Some people are born to have their own
unique vision of the world; others are born to use other people's vision
as a jumping off place from which to delve far deeper into new concepts
and creations. Without a doubt, Oscar Miro-Quesada was born to do both.
As a child, this Peruvian-born psychotherapist
and medical anthropologist suffered from severe asthma. At age ten, he
underwent an attack during which he died, and experienced himself leaving
the physical plane.
"Three very wizen old beings called me back and told me a lot of
things about where I came from and where I was heading to." Miro-Quesada
recalls. "After that I was healed and never had asthma again."
As he grew older, the experience was forgotten,
lost to the mundane interests of the teenage years-including one
in the preparation of the hallucinogenic San Pedro cactus. At age eighteen,
Oscar and a group of friends traveled to the Northern Coast of Peru, looking
for don Celso Rojas, a curandero (healer) who was reputed to be the best
San Pedro maker in the world. When they arrived at his home, don Celso
dismissed Oscar's friends immediately, and made him stay. Later during
a San Pedro ceremony, the same three wizen old men rose out of don Celso's
mesa (the shaman's altar).
"They remind me of everything they
had told me before regarding what my future was about-the marriage
I was going to have, the schools that I was going to go to, the children
I was going to have," Miro-Quesada says. "I was hooked, and
started an apprenticeship with don Celso."
Drawing from both the spiritual teachings
of don Celso and those from his diverse educational background (which
includes degrees in everything from humanistic clinical psychology to
microbiology), today Oscar Miro-Quesada facilitates experiential workshops
on the integration of indigenous shamanic practices into the contemporary
world through The Heart of the Healer Foundation. His visionary work and
unique self-transformational journey programs to sacred sites around Peru,
Bolivia, England and Egypt have caught the attention of a number of television
stations, including CNN, A&E and the Discovery Channel. His teachings
are heavily featured in the book Peruvian Shamanism: The Pachakuti Mesa,
by Matthew Magee.
Hillary S. Webb: What
do you mean when you say, "Part of shamanic mastery is learning to
swim in this liquid universe"?
Oscar Miro-Quesada: Anyone
who has done any work in shamanism knows that the universe is not a static
state. It is more like an ocean, very liquid, very fluid. When doing magical
flight or shamanic journeying, the soul or consciousness is actually separating
from the physical vehicle and entering into that ocean of possibility.
The shaman needs to learn to disengage his or her consciousness from the
body and float freely in that ocean. The trick is in embracing the great
mystery and in trusting that the universal world is a safe place to float.
In a true shamanic journey, you need to put your personal will aside and
allow Divine will to take over.
HSW: Which is probably
one of the hardest parts of this work. The death of one's attachment to
being in charge.
OMQ: A true practitioner
of shamanism learns to trust that there is a larger source that is guiding
you and directing your journey. Otherwise, you are constantly fighting
it. The currents then become very threatening, and you feel like you are
drowning. When you realize that there is no reason to hang on, because
you realize that you are already dead, then you can just surrender and
become the liquid universe itself.
HSW: Hold on a second.
What do you mean we're "already dead"?
OMQ: Didn't you know that?
HSW: I guess I wasn't
aware of that. Does this mean I don't have to go to work tomorrow? Seriously,
though, what is all this about being dead?
OMQ: There is no difference
between death and life. When you die and cross over, you are going to
come to a place where you think that you are still alive. The Tibetan
Book of the Dead talks about various Bardos-intermediate states
in which you exist before you incarnate again. Let's say you have a car
accident. You've hit a tree and you are on the floor. You look at yourself
and there's not one scratch on you. You get up and you say, "Jeez,
I'm fine. I guess I'll go home."
