T2E4: Muerte y Renacimiento en el Yagé

I don't know how long I lay asleep in the grass, disconnected from reality and unaware of what was happening with the other ceremony participants. Most of them were at the upper part of the farm, near the shed that served as the maloca. Some of them had begun the strongest part of the ceremony and were vomiting with loud retching and moaning. My sister had already started having hallucinations and was delighting in a pleasant samadhi[1] while my friend Martín watched the scene sitting in the shade of a fruit tree.

According to what he told me, it reassured him to see that Yagé had been merciful with me and kept me in a relaxing drowsiness, lying there in my remote corner of the farm.

Yagé is a psycho-chemical and spiritual experience that happens simultaneously in the inner dimension of a person and in the collective that takes part in the ceremony. The memories, emotional state, personality, and character of the individual shape the entheogenic “trip,” but so do the attitudes of the other ritual attendees, and in a very important way, the music and chants of the taita. The wise ones say that, in addition to all of the above, the Spirit of Yagé as conscious energy decides the rhythm and depth of the attendees' experience.

I was able to verify, at least subjectively, all of the above with the events that unfolded when taita Fernando and his brothers picked up their drums and the harmonica and began an energetic, accelerated rhythm: dum-dum-dum-dum-DUM, da-da-da-dum-dum-dum-dum-DUM…

There, lying on my back, I noticed my senses beginning to return from the lethargy they were in, and little by little I started hearing the hypnotic drum, more and more clearly. As I did, my hip began to follow the drum's rhythm, moving up and down. The sensation was pleasant; it could be described as the urge to bob your head when listening to the final part of Bohemian Rhapsody, but multiplied by 100. However, my euphoria lasted only a short time. I remember opening my eyes wide and anguish beginning to invade me as I tried unsuccessfully to stop the movement of my hip. Not only that, but my arms joined the choreography and began moving against my will, like a kind of dance of the seven veils performed by a convalescent.

My hands tore up grass from around me and threw it toward the sky, then it fell back over my face while my hip kept oscillating more and more frantically. By then I had fully regained my alert consciousness, and I was upset to realize that for the first time in my life I had no control over my body, and moreover I was living what I judged to be a totally supernatural experience.

I gathered all my strength, turned around abruptly, and as best I could got onto my knees. My unease turned into panic when I began to feel something moving in my belly. It wasn't the familiar sensation of intestinal movements but an intense movement I would describe as a snake coiling from the mouth of the stomach down to the intestines. I began to feel great fear of being in that place, and for some reason I was invaded by the certainty that I was going to die that day. It wasn't a conscious idea; it was a certainty like the one a condemned man can feel while they ready the electric chair for him.

Unable to contain my emotions any longer, I screamed with all my strength “MARA, HELP!” The taita, his brothers, and Mara came running down to where I was. The first to reach me was Gremo, whom I saw with a grotesque, evil-looking face. Without any clear reason I screamed at him, “You want to kill me! I want to get out of here.” Gremo showed me his hands and asked me to calm down; he told me I was going to be all right, that they were going to help me, and for some reason I began pulling hard at my own hair.

I felt my consciousness was still there, but less and less at the helm of my own actions and more like a simple observer of the terrifying experience I was living. Mara arrived at that moment and told me, “Easy, Manu, everything is fine; Yagé is healing you, but you have to let yourself go.” When I heard those words, a strange violence invaded me; I started screaming insults at Mara that I had never used in my life, and then Mara took with both hands a staff she carried and held it in front of me. It was a piece of dark wood about 50 centimeters long with strange inscriptions and symbols carved into its surface.

While holding it in front of my face, she admonished me with authority, saying, “That's not the way, my brother; here it's about humility!” When she said those words, I felt my legs lose all their strength, and I collapsed onto my knees in front of her. I heard two or three different voices emerge from my own throat saying unintelligible things, buried insults, and sometimes the word “forgiveness” repeated several times.

