Author : D W Walker
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2014-06-05
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0987761528
Confessions of an Ayahuasca Skeptic by D W Walker Pdf
When I first arrived in Iquitos, Peru in July 2012 I did not know what day it was, but within hours of my arrival I had heard much about ayahuasca, an Amazonian jungle vine that, boiled with other jungle plants, causes hallucinations, what people referred to as "visions" that change people's lives, often, they said, for the better, if not for the Good. I was curious, but skeptical. What is this concoction of vines and leaves? What does it really do to the mind and body? Is it truly the miracle cure for the mostly spiritual ills of Modern man? I had to find out for myself, and I did so by looking into the history of the plants involved, the science of it all, the traditional and the modern religious aspects of the "ceremonies" one partakes in, the Ayahuasca Ceremonies conducted by a curandero, the medicine man who guides the ayahuasca user's journey into the unknown realm of plant spirits. I asked private people about ayahuasca, recording their accounts, noted accounts of professional writers before me, watched people under the influence of ayahuasca. I wanted to know about this experience from as many sources and from as many fields as I could find. My search for answers about ayahuasca led me to curanderos in the city of Iquitos, to curanderos in the surrounding jungles, and even into the aether itself. The more I discovered, the more skeptical I became about any genuine physical and especially psychic benefits to the individual taking this drug-- or medicine as the true believers call it. But really, I had to take it myself to know for sure. And take it I did, a number of times. This book, Confessions of an Ayahuasca Skeptic: A Journey to Enlightenment, takes the reader on a voyage of discovery into the alternate universe of Amazonian tribesmen who live in a realm of plant spirits, good and evil, and into the homes of medicine men and witch doctors to see how ayahuasca is central to their life experience and understanding of reality. One encounters in this book as well a wide variety of non-native ayahuasca proponents and detractors, all of whom add some useful stepping stone to the path to understanding the ayahuasca experience. Simple questions and bland assumptions reveal more complications than the average tourist just off the boat would have thought. Ayahuasca. I began as a skeptic.... Foreword by Peter Gorman, investigative journalist, expert on Amazonian curanderismo and author of "Ayahuasca in My Blood: 25 Years of Medicine Dreaming." This is what Gorman has to say about the book: "I will tell you that it's a damned good read... [D.W. Walker has] done his homework, been his own guinea pig, and written something pretty special."