Tales Of Kush, a Peruvian Shaman I met in Cusco...

I
Two diaries in a week, I know, but this is a special occasion. I want to get the events of yesterday down while they are still fresh in my mind — I thus plead your indulgence.

I chanced upon a flyer a couple of nights ago offering "alternative tourism". Down near the bottom was the following.

Ayahuasca Therapy
"Ayahuasca is a sacred plant with psychotherapeutic effects, usually used by jungle tribes as personal healing therapy and as a way to venerate their deities. We offer night sessions in Cusco with a special priest of ancestral traditions..

From reading Alexander Shulgin's definitive work on tryptamines, "Tikhal", I knew a little about ayahuasca. Used for thousands of years by Amazonian medicine men (shamen), it is a mixture of two or more sacred plants, one of which contains a chemical called DMT, N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a powerful psychoactive substance. It occurs naturally throughout the plant kingdom and even in the human brain, where it is discovered in dreaming or psychotic subjects. It, and compounds related closely to it, is the active ingredient in other 'sacred medicines' such as the San Pedro and peyote cacti, not to mention its appearance on the back of certain 'poisonous' toads.

I signed up immediately. I was somewhat shafted on the price (US$70), but this would be a once in a lifetime chance, and I did not baulk.

I arrived at the tour agency at 7:20pm yesterday, and was introduced to Kush, the shaman. Native American, perhaps fifty years of age, with long, graying black hair and a kindly, almost childlike expression, he made small talk in good English whilst he led me to a taxi. The journey took us to a hill above the town, past Christo Blanco, the white Christ statue, and into the woods. We got out at the end of the road and walked for twenty minutes in silence towards the Temple of the Moon, an Incan royal tomb, to Kush's nearby house.

After showing me around, we entered an outbuilding, half of which was raised and covered with straw mats. On this sat mattresses and a low wooden table or altar, covered in a finely woven textile. Sat cross-legged opposite one another, lit a candle and a small pile of palo santo wood, a strong, heavy natural incense. He then arranged a series of feathers and musical instruments upon the table — two fearsome looking maracas, an acasya (a leather dagger filled with beads) and a chakcha, a string of wooden shells — before producing a half litre bottle containing a liquid the color and consistency of old battery acid, and a glass tumbler.

(He also arranged his own supplies for the night, though not on the altar - two packets of cigarettes, a pipe and loose tobacco, a small bottle of whiskey and a generous bag of coca leaves with accompanying lime).

After long prayer in a mixture of Quenya and Spanish (the gist of which appeared to be a request for safe passage, clear and meaningful visions, and peace from mischievous spirits) we sprinkled ourselves with alcohol as sacrifice, and we began. As he filled the tumbler with the brown liquid he advised me to meditate upon the visions I would like to receive, and to drink the ayahuasca in one gulp.

He did so with good reason. The taste was foul — fiercely alkaline, astonishingly bitter — like an electric shock to the mouth — and the aftertaste was little better, bringing pricks of tears to the corners of my eyes. We laughed about it and talked for around thirty minutes — about his education in the shamanic arts from his master in the jungle twenty five years previously, about his travels (he lived in Amsterdam for five years, and visited London many times) and about the uses of ayahuasca to heal many illnesses — until I gradually became aware of a profound discomfort of the stomach.

After being assured that this was perfectly normal (and not, as I expected, a result of the disgusting sryup I had eaten to get me through the day's fasting) I went outside and, permit my frankness, vomited forcefully.

Standing from my crouch, things were suddenly ever so slightly different. The stars shone with searing brightness, and the air tasted intoxicatingly sweet. I staggered back inside, slightly disengaged from events, and sat less clumsily than I expected at the table, the shaman grinning kindly. "You have cleansed yourself. Do you feel different?.

Seeing me nod, he picked up the larger of his maracas, and began to sing. His "icaros", or shamanic songs, were not songs as we know them, but rather a highly melodic, fantastic series of hums, grunts, whistles, undervoicings, groans, clicks, guttural coughs, with some regular singing thrown in. It was clear from his countenance and movement that the singing was not directed at me, but rather at whatever spirits he found in the room. Swooping from gentle lullaby to angry rebuke, swaying and shaking, sending his voice around the room, his song proved quite hypnotic, and I felt as if a great weight were pressing me back from the table. I lay on the mattress, fevered, disoriented, noticing slight distortion in my visual field. When the song finished, and he shooed all the evil spirits from the room, he asked me how I felt.

I replied that I didn't know whether I was hot or cold, hungry, thirsty or neither, breathless or tranquil, in comfort or pain, and that my mind was racing, but going nowhere, like an over revved engine with the clutch down. And then suddenly I knew. I was cold, freezing cold, as if my bones were made of ice, colder, like I was going to die. I scrambled around in a slight panic, putting on extra jumpers, gloves, socks, my hat, and even pulling a rug around my shoulders. Still freezing, still shaking. I tried to convince myself that it was just an effect of the drug, that it would pass, and that I should try and enjoy this new experience, unpleasant as it was. Seeing my discomfort, the shaman began another icaro, at which I consciously let out some tension. Instantly, my concerns disappeared — as did everything else in the room.

Behind my eyelids exploded a breathtaking kaleidoscope of geometry, infinite rotating hexagons, recursive triangles, towers of light, and beyond that, a brilliant starfield, through which I soared. I marveled at the lightshow for some minutes, before opening my eyes and watching the end of the song.

Now I was comfortable, warm, relaxed, and happy, and the rush had passed. I found myself quietly meditating upon my future, easily structuralizing abstract thought, able to visualize and weigh up possible paths upon my return to England, my intellect feeling free, powerful, crisp and unmuddled, devoid of cynicism. During a fourth icaro, Kush extinguished the candle, leaving us in complete darkness, barely interrupting my thoughts but further aiding my visualizations. This pleasant state continued for I estimate some twenty minutes, when I reached a few conclusions and excused myself for a break of air and a look at the stars, feeling back at or near baseline.

