Let it go...

- My dialogues with Death.

The time is 7:30 PM and I am starting to feel the fear.  It feels like something is pulling my stomach down towards the floor.  I am sure it is fear and not the fish I had for lunch but I'm not quite sure what exactly is that I am scared of.  I take a minute, a deep breath and force myself to reflect on the situation and then I see it clear as a bell.  What I am experiencing is the fear of death.  Yes, I am terrified like never before in my life and the terror is about dying.  And my death is going to happen in the next 30 minutes, at 8:00 PM.

That was me a few days ago sitting inside a hut in a deep Amazonian jungle on the Peruvian side of the upper Amazon. The hut, more like a jungle cabin was part of a center for alternative medicine and healing which is a 2-hour boat ride from the town of Iquitos in Peru.  Located well deep inside the jungle, the place was as primitive as it could get.   If I drew a line from there back to my house, I could mark places at different points where I had to leave my familiarities behind.. familiarities like people, language, phone, internet etc. all the way to electricity.  The center's main line of work is offering Ayahuasca ceremonies to their clients, mostly westerners from all over the world.  I was waiting in my hut for Walter (one of the workers at the center) to come and escort me to do my last Ayahuasca ceremony at the center.  Ayahuasca is a foul tasting psychedelic brew made from two plants (Ayahuasca & Chacruna) and is revered by the 'Shamanic Healing' community as the mother of all medicines.   It is believed to heal on various levels (physical, mental, spiritual etc.).  What attracted me to Ayahuasca was my reading about experiences of many people about coming face to face with their egos and fears upon drinking the brew.  I saw 'ego' and promptly signed up.   I had an idea about how sneaky the ego is and had always been interested in knowing more on how it worked, so I had to checkout first-hand to see what Ayahuasca really was and what it had in store for me.   After spending 10 days doing 5 uneventful ceremonies at a center on a weaker brew, I almost lost hope that Ayahuasca would work for me.  But then I decided to try my luck with a different center and it worked.  I had two eventful ceremonies and one terrifying one at this center (Refugio Altiplano) and those three ceremonies had me convinced that there sure was something big waiting for me on my fourth and final ceremony.

I had no clue of what was going to happen in that last ceremony of mine because all three ceremonies before were very different from each other.  The first two were easy glides with varying levels of enhanced introspective activity in a trance-like state and were both pleasant experiences.  But now I was terrified because of what happened in the third ceremony.  What I experienced in the third ceremony was sheer terror.  I felt the fear and helplessness that would happen during the few moments before death.  It is difficult to explain the feeling because it was not happening on the physical level like intense pain or inability to breathe or something like that.  Everything was happening on the mental level.  It was that fear of death along with the voracious urge to get out of it and the strong desire for all that suffering to end immediately.  And there was no room for reasoning that, what I was experiencing was temporary and that I would be back to normal the next morning and all that experience would be nothing but a story for me to share with others.  There was absolutely no room for logical thoughts like that.  At that time, analogically speaking, I was just a worm on a hot frying pan with the burner on increasing heat.   And that was all that was happening; no past or no future attached to that experience.  There was no salvation in sight or even a clue for how I could get salvation and I had to ride out the whole session, experiencing the torture for a grueling 5 hours, inching and crawling through it minute by minute.

When the ceremony ended at 12AM, everybody started leaving to their cabins but I was physically unable to move.  At 1AM it was just me and Walter that were left.  And Walter stayed back just for me, to make sure I get to my cabin eventually.  I was at the worst of my physical and mental states (almost no motor abilities and scared to death).  I was longing for any form of support and had Walter sit right next to me and put his hand on my lap.  Also I was feeling bad to be holding him up so late at night.  So I forced myself into having a conversation with him in whatever broken Spanish I could speak.  Asked him how old he was, how long he had been working there at the center and then about his family and kids.  I show him a picture of my 8-month-old son and my wife.   I burst into tears when I said "mi hijo" (my son).  It was the first time in almost 20 days of being away from family, I was feeling the impact of it.  In the case of my son, it was not a feeling of missing him or wanting to see him immediately but what happened was I clearly saw the bond that connected me to him and it was unquestionably real.  And with my wife, I felt immense gratitude for the enormous patience she has always been showing towards me and felt guilty that I had never realized it before in so many years of our being together.  I was crying and couldn't stop it for like almost an hour, and Walter continued to sit there trying to comfort me.  Then with great difficultly and multiple stops on the way, I made the walk back to my cabin and to my bed.  It was just a short trail through the jungle but it felt like miles and miles of crossing the whole Amazon itself.  I got a glimpse of how helpless I would be when I am old, sick, and closer to death.  The next morning, I woke up a very happy person.   I was basically celebrating the fact that I didn't die and was very much alive.  And I wrote down all that I experienced the previous night in my notepad just like I did for all days before that.

