Lila

Steve Beyer is a renaissance man who seems perfectly configured to act as a messenger agent between the indigenous wisdom traditions and the modernist capitalist cultures that so urgently need the radical vision of spiritual and ecological interconnectivity conveyed in the realms of Ayahuasca shamanism in South America.

Reading his biographical information, it is hard to believe one man has explored so many avenues of enquiry in a single life. He holds law degrees and doctorates in both religious studies and psychology, has lived for a year and a half in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas, has published three books on Buddhism and Tibetan language and religion, and has taught as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, the University of California, and Graduate Theological Union.

Through his practical interest in wilderness survival techniques, he encountered the sacred plant medicines of the Amazon, where he received coronación (a high level of shamanic initiation) by banco ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama.

To deliver the effulgence of visions, traditions, insights and wisdom Steve has gained through his numerous explorations, he runs a fascinating blog called Singing To The Plants, is a contributing editor to Ayahuasca.com and has now published his latest book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, his first-hand account of initiation into the magic and mysteries of Ayahuasca — one of the most powerful plant teachers on the planet.

Anyone who has ever worked with the Great Medicine will respect what strength of character, courage, determination and powers of surrender are required to follow such a path. His book, Singing To The Plants is an excellent contribution to the field of shamanistic studies, Ayahuasca research, Ethnography, Botany, Anthropology and also that undefinable field of direct experience and knowledge. It is a book that deserves to become, along with some other classics like ‘The Ayahuasca Reader’ & ‘Ayahuasca Visions’ (Pablo Amaringo, Luis Eduardo Luna), and ‘The Antipodes of the Mind’ (Benny Shanon), representative of the field of Ayahuasca ethnography and anthropology as it stands.

It is important that this book is penned by an author who has worked consistently over years with the Medicina, in contrast to many authors whom have dipped their toes in the waters a few times and then penned sensationalist and speculative accounts of their experiences. Steve uses his own compelling experience with meeting and knowing Mestizo Ayahuasca shamans to thread together a detailed understanding of the rituals and worldview of the Ayahuasquero, expressing his understanding of the deep aspects of his subject, such as the entities and forces of the shamanic realms, with a refreshing phenomenological purity, humility, and respect for the mysteries.

_______________

DANIEL: Steve, thank you for sharing your time and knowledge in this interview. I’d like to start somewhere at the beginning of your pilgrimage into the realms of ayahuasca. You originally arrived in the world of Amazonian shamanism through your practical interest in wilderness survival. What originally prompted you to make this step, deeper into the realms of deep magic and healing with the Great Medicine? And what particular, specific adaptations do you feel a Westerner must make when encountering this unfamiliar territory?

STEVE: Once I asked my maestro ayahuasquero don Roberto Acho Jurama how he began his work as a shaman, and he told me that it was because he was curious — no shamanic crisis, no inner wounds, no visionary call, just curiosity. In many ways, my path was the same. As I studied the ways that indigenous people survive in the wilderness, it became clearer and clearer to me that there was a spiritual component I had been missing. What did they know that I didn’t?

What I found was that indigenous spirituality is rooted in the need to maintain right relationships, both within the group and with the spirits of the wilderness. So, just as I had learned from the Shapra Indians how to make a really clever animal snare, I tried to learn the ways that indigenous people maintain right relationships with the spirits. I undertook four-day and four-night vision fasts in the desert, I participated in rituals with peyote and huachuma, and I also began to work with my ayahuasca teachers.

What I didn’t know was the extent of healing that I needed. I was full of arrogance and rage. I think that we Americans are in too much of a hurry. We want the medicine to give us an epiphany, a quick fix, a transformative experience. I think instead that most often the medicine works slowly and subtly. It heals in plant time, not in human time. And I don’t know whether it was drinking ayahuasca, or the magical phlegm my maestro planted in my chest, or the gentle example of my plant teacher, doña María Tuesta Flores, working in my visions and my dreams, but far from the Amazon I found that my arrogance and rage were just draining away, and my heart was slowly opening. Entering into right relationship with people and spirits was happening spontaneously and miraculously.

I can’t hold myself up as any kind of a model. People come onto the medicine path in their own unique ways. But I think it is important that westerners give up their sense of control. Most foreigners come to ayahuasca shamanism in a way that is very focused on themselves — “Heal me, transform me, improve me.” They come with their own culturally embedded ideas of what their problem is and what caused it. Then they simply assume that an Amazonian shaman shares these concepts, when in fact traditional Amazonian ideas of sickness and healing are very different from ours. And foreigners often do not want to know the jungle and want to be insulated from the realities of jungle life, and they often have no interest in the culture and struggles of the indigenous communities where they seek their own healing.

DANIEL: One thing that is touched on in your book is how shamans in the Amazon do not fit into our usual dualisms of light and dark, good and evil, and that shamanic power is morally ambiguous and ambivalent. As Ayahuasca extends itself beyond the forest, can we anticipate the same patterns of shamanic healing, shamanic warfare, and the same depth of magical reality to emerge in Western entheogen-using cultures?

