Anthropologists have a tough job. As scientists, they are continually mindful of the need to retain an objective distance when studying people from other cultures. Yet to gain a genuine understanding of the people they are studying, they must often immerse themselves in a culture with a worldview that is diametrically opposed to their own.
In this book, Jeremy Narby tells us many anthropologists now believe this schizophrenic approach is impossible: anthropology cannot achieve the objective status of a science. Instead it should be viewed as a method that enables one culture to interpret another. This is the approach Narby took after his scientific worldview was profoundly shaken by an encounter with the Ashaninca people of the Peruvian rainforest. The Ashanincas have an encyclopedic knowledge of the forest, particularly the medicinal uses of the plants that grow there. But when they are asked how they have gained this knowledge, the answer is always the same: 'One learns these things by drinking ayahuasca.' Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic potion made from plants that, the Ashaninca shamans claim, allows them to communicate with invisible nature spirits. Narby decided that to understand what they meant he would have to take the drug. It was a life-changing experience, which caused him to embark on a 15-year quest to reconcile the Ashaninca way of knowing with his scientific knowledge.
However, he was well aware he was not the first to attempt this. The anthropologist Carlos Castaneda had already written a series of popular books about his adventures with the Yacqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, but as Narby acknowledges at the outset of his book, 'I knew that the anthropological profession had largely discredited Castaneda, accusing him of implausibility, plagiarism, and fabrication.' Unlike Castaneda, Narby took the drug only twice, and only once did he have a profound experience, but it was enough to convince him of the truth of the Ashanincas' claims. Narby had a vision of two wise and all-knowing serpents, which revealed to him his essential unity with all living beings. When he realised his fellow ayahuasca drinkers were also seeing the same thing, the distinction between private, subjective experience and public, objective experience - a fundamental assumption of the scientific worldview - dissolved.
He became further intrigued when he discovered during the course of his investigations that snakes and their winged cousins, dragons, were once symbols of life, knowledge and wisdom in many ancient cultures, but with the rise of civilisation were largely replaced by gods with more human characteristics. The subtitle of the book, DNA And The Origins Of Knowledge, reveals where his investigations finally led him.
Michael Harner, another anthropologist, had a similar drug-induced vision of dragons in the Peruvian Amazon. Harner wrote later in his book, The Way Of The Shaman, that 'in retrospect one could say they were almost like DNA . . .' This was the clue Narby was looking for. He became convinced DNA has somehow been continuously revealing its presence in the minds of shamans and mystics for thousands of years. And with its actual discovery in 1953 and subsequent enshrinement as the modern symbol of life, science has finally begun to catch up with the wisdom of the ancients.
It is an interesting idea, but as Narby would be the first to admit, belongs in the realm of metaphysics rather than science. Nevertheless, he was able to prove to himself that Ashaninca knowledge is more than just spectacular psychedelic visions. He relates that he had suffered for years from a back injury which Western doctors had been unable to treat, but after drinking a herbal brew prepared by an Ashaninca healer he was cured. That forest-dwelling peoples have valuable pharmacological knowledge is of course something that drug companies have known about and exploited for years. But as long as the Westerners who are benefiting from this knowledge stick to their scientific principles, Narby believes, the sacred origins of this knowledge will elude them.