by Colin Wilson
The next day, the ‘unlucky’ hunter was asked by the chief, Xumu, if he could now dominate the spirits of the forest. He replied that his understanding was renewed, and that the forest would now provide for all his needs.
Later Cordova went on a hunt. The day before, there were elaborate pre-hunt rituals, with potions to drink, herbal baths, and the exposure of the body to various kinds of smoke, made by burning the hair of an animal and feathers of a bird they would be hunting. In the midst of the final ceremony, an owl landed on a branch; the hunters danced around him, chanting a ritual and asking him to direct their arrows at, various animals or birds they named. Finally the owl flew away and everyone went to bed.
Cordova describes the hunt that followed, and how he had to learn to recognise all the signs of the forest—the odour of animals or snakes, the meaning of a broken twig or fallen leaf. And after they had killed wild pigs, the leader described to him their method for ensuring that the pigs always pass that way. The leader, usually an old sow, has to be shot, and her head buried in a deep hole, facing opposite to the way the herd was travelling, with ritual chants to the spirits of the forest. If this is done correctly, it ensures that the pigs will always pass over this spot in every circuit of their territory, and by observing the habits of the pigs, hunters can always be lying in wait for them when they return.
One night they heard a peculiar insect call. The hunters were instantly alert, and two of them slipped off into the forest. Hours later, they returned with an insect wrapped in a leaf. They made a tiny cage for it, explaining that the possession of a ‘wyetee tee’ would guarantee good hunting. The next day, the hunters hid in camouflaged tree huts around the clearing. Just as they had foretold, the wyetee tee brought them such abundance of game that they had to build another smoking rack for smoking it.
Cordova was himself eventually chosen by Xumu as his successor. This was not simply because Cordova could fire a rifle, and had business enterprise enough to show the tribe how to manufacture and sell rubber; it was because he possessed the kind of sensitivity that would enable him to understand his fellows.
During my training I became aware of subtle changes in my mental process and modes of thought. I noticed a mental acceleration and a certain clairvoyance in anticipating events and reactions of the tribe. By focusing my attention on a single individual I could divine his reactions and purposes, and anticipate what he would do or what he planned to do... The old man said my power to anticipate and know future events would improve and grow, also that I would be able to locate and identify objects from a great distance.
In fact, Cordova had visions of his mother’s death, which—on his return to civilisation—proved to have been accurate.
The chief himself possessed this clairvoyant power. ‘We waited in the village for many days after the raiding party went out. Finally, the chief said they would return the next day...’ And of course, Xumu was right.
Throughout the book it becomes very clear that much of the ‘magic’ of the Indians is a kind of telepathy. When Cordova is taken into the forest by Xumu for a magical initiation, he is in no doubt that they are in telepathic contact.
‘The chief spoke in a low, pleasant tone, “Visions begin.” He had completely captured my attention with these words of magic. I instantly felt a melting away of any barrier between us; we were as one.’
Then the chief conjures up visions that are shared by Cordova. The sceptical explanation—that the chief is merely using suggestion—fails to fit the facts. The chief says: ‘Let us start with the birds’, and an incredibly detailed image of a bird appears; ‘Never had I perceived visual images in such detail before... The chief then brought a female, and the male went through his mating dance. I heard all of the songs, calls and other sounds. Their variety was beyond anything I had known.’
There is later another lengthy description of visions shared by the whole tribe. After drinking the ‘vision extract’, a chant causes a procession of animals, including a huge jaguar. ‘This tremendous animal shuffled along with the head hanging down, mouth open and tongue lolling out. Hideous, large teeth filled the open mouth. An instant change of demeanour to vicious alertness caused a tremor to pass through the circle of phantom-viewers.’
In fact, Cordova realised that he had conjured up this jaguar, which he had once met on a jungle path, and succeeded in ‘staring down’. The other members of the tribe also recognised this, with the result that Cordova was nicknamed ‘jaguar’.
Cordova goes on to speak about scenes of combat with enemy tribes, and with the invading rubber-cutters who had driven the Amahuaca to seek new territory. He sees visions of a village in flames, and the chief killing a rubber planter. The ‘show’ ends with scenes in their new village. In this visionary session, it is obvious that everyone is seeing the same thing, as if they are sitting in a cinema watching a film; but the film is created by their own minds. In his introduction to Wizard of the Upper Amazon, Harvard research fellow Andrew Weil comments:
‘Evidently, these Indians experience the collective unconscious as an immediate reality, not just as an intellectual construct.’
Later in the book, Cordova describes how, when the old chief dies, he takes his place. He discovers that, during the drug-induced visions, he is able to control what is seen by means of chants.
No matter how involved or strange the visions, they obeyed my wishes as I expressed them in song. Once the men realised that I had obtained domination over the visions, they all considered my position infinitely superior to theirs. I developed at the same time a more acute awareness of my surroundings and of the people about me—a sense of clairvoyance that enabled me to anticipate any difficult situation that might develop...
He also inherits the old chief’s power of making use of his dreams. ‘One night at the boa camp I had visions in my sleep of trouble back at Xanada...’ On their return, he learned that their territory was being invaded by a neighbouring tribe.