Returning, we discussed my trip, which had been overwhelmingly positive even with the initial discomforts. Kush offered a supplementary dose, which I eagerly accepted, the taste of which was miraculously even worse than before. This time I chose to meditate upon those close to me — and sure enough, forty minutes and another vomiting session later, I rode out the (gentler) cold spell and psychedelic rush to find myself thinking deeply and warmly of each of my friends and family in turn — so clearly that they could have been in the room with me. Following a final song and prayer, Kush indicated that I should get into my sleeping bag, and we settled down. For several hours I felt nothing like sleep, but instead daydreamed in comfort, mind still tack-sharp, perfectly serene, strongly aware, continuing and rounding off my internal monologue until falling into a beautiful night's sleep.

I woke wide at six am, refreshed, energetic, in excellent cheer and feeling no ill effects. We walked the thirty minutes back to town whereupon I went back to bed to read until Jon recovered from the effects of his altogether different night of intoxication in the meat market nightclubs of Cusco.

II
A Yage Letter22 October 2002: Cusco, Peru
PART 1: The YagePART 2: AyahuascaPART 3:
Personal Experience

The Yage
My first exposure to the word "yage" came from the book The Yage Letters, which is "an early epistolary novel by William S. Burroughs, whose 1951 account of himself as Junkie, published under the pseudonym William Lee, ended 'Yage may be the final fix'. In letter to Allen Ginsberg, an unknown young poet in New York, his journey to the Amazon jungle is recorded, detailing picaresque incidents of search for telepathic-hallucinogenic-mind-expanding drug Yage (Ayahuasca, or Banisteriopsis Caape) used by Amazon Indian doctors for finding lost objects, mostly bodies and souls. (Copied from the back of the said book.)"

Yes, I have this book, right here, right now--brought it all the way from New York. Searching for yage, peyote, etc. has been a major agenda for this trip. I've found them both.

Ayahuasca
(This is copied word for word, typos included, from Kush's leaflet, without permission. Geez, I wish I had a scanner.)
THE WORD AYAHUASCA: comes from the Quecha language and means "soul plant", "death plant" or "vision plant" known by many different names from the 72 cultures that ingest Ayahuasca in Peru, Columbia and Ecuador. This legendary hallucinogen is used by Shamans to cure illnesses and to communicate with the Spirits. Various Shamans of the Rain Forest simply refer to Ayahuasca as the "cure-all". To the indigenous people, it is known as a sacred medicine that can cure all illnesses. Without a doubt, it is the most celebrated hallucinogen of the Amazon.

ACCORDING TO THE INDIGENOUS FOLKLORE: Ayahuasca is the fountain of knowledge, the best way to reveal the mythological origins of life. The anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Donatoff once wrote that to consume this spiritual drink is to become the center of the cosmos. The origin of our existence where the individual sees tribal divinities, the creation of the universe and of mankind, Adam and Eve, the creation of animals and the establishment of social order.

THE BIG CLEANING: Ayahuasca has never been used casually or for recreational purposes in the traditional societies. The Shaman, which is the person who knows how to bring out a chemical induced state of trance, guides those who wish to embark on the "search for vision". The Shaman is without a doubt, the master of ceremonies, the key figure in drinking Ayahuasca. After sunset, the bitter drink is passed in a circle from person to person, and the Shaman begins to sing or chant about the visions that they will see. When they hear the song, the participants feel a certain tingling on the lips and a burning in their stomach. A nauseating energy ill overwhelm them, and many will begin to get sick with vomiting and diarrhea (but not necessarily everyone). This is a strong and unstoppable movement of the colon that penetrates all organs passing through the intestines like a liquid laxative of the soul, cleaning the entire body of all parasites, emotional blocks, and ancient feelings of resentment. This is why the natives of the Amazon refer to the "purge" when they speak of this drink. "One cannot help but be impressed by the notable improvement in their health attributed to the purging caused by the plant", wrote the psychologist Ralph Metzner, editor of "Ayahuasca". Metzner wrote an anecdotal report of the complete disappearance of certain types of cancer after one or two sessions using Ayahuasca. The rejuvenating impact of the "purge" helps to explain the exceptional health of those who use Ayahuasca, including even the oldest people.

TRAVEL IN TIME AND SPACE: After the inevitable purge, the senses sharpen and the initiate experiences are "magnetic liberation of the whole world". After that spectacular visions are coming like a turbulent pandemonium of images that change faster than you can think. While one is under the influence of Ayahuasca, people frequently have the sensation of being separated from their bodies and catapulted into a strange area of excursion. During this trip outside of reality, marvelous sights appear and enchanting landscapes that unexpectedly give way to unsettling encounters with wild jaguars, enormous iridescent snakes, and other predator beats that will try to attack the person. William Burroughs described a sensation of flying long distances when he drank Ayahuasca during a South American expedition in 1953. "The spiritual drink is a trip in time and space", he wrote in a letter to Allen Ginsberg. The blood and substance of various races: black, Polynesian, Mongolian people of the mountains, desert nomads, Indians, new races that have never been experienced before will pass through your body, incredible trips through the mountains, deserts, and jungles... A place where the past is forgotten and the emerging future combines in a vibration without sound." It is unknown, why the visions provoked by the Ayahuasca include animals from the jungles of the Amazon. Especially when people from other continents ingest the sour tonic. Long anecdotal stories about rivers and electric radiations that illuminate the night sky are classic elements of the experience with this liquid. An indigenous said: "Always when I drink Ayahuasca I have such wonderful visions that I have to cover my eyes with my hands, because I am afraid someone would steal them.

Personal Experience
"Only eat breakfast on the day of the ceremony. No lunch and dinner," Kush said to me when I expressed an interest in doing the journey. As soon as I arrive at Kush's shop at 8 p.m., we go out for a dinner. Kush's shaman friend, his wife, and Kush order dinner. Keith and I sit and talk. Keith is a journey man from New Mexico who has been taken under Kush's wing as an apprentice. After dinner, Kush, Keith and I take a cab uphill on dirt roads to Kush's ceremonial shack, where he burns incense, talks a bit, and lets the ceremony begin.

