INTELLIGENCE IN NATURE.
AN INQUIRY INTO KNOWLEDGE.
JEREMY NARBY.
Introduction.
SEARCHING FOR INTELLIGENCE IN NATURE.
For fifteen years I have helped indigenous Amazonian people gain t.i.tles to their lands. These are people who believe that plants and animals have intentions, and that shamans communicate with other species in visions and dreams. Their way of knowing is difficult for rationalists to grasp.
More than a decade ago, I began searching for common ground between indigenous knowledge and Western science, and ended up finding links between shamanism and molecular biology. In the book The Cosmic Serpent, I presented the hypothesis that shamans take their consciousnesses down to the molecular level and gain access in their visions to information related to DNA, which they call "animate essences," or "spirits."
In the Amazon, indigenous leaders and shamans expressed broad interest and support for this approach. For them, it was not news that their knowledge is real.
But on the other side of the equation, things were more complicated. Western science has some difficulty with the possibility of both nonhuman intelligence and the subjective acquisition of objective knowledge. Since its original publication in 1995, The Cosmic Serpent has not gained the attention I had hoped for from scientists. However, several biologists read it with interest and engaged me in dialogue. One biophysicist challenged me to test the hypothesis, saying that this was the true method of science.
He had a point. As an anthropologist, I am no scientist and had never tested a hypothesis. I decided to take up this challenge. To test the hypothesis, I accompanied three molecular biologists to the Peruvian Amazon to see whether they could obtain biomolecular information by ingesting a psychoactive plant brew administered by an indigenous shaman. In the realm of visions, all three received clear answers about their work.
One of these molecular biologists, Dr. Pia Malnoe, who teaches at a Swiss University and who directs a research laboratory, concluded: "The way shamans get their knowledge is not very different from the way scientists get their knowledge. It has the same origin, but shamans and scientists use different methods."
I published an account of this encounter between parallel avenues of human knowledge and ultimately realized I was stuck on getting the approval of the scientific establishment. I decided to redirect my inquiry.
One question seemed more important than any other. By digging into history, mythology, indigenous knowledge, and science, I had found clues pointing to intelligence in nature. This seemed like a new way of looking at living beings. I had grown up in the suburbs and received a materialist and rationalist education"a worldview that denies intention in nature and considers living beings as "automatons" and "machines." But now, there was increasing evidence that this is wrong, and that nature teems with intelligence. Even the cells in our own bodies seem to harbor a hive of deliberate activity.
Toward the end of the 1990s I began focusing on the works of biologists who study organisms rather than molecules. To my surprise I found a number of recent studies demonstrating that even simple creatures behave with intelligence. Scientists now show that brainless single-celled slime molds can solve mazes and bees with brains the size of pinheads can handle abstract concepts. Philosopher John Locke proclaimed in the seventeenth century: "Brutes abstract not." But, in fact, brutes abstract, and reductionist science recently proved it. I even found contemporary scientists who claim that natural beings can only be understood by attributing humanness to them. This is what shamans have been saying all along.
This led me to launch an investigation on the subject of "intelligence in nature," a concept constructed by combining science and indigenous knowledge. I would later learn that j.a.panese researchers already possess a term for this "knowingness" of the natural world: chi-sei (p.r.o.nounced CHEE-SAY). But I would begin the first leg of my search in the Amazon, where I had first met people who attribute spirits, intentions, and humanness to other species. Then I intended to do an anthropology of science and visit scientists in their working environment.
I set off on a quest not knowing what I was going to find. I went hunting for treasure, whereabouts unknown.
ONE SUMMER DAY just before the beginning of this investigation I visited an old herbal healer living on an isolated farm in Estonia. Her name was Laine Roht, which means "Wave Gra.s.s" in Estonian.
I was introduced to Roht by the Estonian translator of my previous book. She led us to a small outdoor shelter at the back of her garden, which contained a rudimentary fireplace decorated with empty Russian champagne bottles. Roht spoke only Estonian.
