Eight years ago, I found myself at my first psychedelic ritual. A group of about ten people, none of whom I knew, remained strangers to me at that time. And to this day I don’t remember anyone who was there. My experience could be summarized in three sentences – I drank an unknown potion, about an hour later I “returned” it into a bucket, and then I fell asleep to the sweet sound of a harmonica. In the morning, when it came time to share, I had nothing to say. I felt like crying.
Nevertheless, I took home a certain new inner peace and determination to open the doors to my inner self. Other participants shared colorful experiences, emotions, and realizations, so surely they didn’t make it all up!
And so began my many years of attending various group rituals and therapies, ceremonies, workshops, and treatments. Over time, I began to observe interesting interplays of circumstances in the groups I participated in and what manifested within them. This was especially true in the psychedelic ones, where it seemed possible to momentarily lift the fog that envelops each of us and prevents us from seeing ourselves or others clearly. However, in the moment when it temporarily dissipates, we can catch glimpses of ourselves and others, as well as ourselves in others, more transparently.
Intensified Being
Psychedelics generally act as amplifiers – they amplify our inner contents. In other words, the intensity of experiencing themes that we close our eyes to, turn our backs on, or simply just ignore, can be so dense that it’s impossible to pretend you don’t get the point.
However, from my experience, psychedelics not only intensify the connection with the inner self, but also with external reality. I truly experienced real wonderment in adulthood while in the psychedelic state of consciousness. And similarly, the feeling of connection with others with whom the experience is shared is intensified. It’s as if individual members of the group together create a complex and consistent whole, the mutual interconnectedness of which is beyond doubt.
In rituals – both psychedelic and non-psychedelic – it has repeatedly happened to me that I thought of something and someone else did it. Whether it was singing a specific song or, on the contrary, silence, giving water, blankets, or encouragement, closing a window, or ventilating. In a certain sense, this sometimes happens to us in life – we think of someone and they call us, we wish for something and it happens, but in rituals, it happens remarkably often, as if the person could simply manifest as wish into reality.
I remember one moment when I was saved from a challenging mental chaos, an unpleasant looping, by the sound of a glass tipping over, clinking against the stone floor. Coincidence. But next time it was the slamming of the window, another time the abrupt closing of the door. At the moment when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, there was a pause. Always at the right time. It may sound like a cliché, but when it happens again and again, and in moments when we consider it “vitally” important, the mind has no chance to explain it.
Fascinating is also the time of packing for a journey. I stopped thinking about it. If my intuition tells me to take something, regardless of whether there’s a single reason to think I’ll need it, I do it. Then I’m amazed at the situations in which the particular thing is really needed. Usually, someone else needs it. It’s like a game with the universe that resembles the chicken and egg. Is the thing necessary because it’s available, or did I take it because it was clear it would be needed?
Evan M. Cohen
Beyond Ordinary Comprehension
It’s been four years since my first vision quest in the Lakota tradition. Several nights without food, water, and sleep, enhanced by the ritual of the sweat lodge and the observance of the rules of the original tradition, are among the most significant experiences of my life. The aspect of the group is extremely interesting in this case because the participants are divided into vision seekers and helpers. According to tradition, they are connected through the fire of the sweat lodge (Native American sauna). It’s said that helpers are in fact eating, drinking, and sleeping for those sitting in the forest. If they eat, they give food to the fire, and if they drink, they symbolically drink with the fire and with those sitting in the forest. “A dear comfort saying before the four-day fast,” I said to myself, “it’s more like the placebo effect.” To my surprise, during the final sharing, some participants described the food that was eaten on a particular day. They all “hit the mark” and the mind could not comprehend how.
While sitting in the forest last night, I felt an urge to scream. It was as if a command echoed within me. The feeling was truly extreme. However, I knew I wasn’t alone – usually, the participants are scattered at a distance of about a hundred, two hundred meters from each other, and I refused to scream it. It was a deep night, I didn’t want to scare anyone. I felt sick. The urge to scream was even stronger within me. I got up, my head spun, but I screamed at the top of my lungs. I felt like a lion announcing that it’s their territory, and I felt significantly relieved.
Upon returning, we shared our experiences. Most participants mentioned the last night as the most intense, and they divided its course into the time before I screamed and the time after. Some perceived the scream as protective, others as empowering, and three people mentioned that they were falling asleep and the scream woke them up when they felt threatened. It also scared someone and then they had to confront their fear. Where did my need to scream come from? Did I scream because I needed to release something, or because others needed it?
During a vision quest, it’s often said that the group becomes one organism. That the helpers do exactly what needs to be done. And it’s always done by the one who has the most ideal predispositions and means for it, they just shouldn’t think about it. Many times I’ve witnessed someone not even having time to get up to get something, to add wood to the fire, nor express any need because it has already been fulfilled. In a way, it’s reminiscent of the symbiosis of living organisms on the planet, like ants or bees, who cooperate unconditionally and do what is necessary for the whole. What sets us apart from them is our mind, which often puts obstacles in the way of activities it doesn’t understand, so often that we let the motives for action fade away and simply think it’s nonsense.
Evan M. Cohen
The Group as the Desired Future of Psychedelic Therapy
Although legal psychedelic psychotherapy primarily occurs as individual sessions in the vast majority of cases, it is common in the underground for entire groups to undergo the psychedelic experience. This setup partly mirrors the communal gatherings of indigenous tribes and offers many advantages for our context.
One such advantage is the connection with others who have chosen this approach, with whom a person can then share their experience. Although a person’s experiences, which often exceed the ability of words to adequately capture, can bring them closer to themselves, it can happen that they feel more distant from their surroundings. It’s no wonder that patients who undergo an individual experience feel isolated with their experiences afterward.
A group that collectively experiences realms that transcends everyday reality usually leads to deeper connection and cohesion – in challenging moments, participants mutually provide courage simply by not being alone, both during and after the “action”.
In our Western context after a ceremony, it’s customary to share one’s experience and impressions. Usually (and fortunately), it’s not obligatory, nevertheless, it has certain advantages. Many times, from someone else’s story, we understand new dimensions of events that happened to us. I’ve often had the opportunity to listen to the perspective of someone for whom the situation was exactly the same as mine – just in different settings, with different “actors” of the theater of life, and yet from the opposite position. Expanding the perspective on how the other person might have felt is liberating.
We can find a great quality of the group within the space it opens up, precisely for the expression of inner contents through interactions with others. It’s as if they can play exactly the scene we need to evoke something in us and we can take away some new awareness and insight. In this way, we can be the best teachers to each other. If we are aware of it.
