Eight years ago, I was drawn to the mysterious Amazon and made a documentary about a tribe
defending their ancestral territory against oil companies.
Enticed by the mystery of ancient knowledge, I'm returning eight years later with my new
family to meet some of the keepers of the knowledge, the medicine men, the tribal shamans.
I'd heard about a sacred vine called ayahuasca, which enabled the shaman to have visions of
the future and communicate with the spirit world and the natural kingdom.
I knew that historically, altered states of consciousness have been an integral part of
many cultures, and in tribal societies, these states have often been induced by taking hallucinogenic
plants, with the shaman acting as the scapegoat.
I was curious as to why the United Nations had outlawed ayahuasca, and I wanted to experience
the ayahuasca ritual and gain insights into the shaman's world.
My journey would lead me head on into the global war on drugs.
Every society chooses a small number of substances, no matter how toxic, and enshrines them in
its cultural values, then demonizes all other substances.
And then persecutes and launches witch hunts against those users.
I am thrust into life-threatening situations between worlds of opposing value, and I experience
realities I never even dreamed of.
Ecuador lies on the equator, on the western side of the Amazon basin.
We touch down in the capital, Quito, which is nestled amongst volcanoes high in the Andes
Mountains.
This trip into the Amazon was set to be more than a journey.
It's been more challenging than my last.
This time, I had Jasmine, my one-year-old daughter, and my wife, Willow, who was six
months pregnant, traveling with me.
I've always believed that the Amazon is the wildest place on earth, and I had to see
it for myself.
Half of Ecuador's population is indigenous, and there are 12 distinct language groups,
as well as some uncontacted tribes.
With its diverse climates ranging from snow-capped mountains to lowland Amazon rainforest, Ecuador
is one of the most biologically and culturally diverse countries on earth.
Ecuador has a long history of hallucinogenic plant use, with the San Pedro mescaline cactus
in the mountains, and the ayahuasca brew in the Amazon.
That the road leading down to the Amazon was perilous, and a year before, a bus went off
the edge, killing everyone on board.
Eight years earlier, while filming the Wurundjeri Indians cutting a demarcation line around
their territory, I met Flavio.
Flavio is a shaman and a warrior, fighting hard to preserve his land and way of life
from the oil companies, the colonists, and the encroaching outside world.
But now they are destroying my life, my people, and my future generation.
The trees, the leaves, all of it.
I don't want anything else.
.
warrior and an ayahuasquero shaman. They've organized workshops on their community where
the local shamans share their culture and knowledge with the youth. Rafael is determined
to pass on his ancestors' culture, knowledge and land to his children. The shamans are
the spiritual guides and the medicine men of the tribe who have vast knowledge of the
jungle plants and their medicinal uses.
¿Por qué es ayahuasca importante para usted?
Ayahuasca es de nuestros abuelos cuando ellos tomaban para tener visión espiritual de la
selva, del río, también de la lluvia, de los cerros. Este contiene de que este es bueno
para salud de un shamanismo, control del shamanismo.
Y tener más energía para el shaman y para controlar toda la selva. Entonces la boa
es un shaman, el tigre es un shaman, espiritualmente. Todo animal contiene a este espíritu de ayahuasca.
Este vamos a llevar un poco para entrecambiar el visión porque este es otro ayahuasca y
también este es otro.
¿Este ya es?
Espiritualmente, suelo conecta con ayahuasca, con otra ayahuasca. Entonces por eso hace
una visión más fuerte. Sin esto no tienes visión, no le ves bien. Pero con este ya
tienes visión. Puedes mirar. O bueno, así, espiritual, selva, la medicina de montaña.
Ah, diferente.
¿Este puede tomar también?
No, no, ya está.
No, o sea, puede tomar también. El que, seguía tomando.
No.
Este no es difícil tomar. Solo yacha sino también cualquiera puede tomar.
Se pone estas hojas primero para que este vaya adentro.
Este es yaje, hoja de yaje. Este ahí. Y esto es ayahuasca.
