(To unsubscribe from this newsletter, click on the link at the bottom) The Prophets Conferences/GreatMystery.org, in addition to presenting exceptional gatherings worldwide with today's leading thinkers and authors, is also facilitating very special tours and expeditions with leading adventurers, and we are pleased to be once again working with Peter Gorman. We hope that you may find his truly unusual and most possibly life enhancing expedition of interest. If this adventure is for you or not, you may very well find the Gorman excerpt that follows an interesting and fun read. AMAZON JAUNT: August 4-18, 2001 CUZCO AND MACHU PICCHU EXPEDITION: August 18-25, 2001 PETER GORMAN, former Editor-In-Chief of High Times Magazine and regular adventurer into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, is taking a small group of people into the jungle and then on to the Andes for the adventures of their lives. Peter Gorman is taking these people to participate, with authentic and highly skilled Amazonian curanderos, in the ceremonious imbibing of the sacred power plant brew - ayahuasca. The opening of doors into the spirit plane, with the resultant physical and emotional healing, is taking place under their experienced guidance. >From Iquitos and the jungle, Gorman and his party move to the high mountains of Cuzco >and Machu Picchu for magic mushroom and San Pedro cactus ceremonies. (Regarding San >Pedro, Mother Cactus, the active alkaloid is mescaline, which opens the powers of >"Seeing", including the telepathic sense of transmitting oneself across time and >matter. It develops the power of perception.) These substances are legal and accepted for their curative value in Peru. Expedition Information at: http://www.greatmystery.org/amazon.html ____________________ The Following is Excerpted from: BETWEEN THE CANOPY AND THE FOREST FLOOR: Vision Plants and Medicines in Peruvian Amazonia by Peter Gorman WHERE THE MODERN & ANCIENT MEET While everyone who lives in the Amazon has a knowledge of the plants they need for survival, those with the most refined knowledge of plants are those westerners call shaman-curanderos, healers, medicine men and women. In the little mestizo river village of Auchyako, don Julio is the local curandero. On the tributary of the Yivari on which most of the Matses live, Pablo and his cousin Wilfredo are the healers. And despite never having met them, what don Julio has in common with Pablo and Wilfredo is that they all view plants as sentient beings. Though a strange concept to the western mind, it is common among plant healers throughout the world. That belief is the point at which the science of ethnobotany meets the spiritualism of the shaman. For don Julio, who spent several years apprenticing to a healer, access to the intelligence of plant life-among other things-is gained through ayahuasca. For Pablo and Wilfredo, those portals are crossed by dreaming. According to Wilfredo, ! the two of them "studied plant medicines every day for two years with an old man at Buenas Lomas, a big Matses village. The old man is dead now, but Pablo and I know the plants." After their initial studies they learned to dream. According to both, dreaming involves long hours of attention to specific plants, learning to identify them by the insects and animals which associate with them, learning their reproductive cycles, and finally by physically sleeping near them until the plants allow you to dream them. Pablo and Wilfredo say the plant gives you permission to use it as a curative by allowing you to dream the illnesses it treats, and the method of treatment. Once again, to westerners this is a foreign concept. With our awareness of chemical composition and physical reaction, it's difficult to accept that a plant that is used to treat a foot fungus in one village by Pablo will not treat the same fungus in another village by Wilfredo. Yet in several medicinal plant collectin! g trips with both of them, I saw few of the same plants use! ! d to treat similar illnesses, a testimony to their different dreams. Both acknowledge that the plants themselves have the capability of treating illnesses, but say that without the plant's expressed approval through the dream, the results will be considerably less effective. To aid the dreaming, the Matses use a psychoactive snuff they call nu-nu. Similar to the virola snuffs used by indigenous peoples throughout northwestern Amazonia, nu-nu is made by mixing the dried and pulverized leaves of an as-yet-unclassified wild tobacco, with the ashes of the soft inner bark of a tree in the Macao family; occasionally, other leaves are added as well. The result, a bright green snuff, is blown with force through a hollow reed tube by one man into the nostrils of another. On occasion, as many as 20 half-gram "blows" may be administered. When it hits, nu-nu hurts. It feels as though it will take the back of your head off, and leads to sometimes violent coughing and spitting up of dark gr! een phlegm. But in moments, a pervasive calm comes over the user, and fleeting visions of extreme clarity occur. The visions are often of good places to hunt, or new areas in the forest where medicines can be found. Following the visions, the user is generally giddy for a short time, and then back to normal. Though the Matses most often use nu-nu for hunting visions, it is also a vital element in plant dreaming. According to Pablo, nu-nu helps make the plants receptive to those who wish to communicate with them. The first time the notion of plant communication was presented to me, I didn't know what to make of it: I was out with Pablo, on the way to making an animal trap. I had a headache, and he noticed it. Moments later he pulled two leaves off a vine growing up a tree trunk and rubbed them vigorously into my temples. He actually rubbed the skin raw enough to draw a little blood, then had me hold the leaves in place there. In minutes the headache vanished. His cure worked so! well that I asked if he had others. He laughed and said he! ! did, and began to point things out as we walked. As I later learned was typical for him, he would act out the infirmity as he discussed the treatment. Aware I'd stumbled on a great chance, I collected leaves, flowers and bark from the plants he discussed. Back at his village after the trap was set, I laid out all of the plants on the tree bark floor of his large hut, then got my tape recorder and camera ready. There was a mestizo woman in the camp who spoke Matses and agreed to act as my translator. I asked her to ask Pablo to begin discussing the plants again, which she did. Pablo was silent for a minute then broke into a wide grin and responded. I asked my translator what he'd said. "He says he introduced you to the plants, but now you have to make your own friends with them." I asked her what he was talking about; she relayed the message. "He says you should go sleep with them. Make friends with them and dream them. Then you won't need him to explain what they are for." Information regarding the expeditions with Peter Gorman this August is at: http://www.greatmystery.org/amazon.html Addison Terry, after returning from being with Peter emailed that: "My trip was one of the richest experiences of my life. Peter put extraordinary effort into seeing that everyone got exactly what they wanted�this trip is only for people with open minds, and if you bring that with you, Peter will show you the Amazon that few other gringos have had the privilege of seeing. I would go back on another expedition with Peter in a heartbeat." For information about: -The Prophets Conference Victoria: Scientists, Healers, Poets & Mystics -The Initiation In The Mayan Consciousness with Mayan Elder Hunbatz Men -The Prophets Conference Florida Keys: Healers and Heroes Visit http://www.greatmystery.org "Our fledgling worldview is still almost invisible, yet is it drawing to it brilliant minds in every field and function who hold the mysterious sense of hope for the future." -Barbara Marx Hubbard Please click the link below to unsubscribe from the Great Mystery mailing list. http://www.dbdevelop.com/sites/greatmystery/un.cfm?Id=21967&UserId=20 If link does not work, please copy and paste the link in your browser: please be sure to include entire link in one line.
