Chapter 8
San Pedro Healing
An Overview
Ross Heaven

San Pedro and Other Teachers

I cannot say that San Pedro alone is capable of enhancing our perceptions. Many of the observations are consistent with those that arise from ayahuasca. As Benny Shanon remarks in The Antipodes of the Mind:

Universally, Ayahuasca makes people reflect about their lives and leads them to what they feel is an enhanced psychological understanding of themselves. [It enables them to] gain deeper understanding. [Reality, too, is often] conceived as constituted by one, nonmaterial substance which is identified as Cosmic Consciousness. [This is accompanied by a sense of] a force that is the ground of all Being and that gives nourishment and sustenance to everything. Often this force is characterized as embodying love.

It is what I have described here as God.

What seems to distinguish San Pedro from ayahuasca, however, is its immediacy and presence. Many of my participants who have experienced both plants remarked that San Pedro does not take us “out of ourselves” as ayahuasca does. Rather, it is as if the plant possesses the body itself and compels us to see the world “through the eyes of San Pedro,” in one participant’s words.

In doing so it also removes us from our heads and the confusions of the rational and analytical mind so we are more in the moment and in our bodies as well as present in the landscape of which we are a part. What it reveals to us from this vantage point is the power and beauty of the world, the majesty of life, the soul-connections between us, and the knowledge that we are a part of God and a vibrant, living nature.

The Shaman’s View

I put these observations to La Gringa and asked her to comment. She said:

San Pedro achieves healings like these because it is a master teacher. It helps us grow, learn, and awaken, and it assists us in reaching higher states of consciousness. Through it we learn the truth of life and reality: that our health and our sense of purpose and balance are simply choices we make; that we have a destiny and are more powerful than we think. San Pedro also reconnects us to the Earth and helps us realize that there is no separation between us--you, me, the soil, the sky. We are one. It is one thing to read that, of course, but to actually experience it is the most beautiful gift we can receive.

And so San Pedro teaches us to live in harmony and that compassion and understanding are the qualities of all true human beings. Through this it shows us how to love, respect, and honor all things. It shows us, too, that we are children of light--precious and special--and to see that light within us. Each person’s experience of San Pedro is unique, as we are all unique, and drinking it is therefore a personal journey of healing and your discovery of yourself and the universe. But there is one thing that is always true: The day you meet San Pedro is one you will never forget. It will change your life forever. . . and always for the better.

But does San Pedro really change lives “forever” and, if so, is it “always” for the better?

Rick Strassman, in his studies of DMT (the active ingredient of ayahuasca) was eventually disillusioned at the potential for this “spirit molecule” to create lasting and positive changes. He writes:

As the years passed, I began feeling a peculiar anxiety about listening to volunteers’ accounts of their first high-dose DMT session. It was as if I didn’t want to hear them. These psychotherapeutic, near-death and mystical sessions repeatedly reminded me of their ineffectiveness in effecting any real change. I wanted to say, “That’s very interesting, but now what? To what purpose?”

His conclusion was “the deep and undeniable realization that DMT was not inherently therapeutic.”

We might, I suppose, expect a similar outcome with San Pedro: that those who have gone through a “life-changing experience” would, over time, settle back into the routines of the mundane world and make few if any real advances in their lives. This does not seem to be the case, however. Rather, as the accounts of my participants (most provided weeks or even years after their San Pedro experience) tended to show, the spiritual effects of San Pedro remain with them and almost compel them to take action so that they put their realizations to use.

Some of the participants I am still in touch with today, three years or more after their ceremonies. They have, relatively speaking (that is, relative to the changes that most of us make), often made extraordinary advances in their lives. They tell me that they have left unsatisfactory relationships, moved house or country, given up unfulfilling jobs, changed careers or returned to college, patched up their differences with parents and lovers, and much more; all of it, they insist, as a result of what San Pedro has shown them. Some have also returned with me to Peru so they can repeat their experience and “top up” on healing or renew their intent to become different people. They have come to regard San Pedro as their spiritual teacher.

Of those who drank with me back in 2008, in fact, five have relocated, five have given up their jobs and are now working or training as healers, two have written books on plant medicines and healing, and a further two have set up healing centers of their own. These are not insignificant developments, and all of them show a commitment to a new future that stems from their work with San Pedro.

On the face of this at least La Gringa may be correct when she says that San Pedro can change lives.