I explained that I was an anthropologist and wanted to ask her some questions. Roht nodded her consent. She sat upright on a bench, with her two hands joined together on her lap. I started by asking if she could explain how she had become a healer. She said her great-uncle was a healer, and that she was born with the gift. She said that plants speak to her, telling her when they are most potent and when to pick them; this sometimes happens at night, while she is resting; she receives instructions, gets up, and goes to the plants she has just been told about. The information she receives is always correct, she said. And when people tell her of their illness, she feels the sickness in her own body, which acts as a mirror. Later, when she learns which plants will heal the illness, she feels relief in the part of her body that has the empathy with the sick person. She did not elaborate on how she receives instructions from or about plants.
Her views reminded me of the notions held by some Amazonian shamans I had met. I decided to go straight to the point and asked what she could tell me about nature"s intelligence. She shook her head, and said: "n.o.body has asked me this before. It is difficult to penetrate nature. I have no words for it. There will never be such words. No one will ever know how plants and humans are made, or what will become of them. This will remain a secret."
I found her pale blue gaze hard to sustain. When she spoke, I could listen only to the melody of her voice. Estonian is not an Indo-European language, and I found it difficult to make out a single word. When she paused, I listened to the translation and noted word by word what she had said. See jb saladuseks. This will remain a secret. The word saladus means secret.
I asked her why nature likes to hide. She replied: "We will get punished for giving away nature"s secrets. You should not know everything. You should deal in a proper way with knowledge, heal people and treat them well. Secrets can fall into the hands of the wrong people."
Her reply did not make me feel like prying any further.
She showed us around her garden and pointed to the plants she used to cure different conditions. We were reaching the end of the encounter. I felt moved to thank her for her time and consideration and went to the car to fetch a copy of my book in Estonian. The book has a serpent on its cover. She accepted it with both hands, glanced at the cover, and said: "I have something for you."
We followed her over to the main house and waited outside. She soon returned with a large gla.s.s jar containing alcohol distilled from the fruits of her garden and a dead viper. She explained that she had caught the viper in her garden several months ago and had dropped it into the alcohol while it was still alive. On expiring, the snake expelled its venom into the mixture, which, she said, would give us vitality and protect us from illness. She filled a shot gla.s.s with snake medicine and offered it to me. I knocked it back in the name of anthropology. It did not taste so bad. The first effect was a tingling warmth and a diffuse sense of well-being that seemed unrelated to the small amount of alcohol in the dose she had administered.
We thanked her once again and took our leave. I drove the return road in a state of grace, and during the weeks that followed, I felt glowing and full of energy. Once I returned home to Switzerland, people around me remarked on my good form. By telling this story, I am not trying to convince anybody of the efficacy of this particular batch of "snake oil" (though more research would be interesting if only because snake venoms tend to contain substances that act on neurons). What really remained engraved in my mind were Laine Roht"s words. This will remain a secret. Did this mean I should not investigate nature"s intelligence?
I turned these words over in my mind for months. I did not want to break into nature"s box of secrets, but I did want to locate it and consider it from different angles. I traveled to the Amazon and met with indigenous people, then visited science laboratories in different countries. I found that science is coming closer to indigenous knowledge on certain levels. Science now shows that humans are fully related to other species. We are built like them and have brains like them. It also shows that other species are clever in their own ways. Still, Laine Roht"s words remained at the back of my mind. Was I up to no good? Was my investigation doomed to failure?
About a year and a half after visiting Laine Roht, it dawned on me that if something is destined to remain secret, then trying to find out about it is not problematic. Perhaps Laine Roht is right, and no one will ever understand how plants and people are made. But trying to gain knowledge about how nature knows is no crime. True, knowledge can be abused. But if nature has knowledge and I am part of nature, why should I not aim for knowledge?
Chapter 1.
BRAINY BIRDS.
One day in September 2001 I boarded a canoe piloted by a Matsigenka Indian and began heading down the Urubamba River. We made our way through gorges filled with colorful parrots and other birds. The forests and rivers in this part of the Peruvian Amazon contain more species of trees, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals than any other region of similar size. We were entering the epicenter of world biodiversity.
