…So there it lies, the greatest of all invisible forces.

Seated in the throne of a place...keeper of the Universe

From it all rivers flow with the waters of life, baptizing the land,

And above it the wind sings motivated by its infinite capacity.

 

In its seat lies the answer to all things, and that is itself.

That is its self. Breathing close to the ears of those that know it,

It is perceptible only to those who understand its nature.

And it blesses those who believe in it with the grace of its revealing music.

 

Shallows are the waters in the lands of those against it.

Putrid and foul is their condition, yet it still shines for them.

Like a dormant sun it sits and it waits in its throne,

waiting for the moment when they are prepared.

Waiting for the awakening

 

Outside the circle of the known lies the unknown.

Also, in turn is the known outside the unknown.

As above is below so is within without.

So as the sky mirrors the earth, so does the earth mirror us, so do we mirror the sky.

 

But all of this is nothing

If the great of all invisible forces

Does not shine within as it does without us

Below as it does above us

It with us and us with it…

 

 

These are the words and this the life of yoayar, the experience of the daemon.

A pure reflection of the overall within itself.

 

In dedication to our ancestors and to all our relations…

 

---

Chapter 1

      One long past evening in guanjama, the holy land of the gujumnoe tribe to which we are all born, in a time and place where the indigenous peoples still lived with nature as their immemorial source of both learning and sustenance, we watched proudly as my son yoayar stood in perfect balance and stillness, gazing at the distances as himself for the last time.

      As the chosen ceremonial elders and teachers, huomono, kutetaro, bejebo and I prepared the fire for the initiative rituals to take place, and while doing so we all smiled within as we recalled in synchronicity how we ourselves had reacted to our first near-death experience.

Complete trust and goodwill we laid upon that place and that moment because we knew from experience of the one spirit, and because we believed in it whole-heartedly. Yet the outcome of this rite of passage was entirely up to yoayar and his universe. It was a delicate and dangerous procedure we were undertaking although we knew that nothing could ever go wrong or unaccepted on the fasalo plateau, our place of passage, for it was guarded by the ancestral spirits of our kind.

      This was to be a ritual in which pure focus and strong intent were needed, for an important choice between paths was to be made, and a perilous voyage undertaken. Whatever the choice, it was correct and it was destiny. If chosen by the spirits, yoayar would be born again as a gujumno. If not, the plants of fasalo would either take his sanity or his breath.

These were the laws of cause and effect in fasalo, distorted and unusual yet holy to us. Whatever the outcome of this ordeal it would be definite for yoayar because one thing was for certain, regardless of the choice, in one way or another, yoayar would now finally break through the belief he had sustained that all things are as perceived by the senses. He would discover that the real world of defined objects he had been living in was an illusion. He was to experience and grow up in a new world built upon the ruins of his  previous one.

 

      It was now nearing night. The wind blew something fierce up in that plateau. Clouds were gathering to observe and the raptors hovered above us in solemn support, for all nature in the surrounding area was aware that something of big spirit was coming to pass in fasalo.

      The mesa fasalo was a special sedimentary rock extension shaped by passing time and the natural forces that work with it. A desolate high point de-constructed and molded round by the combining forces of wind and water. Conditions so strong and piercing that they only permitted the survival of certain life forms on the fasalo plateau. It was an un-inhabitable place to most species of plants but a specific type of weed and shrub life.

        Exceptionally, the life that bred here was different from the life that bred elsewhere, it had needed to in order to realize its goal of survival. Such a natural metaphor was what gave the first gujumnoes the urge to make this site a place of gathering and new-birth for our kind, and it has been so for at least ten thousand seasons.

      In this place, the home of the jaunt fruit and the sacred weed, there was nothing of advantage but to the gujumno natives of our belief. Across the duration of thousands of generations this area had been and still was seen by believers as the place for separation between regular and heightened understanding. A place the elders before us had designated as the place where all of our young should begin to walk our by nature given path. To us this was an ancient and sacred place and ours were ancient and sacred customs. Between us, we held the ideals of the Southern ones from guanjama, the gujumnoe-lei and the gujumnoe-pei.

 

 

      As we watched him, yoayar stood quiet and pensive facing the emptiness that now gathered in this mind. His look was one of questioning. We heard without words how he was beginning to fear his near future, forgetting that all that fear would bring him was confusion, doubt and evasive questions with no answers. The main doubt, the thought most felt at this moment was a simple yet serious one: was the step that he was taking one towards an amplified comprehension towards all things or was it one of insanity.

      We the elders knew that to a common human being, ignorant or distant to the gujumnoe ways, these were both one and the same, that we were all insane, since a common person could not possibly understand our reasoning, customs or ways.

      But to yoayar this was not so evident at the moment. He was becoming panic stricken. Since the gujumnoe peoples did not abide by the standard cultural and sociological rules set by the civilized man from the upper North, who were by now the predominant group occupying guanjama, this presented a great dilemma in the hearts and minds of our young. Since following the ways of their ancient tribe meant renouncing civilization and never giving in to it there was great unrest and insecurity present for them.

      In the near past we had been frequently visited by the prophets of that new-world civilization that had invaded the land to which we were and we had found them shallow, devious, cunning and deceptive.

      As opposed to them we did not spend our days in search of material treasures without but rather in search of the spiritual treasure within. As opposed to them we worked towards tuning our hearts with the soul of the earth and ultimately to consciously merge with the one overall. So, as gujumnoes we were righteous ones, and as citizens of the Bantsu nation established by the ant-people colonists from the North we were insane ones, barbaric and backwards natives who needed to be civilized at all costs.

      So yoayar now had to decide. He would have to choose between being part of the gujumnoe family or a citizen of the new-world civilization. If he was to become a gujumnoe he was not to turn back, he would live off and give to the land and he would spend the rest of his days scorned and misunderstood by the common ones of guanjama. If he was to choose to be a citizen of the new-world civilization he would have to travel to the steel and cement ant-center and become an ant-person, to learn and adopt their ways. But since yoayar's childhood the elders and I knew what was his decision to be. We had always felt yoayar’s tendency towards the unseen, it was inbred in his character and from the moment he first asked about our ways, we knew that he would one day become one of us.

 

      Yoayar now sat and observed how around him there was nothing but dry and seemingly lifeless earth as far as he could see on this holy mesa fasalo. Only few now knew of its importance to the gujumnoe kind since our milliner culture was at this time endangered by extinction. The colonists had by now arrived at the southern most point of guanjama. They had colonized the gaupameis and had already engulfed and corrupted the gaupi natives of the area into their system. Only few young now followed the aged customs brought forth to them by the elders, and to them by their predecessors, following a path used since the initial times of humans in the area, since the beginning of our peoples times. With this in mind we were now ready to make use of that sacred place.

 

 

      We sat there at that chosen spot for a long period of time, fasting in sacrifice and purification and facing each other in sign of mutual affection and respect. We prayed and meditated, and we contemplated upon the beauty of the overall as was custom to the tribe to which we were reborn.

Moments gave way to moments and time passed on and on until huomono, present specifically to execute and monitor yoayar’s initiation ceremony, began the ritual. He started by staring intently into yoayar's eyes. Huomono could see within. He was magic...

      For a long time he stared hypnotically at yoayar with a solemn expression, measuring yoayar’s submission to his senses. Yoayar was ecstatic while huomono was doing this, not knowing what to think yet feeling a great strength and positive change already taking place inside of him.

      Huomono then slowly closed his eyes and sat perfectly still for a few moments. Then he suddenly slid over to where yoayar was sitting. He slid real close to yoayar and whispered the basic principles of a gujumno into his ear. His words were inaudible to my ears but I sensed the importance for I recognized their meaning, I could smell it in the air.

      In such an instance the chosen elder would only direct his words to his subject of initiation, since all attention was necessarily focused towards making the moment an awakening for yoayar. Huomono placed his hand on yoayar’s forehead and channeled something so powerful that it subdued yoayar's ego and dispelled it, leaving yoayar uncovered to the lessons that were meant to enter into him. Yoayar heard huomono’s silent words in his head at that moment and he turned towards the night and began to walk the mesa fasalo by himself. He walked until he reached what he intuitively felt was the right spot and he stopped, searching for the signs to appear. A jaunt fruit of journey and a rock of his given choice was all he needed. He took the rock with which he would symbolically bury himself, then he picked the jaunt fruit and began his task.

      He sat, he ate the plant's leaves, buds and fruit and then left towards an expected chaos for he was without the filter of ego. 

 

---

      In a fit of convulsions it all began. Yoayar fell over and rolled on the ground, grasping and squeezing at his stomach in agony and kicking at the invisible pain that seemed to claw at him from all sides. His eyes had rolled back in their sockets revealing a bloodshot tarnished white and tears ran from them down his face as he gritted his teeth fiercely causing himself to sever his tongue and bleed from his mouth. He jolted and jerked in agony and occasionally we heard an intense scream running from his throat and out to the wilderness, escaping the pain. There was thunder, and lightning lit the events. More spirits than we had ever witnessed together came down to see the unfolding of yoayar.

      He now held his chosen rock tightly against his chest. His hands bled, he had chosen a sharply edged rock and had cut himself in the process, but that made no difference to him, it was a minor pain in relation to the worst pain of all, to the mental hell. The attack of the archetypal demons was in effect.

      Images which could not be interpreted by the rational mind were now before him and he could not even begin to comprehend their significance, but he could feel them, his private hell culminating only when he felt the worst and most savage of his fears become visible and felt his death approaching from the distances.

      And at that moment yoayar died as a man, and his spirit was released from his body, glad to be rid of such chaos and pain. Gladly yoayar had resigned to his death, and he was prepared to fly towards the unknown when suddenly a sign of comfort came from his body. There was a light to be seen shining from within his lifeless shell. It was a powerful sign that all present could see. And from the center of the ravaged and contorted vehicle he was leaving behind, rose one beautiful image of intense revelation. There was a ball of light hovering above the body and there was music rising from it. It was inconprehensible yet beautiful. None of us there had ever seen anything like it. And because of that vision yoayar came back to us.

      When yoayar next opened his eyes we recognized that he had seen the overall and had felt a state known only to the gujumnoe and he looked content.

 

      He awoke calm but in shock, and wiped his face from the sand and dust that had stuck there and created the mask of dirt and grit that he was now wearing. We giggled for he looked amusing. The earth had painted his face like that of a warrior fallen facedown in the battlefield. Stunned, while sitting up he grinned back, holding his aching head. He too found the moment humorous and he did feel like a fallen warrior. Like one that had died and was now empty. Now he felt a real insignificance, now that he was no one...

      “What I’ve seen in the past, is not at all what it truly is,” he mumbled as he gazed down at the sand, “now I know that nothing was really true and truth was really nothing to me. The world is not what I see outside me but what I project from within. With these eyes I see what I have created for myself. With these hands I touch what I am in all things. That is why life has always seemed barren to me. Because I am alone inside here, and I will always be alone here until I find my daemon, the wisdom, the capacity to acknowledge the One. That part of me that no longer creates illusions for itself but simply reflects the true self that is within. Only then will I cease to be alone. I must truthfully find myself if I am to ever have myself as a companion on this walk of life. My dreams are my life and my imagination and thoughts are only of my own world, I am sick of that, I was sick from that...

Before I was stagnating potential, unaware that I was dead to life,but now I walk aware, to the day when I become one with the overall...”

