maps bulletin • volume x xi number 1 53

Ayahuasca Healing and Remote Viewing

By Peter Gorman

W WHEN dealing with the medicine ayahuasca, it’s important to under-

stand that we are not dealing with a medicine in the conventional sense,
but with a spirit capable of opening doors for humans to other levels of
reality. And as a spirit, or sentient being if you prefer, you also need to
remember that she has a will, needs, likes, dislikes and a complete tem-
perament.
The other levels of reality that I note can best be explained in terms of
a dog whistle: you don’t hear it but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Be-
cause if you blow it near a dog the animal will howl. If, on the other hand,
you could broaden the band of your hearing just a bit, you too would
hear that whistle. And if you could change the speed at which a human
vibrates, or the range of colors we normally see, you would see and experi-
Peter Gorman ence all sorts of things we don’t ordinarily see or experience. Ayahuasca is
Author of Ayahuasca in my Blood one of the Plant Teacher medicines that temporarily does those things in
http://pgorman.com
humans.
[email protected]
It’s important to understand that ayahuasca—traditionally made by
mixing Banisteriopsis caapi vine and Psychotria viridis leaves cooked in water
all day until they’ve been reduced from perhaps 20 gallons to an essence
of perhaps a quart—is sentient because that’s how the curandero, or heal-
...ayahuasca er, deals with it. His or her communication with the spirit of ayahuasca is
how he or she heals. And the better the relationship the curandero/curan-
...has a will, dera has with the spirit of the medicine, the more tools for healing he or
needs, likes, dislikes she will have at their disposal.
One more thing before I get to the specifics of healing with ayahuasca:
and a complete in the northwest Amazon, where I’ve been working a few months a year
temperament. for better than 25 years, illness, bad luck and anything wrong on a physi-
cal, emotional, mental or spiritual level in ordinary reality is perceived
as the symptom of something out of balance on a higher/different level
of reality. Those people suffering bad luck or a bad marriage or physical
disease go to the curandero to have them access that other level of reality
to see what is out of kilter. Fix that and the symptom—disease or bad luck
or whatever—will disappear.
54 maps bulletin • volume xxi number 1

Given that preamble, there are several “A priest! She’s cheating on me with a priest!”
ways in which ayahuasca is used in healing. he nearly screamed.
Traditionally, participants in an ayahuasca Juan nearly started laughing, then told the
ceremony do not drink ayahuasca. That is the man to revisit the scene one more time and
job of the curandero. The participant comes to listen to what his wife and the priest were say-
the curandero and presents the problem. The ing. Again the man closed his eyes. When he
curandero then drinks ayahuasca to access opened them he was near tears.
a higher level of reality where he or she will “Yes,” said Juan. “She is talking to the priest
search for the disturbance that is causing the about a divorce. She says you get drunk and
problem for the client. accuse her of cheating on you and then you
I first witnessed this most basic example of beat her up.”
ayahuasca healing years ago at my late teacher The man tried to deny it but in a few min-
Julio’s home. A man canoed up the Aucayacu utes broke down and admitted it was true. He
...if you could change river to Julio’s and explained that someone was
jealous of him and giving him the evil eye,
just thought her so beautiful that he was sure
everyone else did as well. He thought everyone
which was causing him to have accidents every must want her the way he did and when he got
the speed at which time he sold his plantains. “My legs, my ankles, drunk he just went crazy.
my back! You need to tell me who is doing this Juan told the man that it was obvious that
a human vibrates, to me,” he said. his wife still loved him but that if he didn’t
Julio drank ayahuasca and when he came want her to leave he’d have to stop drinking
or the range of colors out of his dream he chuckles. No one was
giving the man the evil eye, he said. Rather,
and then beating her.
It was extraordinary that the spirit of aya-
he’d seen that every time the man sold his huasca would allow all three of us to view the
we normally see, plantains and had money he went to a little same scene, with none of us having any idea of
cantina in a nearby town, a cantina that had even where to look for the wife.
you would see two rickety wooden steps. Julio said he saw But that wasn’t the only time that hap-
that every time the man had money he got pened. A friend of mine, Alan Shoemaker,
and experience drunk and then stumbled on the broken lower
step as he left the place, fell and hurt himself.
moved to Peru in 1993 and within a year or
two learned that his mother, who lived in Ken-
all sorts of things So, Julio said, the man had two choices: Either
stop getting drunk at that cantina, or fix the
tucky, was dying of liver cancer. She had been
given just a few weeks to live. In desperation,
broken step. Alan asked me to drink with him at Juan’s and
we don’t ordinarily It’s a simple and funny story, but illustrates try to see his mother and see what she might
a key element in ayahuasca healing: The ability need to get healed.
see or experience. of the curandero to remote view situations, It was a crazy request: I wasn’t a curandero;
including those in the past. I didn’t know his mother; I had no chance of
I saw and shared remote viewing a few finding anything that might help her. None-
years later with another curandero, Juan theless, because he asked, I agreed to try.
Tangoa Paima. In that case, a man came to During that dream, I thought of Alan’s
Juan’s house while I was there and said that mother and when I did found myself hurtling
he was certain that his wife was cheating on through space and winding up on a street in a
him and was going to leave him and wanted small town in what felt like the United States.
to know with whom she was cheating. In that I imagined Alan’s mother must live nearby and
case, Juan suggested that the man drink the wondered in which house she lived. Instantly I
ayahuasca with us. He did. was moving again, but surprisingly didn’t come
During the dream, I had a few moments out into a kitchen or living room. Instead I sort
when I found myself looking at the Plaza 28, of wound up in someone’s insides. I guessed
a plaza not far from the center of town in it was Alan’s mother’s insides. I’d never seen
Iquitos. The plaza is ringed by good restau- a human liver before but was looking at one
rants and a couple of pool halls, so it’s always the moment I thought of it. On top of the dark
busy at night but I found myself zeroing in on brown mass was a twisted clump of some sort
a woman walking with a man. She held his of tubing. I thought it must be the cancer and
arm tightly. I took it to be the man’s wife, but lifted it to see what it was made of. I realized it
wasn’t sure as I didn’t know her in real life. didn’t seem like cancer—whatever that would
When the dream was over, the man was seem like—but rather that the tubes bringing
distraught. “I knew it! I saw her with him on things to the liver for cleaning were all tangled
Plaza 28!” and nothing could get through them and so
Juan asked the man to close his eyes and were sort of killing the liver. I thought that
revisit the scene and take a closer look. The if those tubes could get untangled somehow
man did as told and when he opened his eyes a then the junk in them could pass into the liver
few minutes later he was even more distraught. to be eliminated. I silently asked if there was
 maps bulletin • volume x xi number 1 55