At nightfall, we camped on a small beach on the riverbank. I was traveling with a Peruvian anthropologist, an American environmental foundation director, and two Swiss friends. We were on our way to inspect a project run by a local Matsigenka community. My companions retired early after a long day on the river, but I sat up next to the fire listening to the hypnotic wall of sound produced by the forest. I could hear cicadas and crickets buzzing, birds singing odd melodies, frogs croaking, and monkeys howling. In the Amazon, nature plays loud, especially at night.
The next morning we continued downriver and reached the docking site of a lodge called the Matsigenka Centre for Tropical Studies. It was perched on a high bluff overlooking the river. I was curious to see this community-development project, which claims to combine income generation with respect for biodiversity. We climbed a long wooden staircase and walked into the lodge"s entrance to find polished hardwood floors and fully screened corridors. Further inspection revealed clean beds and tiled bathrooms with hot water. In all my years of visiting rural settings in the Peruvian Amazon, I had yet to see this level of comfort. As a Matsigenka receptionist took down our names, an American client walked past and asked casually: "Had a good trip?"
I settled in and took a shower, then joined my companions in the dining area. We ordered papaya juice, fish, and rice from a Matsigenka waiter. Several other tables were occupied by a group of Americans, who spoke excitedly about the birds they had observed that morning in the forest. After lunch, one of the men came over to our table and introduced himself as Charlie Munn. A tall man with a large forehead, Munn began telling us about his profession and pa.s.sion, studying birds. He had been coming to the Peruvian Amazon for twenty-five years, he said, and had done his doctoral research in the nearby Manu Biosphere Reserve. Working with Matsigenka Indians, Munn and his team discovered that macaws, the colorful giants of the parrot world, gather daily for most of the year at large banks of clay, which they peck at and consume in small morsels. When Munn and his colleagues first observed this behavior in the Manu, they a.s.sumed they had found the only macaw "clay lick" in the world. But with the help of indigenous guides, they went on to find dozens more, one of which was an hour"s walk from the lodge we were sitting in.
All this was new to me, and I had not expected to run into a leading bird scientist while traveling down the Urubamba. Nor was I used to people presenting their work so forthrightly. But I found Munn interesting and did not interrupt him. He said he and his research team were initially mystified by the macaws" consumption of clay. They a.s.sumed the clay contained salts and minerals that supplement the birds" primarily vegetarian diet. Then a graduate student a.n.a.lyzed the seeds commonly eaten by the macaws and discovered they contain toxic alkaloids. Macaws prefer eating the seeds of fruit to their pulp, and they use their powerful, hooked beaks to crack and consume seeds from many different trees, unlike most birds in the tropical forest. It turns out, Munn said, that the clay the birds eat binds to these toxins and speeds their elimination from the body, and probably also lines the gut and protects it from the chemical erosion by the seeds" toxins. Macaws take almost daily doses of clay to detoxify themselves, which allows them to eat foods that other animals cannot tolerate. He added that macaws choose clays with a much higher capacity to bind toxins than adjacent bands of clay, which they shun. They prefer clays rich in kaolin, which humans use to cure food poisoning.
As I listened to Munn, I realized that this was an example of intelligent behavior in nature. Homing in on the right clay and consuming it allows the birds to eat seeds and unripe fruits that are unpalatable and even lethal to other species. This gives them an edge over most other animals in their environment. But, I wondered, is this the kind of intelligence that humans exert when swallowing kaolin? Or is it just "instinct," or an "evolutionarily adaptive behavior"? Are the birds being choosy and cunning by some kind of automatic process? Or do they know what they are doing, like thinking subjects? Are humans "smart" when they eat clay, while macaws are merely "instinctive" when they do the same?
Before I could ask Munn these questions, my companions and I were invited on a tour of the lodge"s wildlife circuit. I thanked Munn for the interesting information and made a mental note to speak with him later.
