Report and story from the recent trip to Peru by Dean Jefferys

How does one explain colours to a blind man or a shamanic hallucinogenic journey to someone who has never experienced one?

All that can be expressed are the insights, visions, colours and emotions experienced. The real feeling of having a psychoactive plant communicating with you and opening you to other realities is beyond accurate description. With that in mind I will attempt to describe my shamanic journey in Peru with 6 Australians 1 American, 3 Peruvians, the San Pedro Cactus and the Amazon Jungle vine Ayahuasca.
Southern Peru, especially the Machu Picchu region has been surrounded by a mystical aura for good reason, it was the heart and soul of the ancient Inca civilisation. Sun worship was just a small part of their deep and complicated nature based culture.

As I sat in the specifically placed stone temples and with the San Pedro cactus opening the way I could often feel Inca shamans that have journeyed before me using these teacher plants to gain insights into harmonising with earths natural forces. Was it this harmonising that enable them to cut huge stone blocks and move them using what we would say were supernatural powers?

Their connection with the astral realms as well as the natural and supernatural kingdoms became obvious as we journeyed deeper into their stone sacred sites, rituals and culture. Portals into other time zones seemed to open and the many flat rock altars seemed to hold a collective memory of past rituals performed there.

A condor that visited us during a full moon ritual at the temple of the sun at the Ollientytambo ruins made me feel like we were closing the gap of separation many humans have with nature. The condor could feel that and came to check us out. Standing on the top of Machu Picchu Mountain on a protruding large rock the shape of a condors head I could certainly feel, that with the right conditions and training condor and animal awareness could be transferred to human consciousness.

Everyone went on this shamanic journey for different reasons, from the 25 year old computer head from Melbourne who had never had hallucinogens to the 65 year old psychodelic veteran. All hoping these plants and the shaman guide would help them to discover and reveal their own interpretation of the great mysteries. On reflection I feel much was received, not necessarily what was expected. In fact expect the unexpected became the mantra of the journey. Our shaman/guide, was a descendant from the Incas and has spent 30 years working and experimenting with these teacher plants. Our training was relentless and the rest days were few and far between. We were pushed both physically and emotionally, helping us to break down the barriers that prevented us from experiencing the teachings more completely.

We eventually dragged ourself away from this ancient cultural area to the Amazon. Travelling by boat we passed two huge granite sentinels like in the “Lord of the rings” they seemed to guard and watch over this river gateway to the Amazon and the Machu Picchu region. A local legend says that if anyone tries to climb them they would never return and instead turn into animals or fairies. Maybe we climbed the wrong one.

We visited a local Machingangas village by a widening Amazon tributary close to the jungle Camisea natural gas pipeline project. We talked to some Machingangas about how they felt about this 2.4 Billion dollar project that will extract gas from their territory and send it in a buried pipeline 700 km over the Andes to Peru’s capital Lima. Most seemed to be pretty happy about the short term employment and an injection of funds into this forgotten area yet there was some concern expressed about its long term environmental and social impact as well as the survival of two uncontacted tribes living in the proposed drilling area.

Interestingly two huge US Oil companies are involved in the Camisea Gas pipeline, Hunt Oil, from Texas and the US Halliburton company. Halliburton will be setting up a gas processing plant next to the Paracas Marine park on the coast against the wishes of many who believe the potential threat to many endangered species within the park would be to great. Due to extensive lobbying from human rights and Environmental groups world wide in September this year the Export-Import Bank of the United States voted against supporting the project and refused a US $214 million loan.

While I was in Peru I heard of massive protests in Bolivia, where there was a general uprising against the Bolivian president selling of its gas recourses to multinational companies too cheaply and the government wanting to send the gas to their arch enemies Chile to be processes. Now after 70 people were massacred by the Bolivian police and military and the president has been deposed and fled to Miami, Bolivia’s gas may end up going through the Amazon to Camisea and Peru instead. For more information, see http://www.amazonwatch.org/ or http://www.camisea.com.pe

While the others left for adventures in Peru and Australia I stayed on with a friend to examine some amazing land owned by the national park ranger next to the sentinels with the idea of establishing an Ayahuasca centre and bring shamans there so people can study with them in a safe, non intrusive environment.

Now after flying 25 hours from the other side of this planet the whole journey and the realities visited seem almost like a dream. Teacher plants and composted plants as fossil fuels both facilitating this amazing journey. Can these insights be achieved in a simpler way? How will human interaction with these plants effect planetary evolution. I am left with more questions than answers.

The suburbs of Sydney now sprawl out like a huge matrix below me. Was our journey just a temporary glitch in this matrix of life or was it an insight into the real world? And what is real anyway?