Master Plants: Retreats, Amazonian Cosmovision, and Psychological Integration

At Sapan Inka, we respect and honor the traditional knowledge of the native peoples of the Amazon rainforest and the Andes. At the same time, we work from a perspective that values contemporary knowledge, specifically those insights that allow us to understand the deep structure of the psyche and that seek the integral health of the human being. In this sense, we have integrated the use of Ayahuasca medicine and the San Pedro cactus into our comprehensive healing methodology.

We deeply respect the traditional medicine system of the native communities of the Amazon rainforest, as we have been trained by curandero healers of the Shipibo nation and feel ourselves to be heirs of our ancestors’ wisdom. In our work, rituals involving sacred plants such as Ayahuasca and San Pedro are considered very important.

For the native peoples of Peru, plants are not objects that can be used, but rather entities with which we connect and that offer their assistance. For this reason, certain plants like Ayahuasca or San Pedro are called "Master Plants," a term that reflects the ontological relationship these communities have with them. That is to say, the plant is not merely seen as a natural resource or a therapeutic tool, but as a living being with its own identity, intelligence, and reality that is fundamental to the world's existence, knowledge, and health. This perspective opposes Western ontology, which often categorizes plants as inanimate objects or passive biological resources.

The plant is considered an entity, a being, or a spirit that possesses intentions, will, consciousness, and the capacity to communicate. It is a “Sacred Plant”, it is not something the shaman simply uses; thus, the plant is considered a Master or Guide with whom one interacts. The knowledge and curative power of Ayahuasca is found not only in its chemical composition but in its quality as a spirit. The plant, as an entity, possesses its own will and can decide whether it communicates with the healer and what kind of knowledge or vision it grants. Communication takes place through different perceptions, visions, sensations, emotions, understandings, or through the ícaros (sacred songs) that the shaman "learns" directly from the spirit of the plant.

The plant not only affects perception but allows for an expansion of consciousness that grants access to contents of the psyche that cannot be experienced in an ordinary state of consciousness. The plant allows us to access the spiritual dimension, a vast, unknown dimension of the psyche. Through Ayahuasca, the visible world (the world of everyday life) is complemented by the invisible world of spirits, where energetic forces and archetypal manifestations reside. For the cosmovision of the native peoples of Peru, this revealed world is as real as the physical world.

The Ayahuasca experience for indigenous communities is not a mere subjective hallucination but an objective reality where one interacts with real forces and beings. This conviction that the archetypal-spiritual world has a concrete and active existence in reality, and is not just a metaphor, resonates with the Jungian idea that the archetype, at its root, is not simply a mental construct but a fundamental part of the structure of reality. The encounter with an archetypal manifestation during a ceremony is lived as an encounter with an intelligent entity. What is experienced is not a "fantasy," but something totally real that, according to Jungian psychology, has been called: psychic reality. Ayahuasca does not produce random visions; it grants the ability to see the archetypal structures that organize reality. The plant spirits are perceived as specific, localized manifestations of these universal forces.

The ritual is key in interacting with the materially invisible structure of reality, the spiritual dimension. Healing occurs when the shaman and the patient negotiate with these objective archetypal forces that are experienced during the expanded states of consciousness in the ceremonies. These forces are not mere mental projections; the shaman calls them entities or spiritual forces. Healing or the course of the process depends on this interaction with these entities or forces.

Furthermore, illnesses are not viewed solely as a physical ailment but as imbalances of the soul caused by interaction with the spiritual world. The spirit of Ayahuasca helps the healer observe the ontological cause of the illness (for example, contamination by malevolent spirits). Thanks to a phenomenological translation, the psychotherapist helps to see those spirits as projections of traumatic complexes or destructive patterns of the unconscious. For this reason, after an experience in an Ayahuasca ceremony, it is very important to have specialized psychotherapeutic accompaniment in a hermeneutic and phenomenological interpretation of the process for appropriate integration.