Apart from the Introduction and Conclusions sections, the body of this manuscript is an edited transcript of a taped account of the Santo Daime ritual which was recorded within about 10 hours of the experience itself.
Introduction: I am an academic researcher and teacher in one of the 'hard' sciences, male, mid-50's, married but with no children, In the mid-1960s I lived for some years in Southern California and was fascinated by hearing occasional anecdotal accounts of LSD trips as experiences of spiritual enlightenment. I didn't experiment at the time and, in retrospect, this was a wise decision. I know now that I had neither sufficient psychological grounding to deal with meeting my 'shadow' side nor sufficient psychological insight to understand the importance of internalising the experience.
For much of my later life I have suffered from chronic depression at a sub-critical level - what I once heard R.D. Laing describe as 'driving with the brakes on'. I was brought up in a Roman Catholicism and didn't finally shake it off (if, indeed, I have actually done so) until my late thirties. My depression lives in the gaping chasm between my rational, scientific self and - for want of a better word - my 'spiritual' self. My rational self sees life as chaos, full of pain, utterly devoid of any meaning - and constantly wonders why it must be endured. Although my 'spiritual' self is also deeply sceptical it is intoxicated with some ever-fugitive sense of 'otherness', ravenously hungry for a touch of the spiritual. This self would, I suspect, be prepared to believe in even the flakiest New Age nonsense if it didn't retain at least some of the critical apparatus of my scientific background.
But for an encounter with some 'new' therapies my early 40's (which led on to a great deal of personal exploration in a wide variety of therapeutic settings) I suspect that I would now be dead or swallowed up by depression. Instead I still ..... well, I keep walking the road. Two influences were instrumental in directing my footsteps towards the Santo Daime ritual. One was many years experience with Stan Grof's 'Holotropic Breathwork', a therapeutic tool which emerged from Grof's earlier pioneering work with LSD. Like the latter, Holotropic Breathwork can create powerful altered mental states and Grof's understanding of the healing potential of these states gives an explicit and important place to the spiritual dimension. The second influence was a fortuitous encounter in the late '80s with a therapist in the US who used ecstasy and LSD with selected clients. I had four psychotropic sessions one of which took the form of a revelation of a millennia-long exile from my 'true home' and of the sufferings that I had endured as a result. I still have no idea whether this experience represents some form of objective reality or is merely a self-generated powerful metaphor for the state of my subjective world. What I do know is - despite my normal knee-jerk cynicism - my memory of the experience remains profoundly moving. While it is true that psychotherapy rather than spiritual practice as commonly understood was the road that brought me to Santo Daime it is also the case that I have always seen my depression, my central crisis, as a sickness of the soul. Hence - for me at least - psychotherapeutic healing is essentially spiritual healing and vice-versa.
Hearing About Santo Daime: About three years ago two close and trusted Dutch friends of mine began to tell me about the Santo Daime Church in Amsterdam which they had then been attending fairly regularly for about 18 months. Although most of my preconceptions about it subsequently turned out to be ill-founded I immediately felt powerfully drawn to the experience. Paradoxically, one attraction was hearing that the ayahuasca - employed as the sacrament in the ritual - made you vomit. Vomiting has been a major phobia of mine since childhood and I have been slowly working up to confronting it through Grof breathwork. Here now was a way of meeting it head-on. My friends had also described the Santo Daime as one of the most powerful exercises in 'letting go' that they had ever encountered. As someone who is a past-master in not letting go I was deeply attracted by the notion of trying to surrender to the ayahuasca in a religious context supported by a community, all of whom were facing the same struggle. And underneath it all - but possibly most important - there was, of course, the hope of just possibly experiencing a touch of the divine. It took me another two years to actually get myself organised to visit Amsterdam but the inner summons did not diminish.
When I finally sorted out the visit I arranged things so that I would be in Amsterdam for two successive rituals - a cura (healing) on a Friday and a concentration (meditation) on the following Saturday - with the intention of doing both. In the few weeks before my departure I began to get very scared. I had two uncharacteristically bad sessions on hash which propelled me far enough into strangeness to really frighten me. Feeling that the Santo Daime experience was likely be far worse again I began to think that I'd never be able to handle it. I also have some relatively mild chronic urinary and bowel ailments and I began to fret that the ayahuasca might somehow exacerbate these with irreversible consequences. At least twice I firmly decided that I had to back out. Each time the major factor in changing my mind was less courage than the fear of feeling humiliated before those few friends who knew of my plans.