"You must ask ayahuasca the question to which you want an answer," Kush tells us. I have not thought about this, to be honest. What do I want to know? I know I am always looking for something yet the concept is too general. I think about this for a while. "What is my happiness?" No, too broad. "What shall I do after I am done traveling?" No, too specific. How can I concisely put into words what I really want to know... OK, I got it:
Show me how I can best co-exist with the world.

OK, ready. Kush pours a purplish brownish liquid from a plastic bottle into a cup, and hands it over to me. "Drink it in one shot. It is no honey." I chug this vile and sour liquid and hold it inside my stomach. Another cup goes to Keith. "It will take 40 minutes to one hour before you get the effect." Keith, being a talkative chap, goes on telling his stories while Kush chews on coca leaves non-stop, until, when Kush thinks we've waited long enough, he turns off the light. The room is only illuminated by one candle and a bowl of burning incense. I take off my watch, detach money belts from my waist, undo my pony tail--they all seem cumbersome to me.

Kush whistles to imitate the sound of wind while shaking a maracas that imitates the sound of rain. He chants in some tribal language. Soon, I see the candle light split into two, then into four. The smoke rising from the incense turns into a micro whirlwind storm, changing shapes: Buddha, Virgin Mary, a school of dragons penetrating the clouds, then finally translucent strands of silk sheets. I see auras around certain objects--halos of red, yellow and green around them. The candle flame takes its own life, stretching one long arm and bony fingers towards me, perfectly aligned to the vertical axis of my brain, and stretching the other arm yonder in exactly the opposite direction. The arm closer to me seems to suggest, "Come closer, come outside," while the other arm seems to point, "Over there!" Over where? When I look upward, I see a faint shade of green falling slowly towards me like a feather. What is that? As it comes closer, I observe that it extends to infinity in the plane parallel to the floor. When I know clearly what it is, I am frightened. It is a net, a green net like the one at a golf shooting range. Outside the net I see a hunchbacked woman walking with a stick, a wild dog looking for prey, and other dark objects coming and going that I cannot tell what they are. What am I to do now?

I am trapped and cannot move. Kush continues with the sound of wind and rain. This is the sound from Pucallpa where he apprenticed after leaving his hometown Huaraz. Pucallpa is where William Burroughs traveled to get his final fix from the Yage. Kush seems to know what I am going through. He transfers power through the sound, and gives me the energy. I grab the net over my head with my fingers and lift it up. There is only one thing in my mind: I want out of this net. With full concentration I manage to free myself. I feel relaxed now, like in a completely different world where nothing is tangible. I can tell that my mind is not confined inside of me but instead occupies every space inside of the room. I lie down and snuggle inside my sleeping bag.

For some reason I feel cold, even with my down jacket and sleeping bag zipped all the way up. I feel as though I am sitting in a freezer, harboring discomfort somewhere inside of my body. When I feel the sudden attack of an implosion, I grab a flashlight, stumble outside (very difficult to balance my weight on two feet), lean against a wall , crouch forward, and vomit, right through the long hair hanging down my face. I wipe my mouth and hair with my hands and collapse back inside of the sleeping bag.

Now I see nothing but fog in the darkness, like in a misty cemetery at night. My body seems to be floating, detached completely from the floor. Not before too long, I lose all consciousness and become part of the silent night.

In the morning, Keith asks me what I saw. I give a brief summary, which, he says, sounds like his very first experience with ayahuasca. I ask him what he saw. "Every colors and shapes are possible, as in walking through kaleidoscope," "distance doesn't exist," "pure unity," were what he experienced in his second try.

The three of us pack up and head downhill, past the Temple of the Moon and the Temple of the Monkeys and down into the valley that is the city of Cusco, when the town is still deeply in its sleep.
Now I have one thing to ponder about: Am I in or out of the net right now?

