When did you first come across psychedelic drugs?
Well really only about 3 years ago. I came across them but I decided not to take them earlier, because I didn't have a clear source. It interested me but I never had the people or the connections. So about 3 years ago I started.
So what is the way you've been using them? I mean, I gather you go off for weekends or you go off for sessions with some friends?
Yes, usually 2 or 3 of us will go away for a weekend and sort of spend a day preparing, really setting up a space which is very comfortable, having everything we'll need for the journey, so we won't have to do much afterwards. For example, we went out to an island last summer so we gathered our firewood, we pitched our tents, we got all the food set up, had a fire pit, made sure we knew where everything was, had lights around, so we could go on our journey and not have any hassles. Just to be as comfortable as possible.
Describe one of the sessions and what you really got out of it for yourself...
I guess my first ayahuasca session was quite wonderful. I felt really connected with the spirit world. I saw that I had protectors, I saw guides, just lights protecting myself and my family. It was good to feel that connection and that protection. Certainly I feel the ayahuasca has plant wisdom so when I get involved it's almost like I'm at the micro cellular level, I can see the structure of the plants and hear the song of the plants and be in the kingdom of the plants. So I feel connected to something really primeval, really old.
And is that in contrast to synthetic drugs?
Hard to say. A friend of mine and I take MDMA together and what we do sometimes; we'll just sit there and just look at each other in our eyes and it seems we can take leaps to past lives - maybe back 2000 years, 5000 years. It's like we've been here together before. Once we thought we were in Rome and then in a caveman setting. So with me, especially with that person, it's a connection to someone who I've felt connected with before in a past time. It gives me a sense of the continuity of my life and my lives before and where I've been and where I'm going.
Is this your spiritual life that you see through psychedelics?
No, it's part of my spiritual life. I wouldn't say it's all my spiritual life. More spiritual to me is my everyday activity and what I do and how I lead my life and my relationships with other people. I think that's my spirituality at its deepest. I sense it in contact with other people, with a friend or someone in need or with one of my children, sometimes my wife.
So are these psychedelic experiences learning experiences that help you in your spiritual life or are they quite a separate thing?
They have certainly helped me. They've shown me the sense of a larger reality, so it has helped me to know that I am going someplace and I've got a sense of knowing that it's worthwhile and that there is something else out there and there is a future. But after my session last night it came to me that I'm probably not going to do ayahuasca for a while.
What was your experience last night?
It started with the entry into the plant kingdom again. It's almost like a world or a palace of micro cellular lights and colours and geometric patterns. It shifts the floor around and it's accompanied by what seems like high sounds. It's almost like 'welcome here again'. That's been consistent with my 3 experiences of ayahuasca as opposed to LSD or mushrooms.
And do you explain that to yourself as it being the spirit of ayahuasca or what?
Definitely the spirit of ayahuasca, yes. Sometimes I wonder with these psychedelics how much is external spirits coming in or how much is my imagination or projection, but this, I'm sure, is the spirit of the plants. Later on in the session, as it was wearing off, I'm sure it was my imagination or projections and then I tend to work through some of my memories of childhood, either painful instances or good instances. I see certain people in my life... This time I saw these 2 people who I think are kind of teachers of mine, I think they're almost witches. I actually sensed last night that I should stay away from them, as if there's something there that they're sucking from me. That came later after the vision stage.
Did you feel you were in control, that you were guiding the way that personal past session went?
At the end I was, but certainly at the middle I wasn't. If I opened my eyes I could be there and be present and talk and say I'm ok or go walk to the wash room. But if I closed my eyes I could let go and whatever came would come. This was the case for probably for the first couple of hours and then after that I could kind of guide it or go back to something... I was there working with myself at age seven, I could go back to that and almost guide it, and that's valuable to me.
I also experienced a sort of a golden reality... A visual reality, really a lot of golden light... and maybe it was almost the hand of God coming down, but I can't be sure, that's what I sensed it was, the divine from there. I still don't know whether this is the path I want to do as my only path, I don't think so, I think it sort of shows me possibilities. Maybe I'll do this once a year or once every 2 years. I got from the session that my work really is more day to day, being in my body, having the physical experience and being in contact with others with an open heart. That's probably more important to me in this reality than going off to Peru next month to find ayahuasca.
Doing the sessions did you feel connections with the other people taking part, or isolation?
Just the person next to me. When I could hear her breathing I would feel the connection. But I felt isolated from the group as a whole, I couldn't see them... My preference would be to go on journey with a large group repeatedly, so have a bunch of about 6 or 8 people and once a year do a ritual journey. I would be more comfortable with that. I didn't feel that much connection, I felt it's very much an internal thing. It interests me to have a connection and I would actually like to, in that sense, go up to another person and feel their energy field, feel that field, look into their eyes... a little higher dosage... that work intrigues me that contact. I don't know if it's transpersonal or what it is, but that work intrigues me. But most of these ayahuasceros, they don't go for that, they just go for keep it inside and keep it quiet as well.
©Nicholas Saunders . Interview took place in Peru, February 1997
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