Writings of the Self through Mystical Experience within Santo Daime

This presentation will be presenting partial results of the research project on “Writings of the self and mystical experience within Santo Daime”. This research is funded by FAPEMAT, a Brazilian state agency for research funding and technology development. Santo Daime is a Brazilian religion based on syncretic symbols of popular Christianity, Amazonian indigenous shamanism and afro Brazilian mediunic incorporation. During the Santo Daime´s cults ayahuasca (a indigenous brew made out by leafs and vime) is consumed producing intense mystical experience as it is accounted by the rituals participants. Whether in an anthropological approach or in a pharmacological frame, there are much scientific attention to all religion practice evolving the use of ayahuasca nowadays in Brazil. Despite of these main approaches to the phenomenon of ayahuasca consumption this research project points at other epistemological direction while it investigates how a mystical experience is built as a written account of oneself. In some cases there is a remarkable connection between having a mystical experience and being compelled to give an account of oneself. In this first stage of the research we investigate published material by two authors who have written accounts on their experiences within Santo Daime´s rituals. The first is the poet and ex-participant of guerrilla movement in Brazil Alex Polari. He has published the book “O guia da floresta” in 1992 as an autobiographical account of his first experience in the Santo Daime community in the middle of the Brazilian rain forest. The second is the Argentinian anthropologist and also poet Nestor Perlongher who lived in Brazil and took part in a research group on ayahuasca but the account of his mystical experience is mostly in the genre of essay in a book “Prosa plebéia”. My goal for this proposal is to investigate in both texts how the mystical experience is bound to an intense process of redescription of the self which compelled these two authors to give written accounts of themselves.