And so I did eventually fly off to Amsterdam feeling far more depression and fright than excitement. My friends met me at the airport, took me home, fed me and talked with me at length about their own experiences with the Daime. Listening - and later putting out my own anxieties - calmed me down a lot although, at base, a dull sense of fear still lurked within me.
Preparing for the Ritual: That morning I had a light breakfast and decided not to eat or drink for the rest of the day to minimise the nauseating effect of ayahuasca. (At the time I felt that this might be cheating but later discovered that many of the regular participants take the same precautions).
Evidently the Amsterdam Church does not operate in a single constant site. This night our journey ended in what seemed to be an industrial area in the outer suburbs of Amsterdam outside a long, low, white building which turned out to be used as dance studio by day. My first impression of the other people there was of an unexpected ordinariness. They seemed just like the standard mix at any group-therapy session, the usual preponderance of women (about 2:1) but perhaps rather more young people than would be common - the youngest looked to be about 18.
My friend introduced me to Geraldine, the Madrinha (head of the Church in Amsterdam) and to some other organisers of the ritual. Geraldine is a middle-aged woman with a cheerful animated face and shoulder-length grey hair. Although she was very welcoming and friendly, I sensed a certain reserve in her. I also met a second woman, (referred to below as H) who is, I gather, Geraldine's deputy and who seemed to be rather more outgoing. Registration involved paying a £35 donation for the ritual. I also had to fill out a document describing my medical history and sign a waiver acknowledging that I knew that the Daime was a psychotropic substance, that I was participating on my own responsibility and that I would not leave before the end of the ritual - all of which raised my anxiety level somewhat. I also discovered that there was only a single toilet in the entire complex - and that there were three large rooms between it and the place where the ritual was to be held. Since my friends had told me that loss of bowel or bladder control can also result from taking the Daime - and given my health anxieties - this did nothing to calm me down.
Having changed into the prescribed white clothes we went down to the room where the ritual was being held - much smaller than I had imagined but adequate for the ca. 40-50 people who would eventually be present. Like our own dress, everything was white - the room, the small rectangular central table, the chairs. On the table was a wooden cross with two crosspieces, the upper one shorter than the lower. There were also some flowers, what seemed to be a small statue of Archangel Michael slaying the devil, a piece of the ayahuasca vine, incense, glasses and a water jug. The celebrants began to file in - very disparate people, varying from the apparent 18-year-old to middle-aged or elderly men and women. Many of the latter were tall, had long straight grey hair, looking a lot like older versions of Rajneesh sannyasins I had met at workshops nearly 20 years before.
About seven of the initiates or committed permanent members of the Church, with Geraldine at the head, sat around the small central table, men on one side, women on the other. The remaining chairs were arranged in rectangular lines around this table, again with the women taking two sides, the men the other two. This, I understand, has no inferior/superior gender connotations but involves concentrating the different male and female energies. In the same spirit two of the initiates spent some time moving some of each gender group from chair to chair or row to row - again with a view to energy balancing. As Nicholas Saunders has described elsewhere, the uniform worn by the initiates seems rather incongruous but it did not strike me as in any way ridiculous.
It had been emphasised to me by my friends that the Santo Daime experience was a religious ritual - not therapy - and that the guiding purpose of participants should be to support the ritual as much as possible, whatever might be happening to them personally. 'Acting out' in any disruptive fashion was not allowed although audible weeping was acceptable. And, of course, vomiting was seen as a very positive clearing process.
The Santo Daime Ritual: As the ceremony began I was able to recognise the Dutch prayers as the 'Our Father' and 'Hail Mary' of my Roman Catholic background and - surprised at my lack of resistance - I said them quietly to myself in English. There were other prayers too which I could not catch. I was sitting in the first male row, directly behind the initiates at the table itself. The hymn-singing (all in Portuguese) began and I rapidly lost my place in the booklet that my friends had given me - so I just hummed along with the melodies. Quite soon - far too soon for me - everyone stood up and began to move in line, the women and men separately, towards a table at the rear of the room to receive the Daime. Feeling very scared I eventually found myself at the top of the line. On the table was a large jug of what looked like tomato juice. The initiate behind the table gazed at me for a moment and then poured a quantity of the Daime into a glass. I took it in both hands, raised it up in a ritual gesture and drank it in one swallow. All that I had read in other accounts of ayahuasca rituals had emphasised the absolutely revolting taste of the liquid. To my immense surprise it wasn't even remotely as bad as I had expected - not unlike tomato juice with an extra and unpleasantly acrid after-taste.
