The attainment of psychedelic gnosis: the story of Vegan

notions about a revelatory experience, Vegan expressed that some information just cannot be explained or taught. Instead, it needs to be lived in a direct, experiential way. Realizing the universe wished itself into existence felt like a piece of obvious information that had been hiding under his nose. As if he was a child who suddenly understands a message sitting in front of him for years. "I know it sounds loony," he says, "but it only sounds loony because I'm unable to explain [it]." He expresses that it felt as if it were a memory long lost and recovered.

"When a so far non-existent compound is synthesized, do its chemical properties appear out of nowhere or were they already inscribed in the fabric of the universe? The universe keeps creating itself, because it's a newborn," he explains as he described having seen through the eyes of an infant universe which is slowly becoming self-aware through life. "We ARE part of one unique consciousness," he says, "even if we are not aware of it in the same way flowers can live and die independently from a tree." Trying to explain his experience was, for Vegan, equivalent to giving a human brain to a cat for an hour, so that once the cat is back in its usual self, it would not be able to describe what it had understood. He beheld the absolute beauty of

"contemplating the ultimate answer of the universe," and then,

"… in a second, it was gone. I still had the tears on my face, and yet, I didn't know anymore. The book of the universe was not in a language I could understand anymore. It had escaped me. I was left knowing that I had known something, everything. . . but what was it?" (Vegan, 2006, p. 4)

The transiency of his moment of ultimate understanding hit him, and the knowledge escaped him as fast as it had come. He was left with the sensation of having known something that now eluded him, a reversed Aha! moment, or a piece of hidden information on the tip of his tongue.

As much as he had a psychedelic experience, in the original definition of the term as "mind revealing," he had now a psychecryptic¹⁶ one: knowledge was hidden again. The door had been

16"Psychecryptic" is a term discussed in the forthcoming book by Aidan Lyon, "Psychedelic Experience" (2020). The term is contrasted with the word "psychedelic": As some parts of the mind can be revealed, other parts are simultaneously concealed. The author defines such

open and closed again suddenly, and he now had the memory of having known something, everything! But what was it?

Vegan's story ends by stating it has been two years, and his interpretation of the experience has not changed. "Should I consider [I was on drugs] and you think crazy things when you're on drugs?" he interrogated openly, having a critical stance towards his own experience. "Put it simply, the question is, have I really known everything, or has the drug tricked me into believing so?". "Be it true or false, I am thankful," he concludes, while stating, "it felt truer than truth itself".

"I read in articles about ayahuasca that it 'answered your questions'.

Reports show people with family problems who find the answers to those problems on ayahuasca, people with addiction problems who solve those problems, and so on. I had always seriously been wondering about the universe and its origin. Did ayahuasca show me the specific answers to what was puzzling me? What more valuable tool could there be then! Or

did I just get them randomly, as I could have had answers to matters I didn't really care about?" (Vegan, 2006, p. 5)

4.2.3.1 Psychedelic and psychecryptic: analysis of Vegan's narrative.

The story titled "Absolute Knowledge and Understanding" was chosen to close the findings section. Its provocative title pointed towards the very thing that inspired the project: the sense of understanding something profound and ineffable, or having experienced a transient moment of knowledge about something otherworldly. Vegan’s story was the clearest example of a

"The universe whished itself into existence!" says Vegan with evident excitement. "I know it sounds loony but it is just because I can really describe it." When it comes to discussing the actual content of a gnostic experience, there is nothing much to say about it as a claim. Proving or disproving the means by which the universe came to be is not the purpose of the project, but to address what it meant to the storyteller to have lived and felt such a thing. It would appear as though Vegan longed no more for an answer to his existential questions. What he had lived was, regardless of what happened in the future, the most important thing he has experienced.

As stated before, asking whether the vision was real or just a drug would miss an important point as well as trying to frame such claims in terms of true and false or as reality and delusion would fail to recognize the weight such experience has for the individual, who in the case of Vegan, appears to have satisfied a deep hunger for understanding: "I had always been wondering about the universe and its origins."

Approaching such claims in terms of verification implies the intention to box psychedelic experiences into fitting the consensus of intersubjective reality and waking day-to-day consciousness. Psychedelic experiences are, in essence, outside that mode of consciousness and allow the individual to relate with their surroundings with a different embodied experience, hence their slippery nature. In other words, psychedelic experiences are not happening in the space of intersubjective consensus reality but in a different space that is yet to be determined.