 

        Huomono stood up and with a glint in his eyes laid his wrinkled hands on yoayar´s shoulders. The elders and I all knew well of yoayars pain, I had watched yoayar grow through a turbulent childhood, and they had watched it through me. We knew the confusion that was now running through yoayar's mind. So huomono turned to face yoayar and spoke thus...

 

      “...Pay no mind to the discrepancy of your own ways and actions to this day, for they were nothing but symptoms of your own evolution. Pay attention to what had no discrepancy in you for it defines your true character. What you have felt now in your heart was the awakening of your daemon. You will now begin to leave the demons behind, you are now on your way to becoming a wise man, a gujumno, but it will be a long walk for you. In you, the potential is great, in you are the seeds that will make you an example.

A true sample of the creator you are, so as your daemon finds consciousness in itself you will hopefully become it and eventually be given the ultimate choice that is presented before every gujumnoe wise man or woman. To die and be reborn as a piece of the ever transitory overall, in other words to continue the cycle of life and death, or to go to that place for which there are no other words to describe but home... ”

 

      Yoayar's complexion had now turned into one of calmness and understanding. He acknowledged to himself that he had now started to walk his own individual path towards the light. He sat down on the ground and finalized the initiation ritual by drawing his personal symbol with his own blood onto the sharp flattened rock that had accompanied him through his personal descent to hell, and then proceeding to bury it in the same spot where he had suffered for so long. He was symbolically burying himself, his old self, in the grave of yoayar the common man.

      As a new self reared towards visions of wisdom and knowledge, yoayar's first step was to structure and follow a new dogma with which to substitute his old and obsolete one, a set of beliefs that only he should accept without reason. Now he would begin to evolve and obey a doctrine for himself, his own set of principles that would be based upon only on what basic rules and principles were taught to him by his elders, and whatever wisdom he gathered from his own experiences. He would begin to study the ancient ideology of his gujumno forefathers and create his own unique, idiosyncratic way to coexist. He would set his roots into the earth and finally begin to be nurtured by it. 

 

      He now acknowledged that our very own lives are insignificant to most others, and of minimal importance to any but ourselves and those close to us. The poison had shown him of our frail and confused disposition as a common one and of our deficiency to be of dedicated service to anything greater than our own comprehension. The poison showed yoayar of the moral incompatibility of the gujumnoe with that of the people of the new world civilization. Through the authentic agony of chaos yoayar learnt about faith and will. He would now begin to transcend his mental limitations and reformulate his reasoning towards the eternal and the void, into one of intuitive knowledge and of humble acceptance.

      With this in mind he again smiled at us. Love was radiating from his smile, and with that playful grin of his, he took the dried sacred weed that he had gathered in the fasalo plains on his way to the initiation and shared the herb with us, for yoayar was considerate that we too had been through that revealing agony once before and had also had to bury our old self and turn our backs to our old world. He was thankful and respectful for the wisdom and help of the present elders and in quiet admiration he beheld their serene and munificent manner as he rested his numb and close to senseless body against mine.

      This rebirth and the emotional aura it had spread upon us was one of deep inspiration. It brought forth a sense of comfort and unity to all five in the group. All laying down comfortably around the fire we exchanged stories and humour. Little by little, one by one, the elders dozed off. It had been a tiring night filled with intensity. Embraced by a silence rarely known to these parts we rested by yoayar's grave. Again nature had responded to the moment and now everything was quiet. There was no more storm for the night. Having realized how appropriate it is to become a king in your own world rather than a servant in another’s, yoayar laid on his side staring at the night. With this thought in mind he rested his head and he slept...

 

      The night continued in its peaceful flow up on the fasalo plateau. The stars were so many up there in the sky. They hung from the heavens to bring light to darkness. Excited by the good fate of my son I lay awake throughout most of the night dwelling and thinking about the changes in his life and in prayer and thanksgiving.

      Prior to his rebirth, I had always found yoayar a peculiar young man. To me his eyes often harboured a solitary calmness, and I had gathered that his was a mind enveloped in sadness. As most others of his generation he had been enveloped by hatred and despise for much of his life. All this due to the hardships of the times for those born to our kind. The young had grown up with decadence and decay all around them, and many were doomed to lead their lives along those lines. If not saved by choice to leave and pursue the ancient gujumnoe ways, they would come to age in an unjust existence of slavery and servitude.

      In my encounters with yoayar in the past I would often read his cynical and critical thoughts about this predicament. I could sense the negative in the opinions that birthed from his inexperienced and tormented mind. Whenever we crossed paths and discussed life I could see that he was being accompanied by demons that would one day make him or break him. This he was borne to face.

In the past I could read in his face awareness of the bitter taste of a hard life which was in turn reflected on his tense posture, but that night, at that moment, in that darkness, at that stage, his form was a completely different one, it was one of strong resolve towards finding the beauty in life.

  

      This newly awakened quality of yoayar's, to quickly change and look ahead was a definite reminiscent trace from his mother, wanea. Wanea Ans-ul, in life, had been a woman that had found a balance between the bliss of peace with the world, and the misery of war within herself. A woman living with an interior struggle against destiny so strong that it led her to her voluntary death as soon as she had gave birth to yoayar. Yoayar was the offspring of an unusually distinct relationship between myself and wanea, the wetlands woman.

 

---

     

I had met wanea one day close to the end of one particular rain season as I was following along the isles that compose the Shinke estuary to the South-east of the mesa fasalo. At the time I was a young and studious one, lover of observation and learning.

      I had traveled on my own down the river because I was interested in that abstract follow of water that flowed so capaciously down from the fasalo-lei mountains at this time of year, and I wanted to study the behaviour of the animals dependent on it. To me they were art in motion. I walked along, meditating on the fragile balance in the ecosystem of life and death, and counting on submerging myself in the melancholic feeling of that reality until the beginning of the dry season. It was my plan to then be on my way, aiming towards a retirement in the great galleries of rockpaintings that had been made over sixty thousand generations back by the early inhabitants of the Dab-Shi coast who had come to the area from the kaikune deserts.

      These galleries were situated in hidden caves under the brush by the oceans of Dab-Shi. They were a well kept secret of our kind for if they were found by the ant-people these would surely destroy their spiritual meaning with their well known green schemes.

I was heading towards the caves to paint my own feelings on their walls but I did not make it for on that day I encountered a goddess.

      I had been initiated and had declared myself a gujumnoe-lei no more than a few thousand days back when I first saw her. I was astonished by the sheer vision of her, a woman that had emitted such an immaculate and pure meaning of the word of love through the gleam and glitter of her eyes when she first looked at me that I was immediately hers. That initial sight of her made me believe that all the beauty present around me was but a consequence of her proximity, a consequence of her existence. An aboriginal woman of night, earth and sand to whom I immediately, at first sight developed a worship and an intense love for. It was only because of this overwhelming feeling of belonging to her that I was later capable of understanding and accepting her decision to leave me for death without a moment of judgment or doubt.

      To me, definitely the most beautiful and enigmatic being on earth and beyond. Slim and firmly shaped, full of life, familiarly attuned was the alignment of her mind, body and  soul. She was wise as all life and full of wonder. Wanea lived alone and had built herself a home up in one of the thick malanbhatho trees that hung above one of the rivers. She had lived alone since an early age. Leaving the uselessness of her previous life to undertake a dedicated pursuit for wisdom and impeccability, which she had found through the teachings of an elder gujumnoe-laman that had taken her from the misery of her family life and taught her all that he knew. Wanea had become a dream creature and a vident at an early age.

      Dream creatures and vidents were peoples that lived in a content situation in between the realms of the native wise-ones and the gujumnoe-lamans. They had developed a skill in which time and space had assumed different proportions to the common ones and a greater insight into the past and future were achieved. As most would live a day, they could live either a second or a year at choice.

      When we first met, she confessed as if guilt ridden and relieved that when she saw me afar, she observed what her dream gods had meant when they had described me to her, and that at that moment she knew that she would have to dedicate herself to the dedication in myself, for the seed was in me. She was my first mentor and aided me in many great achievements and many great conclusions.

      We lived together as family, friends and lovers for as long as I had lived as a gujumno until then.

Up in that malanbhatho tree we spent most of our days watching nature and advancing in our way. We had plenty time to sit and watch the animals and the plants, and to think about things. We would feel, I would talk and she would listen and then give me more to talk about and develop for her, this was how she taught me, this was how she tested me. She did not speak much, she preferred to channel her feelings through me and let me verbalize them. In special times we would sit tight and while she would arrange my hair and beard knots, wanea would explain certain things to me, or she would chant song cycles that she had learned in dreamstate for my knowing. It was in one of these moments that she revealed to me a key to the gujumno’s harmony with the environment. With that divine voice I seldom heard, wanea explained that we gujumno are of the small numbers of conscious humans to acknowledge the importance of the nature world. She recounted why we believed that fire, water, air and earth, are everlasting...

 

      ...The elements are one in our mind and in our heart. We can feel this if we are to compare the humans mind's, especially the ant-people's with the trees. Both have roots that are firm in the soil and go down deep. We all grow up towards the light. We live for the light but we are stuck to the ground. The ground is the society man and woman are part of and have helped create for themselves. The tree, with its roots buried deep into the ground extracts the necessary matters from it in order to grow taller towards the light but, if the soil is poisoned the tree will not grow but wither instead. Most humans poison the very soil they need to exist, they poison themselves without realizing the repercussions that will be reflected on their cycle of life as whole. When they die, they leave behind enough fire, water, air and earth to be born again, but they leave very little fertile ground behind, not enough to grow more than another weak and hopeless tree. They do not learn that they can be much more than one sole tree and that to do so, their first need is to stop poisoning the soil they live on so they can bear fruit and expand themselves. If their fruit drops on fertile ground it may be born and grow, if it drops on poisoned ground it will not even begin to live.

      Now, I am to explain us, the gujumnos. Think of this malanbhatho tree we live in as one in the field of your mind. You as a gujumno are a field of trees, each tree containing fruit. Each tree was once a fruit and now is a tree with fruit. Each idea is a fruit with seed. Each fruit is a conjecture of seed and enough matter to feed it in its birth. Well, if you are the ground in which the fruit falls when it is heavy enough and you are fertile enough to keep the seed alive and growing after its birth, then you will be making yourself a field of wisdom filled with a growing, increasing knowledge. If such a knowledge in itself generates more and higher knowledge then I could say that you are heading towards an awakening. The light has always been there for us all but as a field and not an individual tree, we are better equipped to soak in more light for our area of span is much greater. Such is our state, such is the state of the trees. We both grow old and die, but this is not the end, We are soon born again from the decomposition of our old-self. The decomposition back to water, our time, and earth our substance, back to air our place, and fire our intent. They will bring us all life again, yet there is more chance of birth in the regeneration of a field than of a simple tree.

 

      Now imagine this field as your full mind, this malanbhatho tree as a growing part of your knowledge and the river that runs by it as the time that feeds both the field and the tree. This river runs constant, it is all the moments in the universe, each drop of time in it is flowing without halt. The time in your life is the amount of water that seeped into the ground of your field and onto the roots of your malanbhatho tree put together. That water is the moments of your life. As you free these moments after your death, they return to be as moments of the universe again flowing without halt, the river running constant again.

