Audiobook
by Pierre F. Walter
ISBN 978-1-933137-03-2
Production / Copyright
©2007-2010
Playing Time
2.8 Hours
Spoken By
Pierre F. Walter
Download Size
195 MB
Price
28$
Description
CONSCIOUSNESS AND SHAMANISM is the result of the author’s Ayahuasca voyage in 2004 to Ecuador, where he was drinking the sacred brew in the presence of an experienced Shuar shaman. He puts up the hypothesis that when the traditional Ayahuasca brew is ingested, it is not, or not directly, the plant’s DMT that causes the spiritual voyage, as it is assumed in the overwhelming part of the literature on shamanism and entheogens, and especially by the McKenna Brothers and Rick Strassman, but the shaman’s superconsciousness impacting directly upon the consciousness of the shaman’s client, the seeker of truth who comes to drink the brew.
The author explains in this paper the various theories of causation, reports his own Ayahuasca experience in all detail, and cites the few research results from other consciousness researchers (Narby, Leadbeater, Villoldo) that seem to corroborate his hypothesis. He brings forth other examples that sustain his theory, taken from former experiences with Filipino spiritual healers, homeopathy, medical hypnosis and Bach flower treatment.
The author counters the plant chemistry causation theorists with the possibility and even probability that the shaman’s directed superconscious intent impacts first on the plant’s consciousness matrix and uses this matrix as a transmitting and amplifying agent of his powerful thought forms. This might be accomplished in practice via the creation, by thought energy, of elementals that in last resort effect the alteration of the client’s consciousness during the trance.
The author calls this a multi-causative theory of causation versus the reigning single-causative theory that holds it was solely the plant’s or the brew’s DMT that causes the consciousness-altering effects. He also brings forth evidence from the experience itself that appears to strongly corroborate his conclusions.
Preview Track 1/7
Contents
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS AYAHUASCA?
HYPOTHESIS
THE CONSCIOUSNESS THEORY
1. The Ayahuasca Preparation
2. The Lasting Trance
3. The Shamanic Treatments
4. Focus and Intent
5. The Strange Reception
6. The Hypnotic View
7. Hypnosis and Natural Healing
8. Medical Hypnosis
SUMMARY
THE COGNITIVE EXPERIENCE
Alien Noise and Pulsation
The Five Depth Levels
Calling Me in Touch
Freeing from Conditioning
Love, Life and Relationships
ANNEX ONE : An Ayahuasca Experience
ANNEX TWO : Literature Review
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7 Responses to “Consciousness and Shamanism”
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I am sorry for the long delay for I had previously promised to get into the “Consciousness and Shamanism” audiobook recently shared with me.
I listened carefully to the second chapter three times in order to get a good grasped of the material and thus I am now ready to deliver some initial feedback. This chapter was very interesting, very informative as a beginning section of this audiobook. The discourse here covered important pieces of ideas including the one that attempts to shatter the stereotype that Ayahuasca was nothing more than another mere drug used for recreational purposes in much the same way that popular illegal drugs are used for recreational consumption as part of a prime time illegal social affair marked by drinking, drug use, sex and even violence upon each other as people in such wasteful states of being eventually at some point reach a chaotic inner level making them highly sensitive to unleashing violence by another and or coupled with being prone to commit bodily harm upon themselves.
Quite the contrary to the conventional western point of view of plant based brew formulas, Ayahuasca is far from that. You voice a rather positive perspective of Ayahuasca as something worthy of all due respect. It is viewed as a inner consciousness bringer, in which the very intake of it under the supervision of a qualified shaman, allows the individual access to higher levels of being, namely, entry into the metaphysical world in which one can find assistance for one’s problems, issues, thereby the native earth belonging substance is actually filled with positive qualities and a multi-purpose. It can provide healing to the sick, answers for the emotionally distressed, possibly cure social ills such as alcohol addiction (as you mentioned). Another important thing the chapter does is to shatter the myth that the shaman was no more than simply a crazed forest creature in much the same way as a cl is regarded in a similar fashion. Far from crazy or untamed, the shaman is equal to an internist (general medical clinician) in that he has been accorded the unique position of guidance seeker, healer, to name a few. His very intake of Ayahuasca allows him to be more effective as a healer or problem solver because once in a trance, he has immediate access to helping spirits which he can connect with. These helping spirits serve as personal assistants, so to speak, and their very feedback can guide the shaman’s approach to helping a given client before him. Addressing the late ethnobotanist, Terence McKenna, was also vital for he was a pioneer in the field of entheogenic study.
The chapter makes the case for the re-consideration of shamans and entheogenic containing plants insofar as we must confront our initial long standing biases towards shamanism and plants that have been historically demonized by western society. You provide justice to a subject matter only a hand full of people have done, your discourse being perhaps the most updated unique source material available to date having incorporated both previous scholarly material coupled with one’s very own subjective source material following an actual Ayahuasca journey conducted by the author himself. If nothing else, the listener walks away from the chapter knowing that entheogenic plants are worthy of respect and are to be taken seriously. That they are not to be equated with illegal street drugs used in low level or large scale urban drug trafficing. To harbor such as biased point of view is to project our consumer societal ways upon something we more or less fear and know little about.