Outside, a Matsigenka guide was waiting for us. His name was Hector Toyeri Andres. He was twenty-one years old, with jet-black hair and dark eyes He wore pants and a T-shirt, but walked barefoot with a traditional cotton bag hanging from his shoulder.
We greeted each other and he started talking in a strange language, which I soon realized was English. He said he would show us the animals. This was the first time I had heard an Amazonian Indian speak English. We headed off into the forest. Despite the midday heat, the air under the trees was fresh. Toyeri motioned for us to walk quietly single file behind him. After a short while he stopped and pointed to a tree ahead of us, and whispered something in English, which I did not understand. He delved into his shoulder bag, pulled out a largish book called Birds of Colombia, and flipped through it until he found a page filled with bird names like "white-winged shrike-tanager." Toyeri"s p.r.o.nunciation was not so bad"I was just not familiar with the names of many tropical birds.
This was also the first time I had seen an indigenous Amazonian treat a book as a transportable tool for understanding the world. Traditionally, indigenous Amazonians have oral cultures, and do not use texts. Toyeri was from a new generation and had received training as a guide for ecotourists. He moved like a hunter, gliding swiftly and silently across the forest floor. He seemed attentive to movements at all levels. We walked across several streams and saw different birds and insects including leaf-cutter ants busily at work. But mammals were few and far between. At one point Toyeri spotted a large gray anteater climbing a tree, seemingly untroubled by our presence.
After the wildlife circuit, I spent the afternoon writing notes, then took a nap and fell into a deep sleep. When I awoke, night had fallen. I wandered into the lodge"s dining area feeling a bit groggy, and found the American bird-watchers gathered around a portable computer. They were voicing enthusiasm at images of macaws they had filmed that morning. I took a look and saw explosions of color"green, red, blue, yellow, close-ups of macaws vying for s.p.a.ce on a clay cliff and squawking loudly. As I watched these bird-watchers marveling at what they had witnessed here at the Matsigenka Centre for Tropical Studies, I was reminded of a dream described by ethn.o.botanist Glenn Shepard, who spent years working with Matsigenka shamans in the Lower Urubamba Valley, studying their knowledge about plants. Inspired by a tobacco paste prepared by a shaman, Shepard dreamed of "a team of Yankee doctors" working alongside English-speaking Matsigenka botanists in elaborate research facilities. Though only three years had elapsed since Shepard wrote about his dream, it seemed to be coming true.
At dinner, my companions ordered a bottle of Peruvian wine"to "contribute to the local economy""and we started storytelling and philosophizing. I was hoping to catch Munn to ask him about macaw intelligence. But the bird-watchers, including Munn, retired early, because they planned to get up at 4 A.M. and hike to the clay lick to observe the macaws and other parrots again. Though my companions and I had resolved to accompany them, we stayed up far too late, talking.
After a short night"s sleep, I put on my shoes by candlelight. It was 4:15 A.M. and we were running late. The bird-watchers had already left the lodge. Toyeri, our Matsigenka guide, was waiting for us outside. He told us we had to hurry to be there before the birds arrived. We headed off equipped with flashlights, following Toyeri into the forest. He led us on an energetic, uphill hike that took an hour. I used my flashlight to beam a path through cold, vegetal darkness.
By the time we reached the clay lick, day was almost breaking. Toyeri took us to the base of a fifty-yard cliff made of reddish clay and ushered us into a sizable blind made of palm leaves. The bird-watchers were all there and had deployed their cameras and powerful binoculars on tripods. The blind had the feel of a nest of spies. We were told to be quiet, because the macaws and other parrots were due to appear any time, and visible or audible human presence would keep them away.
One of my travel companions was an electronic musician who wished to tape the sound of the birds. He realized that conditions in the blind were not optimal for recording. He needed complete silence in the vicinity of the microphone. He discussed the problem with Toyeri, who made a gesture for us to follow him. Toyeri took us to a small mound one hundred yards opposite the clay cliff. We hid under tree cover in a spot that allowed us to peek out through the vegetation and catch a panoramic view.