III
Greetings fellow psychonauts.... As I have written on this tribe many times before...I am on extended tour of Peru, Chile and Bolivia working with the Medicine(s) and various teachers. I arrived in Cuzco earlier this week after 6 weeks in Bolivia and an intensive with my primary teacher. I have been deeply touched by the opportunity to diet in the jungle and experience the Medicine in Her home. For many years, I was dependent on the Medicine being brought to the States and only experiencing it for short periods each year. With this trip, doors have opened on many levels, as the calling to dive into deeper training was loud and clear. The availability of the medicine and new teachers has been wide open. Last night, I had the longest ceremony and deepest teaching with the Medicine in my life. I met this particular man at his shop here in Cuzco, where he sells beautiful hand made pipes, jewelry, drums, masks, etc. I was a bit wary when I saw his flyer advertising ceremony, but after speaking with him for a bit and looking at the massive altar he had arranged in the center of his store...I could recognize he was no charlatan. We arranged a night that my friend and I would meet with him and head up to a Retreat space he rents next to the Temple of the Moon, about 20 minutes up above Cuzco. We began at about 10 pm with a fairly large dose of what I was told was just chacruna and yellow vine. For the first few hours, my experience was fairly mild but I was content to have the Medicine doing its work on me...and Kush’s singing was phenomenal. He brings through an Atlantean language that is beyond words or description. The moonlight coming through the window often cast shadows and light that created the effect of him sitting on an island of Light. I could see, hear and feel the essence of the Atlantean teachings throughout....recognizing later the connection between that civilization and the culture of the Incas. At one point, I reached out and connected with a friend in Seattle who is going through some difficulty...and almost immediately afterwards...purged what I felt was quite related to what she has been dealing with. I need to check with her today, but she was aware that I would be journeying last night and that I had intended to do some work together. About 3.5 hours in, things wound down and I was feeling like we were nearing completion....and then it really began. The Medicine came back much more strongly and the deep teachings-healing began. I am not sure how much to share here, as I typically offer too much of my experience rather than allowing it to steep inside. I will say that Kush directed us to journey deep with Pachamama and that was the portal through which we ventured. So many tears, as I was humbled again by the enormity of the Love, the abundance of the Mother. She took us deep and I went outside to purge once more....The land itself we were sitting on was hallowed ground. I could feel the presence of many elementals and Incas all around. They assisted greatly in helping me to release each time I went outside. And it only got better as the night-morning went on. I worked directly with Kush’s teacher, Manco Kali(sp?), the Patron of all Native peoples, and was brought into the Ways of the Inca. The teaching showered us for hours....as Kush sang in the language of Atlantis, one of the stars and various animal spirits. So very profound....My friend and I also had opportunity to bring out some of our own songs....It is always a gift to feel as if you are being played like an instrument. I also brought out my newly purchased, Arco de Duende, or Fairy’s Bow. An invention of Agustin Rivas and a gift from the Medicine...It is a wooden bow, about 4 feet long hollowed out in the center with four strings across the bridge...so it looks like a literal bow, as in bow and arrow. the flat end where the strings begin goes into your mouth, between your cheek and your back teeth, creating an overtone effect similar to a Jews harp. This was the first time playing in ceremony and I learned so very much about the power of this instrument.....It is a wonderful healing tool and it is quite beautiful. Here’s a link to get a picture and also here the sounds it produces. http://www.sacharuna.com/english/musicalbow.html.Around the time we were deeply receiving the teachings, I asked Kush what else was in the brew....He said solely Chachruna and the Vine, but my body was telling me there was another ingredient. This was way too intensive and the duration far too long...for solely the leaf and the vine. He then admitted (or realized), that there was also Datura in the brew.....which hit home...as most of my early experiences included Brugmansia. This was by far the best brew I ever imbibed....from Pucallpa and the Shipibo. Somewhere around 5 am we stopped playing music and began to drift into Dreaming. A few hours later we awoke to a spectacular morning and visited the Temple of the Sun and the ruins of Sacsayhuaman on the way back to Cuzco. Kush then took us to his home this morning and made us breakfast...over which we learned more about Manco kali...and Kush spoke into the rarity of His presence...and the significance of our visit. We are intending to do another ceremony after returning from Machu Picchu this weekend...hopefully having a few more friends join us....I was so moved by the experience and have fallen in love with Cuzco, it is going to be difficult to leave. I am already scheming about how I can extend my visit and continue working with Kush for a few more weeks. Anyway, I wanted to extend to those who may visit Cuzco, an invite to visit Kush in his shop which is just a few blocks from the central plaza...called simply the Shaman Shop. Btw, the city of Cuzco itself is incredibly beautiful and magickal. It feels like you are walking on an enormous Incan fortress. The Church in the Main plaza is astounding, as it is built on top of a sacred Incan Lake-Spring. The locals are quite supportive of the tourist community and it creates a wonderful blend of peoples and cultures. The ruins, the churches, the restaurants and the vistas are simply intoxicating. I intend to come back here in July just prior and possibly again after the conference in Iquitos. Anyone who wants to get on that train...let me know, I welcome co-conspirators in my travels.
posted by:

isaiah
Oregon

More McKenna

Space Time Continuum
Alien Dreamtime

With Terence McKenna

The following pages contain the words to the Space Time Continuum / Alien Dreamtime album. Recommended to discontinue further reading of these pages if you have not first listened to the album.You have been warned. Alien Dreamtime was a multi media event recorded live on February 26th/27th 1993 at the Transmission theater, San Francisco, Ca. The didgeridoo is played with the greatest respect for all the aboriginal people of Australia and the spirit of all first world people.

Archaic Revival
Allright... tonight, for your edification and amusement... three raves, two interregnums. Visions by Rose X. Didgeridoo, Stephen Kent. And sound by Space Time. Words and ideas by Terence McKenna. Rap one: The Archaic Revival.History is ending, because the dominator culture has led the human species into a blind alley. And as the inevitable catastrophe approaches, people look for metaphors and answers. Every time a culture gets into trouble, it casts itself back into the past looking for the last sane moment it ever knew. And the last sane moment we ever knew was on the plains of Africa, 15,000 years ago, rocked in cradle of the great horned mushroom goddess before history. Before standing armies, before slavery and property, before warfare and phonetic alphabets and monotheism. Before, before, before. And this is where the future is taking us. Because the secret faith of the 20th century is not modernism. The secret faith of the 20th century is nostalgia for the archaic, nostalgia for the Paleolithic, and that gives us body piercing, abstract expressionism, surrealism, jazz, rock and roll, and Catastrophe Theory. The 20th century mind is nostalgic for the paradise that once existed on the mushroom-dotted plains of Africa, where the plant-human symbiosis occurred that pulled us out of the animal body and into the tool-using, culture-making, imagination-exploring creature that we are.And why does this matter? It matters because it chose that the way out is back, and that the future is a forward escape into the past. This is what the psychedelic experience means. Its a doorway out of history and into the wiring under the board in eternity. And I tell you this because if the community understands what it is that holds it together, the community will be better able to streamline itself for flight into hyperspace. Because what we need is a new myth. What we need is a new true story that tells us where were going in the universe. And that true story is that the ego is a product of pathology and that when psilocybin is regularly part of the human experience, the ego is suppressed. And the suppression of the ego means the defeat of the dominators, the materialists, the product peddlers. Psychedelics return us to the inner worth of the self, to the importance of feeling immediate experience. And nobody can sell that to you and nobody can buy it from you, so the dominator culture is not interested in the felt presence of immediate experience. But that’s what holds the community together. And as we break out of the silly myths of science and the infantile obsessions of the marketplace, what we discover through the psychedelic experience is that in the body-- in the body-- there are Niagara of beauty, alien beauty, alien dimensions that are part of the self, the richest part of life.I think of going to the grave without having a psychedelic experience, like going to the grave without having sex. It means that you never figured out what it was all about. The mystery is in the body, and the way the body works itself into nature. What the archaic revival means is shamanism, ecstasy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people, and the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy, and monotony. And if you get them on the run, you have the dominators sweating, folks. Because that means that you’re getting it all reconnected, and get it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind. And the Gaian mind is what were calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet, and without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies, but with that experience, the compass of the self can be set. And that’s the idea, that were figuring out how to reset the compass of the self, through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, intelligence-- intelligence... this is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.I’m gonna take five here, and uh, well be back and chat some more.

