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.