The
Cosmic Serpent - DNA and the Origins of Knowledge
By Jeremy Narby
The first time an Ashaninca man told me that he had learned
the medicinal properties of plants by drinking a hallucinogenic
brew, I thought he was joking. We were in the forest squatting
next to a bush whose leaves, he claimed, could cure the bite
of a deadly snake. "One learns these things by drinking
ayahuasca," he said. But he was not smiling.
It was early 1985, in the community of Quirishari in the Peruvian
Amazon’s Pichis Valley. I was 25 years old and starting a two-year
period of field-work to obtain a doctorate in anthropology from
Stanford University. My training had led me to expect that people
would tell tall stories. I thought my job as an anthropologist
was to discover what they really thought, like some kind of
private detective.
During my research on Ashaninca ecology, people in Quirishari
regularly mentioned the hallucinatory world of ayahuasqueros,
or shamans. In conversations about plants, animals, land, or
the forest, they would refer to ayahuasqueros as the source
of knowledge. Each time, I would ask myself what they really
meant when they said this.
My fieldwork concerned Ashaninca resource use–with particular
emphasis on their rational and pragmatic techniques. To emphasize
the hallucinatory origin of Ashaninca ecological knowledge would
have been counterproductive to the main argument underlying
my research. Nevertheless, the enigma remained: These extremely
practical and frank people, living almost autonomously in the
Amazonian forest, insisted that their extensive botanical knowledge
came from plant-induced hallucinations. How could this be true?
The enigma was all the more intriguing because the botanical
knowledge of indigenous Amazonians has long astonished scientists.
The chemical composition of ayahuasca is a case in point. Amazonian
shamans have been preparing ayahuasca for millennia. The brew
is a necessary combination of two plants, which must be boiled
together for hours. The first contains a hallucinogenic substance,
dimethyltryptamine, which also seems to be secreted by the human
brain; but this hallucinogen has no effect when swallowed, because
a stomach enzyme called monoamine oxidase blocks it. The second
plant, however, contains several substances that inactivate
this precise stomach enzyme, allowing the hallucinogen to reach
the brain.
So here are people without electron 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
of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic
effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness. It is
as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants and
the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know
these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic
plants.
I had not come to Quirishari to study this issue, which for
me relates to indigenous mythology. I even considered the study
of mythology to be a useless and "reactionary" pastime.
My focus as an anthropologist was Ashaninca resource development.
I was trying to demonstrate that true development consisted
first in recognizing the territorial rights of indigenous people.
My point of view was materialist and political, rather than
mystical–yet I found myself quite impressed with the pragmatism
of the Quirishari.
This is a people who teach by example, rather than by explanation.
Parents encourage their children to accompany them in their
work. The phrase "leave Daddy alone because he’s working"
is unknown. People are suspicious of abstract concepts. When
an idea seems really bad, they will say dismissively, "Es
pura teoría" ("That’s pure theory"). The
two key words that cropped up over and over in conversations
were práctica and táctica, "practice"
and "tactics"–no doubt because they are requirements
for living in the rainforest.
After about a year in Quirishari, I had come to see that my
hosts’ practical sense was much more reliable in their environment
than my academically informed understanding of reality. Their
empirical knowledge was undeniable, but their explanations concerning
the origin of their knowledge were unbelievable to me. My attitude
was ambivalent. On the one hand, I wanted to understand what
they thought–for instance, about the reality of "spirits"–but
on the other, I couldn’t take seriously what they said because
I did not believe it.
On leaving Quirishari, I knew I had not solved the enigma of
the hallucinatory origin of Ashaninca ecological knowledge.
I left with the strange feeling that the problem had more to
do with my incapacity to understand what people had said, rather
than the inadequacy of their explanations. They had always used
such simple words.
In June 1992, I went to Rio to attend the world conference
on development and environment. At the "Earth Summit,"
as it was known, everybody was talking about the ecological
knowledge of indigenous people, but certainly no one was talking
about the hallucinatory origin of some of it, as claimed by
the indigenous people themselves.
Colleagues might ask, "You mean Indians claim they get
molecularly verifiable information from their hallucinations?
