26/08/2021
Experiment at La Chorrera - A shamanic initiation, alien encounter or mushroom fueled psychosis?
Dennis McKenna analyzes his experience at La Chorrera in 1971:
"Shamanic initiation is a process of psychic upheaval holding out the possibility of personal transformation for the individual who can negotiate the journey successfully. The difficulty inherent in doing so lies in the fact that such experiences are often sudden, overwhelming, and undergone without any context for the initiate to know what is happening to them at the time. Without the support of another individual — or community of individuals — who are aware of the opportunities these experiences can present, the possibility can be lost. Given the magnitude the initiatory experience can have and the corresponding high price an individual can pay to go through it, this loss can properly be called tragic.
In some primitive cultures, an elder shaman was known to provide this supportive role of in what Joseph Campbell described as 'a kind of schizophrenic crack-up' the young initiate goes through. Once configured to the transformative psychic energies, the initiate can in turn bring healing to the pathologies afflicting the tribe. This is all a natural, organic process by which individual and legitimate cultural healing can happen. But it must be recognized as such and supported by the culture.
In recent and current western culture, such experiences are commonly labelled and interpreted to be 'psychosis, mental illness, psychotic episodes, schizophrenia, mania, etc.' by the psychiatric establishment. It is arguable these categorical designations exist solely as a consequence of limitations, fears, prejudices, and loyalty to pathological aspects of the culture those employed in these professions are embedded and invested in. That knowingly or unknowingly, they are living off the deceptions and delusions comprising the very cultural maladies many of their designated 'patients' have been ordained by nature to heal. The psychiatric response to the emergence of these potentially transformative energies in an individual is to sabotage the process in order to serve and protect the integrity of their own place in a pathological culture at great loss to the initiate cast as 'patient,' and the human community needing healing. And it can be reasonably surmised that individuals would only be subjected to these turbulent, potentially life-threatening experiences in correspondence to their need for personal transformation, and their culture's need for it. Why else would an organism with robust, built-in life-preserving mechanisms as human beings possess, place itself in that much danger?"
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Tim Ferriss explores "The Experiment at La Chorrera" with Dennis McKenna on The Tim Ferriss Show. Listen now.
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