Alien Love
Hello... so, that was like an introduction, ha ha! Now for some preaching to the choir on the subject of: How come it is that the further in you go, the bigger it gets? I remember the very, very first time I smoked DMT. It was sort of a benchmark, you might say. And I remember that this friend of mine that always got there first, visited me with this little glass pipe, and this stuff which looked like orange mothballs. And since I was a graduate of Dr. Hofmann's, I figured there were no surprises. So the only question I asked was how long does it last? And he said, About five minutes. So, I did it. And...There was uh, something like a flower. Like a chrysanthemum in orange and yellow that sort of spinning. Spinning. And then, it was like I was pushed from behind and I fell through the chrysanthemum into another place that didn’t seem like a state of mind. It seemed like another place. And what was going on in this place (aside from the tastefully soffited indirect lighting and the crawling hallucinations along the domed wall), what was happening was that there were a lot of beings in there, a lot of what I call self-transforming machine elves. Sort of like jeweled basketballs all dribbling their way toward me. And if they had faces they would’ve been grinning at me, but they didn’t have faces. And they assured me that they loved me, and they told me not to be amazed, not to give way to astonishment. And so I watched them, even though I wondered if maybe I hadn’t really done it this time! And what they were doing, was they were making objects come into existence by singing them into existence. Objects which looked like Faberge eggs from Mars, morphing themselves with Mandaean alphabetical structures. They looked like the concrescence of linguistic intentionality put through a kind of hyperdimensional transform into three-dimensional space. And these little machines offered themselves to me. And I realized when I looked at them, that if I could bring just one of these little trinkets back, nothing would ever be quite the same again.And I wondered where am I? And what is going on? And it occurred to me that these must be holographic viral projections from an autonomous continuum that was somehow intersecting my own. And then I thought, a more elegant explanation would be to take it at face value, and realize that I had broken into an ecology of souls, and that somehow I was getting a peek over the other side. Somehow, I was finding out that thing, that you cheerfully assume you cant find out... but it felt like I was finding out. And it felt... and then I cant remember what it felt like because the little self-transforming tikes interrupted me and said, Don’t think about it. Don’t think about who we are-- think about doing what were doing. Do it! Do it now. Do it!

Speaking in Tongues
And what they meant was: use your voice to make an object. And as I understood I felt a bubble kind of grow inside of me. And I watched these little elf tikes jumping in and out of my chest (they liked to do that to reassure you), and they said, Do it! And I felt language rise up in me that was unhooked from English and I began to speak like this:Eeeoo ded hwauopsy mectoph, mectagin dupwoxin, moi phoi wops eppepepekin gitto phepsy demego doi aga din a doich demoi aga donc heedey obectdee doohueana.(Or words to that effect). And I wondered then what it all meant, and why it felt so good (if it didn’t mean anything). And I thought about it a few years, actually, and I decided, you know, that meaning and language are two different things. And that what the alien voice in the psychedelic experience wants to reveal is the syntactical nature of reality. That the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of, you make of it, whatever you wish!Eh moi dea doi phegenheggo...And one of the things that I learned about DMT, was that, if you ever had it, even just once, then you can have a dream. And in this dream somebody will pull out a little glass pipe, and then it will happen. It will happen just like the real thing. Because there’s a button somewhere inside each and every one of us that gives you a look into the other side. And that’s the button that resets the compass that tells you where you want to sail. Good luck!

