The experience of ayahuasca and its “modified states of consciousness”. A cross-cultural study of the stories of the urban users of ayahuasca. A reading through the concept of the unconscious according to Gilles Deleuze.
The Ayahuasca is a millennium plant with which tea is made with very powerful psychoactive properties and which occupies a unique place in South American Shamanism. This research is a test to map the “ayahuasca experience” in eclectic rituals, based on the stories of 12 urban users. Through a reading of the unconscious – touching on concepts such as fate, body-without-organs, body-bodies, bodies, prudence and encounter – we are looking for the “process of subjectivity” that are at stake in those who experience ayahuasca. We also open the debate between the profile of the ayahuasqueiro and the profile of the drug addict to distinguish the different existential dimensions in question. Research has shown that the ritual use of ayahuasca, with therapeutic and/or spiritual purposes, differs from the use of daily, non-ritualized drugs; and that in contemporary contemporary, there seems to be a spiritual demand or “self-knowledge” which, in order to achieve its goals, mixes the ayahuasqueira religions with a wide range of eclecticism: “New age”, esoterism, transersonal psychology, shamanisms and Christianity.