Liquid Light

G. William Barnard, a Professor of Religious Studies, has written this fascinating account of his own journey through the Santo Daime religious tradition. Santo Daime emerged in Brazil in the 1930s as a syncretic religion drawing together Catholicism and Shamanism. Its religious ceremonies involve the ingesting of ayahuasca – a plant-based psychedelic containing DMT, which has been used for thousands of years in South America to elicit spiritual visions and insights, prior to becoming a central part of the Santo Daime religion. The book takes the reader through William Barnard’s initial encounters with Santo Daime followed by his time as an active and committed member of the religion, and is interspersed with philosophical and scientific reflections.

I found William Barnard’s descriptions of the ayahuasca (Daime) experience to capture it about as well as language can. It is a profound revelation that is impossible to convey in words, but they can signpost nonetheless. Here is an extract from Chapter 1:

‘I began to be tossed and turned in an extremely powerful and turbulent inner river of Force and Light that sent me forward through a series of nonordinary temporal moments and spaces that were punctuated with Power-filled visionary perceptions that would almost force themselves into my conscious awareness, coming with an insistence that was impregnated with Meaning and Beauty (here We Are, Revealing Ourselves)…. it was as if each “world” that I entered into (or that entered into me) was tuned to a different key than my ordinary world – each world has its own inherently unique vibratory signature…’

In a later chapter, he describes how the ayahuasca provides access to “a vast, multidimensional ‘realm’ of nonphysical reality.” He describes encountering all kinds of nonphysical entities in this multidimensional realm, including entities with long spindly fingers that seem to want to help examine him, and a demi-god being who “crackled with Power and Light.” These claims may seem outlandish to those who have not taken ayahuasca or DMT, but for those who have, including me, it is a just description of the facts of the experience. My own journeys have included similar encounters.

The book contains philosophical reflections on the nature of consciousness and mystical experience through the lens of William James’ and Henri Bergson’s writings. These two philosophers provide a sense-making framework that William Barnard uses to comprehend his Daime experiences. The book also discusses the religion of Santo Daime itself. He emphasises that it is a hard and challenging path, not for the faint of heart, which leads to slow but steady personal development. The aim, which he feels is achieved over time, is to become “increasingly translucent conduits of Divine Power, Light, and Love”. The religious structures that surround the use of this ayahuasca in Santo Daime provide for stability, support and communality around the transpersonal journeys, which can be disorienting and challenging. Such a steadying social system may be missing if individuals take ayahuasca outside a religious tradition or a support community. William Barnard discusses his discomfort with the more ritualistic aspects of the religion over the years, but also says that adhering to the religion and learning to love the more challenging aspects has been central to overcoming his ego.

Other parts of the book discuss journeys to the Brazilian rainforest, the ritual of making Daime, coming to terms with the Christian aspect of Santo Daime, mediumship within the tradition, the meaning of divinissation, and ‘miracoes’, which are visionary experiences initiated by ceremonies that bring knowledge, insight or a creative inflow, such as fully-formed songs that appear ready to convey to the outer world.

This is an important book. It provides a rich and powerful tapestry of personal experiences and theoretical considerations that convey an insight into one of the few modern religious traditions to have built their sacraments around a psychedelic. Psychedelics are becoming ever more popular, and the realisation will inevitably grow that communities and ritual are essential for psychedelic work to be safe and catalytic for development. This will lead to more religious organisations emerging to hold the space around plant medicine work. Santo Daime provides an important model to emulate. It might just be a vision of the future.