Four
Shamanic
Voices:
Maestro
Tlakaelel
''Here in the Americas, more than 2,000 years ago, groups went forth in the four directions with the message that we must return again to raise up this great confederation of nations.''
Q: How can we help the Earth to heal?
Tlakaelel: The need that we have is to truly know the Earth. This is the basis of everything. There are many technological advances, and Mother Earth has suffered many alterations. They have changed, for example, the rivers. They have made great reservoirs all over the world, here in America and in Europe, and in Africa the great mammoth Aswan, the greatest reservoir in the world. This has altered the ecology. In ancient Egypt, the Nile river grew and inundated the riverbanks, leaving fertile earth and humidity and cleansing all of Egypt. Now, they regulate the water, and there are no longer these floods. Instead, they must lift up the water with mechanical pumps. There are shells and conches which developed in the water. Before, when the water went down, it took with it these animals. Now it never goes down so these animals are reproducing in a terrible way. The eggs of the small animals are killing the people. This is dangerous. In all places where they have detoured the waters of the Nile, where they have regulated the currents, this has altered the Earth.
Humans have extracted millions of metric tons of petroleum, leaving enormous empty caverns. Now we have more earthquakes. They are more frequent and stronger, more powerful. The climate of the world has been changed, and many of us are guilty of this. It is incredible that we had not taken this into account, until a man by the name of Thor Heyerdal awakened people's curiosity. He journeyed on the ocean in a raft and saw that there were enormous oceanic deserts where there was no life, where everything was covered with trash -- the trash that was dumped into the ocean by all the cities, plastic cans and bottles, and so on. Heyerdal brought forth the voice of alarm, that we are killing the ocean and soon everything will disappear.
We indigenous people, we saw something. This is the message of the ancestors. We remember the message of Chief Seattle, his poem to natural life that is an inspiration, a hymn, for current ecological groups. Chief Seattle's naturalness, his comprehension of our natural relationship with All That Exists -- this is the thinking of all of the indigenous peoples of the world. When asked to sell his land, Chief Seattle said sincerely, ''But how can one sell his own mother? Who can sell his mother? Who can sell the aroma of the pines? Or the murmur of the insects? Or the sound of the waters and the rivers? Or the air that we breath, which is breathed by the eagles? It was breathed by the buffalo. We all share it. Who can say this?'' In the last part of the message he says, ''If you are all coming together in these places you call cities, you live far away from nature. One day not too far away, you will awaken, drowning in your own excrement.'' And in the end, he said prophetically, ''Now life ends and survival begins.'' He said this 200 years ago, expressing perfectly the thinking of native people today.
How to heal Mother Earth? We must return once again to love Mother Earth, to understand her. The Earth is the ashes of our forefathers. At the beginning, it was a ball of fire. And little by little, it began to cool. Then we entered into a space where there was water. Water began to enter. Little by little it began to cool. In this water from outer space floated spores and seeds, and thus began the first plants, the most primitive plants. They were microscopic -- their roots were microscopic -- and they combined with the water and went into the pores of the rock. In this way, a plant grew and then died. And its ashes were part of the Earth. So more plants were created and then more ashes. Then the big trees came and the animals and we, ourselves. And each one of us will become ashes. So the Earth is the ashes of our forefathers. This is not a metaphorical statement -- it is true. She is our mother and these are our ancestors. They maintain life, and all that exists is sacred because everything is interrelated.
There were many eagles and there were many animals that the eagles eat. In this way there was always an equilibrium. We all look for balance. The animals teach us how to live. When we put many rabbits in a cage and give them all the food they want, they limit their space. When they see that there are too many, the mothers kill the small ones. So they maintain the number of individuals who can live in the space. This is how the animals teach us. There are many more examples.
How to heal the Earth? Understand her. Love her. Identify ourselves with her. This is all that is necessary.
We have forgotten. Today the people don't think of her as something sacred. They think of her as private property, something we must exploit. And they don't think about regenerating the Earth. A way to heal the Earth is through the rotation of crops, by planting different plants. The trees do this. Over a determined period of time, the pines are born and die and other plants begin to grow, other trees, and then again the pines. There is a natural rotation. Yes, it is possible to do this, if we understand. The important thing is that we have a synthesis.
What is the Earth? We see that it's a planet. We are in a solar system which is moving. Mother Earth is alive. She moves, she breathes, she has her own energy and movements. And the human beings, we are interconnected --our brains, our minds -- with all other human beings. The totality of our mind is the mind of Mother Earth. We are connected with the animals, with the plants and with all the beings that exist. But we have forgotten this. And now the few people who can move these forces because they know them -- because they feel them -- we call these people witches or medicine men or shamans. But anyone can do this. We all have the same capacity for comprehension.
