by kind permission Kees Dam has allowed the publication of this proving on the net
FOR PICTURES OF VINE GO TO SITE http://www.erowid.org/plants/banisteriopsis/
SYNOPSIS
SANTO DAIME
(a further proving and combination with ayahuasca)
In the Amazonian area of South America the Indians have a drug which they believe can free the soul from the prison of the body. This drug enables the soul to wander freely and also to return to the body. Such an unbound soul frees the owner of trivial reality and lifts him to another reality in which he can communicate with his ancestors. This drug is called "Ayahuasca" - the vine of the soul. The scientific name is Banisteriopsis caapi; it is a climbing vine that grows along the along the surface of the trees, winding itself up and around, clinging to the trees, on its way to the roof of the jungle.
The Indians prepare it by scraping the fresh bark of the Banisteriopsis, boil this for a few hours till a very bitter, syrupy juice is left. Often other plants like the Psychotropia viridis or carthaginensis are added to reinforce the hallucinogenic effect.
In shamanistic rituals this viscid syrup is drunk. The first effects are nausea, dizziness and vomiting and then a euphoric or very aggressive state comes on. Hallucinations of fatal attacks by snakes or jaguars follow. They humiliate him because he is just a human being. The Tukano Indians (they use the ayahuasca the most) often have nightmares of being in the jaws of enormous jaguars or of being strangled by enormous snakes.
A shaman can use the drug to make a diagnosis, to acquire knowledge on medicinal plants, healing, good places to fish, places in the jungle where the fruits are ripe to pick, on how to prevent threatening disasters or to predict the future. The people who use it say they can see all the gods, the first humans and the first animals and they get an understanding of the social order and hierarchy. The myth of creation is vividly seen again by the user and the identity of the group is reconfirmed. The first human being was accompanied by three plants according to a Tukano myth: the yuca, the coca and the yajé (ayahuasca). The yuca gives the maniok-root, the most important food. Coca is chewed and gives energy and vitality. The use of yajé centers in the spiritual life and healing of the Tukanos.
After taking ayahuasca the voice of the shaman of the Campa Indians is getting thin and sounds as if from a distance, his lower jaw starts to tremble which is the sign that the good spirits arrived and sing and dance for him. The voice of the shaman is only the echo of their singing. While singing the soul of the shaman can freely go from the body.
With the Tukano Indians the user of ayahuasca feels himself drawn by a strong wind. The Zaparo's from Ecuador feel themselves lifted in the air.
The effects of ayahuasca without additives is initially perspiration, nervousness, nausea then a certain agreeable drowsiness followed by colour impressions, first white then a misty blue getting stronger, then one falls asleep with dreams and a feeling of fever. A disagreeable diarrhoea can last till a long time after. The Banisteriopsis caapi is in itself a sedating plant and often "stimulating" and psycho-active plants are added to the ayahuasca mix.
The ayahuasca or Yajé (as named by the Tukano indians) is prepared in the yajé pot. The round-bellied Yajé pot symbolises the vagina and womb, the ayahuasca stands for the male phallus and sperms. Preparing the yajé and drinking from the yajé pot is the sexual act, the unification of male and female. Women are not allowed to take part in the drinking of the yajé.
A part of the ayahuasca ritual is self-chastising; young men whip themselves on the lower limbs and ankles. The whiplashes sound like pistol shots. In no time the young men are covered all over with bloody streaks. The tukano's believe that in the beginning of Tukano history the people had very hard times, rivers full of horrible snakes and dangerous fishes, there were man-eating spirits and full of fear the Tukano's received the principles of their culture.
Under these Tukano's lived a woman, the first woman created, who "drowned" men in visions. The Tukano's believe that a man "drowns" during coition, an equivalent of getting visions or hallucinations. This first woman noticed that she was pregnant. The Sun-father made her pregnant through her eye. She gave birth to a child, that became the Caapi, the drug-plant. The child was born during a flash of light. The woman - Yajé - cut the umbilical cord and rubbed the child with magic plants and shaped the body. The caapi-child grew till it was an old man constantly busy defending his hallucinogenic powers. The men of the Tukano's received their sperm a from this old aged child, the owner of caapi and the owner of the act of coition. For the Indians the hallucinogenic experience is in fact a sexual experience - to make this perfect, to sublimate this from an erotic to a mystic experience, to return to the womb, that is the goal reached by a few but strived for by all.
Also the colors of the ayahuasca experience have a symbolic meaning: yellow or broken white stand for sperm, the fertilisation by the sun; red is the colour of the womb, of fire or heat and symbolises female fertility. Blue is the smoke of tobacco symbolising thought.
The English botanist Spruce is the first who collected Caapi to send it to England for research in 1851. He describes a ayahuasca ritual: "After taking some of the drug in less than 2 minutes the effects show. The Indian is getting pale as a corpse, trembles over his whole body and he looks as if he is seeing something horrible. All of a sudden the effects turn into the opposite: he starts to sweat and he seems to get an attack of rage, grabs a weapon that is nearest to him.... and runs to the door while giving enormous blows to the ground and doorpost, screaming: "This will I do to my enemy ....(name) if this was him". After about ten minutes the Indian has calmed down again and looks exhausted".
Only in 1969 the material that was collected by Spruce in 1861 has been chemically analysed.
- R. Schultes/A. Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, McGraw-Hill Book Co 1979
(Dutch: Over de Planten der Goden, Spectrum 1983)
- Panforum nr 9 - april 1998 page 6-11 (dutch journal on psycho-active drugs) Publisher: Bres bv Amsterdam ISSN: 1382-4538
- H. Plomp/G. Hellinga, Uit je bol, Ooievaar Amsterdam 1997
with 40 participants of the International Seminar in The Hague from 29 May - 2 June 1998. Twenty-seven of them wrote down their symptoms and are identified with a prover-number. Symptoms without prover-identification were brought forward in the group-sharing of the proving-effects. This is not a proving of the mixture the Indians use in their rituals but only of the main constituent of it: the Banisteriopsis caapi. We also did a proving of the Mixture (see Santo Daime proving).
First we will relate the proving experiences of a few "master provers" and afterwards divide the whole of the proving into themes.
(proving symptoms triggered by the sound of the word ayahuasca): Inco-ordinated movements of the right hand, awkward and dropping things, no control and a bit absentminded, it was associated with a paralysing feeling in the right hand later extending to the shoulder, then an enormous aggression/rage in my right hand and foot came up, wanted to kick a door into pieces with my right foot and to throw something at the person nearest to me. The feeling was to kick something away from me. On a polite question the answering got abrupt and harsh, irritated ("no!!!"). From the bookshelf I spontaneously grabbed a book (Inner Skying) and opened it on a page where a lifeguard was in the sea during a storm, his feet got entangled in a rope and he couldn't keep his head above the (wild) waves. In a panic he kicked and pulled with his feet to get loose from the rope but instead the rope got tighter and tighter. He got out of air, his lungs were about to burst, all his strength vanished. "And then something extraordinary happened, all of a sudden I felt a new energy flowing in me. All my panic was gone and I got very calm. I knew this was a matter of life and death, but still I stopped wildly pulling that rope. It seemed as if time was slowing down. All of a sudden I got very clear in my mind. I didn't have to think, I knew intuitively what I had to do and I let my self sink to the bottom. I already felt how the rope got looser by it. When I was down I could free myself with ease and I swam to the surface".
I can imagine that this remedy is suited for babies with the umbilical cord around their neck. Every time on hearing the word Ayahuasca the anger/rage is triggered, later it only evokes spontaneous movements of the feet as if not to get entangled in something, motion is freeing yourself, is not to get stuck.
A few nights afterwards there was an unusual incident that I suspect (in hindsight) to be related to the Ayahuasca proving: at 5.00 in the morning a patient rings - he got a terrible toothache that night, getting worse and worse, extending all over his face and head, he is very restless with it, the only relief is from shrieking and kicking objects in pieces (he kicked a kitchen chair together)
The common theme of the dreams I had while under the influence of Ayahuasca (or Santo Daime ? - the remedy my partner was proving at that time), was:
* about getting into something and not being able to get out of it
Comment: A very remarkable thing and probably indicative of an overbearing power of this remedy is that the name of the remedy evoked proving symptoms. This very experienced and sensitive prover has done more than 50 "provings" (ranging from a 15 minutes till 2 months duration) but never before only the name of a remedy was capable to elicit proving symptoms. In hindsight after doing the seminar proving (29.5 till 6.6) this very small proving (happened mid- may '98) gives already a clear blueprint and frame of the remedy's workings. The story of the lifeguard is in a nutshell the Ayahuasca-disease and cure: first the entanglement with the trying to fight or flee from it and thereby getting more entangled but then an enlightening thought with supernatural calmness necessary to be able to dive deeper, going to the root of entanglement and free yourself.
(Meditation): At first I had a light feeling and saw red flames, glittering red or white (maybe blood?). It was not frightening. Then it turned into a grey fog and cloud. With the redness there was a feeling of being very straight (physical). With the grey cloud there came a very heavy sensation which I couldn't resist. This heavy feeling started from the throat downward. Steadily but slowly it kind of squeezed me towards the floor, like a grey plastic.
I had a pain in the throat with a swollen feeling: "sticky and slow"; no reaction could be made. This feeling extended to the chest, I had a difficulty to breathe. My neck felt long and my mouth was opened firmly. It all made the impression of a "slow motion movie". It was very difficult to get out of the meditation. Slowness, shortness of breath, sighing and yawning.
In the afternoon I went cycling with others. I was the last one. A couple ahead of me said that we were cycling in pairs. I thought: "But not me, I am alone, I am the only one who is alone". I saw the others ahead of me a lot further than they were in reality. I was also anxious because I thought I lost my favourite ring (I tend to lose things but I am never anxious about it).
A friend of mine said: "You have such a heavy energy around you, I don't want to be near you". I felt no offence or grief, I took it as a matter of fact that I am supposed to be alone (fatalistic).
Couldn't sleep well at night. No dreams, difficult to fall asleep and unrefreshed in the morning.
In daytime a lot of giggling and laughing and our group lost its way for one and a half hours. In the night I dream that there is a soldier hunting for me and I just have to run. I am bored and frustrated in all of that running alone.
The next day during the evaluation and sharing of the proving in the class I feel that my consciousness gets wider, see things far away, I am concentrated on a higher level of consciousness. I get a pressing pain in the chest (parasternal left). I feel very dizzy and very nauseous, I think I have to vomit. I have to get out of the class and walk around and I feel a lot of grief in my chest with the feeling that if I let this out I can't stop crying. Somebody talks to me and this helps me to "stay here", also feeling my feet on the ground helps. But there is still a lot of dizziness and pain in the chest as if from a suppressed cry. I know I couldn't stop crying if I start, I have to walk or talk to others, I feel alone in this dream state, I need caressing, would like to be in somebody's arms and just cry (also writing this down helps).
Comment: In the meditation we see the polarity between the light feeling, the red flames, feeling straight (the power) and the grey fog, heaviness, the being squeezed to the floor, an irresistible heaviness. The heaviness is in the body, it starts from the throat, the head wants up and the body drags down (like in the lifeguard story - the head wants to surface, gasping for air but the body is being dragged down by the entanglement). The throat and neck is the place where both forces meet or rather counteract with an elongated throat/neck sensation as a result. This heaviness of the body is so irresistible and intense that even others are being dragged down by it (if they would let that persons energy in).
What can be the origin or the unfelt emotion that causes the heaviness of the body? In this prover the next day a subconscious emotion threatens to surface accompanied by a pressing pain in the chest (left - heart area), nausea and dizziness, bodily equivalents of a suppressed cry. When this cry is let out, the crying would not end. And what is needed to be able to let this cry out: caressing and being in somebody's arms. One is tempted to conclude that the origin of the suppression of the grief is the fact that nobody was there at the time of the grief to caress, comfort and hold. This has prevented the expression - the crying, and gave rise to a forsaken, lonely and distant feeling instead - the feeling this prover had while bicycling with the group. The coping mechanisms to escape these painful feelings is the "dream state", the "lift off", fatalism and indifference or a shift to an anxiety about losing material things (i.e. the ring).
