Look at this crap from a shamanic aya freak site:
“Most people are energetically very polluted as well from negative experiences in this life as from previous lives. They also need to know how to liberate people from dark and evil energies.The only method for that that really works is the technique which is called Shamanic Pleghm. This means that the shaman sucks out the dark spirit and spits it out. We (the healers from the Awakening) learned that from the Amazon shamans and during ceremonies we can spit out many demons and negative attachments.”

Can you imagine getting stuck in a smelly room with sick all over the floor with these jokers?

I`m glad I took my acid and mushrooms either by myself or with a small group of trusted friends in mostly beautiful, interesting outdoor places!!

These guys sound like they`ve got shamanic depression.

People tend to focus too much on the superstar’s presence. I think the collective energy of everyone’s intention and longing, and the just being together, is maybe just as important, if not more so. The Buddhafield, for me, was as much about everyone’s creativity and energy as the focus on a central character, who I never got to meet.

Plant medicines are just one more tool in the arsenal that have come into fashion, not that I have any direct experience, apart from pixie caps. Like everything else, there’s a bright and dark side. There’s gurus and therapists and shamans who heal and who abuse, and do a bit of both.

The long-term strategy, for me, must be awakening your own inner guide and cultivating self-reliance and autonomy, with a good balance of head and heart. Devotion to grandiose ‘avatar’ types like Meera and Amma seems to me to put devotees in a regressed state, in which because they say so little, you can project so much. What little I have heard from Amma has been mostly trite platitudes. But hey-ho, each to his own.

Who is this mythical beast, the genuine spiritual teacher you have found btw?

I agree, it’s very wise to be sceptical about everything, just not overly cynical, although that’s fun sometimes!

Some foreign people, not native English speakers, told me about a place where they had all had amazing life-changing experiences. They enthused wildly about a magical brew and an initiate in a lineage who was responsible for making it himself according to a time-honoured secret old recipe and conducted incredible rituals which involved strange incantations, various odd substances, heady incense and much, much more.

By all accounts, it had had extraordinary effects: and people far and wide sang the praises of this paradigm-changing happening and the concoctions used therein.

I had to check it for myself…
I found myself magically, by way of a series of extraordinary synchronicities and serendipitous events in an ancient, tucked away, holy place somewhere obscure in the hills.

There I was in a weird place with a lot of freaky-looking people of all nationalities: South Americans, Asians, Russians, Africans, Indians etc. wearing long dark robes, odd hoods, weird hairstyles, crosses round their necks, strong smell of incense, mumbling and intoning verses that sounded strangely familiar. And they were indeed were drinking some kind of ritual brew, quite large amounts of it, and sitting at the feet of a holy man who was presiding over the proceedings, surrounded by some very young, fresh-faced initiates who were singing angelically.

Suddenly I recognised it!

It was Holy Mass at Buckfast Abbey. Everybody was drinking Buckfast Wine and the holy man leading the service was Father Pete O` Foyle, the Abbot.

I woke with a start and I must admit, I`ve never seen shamanism in quite the same light since.

For the rest, yes, I see your point, but as I said, I suspect that the primary reason people attend a Mother Meera darshan (about 90 mins.) every 6-12 months here, or see Amma once a year for a few hours, or any other spiritual teacher they feel a genuine connection to, is to receive a helpful personal and/or energetic input from that teacher, with any ‘community benefits’ very much a secondary consideration.

As for drugs, I wasn’t born yesterday and I know what I need to about the difference between psychedelics, plant medicines etc. and drugs simply to get ‘high’, including certain radical mental health treatments. Yes, my personal experience of the former is limited (to lsd, mescaline and marijuana many years ago) but that, plus what I had to deal with in my life, together with a feeling for what’s right and what’s probably harmful for my system, was enough for me.

However, from what I understand, I’m not saying these things can’t help, of course they can, to a degree, likewise, a shaman (I wonder how many genuine ones are left), in a few cases a lot, but I’m extremely sceptical about whether they can take the place of meditation (and/or therapy) and a genuine spiritual teacher who, crucially, really understands the plight of us westerners.

I don’t care how long the traditions have been there, they come from a place so radically different from our own, physically, mentally, psychically. Which, as well as genuine ‘searching’, is one reason why westerners like to go there, ie for the excitement of the new, the different, the exotic, the promise of ‘liberation’, an ‘easier way out’. If only it were that easy…

Moreover, apart from reading about bad or disappointing episodes, as it happens, various people I know, including a couple who were hoping both their lives as individuals and as partners and would be profoundly healed and others who had a mixture of motives (as in above parag.) have reported adverse effects or simply ‘nothing very much’ from their experience of ayahuasaca, even when taken in the South American jungle under the auspices of a so-called shaman*, so I’m hardly likely to be much of an advocate.

*I say “so-called shaman” as it seems these days many are fake, cashing in on the lucrative trade from gullible, inexperienced westerners. Do you intend to expose a few, Dominic?

There’s drugs for entertainment and ‘highs’ and there’s entheogens, plant medicines, psychedelics etc. for self-exploration and self-discovery. Know the difference.

Shamanism predates religion and has existed across the globe. I haven’t been to any of these ceremonies myself, nor feel I have to, but there is much reporting on their profound effects, and psilocybin, lsd, mdma, dmt etc are being researched again by the scientific community for healing.

Doesn’t sound like you’ve had much experience with psychedelics, or have done any research, if you think you can just chase excitement with it!

I say, humbug to your humbug!

Well, that may be the case for some or even many, I don’t know, but no one goes to the three you mention here for “community” unless they’re in the minority who join Amma’s ashram in India, because there aren’t any such communities here (and in Amma’s and Mother Meera’s cases, never have been).

But if by “community” you mean spending an hour or two (or several, in Amma’s case) every 6 to 12 months or so with a crowd of others, then I don’t think that really qualifies, do you?

As for “South America is the new frontier today, with sannyasins and seekers going for entheogens and shamans, perhaps a quicker and more direct route.” – Sounds like just another version of chasing drugs and excitement, as per 40/50 years ago. As if any shaman could really help any westerner beyond perhaps a relatively brief psychic ‘opening’. Bah, humbug, I say!

I hear there`s a spin-off from ‘King of the Jungle’ – a retro thing featuring Dhyan Raj called: ‘It`s a Knockout’, but that`s just gossip.

There was also the complaint and court case of a an ex-devotee who said that Adi Da had instructed her to give three other men blow jobs while he watched, after she had told him that she had been sexually abused as a child, and the woman who complained that Adi Da had given her herpes and then told her he had freed her of her “bad cunt karma”. Then there were the home-made porn movies and the orgies which were orchestrated whilst he watched and wanked.

‘Keeping Up With The Trustafarians# – following a bunch of spoilt baby-boomers, squandering their parents’ inheritance on designer guru labels!

‘Extreme Makeover’ – Gurus caught with their pants down and high on drugs and abuse, get a name change and a PR makeover to relaunch their brand!

‘Guru Swap’ – Two seekers from different social classes, swop gurus for a week. Each seeker is given a manual on exactly how to behave. Often descends into violence!

‘Hoarders’ – the real life struggles of gurus who have accumulated the biggest stash!

‘Survivor’ – A group of gurus are dropped on a desert island, and must compete in being the best smartypants to avoid elimination!