Quantum Life Bodywork News

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2010) — A new system that ranks drugs on the basis of harm caused to both the user and others places alcohol as the most harmful drug, above heroin and crack. The scale, developed by drug experts led by Professor David Nutt of Imperial College London, is published online in The Lancet.

[From Alcohol 'most harmful drug', according to multicriteria analysis]

Somewhat topically, given reports of Ayahuasquero’s facing twenty years in prison for the possession Sacred Medicine, Science Daily reports that state sanctioned drug alcohol is the most damaging drug for both the individual and society. Whilst alcohol is less harmful for the individual than Heroin, Crack and Crystal Meth, the study deemed it overall as at least more than twice as harmful as Crystal meth, cocaine, tobacco, amphetamine/speed, cannabis, GHB, benzodiazepines, ketamine, methadone, mephedrone, butane, khat, ecstacy, anabolic steroids, LSD, buprenorphine and mushrooms.

Consider the amount of money spent “combatting” the latter drugs, and the amount extolling in advertising the glamour of alcohol and one can see that there is something seriously awry with the common cultural viewpoint apropos “drugs”. Is this a case of mere misunderstanding?

In a recent post on Taita Juan, I referenced an arrest of Santo Daime members in the UK. Consider the language used in the commercial media about that case;

A COUPLE have been arrested on suspicion of importing a powerful drug linked to a secretive religion, following a police raid on a Dartington home.

Officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Investigation Team headed up the raid which seized what is believed to be a quantity of ayahuasca — a liquid which contains the powerful hallucinogenic dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT, a designated Class A drug in this country….The drug comes in the form of a brown liquid. Police have refused to say where they are keeping the drug until it can be analysed. However it is being stored in special bio hazard bags. Det Sgt Gilroy explained: “At the moment we don’t know how potent it is.”

or more general media coverage here;

Santo Daime: the drug-fuelled religion
A new religion is spreading to Britain – its central sacrament the consumption of a hallucinogenic Class A drug. Here’s a report from the faith’s heartland in the rainforests of the Amazon

[From Santo Daime: the drug-fuelled religion - Times Online]

or here;

The lost and depressed turn to Peruvian ayahuasca rituals for guidance. A Peruvian potion called ayahuasca is drawing foreigners searching for guidance, insight, relief from trauma or a spiritual high

IQUITOS, PERU — Kevin Simmons, a 28-year-old Chicago native, said he “was stuck” — depressed, locked away in his home and taking more than a year to even open his e-mail.

[From Peruvian hallucinogen ayahuasca draws tourists seeking transforming experience]

In that latest article the lack attention to journalistic standards shows clearly in the image of a Huachumero in front of his mesa taking something, possibly Cimora from a shell into his nostril, captioned;

Peruvian Andean soothsayer Erick Caceres, 38, inhales ayahuasca through a shell during a ceremony where soothsayers announce their visions, in the central Lima district of Rimac. A range of healing centers perform rituals related to the potion.

“Soothsayer”, “potion”! Does the Washington Post purport not to understand the pejorative weight of those words in that context? Such kinds of “reporting” shows at least a lack of desire to understand the issues at hand, and at worst a clear attempt to obfuscate and manipulate popular opinion.

There have been a number of studies showing the individual and societal benefits of the Sacred Medicines, and it is these stories that we need to ensure also populate the mainstream media. Not just the stories of “drug arrests” and “ayahausca tourism” disasters, but stories of the immense capacities to heal and correct imbalance that these Teacher Plants offer us. These stories need to be presented as they are, as stories of hope and of individuals making personal and cultural changes for the better, for the healthier, for the more balanced. They need to be told in a manner accessible to other members of that culture, be it the UK, the US, Australia, Spain, or Sweden..

Certainly those stories exist, and in the mainstream media as well. I’ve referenced prior this article in the National Geographic which details an adventurer and writer’s struggle with depression, and the efficacy if not difficulty of her experience with curing in a Peruvian Ayahuasca ritual. There’s another here at the ABC. I’m sure there’s many more…and the potential for many, many more. Please let me know if you have any to share and in that sharing let us change the, seemingly manipulated, public perception and thus this absurd near global prohibition on the practice of this ancient medicinal and spiritual art and science.