That was my third ceremony and now, there I was waiting for the next one with the anxiety in my stomach bubbling up to uncontrollable levels.  Though it will be my last ceremony, I knew there was a good possibility that I could go through that same terror and torture all over again and I also knew that if that happens, I have no way of escaping it.  Sitting on the chair didn't help, neither did lying down on the bed, and I ended up walking in circles inside the cabin attempting to calm myself.  And I was looking once every minute to see if I could spot Walter's flash light in the direction of the trail; he came at 7:45 PM.  I locked the door and followed him to the Maloca (the bigger hut in which the ceremonies are conducted).  The walk was exactly like walking my last mile to get my execution sentence served.  And symbolically enough, Walter was carrying a big rifle in his shoulder (the security role was one of the many roles he did at the center).

The ceremony started at 8PM and the initial rituals were performed.  These initial rituals usually take from 8PM to 8:30PM where the evil spirits are blown away from everything and everybody, the bottle of Ayahuasca is blessed, poured in a small wooden cup and given to everybody one by one, the candle is put off (yes, everything is done in complete darkness) and then the songs (Icaros) begun.  In the case of this center, there were two Shamans taking turns to sing through the night till the end of the ceremony which is usually like 11PM.

It was not exactly one of those nights where things went like I wished.  After a brief few minutes of being in the trance state, the same torture began again and I was back at the same situation struggling for my life like a little fish out of water, gasping for one good breath of air; though physically I was not gasping, the experience I was going through was just that.  Interestingly, though I had one whole day to prepare myself for this very situation, just then did I realize that I had been doing nothing that day but hope that the same situation never happened to me again.  What an idiot... I mean I actually used up all the time there was, to just keep hoping the worst doesn't happen.

Anyways.. there were two spontaneous things I did involuntarily (rather happened to me) during that last ceremony on the night of 27th December 2011 and it is still hard for me to believe that there was no external intelligence involved in making those two things happen.  Here is the first one: When the torture was underway, out of the blue, I opened my mouth and uttered the phrase "Let it go!".  Even right after I said that, I couldn't believe I said it because letting it go was the last thing I wanted to do and there is no way I could have said it myself.  But right after I said it, I saw something strange happen.  The torture paused for a moment.  Again, analogically speaking, I could say that if the torture was like as if somebody was busy strangling me, and out of great difficulty I say this phrase "Let it go!", what happens now is the person gets confused, stops for a moment, looks at my face and asks, "What did you just say?".  So I see the power of that phrase and repeat it again and see the effect of it instantly reflecting in my body as a reduction in the torture.  And obviously, I end up saying it again and again as fast as I could as if I had found my savior holy-grail mantra.  But it was not quite saving me from the torture fully.  All it was doing was buying me time to breathe.  In a way I could say, if it was Death I was fighting with, I figured a way to get its attention.  And by doing that I felt a little (only a very little) powerful.  But I still had a long way to go.  One other thing was I didn't quite mean what I was saying (obviously, I didn't really want to let it go).  And given the situation I was in, I would have done anything that helped, even a little bit.  If I had to make a necklace out of noodle soup, I would have done it.

Then came the deadly question that put the gravity of the situation into perspective.   It was as if Death was asking me this: “I am Death and I am on to you, and all you are saying is ‘Let it go’, so are you ready to die now?" I would never forget that moment ever in my life.  My terror peaked at that point and I was absolutely sure I was going to die any moment then.  My eyes opened real wide and I took a good look at the ceiling of the hut.  The first thing that flashed in front of my eyes was my Son's face; he was sleeping peacefully with a quirky smile on his lips and I just wanted to hug him.  I wanted him sleeping on me, than anywhere else at that moment.  And secondly a thought occurred about my feeling of gratitude towards my wife, and how I won't get a chance to meet her and say it to her.  Both these thoughts were coming back again and again, just those two.  It was like I had only those two things unfinished before I could die.  I felt utterly helpless.  Tears started flowing from my eyes.
And sadly the torture continued as well. It was as if all that I felt about my son and wife were totally ignored, and the same question surfaced again… "Are you ready?".  It was brutal.  And I realized it was Death and I couldn't expect mercy from it.  It was clear that Death couldn't care any less about my unfinished business and would pull the trigger irrespective of whether they are taken care of or not.  There is no negotiating with Death.  So the only choice I had was to come to peace with my unfinished business myself; somehow.

