drugo

Hey Folks, Have you checked out this cool ayahuasca science course yet? It's especially interesting if you're into the neuroscience and psychology of ayahuasca. http://courses.kahpi.net/courses/ayahuasca-science/

Cool short video on ayahuasca neuroscience and shamanism. [media]

EGA 2014 talks are being uploaded... What a great weekend of knowledge and vibes it was, and also what a wonderfully eco-cosmic looking venue for the city event! First two: -

Hey Seldom, I hope you can find the time to read the paper when it comes out early next year, and my thesis later this year. It would be very interesting to hear your reflections. I think you will find the methodology particularly interesting. Here is a sample: Mirroring the limits of knowing that social and cultural perspectives provide people with, the effects of ayahuasca are mysterious, ambiguous, powerful, and transcendent. An anthropological study that attempts to completely reduce the mysterious, ambiguous, powerful, and transcendent ‘effect’ of ayahuasca to epiphenomena of social and cultural conditions results in inevitable reductions in which the power that ayahuasca has at encompassing that which is beyond language, reason, and understanding, becomes diffused. While anthropologists can circle-around the ineffable experiences and pick-up the ‘markings, traces, paths, and ultimately, “evidence”’ (Blanes and Santos 2013) of the social and cultural in narrative accounts of ayahuasca trance and social action, the pronounced ineffability of ‘ayahuasca experiences’ may only ever be fully conquered by anthropologists at the expense of other modes of knowing that include, for example, nonverbal, aesthetic, and extracorporeal modes.

Thanks RC. Yeah, as a teenager, I always wrote rhymes and was never any good at freestyling. One day, i hope. The Q&A discussion, from memory, was largely about the notions of romanticism and exoticism introduced in the paper, and about how Amazonian shamans are internalising Western perceptions and expectations of them in order to be competitive on the tourist circuits. Sorcery doesn't sell well in comparison to Gaia in these circuits! But perhaps this cultural reinvention is part of an older shamanic logic in Amazonia -- what might be called cosmopolitics -- in which shamans shapeshift into nonhumans and others to mediate relations between disparate and radically different social groups and domains.

By thinking that an approach of synthesising large amounts of accounts of ayahuasca visions is "obfuscating the nature of the aya experience" you are totally missing what this type of anthropology is about and, it seems, wishing for some objective pure metaphysics of ayahuasca. What is "the nature" of "the ayahuasca experience" that i am obfuscating by analysing Australian ayahuasca trip reports and narratives of healing? I'm sure this is where you say that it is "ineffable". But around the edges of this ineffability, whether in the Amazon or Australia, social discourses are woven by drinkers, many different forms of social discourse that are relative to different forms of culture, language, history, politics, morality, or put simply, manifestations of the human condition. Anthropologists take these discourses seriously, as objects of science, by considering them in relation to different cultural contexts or cultural dimensions. Among the hundreds of surveys and interviews and accounts of ayahuasca drinking I have accumulated in Australia are trends in ways that people conceptualise what is going on when they purge or experience some sort of profound vision or theophany. The examples provided in the talk indicate a type of political imagining that exists in these conceptualisations and metaphysics. I'm not going to repeat them or introduce the many more examples that are in the thesis. In response to your methodological question that taking a shit and thinking about interpersonal relations or politics doesn't make taking a shit a political act, I would say if you approach this bodily practice as a means by which psychic toxins of interpersonal relations and toxins of society are healed and a deeper connection with nature is achieved, then yes, it would be a source or act of political imagining. It does not matter whether i think there really are psychic toxins in society or interpersonal life that ayahuasca is healing (i.e. what you are calling it's "true nature"), the discourse that drinkers share is precisely this and the discourse represents a form of political imagining that is indexed in bodily processes and bodily states i.e. purging and visions. I have gone to the effort to lay this out because, despite your rude psychologising of why I apparently do this type of anthropology, I value your conceptual thoughts and I really value people in this community getting into academia. We are a small breed. Thanks for being on board and exploring my work.