You don’t take them literally, do you?" What could one
answer? There is nothing one can say without contradicting two
fundamental principles of Western knowledge.
First, hallucinations cannot be the source of real information,
because to consider them as such is the definition of psychosis.
Western knowledge considers hallucinations to be at best illusions,
at worst morbid phenomena.
Second, plants do not communicate like human beings. Scientific
theories of communication consider that only human beings use
abstract symbols like words and pictures and that plants do
not relay information in the form of mental images. For science,
the human brain is the source of hallucinations, which psychoactive
plants merely trigger by way of the hallucinogenic molecules
they contain. It was in Rio that I realized the extent of the
dilemma posed by the hallucinatory knowledge of indigenous people.
On the one hand, its results are empirically confirmed and used
by the pharmaceutical industry; on the other hand, its origin
cannot be discussed scientifically because it contradicts the
axioms of Western knowledge.
When I understood that the enigma of plant communication was
a blind spot for science, I felt the call to conduct an in-depth
investigation of the subject. Furthermore, I had been carrying
the mystery of plant communication around since my stay with
the Ashaninca, and I knew that explorations of contradictions
in science often yield fruitful results. It seemed to me that
the establishment of a serious dialogue with indigenous people
on ecology and botany required that this question be addressed.
I had myself ingested ayahuasca in Quirishari, an experience
that brought me face to face with an irrational and subjective
territory that was terrifying, yet filled with information.
In the months afterwards, I thought quite a lot about what my
main Ashaninca consultant, Carlos Perez Shuma, had said. What
if it were true that nature speaks in signs and that the secret
to understanding its language consists in noticing similarities
in shape or in form? What if I took him literally? I liked this
idea and decided to read the anthropological texts on shamanism,
paying attention not only to their content but to their style.
I taped a note on the wall of my office: "Look at the FORM."
One thing became clear as I thought back to my stay in Quirishari.
Every time I had doubted one of my consultants’ explanations,
my understanding of the Ashaninca view of reality had seized
up; conversely, on the rare occasions when I had managed to
silence my doubts, my understanding of local reality had been
enhanced–as if there were times when one had to believe in order
to see, rather than the other way around.
It had become clear to me that ayahuasqueros were somehow gaining
access in their visions to verifiable information about plant
properties. Therefore, I reasoned, the enigma of hallucinatory
knowledge could be reduced to one question: Was this information
coming from inside the human brain, as the scientific point
of view would have it, or from the outside world of plants,
as shamans claimed?
Both of these perspectives seemed to present advantages and
drawbacks. On the one hand, the similarity between the molecular
profiles of the natural hallucinogens and of serotonin seemed
well and truly to indicate that these substances work like keys
fitting into the same lock inside the brain. However, I could
not agree with the scientific position according to which hallucinations
are merely discharges of images stocked in compartments of the
subconscious memory. I was convinced that the enormous fluorescent
snakes that I had seen thanks to ayahuasca did not correspond
in any way to anything that I could have dreamed of even in
my most extreme nightmares.
Furthermore, the speed and coherence of some of the hallucinatory
images exceeded by many degrees the best rock videos, and I
knew that I could not possibly have filmed them.
On the other hand, I was finding it increasingly easy to suspend
disbelief and consider the indigenous point of view as potentially
correct. After all, there were all kinds of gaps and contradictions
in the scientific knowledge of hallucinogens, which had at first
seemed so reliable: Scientists do not know how these substances
affect our consciousness, nor have they studied true hallucinogens
in any detail. It no longer seemed unreasonable to me to consider
that the information about the molecular content of plants could
truly come from the plants themselves, just as ayahuasqueros
claimed. However, I failed to see how this could work concretely.
Maybe I would find the answer by looking at both perspectives
simultaneously, one eye on science and the other on shamanism.
The solution would therefore consist in posing the question
differently: It was not a matter of asking whether the source
of hallucinations is internal or external, but of considering
that it might be both at the same time. I could not see how
this idea would work in practice, but I liked it because it
reconciled two points of view that were apparently divergent.