When I got back to my seat I was initially quite elated - if the taste of the Daime was so tolerable perhaps the rest of the experience wouldn't be so bad either. Very soon I noticed that the spatial relationships between everything in my field of vision had begun to take on a strangeness and subtle sense of significance. Then my body began to feel strange too. When I looked across the table at H. and at another woman - both of whom were singing energetically - I saw patterns of broad black lines on their faces and I had no doubt that these were tribal markings. For me, this was a deeply moving moment - a powerful message that this was not just a group of middle-class Dutch getting together to foul-up their brain-chemistry but a witness, a sign that there was something present among us which did go back, genuinely did connect with the era and culture from which the ayahuasca originated.
Now the visual effects began to get more dramatic My ability to judge distances became more distorted and I also began to see the edges of everything I looked at outlined by tiny little rainbows or little coloured fluorescent lights. Then, at one point, the colours in the room suddenly bleached out like an over-exposed photographic negative and all the people that I could see took on an ethereal lavender colour. I can remember being quite frightened at all this - but the effects themselves had no specific emotional content. Unlike the 'tribal markings' they were 'just' strange visual effects, no more.
From the very start the initiates at the central table - and most of the other participants - were singing the hymns almost non-stop and with great gusto and most of them continued to do so throughout the entire 6-7 hours of the ritual. The 'inner circle' initiates showed little outward signs of the physical effects of the Daime - I never noticed one vomit, for instance. Whether this is due to a chemical habituation or to some other effect is not clear to me. Two or three other initiates always remain outside the rows of participants so as to look after the needs of those going through the ritual - I think that these people take milder doses of the Daime. At this point I needed to urinate so one of these initiates took me out to the lavatory. I was surprised to find that I could walk reasonably steadily but when I got back to my place I begin to feel nausea for the first time. I remembered that Saunders had written that virtually nothing happened to him with the initial minor dose of the sacrament. 'My God, I thought, if all this is happening to me on the mild dose, the major dose will blow my head off'.
I signed to one of the helpers that I needed a something to throw up in and was provided with a small shiny white plastic bucket. By this time many people in the room were vomiting, some quite noisily. Normally I would find this intolerable but the whole 'problem' of vomiting - the major demon that I had come to Santo Daime to confront - turned out, paradoxically, to be one of the least significant aspects of the entire experience. I didn't throw up, just belched a couple of times, and then began to feel my body starting to shake and my face to contort. Where before I could hum along with the hymns, now I could only make little grunts and small noises.
Initially I tried hard to remain in my seat and be close to the focus of the ritual - but the shaking got worse and after a while I got up and told the closest helper that I needed to lie down. There were gym mats laid out on the periphery of the room and I lay down. The helper laid a blanket over me with what seemed like an infinite tenderness which I found extremely moving. 'Now, I thought, I can just let the shaking happen'. But it wasn't so simple - I discovered that I had to - so it seemed - float up from some calm motionless place and make the shaking happen. And it came to me that the shaking, contortions and all, though they seemed involuntary, were just manifestations of a struggle to avoid the calm place - and also, for some reason, to give me an excuse for not going back to my place at the table. In a fashion that is all too characteristic of my normal behaviour pattern I both received this important revelation and totally ignored it. I just went ahead and 'made' the shaking and contortions continue.
Just after I lay down the singing stopped and Geraldine began to recite a prayer - this time in English - which I later discovered is called 'The Consecration of the Sanctuary'. Her voice, through the effects of the Daime, sounded like the voice of some huge being, intoning in a vast cave, sounded like the voice of God:
'There is only one presence here, it is Love .............. Those who choose to enter here will feel the pure and Holy presence of Love.
'There is only one presence here, it is Truth .............. Those who choose to enter here will feel the presence of Truth.
'There is only one presence here, it is Justice .............. Those who choose to enter here will feel the presence of Justice.