When Cordova eventually returned to civilisation, the training of the old chieftain stayed with him. The visions of his mother’s death—in a flu epidemic—proved to be accurate. And, ‘strange as it may seem to you, at least two other important events in my life I have foreseen in advance. Explain it how you will, I feel that it came from Xumu’s training.’
A sceptic would object that all this proves nothing. Cordova had merely taken part in rituals that the Indians believed would bring results, and when results came, they believed that their magic had been responsible. Yet this is simply quite contrary to the impression conveyed by Wizard of the Upper Amazon, in which there can be no doubt, as Andrew Weil says, that we are speaking about the ‘collective unconscious’ as an everyday reality.
The following example of shamanistic power cannot be explained in terms of some kind of mass self-deception.
Sir Arthur Francis Grimble was a British colonial administrator who became land commissioner in the Gilbert Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, in 1914. He was to describe his five years there in a delightful autobiography called Pattern of Islands (1952), which deservedly became a bestseller. The book is mainly concerned with his everyday life, and is told in an appropriately matter-of-fact tone. Yet in one chapter he describes an event so bizarre that it seems to defy any normal explanation.
An old chieftain named Kitiona criticised Grimble’s skinniness, and recommended him to eat porpoise meat. On enquiring how he might obtain porpoise meat, Grimble was told that Kitiona’s first cousin, who lived in Kuma village, was a hereditary porpoise caller.
Now Grimble had heard of porpoise calling—the ability of certain shamans to cause porpoises to come ashore by some form of magic; he classified it with the Indian rope trick. He enquired how it was done, and was told that it depended on being able to dream a certain dream. If the porpoise caller could dream this dream, his spirit would leave his body, and could visit the porpoise-people and invite them to come and feast and dance in Kuma village. When the porpoises reached the harbour, th
e spirit of the dreamer would rush back to his body and he would alert the tribe...
Grimble expressed interest, and Kitiona promised to send his canoe for him when his cousin was ready.
In due course the canoe arrived, and Grimble was taken to Kuma. He arrived hot, sweaty and irritable, and was met by a fat, friendly man who explained he was the porpoise caller.
The porpoise caller disappeared into a hut screened with newly-plaited coconut leaves. ‘I go on my journey,’ he said as he took his leave. Grimble was installed in his house next door.
Four o’clock came—the hour at which the magician had promised results; nothing happened. Yet women were plaiting garlands, as if for a feast, and friends and relations were arriving from neighbouring villages. In spite of the festive atmosphere, it was hot and oppressive.
My faith was beginning to sag under the strain when a strangled howl burst from the dreamer’s hut. I jumped round to see his cumbrous body come hurtling head first through the torn screens. He sprawled on his face, struggled up, and staggered into the open, a slobber of saliva shining on his chin. He stood a while clawing at the air and whining on a queer high note like a puppy’s. Then words came gulping out of him: ‘Teirake! Teirake! (Arise! Arise!) ... They come, they come! ... Let us go down and greet them.’ He started at a lumbering pace down the beach.
A roar went up from the village, ‘They come, they come!’ I found myself rushing helter-skelter with a thousand others into the shallows, bawling at the top of my voice that our friends from the west were coming. I ran behind the dreamer; the rest converged on him from north and south. We strung ourselves out, line abreast, as we stormed through the shallows...
I had just dipped my head to cool it when a man near me yelped and stood pointing; others took up his cry, but I could make out nothing for myself at first in the splintering glare of the sun on the water. When at last I did see them, everyone was screaming hard; they were pretty near by then, gambolling towards us at a fine clip. When they came to the edge of the blue water by the reef, they slackened speed, spread themselves out and started cruising back and forth in front of our line. Then suddenly, there was no more of them.
In the strained silence that followed, I thought they were gone. The disappointment was so sharp, I did not stop to think that, even so, I had seen a very strange thing. I was in the act of touching the dreamer’s shoulder to take my leave when he turned his still face to me: ‘The king out of the west comes to meet me,’ he murmured, pointing downwards. My eyes followed his hand. There, not ten yards away, was the great shape of a porpoise poised like a glimmering shadow in the glass-green water. Behind it there followed a whole dusky flotilla of them.
They were moving towards us in extended order with spaces of two or three yards between them, as far as my eye could reach. So slowly they came, they seemed to be hung in a trance. Their leader drifted in hard by the dreamer’s legs. He turned without a word to walk beside it as it idled towards the shadows. I followed a foot or two behind its almost motionless tail. I saw other groups to right and left of us turn shoreward one by one, arms lifted, faces bent upon the water.
A babble of quiet talk sprang up; I dropped behind to take in the whole scene. The villagers were welcoming their guests ashore with crooning words. Only men were walking beside them; the women and children followed in their wake, clapping their hands softly in the rhythms of a dance. As we approached the emerald shallows, the keels of the creatures began to take the sand; they flapped gently as if asking for help. The men leaned down to throw their arms around the great barrels and ease them over the ridges. They showed no least sign of alarm. It was as if their single wish was to get to the beach.
