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TALES OF FORESTS,
HERBS, SPIRITS
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OW: What is the ayahuasca experience?

LUTHER: Ayahuasca is a spiritual potion that the shaman prepares from the vines of the jungle. They call it "the vine of the dead" or "the drink of the dead." What happens is that each shaman prepares

"The Instigate of the Ayahuasca in the Brain"
© Pablo Cesar Amaringo

it a little differently and perhaps uses different vines and plants of the jungle. Not being an expert, I am only repeating what I have read and what I have heard. But anyway, they prepare these plants and I think that each shaman prepares a different type of potion.

It is a drink that is designed for spiritual awareness and for healing. When I took the drink, they told me that it is a very spiritual journey and they created it. I perceived that they asked me to bless it myself. So I asked the drink for some blessings and I asked it to give me the vision of oneness, as I want to understand oneness in the universe.

OW: Did you have any idea what was going to happen to you after you drank it?

LUTHER: No, I had no idea at all.


Tryptamines remove the physical and emotional blocks which keep us from seeing the spirit world around us. It is possible to see visions without tryptamines, but tryptamines can take anyone there immediately, while other techniques may take a lifetime to perfect.

http://www.herbweb.com/tryptamines/18.htm



OW: Was there a ceremony that surrounded your drinking ayahuasca?

LUTHER: No, there wasn't. Our guides went into the jungle beforehand to create a space for us and as they did this they would try to remove the vines and undergrowth and also the snakes. Then we took motorboats from the main houseboat to this remote spot in the jungle and we got there and we were attended by some of the Indians that were traveling with us on the boat as attendants and workers. The shamans, three of them, they created an altar or a basin and put various things on the mesa, crystal and tobacco and things like that. I perceived that it was set up as some kind of a sacrificial area.

OW: Why do you say "sacrificial"?

LUTHER: That's just the impression I had. They were just putting things there to appease the spirits that were going to join us.

OW: So the things like tobacco, were the offerings. The crystals interest me. What part did they play in the ayahuasca drinking?

LUTHER: I don't know. I brought some crystals along with me and I donated them to the shamans later on. They wholeheartedly accepted them. And I brought about a dozen crystals as gifts that I was going to give them. They mysteriously disappeared. I have no idea where they went. Nothing else disappeared from my room. Only those crystals which I bought to give as gifts. And I had other crystals in my room--just for me personally to have in my room.

OW: How long did the ayahuasca last?

LUTHER: About three to four hours. What happened is we went into the jungle and sat down and they came by to offer us the drink. The shamans indicated that there was a depository area which they pointed out. They jokingly called it the "vomitorium," and they said that within a half an hour to 45 minutes we would feel quite nauseous. My vision started within about 20 minutes, and then they came by again to see if anybody wanted more and I took another drink. And the vision just got really fantastic.


Western explorers and ethnologists have written about the ceremonial use of ayahuasca since the middle of the 19th century, and there are hundreds of scholarly and popular accounts on the subject, most of which are filled with exaggerations and inaccuracies. The first widely read description of yage practices was published in 1858 by Manuel Villavicencio, an Ecuadorian geographer. The experience made him feel he was "flying" to most marvelous places. Describing how natives responded, he reported that natives using this drink were able "to foresee and answer accurately in difficult cases, be it to reply opportunely to ambassadors from other tribes in a question of war; to decipher plans of the enemy through the medium of this magic drink and take proper steps for attack and defense; to ascertain, when a relative is sick, what sorcerer has put on the hex; to carry out a friendly visit to other tribes; to welcome foreign travelers or, at least to make sure of the love of their womenfolk."

http://www.cnw.com/~neuro/gaz/fresh/encycay.htm



OW: Would you mind sharing a bit about what you experienced then?

LUTHER: When I got into the ayahuasca, I had asked to understand the oneness. I looked up in the trees that were over this jungle garden that we were in and I saw animals up there and I saw images of people and plants in the trees. Then I looked down and then I saw things like that near the ground. As I experienced more of the ayahuasca drink I saw these same images which started to interconnect with one another. The animals and the human forms began to intertwine and it was just really fantastic. My vision was just like a huge mural that came to life and encompassed the entire umbrella of the trees on the top. As I looked in the circle where the people were sitting around the altar, they became Egyptian images. Then I looked where the shamans sat they became huge, with big capes on and spirits started to come down to us and hover around the mesa. Spirits came in from all different parts, a 360 degree circle, and sat and visited with us.

OW: What were the spirits like? Could you see them?

LUTHER: They were forms, spiritual forms. I also went back to when I was first born and then to the white light entering the embryo at the moment of conception. Some of the other people saw the very same spirits that I did. Later I saw them again in the Grand Canyon.