– Nelson, San Francisco
In this chapter, it only makes sense to provide to your very own take on the shamanic experience for your own subjectivity provides unique source material which serves to add another layer to the already existing database firmly established previously. After all this is what constitutes novelty is one’s own unique interpretation or impression as to the nature to his experience for it is only he who can provide the very best and most accurate account.
Your discourse would only reinforce or contradict one or the other when it comes to the vital question as to who or what exactly is responsible for the very experience one has during the trance. It is informative to acknowledge what others before you had thought about the idea as McKenna reportedly attributed visions and sorts strictly to the actual plants themselves thereby making his idea limited and the same was true for Alberto Villoldo who reportedly, based on his writings from the field, attributed energy detections strictly to his shaman teacher.
Your idea seems more complete I suppose as you seem to suggest that the content and quality of the experience in dependent on preparation of the plant brew and the young shaman’s energy delivery, attention or intention during the process of the brewing process. If I recall your 2004 experience correctly, the shaman was a young man for whom you had some level of doubt about perhaps his abilities.
Also, I recall that at some point, the shamanic practitioner blew smoke in your face and did something involving a feather as well. Such gestures perhaps served to rescue you from the trouble you were in health wise. Such ‘treatment,’ if you will, perhaps helped to diminish any doubts you previously had about the young shaman.
– Nelson, San Francisco
I just finished listening to the next chapter of Consciousness and Shamanism. I found it challenging for as an outsider with no formal experience or scholarship myself, I could only remain open to what was being said in the chapter. For what I just listened to, it seems that the chapter aimed to really reflect upon your very experience with the intake or Ayahuasca and what exactly is being experienced by you during the trace.
There seems to be a heavy emphasis on the sensory tool of audio or auditory realm as a key tool in the experience. It appears that you are trying to say that during the trace, your audio system, if you will, was highly sensitive, fully active in the experience or session and that you communicated or were somehow in contact with what seemed like many many voices speaking all at once.
You could have had the opportunity to extend thanks for the very chance to connect with the spirit world and the many voices you ‘heard’ and by namely asking questions of the vital nature for which you received questions in return. The answers extended by the spirits you saw as not being straightforward answers typically delivered by human beings but rather the so-called answers served to open yourself up to better answers which you seemed to have detected well.
Communication here was unlike any other and is therefore highly uniques, highly subjective and profound as you are allowed temporary entry into sacred space so that you could tap into the metaphysical world marked by voices to be heard and connected with.
– Nelson, San Francisco
Thanks, in your own words and hesitatingly, you grasp a part of the experience, but not the whole of it as there was so much more. Also I would not forcibly say that the experience was subjective in the sense that it was relative to me.
In this sense, all experiences are relative, of course, but they can be objective for that matter as well. I am convinced this intelligence is real and I was in touch with something real not something belonging to the imaginal realm, not something that is a reflection of my own beliefs. In this sense, every entheogenic experience, when it’s done within the right set and setting, is authentic and objective, the real coming together of two different realms of existence, and communication via telepathic exchanges.
Other authors agree with that objectivity and authenticity of those experiences, versus the delusions you get from narcotics and when drugs are used as entertainment instead of favoring the contact with the inner god.
Sure it is subjective in the sense it is your own personal experience while it is at the same time, objective insofar as it can be proven as authentic, genuine, others can mirror your experience and thereby make it empirical even more so. I am glad I understood most of the content of the chapter.
Yes in this sense it can be objectivized as all in science needs to be verified. Let us say the core experience can be verified by others, but not how I subjectively experienced it, as here we are indeed all different and accounts of those experiences vary accordingly. But consensus is present as to the realism of the experience (versus play of imagination) and the mind-opening results, the freedom from consumer conditioning and the boundaries this conditioning puts up all around us.
Your choice to receive the brew in Ecuador instead of Brazil was a very wise one for the very reason you provided. The Ecuadorian journey in theory provided a more authentic experience insofar as it was as pure as possible while the one you opted out of in Brazil sounded like a non-genuine spiritual offering given that it would have been intertwined with Christian elements thereby decreasing the overall validity of the experience.
Your Ecuadorian decision was of course far from a honeymoon given the unfriendly nature of some of the local people and what sounded like a French hotel owner whose behavior was unwelcoming making him unfit for his tourist position.
You also expressed what I had previously known about namely the very status of the shaman you would be working was not a very promising or impressive type based on your description.
Although the taste of the brew was something you found agreeable which could indicate your connection with the plants composing of mother earth, such agreeable taste indicates a strong connection with nature or that you are more in tuned with nature while others disgusting response to the taste indicates perhaps a much lesser connection with the plants consisting of the natural environment, you seem to have been suffering from what you suggest was a disturbing energy field coming from the shaman himself if I understand correctly.
Despite this, what appeared to have brought about comfort in your discomfort was a feminine or female figure you had encountered which clearly indicates that you are female inclined, oriented toward the non-male aspect which is the healing power potential for you.
These experiences speak about the genders and how they resonate or do not resonate with you. They seem, in my novice opinion with no formal training in shamanism, that men or males appear as aversions or semi-adversial figures to you while the female or women are viewed as gentle, non-threathening beings with the power to put you at easy. This is what I see coming from the chapter.