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| De Catherine bourgeois pour Terre Sacrée le 21 Juillet 2005. Traduction de Jean-Pierre Cattelain ____________________
Medicine men in the Amazon claim they have acquired their knowledge through contact with plants that speak to them. To have access to this comprehension, it is necessary, for a given time, to suspend our invasive rationality and exacerbated critical sense, and to allow ourselves to be guided. The medicine man himself goes through a process of initiation that confronts him to his own shadow, his own death, or deaths... Thus, plants can speak! Within the framework of this approach to traditional medicines, work is completed first of all on the body, and through it, in a second stage, on affects and the mind. The body stores the archives of our personal history, and, beyond, a kind of engrammation of the heritage of parents, ancestors, the culture, the foundations of the human being, of the universe and life in general. Man carries the world inside himself. A number of techniques used by medicine men might, to a certain extent, allow a re-examination or a reading of the archives inscribed in our body.
In this perspective, initiation is used to re-examine one's past, to decode one's future and to integrate the sense of our existence into a much wider meaning and context. Supposedly, succeeding in replacing oneself into a universal dimension allows a real cure to take place. Traditions teach us that, beyond "this" world, beyond everyday life and embodied manifestation lies an "alien world", the one of the Self, of the Gods, of Heaven, of Archetypes, of the Unconscious... always present and active, yet not permanently accessible, except when a threshold of consciousness, a symbolic gate, is crossed. This passage can take place spontaneously, through dreaming, or, for example, after an anaesthetic accident during surgery. In traditional medicine, this crossing is achieved intentionally thanks to ritual practices which provoke an exit from ordinary consciousness, and where plants often play a central part. The idea, thus, is to visit this "alien world" in order later to integrate into "this" world the pieces of information acquired during the "trip". The altered states of consciousness, in this perspective, are not mere escapes and flights away from reality, but aim at returning to the here and now. Thus, eventually the idea is to focus again on integrating the present, on our incarnation. The "other world" is a world peopled by a number of forces, of energies, of beings showing a degree of autonomy in relation to our universe, also named gods, spirits, demons, entities or archetypes... By crossing this threshold, contact can be established with invisible powers likely to inform us and intervene on ourselves and our lives. Indeed, this communication may turn out to be either beneficial or dangerous; hence the importance of not launching explorations of the "alien world" in an anarchic, or chaotic, way, but by instituting a precise ritual framework which requires a vast experience and mastery. The interest lies in understanding that man is included into a vast universe with other gates, other entities, other energies, other dimensions that man should relate to, articulate with, communicate with. If plants are numerous in the Amazon, the main plant that symbolises traditional medicines is Ayahuasca, from the quechua terms aya (death) and huasca (rope). Thus, Ayahuasca is the rope of the dead, or of death, the vine that allows to communicate with the world to be found beyond death. Traditionally, in Amazonian culture, one of the essential functions of Ayahuasca is to allow contact with deceased persons, to converse and exchange with them. The Ayahuasca drink is the mixture of two plants: the Ayahuasca vine and an added element, often composed of the leaves of the Chacruna bush. Chacruna absorbed alone creates lighting phenomena but does not structure the visionary material. Information and learning is essentially provided by the Ayahuasca vine which thus lends its name to the mixture. The alcaloids of Chacruna (DMT) are inhibited at the digestive level by an enzyme called mono-amine-oxydase (MAO). The alcaloids of Ayahuasca in their turn inhibit this MAO and thus let DMT flow into the blood stream. The "light" of Chacruna will them "illuminate" the information from the Ayahuasca, thus providing coherent visions to the subject. Obviously this high technology owes nothing to chance or improvisation. One can only marvel that this highly effective biochemical sophistication, recently discovered in the Western world, should have been known to the Amazon Indians for thousands of years. The main alcaloid of Ayahuasca was discovered during the 20s and was first called "telepathine", due to its dramatic effects on the psyche, as observed by scientists. The natural form of using Ayahuasca guarantees the intervention of a self-regulatory phenomenon thanks to respect for the natural barriers, both digestive and neurological, of the body. Ayahuasca, like every visionary plant preparation (formerly named, wrongly and pejoratively, "hallucinogens"), does not create any dependence. Hence, there is no such thing as addiction to Ayahuasca, which besides, is never deadly, even in high doses.
