The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience

488 Pages·2003·28.66 MB·English

by  Benny Shanon

THE A N T I P O D ES
OF THE M I ND
Charting the Phenomenology of
the Ayahuasca Experience
BENNY SHANON
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE ANTIPODES OF THE MIND
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Benny Shanon
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First published 2002
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Shanon, Benny
The antipodes of the mind : charting the phenomenology of the Ayahuasca experience /
Benny Shanon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Ayahuasca-Psychotropic effects. I. Title.
BF209A93S53 2002 615'.7883-dc21 2002027770
ISBN 0-19-925292-0
ISBN 0-19-925293-9 (pbk.)
5 7 9 10 8 6
Typeset in Ehrhardt MT
by Kolam Information Services, Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddies Ltd., King's Lynn, Norfolk
CONTENTS
List of Tables ix
Prologue 1
Part I: Preliminaries
1. General Background 13
2. Theoretical Foundations 30
3. Methodology and General Structure 41
Part II: The Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience
4. Atmosphere and General Effects 55
5. Open-Eye Visualizations 69
6. A Structural Typology of Ayahuasca Visualizations 86
7. Interaction and Narration 99
8. The Contents of Visions 113
9. The Themes of Visions 141
10. Ideas, Insights, and Reflections 160
11. Non-Visual Perceptions 181
12. Consciousness I 194
13. Transformations 210
14. Time 226
15. Meaning and Semantics 242
16. Consciousness II 256
17. Light 273
Part III: Theoretical Issues
18. Stages and Order 287
19. Contextual Considerations 305
20. Cognitive Parameters 331
21. Dynamics 344
vi Contents
22. A General Theoretical Perspective 361
23. Concluding Philosophical Reflections 386
Epilogue 405
Appendix. Quantitative Data 409
References 435
Index 453
FIGURES
The images presented on the cover and in the book are reproductions of the work
Pianos (Portuguese for 'planes', 'levels', and also 'plans') by the Brazilian artist Ceu
who travelled throughout the Amazonian rainforest and has partaken of Ayahuasca
there; he is involved in ecological and educative projects both in the Amazon and
elsewhere in Brazil. The art work is partly based on visions the artist has had with
Ayahuasca. Figure 1 shows the entire work; Figures 2 (and the cover), 3, and 4
depict details from it. The author deeply thanks the artist for making his work
available for reproduction here.
LIST OF TABLES
1. List of data sets 410
2. The core corpus (set 1) 416
3. The Polari corpus (set 2) and the Amaringo corpus (set 3) 417
4. Structured questionnaires 418
5. Single sessions 420
6. The anthropological literature 422
7. Frequencies and averaged ranks 428
8. Dreams 434
The light that the Holy One, blessed be He, created on the first day, one
could see thereby from one end of the world to the other; but as soon as the
Holy One, blessed be He, beheld the generation of the Flood and the gener­
ation of the Dispersion, and saw that their actions were corrupt, He arose and
hid it from them And for whom did he reserve it? For the righteous in
the time to come.
The Talmud (tractate Hagiga)
God wanted to hide his secrets in a secure place. 'Would I put them on the
moon?' He reflected. 'But then, one day human beings could get there, and it
could be that those who would arrive there would not be worthy of the secret
knowledge. Or perhaps I should hide them in the depths of the ocean,' God
entertained another possibility. But, again, for the same reasons, he dismissed
it. Then the solution occurred to Him—'I shall put my secrets in the inner
sanctum of man's own mind. Then only those who really deserve it will be
able to get to it.'
A tale recounted to the author by an ice-cream vendor in the
Peruvian Amazon

Prologue
In the summer of 1983 I took a walking tour in the jungle of the Oriente of
Ecuador. I joined four other people, two couples, and together we hired an Indian
woman as our guide. The two couples kept very much to themselves, and I, being
alone and much more interested in the locals than in my fellow tourists, paired
with the guide. We walked and talked. When the woman found out that I was a
psychologist, the topics she discussed became more and more personal. She
recounted her life, critically examining her relationships with her parents when
she was young. The conversation went on into the night. In the hut at the riverside,
the other four members of the group were sound asleep and we two went on
talking. There was one dream, the woman told me, that had haunted her for more
than thirty years. 'I thought it must mean something. Indeed, the dream made me
realize that what I was thinking was the case could not have been so.' Thus, with
increasing boldness and trust, the woman began to reveal to me thoughts and ideas
she had never told anyone before. She spoke of a mental life unknown to us, of
repression, of symbols and symbolic transformations, of dreams and their inter­
pretation. What I was listening to was, in effect, an exposition of an entire theory,
invented unawares by a person who hardly knew how to spell her own name. At
one point, the woman inadvertently mentioned hallucinations. She referred to a
concoction made out of a plant. I became interested but she did not want to delve
too deeply into the subject. I pressed her, but still she insisted that it was not for
gringos (foreign white people). I pressed further, and she said she had to ask the
local sorcerer, the brujo.
When the jungle trip was over we went to the guide's village and looked for the
brujo. He was not to be found. For a while I thought the woman did not really want
me to find the man. But then she gave me an address where I could obtain the plant;
'Ask for Ayahuasca,' she told me. I spent a whole day on a bus going to the little
town she had indicated and there I headed for the grocery store. I told the vendor
the name of my guide and she turned to the back of the room. There, behind a
curtain, was a big heap of logs. The vendor picked up one about a foot long and
returning to the counter told me to make a soup out of it. 'Ayahuasca,' I reiterated
the name looking at the piece of wood on the counter, 'Ayahuasca,' she nodded,
'pound it, make a soup, and drink it at night.'
Several months later, at my home in Jerusalem, I prepared the soup. My
(erroneous) understanding was that I should use only the bark. I cut it into pieces
which I immersed in water to boil. The water was evaporating and there was still
solid material in the pot. Again and again, I added water and let the liquid simmer.
The process took several hours. Eventually, I was left with a small schnapps-size
cup of a concoction of dark purple-brown. I drank it.