Roger Rumrril asked in his interview with Guillermo Arrévalo the quintessential question of why people take ayahuasca, since there couldn’t be an ayahuasca boom without the huge demand for ayahuasca.
Indeed, why do people go all the way across the globe to take a purgative medicine that gives them the experience of annihilation? Why do people want an experience of annihilation? To me, people yearns for what’s beyond the see-smell-touch-hear-taste they call the reality. To me, the demand is not so much for ayahuasca than it is for existential truth.
Shaman Guillermo Arrévalo mentioned in the interview that the increasing popularity of ayahuasca for personal healing amongst European and North American communities indicates a rising spiritual crisis. It is of no surprise that spiritual crisis becomes a contemporary social issue in Western societies since our education intentionally and selectively produces the kinds of humans that contribute to the existing capitalistic economy and thereby perpetuates the idea that purpose equals productivity (Donald 2015) without the acknowledgement that these educational approaches are “products of decades of diligent efforts to scrub spirituality and religion out of ways of knowing and out of curricula—and keep it that way” (Bartlett, Marshall and Marshall 2012).
If the purpose of life is being productive in the economy, then why are people depressed instead of being content? To me, this social norm of productivity derived purpose is the root of these spiritual crisis.
So what is a spiritual crisis? To me, a spiritual crisis is the discontentment for the limitation of our physical reality with the deep inner knowing that there must be more to it. A spiritual crisis is the shaking up of the conditioning of who we are told to be. A spiritual crisis is the deep questioning of this physical body that we tie our identities to. A spiritual crisis is the dissatisfaction with transiency. It is the search for life, the search for truth, the search of eternity, and the experience of ayahuasca does exactly that. The ayahuasca experience is contacting and acquiring knowledge from plant spirits. Therefore, the preparation of an ayahuasca ceremony requires “dieta”, which essentially is the deactivation of the human functions through isolation, fasting and celibacy in order to go on a journey as a spirit and exchange information with plant spirits. (Jauregui, Clavo, Jovel, Pardo de Santiyana 2011).
To me, ayahuasca is a blessing. It is not escapism. It is salvation.
Professor Smith mentioned in the podcast that “…the reason that you have access—you, anyone listening to this podcast has had—the reason you have access to ayahuasca experiences today is because indigenous people were enslaved during the Amazonian rubber boom.” So is ayahuasca exploitation? Probably yes. Is our existence and livelihood as settlers in North America and Latin America also because of the genocide and oppression of indigenous people? Also yes.
I haven’t figured out how I should live with that…
Bartlett.C, Marshall.M & Marshall,A. (2012). Two-Eyed Seeing and other lessons learned within a co-learning journey of bringing together indigenous and mainstream knowledge and ways of knowing. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, (2) 4: 331–340.
De Rios, M. D. (2005).Interview with Guillermo Arrévalo, a Shipibo Urban Shaman, by Roger Rumrrill. Journal of psychoactive drugs, (37) 2: 203-207.
Donald,C. (2015). Homo Economicus and Forgetful Curriculum: remembering other ways to be a human being. Edmonton, Alberta : University of Alberta Press, 2019.
