Ayahuasca is greater than the sum of her parts

The wisdom of Shipibo plant spirit medicine as a way of learning

fMRI image of the brain on DMT (1)

“Knowledge without a body to hold it is nothing…but it’s not just nothing, its hazardous.” -Joshua Michael Schrei

The most arresting feature of the Guardian article “Psychedelic brew Ayahuasca’s profound impact revealed in brain scans” is the image of a human brain on DMT. It’s simple, yet evocative. The folds and rivets, the overall shape, the brightly shaded areas in hues of red, orange and yellow are cartoonish, but speak to something, to a certain way of seeing the world. To my eyes, what is most striking in this image is not the brain itself but instead the negative space around it — the white, blank, open space at the center of which it sits. This brain sits in isolation. It begs the question— how do we really know a thing?

Western science is a paradigm, which includes some things, and excludes everything else. It views the world through parts. The method of Western science dissects and isolates in order to learn. This article, and the study to which it refers, is a perfect example of this. The scientists isolated DMT, the psychoactive compound from the traditional amazonian plant medicine brew Ayahuasca, in their wish to “probe” and study human consciousness. In their quest, they gave this compound via injection to 20 people in a lab and then studied the effects on what they consider to be the central, singular hub of consciousness— the human brain.

What they found, using fMRI images of the brain on DMT, is that there is greater “global functional connectivity in the brain” and network disintegration and desegregation.” This basically means DMT breaks down our normal ways of functioning, while simultaneously making connections that support a different kind of functioning. Taken at face value, from a scientific perspective, these findings could be said to be remarkable, and they lend an air of excitement to scientists and psychedelic enthusiasts alike who wish to treat psychological ailments such as depression. But having taken the actual plant brew Ayahuasca a multitude of times over the past 13 years, I am acutely aware of the limitations of applying Western science to the study of Ayahuasca, and I am more than a little pained by what this experiment, by design, leaves out.

The human brain, when taken out of the skull, ceases to be something alive. It does not and cannot exist on its own. It becomes an it, an object. We might say the same of DMT. When taken on its own, it is a thing— a compound. In order for it to have life, it needs the body of Ayahuasca.

You see, to those of us with experience drinking Ayahuasca, we know her as a presence, a distinct consciousness, a plant spirit. Yes, a spirit. I say her because, although plant spirits have, like we all do, both masculine and feminine attributes, Ayahuasca has a distinctly feminine manifestation. In fact, she is commonly referred to as “Madre Ayahuasca.” Mother Ayahuasca, known for opening the doorway to the spirit world. How is this possible one might ask? How do we know this?

There are multiple ways of learning, and multiple ways of knowing. There is knowing that comes from learning things didactically, through engaging the mind. This would encompass reading, memorizing or being told. But the mind, of course, is only one aspect of us as human beings. The mind, we must not forget, has context, which in our modern Western culture, is downplayed at best, and often completely ignored. One need only reference the brain at the top of this article as a clear example of this. We would not have minds without the frame of our living bodies. This fact leads us to another, deeper kind of knowing that precludes cognition, and brings us into the realm of the experiential.

Experience is a phenomenological happening, a breathing, interactive, moving, somatic event. It is felt as much as it is thought and it adds substance and dimension to cognitive knowledge. It is a kind of knowing all on it’s own, spoken by the language of tissue and blood, bone and energy. We learn from experience, and we form narratives about ourselves, our world, and the world in which we live based on our experiences. Experience is also inherently subjective.

Subjectivity is too messy for science. As a living process, subjectivity is difficult to quantify. And how does one measure that which can’t be quantified? Science is a paradigm based on measurements. The scientific method evolved out of a cosmological framework that is mechanistic and materialistic. It solves the messiness of subjectivity by reducing it down to objectivity, by rendering living subjects into inert objects, by divorcing experience from data, body from mind, spirit from matter. It is a great strength and of the Western scientific method to view the world through the prism of parts. Granted, we all have benefited from this. Still, it is our great hubris to view the world only in this way. Parts viewed in isolation are decontextualized and easily seen in mechanistic terms only. Objects become devoid of spirit, of life. What science does not include, what it in fact by its very nature cannot include, are things that defy measurement. Things like the phenomenological, felt realms of life—like the mind blowing, ego dissolving, terrifying, stunning, on your knees humbling experience that can happen when an individual person drinks a small cup of the plant brew Ayahuasca in the pit of a dark night. So to say Ayahuasca is a conscious plant spirit is, to science, at best, irrelevant. And yet, the spiritual realm is the basis of the medicine of Ayahuasca.

