sodom wrote:
>
> I AM SO ENVIOUS - tell me all about your trip!!!
Obviously, downtown Seattle, where I reside, and the Amazon jungle are two different worlds, but you simply cannot get a sense for how different the two are without spending time in each place. In the jungle, EVERYTHING is alive and intelligent. Everything.
You can say that everything is alive and intelligent, be it in city or jungle, but in the jungle it's not just an abstract intellectual notion. It's obvious and undeniable.
> I was aware that the US and
> others had interest in the region, but I had no idea it was as intense as
> you make it sound.
The military presence is much stronger in Lima, especially around the airport. At least it's more visible there. The jungle can swallow up a lot of personelle and hardware. Luis (Eduardo Luna) told me about an incident he witnessed in a cafe in Iquitos. The cafe was full of Americans; missionaries and soldiers, and one of the missionaries approached a table of military men and berated them for their intrussion and unthinking impact on the local people. The missionary showed no sign of noting the irony of his own criticism.
Going through customs in Iquitos is a frightening experience. There are posters on the walls depicting travelers languishing in tiny prison cells for drug offenses, and you know that all of your rights are quaint fictions maintained only in distant places.
> If you are going to go again next year, i will be sure to
> have the money saved up!!!
Prof. Tim has been organizing get-togthers at a resort in the San Juan Islands near Seattle for the past couple of years. I told Luis about the place and he's interested in conducting an ayahuasca session there in August. He and Dennis McKenna will be conducting sessions in California and Hawaii that same month, and if we can get 15 to 20 people together who are willing to put up about $150 each to pay for their plane tickets and the ayahuasca Luis and Dennis will come here to conduct a session as well, so you won't have to finance a trip to the Amazon in order to get a lesson from this very powerful plant teacher.
> So - how are our killer memes doing in the jungles and with the people?
I saw no evidence of their effects in the jungle, but I saw a huge religious rally in Iquitos, and televangilist Robert Tilton graced my tv screen in my hotel room in Iquitos. Business seems to be booming.
> What
> is the reaction to Christianity like in a group of non Christians?
I did not witness any proselytizing to non-Christian Indians. I know it goes on, but I didn't see it. From what I could tell, the protestant missionaries are mainly cutting into Catholic market share. Thus the Pope's fourth visit to Mexico.
> How was
> the experience as a whole - drug wise - did u notice anything
> "supernatural"?
Oh yes. We had a very tight group, and there seemed to be a lot of telepathic communication going on. One of group saw some forrest gnomes. Interestingly, she wasn't on Ayahuasca at the time, but she had ingested another substance called Toe (with an accent mark over the e--pronounce "toe eh") the night before. I felt the effects of that plant brew for several days after I took it.
My ayahuasca trips were not visual, but those of many of my fellow trippers where quite visual, and I did have a lot of dreams after taking the ayahuasca in which I saw many of the elements that are typical of ayahuasca experiences, e.g. fabulous cities, snakes, jungle cats.
The ayahuasca presents itself as an intelligent agent and a teacher. It's both a physical and spiritual purgative. It let me know that I was carrying around a lot of crap that I would be better off without. The first time I took it, it literally spoke to me in complete sentences.
You might go into your first ayahuasca session with a nonchalant attitude, but if you brave a second encounter, you will approach it with knees knocking. It's a rewarding experience, but it's a hard road to travel. You will puke and shit until you can't believe there is anything left inside you to expell, and yet the ayahuasca continues to dredge up the crap you've unthinkingly loaded your body with for years and push it out of you via one hole or another.
The physical purgative effect was less severe with each session, but the spiritual/emotional dredging was just getting started by my third and final experience. I will definitely continue to take lessons from the plants, but I don't know if I'll be heading back to the jungle anytime soon. I certainly don't plan to place myself under a shaman's instruction. We had contact with several shamans, and while they have an impressive knowledge of plants, they are also, as a group, self-aggrandizing, ego-driven, intensively competitive, and often predatory. Most Shamans maintain a rigorous diet for 5 years durring their training, and durring this period they are also celebite, but thereafter, many of them are quite willing to use there plant-derived powers to get laid.
> glad you are back
Thanks. It's good to be back.
-KMO
> Bill Roh
> Sodom
>
> KMO wrote:
>
> > Hi Doug,
> >
> > Dope Fiends is a great website. I share your conviction that ending the
> > War on Drugs is of the utmost urgency and importance. I just got back
> > from the jungles of Peru yesterday. I was there with Dr. Luis Edwardo
> > Luna, author of "Ayahuasca Visions: Religious Iconography of a Peruvian
> > Shaman," to try ayahuasca, but I also got an eye-full of contradiction
> > and creulty concerning US involvement in South America. The US military
> > has a strong presence in the Amazonian jungle port city of Iquitos.
> > There you'll also find plenty of Christian missionaries and reserchers
> > working for US pharmaceutical companies. Poverty and deprivation are
> > ubiquitous in Iquitos, but the soldiers, proselytizers, and researchers
> > are not there to improve the quality of life for the inhabitants; they
> > are there to assert military and political dominion over the region,
> > deprive its people of part of their cultural identity in exchange for
> > the spiritual banality of televangalism, and extract the pharmaceutical
> > treasures of Amaznionian biodiversity before it disappears forever.
> > Witnessing this had a powerful effect on my convictions and goals.
> >
> > I send out a "Thought of the Day" mailing every Monday thru Friday. The
> > mailing consists of two quotes from various sources. I expect that I'll
> > be using quotes from your website for the TOTD in the near future. I've
> > taken the liberty of adding you to the list of TOTD recipients. You'll
> > receive a message telling you how to unsubscribe if you'd rather not
> > receive the mailing, or just tell me, and I'll remove you from the list.
> >
> > I'm posting this message to the Church of the Virus mailing list as well
> > as sending it directly to you because a recent thread on that discussion
> > list has centered around anti-drug propaganda. The list is devoted to
> > discussions of memetics, cultural engineering, mind-control and related
> > topics. I'd invite you to take a look at the Church of the Virus website
> > and well as my own site, C-Realm, and I'll encourage the recipients of
> > the Virus mailing list to look at your site and see your take on the
> > war.
> >
> > Take care.
> >
> > -KMO
> >
> > You can find the Church of the Virus at:
> >
> > http://www.lucifer.com/virus/
> >
> > and Doug's "Dope Fiends" page at:
> >
> > http://www.execpc.com/~daanes/dopefiends.html
> >
> > and C-Realm at:
> >
> > http://www.c-realm.com