And at some point here, another insight came to me: that I needed to say "Yes". I needed every cell in my body to say ""Yes", to say "Yes", to say "Yes", to say "Yes". Alas, there was no parallel insight as to precisely what this meant, of how to make it happen. At this time also, with my eyes closed, I began to see all sorts of images but mainly faces of coloured people, These, it seemed to me, were clearly the faces of real people but not of anyone that I'd ever actually met, And I tried at all times, whatever was going on, to be mindful of the hymns. Keeping alive my connection with the ritual seemed very important - and not because I had been told that it was the thing to do - now the desire to do so was wholly mine. By making what sounds I could, I tried to approximate to the hymns. Since they were all in Portuguese it was difficult, but I could get a word here and there. Sometimes I could hum along with the tune or sometimes again I could only make tiny little sounds.
Another thing that I remember from this period is feeling that - because I had left the central group - I was one of the failures, one of the fallen ones, the ones that couldn't keep faith. I found myself wondering whether there was a place in the scheme of things for us weak ones, fallen ones. And then I suddenly thought: 'This is supposed to be a religious ritual, this is supposed to be a going to God' and I badly wanted reassurance that there was indeed a God to go to. The answer was instantaneous: What a silly question - of course there is! I would have expected that this experience would be one of intense feeling but it wasn't. It was just an utterly matter-of-fact realisation that God is, and God is in me and God is in everything, not concentrated as a personal God 'out there' but God nonetheless. Perhaps my lack of emotional response reflected the fact that this was quite definitely not the answer that I wanted to my question!
So I lay there and I shook and I tried to throw up a couple of times but nothing much happened - though now I felt very nauseated. And I thought 'Oh it gets worse, it gets worse and I won't be able for it - I can't, can't possibly go on with this.' But I stayed there anyhow - I was now so far into the Daime that I didn't have much choice! .......
Eventually one of the initiates came and tapped me on the shoulder and asked me quietly if I would like to go for some more Daime?. I felt reluctant but I got to my feet and stood there, feeling my whole body shaking, almost falling over again. Reassuring myself 'Well this is what is, this is what is. This just is' I put my hands in a gesture of openness - arms stretched down and away from my body, palms facing the front, fingers spread out - and staggered forward, somehow following the line. Eventually I am facing the man at the table again, and again he looks searchingly at me. Then he pours another dose of Daime into a different glass, narrower this time, and with gold bands at the brim. He offers the glass to me and I take it again in both my hands and close my hands over it like a roof. I lift it up and hold it above me and then I bring it to my lips and I drink. Again the taste is not pleasant but much less revolting than I expect. Shakily, I make my way back to the mattress and lie down and again I begin to shake, and from this point onwards my memory has a different quality as if the observer has departed leaving only the experience itself.
Since the very beginning of the ritual those who remained seated around the central table had been singing, pausing only for occasional prayers and short periods of meditation. From the beginning I had an ambiguous reaction to the hymn tunes. While certainly no expert, I have a fair knowledge of South American ethnic music and I had expected folk melodies or native American chants. I had felt slightly irritated when I found that the tunes didn't seem to fit these categories at all and, indeed, seemed a little too light and bouncy to fit my ideas of 'spiritual' music. Now, with the second dose of the Daime beginning to take effect, the singing began to sound very monotonous, endless, relentless, like a machine which would go on and on and on and would grind over me in some way, like a steamroller going on and on and on and on. In this mood, for the first time, I began to feel somewhat alienated from the ritual.
But now the Daime really began to open me up, Subjectively, it seemed as if my ability to control the amount of sensory input to my mind/brain had been completely removed. All I could do was lie there with, as it were, the top of my skull removed - being flooded by images, most of which I can no longer remember clearly. At one point I know that there was a lot of sado-masochistic stuff - cartoon-like people in black leather, very evil. Curiously, neither then nor later - did I feel personally identified with the content of the images - it was more like watching a particularly horrible movie, though none the less terrifying for that. I began to get much more nauseated so I grabbed the container and tried to throw up in it. My stomach went through the motions of vomiting but nothing came up. At the time I felt that this was a failure but I gather that most people have nothing but the Daime in their stomachs by this time so that - at most - the Daime itself may come up again.