Then I raised my gaze and focused on Mara's eyes. Seeing her there with her staff of power, piercing me with her gaze, I could recognize an admirable warrior. When she realized that what was moving inside me had calmed down, she asked the shaman – who was now also by my side – whether they would take me to the maloca or help me right there. Fernando probably judged that given my size and weight it would have been difficult to carry me back up to the upper part of the farm, so he told Mara, “Let's put him next to the inipi[2], and you all hold him tight because this one is going to be rough.”

I was completely confused and slowly sinking into a state in which ideas became disordered, perceptions became muddled, and concepts like time and the self grew diffuse. While they carried me next to the inipi, or rather to the inipi's structure, since at that moment it wasn't yet “dressed” with its covering of hides, I felt totally disoriented; I didn't remember who I was or what I was doing there, and waves of fear of dying mixed with moments in which I felt that my whole life I had been longing to be in the arms of Yagé, that it was my destiny to be there in that place.

Finally they managed to carry me next to the hemispherical bamboo structure, laid me down gently, and spread my arms and legs as if imitating the pose of the Vitruvian Man; “like a five-pointed star,” said Mara.

I raised my face and saw the inipi, still not knowing what it was for, which led my mind to tell me with complete certainty that its function was to trap demons, which remained tied there after being expelled from the bodies they had invaded. Then a doubt seized me: “What if it's not demons but me myself who is going to be expelled from my body and left there tied to that mysterious structure?”

Suddenly the panic returned and I began struggling with Mara and the taita's helpers who were holding me. They managed to contain me with effort, and when I felt subdued I again felt that something terrible was going to happen to me, so I screamed with all my strength, “NOOOOOOO! You want to kill me! Help!”

My friend Martín, who had already noticed that Yagé had me “well in its grip,” told me afterward that at that moment he himself felt an unusual fear, as if he too sensed that something bad was going to happen. Although he hadn't ingested ayahuasca that day, he felt his consciousness was altered in some way: he perceived the darkness I was experiencing and even had a premonition that something bad would happen to me that afternoon. He wondered what he would do if he had to tell my mother that I had died during the trance. In fact, he managed to prepare the words he would say: he would explain that if I had “gone” that day, it was because it had to be so. Even so, he felt afraid. Deaths in Yagé are uncommon, but they have happened. In most cases as a result of adding other hallucinogens or because of preexisting medical conditions, but in any case they always generate great controversy over the attributions of responsibility they produce.

While my friend prayed that I wouldn't become another case among the strange deaths in Yagé, my sister was immersed in a sublime experience. She told me that in her “trip” there was nothing dark like what I was living; on the contrary, she felt her soul rise to the sky and that there it had been absorbed into a kind of mystical trance. She says she felt the presence of God and that love and light enveloped and lulled her. Then Mara told me that the “lulling” she could see was my sister starting to roll on the floor, pushing herself from side to side. On a couple of occasions, long grasses got wrapped around her neck, leaving her with minor lacerations.

I had stopped struggling to free myself, but Mara and César still held me to keep me from getting up and trying to flee while the taita shook his wayra toward me and chanted songs in his native language. Images of my life from childhood to the present passed through my mind. As if it were a movie, I could see myself as a child killing little tadpoles or bothering my sisters; then I saw myself in Santa Marta having sex with my lovers, but also with women I was never with. At that moment a feeling of lust flooded me, and with no willpower over my actions I freed my right hand and began touching Mara lasciviously. As I did, I murmured obscene phrases and wagged my tongue out of my mouth as if it were a snake's tail.

Mara, for whom it wasn't the first time having to put up with an impertinence like that from someone “high on yagé,” grabbed my arm again and told me, “Manu, you have to fight and get that out on your own. Don't let yourself be fooled! You are not what you're feeling.” Just hearing her words, I again felt the fear of death I had felt before. Suddenly I noticed that the obscene being I had become moments earlier was in reality another being that dwelled in me. The moment I tried to regain my composure, I could feel that “other” retreating and shaking aggressively inside me. I again felt multiple voices coming from my throat and other beings that, like giant parasites, thrashed around in my entrails.