My research revealed that in the early 1960s, anthropologist
Michael Harner had gone to the Peruvian Amazon to study the
culture of the Conibo Indians. After a year or so he had made
little headway in understanding their religious system when
the Conibo told him that if he really wanted to learn, he had
to drink ayahuasca. Harner accepted, not without fear, because
the people had warned him that the experience was terrifying.
The following evening, under the strict supervision of his
indigenous friends, he drank the equivalent of a third of a
bottle. After several minutes he found himself falling into
a world of true hallucinations.
He saw that his visions emanated from "giant reptilian
creatures" resting at the lowest depths of his brain. These
creatures began projecting scenes in front of his eyes. "First
they showed me the planet Earth as it was eons ago, before there
was any life on it. I saw an ocean, barren land, and a bright
blue sky. Then black specks dropped from the sky by the hundreds
and landed in front of me on the barren landscape. I could see
the ‘specks’ were actually large, shiny, black creatures with
stubby pterodactyl-like wings and huge whale-like bodies....
They explained to me in a kind of thought language that they
were fleeing from something out in space. They had come to the
planet Earth to escape their enemy. The creatures then showed
me how they had created life on the planet in order to hide
within the multitudinous forms and thus disguise their presence.
Before me, the magnificence of plant and animal creation and
speciation–hundreds of millions of years of activity–took place
on a scale and with a vividness impossible to describe. I learned
that the dragon-like creatures were thus inside all forms of
life, including man."
At this point in his account, Harner writes in a footnote at
the bottom of the page: "In retrospect one could say they
were almost like DNA, although at that time, 1961, I knew nothing
of DNA."
I had not paid attention to this footnote previously. There
was indeed DNA inside the human brain, as well as in the outside
world of plants, given that the molecule of life containing
genetic information is the same for all species. DNA could thus
be considered a source of information that is both external
and internal–in other words, precisely what I had been trying
to imagine.
I plunged back into Harner’s book, but found no further mention
of DNA. However, a few pages on, Harner notes that "dragon"
and "serpent" are synonymous. This made me think that
the double helix of DNA resembled, in its form, two entwined
serpents.
The reptilian creatures that Harner had seen in his brain reminded
me of something, but I could not say what. After rummaging around
my office for a while, I put my hand on an article called "Brain
and Mind in Desana Shamanism" by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff.
Paging through it, I was stopped by a Desana drawing of a human
brain with a snake lodged between the two hemispheres.
Several pages further into the article, I came upon a second
drawing, this time with two snakes. According to Reichel-Dolmatoff,
within the fissure "two intertwined snakes are lying....
In Desana shamanism these two serpents symbolize a female and
male principle, a mother and a father image, water and land...;
in brief, they represent a concept of binary opposition which
has to be overcome in order to achieve individual awareness
and integration. The snakes are imagined as spiralling rhythmically
in a swaying motion from one side to another." Concerning
the Desanas’ main cosmological beliefs, Reichel-Dolmatoff writes:
"The Desana say that in the beginning of time their ancestors
arrived in canoes shaped like huge serpents."
I was astonished by the similarities between Harner’s account,
based on his hallucinogenic experience with the Conibo Indians
in the Peruvian Amazon, and the shamanic and mythological concepts
of an ayahuasca-using people living a thousand miles away in
the Colombian Amazon. In both cases there were reptiles in the
brain and serpent-shaped boats of cosmic origin that were vessels
of life at the beginning of time. Pure coincidence?
To find out, I picked up a book about a third ayahuasca-using
people, entitled (in French) Vision, Knowledge, Power: Shamanism
Among the Yagua in the North-East of Peru. In this study by
Jean-Pierre Chaumeil (to my mind, one of the most rigorous on
the subject), I found a "celestial serpent" in a drawing
of the universe by a Yagua shaman. Then, a few pages away, another
shaman is quoted as saying: "At the very beginning, before
the birth of the earth, this earth here, our most distant ancestors
lived on another earth...." Chaumeil adds that the Yagua
consider that all living beings were created by twins, who are
"the two central characters in Yagua cosmogonic thought."
