[DMT]Being outside the dominion of time-Shanon.pdf

being outside the dominion of time

By Benny Shanon, Department of Psychology

The Hebrew University

Jerusalem, Israel (msshanon@mscc.huji.ac.il)

s explained in previous contributions to the MAPS Bulletin (Shanon, 1997a,

1998a and 2000a; see also Shanon, 1997b, 1998b and 2000b), for almost a

decade now I have been engaged in the systematic phenomenological investigation of the

special psychological state induced by the Amazonian psychotropic brew Ayahuasca (for

general background information, readers are referred to the

previous publications cited above). My investigation is based,

on the one hand, on extensive firsthand experiences with the

brew (at this point, I have partaken of it more than 130 times)

and, on the other hand, on interviews conducted with almost

200 individuals. Amongst my informants were indigenous and

non-indigenous persons from various places in Brazil and Peru

as well as foreigners (that is, persons residing outside of South

America). These individuals differed in the levels of their

experience with Ayahuasca and with respect to the contexts in

which they partook of the brew. My investigation examines all

aspects of the Ayahuasca experience - general atmosphere and

feelings, hallucinations in all perceptual modalities, ideations,

spiritual and mystical experiences, modifications in people’s

overall state of consciousness, transformations of personal

identity as well as non-ordinary overt behaviors and perfor-

mances. A full report of the investigation is presented in a

forthcoming book titled The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the

Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience. In this short

communication I discuss one aspect of the Ayahuasca phenom-

enology that has to do with radical modifications in the

experience of temporality.

The study of temporality is of special significance because,

as noted by many thinkers—philosophers and psychologists

alike (see Kant, 1781/1953; James, 1890/1950; Bergson, 1944,

1950; Heidegger, 1962; and Merleau-Ponty, 1962; as well as

Shanon, 1993 and Shanon, 1998), temporality is perhaps the most fundamental

constituent of human cognition. Thus, any modification in temporality is of significant

cognitive import, empirical as well as theoretical. Various such modifications are

encountered with Ayahuasca. Like other psychotropic agents (for reports related to other

such agents, see Mayhew, 1961; Watts, 1962), Ayahuasca can induce marked changes in

the experience of time. Here I would like to consider those changes that are so radical as

to induce a feeling that is altogether outside the dominion of time; for further details and

a more extensive theoretical discussion, the reader is referred to Shanon (2001).

Perhaps the most

marked, and the most

common, modification in

the temporal experience

encountered with

Ayahuasca has to do with

changes in the rate of

time's flow....it is as if in

brief moments a person

can accommodate what

are experienced as long

stretches of time. “

“

Changes in the rate of time’s flow

were in the ordinary frame of reference, the Israelites were

in a non-ordinary one. When only a moment passed in

the ordinary frame (and hence, it seemed that the sun did

not move), an extended duration was experienced in the

non-ordinary frame, thus enabling the Israelites suffi-

cient time to fight their enemies. The similarity between

this account and the phenomenon encountered with

Ayahuasca is striking. I shall further note that the

Maharal’s proposal probably presents the first employ-

ment of the conceptual distinctions which, at the begin-

ning of the 20th century, became the core of Einstein’s

special theory of relativity.

Interestingly, similar observations are found in the

fantasy tales of C.S. Lewis in his The Lion, the Witch and

the Wardrobe (Lewis, 1950) in which he recounts the

Perhaps the most marked, and the most common,

modification in the temporal experience encountered

with Ayahuasca has to do with changes in the rate of

time’s flow. Specifically, time may be experienced to run

faster or slower than it normally does. The prevalent

experience is that in what objectively (that is, as measured

by the clock) is a short period of time, much can be

experienced. The contrast is especially appreciated when

drinkers of Ayahuasca consult the watch and discover

that even though so much has happened to them experi-

entially, in reality very little time has passed. What we

have here may be conceived of in terms of two frames of

reference. In the ordinary frame of time hardly any time

ln especially strong visions, drinkers may feel totally immersed in

these scenarios and even act in them and engage in interaction with

the objects, people and creatures that they encounter in them. “

adventures of children who passed through a wardrobe

and entered into magical lands. The children’s adven-

tures in these other lands lasted hours, days, perhaps even

longer; yet, as far as the ordinary world was concerned

hardly any time elapsed at all. Thus, when the children

returned to the wardrobe and into their house, they

realized that the adult members of their family thought

that they were absent for only a moment or two.

has passed, whereas in the other, non-ordinary frame one

seems to have traversed a very long duration. In other

words, it is as if in brief moments a person can accommo-

date what are experienced as long stretches of time. In

general, it seems to me that the more powerful the

Ayahuasca inebriation is, the more pronounced is the

discrepancy between the two frames of temporality.