At that moment I felt a tingling in my arms and saw several black ants walking over them. In the midst of my paranoia I began screaming, asking them to get the ants off me, to which Mara replied, “Easy, they're here to help you.”

I felt she was right, so I let them do their thing while I kept trying – unsuccessfully – to cast out of me those demons fighting to take over my consciousness. Shortly after, I felt the ants' mandibles digging into my skin and I screamed again, but my scream died out when I noticed that with each ant bite an intense heat began that gradually spread toward my chest. The heat mixed with a tingling that kept invading my body until it filled it completely.

At that point the experience turned even darker; I began to see grotesque figures, disfigured faces, and symbols I identified as satanic: upside-down crosses and an inverted five-pointed star with a goat's face behind it. The fear of dying became a certainty, and despair reached its peak. The voices returned to my throat along with the lustful thoughts, but then I felt that if I let them take hold of me again I would lose my soul.

So with all the strength I could muster I brought out my own voice, saying, “I don't want this… Get out of here… My God, help me!” At first I could only emit a thin thread of voice interrupted by tongue flicks, guttural sounds, and obscene words, but little by little I managed to assert my voice until I could repeat the mantra with force: “No mooooore, my God, forgive meeee.”

Upon saying the last part, I felt something detach from me in my belly. Whatever it was rose quickly through my esophagus and became an enormous mouthful of vomit that I hurled toward my left side. As I vomited I shook violently, and the taita increased the volume and speed of his chants. Mara and César let go of me and both joined Fernando's chants with their own sounds and consecrations. I felt that something very dark and evil was coming out of my mouth, and all the muscles of my belly were numb, pushing it out from within.

I vomited for long seconds and felt things passing through my throat and mouth that moved along their way out. When I finished, I felt all the muscles of my body relax, leaving a tremor like a chill. Mara was cleaning my lips and face while encouraging me with affectionate words: “Come on, my warrior, you're doing great! You've almost gotten all that filth out…”

The feeling of rest was followed by a drowsiness I let myself be carried away by. “Don't let him sleep, it's dangerous; it's not over yet,” said the taita. Mara and César took me by the arms and sat me up. Mara spoke in my ear and told me, “You have to get up and bring out what you haven't expelled, my precious.”

My mind had no order, and I know I couldn't articulate coherent sentences. What was happening at that moment mixed in my head with images from the past, phrases from the Bible, and strange humanoid figures. I gathered what strength I had left and, with Mara and César's help, managed to stand up. I tried to focus on the taita, whom I hadn't seen in what felt like hours, although it had probably been only about 15 or 20 minutes.

I felt strong dizziness and great confusion, but the panic I had felt at the beginning had dissipated quite a bit. Without knowing why, I leaned toward Mara and told her, “There's a very strong demon in here; I can't get it out; if I get it out I'll die.” I don't remember Mara's words, but in any case she wasn't willing to let me give up. She kept telling me to focus, that I could do it, and I kept repeating that I couldn't, that it was too strong.

I don't know how much longer I fought against those ideas until I remembered my daughter, my parents. For the first time since my liberation had begun, I remembered my sister Julia and my friend Martín. My mind kept going through the people who love me, and I realized they were many. I felt all of them were accompanying me at that moment and that they were waiting for me to be born. As if I didn't exist yet, as if I had always been shut inside my own mind, letting out only flashes of my essence, and everyone around me was waiting for that day to see who I really was.

With that new impulse I addressed that entity or entities I still heard threatening me from within and told them I didn't care about dying at that moment. I had discovered that my essence was love and that I wasn't alone, so I no longer felt fear. As those thoughts arose, new ideas began to clear in my mind: I had been very selfish, always thinking of myself, ignoring the suffering of the people who loved me. I felt remorse for having made my ex-wife suffer, great pain for having set aside my daughter so many times, for distancing myself from my parents for long periods, and for having deceived and manipulated several women who had come to love me.

