Because ayahuasca has been reported to reliably facilitate profound healing and creative and spiritual experiences, and because it can be studied in neuroscience laboratory settings, it offers extraordinary opportunities for the kind of research bridging neuroscience and the humanities that is advocated in this book. This chapter offers an example of ayahuasca research as a part of this new meta-field. The central question of the inquiry is: How can the spontaneous imagery narratives that are so prominent during the use of ayahuasca produce the widely reported benefits? To answer this question I will draw from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, religion, and my own research. Recent neuroscience evidence and theory offer exciting new insights into the specific brain processes that possibly occur, and this may lead to enhanced applications in psychotherapy, creative activity, and spiritual development. I will present my own model of the nature and function of spontaneous imagery narratives; this model incorporates both previous and new views, and uses imagery from a variety of religious traditions to depict the creative psychophysiological and spiritual processes involved. One new hypothesis that ayahuasca research clearly supports is an ancient idea placed in a new content: that creative human activities are a blending of deliberative thought processes and spontaneous experiencing.