Timewave Zero
Hello, all right. Have you ever noticed how, um, there’s this quality to reality, which comes and goes and kind of, ebbs and flows. And nobody ever mentions it, or has a name for it. Except that some people call it a bad hair day or they say, Things are really weird recently. And I think we never notice it and we never talk about it because were embedded in a culture that expects us to believe that all times are the same, and that your bank account doesn’t fluctuate, except according to the vicissitudes of your own existence. In other words, every moment is expected to be the same, and yet this isn’t what we experience. And so what I noticed was that, running through reality is the ebb and flow of novelty. And some days, and some years, and some centuries are very novel indeed. And some aint. And they come and go on all scales, differently, interweaving, resonantly. And this is what time seems to be.And science has overlooked this, this most salient of facts about nature, that nature is a novelty-conserving engine. And that from the very first moments of that most improbable Big Bang, novelty has been conserved, because in the very beginning there was only an ocean of energy pouring into the universe. There were no planets, no stars, no molecules, no atoms, no magnetic fields. There was only an ocean of free electrons. And then, time passed. And the universe cooled. And novel structures crystallized out of disorder. First, atoms. Atoms of hydrogen and helium. Aggregating into stars. And at the center of those stars, the temperature and the pressure created something which had never been seen before, which was: fusion. And fusion, cooking in the hearts of stars, brought forth more novelty. Heavy elements, iron, carbon, forvalent carbon. And as time passed, there not only then, elemental systems, but because of the presence of carbon and the lower temperatures in the universe, molecular structures and out of molecules come simple subsets of organisms, the genetic machinery for transcripting information, aggregating into membranes, always binding novelty, always condensing time, always building and conserving upon complexity and always faster and faster and faster... and then, we come to ourselves. And where do we fit into all of this?Five million years ago, we were an animal of some sort. Where will we be five million years from tonight? What we represent is not a sideshow, or an epiphenomenon, or an ancillary something-or-other on the edge of nowhere. What we represent is the nexus of concressent novelty that has been moving itself together, complexifying itself, folding itself in upon itself, for billions and billions of years. There is, so far as we know, nothing more advanced than what is sitting behind your eyes. The human neocortex is the most densely ramified and complexified structure in the known universe. We are the cutting edge of organismic transformation of matter in this cosmos. And this has been going on for awhile. Since the discovery of fire, since the discovery of language, but now, and by now, I mean for the last 10,000 years, we’ve been into something new: not genetic information, not genetic mutation, not natural selection, but epigenetic activity. Writing, theatre, poetry, dance, art, tattooing, body-piercing, and philosophy. And these things have accelerated the ingression into novelty so that we have become an idea-excreting force in nature that builds temples, builds cities, builds machines, social engines, plans, and spreads over the earth, into space; into the microphysical domain; into the macrophysical domain. We, who five million years were animals, can kindle in our deserts and if necessary upon the cities of our enemies, the very energy which lights the stars at night.Now, something peculiar is going on here. Something is calling us out of nature and sculpting us in its own image. And the confrontation with this something is now not so far away. This is what the impending apparent end of everything actually means. It means that the denouement of human history is about to occur and is about to be revealed as a universal process of concressing and expressing novelty that is now going to become so intensified that it is going to flow over into another dimension.You can feel it. You can feel it in your own dreams. You can feel it in your own trips. You can feel that were approaching the cusp of a catastrophe, and that beyond that cusp, we are unrecognizable to ourselves. The wave of novelty that has rolled unbroken since the birth of the universe has now focused and coalesced itself in our species. And if it seems unlikely to you that the world is about to transform itself, then think of it this way: Think of a pond and think of how, if the surface of the pond begins to boil, that’s the signal that some enormous protean form is about to break the surface of the pond and reveal itself. Human history is the boiling of the pond surface of ordinary biology. We are flesh, which has been caught in the grip of some kind of an attractor that lies ahead of us in time, and that is sculpting to its ends. Speaking to us, through psychedelics, through visions, through culture and technology. Consciousness, the language-forming capacity in our species is propelling itself forward, as though it were going to shed the monkey body and leap into some extra-surreal space that surrounds, but that we cannot currently see.Even the people who run the planet, the World Bank, the IMF, you name it, they know that history is ending. They know by the reports which cross their desks, that the disappearance of the ozone hole, the toxification of the ocean, the clearing of the rainforests, what this means is that the womb of the planet has reached its finite limits, and that the human species has now, without choice, begun the descent down the birth canal of collective transformation toward something right around the corner, and nearly completely unimaginable.And this is where the psychedelic shaman comes in. Because I believe that what we really contact through psychedelics is a kind of hyperspace, and from that hyperspace, we look down on both the past and the future and we anticipate the end. And a shaman is someone who has seen the end. And therefore is a trickster, because you don’t worry if you’ve seen the end. If you know how it comes out, you go back and you take your place in the play and you let it all roll on without anxiety. This is what boundary dissolution means; it means nothing less than the anticipation of the end-state of human history. A return to the archaic mode, a rediscovery of the orgiastic freedom of the African grasslands of 20,000 years ago. A techno-escape into a future that looks more like the past than the future, because materialism, consumerism, product fetishism, all of these things will be eliminated and technology will become nanotechnology and disappear from our physical presence. If-- if-- we have the dream. If we allow the wave of novelty to propel us toward the creativity that is inimical to the human condition.This is what were talking about here-- psychedelics as a catalyst to the human imagination, psychedelics as a catalyst for language, because what cannot be said, cannot be created by the community. So that we need then, is the forced evolution of language, and the way to do that is to go back to agents that created language in the very first place. And that means, the psychedelic plants, the Gaian Logos, and the mysterious beckoning extraterrestrial minds beyond. Hooking ourselves back up, into the chakras of the hierarchy of nature, turning ourselves over to the mind of the Totally Other that created us and brought us forth out of animal organization. We are somehow part of the planetary destiny. How well we do determines how well the experiment of life on earth does. Because we have become the cutting edge of that experiment. We define it, and we hold in our hands the power to make or to break it.This is not a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse. This is not a pseudo-millennium. This is the real thing, folks. This is not a test. This is the last chance before things become so dissipated that there is no chance for cohesiveness. We can use the calendar as a club. We can make the millennium an occasion for establishing an authentic human civilization, overcoming the dominator paradigm, dissolving boundaries through psychedelics, recreating a sexuality not based on monotheism, monogamy, and monotony. All these things are possible. If we can understand the overarching metaphor which holds it all together, which is the celebration of mind as play, the celebration of love as a genuine social value in the community. This is what they have suppressed so long, this is why they are so afraid of the psychedelics, because they understand that once you touch the inner core of your own and someone else’s being, you cant be led into thing fetishism and consumerism. The message of psychedelics is that culture can be reengineered as a set of emotional values, rather than products. This is terrifying news. And if we are able to make this point, we can pull back, we can pull back and we can transcend. Nine times in the last million years, the ice has ground south from the poles, pushing human populations ahead of it, and those people didn’t fuck up. Why should we, then? We are all survivors. We are the inheritors of a million years of striving for the Unspeakable. And now, with the engines of technology in our hands, we ought to be able to reach out and actually exteriorize the human soul at the end of time, invoke it into existence like a UFO, and open the violent doorway into hyperspace and walk through it, out of profane history and into the world beyond the grave, beyond shamanism, beyond the end of history, into the galactic millennium that has beckoned to us for millions of years across space and time. This is the moment. A planet brings forth an opportunity like this only once in its lifetime. And we are ready, and we are poised, and as a community we are ready to move into it, to claim it, to make it our own. It's there -- go for it! And thank you!

Terence McKenna on DMT

Transcription of a taped workshop with Ethnobotanist & Researcher Terence McKenna. May 26/27, 1990 - New Mexico. A detailed elaboration about the experience of the enigmatic 'DMT entities' reported in many experiences.

I
The Tykes...Well, I suppose it's an invitation do describe a DMT trip, which is never to be passed up. Because I think, I think what we're talking about here is a continuum, I'm talking about a very narrow band of experience. A continuum of experience that comes through tryptamine hallucinogens: DMT, Psilocybin, and the DMT-Harmine combination... and that's it... Mescaline doesn't, isn't what I'm talking about. Ketamine certainly isn't what I'm talking about. Datura certainly isn't what I'm talking about. And some of these are plants, and some of them are synthetic drugs, but it's a very narrow spectrum of these highly visionary ones, and then the most visionary, the quintessence is DMT. I mean, I think that DMT is as intense as any drug should ever get; I don't ever want to be more loaded than that. I don't think you can be more loaded than that and come back. What happens on DMT for me, and this is based on, you know, composite image of many experiences, and I've confirmed it to some degree with other people, but I was talking to somebody the other day, somebody who had just done it, and I said, "what did you think?" and they said: "It's the most idiosyncratic thing there is." and I thought, what a wonderful description, that's exactly what it is - it's pure idiosyncraticness. It's so idiosyncratic that's all there's there - it's like idiosyncrasy without an object, is what DMT is.

