The traditional shaman: the story of Dillon

profound effects when used "in the right place and with the right guide," and he was about to act according to his beliefs.

The rhythmic and hypnotic swish of the schacapa⁹ would entrance Dillon even before drinking the brew. The shaman blew tobacco smoke over Dillon's body and over the bottle where ayahuasca was contained, executing the ceremony's overture. Then, with a "¡Salud!", Dillon drank the "foul tasting liquid." As the shaman chanted and shook the ritual rattle, Dillon started to become entranced in his song.

As the effects of ayahuasca commenced Dillon felt guided by the whoosh of the schacapa as the guiding presence of the shaman would pull him away from visions that were too intense.

The practitioner reflects in his story how daunting his experience would have been without the presence of a guide: he imagines his visions would be jumbled, incoherent, and much more domineering. Specifically, in the following excerpt, Dillon describes the interaction between his visions and the shaman who would ravel him out of "darkness":

" The pain was excruciating. It took precedence over the visions. I felt regret and lost time. I faded into darkness and agony. Time was no factor,

yet much passed before I regained a measure of control. I distantly, so distantly, heard the soft soothing rattle of the schacapa. I followed the sound. I felt my spirit moving, as if in a windless void, pulled forward by a

force unknown (…) Each rattle became a color, and each color became more brilliant as I drew closer and closer to the source. I suddenly became

aware of Don Jorge's song, a glorious symphony of light and hope. I wept without tears at the majesty of the sound." (Dillon, 2008, p. 4)

9 The Schacapa is a ritual device used by Peruvian ayahuasca shamanism made of unique leaves and which makes a distinct sound while being shaken rhythmically. Used only by the shaman during the ceremony to perform cleansing and healing rituals. The same device is called a Waira in the Colombian yagé tradition. – Fieldwork notes.

As difficult emotions took over Dillon, where he felt regret, lost time, and "faded into darkness and agony," he describes feeling his spirit being pulled forward by the "soothing" sound of the schacapa. His soul was moving in a windless void called by the shaman's song, where each sound of the ritual rattle brought back light into his vision until he finally became aware of Don Jorge's "glorious symphony of light and hope."

Time passed, and the brew took a slow but steady grip on his mind. Dillon describes feelings of ineffable convoluting of sensations in psychedelic synesthesia:

"Words are utterly incapable of describing my glimpse into a realm where emotions, thoughts, sound, sight, smell and tactile sensations lost their distinctive edges, where egos dissolve and merge with the external, where I

was a willing and knowing participant in the divine substance that exists inside and out of everything, a place all-encompassing and saturated,

completely saturated, with volition, with life." (Dillon, 2008, p. 3)

An inadequacy of language appears as the practitioner describes a sense of oceanic-boundlessness¹⁰, which he describes as being religious as he was "a willing and knowing participant in the divine substance" that permeates the world. The feelings of the world being

"completely saturated with life and volition" would be heightened as his sense of hearing would become entranced with the environmental soundscapes of the jungle which surrounded him.

"All at once," he noticed the sounds of the jungle. Dillon could distinguish each sound among

"the chorus of the jungle life." As his sense of hearing amplified, his mind wandered in the

"intricacies, combinations of songs and languages" of the environmental soundscape that

become acute to the point of absorbing the thousands of animals buzzing in the jungle as a

"language" with "purpose and direction." Immersed in synesthesia where each sound had a color and feeling, everything "coalesced into an undifferentiated dance of feeling and expression" a "grand language" "tangled and connected" which was aware of him. Then,

"A chanting began far off to my right. A soft, almost druid like sound, that grew louder and louder in my awareness. It was a message for me; a

singular discernible distinct message that I could understand. We conversed. (…) I realized that the sound I was conversing with were

frogs". (Dillon, 2008, p. 4)

A sound grew louder and louder, and among the chorus of overwhelming insects, there was a message for him. His mind held a dialogue with this sound that appeared familiar to him as he slowly realized it was croaking. Then, Dillon's experience turned challenging as he described the agony of purging. Don Jorge, the shaman, performed a healing ritual by "sucking and draining off excessive energy," then he invited Dillon to smoke tobacco with him.

"The next few hours were a blur, and I am sure the lessons ayahuasca attempted to teach me were too much for me to handle." Dillon narrates as he describes his encounter with a feminine entity who examined him and talked to him. He rejected her, refused to talk to her, pushed her image away "before it pulled [him] down to another lesson." Time and time again, she appeared to Dillon in the shape of a person in his life, "People I know passed before my eyes, floating before me. Each person in turn changed and twisted into a feminine-like deity, facing me, examining me in detail." but he resolutely pushed her away, begging for the visions to end.

"She was talking with me, yet I was refusing to engage her. Her eyes held messages that I could not understand," he recounted.

Then, Dillon faced death:

"I lost all fear and opened myself. I was shown death. That was my gift. I felt what death was like, or at least the moment before death. I was somber

and detached, yet I felt it with a visceralness that I will not experience

again until the moment I die. It was transcendent and glorious. It was the ultimate destroyer, soul crushing and the consumer of awareness. I loved and loathed it. I thought of it as the ultimate expression of the conflicting

forces that make up life and death, without which there could be no existence. It was the source of all things, but only a small part. It played out

its role indifferently. It would hear no bargaining. Together we sat for an infinite moment. I was content and without fear". (Dillon, 2008, p. 5).

After interacting with a feminine entity, and the "ultimate destroyer of awareness without which there could be no existence" the experience was over. The morning after, Don Jorge, the shaman, departed without a glance. Dillon, still inebriated, was escorted back to his room by Moses his guide. Once there, he felt a warm sensation on the back of his right calf; once he looked down, he saw it was a tree frog resting on his leg. It jumped to the next tree as Dillon stared at it, then Moses whispered, "Jorge says your spirit animal is the frog."

