Enlightening Entertainment
 
The Way and Message of the Kogi People of Colombia - (In Spanish)      
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Today’s Enlightening Entertainment will be presented in Spanish and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Twenty years ago, I was not allowed to come here. It’s too far up the mountain, too sacred. And they are talking about nearly three, well, 2,500-2,700 meters above sea level, because the Kogi live in a high and almost inaccessible mountain, the highest coastal mountain in the world; steep folds, difficult valleys. And a town like this is rather hard to get to. There are certainly no roads leading to it.

As human impacts on the climate have worsened in recent decades, the Kogi indigenous people of Colombia stepped out of their centuries of reclusive and self-contained living in the coastal mountains and began to share a message of warning: that the destructive ways of humankind must stop before it is too late.

Toward this goal, they allowed the 1992 filming of the BBC documentary, “From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning” in a rare collaboration with a foreigner, British filmmaker Mr. Alan Ereira.

I made a film 20 years ago with the Kogi That was called “From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers Warning.” The reason that they did it, the Kogi being an extremely reclusive people, is that they have decided that their isolation was unsuccessful as a form of defense since we’re in the process of destroying the world.

And so they needed to tell us what we’re doing and try to persuade us to stop. That was 20 years ago. This was my introduction to the astonishing world of the Kogi, the one surviving high civilization from America, from the world of the Aztec, the Maya, the Inca.

Because here you have a highly sophisticated, highly intellectual society, civilization which have been watching our civilization with horror, dismay, and the feeling of responsibility for 400 years, and it was that feeling of responsibility that made them end their isolation and make that film.

Twenty years later, I’m summoned again, and the message is, “We spoke, we waited, you did not listen. Now we have to do something more drastic.” I have been in contact with the Kogi of course in the intervening period, but I’ve never been up their mountain until they called me back. I’ve only been to the base of the mountain, and their leaders, Mamos as they’re called, have come down to talk to me. And then they summoned me.

And this project is something quite extraordinary. What they’re doing is making a movie. The movie is called “Aluna.” “Aluna,” well why doesn’t Jacinto explain the meaning of the word “aluna.”

Well, the word “aluna” means many things. For example, when you do things, first, we think. I mean, the “aluna” word in our language is: to think what one wants to do. Through the word “aluna,” I mean our word; with that word we work when we build a house, when we build something. When you work in some very difficult situation.

So, Aluna is connected intimately with thought and with consciousness and in fact, Aluna precedes the world. The world is created in thought, and without thought, there would be no world. This is the basis of the Kogi understanding of life. The material world is nothing but the present moment embedded in a much greater complex of thought, which extends back into memory and in the future into possibility and potential. And we are just here in the blink of an eye.

A cordial greeting for everyone. On behalf of the people... On behalf of the people of the four peoples: the Kankuamo, the Arhuaco, the Wiwa and the Kogi. We are in the northern part of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta in Colombia.

Surely you have heard of the principle or law “Sé,” that is from before the materials existed that we see now. “Sé,” even before realizing the world. That’s why we always mention the word “aluna,” because it begins from there. So before materializing the world, we think.

This is town at about 3,000 meters. And here I am in the pitch-in that was set up to feed us at this gathering. And these are the wives of the Mamos, the male Mamos that I was talking to, and they were preparing our food. We were living, as they do, mostly on starchy crops, root crops. It’s a very good, healthy diet. I always feel much healthier after I’ve spent some time up in the Sierra eating their food, than I do after I’ve spent some time down at the bottom eating ours.

And now, here we see some of the kids. And you can tell a girl from a boy by the way, by the necklaces. We, looking at them, unless you are familiar with the culture, have some difficulty distinguishing male from female. I can tell you the Kogi have the same problem looking at us. And the first time I went up there to film with a mixed-film crew, they couldn’t work out which of us were male and which were female.

The Mamos… We just saw that house with its rays coming out of the top. Now those rays are the rays of the sun and the rays of the influence of the Mamo, reaching over the community and protecting the community and guiding the community. And the reason I was… Now, that that you see in that man’s hand… he is a Mamo.

Next to him, by his knee, you can see a divining bowl, and in it is the hollow bead that he uses for his divination. He drops that into the water. In his hand, was a thing called a jatukua.

Now the children that are kept in the dark for years are being raised to be Mamos, and Mamos are – well the word Mamo is the same word for the sun – they are the enlightened ones. They are the spiritual guides of the society. And the divining bowl called the jatukua is used to interrogate the consciousness inside nature. That is a Mamo’s job and that’s why he is raised in the dark.

But also I believe they are constantly engaged in the daily life of the Kogi population.

What it means is that they leave some children in a large cave… to prepare them, so that they study to face different kinds of problems that come to one, to the people. The Mamos are to help and support the entire world.

The president of Colombia, the new president who is just now been installed, has gone to the Mamos for consultation and to seek their advice in just the way you’re talking about. Of course, symbolic acts.

