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The Sacred Voyage: a holotropic perspective on mental health

The first time I drank Ayahuasca is carved into my memory forever. In 1993 I was among the participants of a Santo Daime ritual in the German state of Bavaria. At these Santo Daime meetings Ayahuasca, a bitter tea originating from South America, is drunk. Ayahuasca is famous for its visionary qualities, and for the way it cleanses both body and soul. I had gone to this ceremony after being invited by a psychologist I had met at a San Francisco conference.

I was a bit of a ‘late-bloomer’. After having witnessed a considerable number of friends lose their mind in the sixties and seventies, the results of what was known as a ‘bad trip’, I decided to keep a respectful distance from what were considered to be consciousness-expanding substances. It had become clear to me that these substances could help expand the mind consciousness but it was equally clear that this alleged shortcut to insight could come with some unexpected risks. My experience as a counselor in a therapeutic community for drug addicts had also given me an up close look at the daunting images of the havoc addictive drugs can wreak on human life. However, I do not hold the opinion that all drugs are necessarily harmful.

Unfortunately, the view that drugs are by definition destructive dominates public opinion with a saddening tenacity. This view unjustly ignores the centuries of experience in using harmony-enhancing, consciousness-expanding plants. Unfamiliarity with these favorable aspects is what distorts any debate on the use and merits of entheogenous (‘awakening the deity within’) plants.

I myself have also been confronted with my fair share of incomprehension towards Ayahuasca, especially when I attempted to travel through customs, going from Brazil to The Netherlands, carrying several gallons of Ayahuasca in jerry cans. With sweaty hands I tried to bring Ayahuasca into the country for the Santo Daime religion for the very first time. At the time, Ayahuasca was positively illegal and importing it could mean serving several years in prison. The Justice Department did not know that this brew had a history of millennia of use in religious rituals in the Brazilian Amazon, among other places. They were also unaware that, in Brazil, Ayahuasca plays an essential part in a recognized religion.

But let’s jump back to Germany, where I experienced my first Ayahuasca ritual with some friends. After having sung several songs in an indiscernible tongue (which later turned out to be Brazilian Portuguese), the other participants suddenly burst out in enthusiastic German singing. My first thought was: “Where have I ended up? It’s almost like I’m in the war, surrounded by Bavarians”. At the same time the leader of the ceremony sternly looked my way and said -fortunately in English-: “No, we are not Nazis!” Being taken aback by the fact that my thoughts were apparently out there open to everyone, I suddenly realized one of the alternative names for the Ayahuasca brew I had just taken: ‘telepathine’. The illusion that thoughts are there only for private use suddenly belonged to the realms of history. The experience at this ceremony spurred me on to travel to Spain, where Padrinho Alfredo, the leader of the Santo Daime religion attended a European meeting. I was provided with the opportunity to invite him for a visit to The Netherlands. He accepted my invitation and visited the following year.

In Spain, I witnessed for the first time how important and powerful the ritual setting is for guiding the contents of people’s consciousness, awakened by the Ayahuasca, to their proper destination.

It is well-known that consciousness-expanding substances can release these contents of man’s awareness. However, what should be done with this energy, the emotions and the visions that are released? Without adding structure to the experience, only those truly strong of body and mind may afterwards be able to regain a firm foothold. Repressed trauma, emotional blockades, questions of meaning in life, sickness and health, oneness and harmony, or their opposites; these are all issues that are brought to the surface by consciousness-expanding substances.

In Leiden, Holland, the well known Prof. Dr. Bastiaans gained international reputation for using LSD to have his heavily traumatized patients, WWII concentration camp survivors, relive their memories and deal with them. One of Bastiaans’ colleagues, the Czech psychiatrist Dr. Stanislav Grof performed an incredible feat by managing to document, under a communist regime, the experiences his patients in a psychiatric institution had under the influence of LSD. It was remarkable in its own right that his patients reported near-death experiences, rebirthing, memories of their natural birth, past deaths and reliving a whole range of spiritual and traumatic experiences. The fact that Grof was not only courageous enough to place his patients’ experiences in the foreground, but also rejected the communists’ strictly atheist paradigm is a true litmus test for any entheogenous experience. Courage is absolutely indispensable when stepping into worlds that normally remain closed. By recognizing these transpersonal experiences the traditionally trained psychiatrist placed himself outside the dominant scientific paradigm that only acknowledges a material origin of consciousness.