Given this complexity, one understands that mastering Ayahuasca requires far more than attending a few sessions. The difficulties in exploring the "alien world" require humility and patience, and the presence of an experienced and knowledgeable guide. Training requires years and demands long periods of fasting, dieting and sexual abstinence, with demanding work on oneself, in other words, a powerful calling, permanently to be renewed. Initiation, in Amazon tribes and ethnic groups, is preceded by the teaching to children and youths of the great myths of the Amazon cosmogony. The rites of passage to adolescence or puberty call on the ritualised use of psychoactive plants, where, through visions and altered states of consciousness, they can verify the genuine character of the figures of the mythology transmitted to them. Amazon traditional medicines, in their most sophisticated form, assume the controlled induction of consciousness alteration, allowing to explore the individual's inner universe, which within the experience coincides with the outer universe's structures. The shapes of the "alien world", spirits of nature or spiritual entities, symbolically reflect the inner forces which inhabit us. Thus, the inner/outer duality dissolves. Most of the plants used in the Amazon context in initiation are purgative, causing vomiting, diarrhoea, sweating... Ayahuasca, concurrent with its visionary effects, makes possible a draining of the body and consequently is called "purga" (the purge) by medicine men. They consider that their work is not so much inducing altered states of consciousness, but rather to enable the body to be cleaner and cleaner, thus allowing "channels" to be unblocked, with the aim to receive the information from inside. Work on the body is essential and includes purgation or purification. This work on the body should necessarily be followed by a process of integration of the information acquired, an actualisation in daily life. Every initiation work to explore an alien world within the concept of traditional medicines is based on the "going there, coming back, integrating" process. The great Amazon medicine men are peasants, they get up in the morning, take care of their fields, have a family and look after their home... and then, once a week, or two or three times, they conduct their experiments. They go through periods of isolation in the forest, when they have access to altered states of consciousness induced by various techniques or by plants, and then come back to their daily life. This coming and going, this counterpoint, or transition from one world to another is permanent. This exchange never stops. Thus, the work of initiation is not a flight towards different realities, but the full acceptance of incarnation. It is rather a far-reaching exploration, carried out ritually in order to come back better and thus to enrich daily life. To gain access to this experience, ritual is absolutely essential. The potential complexity of sensitive manifestations of a symbolic character (words, gestures, perfumes, songs...) is part of a rigorous and effective "technology of the sacred", appropriate to the context and, in this case, to the plant used. The ritual form or structure makes it possible to install a sacred link used as a transition lock between worlds, where space-times can coincide. The opening of this gate allows to enter the alien world, travel there, but especially to come back from it. Ayahuasca, in this light, can be defined as a vehicle-plant which makes it possible to undertake this trip. Conducting this vehicle, hence the ritual also, is partly imposed by the energetic structure of the plant. Every plant has a specific structure, an energetic matrix which medicine men indeed name "madre" (mother). Ayahuasca demonstrates a typically feminine, non-rational energy, and it is often visualised under the symbolic shape of a "headless female". The correct use of Ayahuasca may allow users to discern their own lives better and, thereby, to make latent choices, to define clearer options. Access to the "alien world" reveals a transcendent dimension of our life, and life in general. The disappearance in the Western world of spaces of genuine initiation and sacredness lead teenagers on an "unregulated" quest for rites of passage. This aspiration to explore the "alien world" appears as an intrinsic need in human nature. If it is not satisfied, this thirst for meaning and transcendence leads to clumsy, even dangerous, attempts at self-initiation. The massive availability of both legal and illegal psycho-active substances on the modern consumer market facilitates, even encourages, transgressions. Meanwhile, all the precautions in the traditional Indian know-how are ignored, leading to the use of inadequate, addictive, poorly dosed substances, without guidance or previous training, without rigorous ritual, without eventual integration of experiences... Addiction is born of this Western mix of ignorance and arrogance as far as mastery of consciousness phenomena is concerned.
At the same time, resuming correctly these unregulated self-initiations among addicts, thanks to corrective techniques, using purgative and psycho-active non-addictive plants such as Ayahuasca, demonstrates extremely encouraging results in clinical experiments. The time, probably, has come for ancestral knowledge to allow us to re-discover how we can respect both nature and our own human nature. It also requires our help to escape the rejection it suffers from, to regain its dignity, to preserve its territories and traditions, to enlarge to an inevitable universal scope, while preserving its soul. The meeting between traditional medicines and those of the Western world may mean mutual enrichment and a source of reciprocal fertilisation. |