In an age of viral media sent moments after it’s capture, it was an interesting experience to be engaged in the crafting of a modern radio documentary feature. Over three weeks work in the ABC studios, as well of 100 s of hours of collecting, collating and editing material by Liz and myself.

Despite script compromises to allow broadcast in that particular manner, and a name I would not have chosen myself, I am pleased with the end result. I feel most comfortable in oral culture’s but I think this piece makes a worthwhile contribution to aural culture, and hope people will continue to find a richness in it which contrasts the banality of much of that which washes through the ever broadening media ocean.

When I launched my website some years ago I expressed on the home page

“Quantum Life Bodyworks draws on a vast array of technologies, from those of archaic shamanism to hyper-modern media manipulation, manual body therapies and entheogenic ecstasies.”

This program is another step in that project’s realisation, and I am heartened that in the nations where the direct experience of the spirits of the Plant Medicines is prohibited, the spirit of the Plant Medicines can still touch the hearts of the people.

Big thanks to Liz Thompson, Robyn Ravlich, Robyn Johnston, and Judy Rapley [amongst many others unnamed] for making this possible.

The program is available to stream or to download here. Additionally a number of visual vignettes edited by myself and conceived, directed produced and shot by Liz Thompson and I are here and here available for your viewing pleasure.

As these things go, moments after posting my reference to Terrence McKenna, i discovered in my in tray, a link to this article by David Suzuki. It interested me as it spoke to a lot of the subjects I have been endeavouring to address of late. David speaks of perceptual filters, references a story told by Wade Davis [who's inspiring TED talk I referenced here] of the cultural and geographical landscape I am currently inhabiting, and articulates an experience with loggers very similar to a historical one of my own.

If presented with the autopsied brains of a diverse array of people, no expert would be able to distinguish from the brains’ anatomy or neurocircuitry the gender, religion, or socio-economic class of the cadavers. Because we are members of one species, our brains, neurons, and sensory organs are similar in structure and chemistry. But if you were to ask both men and women about love and family, Israelis and Palestinians about Gaza, Catholics and Protestants in Belfast about British occupation, Republicans and Democrats about Karl Rove, and Shia, Sunni, and Kurds about U.S. troops, you’d think the respondents came from different planets.

What this demonstrates is that we learn to see the world through perceptual lenses formed by heredity, upbringing, personal experiences, religion, socio-economic differences, and so on. Even though we detect our surroundings in the same way through eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue, our brains actively filter that incoming information so that it “makes sense” according to our individual values and beliefs. This creates huge dissonance between fossil-fuel executives, environmentalists, and politicians when we discuss an issue like climate change.

[From Our perceptual filters shape the world! | Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Causes: The Alternative Channel Blog]

Suzuki goes on to describe an experience with Davis which caused him to think about the profound manner in which a cultural perspective determines a people’s relationship with their environment. He contrasts the vast difference between the attitudes to environment between a resident of a Peruvian mountain village, and a Canadian logger. In his account of a confrontation with one such logger, he says;

The confrontation made for good television, but I was frustrated at our inability to find common ground. Finally I told them, “I worked as a carpenter for eight years, and to this day, I love working with wood. No environmentalist I know is against logging. We just want to be sure that your children and grandchildren will be able to log forests as rich as the ones you’re working in now.” Immediately, one of the men replied that he’d never let his kids to go into logging. “There won’t be any trees left!” he said. And there it was. Those men knew that they were cutting the trees down in a way that ensured there would be no harvestable timber for future generations of loggers, but they saw the trees as the way to put food on the table day after day and make the house and car payments at the end of the month.

Some years ago whilst endeavouring to assist in the halting of an illegal logging operation in Central Victoria’s increasingly scant state forest, I was greeted by the sight of an aging but virile, chainsaw wielding logger sprinting towards me with anger and frustration writ clear in his eyes and on his weathered face.

