Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition

"In the last few years there has been a resurgence of interest in psychedelics across a number of fields from anthropology to religion, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. Whereas most recent publications have either stressed the potential therapeutic benefits of these powerful mind-altering substances or offered anthropological analyses of how these substances are utilized in different cultural contexts, Liquid Light takes a different approach. Using as a case study the Santo Daime community in Brazil, which practices a religion based on the sacramental use of ayahuasca, a psychedelic brew. Barnard gives readers a vivid, introspectively sophisticated depiction of the dramatic ritual and visionary worlds that appear in the life of a practitioner of this tradition--himself--arguing that careful examination of entheogenic religions, understood not only historically and culturally but also, as it were, "from within," can provide a rich empirical basis for sustained reflection on what psychedelics more generally can tell us about a wide range of key philosophical questions concerning the nature of consciousness, selfhood, and reality"--