Tens of thousands of years ago shamanism entered into the collective unconscious of the human being and formed the structure to understand the life experience of traditional man through present. Today the westerner, distanced from the inner wisdom of this realm of magic is looking to the mystics to open their ancient connection to Spirit and unveil the boundaries between the westerner’s reality of separation and fear to a reality of mystical proportions filled with inner connection to spirit in its various forms. But as the first layers of secrecy lift, fear of the unknown and the misunderstood is penetrating the very worlds where this wisdom is kept, closing in with judgment and the possibility of legislation to permanently lock away this spiritual knowledge.

Through the domination of globalization of western belief systems and commercialization of third world countries, traditional, old world, shamanism is now isolated to the world’s most remote locations. One of such places is the Peruvian Amazon where traditional beliefs still penetrate the inner landscapes of its inhabitants. As soon as one leaves the cities traveling deeper into the primary forest, local communities, hidden by the immensity of nature, appear filled with vibrant people living a frontiers subsistence agricultural lifestyle. It is here, when the sun descends behind the horizon, that the veil of the westerner’s reality lifts and the sights and sounds of shamanism begin to take shape. Throughout the jungle, on almost any given night of the week, shamanic rituals and healings take place. The boundaries marked by the western concept of reality fade into a system of infinite dimensions governed by a universal energy and the animism of Spirit. Shamans (Curanderos), men and women trained in the art of Spirit, turn to and into the realm of the mystical to aid and enrich their patients, communities, and personal path of discovery. Shamans learn, heal, grow, and teach through altered states of consciousness where plants and animals have voice and other worlds hold places of wisdom where the learning and training occurs.

It is in this transition between states of consciousness and the experience of reality where the greatest misunderstanding between the westerner and the shaman occurs. In the western world we experience a reality of the physical realm and then base all other experiences against that defined concept. For the shaman, reality is something that is infinite, constantly changing and molding through the turns of life. It is a boundary-less space where the shaman navigates through consciousness, the expanses of the universe, passing through dimensional portals into other realms. Through these journeys the shaman reaches places only allowed in western reality in fantasy and science fiction, but in the world of the mystic these experiences are not only real, but they have profound effects on the physical realm. Matter becomes energy and energy matter as illness and disease are magically released under the power and direction of the shaman. As the shaman works in the invisible space, symptoms disappear like a parlor trick only in this case it is serious, with a patient in distress and in need of aid. The shaman defies western logic by experiencing life outside the self-created boundaries of the western world.

The differences do not stop there. Because the shaman’s reality incorporates more than just the physical realm, things impossible in the western mind become commonplace. Shamans travel without the passing of time. They bi-locate (being seen in more than one place at the same time). They reach ecstatic states allowing for clairvoyant connections. Even the concept of linear time is released to flexibility. The shaman experiences the present, the now, a space where the past and present are integrated into a single moment followed by an infinite series of these moments. It is in this realm that the shaman learns the shamanic arts, to be a curandero (healer). And even as they learn, the knowledge is passed through connections with healing Spirits that hold the wisdom of the universe, without the passing of time.

These ecstatic states are reached through many means such as fasting, dietary restriction, and the ingestion of sacred plant medicines (some containing psychoactive properties and some not). The westerner only understands these plants and the medicines made from them as drugs, a trip, or high. For the shaman those definitions strip what is sacred about their understanding of the world and reduce the medicines to nothing. The shaman does not believe in a hallucination due to the ingestion the medicine because they live in a reality where the experiences during those rituals are real, truth, and significant to their understanding of life and the spiritual. It is during those sacred rituals where the apprentice learns to communicate with the spirits and to heal through their tutelage. In the ecstatic state shamans see the same spirits. This occurs outside of cultural backgrounds or previous learning. A westerner apprenticing will meet a spirit commonly known among other shamans having never seen drawings or without hearing a description of the spirit. Through common experiences like this, the knowledge is passed from generation to generation.

As the westerner enters into these realms, they open to a reality much greater than the one in which they previously lived, experiencing for the first time a space of freedom and direct interaction with Spirit, but fear of these explorers and the shamanic medicines opens the possibility of legislation to eliminate their open practice. We need to protect these magical people, belief systems, and their medicines through our openness and understanding. Our common past will then be able to integrate into our present and transform our daily life experience.