I began to cry, and as I thought of all the people who had suffered because of me, I asked their forgiveness with my lips, understanding for the first time, from the heart, things for which I had always had a justification or an excuse. Then I again felt the monster move inside me; it told me that none of that was my fault, that I had always been a good son, a good father, a good lover. Lover… those women should feel lucky to have had me in their beds… Then I could see the deception again, the ease with which that dark being that dwelled in me manipulated me. Sexual excitement clouded my thinking, and I began to crave the injection of serotonin and oxytocin that even thinking about sex produced in me.

At that moment I opened my eyes wide and tried to command again, “No more, get out of me,” but my jaw closed like a cage and I couldn't articulate a word. I stood there with my arms open and all the muscles of my face, arms, belly, and legs totally tensed. Scenes of sex fluttered through my mind while my inner self tried to focus on a single idea: “I don't want to be like this; I need to be free; get out of me.”

I heard Fernando and his helpers again speeding up their chants, now joined by a harmonica and a drum. The frenetic rhythm seemed to dictate the beat at which my muscles grew more and more numb. I felt I could no longer breathe, and the fear of death returned once more. I thought that thing was much stronger than me and that it might prefer to kill me rather than set me free. I looked at my forearms and noticed my veins were bulging, surely from the hypoxia and the prolonged muscle contraction. “I don't want to live with this anymore, even if I have to die,” was the last thing I thought before giving up. I looked at the sky and saw with total clarity that a circle had opened among the clouds, in the center of which a five-pointed star was perfectly drawn. Then I felt the warmth of the sun finally peeking out from between the clouds. Its rays renewed my strength, and I managed to take a gulp of air with which I recovered my breath and could shout, even through clenched teeth, “I SAID GET OUUUUUT!”

As I shouted with that last breath, I felt the tendons jumping inside my arms, and I saw in my mind several indigenous people shaking their wayras. I wasn't at that farm but in some corner of the jungle where the jaguar hid watching me from behind the thicket. Then a new mouthful of vomit came over me, which I hurled forward as I fell to my knees and then face-first onto my belly.

Mara tilted my head to the left so I wouldn't choke on my own vomit and congratulated me again with her sweet words. The music stopped, and I could hear the taita telling his helpers, “That was close!” In fact, I could also hear the conversations of the other ceremony attendees, the singing of the birds, the sound of the wind. However, I didn't open my eyes but stayed there lying face down, as I have done since I was a baby at bedtime.

The sounds of the farm gradually mixed with whispers I began to hear around me. It was as if I were at the center of a circle barely a couple of meters in diameter in which several people were conversing with one another. Then I began to feel a soft massage on my back; I felt the force on my muscles, but there was no physical contact. At the same time I heard the sound of a continuous mantra, a kind of “mmmmmmmm” that came closer and closer to my head and gradually silenced the rest of the sounds.

Suddenly everything went silent, and the only thing I felt was the warmth of the sun on my back. Then I felt my body rising slowly toward the sky. I also realized that, despite being face down with my eyes closed, I could see everything 360 degrees around me as I ascended into the sky. Only Mara's voice briefly interrupted the silence when I heard her say, “Leave him, leave him, he's… in a samadhi!”

For a few minutes I remained levitating about 10 or 12 meters above the ground, feeling the purest sensation of peace and love I had ever experienced. Around me there was a sphere of iridescent light filled with a warm breeze that held me up. Then I again heard the voices of the beings around me: “Yes, he's ready now; he can be born now.”

Then I began to descend gently the same way I had ascended. I felt my belly being placed softly on the grass, but I still couldn't – or didn't want to – open my eyes. The incomparable feeling of peace kept flooding me, and I again heard the voices of those mysterious beings around me, this time much more clearly. All the voices were female. “Manu has a big heart, but he still has work to do to finish healing that chain he's been carrying since he rebelled,” said one of them. Another added: “Now he can finally meet his spiritual partner. Wait until he sees the one we have for him.” “A blonde, like he likes?” “Yes, but this one is a real warrior; she was waiting for him, but the way he was, she wasn't going to go near him.” Then the two of them laughed.