Theoretically, in the limit, experiences of timelessness

associated with unbounded duration may be experi-

enced. In this sense, the Ayahuasca drinker will find him/

herself to be, in effect, outside of the dominion of time.

The state of affairs noted here is, I think, exactly that

recounted in the Bible in conjunction with the war the

Israelites had with the Amorites (Joshua 10: 12-13):

The meeting of two frames of reference

Another non-ordinary pattern involving the contrast

between two frames of time has to do with non-ordinary

anchoring of temporal reference. Normally, we are situ-

ated in the present: The past is gone, not to be retrieved,

the future is not yet and still unknown and we, human

beings, are confined to the now. This holds both the

definition of our own being and that of whatever we

perceive. Thus, if now—Tuesday, 13:15—I am in my

home in Jerusalem, what I perceive through the open

window is taking place now—that is, Tuesday, 13:15—

as well. This seems to be trivial, but with Ayahuasca

people may encounter patterns that violate this scheme. It

is quite common for drinkers of the brew to feel that they

are here, in the now, observing states of affairs happening

in other places, at other times. For instance, once I found

myself looking through the hut in which an Ayahuasca

session was held and saw a scenario which I interpreted as

Then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when

the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the

children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,

Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou,

Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood

still, and the moon stayed, until the people had

avenged themselves upon their enemies.

Impressively, the Maharal of Prague, the Jewish

rabbinical sage of the 16th century famous for his Golem,

explained this event by means of the coupling of two

distinct frames of references. Specifically, the Maharal

(see Mallin, 1979) proposes that whereas the Amorites

“

taking place in ancient Egypt.

Even more powerful are cases in

which Ayahuasca drinkers feel that

they cross the boundary and enter

into the scenes of their visions. In

such cases, drinkers feel not only that they have seen or

witnessed scenarios taking place in other times, but that

they have actually been present in such scenarios. Experi-

ences of this kind involve both non-ordinary space-travel

and what may be regarded as time-travel. In especially

strong visions, drinkers may feel totally immersed in these

scenarios and even act in them and engage in interaction

with the objects, people and creatures that they encounter

in them. Transformations of identity may be experienced

as well. Since these experiences involve various facets

which extend beyond the topic of temporality, I shall not

discuss them any further here.

..Mozart was said to have been able to

grasp an entire symphony in an instant. “

When we read something, we are aware of one

word coming after another. But when we de-

tach our minds from the sense of the words and

look at the page as a whole, this impression fades,

and we are aware that the words all exist together

at the same time. (p. 298)

Knowledge and the realm of meaning

I would approach Mayhew’s observations from a

somewhat different perspective, focusing not on the

written words but on the content they express. The book

is there - everything described in it is in front of the reader

at the same time, now. The story that the book narrates

progresses in a certain sequence in time. Yet, we the

readers (especially if we have already read the book or

heard the narrative) can open the book and read it in any

order we wish. One can start by reading an episode that

took place in the middle of the sequence, then turn to an

episode towards the end of the book, and later to one at

the very beginning.

Related to this is the epistemic status of the knowl-

edge readers have of the narrative recounted in the book.

A book takes time to read. It is also the case that if enacted,

all the episodes in it would take time. However, the

information contained in the book is all there at once.

And so is the knowledge readers familiar with the book

have. Actually, this pattern is quite general. Think of a

body of information you know well: a novel, a scientific

theory, a piece of music. I ask you to think what it means,

to appreciate what it conveys, to assess your understand-

ing of it. How much time did it take you to do so? A few

moments, I presume. At any rate, much less than the time

it would actually take to read the novel, to retrace the

theory, to listen to the musical piece. One’s appreciation

is, in a way, instantaneous. And the more knowledgeable

or competent one is, the stronger the effect. For example,

Mozart was said to have been able to grasp an entire

symphony in an instant (Ghiselin, 1952). But in truth, all

of us know this feeling: When one knows something well,

the grasping of this knowledge (as distinct from specific

demonstrations of it) seems to require little or almost no

time.