These correspondences seemed very strange, and I did not know
what to make of them. Or rather, I could see an easy way of
interpreting them, but it contradicted my understanding of reality:
A Western anthropologist like Harner drinks a strong dose of
ayahuasca with one people and gains access, in the middle of
the twentieth century, to a world that informs the "mythological"
concepts of other peoples and allows them to communicate with
life-creating spirits of cosmic origin possibly linked to DNA.
This seemed highly improbable to me, if not impossible. Still,
I had decided to follow my approach through to its logical conclusion.
So I casually penciled in the margin of Chaumeil’s text: "twins
= DNA?"
These indirect and analogical connections between DNA and the
hallucinatory and mythological spheres seemed amusing to me,
or at most intriguing. Nevertheless, I started thinking that
I had perhaps found with DNA the scientific concept on which
to focus one eye, while focusing the other on the shamanism
of Amazonian ayahuasqueros.
About this time, as I continued looking out for new connections
between shamanism and DNA, I received a letter from a friend
who suggested that shamanism was perhaps "untranslatable
into our logic for lack of corresponding concepts." I understood
what he meant, and I was trying to see precisely if DNA, without
being exactly equivalent, might be the concept that would best
translate what ayahuasqueros were talking about.
As I browsed over the writings of authorities on mythology,
I discovered with surprise that the theme of twin creator beings
of celestial origin was extremely common in South America, and
indeed throughout the world. The story that the Ashaninca tell
about Avíreri and his sister, who created life by transformation,
was just one among hundreds of variants on the theme of the
"divine twins." Another example is the Aztecs’ plumed
serpent, Quetzalcoatl, who symbolizes the "sacred energy
of life," and his twin brother Tezcatlipoca, both of whom
are children of the cosmic serpent Coatlicue.
When I read the following passage from Claude Lévi-Strauss’
latest book, I jumped: "In Aztec, the word coatl means
both ‘serpent’ and ‘twin.’ The name Quetzalcoatl can thus be
interpreted either as ‘Plumed serpent’ or ‘Magnificent twin.’"
A twin serpent, of cosmic origin, symbolizing the sacred energy
of life? Among the Aztecs? I wondered what all these twin beings
in the creation myths of indigenous people could possibly mean.
I was trying to keep one eye on DNA and the other on shamanism
to discover the common ground between the two. I reviewed the
correspondences that I had found so far. Ruminating over this
mental block, I recalled Carlos Perez Shuma’s challenge: "Look
at the FORM."
I had looked up DNA in several encyclopedias and had noted
in passing that the shape of the double helix was most often
described as a ladder, or a twisted rope ladder, or a spiral
staircase. It was during the following split second, asking
myself whether there were any ladders in shamanism, that the
revelation occurred: "THE LADDERS! The shamans’ ladders,
‘symbols of the profession’ according to Métraux, present
in shamanic themes around the world according to Eliade!"
I rushed back to my office and plunged into Mircea Eliade’s
book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy and discovered
that there were "countless examples" of shamanic ladders
on all five continents, here a "spiral ladder," there
a "stairway" or "braided ropes." In Australia,
Tibet, Nepal, ancient Egypt, Africa, North and South America,
"the symbolism of the rope, like that of the ladder, necessarily
implies communication between sky and earth. It is by means
of a rope or a ladder (as, too, by a vine, a bridge, a chain
of arnyaw, etc.) that the gods descend to earth and men go up
to the sky."
Eliade even cites an example from the Old Testament, where
Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching up to heaven, "with the
angels of God ascending and descending on it." According
to Eliade, the shamanic ladder is the earliest version of the
idea of an axis of the world, which connects the different levels
of the cosmos, and is found in numerous creation myths in the
form of a tree.
Until then, I had considered Eliade’s work with suspicion,
but suddenly I viewed it in a new light. I started flipping
through his other writings in my possession and discovered:
cosmic serpents. This time it was Australian Aborigines who
considered that the creation of life was the work of a "cosmic
personage related to universal fecundity, the Rainbow Snake,"
whose powers were symbolized by quartz crystals.
How could it be that Australian Aborigines, separated from
the rest of humanity for 40,000 years, tell the same story about
the creation of life by a cosmic serpent associated with a quartz
crystal as is told by ayahuasca-drinking Amazonians? The connections
that I was beginning to perceive were blowing away the scope
of my investigation. How could cosmic serpents from Australia
possibly help my analysis of the uses of hallucinogens in Western
Amazonia?
