Customer Reviews

The Jaguar that Roams the Mind: An Amazonian Plant Spirit Odyssey

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This book features a powerful tour through the wondrous caverns of the entheogenic, visionary landscape. It delightfully captures one man's amazing journey of mind, heart and soul as he travels through foreign lands in pursuit of higher knowledge. I was captivated by the extraordinary insights and intense self-analyzing that keep the reader hypnotized and enriched throughout the process. There are vivid, engaging stories of environmentalism and stories of love. He recalls interesting parables and dabbles in some of the world's greatest offerings in the domains of literature, science and religion. He ties them into his personal experience with originality and vivacity. Excitement abounds in this work!

This highly colorful and enlightening book will bring your spirit higher and take you into rich, expanded territories of thought. It will obliterate close-mindedness and open your eyes to a whole new world of thinking and feeling about the world around you - and the world within.

The unique love story that evolves adds a poignant touch. Also, I enjoyed the heartfelt memories of his special feline.

Every chapter stimulates the reader to question ideas of philosophy, psychology, metaphysics and hedonism. You might even salivate as you turn the pages.

I invite you to sink your mind into one of the most delectable and rapturous soul-twisters I have read in quite a while. It is completely worth the effort and will leave you permanently changed.

This book is a beautifully written chronicle of one man's journey into the Peruvian Amazon in search of healing. It is familiar territory for me, both the outside environment and the incredibly rich psychic landscapes the author describes so well. Robert Tindall has the gift of being able to describe in intimate detail what is often indescribable. When people ask me about ayahuasca and shamanism, I find it very difficult to describe. Now I can simply point to this beautiful book for the best verbal painting that I have read of something that transcends words. I highly recommend this book not only to experienced psychonauts but also to those who are curious about ayahuasca and/or healing the spirit.

The dilemma posed by this book: you're either a Westerner with a "limited, disconnected" world view or a new Private First Class to Tindall's rank as Spiritual Captain and I don't buy either of those alternatives. I for one, am a big fan of useful, rational principles such as Okham's Razor--and cats (I'd have at least had the spleen to say something to the idiot who let my cat... well, I won't ruin it for you)--and the sort of scornful, baby-with-the-bath-water dismissal of the principles of rational thinking leave both the narrative of the book and the explanatory narrative of ayahuasca healing in messy disarray. For example, Tindall, expecting for days that his Maestro will soon reveal to him that, yes, they have met in the spirit world (before they met in the earthly world), Tindall finally breaks down and asks the Maestro outright: Did you visit me in spirit last week? The surprise answer? Maestro grinned, Yes, I did. Of course--why not? Here's the giddy gringo handing it to you after all, take what you can get for free. Expectations are potent medicine. That's not cynicism, it's human nature to want the esteem of your acolytes. Much of the book is spent drumming up spiritual portent where there is none--or at least where the sober see none.

There are some good chapters. I particularly liked the chapter on the environmental devastation caused by oil and logging in the Amazon. I have seen these things first-hand myself and could hardly contain my rage as I read Tindall's vivid account of his experience with this travesty. I would have enjoyed reading more of this sort of thing. Likewise, the descriptions of some of his ayahuasca trips are fantastic. He lived them, after all, and here lies his strength: writing about things that are in-the-world or at least in his experience, and bringing to bear on them his newly enlarged perspective--not out on a limb apologizing for a cosmology that few can take seriously. Case in point: Tindall gives an account of a cancerous brain tumor healed--utterly and miraculously--through the use of indigenous medicines. Not content to leave it there, we are offered the explanation that the psycho-emotional changes brought about in the patient by the plants' spirits are responsible. No allowance for plant chemicals is given; it's cosmological interconnectedness or nothing. He may not realize it, but his attitude toward Western culture is rather condescending--ironic, when you consider that the core message of the book is that Western culture is myopic and condescending with respect to indigenous culture.

One more thing: His wife got damned lucky her corneal herpes flare-up settled back down instead of blinding her in one eye. Had that little bit of luck worked out differently, the General of the Spiritual Marines would have had some serious explaining to do.

Is the book worth having? If you're a fan of trip-lit, it's worth a read. You'll likely fly through it and be glad you did; Tindall is a likable enough guide and there are enough interesting chapters to hold your attention. Is it a good introduction to ayahuasca? You can do better.