“Come ‘ere ya f***ing hippy f***ing c***”, he screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. He brandished his chainsaw maniacally, “I’ll give ya a f***ing haircut”

I adopted my best Aussie drawl and met him calmly.

“Ah yeah, hippies mate, don’t get me started! Look mate, I got no problem with logging mate, logging’s an honourable trade. Me, I’m from three generations of rice farmers, mate, out Deniliquin way. That mob can’t make a living any more because of the salt problem caused by too much clearing and over irrigation…”

Within 10 minutes we were sitting on a log, sharing a cup of tea and some organic chocolate donated by the local businesses, eager to protect their environment and the tourist trade it afforded them. George looked over his shoulder to see if any of the other loggers were within earshot and said to me sotto voce

“Yair mate, ya don’t need to tell me we’re killin’ the forest, we know it. 50 year ago mate we used to look after this forest, I could fell two trees over the river and go down half a mile and drink a glass ‘a water outta that stream, clear as crystal it were. This industrial loggin’ mate, it’s bullshit, but what am I gonna do? I’m 67 years old mate, and I got family to support.”

There were tears in his eyes.

The operation was found illegal in the courts and the logging process halted, until such time as the corporations found a loophole or a less publicly obvious forest to exploit..

Suzuki concludes his article;

How can we resolve such differences in perspective? I don’t know, but I am sure that the challenge has to do with what’s locked inside our skulls. I have spent more than 40 years trying to use the electronic media to inform and educate, but I continue to be flabbergasted by the strength of those perceptual filters.

We have to find ways of overcoming those blocks so that we can begin to agree on some basic principles. We are not outside or on top of the web of living things; we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on it for our survival and well-being. Without that understanding, we will continue on our destructive rampage.

My experiences about the world, with people of all different ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic situation has lent me to believe that our differences are largely illusory. Most people want to live happily, without fear or struggle. They want their children to be happy, to eat and be educated well. On the whole they want to be kind to their fellow humans. I believe few want consciously to destroy their environment or those with whom they inhabit it. Those that do, I feel have simply forgotten, or been taught by state or religion to see with a perspective too narrow to allow for the effect of their actions upon the web of life and consciousness around them.

My experience in working with the Sacred Medicines has consistently shown me the incredible power of these Teacher Plants to show each and every one of us that “we are not outside or on top of the web of living things; we are deeply embedded in and utterly dependent on it for our survival and well-being”.

If, as Suzuki suggests, “without that understanding, we will continue on our destructive rampage”, why, when we have the possibility of learning from teachers who can offer us precisely that understanding, are these plants outlawed in most countries in the world?

What cultural mechanism, especially in light of substantial scientific evidence that regular Ayahuasca drinking in the context of the UDV church leads to healthier, happier, more culturally cohesive individuals, can justify the continued prohibition of such substantially profound possibilities?

I will leave you to your own conclusions, and with a quote from a National Geographic article I referenced some time ago;

The taking of ayahuasca has been associated with a long list of documented cures: the disappearance of everything from metastasized colorectal cancer to cocaine addiction, even after just a ceremony or two. It has been medically proven to be nonaddictive and safe to ingest. Yet Western scientists have all but ignored it for decades, reluctant to risk their careers by researching a substance containing the outlawed DMT. Only in the past decade, and then only by a handful of researchers, has ayahuasca begun to be studied. At the vanguard of this research is Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCLA’s School of Medicine.

In 1993 Dr. Grob directed the Hoasca Project, the first in-depth study of the physical and psychological effects of ayahuasca on humans. He and his team went to Brazil, where the plant mixture can be taken legally, to study members of a church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), who use ayahuasca as a sacrament, and compared them to a control group that had never ingested the substance. The studies found that all the ayahuasca-using UDV members had experienced remission without recurrence of their addictions, depression, or anxiety disorders. Unlike most common anti-depressants, which Grob says can create such high levels of serotonin that cells may actually compensate by losing many of their serotonin receptors, the Hoasca Project showed that ayahuasca strongly enhances the body’s ability to absorb the serotonin that’s naturally there [4]. ‘Ayahuasca is perhaps a far more sophisticated and effective way to treat depression than SSRIs [antidepressant drugs],’ Grob concludes, adding that the use of SSRIs is ‘a rather crude way’ of doing it. And ayahuasca, he insists, has great potential as a long-term solution in maintaining abstinence.