      The malanbhatho tree and the field need water to develop. Your mind and your knowledge need time to develop. A human being has the ability to administer the water intake and where it is sent to, not realizing that by sending water to one tree alone it runs chances of leaving the rest of the field dry and loosing many of the trees it may have ignored or forgotten to consider. A common human normally channels and directs all the water to one tree limiting his field because of a belief that growth of a single tree is advantageous. A gujumno is conscious of the importance of the totality of the field and all the trees harbored by it, a gujumno does not control and administer the water as rigorously as other humans would, but let's it seep freely in all directions, not pointing to any one particular tree. Such a mistake was made by the brothers nhu-ater and nuh-terur which you will read about in your future. The wise gujumno simply waits for the recollection of new fruits and trees to reappear to him or her, knowing that the field is developing in the shadow of a former field bathed by the same river but different drops of time. 

      We, the gujumnos respect all that is natural for it is the same as us, be it what it may. We will never purposely damage this chain of life that we are part of. If the tiniest of beings is unimportant, then the largest of beings is unimportant. We will live here in harmony causing no harm, spending our time and living in respect for our brethren...

 

      I knew this to be true and felt sad that not all of mankind could feel the same esteem and admiration for nature and the world. In that way we the gujumno were alone at that time, yet between us there was enough goodwill for the earth to continue prospering for it does not require much.

     

      Wanea and I consumed a large portion of our days inventing, shaping and building whatever was necessary for our home and for ourselves. We did this with the power of those who had been entrusted with a mission. Most of the time we would work without words, but being a very communicative sort of gujumno I often felt the need to verbalize, and whenever the chance arose to ask wanea something, I would. I would because I loved to hear her voice. Yet no matter how much I asked about it she would never speak willingly of her past before her gujumnoe-lamanic learning's, and she would refuse to mention it at all times. She would discard it by saying that she had been someone else that was of no importance just as I had been someone else of no importance, that whatever life she had led before could not and should not interfere with our union, and then she would cry as if I had just uncovered a painful memory meant to remain hidden.

      So I have never discovered which lineage of the gujumnoe knowledge wanea was perpetuating but, I suspect that wanea could be of one of the gujumno-pei dynasties that originate from the fasalo-pei hills. Maybe of the dynasty that originated in the buantchama estuary. After all, wanea was a wetlands woman of dark skin, a trait of Southern guanjama. But none of that mattered to me at the time. Until the very day of yoayar’s conception nobody else but wanea was present in my mind, and I was happy that way.

      It came one night while wanea and I coiled around each other. At first a thunder so loud that it awoke our survival instincts. Still locked together in loving embrace we looked up in time to see the lightning descend from the heavens and strike a neighboring malanbhato tree which was immediately split in half and engulfed in flames. In the center of the split we could see a violet-blue fireball hovering. It was a sign. Yoayar was coming.

---

 

…We ran away like poets after the glow,

Stumbling upon sparkles

At twilight between heaven and earth

We rested

And around us nature echoed

Day was eventually slain by night

So we lit a fire to keep comfort

And I fell asleep

Thus from thin air dew gathered on the leaves

Giving birth to frail water drops

Hard enough to break rock

From silence the ideas arose within her

And then they gathered as concepts

Strong enough to break the mind

At that moment we were cacophony and silence

Bound together by something greater

Than even themselves

By nothing

In nothing is everything

I remember the fire and how it spoke

Like the water and air, like the earth,

It droned continuous

Like the universe

It spoke to us

Like words are to the mouth

Related and from the same source

And it said:

This glow that you search

Is the glint in your very eyes

It is the feeling

And it is within you.

An owl then sent words of wisdom from the dark

It did so for countless times

Intuition finally awoke me

Seconds before she took the spark

That hovered within my chest

And threw it into the big ocean

For what reasons I do not know

But I already knew

I jumped in after it

And found myself underwater

I thought to myself

The heart is where the mind lays rest

If home is where the head lays rest

And from then on I now do not know what happened to me

But I am assured by the legends that I will later…

 

      When he finished the poem, he stared me in the eyes and smiled. He and I were one and the same. I realized that I would soon be without her and I woke up to witness wanea die.

 

      As I awoke from this deepest of sleeps wanea was delivering yoayar. All night she had been trying in silence so as not to wake me, and now the time was near. Wanea could not last much longer, and she cried out for the medicine pouch we kept in our home. I knew what she would do, yet I brought it to her and wanea took a deadly dosage of the jaunt fruit. Her survival was of no importance in comparison to her son's and that dosage of the jaunt fruit was the only power capable of assisting wanea in this delivery. It was either wanea or yoayar. She gave him her life. I was crying for I knew she would soon go. But the signs had been evident, we were to be split apart by the fireball, yoayar.

Our son came to this world and his life demanded more life force than one small body could generate so wanea gave him hers to take and flourish with.

      As wanea faded she introduced me to our newly-born sibling, yoayar, and then gave me instructions that I must find a group of indigenous women that were part of a nearby tribe inhabiting the lower shinke rivers, and hand yoayar to them. They would teach yoayar in the ways of the regular guanjamo folk. Wanea instructed me that I that must not teach him of the gujumno ways until he reached manhood for he would not understand them and could possibly develop an aversion to them and rebel. Wanea explained that these women were widowed and alone of men and would teach yoayar as pure and as well as if he were their own child. They would teach him of the subsistence supported by the life of occupational pluralism, of the tribal society.

      Having contacts of trade and barter with many other tribes, the conditions for growth and expansion of awareness were perfect for yoayar. It would be in these encounters with others that yoayar would learn about the general topics in the life of the common guanjama peoples. As yoayar would grow toward manhood he would assimilate the simplistic ideas that these women upheld about what was an ideal life of happiness and satisfaction.

      He would grow accustomed to imported ideas and theories and be influenced by the knowledgeable contacts and company of those wise who crossed that fertile land. By the partition of the wisdom of others he would develop a notion of life which he would later have to dissipate, yet he would grow up to assimilate the honorable customs of those based on goodwill, kindness and respect.

      Wanea, As the elders and I, knew what yoayar was to choose to be in the future. This she had dreamt. Wanea was good with dreams, her dreams had revealed the world to her and I.

      To this day I do not understand how I could adore this woman with such a passion that her very presence I can still feel strongly at any given moment. She is still very much in me and her constant presence is branded into my mind.

 

      Shortly after her death, I prepared wanea's breathless body to return to the elements. I dug a hole between the roots under the malanbhatho tree and buried her there.

      Emotionally shattered and physically wounded, I left with yoayar to find the women. I walked down river with yoayar between my arms until I found the tribe that was situated at the dab-shi coast. There I remained for three seasons with my son and the group of women, explaining and discussing their mission, and when they had finally understood the intentions proposed, they accepted and gave me blessings. I then left up coast to the cave galleries to finally complete my journey and set a new home for myself where I could heal.

      By a solitaire beach I built my home and there my wounds were healed and turned to scars. There I divided my time between dream, vision and discovery, and the disguised visits as a traveler in trade to see my son yoayar.

  

---

      The next morning after his symbolic death and rebirth, yoayar woke up alone in those arid parts. The elders and I gone and had left him by himself for the first time since the initiation. Once again I had left yoayar at birth.

      I remember my own feelings when I was initiated. I had felt as scared as a young child who finds itself alone in a dark and unfamiliar place. For the first time I had felt truly humbled by the prospect of being a small part of a greater unknown. I had seen that I was born to a new reality where everything was fresh and undefined, where appearances were nothing but mirages to the hungry eye, and concealed an essence that could not be seen without a pure heart.

      At that moment yoayar still perceived things as they had been explained to him by his fellow tribesmen and by the travelers in trade, and it was his first task to cleanse himself of all that criteria. On what was and was not true and real.

      This was the first time he consciously attempted to alter his state of perception. Now he had to see beyond the concepts that been taught to him as a child by the widowed guanjama tribes-women, who had never themselves been spokesmen for the gujumno-lei dynasty.

      By not training our young ourselves, we gave them the freedom to be part of whatever world they felt suitable until they reached a mature age. Only then would we intercede by explaining our ways to them and presenting them with a choice. All tribal peoples and all tribal teachings were part of one guanjama culture, and all its inherent attitudes, beliefs, expectations, values, perceptions and patterns of behavior, were ones derived from nature, all focusing on the earth as a primordial resource for life, and a sacred haven for its peoples. So what they had taught him was great and had made him a good man, but now it was time for him to transcend that state.

      What yoayar had learnt as a child was simply one between many different ways of looking and understanding all that was presented before him. He now understood that he had been taught a limited manner of analyzing and pondering upon matters with reason, and that his views were widely influenced by the the education he had received since birth. And he was aware that there was more to the world than what he had been taught. The initiation had opened a door in his perception that led to an inmeasurable ocean of experience, and he now accepted that by ridding himself of the rules that defined what was true and real and what was not, then what had been unbelievable in the past, would in the present simply become a possibility, thus opening an incredible number of new paths.

      As he awoke from sleep and began to think about what had happened the previous night, he felt how frightening it was to admit that he had never before really been free, but imprisioned by his own ignorance and fear of the unknown, and of being selfish and materialistic. At that very moment he was terrified of the new world, yet confident in the spirit.

      He sat up and decided that there was only one way to rid himself of his chains. And that was to break them with something stronger than them, commitment to freedom. He would suceed or die trying.

How was he to rid himself of the structural reasoning embedded in his intellect without loosing complete control and falling into mental chaos? He would need a bridge. And faith was the only bridge he could think of. So he stood up and again faced the emptiness outside and within, staring at it with awe as if it was the fist time he had ever seen, listening as if it was the first time he had ever heard and felling as if he had never felt before. The world was new and beautiful.

 

 

      For many seasons after the initiation the elders kept account of yoayar's development from afar. They would follow his tracks and observe his direction from the distances like hunters. After all, these elders were yoayar's spiritual fathers and they were most naturally concerned with his well being. All of them had been individually entrusted with the task of teaching all that they knew as pure and holy to him, as well as revealing the compositions of our kind to yoayar. But for a long time after his rebirth, it was not right to move in and begin the teachings. He was to take the first steps by himself. Without this he would never be prepared to learn from what we had to give him.

      The first time the other elders and I reunited after yoayar’s initiation rites it was a great moment indeed. I was ecstatic to hear the good news about his progress. While we were celebrating our reunion, sitting around the fire talking, eating and drinking, bejebo jhal-tuk made known to me amidst great laughter how after the rebirth, yoayar reminded him of a large baby, amazed and confused by his new surroundings. How everything to him was so fresh and incredible that his reactions to all things were extremely amusing to observe. All that he could do since the rebirth was to soak in information and try to digest it, that wonderful child-like characteristic of search and discovery.

      Bejebo had been the elder that had most accompanied yoayar through these early stages. He had remained close after the initiation and had followed yoayar´s tracks in hiding for many moons before finally deciding to present himself before him. Yoayar was overwhelmed with joy when bejebo appeared before him. He had gone through a rough time on his lonesome and he had much to tell and much to ask bejebo.

      Yoayar told bejebo that after his rebirth his conscience truly did not abide by the same rules any more, and that the awareness of his surroundings, through his body and his inner world of thought and feeling had been altered for the ever of this life. In introspection he had verified a radical change in priorities, in predilections and in importance, but the most significant change he had come across was that of his own interpretative tendencies.

      He felt different, he felt like a gujumno.

      Naturally we were all pleased to hear that yoayar was developing sanely, and had not let his demons take control of him. I, in particular was very pleased to hear these words from bejebo. That night I dreamt that wanea and I met and that I had made it known to her that our son was developing in a truly remakable way.