So that he can gave advice. In order for him to start to control all the harm that is being done against nature.

That’s why Jacinto is here, and Jacinto really ought to explain why the Kogi Mamos are worried, and what is it that they are worried about.

They are worried. Most of all for the sacred places. Which are the sacred places? Those that are, for example, the snowy mountains. With stones with images. The lagoons. The rivers’ sources. And also, where there are coal mines, petroleum, which are parts of the body of nature.

Never at any moment did we want to exploit or damage or destroy the sacred places such as the source place of water. Never have they told us… to destroy or exploit the coal. Never. Because those are… we were damaging Mother Nature, or destroying.

And I think the point here is, Jacinto talked about the law of Sé, the law that precedes everything and whose rules control all life. And the law of Sé is actually controlled and manipulated and managed at sacred sites, and these sites are places of management of the life of the world. And if you destroy sacred sites, the life of the world itself becomes violently disrupted, as I understand it.

Now, in the middle of this meeting in the front, Sagas, these are female Mamos. They might look quite young to you and nowhere near as young as they appear to be. I have always found it very difficult in a Kogi family to tell who is the daughter, who is the mother, who is the grandmother, because quite honestly, they look pretty much the same age! Kogi women somehow keep their freshness and complexions extraordinarily well.

But the point what was going on here is that these women are making a speech. There is a man in front, who you will see later, Mamo Pedro Juan, making a speech of explanation of what is going wrong with the world. And those three women are speaking the same speech simultaneously. Those women are in fact the voice of the mountain, the voice of the Earth. They are the Mother. And they validate and authenticate every word that the male Mamo is saying.

And it is the authority of their voices that is being listened to, because the Earth itself is speaking through them and he as a man speaks to men, he speaks direct to me and tells me what I have to hear. And that, I have never seen anything remotely like this before. It was extraordinary.

Now the one thing that you’ve mentioned which seemed really startling and interesting to me was this business of confession, of being absolutely open, to have no secrets, to tell whoever is your partner in life, everything that happens in the course of the day. Is that a fundamental thing to do that will change who you are and how you are, and change the world?

The day, not just one day, rather of the whole life. Of course, and also not just all the human society, but also some of those big companies, to see, hey, that they are destroying themselves… we want to destroy the world. And so how we can change that?

So the message is introspection brought on by having to speak about who you are and what you are doing.

That’s wonderful, fascinating, marvelous thing to have said. Thank you.

Introspective viewers, please join us again tomorrow as we continue our program with Kogi Mamo Mr. Jacinto Zarabata’s interview with Supreme Master Television, in which he further explains the Kogis’ timely environmental message for humankind.

It was nice to have your company on today’s program. And now, please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May you enjoy the awareness of nature’s blessings for you.
Today’s Enlightening Entertainment will be presented in Spanish and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

As human impacts on the climate have worsened in recent decades, the Kogi indigenous people of Colombia stepped out of their centuries of reclusive and self-contained living in the coastal mountains and began to share a message of warning: that the destructive ways of humankind must stop before it is too late. Toward this goal, they allowed the 1992 filming of the BBC documentary, “From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers’ Warning.”

Most recently, the leaders or shamans of the Kogi society, known as Mamos, sent an official representative to the United Kingdom to collaborate once more with British filmmaker Alan Ereira, this time in an effort to actively spread their message. In a live internet webcast with spiritual media group EsoGuru, Mamos representative Mr. Jacinto Zarabata shared about the Kogi Mamos’ spiritual way of life and how they have been seeing the rest of the world.

How much do the Mamos know about what is happening in the rest of the world, really?

They find out when they consult… because they have so much sensitivity. For example in… deep inside. In the thinking, in his “aluna” (thought). Suddenly, not just the Mamos, and others that have like a dream. Also, they consult.

So they know about things like the eruption of an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico from their dreams and through thoughts.

Of course, they immediately… Some of them say well, something is going on in some other place.

And then they act immediately, in the place where they have to carry out their spiritual work.

Well, it’s obvious that the Kogi Mamos do not need television, manage quite well without.

So this suggests that the Mamos possess powers or abilities that we would regard as, magical as not, not part of the material world.

They don’t work individually. They just do their work as a collective, as a whole.

They have decided to communicate this warning, more than warning, a form of understanding to change our understanding of the world, through the medium of film. And in order to do this, they’ve decided not just to make a film, but to invent a new kind of film. So I will be working with a crew which is partly Western professional, and partly indigenous trained, and they’re extremely good, I have to say. They are doing something amazing. “Aluna” will be a very remarkable film.

During an interview with Supreme Master Television in the United Kingdom, Mr. Zarabata further explained about the Kogi people’s timely environmental message.

My name is Jacinto Zarabata. I come from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, from the Kogi people. In the Sierra there are four tribes, which are the Kankuamo, the Arhuaco, the Wiwa and the Kogi.

