Meeting the First Shaman

Substances: Ayahuasca, Peganum harmala, Mimosa hostilis

He began by saying: "these are advanced techniques unsuited to the faint of heart or spirit: DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY OF THESE PRACTICES AT HOME UNLESS YOU REALLY, REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!

The alien continued:

"Astral Vehicle: Ayahuasca: 300mg P. harmala + 20g M. hostilis.

"7:30 pm. 1 hour of Kundalini yoga. Must purify myself as much as possible before I set off -- just in case...

"8:45 pm. Consumed the last of the six P. harmala capsules (spaced over an hour), and drank the half cup of acidic, dark purple liquid extracted with lemon juice using standard technique.

"This was my first time using this combination. I added more M. hostilis than recommended to avoid the Dreaded Underdose, since a previous experience with P. viridis ended in bathos.

"9:05pm. Nausea. Pre-vomitus saliva streaming down the back of my throat. Make a run for the bathroom. Retch. Did I manage to keep it down long enough? I worry over this until I'm hit with waves of nausea that turn my insides out until I am expelling nothing but painful belly gasps. "La purga" is aptly nicknamed.

"Finished retching. Still at baseline. Will this potion actually work? This question pestered me for about ten minutes or so. And all of a sudden, without the typical "coming on" bells and whistles one hears with psilocybin or LSD, the air begins to take on a crystalline sheen.

"It became obvious lying down would be the right choice at this point. I put my favorite didgeridoo tape into the walkman and closed my eyes.

"Without warning, I found myself merged into a vaulted celestial dreamtime. This place is utterly beyond words. It's an Elysean field-room of velvety hummingbird-buzzing bumblebees who electrify every part of of the body with a droning cosmic field of vibrating eyelashes-kisses. Everything in the universe is permeated by this buzz. This was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was utterly astonishing. At this point, all my spatio-temporal references collapsed.

"Shortly thereafter emerge The Ancestors, with their tribal-mask, monkey-hooting faces droning their coroboree didgeridoo songs. Out of the dancing throng emerges the First Shaman himself. I was already in a state of utter amazement at the ongoing spectacle, and then this body-of-light, bumbleee-headed Tassili shaman takes the stage. All shamanic cultures recognize the spirit of the First Shaman, and here he was in all his translucent, shimmering glory. Anthropologists take note: the 20,000-year-old Tassili drawing *is* the First Shaman. I now know that for certain. His electric body is self-explanatory for many familiar with psychedelics. The bee head symbolizes the pervasive marshmallow buzzing in this realm of consciousness. He indicated that he would be serving as my guide and cruise director for the evening.

The alien went on...

"Amazing patterns then emerged behind closed eyes. Deeply etched, moving geometric luminous zig-zags and square spirals and baroque, slithering, snake-skinned, electrically livid Promethean patterns filled up the celestial vault. There came a seeming endless procession of Forms, an awsome demonstration of The Ancestors' powers of creation. They constructed the most ethereal sight-sound-smell-touch objects with mere utterances ("in the beginning was the Word.")

"I made the "OK"-sign mudra with my hands and began vibrating them, as I've often done under the influence of psilocybin. This is an almost involuntary response on my part. But this time when I tried it, the vibrations in my hands (~200 Hz -- standard shamanic rattle speed) and the sounds of the didge set up a cascade of sympathetic vibrations that penetrated my entire body and all space around me. The result cannot be described here in remotely human terms. Magic is a *very* weak word for it. I felt my body come apart and dissolve into the ether. The *physical* dimension began hissing and popping; the wind picked up sharply outside.The field of body-consciousness continued to expand outward until the inside became the outside became the inside.

"I had to exercise control over the ego at this point. There was the distinct knowledge that I was treading a fine line between life and death. While the autonomic nervous system is normally reluctant to let go, and N,N-DMT is physiologically benign, I also recognized that this plane of consciousness was as imminently real as the material universe, and that none of the normal rules applied, that to lose my grip at this point could result in going right 'round the bend. Surprisingly, there was no real fear. There was only a rational sense: "pay attention here!"

"Then I entered a bizarre "lower-middle world" of sorts. A flock of hungry spirits descended and began slurping out my innards and licking my bones. Here were demonic faces, blood-dripping skulls, luminous skeletons and all sorts of hideous death-masks swirling in the miasma. When I'd been thoroughly eviscerated, the First Shaman filled up my innards with a magical, sludgy, sparkling electric obsidian ooze.

Transcriber's note: for those unfamilar with shamanic motifs, this is pretty standard initiatic fare, and occurs across cultures with minor technical differences. Australian shamans have their organs replaced with magic quartz crystals to enable "vision," and often report being speared all the way through the head, back to front through the tongue with a sharp stick and having a walnut-sized quartz crystal placed into their skull. (note: compare this with, amazingly, Conrad's Kurtz: "I felt as if I'd been shot through the forehead with a diamond bullet").

The alien continued his story:

"10:20 pm: And as quickly as the effects had come on, they ebbed. It was as if a switch had been flipped. Plop back into 3d-temporal reality. I grabbed a box of Wheat Thins and some aged, New York sharp cheddar and started munching. I'd forgotten how *empty* my stomach had been. (Note: for those who might worry about the potential for the tyramine "cheese" effect with MAOI's, the primary MAOI-A features of harmine/harmline don't appear to signify wrt tyramine-containing foods, and this data point should hopefully reassure a few people out there).