Then I realized I was accepting everything that was happening as if it were normal. I had just levitated, I could see 360 degrees around me all at once, and now I was listening to women talking about my future as if it were something natural. I opened my eyes and, with a start, turned onto my back expecting to see my companions, but I found myself completely alone in the same place where my “exorcism” had begun.

I quickly closed my eyes again, and to my fortune, I was able to connect immediately with that strange and extraordinary dimension I was in. I realized I could see the blue sky even with my eyes closed. Above, I saw the bluest firmament with a few clouds, although everything seemed to be in front of a nearly imperceptible net or grid. Then a voice, this time masculine, addressed me and said: “You don't yet know who you are, but you're going to find out. We've been waiting for you for a long time because you have many souls to save. Great things are coming, but I can't tell you all of them. It's enough for you to know that love will always surround you and that you will never lack anything. In fact, you're going to have many riches, but they are things of the Father that he will give you to take care of.”

As I listened to those words, I could see some of the things that strangely familiar voice mentioned. I saw a big house with a green, flowery garden; I saw many trips, books signed with my name, and I saw myself dressed in robes and necklaces.

I was in the middle of that when I heard Mara ask again, “Hello, my warrior, how are you doing? Are you back?” I opened my eyes and saw her smiling in front of me. I tried to sit up, and although I felt weak, I managed to do it. I looked at myself and noticed I had stained my shirt and pants with vomit the same color as Yagé. “Welcome back! What a spectacular trip you had!” “Really?” I asked, somewhat embarrassed, since I remembered the shameful episodes that had occurred during the ceremony.

Mara laughed when I offered her my apologies and told me everything was fine, that that hadn't been me, and that I had done a good job getting out of me those things that were hurting me. She also explained that it would take me a long time to process what I had lived through, that in Yagé one can live whole lives in a few hours, but that Yagé itself would put me on whatever path I needed to achieve that understanding.

When I finally felt strong enough, I stood up and walked slowly to meet my adventure companions. I received hugs from Zoraya and Martín, who looked at me with broad smiles and several jokes about the “show” I had just starred in. I asked about my sister, and they told me she was fine, although Yagé hadn't released her yet. So I went to see her, and I confess I felt a little afraid of the state I found her in.

She looked calm and fully awake, but when I asked how she was, she began answering me with nonsensical phrases, strange sounds, and a lost gaze that showed she was more in another dimension than in this one. “That's why, Richie, I already told you I'm BUAaaaaaaaappp Buaaaaaaaappppp, you see, we're all already there. Now… now!, now!”

I asked the taita if she looked all right, and he told me, “Don't worry, she's just well in the grip of it, and I only gave her a tiny bit, like half of what I gave you!” I learned it was around 4:00 in the afternoon, and some ceremony attendees had already left while others were getting ready. Then Mara took me to the stream that ran through the lower part of the farm while the taita and his helpers gave my sister aromatic waters, perfumes, and essences to help her come out of her trance.

I was still so weak that I couldn't undress to take the bath I needed, so, to add to my embarrassment, Mara helped me get fully undressed and bathed me with a care and affection that only a mother could have.

[1] Samadhi is the state of consciousness reached when, during meditation, a person feels they are merging with the universe.

[2] The word Inipi derives from the Lakota word “Iniunkajaktelo”, which literally means “let's go

to pray at the sweat lodge”. It is the way some shamans call the hemispherical tent of animal hides used to perform the Temazcal ceremony.

5 years ago Thank you Manuel for sharing your experiences of the path.

0 Reply manuelr Author Reply to Dairo 5 years ago Thank you for listening, a big hug my brother!

0 Reply Mara 5 years ago THANK YOU FOR BEING MY SPIRITUAL FAMILY…Mara