In 2011, after an ayahuasca ceremony in the Maluti Mountains of central Southern Africa, I lay flat on the grass outside Sunmoon Lodge in Rustlers Valley. The sun was just rising over the valley. I could not move. Not a finger.
The mist was moving through the grass. I had just received a large dose of rapé from the shaman, and I was now on the ground, my body purging and paralysed. It was not a scary experience; I had been here before. I could see out of my eyes, but it was like looking through a window I could not open. The valley was more beautiful than I had ever seen it.
And then, as I stared at the sparkles of light on the spiderwebs, a screen appeared before me, like the white screen at a drive-in cinema, and the visions began. First, I was looking at a screen with a moving image of New York from the Brooklyn Bridge. But then in an instant, I was sucked into the screen and standing on the bridge with the sound of cars behind me and the bustling business of New York in front of me.
I saw a series of four visions in sequence.
First vision — the Brooklyn Bridge, New York. The World Trade Centre was not there.
Standing on the Brooklyn Bridge looking at the skyline of New York. I was actually standing on it, looking at New York in front of me, boats moving on the water below, and helicopters in the air. The World Trade Centre was not there.
Second vision — the Amazon River, moving downstream toward the tribal people on the banks.
Then I was on the Amazon River, in a long wooden boat, motor buzzing as we moved downstream. I waved at the indigenous people on the banks. They smiled and waved back. We beached and began walking up a path; the tribal people welcomed us as we passed.
Third vision — from space. A black oil slick ran from Somalia’s coastline up into the Red Sea.
Then I was shot up into space. I could clearly see the horn of Africa below me, the tip of Somalia, and between Somalia and Yemen, a large black oil slick ran along Somalia’s coastline and up around the tip of the horn into the Red Sea.
Fourth vision — the Sinai Desert. American jets appeared and began bombing the Pyramids.
Then I was sitting in the Sinai Desert in Egypt. At ten o’clock in my field of vision, the Sphinx. And beyond it, the three great pyramids stretched into the distance to the right of my vision. As I stood there, American jets and helicopters appeared and began bombing the Pyramids.
It was at this point that I heard her. Mother Ayahuasca. Her voice was clear and direct.
I was confused. I said to her, “What is my purpose?” I genuinely did not know. She answered simply: “Your purpose is to observe. To observe the merging of humans and machines.”
Then she showed me images of light and dark merging together, flowing into each other, surrounding the whole planet. And she said: there is always balance in everything.
And then it was over. I was back on the grass. The sun was still rising over the valley. It was a most spectacular sunrise.
“Don’t be distracted by all these things. Focus on your purpose.”
Nothing. I made nothing of it.
In 2011, I was using a BlackBerry phone to connect to the internet on a 1GB laptop. The idea of humans merging with machines was almost science fiction from where I was sitting in that valley. I had never been to New York, never stood on the Brooklyn Bridge. I had never been to Egypt, never seen the Amazon from a boat, never been to space. She had shown me places I had no frame of reference for.
I did not try to interpret the vision. I did not try to force meaning onto it. I just carried it, the way you carry something you don’t yet understand.
It is 2026. I am sitting in Costa Rica, speaking my story out loud, and an artificial intelligence is listening, writing, and helping me build the website that holds my life’s work. As I speak, it responds. As I remember, it shapes the memory into pages.
I am living the vision at this very moment. Not as a metaphor. Literally.
The merging is not something that is coming. It is here. And I am observing it, exactly as she said I would, from the inside of it.
She did not say whether the merging was good or bad. She showed me light and dark flowing together and said, “There is always balance.” I take her seriously. I do not think machines will save us, nor will they destroy us. I think they are part of the pattern, the way everything is part of the pattern, and the question is not whether they arrive but how we meet them.
I am sixty-three years old. I have spent thirty years facilitating ceremony, walking between worlds, learning what a portal is and how to open one responsibly. And now the most unexpected portal of my life has opened on a laptop screen in a small house near the Costa Rican coast.