La Kapok Center. Taking advantage of the phone reception, I called home each day to check all was well and then mooched about the markets on the edge of the shantytown. Andreas was the name of the Greek man who conceived, led, and delivered the Mythic Voyage, and I looked forward to meeting him and the other mythic voyagers (whom I soon learned Andreas refered to as argonauts).
While having breakfast in a café overlooking the river, a young man approached me selling trinkets and crystals. He had no idea I was working with ayahuasca, yet said solemnly, “Everyone in the world needs ayahuasca. It will help save the world.”
He picked one of the largest and clearest quartz crystals from his cache and held it quite firmly to my temple. “Can you feel that?” he asked. “Can you feel it?”
Beads of sweat covered his brow; his eyes were wide and intense. I admitted that I didn’t feel anything but was intrigued by the claim that you could potentially feel the power of crystalline rock just by holding it in close proximity to your head. He told me he’d been training as a shaman for seven years, although he made it clear he couldn’t begin to express how difficult that apprenticeship had been. His face looked filled with the world’s woes as he stressed, “It has been a hard journey. So hard, so, so hard.”
He turned to leave, put his hands together in a prayer position, and bowed his head. “I feel you,” he said softly. “I feel you are a good person. Peace be upon you, brother.” Then he walked away.
He probably said that to all the travelers who bought his trinkets. I shook my head in bewilderment.
I checked into the Trek hotel for my last night in Iquitos. The next day I would be meeting with Andreas and his “argonauts.” According to his website:
The intention is for a collective vibration of openness, light and goodwill creating new friends, travellers on the paths of the warriors of light. This however is not a touristic voyage, although we do have an awesome time; it is meant for people who, however good their lives have been up to now, want more out of their lives, people who wish to be free to be anyone they want and live any way they wish, people who wish to dream new lives into being and a new, full of light world.
Ayahuasca . . . can offer what has been called “ten years of psychotherapy in one night,” giving the possibility of a direct communication and conversation with our subconscious, with total and unrestricted access to all our memories and events of our lives as
well as our cellular memories, a totally clear and lucid mind and a spectacular visual journey that can heal deep wounds, liberate from addictions, give clarity and purpose and expand our consciousness.
It all sounded intriguing. While checking in I met one of the other argonauts in the lobby. She introduced herself as Anna, and we went to dinner. She was a location scout for a Czech film company. This was her second Mythic Voyage, and her eyes filled with wonder as she assured me this was no ordinary journey. In an effort to mask my naïveté, I countered with some La Kapok Center anecdotes. She reciprocated with the smile of a mother for a son who had just learned to tie his shoelaces. We said good night, and her parting words were, “Just you wait.”
Excitement bubbled up. I got back to the room and noticed its ramshackle state. Dark, dingy—in dire need of modernization. The spartan room, with its single bed, was poorly lit. No window, no natural light. The walls were painted brown, and the weakest of lamplights cast eerie shadows. A coal black TV set protruded from an extendable bracket high up on the opposite wall facing the bed, crouching like a gargoyle waiting to pounce.
The introductory meeting for the argonauts was at seven o’clock the next night in the same hotel. About twenty people already sat on chairs in a large circle in the hotel conference room. Andreas stood up to greet me, beaming. In his early fifties and huge, six feet four and quite possibly the same in circumference—at least three hundred pounds. His waist was gargantuan. His head was shaved, and he sported a goatee beard. He greeted me warmly. “Alex. You’ve arrived. It’s good for you to come here and join us.”