Pubdate: Sat, 30 Jan 2010
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2010 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Richard Meech
Note: Richard Meech is a Toronto-based documentary filmmaker. His 
latest film, Vine of the Soul, will be shown on VisionTV this spring.

SACRED BREWS, SECRET MUSE

If you haven't seen Avatar yet, you must be living on a different 
planet - clearly not Pandora, where James Cameron's blockbuster 
unfolds. His 3D extravaganza has pushed hot buttons from the U.S. 
military to the Vatican, as well as soliciting political criticism 
from both left and right.

The film's effect has even thrown some fans into a downright funk. A 
thread in one Avatar forum, titled "Ways to cope with the depression 
of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has been visited by 
hundreds of moviegoers, some describing suicidal thoughts, others 
offering helpful tips for managing in the real world.

If Pandora is just a product of an active imagination, why such 
extreme reactions? Could it be that the Canadian 
producer/writer/director has tapped into a zeitgeist that longs for a 
deeper connection to nature and a re-enchantment with the natural world?

After seeing the film twice, I believe Mr. Cameron may have had help 
with his vision of life in another dimension, where the blue-skinned 
Na'vi maintain a direct communication with all biological life 
through a visceral connection with the tree deity Eywa. My suspicion 
is that he has heard about the use of ayahuasca among indigenous 
people in the Amazon, our closest relative to the luxuriant, 
bioluminescent jungle of Pandora.

Ayahuasca ceremonies have migrated in recent years from South America 
to North America and Europe as Westerners seeking healing and 
spiritual awakening discover the traditional medicine, raising legal 
issues about the classification and use of the psychoactive substance 
as a medicine, drug or religious sacrament. I've recently finished a 
documentary film about this very subject, following characters as 
they enter the world of ayahuasca in Peru and their North American hometowns.

In the Amazon, ayahuasca is a sacred medicine, a tea brewed from 
plants shamans have used for centuries for healing to enter the 
spirit world and communicate with other life forms. The thick woody 
vine spirals skyward to the forest canopy like the staircase inside a 
Na'vi Hometree. The literal translation of ayahuasca is "vine of the 
soul," echoing the Na'vi "Tree of Souls." Both plants - our vine, 
their tree - allow initiates to connect with ancestors and plug into 
the living biological matrix that sustains all life.

One of my documentary subjects, a naturopathic doctor, described her 
ayahuasca experience this way: "I could feel plants quivering. I 
could feel everything breathing; I could even feel the Earth 
groaning. I could hear every single bird and had this blissed-out 
insanely powerful connection with the Earth ... It's one thing to 
intellectualize something, it's another thing entirely to touch it, 
and to experience other, bigger energies that are intelligent."

In Avatar , the blinding psychedelic flashes that signal the transfer 
from protagonist Jake's human psyche to Na'vi consciousness are 
similar to how people in ceremonies describe the energetic shift as 
ayahuasca takes effect - a visual cue that consciousness is expanding 
and the mind is prepped as both receiver and generator of a different 
reality. The ayahuasca experience is like dreaming while you are 
awake; in effect, you become an avatar.

I am not the only one to wonder about Mr. Cameron's possible 
ayahuasca influence. As L.A. blogger Erik Davis notes at 
techgnosis.com, "if there is an aya -Avatar connection, it would 
explain one crucial way in which the film differs from conventional 
'noble savage' mysticism. Rather than ground the Na'vi's grooviness 
in their folklore or spiritual purity, the film instead presents the 
vision of a direct and material communications link with the plant 
mind. Which means that Eywa (aka Aya) does not have to be believed - 
she can be experienced."

In the film, the Na'vi hold ceremonies huddled around their great 
tree and enter into communion with ancestors or Eywa herself by 
physically attaching their long braids to the glowing tendrils that 
hang from the branches. They immediately feel the healing energy 
flowing through all living things. In ayahuasca ceremonies, 
participants sit in a circle and drink the brew that transports them 
to a similar realm. Starting with the physical act of taking nature 
directly into their bodies, many report an egoless merging with one's 
surroundings, coupled with feelings of love for all creation. In 
religious terms, it would be a mystical experience, a direct 
encounter with the divine. "It's very much like being held to the 
bosom of the mother of everything," another character explains in my 
documentary.

Part of what Mr. Cameron has done with Avatar is to reawaken an 
ardour for the beauty and mystery of nature at a time when many 
people feel our planetary ecosystem is most under threat. That he has 
chosen the precarious Pandora/Amazon as his location and the 
indigenous relationship with a sacred tree/plant as the spiritual 
heart of his story reveals that his concerns have never been too far 
from our own world.

Indigenous people have always revered their sacred links with the 
natural world. The relationship always begins with plants, the most 
humble of nature's creations - but also the most powerful, for life 
cannot exist without them. Learning through them is a pan-human 
cultural tradition that goes back thousands of years.

In the end, it may just be that Avatar will get us all listening 
again to the plant world around us.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake