Religions of the Twice-Born:
Northwest Amazonian Ayahuasca
Shamanism and Near-Death Experience
Marcus Lumby
In cooperation with the international body of medical doctors,
psychologists and
anthropologists presently conducting collaborative ethnomedical
research, this project will afford a new anthropological explanatory
perspective on near-death experience (NDE).
Field Reports for this research
READING FOR A Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University,
my project falls within the remit of current inter-national
multidisciplinary research initiatives directed towards an analysis of the
biopsychosocial dynamics of hallucinogenic
plant-induced "altered states of consciousness" with a view to
developing new therapeutic treatments in the West for a variety
of mental disorders. At present this research has super-
specialised in the area of cross-cultural transference of medical
knowledge appropriate to the establishment of accelerative
pharmacological adjuncts to existing cocaine treatment
protocols in Europe and America. However, it is hoped that successes
in this field will qualify the use of such treatments
in the psychotherapeutic rehabilitation of other substance
dependency and depressive disorders.
Background
The successful clinical application of LSD-25
experience in the the psychotherapeutic
preparation for death of terminally ill cancer
patients (Kast, E. 1966; Grof, S. 1977) has led
more recently to an examination of the potential
of such hallucinogenically induced experiences
for augementing conventional analytic
psychotherapies aimed at the rehabilitatory
preparation for life of patients manifesting self-
destructive disorders (drug abuse, etc.) (Grof,
S. 1975, 1980). The proposed project is
intended to explain further the link between
certain categories of non-ordinary
consciousness and the long-term,
psychotherapeutically conducive self-referential
"attitude changes" consequent to such
experiences. To do this it hypothesises that the
efficacy of such experiences in contributing to
the rehabilitation particularly of drug
dependents rests in large measure on the
explicitly systemic insights and cognitive
orientations characterising human consciousness
in proximity with an immediately perceived
threat to its existence (so called "Near-Death
Experience," or NDE).
Locale
Fieldwork for this project will be conducted in Iquitos, Peru. Given
the high density of shamans inhabiting Iquitos and its jungle environs
as a consequence of urbanisation, and the frequency with which a
substantial proportion of the general population is involved in
ritual/institutionalised near-death-type shamanic experiences
(hallucinogenically induced), this Amazonian city presents itself as
the ideal setting for research into the biopsychosocial dynamics of
shamanistic/near-death attitude changes. Iquitos further satisfies the
demands of the proposed research in that shamans are both accessible
and open in their magico-medico-religious practices with regard to
local authorities, cosmopolitan health services, "state" religion, and
foreign research workers.
More research on the NDE needed
While both ethnopharmacology and ethnopsychiatry, and the
associated disciplines of medical anthropology and medical sociology,
have made extensive studies of the indigenous therapeutic uses of
hallucinogenic plants such as ayahuasca there remains a great deal of
work to be done before the knowledge derived from the analysis of
ethnomedical approaches may be fully accommodated within the
modern clinic and the practice of scientific medicine. In co-operation
with the international body of medical doctors, psychologists and
anthropologists presently conducting collaborative research towards
effecting such a transfer this project will afford a new anthropological
explanatory perspective on a core dynamic (NDE) of hallucinogen-
based psychotherapies. This may serve to legitimate further the claim
that hallucinogenic plants and the indigenous knowledge associated
with their cultivation, preparation, and administration have
potentially a major role to play in the development of
psycopharmacological preventative and alleviative treatments for the
sorts of individual and social suffering characteristic of inveterate
substance abuse and similarly self-destructive behaviors. In addition,
the proposed research will fill a gap in more generally relevant cross-
cultural understandings of the nature, role, and function of NDE, a
phenomenon the incidence of which inevitably increases in line with
the ever-improving resuscitatory technologies of biomedicine (a 1992
survey revealed that 13 million people in the United States alone had
undergone some form of NDE). A collaborative presentation of the
results of these research initiatives has been entered for the Hannover
2000 Millennium Exposition. ·
Acknowledgements
On completion the results of the research project will be presented
for examination by the Department of Social Anthropology and the
Board of Graduate Studies at Cambridge University in the form of a
doctoral dissertation not exceeding 80,000 words in length.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincerest
gratitude to MAPS for offering me a stipend for travel to the
Takiwasi Center
in Tarapoto, Peru, in the context of my research into the
biopsychosocial dynamics of the long-term attitude changes
consequent to the ritualised near-death-type experience components
of ayahuasca-based healing initiatives.
Field Reports for this research
Marcus Lumby
Bracklyn, Odiham Rd.
Winchfield, Nr. Hook
Hampshire RG27 8BU, England
Tel.: 01252-843584
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