And I did.

In the case of my son, it was the very thought I had the day before.  I realized that the fact that I didn't miss him shows that getting to hug him or hold him doesn't really matter.  What matters is that I have the bond in me that connects me to him and it is real, irrespective of anything else.   Including me being dead or alive.  That certainly helped and I was okay letting that desire go.  And with my wife I remembered that I did write down everything I wanted to convey to her that very morning and it was in my notepad.  Now I could see what would happen after I died.  It was more like watching all the events that would unfold after my death but in fast-forward mode, as I had to get to the part where she would look through my stuff.  My funeral is over and she gets my stuff, she clears out my backpack.. mosquito repellant, snake bite kit, shaving cream, kindle and then comes that yellow notepad.  She opens it and starts reading and I see that happening.  Now I was convinced whatever I wrote about my gratitude for her would reach her for sure.

And then I was ready.

Now, I really said my 'Let it go' and it was very different from the way I had been saying it before.   It was as if I used all my body (not just the mouth) to say that.  And as if I was looking right at Death when I was saying that.  There was not even a speck of fear attached to it.  It was not one of those "please get me out of this" kind of 'let it go's it was more like "fuck you, I don't have any unfinished business" kind of 'let it go'.

And then it started to happen.. the process of my death.  And Yes, I experienced it wholly.  My body started to disintegrate into something like a powder and that powder slowly started to disappear.  The best way to put that feeling into words is, it was the maximum point of feeling light and weightless.  And it happened very slowly step-by-step, starting from the legs and moving upwards. It actually felt very good and I wondered where the torture went and then realized there was no torture involved in that process and it was a very pleasant experience.  I saw a dry leaf falling to the ground, finding that perfect place to rest, on a soft bed of million other fallen leaves providing all the necessary cushioning to make the landing as smooth as possible.

The singing stopped and the sound of the jungle night resumed and I heard the lead shaman's rubber boots making it's way slowly to the center of the hut.  I knew he was going to light up the candle (ritual to signify the end of the ceremony) and I so wanted to see it.  I got up and stared into the darkness in that direction and got to see it just as it happened.  It was one of the most beautiful sights of my life, the sight of him lighting it.  The candle light first falling on him and me discovering his pose of lighting the candle; he was holding his lighter and bending down towards the candle which was on the floor.  And I opened my mouth and uttered the phrase "Happy Birthday!".  Yes, that was the second spontaneous involuntary thing that I did (or rather happened to me) on that night of 27th December 2011.  I had absolutely nothing to do with me saying that.  It was like my mouth was operated by something/somebody else and made me say that.

The next morning was very different.  Firstly, I was not feeling happy that I was alive (like how I did the day before).  I was just feeling very neutral.  Neutral because, I sure was alive and that was real but at the same time, I couldn't accept that the death experience I went through was not real.  And secondly, I felt like having a cold shower, again didn't happen before (equatorial nights and mornings are quite chilly).  It was the day I was leaving the center and I was going to the airport to start the series of flights back home.  I had the cold shower, packed up my things and started walking towards the boat. When I crossed the ceremony Maloca on the way, I felt like I was walking past my grave.  I put my bag in the boat, sat in the front looking ahead and the boat started.  It was a 45 mins ride to a local village from where I would be taking a powerboat to Iquitos.  I didn't feel like turning back coz the river in the front grabbed all my attention.  I was looking straight ahead and with the jungle going past me on both sides, I felt something very strange in me.  I had a slight smile in my lips but was not really feeling happy.  It was peace.  And I knew that is exactly how peace is supposed to feel like and it was the most peaceful I ever felt in my life.  There was no happiness, no hope, no guilt, no sadness, no feeling of success or failure nothing at all.. or well, maybe a little bit of all of those things in just the right proportions that they balanced out each other.

In summary, when I look at my trip to Peru as a whole, I'm not sure if I got to confront my ego as I initially wanted to, but I'm sure I stumbled onto something much bigger given that my experiences of fear, love, gratitude, and peace were the most extremes I ever got to experience in my life.  Also I am sure I buried a piece of myself out there in the jungle.  Was it my fear of death? Or was it the fighter in me? Am I now the fighter that can deal with Death? Or am I a coward that gives up and 'lets it go'? I am not sure.  This experience has certainly been the most significant in my life so far; but whether it is for the good or for the bad, I will have to wait and see.