(did not want to join the proving, went outside the class during the passing of the remedy and the meditational proving but nevertheless had symptoms)
Two nights before the proving I had a dream about the proving.
* The whole class is sitting outdoors at lined up tables. The person who is going to do the proving is blond with a beard (just as it turned out to be although I have never seen him before, in the dream he is a bit shorter and fatter). He is about to pass the remedy when suddenly from another seminar a person comes who rushes to the people in the back row and tells them not to do this proving and that the organisers cannot be trusted. People start getting agitated, get up on the tables and start throwing stones at the person directing the proving until it all becomes a riot (à la Paris, May '68). People overturn cars, throw Molotov cocktails, bombs, stones. Smoke, screams, explosions. I am carrying people, adult people like babies (legs crossed around my waist and their heads on my shoulders) into the building for rescue. I carry men and women and they are not too heavy, just like small children. Suddenly everything stops and we can only see the smoke going up still. The battle has finished. I go to the proving director and take his hand to make peace with him and to explain to him why all this has happened. I feel that we have won and feel magnanimous towards him. I know it will be OK. The feeling in the dream is of great responsibility, alarm and power.
Unusual symptoms for me during the first 24 hours of the proving:
- Constant desire to laugh; an uncontrollable laughter to tears. It is triggered by the fact that people seem funny, a little alien, everything they do seems funny and provokes laughter and mocking. Also a contagious laughing - just to hear someone laugh can send me into hysterical laughing fits.
- Pain, soreness and bruised feeling in neck and upper back
- Heaviness of head and upper back
- Fatigue, extreme tiredness: I walk back home in a daze, as if in a dream
- Eyes are burning as if extremely tired
- Head, as if empty and full of air. As if my head/skull stopped above my eyes or was a shell with wind inside; also as if cotton in head.
- Confusion/Disorientation: mistook the doors several times in my apartment; don't know where I am walking on the street, on the pavement? On the street?
- My own name I did not recognise when I was called.
- Everything seemed unreal, like a drug; people seem like aliens
- Chewing like a camel (from side to side) when waking up from a nap
- Sudden loss of hearing for a few seconds as if cotton in my ears; also buzzing (high pitched) in ears
- Head feels congested and full. Ears and nose stopped
- Constipation
Dream on the second night of the proving
* I am huge, like a giant, naked from the waist up. Two rows of people are standing lined up in front of me: one of men and one of women. One by one they come up to my enormous breasts and suck them briefly then they leave and then the next one comes etc.
The feeling is of power, protection (desire to protect), mother or feminine power, like a goddess
Third night of proving (remedy revealed). I went to bed and asked to have a dream whether proving the Wailing Wall was a right thing to do (we discussed this with some participants during dinner in reference to the proving of Berlin Wall) - this is the dream I had:
* I am in a very wide dark, vertical tunnel, not unlike Alice in Wonderland's well. People are floating up and down in it. It is the tunnel of time. I decide to go back 40 yrs to the year I was born.
I arrive in the apartment of some young people, bohemian types. They live in the Navajo desert. In the dream they are my uncle and aunt, they collect Indian artifacts and bags. They have them all over their walls and window sills and explain to me what each one is - mostly weapons and ritual objects but also magic bags containing beads and amulets for healing: those are called "shamanic heareus". Suddenly, in comes one of their friends with an enormous plastic bag full of watches. He asks me whether these will be popular 40 years from now because he is thinking of starting this new company called "Swatch". I tell him "very much so" and that he will be a rich man (!). I decide to go back to 1998 and to bring back with me the parents of my uncle and aunt (my grandparents). They are really nice people (in reality my sister in law's parents) and we all sit at breakfast around the table in 1998. They ask me about the last forty years and I explain to them what has been happening year after year. They ask me about the future and this is what I said: "There is no future and there is no past. The snake bites its own tail. When you look at a football pitch, you do not ask: Is the left side the past and the right side the future? It is all one - there will be an "almost" end of the world. For every million killed, only one person will be left but the walls will be left standing. Whether you do a proving or not will make no difference because this is inevitable. Everything is pre-written. History has been decided upon already. It is programmed in our genes. There is no beginning and no end. Love that comes from the heart is human love. Universal love is something else..." (which I felt in the dream but forgot shortly after waking).
I woke up, my head was buzzing, especially at the top and I felt slightly nauseous.
Fourth night of proving
* I am torn in myself between two men. One reliable, intelligent and sane and the other, absent, unfaithful, liar and extremely attractive. So much so that whenever I see him I cannot resist him (he looks like Warren Beaty the actor). And I wonder every time when I am not with him why do I go back each time? Why can't I just stop? He is like an irresistible drug.
- Feeling very tired around 11 am; head spinning and comatose sleep
Fifth night of proving
* I went back to the house of my childhood along with my brother. The basement of the house was a museum to our childhood. All objects and clothes had been preserved there intact, neatly folded, hanging or exposed. We went through it remembering each artifact. All our baby clothes as well as my own children's were there, as well as a few other torture instruments (not in reality) such as belts to tie us down to our chairs. I told him to take all the baby clothes and to take it home to use for his own children. My mother and grandmother were there (dead in reality) and were both getting married to 2 men. My mother was marrying Charles de Gaulle (!). I was very happy for her. I saw how we were now (my brother and I) taking care of our own parents. How the roles were reversed. But all was much better now.
Feelings: a good dream, sensation of closing a circle. A feeling of forgiveness for past offences. Acceptance. Adulthood.
Sixth night of proving
* I am in a house - the roof is open (broken) and I want to repair it. I want to make things beautiful but there is so much work to do.
Dreams sent afterwards (kept on proving at home)
8-6-'98
* I am in a town after a revolution. The town is all destroyed and I have to take care of the children, mine and my brother's. Someone I care for (I don't know whom) is held hostage at the top of the highest building in town, a skyscraper, which now serves as the headquarters of the revolutionaries. I go there with the children. I have to go up the tower without us being seen or killed, but at each floor there is a guard, each one a champion in a different martial art. At each floor I fight him, get killed as well as the children but wake up with the children at the next floor up, get up, fight the guard, get killed, wake up one floor higher and so on. I try different tactics on the guards, as I am learning from my past mistakes (to hide, to confront head on, different strategies) but the guard always has a different way, masters a different martial art so that he always gets me in the end. But as I go on, I become less and less afraid (I know I'm going to come back to life), more and more calm, more and more detached and feel more and more power within myself.
15-6-'98
* I dream of a great fire at the center of the earth, like a big furnace with people shovelling coal into it. Nearby some people kneel and bend down, praying to and adoring the fire.
17-6-'98
* Me, my husband and another couple have murdered a man (who deserved it), all of the time we spent trying to get rid of the body by putting it into a car, driving the car and trying to find a way to get rid of it as well as escaping the police.
23-6-'98
* A civil war scene - a tank in the streets explodes as people look on. I am afraid that pieces will land on my head. Further in the mess and disorder that ensues, an old man near a cart tells me that people and objects all have a different "frequency". He explains that certain people, nations and things vibrate according to frequency number 1, the most special. He says there are seven different frequencies and that elements at each frequency level attract one and other. Example, a gypsy and a guitar, both number 1 frequency, attract each other. Thus, he says, can desire be understood as an attraction between elements of similar frequencies.
Comment: In this prover the "enlightened" side of ayahuasca was especially elicited: telepathy, overview of past, present and future, the calming and reassuring wisdom, the forgiveness, acceptance, the going back to the roots/origin (childhood). The lifeguards enlightening insight in what to do and his supernatural calmness is reflected here. The shamans use ayahuasca for future telling, diagnostic and therapeutic purposes, getting in touch with ancestors, perceiving the hierarchy and order of life - all these facets come back in this prover.
Another side which is highlighted in this prover is the nurturing, nursing, "all mighty" motherhood. Very striking is the dream of the giant woman, naked from the waist up with very big breasts, nursing a line of women and a line of men. In the Santo Daime church (where ayahuasca is ritually drunk) the celebration starts with the lining up of men and women in two separate lines, approaching one by one the table where for everyone a glass of ayahuasca (santo daime) is served - a more than striking analogy.
Another expression of the irresistible "dragging" is seen in the dream where the prover is irresistibly drawn to a "man fatale",
Child abuse or child torturing is hinted upon in the dream of the fifth night.
The dream of the sixth night: being in a house with the roof broken open can be seen as an analogy of a physical symptom of this prover: head as if empty and full of air, as if the skull was missing above the ears.
In the dream of 8-6 the theme of war and destruction is there again (a very prominent theme in ayahuasca it seems) but again paired with the "beyond", the cycle of life and death, the overview in the dream of lifetimes. Each floor seems to represent a lifetime with each time a different struggle, with learning each time and getting on a higher level - less afraid, more calm and more powerful.
Meditation: darkness, heavy, being encased in armor, thought patterns couldn't form, were stopped or empty.
Not alive, heavy deadness no life. I saw a cavernous mouth (of some animal) with teeth, tongue; then dark, slow and sluggish. Trapped, couldn't get beyond the wall.
Back of neck sensation as if something growing, then nose felt strange (as if I became the animal with that cavernous mouth) then nothing. A little pain in the left thumb, aware of the left hand not the right hand.
* Very light bright surroundings, I think I was looking at snow, then I noticed a shadow I had to investigate. When I went to see what was happening everything was blocked off and I asked why, what is the problem? People like guards said to me: "There is no problem, we are just testing something". I was aware that everything was dark now. Suddenly I didn't believe them, I turned away and out of the corner of my left eye came a flash of light like an electric cord sparking. This happened again and I knew something was wrong. The guards felt my unease. I felt unsafe and knew I must run from here but I had also to pretend that everything was OK. Then I started to run but knew I could not get away. When I knew I was lost, the darkness came again and everything was black. I woke up very frightened and felt an urgent need to lock the door even though I knew it was locked. The fear disappeared quickly.
During the discussion and evaluation of the remedy-proving symptoms I had the feeling that I didn't want to be there, not wanting to listen to all this stuff, couldn't really hear what was being said and didn't want to. After hearing the dream of the giant woman with the enormous breasts and men and women coming up to suck them, I felt very much better. I could hear again and was interested in what was going on. My clarity and well being all seemed much better, like a weight having been lifted.
Comment: In the dream we can see an illustration of some Jungian principles and of the archetypical symbols light (bright) and dark (shadow, black). If we would analyse this proving dream in a Jungian way then the shadow that had to be investigated is our own shadow side - an unfelt emotional conflict in the subconscious. Because these emotional conflicts are too painful to be felt (and thereby getting into consciousness - the light) they have to be guarded and any probing and questioning into the real issue of the shadow can trigger the original trauma and make it surface into consciousness and this has to be prevented at all costs (because it would feel like dying, you would not survive the pain of it). So your survival mechanisms, your ego-mechanisms (the guards) try to delude you, "nothing the matter, just testing something". But then there is an intuition, an enlightening insight (in the form of light sparks in the left eye symbolising the past): there is something wrong. But your own defence mechanisms get more and more aggressive, even pretending that you will leave it, does not help anymore, they come after you. They know that you know their secret and now you have to be eliminated. The light of your consciousness (your knowing) has to be extinguished, you are lost and drawn into the black of unconsciousness. You wake up in a fright and the fear for your own defence mechanisms is projected on burglars trying to get into your room.
That unresolved emotional conflict (the shadow) in the dream is equivalent with the darkness, heaviness, encased in armor in the meditation; there is no flow or life anymore - it is all stagnated, dead. Thought patterns cannot form anymore, were stopped. The light of consciousness is needed to make it alive and flowing again and that means feeling the unfelt pain and becoming aware of the painful "truth". The image of this "deadness" (unresolved conflict) is a "cavernous mouth with teeth, tongue - then dark, slow and sluggish" with the feeling of being "trapped, couldn't get beyond the wall". The unresolved conflict takes the form of the devouring mouth of an animal, deadening all light of consciousness, all life, making everything slow and sluggish. Then the prover has the sensation of something growing in the neck and the nose feels strange and changing (as if she becomes the animal, as if she is taking over and overwhelmed by the unconscious conflict).