 

---

 

      During the seasons after yoayar´s initiation I travelled between the buantchama bay isles that were bathed by the oceans of wie-bua, and the fasalo-pei hills of the fasalo belt where I was in haven with the local gujumno-pei dynasty. Together with seven other dynasties in the mountains and hills they made the tribe of the fasalo belt.

      I was hunting in the area for new knowledge that I could attain from any of the composition books kept by the local gujumno-tribes. They were tribes that purposely kept themselves away from the tribes of the common ones, from those that were not followers of the gujumno ways. All tribes in guanjama agreed on the cultural importance of the gujumno. And even the tribes that did not follow, believed and welcomed the speakers from the gujumno tribes, finding in them counsel and aid. But in turn they knew that they were not to enter the gujumno-tribes of the fasfalo belt unless they seeked to become one of them.

      The gujumno were scattered across guanjama in groups of tribes that lived in harmony with their neighbors, and each group of tribes were mainly composed by one of both kinds of gujumnos, the gujumno-lei or the gujumno-pei. The distinction in name was due to the tribe´s geographical locations and any one member of one tribe was welcome as a temporal or permanent resident in another.

Yet the gujumno kind was one kind. A kind that had developed an egalitarian society based mainly on the cultivation of consideration and respect for all life. This was the basis which had become the tradition and prevailed throughout the times. A gujumno one was known to hold responsibility for one´s own actions and an unshakable compassion and consideration for others and their needs and feelings.

      Close to the tribes were usually the homes of the gujumno-lamans. They lived separate from the tribes, usually making their homes on trees or in caves. These were gujumnoe born to the dynasty that had chosen the path of solitude in order to pursue their ways. They were still an integrated part of the tribe and their knowledge and views were greatly appreciated by them. The gujumno-lamans were often awakened gujumnoe-gajueh that had a deeper but more abstract understanding due to an abundant use of plants and objects of power, and were often consulted by the others as guiding teachers or healers.

      Both gujumno kinds had an identical cultural environment. Both had the same basic principle. Due to their beliefs and perspectives about the ecology, the gujumnoe were horticulturists. Their subsistent strategy aimed mainly on small-scale farming and the foraging for wild foods for alimentation. They depended entirely on the nature of their environment for their food and fuel, for their medicine and numerous other necessary things. And so they believed that they were just one of the kinds of interdependent life that must manage to subsist in an area without causing any unnatural harm to it. They had developed an agricultural technique of shifting that allowed the nature of the land to regenerate itself after seasonal use.

      The only noticeable physical difference between the gujumno-lei and the gujumno-pei was the intonation of their skin and cetain physical characteristics. This was due to their geographical origin. I was part of the gujumno-lei, slim peoples of dark skin and sharp look by ancestry. The gujumno-pei in turn were blacker peoples of wider and rounder look by lineage. Despite our physical differences we all believed in the same and we were all part of the same gujumno peoples. Together we occupied all the land from the north-eastern corner between the kaikune deserts and the dabke plains, to the north-western corner at the fasalo-lei mountains. And from the south-eastern border between the buantchamas and the gaupameis, to the south-western corner of the fasalo-pei hills. Many gujumnoe came and went to the jungle province of the gaupameis to live and teach, but, for most of us that land was too near to the ant-centers and too dangerous to be of any peace or comfort.

 

      The gujumno-lei, particularly the ones that resided anywhere near the natural border between kaikune and guanjama, be it the coast of dab-shi or the fasalo-lei, have their origin in the gugemo tribe of the kaikune. In a distant past there was an exodus that brought what is now known as the gujumno-lei lineage down to guanjama from the sandy kaikune deserts.

      The gujumno-lei began to settle at the hidden caves by the ocean of dab-shi over sixty thousand generation's back. There they began the galleries, rock paintings that express the respect and admiration that the ancient gugemoes felt as they came accross this fertile land and its fruitful condition. It is known that as the gugemoes arrived at the dab-shi coast, they had many peaceful encounters with the local groups of peoples, who accepted the gugemoes into their homeland. And thus the two kinds began to pass onto each other their beliefs and customs, and mixing their lineage until they were all of one kind.

      In the ancient writings of the dabke and shinke dynasties, it is stated that the dynasty of gugemoe that came to the dab-shi coast, had chosen to leave the kaikune deserts because of the clash of their peaceful nature with the period of war and conquest brought forth by other gugemo tribes, mainly the tabaer and the mibn tribes.

      Those ancient writings were composed by a group of gujumno historians that came from the dabke plains and the shinke rivers and were dedicated to recording the beginning of the gujumnoe for posterity. This group of wise ones traveled back to the kaikune deserts to discuss their ancestry with the residential gugemoe they came upon and there they found the answers they were searching for. From that moment on they researched and recorded any possible fact that verified this story and found a great deal of relations to this truth. They then composed the book of ancients of dab-shi.

      This book, and all other holy books of the gujumnoe, has been hand-copied and read by hundreds of thousands of gujumno-lei and gujumno-pei since its conception a good ten thousand one-hundred and twenty seasons ago. The book of ancients of dab-shi is considered to be one of the Holy books of the gujumnoes.

      The gujumno-pei, particularly the ones that resided anywhere between the coast of wie-bua and the fasalo-pei hills are the eldest residential peoples of the guanjama territory. Seemingly they have inhabited guanjama since the beginning of times, dwelling mainly at the wie-bua coast, the buantchama river and the fasalo-pei hills, though never adventuring much into the lands to the north or to the south, the wiaed grasslands and the gaupameis.

      The gujumno-pei are peoples enriched by a vast repertoire of venerable poetic writings. Their poets of the past were masters of metaphors. They composed many books of disguised truths and meanings that are existential maxims to our kind. They were great writers of poems, sayings and meanings, and magnificent tellers of stories.

      One of these venerable anonymous poets of the past wrote the jaunt book of the mesa fasalo. Though this poet was a gujumno-pei, he acquired a great affection to the fasalo plateau and the voyages of the jaunt plant. He had, as I have, chosen the specific gujumno path of the laman, and he had written many fantastic poems. The jaunt book is a saga made of poems and sayings about the feelings and thoughts that are provoqued by the process of initiation and rebirth...

...I do not know what makes a flower blossom, Or why it is a flower, but I can recognize a seed...

...What is it that cuts the darkness with a slit through the sky behind the mountains?

What is it that breaks the dead of night?

What is that shadow, that opposite and where does it come from?

There is only one perpetual hum that I know beyond this.

It has been ringing all my life, accompanying me throughout good and bad and shedding its light on every situation that I encounter.

But because it has always been there I have become unaware of its presence.

I've been seeing in its reflection.

How come I am so deaf, why can I not hear the world turning in its ever-present grace?

How come I am so blind to its evident beauty that shines from every corner and every center?

What is this pain, this ignorance and where does it come from?

I have built walls to protect myself and now I find that I am trapped by them.

I have tried to run free only to find that I am lost.

Of all the things that come and go only one has remained.

It is that hum ringing inside my heart.

Before and after each pulse it rings.

Beyond this rhythm of life it rings.

Above all conditions and below all conditions it rings.

Within all conditions and without all conditions it rings.

Around all conditions it rings, weaving them into place, recreating and destroying this universal web with every fleeting moment.

Why does it ring now and forever?

Because it is will.

Because it is the I.

Because it is in everything that has ever been, that is, or ever will be.

The overall.

Sky.

Soul.

Sun.

Heart.

Earth.

Body.

Great

Spirit

I have heard you sing,

And I can only say that it is beautiful.

The most sacred of devotional songs you have offered us.

It is in the breeze that rustles the leaves, and in the tree itself.

It is in the water that caresses and moves the stones and pebbles downstream,and in the river itself.

Sometimes I have heard that beautiful song of yours so clearly outside,

And others I have even felt it resonate and echo within me.

Sometimes I have been unable to hear it,

And others I have wished to.

But I have always known inside that it was there,

In everything,

And here,

In me.

I need time when the word does not enter my mind,

When it is only you, singing in here.

God is in the heart.

It is in my soul,

Your name reverberating from the walls of my being

Gaining strength

The atmosphere within me

I hear your calling

I see you coming

My way is your way

The same road for two

Who are one...

 

      Another great book of the gujumnoe was written by one of the first anonymous writers of the past. This was a book of profound writings detailing the influences of demons in the gujumno way of life. Its name was the book of demons. In this book there is a passage I found to be particularly interesting which tells us about the demons of pride, greed, fear, ignorance and desire...

 

       ....the five cheuzhalad cheetah predators were born to the same mind, and hunting for the same stomach. The five were hunting in a pack as usual. They advanced slowly through the brush in search for a victim to attack, when they came across a defenseless munungoe who had stumbled upon the misfortune of receiving an injury by accident that made his escape impossible. When the unfortunate munungoe saw them approaching her in an attacking position she cried to the cheuzhalad for a quick and easy death.

      The five halted by the crying munungoe but none advanced for the kill.

The puzzled munungoe ceased to cry and questioned the first of the five cheuzhalad about why did he not do as his instinct urged, and the first cheuzhalad who had been named of pride answered.

      He told the munungoe that he was not interested in him for hshe was too much of an was an easy catch, he believed himself to be the most powerful cheuzhalad in the field and not every animal was worthy of his attention or even his consideration.

      "For the best, only the best", he exclaimed, and he told the munungoe that he preferred to wait for a better kill.

      The munungoe was truly surprised at the first chezhalads response and proceeded to question the second cheuzhalad who had been named of greed.

      The second of the five answered that yes, he would kill the munungoe as his instinct ordered but first he had to figure out a way to rid himself of the others so that he could feast by himself. He said that the munungoe had to be his above all others, and he contested that he preferred to wait for the others to become bored and tired of that anxious moment and leave.

As the second chezhalad had hesitated, so did the third, so the munungoe chose to place the very same question to the third chezhalad who had been named of fear.

      The third of the five replied that he was not hesitant, he was cautious for he thought that if he approached the munungoe for the kill, he might be harmed either by the prey or the others in the middle of the feeding frenzy. He answered that he preferred to wait until the others were finished with her so that he could eat whatever was left of her carcass in safety.

      The munungoe was now annoyed by the lack of instinct these carnivores presented, yet although she was upset, she was still curious, so he questioned the fourth of the five.

      This cheuzhalads name was ignorance. Now ignorance replied that he was not at all an expert in these killings, that he did not know much about them and that he awaited for the initiative of one of the others so that he could imitate him. He contested that he preferred to wait for the others to attack and then he would do so himself, for he believed that since they were wiser than him their reasons for stalling must be valid and appropriate.

      The munungoe was growing impatient now but decided he would ask the last of the five cheuzhalad for his response.

      The fifth chezhalad had been named of desire and he admitted to the munungoe that he really wanted to consume her but also wanted the many other animals present in the field. He wanted them all, so he said that he would wait and watch the other animals that kept drawing his attention in case a better one came along.

      The five cheuzhalad waited and waited but did not attack, and the munungoe cursed and insulted them to no avail. She was in pain from her injuries and longed for the end of her misery.

      The munungoe, accompanied by the five chezhalad, eventually died of hunger at the very same spot, waiting...

 

 

      From the teachings taken from these two ancient books spawned the two types of gujumno outlook. Of the gujumno-laman and the gujumno-gajueh, the speakers and the dreamers.

      The speakers were gujumno involved in the cultivation of their personality, with which they met the constant changes in their surroundings. Their way involved travel and challenge, and an experience closed to the dreamers. Yet it was difficult to maintain balance as a gujumno-laman, for the constant exposure to the oscilating double sided aspect of this world meant that they must walk a very straight line. Often we would meet lamans who had walked all the way to the east, where there are so many beautiful people and so many interesting things.

