Long ago I lived in the woods just outside of Woodstock, New York, as the foot of the mountain where the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Tibetan Buddhist Monastery is located. On that land, I had built a large glass-faced pyramid. I would often use it for meditations and sometimes just to get some quiet from our three children and my wife. I'd had a number of intense and fascinating experiences with pyramids so I was thrilled when I finally had the space to build one in my backyard.
During that time I was also growing my own psilocybin mushrooms in the basement of my house.
I can't say if it was the effect of the pyramid or the heroic dose of shrooms, but the experience can best be described as falling through a wormhole into the twelfth dimension of the multiverse. I could write an entire book on the subject. The "lift-off" alone was something straight out of a science fiction thriller, with the walls of the pyramid spinning in opposite directions at the same time, making me terribly nauseous. There is a post 'Teonanacatl Speaks: Lesson 1' about one of the experiences I had during this trip.
After about an hour or two, earth time, I stepped out of the pyramid into a magical, glimmering fantasy land of unspeakably divine and miraculous glory... the heretofore boring, dull, often annoying woods that was my backyard.
It was too much to absorb and remain standing at the same time. I moved to lie down on a beautiful, lush patch of moss, but just before I did I was coherent enough to remember that this moss was always covered with ants, as my attempts to lay down there in the past always resulted in ants crawling all over me.
The conflict between my desire to lay the on moss, but not wanting to be covered in ants, must have transmitted a distress call out into the universe, because I soon found myself in a thick fog, unable to see anything. Then, in the mist, I detected a form moving. It was approaching me. It was large, perhaps 20 or 30 feet tall. As it became clearer I began to make it out, and I was frightened. It was an ant! A thirty-foot-tall ant! It was quickly approaching me. As scared as I was, I did not move because I felt something else. I did not feel threatened. My fear was merely an instinctual reaction to seeing a 30-foot ant. I also felt I was being given a gift, an opportunity as if the ant was responding to my call. The ant stopped when it was a few yards in front of me. I could feel its powerful presence as well as its intention. Awed and humbled, I knew I was standing in front of a deity, a great and powerful spirit—the spirit of the Ant. I found myself on my knees before the Ant God and thanked him (I say “him,” but it was neither male nor female. It was “ant”) for allowing me to see him. The Ant God was impossibly still and quiet, but I could feel that he was allowing me to communicate with him. I asked him if I could be granted the opportunity to lie on the moss without any of the ants bothering me. I presented to him the idea that I was on a great journey, and to help me further my experience would be to the benefit of all life. I then added that were he to grant me this request, I would take extra special care of all ants, wherever I encountered them, and always show them the highest respect. The Ant God continued to stand perfectly still, but I could feel a shift in his energy. He then slowly began to move back into the mist. I knew my request had been granted. I was back in my garden in front of the moss. I lay down and waited a moment, nervously feeling for ants crawling on me. I felt none. I then began to shift to the next level.
For another one or two earth hours, I lay there perfectly motionless as I was continuously dissolved and reconstituted over and over, with each cycle showing me deeper and deeper level of the true nature of my existence.
When I came back I saw I had not moved one inch from how I began, and there was not one single ant on me. I expressed my gratitude.
For the next few weeks I would go back to that moss and lay down, but every time the ants would start crawling on me within seconds. It was teaming with ants, always. I tried to reach out to the Ant God again but to no avail. Never again would I be able to lay on that moss.
One of the more fascinating details about ayahuasca is how it is made and how it was discovered in the first place. The DMT that exists in plants has no effect on humans when taken orally because of the enzyme monoamine oxidase (MAO) in our blood that prevents it from passing the blood/brain barrier, which is a semipermeable membrane that separates the blood from the cerebrospinal fluid and which blocks many cells, particles, and large molecules, from entering the brain. This is a very good thing, as there is a lot of stuff floating around in our blood that really messes with the brain. In order for the DMT to get to the brain it has to pass through the blood/brain barrier, and for that to happen there must be something that stops the MAOs from doing its job. That thing is called an MAO Inhibitor (MAOI). MAOIs are commonly used in pharmaceuticals to help with ailments such as depression and Parkinson’s (which, according to Stanford University, are the same two things that tango dancing also helps).
In order for orally ingested DMT to work one needs the DMT and an MAOI together. Modern science has known about both of these drugs for a little over 100 years. Indigenous shamans have known about them for about 5,000 years. Somehow, in a manner beyond the ability of modern Western man to comprehend, these shamans managed to discover that the bark of one particular vine, from over 40,000 species of plants, contained a lot of DMT. They also, somehow, knew that an MAOI was needed, which they found in another of those 40,000 species. Traditional anthropologists would have you believe they discovered this by trial and error, but with just a little thought, it is clear how ridiculous that theory is.
Of the 1,600,000,000 possible pairing combinations of Amazonian plants, only one produces ayahuasca. In addition, these 1,600,000,000 possibilities do not consider the variable of proportions or the specifics of preparation. For that many trial-and-error tests, even if every man, woman, and child in all of South America partook in the finding, preparing, and experimenting, it would take over 2,000 years, which then raises the question of record keeping as to what was already tested. The fact that modern science expects any semi-intelligent person to believe its trial-and-error theory is laughable, but also pretty frightening that they DO believe this.
For other substances, such as curare, the chances are astronomically greater. Curare is a poison that paralyzes an animal, but soon after being paralyzed the poison is metabolized by the animal, rendering it harmless. That is obviously a pretty essential requirement, as you can’t be eating the same poison you used to catch the animal. There are 172 different types of curare in the jungle, and only one of them works, but the real kicker is that the fumes one is exposed to while preparing the curare are fatal! How does modern science imagine this was achieved?
Wanadi: “Trumak! Mojie just died testing that new batch of curare!”
Trumak: “Bummer. And he was so close! Go and try that again, with the same batch…and remember to keep smelling it. That’s how you know it’s done.”
Wanadi: “OK!”
On the other hand, if one were to ask the shaman how these things were discovered, he would simply say, “The plants told us.” This is also what anthropologist Jeremy Narby discovered and wrote about in his excellent book "The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge."
This always made sense to me, conceptually, but after my experience with the Ant God, I realized there was nothing at all 'conceptual' about it. It was quite real, practical and down-to-earth. In fact, it appeared to me that the Ant God was the 'real' Ant, and what we call ants are simply a shadow of the One-True-Ant reality as it expressed within the limitations of the 3D world we live in. Of course, this goes for all expressions, be they weeds, bugs, rats, humans, etc.
This was also known among the founder of the miraculous Scottish community called Findhorn, which I first heard of when I was a Sufi, with regard to how they managed to turn an arid dessert-like terrain into a lush garden. This is anecdotal, so I have no references to share, but the story goes; One of the founders, Peter Caddy, I believe, was explaining how they do pest control on their gardens, as they use no chemicals or pesticides. He said what they do is they form cooperative relationships with the 'spirits' of each species; the deer, the bugs, the rabbits, etc. This, he said, worked very well with all the species except one. The rat was not interested in any 'deal.' As he put it, the rat's response was "It's either you or us. We will not negotiate." They were like the Klingons of the animal species (or the Alt-Left/Right of American politics). For this reason, a war was declared on the rats, and they were sought after and killed.