The clay cliff in front of us began to echo with bird calls, chirps, and squawks. It sounded like an aviary. Out of nowhere, hundreds of birds had congregated. I closed my eyes and listened. The sound reminded me of the scene in Hitchc.o.c.k"s film The Birds, in which thousands of seagulls flock together and let off a threatening din. But these macaws sounded raucous and celebratory, rather than threatening.
During a pause in the sound recording, I asked Toyeri to name some of the birds we were hearing. He pulled out the Birds of Colombia book from his shoulder bag and started reeling off names in English, which I noted down: scarlet macaws, blue-and-gold macaws, chestnut-fronted macaws, white-eyed parakeets, yellow-and-crowned parrots, blue-headed parrots"
The cliff had become a wall of spinning rainbow colors. The racket the birds made was both symphonic and deafening. As they hung out on the red-clay cliff, they also appeared to squabble, tumble off, and dive-bomb one another, twirling and pirouetting, while other birds flew over to nearby trees letting out loud screeches. Magnificent colors and movements blended with dissonant sounds in a dazzling spectacle.
I asked Toyeri what he thought the birds were saying to one another. He replied (in Spanish): "They are all friends. They make such noise when they eat clay because they are saying "everybody come over here, it"s really good here." For them, the minerals and salts are like sweets for us. It is their food. They do this from half past five to seven-fifteen. Then they all go their separate ways to the forest. This is like their breakfast."
It was difficult to know what the macaws had in mind as they feasted on clay. But they were obviously enjoying a very social breakfast before a day of solitary foraging in the forest canopy. I asked my musician friend what he made of it. "This reminds me of a party," he said, "or an after-hours, I"m not sure which. It might even be the rave itself!"
As we sat on the forest floor waiting for the end of the birds" riotous clay fest, I pondered the difficulties of gauging intelligence in nature. Here were birds behaving in ways strongly reminiscent of humans, holding loud get-togethers and food fests, and self-medicating by using the most detoxifying clays. They did not behave like machines or automata, but like intelligent beings. Yet the intelligence that seemed to lurk inside them remained elusive and hard to define"seen and heard, but not grasped.
Suddenly, a hummingbird with a long pointed beak zoomed in on us. The intense beating of its wings sounded like a whirring motor. It remained suspended in midair for long seconds, only a few feet from our faces, appearing to observe us and to size us up. Then it went on its way, searching from flower to flower for nectar.
The parrots" get-together came to an end as abruptly as it began. The birds started flying off in different directions over the forest. Within minutes, the party was over, and a crowd of about a thousand had dwindled to a handful of individuals. My watch indicated seven-fifteen. These birds were punctual.
We made our way back to the lodge. Soon we would be getting back into the canoe to continue our voyage downriver. I readied my backpack, then sought out Charlie Munn.
We met in the lobby and had a short exchange. I told him I was starting to research a book on intelligence in nature and asked if he thought macaws act intelligently at clay licks. I expected a quizzical gaze in return, but he looked straight at me and said: "These are smart birds." He went on to suggest that I read an article he published in the journal Nature called "Birds That "Cry Wolf."" He said he had observed birds in the nearby Manu Biosphere Reserve that act as sentinels and give alarm calls when they sight predators, but that sometimes use their power to deceive other birds. These deceptive sentinels occasionally feed themselves by giving out false alarm calls that cause other birds to panic and abandon the insects they have just flushed out of trees. Munn said that deception usually requires intelligence.
I asked whether he thought these birds acted intentionally. He nodded. "There are even birds in the Manu who can tell the difference between Matsigenkas who work with scientists and those who are hunters. That piece of data is unpublished, and you can put it in your book if you like."
Later that day, my travel companions and I continued downriver in the motorized canoe. The sun glared down on us, hot and heavy. I stared into the water gliding by. My mind began to wander, and I thought about birds.
