Tripping in Holland D 209
Back in my seat, I wonder at all the warnings I've received from
friends and family not to take the stuff, that it could be dangerous.
From reading Alex Polari, I remember that before seeing visions the
apprentice will pass through a craziness stage, the principal characteris-
tic of which is fear. The first visions are pervaded by death and de-
struction as a test to see if the novice is strong enough to travel in the
spirit world, much as occurs in an initiation into Freemasonry. And be-
cause what happens on this side of reality is but a pale reflection of
what is to be seen on the other, the dangers of a journey to the other
side require the presence at every ritual of a master shaman with men-
tal stability and strength of character.Typica1 of the opening moments
are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, intense depression, and anxiety.
The chanting resumes, mostly in Portuguese, occasionally in Eng-
lish. A woman with red hair, in her thirties, almost across from me,
reaches for a pail and starts to vomit. Her retching sounds like a wild
beast in the jungle. She vomits and vomits while one of the female
attendants holds back strands of her red hair to keep it from being
filthied.
Vomiting, I have been told, is a key point in the Daime learning
process, helping to release the past. As Alex Polari puts it, "Only you
can cast away your old identity-the crusts of ego, personality, psychic
imbalance, and spiritual obstacles-that once served as a protective
shell for differentiating yourself from the spiritual world.... Daime
accelerates the process in the psyche and dissolves even the most
chronic emotional shells that hinder an individual's capacity to see,
feel, and be his or her true self."
The Daime obliges one to look at oneself, especially at aspects one
doesn't want to see. Seeing ourselves as we really are can be painful, and
the pain, as Polari points out, "is usually proportional to our resistance
to the Master who wants to show us ourselves."
The concept of healing in the Daime faith is holistic-body, mind,
and spirit are treated as a unified organism. Walter Andritzky comments
that whereas orthodox analytical therapy offers only hagrnentary and par-
tial insight into particular aspects of the self, the holistic vision and