Turn on, Tune in, Drop out

"Turn on, Tune in, drop out" Timothy Leary, an icon of 1960s counterculture and psychedelic self-exploration told in the Human Be-In gathering in San Francisco in 1967, the year I was born.

Timothy was a professor in Harvard and Richard Alphert, who later changed his name, as Ram Das was his colleague in the psychology department. And after 50 years since Timothy said this, I decided to Turn on, Tune in and drop out.  

I went to attend an Ayahuasca ceremony, where in a shamanic setting, I experienced Ayahuasca, Kampo, venomous secretion of a bright green tree frog native to the Amazon basin and Bufo, the milky white venom of a toad found in the Sonora desert. This the desert Carlos Castaneda mentioned in his books. 

Ayahuasca is a plant medicine used by Shamans of South America for healing and expanding consciousness. Shamans traditionally prepare the ayahuasca brew using two plants native to South America. The first, Psychotria viridis, is packed with the mind-altering compound dimetheyltryptamine (DMT). The second, the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi), contains substances that stop DMT from being broken down before it crosses the gut and reaches the brain.

After doing the reserch on Ayahusca ceremonies happening all the over the world, I decided to go to Spain, specifically Mallorca and do this. Ideally I would have loved to go to Peru and do this but the travel time and the ceremony dates did not work out for me.

Few kilometers away from Mallorca airport in Spain, in a farmhouse Antonio and Mariela welcomed the participants who came mostly from different parts of Europe. A large hall that had around 20 beds on the floor is where we were asked keep our luggage. A traditional pond, a toilet outside, an outdoor place where the fire ceremony happens and fruit and vegetable plants in the farm constituted the whole place.

A father and son due came from London and the son who is 28 told me that he had done this couple of times in Peru and he wanted his father also experience Ayahausca. Clarie, a young lady from France is a Yoga teacher and Jason from South Africa works in the Mallorca port. Most of them had some experience with Ayahausca before and felt it had benefitted them.

In the evening, the beginning of the three-day retreat, we all sat in the common hall on the beds kept of the floor and Antonia and Mariel came dressed in traditional South American shaman's attire and sat in chairs kept in the front of the hall.

The session started with introductions of what and us we could like to get out of the ceremony. The candle lit hall suddenly became alive with the group sharing their previous experiences and current expectations.

The ceremony staretd with Antonio inviting particiants to have Rapé (pronounced ha-PAY) is a preparation of powdered medicinal herbs – with a tobacco base. He has a pipe filled with Rape' that he inserted into my nostirl and blew powerfully into my nose. Painful would be an understatement. The powder went into my sinus, my eyes were burning and I felt the my head spinning.

Administering Rape' is supposed to help focus and sharpen the mind, detox both the body and mind and prepare the body and mind making them alert. Antonio adminstered Rape' to each one of us and we all sat sneezing,vomiting and some coughing.

Then invited us one by one to him to have the Ayahausca brew in a small tradtional cup. I was the first one to go and gulped the aweful tasting brew in one go and came back to my seat on the floor. They had given each one of us a plastic bag to vomit. Within ten mnutes I started vomiting and thought its good that I have not had anything to eat in the evening. Before Ayahausa ceremony its is advised that for a week you follow a vegetarian diet and avoid alcohol.

By that time everyone had their drink, the room was filled with sounds of vomiting and we then moved outside and sat around the fire. Three were three other people assisting Antonio and Mariela and Saskia, one of them,a tall thin lady probably in her late 20s started palying the guitar singing a song. While Antonio makes sure the fire is alive, Saskia sang the song Aguila Augila that says "there is a song of the bird from far and that bird is my grandfather". Some participants who are all sitting around the fire joined her and I felt my vomiting is over and slowely Ayahausaca is having an effect on me.

I felt the song getting into my cells, nerves and Mareila was now walking around with a drum beating that in rythem with the song. I looked at the fire and it looked different now and I closed my eyes, covered myself with a blanket that I had carried all the way from Delhi. I could feel my whole body vibrating, sensations moving along the body and I was transfered to multiple early incidents in my life that just occured like a flashback. I opened my eyes and looked at the stars in the sky, and the ego and physical existance ceased and experiencing a sublime collective existance and oneness.

I saw Marco, who had done this multiple times, slowley getting up and going to the pond and heard him jumping into the water at 1 AM. The songs continued and l lied down near the fire on the grass covering myself with the blanket. The songs continued till 4 AM and most participants are having intense mind opening and serene experiences.

Lindsay Lohan, the Hollywood actor had announced Three years ago that she had participated in an ayahuasca ceremony and it was helping with her addiction issues and keeping her sober. In her words “I saw my whole life in front of me, and I had to let go of past things.”

We all slept for few hours and at 8AM the next day we were given a large two litter water bottle full of water and asked to drink before we take the Kampo medicine. Kamb? is a resin secreted from the back of a large green jungle frog, given the name Phyllomedusa bicolor for classification, but more commonly known as the giant waxy monkey tree frog. It’s found in the southern Amazon, across the countries of Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.  

Kampo is applied as a paste in the skin by making small burns in the skin. Antonio came with a burning incense stick and created three burns on my arm and applied the paste. Within 10 minutes I felt my body heating up and the vomiting started. Almost for the nest 40 minutes I sat in the warm morning sun vomiting into the small plastic bucket. Antonio mentioned that Kampo help us to ground ourselves and build immunity.

After experiencing the Kampo medicine and when the vomiting stopped we had some breakfast and it was time to have some rest. Many of us got into the pond, some sat around discussed their previous night's Ayahausca experience and the learning and insights they had from that. After Lunch it was an integration session where participants shared their experiences with Antonio and Mariel and both of them made remarks and suggestions.

Some one talked about the neck pain and what would be the emotional reason for that and someone shared the challenges of attracting the right partner and the toxic relationship he keeps getting into.

The evening we started with Ayahausca ceremony around the fire again, and the same pattern repeated for the next two days.

The last day the added excitement was Bufo. This is a venom of the Bufo Alvarious, Sonora desert Toad from Mexico. This toad has the most powerful Entheogenic molecule known to man, 5-MeO-DMT or “The God Molecule” as many are now calling it. Unlike its cousin N,N DMT, used in the Ayahuasca brew 5-MeO-DMT appears only in a few plants and one animal and that is Bufo Alvarius and I was getting ready to experience in the morning around 11AM on a sunny October day in Mallorca.

I inhaled the smoke that had the Toad poison and within a minute my body fell back into the waiting hands of Antomio and Marelia. I was lying on my back on a yoga mat. Suddenly my only reality was a mass of radiant energy, the sun, the coulds and a deep sense of unity and joy in a abstract form. It was like experiencing the sense thatI am the absolute, the universe and all encomassing. I felt the bight sun but not in a way that I have experienced sun before. My ordinary identity was not there and there was this feeling of being of unity and Source.  Source.  I might have been in that state for 15 to 20 minutes and then slowely I came back, felt my indentity, looked at the sun and saw the usual sun that I see.

Now these experiences and experiemnts like my Ayahausca and Bufo trip could be questioned with a lens of modern science and psychology. We have a congnicentric bias and thats why we now say that nuroscience has found mediaction useful though thousands of years ago people knew meditation is useful.

As Werner Heisenberg, one of the pioneer in Quantum Mechanics said “We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

So can drinking a strong cup of Ayahuasca and a puff of Bufo take you to altered states of conciousness and expand your awareness and helps in healing? I do think so.