In reality, you are physically dead, but
you are back in the same reality that you were before you died. Then,
little by little, life starts shapeshifting around you and synchronicities
start to abound. Your waking dream, your daydream, and your sleeping dream
all become one and the same. You think about someone and immediately they
call you up on the phone or perhaps show up at your door. Then, you start
thinking about people who have already passed over, and they show up,
too. At that point you start to say, "Oops, something's different
here." Then, little by little, with very much gentleness, the Elders
of the various Bardos start introducing you to the fact that you have
passed over. At first you panic and life becomes unbearable, because the
minute you experience fear, love becomes constricted and you attract lower
astral forms. That's what Hell is. But when you learn to just surrender
and accept it, it becomes a very luminous experience. Some people take
a long time to wake up when they are on the other side, and some people
are very quick at it. Get my drift?
HSW: I'm not sure I do.
If there is no difference between life and death, then why do we make
a distinction between the two?
OMQ: The difference is
the mind. During my most tortuous period of initiation, I had a severe
auto accident that resulted in a near-death experience. When I returned
to my body I was given a choice to continue and transcend, or to return
to physical form. Once I came back, the synchronicities and acausal coincidences
were so rampant that I was convinced that I had not returned at all; that
I was in some other realm. Encounters were being provided that were beyond
bizarre. For two years I did not know if I was dead or alive. I almost
went mad trying to figure it out, until one day I realized, shit, whether
I'm dead or alive, I still have to get up and go to work in the morning.
I still had to live in whatever reality is being presented to me. So why
freak out over understanding who's in charge, right? At the point that
that "aha" came to me, I no longer had to struggle with the
need to understand. I let go of the need to know and just embraced the
great mystery. That was a major rite of passage.
HSW: And, I would imagine,
a major lesson in detachment.
OMQ: Right. And it helps
to understand that even the striving for enlightenment is attachment.
HSW: So when a shaman
goes on a journey, is he or she experiencing a kind of death?
OMQ: Yes and no. The aspect
of consciousness that goes on a shamanic journey is the same one that
leaves the physical body at the moment of death. The shaman understands
that he or she can travel through the same realms that are presented at
the moment of one's physical death without having to physically die. In
that sense, in having that experience, one realizes that there's no separation
between life and death, spirit and matter. All duality is dissolved.
HSW: So the answer then,
is not to look for answer?
OMQ: Well, the answers
will come when the time is right. When the person is ready to apply them
in a concrete way to help our planet, there will be many, many answers.
They've always been there and they always will be.
HSW: During our conversation,
Toltec shaman Ken Eagle Feather said to me, "You have to know that
you don't know anything and be comfortable with that."
OMQ: That's exactly right.
Unfortunately, I wasn't that clear in my earlier years. I really tried
to explain God and Creator through academic means. Finally, I realized
that a donkey with a load of books is still a donkey.
HSW: That makes me feel
silly putting this book together. This whole project has been, in many
ways, my quest for answers.
OMQ: Well, what I see
you doing, regardless of what you personally want, is documenting certain
people who are committed to a path of service and who can speak about
where we are as a planet of people right now. And that is very important
in waking people up.
HSW: Do you think that
the current resurgence of interest in indigenous spirituality is part
of our waking up? Are we experiencing a true shamanic renaissance, or
is this just a fad that will die out within a few years?
OMQ: The way I view the
current emergence of a shamanic global culture taking place on our beloved
Pachamama is simply the result of people having lost their connection
to the sacred dimensions in life. Most of our psycho-spiritual traditions
and religions have focused more on transcending the physical world and
welcoming the afterlife than actually living the spirituality here and
now in the kay pacha, the Middle World. Because of this, they have disconnected
from our planet, from our beloved mother. Hence, the devastating conditions
that we now witness on our planet.
I see the indigenous wisdom teachings,
especially those of South America, as being very relevant for all humanity
for a return to an intimate, reverent relationship with Pachamama. This
is mainly because they focus on becoming as sensitive as one can to the
touch, taste, and sounds of everything that is born from the Earth. You've
probably heard this thousands of times from the people that you have interviewed,
but in these traditions there is a very clear understanding that human
beings are not separate. We are but luminous strands in the great web
of life.