STEVE: Ayahuasca seems to be spreading along two different paths — the Brazilian new religious movements and the shamanic traditions of the Upper Amazon. Anthropologist Edward MacRae has specifically pointed out that Santo Daime has not incorporated such features of Amazonian shamanism as magic darts, protective arcanas, shamanic phlegm, or the idea of the moral ambiguity of the shaman. I have had some very interesting discussions with people about the extent to which the Brazilian ayahuasca religions can be considered shamanic. But in none of these discussions has anyone maintained that these churches have incorporated any idea of dark shamanism, attack sorcery, or the power of the shaman to harm as well as heal.

I also think that most foreigners are deeply uncomfortable with this darker side of Upper Amazonian shamanism — what I have called its tragic cosmovision. Shamans deal with sickness, envy, malice, betrayal, loss, conflict, failure, bad luck, hatred, despair, and death. But we have tended instead to assimilate the shaman to our existing catalogue of spiritual teachers, along with Zen monks, Tibetan lamas, Ascended Masters, and Hindu gurus. Many foreigners simply do not see the shaman as ambiguously dwelling in the landscape of suffering, passion, and mess.

Some shamans who work with foreign tourists adopt the concepts and language of their clients, some for commercial reasons, some out of a genuine desire to communicate. Mestizo shamanism in the Upper Amazon has always been voraciously eclectic, and we can observe it now as it incorporates currently popular foreign ideas about the nature of healing, the origins of suffering, and the sources of sickness.

This process appears to be largely one way. I just do not see most foreigners adopting the complex, tragic, and ambivalent views on healing and sickness that lie at the roots of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Yet the existence and spread of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches shows that the teachings of the ayahuasca experience are in some ways separable from its cultural origins. This may be true in other settings as well. We will just have to wait to see how it all turns out.

DANIEL: You mention that westerners, particularly the new age, have incorporated the figure of the shaman into the usual cast of spiritually advanced archetypes, along with gurus, avatars, and monks, and that this may not always square with the reality of most shamans in their day-to-day life. So this question this leads me to another. Can ayahuasca, for the Westerner, actually work as a useful spiritual vehicle? Have you come across many examples of people for whom Ayahuasca has had an important role in the development of advanced human potentials and powers?

STEVE: I don’t think there’s any doubt that people have reported important life-changing and transformative experiences after drinking ayahuasca. And I personally know people whose life directions have changed after such experiences. I just don’t know how to generalize from these events. We lack even the most basic data, not to mention even moderately long-term follow-up.

Perhaps more important is this. I fear that these stories, being powerful and moving, may lead to unrealistic expectations, and to self-blame when those expectations are unmet. As I said before, I think that, for many people, sacred plant medicines work slowly, over time, and sometimes subtly, so that one day you realize, to your surprise, that the world seems different — more wonderful, more miraculous, and filled with the spirits. For me, that is the lesson of the ayahuasca vision — not necessarily the healing of our perhaps irremediably flawed selves, but rather a way to see through the world to the wonders that were there all along, and we could not see.

DANIEL: You mentioned your teacher doña María Tuesta Flores, who from your book sounded like a very wise and beautiful soul. What did she show you on this path of medicine ? Do you think it is important to have a guide when working with Ayahuasca ? What words of advice would you give to Westerners looking for their shaman ?

Although I worked with other healers as well, I consider don Roberto, my maestro ayahuasquero, and doña María, my plant teacher, to be to be my primary teachers. Doña María was indeed a wise and beautiful soul, but she was not a simple person, and certainly not a saint; she was genuinely warm, giving of her knowledge, impatient, dramatizing, complaining, generous, fussy, proud, unassuming, earthy, demanding, motherly. She lived as a healer in the disorderly landscape of the soul.

She often shook her head in dismay at my questions, my blockheaded inability to absorb the immense plant knowledge she offered to me. What I needed to learn I would learn, over time, from the plants themselves, she said; the way for me to learn was to “continue on, and all will be shown to you.” This was typical doña María. When I would say I couldn’t learn any more, she would scold me. Study, study, study, she would tell me. Follow, follow, follow.

I was consistently told in the Upper Amazon that it is dangerous not to have a maestro ayahuasquero when working with ayahuasca. Once you begin la dieta, once you drink ayahuasca and start to learn the plant teachers with your body, the world becomes a more dangerous place. Sorcerers resentful of your presumption will shoot magical pathogenic darts into your body, I was told, or send fierce animals to attack you, or fill your body with scorpions and razor blades—especially while you are still a beginner, before you gain your full powers. This is especially true when under the influence of ayahuasca. It is important to have an experienced teacher who can sing the appropriate songs that protect against attack and guide your visions.

But I don’t have any advice on how to find such a person. I generally don’t make recommendations. A shaman who is good for one person may be terrible for another, because of differences in background, personality, and expectations. The right teacher is there for everyone; I am sure, but perhaps the search is an integral part of the journey.

____________________________

“Singing to the Plants” is available from www.amazon.com