The War on Consciousness - Graham Hancock

After Skool

"What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter, materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies. So when the brain is dead, that’s the end of consciousness, there is no life after death, there is no soul; we just rot and are gone. Actually, many honest scientists should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain is involved in it some way but we’re not sure how. It could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity, if you hold to that paradigm, then of course you can’t believe in life after death, when the generator’s broken, consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship — and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set, and in that case, when the TV set is broken, of course the TV signal continues. 

And this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions, that we are immortal souls temporarily incarnated in these physical forms. If we want to understand consciousness, the last people we should ask are materialist scientists. Instead, we should look at ancient cultures, like the Egyptians, who highly valued dream states. Many ancient cultures around the world used hallucinogenic plants to understand consciousness and expand their minds. However in today's society, visionary plants are highly illegal because they promote a state of consciousness that does not agree with the agenda of profit.

Substances, like coffee, alcohol, sugar and pharmaceuticals, are forced upon the population, but possession of even small quantities of cannabis, Ayahuasca or psilocybin will land you in jail. If we do not recognize the right of adult sovereignty over consciousness, then we can NOT claim to be free. Look at what our moderns state of consciousness has done. We have destroyed the natural gifts of earth in pursuit of short-term, selfish gain. We must reconnect with spirit immediately or else we will encounter disaster. Visionary plants could be the remedy for our current sickness."

Peru's Top Indigenous Leader Says Industry, Traffickers Behind Shaman Slayings

Shaman Wilson showing plants used in preparing a 

'pusanga' in Peru, September, 2009.(Photo: Howard G Charing)

Truthout

Darrin Mortenson

Iquitos, Peru - It's been more than one month since Peru's government sent investigators to the Amazon to probe the brutal murders and mutilation of at least 14 shamans, traditional healers or medicos, of the indigenous Shawi people of Peru's northern border region near Ecuador.

Since then, the government has remained mum and, so far, has made no arrests, or at least has not made any known. Early reports focused on the Evangelical Christian mayor of the river port town of Balsapuerto, citing officials who accused him of instigating a fanatical religious purge.

But Alberto Pizango, Peru's top indigenous leader and president of the country's most powerful indigenous organization, the Interethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Rainforest (known by its Spanish acronym, AIDESEP) paints a more complex picture of the case, blaming cash and pressure from legal and illegal industries in the Amazon who poach natural resources from indigenous lands.

"What is happening now in my community is organized crime," said Pizango, himself a Shawi medico who studied for seven years under a master shaman.

"This work, I would say, is done in a very subtle way by the extractive industries," Pizango said, naming the timber and oil industries as well as those involved in producing illegal drugs.

"Divide and conquer," he said. "That is exactly what is happening here."

Masking Ambition

Pizango explained that Shawi tradition used to allow certain shamans, often ones who had quit their apprenticeships and used their powers for "bad things," to be killed or banished by others in the community. Now, he said, a "bad interpretation" of that tradition has been used to cover up corruption and greed.

"The criminals accuse someone, [they say], "He is a brujo! He is evil! He was killed because he was evil!" Pizango said. "That was ancestral justice," he said. "But now it is just organized crime." 

Original reports cited public prosecutors from the nearby port of Yurimaguas who specifically named Balsapuerto mayor Alfredo Torres and his brother Augusto, also known locally as a matabrujos or "witch killer," as suspects in at least some of the murders. One early report said at least seven additional shamans were still missing from Shawi territory and listed as dead by local officials of the Catholic Church - making it more than 20 shamans killed in the region in less than two years.

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