Meditation: Aware of hard and different surfaces under feet, sand, brick, tarmac and shallow steps. Later more sand as I moved out into the dessert on a camel train.
I was the observer of everything - viewing from the left side or from behind.
In the upper teeth strange feeling as if growing forward.
Throat - as if huge, like a cobra with its jaws wide open (see drawing); looking down the throat and seeing the fangs and cartilage rings, redness. Deep throat. Not sore, I was just looking at this long neck/throat.
- Seeing myself as a 2-year-old child running down the street to get to the toilet in time and not making with it. My mother reprimanded me. Now a furious anger comes up because I didn't deserve it. I have always thought that my mother was right and that I was the one to blame.
Saw a blue sky with a tennis ball stationary in it (with an S-line on it). Ball became a distant planet.
Discomfort under right scapula
Feel disjointed, disconnected, this sensation lasted all night (I took Opium 8 weeks ago and this is a return of how I felt then)
Heart pounding, went after ten minutes
Toothache in upper right side, slightly stabbing with pain in right cheekbone.
* Sheep in a boxkite - flying! I thought I was awake until I realised sheep weren't really in the room. Dream state all night but sleepless. Was kept awake by every noise (cats, people, talking).
Complete and utter impulsiveness. Felt free of every constraint, totally centered, very sexual and sensual. A madness in paradise. Seems a self-satisfied, contained, whole state achieved by impulse, breaking down of barriers and the recognition of my own needs and getting them met.
4-6
- Sneezing in morning 10 a.m. - noon
- Itching in small spots (right thigh and index finger) without eruption
- Sleep very light, waking 2 a.m. - 3.30 and 5 a.m., very tired in morning
thinking in sleep, aware of all the noises
awoken by wind in sleep - fear of wind
sleepless at night, sleepy in day
brain waking up 4 p.m. onwards
5-6
- Sleepless until 2 a.m.; working on cases in my sleep; 4 a.m. loud noises in the street, 4 police cars; 4.45 a.m. Police raid house opposite, shouting, hammering on door, lights flashing. They break down the door. Lots of noise. I am not frightened but I can't sleep.
Next morning: shaking from fatigue, loss of appetite.
Ayahuasca is like being in a nightmare interspersed with a heightened awareness. I feel very vivid, sensual or dull, sleepy. I am sleeping in the lectures and I don't understand what the lecturer says. Then suddenly everything is very clear and I feel potentised. I do feel very sexual (new symptom), wild spirit, capable of speaking my mind, capable of great vision alternating with sleepy feeling. Like Opium but much worse and the same stubborn constipation.
Comment: In this prover the drug - opium like state of Ayahuasca is demonstrated alternating with clearness, heightened awareness and vividness. An unresolved emotional "entanglement" from childhood is resolved. Entangled in the vision of her mother that she (the child) was to blame - the child takes over this vision, feels guilty and bad and is discarding her anger. Now the Ayahuasca "disentangles" the mother from the child. Actually with the now felt anger the child sets herself free from the mother and can see (for the first time after 40 years) how things really were.
When the proving was done I was outside on the grass. I am very sensitive to remedies and I did not want to participate.
I was lying on the grass feeling tired and heavy. Sensations were heightened. The heat of the sun was burning and the cool of the shade was freezing. I fell asleep (very unusual for me). On waking I was very angry at something that happened two days ago. I was disoriented, not clear where I was. I had a right-sided headache with an uncomfortable pressure in the right ear. The head pain was just above the forehead on the right side. Slowly it got better through the afternoon. While riding on the bike with the group I felt very lonely. On one hand I was sad that I felt so lonely while I was among friends. On the other hand I wanted to be left alone and I rode ahead to be on my own.
* I dreamt that I was in Holland, sitting outdoors in a restaurant with friends. The menus were in Dutch only and I was upset about it a little. A boy of about 14 came from a nearby building and gave milk in a bowl to a yellow labrador dog. He left and a few minutes later the boy's mother came downstairs. She did not know the dog was fed. She went to give him milk and the dog acted so excited, as if he was not already fed at all. I thought what a deceitful, cunning dog, cheating the owner like that.
* I see my sister walking with a puppy ( a dog I used to have who is now a year old and not with me). She orders the puppy "Stand!!" but he is running around. She is angry and frustrated. (It is unusual for me to have dreams where I am more the observer than a participant).
I woke up in the morning and before opening my eyes I turned from lying on my left side to my right side. I became very dizzy with my eyes still closed.
Pain in left knee extending to the thigh, started in both knees and than remained in the left. When the pain becomes severe there is nausea and fainting sensation and I am on the verge of tears from the pain.
Pain in left ovary, started around 1 p.m. comes and goes, drawing, pulling pain; rubbing helps
Heat in the face
Lots of crazy laughter and giggling
Three days before the proving I had a dream.
* I was in a garden and a huge lizard (3-4 meters) was attacking me. I saw it running towards me with the mouth wide open and the teeth showing. I knew there was no point in running, it was too fast. When it got to me, I managed to grab it under my arm and held its neck. I dragged it with me looking for someone to help me.
Comment: An interesting phenomenon is exhibited in this prover: proving symptoms before the proving has started. This is something the Germans call: "prüfen im Vorfeld" and has been observed already several times. The dream of the huge lizard, mouth wide open, teeth showing and no point in running, is so clearly and obviously in line with the actual proving leaves us no other option than to take these phenomena quite seriously.
The dream of the dog pretending not to have been fed already, might be an illustration of an Ayahuasca way of coping or compensating: an unfelt deficit in nursing in childhood is now expressed in a feeling of "never enough" and delude others to get your "need" met.
In the other puppy dream you can see the reaction if your "need" (i.e. to be in charge and to be obeyed) is not met by others: anger and frustration.
Meditation: Feeling that the part above my nose together with the internal part of it, are pulled up out of my head through my forehead and form like a pyramid above my head.
All my body muscles are tense.
I see the Chinese woman who took care of me in my childhood, running with me in her arms and shrieking, she runs to a hole in the ground and jumps into it (I am a few months old), aeroplanes pass and drop bombs around us.
I see my parents holding me with great love (also a few months old).
I see a face like a mask. A deep furrow has been cut into the face under each eye down to the chin. Tears and blood runs down from them and make a puddle of blood in the form of a heart.
I see an enormous field of wheat - magnificent yellow - waving in the wind with blue butterflies above it. Feeling of great speed, sweeping above the field.
I feel myself being pulled strongly by somebody and I shriek: Noooo....... And then the shriek ceases suddenly.
I find myself in the uterus of my son's (pregnant) wife and I can see her daughter, a beautiful little girl
During the day and evening: irrepressible laughing, off and on all evening with the ability to turn everything into extremely funny descriptions - mocking
Coryza for an hour around 9.30 p.m.
* An old man and his wife are preparing to eat a steak in the street in front of my house. The steak is being prepared in an aluminium dish and I see a big hole in one of the dishes and all the juice is dripping out on the floor and on the gas stove. I think about how I could help them (they don't realise there is a problem). I go in the house to look for something to close the hole. I finally take a plate and I go out and I find them sitting together on the street eating with their fingers a piece of completely overdone steak. They look very happy. I feel I came too late, feel guilty.
Second day of proving: feeling unconcentrated, confused, mistakes in writing, not able to listen and write at the same time as usual. Feeling of not having my normal head.
4-6
* My husband is pursued by ? and I am very worried about him. I decide to hide him in the metro behind a rack full of coats. The metro will leave any minute but before that somebody in uniform comes to look for suspects in each wagon. In the end the doors are closed but the train doesn't leave. My husband is trapped and I am afraid he will suffocate. I see that the uniformed man leaves to look for something else and I quickly get my husband out of the train. Now he goes to organise people for a revolt instead of hiding. I feel terrified.
5-6
I am walking in busy street and I see from far somebody that I don't want to meet. She is a friend of mine from 30 years ago, a very intense person whom I like but cannot really be with for long times because she is too intense and loquacious. I try to avoid her by going into a tunnel where the train pass. I run all the way through the tunnel to the other side of it. But she has seen me and runs after me and finally gets to me to talk. I feel trapped because I cannot tell her the truth about not wanting to be with her.
Comment: Several Ayahuasca themes come together in this prover: the very early childhood "torture" (i.e. war situation, which comes back in several provers); the rescuing "all mighty" Chinese woman (see prover 11); the future telling and going back to the roots (the womb); the irrepressible laughing as a drug-symptom (was there in many provers); the being pulled or dragged strongly by some(body's) force - irresistibly and no defence to it; the wanting to avoid the pulling and draining energy of a friend but no escape possible and then the trapped feeling (entanglement) because you cannot tell her the truth.
This takes place in the future, a group of people are going to go off and form a new society. I am aware that we will have to go through several states and stages before ready to start a new society. I can feel that we have to go down into a dark stramonium state as final crisis. The group of people will be treated with homeopathic remedies "as if one mind" for social issues. It will be OK, no fears. I feel excited about the possibility.
Comment: This dream puts Ayahuasca and its workings in a social perspective. Ayahuasca is already used in fact to create a better world (in the Santo Daime Church) but with realising that this can only be achieved by personal growth, meeting and resolving your shadow-sides. This dream is a reflection of this.
- The moment I took the sniff it went around in my head. Very sudden I got a vision of a seagull in a clear sky, a big flying bird like an albatros, not moving the wings only keeping them out. Very symmetric in front of my eyes also a smell of seagrass for a while (pr 10- med.)
- I was startled by a bright yellow light, I had to open my eyes during meditation
- A sudden light came from the right side
- *......I was aware that everything was dark now. Suddenly I didn't believe them, I turned away and out of the corner of my left eye came a flash of light like an electric cord sparking. This happened again and I knew something was wrong...... (pr 12)
- I felt my occiput/vertex shaped pointed upwards which was followed by yellow, light flash, like a shock, I had to open my eyes (pr 8 - med)
- Feeling of being accelerated forward/upward
- I felt a lightheartedness in the room and in me at the time the remedy was passed around, then a feeling of heaviness low in the abdomen below the navel - an awareness of that area; later after putting the remedy down a heavy feeling in mind and body (pr 3- med)
- *....Very light bright surroundings, I think I was looking at snow, then I noticed a shadow ...(pr 12 -dr.)
- It started with a light feeling then came red flames or glittering red and white (maybe blood). It was not frightening. Then it turned into a grey fog or cloud. With the redness there was a feeling of being straight (physical). With the grey cloud there came a very heavy sensation starting from the throat down which I could not resist. Steadily and slowly it kind of squeezed me towards the floor (like a grey plastic)..........
It all made the impression of a slow motion movie. It was very difficult to get out of the meditation (pr 6- med)
- When I knew I was lost, the darkness came again and everything was black (pr 12 -dr.)
- Sensation of being smaller
- Heaviness in both lungs as if fluid was in it; had to remind myself to breathe
- Heavy and weak feeling in the heart region
- Very heavy, like walking in dark mud
- Dark islands, dark water
- A friend of mine said: "You have such a heavy energy, I don't want to be near you" (pr 6)
- My body is heavy, feeling as if drugged, everything is an effort physically and mentally (pr 3)
- *.........The person who is going to do the proving is blond with a beard (just as it turned out to be although I have never seen him before.....) (pr 11, dream two nights before the proving)
- I knew something would happen to a participant (who was too reckless in cycling) and something did happen and now I am angry at myself that I didn't warn her enough (pr 18)
- Dream "Noah's Ark" about forming a new society in the future and the preparation for it by going through the dark states of the unconscious (pr 24)
- I see that my chakras turn to the right (pr 4)
- (I went to bed with the question if proving the Wailing Wall was a right thing to do) *..........They ask me about the future and this is what I said: "There is no future and there is no past. The snake bites its own tail. When you look at a football pitch, you do not ask: Is the left side the past and the right side the future? It is all one - there will be an "almost" end of the world. For every million killed, only one person will be left but the walls will be left standing. Whether you do a proving or not will make no difference because this is inevitable. Everything is pre-written. History has been decided upon already. It is programmed in our genes. There is no beginning and no end. Love that comes from the heart is human love. Universal love is something else..." (which I felt in the dream but forgot shortly after waking).