The people who think a different way are said to be crazy. But we are not crazy. The medicine person lives on another plane, another vibration or wavelength. All that exists in this world is vibrating at a special wavelength and only exists in that wavelength. Shamans are simply receptors who receive this wavelength. But we can have other wavelengths, like Sai Baba. He has different wavelengths, and he materializes things. For this reason some say he's crazy. It's just that he's different because he goes beyond the human condition, beyond the common, beyond that middle point, and he dares to use these forces. He lives in two worlds. His world should be at the reach of all.
We must think of how to heal the people, of how to achieve a complete change in the human mind. We are the problem, and the official education has many lies. We are taught a history that is not the true history of the world. Instead, it is written in the interests of the people who have won the wars. The official history goes back only 8,000 years from the War of Troy, and since then we have just had wars and more wars. We don't remember other things. When someone speaks of Atlantis or Lemuria or other prior civilizations, they say these are just theories. But we know they are true. Science has just not committed itself to investigating this further. They have just uncovered the remains of a man in Africa who is 3.5 million years old. The official histories say man is new, maybe 150,000 years. And the other millions of years? And the people who were there before? There is proof of other technological civilizations that were more advanced than ours. We all think we are the greatest of humanity, but this just isn't true.
I am a Toltec Chichimeka indigenous person. More than 12,000 years ago, my forefathers began to unify humanity again. We knew that, before, there had been communication among all of the peoples of the planet. There was one single culture, one single religion. But a cataclysm came and left us out of touch. The few survivors began again to evolve. They are our forefathers, the survivors of the destruction of Atlantis. With these ideas, with this knowledge, they went to a place called the Mountain of the Serpent in the middle of a valley in what we now call Mexico, and they sent forth four expeditions to the four directions to carry a message. This historic message is that we are all descendants of a great culture, of a paradise. In my language we call this Tamoanchan where everything was in abundance, there was great luxury. And in a moment all was lost. The people who survived, the grandfathers, said this place existed. The children asked where, and were told, ''Maybe on the other side of the mountains.'' So they went forth, farther and farther, looking. In this way great migrations were established, great movements of human beings throughout the world.
Here in the Americas, more than 2,000 years ago, groups went forth in the four directions with the message that we must return again to raise up this great confederation of nations. They tried to invite the people -- those they encountered on their paths -- to organize but also to share their knowledge. These groups were messengers and ambassadors who made alliances with the peoples. They carried seeds and beans and squash and corn, and in this way they traveled and they shared this food. Throughout all the native peoples of America, we still have the same foods. Nine hundred eighty-eight years later, the descendants of those who went forth returned to the valley in Mexico, bringing all the knowledge they had been able to learn. They said, ''We have discovered that there are people of four colors but one single race, the human race. We are all brothers and sisters, and our origin is cosmic. We are all brothers and sisters because we are all sons and daughters of the same father, who we call Teotl or the Great Spirit or Great Grandfather or Great Mystery or the Superior Mind. He is the unique creator of All That Exists. We are all brothers and sisters of All That Exists. We must understand this to mutually respect one another.''
In this way, they decided to found the City of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, as the center of the cosmic race and cultural capital of the human species. They created the concept and the word ''Mexicatl,'' which means ''planetary citizen,'' or citizen of this planet. They said, ''So far, the first Mexican has not been born, but tonight we will plant in the bellies of our women, and from here, two hundred seventy-two days forward, the first Mexicas will be born, the first citizens of the universe.'' This ceremony was done on the equivalent of the 30th of the month of July in 1324. The confederation began to evolve rapidly until almost 200 years later when the Europeans arrived and our evolution was suspended. But before that, an enormous confederation existed. There were two confederations, one from today's Nicaragua to the south -- the Confederation of the Condor -- and one from Nicaragua to the north -- the Confederation of the Red Eagle. The two confederations had made an alliance, called the Confederation of the Eagle and the Condor. This history is not known. Some have tried to destroy it, but we indigenous people preserve it.
Three generations ago, we decided again to rescue our history and tradition. This is what we are doing. When our evolution was suspended, the grandfathers gave us instructions. They told us what it was we would have to do, and what would be our strength. Strength can only be given when the people identify with something, when something brings them together. What has brought our ancestors together is this idea of the cosmic citizen. The Earth is of all of us, and we are of the Earth. The Earth is not ours; we are hers. It was then that we decided to maintain the resistance, and we always preserved, in secret, what is the destiny of man: why we are here, where we come from, where we are going, and what is our mission.