The most interesting aspect of Vegan's story is the transiency of his state. The psychedelic nature of his experience (understood as mind-revealing¹⁷), presented itself as a piece of information which was suddenly understood in all its weight, and then, in a second, it was back again in the shadows, veiled to his awareness, pray to a psychecryptic process. An experience that was both revealing and concealing.

Whether true or false, Vegan appears to be sort of existentially satisfied with an answer: whatever its content it was an answer nonetheless. A moment of gnosis that came

17 Psychedelic, from the Greek words, psyche (mind) and delos (commonly translated as either

"manifest" or "reveal") (Hartogsohn, 2020).

about in bliss and terror and revealed the secret of the ever-mysterious nature of creation and existence.

4.2.3.2 Ayahuasca Analogues

For the sake of the theoretical example, we started on the premise that the psychedelic compound responsible for triggering the experiences in our narratives was relatively the same.

Moreover, while there is no doubt that psychedelics trigger vastly different experiences even using the same chemical compound, the use of ayahuasca analogs surfaced in the context of individual private consumption of ayahuasca, as shown in table 5.

The variability of the chemical composition will be addressed here by referencing a recent study by Helle Kaasik¹⁸, who compared the composition of ayahuasca preparations in both Europe and South America. As we will see, the use of ayahuasca analogs is particularly prominent in neoshamanic circles in Europe. This discussion is relevant as the source of inebriation in seven out of ten narratives within the setting of an individual practice had as a source an ayahuasca analog, including Vegan's story.

Table 5. Ayahuasca analogues - Atlas.ti results

According to the authors, analogs of ayahuasca consist of plant-derived or synthetic MAO inhibitors together with an alternative source of DMT, and are common in ceremonies held outside of South America for psychonautic experimentation. Ayahuasca analogs are an alternative to the commercialization of traditional ayahuasca because they produce similar psychoactive effects with cheaper and easier ingredients to access than the Amazonian recipe (Kaasik et al., 2020).

The study showed a higher presence of DMT in the analogue versions of ayahuasca used in neo shamanic circles, in comparison to the Amazonian brews which appeared to have a fair balance between the psychedelic and non-psychedelic components. Following this line of thought, there might be a cultural proclivity in western contexts towards favoring the psychedelic aspect of the experience (DMT) as a source of power or effectiveness. The previous study is relevant for the discussion as it gives context to claims such as Vegan’s who recounted taking "extracted DMT and harmaline alkaloids".

As shown in table 4, a fair amount of the narratives analyzed in the setting of an individual consumption of ayahuasca used analogs to procure the experience. This might be a direct result of it being a practice outside of the traditional context in which the individual in charge of procuring the brew is, in every case, the shaman. As these experiences are provided by private practitioners, they depend on themselves for the brew's concoction, or in this case, an analog that produces similar effects to ayahuasca. A thorough analysis of this phenomenon would have to delve deeper into the milieu of psychonautic experimentation, in which these practitioners are situated. However, for this analysis, the apparent entanglement between contemporary expressions of spirituality and psychedelic experimentation is only curious. Both aspects are intersecting in the individual search (and procuring) of intense bodily alterations of consciousness.

5 Theoretical reflections

This project stems from the idea that psychedelics can trigger states of knowledge, which is an elusive concept in itself. The research question concerns the relationship between the context of a psychedelic experience and the content of the experience. This is intended to situate the narratives of ayahuasca experiences as having a larger cultural context which informs their meaning.

Partridge’s discussion on psychedelic gnosis, for whom there is no autonomous, transcended subject operating outside of a historical and cultural context, informs the research question as researching claims of the attainment of transcendental knowledge (gnosis) within a cultural and historical context, situates the claims as culturally situated objects of study and not as truth claims. The aforementioned follows the stance of methodological agnosticism which prevents the scholar from claiming that, in fact, ecstatic states of consciousness are interacting with an objective transcendental reality. Hence the research question: what kinds of insights can be found in reports of ayahuasca experiences, and how are they related to the setting in which they occur?