“When we want to understand something strange, something previously unknown, we have to begin with an entirely

different set of questions. What is it? How does it work? Are there recurrent regularities?” Margaret Mead

I wrote recently about the culturally sanctioned belief [and an incredibly resilient one at that] which flies in the face of ever mounting evidence to the contrary, that quantum effects occur at a quantum level and any observation of them in daily human life is evidence of “magical thinking”, superstition or lack of critical facility. Now whilst I agree with Israel Regardie in the matter of their being a great deal of “new age cosmic foo-foo” to sift through in current popular literature around the subject, I believe the matter requires our urgent collective attention, if we are to have any hope of some manner of directing our personal and collective destinies.

Obviously I work in a realm where non human consciousness are not only conceptually considered, but interacted with on a regular basis. These are not abstractions, but rather conscious, self organising and determining entities, with particular personalities who, in certain situations, will interact with the human realm and share their particular wisdoms. By the definitions of a Western reductionist cultural model such ideas are quirky and amusing idiosyncracies to be tolerated at best, or dangerous pathologies to be medicated out of existence at worst, and yet,

“As if it wasn’t bad enough for the military to muck about with mind control, they’re also bent on creating an online, self-teaching artificial intelligence.”

[From Military AI Could Rule the Internet | Wired Science from Wired.com]

Internet Map

So notions of plant sentience are off limits for cultural examinations, but multi million dollar budgets to build the same thing in the machine are up for serious discussions in the rarified halls of the power elite? If nothing else, as the Wired writer suggests;

“there is something vaguely creepy about the idea of greater-than-human artificial intelligence unleashed on the Internet by the military”

Why is it that working in collaboration and harmony with the ecological systems we inhabit is a “fringe” solution, and hurling huge sums of money at technological replications of preexistent structures in nature [which inevitably function with more grace and efficiency] is the dominant course of action to try to ameliorate the damage wrought by our current oil addicted economies?

Again, a regular occurrence in the work conducted here in South America in collaboration with the plants, telepathy when examined in modern intellectual psychological models is largely discounted, unable to be statistically held up as a possibility worthy of serious attention. Again, it’s examination by “fringe” scientists such as evolutionary biologist Rupert Sheldrake are often ridiculed by “serious” scientists and “skeptics”. And yet from here , here and here

“A team of UC Irvine scientists has been awarded a $4 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office to study the neuroscientific and signal-processing foundations of synthetic telepathy”

Why are these subjects allowable in the cultural domain to be examined for the agenda of dominance and control, for the facilitating of killing people? The use of the such technologies for malefic intent in the Amazon is considered brujeria, or sorcery, yet another notion discounted by modern psychology and philosophy as primitive superstition. and not to be taken seriously. Why are we not spending millions of dollars examining usage [such that has occurred in the Amazon for millenia] in the realms of healing, caring for community and society, and finding visionary means of navigating our way through what is widely held to be a very critical juncture in the evolution of the human species?

A widely quoted aphorism is “the devil’s greatest achievement was to convince humans that he didn’t exist”. If we are to take responsibility for our own destinies [if indeed that is possible] then we must be aware of the possibilities and technologies of consciousness available to us, and be aware that to redress the significant imbalance in the current global mind, we must work actively with those technologies for the betterment of our individual ecosystems and the collective health of the incredible diversity of relations with whom we share this planet. We must have the courage to ask new questions, perhaps uncomfortable ones, if we are to break out of the stupor of our current spiral of self destruction and life denial, as it is clearly obvious that our habituated questionings are not providing us with the answers we need. I have no doubt that we are capable of such a leap of consciousness.