      The gujumno-laman were proficient in diverse matters of the mind not open to the dreamers. Travel was necessary to gain the experience and knowledge that the speakers had, and the more intense and difficult the travel, the richer the experience.

      The speakers were highly respected by all peoples in guanjama to the north of sancaro. I as a speaker had, at the time, traveled from the kaikune to the dabke plains, from the fasalo-lei mountains to the fasalo-pei hills, from the wie-bua oceans up the rivers of buantchama, across the wiaed grasslands and down the shinke rivers to the oceans of dab-shi. I had met and shared with a great number of people and had learnt so much from them. With the deference and compassion known to the lamans I would offer them all help and work that I could and in return they would take me in as one in their kinship. All peoples had great respect for the meanings taken from the words of the speakers of guanjama.

 

      In turn, the dreamers were sedentary gujumnoe who reserved themselves to a chosen place. These gujumnoe did not move around seeking experience such as the elders of our group and yo-ayar, but instead remained in the immediacy of their homes in which they lived as ascetic hermits.

      They were good with dreams for they kept their minds pure and clean of any confusing information by leading very calm and simple lives. Their dreams were real possibilities in this world, for they had achieved methods through extensive studies and interpretations of the book of demons that allowed them to free themselves from their influence. These demons could and would, in any way possible, cause breaches in the gajueh inner and outer harmony and manifest themselves in the dreamer's dreamstate. If this sanctified purity of mind and surroundings was constant and uninterrupted it permitted dreams of reality, where much of the greater truth was seen by their dreamers.

     

 

---

 

      The next time my eyes registered yoayars physical presence before them, was at the foot of the high-belt that connect the fasalo-lei mountains with the fasalo-pei hills. This, a good thousand-four hundred days and nights since some of the elders and I had left him alone to face what was to come for himself. About sixteen seasons later.

      I had been traveling around the area home to the gujumno-pei, and as it seemed so had yoayar.

We met by the chance that does not exist in an open field that harbored three ancient chief trees. The fresh scent of early morning hung about as we both walked towards down our paths that linked, oblivious that we were to meet. The spirits were high. Then a pachica eagle suddenly made her cry known and we both sensed something was about to happen  So the two of us looked around and about and ended up spotting each other far away.

      Yoayar was euphoric with the sight of me and ran over to greet me warmly. I too was extremely glad to see him. After a long time hugging and greeting each other yoayar told me that he had some important things to discuss with me.

      So we sat right then and there, under one of the three chief trees where the pachica had adorned the ground with its fallen feathers, and after we had thanked the overall for our fortunate meeting he began by asking me about myself. He was curious about the father he had never really known. We were sitting down on a comfortable spot on top of a rock that rose above the high plants, overlooking the vast grasslands, and there I began to tell yoayar about myself and my experience...

 

      ...I look as if I do not believe that anything is fully defined, for definition is in the mind of the beholder, yet I do accept it all as it is presented before me, for I am a beholder. I do this because of the impermanent nature of things.

      I feel there are as many answers to one question as there are points of perspective, so I accept all without accepting and discard without discarding. What each individual feels is true in its feeling and in its life yet it may be completely wrong or unbelievable to another. We are all different and we are the same. We all feel, but we do not feel the same. We see, and do not see the same.

      That is why there is no definition for me, only all definitions. No one road, but all roads.

In this voyage through time and space within the timeless and space-less overall, I am only aware of this moment, that I am always just a reflection of the spirit in a denser realm of existence on a path towards a lighter realm. Travelling within. It is like this because it is meant to be this way, and because I believe in it. I am here by my own choice, for my own good. As are all others.

      The nature is change, growth with change.

      Yoayar, you and I are eyes of the One god whom has chosen to divide its self into the manyfold and chosen to forget. We have done so because we wish to know ourselves, and to know ourselves, we must first not know ourselves. That is why we were born without the memory of who we really are. So we can find it out for ourselves and enrichen the overall experience of the One Great Spirit.

     So I attempt to walk the middle way. Without violence and darkness. With but one discipline for myself, to simplify, and keeping to the essence that is my love. I only wish to good, and so receive good. Because my greatest desire is peace.

      At this time I wish to give you an advce son. S

tart by asking yourself what it is you love to do. See in its qualities the potential for transcendence. That which you love is yourself, and you can learn of yourself through it. By dedicating yourself to love…

 

      He listened carefully to my words and his eyes shone because he understood what I meant, he related to what I had said. Excited and eager to hear more he asked me what it was that I loved to do. So I told him...

 

      ...What I love is life, creation. Its expression is something that overwhelms me. It brings me the peace I adore.

      I love to create, be it with forms and colours, sounds and silence or in any other way. I feel alive when I express myself like life itself, because we are both one at that moment.

      When I express myself in any form I feel the inner and the outer worlds merging, for I have no sense of identity as it happens. It is all feeling and abstracted thought. It is all potential and choice.

As I create, I am the creator describing myself, experiencing myself, outside myself.

      Let me tell you an old story I heard as a child:

 

      One night the creator dreamt, and in that dream he saw himself asleep. He watched himself as he dreamt and saw that he dreamt of a universe. In that universe of his all things were apparently separate and individual but they were actually interconnected, for he was the dreamer. They were all going about their own evolution of change, in a dance of impermanence, flowing through something that was new to the creator: time and space.

      With this apparent separation of elements there was the introduction of borders between things, which gave them their own awareness. The creator had multiplied himself in the dream. Now he watched this with great interest for the actions and reactions of all things were in the end his, for he was the dreamer. So he learnt, as he first saw darkness, that ever-present shadow within his dream. Darkness was all that he was not, but was within him, and this was hard to comprehend for him. Until one day he witnessed one piece of him awaken within the dream.

      That was when he understood the message of the dream. Darkness was what gave the choice for light, that which seemingly separated the united. And for him to fully awaken in bliss, all things within him would have to awaken from darkness. So as the observer, the dreamer, the creator still waits patiently for that moment.

 

      See yoayar, everything is potential, in every situation there is choice. A choice that holds the potential for any given outcome, be it positive or negative, through the freedom of will. When I am creating, I am dancing with that potential and choice, letting my mind and hands flow with its waves as they pass through me. Like a hollow reed that whistles with the passing wind that flows through it. The whistle is the outcome of that which passes and that which is passed through. That is art. A reflection of the elements…

     

      Yoayar was pleased and nodded in agreement. He laid his back against the rock and sighed as he looked at the passing clouds thinking to himself on what he had heard. Only because of my status as both his father and mentor would he even dare asking me anything that could influence his unveiling daemon into any one given direction. That path was his own to discover and form, but above all he was my son, and he wanted to know who his father was. Who that man he had never known personally, who had come into his life carrying such abrupt change was.  

      After a while of sitting in silence yoayar decided to speak up. He wanted to tell me of what he had been going through since he had become initiated. He had been having very strong dreams ever since that night, dreams that were sometimes so powerful that it would take him days to return from them. Sometimes yoayar would walk around so enveloped by the memory of a dream that he would go by his day without being aware that he had ever woken up. His thought had been dominated by them. Strangely enough he would often forget the dreams in his waking hours, although at the same time he was able to retain their reality.

      He said that many times he would find himself in strange worlds, and that in those worlds he would meet many great creatures that were messengers. Messengers endowed with bringing him words of wisdom. Yoayar told me about an old speaking stone that had befriended him one night in a dream.

      The dream was a very clear one, in which yoayar found himself standing on a long flat plane the colour of amber. It was twilight. It was always twilight there. And it was very silent.

      Yoayar had the intuition that this was an ancient place, for there was a serenity in the atmosphere reminiscent of that found in ancient places of power. Except this place was different. Somehow he felt that this place was even older than the earth itself. He decided to walk around this place of potential and soon after he had given his first steps he came accross a big boulder that was sticking out from the ground. Yoayar looked up along the boulder until he could see only the sky, and then suddenly, he heard a voice speak out to him. He searched for the source of that voice but he could not see any other person or animal anywhere in sight. So he kept looking around and about but to no avail, until a shine momentarily caught his eye coming from somewhere on the ground. He knelt over to where he had seen it, feeling the ground with his hands, and he heard the voice again. It was telling him that he was close. He saw something under the sand glowing and he reached for it, bringing up a beautiful stone on the cupped palms of his hands. The voice spoke once more. Now yoayar noticed that the voice was being spoken inside his heard and that he was perceiving it with his mind and not his ears.

      It had been the stone that had spoken, and it kepton speaking to yoayar from the moment he picked it up. The stone told yoayar to hush, and to listen to tis words. They were words that spoke of knowledge and experience, and of living in non-violent interference.

      Yoayar did not continue to tell me about his dream or what else the stone had said, although I could see that there was a lot more to be told about that dream. He stressed that the stone had given him a push to once again discover what he already knew. I listened attentively as he began to explain his beliefs of knowledge through experience and non-interference. 

      Yoayar believed, as his forefathers had, that most of the wisdom of a gujumno was attained by personal experience and only a mere but significant part through the spoken teachings. The philosophical and esoteric literature of his peoples was sacred, and he stated that one's own interpretation of the wisdom inscribed in the manuscripts was a reflection of one's own wisdom. That the greater the experiences one would live, the more beautiful and enrichening the interpretation of those experiences would be, if they were accompanied with the necessary honesty of heart and desire to learn and to grow. The result of such experience would be a heightened understanding which was what we called wisdom.

      Yoayar proceeded to say that knowledge bred with knowledge and that the experiences that brought wisdom from it acted much like a puzzle, together revealing a greater picture. So yoayar believed that knowledge was a repercussion of experience through life and its situations.

      Another belief that yoayar held as one of greatest importance was that of non-violent interference. That one could not bring his troubles and demons upon others and one should not create these for another. One could converse and discuss these with a neutral body in an environment of calmness and respect to find council and advice, but one could not attempt to influence another into taking charge of one's own demons for him. One's own demons only made sense in one's own mind. The demons were known to systematically tear apart ones consciousness, leaving them without the ability to reach certain conclusions, and without the ability to grasp certain situations. How could we pass on our unlearned lesson to another, from where would we reap their solution?

      With this belief he clearly stated that no two observers could understand with the same consciousness. Consciousness could only be observed by introspection, making of it a private event. As private as our own demons.

      Yoayar stated that through this belief of non-violent interference he did accept any negative influences to guide his daemon into dark direction from any other. With freedom his daemon would follow only its innate tendencies and develop on these through the search for experience.

      Now he knew exactly what he naturally believed. It was inherent in him, It had been there from birth, waiting.

      Through the search for experience in his own natural way, without violence and unaffected by influence his personal wisdom would come to him.

    

      I was so pleased by his thoughts and conclusions. He was a man of depth and soaring intellect. Surely he would soon discover the key of simplicity through such relentless probing with the mind. To some, this kind of fervent analysis is a necessary step towards letting go. I had been the same way as I grew up. I had needed to answer questions I had not needed to make.

      Soon it would be time for us to part again, so as the sun descended behind the hills we shared and traded personal objects and tokens, and then we laid our heads to rest.

      As I woke up the next sunrise I noticed him to be gone. He had left me an inscribed message...

 

  ...I shall return soon to accompany you, I have something very important to ask you. I am going to organize my ideas to make a better picture of what I am to question you about. Wait for me here...