- * I am in a town after a revolution. The town is all destroyed and I have to take care of the children, mine and my brother's. Someone I care for (I don't know whom) is held hostage at the top of the highest building in town, a skyscraper, which now serves as the headquarter of the revolutionaries. I go there with the children. I have to go up the tower without us being seen or killed, but at each floor there is a guard, each one a champion in a different martial art. At each floor I fight him, get killed as well as the children but wake up with the children at the next floor up, get up, fight the guard, get killed, wake up one floor higher and so on. I try different tactics on the guards, as I am learning from my past mistakes (to hide, to confront head on, different strategies) but the guard always has a different way, masters a different martial art so that he always gets me in the end. But as I go on, I become less and less afraid (I know I'm going to come back to life), more and more calm, more and more detached and feel more and more power within myself.
- * I dream of a great fire at the center of the earth, like a big furnace with people shovelling coal into it. Nearby some people kneel and bend down, praying to and adoring the fire.
- * A civil war scene - a tank in the streets explodes as people look on. I am afraid that pieces will land on my head. Further in the mess and disorder that ensues, an old man near a cart tells me that people and objects all have a different "frequency". He explains that certain people, nations and things vibrate according to frequency number 1, the most special. He says there are seven different frequencies and that elements at each frequency level attract one and other. Example, a gypsy and a guitar, both number 1 frequency, attract each other. Thus, he says, can desire be understood as an attraction between elements of similar frequencies. (pr 11)
- Heavy feeling, as if being encased in armor; thought patterns couldn't form, were stopped or empty. Dark, slow and sluggish, trapped, couldn't get beyond the wall (pr 12 -med)
- Pressure between eyebrows and as if shutters from the sides and in front (med)
- Coma like sleep
- Time stopped in a way (med)
- Feeling in throat: sticky and slow, no reaction could be made; extending to chest, difficulty to breathe - "slow motion movie" (pr 6- med)
- Observation: very depressed after falling from bike, asking why this happened, there must be some explanation - could not get out of this (pr 19)
- On going to bed as if a rope around my legs above the ankles (pr 19)
- I feel myself being pulled strongly by somebody and I shriek: Noooo....... And then the shriek ceases suddenly. (pr 23)
- * I am torn in myself between two men. One reliable, intelligent and sane and the other, absent, unfaithful, liar and extremely attractive. So much so that whenever I see him I cannot resist him (he looks like Warren Beaty the actor). And I wonder every time when I am not with him why do I go back each time? Why can't I just stop? He is like an irresistable drug. (pr 11)
- * ........then I started to run but knew I could not get away. When I knew I was lost, the darkness came again and everything was black.. (pr 12)
- * I am walking in busy street and I see from far somebody that I don't want to meet. She is a friend of mine from 30 years ago, a very intense person whom I like but cannot really be with for long times because she is too intense and loquacious. I try to avoid her by going into a tunnel where the train pass. I run all the way through the tunnel to the other side of it. But she has seen me and runs after me and finally gets to me to talk. I feel trapped because I cannot tell her the truth about not wanting to be with her. (pr 23)
- I feel suffocated with my roommate, I feel more distant and roommate is very clingy (after talking about it >).
- *..........I am strangled by something. I see myself in the dream, my neck is bloody, a kind of weal and I cannot utter any sound. I have a lot of grief but I cannot express it (because it is physically impossible) (pr 20)
- Main theme of dreams: getting into something and not being able to get out (pr 1)
- Several provers noticed a reduction in their cigarette craving (also a form of entanglement)
Grief, forsaken, alone
- * In South Africa, I belong to a big family who are in vine-culture. The father, the true head of the family, died. As one of his daughters I have to hold a speech during the funeral. But I can not utter a word; I am strangled by something. I see myself in the dream, my neck is bloody, a kind of weal and I cannot utter any sound. I have a lot of grief but I cannot express it (because it is physically impossible). The other members of the family blame me for not doing my duty as a daughter. Later in the dream I am back in the place where I am born. I am sitting on a bench in the center of the village and I am looking for familiar faces to tell that I am in mourning. There is nobody. (pr 20)
- In the afternoon I went cycling with other. I was the last one. A couple ahead of me said that we were cycling in pairs. I thought: "But not me, I am alone, I am the only one who is alone". I saw the others ahead of me a lot further than they were in reality (pr 6).
- While riding on the bike with the group I felt very lonely. On one hand I was sad that I felt lonely while I was among friends. On the other hand I wanted to be left alone and I rode ahead to be on my own. (pr 16)
- A friend of mine said: "You have such a heavy energy around you, I don't want to be near you". I felt no offence or grief, I took it as a matter of fact that I am supposed to be alone (fatalistic) (pr 6)
- I get a pressing pain in the chest, I feel dizzy and very nauseous, I think I have to vomit. I have to get out of the class and walk around and I feel a lot of grief in my chest with the feeling that if I let this out I can't stop crying. Somebody talks to me and this helps me to "stay here", also feeling my feet on the ground helps. But there is still a lot of dizziness and pain in the chest as if from a suppressed cry. I know I couldn't stop crying if I start, I have to walk or talk to others, I feel alone in this dream state, I need caressing, would like to be in somebody's arms and just cry (also writing this down helps). (pr 6)
- I see a face like a mask. A deep furrow has been cut into the face under each eye down to the chin. Tears and blood runs down from them and make a puddle of blood in the form of a heart. (pr 23 -med)
- There isn't a feeling of integration with the group anymore (as I experienced the first two days of the proving) (pr 21)
- I don't feel any connection to any of these people at the seminar (pr 3)
Persecuted, escape, war, police, raid
- I am escaping something, I feel very exhausted, I have run from along way. Heart beats heavily. Sensation of heaviness everywhere. When I look over my right shoulder to see who or what chases me, I fear to fall to the left. (pr 19 -med)
- In the night I dream that there is a soldier hunting for me and I just have to run. I am bored and frustrated in all of that running alone (pr 6).
- * Very light bright surroundings, I think I was looking at snow, then I noticed a shadow I had to investigate. When I went to see what was happening everything was blocked off and I asked why, what is the problem? People like guards said to me: "There is no problem, we are just testing something". I was aware that everything was dark now. Suddenly I didn't believe them, I turned away and out of the corner of my left eye came a flash of light like an electric cord sparking. This happened again and I knew something was wrong. The guards felt my unease. I felt unsafe and knew I must run from here but I had also to pretend that everything was OK. Then I started to run but knew I could not get away. When I knew I was lost, the darkness came again and everything was black. I woke up very frightened and felt an urgent need to lock the door even though I knew it was locked. The fear disappeared quickly. (pr 12)
- I see the Chinese woman who took care of me in my childhood, running with me in her arms and shrieking, she runs to a hole in the ground and jumps into it (I am a few months old), aeroplanes pass and drop bombs around us. (pr 23)
- *.............He is about to pass the remedy when suddenly from another seminar a person comes who rushes to the people in the back row and tells them not to do this proving and that the organisers cannot be trusted. People start getting agitated, get up on the tables and start throwing stones at the person directing the proving until it all becomes a riot (à la Paris, may '68). People overturn cars, throw Molotov cocktails, bombs, stones. Smoke, screams, explosions.........(pr 6)
- * My husband is pursued by ? and I am very worried about him. I decide to hide him in the metro behind a rack full of coats. The metro will leave any minute but before that somebody in uniform comes to look for suspects in each wagon. In the end the doors are closed but the train doesn't leave. My husband is trapped and I am afraid he will suffocate. I see that the uniformed man leaves to look for something else and I quickly get my husband out of the train. Now he goes to organise people for a revolt instead of hiding. I feel terrified. (pr 23)
- * Dead bodies or pieces of bodies which I placed on black ? (no fear in me), just organising the results of the war (pr 26)
- *.........All our baby clothes as well as my own children's were there, as well as a few other torture instruments (not in reality) such as belts to tie us down to our chairs.......(pr 11)
- * I had a fear that somebody was coming through the door, but the fear was not reachable in a way. It had nothing to do with reality, aware that this fear had nothing to do with my feelings (pr 27)
- * I am in a town after a revolution. The town is all destroyed and I have to take care of the children, mine and my brother's. Someone I care for (I don't know whom) is held hostage at the top of the highest building in town, a skyscraper, which now serves as the headquarter of the revolutionaries. .....(pr 11)
- * Me, my husband and another couple have murdered a man (who deserved it), all of the time we spent trying to get rid of the body by putting it into a car, driving the car and trying to find a way to get rid of it as well as escaping the police. (pr 11)
- * A civil war scene - a tank in the streets explodes as people look on. I am afraid that pieces will land on my head. Further in the mess and disorder that ensues,.......(pr 11)
Synchronicities
(striking events that happened to participants during the proving and fit remarkably
into themes of the remedy being proved)
- Sleepless until 2 a.m.; working on cases in my sleep; 4 a.m. loud noises in the street, 4 police cars; 4.45 a.m. Police raid house opposite, shouting, hammering on door, lights flashing. They break down the door. Lots of noise. I am not frightened but I can't sleep (5-6-'98) (pr 9)
- During the closing lecture of the seminar (and proving) a lot of jetfighters passed by and we heard the noises of machine-guns. We all had the feeling: "They are coming...(the Russians?)". It turned out to be an air-show on the beech of Scheveningen with fireworks.
- I noticed while meditating that I was kind of protecting my laptop-computer (in front of me) then I realised there was an outrageous explosion of rage coming up wanting to smash my computer (pr 7 med)
- I was very irritated and annoyed by "stupid" remarks in the group (in relation to dream provings) (pr 24)
- First I noticed that I got clumsy, dropped things, bumped my hands against things (not at all my style), there was a kind of paralysed feeling in my right arm and hand. Then a rage came up and I wanted to smash the kitchen oor with my right foot and wanted to throw things (pr 1)
- On a polite question the answering was abrupt and harsch, irritated: "No!!". (pr 1)
- Seeing myself as a 2 year old child running down the street to get to the toilet in time and not making with it. My mother reprimanded me. Now I feel very angry because I didn't deserve it. I have always thought that my mother was right and that I was the one to blame. (pr 9 -med: curative)
- Observation: cycled very fast, something of aggression in the speed (pr 19)
- On waking I was very angry at something that happened two days ago (pr 16)
- * I see my sister walking with a puppy. She orders the puppy: "Stand!!" but he is running around. She is angry and frustrated. (pr 16)
Throat
- (during meditation: image) I see an elephant coming from the circus, I can see into his throat, an enormous throat. I can see a long way into it, see the walls and the mucous membrane, no feelings with it (pr 5 - med)
- I had the sensation of having an enormous throat, could look into it and see the laryngeal rings (pr 9 -med)
- Neck felt long (pr 6 -med)
- Stitching pain in the right side of the throat
- Pain and swollen feeling in the throat, "sticky and slow"; no reaction could be made, extending to chest (pr 6 -med)
- Constricting sensation around throat
- Saw a cavernous mouth with teeth, tongue then dark, slow and sluggish; trapped couldn't get beyond the wall (pr 12- med)
- Small green alligator in my house as the only survivor of more wildlife fauna that was send to my home (?). It was too small to really get frightened but I still had the feeling to stay alert. Once he opened his mouth right in front of me and I could see into his stomach. In there I saw another tiny alligator ready to come out through the mouth (pr l3 - dr)
- After the tingling, a feeling as if whole right scalp and face were almost numb, a sensation of not feeling things so much (the same kind of numbness I have felt after circulation has been cut off and is returning (pr 3 - med)
- Aware of the silence in the room, noticing the very small sounds, and then thinking there were no sounds at all (pr 3 -med)
- Numbness in my fingers lasting for 10 minutes and 3 hours later tingling lasting around 2 minutes (pr 2)
- Colourful visions of cheap jewelry, toys, carnival, circus but no feelings, cannot get into lower part of my body (pr 5 -med)
- There was no sensation/awareness/reaction in the lower part of my body (below hips) (pr 3 -med)
- A friend said that I had a heavy energy and that she didn't want to be near me. I felt no offence or grief, I took it as a matter of fact that I'm supposed to be alone (fatalist). (pr 6)
- Not alive, heavy deadness, no life (pr 12 -med)
- Felt a real indifference to work on the live case, this is very unusual for me. Immediately after the live case I felt "fired up" and enthusiastic but somehow in the afternoon this feeling was replaced by indifference which was quite strong. I did feel a general indifference as well but not as strong (pr 14)
- Yesterday completely indifferent to note-taking, I usually take notes very conscientiously. Yesterday I thought this is all in the books. I am too heavy to concentrate to write all this (pr 3)
- Indifference to outside, timelessness, soundless, no thoughts (pr 25 - med)
- Did not go to evening class - no guilt (usually I would give myself a hard time about it), did little work on the cases, it does not matter to me (usually very conscientious) (pr 3 in tired state)
- I was the observer of everything, viewing from the left side or from behind (pr 9 - med)
- It is unusual for me to have dreams where I am more the observer than a participant (pr 16)
- Had a problem concentrating this afternoon, head heavy, eyelids heavy, would like to lie down (pr 3)
- Omitting letters at the beginning of words this morning (pr 3)
- Disoriented, making mistakes in speaking and writing; saying death instead of birth, my husband's wife instead of my father's wife, eggplant instead of watermelon (pr 21)
- Disoriented, not clear where I was (after waking from a nap) (pr 16)
- Stoned feeling, sleepy (pr 21)
- Next day: feeling unconcentrated, confused, mistakes in writing, not able to listen and write at the same time as usual. Feeling of not having my normal head (pr 23)
- Confusion/Disorientation: mistook the doors several times in my apartment; don't know where I am walking on the street, on the pavement? On the street? (pr 11)
- My own name I did not recognise when I was called (pr 11)
- Everything seemed unreal, like a drug; people seem like aliens (pr 11)
- Feel disjointed, disconnected (lasted all night, same feeling as after taking Opium) (pr 9)
- Had a feeling during the meditation that the two sides of my body, especially from hips upwards were not even: a split between right and left side.
