Impressions from participating in Ayahuasca ceremonies by a participant of the Peruvian expedition «Magic of the Amazon Jungle,» held in 2007
Chapter 1. MIND.
He appeared before me completely unexpectedly. Of course, I knew who he was—this stocky, short, slightly balding man, whose murky, slightly slanted eyes radiated boundless despair. He left a strange impression. His entire figure exuded solidity and groundedness. Yet his lips trembled touchingly, and he nervously glanced around. I stared at him in silent amazement. In forty years of my life, I never questioned what he might look like, nor did I even imagine that he could exist as something separate from me. He filled my inner space so completely that I was sincerely convinced he was me. But it turned out he was a man—one who, by the way, was far from my type.
My MIND. It already feels natural to observe him. He, too, is intently studying me. I wonder how he pictured me? And who am I, anyway? Who is watching him? The boundless despair in his eyes gives way to disapproval. A vague memory stirs within me that this isn’t the first time.
Of course, he’s displeased. «You’re foolish. I arranged everything so perfectly. I controlled everything and everyone. You were safe. I was always on guard. I saw, heard, and prevented things. I built elaborate defenses to ensure you wouldn’t feel lonely, unloved, or unwanted. I built fortresses against your fears. I took care of you. You ruined everything. Think again.»
The usual reaction—I feel a bit ashamed. He genuinely tried. But I wasn’t enjoying life that way! I couldn’t feel anything! What do pleasures have to do with it? I knew what was good for you. And what was safe. But I’m not free! I don’t even know what I want. I can’t even want anything. It’s all nonsense, he says bitterly and wearily. And I understand that it will be very difficult to come to terms with him.
He leaves, and his back radiates contempt.
In one of the ceremonies, while examining my fears, the man kept getting in the way. He constantly pushed to the forefront, commenting on every image, and somehow blurred some of the visions so that I couldn’t see anything clearly. I was frustrated, sensing that much of the energy I needed for inner work was being drained by resisting his influence.
Help appeared unexpectedly. The man turned out to have another form. I saw him as a reinforced concrete structure with numerous crossbars, firmly anchored in the ground and towering high above. It was like a prison within which I was trapped. When my requests and pleas for him to be quiet and stop interfering had no effect, I began shaking and rocking this structure. And, oh, joy! With each attempt, it swayed more and more, frightening the man. He ran away and sat on a small bench that I could barely see out of the corner of my eye, somewhere on the periphery of my attention. There, he grumbled, snorted, and sighed in dissatisfaction. For me, these were rare moments when I could perceive with my Heart directly. And it was amazing!
Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to bring back from there how to interact with this man, or I simply forgot, just like I forgot much of what I understood THERE. The only thing I learned is that my pleas to be left alone, my struggles with him, and my irritation at his actions make him stronger. Fighting is especially useless. Any struggle is unproductive and pointless. But since I didn’t know how to interact with him, I kept stupidly shaking him from time to time.
Not long ago, I had a dream. I boarded the wrong bus, heading in the opposite direction, and now I’m standing on the roadside, trying to hitch a ride. A man stops and beckons me with a wave. I get into the car and realize that the driver is my familiar man. We set off, and he falls asleep. Panic grips me as the car swerves wildly at high speed, leaving me with just enough time to close my eyes. At the last moment, I grab the wheel, and, miraculously, the car starts responding to my control. The man wakes up and, with all his baggage (he has lots of bags and old clothes), moves to the back seat. I confidently drive, and then… I wake up.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to find common ground with this man. We’re still in endless conflict. I already know all his tactics and point them out to him, which irritates him. He wants to be in charge. He’s so used to it. But I want us to become friends. I want him to acknowledge my existence, but for that, I probably need to show him my true value. And my ability to be an adult. Besides, now I’m not afraid of anything. After all, I’ve already died. But more on that next time…
Chapter 2. Death.
Now I understand why I always avoided any thoughts or conversations on this topic. Perhaps the fear of death is one of humanity’s strongest fears. In my case, the fear of death was securely packed away and deeply hidden for my own safety by the now familiar Gentleman. Later, I saw how it all happened.
Unfortunately, much of the information I received from Ayahuasca can be characterized by the term «inexpressible.» The inability to explain it lies in the fact that in the state of heightened awareness, there is no Thinking as such. Instead, there is a profound Knowledge of the VERY ESSENCE of objects, phenomena, people, and the World as a whole. Before my personal experience, I had read a lot about this state but never fully grasped what was being described. Being aware means somehow grasping the entire depth, touching it with the Heart, and receiving answers to all your questions. And this Heartfelt Vision feels so natural to you at that moment.