Thanks Seldom, i think. In regards to saying that I squeezed the theory of "radical political imaginary onto the experience" because of some selfish agenda for recognition, I have to disagree, that is a strange left-field interpretation. I do think the act of drinking ayahuasca in Australia is political, not just in the sense of being illegal, but in the sense of what type of thoughts and actions the experiences help to generate in people. It sounds like you have a bone to pick with anthropology in general. In term of, as you said, people asking the question: "well, I'm really on the fence about the therapeutic applications of Ayahuasca, maybe I'll use this video to decide", this is not my agenda. I am a social scientist, not a psychologist or a GP. We do things such as analyse how the notion of "therapy" so normal to Western societies actually doesn't necessarily fit, say, indigenous amazonian metaphysics and practices of ayahuasca, and thus expecting me to help "prove its application" in an anthropological talk misses the point. The question of etiology or different "healing systems" discussed at the end of the paper alludes to this diversity. Anthropology has a long history of learning and trying to account for a large diversity of culture and ways of living, cosmological and practical (including their indivisible nature), that is the type of thought that informs the research, not my perceptions of whether Darpan's comments are "bullshit", as you say. Turning the project of anthropology into a question of "attaching to people for recognition" is naive and silly. By Northern Brother wattle, i am guessing you are referring to this thread about consuming the highly endangered Acacia species courtii, but you failed to mention that they were "harvested from fallen trees/branches" . Chill out mate! You've got brains, i've really enjoyed your input and discussion on this forum over the years. It is a shame to see that the talk has evoked in you what seems like such a disdain towards the social sciences. I'm intrigued by you last comment 'The 'truths' of Aya are noetic. Those who speak, don't know; and those that know don't speak. And I wonder what you think of the fact that typically all ayahuasca circles in Australia include a "sharing round" circle where people in the morning after a ceremony sit back down in the space and articulate and talk about their visions. Peace,

An anthropological talk I gave in Spain last year on ayahuasca in Australia has just been uploaded. All thoughts, reflections, and critiques are very welcome! The Q & A time didn't make it to YouTube, i am not sure why, but people were particularly curious about the notions of "romanticism" and "exoticism" discussed in the paper.

There is hope for your wish to photosynthesise. Something along the lines of this http://blog.mbl.edu/?p=3285 with this http://www.techrepublic.com/article/cambrian-genomics-laser-prints-dna-to-rewrite-the-physical-world/

how sad, all the awesome flavours of food he is missing. Or is the eternal life force like the bubble-gum of willy wonker that can taste like everything? im still not impressed.

There is an interesting debate taking place about the ESC (Ethnobotanical Stewardship Council) and their plans to introduce a certification system to ayahuasca ceremonies of the Amazon. A group of 60+ leading academics and experts on the Amazon region wrote a public letter rejecting the organisation based on a number of issues. You can see the public letter in the PsyPressUK article Good Intentions and the Road to the Amazon The ESC responded with this open letter, from which an expert that help write the critique said that it confirmed their fears and that the ESC refused to acknowledge or change anything. A hilarious parody image and a discussion about the so-called "Ethnobotanical Security Council" just turned up over at the ayahuasca forums. I tried to bring the image across but I couldn't get it to work for some reason? Have any of you been following this debate? What are your thoughts?

I'm glad it gave you some relief from sobriety. Thanks Foo!

Thanks Thunder. Glad you like it man! The mash is from Dreams that Money Can Buy 1947

"Walking in my thoughts", taken from Tailor Made's debut album 'The String Theory'. Young a vibrant Brisbane based crew. I knocked the visuals up. Hope you enjoy it!

http://culturaladmixtures.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/inorganic-life-and-ayahuasca-plant-spirits/ A new blog post that looks at digital language and ideas in ayahuasca visions in Australia and indigenous Amazonia. All and any feedback welcome y'all.