When you smoke this, the onset is very rapid. 30-45 seconds, you know? There's this feeling which comes over your body - half arousal, half anesthesia. The air appears to suddenly have been sucked out of the room because all the colors brighten visibly, as though some intervening medium has been removed. And then there's a sound, like a piece of bread wrapper or cellophane being scrunched up and thrown away. A friend of mine says this is radio-entelechy leaving the anterior fontanelle at the top of your head. I'm not sure I want to line up with that... but a membrane is being ripped; something is being torn. And then there is a total (what Mircea Eliade called in a wonderful phrase) "a complete rupture of the mundane plane". That's like a hit and run accident except the car came from hyperspace, you know? A complete rupture of the mundane plane. And you fall back into this hallucinogenic space, and what you see is a slowly rotating red and orange kind of thing, which, over the years we've nicknamed, uh, "The Chrysanthemum". And it's.. this represents some kind of disequilibrium state that has its roots in the synapses. What's happening as you're watching this Chrysanthemum is that millions and then hundreds of millions of DMT molecules are rushing into these serotonin bond sites in the synaptic cleft and disrupting the serotonin and switching the electron spin resonance signature of these neural junctions in this "other" direction. And this is taking, you know, 30 or 40 seconds, and there's this rising hum, this ____nnnmmmmMMMMMMMM^^^^ that rising tone; the flying saucer tone of Hollywood B movies... you actually hear this thing.

And then, if you've taken enough DMT (and it has to do entirely with physical capacity: Did you take, did you cross the threshold?) something happens [clap] which... for which there are no words. A membrane is rent, and you are propelled into this "place". And language cannot describe it - accurately. Therefore I will inaccurately describe it.

The rest is now lies. When you break into this space, you have several impressions simultaneously that are a kind of gestalt: First of all (and why, I don't know) you have the impression that you are underground, far underground, you can't say why, but there's just this feeling of immense weight above you but you're in a large space, a vaulted dome. People even call it "The DMT dome" I have said, had people say to me, "Have you been under the dome?" and I knew exactly what they meant.

So you burst into this space. It's lit, sofeted lighting, some kind of indirect lighting you can't quite locate it. But what is astonishing and immediately riveting is that in this place there are entities, there are these things, which I call "self transforming machine elves", I also call them self-dribbling basketballs. They are, but they are none of these things. I mean you have to understand: these are metaphors in the truest sense, meaning they're lies! Uh, it's a jeweled self-transforming basketball, a machine elf. I name them "Tykes" because tyke is a word that means to me a small child, and I was fascinated by the 54th fragment of Heraclites, where he says: "The Aeon is a child at play with colored balls" ... and when you burst into the DMT space this is the Aeon, it's a child, and it's at play with colored balls, and I am in eternity, apparently, in the presence of this thing.

There are many of these things, but the main thing that's happening is that they are engaged in a linguistic activity of some sort, which we do not have words for, but it's visible language. They are doing the visible language trip. When you break into the space, they actually cheer! The first thing you hear when you pass across is this "hhhyeaaaaaayyy", you know the Pink Floyd song? "The Gnomes have Learned a New Way to Say Hoo-Ray?" This has gotta be what these guys were talking about; how else could it be? It doesn't make any sense otherwise.

You break into this space... the gnomes say hoo-ray! And they come rushing forward and they, and, and the thing then that happens is... and people say "is there risk, to DMT? it sounds so intense. Is it dangerous?"

The answer is: yes, it's tremendously dangerous; the danger is the possibility of death by astonishment. And you must prepare yourself for this eventuality, because you are so amazed. Amazement seems to be the emotion that has torn loose and swamped everything else, I mean ASTOUNDED. When was the last time you were genuinely "ASTOUNDED"? I mean, I think you can go your whole damned life without being "ASTOUNDED"... and this is astonishment, you know, raised to the n-th degree to the point that your jaw hangs...

I mean you're like this:
And it raises issues: like you say, "Jesus, ah, huhh ... I must be dead!" And you, and the weird thing about DMT is it does not effect what we ordinarily call the mind. The part that you call "you", nothing happens to it. You're just like you were before, but the World has been radically replaced, 100%, it's all gone, and you're sitting there, and you're saying, "Jesus, a minute ago I was in a room with some people, and they were pushing some weird drug on me, and, and now, what's happened? is this the Drug? Did we do it? Is this it?" And meanwhile, these things are saying: "Do not give way to amazement; Control your wonder." in other words, they try to bring you down. They say, "Don't just goof out on this; pay attention. PAY ATTENTION... to what we're doing." "OK, what're you doing?..."

Say this is what we're doing, and then they proceed to sing objects into existence. Amazing objects. Objects that are Faberge Eggs, things made of pearl, and metal, and glass, and gel, and you, when you're shown one of these things, a single one of them, you look at it and you know, without a shadow of a doubt, in the moment of looking at this thing, that if it were right here, right now, this world would go mad. It's like something from another dimension. It's like an artifact from a flying saucer. It's like something falling out of the mind of God, such objects do NOT exist in this universe, and yet, you're looking at it. And they're clamoring for your attention. "look at this! look at This! Look at THIS!" and they pull these things... and each one, you look into it and it begins to open into this wonder that you must fight. You say "No, don't look at it, look AWAY from it!" because it's so wonderful that it's swamping my objectivity and destroying my ability to function in this space.

