This summer school course focuses on ayahuasca religiosity, using a philosophy of religion approach that focuses on ontology and epistemology. Ayahuasca is a psychoactive (mind-altering) drink that is prepared with two plants from the Amazon region. Its ingestion can lead to radically altered states of consciousness. Today, the West is increasingly witnessing the rise of a new set of ayahuasca-based contemplative practices that derive from the traditional ayahuasca cultures from the Amazonian area in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. In addition to countless neo-shamans leading ayahuasca ceremonies in the West, Brazilian ayahuasca religions such as Santo Daime and UDV have spread out all over the world. While backpackers in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties of the past century travelled to India or Nepal in search of spiritual enlightenment, they now increasingly travel to the Amazon in order to find illumination and wisdom through a deep communion with nature.

As ayahuasca travels from the Amazonian area to the West, it transforms the religious landscape of the West. Ayahuasca often yields transformative experiences that merge such familiar categories as the sacred and the secular, transcendence and immanence, subject and object, and the human and the non-human. Such a new phenomenon requires a new, cross-cultural and decolonized discourse.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course. CEA's recommended credits are based on the contact hours assigned by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam): 15 contact hours equals 1 U.S. credit