Quotes
Here you can find some quotes by notable persons on the topic of ayahuasca.
"I'd had these experiences which were so incredible, and then I went to the shaman, and he dealt with them quite matter-of-factly. There were certain creatures who said certain things about how they were really running the planet, and he just smiled and said, "Oh, they're always saying that," and so on. And I realized, from that and many other things, that he was quite familiar with the terrain that I'd been to."
"For several hours after drinking the brew, I found myself, although awake, in a world literally beyond my wildest dreams. I met bird-headed people, as well as dragon-like creatures who explained that they were the true gods of this world. I enlisted the services of other spirit helpers in attempting to fly through the far reaches of the Galaxy. Transported into a trance where the supernatural seemed natural, I realized that anthropologists, including myself, had profoundly underestimated the importance of the drug in affecting native ideology."
Tori Amos
"...the most influential journeys I have had have been with ayahuasca, the vine from the Amazon, the combination of that and mushrooms. It's very much a medicine woman, medicine man's journey drug, where you go inside. It's not a social thing. It's an internal experience. I experiment with things that are usually an internal experience, because that's just what excites me. And yes, it does sometimes give me visions. But my intention when I am doing it is very different than recreational. I don't do it recreationally. I do it to go do inner work, and I'm very clear before I do it what I'm searching for. That way, there's no abuse suffered and I don't rely on it. It's just one more tool that I use sometimes."
Jeremy Narby
"So here are people without electronic microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness." Jeremy Narby - The Cosmic Serpent
Sting
"..it's not a frivolous pursuit... there's a certain amount of dread attached to taking it - you have a hallucinogenic trip that deals with death and your mortality. So it's quite an ordeal. It's not something you're going to score and a have great time on." Sting in a Rolling Stone interview
Paul Simon
"Spirit Voices is really based on events that happened to me on a trip into the Amazon. We went to see a
bruho (shaman) in a shack in a jungle... first he sang. He sang for a long time, chanted... these beautiful melodies... and then they made up this brew called iawasca ... which we drank and they said the anaconda will appear to you... and you will see that in a vision... but no anaconda appeared." Paul Simon in an interview