No.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
is also an ayahuasquero shaman who paints the visions he's had during ayahuasca rituals this
painting represents the two plants necessary in preparing the ayahuasca brew out of the ayahuasca
vine comes a black snake with the yellow aura there is another snake called the chacruna snake
which penetrates the ayahuasca snake producing the visionary effects of these two magic plants
in this vision a defeated king from a remote tribe in peru rises from his grave to tell his
shocked wife that he has grown a vine from his hair which is to be called ayahuasca meaning
vine of the dead he said you must mix this vine with the chacruna plant which will allow you to
see sound to have visions and develop your psychic abilities and acquire deep knowledge from past
cultures in scientific terms the ayahuasca brew consists of two major
active ingredients beta carboline from the ayahuasca vine and the extremely powerful
dimethyltryptamine or dmt from the psychotria or chacruna plants normally dmt is destroyed
in the gut but you take it in combo with beta carboline and then it's active this was discovered
by amazonian indians millennia ago and not discovered by western science till 1956
you
during my research for this journey i met author and ethnobotanist terence mckenna terence was so
inspired by his spiritual adventures with these amazon shamans over the last 30 years he wrote
several books on his experiences and philosophies he became a world-renowned speaker advocate and
expert on plant-based hallucinogens and shamanic rituals shamanism is about going into the realms
of death transcending the body
transcending space and time what the psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries they dissolve the
illusion of separateness raphael invited us to an overnight ayahuasca ritual at a sacred site
in his ancestral territory deep in the headwaters of the amazon willow didn't want to drink ayahuasca
because of her pregnancy but she still wanted to come for the adventure the wildness the sense of
mystery and the power of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit of the spirit
and intrigue was enough to capture me it was a journey into myself to discover my personal
boundaries i had no idea of the extent of the challenges that lay before me i felt enormously
protective
serbian
Tigre muy grande!
Tigre embarazada!
We just saw a jaguar prince
and apparently it swims in the river and eats children
It's probably in the jungle
with a baby
It's been a three and a half hour walk through mud
and I'm seven months pregnant
and I've still got three and a half hours to walk
We've been told to be very careful of snakes
because there's apparently a lot of them around here
and they were going to build a plastic house
but we asked them to build a house out of mambil
and so it looks like we're going to have a tradition
made in a very very short time
I felt how my modern lifestyle
had allowed a sort of separation to develop
between myself and nature
Through their actions
I could see how these forest Indians
were still directly connected
with the natural environment
I felt like I had journeyed back in time
I felt privileged
to be able to participate
in this ancient ritual
The young people who don't know
didn't go to school
they didn't learn at school
They were given advice
They were given to drink ayahuasca
always
It's not a drug
it's to know the vision
I knew that drinking ayahuasca
could be a very intense experience
that it tasted foul
and often it made you vomit
I was feeling apprehensive
about how it would affect me
Millions of people take ayahuasca
in the Amazon
It is the largest psychedelic religion on earth
The waking world and the world of the dream
become one
So then it becomes the function of the shaman
the gadfly
the go-between
to carry information back and forth
between these worlds
Everything feels like the whole forest
and everything
I'm seeing iridescent rainbow spiral
feels like I'm being bombarded
by some sort of ancient knowledge
universal consciousness
that I don't understand
Sometimes when you don't see
they kill another person
and you see which person
was killed
So we know
spiritually
The shamans
between the yachaks
they fought a lot
when they had
a friendship
when a son was killed
by another yachak
and the father
killed him too
so they have enemies
so
those are the ones
who put the arrow
pay the other
so that's the arrow
The arrows can go
very far
They are spiritual minds
that walk
between the spirits
of
different kinds
of spirits
in the forest
insects
toads
snakes
toads
toads toads
toads
indigenous cosmology, amalulla, amakilla, amashua, not to steal, not to lie, not to be lazy,
to live taking care of nature, always, us and our children, ayahuasca teaches us to love
nature, but to see the spirituality of the earth, to see the Pachamama and the space.
In many countries around the world, people are now running their own unique style of
ayahuasca rituals to open a doorway into this shamanic world.
What you see I think is the morphogenetic field, the invisible world that holds everything
together.
You don't have to spend 20 years around the ashram.
Ayahuasca to me is a very, very feminine spirit, it's a feminine experience.
It's an experience of let go, of surrender, of nurturing, of love, of light, of the heart.
It's a holographic library, it speaks to you in visions, it communicates through pictures.