 

---

      So I did. I waited for four days and three nights. The fourth night was approaching when yoayar arrived. He seemed very content with himself and told me that he had retired to a place not far from where we were to go through with a revaluation, alone and had discovered a meaning to his journey.

      He was acquiring knowledge, experiencing situations in order to gain a complete control over his mental faculties. Not the common ones, but the ones that would enable him to attain completely different and alternate dimensions of experience and potential. He was being prepared to commence a voyage out of this world. He wanted to ask me if I knew of this, which I did.

      His journey, until now, had only been a small scale preparation for an ulterior task, and he was on the right track to discovering and developing it, but he did have a few doubts. Yoayar wanted to know about soul-travelling.

      I anwered by telling him that I knew of such travelers but did not know everything he needed to learn about them. We all were soul travellers, every gujumno was to a certain degree. The sole purpose of our kind was to attain such a liberation, this freedom that would bring us immortality, but opinions were divided on the processes of this subject.

      Many believed that such spiritual freedom could be attained only throughout a complete re-structuration of earthbound concepts. If one could abstract himself enough to reach different dimensions and alternate realities or simply a heightened perception of this one, then one could free himself whilst on earth. When one would perish, his soul would not return to this earth but would proceed to a higher level, from where he could attempt to reach even higher ones.

      But to acquire such self-control would take one his entire time on earth, a lifetime of fighting off the demons created by the human mind, and of striving for liberation.

      This was the process followed by most gujumnoe wise-ones through the cultivation of their impeccability.

      There was an alternative taken by many other gujumnoe. Many of our kind believed that they could reach such advanced states of consciousness about existence without having to wait for the death of the body. That one could, in fact, leave this earth both physically and mentally. One could travel as he was, to move on or to return at will.

      This would signify that there would be no more rebirths for the soul. Never again would the soul have to forget and learn again as the body it inhabited perished. The current body would be the eternal one.

      The denomination we used for them was the immortal travelers, and to reach such incredible mental levels would usually take innumerous lifetimes, a scrutinous self discipline and constant concentration on one's goals. Such travelers were the elite of the gujumnoe race. The ones who had control over this were referred to as the hassi and the ones initiated in this and still trapped in between these two alternatives were the ghenia. Great courage was needed to undertake this approach and, if not careful, one could get lost easily in the limbo that bridges both states.

 

      So yoayar then asked me about visions, and I told him what I could, of my own experiences.   

I proceeded to explain to yoayar about the visions of some of my past deaths on earth. These I had experienced during an intense ritual executed for me by the other elders of my group on my second encounter with the poison plants.

      Yoayar seemed surprised to hear that I had more than one encounter with the jaunt poison fruits and I explained to him that I had in fact taken not only the fruit but the whole plant on numerous occasions. I revealed to yoayar that I had decided long ago to try to become a lassi and that now I was still a ghenia. The poison plants had been a part of my road, for as a child I had been earthbound to the reality taught to me by my parents and teachers, who were all common ones that did not follow the gujumnoe ways.

      In this fruit I had found the necessary power I needed to counduct my enclosed mind into insane realms that eventually shattered any conviction I had about our present social structure being an ultimate truth. The poison plant took a serious toll on those who used it, a challenge to one's own spiritual strength. This toll came in the form of a new demon. A demon of addiction that forged in us a will to pursue the fruit as an easy channel to attain our quest. But this pursuit was superficial and any gujumnoe that would get lost in such an path would virtually never return or advance, and would be caught up in that way of living until the end of this life.

     

      The weed, our holy plant was a harmless and healthier way, for in conjunction with ones imagination and intelligence one could create, out of sheer will, visions in a domain that carried important meaning, and revealing premonitions. It could bring a strong foreseeing ability if one had the necessary power to develop such a capability.

 

       In the midst of yoayars awe to what I was revealing to him, I chose to explain about my own personal experiences with these plants of power... 

 

  ...I have been revealed three metaphoric cycles of life and death on this planet. During one encounter with the visions of the poison plants I was broken in two. My spirit was divided into the natural and  rational entities that form the soul.

       These seldom split, usually they stay interlocked during ones entire mortal life span, but this time I had been fortunate enough to separate them. I recall referring to them as nature and nurture.

 

      Nature is eternal. It is the consciousness of the soul that is reborn again and again carrying the true character of our spirit life after life. Nurture is temporary, it confines itself to the present life that we lead but can scar our nature profoundly. Such instances as past deaths may always be remembered.

      One can use such a division in a very profitable way. Throughout lives we can gain the necessary knowledge to immortalize ourselves.

 

      The first of my deaths on planet earth...

...I was inebriated, filled with hopes and dreams that clouded the moment. Sitting in a dim room lit by a weak light that allowed only the closest of details to be seen, I was eating and drinking glutinously, accompanied by a few others that seemed very entertained by my conversation. I dont know what I was talking about. We were all dressed in dark and loose clothes, and I believe we must have been in a common house celebrating. The festivities must have been going on for a long time, for I was intoxicated enough to confuse walking with stumbling, and I decided to retire to my place of rest to recover.

I found myself outside the common house attempting to stand upright and regarding the tall stone buildings. I was somewhere within an intricate stone construction, a labyrinth made of stone. An early aged ant-farm. As I stared up towards the tops and readied myself to resume my fumbling dance toward home I was attacked by a man that approached me quickly and shoved a cutting object through my ribs and into my insides. He left me there to bleed to death. I placed my hand on the wound, held the object tight and made my way to the nearest wall. I sat against the wall and looked up to the tops again. There I sat and bled to death.

      What this first vision pointed out to me was the first of three imperative mistakes that have accompanied me from lifetime to lifetime. To loose control of my destiny by hiding behind inebriation and quitting the search for the daemon. That was a great lesson, a difficult one.

      The second of my deaths on earth occurred somewhere in an desert-like area. I had fought for an army which had commanded its soldiers in the unjust occupation of a land that was not our own. In the struggle of war I had been captured by the enemy. They were natives and I was not, and in their customs the capture of enemies meant the sacrifice of enemies. I resigned to what I believed to be an honorable death and did not struggle as they stripped me down to the skin and dragged me by the arms to a spot their priests had prepared especially for me. I bowed my head down as they dragged me for I felt the shame of killing their brothers. I remember noticing only the vegetation.

It was beautiful. So different to the life in my own land.

I was so absorbed by the surroundings that I did not notice when we reached the spot they had prepared for me. And as they placed me down, they tied me by my arms and legs and pulled, thus stretching me out to dry. I was tied face down. They then speared me in two places. Thrusting their spears through two spots relative in distance to the bottom of my spine, through the bottom of my ribs. Pinned face down I was put to dry and die.

      This second vision showed me the second imperative mistake I was commiting. By realizing how dangerous my first imperative mistake had been, I had indulged myself in a fervorous search for the daemon. Becoming highly religious I believed that I could fight ignorance for others. I had not realized that there are as many paths as there are people, and that they are all the right path. That belief is what must be one, not religion.

      So my second imperative mistake was believing that I knew the way because I believed so much in something. I thought that for my belief to be right, other beliefs must be wrong.

That was a great lesson, a difficult one.

      The last vision I had about earthbound deaths was a peculiar one. I do not precisely remember the moment of my death but only the moment before. This was a sudden death in relation to the others that took their good time of suffering. In this vision I was again in a desert-like area that seems to be towards the deserts to the North. The deserts of the northern peoples.

I recall entering into a large tent in which I sat cross-legged on one of the cushions that filled the interior of the tent, and there I waited for something. Before me was a chalice ornamented with gold that also seemed to be waiting for something.

A man arrived. He sat before me and stared at me for a while. Then he recited the word baldetruz. There was some power to this word for as soon as it was pronounced it came at me repeated from all directions in increasing speed and tonality, and with this the chalice parted itself in two exactly at the middle and began to rotate in opposite directions.

This process had a very strong effect on my mind. With each repetition and intonation of the word I was driven closer to terror until the chaos within my mind was such that I simply ceased to live.

 

      The third of my imperative mistakes showed me that even admitting that my search is unique and proper only to myself, understandable only to myself. I must not overstep my boundaries and attempt to comprehend what is not possible for me to comprehend. There are laws which were not made for our understanding as beings guided by reason. I found that I should accept certain things and allow them to maintain their eternal mystery to me. I found that I should not overstep my boundaries without being certain that I had enough strength and power to deal with their realities and not get caught up in them.

That was a great lesson, a difficult one.

      These were the three past lives and deaths I have been given the power by the poison plants to have witnessed on earth. Many days and many nights have I wondered and reflected upon these visions. Curiously enough, and to my surprise, I noticed that all these situations I had observed from an outer point of view. I have witnessed them, not experienced them in these recollective visions, so indicating that during these moments I was present dually, meaning I was able to travel back to that place in time as an outside observer...

 

  I urged yoayar to go and reflect upon what I had revealed to him. To go with the certainty that we would meet again when the teachings called for us. We departed once again only to later meet again.

 

---

 

      I walked great distances back toward the fasalo plateau to once again reunite with huomono and the other elders. We, as gujumnoe, the soul travelers of guanjama, were periodical loners by need, and after these necessary periods alone, we always searched for each others company. Alone was how we looked for experiences in other worlds that would bring us knowledge and test our impeccability as individuals, and together was how we shared our experiences and understanding.

      There were two main kinds of gujumno travelers. There were the kind of travelers that explored the subsequent worlds in our own human dimension and numerous other worlds composed of different realities incorporated into this world, and then there were the kind of travelers that spent most of their time present in other dimensions that were incomprehensible to all but themselves and the natural inhabitants of the dimension.

      I, as the first kind of gujumno had chosen one other realm to inhabit in the physical world, and one in the dreamworld. In this physical world, I had chosen to sometimes dwell in the shadow world, a place where I spent most of my time observing the dancing shadows that changed with the fire of my memories and recollections.

      My other reality of choice was one only achieved in the dreamstate. It was the world of wanea. A world where I spontaneously appeared in every time I achieved the dreamstate. A private world of peace, of tranquility, and of comfort.

      I am not sure if it was I who created this world and its existence after her departure or if it was her that had prepared it for us to reunite in after her going. I was a gujumno of stoic aspirations for my two chosen alternate realities, and I did not often wander away from these.

 

      The most powerful soul-traveller that I had ever known was the eccentric huomono mita-koe, the elder who initiated yoayar. Huomono had created for himself the world of winds, where he would regularly travel to, and which took him to any near or distant places in this earth. There he would witness and interact in many places and situations.

      Huomono once confided in me, during one of our long conversations, that in the world of winds he had met many other gujumnoe, gajueh and lamans, and also many other wise men and soul travelers of other kinds unknown to guanjama. He also confided in me that his power of travel had grown so strong with experience that he was actually able to position himself anywhere outside this earth with simple deliverance. He had learned so much about this art that he could dislocate himself to anywhere at any chosen time. He had become a hassi.

 

      The gajueh and laman kind of gujumno peoples believed strongly that if a sufficient amount of strength of feeling was given to an object, then this object could retain that vibrational and bring the gajueh or laman back to that feeling or moment whenever he beheld it. I, as a gujumno that dwelled extensively in the moments of the past had a great inclination and fondness for these objects of power. I had chosen the stones as my link to these past moments. At all times I carried with me a pouch filled with stones that wanea had made for me. Wanea had learnt of the strength in objects of power and she had taught it to me. Curiously I had the custom of carrying stones since the beginning, since even before my gujumno ways.