4.1.3.1 Heightened hearing and synchronicities: analysis of Dillon's experience

Dillon's experience shows a fascinating example of the interaction between setting and psychedelic experience. He had a one-on-one interaction with a shaman immersed in the depths of the Amazon. His experience appears to be strongly affected by the sounds of the jungle that surrounded him and the ritual performance of the shaman. In his narrative, we read how his attention was flipped towards his hearing almost entirely as he described being entranced by the "swish swish of the schacapa," even before drinking the Amazonian brew. The expression

"swish, swish" appears to be an onomatopoeic reference to the sound of the ritual rattle.

was evident in the section where Dillon explains how he followed the "swish" of the rattle back into "light."

Regarding moments of insight, we see something particular in Dillon's story. His narrative recounts an encounter with a feminine entity, which might be interpreted as one of those instances where ayahuasca presents itself as an intermediary being; Dillon narrates how this entity would present itself embodying different people in his life and "trying to teach him lessons," but he would "push her away" and beg for the visions to end. In the interaction with this "feminine entity," Dillon finally enters his peak experience, where he is shown death as

"the ultimate destroyer and consumer of awareness" without which there would be no existence. Both the interactions with ayahuasca as a distinct entity and the experience of

"death" is present in other narratives. Usually, the interaction with ayahuasca as an intermediary being would present itself as a dialogue between the practitioner and an intelligence outside of the practitioner's own.

There were instances where the appearance of death's experience would follow a sort of revelation. Analyzing through the Atlas.ti tool of code co-occurrence, there were instances where the code of death and gnosis would overlap. The same happened with a co-occurrence between the encounters of ayahuasca as an intermediary being and gnosis. An example of this cooccurrence in Dillon's narrative is the description of being given information or lessons by an otherworldly entity who in his narrative he rejects.

Dillon's story ends with a synchronicity between his subjective experience of understanding and communicating with the croaks of the jungle, and the comment by Moses, his guide, who chuckling reported "[the shaman] says your spirit animal is the frog." That last aspect of the narrative is part of the meaning-making process by the practitioner who leaves it to the reader to connect the dots as to why he would converse with frogs in the jungle. In other words, the practitioner hints at the correlation between his subjective experience of conversing with frogs and the shaman's reported comment. There would be either a subtle claim of legitimation and verification of Dillon's subjective trance experience through the shaman's authority or a claim of both Dillon and the shaman having a common intersubjective experience of the practitioner's transcendental relationship with the frog. Hence revealing his meaning-making process: I conversed with the frogs because they are my spirit animal.

The most prominent element related to the experience of oceanic-boundlessness is the jungle's environmental soundscapes, which is a direct result of having the rainforest as a setting. In the following sections, we will analyze this element from the perspective of another practitioner.

4.1.3.2 Live music, psychedelic experiences

The role of music in the shape of the ceremony was prominent in all the narratives within the context of a ceremonial setting. Atlas.ti allowed the graphical display of the correlation of the main codes associated with music as shown in Network 1. The network shows an overlap between references to the performance of live music and the performance of the shaman as a healer and a correlation between music and the evocation of intense experiences and insights. As shown in the network, the healing practices of the shaman are also associated with

Network 1 Music and visions - Atlas.ti results

In the same way Dillon described the role of the shaman, other practitioners' concurred in the guiding function of the shamanic practice. As one storyteller recounted,

"I remembered my bucket, and did everything I could not to lose focus on the maestro's singing. It was the only thing showing me a path out of the Hell I was in (…) I was sat in front of the maestro who started singing to me and two others who I couldn't identify. The shaman who brought me over gave me one more hand squeeze which made me instantly feel safer. I

still couldn't believe I had even made it the 10 feet to sit in front of the maestro. As he sang, I felt much of my anxiety simply disappear. Every syllable he sang brought light into the darkness I had almost disappeared

into. It was like the sun breaking through the clouds". (Fern, 2010, p. 2)

The previous excerpt shows in narrative form the same interacting elements the network abstracted, which ultimately articulates the intimate relationship between the use of music for the modulation of strong emotions (such as anxiety), and the shaman's performance as a healer.

Some practitioners described how the shaman's icaros triggered memories and influenced visions with synesthesia, while other stories recounted how shamans singing would drive away negative energy, whooshing away grunts, moans, sighs, and other sounds of discomfort in the room. With regards to the specific argument of the regulation of challenging emotions, the next passage is a good example:

"The music was beautiful, and the shaman was seemingly everywhere.

Sometimes I would sing along with his songs to help regulate my breathing.

I would hang onto his singing like a life preserver in a stormy ocean. His rhythm was incredible". (East forest, 2009, p. 2)

Finally, the relationship between the presence of music and insight was also present in other narratives. Dillon's story recounted how first the singing of the shaman acted as a way to bring him back to the light, and afterward, he related the sounds of the rainforest with feelings of boundlessness, which can be interpreted as close to a mystical experience. However, regarding specific personal and psychological insights, the next quote recounts a moment of feeling interconnected with other individuals in the room through sound:

"The Shaman began playing the jaw harp, which caused a girl to laugh wildly. That laugh sent a laughing wave across the entire group. Suddenly my very internal trip lit up with all the maniacally laughing Homo sapiens around me. It was a beautiful realization that everyone around me was

going through the same experience. We were all connected. I laughed harder than I have in a long time." (JL, 2019, p. 3)

As we could see in that piece, the jaw harp's sound, the interaction with the group all in unison caused the practitioner to feel connected with those around him, in other words, to feel a strong empathy and interconnection with his peers.