And also you're very sensitive to sound in ayahuasca, sound can influence wherever you
go.
You use sound as a navigator also, you use your intent and you use sound.
Ayahuasca can be seen as a doorway, a link between the dimensions, it can give you all
kinds of, let's say, shamanic information, it can give you a look into the animal world,
the spirit world, the world of insects, the world of plants, the world of minerals, the
galactic world, the cosmic perspective.
And ayahuasca is like a different world.
It's a different world.
And at the very beginning of all this, there is a deep immersion into that kind of experiential
understanding of unity.
And this unity is liberating.
It's a transforming experience.
Ayahuasca teaches that we are it.
We are nature.
We are not separate from it.
.
to live longer.
Yesterday we drank ayahuasca.
In that I saw a very deep vision.
A tree was transformed into a vein.
But in the middle, this big tree had teeth
and it was smiling.
And after smiling, it blew a strong hurricane-like wind
to the south and to the north.
That meant that this jungle was still full of spirit.
All of this belonged to our grandparents.
When the colonization came,
the government forced people to be retired
because of their jobs.
Yes.
In the past, all of this belonged to the indigenous people.
The Amazon Indians have lost more than their claim to ancestral lands.
Military-backed oil companies have pushed roads through their territory
and their land is being invaded by colonists and outsiders.
Their culture is undergoing massive upheavals
and the people look to their shamans for vision and guidance
in these rapidly changing times.
I don't want oil because it's polluting the Amazon.
That's why we don't want it.
We saw that this mountain was full of birds and monkeys.
Now we only see houses and cars.
That's why the indigenous people don't need oil.
It destroys all the rivers and all the fish.
That's why we're here,
to defend our Ecuadorian Amazon
so that our children and future generations can live better.
As threats to the Amazon people change with the times,
the shamans use ayahuasca to gain insights and strategies
to fight new enemies.
That's why we're here in the jungle,
drinking ayahuasca,
to see more visions,
to get more spirit,
to be able to fight and defend territories against oil companies.
Grandparents drank it for war,
to see where the enemy was.
And they killed each other among peoples.
To a psychological war,
they also drank it.
For a psychological war.
Now, we don't want to make a war for violence,
drinking ayahuasca.
We want to see the government,
if they're lying to us
or if they're telling us the truth.
We're at the blockade now.
There's a lot of military going through here.
And the indigenous people are being held off by the military.
I can die against the oil companies.
I will give my life for my territory.
My territory,
what my grandfather left me as a legacy,
I will never surrender.
When we get angry,
we get angry and no one stops us.
And no one will stop us,
not even the military,
not even the missionaries,
not even the government.
We will die together,
the nature.
Why do you want to kill me?
Because you wanted to kill me.
Why?
Because I was attached to Tri Petrol,
to ARCO,
that brother who works with oil companies.
That's why they want to kill me.
Yes.
They want to see me dead
so that they can easily bring oil companies.
Son of a bitch!
Yes?
Give me the gun
or give me the arrow right now, damn it!
We're going to drink ayahuasca
to have a vision,
to get to know
bad spirits,
to get to know the family,
how the family is doing,
to take care of them a lot,
now that the company is here.
So we're going to control
how long we're going to be well
and how long we're not going to be well.
I'm convinced that in its native setting
ayahuasca is a telepathic drug.
I mean, small groups of tribal people
are taking this thing and making group decisions
based on group hallucinations,
based on
the collective database of the tribal group.
They're seeing the information
from a higher dimensional space.
On this ayahuasca journey
I was given deeper insights into the shaman's world
and their intimate relationship with nature.
I saw how the shamans,
through their visions,
were able to communicate with the planet
as if it were a conscious living entity.
Spiritually,
the sangai was the eye,
the eye of the Amazon.
It's a volcano
that maintains the entire Amazon.
It's in danger
in case they take out the oil
and reactivate the sangai.
In 1971,
largely in response to the popularisation of psychedelics
in the United States in the 60s,
such as LSD, magic mushrooms and marijuana,
the United Nations drafted
the Narcotics Convention,
which was signed by all of its members
prohibiting hallucinogenic plants and chemicals.
Without any real scientific research,
DMT and other hallucinogens
were placed in the Schedule I category
along with heroin and cocaine.