Western observers have long minimized the mental capacities of birds"hence the term birdbrain, meaning "stupid person." Birds do have small brains relative to humans, but why should small brain size rule out the possibility that birds might think and make decisions?
Members of the crow family"including ravens, magpies, jackdaws, and jays"generally receive the highest notes for intelligence from scientists. For example, one crow, the Clark"s nutcracker, can remember up to thirty thousand hiding places for the pine seeds it gathers and buries for safekeeping. And in one recent laboratory experiment, scrub jays who cached food while observed by other birds were found to modify their hiding places when the observing birds were no longer present"indicating both social memory and foresight. But crows are not the only smart birds. Even pigeons appear to be brighter than many people suspect. One recent experiment demonstrated that pigeons can tell the difference between paintings by Van Gogh and Chagall. The birds received training in which they were rewarded for pecking at paintings by Van Gogh but discouraged from choosing Chagalls. Then they were shown previously unseen works by both painters. The pigeons as a whole performed almost as well as a parallel group of university students majoring in psychology.
Many consider learning to be a hallmark of intelligence. It turns out that almost all of the known nine thousand species of birds have a song, but about half of them have to learn how to sing. If they lack the opportunity to learn, they develop songs different from those heard in nature. Young birds must listen to adults, then practice on their own. Birds even appear to practice singing in their dreams. Research shows that sleeping songbirds fire their neurons in intricate patterns similar to those they produce when singing. Some songbirds, like canaries, change repertoires every year. Scientists correlated this to changes in the birds" brains and went on to find that adult canaries generate a steady stream of new neurons. This overturned a century of scientific theory which held that brains in adult animals do not change. Now it appears that all animals including humans grow new neurons throughout their adult lives. On this count, our brains are not so different from those of birds"fortunately.
Indigenous people in the Amazon and elsewhere have long said that birds and other animals can communicate with humans. Shamanism is all about attempting to dialogue with nature. When shamans enter into trance and communicate in their minds with the plant and animal world, they are said to speak the language of the birds. Historians of religion have doc.u.mented this phenomenon around the world.
Scientists and shamans could join forces to try to understand the minds of birds and other animals, I told myself, gazing into the waters of the Urubamba.
Our canoe approached a break in the forest cover on the right bank of the river. This was where an international consortium led by an Argentinian petroleum company was building a center of operations called Las Malvinas (the Falklands). Pristine forest gave way to bulldozers and earthmovers. There were huge mounds of orange clay, deep pits filled with water, makeshift housing for construction workers, giant tubing lying in stacks, and a landing pad for helicopters. Beneath the Urubamba Valley lies one of the world"s largest known deposits of natural gas. Matsigenka communities own the lands, but the Peruvian state owns the subsoil and has granted the right to exploit it to the petroleum consortium.
Traditionally, shamans around the world report dialoging with nature about the extent to which humans may exploit it. In particular, shamans in numerous indigenous societies refer to an ent.i.ty known as the "owner of animals" with whom shamans negotiate in their trances for the release of game. The owner of animals is said to protect plants and animals, and place limits on the productive activities of humans when they act recklessly or greedily.
What, I wondered, would the owner of animals say about driving a pipeline into the heart of world biodiversity? Perhaps that we are birdbrains.
Chapter 2.
AGNOSTIC VISIONS.
Prior to traveling in the Urubamba Valley, I had visited an Ashaninca shaman named Juan Flores Salazar, who lives in the Pachitea Valley, in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon.
The hike from the Pachitea River up to Flores"s place in the hills took me through primary rain forest. The air smelled musty and fertile, like in a greenhouse. In the thick vegetal tapestry all around me, every plant seemed different from every other. Even the trees that towered up into the sky all seemed different from one another. And those that had partially fallen over and begun to decompose, had arrays of plants growing out of their rotting trunks. Rain forests stand on poor soils, but they embody exuberant life.
