Ayahuasca as a Triple Phenomenon:
The Personal Factor
As Ayahuasca reveals our hidden side, opening the doors of the unconscious – to use psychological language – a huge range of options and types of experience appear. In reality this psycho-active potion reveals and liberates what is inside the person, making the mind manifest (in other words, the “psychedelic” effect is a “manifestation of the mind”). The mind becomes subject to observation and, for this reason, to transformation.
The fluidity and the quality of the movement of the “ayahuasqueiro” in this psychic labyrinth depends primarily on the personal factor, on his or her “contents”, which include elements of the personal unconscious and experience of life, as well as the conditioning mechanisms which are in operation – like inhibition and defence. All these determine his or her freedom of choice, the quality, richness and legitimacy of the interpretations – in other words, the main challenges to the individual.
Another important aspect of the individual’s “contents” are his or her values or personal criteria: attitudes, aspirations, expectations, intentions and ethics.