Operating within the paradigm of Western science, this experiment not only dissects Ayahuasca, rendering her into DMT, but also fully separates her from the context within which she is embedded. Ayahuasca is just one small part of a much larger medicine path, borne out of the traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Rainforest. The Shipibo tradition of the tribal people of the upper Ucayali River is one of the deepest, most skillful and most ancient. In this tradition, the shaman, or “Onanya” as they call themselves in Shipibo, are an essential part of working with the medicine in Ayahuasca ceremonies. The Onanya is a doctor of Ayahuasca and they have immense knowledge gained from many, many years of apprenticeship. This knowledge is steeped in experiential learning to the core. The Onanya has learned over time how to navigate the vicissitudes and even dangers of the spirit world, and they know how to work with and manage the energies they encounter. The medicine of Ayahuasca opens the visions and the songs, or “icaros,” of the Onanya transmit healing information carried through tones, vibrations and words to the body of the person to whom they chant. Thus the Onanya diagnose and doctor those that receive their icaros. There are also other “master” or teacher plants that are a part of this medicine tradition. Ayahuasca is one, but there are many, many others. This is all vital context for this medicine - the Onanya, the icaros, the other master plants, the ceremony. Ayahuasca does not work alone, but in connection with a much larger framework of interdependent relationships.

The Ayahuasca medicine path is rooted in holism. It is multidimensional and connects the physical aspects of the body with the mind, the spirit, the emotions, the psyche. It also reaches beyond the individual person into the social, the environmental. It thus takes into account all the many levels of life, energy, form and, importantly, relationship in an effort to heal. To heal is to make whole, to form connections and communication between disparate parts. Finding connection is about making relationship, and relationship is a fundamental basis of life. Healing with Ayahuasca medicine traditions, and for that matter all medicine traditions that are based on indigenous lineages and knowledge, is thus about healing and connection, through which coherence, harmony, and integrity can be created in support of joyful living.

To me, these scientists are missing the point entirely when they attempt to study Ayahuasca as DMT. They have eviscerated her, reduced her to a drug, an it. Not only that, they have cut her off from the roots of indigenous knowledge and context from which she was born, and where she thrives. They pronounce their findings to indicate support for a “drug-plus-psychotherapy combination for treating depression.” But treating things with drugs is a reflection of our way of being in the world—it is an attempt to bandaid over a gaping wound, with little real understanding of the cause. Depression is a symptom of disconnection— from a person with their own body, and with the larger world around them. The sickness is really our culture. Our modern Western way of life is rooted in this paradigm of separation and objectification, and the disconnection and disembodiment that ensues. To view the world and all life in it as simply objects, to separate the spiritual from the physical, is to miss the larger whole, which is always greater than the sum of it’s parts. Life is a dynamic, relational happening. It is much much vaster and more complex than what we could ever measure, and in that utterly mysterious. Life defies comprehension and it must be this way.

The irony of this study is that the brain scans revealed how DMT facilitates connections in the brain. It is like a little clue - consciousness is not to be measured or understood, not really. Consciousness is to be related to. Health is made through relationship. Sometimes you have to jump out of a system to be able to see it’s limitations. What is most revealing in this study is not that Ayahuasca has profound effects, this we already know, but instead the gaze of the Westerner wedded to a scientific framework in order to know the world. Science could be informed by, and could even learn from, the depth of knowledge and experience of the many voices and perspectives of those that have evolved over thousands of years, as well as from a fully embodied, participatory ethos. Ayahuasca in her fullness, intact, has a lot to teach you, scientists. Perhaps you could learn to listen.

*** For more information about Shipibo plant medicine and how to get involved please check out Caya Shobo at CayaShobo.com ***

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(1) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan of a brain shows regions of increased connectivity on DMT. Connectivity rises from yellow to orange to red. Photograph: Christopher Timmermann, Imperial College London