It hit me suddenly—»inhumanly bad.» Any physical pain or mental torment of our Mind are mere toys compared to this «bad.» An endless, animalistic Fear, beyond space and time, that cannot be controlled, overcome, or silenced. It’s just this endless «bad» everywhere. And alongside it is the sober Knowledge of the source of this «bad.» You’re willing to give anything just to make it stop. It’s the agony of a Soul that cannot detach from the Body. I WAS DYING.
This painful, sluggish, and infinitely stretched-out moment of separating Mind, Body, and Soul. My Mind wasn’t ready to die. It didn’t believe in any immortal Soul. It refused to accept that the Mind and Body were not the real me. That I am something else, elusive to the Mind. I am what is experiencing this «inhumanly bad» and wants to break free and fly away. But the Mind refuses to accept this idea, and the suffering drags on for eternity. The Soul, endowed with the Knowledge of its true Essence, pleads with the Mind to relent, but the Mind clings to the Body with such ferocity that it seems there is no escape. At some point, I see that many friends have gathered around me. Pancho, the shaman, sings Icaros, and I feel waves of Love and Support spreading around me. He «encourages» me to move forward. He «says» that I’m strong and can handle it, that I shouldn’t back down, and that I need to accept myself and the World as they truly are, without illusions and delusions. Sitting next to him is Maki, observing me closely, and I feel his Love, his support. He looks at me as if I’m a child who has grasped something about the world but is still unable to accept it. I see Sveta and Kostya; they’re singing for me too. I realize how much MY WORLD LOVES ME by sending these people into my life.
Here I also gained the understanding that if you lack the courage and readiness to Die, you will never have the bravery and courage to Live. But I had read about this before! The samurai are always prepared to die. Don Juan had death as his advisor, standing by his left shoulder. Is it really necessary to have personal experience for every piece of Knowledge and to pay such a price for understanding? Does the profound and sacred meaning of Death reveal itself only in exchange for suffering? And only by passing through one’s own Death can one begin to live authentically? Or is this just for the down-to-earth types like me?
What happened next? Next came «a thousand times worse than inhumanly bad.» Each of us creates our own Hell, and everything that opened up to me there was created by me. I went through what Christianity calls Trials, but instead of answering to others, you answer to yourself. I was retching into a bucket, and at the bottom of the bucket, I saw an entire Universe inviting me to expel everything out. All secrets become exposed, and you are accountable for everything. I gained the Knowledge of responsibility to the World, to myself, to people. The next morning, I realized I no longer needed to smoke, drink alcohol, or deceive. I forgave everyone, perhaps even myself. I understood that each of us has a purpose in life, and we must strive to fulfill it. How foolish Jealousy, Envy, Anger, and Pride seemed to me! Heaven and Hell are human creations, and humans create them through their lives. My first feeling from this awareness was despair. How am I going to live with this? Here, the MIND has created so much mess that I suffer endlessly. There, I suffered a thousandfold, so is there no light at the end? Any violation of the Universe’s laws, no matter how small or unnoticed, echoes THERE with unimaginable force. Like the Butterfly Effect. The only thing that can somehow change what was created is Sincere Repentance. I deeply regret that I was so scared that much of the Marvelous passed me by. Too much fear lived within me, but more on that next time…
Chapter 3. Fear.
I’ve always known that I fear many things. And while fully aware of many of my fears, I diligently ignored them. After two years of studying psychology and psychoanalysis, helping my child overcome their fears, my MIND (to be more precise) never allowed myself the luxury of admiring my own collection. Everything was so securely packed away that the bits I discovered during my sessions seemed like significant and weighty exhibits.
During one of the early ceremonies, I was vomiting out fear. This wasn’t any specific fear; it had no name, time, or other identifiers. It filled all the space both inside and outside me. The fear was deep in my gut, and Pancho sang, summoning it out. He did so relentlessly and persistently. When he succeeded, I felt like I was being turned inside out, as if the fear was resisting so much, unwilling to leave my body, that I feared I might burst. Afterward, there was a brief relief, but only for a short while. A new wave of fear would rise again, Pancho would sing, and the process repeated. This went on for several hours. When it became unbearable to stay in the shaman’s house, I would venture out into the surrounding fields. I moved at tremendous speed, always seeming to circle back. Occasionally, another wave of fear would hit, accompanied by the unbearable unrest of my Mind. It screamed so hysterically that I couldn’t focus on anything important. A couple of times, Pancho caught me and brought me back to the house, singing his songs for me, but something more powerful kept pulling me outside, and after a while, I found myself back under the starry sky. I moved in complete darkness, somehow finding the light from my flashlight more of a hindrance. This restless movement only ceased when I suddenly realized that this mirrored my life. I’m always rushing somewhere without knowing where, while a constant Noise lives its own life in my head. The source of that noise—the war of the Mind. The Mind is at war with everyone and everything, including itself. So much energy is wasted on this; it’s so exhausting. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed by fatigue and understood it was time to return to Pancho’s house. On the way back, I listened to the sobs and laments of my familiar man and admired the Sky. The stars danced a strange dance for me, whose meaning was clear and close at that moment, and I felt Joy being born in my heart and… cried.
