As it got darker we started the fire and the Shaman prepared his ceremonial set up. He then proceeded towards each of us individually and completed the pre ceremony rituals of praying, rubbing fragrant alcohol on our heads, arms and necks, and blowing Amazonian tobacco around us as a cleanse. It had gotten quite dark by then and we could hear the sounds of nocturnal creatures coming to life. The night sky was interspersed with bright stars and dark clouds, with gusts of cold winds from the mountains chilling our bodies to the bones.
One by one we proceeded to drink the Ayahuasca and settled down on our yoga mats surrounding the fire, with pillows and blankets to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. I started feeling the effects of the medicine within about a half hour. I felt strong discomfort and got up from my place. I went to the bushes and puked my guts out with intense retching and coughing. However, unlike my last experience where I had thrown up multiple times in the night, this time it happened just once. When I was done, I came back to my seat and the Shaman asked me to get comfortable and lie down. He was playing a hand drum and singing Icaros with a steadily growing intensity.
As I laid there with my eyes closed my ears started ringing to the beats of the drum, it felt like the beats were physically passing through my body. My heart started beating louder as if it was trying to match the rhythm of the drums until eventually they were both in complete sync with each other. As the ringing in my ears reached its crescendo, a tiny spot of light started to appear in my vision right in the centre of my forehead between my eyes. With increasing intensity the light started getting bigger as if I was approaching a light filled tunnel. And then I entered the tunnel. It was a long winding wormhole with dazzling lights passing me by at rapid speeds, changing colours, patterns, shapes and sizes. I was again transported into the cosmos watching stars, galaxies, planets and asteroids flying by me as I floated into the centre of the universe as a microscopic particle made of pure light.
Thousands of images flashed in front of my eyes as if I was watching a movie on fast forward. Before my brain could comprehend what one image meant, another two popped up in rapid succession. It was like the universe was telling me its story in pictures but it was too vast and incomprehensible for my feeble human brain to fathom. These flashes of images although alien to my vision were still associated with a strong feeling of déjà vu, as if I had been there before and experienced those scenarios. I traveled through what felt like multiple dimensions and saw strange beings living on strange planets, a kind of existence that we cannot even imagine or make sense of. I saw hundreds of different species if not thousands occupying their own little space in this infinite cosmos.
It felt as if time was changing speeds in different places. Sometimes it slowed down almost to a complete halt while at other times it would fly by at hundreds of years in a second. Eventually I was on a planet that was dark and had a lot of vegetation. As I walked through I saw a small village with weird beings living there that looked sort of like humans but didn’t seem to be. They were short and muscular, had dark curly hair and big moustaches. They looked mean and psychotic. I don’t know why but they reminded me a lot of the depictions through carvings on the walls of certain Hindu temples in India, especially in South Indian temples and those of local deities.
These beings were constantly in a state of agitation. They kept killing and hurting, robbing and maiming each other for no other reason except pleasure. They seemed to enjoy committing abhorrent acts on every creature as if they were getting off on it. It was like watching a car crash, even though I was appalled by their behavior, I somehow just couldn’t look away. They were all like that. At first they didn’t seem to notice me as I walked through the village watching them in the middle of one heinous crime or other, but after a while a few of them started staring at me directly. I got scared and started to move away from them towards the forest that I had come out of.
A couple of them started following me into the forest with maniacal grins on their faces. I started running deeper into the vegetation in the hopes that I’d lose them but they kept chasing after me. I then saw light coming from a distance from between the trees and ran towards it. As I got closer I could see the vegetation getting thinner and bright lights emanating from a particular spot of a grassy meadow. When I was close enough I saw a giant humanoid being sitting there in lotus position looking up towards the sky. He had a strangely shaped head that seemed to get wider at the top with a large eye at the center of his forehead. I couldn’t decipher his facial features as it was glowing with a bright light. He was surrounded by a blue hue of light and had a beam of light coming out of his forehead and going into space. It looked as if he was in a deep state of meditation and was communicating with the universe. He seemed to be at peace. As I got closer to him I noticed that the creatures following me were not very keen on chasing me anymore. The light coming out of the giant was making them physically uncomfortable and they started fighting amongst each other about something. Standing so close to this being had somehow calmed me down and relieved all my fears. I was feeling peaceful just by standing next to him. I kept watching him as he hardly moved and the communication of light between him and the universe continued. The other creatures were gone now. They retreated as they couldn’t take the pain anymore, but I was mesmerized. I was feeling the same sense of bliss that I had during my first Ayahuasca experience. Back then it was a giant bird of light, this time it was this giant blue person.
A few moments later I started coming back to my physical body. I started getting more and more aware of my physical surroundings, the fire, the winds and the music. The Shaman was now playing his guitar and tapping on it, singing Icaros and Sanskrit hymns. I started to get immersed in the music in a very spiritual way, with the clarity of every note bringing a feeling of euphoria with it. At that moment I felt as if I could see music with my eyes closed. Every note was of a particular colour and mixed with the beats acting like brush strokes, they painted one beautiful picture after the other.
A sense of epiphany was now setting in. I started to realize things about my life that had been right in front of my eyes the whole time but still unseen. I realized my deep love & respect for music. I had been a part of a band once and those years were perhaps the most fulfilling years of my life. I now knew that I needed to get back to music in some way otherwise my existence would be incomplete.
I also started to understand the intention of the Medicine behind taking me to the strange planet with the strange beings. Those beings, both the demonic ones and the serene giant were a part of me and I had to choose which one I strive to be. They are a part of all of us. A sort of lower and higher consciousness and it was up to each of us to decide which one we nurture. The lower consciousness only demands pleasure at all costs. It keeps fueling our Ego by making us run after physical and material pleasures without any opportunity of achieving our higher potentials. We keep poisoning and abusing our bodies which are our only vehicle in this existence. We keep buying things that we don’t need with the money that we don’t have to take pictures & show off to people we don’t know. We keep striving for a bigger house, a fancier car and a sexier partner with a false sense of accomplishment attached to every such perceived achievement that lasts for a fleeting second before we are swallowed by loneliness and emptiness until the next flicker of the same false hope.
We have a choice however; to strive for something better, something that would give us true happiness and a sense of fulfillment. The Giant was a manifestation of that higher consciousness that we are meant to aspire for. He was the anthropomorphization of the “True Calling” that exists in all of us and that gives our lives meaning and purpose. But to get there we need to shatter the glass palaces of greed and ego that we build around ourselves.
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