Aho Mitukuye Oyasin

Good news in Peru, with the following announcement..

Peru declares ayahuasca part of cultural heritage

The Government of Peru declared the traditional knowledge and the use of Ayahuasca practiced by the indigenous communities of the Amazon forest to be national cultural patrimony. Ayahuasca is more commonly known in Brazil as Santo Daime. The decision of the peruvian Government, signed by the Director of the National Institute of Culture, Javier Ugaz Villacorta, was published on the Saturday edition of the country’s official daily newspaper, El Peruano.

[From Peru declares ayahuasca part of cultural heritage - A general introduction to Ayahuasca]

This is a very welcome decision by the Peruvian legislature, as it makes it less likely that those treating illness using Ayahuasca will be charged for practicing medicine without a license, and will confer more legitimacy upon Ayahuasca as a medicine in other legislatures throughout the world. It also has relevance for the struggle of indigenous peoples to retain the usage of other traditional medicines without persecution. The traditional use of coca, legal only in Peru and Bolivia, is under threat from the international law making bodies, a subject which I will be soon addressing in this space. This decision as well as recent actions by Peruvian politicians may well bring recognition of these issues to the attention of the broader international community.

Particularly of interest is the distinction between traditional and touristic use, an issue of need for discussion with the rise of “Ayahuasca tourism”, which is certainly obvious in Cusco, where I am currently living.

Peru’s Government states that the effects produced by Ayahuasca have been extensively investigated due to their complexity and are different from the ones usually produced by hallucinogens. Part of that difference consists on the ritual of consumption, that leads to several effects, however always within a culturally limited margin, and with religious, therapeutical and cultural purposes” says Javier Villacorta.

According to the Peruvian Government, “the practice of Ayahuasca ritual sessions and their ancestral use in the traditional rituals, guaranteeing cultural continuity, is tied to the therapeutical virtues.

There is a need for protection of the traditional use and the sacred aspect of the Ayahuasca ritual, differentiating it from the Occidental use, which is out of context, consumerist and with commercial purposes” allerts the statement of the National Institute of Culture.

As I say, the issue of Ayahausca tourism is a pressing one, and I have personally frequently attended to the needs of “occidentals” here and in Australia, who have partaken of Ayahuasca in circumstances less than ideal, or where the intentions of the facilitator have been unfocussed or actively malicious.

One aspect of the announcement, however, which is of concern for me personally is the use of the word “patrimony”. For me it seems quite at odds with legislations pertaining to a plant regularly referred to as La Madre or La Abuela (mother or grandmother). Whilst I enter ceremonies with the utmost respect for the traditions of those who hold them, I believe that Ayahuasca has clearly moved beyond a construct of indigenous, jungle usage, and that the manner in which new cultures of Ayahuasca usage develop should not be limited by the limited world views of a particular patriarchy. I feel that Ayahuasca herself will determine how and when these new modes of working unfold, but any attempts to control the usage of Sacred Medicines should be diligently examined by all who care for the freedom and evolution of human consciousness.

The healing vision of Quantum Life Bodyworks has always included more than solely the laying on of hands. It was with great pleasure that in November of 2007 I met with Rachael Kohn of Radio National to discuss something of my understanding of the nature of plant based shamanism in the South Americas, and the way in which my work was informed by these traditions.

I was grateful for Rachael’s openness in discussing seemingly arcane topics, and exponentially gratified by the reception of many throughout the world who called and emailed to thank me for the manner in which the interview shifted their perceptions, and helped them to understand things that they themselves had long sought to articulate.

That particular venture has paved the way for a collaboration with award winning documentary film-maker Liz Thompson to explore at length the curing traditions based around the usage of the Sacred Plant medicines Ayahuasca and Huachuma..stay tuned for more from SoulCure productions.

Until then the Radio National interview is available in mp3 format here.

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I have had much experience of late of the manner in which indigenous shamanism is appropriated and subsumed into the Judeo Christian framework of the western “practitioner” and reinvented as a pale approximation of it’s actual living experience. There’s plenty to say on that subject, and many wiser, more erudite folks than I have done so.