"I was mildly disappointed. I'd expected a longer trip. At least there was the satisfaction of it having *worked*! I tried processing everything that had happened. Hell, I could baerly remember the *half* of it. But having a stock of maps carefully charted by shamanic and yogic predecessors is an enormous help. Their maps helped turn what would have been a bewildering morass of images and symbols into markers and signposts that can be used to navigate these amazing realms of consciousness. They make integration much, much easier.

"10:40pm: Whoa. Time to lie back down again. A second wave was beginning to crest. In the span of a few seconds, I was *full-on* back. Kiss bye-bye to spatio-temporal reality.

"The buzzing wasn't as intense this time. What *was* unusual: I felt consciousness expanding again, and this time it began dropping downward, out of my body, until I found myself in some sort of truly chthonic realm, filled with all sorts of infernal, demonic spirits. I couldn't help but be reminded of the Buddhist's asura realm. It was filled with the same spirits of the Mayans and Aztecs as depicted on their temples.

"The entire luminescent, obsidian-black and reddish space was packed with a horde of dark, voracious, winking-fire-eyed bloodthirsty spirits screaming for blood sacrifice. Their fierce, terrible beauty was absolutely enthralling and seductive beyond words. I recall feeling myself being pulled in by them. Invisible hands grabbed at my body and tried pulling me down. At this point, I had no fear of literal death. My body was functioning at its normal clip, so I felt physically safe. However, I was afraid of the seductive power (and the ability to *confer* power) of these demons were I to choose to engage them. Images of the Aztecs' racks for the skulls of their heart sacrifice victims came immediately to mind. I did *not* want to go there, or have anything to do with the whatever these demons offered or demanded.

"Out of this writhing kaleidescope emerged all kinds of death-forms. More bloody, Maya/Aztecan spirits, fierce angular jaguars red in tooth and nail, and jangling skull-belted, gold-sceptered demons resembling the ferocious 49 wrathful dieties of of Chonyid bardo. I knew this was *in actuality* the Chonyid bardo. I felt like the First Shaman was taking me on a tour of the bardo planes so I could understand fully the nature of this post-mortem realm. I recall Terence McKenna mentioning a Tibetan yogi taking DMT and saying he experienced the "lesser lights" of the Bardos on his trip. Anyway...

"I had to keep up a mantra invoking Amitabha Budda to prevent me from losing my grip, and I kept reciting the Bodhisattva vow to keep myself from complete thralldom in the fierce, gleaming, sinister, astonishing beauty of this realm. Surprisingly, I'd completely forgotten to chant the mantra "om ma ne pad me hum" used to close all the lokas [doorways] that lead to rebirth in various realms -- a testament to just how easy it is to forget and lose your bearings in the bardos after death. This taught me the incredibly disorienting nature of the bardo realms, and showed me not to be arrogant -- and just how easy it was for a dead soul to become distracted and enter into yet another cycle of rebirth, suffering, and death.

Transcriber's note: The alien here is referring to a very useful map of hyperspace, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which states among many other things: "Thick awesome darkness will appear in front of thee continually, from the midst of which there will come such terror-producing utterances as "strike! slay!" and similar threats. Fear them not. In other cases, persons of much evil karma, karmically produced flesh-eating rakshasas [or demons] bearing various weapons will utter "strike! slay!", and so on, making frightful tumult. They will come upon one as if competing amongst themselves as to which one of them should get hold of one."

The alien went on...

"Infernal, electrically-lit fiends filled up the visual sphere, one in particular resembled the "Alien" of the movie trilogy fame, with even more vicious jaws and mein. I then felt myself sinking to the bottom of a muddy jungle river. Out of the watery tapestry of glowing, finely etched geometric patterns emerged a fiercely beautiful school of click-clacking jaw-snapping, demon-pirahnas that bit into and through my belly and with unearthly greed and hunger sucked out my innards all over again and left my skeleton picked clean.

"This time, however, my insides were not replaced by this obsidian ooze. Instead, I saw with a type of x-ray vision my empty insides transformed with Shakti, the serpent-power of Kundalini. Hissing, fiery currents of energy started up from the Muladhara chakra, up the Ida and Pengala channels, creating a helical swirl around the sushumna channel and forming a dancing, biolelectric caduceus that lit my insides completely. I felt the writhing skin of the rainbow anaconda sliding inside my body-cavity. Unfortunately, this time there was no samadhi, as had happened on one occasion previously with psilocybin and P. harmala. It was as if I'd first been shown to lighter side; this trip was *clearly* the darker side.

"11:45pm At this point, the visions began to fade, and I found myself popped back up into the 3d realm. Wow. Wow. Wow. Some may infer this was some sort of "bad" trip. Nothing could be further from the truth. At no point was there any pronounced fear or self-loathing. Just an endless stream of astonishment at the amazing Multiverse of Mind.

Transciber's note: here the dream ended when the buzzing of my alarm woke me up.