There was no reaction/sensation/awareness in lower part of body (below hips) (pr 3- med)
- Could not get into the lower part of my body, only in the upper part (pr 5 -med)
- Tight, pressing (constricting band-like) around the lower ribcage; need to inhale deeply (pr 10 med)
- Observation by participant of prover 19: split in head and body. Mentally euphoric, talking on numerology etc and physically heavy way of walking, had to pull her legs after her, unhappy body language.
- I am relaxed, my head is going more and more up and bending backward a little, I realised my chakras are turning to the right side (clockwise), I am happy, then I hear a noise from my abdomen. What a reality, paradise and bowels, two parts of mine. I hear a lot of other bowel sounds in the room now (pr 25)
- * I was divorced and ex-husband came with a legal document to sue me. Very unpleasant, I thought it was all settled. No particular feelings except that I wanted to have access to the small children, that I could look after them (In real life I am divorced and around this I have a great deal of anger going nowhere) (pr 3)
- During headache thoughts of all kinds of cares about people (pr 18)
- I knew something would happen to a participant (who was too reckless in cycling) and something did happen and now I am angry at myself that I didn't warn her enough/ didn't take care of her enough (pr18)
Worried and fantasised husband had a car-accident (after phoning him and he was not there). At night I dreamt my husband died in an accident (pr 22)
- * I am in a wagon with four people including my older sister (who is now a Zen Roshi). She is holding two oil-lamps, one of which is resting with a sharp edge on my leg. She does not seem to be concerned. Someone comments about it and I move my leg so that the lamp falls off the wagon (intentionally). I have the feeling she was not concerned about me so I was not concerned for her lamp. Immediately I feel remorse for being so selfish and mean, I apologise (pr 24)
-* I dreamt that I was in Holland, sitting outdoors in a restaurant with friends. The menu's were in dutch only and I was upset about it a little. A boy of about 14 came from a nearby building and gave milk in a bowl to a yellow labrador dog. He left and a few minutes later the boy's mother came downstairs. She did not know the dog was fed. She went to give him milk and the dog acted so excited, as if he was not already fed at all. I thought what a deceitful, cunning dog, cheating the owner like that. (pr 16)
- * An old man and his wife are preparing to eat a steak in the street in front of my house. The steak is being prepared in an aluminium dish and I see a big hole in one of the dishes and all the juice is dripping out on the floor and on the gas stove. I think about how I could help them (they don't realise there is a problem). I go in the house to look for something to close the hole. I finally take a plate and I go out and I find them sitting together on the street eating with their fingers a piece of completely overdone steak. They look very happy. I feel I came too late, feel guilty. (pr 23)
- I see the Chinese woman who took care of me in my childhood, running with me in her arms and shrieking, she runs to a hole in the ground and jumps into it (I am a few months old), aeroplanes pass and drop bombs around us. (pr 23 - med)
- *..People overturn cars, throw Molotov cocktails, bombs, stones. Smoke, screams, explosions. I am carrying people, adult people like babies (legs crossed around my waist and their heads on my shoulders) into the building for rescue. I carry men and women and they are not too heavy, just like small children......The feeling in the dream was of great responsibility, alarm and power (pr 11)
- * I went back to the house of my childhood along with my brother. The basement of the house was a museum to our childhood. All objects and clothes had been preserved there intact, neatly folded, hanging or exposed. We went through it remembering each artifact. All our baby clothes as well as my own children's were there, as well as a few other torture instruments (not in reality) such as belts to tie us down to our chairs. I told him to take all the baby clothes and to take it home to use for his own children. My mother and grandmother were there (dead in reality) and were both getting married to 2 men. My mother was marrying Charles de Gaulle (!). I was very happy for her. I saw how we were now (my brother and I) taking care of our own parents. How the roles were reversed. But all was much better now. (pr 11)
- * I am huge, like a giant, naked from the waist up. Two rows of people are standing lined up in front of me: one of men and one of women. One by one they come up to my enormous breasts and suck them briefly then they leave and then the next one comes etc Feeling: power, protection (desire to protect), mother or feminine power, like a goddess (pr 11).
Synchronicity: in the newspaper (De Volkskrant) of the last seminar day there was an article "Gek uit de baarmoeder" (Crazy out of the womb) in which was related that mothers who were pregnant during the German invasion in 1940 had a bigger chance to get a child that would develop schizophrenia later in life.
* I was on a boat with an enormous cargo-hold. The boat was emptied, loads of sacks on cables. In my dream I think: this boat is as the body of a woman, the cargo-hold is her belly, as big as a cathedral. All those sacks that had to be hoisted out are hanging on umbilical cords (pr 20)
Meditation: I had the feeling that I was bended (in the form of a little shrimp), there was a bubbly, tingling sensation in my whole body. Before my eyes I saw a warm, bright orange/rose hue as if sunlight through curtains. I had the feeling of rocking to and fro as if I was in a big fish-bowl. I felt tears running over my cheeks. I wasn't sad but it was a kind of memory of something that will never come back (pr 20 -med).
- I find myself in the uterus of my son's wife and I can see her daughter, a beautiful girl (pr 23)
- Cutting, burning pain across navel extending to whole abdomen
Laughing, giggling, mocking
- Laughing, joking, silly (pr 15)
- Lots of crazy laughter and giggling (pr 16)
- Hilarity and laughing a lot (pr 3)
- Easily giggling (pr 21)
- Constant desire to laugh; an uncontrollable laughter to tears. It is triggered by the fact that people seem funny, a little alien, everything they do seems funny and provokes laughter and mocking. Also a contageous laughing - just to hear someone laugh can send me into hysterical laughing fits (pr 11)
-During the day and evening: irrepressible laughing, off and on all evening with the ability to turn everything into extremely funny descriptions - mocking (pr 23)
- A twelve foot penis that could be admired (pr 7)
- A big white flamengo (larger than normal) with black "fingers" on the edge of the wings. Heavy flying. (pr 19)
- As if my two front top teeth were longer and touched my lower teeth first, like a chipmonth/beaver (pr. 24)
- * I am huge, like a giant, naked from the waist up. Two rows of people are standing lined up in front of me: one of men and one of women. One by one they come up to my enormous breasts and suck them briefly then they leave and then the next one comes etc (pr 11).
- * I was standing at the remnants of something that had been mine: my house and my vegetable garden. Now there was only a heap of peels and skins and from the house some remainders of paint, wood and stone. I was surprised that this was all that remained (pr 20 -dr)
- Sensation of being smaller
- (during meditation: image) I see an elephant coming from the circus, I can see into his throat, an enormous throat. I can see a long way into it, see the walls and the mucous membrane, no feelings with it (pr 5 - med)
- *.....(in bed) I turn to the wall and look out of the window, there is a huge purple snake there wrapped in two clumps on the tree branches. I feel a fear and note that the window is closed. I see the head of the snake and we look at each other. Then a strong wind causes the snake to fall of the branches. I step to the window and watch him fall. I am amazed that I am high above the ground, like in a skyscraper whereas I felt that I was in a downstairs bedroom. The tree too was enormous and the snake looked like it was falling down a chute. Suddenly it shot to the left and wrapped safely around some branches. I thought this is a powerful or magical snake. (pr 22)
- I saw the others ahead of me a lot further than they were in reality (pr 6)
- A snail without a shell (pr 18 -med)
- Big brown bear comes out of my centre and walks away. It has a little bright bird on top of its head. Heart beats strongly (pr 19 -med)
- A big white flamingo (larger than normally) with black "fingers" on the edge of the wings. Heavy flying.
In later scene it stands near a fresh cool clean water stream in the desert, now it turns into a human male dressed in light blue almost white dress. He walks the stream downwards away from me (pr 19 -med )
- Small green alligator in my house as the only survivor of more wildlife fauna that was send to my home (?). It was too small to really get frightened but I still had a creepy feeling and stayed alert. Once he opened his mouth right in front of me and I could see into his stomach. In there I saw another tiny alligator ready to come out through the mouth (pr l3 - dr)
- Chewing like a camel (from side to side) when waking up from a nap (pr 11)
- Meditation: aware of hard and different surfaces under feet like sand, brick........Later more sand as I moved out into the dessert on a camel (pr 9)
- * my genitals covered with sand.... (pr 24)
- Chewing like a camel (from side to side) when waking up from a nap (pr 11)
- * In the navajo dessert.......(pr 11)
- A twelve foot penis that could be admired (pr 7)
- * I am in a house and a woman wants to sleep with me; she is quite straightforward about it but I have course sand all over my genitals from lying in it. I am not interested, not aroused (pr 24)
- * Invited to have sex with a man, lying on his back, I can only see the legs with the knees raised and a limp penis. I feel a desire and then the dream fades.........I come back in the dream with an unpleasant feeling and the realisation that my husband has had sex with me while I was asleep. I am angry and express this to him. I turn to the wall and look out of the window, there is a huge purple snake there wrapped in two clumps on the tree branches. I feel a fear and note that the window is closed. I see the head of the snake and we look at each other. Then a strong wind causes the snake to fall of the branches. I step to the window and watch him fall. I am amazed that I am high above the ground, like in a skyscraper whereas I felt that I was in a downstairs bedroom. The tree too was enormous and the snake looked like it was falling down a chute. Suddenly it shot to the left and wrapped safely around some branches. I thought this is a powerful or magical snake. ( When it landed in lower branches it was still in two clumps, never stretched out while falling. I think it resembles an image of the female organs - ovaries and falopian tubes) (pr 22)
- Tingling vertex, as if under scalp (pr 17)
- Right sided headache with an uncomfortable pressure in right ear; pain was just above the forehead on the right side, after waking from a nap (pr 16)
- Drawing pain right side of neck extending into occiput (pr 5 -med)
- Congestion of blood to the head, fullness (pr 15 - med)
- Aggravation of headache with a lot of caring thoughts (pr 18)
- Pain, soreness and bruised feeling in neck and upper back (pr 11)
- Heaviness of head and upper back (pr 11)
- Head, as if empty and full of air. As if my head/skull stopped above my eyes or was a shell with wind inside; also as if cotton in head (pr 11)
- Head feels congested and full (pr 11)
- I woke up in the morning and before opening my eyes I turned from lying on my left side to my right side. I became very dizzy with my eyes still closed. (pr 16)
- On waking my head was buzzing, especially at the top and I felt slightly nauseous (pr 11)
- Vertigo, falling to the right
- Loss of balance in the car when making a turn
- Dizziness and nauseous feeling (3x)
- Heat in face (pr 16)
- Sparkling dots before eyes (when focussing nearby while looking in the bright sky), then black wisps like smoke wisps with a small dark centre spot (pr 3)
- Eyes are burning as if extremely tired (pr 11)
- Ears and nose stopped (pr 11)
- Ringing right ear (have a chronic ringing in left ear, now it seemed to include right ear as well) (pr 17)
- Noises in right ear
- Sudden loss of hearing for a few seconds as if cotton in my ears; also buzzing (high pitched) in ears (pr 11)
In the upper teeth strange feeling as if growing forward (pr 9).
