The Light of Ayahuasca

by Christian Funder, author of Grandmother Ayahuasca: Plant Medicine and the Psychedelic Brain

As tempting as it is, I won’t use linguistic tricks to capture your attention. My intention for this blog post is simply to introduce and explain certain aspects of my book Grandmother Ayahuasca (in a rather untraditional way, which I, however, find amusing). Hopefully it will find readers for whom it will add value and meaning—and perhaps even evoke feeling.

Slightly afraid of sounding arrogant, I dare say that this is the book I was looking for before and after I had drunk ayahuasca myself. This does not mean that there aren’t good books on the topic lurking out there, but I felt that each of the books I read before writing my own were exclusive to a certain genre, whether that was the science, the shamanism, the personal adventures, the psychology, or the philosophy. I found it unfortunate that one must buy several books to get a holistic and wide-ranging introduction to this incredible plant medicine. This feeling, along with my bottomless curiosity after having experienced these reality-obliterating experiences myself, fueled the writing of this book. I have thoroughly researched and gathered all these different perspectives on this miraculous and sacred plant mixture into one book that I believe adequately presents them all.

I am well aware of my own ignorance and do not claim to be any sort of expert. Compared to the wisdom held by these sacred plant spirits who I view as representatives of this Gaian, perhaps even cosmic, intelligence, I am but a humble and ignorant fool. And I do not wish to be anything more. Part of me feels that it is pretentious and even pathetic that I, as a clueless non-indigenous traveler, have authored a book on this sacred topic, which is the holy lifeblood of a dying culture. I am, however, a fool who has done an incredible amount of research on this plant medicine in the fields of indigenous culture, shamanism, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and personal experience from myself and others. This journey has been extraordinary, revelatory, and humbling, and I am proud now to say that I am the author of Grandmother Ayahuasca: Plant Medicine and the Psychedelic Brain.

I would like to refer to this article as an adventure on a ship, and you, the reader, are a valued crew member. Now, if you wish to join this adventure, we will explore some of the most noteworthy chapters of the book. First stop on the journey will be a chapter on the ethnobotany, then we will cross the seas to the island of neuroscience, followed by a chapter on personal experiences and relevant philosophical theories on these phenomenological adventures through the psychedelic mindscape, then on to a chapter on ayahuasca and its relation to shamanism, and finally we will conclude the journey with a chapter relating all this to our modern civilization.

As phrased in the plan above, the first stop on our adventure will be a general introduction to the vine. Here the reader is invited in to the history of the medicine and the mystery surrounding its use. Lore and native tales are presented from several tribes of how ayahuasca came to be and the recipe discovered. We will investigate how the shamans prepare for ceremony, abstractly discuss what one can expect, introduce the dark side of ayahuasca, and some theories of why these peculiar plants contain these strange and unique psychedelic molecules.

We now withdraw the anchor and set sail toward the second chapter, which is “The Psychedelic Brain.” In this part of the book, dear crew members, you will be introduced to several studies on psychedelic neuroscience and these interesting findings are then related to both scientific and philosophical theories about how the brain processes information. Among these theories, we will refer to what Aldous Huxley and Henri Bergson wrote about the brain as a “reducing valve” and consciousness as a fractal expression of the “Mind-at-Large,” which they argue it is subtly connected to.

The third adventure or chapter toward which we will now be sailing is a collection of chronicles from people who have experienced the powerful effects of ayahuasca medicine themselves. It is fittingly called “Ventures into the Unknown,” because that is all one can really say about the adventures that follow from drinking a cup of this foul-tasting forest smoothie. One of the greatest and most overlooked philosophers of our time, Alfred North Whitehead, said that every philosophical outlook or discussion about reality should always relate to and grow from felt experience, which is ultimately all we have to work with and all there is. Thus, what better way to explore the nature of ayahuasca than to present what many people have experienced on this medicine? These personal adventures are miraculous, incredible, horrible, confounding, and diverse, and that is all I will write about them for now. A following discussion of the philosophical implications that grow from the unbelievable nature of these experiences will make up the end of this chapter. We will investigate what this could mean about the nature of the soul or spirit with the help of venerated philosophers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Heraclitus, Hegel, and Henry Corbin.

The next stop on our adventure is perhaps the most relevant: the investigation of ayahuasca’s relation to shamanism and indigenous use. We will investigate what shamanism is and how ayahuasca relates to this intriguing branch of ecstatic practice of healing, learning, and transformation. We will also look deeper into the Amazonian Shipibo culture and their use of oni, or “wisdom,” which is their name for the ayahuasca tea. The rigorous diets, apprenticeship, sorcerers, and icaros (plant songs) are some of the topics which are explored in further detail.

The final stop on this journey is the chapter “Child of Gaia.” This chapter lies close to my heart. Within it I try to frame the dilemma of modern civilization and how it relates to the native worlds of plants and magic. I explain how I think ayahuasca and similar sacred plants are not merely a quick fix to our problems or needs, but can, if used and introduced correctly and respectfully, help medicate the global disease we are suffering from in modern civilization. This disease, I think, is ultimately the result of a lack of feeling. We are no longer connected to this living breathing spirit of nature who gave birth to us; the sacred Gaian umbilical cord that has been held sacred for thousands of years by premodern tribes has now been severed. Mother Earth has become nothing but a distant metaphor to us, and this disconnection is causing an international forest fire of deluded ontologies, meaninglessness, depression, and ecological disaster.

These special plants, I think, are pipelines into the sacred planetary mind of whom we are children. It has now reached a point where we define ourselves as something opposed to nature. Due to lack of ceremony and minimal exposure to the living kingdom of the forest, modern civilization has become sick. We have lost something very precious and are now paying a dear price. I think Carl Jung phrases it very well: “Modern man does not understand how much his ‘rationalism’ has put him at the mercy of the psychic ‘underworld.’ He has freed himself from ‘superstition,’ but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has been disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation.”

We are now well wandered in the desert of abstraction and rationalism, but this is not where our fate as children of the planet lies. This is not to condemn the enterprise of modernity. It has been a great adventure, but it is time we realize that it is a dead end and return to live as children of the planet, as children of feeling, as children of nature, and these sacred plants are the lanterns that can help us back if we let them guide us, as they have done for thousands of years.