My personal experiences with the now formally founded and registered Santo Daime church in The Netherlands were by all measures tempestuous. A wide interest for this form of religious experience proved to exist. During a visit to Holland by a group of Brazilians it turned out that the police were also thoroughly interested in our affairs. Police raids of Santo Daime churches throughout Europe, coordinated by Europol, were executed simultaneously. Church leaders were arrested, and it was especially bizarre to find out that I was being taken to a prison holding unit where I had once worked as a consultant for the Justice Department, motivating drug addicts to lead a drug free existence. Civil servants threateningly ensured us they would ‘put us away for years’. Fortunately I had done a lot of preparational work, allowing our fully settled in attorney Adèle van der Plas to swiftly turn up to submit the church statutes and the relevant references to leading academic experts on these specific matters. In the anxiously anticipated trial at an Amsterdam Court the scientific statements proved to be of overriding importance for the legalization of the Dutch Santo Daime church. It cannot be overemphasized that the seal on entheogenous plants, formed by the European drug legislation, can only be broken by the words of science. Most European states followed the Dutch lead and legalized and formally acknowledged the Santo Daime religion, which is now represented in almost every European country. Regular religious meetings are held throughout Europe, sometimes bringing together hundreds of participants.

This introduction is essential to sketch the historical frame of reference from which the Western world traditionally regards alterations of consciousness through the use of entheogenous. The Santo Daime church had the benefit of being able to lean on an ancient South American tradition of using entheogenous plants. The interesting thing about the work of Lars Faber is the direct inspiration he finds in Ayahuasca. From its astral dimension it helps him to find a direction in his work and to define the contents of his writings. This is an interesting development and should, in my view, be subject to the same rights and conditions as those that apply to existing recognized church communities. It goes without saying that people’s actions should be accounted for in processes that deeply affect one’s most intimate and personal levels. Lars has initiated this through sound scientific research. This research is a necessary condition for enabling us to retain the birthright to expand our consciousness through the use of entheogenous plants.

The following research report documents the findings of research conducted by Lars Faber and expert Dr. Maria Groot, research into the experiences of seventy clients of Lars’s Sacred Voyage practice. This solid approach is testimony to the intention to use the Golden Key responsibly. The Golden Key here represents the well-informed use of entheogenous in a religious and therapeutic setting. Lars’s paper is the tangible form of the need for theoretical education in these matters, required, in conjunction with practical experience, to be able to do this important work. Transpersonal psychology recognizes a wider framework than the limited theories in the fields of conventional psychology and psychiatry. Lars’s books have shown him to be well-versed in the transpersonal views, a basic requirement for any therapist aiming to work with the Golden Key. The combination of a strong entheogenous agent and a solid therapeutic approach may prove a promising Key in the right hands, enabling the user to transform a great deal of suffering.

The ‘bad trip’ phenomenon (resulting from too much information, use at an inopportune moment, in the wrong circumstances, and/or without the right guidance) is largely caught out through a phase of sound preparation. Through a structured interview about the potential participant’s medical and psychological condition, many risks are brought down to acceptable proportions. The research shows that even people who underwent negative experiences during their Voyage later regarded these as useful learning opportunities. This goes to show that proper preparation, context for interpretation, surroundings and guidance are of decisive importance for any entheogenous experience.

This report, written by Lars Faber and Dr. Maria Groot, doesn’t merely present the dry statistics that accompany any scientific effort. Rightly so, a lot of space has been reserved for the verbatim accounts of Sacred Voyage participants. Some critical remarks aside, the dominant response reflects how amazement abounds at the possibilities that arise for new perspectives and a new way of living.

The entheogenous path of learning has a lot of potential for harmony and healing for those people out to find them. This work may hand many a person the handles to the meaning of Aldous Huxley’s use of William Blake’s quote in The Doors of Perception: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite” (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell). Lars Faber’s use of this quote in his book “The Sacred Voyage” is very significant, as he uses it to indicate the aim of his labors. That the entheogenous experience under the right guidance and the right conditions may help to cast new light on the world is the message of every truly Sacred Voyage.

I hereby wish to express my sincere hope that the brave workers beating this new track will be given all the support that is needed. Support from both the material and the spiritual dimension.

Hans Bogers, co- founder of Santo Daime The Netherlands Wassenaar, July 2008

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