Ayahuasca church spreads into UK
Steve Boggan writes about the Church of Santo Daime's spread into the UK. The church uses a powerful hallucinogen called ayahuasca as a sacrament.
LinkThe Church of Santo Daime (“holy give me” in Portuguese) was born in the 1930s out of the experiences of a Brazilian rubber-tapper named Raimundo Irineu Serra, or Mestre (Master) Irineu, as followers call him. He was born in 1892 to African parents in Maranhão in the northeast of Brazil and travelled to Acre in the northwest in 1912 to find work during a boom time for the rubber industry. In 1930 he was given his first taste of ayahuasca by indigenous shamans - medicine men - and spent eight solitary days and nights in the rainforest, experiencing a series of visions and receiving instructions from the Virgin Mary, whom he called the Forest Queen, that formed the basis of a new religion.
It was predominantly Christian with an emphasis on nature - on the spirits of the rainforest - and it espoused spiritual growth through the drinking of ayahuasca during carefully defined rituals. In subsequent years Mestre Irineu shared his teachings, experiences and ayahuasca with growing numbers of fellow rubber extractors before building his own church, Alto Santo, on the outskirts of Rio Branco in Acre.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Rise of ayahuasca ceremonies in USA
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This is great, well in a sense. I mean people really do experience amazing healing physically, emotionally and spiritually from experiencing ayahuasca but I feel it is a bit of crutch. The experience fades and some things are learned but I feel one can attain that level of consciousness through deep focused meditation. And then the experience is sustained until one finally ascends in to the higher dimensions if one so chooses.
From the article: "So, is this a Church we should be welcoming or is it just an excuse for people to take drugs? Is Santo Daime a serious religion and is ayahuasca really so important to its adherents?"
1. No.
2. An excuse to take drugs.
3. No
4. No
Charlie Brown: How can you be so sure?
Lucy: I am always certain about things that are a matter of opinion.
1 Timothy 4:1 The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
The curse of living a long time is missing out on the fun as you realize it's mostly unnecessary.
Sounds like he was already a brainwashed Catholic before taking the stuff? I've done drugs too... and it's always amazing what your mind comes up with when you're intoxicated. The next day it all returns to normal. But, at the time it seems like the most important revelation in the world. The mysteries of life are suddenly revealed. The only problem is: you can't remember what it all meant the next day.
You must wear the robes of the church of the psychadelic monks, if you are to find the New Sound, hidden out somewhere, in the desert.
Do this, and Roger Daultry will do the hoovering.
I know people in the church, in the Bay Area.
People enjoy experiences like this because it lets them tap into something completely foreign yet still completely familiar. Although you might not remember the secrets of the universe the next day, you remain in touch with the emotions you had during your trip. Kind of like having a really nice dream the night before can put you in a better mood without anything "actually" happening in reality.
For my money, what people want to do to their own minds and bodies is not really anyone else's business anyhow.
Is it just me or does he look a powerful heap like Jed Clampett?
yep,yep, he done do.
please
no Virgin Mary's
swing freely from the vine
if you like
you will return to earth
Interesting, yet uninformed comments. First - Ayahuasca is an enthogen not hallucinogen. Look up the difference.
Second - This chemical compound can not possibly be used as a street drug. You don't get high even though it can be way more euphoric than sex.
Third - It is comparable to, but maybe not as strong as a American Indian peyote ceremony. The "vision quest" achieved can lead to long term understanding or clarity (even if you never do Ayahuasca again.) I have also seen people go completely off street drugs after just one Ayahuasca "trip". Not because of a chemical change, but because any drug, even heroin, does not compare to the experience of a controlled Ayahuasca experience. Plus you remember with fine details most of the experience and understanding gained.
Finally - making fun of how someone looks as a basis to criticize a religious experience is pretty juvenile. How many people made fun of Jesus' dress, Muhammad's (or his followers) beards, Buddha's fat stomach, the Dali Lama's face. Pretty short sighted bigoted response. Good luck with that.
hey! who's making fun? An evil mind finds evil.
This guy looks like Jed. So? Who said that was bad?
I'd sure as hell trust Jed over any TV preaching son of a bitch. I think you better talk to the forest again.
The CBC did a nice 2-part show on Ideas a few weeks ago. "In Search of the Divine Vegetal" was the title. It's not on iTunes anymore, but worth a listen.
Basically, for enlightenment, I'm good, thanks. Same goes for any mind-altering drugs, too.
Here's the thing about drugs and the "understanding" they provide (and this comes from someone who was once known to trumpet them): It's all chemical bullshit. All of it. All of it. Not just the drug-based epiphanies, but the drugless kind, too.