During another ceremony, I saw myself inside a large egg. The shell was very strong. Surrounding the egg was a disgusting liquid, resembling sewage. And around it, an incredibly beautiful Sky. You cannot see the Sky and enjoy the Sun because you’re blocked by this liquid and the shell—they are your Fear. You must pass through it—there is no other way. Curtain.
My last ceremony… I never imagined one could get so tired. For several hours, I was doing the Work. I saw a cabinet with many drawers, representing my life. I held a hose in my hands. I had to open and clean out each drawer anew. So, the clock was ticking.
As I mentioned earlier, my main problem was that my Mind kept interfering and commenting on everything happening. This balding, ever-present man’s presence created noise and distractions. His relentless activity meant that I had to rewatch extensive material repeatedly with great effort. Moreover, the image often lacked clarity due to the noise he created.
The first image. I am a tiny bundle, curled up in fear, lying in an iron crib in a small room. I am not alone. There is an angry woman in a white coat nearby, her head aching, and she’s very unhappy with my screaming. The twilight outside the window, the bright lamp in front of my eyes, and the premonition that something terrible is about to happen frighten me. A moment later, the woman leaves and locks the door behind her. I hear the key turning in the lock and realize I’m alone. The complex emotions of a small abandoned child are impossible to convey in words. The man begins screeching something incoherent, and I am thrown out of that room. I beg him to shut up and return to the room. Everything repeats. The overwhelming emotions crush me, tearing apart my tiny heart, but I remember what Sveta told me—no matter what happens, always go and look further. The woman returns, inserts the key, and the lock breaks. I see her from the outside. She panics and calls for another woman, and they both try to fix the broken lock. Time drags on endlessly. The little girl in the room no longer cries; she’s now convinced that no one needs her. And that it will be forever dark outside, with this bright lamp shining and no one coming. She can’t understand—why did she come into This World if no living soul cares about her? No one was waiting for her here… I feel such inhuman sorrow that I want to howl. Time has stopped. Somewhere above my ear, the man sobs helplessly.
For some reason, I remember that Irene told me yesterday that Here, you can use creativity and transform images with the help of LOVE. YOU’LL NEED THIS.
I go back and look at Irene. She’s feeling bad again today. Why didn’t I ask her more yesterday? Now, there’s no way to learn anything. I force myself to return to the room. I realize that it’s simple. Just LOVE. It fills all the space around. I see an Angel. He gently takes me in his arms and holds me close. Fear, pain, loneliness—all dissolve in LOVE. The Angel holds me until the frightened women in white coats finally open the troublesome lock.
I feel sweat trickling down my back, but I need to open the next drawer… I’m about two years old. My mother brought me to take a photo. There’s a picture of a scary dog’s face on the wall. The room is dark. Fear paralyzes me; I can’t move or scream. I want to leave this room, but I can’t. How did I end up here all alone, and where is my mom? It seems like the scary dog is coming closer. My second self turns the scary dog into my real dog, Monya. Small hands wrap around his neck, and relief sets in.
It’s dark again; I’m sitting on a couch. A boy approaches me and starts touching me. I feel his sticky, terrifying hands, and I scream. He jumps back. Yura Kostrov. I feel that familiar disgust and now understand where it came from. By the way, when I got home and asked my mom about this boy, she was very surprised and said he often came to our house, but I couldn’t remember him because I wasn’t even two years old. She found his photo, and all doubts vanished. I had indeed seen this boy.
There were many such images. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to «transform» them all.
And much of it, unfortunately, was immediately repressed. One large block I saw was my Fear of Death. This was no longer the fear I experienced when the Soul leaves the body but its other manifestations.
I saw my pregnant mother standing in the snow, frightened by someone’s death. I didn’t have the courage to go further and see whose death had scared her so much. The fear she felt was too intense. When I returned home and asked her about it, she couldn’t remember anything at first, but then she told me that while pregnant with me, she was walking by the river. It was late March, and indeed, there was snow. And she witnessed two children drowning in the river before her eyes.
Endless cemeteries drifted before my eyes—real and imaginary. My closest people were buried there. I looked and felt the same loneliness and sorrow that the little girl in the small iron crib had felt. I was afraid of being NEEDED BY NO ONE AGAIN. I realized that this fear was what made me cling to my husband so tightly—the fear of being a child without LOVE. And how that fear chained another person. And how the fear filled all the space. And there was no room for Love there… Despair overwhelmed me; I was suffocating in my sorrow, with my familiar man wailing beside me in agony. I was nauseous. It seemed like this torment would last forever and never end. I would have been happy if I could vomit and feel relief. But inside me, some heavy work was taking place, dissolving the Fear.