Dealers in these substances
face between seven years and life in prison
and in some countries even death.
Except in Brazil and Peru,
ayahuasca rituals are now banned
in every United Nations country on Earth.
In Brazil, 80 years ago,
an Amazonian shaman introduced rubber-tapper
Raimando Sierra to ayahuasca.
Raimando became a shamanic healer
and later established the Santa Dami religion,
which is an unusual combination
of Christianity, ayahuasca rituals and nature worship.
Today, the Santa Dami Church
has over 15,000 members in Brazil
and many centers around the world.
The Netherlands is a signatory
to the Narcotics Convention
and in October 1999,
the government raided a Santa Dami service
with 70 people in the congregation
and arrested the two spiritual leaders.
I went to the Netherlands to meet Brazilian
Yatra Silveira de Barbosa,
who established a number of Santa Dami centers in Europe.
In my country,
it is legal.
Ayahuasca in South America
is being taken in the same way,
a ritualistic way,
for healing,
for spirituality,
back to 500 years before Christ,
that we know as a fact.
I cannot understand
this way of thinking.
You're going to jail for seven years
or 15 years
because you are running a ritual.
It's just too much.
So this is going to be our first ritual
with our doors closed.
So there is a risk
that the police might come here.
The doors downstairs are totally locked.
It's like you put the lights on.
Everything that's in the darkness
will show up
and you can work with that.
So actually makes you closer to yourself.
It brings you in contact
with God within you.
It brings you back into your heart space.
It's impossible to use as a recreational.
First because you throw up like crazy.
You know what I mean?
You don't really enjoy every moment.
It's not something that you take
and you go to a party
because when you drink ayahuasca,
you really come in touch
with your inner most
and it's not all the time flowers.
There is a lot of thorns.
We've been healing people
of physical diseases
like cancer,
psychosomatic diseases,
depressions,
drug addiction,
heroin,
cocaine.
I've been addicted to cocaine and heroin
since I was 16
and went through many,
many different treatment programs
and none of them worked.
Basically,
it just helped me go inside myself
and look at why I was using.
People need to know about it
and it needs to be legal.
It needs to be able to go on
and happen
because without it,
I would be dead right now
and I know many, many more people
would be dead right now.
We understand the problem
and it's not the case
to send people to jail
but to send people into treatment.
The Narcotics Convention
also banned virtually
all scientific research
into psychedelics
and their possible
clinical applications.
Before the ban,
some psychologists
such as author
Stanislav Grof
were using psychedelics
as a therapeutic tool
accessing deeper levels
of consciousness
to unlock traumas
with very positive results.
I think it's a great tragedy
of 20th century science
that the original excitement
about exploring consciousness
and mental illness
generated by the discovery of LSD
gave way to establishment paranoia
and repression of drug-using populations.
Drugs might actually cause people
to wake up to some of the abuses
and scams that were being run
by late modernism and capitalism.
We are supposed to live
in an environment
with a narrow canyon of consciousness
walled in between a wake and a sleep.
This is the dump square in Amsterdam
the site of many protests
and the protest behind me
is one to try and get
ayahuasca legalized.
As we enter the new millennium
we shouldn't have to be dealing with
religious and spiritual persecution.
It's something we should have left behind
in the dark ages
but unfortunately
the dark ages are still with us
so we have to make a stand.
We have fundamental law
and we have also
the European Convention on Human Rights
which says that people have
liberty to have freedom of religion.
And we have seen this also
in the United States
where they gave the freedom
to the Native American church
to use the peyote cactus.
In my country, in Brazil
we had the same thing happened
in a case that lasted for eight years
but not a case as the police
the investigators were scientists
anthropologists, doctors
and after eight years
we won the jury by unanimity
so they took ayahuasca
out of the open law
and we want to have the same here
because we really have the right
to have our own religion.
There's a lot of international pressure
on the Dutch government
to conform in the drug policy
with the other European countries
and the United States.
The big war on drugs.
Due to the war on drugs
in America alone
there are currently
three quarters of a million people
spending around five million years
behind bars
costing over 60 billion US dollars.
America spends more on its prisons
than it does on its schools.
The so-called war on drugs
which is really a war against
other people's values.