I tried answering my own question: One, Western culture has
cut itself off from the serpent/life principle, in other words
DNA, since it adopted an exclusively rational point of view.
Two, the peoples who practice what we call "shamanism"
communicate with DNA. Three, paradoxically, the part of humanity
that cut itself off from the serpent managed to discover its
material existence in a laboratory some three thousand years
later.
People use different techniques in different places to gain
access to knowledge of the vital principle. In their visions
shamans manage to take their consciousness down to the molecular
level.
This is how they learn to combine brain hormones with monoamine
oxidase inhibitors, or how they discover 40 different sources
of muscle paralyzers, whereas science has only been able to
imitate their molecules. When they say their knowledge comes
from beings they see in their hallucinations, their words mean
exactly what they say.
According to the shamans of the entire world, one establishes
communication with spirits via music. For the ayahuasqueros,
it is almost inconceivable to enter the world of spirits and
remain silent. Angelika Gebhart-Sayer discusses the "visual
music" projected by the spirits in front of the shaman’s
eyes: It is made up of three-dimensional images that coalesce
into sound and that the shaman imitates by emitting corresponding
melodies. I should check whether DNA emits sound or not. It
seemed that no one had noticed the possible links between the
"myths" of "primitive peoples" and molecular
biology. No one had seen that the double helix had symbolized
the life principle for thousands of years around the world.
On the contrary; everything was upside down. It was said that
hallucinations could in no way constitute a source of knowledge,
that Indians had found their useful molecules by chance experimentation,
and that their "myths" were precisely myths, bearing
no relationship to the real knowledge discovered in laboratories.
At this point, I remembered that Michael Harner had said that
this information was reserved for the dead and the dying. Suddenly,
I was overcome with fear and felt the urge to share these ideas
with someone else. I picked up the phone and called an old friend,
who is also a writer. I quickly took him through the correspondences
I had found during the day: the twins, the cosmic serpents,
Eliade’s ladders. Then I added: "There is a last correlation
that is slightly less clear than the others. The spirits one
sees in hallucinations are three-dimensional, sound-emitting
images, and they speak a language made of three-dimensional,
sound-emitting images. In other words, they are made of their
own language, like DNA."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
Then my friend said, "Yes, and like DNA they replicate
themselves to relay their information." I jotted this down,
and it was later in reviewing my notes on the relationship between
the hallucinatory spirits made of language and DNA that I remembered
the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel according
to John: "In the beginning was the logos"–the word,
the verb, the language.
That night I had a hard time falling asleep.
My investigation had led me to formulate the following working
hypothesis: In their visions, shamans take their consciousness
down to the molecular level and gain access to information related
to DNA, which they call "animate essences" or "spirits."
This is where they see double helixes, twisted ladders, and
chromosome shapes. This is how shamanic cultures have known
for millennia that the vital principle is the same for all living
beings and is shaped like two entwined serpents (or a vine,
a rope, a ladder ... ). DNA is the source of their astonishing
botanical and medicinal knowledge, which can be attained only
in defocalized and "nonrational" states of consciousness,
though its results are empirically verifiable. The myths of
these cultures are filled with biological imagery. And the shamans’
metaphoric explanations correspond quite precisely to the descriptions
that biologists are starting to provide.
Like the axis mundi of shamanic traditions, DNA has the form
of a twisted ladder (or a vine ... ); according to my hypothesis,
DNA was, like the axis mundi, the source of shamanic knowledge
and visions. To be sure of this I needed to understand how DNA
could transmit visual information. I knew that it emitted photons,
which are electromagnetic waves, and I remembered what Carlos
Perez Shuma had told me when he compared the spirits to "radio
waves": "Once you turn on the radio, you can pick
them up. It’s like that with souls; with ayahuasca ... you can
see them and hear them." So I looked into the literature
on photons of biological origin, or "biophotons."
In the early 1980s, thanks to the development of a sophisticated
measurement device, a team of scientists demonstrated that the
cells of all living beings emit photons at a rate of up to approximately
100 units per second and per square centimeter of surface area.
