First question Participant: I had a very powerful dream yesterday, with a lot of visions. The whole night. And I was very negative. I have the feeling that I was in a rollercoaster. I think that place was not bearable, or I couldn’t take it… so I felt I was dying. Once, twice, three times. A thousand times. I think there was nothing left of me. And at the same time I was in peace. Ruymán: that’s okey. Participant: At the same time I felt that sense that it was absolutely necessary, and I was grateful that I went through it. That’s crazy. Ruymán: It was totally necessary. It was your first vision, right? Participant: When you were chanting, playing

Participant: In the first week that I was with you, I had very intense visions. They were good, but brief visions. Many things were revealed to me. However, in these last ceremonies, my visions are no longer so intense as they were before. My question is this: is it really important to have visions? Is it possible to achieve the healing effect required without having any vision? Maybe the Great Spirit is angry with me, and that’s why I have no more visions. In the first ceremony my visions were in color, while in the latter, the visions were black and white or gray. You vomited last night? Yes, I usually vomit. After drinking, how long did it take to

First question Participant: For the second time, during the second ceremony, I feel fear of death. This fear does not begin immediately, just when Ayahuasca begins to take effect, but a little later, during the night. And I still feel it even at night. Even for most of the day, I was mortified, and so I was asking to see if I could take more. Because I’m really scared. Ruymán: You’re afraid to die, you say. Good. Are you sick, do you feel any discomfort? Any problem, some pain? Participant: Consciously, no. Ruymán: have the doctors told you there’s anything wrong with you? Participant: No, I’ve had stomach problems, and I’m not yet fully recovered. For example, I have trouble

A QUESTION ON INTERPRETATION Participant: Last night I had many visions, and I think I understood the meaning of my dreams. But in the last one I didn’t understand very well. In my dream I was on a shore… Ruymán: In a river or at sea? Participant: On the seashore. There were two very beautiful men; They were calling me. Then I saw four men -also very beautiful- on a boat. They called me. I was walking, and they asked me to get on the ship. Everything was fine, until I began to wonder what that vision meant: at that precise moment, the vision vanished. Ruymán: Well, so you started wrong. You tried to reason, you used the perspective (the

A QUESTION ABOUT THE LESSONS LEARNED THROUGHOUT THE WAY Participant: Does Natem (Ayahuasca) take us into our darkness? Ruymán: I wouldn’t say that Natem leads us into our darkness: I’d rather say that Ayahuasca immerses us into the Spirit’s depths, and as we reach the Spirit, we see those dark tendencies, the ones that we feed daily; we can feel their misery and their dark veil. We see them as they are, and how they grows within us. But if we didn’t do that, Natem’s trance would be just the sheer radiance of the Spirit: pure light and beauty, just as Life itself. Participant: Well, when Ayahuasca shows me those dark parts of myself, I start to feel nauseous. I

I’d like to share with you an excerpt of a quary asked by a lady from St. Petersburg: Participant: I’d like to know if you could help me out. I have a sick little daughter. She was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She had received the unofficial treatment and, although initially there was an improvement, cancer has returned with possible metastasis. Right now the doctors propose to perform a fairly aggressive procedure, but my daughter is in terrible shape, physically and mentally. I think she doesn’t feel like living anymore, and she’s giving in. I really don’t think that I can help her to improve her situation, I don’t know what will happen to her after a new exposure

Participant: Those who live in Siberia, for instance -where not many plants can be cultivated-: How should they feed themselves? Ruyman: They have to eat meat. Anyway, if I lived there, I would try to eat more fish. As we’ve already said: in the diet, it’s important to minimize the damage that we can make to the body. If the dilemma is between eating fish or bird, it would be interesting to ask ourselves the following question: what is simpler for us? Is it better to kill a bird… or a fish? When we take Natem: Do we become a fish or a bird? Maybe we’ve not had visions yet, but fish is usually a lot further from our consciousness.