It's a continuation
of cultural genocide
and all the other efforts
made by the phenomenal success
of capitalism
to shove its agenda
down other people's throats.
People's minds
like their bodies
must be a domain
free from government control.
It is a civil war
and a civil rights issue.
This psychedelic dimension
is part of the human birthright.
No plant should be illegal.
These things should not even
be talked about as drugs.
The big drug and biotech companies
have been sending their bio-pirates
to the Amazon for years
to steal and patent
shamanic medicinal knowledge.
And in 1988
a variety of ayahuasca was patented.
The patent was challenged
by a coalition of Amazon tribes.
The Supreme Court ruled
that you can't patent a plant,
that a plant is not an invention.
One of the active ingredients
in the ayahuasca brew, DMT,
is found in many species of plants
throughout the world.
In the Amazon,
shamans have used DMT
in their snuff rituals
for thousands of years.
The shamans derive the DMT
from the hakula beans
and the verola tree
and absorb it through
the nasal passages.
The snuff is used
to induce a trance,
to see visions,
to communicate with the spirit world
and drive away evil spirits.
There is an ancient Amazon legend
about DMT
which says
in the beginning
the sun created various beings
to serve as intermediaries
between him and earth
and created the DMT snuff powder
so that man could contact
these supernatural beings.
The national symbol of Australia
is the wattle.
It's an acacia.
The acacia ecology of Australia
is jammed with DMT.
And then of course the question was
well do the aboriginals
know about this?
Ask Paul Dillon
from the Australian National Drug
and Alcohol Research Centre
about the dangers of DMT
and other hallucinogens.
We did a call out to DMT users
asking them for their experiences.
Interestingly,
every single caller we had
emphasised that it was a drug
that they were not going to use again.
They found it very intense,
quite unpleasant
and they really weren't prepared
for the experience at all.
The most harmful drugs in society
are definitely
the legal ones.
Alcohol and tobacco.
Tobacco kills almost
20,000 Australians every year
and alcohol is up around 4,000.
And the hallucinogen drugs,
none to my knowledge.
But I suppose they're drugs
that we do need to know more about.
We need to know about
the psychological effects.
I think more research needs to be done.
The only legal scientific research
into psychedelics and DMT
since the narcotics convention
was conducted by psychologist
Dr. Rick Straussman
in New Mexico in 1990.
He concludes,
amongst other things,
that DMT is naturally released
from the pineal gland
during birth, death
and other naturally occurring psychedelic states.
The strongest drugs
are the ones most like
ordinary brain chemistry.
The most extreme case being DMT.
DMT only lasts
seven to ten minutes.
And yet it's the most profound
dislocation of reality
that you can undergo.
A lot about psychedelics
before I encountered DMT
and it showed me
that I knew virtually nothing.
And I took four
very large inhalations.
My impression was of
falling forward
through some kind of
that was fluctuating space.
It was filled with beings.
Entities of some sort.
Creatures made of light.
And they were jumping
in and out of my chest.
And I thought I must have died.
It meant this couldn't happen
to somebody
and come back.
You cannot go further than this
into the bardo
and return.
The shaman is someone
who has seen the beginning
and the end.
It's the most challenging,
enlightening,
astonishing,
terrifying,
joyous,
strange thing in the world.
I don't mean to scare anyone off,
but these are bizarre dimensions
of extraordinary power and beauty.
People should be very careful.
The shaman offers an immense
example of courage.
While I was making this film,
Terence was diagnosed
with terminal cancer.
I asked if he had one message to share
from all his experiences,
what would it be?
Sheer curiosity
is the thing that I've always
let carry me along.
And I have no regrets
about any of this.
I think it's worth the life
to put these issues
in front of people.
Willow was now nearly
eight months pregnant
and suffering from dizzy spells
and headaches.
So we searched out a shaman
named Enrique
who lived by the Amazon River,
who we heard used ayahuasca,
mainly as a tool to heal people.
Enrique and his family
have established
an indigenous foundation
to help preserve
his ancestral territory.
Part of the finances needed
to run the foundation
he gets from offering
ayahuasca rituals
for eco-tourists.
Doctor Ecuador,
Blanco,
here in Puyo,
they already know the shaman.
