Ayahuasca with Uniao do Vegetal, Nucleo Caipuri

On sunday 23 of April 2006 I went for a "Vegetal" ceremony at Nucleo Caipuri, one of the 8 Uniao do Vegetal centers in Manaus.

The "temple" was pretty packed (here is a picture), since there was a regional encounter of people from all around the Amazon area. There must have been around 200 people (here is a picture). I later found out that the Nucleus where we were is where the vegetal originated and spread through the rest of Brasil.

The person who was the "master" of ceremonies, so to speak, Edson Lodi, is the second most important person in the hierarchy of the UDV. While I was queuing to get my glass of tea, someone told him to fill my glass to the top (other people were having small doses), and he did so, generously.

The rules stipulate that only once everybody's glass is full can you drink up. I waited, and swallowed it all up, all the bitter taste of it. I sat down and listened to the chants and music.

All of a sudden, I started feeling it in my body. Not even 15 minutes after taking it. It came through the form of three little bee-like creatures smiling at me with distorted smiles, sort of trying to seduce me to follow them. I felt like I should think about it before following them, but then did one step in their direction, and that was it for me. They took me into a sort of hell. All of a sudden I felt I was completely trapped.

It felt as if I had just done one of these things you realize you shouldn't have right when you do them, and hell breaks loose. This type of hell was very particular. It was what I would call an "Indian hell", something like what you could imagine would come out of the mind of an indian storyteller. It was a place where everything was agressive and terrifying. It is hard to describe but my position was both of spectator and vicitim, and in the same time there was no separation between the two. I was surrounded by very nasty insects, buzzing all around me, and apparently all following the orders of these three little round looking faces that had seduced me to follow them. But in the same time I was watching a scene that sort of reminded me of an amazonian version of Charlie and the Chocolate factory. It was an apparently quiet scene, a river bend with grass and forest around it, all the colors very bright, and on the river a little cute looking two story boat painted in saturated colors. However I realized this entire landscape, boat included, was made of insects.
The three round insect characters were making fun of me, like little demons, and the crowd of insects were buzzing all around me, threatening me.
And it was going to get worse. I remember thinking, "oh oh, I'm in trouble" to say it politely.
There was no way out of this. In the beginning I could still open my eyes, but after a while that was not possible any more.
I was being taken deeper and deeper into this hell, and it was taking me physically. My ears started buzzing terribly with the sounds of huge firefly like insects having a riot. I was paralyzed. I couldn't feel my body anymore. Every tentative movement made the insects terribly mad. They screamed at me I should stay COMPLETELY STATIC, and endure. The only thing I could do was yawn, strangely. And I did that a lot. I remember seeing somebody in my first ayahuasca session opening his mouth extremely wide every other minute, and that is what I felt like doing, or what I was supposed to do..
I felt I had no other control over my body, that I couldn't stand up, and if I had to vomit, it would be on the floor in front of me.
The limit between what was going on in my mind and the outside world was blurry, starting to disappear. It was all part of the same thing, the words being said were uncomprehensible to me. The presence of the people around me was disappearing.
I had tears running down my eyes, but couldn't really wipe them away.
I thought of asking for help, I thought I was going to be trapped into this world for ever, and maybe somebody could snap me out of it.
But I thought better, and realized panic is probably the worst thing I could do.
I realized that what this was showing was how the mind controls all of our reality. I felt with the vividness of a mosquito bite that our world can be limited to what our mind makes us see. It felt like the sort of hell one can be in when one loses a loved one, or when one enters a deep depression, or does something that has terrible consequences. There is usually no way out of those states. They color reality with dark tones, and make breathing almost impossible.
I decided I needed to accept this force, trust it, let it take me where it wanted to. I felt I knew somehow where it came from, I could see that indians in the Amazon had felt this pain before me. And essentially, despite all the evil it was spitting now, this force was good.
The physical effect was overpowering. It was as if a huge angry anaconda was going crazy in my body. At some point it was as if my skull was going to be dislocated, my jaw being pulled out, but from the inside.
I had to find my center, my balance, myself in a place "before" the force could use my mental images to manipulate me. But breathing was made hard by the fact that my whole rib cage was crushed down. Only little by little did it give way to air.
This breathing was making the insects crazy. I was on the small boat with them and they were making TV sets explode with static in my face at each movement.
I controlled one thing : I didn't let them bring the girl I love into the mental distortions they were creating constantly, transforming everything into a disgusting scene.
Little by little the insects lost power. But I could never cry victory, because if I did they came back full force.
I was not helped by the fact that next to me a young guy was going through his own hell. But he had no control over it. He was crying out loud, asking the master to promise him he wouldn't die, then begging he would die rather than see what was in his mind. I later found out he was a rich kid, drug addict, and was being cured of his addiction by ayahuasca sessions.

I focused on the tremendous power streaming through me. I started feeling my body could take any shape.
I also started understanding how not to fall victim of the negative power. I had to center myself more and more. At some point I felt like I was on a column, like a stylite, and that waves of crap were washing against the column, but weren't touching me.
My eyesight started coming back, blurry, but there. My sense of body returned.
I could distinguish words again. It must have been two hours into the ceremony when I started feeling like my effort to stay calm was bearing fruits.
A new phase was beginning. I marveled at the body, at the human vision, the engineering of the eye, the beauty of the design of the human organism.
The strength flowing through me was no longer destructive, it was overpowering. At some point I felt like my chest was going to explode from the inside, filled with power.
Another type of vision started taking place. One of them was of an indian woman carrying a baby to a river. She didn't utter a sound, yet she spoke, and said "nothing in nature is abrupt. Make your body and your movements like the curves of this river".
Visions of beneficial "spirits", such as winds with animal heads blowing by, appeared briefly.
Then for a while my eyes were completely focused on the sky. I also started listening to what people were saying, and felt a great admiration for the Union of the vegetal, for the intelligence of it, for the intelligence of the people behind it, of those participating, who would endure these powerful experiences regularly. I felt I wanted to thank them, but who to thank?

I started focusing on questions, and I was told things like "think of new words" or "what is the shape of form" or "what gives a form a shape".

I then saw the girl I love very clearly, as if in a conversation. We talked, then spent time together physically.

I was happy to have made my way through. It was as if it was a test, to see if I could do it. And now I would have to go further.
When the session ended I was still feeling the vibration of the force very strongly. I walked out and talked to several people who all encouraged me to find the people of the UDV abroad. Apparently they have just won a trial in the US and are allowed to drink the tea there.

I was impressed by the eyes of the people of the UDV. A lot of then are very clear, blue or green, and those who have dark eyes have them very open, focused, aware. Talking with them is thrilling. Nothing of the social way we usually talk, our eyes drifting to other things, blurring, loosing focus on the person in front of us.

They told me about Mestre Gabriel, the founder of the UDV, how he created a mythology, how he remembered all his past lives back to the point where people spoke the language that gave birth to all languages. Some of the chants during the ceremonies are in that idiom.
All of his teaching are transmitted orally, none of it is written down.

At any rate this experience was extremely powerful, and I still feel it today. It is as if the ayahuasca was saying in its own language how to get through the things your mind puts you into. How to gain control over it. And that was only the second time I had the tea.