At this time, I'm here for several reasons, because these days, humanity or people want to know the message of indigenous peoples.

So, that's why we have sent many messages.

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is on a Colombian mountain that is in between three departments, which are the Department of Guajira, Cesar and Magdalena that is in Colombia.

How important is it therefore for the human race, to stop the polluting of the environment?

The Mother gave us the territory to manage, to use. Today we are using the management that is not required. For example, if we remove a stone or cut a tree, what effect, what consequences or what risk could be caused for us? For example in mining operations of coal, petroleum, of many things.

Well, this is something that generates development for the human society, but for us it is not very important to do that, but that it is something that maintains the body or nature. For example, they operate this exploitation of mines of some minerals. But it seems that today, doing all that, you see a lot of avalanches, a lot of tremors, for example, earthquakes, which have caused damage in some parts of the country.

Today, there are institutions that have to do with mines, to see what happens. Perhaps we as men think a lot, but so what? It is nature that teaches us, and so, it is up to us to learn from it, we have a lot of things to learn.

I do not know if it's okay if I make myself understood.

It's okay.

According to your culture, how should we behave toward nature?

Well the message that one could give... it isn’t from me personally, but rather, the message is from the beginning, from the origin. So that each one of us was given some laws and some norms that must be fulfilled. And then in this case, we the indigenous peoples of the Sierra still keep our standards, which were left to us by our ancestral laws.

What specific advice that the Mamos give to us? There have been earthquakes in some countries that have destroyed some peoples. Half of the population. And, there have been hurricanes that have almost destroyed… Eh, with landslides. And also, there have been a lot of diseases.

Not just the Mamos eh, can send us the message. Also nature herself and in connection with the Mamo. It is already seen, the, the message, that we can start to listen and to ask ourselves: So how can we make the change?

What we can learn about the connections between our daily actions that is affecting the balance of the Earth?

Our ancestors, our roots, they left us how to have the connection, to co-exist with nature, for example, with water, with the wind, with fire, with all species. But it seems we've lost the knowledge or the laws or rules that were had. And then, there is what seems to be that we are destroying nature, but not knowing the rules or the laws that govern us. We must learn from nature, and that is why all of a sudden, there has been weakness and imbalance in nature that we ourselves we are seeing.

Can you tell us a little bit, how you connected more with nature or how you got closer to nature?

By having more connection, for example, respecting sites that are sacred for us. For example, which are the sacred sites? Those are the lakes, the snow peaks, the stones that have figures.

The older mothers, for example, ponds, the hills, and also the sites that cannot be exploited and also with minerals, for example. I do not think that we would not be happy to remove, let’s say, a lung, some piece of our body.

We would be incomplete.

We would be incomplete, and so the same: Nature is no longer complete, it is incomplete, and is no longer nature, but that is really manipulated.

Jacinto, being vegetarian – or for example, to practice a life where we don’t have to be involved with the massive killing of animals – will this get us closer to nature?

Yes, because it is something wicked that we are doing, for instance, to animals; in this case, we would not like, let´s say, that someone kills your brother, you don’t like him to be killed. So it is the same. All species that exist in nature, like animals, birds, so many things, they have to be respected, like we want to be respected.

This lack of respect and unnecessary killing for us to feed on is one of the biggest contributors to the imbalance of our Earth, what advice would you give us?

Well, in this case, it is because we are not following the norms and laws that Mother Earth has had, so, tempests appear, hurricanes, earthquakes.

So the major disasters that have happened recently, for example, floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia, landslides in China, even the ice in Greenland which is breaking up very fast, this is the way of nature, as you have told us, of sending us a warning that we must change? Or what is your opinion?

Exactly, it’s the same. She herself is sending us a message. What change can we have? And that is what we, each one of us, must ask ourselves.

But we become deaf, we're stubborn and that is why we do not want to live, and every day it’s going to start charging all of us our lives.

We found out that the Kogi Mamo, or your shaman, doesn’t eat any meat or food that is related to animals, while he is training to be a shaman. If it is so, could you explain to us the reason for this pure diet, with no animal elements?

Well, that's ... that's true. Why? Because when he is training, when he prepares to work with the animals, to work with the sea, to work with all the species that exist in nature, the Mamos prepare without eating salt, without consuming meat, without consuming many products.

And this is to be more connected with nature.

To be more connected with nature and with animals.

Thank you. Would you like to send a message to the world?

One of the things at once, I would like that... that this is not from a single person, but rather that, together, for example, the people of the Sierra, which are closer together, they know of their cultures, their traditions… that you understand, that these enter your heart too. This is something that is reality, what we're saying.

We are grateful to Mr. Zarabata and the Kogi Mamos for their urgent concern for humankind at this dire time. May we heed such caring counsel through actions to save our planet and live harmoniously among humans, animals, and the environment

Thank you, peaceful viewers, for joining us today. And now, please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May Heaven bless Mother Earth and all her precious inhabitants.

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