That's why when they can't
get an injection
on the shaman,
they just go
and clean it up.
The bark
for when they have
the flu.
The flu.
To do that,
you have to absorb it.
You know all the bad stuff.
Yes, yes.
It's better.
Yes.
Against the snake,
the potato
is scraped,
with warm water,
it's taken.
When the snake bites,
it's taken.
This is ayahuasca?
Yes, ayahuasca.
Yes.
All the time
in Ecuador,
it's legal
to heal.
But another person
in particular,
as a hobby,
that's not.
Because it's a thing
that has to be done
as a ritual
and all
through a shaman.
Yes, it's not legal.
Other gringos
take ayahuasca
in other countries.
It's good or bad?
It's good.
People want to know
that
Usually the shaman
and the patient
drink ayahuasca.
When that happens, he takes it out.
Then the sick will heal.
Before, there were no doctors or pharmacies, nothing.
This Amazon didn't know anyone.
Only with this ayahuasca, the shaman continued to heal.
I want to learn shamanism when you are a young man.
And there was just that shaman who healed me.
At the age of 12, he stung me with a snake.
So there I, until now powerful,
I learned.
The shaman told me that my power wants this young man.
For a year I was on a diet.
I only crushed bananas.
When he is drugged with this liquid,
he is directly talking to the spirit.
And through this intermediate of the spirit,
the shaman has the power.
But in the water too.
I have entered like an anaconda.
Also, I have looked like a shaman.
A great one.
In anaconda, I made a wheel.
I was there, sitting.
Another shaman wants to do harm.
They...
Over here...
Over here too.
They are guardians.
I felt that when these shamanic planets
were used with correct preparation,
guidance and ritual,
they could be powerful tools for healing
and personal transformation.
Without light, I can look.
This is without light.
I can look at who you are.
But with light I can't.
I didn't take any ayahuasca,
but I had a healing from him.
I've been having a lot of movement
and a lot of pain
and a lot of faintness.
And he said that I need lots of minerals and vitamins.
I wanted to see if this baby is a boy or a girl.
And he says it's definitely a boy.
With an ayahuasca,
when I was looking at you,
I saw in this,
in your body,
in this.
In your central column.
In the nerves too.
Parasites.
After returning to Australia,
we all became quite sick.
We tested positive for amoebas and parasites.
I also spent four days in hospital,
unable to walk due to a problem in my spine.
Oh yeah, and we did have a baby boy.
We named him Shaman.
In Ecuador, thousands of people were evacuated
as a number of volcanoes began to violently erupt.
At that time,
when the first eruption of Pichincha,
or Pichincha,
I was drinking ayahuasca with some Quito people.
We were talking in vision
when this volcano is sacred.
When the oilfields are bothering,
it's...
It's...
It's angry
because these oilfields are
blowing up the soil inside.
So the volcano is angry
because they are not treating nature well.
I don't want them to come and destroy me.
People from the United States,
for sucking the blood
of our ancestors,
the black gold,
that is created with the technology of tips,
made by the smart people.
No.
Here we are, the smart people,
the ones who defend the lung of the world,
the jungle,
the pure air,
the pure water.
What it brings is an empathy
to the destruction of the planet.
You know, the cutting of a rainforest
is suddenly no longer completely abstract.
It's actually something you can feel and relate to.
And all political change begins
with a change of feeling and value.
We have become a toxic force
in planetary biology.
There is going to have to be
a radical transformation.
Human future will be designed
on how conscious
we are able to make ourselves.
If we can change our minds,
we can take hold of this process
and halt it.
And I call on all the yachaks,
all the shamans of the world,
to unite,
to spread in the world
and say,
no destruir la naturaleza,
no destruir las raíces de los árboles.
My journey into this mysterious world
of the shamans of the Amazon
lasted three years.
I'm left wondering
whose interests are really being served
by keeping illegal these shamanic plants
that can help you connect with yourself
and the natural world.
And how is it that humanity
is allowing such unprepared,
unprecedented destruction of nature?
Meeting the shamans
and taking ayahuasca
opened me to a world
I never imagined.
A world that challenged
my current concepts of reality
and made me question my life's purpose
and my relationship with everything.
Materialism is ending our world.
Our world is the spirit
of the trees,
of the magical leaves.