You open yourself to inferior beings to explore yourself, while you are able to explore superior beings. "Explore" here means that you can enter in their realm, you can feel the pleasure and the sensations of being spiritually superior. It's difficult to put it in words... I mean that when you take Santo Daime you suddenly become aware of dimensions you never thought would exist. You turn yourself able to feel and realize this dimensions all over... like a multidimensional-spaceship... These beings are the not usually seen: they are animic beings, dwarfs, fairies, etc and spiritual and deceased beings... this are all in a kind of scale between dimensions...You transform yourself in a kind of infinite translucent tube that naturally lifts you upwards. The feeling of rising, of going upward in a gentle floating to subtle highs is very, very common, and it's the main goal in the experience: "to go up". (That is reported frequently by people who drink it) Your body doesn't count really too much: you get really in contact with your spiritual side, and out of body experiences are very common. People are seated around a table and they are all linked in a current to go up. "Going up" happens in a very gentle and natural way: You feel the pleasure of it and just let yourself go "with it". "Going down" is theoretically possible (some experienced it - its called "peia" and it works your inferior self), but the meaning of the current is to achieve higher planes where you can find some unexpected truths. Now this is a spiritual linkage. You don't go REALLY up (physically) and people wouldn't touch or give hands... its the general spiritual energy that is inside that consecrated place that rises you up. Its like the sum of all spiritual energy gathered inside the place... when all people involved are connecting with their most elevated, spiritual side, there is a huge sensation that you are (with everyone else) going to heavens, lifting to a new SPIRITUAL high. The main purpose is to make this current work so everyone would feel the joys of going up spiritually... if one person in the current is down, having distracting thoughts, "tripping" as they say, the all together energy will go down... and more spiritual work will be needed to endure and retake the spiritual position reached.

You make yourself able to see the dead, spirits, and other spiritual beings. "Ayahuasca" means "the vine of the dead", and really makes it possible for you to see and talk with spirits. Indians used this as an shamanic instrument for healing people, finding lost objects and persons, hunting in the forest, finding enemies position, and so on. If you meet one of these spiritual beings they can be a kind of guardian or tutor. You can ask anything of them and they will give you the answers (and old Indian guy is archetypal here - I never met him). This may sound incredible, but it's not just hallucination (not at all). You will remember everything. All the experience is very lucid, clear, and full of the deepest meaning. For example, you can clear any situation or discover the truth of anything just by thinking about it. Knowledge comes with your thoughts, and your mind is so clear that you can see everything. This is a very important concept for understanding what Daime is: usually knowledge is the fruit of much study and methodic experiences. In Santo Daime knowledge comes in a more magical way and it comes specifically to you. You think about something (remembers it, evoke it) and that think will reveals itself to you... as you could read the spiritual code of that thing (feeling, person, object, situation, etc). Its so much so that inside the Daime language "to study" (a much used expression) means exactly this, consider things by this vision of its spiritual code, see things by its inner realm... when you see things this way you reach what they call truth or cure. The Amazon Indians, for instance, knew about cities and white people long before they ever met any. You can fly with your astral body and be in other places, other countries, and so on. Furthermore, all this happens very naturally. You enter in realms of translucent (or may I say translucid), luminescent cathedrals. Imagine, for example, stained glass geometric patterns in a diamond chair. Some people can go further and see the Virgin Mary in all her grace and all the Church Saints. I had the experience of talking with my long-deceased grandfather and seeing fairies and gnomes and other things. I could understand every aspect of my sentimental life, how it would make-produce things into my physical and psychic body. Some people can see the future on these trips. The fact is that "going out of the body" turns very easy and somehow one can direct and use consciously the trip for the intents of spiritual growth. You can use your conscious mind to endure in your spiritual battle. At same time, you can't think that you are in control, in an egoic way... if you do so, Daime will teach you that you are wrong. You just need to surrender to your spiritual grow, and then, naturally, this will happen. It's an utterly spiritual experience, much like opening the doors that you always knew that were there but to which you never could find the entrance. People that are very much into this (they are called "fardados") really achieve transformation. People visibly change, internally and externally. You can recognize in the eyes of some of them the light of a deeper consciousness developed. Some really handle or have the energy of enlightened persons. The perception that these people have from reality is unique, its not of this world... they look connected with something bigger, that is giving them energy, knowledge, wisdom, peace, etc.
 

People at Santo Daime have an Internet page (in English) :
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/5949/index.htm