Because of world view, I tend to look at this as, maybe, the way gods were created.
If the human mind has the capacity (and we know it does) to create "out of body" experiences when one part of the brain is stimulated (i.e. the feeling of looking down upon your body, etc.) and has the capacity to hallucinate images that are not present, then maybe those hallucinations were where people first saw the existence of gods.
Ayahuasca is called Mother Ayahuasca - that's the form of the god in traditional cultures - but other gods from other religions have also been present for people during ceremonies. A lot of people see snakes. Again, my brain is so literal that I think hallucinations create all sorts of fractal patterns and people try to find correlations that make sense to them in their known experiences. On the other hand, I recognize that there are senses that we don't have that other animals do - frequencies in sound that aren't available to us, radar, etc. and, while I don't think these are supernatural - they are beyond human observation without some device that decodes those things.
I don't have personal experience with ayahuasca, but the things I've read from those who have, and who have looked at the components of it, found it contains a huge amount of MAO inhibitor - which was one of the first line pharmaceutical treatments for depression in the west. The DMT in one plant only becomes active when combined with the MAOI containing plant b/c this allows absorption - otherwise the DMT would pass through the body. So, you have something that is allowing the brain to flood itself with "feel good" chemicals (seratonin, etc.) combined with something that also changes the visual field.
Some of the work that people have done concerning alzheimer's, depression and PTSD indicate that some drugs have the capacity to stimulate the growth of brain cells in the hippocampus that relate to learning and memory. THC, tho much milder, is one, and other plant psychotropics seem to do the same. All of them are illegal.
Synthetics - MDMA and LSD - have had the same effect in studies concerning PTSD and other anxiety-related disorders.
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