Hi, I'm a chemistry and pharmacology student with a profound passion for the exploration of consciousness and reality. I don't know what to write for an essay, so I will post something I wrote recently, something which I want to share with others but have not posted anywhere yet. Its about some connections I've stumbled upon over the years involving Amazonian shamansim, pharmacology, spirituality and the limitations of the western paradigm. Here it is:
I read an article about the use of Cats Claw by indigenous people in the Amazon jungle. Pharmaceutical companies are researching Cats Claw extensively due to its wide range of medicinal properties. I can't find the original article I read, but heres an excerpt from a thread:
http://vitanetonline.com/forums/1/Thread/666the explains the points of interest:
Quote: To determine which cat’s claw roots do have healing properties, we have to go to the rainforests of Peru. This is where Uncaria tomentosa thrives. It’s a woody vine that’s found at the base of tall trees in the rainforests. As the plant grows, it winds up and around the tree, attaching itself to the trunk with curved cat-like claws found at the junctions of its leaves. The Ashaninka Indians, who make these rainforests their home, have used the roots of the cat’s claw plant for thousands of years to cure illness and maintain health in the tribe.
Healers in the Ashaninka tribe attribute the healing properties in cat’s claw to the “good sprits” that live in the plant’s roots. In order to obtain these healing properties, the correct cat’s claw root must first be harvested. The Ashaninka healers know which cat’s claw to use; they can actually “see” the good spirits hidden inside the root of the plant before they collect them. Some cat’s claw plant roots have the good spirits. Some cat’s claw plant roots don’t. If the cat’s claw root with good spirits is mixed with any cat’s claw root without good spirits, the healing power is lost. While there are no visible differences in the plants or the roots, only certain cat’s claw roots possess the power to heal. And, only the Ashaninka tribal healers seem to be able to see them.
Amazingly, however, scientists who were given cat’s claw roots by the Ashaninka to study in the laboratory discovered that they were able to “see” the good spirits, too! Using high performance liquid chromatography, or HPLC, a laboratory process that identifies various chemical compounds, the good spirits of cat’s claw roots were revealed to actually be important medicinal compounds, called pentacyclic oxindole alkaloids (or POAs).
At the same time, the scientists studying cat’s claw found they could “see” the non-healing properties as well. Again, using HPLC, they also discovered the presence of tetracyclic oxindole alkaloids (or TOAs) in certain cat’s claw roots. While the POAs have very powerful effects in the immune system, the TOAs have different effects in the body, none of which help the immune system cells at all.
And, if the TOAs and POAs are mixed together (as, so often happens in the vast majority of cat’s claw products), the resulting product is useless to healing and health. The TOAs cancel out the action of the POAs, making the cat’s claw root extract ineffective. Even as little as 1% TOA content can cause POAs to lose their ability to beneficially modulate the immune system.
So it seems these Ashaninka shamans can somehow see which cats claw plants have the medicinal properties and which don't, and they refer to what they see as "spirits". Western scientists cannot understand how they "see" this, it seems the Western paradigm itself is blind to something which can be seen through the paradigm of the Ashaninka people.
This reminds me of the book DNA: The Cosmic Serpent, because it was the Ashaninka tribe that Jeremy Narby stayed with. Various Amazonian tribes have extensive knowledge of plant medicines and in some cases, Western scientists cannot understand how they obtained this knowledge because the statistical probability that they discovered it by chance is such that it would be completely absurd to believe that they made the discovery by chance. When they ask the people how they made the discoveries, the explanations they give are completely incompatible with the western paradigm. The most notable example is ayahuasca. It is a mixture of Psychotria viridis (chacruna) and Banisteriopsis caapi which must be boiled for 10 hours or so. Out of the millions of species of plants in the Amazon, what are the odds that they decided to mix those two particular species together, boil them for 10 hours and drink the resulting brew. Even if they had the knowledge of modern pharmacologies, what would be the odds that out of the millions of plant species in the Amazon, they discovered the one which contains significant concentrations of an MAOI (B. caapi) then somehow figured out that chacruna contains DMT (I've tried smoking it, snorting it and drinking tea, its completely inactive without an MAOI because it has such a low concentration of DMT).
On top of that, they have knowledge of what diet one should eat before ingesting the ayahuasca, in order to minimise the negative effects. Earlier western anthropologists believed this was just some superstitious taboo, but as science evolved, scientists gained an understanding of MAO and how compounds (like tyramine) in certain foods can interact negatively with MAOIs. The Amazonian shamans claim that they were given this knowledge by the plants themselves. According to Narby, one of the shamans he asked, told him that the first shaman to discover ayahuasca was a tobaquero and was instructed by the tobacco spirits on what plants to harvest and how to prepare the ayahuasca. In other words, he received the information in a vision induced by tobacco. For anyone who doesn't know, high doses of nicotine do in fact induce visions. Indian tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) contains up to 17 times as much nicotine as the kinda tobacco westerns use (Nicotiana tabacum). There is a tribe near the Peruvian Brazilian border (they're called the Matses) which uses a snuff called nu-nu, which is a mixture of finely powdered Indian tobacco and mapacho bark, they get someone with a tube to blow enormous quantities (half gram each shot) of it into their noses, until they fall unconscious. They say that after they lose consciousness they receive visions, and will see an animal arrive at a particular place, then later on they will go to that particular location and wait for the animal to come along so they can kill it.
Another one of these mysteries is curare, a preparation used by indigenous tribes to paralyse animals without poisoning the meat. Curare is a mixture of around 10 (I can't remember the exact figures) different plants which must be boiled together for something like 18 hours in order to become active. Indigenous Amazonians believe that the plants are intelligent and are in constant communication and that humans can communicate with the plant world too. There is a plant that grows in the Amazon which the indigenous people there use to treat snake bites. The plant itself resembles snake fangs, and one of the locals told Narby that this is no coincidence, he said that nature communicates to us in various ways. I didn't read the full book (DNA: The Cosmic Serpent), I haven't read the last couple of chapters yet but I remember Narby was theorising that there is a connection between some of the mythology and supernatural beliefs of these indigenous shamans, and real biochemical processes. I feel like I'm stumbled upon some connections that maybe nobody has yet made, which is why I wanna share it with others because maybe someone else will be able to see a big picture emerge. That discovery about the tetra and pentacyclicindole alkaloids in Cats Claw hadn't been made when Narby wrote his book. The reason I've researched the Matses is because they are one of the main tribes who use sapo (tree frog venom) as a medicine, and they are probably the most adept at it. I believe the Matses are the only tribe who use nu-nu.