      Since I was an infant I had this custom, to collect stones that reminded me of a certain situation of personal importance, and to keep them to later admire them. Wanea stressed their importance to me ,she believed that since this was a childhood custom it was a very powerful one. I always accepted the teachings and the manners wanea innocently imposed on me without scorn, for I knew that nothing between us was done with malice. She was a dreamer, and I a speaker, and many times her dreams taught things I should know.

 

      Wanea paid much mind to the messages in her dreams and their meanings, and I paid much mind to the hidden messages and meanings of my waking life. Her dreams had told her of the importance of the stones for me, and since child I had subconsciouly know the very same thing. It was with these step-stones of power that I frequently reunited with of yoayar, the fruit of our affinity.

 

      One strange night as I sat with huomono and the other elders that had set up camp at the fasalo plateau, I felt a strong pull from the memory of yoayar in the stones, and I knew that he would find us soon.

      Soon enough, yoayar did appear before us. Huomono seemed to sense the problem that yoayar was bringing with him to us, and he urged yoayar to sit with us. Huomono stared at him, reading, as was his custom, and then spoke to yoayar in silence. At the same time he mentioned to all of us that yoayar was unhealthy and troubled. After a short while with no words, yoayar spoke...

 

      ...Since I was last with you father, I have been living amongst the ant-peoples of sancaro. Decided to experience their reality and test my own integrity I moved into the ant-city to live and work as they do. Now I know of that world, but I have been left with the many wounds I have suffered there. All people are inhabited by a soul of pure light, so all people are good in essence, yet I cam to know so many lost souls and a good number of evil people in the city. There is a light that guides their life there and I cannot say that it is a bad light, it is just a deceptive light that casts long shadows and makes things seem so much bigger and better than what they really are. A light that is so dim and is yet so appealing to them. In my own futile attempt to comprehend the ant-people I exposed myself to their demons. I did this because I could not bare to feel that their souls were being choked by their way of life, and I wanted to understand how they think so that I could help them using their own reasoning. It was not that simple.

      I attempted to find any relation to our ways in these ant-people, but I could not find a glimpse of tranquility in them, our stepping stone to happyness, let alone the shine I was accustomed to seeing in people's eyes. I did not find them to be content with life or in peace with our true parents, nature and the overall. They proved to be mostly people who are shallow and do not search or create, opposite to all that we the gujumoe find of importance, and they serve others without even questioning the significance of the actions they go through in their daily routine. Their objectives are trivial to me and I do not understand them. There is no real transcendental objective in their lives.

      Why I come to you so distraught is because I am enveloped in a sadness that is overwhelming me. These peoples are our brothers and sisters, and to see them lost like this saddens me to the point when I am not able to see the sparkle of life. I have been hurt although I should understand that this is the condition of their kind because they have willed it and caused it to be so by their own doing. It is easier to say that than to see that in this heart of mine, it will take me some time...

 

      The elders and I told yoayar to let go of what he had learnt about the demons of consumption and competition he had found himself living with in sancaro. They were illusions created by an unnatural style of living. To survive, our people need food and shelter, and that is provided by nature for free. To be satisfied our people only need to feel helpful and worthy, and that is attained by being helpul and worthy. We had a good laugh at this. It sounded ridiculous, but it was true.

      We reminded him that what he had, and what he owned, did not seem as much to the ant-people but it had always been enough for him. He had freedom and owned himself.

 

      Houmono, kutetaro, bejebo and I prepared a ritual of cleansing for yoayar. We made the necessary preparations and then we sat yoayar by the fire. There were many hours of singing and drumming while we stared at the fire and the stars and appreciated what we had around us. We ate and we drank until we were all merry, and when we were all very relaxed I carried yoayar into my world of shadows, followed closely by the others. The objective was to see the abstract metaphore for these demons yoayar had brought with him in the shadow world.

      The image of the demon of consumption showed up in the slow and vagarious shapes of the domesticated munoenge and mitoenge. They were the overweight horses and camels that were kept for the amusement of the ant-people, and were accustomed to excess food and lack of exercise. They were set loose in the wilderness as they aged to face a gruesome end at the mouth of the wahasa, the predators that would bring end to their lives. These nervous predators themselves became the shadows of the demon of competition, in constant fear and struggle with each other, eternally vigil and ready to snap at each others throats in defense of what they had taken or killed.

      We returned from the shadow world and sat down again. The elders and I were very amused by what we had seen, and yoayar seemed more relaxed. His eyes had begun to glow again, and so we all spent the rest of the night telling stories in turn and sharing experiences. Kutetaro told a great story intended to give yoayar something of his past with which yoayar could relate. So we all sat back and listened as kutetaro told his story directly to yoayar...

 

  ...There was once a man of such beauty and charisma that he was like gift from the gods to women. Since his early childhood he had grown accustomed to all kinds of flattery from the older women of his village. They would mention to his family how gorgeous this child was and how he would grow up to be a beautiful man. The young girls of his age on the other hand, were frightened by his good looks and by his fiery personality. This child was not ordinary in any way, for despite being endowed with such an astounding beauty, he had the character of a king. Even his own parents were careful with how they handled him. He was quiet most of the time, so silent in fact, that you would not even notice that he was there.

      Yet when this child felt provoqued to words, those who heard were flooded by the intensity of emotion with which he would charge them. When they were about good things, all would smile and rejoice with what he was saying. But when these words were used as weapons for criticism or in anger, you could expect an all embracing sadness and hurt around the village.

      So the girls of his village were intimidated by him. It was like he wasnt one of the children of the village, but someone from another domain. Actually, most of the children though that he was the son of one of those spirits from the mountains who would so inadvertedly bring their village good weather and healthy crops, or storms, flood and destruction.

      As he grew into a young man things changed with the girls of his age. Including them, he had become a favourite to the women of the village, and they all seeked him for pleasure. The men of the village were not upset by this, for since the women always returned to their homes after being with him, he presented no danger to the stability of their homes. This kind of behaviour was customary in that village. Physical love and physical pleasure could be kept separate, because to them betrayal was a matter of the heart, and not a matter of the body.

      But this young man spent much of his time walking around in the mountains with the giano and the yukucheh, the wild goats and the eagles. The people in the village below thought that he spent all his time there alone just walking and looking around. But the truth was that he spent most of it with an old man, an old gujumno-gajueh by the name of sensen. The young man had been learning of the gujumno ways since child, when he had accidentally entered the cave where sensen was sitting in silence. Accidentally, or so he thought at the time.

     By the time he was fully grown he had learned a great deal of things from sensen. One of them was the ability to see in the eyes of another. From looking at the pools and the glow in your eyes he could tell what you were feeling, and most of the times, what you were thinking.

      The day came when he decided to leave the area of his birth. Everyone was saddened because they loved him so, but most were at the same time relieved to see that his fire would not set their emotions up in flames any longer. Sensen was the happiest of all, because he knew that he had accomplished what he had come to those mountains so many ago to do.

      The young man walked and walked until he came upon a village at the end of the jungle to the south of the gaupameis. He seeked shelter and was immediately taken in by the locals.

      At first everyone was happy, but soon the men became displeased to see that all the women were infactuated by him. He would often sit outside his tent just watching the people go by in their daily chores, and he would notice how the women would look at him when they passed. There was a strong sense of desire in that village, and the men were very zelous of their women, whilst the women were very jealous of each other when one would spend the night with this gorgeous young man. But not all women were the same.

      There was a small number of women who did not say the same thing in their eyes to him. He could not read well into their minds because they said something he had not heard before. In the beginning he ignored these women for he assumed that they were just strange. There was a special, yet uncomfortable empathy between himself and these women who did not desire for him as the others did, and so he chose to keep a safe distance from them.

      For years he did this, and the men's dissatisfaction with him rose all along. He knew that he was causing a great rupture in that village and he chose to leave. But he wanted to take wives with him, because he felt that it was time to begin his own family. So he decided to stay in the village only until he could find the right ones to marry. He searched amongst all the women that came to him for immediate pleasure, but he did not feel love amongst them. And soon the number of women he had not search in became low.

      Then one day he suddenly and finally understood what was in the minds of those other women that passed by his tent without ever entering. It was real and pure love, beyond desire. The very same thing that he had nedded since child when he had been singled out. There was a change in his life at that moment, and he realized that his astounding beauty had been his greatest obstacle to finding what he had always most wanted. His fiery character had kept people at bay because he had felt that they could not give him that if what they had for him was only desire to please themselves. So he looked around with different eyes.

      And it was with three of these women, that locked eyes with him and that expressed much more than desire in their glance, that he married, and went back home to his gujumno and gajueh ways. Together with them he learnt of life again and slowly released himself of the demon of shallow desire.

      I am that gajueh man, kutetaro. And I was also lucky, as you were yoayar, to return from the grip of a life long demon. But where you have come from is many times more dangerous than where I came from, and if you survive the sickness that you have been contaminated with in  sancaro, and that has been haunting you since childhood, you will grow to be of the strongest and most powerful gujumnoe I have ever had the pleasure to know and share my life with...

 

      Kutetaro had spoken many words in comparison to usual, and his story gave us all an example of how people of wisdom, who enter the worlds where the day to day reality is filled with the influences of demons, also become part of this reality and are themselves influenced by the demons. Kutetaro had but one demon, and this one almost had him lost in his way.

      It takes but one.

      Yet people of that world live with many, away from the simple life. It is too difficult for us to enter their world and not be affected. Almost impossible for us to enter and remain unaffected by it. Yoayar was fortunate to not have been caught in sancaro.

 

      Listening to two people who had been in direct contact with the reality of the ant-peoples and the tribes that had been subdued by them, and had accepted their culture and assimilated it as their own, made us wonder about what problems these ant-peoples would bring upon us with their impending contact and influence.

      It was established to them that our land was actually theirs. What we had called guanjama for over sixty-thousand generations, they had already renamed as the bantsu nation after only a handful.

      We discussed this and agreed that such problems as the destruction of the environment, and disruption of the harmony between nature and its inhabitants, were the primary effects of their occupation. The secondary one were commercial competition, the consumption culture and overpopulation.

   

     The gaupameis were by now just another colony of an immense first world empire. The colony was called by the settlers as Bantsu. Civilization had reached those formerly quiet parts turning them into a place of suffering, where man serves another with his life. The organizational and hierarchic patterns of these urban centers reminded the gujumnoe of the ant's organizational and hierarchic patterns, with the exception of man’s ant-queen being an elite of wealthy individuals and not a single individual with unique reproductory functions.

     The land of the guanjama peoples, especially the jungle province of the gaupameis, was a land that was rich in natural resources. These were now being exploited by the powerful and wealthy leaders of the ant-peoples, using our aborigine and native brothers of the gaupameis, the gaupi´s, who were prompt in their submission to the lies of the invaders, as labor and servantry. All but the gujumnoe cultural dynasties in guanjama were subdued.

 

     It was shocking for any gujumno first comer to see how those peaceful parts and peoples had, so suddenly, changed into a place where chaos, violence and destruction were regular visitors. It had been changed into a land where the greed, and the need for money and power ruled the day to day lives of all of its inhabitants.

     All native morals and values had been substituted by the ethics of a both mentally and physically corrupt society. Now happiness and success were measure by the quantity of material gain.

     With this sickness we did not agree. This we could not comprehend and, like them, the ant-people and their governors, we could not live. Places such as our sacred plateau would someday be destroyed by this virus of civilization.