When the water stood only thigh deep, the dreamer flung his arms high and called. Men from either flank came crowding in to surround the visitors, ten or more to each beast. Then, ‘Lift!’ shouted the dreamer, and the ponderous black shapes were halfdragged, half-carried, unresisting, to the lip of the tide. There they settled down, those beautiful, dignified shapes, utterly at peace, while all hell broke loose around them. Men, women and children, leaping and posturing with shrieks that tore the sky, stripped off their garlands and flung them around the still bodies, in a sudden dreadful fury of boastfulness and derision. My mind still shrinks from that last scene—the raving humans, the beasts so triumphantly at rest.
We left them garlanded where they lay, and returned to our houses. Later, when the falling tide had stranded them high and dry, men went down with knives to cut them up. There was feasting and dancing in Kuma that night. A chief’s portion of the meat was set aside for me. I was expected to have it cured, as a diet for my thinness. It was duly salted, but I could not bring myself to eat it...
It seems clear that there is no great difference between the ‘magic’ learned by Cordova in the Upper Amazon and the magic of the porpoise callers of the South Pacific. Both seem to be based on some peculiar telepathic ability—or what Weil calls the collective unconscious.
It may seem that, in venturing into this realm of primitive ‘magic’, we have left all common sense behind. Yet, surprisingly, there is a certain amount of scientific backing for the suggestion that dreaming can induce ‘paranormal’ powers—or rather, tap powers that we all possess.
In the early 1980s, Dr Andreas Mavromatis, of London’s Brunei University, led a group of students in exploring ‘hypnagogic states’, the states of consciousness between sleeping and waking.
In a book called Mental Radio (1930), the American novelist Upton Sinclair discussed the telepathic abilities of his wife May—she had been telepathic ever since childhood. May Sinclair explained that, in order to achieve a telepathic state of mind, she had first of all to place herself in a state of concentration—not concentration on anything, but simply a high state of alertness. Then she had to induce deep relaxation, until she was hovering on the verge of sleep. Once she was in this state, she became capable of telepathy.
Mavromatis taught himself to do the same thing—to induce states that were simultaneously concentrated and deeply relaxed. What happens in these states—as everyone knows (for we have all experienced them on the verge of falling asleep or waking up)—is that we see certain images or situations with extreme clarity.
In a book called Beyond the Occult, I described my own experience:
I myself achieved it by accident after reading Mavromatis’s book Hypnogogia. Towards dawn I half woke up, still drifting in a pleasantly sleepy condition, and found myself looking at a mountain landscape inside my head. I was aware of being awake and of lying in bed, but also of looking at the mountains and the white-coloured landscape, exactly as if watching something on a television screen. Soon after this I drifted off to sleep again. The most interesting part of the experience was the sense of looking at the scenery, being able to focus it and shift my attention, exactly as when I was awake.
One day, when Mavromatis was half-dozing in a circle of students, listening as one of them ‘psychometrised’ some object he was holding in his hand (trying to ‘sense’ its history) he began to ‘see’ the scenes the student was describing. He then began to alter his hypnagogic visions—an ability he had acquired by practice—and discovered that the student was beginning to describe his altered visions.
Now convinced that hypnagogic states encourage telepathy, he tried asking students to ‘pick up’ scenes that he envisaged, and found that they were often able to do this. He concludes that ‘some seemingly “irrelevant” hypnogogic images might... be meaningful phenomena belonging to another mind’. In other words, that T. S. Eliot might be wrong in thinking that ‘we each think of the key, each in his prison’. Perhaps, as Blake suggested, man can pass out of his inner prison ‘what time he will’.
Telepathy is, in fact, perhaps the best authenticated of ‘paranormal’ faculties; the evidence for it is generally agreed, by those in paranormal research, to be overwhelming. Mavromatis’s book goes a step further, and suggests a link between telepathy and dream sta
tes.
It would seem, then, that what Mavromatis has duplicated under control conditions with his students is what the Amahuaca Indians were able to do, using mind-altering drugs, under the guidance of their shaman: to achieve ‘group consciousness’.
It becomes possible to envisage what took place when the porpoise caller went into his hut. Like Mavromatis, he had taught himself the art of controlled dreaming—of sinking into a hypnagogic trance which he is able to control. We have to suppose that he was then able to direct his dreams to the realm of the porpoises, and communicate direct with them. (Experiments with porpoises suggest that they are highly telepathic.) Somehow, the porpoises were ‘hypnotised’ into swimming ashore and allowing themselves to be beached.
In Man, God and Magic, Ivar Lissner points out that about 20,000 years ago, on the threshold between the Aurignacian and Magdalenian, portrayals and statuettes of the human figure suddenly ceased. ‘It seems obvious that artists no longer dared to portray the human form in effigy.’ What he is suggesting is clear. Our ancestors firmly believed that hunting magic—with the use of portrayals of the prey—was effective and deadly, and that on no account should humans be portrayed.
Let us return once again to the question: why has man evolved so swiftly in the past half-million years—and particularly in the past 50,000—when his evolution was virtually stagnant for millions of years before that?
In Darwinian terms, there is no obvious answer. Nothing, as far as we know, ‘happened’ that suddenly forced man to adapt by developing increased intelligence.