The Jaguar That Roams the Mind - An Amazonian Plant Spirit Odyssey
276 pp., illustrated, ISBN 978-159477254-2
Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, USA
Replete with examples of literary and historical characters relating to the author's personal mythology, this book flows like the tributaries of the great Amazon, pausing only to inform and implore us to help stop the ecological madness wrought by greedy entrepreneurs on the green lung of the Pachamama, our Mother Earth, as we find ourselves longing for a life closer to the wilderness inside our soul.
Following a vision he has in the Sahara desert, Robert goes on a spiritual pilgrimage in pursuit of ayahuasca or daime, as it is called in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, he joins the Arca, a group with a Jungian tint striving to synthesize the world's spiritual traditions, working with the ayahuasca vine to induce self healing. A first session leads to a cathartic breakthrough, as the author finds himself changed into a jaguar, initiating a series of experiences leading to the healing of his broken relationship with his father. To further explore the «pedagogical nature» of daime, he journeys to the Province of Acre, the Brazilian part of the Amazon.
There, Robert visits the Church of the Universal Flowing Light, finally realizing he has arrived in an utterly strange new world. The orientation of this faith is founded in Catholicism enriched by strong elements of Umbanda, a religion of former slaves reaching Brazil via Cuba, as well as the age-old plant wisdom of the Amazonian jungle tribes. Originally established by the rubber tapper Raimundo Irineu Serra, the congregation practices a ritualized usage of Santo Daime", involving both dance and possession by the spirits of the old African Gods. From this main church separated a smaller flock of darker skin, the Barquinha or Little Boat, where the elements present in the church of Mestre Irineu are fused with the Yoruba cult of Candomblé. The rituals of these intriguing sects, their unusual attire; their highly charged songs and deeply touching music engulf the author's body and mind. At the heart of both the daime and the ayahuasca experience lies the miraçao or visionary trance, when one gives oneself entirely over to the experience of the sacred.
While quite moved by his welcome into both churches, Robert's encounter with a young curandero of the Kaxinawa indians makes him realize «that daime is only a brief portion of the vast territory of Grandmother Ayahuasca», used to heal, to gain insight into things past, present and to come, to diagnose illness and to serve as a channel to the otherworld, the sacred space of mystics, magicians and fools.
The second part of this captivating book describes how the author travels to the tropical rain forest of Peru with his new love, Chilean psychologist Susana Bustos. She is writing a dissertation on the healing songs of the Peruvian curanderos, called icaros, and takes Robert to Takiwasi, an addiction treatment center where ayahuasca is used to «symbolically manifest the contents of the unconscious.» Addiction there is held to be a twisted spiritual quest for transcendence: the addict is suffering from lack of meaning. To further psychospritual progress, shamans are regularly invited to lead sessions, to effect purges and administer indigenous herbal cures. Robert, a former drug addict and alcoholic, is confronted with his shadow self and challenged to integrate his traumatic childhood.
Unforeseen trouble with Susana's data collection incite the couple to travel to Pucallpa to study with the experienced healer and ayahuascero Juan Flores Salazar in the deep jungle. Around this self-possessed vegetalista, the Catholic element of the ayahuasca cult gives way to a closer acquaintance with the animal and ancestral spirits of the rain forest, striking a truer chord in Robert's heart. He and Susana enter upon a formal training at the remote healing center of Mayantuyacu, becoming familiar with specific plants and with the dense vegetation all around them. They spend many weeks by themselves in a little cabin upstream where they diet with entheogenic plants chosen by their teacher, under whose direction the deeper logic of indigenous healing practices unfolds for them.
Much becomes clear to our surfer of consciousness who loses his fear of the jungle within and without, as he matures into a human being capable of true commitment.
Susanne G. Seiler

Everybody with a Dna can experiece beauty. Everybody can become aware. Happiness is difficult, but it is possible. You don't need to be an amateur of Amazon adventures or a plant scientist or a newage healer or a foreign documented scholar, or a musician, artist or magician to access real life changing knowledge.
Here is an authentic record of direct experiences with the remarkabe maestro of the Ashaninka group Juan Flores Salazar at Mayantuyacu, a traditionally sacred area now hosting an indigenous healing and plant investigation centre. Robert Tindall gives a literary gifted and courageous account of the events, the site and the painful but necessary effort to become completely alive.

Read this book. And you will look for the following chapter of its hidden lesson.

I found this to be the combination of an autobiographical sketch of a seeker's journey, an inside view of Amazonian curandismo, and a touching love story as well. It happens that I know Robert and Susana and they're sweet and dedicated folks. So naturally the love story part was more meaningful for me, but I think it would be attractive to anyone. I am also a graduate student focused on related studies (in fact Susana just graduated from my department), so naturally I am interested in the explication of curandismo; and I am also a seeker so I resonate with the trials and tribulations that Robert describes. Even with my special interests, I think I can safely say that the book is a well-written, personal story which should prove engaging material for many. It is scientific without being overly technical, and Robert is careful to confess his personal biases so it is scholarly without being pedantic. I found it a very human story.

There are a lot of books about Ayuaska, but this one is different from the rest. It is not an after-the-fact intellectual Ayuaska tourism dissection. Rather, it is a very personal, existential experience that puts you in the heart of the Ayuaska culture in Brazil. With a captivating writing system, Tindall shares his experiences in a non-judgmental way. A powerful page turner.

This is another gem of the paths to healing through entheogens; I can not praise this book enough. Do yourself a favor and get it.