I find in my teaching that most of the
people that come to these trainings are looking for a change. They realize
that everything that they have accumulated and felt a sense of ownership
of is no longer cutting the mustard. So, initially, they come for self-gain
and self-healing. Little by little, however, they realize that they are
an inextricable part of the greater whole and start working more for the
Earth than for themselves, moving out of a narcissistic self-identity
to more of a global consciousness. That's what I find is the relevance
of these native traditions to the modern world. That is, helping us wake
up to our sense of being a global family, rather than isolated individuals.
HSW: So is there a definite
shift happening? This isn't just a fad?
OMQ: I find it is both.
And I think that there is value in it being both a fad and an inevitable
option for our people. Even those people who are transforming the indigenous
ways into a commercial enterprise are still touching the hearts of many.
And out of those many, maybe one may truly wake up and feel that they
can do something at a grassroots level. Being a fad, it becomes mainstream,
and being mainstream, we begin to see what we are seeing now throughout
America. For example, everyone is talking about having altars in their
home. So a fad is good in that sense. The more altars in the home, the
more of a personal connection to the sacred is established, and the more
one will venture out and feel like doing service for others. The more
people that hold a common vision, especially a sacred vision, the greater
the impact on the planet.
And this trend is having global implications.
I just got back from Tibet and Nepal. Despite all the oppression and the
attempted destruction of their traditions by the Chinese, the Chinese
are now rebuilding all the monasteries and temples that they had once
destroyed. A similar thing is happening in Peru where there has been a
resurgence of a respect for the Indian who before was considered a lesser
being. There are some major structural social political changes occurring
as a result of people, especially from developed nations, honoring the
teachings of our ancestors. To me, that is an indication that it is more
than just a fad.
HSW: It is ironic that
once upon a time the white Europeans wiped out so much indigenous spirituality
and now we're paying these same people thousands of dollars to teach us
their beliefs.
OMQ: Well, yes, it's all
cycles, right? We are currently moving out of what the Hindus call the
kaliyuga, the Age of Crisis, and moving into what's known as a Satya.
This is an elaborate system of eras that are shared by various metaphysical
traditions around the world. In the Andes we have a similar notion. According
to Andean cosmology, we are currently living in Hell.
HSW: How so?
OMQ: The conquest by the
Spanish five hundred plus years ago marked the beginning of the uhu pachacuti,
the turning of the Lower World, in which all of the repressed shadow of
humanity began to come to the surface. That's what we have been living
in since then, and that's why people are grasping to find meaning by having
things and then feeling horrible even if they have money and property
and material ownership. There is an imbalance, and that imbalance is reaching
a critical point. A turning is going to have to happen, and that turning
is going to create a major cataclysm. Not so much a geophysical cataclysm,
but an inner cataclysm. Uhu itself means "inner space." The
earthquakes that are going to occur are going to be within the hearts
of human beings more than on the planet. Individually, people are going
to feel really off-balance, uncentered, and bewildered. On a global scale,
it is going to mean a lot of crisis and chaos until we hit bottom. At
that point, it is going to be a lot like a Twelve Step recovery program
where you realize that you can't do it on your own, and that anything
is better than what you are experiencing now. Even those people who don't
believe in God begin to call upon a higher power. In the same way, our
consumer society is reaching that critical bottom. Through that internal
pain they are going to develop a relationship with the hanaq pacha, the
upper realm, the more divine and spiritual dimension.
We're getting there. Regardless of all
the shitty news that we see out there, there is an inherent transformation
occurring in the hearts of people-in our political leaders, in our
techno-industrial monopolies, in our multi-national companies. There is
a change occurring. As people who have woken up to the power that can
be harnessed by tapping into these unseen forces and energies, our role
is to avert many of the negative prophesies that were put out by Nostradamus,
as well as the more recent prophets like Elizabeth Claire or Gordon Michael
Scallion-types.
HSW: So there is a little
bit of free will versus determination at work here?
OMQ: Oh, most definitely.
God works with us, not for us. It's our time to do it. We need to leave
this planet a better place than where we found it for our children's children.
That's the focus.
HSW: You sound optimistic.
OMQ: I'm very optimistic.