anything that could do that. In a moment I would help the woman.

thought of uña de gato, cat’s claw, now well The bark from an ancient tree was cut with
known as a medicine but hardly known at all a machete and then boiled down in Julio’s
15 years ago. ayahuasca pot for hours. When there was just
When I came out of the dream I wrote the about a quart of essence left, Julio mixed it
words “cat’s claw” down on a piece of paper. with cane liquor so that the total nearly filled
In the morning Alan asked me what I’d a two-liter bottle. He told her to drink a couple
seen. I was embarrassed to tell him for fear of of ounces daily till it was finished.
misguiding him with the uña de gato. When I The woman hated the jungle, the ayahuasca
relented I showed him the paper. He laughed. experience and most of all, me.
“Yes. I saw uña de gato and I also saw sacha But she made it out of the jungle alive.
jergon,” another Amazonian medicine. And six months later she called me to let
That day or the next he made up a good me know she was in Italy, driving around the
batch of the two medicines and sent it off to
his mom. She drank it religiously and within
mountains on a moped but still hated me. And
then she called six months later. And then six
She drank it religiously
a few weeks or months the cancer was in total months after that.
remission. She wound up living several good At this time I haven’t heard from her in and within
cancer free years after that before it came rag- about two or three years. I don’t know if she’s
ing back and took her. alive or not. But I know she got at least a few a few weeks
I was and am still amazed that the spirit of extra Christmases’ and birthdays with her
ayahuasca was not just capable of something daughter. or months the cancer
like that, but that she was so generous in shar- What Julio had done that night—apart from
ing the plants needed to effect the remission. having plant spirit helpers tell him what medi- was in total remission.
For me, that was a fairly isolated event. For cine my client needed—is a standard healing
someone like Julio it was fairly ordinary. I once technique with ayahuasca. It involves looking
had someone get in touch who told me she had at a person who is ill and seeing where the
late stage incurable cancer and would be dying illness is and then eliminating it. Essentially
in a couple of weeks. She wanted to die in the the curandero looks for clusters of energy that
Amazon jungle and wanted me to take her don’t fit in with the rest of the body. They’re
there for the big event. I was taking people out generally seen as dark spots or splotches,
into the jungle occasionally at that time but sometimes on the surface, sometimes inside the
not to die, so I told her I couldn’t do it. body. They are visible through clothes. Some
She insisted and insisted and I finally re- curanderos work on the physical body with
lented when she promised to drink ayahuasca their hands to feel those spots, some use the
with Julio and attempt to get healed rather ubiquitous black tobacco cigarette smoke of the
than to simply die. I even set a target of having region to help them see the spots. Others, like
one more Christmas and birthday with her Julio, used to sing at the body to make them
teenaged daughter before she died. visible, and then use his chacapa like a scalpel
She came with a friend and I took them to cut those negative energy clumps out. And
both out to Julio’s. Julio said that ayahuasca once cut out, they need to be eliminated be-
would not directly cure cancer, but that he cause they’ve got their own sentience and don’t
would talk with the plants and see if they sug- want to die anymore than anything else does.
gested anything that might help my client. For that, each curandero has his or her own
The night the woman drank I did as well, method: Some wrap them in invisible light and
and Julio drank a little as well. Julio spent put them in ethereal fires or send them to cold
nearly the entire night working on my client. distant planets. •
Not physically. He never left his little stool.
But he sang and chanted for her and shook his
chacapa, a leaf-bundle rattle, in her direction
all night. Ayahuasca invited me to see what he
was doing: From the ends of the chacapa leaves
white lights, like lasers, shot out and into the
woman’s middle. They moved things around,
cleaned out areas of her body, forced her to
vomit up the bile of her life over and over.
In the morning, Julio’s chacapa was
burned to a crisp, despite no fire having
actually touched it. Julio laughed when I
mentioned it, then called his son Jairo and
told him to go collect a lot of medio renaco
bark. He said his spirit helpers told him it