So man comes to the world with the aim of seeking perfection by means of personal self-development. This perfection will arrive when man is capable of creating all that he is capable of conceiving. Here is the superior being of the future -- able to create all that we conceive. Each one of us is a link in the chain of evolution. Each one of us is a treasure, and in our genes we preserve the memory of all the generations before, of their experiences, and after, we leave behind our own experiences. And pass them on to our children. The immediate mission of each generation is the creation of the next one.
This is our mission. Now we have a goal that we must reach. We must come again to a way by which we can identify ourselves. We didn't come to this world just to eat, sleep, reproduce, and die. We have a great destiny. This destiny is possible when we achieve our worth and when we transcend. We live for just a little bit of time. That which continues living after us is the community, the Earth. Our work is to build a pyramid little by little, growing and growing and growing. Soon we will be able to complete the pyramid. For this reason, symbolically we never closed the tops of the pyramids ourselves. They were left apart. And when we complete them, then we will be like gods. We will be capable of doing everything we are capable of thinking.
We will again have a reason to be -- strength for living, to conquer all the problems: the wars that there have been, the differences between Catholics, Protestants, and Moslems. These are easier to put aside when man has the idea, I am cosmos. I am not cosmic, I am cosmos. I am an integral part of the universe, of the creation of all. And I continue being part of a great plan of creation. When we are all able to feel this just a little bit, when we identify with All That Exists, we will be planetary citizens, cosmic citizens. And peace will come. The truth will be known.
Many religions have been bred so that the people will submit. All religions are good, there are none that are negative, but man has interpreted religion in different ways to justify invasions, to justify slavery, the submission, the obedience. When we are capable of knowing the truth and can teach it to our children, then we will be healing Mother Earth, we will be healing humanity. We will be healing the universe. A worldwide reeducation is necessary.
We have committed many errors, and we must write down this history, the history of our errors, and also the good things. We must know that both the positive and negative are necessary, the good and the bad. They are two poles, the same as hot and cold, light and darkness, the positive and negative poles of energy, the man and the woman. Apparently, the two are opposed, but they come together and they create. The positive and negative poles of electricity create light. The energy of motors, the hot and the cold, create the climate in which we are able to live. The man and the woman create as they come together. So the positive and the negative side are both indispensable.
The devil could not exist apart from God. One could not exist without the other. They both are positive, for the two create our concept of good and evil. Which is the negative pole of the Earth? And which is the positive? The north, or the south? Either could be positive or negative, but together they create an energy field that regulates life on the planet. That is our concept of good and evil. Sometimes I am asked, ''Are there good witches and bad witches?'' I say, ''I understand the question, so how would you attack the bad if you don't know what it is? How could you know what's good if you don't know what good is?'' You must know the extremes, and then you can place yourself on whatever side you choose. What is good for one is not necessarily good for the other. We must learn to respect the plurality.
For the future, we must remember the people in a prayer, which goes as follows:
Creator, accept me as I am with my vices, with my passions, my detours, my works, my positive things, because I am this way. You made me this way. And permit me that I may accept those similar to me, that I may accept them as they are. And help me, Creator, so that people accept me, too.
This is good. We must mutually accept one another -- people of all colors, all religions, all languages. We must learn to respect each other because we are sons and daughters of the same Creator. The problems of humanity are coming to a climax. There has been a history of wars, of wars that each time are more bloody, each time producing more bodies, more people dying. The young people are beginning to think, ''This is the world left to us by our elders. Why are there so many wars? Why is there so much division? Why is there a North Korea and South Korea? Why is there a South Vietnam and a North Vietnam? Why are the countries divided?'' They are looking for unity, and now they are finding a motive.
We are a single human species who are now the guardians of the Earth, and that this Earth is our home. Whatever happens on our planet, positive or negative, affects all of us. We need more groups like the ecologists -- small groups, local groups, or bigger groups like Greenpeace, people who have taken a global consciousness. They are going to change the world. There is hope.
Our message would be strength for those who are struggling, strength for the warriors of peace and for the warriors of Mother Earth, strength for the ecologists, for all the people who are working to understand the Earth. Those who are demanding a reeducation on a worldwide level, those who are creating and who are teaching the truth -- they are the future! There is a very good future ahead. After many centuries, the planet begins to vibrate with an idea: We will save the Earth! This planet is our home, and we are now the guardians of the Earth. Our mission is to keep it clean, habitable, and inhabited.