Taking a more general perspective still, we note that,

by its very essence, semantics transcends time. We can all

The realm of the eternal

Still more radical is the experience in which one feels

that one is situated in a point of reference where one can

observe everything that has ever happened as well as

everything that will ever happen. This point of reference

defines the eternal, with respect to which all events have

an equal temporal status. In a certain sense, they are all

there and one only has to look at them. From the

perspective of the eternal, the temporal may, in a fashion,

be reduced to the spatial. This, note, is reminiscent of the

view presented by Spinoza (1670/1989, 1985) with

regards to both determinism and the nature of time.

Experiences of this kind are described by Alex Polari

(1984), a Brazilian intellectual who is currently a leader of

the Church of Santo Daime, a syncretic religion that uses

Ayahuasca (referred to as Daime) as a sacrament. The

following are insights Polari gained during the course of

his own firsthand experience with the brew:

The Daime, simply, delivers us to all the Times.

Overcoming the difficulties of our conscious-

ness, which still has to establish differences be-

tween what was, what is and that which will be.

(p. 70)

In conjunction with this, a useful analogy is to be

found in Mayhew’s discussion of the non-standard expe-

rience of time he had with mescaline (Mayhew, 1961):

“

appreciate this when reading literary texts of past genera-

tions, inspecting old photographs, or looking at works of

art from ancient civilizations. The child or the young

enamored couples that appear in them are long, long

dead. Yet for the reader or the viewer the persons in

question are forever children, adolescents or young

adults. Babyhood, adolescence and adulthood are not

just moments in biographical chronology, they are also

chapters in a story. It is the story of human life, that which

we all enact in the course of our own individual lives. The

particular manifestations of this story evolve in time, but

the basic patterns of the script transcend the contingen-

cies of the temporal. These pertain to the domain of

eternal meanings.

With Ayahuasca, similar appreciations are gained

on a much larger time scale - that of human history.

and change. Thus, the realm of the Ideas both specifies

meaning and transcends time. Several informants with

academic education explicitly told me that with

Ayahuasca they felt they contemplated the “Platonic

spheres”. Observations along similar lines were also made

by Huxley (1971) in conjunction with his experiences

with mescaline.

Interestingly, the association between atemporality

and meaning is also encountered in Amerindian my-

thologies. Overing (1985a, 1985b) reports that in the

cosmology of the Piaroa, a tribe from the Orinoco basin

of Venezuela, in the world of the Gods’ relationships

between beings is defined in a manner that defies ordi-

nary logical and temporal relationships. Overing explains

this by noting that in this world relationships pertain to

the world of meaning. Analyzing the cosmology and

metaphysics of the Piaroa,

Overing also noted that the

world of the shaman, and that of

the Gods, is outside of time.

Indeed, instead of being defined

by linear temporal contiguity,

this world is defined by relation-

ships of meaning. Overing (1985a) further reports that

according to the Piaroa there is a realm which is before

time in which the special powers of the Gods are guarded

in boxes of crystal. Inter alia, these powers include

rationality and the words of songs. It shall be noted that

the knowledge pertaining to this realm is directly associ-

ated with plant-induced hallucinatory experiences (in

this case, however, not Ayahuasca).

The past is gone, not to be retrieved, the

future is not yet and still unknown and we,

human beings, are confined to the now. “

There are periods of peace and periods of war, times of

success and times of failure. Kings reign and exercise

great power but eventually they die. Likewise, entire

civilizations rise and fall. In grand Ayahuasca visions

one may be privy to a special perspective, by which one

observes such historical events with the detachment of

distance (which does not mean lack of empathy). With

this, one savors a little bit of the taste of the eternal and

appreciates the perennial meanings of life and Exist-

ence. As the Biblical sage Ecclesiastes (Kohelet in

Hebrew) said “There is nothing new under the sun.”

(1:9) In line with all this is another insight reported by

Polari (1984):

Nirvana-like experiences

Usually, the experience of eternity associated with

Ayahuasca does not entail the abolition of movement.

