The following conversation is excerpted from The Psychotropic Mind: The World according to Ayahuasca, Iboga, and Shamanism
by anthropologist Jeremy Narby, filmmaker Jan Kounen, and writer/filmmaker Vincent Ravalec, available from Inner Traditions Bear & Company.
Vincent: The ayahuasca experience can be separated from shamanism. We can take ayahuasca, for example, in an urban setting and have a very strong experience, one not necessarily connected to the ancestral experience of shamanism. The experience of shamanism is quite close to nature, which actually functions with interfaces of spirits; and someone who takes ayahuasca is not necessarily going to encounter, I don’t know, the parrot god who will come talk to him in his dreams or the green mouse who drops by to say hello. He is going to see something else. While someone is having the experience in a shamanic setting, one is going to go through its conceptual system. And you can have very strong shamanic experiences without taking ayahuasca. But it so happens that ayahuasca is a very formidable agent for altering consciousness.

Jan: What is ayahuasca, for you?

Vincent: Physically, it is a beverage that is quite unpleasant to drink. Now there are different blends, depending on the shamans who brew it. . . .

Jeremy: Would you agree that it is the Concorde of hallucinogens?

to read more, go to:    http://www.realitysandwich.com/ayahuasca_experience