The theoretical discussion comprises two main segments. In the first section, we focus on the relationship between environment and experience by addressing psychedelic's sensitivity to context understood as the union of set and setting. The section aims to tackle both the environmental and cultural dynamics that frame psychedelic experiences. Secondly, we address contemporary ayahuasca tourism in west Amazonia to understand the context in which the three narratives of traditional ayahuasca consumption took place (Marisa, Dillon, and The Doctor), arguing how ayahuasca tourism is a larger socio-cultural setting. Thirdly, we address

insight as an idea which arrives with suddenness and pertains a halo of profundity and truth, as well as the way insights relate to factual information. The discussion allows us to approach a ayahuasca moments of insight as a kind of information that differs from factual truth but which nonetheless carries significance. In order to bridge insights attained within an ayahuasca experience we address the resemblance between a mystical experience's noetic qualities and a psychedelic experience; and finally we discuss a hypothetical parallel between Hanegraaff's notion of "altered states of knowledge" and the experiences recounted here.

5.1 Cultural set and settings

5.1.1 Psychedelics' sensitivity to context

Psychedelic¹⁹ substances are dramatically sensitive to the context in which they are used. The set and setting theory recognizes both the influence of the user's mindset and the environment in which they are situated as main attributes in the outcome of a psychedelic experience.

However, the setting extends beyond the immediate surroundings of a room or a maloka since larger socio-cultural and historical components frame the attitudes and expectations of individuals. That is why it might not mean the same thing to ritually consume psychedelic plant medicines for indigenous populations in the Amazon as what it might mean by a tourist traveling to the rainforest.

The aforementioned implies a complex interaction between inner dispositions and surrounding cultural frameworks, which prompts a research challenge. Never before had any pharmaceutical compound been so susceptible to context as psychedelics, which appears to be in sharp contrast with one of the classic pharmacology principles, where drugs generally have similar effects on their users despite who they are or where they take the compound (Hartogsohn, 2017). Think, for instance, of common painkillers; it is expected that they deliver analgesic effects in individuals notwithstanding their context.

In order to tackle this idea, Ido Hartogsohn (2017) revisited the development of set and setting as concepts. According to the author, in the early 1950s, the prevailing idea regarding the nature of LSD was that it could produce mimesis of psychosis. Psychotomimetic investigations presupposed that patients would become mentally ill under the effects of LSD. This research

approach took place in a clinical and impersonal setting, and the subjects were psychiatric patients who had little to no choice in participating. The research group's results were that LSD was an anxiety-producing agent.

In contrast, psychotherapeutically oriented research included subjects who were volunteers, in amicable settings with peer support available. In addition, subjects received preparation before the sessions and had positive expectations of their experiences. This research group described their results as LSD being an agent capable of cognitive enhancement and consciousness expansion (Hartogsohn, 2017).

In this brief example, there is one crucial point to be made. When it comes to psychedelics' effects, there are extra pharmaceutical factors in place, such as the expectations and societal attitudes towards drug effects of participants, clinicians, and facilitators, as well as the advantages or disadvantages of a particular environment.

The impact in the quality of the experience lies in the divergence between a model that conceived and handled LSD as mimesis of psychosis and a model that approached the compound as a tool for psychotherapy. In other words, this is an example of the way attitudes towards drug effects affect expectations, experiences, and reports.

Correspondingly, Carhart-Harris (2018) addressed psychedelics' sensitivity to context by expanding on the notion of a cultural feedback loop, which encompasses a relationship between the societal attitudes plus the expectancy towards drug effects and the outcome of a psychedelic experience. As shown in the picture (figure 1), the feedback loop also includes the reporting of drug effects, which affects public opinion, feeding cultural imaginaries about psychedelic experiences, and later influencing the expectations and preconceptions of individuals, thus perpetuating the loop.

Figure 1 Cultural Feedback loop hypothesis. Image taken from Robin Carhart-Harris et al, 2018 – p. 726

The idea that there are, in fact, cultural settings which affect the report of a given experience is particularly relevant to our data set as the narratives were divided on the type of setting in which they took place. The main difference between the two groups was the presence or absence of a shaman. In shamanic frameworks, in particular, the shaman manipulates the set and setting through ritual songs, music, chanting, smoke, incense, prayers, fire, etc., which is considered essential part of the healer’s expertise. (Hartogsohn, 2017, 2020). The ceremonial use of psychedelics among indigenous people has historically placed great emphasis on the environmental context, and psychological factors brought to the experience such as having a clear intention and an open, enquiring attitude, as well as the importance of ceremonial ritual and song. Indigenous approaches are animistic, ascribing healing sentience to the psychedelic plants, special powers to the guiding shaman, and a locus of therapeutic action to the chants sung (Robin L Carhart-Harris et al., 2018).