They also showed that DNA was the source of this photon emission.
During my readings, I learned with astonishment that the wavelength
at which DNA emits these photons corresponds exactly to the
narrow band of visible light. Yet this did not constitute proof
that the light emitted by DNA was what shamans saw in their
visions. Furthermore, there was a fundamental aspect of this
photon emission that I could not grasp. According to the researchers
who measured it, its weakness is such that it corresponds "to
the intensity of a candle at a distance of about 10 kilometers,"
but it has "a surprisingly high degree of coherence, as
compared to that of technical fields (laser)."
How could an ultra-weak signal be highly coherent? How could
a distant candle be compared to a "laser"?
I came to understand that in a coherent source of light, the
quantity of photons emitted may vary, but the emission intervals
remain constant. DNA emits photons with such regularity that
researchers compare the phenomenon to an "ultra-weak laser."
I could understand that much, but still could not see what it
implied for my investigation.
I turned to my scientific journalist friend, who explained
it immediately: "A coherent source of light, like a laser,
gives the sensation of bright colors, a luminescence, and an
impression of holographic depth."
My friend’s explanation provided me with an essential element.
The detailed descriptions of ayahuasca-based hallucinatory experiences
invariably mention bright color, and, according to the authors
of the dimethyltryptamine study: "Subjects described the
colors as brighter, more intense, and deeply saturated than
those seen in normal awareness or dreams: It was the blue of
a desert sky, but on another planet. The colors were 10 to 100
times more saturated."
It was almost too good to be true. DNA’s highly coherent photon
emission accounted for the luminescence of hallucinatory images,
as well as their three-dimensional, or holographic, aspect.
On the basis of this connection, I could now conceive of a
neurological mechanism for my hypothesis. The molecules of nicotine
or dimethyltryptamine, contained in ayahuasca, activate their
respective receptors, which set off a cascade of electrochemical
reactions inside the neurons, leading to the stimulation of
DNA and, more particularly, to its emission of visible waves,
which shamans perceive as "hallucinations."
There, I thought, is the source of knowledge: DNA, living in
water and emitting photons, like an aquatic dragon spitting
fire.
Am I wrong in linking DNA to these cosmic serpents from around
the world, these sky-ropes and axis mundi? Some of my colleagues
would undoubtedly say yes. They would remind me that nineteenth
century anthropologists had compared cultures and elaborated
theories on the basis of the similarities they found. When they
discovered, for instance, that bagpipes were played not only
in Scotland, but in Arabia and the Ukraine, they established
false connections between these cultures. Then they realized
that people could do similar things for different reasons.
Since then, anthropology has backed away from grand generalizations,
denounced "abuses of the comparative method," and
locked itself into specificity bordering on myopia. Yet by shunning
comparisons between cultures, one ends up masking true connections
and fragmenting reality a little more, without even realizing
it. Is the cosmic serpent of the Shipibo--Conibo, the Aztecs,
the Australian Aborigines, and the Ancient Egyptians the same?
No, will reply the anthropologists who insist on cultural specificity;
but it is time to turn their critique on its head. Why insist
on taking reality apart, but never try putting it back together
again?
According to my hypothesis, shamans take their consciousness
down to the molecular level and gain access to biomolecular
information. But what actually goes on in the brain/mind of
an ayahuasquero when this occurs? What is the nature of a shaman’s
communication with the animate essences of nature? The clear
answer is that more research is needed in consciousness, shamanism,
molecular biology, and their interrelatedness.
Jeremy Narby, PhD, grew up in Canada and Switzerland, studied
history at the University of Canterbury, and received his doctorate
in anthropology from Stanford University. He is author of The
Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge (Tarcher/Putnam,
1998).
