Being healed: an ethnography of ayahuasca and the self at the Temple of the Way of Light, Iquitos, Peru

This thesis explores the experiences, articulations and meaning-making of a group of people referred to as pasajeros: middle class Westerners and people living in Western-style cultures from around the globe, who travel to the Temple of the Way of Light (‘the Temple’) in the Peruvian Amazon, to explore consciousness and seek healing through ceremonies with Shipibo ‘shamans’ and the plant medicine, ayahuasca. In the thesis, I explore the health belief systems of pasajeros, examining the syncretic space of the Temple in which Western and Eastern, New Age, biomedical, and shamanic discourses meet and intertwine to create novel sets of health beliefs, practices, and perceptions of the Self. Conceptualised in terms of rites of passage from states of dis-ease to (potentially) optimal wellness, this exploration occurs in the liminal phases of transformation where reimaginings of the Self and the world are hyper-mobilised. The title of the thesis, Being Healed, refers to a series of complex processes that constitute the focus herein. I present experiences from pasajeros as they navigate their unique journeys through the process of ‘being healed’ with ayahuasca and the plant medicines; explore the notions they present of how they ultimately recognise ‘being healed’ in terms of an endpoint or goal achieved; and present my findings on the remarkably consistent representations of what many pasajeros came to understand as the ‘true’ Self—the embodied experience of their own (human) being, in what they perceive as a healed state: their Being, healed.