Consequently, the ritual framework of an ayahuasca experience is the immediate environmental setting where the individual is situated, the shaman being an expert in holding the space and guiding the experience through ritual devices such as icaros. Individual consumption of ayahuasca replaces the shaman's role by handling the brew's concoction (via analogs) and using recorded or digital sources of music.

As the research here deals with narratives, the analysis of a cultural setting is relevant as a framework and source of reference used for the experience's meaning-making process and its integration. It is hypothesized here that the complex cultural interaction between western practitioners and Amazonian shamanism added a framework to understand the practice, on top of the practitioner's cultural background and expectations. In contrast, the individual practice narratives had a sort of echo chamber of their cultural and religious references to make sense of the experience.

5.1.2 Ayahuasca tourism

The project approached the concept of setting by resting on the notion that it is a conjoint dynamic between the environmental stimuli and the cultural dispositions framing the experience. Ayahuasca tourism is therefore, an example of a larger socio-cultural setting.

With regard to the phenomenon of ayahuasca tourism in west Amazonia, anthropologists Anne Marie Losonczy and Silvia Mesturini have been researching the interaction between Western European and American nationals with Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazonian shamanism (Losonczy & Mesturini, 2010, 2014). Particularly, in their contribution for the book Ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazon and beyond (Labate, 2014), they address the interaction between these two populations based on a communication model.

For the authors, ayahuasca appears to be a ritual device capable of opening a relational field between previously spatially separated populations who meet and interact in a common ritual while remaining culturally distant. This meeting of cultural difference promotes a process of communication ritually framed in mutual misunderstandings, while creating a perception of mutual agreement.

The communication model used by Losonczy and Mesturini to understand this relational field rests on the idea that there are instances of "good" communication and "bad" communication.

The "good" is an integral and complete transmission of the sender's message to his receptor, and the "bad" is a particular interpretation by the receptor, divergent from the transmitter's message. The "ignored conflict" or "misunderstanding" is an exchange set that protects the parts from an unthought-of divergence to let a false agreement last. According to the authors, all acts of communication necessarily involve a certain amount of misunderstanding, the degree of which increases as the overlap in the social actors' cultural codes decreases. This misunderstanding model implies interpretative freedom on the side of the receptor, which in this case are the occidental practitioners.

According to the authors, to the occidental imaginary, experimentation with ayahuasca is supposed to deliver an answer to an ontological quest that ultimately concerns what is "real"

and "beyond" the commonly-perceived reality. A cultural contrast, visible in the comparison

between this fundamental search for a unique, universal reality with a local indigenous request for solutions to practical everyday life problems.

Within this movement, which includes a turn from the cosmological to the psychological, the shamanic journey becomes an expedition of the mind to the subconscious, enabling a shifting between the categories of "spirits," and "traumas," as well as "psychic states," and "psychic entities." The psychologization of spirits together with the spiritualization of psycho-emotional states, creates the necessary blur that permits a successful communication and permeability between the different logics (Losonczy & Mesturini, 2014).

The communication and misunderstanding model proposed by Losonczy and Mesturini can be of use for our understanding of Marisa’s story. On the one hand, her story is situated in a retreat designed to accommodate large groups of western practitioners looking to partake in ayahuasca which is situated in the relational field of cultural contrast. On the other hand, the cultural shock in her story can be interpreted as stemming from a kind of misunderstanding that conceives of alterations of consciousness as capable of eliciting an essential universal experience of the transcendent, which in principle would be compatible despite cultural differences. In her story, we saw a practitioner who expected to find a relatively compatible belief system with the local shaman and who found instead a strong resistance towards cultural difference.

Marisa's narrative appears to reconcile the misunderstanding by interpreting the shaman in her religious terms, hence the title of her story "The resolute path of the root chakra." The reconciliation of the shock involves her understanding of the shaman’s approach as of "earthy,"

"survival," and "instinctual energy" associated with the "root chakra."

Operating in this context where both parties agree in their ignored conflict allows for an