Well, then they say "do"... And the objects that they make have the peculiar ability to themselves generate this linguistic 'stuff' which condenses as other objects. So beings are making objects, showing you objects, the objects are turning into beings and making other objects, these beings and objects, they jump into your chest, and then they jump back out. They jump into your body and disappear into your body, and then they jump back out, waving these things, just throwing this stuff in all directions. They are... the word that comes to mind is: they are Zany. It's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, uh, gone mad. And all of this energy, they are elves. This is what elves are. It's this weird thing, where they love you - or they like you a lot, but you can tell that their sense of humor is weird. And that you must be very careful of the deals you cut with these things. and in fact I've spent so much time trying to understand what is this. It has different kinds of feelings about it. One is (and this really threw me for a loop when I figured this out) after many many of these trips, and analyzing this place I kept going to, I finally realized: this place is... somebody very weird... it's their idea of a reassuring environment for a human being! It's like a playpen. It's this warm, well lit, secure, womblike environment, and when I break into it they, these things, the elves and the toys, are toys! These are things to amuse me. The way you would hang, uh, cubes and blocks above a crad... a playpen, you know? Because children are supposed to coordinate shapes and bright colors. That's what these things are: they are toys to try and get me to coordinate my perception in this place. It's a holding area of some sort, someone's created this and is watching me.

OK, that's one metaphor for what it is. Another metaphor is... I took this stuff to Tibetans, to the Amazon. I gave it to Tibetans, they said "this is the lesser lights, the lesser lights of the Bardo. You cannot go further into the Bardo and return. This takes you as far as you can go." When I gave it to shamans in the Amazon, they said "It's strong, but this is, these are the ancestors. These are the spirits that we work with. These are ancestor souls. We know this place." Well then, the third and final metaphor, because when you're in that place you have such complex emotions, very complex emotions, something weird is going on with time, because you perceive your body image as infantile. You seem to have a very large head, and a very body, and very short limbs. And, you know, I dunno what that's about.

But they're, uh, this...
Then the last facet of it that I want to mention is: there is this "you must be on your toes" thing, don't let these guys get behind you. They are tricky. And their elfin humor may not be your idea of a good time. And I said to myself, where have I had, before, this feeling that I'm having now. It's a feeling of being with people that I can't trust, but who want to help me, and who seem to be trying to, uh, cut a deal. That was the word that gave me the clue: "deal". And then I remembered, "I know where I felt like this, I felt like this in the Crawford Market in Bombay when I had a kilo of Gold in my pocket and I was trying to trade it for hashish, and I was surrounded by all these Arab hash traders, and they were saying 'we're your friend, just wait, don't worry...' And say 'yes, I KNOW you're my friend and I'm NOT worrying, but, you know, brbrbrrr... perform!' And so then I said: 'Aha the creatures in the DMT flash are Traders...' They're Traders. And that's what this weird feeling is, it's a business environment in there. We're having a business meeting. They’re saying... and then the objects! Then I remembered, the objects... they're trade goods! They're saying: "How about thissss! How about This!"

What do they want? What do I have that they want?... They're meme traders, is what it is. And I think that what they wanted, and got, and took, without bothering to even say a word about it was everything I knew about the I Ching. And they're like art collectors. They say "well, the idea is primitive, and primitive in its execution, but with a certain kind of internal integrity that one really must respect..." So they're primitive art collectors, and what they left me with, then, was, uh, my own, you know, their model of time. Which is the closest thing to one of these hyperdimensional objects. The objects themselves cannot exist in this world. But the blueprints of them can. And this afternoon, if the computers are up and running, I will run through this "time idea" with you. And I think I will be able to convince you that it has a weirdly crafted patina to it, that, the feeling is it didn't spring from human minds, it, it is a creature of another kind of mental universe. And I think, you know, aside from the crisis on this planet and our own personal difficulties, this is the real challenge of the psychedelic thing; is to meet the inhabitants and trade with them. And set up a relationship. The notion traders. They can trade hyperspacial notions from across the cosmos. And this may be all the extraterrestrial contact that we're, uh, going to be vouch-safed, you know?

II
D.M.T. is an extraordinary hallucinogen that lasts only a few hundred seconds at the peak of the flash. It is something which is smoked. Something waxy. Orange. Smelling of camphor. You vaporize it in a small glass pipe. Something which is smoked. Behind closed eyelids, a kind of hallucination forms. A chrysanthemum - a swirling floral pattern. Overlayed patterns of colors. You watch the chrysanthemum and if you've taken enough D.M.T., after about fifteen seconds, you are physically propelled through it. Into a kind of tunnel-like space. You seem to be catapulting forward through some kind of labyrinth-like, tubular, unfolding, colored, fluctuating space. And after a few seconds of this, it is as though you arrive. The trip stabilizes itself around you. At that point you are in a kind of domed, indirectly lit, comfortable, underground space. But, what is astonishing about this space, is that it is inhabited, it is crowded. Jeweled, self-dribbling basketballs that bound forward. Chirping fractal denizens of the unconscious. They surround you, singing in a visible language and they use that language to produce objects. Sculptured, jeweled machines. Things made of precious stones and metal. Agate, Topaz, Chalcedony. All kinds of precious materials. But not stable. Morphing. Transforming them. Matter somehow involved with the spirit of language and imagination.

And these elf-like, gnome-like artisans crowd forward, each offering their own creation for your inspection. Follow these entities, these hyper-objectified linguistic objects. It's terribly important that you learn to do this. They are the initiators of the human species into a new ontos of language, where meaning is beheld. Use your voice. It lasts a few hundred seconds. Meaning is beheld. The presence of these entities on the otherside of this pharmacological energy barrier raises a number of questions. Are they true beings? True Aliens from another star system, gently approaching us? Are they true Aliens? Hiding behind the mask on an intoxication? Perfect interfacing of dimenisions? I prefer to think, however, that we are encountering on ecology of souls.

Shaman I am. Shaman I am.

D.M.T. is all of these things. It is like a hyper-cosmic carival in your mind. The boy in the bottle, the goat-faced girl. somehow shattered the membrane between myself and ordinary space. I carried the trip into the room with me. Very rapid transmission of data. It only lasts a few hundred seconds You awaken from a dream. I can see it clearly, after a time I think it sticks with you. The details. Some quality of seeing and understanding. A dimension has been added to ordinary perception. And you will have the complete experience in the dream. It's in the body. You can do this on the natch, it is not far away. Outrageous possibilities lie immediately to hand and are virtually only a toke away.