There is no forest mother or whatever. It was a hallucination. You are not connected to everyone and everything else. Your brain was fucked up and you lost connection to the part that defines spatial boundaries for awhile. You don't love everyone. You just had a whole bunch of seratonin floating around in your brain.
I'm not saying there's something wrong with experiencing altered states. I actually do think they can be interesting and instructive. But there is something wrong thinking they are anything more than your brain being poisoned and ceasing to function properly for awhile. That's the lesson of drugs: You are meat and you can be changed by changing the meat. There is no truth. You do not exist. You're just a car crash away from never having existed, in fact.
This is a very freeing worldview, actually. It's enough to say the garden is lovely.
#10, SpringIsNow:
It's an oversimplification to split 'hallucinogen' and 'entheogen' so completely- most drugs refered to as 'entheogens' today have been described as 'hallucinogens' in the past.
Ayahuasca is not a 'chemical compound'- it's a mixture of compounds, usually containing dimethyltryptamine and a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which allows the DMT to be active orally.
DMT has certainly been used a street drug.
No, Beanolini, you don't get it. It's so much more than a mixture of compounds, man! It's like... A door. To another wooooorrrrlllld, man!
(Who invented Captain Bringdown anyway?)
I'm with William S. Burroughs on this one: it's all a mind control plot.
DMT: the spirit molecule by Rick Strassman, M.D.
authoritative, comprehensive literature on the tryptamine.
For those of you who enjoy reading about natural tripping, the book The Cosmic Serpent, DNA and the origins of knowledge by Jeremy Narby is very interesting. I don't recall that he called the Amazonian cocktail he use as Ayahuasca, but it did allow him to have "great" insights. Not the best science in the world, but still an interesting story.
True "religion" has always been about finding reality and turning away from illusion.
The world is an illusion. Drug experiences are illusions within illusion. (Althought they might be "fun.") Most people's lives are illusions within illusion.
Drug experiences can NEVER get you God or enlightment or wisdom. Just more and more bondage.
(This point was made in the '60s by Meher Baba, Richard Alpert aka Baba Ram Das, and Allen Cohen, among others.)
@12, For real though - do you not see the arbitrary distinction between hallucination and not? Do you really think you or anyone else can tell what's a hallucination and what isn't?
All types of shit that we take for granted on a day-to-day basis is fairly hallucinatory. "cyberspace", biology, language... we relate to all these things through a highly imaginitive process that would be called hallucinatory if it wasn't so completely ordinary and taken for granted.
Hallucination is an inherent part of the human thought process, and whether or not it has any impact on physical reality, the belief that they do has a very real effect on people and societies. That belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as people's real world is transformed as a result of hallucinations. This is true for both the mystical hallucinations of tribal culture and the "sciency" hallucinations of modern culture.
It matters not if something is part of the concensus reality or is purly subjective. If the experience is interpreted to be "real" then that's all that matters. Humans are masters of the "real."
Kind of misleading headline, like saying secret church of pot thriving in southern Cal.
@ #12 :
Ok... so, what do you suggest then?
I mean, your post has a "you are all wrong" tone... so, if we are all wrong, what's right then?
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
BinaryLoop @4, "brainwashed Catholic" is not all one word. Many people just use the second half of the formulation, and find it works just fine.
Doug117 @18:
No kidding? You mean the Divine is present everywhere and in everything, except for drugs?How do you explain that?
And while you're at it, how can you have an illusion within an illusion? An illusion is a divergence from reality. A further illusion is still a divergence from reality, so it comes to the same thing, only more colorful and with less plot consistency.
But when you say something is an illusion within an illusion, do you mean it diverges from what is already a divergence from reality? In that case, is it not possible that the direction of its divergence is in the direction of reality?
Alternately, if by "an illusion within an illusion" you mean an illusion that diverges even more from reality than its parent illusion does, should it not be possible, by observing the nature and direction of their differences, to infer the nature of reality by working backward along that line?
All experiences are equally real. It's just that some of them lack manifestation outside your head.
Camilo, what Kyle Armbruster is doing is staking out the rationalist/materialist position. You can look it up on Wikipedia.
I found this quote hillarious: "Drug experiences can NEVER get you God or enlightment or wisdom. Just more and more bondage."
This is no different than saying "experiences can NEVER get you to God or enlightenment or wisdom". Really? Experience is what drives us toward whatever end we achieve. A drug experience that gives you first-hand empirical knowledge of how your own consciousness works seems incredibly valid to me, especially if it demonstrates how much of this life is illusion (including organized religion). Bondage is ultimately something we all create for ourselves, and there is no wrong way of realizing this simple truth.
http://www.xenu.net/
has information on a related "religious drug experience"
Illusion within illusion "explained"...