- Sneezing in morning 10 a.m. - noon (pr 9)
- Coryza for an hour around 9.30 p.m. (pr 23)
- Tootache in upper right side, slightly stabbing with pain in right cheekbone (pr 9).
- Chewing like a camel (from side to side) when waking up from a nap (pr 9)
- Tingling or twitching under the skin below the left eye (like and insect or hair) (pr 15 - med)
- Red slightly painful eruption on right upper lip edge (pr 3)
- Tender swollen hard gland 1-1.5 cm size under the angle of the left lower jaw (after one day already less swollen and sore) (pr 3)
- Dry, raw sensation in tonsil area (pr 22)
- Stitching in right throat, burning right ear, middle of right breast area burning stitching
- I had a pain in the throat with a swollen feeling: "sticky and slow"; no reaction could be made. This feeling extended to the chest, I had a difficulty to breathe. My neck felt long and my mouth was opened firmly. (pr 6 - med)
- Burning constriction in throat (pr 27)
- Slightly constricted, fauces sore, from 2 p.m. until retiring on two consecutive days, no difficulty in swallowing (pr 9)
- I feel very dizzy and very nauseous, I think I have to vomit. I have to get out of the class and walk around and I feel a lot of grief in my chest with the feeling that if I let this out I can't stop crying (pr 6)
- Nausea and fainting sensation from severe pain (knee) (pr 16)
- Desire to eat solid food (meat) not a sushi (pr 3)
- Loss of all appetite (pr 9)
- Appetite for breakfast usually don't eat before noon (pr 15)
- No interest in food (in sleepy, tired state) (pr 3)
- Abdomen sensitive to belt (pr 17)
- Constipation (pr 11)
- Cramps on abdomen, severe from 22.30 continuing all night, could not sleep. (pr 26)
- Burning, cutting pain across navel and whole abdomen (pr 26)
- vomiting in evening, diarrhea next morning (pr 26)
- sick and sleepy whole day, could not stand up, talking difficult, could not eat or drink anything (pr 26)
- Pains in the abdomen across at umbilicus level, sharp pains, wanted to lie very still, icy cold feet, warm face, no sweat , wanted to be covered; diarrhoea, running like tap liquid, yellow pasty colour, pouring out, not explosive, smelled sweetish; vomiting started later; no energy to get out of bed or go to toilet, ended up in vomiting yellow bile, perspired in the face during vomiting - couldn't stop thinking about food - preferred to lie on right side, knees drawn up; no thirst, dry mouth (food-poisoning?) (pr 3)
- Pain as if a lump in the right breast, holding the breast > (pr 3 )
- Pain in chest area towards left breast (pr 2)
- Fullness in the centre of chest (pr 15 - med)
- I get a pressing pain in the chest (parasternal left) (pr 6)
- Heavy, quick pulse, hammering; 90 beats per min (pr 10)
- Discomfort under right scapula (pr 9)
- Heart pounding, went after ten minutes
- Copious perspiration trunk at night (pr 13)
- Palpitation (pr 27)
- Heart pounding, went after 10 minutes (pr 9)
- Pain ankle/shinbone
- Pain in left knee, started in both knees and then remained in the left. When the pain becomes severe there is nausea and fainting sensation and I am on the verge of tears. (pr 16)
- Heat and heaviness in elbows and lower arms, extending to wrists, left side< (pr 15 - med)
- Itching legs, hollow of the left knee, left upper calf and the inner side of both ankles, left upper thigh on the inner side, have to scratch but no relief; < on going to bed, > cold application (pr 3)
- Itching in small spots, right thigh and index finger, no eruption (pr 9)
- Woke up in middle of the night (4 a.m.) with painful cramps in calves - it came and went suddenly; next morning calves still feel achy and tight.
- Cramp in right calve in the night, coming up slowly (pr 13)
- Restless feet (pr 13, 19)
- Discoloration, purple, of toes when standing
- Paralytic feeling in right hand, incoordinated, dropping things; extending to shoulder
- Unbearable twitchings of the muscles in the whole right leg, < on top of the foot, only after going to bed; as if the whole leg would go into a cramp. Spasms < when leg cold. (pr 9)
- Frequent urination (pr 3)
- Feeling of full bladder (pr 21)
- Small cyst-like eruption perineum left side (pr 22)
- Pain in left ovary, started around 1 p.m., in waves, drawing, pulling pain, rubbing> (pr 16)
- Metrorrhagia during coition (dd arg-n); about five painless contractions, with gushing of bright red blood; stopped spontaneously and did not recur. (pr 9)
- Difficulties falling asleep, unrefreshed in the morning (pr 6)
- Woke at 4.30 and was sleepless afterwards (very unusual) (pr 24)
- Couldn't sleep well at night. No dreams, difficult to fall asleep and unrefreshed in the morning.(pr 6)
- Comatose sleep (pr 11)
- Very deep sleep, not pleasant, as if lost time
- Sleepless until 2 a.m. - working on cases in my sleep (pr 9)
- Sleep, very light, waking 2 a.m.- 3.30 and 5 a.m.; thinking in sleep, aware of all the noises in sleep, awoken by wind in sleep - fear of wind (pr 9)
- Sleepy in daytime, sleepless at night (pr 9)
- Brain waking up 4 p.m. onwards (pr 9)
- Saw sheep in a boxkite - flying! I thought I was awake until I realised sheep weren't really in the room. Dream state all night but sleepless. Was kept awake by every noise (cats, people, talking) (pr 9)
- Very heavy sleep with unremembered dreams (unusual for me) - sleepy during day (pr21)
- Hard to wake up in the morning but after I get out of bed I feel awake (pr 21)
- Feeling very tired around 11 a.m. (pr 11)
- Shaking from fatigue morning after sleepless night (pr 9)
- Tired in spite of 11 hours sleep, had to drag myself out of bed, felt that I could stay in bed, dozing and drifting all day (pr 3)
Fatigue, extreme tiredness, I walk home in a daze, as if in a dream (pr 11)
Sensations heightened: the heat of the sun was burning and the cool of the shade freezing (pr 16)
- All my body muscles are tense (pr 23)
- This morning when I awoke, I had a sense of freedom and the words I used myself was: "Like a bird that has just been let out of a cage". I felt great.
I have a few personal issues that I have been trying to resolve and this morning I felt that I was on my way to resolve these issues, whereas in the past I've gone round in circles. A very positive effect! I have not found the resolution but feel that it is close and I am heading in the right direction (pr 14)
- Seeing myself as a 2 year old child running down the street to get to the toilet in time and not making with it. My mother reprimanded me. Now I feel very angry because I didn't deserve it. I have always thought that my mother was right and that I was the one to blame.
- Complete and utter impulsiveness. Felt free of every constraint, totally centered, very sexual and sensual. A madness in paradise. It seems a self-satisfied, contained, whole state achieved by impulse, breaking down of barriers and the recognition of my own needs and getting them met. (pr 9 -med)
- Instead of anticipating anxiously my trip to Germany after this, I am not worrying. I think it will take care of itself. I am surprised how well I am coping with the seminar. Usually I would be feeling more sorry for myself. Now I feel confident and that things do not matter, that I can deal with it all. OK not to hand in an analysis of the life-case. Usually I would have felt very guilty not to do it. (pr 3)
- Felt emotionally detached in a good way, more centered within myself, I definitely feel this is from the remedy (pr 17)
- During the discussion and evaluation of the remedy-proving symptoms I had the feeling that I didn't want to be there, not wanting to listen to all this stuff, couldn't really hear what was being said and didn't want to. After hearing the dream of the giant woman with the enormous breasts and men and women coming up to suck them, I felt very much better. I could hear again and was interested in what was going on. My clarity and well being all seemed much better, like a weight having been lifted. (pr 12)
- * I went back to the house of my childhood along with my brother. The basement of the house was a museum to our childhood. All objects and clothes had been preserved there intact, neatly folded, hanging or exposed. We went through it remembering each artifact. All our baby clothes as well as my own children's were there, as well as a few other torture instruments (not in reality) such as belts to tie us down to our chairs. I told him to take all the baby clothes and to take it home to use for his own children. My mother and grandmother were there (dead in reality) and were both getting married to 2 men. My mother was marrying Charles de Gaulle (!). I was very happy for her. I saw how we were now (my brother and I) taking care of our own parents. How the roles were reversed. But all was much better now.
Feelings: a good dream, sensation of closing a circle. A feeling of forgiveness for past offences. Acceptance. Adulthood. (pr 11)
- Reduction in cigarette craving (several provers)
Prover 1, Y.L., female, 38 yrs, proving 15th of may, unexpectedly triggered by the sound of the word Ayahuasca, the scientific name Banisteriopsis caapi didn't work, did not participate in the seminar - provers 2 - 24 were participants of the international seminar in The Hague from 29-5 till 6-6-'98 organised by HIN.
Prover 2, R.F., female, 29 yrs, not present at meditation/no rem.
Prover 3, G.E., female, 52 yrs,
Prover 4, D. female, 48 yrs
Prover 5, K.D., female, 40 yrs, held remedy
Prover 6, A.R., female, 29 yrs, took the remedy
Prover 7, P.C., male
Prover 9, J.T., female, 48 yrs, held remedy
Prover 10, I. female, 50 yrs, sniffed remedy
Prover 11, M.M., female, not present at meditation/no remedy
Prover 12, T.C., female, 48 yrs
Prover 13, K.D., male, 45 yrs,
Prover 14, L.R., female, 46 yrs
Prover 15, D.S., male, 44 yrs, sniffed remedy left nostril
Prover 16, S.G., female, 34 yrs, not present at meditation/no rem.
Prover 17, P. , male, 53 yrs, took remedy
Prover 18, A.T., female, 45 yrs
Prover 19, R., female, 35 yrs, held remedy
Prover 20, E.F. female,
Prover 21, A.D., female, 38 yrs, sniffed it and under pillow
Prover 22, S.E., female, 41 yrs, held remedy
Prover 23, S.K., female, inhaled remedy
Prover 24, P.R., male, 42 yrs
The provers 2, 11, 16 who were not present at the meditational proving and did not have any physical contact with the remedy turned out to be three of the best provers. The fact that they did not want to participate, is already indicative of their sensitivity.
The MS had started in a period when her youngest child was 3 years and she was busy to get more independent, to get on her own feet (as she says); finding a job, not a volunteers job but a paid one. She had a very strong ambition for it but also a fear: who do you think you are that you can do that; you won't be strong enough to do that ("voice of her mother"). Though she made to the outside world the impression that she was quite independent.
The MS started in the lower limbs and later got in the arms too, she is in a wheelchair now. She can be furious if her legs do not do what she wants, she can literally hit them then. Most problems are worse on the right side (eczema round right eye, trembling right arm<, psoriasis right elbow, numbness round mouth right side). In the lower back is the blockade - below it there is a total loss of control, above there is still some.