Civilization had by now brought the decline of the morals and values that had evolved in that area for countless generations, and possibly their permanent annihilation.

     I once read a story in one of our sacred books that reminds me so much of wanea and what she has taught me of the difference between ourselves and the other peoples of guanjama. She had prophesized that one day I would come across this story. Now seemed an appropriate time for me to tell it to the others, since it was related with the behaviors and ways of the ant-people. It had been written by a gujumno-pei author of the wie-bua coast, and it is the story of two brothers, nhu-atuer and nuh-terur, born from the affinity of earth and man. A tale that describes the difference between the common man and the gujumno...

 

      ...Nhu-atuer and Nuh-terur were idea-kin born to the same field that is the mind. They were the twin fruit of the conjunction of earth and man. Born to this field, it was all they knew. The field, the trees and the river were their world.

     Nhu-atuer was the content one and was perfectly adapted to the world that sorrounded him, glad to be a part of that beauty and thankful for its guiding company.

     Nuh-terur, in turn was discontent and unadapted to their world.

     Nuh-terur did not enjoy nhu-atuer, he believed nhu-atuer to be a weak and nimble fool, ridiculously spread thin in his thoughts. Both of the kin fed off the fruit from the trees, but whilst nhu-atuer gathered the fallen fruit from the many trees in the field, nuh-terur picked his from one sole tree, and whilst nhu-ater slept under the shelter of the many trees, nuh-terur slept under the same tree he fed from.

     You see, there was a river that brought water and the nutrients of life to the field, and from this water all the trees extracted life. Until one day, when nuh-terur decided that he was to nurture his tree in a special way. He believed that if he was to dig channels from the river to his tree, then his tree would grow faster and larger and bear greater fruits.

     So he began his first task, and brought his first responsibility upon himself. The duty of bringing all advantages possible to the tree he considered his own.

     Nhu-atuer begged nuh-terur to not upset the natural balance of life in the fields, but nuh-terur paid no attention to his foolish companion and proceeded with his task. The acceptance and natural joy for life that nhu-atuer felt, and his incapability to harm such life was a ridiculous concept to nuh-terur. He had decided that advance was only possible by concentrating his efforts in one source, without knowing that it was the eating from one tree solely that gave him only one point view.

     Nhu-atuer who fed only from the matured fallen concepts from all the different trees and their different perspectives saw nuh-terur's actions as evil and perverse. He could and would not interfere with his beloved kin and his decisions, but he chose to keep his distance.

     The river now flowed towards nuh-terur’s tree, bringing it unprecedented and distorted growth, with thick and bloated fruit, and helplessly ignoring the other trees in the field. The fruits that were the consequence of the life in that tree held the abhorrent concept in them which nuh-terur consumed repeatedly. Nuh-terur created that routine for himself and became addicted and dependent on that fruit which itself was dependent on nuh-terur’s nurturing.

     Nhu-atuer and the remaining trees became weakened by the scarcity of their feeding source. Nhu-atuer was so forced to abandon the field and the dying trees. And the mind was without its nature.

     In that field now only one tree grows, it is the tree of the common man. The story repeats itself in the life of many men, but in ours it does not. This tree does not repeat itself in our minds but there seems to be a prophecy in it. This may be the end of guanjama...

 

     The tale fit well, but brought a little sadness to our minds. But sad things should not be focused on, and soon we had let go of the depressing notion that the ant-peoples endangered our precious way of life. We rejoiced for the rest of the night. The last time we had all been together had been the night of yoayar's initiation, and we were so happy to be together. I think we all knew that our group had been rawn together by the great spirit for a great purpose which unfolded with time. So we spent the rest of the night in good spirits, and soon we were all asleep.

     Again feeling renewed by our company yoayar decided to leave us the next morning, and walk his path alone as he had grown accustomed to. But as yoayar was leaving I decided to tell him of a strong premonition that I had, and so I turned to yoayar and spoke my feelings...

 

     ...I am not sure that we will meet again in this lifetime yoayar, and I do wish you the best of life. For true friends like us there should be no sensation of sadness or loss as the time of our departure, for we know that we will again enjoy each other's company whenever the time comes.

     Remember that, for I now feel that I am soon to leave this material world, and that we will meet soon in another world.

     Know that you can meet me any time in the world of shadows.

     That will be our place of reunion where you may find my guidance whenever and wherever.

     Take this stone and hold it with intent when you want me...

  

 

---

 

     My last six seasons were passed in the company of huomono, kutetaro and bejebo, sharing and discussing experiences we had been through. Bejebo, together with huomono, kutetaro and I, closed the circle of elders associated to yoayar. We had been brought together by the creator to teach yoayar our most developed qualities. Huomono being the maxim of being, kutetaro being the maxim of seeing, bejebo beeing the maxim of feeling, and I the maxim of expressing.

     Bejebo spent most of his time alone.

     It was during all this time alone that he developed his gift of feeling things beyond the normal. Throughout many seasons of chosen aesthetic solitude and abandonment, bejebo had trained relentlessly to accomplish a high degree of mastery over the faculties that made him human. He had first searched to silence his thoughts, and then allow his feelings to roam and discover freely outside his body. Little by little bejebo had gained a heightened awareness of his sorroundings. An awareness that encompassed feeling. Feeling like the ground of his cave, like the rocks and the air, like the little birds that sometimes flew into the cave to be with him, and like the insects and snakes that lived there as well. With time passed in discipline and dedication bejebo had himself expanded beyond the cave.

     Once he had to acknowledge that he had achieved his objective, that is when he joined the rest of us on our journey for yoayar.

 

 

     The four of us left the fasalo plateau and headed for the gaupameis. As we arrived at the border between the buantchama rivers and the gaupamei jungles, we encountered a small gaupi village. The natives welcomed us warmly into their village, and their leader immediately ordered the preparations for a great festivity to begin. We were invited to sit down by the chief, and he ordered food and drinks to be brought over to us all. We were pleasantly surprised to find another group of gujumno elders already sitting there. They too had come to visit the peoples of the gaupameis.

     After we all finished eating and were perfectly satisfied and rested, there was dance and song which lasted throughout the rest of the day and some of the night, and when that was over the chief led us to his hut. There we sat down around his throne and listened to him speak...

 

       ...I was told by the ant-person that has come for our men so many times about a force called gauhd. He said: gauhd is the figure that has created the world and he is a righteous and just entity, but he is opposed by saihtan, an entity that is both evil and bad. Saihtan´s goal is to destroy all of gauhd´s work.

     Gauhd is the creator of all and he can make and break all. He has created the world and all in it, and can destroy all of it with the blink of an eye. Saihtan can only attempt to destroy it, and so he does everyday with the temptation of man.

     I guessed that in this way the forces keep the balance of the world for man, like night and day, but I did not know what temptation was. So I thought about it.

     After much discussing and arguing with this ant-person I knew that he was wrong, so I called him an ignorant fool to his face, which offended him tremendously. He said I would burn, but no fire has come to burn me yet. I claimed that it was obvious that gauhd was water and earth and saihtan was air and fire. I told him that in his ant-kind, such ancient knowledge had been confused and the original definition had been lost. Water and earth had created all and could destroy all, and air and fire could only destroy, but from their destruction rose more creation. I explained that our kind respects all of these elements as equals since in both the processes of creation and destruction, the help of each and the help of all is needed.

     We worship creation and destruction alike.

     As a leader of this tribe and protector of this community, I was overwhelmed by his ridiculous observation: that gauhd was good and saihtan was bad for man and his world.

     The world is not for man. Man is a resident of the world. Man makes the balance for himself between gauhd and saihtan, water and earth, air and fire, to his own advantage, and gauhd and saihtan together make the balance of the world in which man is a resident...

     

     The chief informed us that despite his efforts, most of the men had been seduced by the speakings of the ant-person and had decided to leave with him toward the tintchity ant-city, the second biggest city after sancaro.

     That ant-man told our sons and friends that the world was made for them, and that if they were to walk and work by gauhd's side, he would bring them fortunes. So most of the men of this tribe left with him, making of us a dying tribe.

     The leader asked for us to help him reconvert his peoples back to their natural ways. That was when bungele spoke out. Bungele was one of the other group of elders that had also traveled to the gaupameis to visit. He had dedicated most of his time and energy toward the advance of the literary gujumno work. He had read most of the books that had ever been written by the gujumnoe and was a writer himself. Bungele resided with one of the tribes in the fasalo-pei hills that had a vast collection of written word and had received visits from many scholars of literature from the ant-centers at his home tribe. He had convinced these scholars that they must do all in their power not endanger the gujumno culture by imposing their own over it, and that they must never return to guanjama as common ant-peoples again. Bungele was good with words and had used them to guide those scholars towards a peaceful way. He was a great help in preserving of our culture...

 

      ...In order for a way to be considered as a religion, a group of durable beliefs, rites and institutions must be maintained and perpetuated through the times. There is no religion without a clergy, that is, without a body more or less specialized in the observance and transmission of the rites and dogmas. So as you see, the gujumno way is not a religion, seeing that there is a lack of standard rites and institutions. Nothing, no rules or behavioral patterns are passed on. Only literature that can be personally interpreted. We cannot convert anyone. We can only talk of our experience and hope that it aids and stimulates those with whom we share that experience . We can only with you the writings and allow you to interpret them for yourself. We can discuss it with your people, because if it helps you save your tribe's culture and religion it will make us happy. That is all we can do for you...

 

      As the convention continued kutetaro attracted my attention and asked me if I was willing to leave the village and travel with him to his home. He told me that I had seen enough and that it was urgent that I leave those surroundings.

I agreed. Somehow the surroundings, the situation and I did not fit well. I felt uncomfortable with it, and felt that the villagers were left in good hands without me. So we excused ourselves from the debate and left huomono, bejebo and the other elders to pursue the conversation.

     As we left huomono, bejebo and the others I again had a premonition that these were people I would not see again in this life, so I turned to them and wished them the best of life. They returned the compliment. They had felt it too, and they knew what was about to happen. We waved farewell, and kutetaro and I left our brothers.

 

      The four of us knew that our story together was not over. We were kindred souls, of the same spiritual family, and we would meet again in another story of life.

        I traveled with kutetaro for the next season and headed to meet his wives and children at their home near the fasalo-pei hills. Kutetaro had wanted me to visit his home and inspiration, his family. They treated me like one of their own, and I spent the last few days among people with these fantastic souls. Kutetaro had truly found a great freedom in them and so saved himself.

     We sat together around the fire after sharing a meal one night. The moon was like a second sun, casting light on the world. We could see the night animals roaming below the tree house, going about their life. They were as beautiful as always. As I lay on my side smoking the healing herb kutetaro called my attention. He confided in me that both the other elders and himself had been seeing inside of me a great gathering of energy. It was true, I told him, I had been feeling this for a long time already. Like a rising vibration within. I should begin to prepare myself and become a hermit so that I could purify myself in the absence of thought.

     The very next day kutetaro helped me find a suitable cave for my hermitage. We found one near his home where he would make certain that I would remain completely alone.

 

     For thirty-six seasons I remained alone and undisturbed up in that cave, in the absence of thought. In meditating I won the fight over my body, my feelings and my mind, and I became as one, pure observer and part of my surroundings. I remained as the observer for a long time until an urge arose in me. I felt it as a sudden strike, a sudden snap that dispersed the consciousness of unity that I had been experiencing through that profound meditation into millions of scattering pieces. All the elements that had made me returned to their source, and I became nothingness.

 

     Then there was light...