The curandera eats the mushroom in the framework of a ceremony that always takes place at night. It is their belief that if you eat them in the daylight you will go mad. The depths of the night are recognized as the time most conducive to visionary insights into the obscurities, the mysteries, the perplexities of existence.

http://www.herbweb.com/tryptamines/21.htm



OW: Were they all good visions? No scary stuff?

LUTHER: Well in the beginning of the presentation the shamans indicated that the drink comes from God and I perceived that it came from a very spiritual place and that it had some true goodness in it. The shamans then indicated that they were going to do some chanting and if one was to stay in touch with the chanting the visions would not be bad. If I was going into a bad place, and I connected with the chanting I would be safe from any scary visions. And that truly happened. I connected with the chanting and I immediately got back to where I intended to be.

The Interview Continues


Pablo Cesar Amaringo comments on his painting, ""MOVEMENT AND SPIRITUAL SOUND":

"When a shaman has taken the drink of the Ayahuasca AFTER ten or twenty minutes HE starts to hear a spiritual sound of the concentration that is coming down from the heaven and each time he is hearing clearer and perceptible, his spiritual perception which changes his exterior being to an interior existence. It is when the subconscious gets joined with the conscious and it is when the shaman is able to contact with the time and space and can take out to glimmer things that will happen to a person in the future, unforeseen things because the things seeing on the effect of this psychotropic holy plant with extrasensory effects give to the person the sensation of being in another and very strange life to the normal life on earth.

The maximum expression that I have of the spiritual kingdom, is what I found so strange and rare for us the terrestrials. Concerning to the movement I confirm according to that I have seen, it is because the central or nuclear part of the movement is the sound, because it can not be movement without sound, neither sound without movement. But we have to know that the spiritual movement is the ultrasound because there is not physical matter on it while the physical sound is the rhythmic of the whole universe. So that when an angelical being crashes his spiritual sound with the sound of the earth it becomes his body in luminous rays of chromatic colors.

When the shaman and the people who are going with him take the drink of ayahuasca put their auras in trance, that are the sounds of the corporal system of function, and these crash with spiritual ones. That comes from regions of the spiritual world, then the shaman and all of them who are concentrated on the effects of this drink, they see living images of iridescent colors in many shapes and chromes, observed through the visual sensations with an audition of a long reach that embraces the whole globe of the earth, and beyond, of any one is able to hear what people are speaking at any corner of the earth; let us say that all our senses get incited and our nerve cells start to spread themselves in a very, very vast way and then the person becomes wise with an extrasensory illimitable power. In this comes to engrave the sound of the icaros or magic songs which stimulates the emotions and contacts us with the ultrasound dimensions which apparently seem to be concealed, but it is not so, those extraterrestrials always are inviting us and of their influences some people, receive more than others.

In the life of these angelical beings, there are hierarchical levels, some of them with more power and other with less power; some of then with more Wisdom, Intelligence, Sanctity, Purity, Beautifulness, etc., etc. and others with less wisdom, intelligence and so on. These spiritual beings, their existence it is due to the sound of the "WORD;" because through out of the resonance of the "word" they become to exist, that is why they do not admit that a person is deficient to his word because for them the word is a symbol of their life, and that is also why when a person speaks with them must measure well his/her words; in other words, must think to speak and do not speak to think because for the words one is declared in fault or just. In this way, the founder of the Christianity that had prehuman existence gave emphasis to the power of the word, and said, the heavens and the earth will pass, but my words will not pass.

Another wise man said, the sword of the spirit is the word; with these words we are able to direct ourselves end direct to others towards a better world, because with the words we instruct or which educated us, we express the science, we express our friendship, our love, justice, happiness, and so forth. The science of the spirituality that is more beneficial to reach the equilibrium of the mind, emotional, physical and spiritual that is of much value for the rational beings in this life. I have seen it in the visions I had, concerning to the king Solomon from Israel, he always is in sessions or in what people call concealed science but, I call it extraterrestrial science or divine wisdom what I have seen from him (King Solomon) in his books, it was his wise proverbs, his poetry and his trustworthy advice - his spiritual talents - because some wise women showed me his books written on parchment and papyrus; there they made me to understand that with the words one can lead to a whole world because the words conform the spirit or potential energy of the people, and that is why Solomon was the wisest king of the world, because in his kingdomtime, all his nation was joyful, in peace and prosperity, and many kings joined him to hear his great wisdom his intelligence his proverbs and his wise sayings.

In those times the nation of Israel never was in fighting with the neighbor nations, because King Solomon with the wisdom he obtained from the holy spirits, through night revelations and deep meditations he was able to educate to his whole nation on the ways of peace, justice, love, truth, that as a result gave prosperity and happiness to all the governed ones. We see that the spiritual knowledge gets wide to the human one and then one has to look after and find it with all his acquisitions till we find one perfection in all good work, such as for one like for our neighbors." Pablo Amaringo Sh. Pucallpa, 29 de Enero de 1996.

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