Feels completely lost and alone. The bodily handicap is very threatening; if she lies in bed she can't turn herself and needs someone to turn her. Gets into a panic if she is left alone then. Feels useless and to be a burden for everybody.
There is absolutely no acceptance of the disease, there is a constant struggle against it, does every therapy that she hears of. Regularly consults her spiritual guide via dowsing who is giving her (often very sensible) advice on her condition. Dreams that she can walk again. She does not accept a lift-device to lift her from the bed in the morning, feels in a panic, powerless and overtaken and treated coldly and impersonal. A warm human being has to help her out of the bed and has to push the wheelchair, needs company badly. She realises that she is very energy-consuming.
"If I have to stay in a wheelchair I feel "dumped", it is humiliating, I cannot participate in life anymore. I feel a block of concrete, but I go on and fight against it, if I would accept I will be that block of concrete again". (When she was 23 yrs - 15 yrs before the MS - somebody described her feet as being in a concrete block).If there is some amelioration and she gets hope again then there is always a relapse.
Family situation: she is the eldest of 5 children, a very strict religious background; a very controlling and cold mother, she had constipation as a child and her mother forced bowel movements artificially, she felt raped, absolutely powerless/helpless. She was often left alone, cried but nobody came. She still experiences her mother as a drag on her: "how do I get rid of a "sticky mother"?. Her father was a very ambitious man.
Homeopathic remedies that had a favorable effect in the past: Alum, Aur-mur, Nat-mur, Sol, Berlin Wall, Gels, Thuja.
The prescription of Ayahuasca about Mid- May '98 was a synchronicity. Right in the middle of the proving experience of prover nr 1 this patient calls. We considered this remedy because of the paralytic feeling, right side< (symptoms prover 1), hitting the own legs if they don't obey (similarity with the ayahuasca chastising ritual), the patient can have an absent, dreamy gaze (reminding of a drug remedy) and the remedy was kinesiologically confirmed.
F.U. " I slept one night with Ayahuasca 30 under the pillow - ophistotonus got worse, didn't sleep well because of it. Next morning a fury came up because my legs did not obey and I hit them again. An enormous despair came up afterwards, didn't want to live anymore in this condition, a lot of crying. I am very upset with this reaction and do not ever want to take this again. I dreamt that people wanted to do something with my garden, they did what they wanted, decided things without asking me, felt very helpless and powerless, could not do anything about it.
Evaluation: a suppressed despair came up, the remedy gave the emotional strength to cope with this despair and therefore it can come up now. The first step towards "acceptance" of the situation.
I explained my vision on the situation and advised to hold the remedy next time only for a few minutes in the hand.
She consulted her spiritual guide and he agreed with me, so five days after the first "dose" she held the remedy for 8 minutes. Three days later the same reaction came (in the morning again) as the first time: a lot of despair, a lot of crying, (but no ophistotonus), "It is a mix of anger and despair. I feel that under the anger is a lot of grief; feel in a prison, very angry that this has happened in my life, how do I get out of this, there is no escape, as if the glass-bell from my youth is there again, the lid on me again. I bump against a wall. I am confronted with how bad my situation is and this is not livable. I have cried a lot and noticed that for a few hours I had more strength in my arms. My spiritual guide advised me to take it again in 4 days.
I had one dream that I could catch a plane just in time (in the past I often was too late)".
Male homosexual, 47 yrs, with herpes genitalis, symptoms of depersonalisation and narcolepsia.
"After chilling of the head, swimming, a hot shower symptoms start: a hypersensitivity for external impressions, cannot cope with it, everything goes slowly, loose the ability to communicate, do not feel any contact, no enjoyment (though I can make a perfect act). I avoid company then, do not want to be seen. If I have to write a small note, it takes me three hours (time flies by but actions are very slow). When I try to concentrate I get sleepy, there is a compulsory need of sleep but sleep aggravates. Fears come up then, cosmic fears like being sucked into the universe. In my head I have then a funny feeling, a kind of pressure, as if you have been sitting too long in the sun, dull, as if under Valium, floating, no grounding anymore, black-outs. Music-tunes I cannot get out of my head then. In an hours time I change into a completely different person: shy, redrawn, stammering, socially clumsy, forgetful, slow, anxious, loosing my way.
I can get herpes (on penis or scrotum) already after a skin contact like kissing with a (sexual) partner. Before the blisters come I feel very depressed, an intolerable emptiness, no involvement with anything around me. With some partners I never get herpes and with others always. I suppress it with a daily dose of Zovirax.
As a child I had very often attacks of pain in the hollows of my knees, it is between a pain and an itch, as if the muscles/tendons are too short, it is making me crazy, I want to kick it off (which helps) or I have to make a kind of humming-sound. I can still have it rarely. After the Thuja it came back as a reaction, then I had a vision with it of being teared apart by crocodiles.
In my youth I had periods in which it felt as if a snowstorm came over me, the last thought was repeated rumblingly, objects like a match felt like a tree-trunk or things got smaller; everything was vibration around me, whole being was different, confusing.
I am obsessed with big male sexual organs, I do not fuck, the cock sucking gives me the most sexual satisfaction. It evokes a kind of nausea in me when I have come and my partner still didn't - it is then a strain for me to take care of my partner’s satisfaction. I feel with his orgasm his energy is coming in me and my energy fades. My hangover the next day is worse then.
Sometimes I have a masturbation fantasy in which I rape a woman. I think I have an aversion having sex with women because of my mother's behaviour around menstrual hygiene. She cleaned herself with towels that I also had to use. She stank.
Pregancy - birth - youth
My father tried to abort me by kicking my mother in the belly when she was a few months pregnant of me; he said it was from somebody else. I was neglected by my mother, she was never there or she was ill. My mother blackmailed me with her heart complaints, I walked the streets praying that she wouldn't die. She was an alcoholic and led a promiscuous life.
I am in disorder with my fate, I do something wrong, I never succeed and others do, why? I get no more credit from life, my portion of life-energy is used. Things are happening that force me to suicide myself. I did two attempts to hang myself, both times failed. When I am depressed it is as if my room stays dark even if I switch the light on.
I am rejected again and again by partners. I still feel an outsider in the homo-scene. If my partner refuses to have sex with me, I feel very unhappy and rejected, I feel ignored and it feels like I could commit suicide. An arm around me and a good cry is relieving.
In '83 I had a cannabis experience and found out that my biggest threat in life is relaxing situations. I am at ease in tense situations, I am familiar with those. If I am drinking tea with a man and everything is relaxed, anything can happen. If he says: "I am tense" then I can relax again. After the cannabis the mental symptoms got a lot worse, also had paranoia after it.
Periods of procrastination (from exhaustion), postponing everything I planned to do, aversion to do anything, even a sugar pot that falls down I can leave like that. There were periods that I was so tired that I pissed in bottles within reach when lying on the sofa, just to tired to go to the w.c.
I am now in a relation with a man, that kind of "bought" me (he bought an organ for me), but I also loved him. He can be very patronising and dominating, blackmails me when I don't do what he wants, treats me like a child. He is very jealous too.
Dreams
* I saw that parts of my fingers of the right hand were missing, funny - never noticed it before. I must have done it myself but just didn't notice.
* In a crowded tram, some fluid came from my head (there must have been some kind of crack in my skull), I didn't feel any pain. What I liked was the concern of all the others around me. They insisted on me seeing a doctor, they warned the hospital.
* I see a huge high house, when going inside I am struck by the ceiling, beautiful - one enormous sea of light in beautiful pastel tints.
Observation: once while telling a dream about his mother the patient got emotional, wept but I could not tell whether he was playing it or it was genuine; it impressed as a kind of hysterical act.
He can ring on New Years Day or at Easter to say that he wants me to know that it is not going all right with him (experience of the last homeopath).
He can be quite demanding (wants me to potentise the herpes blisters) or wants a second opinion on a new remedy.
There were good reactions on Sulphur, THUJA, Lac maternum and Opium. After the Opium (Jan. '98) the vesicles of the herpes do not appear anymore, the accompanying mental symptoms are still there. Pt started to break up his relationship.
Therapy and Follow up
Mid-May '98 patient got Ayahuasca 30.
The first week very sleepy, could not keep my eyes open. Especially from 16.00 till 19.00. After a siesta of 2 hours very dull and not communicable anymore, as if I have an energy around me that make people avoid contact with me. I am ignored then, not seen (I have lived years like that).
I got back my "migraine" in the hollows of the knees, a drawing pain as if muscles too short. It is as if my knee and the lower part of my upper leg and the upper part of my lower leg are in a vise.
After 10 days I have a hiccough for three hours and very restless legs, I have to trample them, I go bicycling. The next day I am "stoned", high, very relaxed and get a twitching of the left upper lid and have also a lot of flatus. I do not know if these are reactions of the remedy or of one antidepressant pill that I took.
After a highly satisfactory sexual contact (for three hours), I get stitches in my lungs or chest, next day tired and confused.
I got a desire for sugar after Ayahuasca (after Opium there was an aversion sugar).
It is very difficult to end the relationship I have, I have no organ anymore, no one to make love to, nobody on the whole world. But this relationship had to end, it was not healthy. I feel very supported by this remedy to let go.
* I made love with my mother, she had a cock and I sucked it, I was sexually excited though I thought it was a bit strange. My mother agreed and wanted to be there for me.
* I was in bed with my father and mother, my mother went out of bed, my father stayed. At his side there was a fountain pen that I took and put it under my pillow.
* I come into a church, there is a service being held there, I left or lost my keys there and all of a sudden I get them back again but now with a very big and beautiful key-ring. I thought it very nice, a lot of effort was put into it and there was an extra key on it (of the church?). Then I felt I was sitting on two purses, light green, they were not mine but it felt as if I could have them - they were put there for me.
All the people in the church had a cap on, I was allowed in the group, I felt accepted. They showed me a table with all kinds of magazines about organs and I could have them all. The service went on. On the side of the church there was another room, I went there and there I saw my homeopath treating a patient. As soon as he saw me, he welcomed me and started immediately with me (the other patient left). In the corner of the room sits a woman patient naked and with a penis, ugly and unattractive.
My homeopath wanted to see my leg to evaluate some kind of skin reaction (from the last remedy) but he could not see what he wanted to see and had to saw a piece out of it. First I think: has he gone mad? but I trust him somehow - he knows what he is doing and I let him. It hurts tremendously, I feel the saw going through the bone and I scream (this is the first time that I feel pain in a dream!) but there was no other way. After he finished I see that he removed only a piece of skin and did not touch the bone at all. I can feel that he is very concerned and knows exactly what he is doing.
The climbing vine with the form of a thick rope, cable is reminisent of the umbilical cord, the connection with the mother. What can go wrong with an umbilical cord, what can be the original trauma of Ayahuasca? That you get entangled in the umbilical cord, entangled in your mother or your mother's energy. You get stuck in it and it pulls you down, HEAVY feeling. There is no escape, it sticks to you and paralyses.
A concrete and physical expression of this is the actual entanglement of the umbilical cord round the neck of the newborn. But the real pathology starts on the emotional level, the emotional entanglement with the mother that can last a lifetime and that is dragging us down and preventing becoming ourselves. It can be a grief or a guilt that the mother passes on to the unborn during pregnancy, the mother can reject the child. The trauma of ayahuasca will probably be in pregnancy, the time of oceanic/cosmic feelings, the time of functioning of the umbilical cord (symbiosis) on one hand but also the time that the unborn can be loaded with the heavy, grey, dark, black negative energy of a suppressed/not dealt with emotion of the mother, no escape possible.
The only escape possible is getting out of that body, getting lighter, higher. Excarnate, spirit leaving the body (already in pregnancy or a very late incarnation then) - the only communication (lifeline) between body and spirit in this state is the "golden cord" (another analogon of the vine) expressing itself in ayahuasca in the form of flashes of bright light, electric sparks.
So there are two opposite forces in Ayahuasca, one heavy, grey, dark, slow one dragging down eliciting the other (the escape): light, bright, fast, sudden, upward (to the head and beyond). The head goes upward, the body drags down, so the neck gets elongated.