There’s an interesting point. You’d think that once you’ve worked through and understood certain things, you’d immediately feel better. But that’s not the case. Time is always needed, varying depending on the situation, to process and integrate the experience into your new worldview. Now, three months after my return, I’m still working internally; the process isn’t as intense but remains constant. Much new insight emerges from within, the man continues to bother me with his antics, but now I’ve started understanding where my wind blows and stopped confusing cause and effect. Fears still visit me. But now I have an undeniable advantage over my former self. I’ve learned, if only for a short time, to free myself from the intrusiveness of my Mind. I’ve found a path to my true self, even if still a bit unsteady. And I’ve learned to walk it. Not very confidently yet. But that’s for now.
Chapter 4. Love.
Very often, when memories of past life events resurface, my heart overflows with deep compassion for my former self. Unfortunately, I still separate myself into «before» and «after» Peru. But would I be my true self without all my history? Did not every day, every moment, every event and emotion, every disappointment bring me closer to that wondrous encounter—the encounter with myself?
How poor my language is! How few words and how crude and relative they all are to convey the delicate and piercing feeling of elation, the incredible joy, awe, and tenderness I experienced in that moment of touching the Mystery—the very Mystery that stirs the imagination of so many—which opened for a brief moment as Sacred Knowledge: WHAT MY TRUE NATURE IS.
I asked Ayahuasca for two things. To teach me Love, that true and unconditional Love, over which neither time nor circumstances nor the rain outside has power. And to teach me through this Love Forgiveness. Even then, I was beginning to understand the inseparable connection between these two things and, to my horror, my complete inability to feel them.
During one of the ceremonies, as usual, I wandered around the shaman’s house. This time, in a fit of tormenting loneliness. The incredibly beautiful meteor shower that night only intensified the gloom of the scenes passing before me. Moreover, I saw many semi-transparent entities around me that terrified me. It’s worth noting that these entities couldn’t tolerate my fear and quickly retreated whenever they got close to me. Maki later explained that the space is filled with Spirits and various entities that are, of course, invisible in the ordinary state but can be contacted during ceremonies. However, those entities friendly to us do not like fear. After one of the ceremonies, a girl named Olesya told me she saw a semi-transparent figure beside me, sitting in the same pose as me, and when I felt particularly bad, the figure leaned toward me. Perhaps it was trying to help?
In my aimless wandering, I stepped out onto an open area near the house. The scene that unfolded will remain in my memory forever, as the most beautiful dream, so surreal it seemed. A Man and a Woman stood under the starry sky, holding hands, blissfully watching the stellar show. Their figures glowed with a gentle silvery light. I was surprised to hear strange music. «The stars are singing,» I thought for some reason. The music grew louder, the dance of the stars more intricate, and my eyes widened. And then I felt, or knew, or remembered—it’s hard to find the right word to describe the fullness of this experience—what Love is like. And it was already filling all the space inside and outside of me. It felt like it was flowing continuously from where these Two stood. It was so close, dear, and SIMPLE. Just a Man and just a Woman. And simply Love. I reached out my hands to them. «Help me!» I walked toward them for what felt like an eternity, bathing in Love. The three of us held hands. I felt like a little girl who had searched for so long and finally found her parents. We stood and admired the sky, and suddenly I heard Laughter. It was so unexpected. It sounded so tender, so delicate and clear, so full of serenity, peace, and happiness that I wanted to listen to it forever. Imagine my amazement when I realized that the laughter was mine. It was a small, fluffy, green-eyed kitten laughing. It knew nothing of fears, torments, or suffering. It reveled in Love; it lived in it—it was its natural state—Love. I remembered how Anya once said we should try to feel the difference. I feel love. I am love. I AM LOVE. AND THIS IS MY TRUE NATURE.
So simple, so beautiful. My heart overflowed with gratitude to these two people. Perhaps it was one of those rare moments when my Mind didn’t interfere. I’m very grateful to him for that.
After that ceremony, I started recognizing Love everywhere. The blue sky. The murky waters of the Amazon. The jungle filled with flowers and sounds. Pancho singing his Icaros. Maki’s attentive and kind eyes. The laughter and radiant faces of my fellow travelers. The city of Iquitos. Phone calls from home… Everywhere and in everything, Love was present; its breath made the world alive. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? I watched and marveled at the world unfolding around me. For the first time, I was happy to be alive, to breathe, to feel. I delighted in colors, sounds, and the sensations of my own body. I was authentic.
How I feared losing it all! After my return, I checked daily to see if my treasure was still there. But it turned out that the treasure not only remains but also gains new qualities. It’s difficult to express in words. Love is building my new World. This marvelous space within me somehow influences many processes outside of me. Of course, I now know that this division is quite conditional, but more on that another time…