Noetic Sciences Review, Vol. 48, Summer 1999 pages 16-21
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DNA and the origens of knowledge
by Hannah Klautz
Much is written lately about 'indigenous knowledge" especially
in the field of traditional plant and medical knowledge. The
indigenous societies in the Amazon region have received much
fame recently in this area because of their knowledge and use
of hallucinogenic materials. Modern pharmaceutical companies
are especially interested in this knowledge and many indigenous
leaders have spoken about the need to protect their intellectual
and cultural property rights, as well as to capture some of
the economic benefits of such knowledge
The Comic Serpent written by James Narby places the discussion
of indigenous knowledge in a deeper philosophical and cosmological
framework, arguing for an epistemic correspondence between the
knowledge of Amazonian shamans and modern biologists.Narby unfolds
in his book a very interesting theory about the human DNA and
the origins of knowledge.
He came to this after living for several years in the Amazonian
rainforest while he was studying the etnobothanical knowledge
of different Amazonian Indian tribes. His book starts with the
following: "The first time as an Ashaninca man told me
that he had learned the medicinal properties of plants by drinking
a hallucinogenic brew, I thought he was joking. We were in the
forest squatting next to a bush whose leaves , he claimed, could
cure the bite of a deadly snake. "One learns these things
by drinking ayahuasca," he said. It was early in 1985,
in the community of Quirishari in the Peruvian Pichis Valley.
I was twenty-five years old and starting a two-year period
of fieldwork to obtain a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford
University. During my research on Ashaninca ecology, people
in Quiishari regurlarly mentioned the hallucinatory world of
ayahuasqueros, or shamans. In conversions about plants, animals,
land or the forest, they would refer to ayahuasqueros as the
source of knowledge.
And each time I asked myself what they really meant when they
said this." While living their for months doing investigations
and asking a lot of questions a member of the tribe tells him:"Brother
Jeremy, to understand what interests you, you must drink ayahuasca.
Some say it is occult, which is true, but it is not evil. In
truth, ayahuasca is the television of the forest. You can see
images and learn things."
Narby is very curious and agrees with it. He describes his
experience with the following:(At one point in his visions he
meet some snakes and they tell him that he's just a human being.)
"I feel my mind crack, and in the fissures, I see the bottomless
arrogance of my presuppositions. It is profoundly true that
I'm just a human being, and, most of the time, I have the impression
of understanding everything, whereas here I find myself in a
more powerful reality that I do not understand at all and that
in my arrogance, I did not even suspect existed.
I feel like crying in view of the enormity of these revelations."
And a bit later he writes:"I sit down next to Ruperto(
the shaman) and he resumes his song. I have never heard more
beautiful music, these slender staccatos that are so high-pitsched
they verge on humming. I follow his song and take flight. I
fly in the air; thousands of feet above the earth and looking
down I see ann all-white planet. Suddenly the song stops and
I feel myself on the ground, thinking: He can't stop now."
After a few ayahuasca experiences Narby goes back home to rural
Switzerland to write his dissertation. He writes: "Two
years later, after becoming a 'doctor of anthropology' I felt
compelled to put my ideas to practice. Under Ashaninca influence
I had come to consider that practice is the most advanced form
of theory.
I was tired of doing research. Now I wanted to act."So
he started working for a Swiss organisation that promotes community
development in Third World countries. He travels around the
Amazon Basin, talking with indigenous organizations and collecting
projects for the legal recognition of indigenous territories.He
gathers funds for these projects in Europe for four years.
Then Narby decides to write a book about Amazonian shamanism
and ecology. He's still wondering about the statements from
the Amazonian shamans that their knowledge of the medicial value
of plants has been taught to them by the plants themselves through
their hallucinations. He wants to call his book Ecological hallucinations
and he wants to investigate the enigma of the possibility of
communications with plants.
He's looking again in the interviews he did with the Ashaninca
people and he writes: "For them there was no fundamental
contradiction between the practical reality of their life in
the rainforest and the invisible and irrational world of the
ayahuasqueros, On the contrary, it was by going back and forth
between those two levels that one could bring back useful and
verifiable knowledg that was otherwise unobtainable.
This proved to me that is was possible to reconcile these two
apparently distinct worlds."Than he starts very serious
with his research wat finally leds to the publication of 'The
Cosmic Serpent", DNA and the origins of knowledge. His
study is too complicated to describe in such a short article,
but I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested
in shamanism, hallucinogenic plants and the correspondences
between this and the latest scientific research about DNA and
the origins of our species.