Ayahuasca in potency can give us the strength to go down into the grey, dark, shadow, to feel it, bring it into consciousness and deal with it.
The disentanglement of yourself from the energy of your mother is hindered and paralysed by guilt. Guilt of letting your mother down/alone. (Mother can be projected on everybody you have some kind of relationship with). To cut this umbilical cord, to free yourself a lot of energy is needed, an enormous anger/fury. Guilt robs you from your anger/strength. But when the cord is cut then you have to feel you are alone, you have to do it yourself now, you are responsible for yourself and all that has happened to you. You can see the situation now as it really is and how it was in the past. Feeling the pain of those moments that she was not there for you, when you needed her most. So the healthy anger (freeing yourself out of symbiosis) is often followed by a deep grief/hurt feeling and realising how things really were.
In the Ayahuasca disease-picture the anger/fury is to ward off the pain of the disentanglement of the symbiotic relation. It can be directed at the own body/person, or very often at objects.
Mothering and caring is often one of the most subtle forms of entanglement (and not only in the Ayahuasca picture) often resulting in guilt complexes of the persons being (s)mothered. In every mothering there is a conditional and an unconditional part, also these are entangled, making it very difficult to deal with.
A return to the womb, the time of functional symbiosis, oceanic/cosmic feelings, return to paradise that was the ultimate goal the Indians tried to reach by means of Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca in potency can make you aware that this is an illusion, in this life on earth you are able to do it on your own. The symbiotic relation that you had with your mother shifts to mother earth who has two enormous breasts with enough milk for you as long as you are patient, confident and wait for your turn.
Proving leader: Kees Dam Van Walbeeckstr. 85-3 1058 CM Amsterdam
In the beginning of the thirties Raimundo Irineu Serra, a black rubber tapper, was initiated by the Indians in the use of the consciousness expanding ayahuasca, a mixture of the climbing vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of the Psychoria viridis. After a fast for several days in which he drank only the ayahuasca, he had a vision of a divine female figure (Holy Mary or a Godess of the rainforest) who told him to found a spiritual community. Central in the rituals of this community should be the drinking of the ayahuasca, from now on called the "Daime" (litteral translation: give me). Mapia, deep in the rainforest of Brazil, is the center of the Santo Daime movement.
(From an interview with Alex Polari de Alverga, a Daime disciple)
" Daime is a sacrament, a vehicle for the Force - the Divine Being - that is present in the rainforest and all creation. This eucharist of nature, the vine and the leaf, let us partake of the nature of God. The Santo Daime Doctrine evolved directly out of communion with this living sacrament. The effects of the Daime may vary from person to person, and they often relate to the level on one's apprentice-ship with Daime. It is common for initiates to have visions of animals such as snakes and leopards, similar to those experienced in indigenous psychotropic traditions. Participants may also have visions of friends and relatives, or experience visual insights into past lives and into their psyches. It is unfortunate that ethno-biologists and chemists usually classify the Santo Daime components and other sacred plants as hallucinogens, meaning they produce visions that have nothing to do with reality. For those of us in the Santo Daime Doctrine, the visions of the Daime are much truer guides to reality than is an orthodox materialistic or scientific perspective of the world. In fact the visions we experience in ritual works are remarkably similar to visions and ecstatic states described by saints of many religions. Daime opens the doors of communication between the mind and the astral, a parallel dimension that is inside of us and, at the same time, in the cosmos. Once we experience the irreputable sensation of the universe within us, the only path possible is to pleasurably surrender to the knowledge that we are the universe - both the whole and the part. This idea that the entire universe communicates with the interior of our bodies and minds has been part ot esoteric religious traditions for thousands of years.....
...In most other spiritual practices, when initiates have questions about a meditation technique or a philosophical issue, they generally consult their teacher or spiritual superior first. In contrast, Santo Daime initiates usually work directly on their problems through the knowledge given them by the Daime in the visions (miraçoes)....
....People usually become initiates when, after participating in a number of Daime works, they feel and know that their spiritual quest is with Daime. Officially they become initiates when the Padrinho pins stars to their uniforms on their initiation day. However, most persons speak of receiving their stars from the Daime during a vision, long before the official initiation. One person may have seen a star coming from the astral plane; others may have felt invisible stars being imprinted over their heart chakras, opening that energy center to a new experience of love. When you become an initiate, you affirm that the Daime is your sacrament, guide and Master; that this teacher has helped you get in touch with your true self, your divine light. You are celebrating that union within yourself, but you're also taking on a new challenge of joining the wheel of brotherhood. As an initiate, you're responsible not only for yourself but also for a family of spiritual seekers whose objective is creation of a holy life in a context of a community. You become your own flamekeeper because only you can master the fire within. Only you can cast away your old identity - the crusts of ego, personality, psychic imbalances and spiritual obstacles - that once served as a protective shell for differentiating yourself from the external world. Only you can nourish a new identity that honors your true mission, skills and talents and puts them to use for the community........
.... For the most part, the official all-night "works" (ceremonies) follow the calandar of the catholic church. Commemoration of a sacred day begins on the eve of that date and continues until the following morning. The ceremony begins at sunset, and after the rosary is recited, the Daime is served for the first time (two lines are formed, one of women and one of men, and the firsts of the two lines come to the table where the Daime is served, drink the Daime from a glass, the glass is refilled and then the next man and woman come up etc.)
Thereafter, it is served at two- or three hour intervals thoughout the night, with each participant drinking a dose each time. The Blessing of the Ritual Site is read and the hymnal correspondent to the date is begun. Because of the effects of Daime can be diverse, the hymnals with their ritual songs and dances provide parameters or guides for the internal voyage that the Daime permits. Thus the hymnal influences the objective of the work, the path the work takes and the energy created. During the first part of the ritual, the hymnal is sung accompanied only by the rhythm of maracas (shakers). About midway through the hymnal, there is a break in the ritual, after which other instruments - guitar, accordion, bandolin, banjo, flute - may accompany the hymns. Throughout the ritual, people dance as they sing. Six "wings" - three of men and three of women - form a human star of David around the sixpointed star table at the center of the church. Each wing is composed of rows of participants lined up according to height. As each hymn is sung, the dancers move in a rhythmic right to left pattern, using simple synchronised steps. This dancing plays a very important role in forming a strong spiritual current among the participants. It's almost as if they're preparing bread dough - the energy is stretched and kneaded until it is ready. Sometimes people have been dancing around the Star of David condensing and expanding the energy for a while, the energy gets so thick it can be seen. From time to time during this working of the energy, the Force reaches an apex as our individual currents synchronize. At these moments, each one of us can telepathically sense our role in the creation of this incredible energetic field. At the same time, we can feel a very intense harmony within the field resulting from the union of all those minds working towards the same spiritual objective. During these moments of harmony, individual visions (miraçoes) take place with great frequency and strength.
The true purpose of the ritual is twofold. There is the creation of ecstatic energy that I've been talking about, but the rituals are called "works" for a reason. Initiates know that when they enter a work they have a responsibility to work on themselves, to evolve into more perfect beings, and to merge with God. Daime obliges us to look at ourselves, especially at aspects we don't want to see. Sometimes seeing ourselves as we really are, can be painful, and the pain is usually proportional to our resistance to the Master who wants to show us ourselves. When we try to hide some error or blame from ourselves in the presence of Daime, it only makes matters worse. However, it is also said that the Daime is generous and shows us exactly what we're ready to see.
In the Daime community, we talk about people going through difficult "passagens" (passages) during the progression of a work. This term, borrowed from Amazonian pilots and navigators, refers to a difficult stretch of a ship's course. Our passagens are typically experienced as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, overall bad feelings, or even intense depression and anxiety. These passagens are key points in the learning process; vomiting, for example, helps one to release the past.
The hymns play an important healing role during these difficult passagens. Each hymn refers to principles and teachings of the Doctrine, as well as to its evolution.
....Inevitably, the hymn being played at that moment is a torch of light that helps us resolve an enigma or overcome a difficult problem. ...... The hymns provide a frame of reference for what happens during the use of Daime, as well as a method for witnessing spiritual truths.
As Richard E. Schultes and Albert Hoffmann state "Ayahuasca is above all a medicine - the great medicine". Yet although much has been written about the therapeutic use of ayahuasca by Indians, relatively little has been published about its use in the Santo Daime community. As one professional therapist - a "fardado" (disciple of Daime) - observed: "The Daime accelerates processes in the psyche and dissolves even the most chronic emotional shells that hinder an individual's capacity to see, feel, and be with his or her true self. In somatic disturbances, the Daime serves as a rebalancer of the somatic functions."
In the Santo Daime Doctrine we define the concept of healing in the broadest way possible, as the natural process people undergo in the search for our true self, our oneness with God. The Daime helps us arrive at the perception we need for our own healing processes to evolve.
The first impression after taking the remedy was: this is a grounded remedy; I felt a lot of energy in my feet, especially my left one and had a good contact with the ground. That feeling disappeared rather quickly and ascended upward and got stuck in my chest. I had the feeling that I could not breath through, a kind of stuck feeling; my breathing got more shallow and superficial which gave me a restless, hurried feeling.
I also got the feeling that the new house I just bought, is only a "temporary" one, not the house in which I want to get old. Also the way I work now, is not my definite form. I see myself in a big room with a big garden around it, a group of people in the room with a lot of human warmth and I lead the group.
In the morning I can get out of bed a lot easier. Normally it is very difficult, I look up to the day, want to stay in bed, have the feeling I didn't sleep enough but as soon as I get out of bed this feeling is gone. Now it wasn't there at all.
Synchronicity: A female patient offers me a booklet "Il Dottore" about a Columbian doctor living from 1861 till 1916 who is still active via mediums (women) who operate etherically and give injections.
- * A heavy quarrel with my mother; I had to buy a carpet for her bedroom but when I came back she hadn't prepared the room yet. I really yelled at her and threw all the things from the room on the balcony. I blamed my mother for never doing anything to help and never asking someone to help her. (il)
- * My ex-husband bought a new house and wants me to come and live with him there again. But also his girlfriend is going to live there. I scolded and cursed him and his girlfriend. (il)
- The urge to throw the phone through the window after running for it when it rang but stopped ringing when I got there. (hw)
-* A friend is sitting at a table opposite me, he is full enthusiasm telling me about homeopathy etc - in his enthusiasm he presses the table towards me so I get stuck between the wall behind and the table. He doesn't notice, he is so busy with his thing. (yl)
- * somebody is pressed to death in a crowd (yl)
- My right lower limb feels bigger and also the grains of the medicine seem bigger than in reality (hw)
- Sensation as if my thumbs are enlarged (kd)
- * With my husband I walk through the red light district in Amsterdam and when I look to my left I see a big film screen of which the upper part is covered, only the lower half is visible and there I see a horrible pornomovie: a dog with a big human penis which is sucked by a man. (vk)
- * A man is sitting on his knees with a very big penis in erection; very exuberant oral sexual satisfaction (yl)
- Awoke at night with heavy pain in occiput, next morning pain in the middle and vertex of the head with photophobia. (il)
- Dizziness and photophobia at 15.00 hrs (il)
- Pain in the whole of the head with heavy pressure on the temples, after one hour lightheaded and hangover feeling. (il)
- Pressure on the temples and tired at 14.30 hrs, slept for one and a half hour and awoke with a stitching feeling in the occiput staying the rest of the day (il)
- Dizziness and exhaustion (il)
- Awoke at 4.00 hrs with an aching, heavy pain in the left half of my face and head with many thoughts in my head about the things I still had to do - very irritated about it, it was all too much, it was in my way, restless. (kn)
- Abscess around right lower tooth << (vk)
- Constricted sensation throat, as if something is pressed inward in middle of larynx (kd)
- Itching, burning behind right ear, later scaly eruption (yl)
- A sudden nausea this morning while riding in the car, > fresh air, eating (kn)
- Scabs/spots on the back of my head with an irresistible desire to scratch them (old symptom) (kn)
- A dry cough, even lightly asthmatic because of just cut grass (kn)
- Stitching in right shoulder (hw)
- I literally fell asleep like a log, coma-like (yl)