Not optimistic in a Pollyanna sense, but optimistic in the sense that
we can make it rain, or we can make it stop raining. We can master fire
or not, simply by disciplining our imagination and our vision of what
we want for the planet.
HSW: In terms of truly
mastering this work, how far can someone not raised in an indigenous culture
go with shamanism? Unlike those people who are raised with these beliefs,
we in the West have to go back and erase all the paradigms that we were
brought up with that, for example, rejects the idea of a spirit world.
OMQ: As far as they want
to go. Really, the furthest we'll ever have to travel is from our heads
to our hearts. If people start down this path with using just their head,
it can take a lifetime. Two lifetimes. Three lifetimes. Four lifetimes.
But if people wake up to this path with their heart, they don't need to
study with any teacher. They are already there. I always encourage the
people that come to my trainings to develop their own medicine way and
to trust in their own intuitive self-directed call. I am here to provide
them the tools, and yet, ultimately, they have their hands and their heart
with which to do healing. That's it. That's all that is needed. Sure,
shamanism involves other things, but, ultimately, prayer is just as powerful.
So if there is heart in a person's calling and path, it makes no difference
where they were born. They are already there.
HSW: Where? At the level
of shamanic mastery?
OMQ: What's happening
in our culture is that people are confusing shamanism with medicine man
or witch doctor or just healer. Shamanism is much more than just being
a healer, you see? Shamanism is living life in reverence, giving gifts
of Spirit to people, and developing a reverent, intimate relationship
with our beloved Pachamama. It is about being anonymous, not needing to
be recognized for your shamanic gifts. Shamanism involves talking to the
malkis, the tree spirits, to the alkis, the nature spirits, to the tiracuna,
to the watchers, to the machcuna, to the benevolent ancestors, and to
the apus, the mountain spirits. That's really shamanism, whether you apply
it in a healing practice or not. As a writer, your path is one of teaching,
of making information available to others. And teachers are just as much
needed as healers. As long as you are sharing what you know with others,
and as long as your information has heart at its core, you are living
a good life, whether you call it shamanism or not. That's what people
are waking up to. Most of them at first come to learn powers, but if they
have good teachers they learn that that is only one part of it.
More important than being a shamanic healer
is to be able to do an offering to the Earth. That is more important than
anything. When we repay the Earth, we are doing more to restore balance
to a neglected part of Spirit than we would by being on a path of service
to human beings. By doing Earth healing rites and ceremonies, you are
re-establishing a conscious, awakened, sacred relationship with the Earth,
allowing all of the unseen world that inhabits to feel more comfortable
to reveal themselves to those who are still asleep. Feed the Earth first
and then you will have the strength to go out on the healing path.
HSW: Our conversation
so far has been all about the benefits of shamanism. Are there any drawbacks
to being on this path?
OMQ: There is a danger
if someone does this work without a community. Being on this path without
community, without a sense of belonging, can be a very, very isolating
and alienating experience. It's hard to perceive reality in a very altered
way such as this and not have people to share that vision with.
HSW: As Lily Tomlin says, "Reality is nothing more than a collective hunch."
OMQ: I love it! Really,
that is beautiful. There is another great one that goes, "Why is
that when we talk to God it's praying, and if God talks to us we are schizophrenic?"
HSW: Could this be the
cause for much of mental illness? That these people are having a shamanic
experience but don't have a community to share their vision with?
OMQ: Absolutely. As a
clinician myself, I have found that about seventy percent of all socio-psycotic
states are spiritual emergencies. The other thirty percent are psychopathological
illnesses. But in the rest of these cases, if you help the client or the
patient interpret his or her experience as a spiritual awakening rather
than a sickness, they find purpose and meaning in the experience, rather
than condemnation by societal norms. And if you then introduce them to
a community of weird shamanic types, they recover even quicker. So, yes,
if they had a community of like-hearted souls to offer nurturance for
their shamanic initiation to run its course, seventy percent of Western
psychopathology could be shapeshifted into a spiritual awakening.
That's what it is.
Have I confused you enough?
HSW: Just enough to make
me want to know more.
Copyright 2004