The feeling of mental bombardment and overload got worse and worse and the images more horrible. I remember most clearly parts of female bodies - but it wasn't clear what parts - perhaps breasts, but very distorted, squeezed breasts, oozing blood and pus. My terror intensified, I was convinced now that I just couldn't take any more. Years previously, in therapy sessions with LSD, I had involuntarily fled from threatening material by 'blanking out' my mind. Now I tried to do it deliberately, to switch off my mind, but I couldn't manage it. I had an image of myself as a soldier in a huge besieged concrete bunker, running around in terror, closing steel window shutters one after the other and trying - without any success - to keep the enemy out. Up until then I had, despite everything, managed to keep in contact with the ritual to some degree. Now I started to withdraw from it and in a paranoiac frenzy began to feel that the Santo Daime ritual itself and the initiates were inexpressibly evil and horrible, that I must have been mad to get involved and that never ever again would I allow any psychotropic substance into my body.
In desperation I called the nearest initiate and told him that I was absolutely terrified, going crazy, couldn't take any more, absolutely must STOP. He just touched me gently and said: 'There is nothing to be frightened of. There is nothing to be frightened of. Just lie down, just relax. There is nothing to be frightened of; this will pass.' His voice sounded weirdly distorted - stretched out in time just as a rubber band can be stretched in space. And I felt too that he was right - that it would pass in time - but that time had itself been stretched out and out so that in reality the experience would go on and on and on and on forever.
Very nauseated, I was now half-lying, half-crouching with my head over the bucket and, so it seemed, suspended in endless time. I suddenly thought of Dali's 'Christ of St. John of the Cross' where the Christ-figure tilts out of the picture towards the viewer, similarly suspended in a moment of pain. It was so indescribably awful, stuck, suspended in the total overload of my mind and nausea and hung in midair over the container into which I was trying to throw up, with nothing else in the universe but that awfulness and praying to Jesus, Jesu Maria, have mercy. It was worse than anything I could possibly have imagined. It was being on the cross. I also tried to reach out for help to a very dear dead female friend and to my wife. While this did not stem the awfulness I suddenly had an intense feeling of how much of my wife's energy has gone into supporting me over our years together. And, with that, came a strong feeling that she (who has a great capacity for selfless generosity to others) had been 'in service', playing this rôle for a very long time, longer than this life, perhaps longer than many lives.
Still in terror I called on the helper again - and got the same answer: 'There is nothing to be frightened of; this will pass.' Both at this point and in my earlier pleading for help I was aware of something strange which only made its way into my conscious mind with full clarity on the following day. In some way my cries for help and expressions of desperation were a lie, a front, an act. In some part of my being, behind the screen of terror I was quite aware that, truly, there was nothing to be afraid of in the same way that I was aware - at the beginning of the ritual - of a calm place behind the shakings and contortions of my body. Nonetheless I remained in the grip of the terror and nausea, heightened by the awareness that we must be approaching that part of the ritual where we would be given marijuana, the 'Santa Maria' (Note 1) and that there might even be a third sharing of the Daime. Then I heard the sounds of people moving - the noise of their feet on the floor thunderously amplified by the effects of the Daime (Note 2) - and realised that there was indeed a third sharing but that the helpers must have seen that I was beyond my limit and were exempting me.
At this point I was still feeling violently antagonistic to taking drugs of any sort and the Daime in particular. 'This is so terrible, how - why - could I possibly have done that to myself?' And then - without warning - the terror passed, my head felt clear and my visual field was a mercifully featureless grey. My body relaxed and I felt good. This good feeling was curiously accompanied by a strong visual image of someone (I have no idea who) in a beautifully-tailored light brown three-piece business suit - an utterly incongruous symbol for someone who hasn't even owned a tie for over 15 years! With the passing of the terror, my perception of the hymns also changed. Now the singing appeared light, dancing and supportive with some beautiful harmonies (Note 3) and again I began to join in. I kept hearing - or imagining that I was hearing - a phrase which sounded like "Maria de Flores" or possibly "Maria de Forestas". I had read somewhere that the Lady of the Forests is an important image in the Santo Daime theology and now I felt deeply moved by what it conjured up for me. I found myself waiting for the phrase, hoping that they would say it again and again so that I could join in ....