Phenomenologically, time ceases to be relevant, but

motion, progression and change remain. Specifically, the

scenes one observes from the perspective of the eternal do

manifest motion, progression and change. Much rarer

with Ayahuasca is the experience of cessation, in which

atemporality is coupled with stillness. In this case, people

do not feel that other realms are revealed to them. As

pointed out by mystics in many traditions (for pertinent

information and discussion, see Forman 1990, 1998),

being in this state, one feels immersed in the very ground

of all Being. There, neither language nor reflection apply,

and hence no semantics.

I understood that this truth is absolutely immune

to any historicity....A truth that is not relative nor

relativized by anything, which entered and

syntonized within a dimension of eternal

permanency....Above and beyond a finite con-

sciousness depending on matter and ending with

it. (p. 61)

In the European civilization, the locus classicus for

linking atemporality and semantics is Plato. According to

Plato, meanings and regularities in the world are due to

the Ideas. The Ideas are abstract entities that embody all

true knowledge - everything that is not affected by time

“

Concluding remarks

atemporality is the following: The more meaningful

something is to us, the less bound by time it becomes. It

seems to me that in one way or another, all of us are

familiar with this pattern. One does not have to be in

non-ordinary states of consciousness in order to appreci-

ate this, but, obviously, in such states—as with

Ayahuasca—the effects are by far more radical and their

impact much more striking.

Finally, let me underline the fact that in this discus-

sion, I have not alluded to any considerations of paranor-

mality. In this, I radically differ from many, perhaps

most, of experienced Ayahuasca drinkers. In the various

contexts of Ayahuasca use phenomena like those cited

here are usually conceived either in terms of time travel (it

is said that Ayahuasca allows one to actually go to the past

or even the future) or in terms of visits to other non-

physical worlds. Thus, in both the indigenous

Amerindian context and in the modern syncretic reli-

gious sects employing Ayahuasca, the brew is said to bring

its drinkers to other, separate realities. In the doctrines of

all the modern Brazilian religious sects that use Ayahuasca

as a sacrament these are referred to as “the astral”; often,

the notion of reincarnation is invoked as well. I have had

those experiences which are characterized as pertaining to

the astral and I think I know what the protagonists of

Our survey presented various states of mind experi-

enced as being outside of the dominion of time. The very

encounter of such states counters the general statement

with which this paper opened, namely, that human

psychology is grounded in time. This also contrasts with

my own basic view of cognition. Indeed, for me, the

discovery of the atemporal was intellectually most unset-

tling. Throughout my professional career as a cognitive

psychologist and a philosopher of psychology, I have

come to maintain that human cognition is embedded in

time and that all cognitive performance is achieved

through action temporally unfolding in the real world.

This, I have argued (see Shanon, 1993), is not merely a

technical constraint but rather it is an essential, most

fundamental, feature of human cognition. Theoretically,

one could perhaps envision intelligent systems that oper-

ate in a different fashion, but these would be radically

different from the human one. Ayahuasca revealed a

totally different picture to me: It presented me with a

cognitive mode which, in a fashion, defines a world

outside time. The question as to how to reconcile these

new discoveries with my general view of cognition per-

plexed me quite a bit.

Full discussion of this question is outside the

scope of this paper. Here, let me confine myself to

a brief summary statement.

It could be suggested that human beings have

the ability to operate, and exist, in two different

states. Metaphorically, these may be conceived in

terms of the shifting of gears. The first state is the

ordinary one, and it is fully grounded in time. The

other, non-ordinary state consists of the freeing of

the mind from the ordinary temporal constraints.

That such freeing is possible is a major feat of the

human psyche. The study of the dynamics of the

shift between the two states is, I think, a cognitive-

psychological topic of great interest. A theoretical

framework that shall account for it will encompass

both ordinary consciousness and non-ordinary

consciousness and view them as specific cases obtained by

means of variations in a common, general structure.

Thus, the enterprise in question is, in essence, the devel-

opment of what may be regarded as a general theory of

consciousness.

Theoretically, the main moral of the present discus-

sion is the linking of atemporality and semantics: The

realm of atemporality is the realm of meaning. In essence,

the underlying principle governing the experiences of

The realm of atemporality is the

realm of meaning. ln essence, the

underlying principle governing the

experiences of atemporality is the

following - The more meaningful

something is to us, the less bound

by time it becomes. “

spiritualism are referring to. Yet, I do not subscribe to the

parapsychological, supernaturalistic view. Instead, I

would propose that what is referred to as the astral be

conceived of as the realm of meaning.

“

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