Sound

I drank the Daime tea in four big sips and took my seat on the men’s side of the yurt. The young man seated next to asked me if I felt anything and I replied “Maybe a little.” We waited. The members, dressed in white and seated in concentric circles, sang hymns in Portuguese.

The music ended and I noticed the sound of rain falling on the roof of the yurt. I closed my eyes and heard each raindrop falling through the sky and splashing over my head in a vast canopy of sound.

“Heightened perception,” I thought. Little noises darted around me—people exhaling in a whoosh, glass and metal clinking, soft laughter. I could pick out a sound and follow its trajectory through three-dimensional space until it vanished in the distance. The yurt disappeared. There were no boundaries.

I’m an amateur musician with poor eyesight who has been focused on sound and music since childhood. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting and listening to natural and recorded sound. My time in the Santo Daime service, seated at the center of an infinite acoustic sphere, was perhaps the most beautiful experience of my life.