Lying on the mat, enjoying the blessed calm, I found myself remembering something one of my Dutch friends had said to me the previous day about the importance of what another teacher had referred to as 'holy will-power'. One characteristic of my life is a tendency to remain paralysed between decisions, never quite where I am, never firmly deciding in favour of this rather than that. Another crucifixion, I thought, I crucify myself by not committing myself to the next step, leave myself hanging in nowhere. 'Holy will-power', I thought, is something I must acquire. Ironically I was immediately challenged in this by my bladder, which now felt really uncomfortable so that I needed to go and urinate again. But - try as I might - I just could not commit myself to making my way to the toilet again. A part of this was because I just didn't know if I could physically get myself out there but most of it was rooted in my deep fear of the consequences of clear decisions - in this case hypochondriacal fear that perhaps I would find that my bladder had seized up altogether.
There was a tap on my shoulder and I opened my eyes. It was very bright and looking down at me was what I first took to be an old man with an elaborately tattooed face, remarkably like the Maori chief whose picture is on the cover of the Penguin edition of Frazier's 'Golden Bough'. Then I saw that he simply had a very lined face and he said to me "These are the last songs, and it will be very beautiful; will you join?" I got up and as I went back to my place around the central table everybody stood up and began singing again. And I just raised my arms and swayed with the singing, humming along with it as much as I could, feeling good, light, and happy. At one point I caught Geraldine's eye and she gave me a big joyous smile and I grinned back at her - but then I felt sheepish and wouldn't meet her eye again.
Now my mood changed. Suddenly I began to feel self-conscious about the fact that I was the only person with raised arms and dropped them quickly. Now the seemingly endless hymn-singing began first to bore, then to annoy me. Having been through all that I had experienced I had had enough - and thoughts of being back in my own space, of eating and drinking for the first time in over 16 hours (it was now well-past 1:00 AM) began, increasingly, to distract me.
One or two of the participants were still retching. As I withdrew from solidarity with the ritual, I began for the first time to feel some disgust at the vomiting, to feel queasy myself in reaction to it and to try to suppress this reaction in turn. I tried to stay open saying to myself 'Well if it happens, it happens.' but, in the event, I didn't vomit. But I did get more and more fed-up with the hymn-singing. Every time I was absolutely certain that we had reached the end - off they went again with another hymn, each one now beginning to sound exactly like the one before it.
All this time I was still struggling with my need to go and urinate. Despite all my earlier insights about not staying crucified between decisions I couldn't take the step of getting up, leaving the room and finding the toilet. I would keep dialoguing with myself: 'I'll go after the next hymn. No - well, maybe after this one. Oh, now somebody's gone out; when they come back, I'll do it .... ' and so on ad infinitum. There was also a more sensible aspect to my dilemma: I had no way of knowing when the ritual would end but I didn't want to miss the closure. I wanted to be part of the ending, not to have taken my energy away from it.
Eventually, the end did come. Geraldine said something like "The ritual of Santo Daime has ended", and the group began to recite (in Dutch) prayers that I could recognise as "Our Father" and "Hail Mary". As at the beginning of the ritual I found that I wanted to join in English. Then - a real surprise - a prayer from my Roman Catholic childhood and this time in English 'Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, Hail - our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears .... '. Something in this deeply touched me - partly it's being in English so that I felt included in the ritual in a way that I hadn't before - but, much more deeply - because it brought up both my childhood and, once again, that powerful image (which may well be a creation of my own subconscious) of 'Maria of the Flowers' the Virgin of the Forest. Just why this image is so moving and powerful for me is something which I do not yet understand.
And then the ritual was over at last - so everybody sat down and started singing again! I said to myself 'Oh my God, it's over, but it's not over' though clearly it was because people began moving in and out of the room. So - at long last - I found the courage to go out to the toilet and found, to my eternal relief, that I could indeed urinate without any problem. A few people were having coffee and cookies in an outer room but most were still in the ritual room so I returned and sat down again. There was a lot of animated talk in Dutch around the central table which passed me by completely. Some people were still lying on the mats and when one of these began to weep loudly the group responded by starting to sing again until she seemed to calm down. One or two people - my friend included - would still retch occasionally but after about another thirty minutes the session really was over and everyone left the room. From the start of the ritual to this point, I calculate, cannot have been much less than six hours.
There was a problem when we tried to leave: my friend couldn't call a taxi because the telephone wasn't working and no-one had enough room in their cars to give us a lift. Realising that we might be stranded miles from home in a part of Amsterdam that even my friend wasn't too familiar with I was amazed to find that my normal compulsive worrying didn't kick in. I found that I could just sit back and luxuriate in the fact that this was one problem that I just couldn't be expected to solve, sure that we would get home somehow - even if it meant having to walk for hours. In the event one of the initiates drove us home even though it took him considerably out of his own journey to do so.