The universe is just so much smoke (and mirrors). Seems solid and orderly and all, but in fact it is as insubstantial as a dream.
So all of us are experiencing a dream. Within the dream, many of us think like "Hindus good, Muslims bad" or Muslims good, Hindus bad" or recently "Tibet good, China bad" or "China good, Tibet bad".
But there are no such values! Tibet is no more or less good than China. Even the terms "good" and "bad" are wacked.
Thus, there are these delusions (invalid value judgments) in addition to the smoke and mirrors that is the physical universe.
Double-decker illusion, if you will.
Ref #24
A person decides to walk from San Francisco to New York.
However, setting out from S.F., the person walks west, only to encounter the Pacific. Decent enough ^experience^ but, unless the person takes another approach (such as turning around or taking an airplane) walking west will NEVER get to New York.
So it is with drugs: drug use is "walking west" where God/enlightment/etc is in the east.
The problem for humans is that drug use "seems like you're walking east" when you're actually "going west."
Another problem is that humans, on their own, cannot easily discover that this is so. We need instructions from one who is enlightened. That could be your guru or Buddha or whoever.
(What I'm saying here is nothing new. It has been known for ages.)
@27, I'm waiting for it...you've got a week-long retreat to sell me, right?
What you're saying is indeed nothing new, it's been imposed upon young, open-minded people by old, crusty religious and social establishments for ages.
Long-lasting religious traditions are built on the idea that only they know the answers to the "great mysteries", and doing anything but following their instructions is a waste of time. But just being long-lasting doesn't make them right.
Doug117 @27:
I understand where you're coming from, but evidence is on my side I think. You claim the use of drugs to gain perspective has been "known for ages" to be in error, yet:
a) It was "known for ages" that the earth was flat, and that we were at the center of the universe. Longevity of a belief system is no guarantee of correctness.
b) There is a surprising amount of evidence (see soma and the possibility that Jesus may have partaken after learning of it during his travels) that many modern religions had their origins as drug cults. Certainly iconography and symbolism which I hadn't found particularly meaningful gave me new insights during my personal explorations, and I personally do not believe this is coincidence.
Relying on someone as your guru or "enlightened" master strikes me as every bit as dangerous as relying on a drug experience alone as the basis for a coherent world view. Open-mindedness and inclusiveness seems to me to be a positive and enlightened approach to life; shunning an experience because someone else said so (even someone you respect) seems quite negative to me. I entertain the possibility that I may be wrong, while it sounds like you are quite sure you are correct (another warning sign I think).
My personal experience made me a better and happier person, in that I more fully appreciate all that is around me and celebrate the beauty of this life, even while for the first time deeply understanding that the separateness of an "I" is yet another illusion. I believe I could have achieved this insight through any number of means, but eating a cactus happened to be my path, and I know (with a grain of doubt :-) it was the right one for me.
What, were you unaware that the US government had acquired the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, and thereby the power to bind and loose? What else could explain traditionalist Catholics like Antonin Scalia and Dinesh d'Souza paying more heed to GW Bush than to their own pope?
As to how this happened, well, I can only guess, but I figure Mario Scaramella passed the Keys along to the CIA with the yellowcake papers, though he may have held onto them long enough to transubstantiate sushi into polonium-210 during a visit to London in 2006.
The Mitrokhin Commission has linked Scaramella to Mehmet Ali Agca; clearly the 1981 assassination attempt on JP2 was just a distraction.
What else could explain traditionalist Catholics like Antonin Scalia and Dinesh d'Souza paying more heed to GW Bush than to their own pope?
I just saw a comment somewhere accusing Bush of being a closet Catholic, as evidenced by his social policies and falling all over himself to sniff the Holy Father's taint on his current trip to the US. It's interesting in light of the fact that Bush's blow-job buddy, Tony Blair, was literally a closet Catholic. He waited to convert until leaving office because it could have caused a constitutional crisis in the UK. And we were worried about the Scientologists.
Gigamugged @ # 29:
I believe I could have achieved this insight through any number of means, but eating a cactus happened to be my path, and I know (with a grain of doubt :-) it was the right one for me.
heh, mine was eating a couple of mushrooms in the jungle of Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. :)
Also,
Relying on someone as your guru or "enlightened" master strikes me as every bit as dangerous as relying on a drug experience alone as the basis for a coherent world view. Open-mindedness and inclusiveness seems to me to be a positive and enlightened approach to life; shunning an experience because someone else said so (even someone you respect) seems quite negative to me.
I'll second that. I like to question everything, and I like to think that no one can live and experience for you, you have to live it yourself. Right or wrong, you'll never know unless you try it.
Cheers.
to each one's own... that might mean guru, or dope, or math, or myth or none...
peak experiences can serve as "proof of concept"...