“Shamanism has thus come to connote an alternative form of therapy; the emphasis, among these new practitioners of popular shamanism, is on personal insight and curing. These are noble aims, to be sure, yet they are secondary to, and derivative from, the primary role of the indigenous shaman, a role that cannot be fulfilled without long and sustained exposure to wild nature, to it’s patterns and vicissitudes. Mimicking the indigenous shaman’s curative methods without his intimate knowledge of the wider natural community cannot, if I am correct, do anything more than trade certain symptoms for others, or shift the locus of disease from place to place within the community. The source of stress lies in the relation between the human community and the natural landscape“The Spell of the Sensuous

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a Bön master who now lives and teaches in the West says

“If we relate to the natural world as a collection of lifeless mechanical processes, it is lifeless for us. If we relate to our bodies as machines, they are machines to us. If we relate to religion as a fantasy, it is fantasy to us. But if we relate to the natural world as alive, full of spirits and elemental beings, the natural world speaks to us. Generally, shamanism deals with forces and entities understood as being external to the practitioner. Practitioners work with the raw natural elements and their energy, and they also work with spirits, deities, healing goddesses, ancestral spirits and other non physical beings…The shamanic vehicles are not primarily concerned with enlightenment but with the removal of obstacles in life, the enhancement of positive qualities, and the lessening of the suffering we experience through interaction with external forces.”

Even further debased, “Shamanism” the word has been applied to any number of imaginative flights of fancy of the manner which Israel Regardie (who’s Middle Pillar exercise has been widely adopted in the New Age movement) referred to as “New Age cosmic foo-foo”.

“What the modern world calls Shamanism is not at all Shamanism…..the westerners have this idea that a shaman is a guru, but shamans are technicians. They are lovers of the sacred, but are no way looked upon as being exemplary. They are not ‘holy men’. They are technicians of the holy You’d never say to your kids: ‘Grow up and become a shaman’, like you might say: ‘Grow up and become a farmer’. It’s like telling someone to be like a fighter pilot!…People say: ‘You want to be a shaman? I want to be a shaman!’ And it’s like, ‘Oh no you dont!””….

Shamanism is not to be confused with entertainment – like people taking drugs and getting high. Shamanism says everything is alive. The spirits are alive. You really can’t be naive about this. The problem with people that are dabbling around with so-called ‘Shamanism’ is that they think they can sit there on some hill that was used long ago or ceremonies, and take flowers and go up there and say to some unhappy spirit ‘I love you’, and that that will make things OK. It’s like going back to an old girlfriend and saying; ‘I’ve decided you are the most beautiful after all.’ Well, the girlfriend you have abandoned a long time ago, she is not going to say; ‘I knew you would come back’. It will be like – ‘Well! Hey sucker!’ And then BAM! You get hit. And you have to be awake about this. This is what the shaman does. He is not naive.”Martin Prechtel, Tzutujil Mayan Tradition

Anthropology professor Michael F Brown says;

“When in my role as curious ethnographer, I’ve asked Santa Feans about their interest in this exotic form of healing, they have expressed their admiration for the beauty of the shamanistic tradition, the ability of shamans to “get in touch with their inner healing powers”, and the superiority of spiritual treatments over the impersonal medical practice of our own society. Fifteen years ago I would have sympathised with these romantic ideas. Two years of fieldwork in an Amazonian society, however, taught me there is peril in the shaman’s craft…New Age enthusiasts are right to admire the shamanistic tradition, but while advancing it as an alternative to our own healing practices, they brush aside it’s stark truths. For throughout the world, shamans see themselves as warriors in a struggle against the shadows of the human heart. Shamanism affirms life but also spawns violence and death. The beauty of shamanism is matched by it’s power-and like all forms of power found in society, it inspires it’s share of discontent.”Michael F Brown

As there are more than enough words in the datasphere I have maintained a silence of sorts of late regarding this issue, but the most recent example of this to come to my attention has prompted a public utterance.

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