At that point of the ritual when I felt totally overwhelmed and utterly paranoid there was no question but that I would certainly not return for the following night's session. When I emerged from the maelstrom the paranoia vanished - but I still felt that I just did not have the courage to face into another confrontation with the Daime so quickly. I went through all sorts of loops of self-reproach on this - but, much as I wish things could have been otherwise, it still feels as if I made the correct decision at the time - I was at my limit of endurance. What I do regret, though, is not being up-front about my decision when several members of the Church said that they looked forward to meeting me again as they bade me farewell that night.
Conclusions:
"This is a very good road, but a very hard one."
Just how can one evaluate an experience of the kind that I have just described? In attempting to do so I come up against two quite separate questions. What, on the one hand, do I make of the Santo Daime cult per se? And, on the other hand, what do I make of my own subjective experience of the Santo Daime ritual?
The first question is the more difficult. If a Buddhist from some remote area with minimal Westernisation was suddenly transported to the front pew at a Papal High Mass in St. Peter's Basilica what would he or she be able to make of it all? Very little, I suspect. I feel in very a similar position vis-á-vis the Santo Daime Church. I possess only minimal information on the origins, history and belief-system of the Church in Brazil. I have no idea at all as to how the ritual psychotropic experiences of the Brazilian adherents and their everyday lives interpenetrate, as to whether there is a morality or ethical system which is, in some way, rooted in the ritual and guides their day-to-day behaviour. I have even less idea - though, perhaps, better grounds for speculation - why what must seem to many to be an entirely bizarre cult is gaining adherents among middle-class Europeans, many of whom, I suspect, must have very little in common with the mind-set of the Brazilian adherents. Even here I feel that it would be necessary to talk in great depth to a wide cross-section of European Church members, both to the fully-committed initiates and to the outer circle of regular attendees, before useful conclusions could be drawn.
All that I have to go on, then, are fragmentary impressions gleaned from my own experience of the ritual, from brief conversations with some of those who were present and from more detailed discussions with the two friends who introduced me to the Church in the first place. And when I try to sum these up the quotation at the beginning of this section comes back to me again and again. It was said to me by one of the people who came, briefly, to talk to me after the ritual. Coincidentally, the person concerned happened to have been in my field of vision for all the time that I spent sitting with the celebrants and I had been deeply struck by the pain and endurance that I had seen in their face and by the obvious intensity of their struggle. That, and all else that I witnessed and experienced, convinces me that the Santo Daime celebrants in whose company I spent that extraordinary six hours are genuine seekers of the spirit, that the ritual is indeed a genuinely religious event. Whether the way that the faithful have chosen is truly 'a good road' is not for me to judge, if indeed it can be judged at all other than by those who try to walk the road themselves.
And what of myself? When I set off for the ritual I know that I secretly hoped that it would change my life. An unrealistic hope, of course, particularly since 15 years experience of doing various kinds of therapy have taught me that I have an infuriating ability to go deeply into powerful experiences - only to walk away afterwards seemingly unaffected, as if what I had been through had happened to someone else. It has not been greatly different with the Santo Daime. In the course of the ritual I had many powerful insights - the need to accept (say 'yes'), the reality of God (albeit in a form that touches my heart not at all), the perception that all my suffering and pain may somehow be an effort to escape peace and calm and - not least - the recognition of the appalling level of terror that I carry inside me. I wish I could say that I have usefully integrated all this - but the truth is that I haven't. At best I make an act of faith that every experience changes me at some level, whether I am aware of it or not. And it is also true that I still feel called back to experience the ritual again and I am sure that I will return. It took some courage to go the first time - the next visit will require a lot more.
Notes:
(1) The ayahuasca is considered to connect with male energy while marijuana, Santa Maria, evokes female energy. For many the bringing together of both forces is most powerful moment of the ritual.
(2) I was quite unprepared for the powerful sound-amplifying effects of the Daime. At one point a single African drum being played at the other end of the room sounded like a thunder-storm or the roar of a tidal wave. At another, I heard a woman speaking who appeared to be standing next to my mat when actually she was at the other end of the room.
(3) These 'harmonies' were almost certainly created in my own mind since before and after the peak of the ayahuasca experience I know that the hymns were all being sung in unison.
November 1996, Amsterdam Church
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