Two years before, I had asked Flores to administer ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew, to three molecular biologists who had come to the Peruvian Amazon to see if they could obtain scientific information in such conditions. Flores had risen to the occasion. The nighttime ayahuasca sessions he conducted gave the scientists information about their research; and during the daytime Flores spent hours answering the scientists" questions. The three scientists came away from the experience saying it had transformed their way of looking at nature. Under Flores"s guidance, two of them reported communicating in their visions with "plant mothers" from whom they received information about their research. Throughout the encounter Flores did not talk much unless spoken to, but he exuded confidence. The day after an ayahuasca session that the scientists had found remarkable, I asked him how he felt. He pointed his index finger straight ahead and said: "Like a bullet."
His words came back to haunt me when I learned several months later that Flores had stepped through the trip wire of a hunter"s trap while gathering plants in the forest near his home and had received a blast of shotgun pellets which shattered his tibia. His friends barely managed to carry him out in a hammock and get him to a hospital on time. On arrival he had lost so much blood the doctors said he had only a few hours to live. They saved his life with a transfusion, then they saved his leg by replacing the shattered bone with steel plates. Flores spent a week in the hospital, then insisted on returning home. His friends transported him back to his forest retreat. For a month he took antibiotics as prescribed by the doctors, then set about healing himself with plants. In the meantime, the police identified the man who set the trap in the forest, an impoverished colonist living in a nearby frontier town. Flores could have pressed charges and had him sent to prison. Instead, he simply asked for an apology and encouraged the man not to set up further traps.
It took an hour to reach the house Flores had built next to a stream of near-boiling water that flows from a geothermal source in the forest. I arrived in the late afternoon and found Flores standing in his garden. His high cheekbones and slanted eyes made him recognizable as an Amazonian Indian.
Flores had already told me a bit about his life. His grandparents were enslaved during the rubber boom in the early twentieth century and taken from the Pachitea Valley to work downriver. Flores was born in 1951 in a community of displaced Ashaninca people who were only then shaking off the shackles of forced labor. As a child, he attended primary school and learned to read, write, and speak Spanish. His father, a reputed shaman, died when he was ten. This prompted Flores to follow in his father"s footsteps. He devoted his youth to apprenticing himself to several Ashaninca maestros. He traveled all around traditional Ashaninca territory, then settled near the town of Pucallpa, where people gradually recognized his skills as a plant specialist and healer. He only recently returned to the Pachitea, the homeland of his grandparents, to set up a healing center in the forest.
Flores has spent most of his life going between worlds"forest and city, indigenous and mestizo, traditional and modern. He is both an indigenous person and a cultural hybrid. When he walks barefoot through the forest wearing a crown of feathers and a traditional Ashaninca cotton robe, he looks like an indigenous shaman. And when he wears a shirt, jeans, and boots, he moves with ease in the world of mestizos.
The day after my arrival, I interviewed Flores on the thatched-roofed platform by the river where he conducts healing sessions. He sat at a homemade desk wearing a colorful cotton headband with Ashaninca designs and a white shirt that made him look like a doctor.
I wanted to record his view on intelligence in plants and animals. I began by asking what he thought the difference was between humans and other species.
"Bueno," he said. "I can say the difference is that human beings have voices with which to speak, whereas animals have their knowledge but do not have the property of speaking, or the strength to speak in a way that humans can understand. The same is true for plants. So there is the difference: We cannot speak with them. But through the knowledge of healing, and through the spirits of plants, we can speak with animals and we can also speak with plants."
I asked him to explain how one could do this. He said that shamans use plant mixtures such as ayahuasca to dialogue with the spirits of nature"s beings. In their visions, shamans communicate with these spirits by singing icaros, or shaman songs. Plants receive these songs "from inside, from the heart," he said, and shamans thank plants for the knowledge and healing they impart by singing these songs.
I asked Flores what he thought about intelligence in plants and animals. He said that animals make plans as they go about their lives in the forest and decide where to walk during the day and where to spend the night. And he said that plant spirits wander from one place to another to heal people, "because plants care a lot about humanity."
Several of his ideas contradicted the Western, academic worldview, but he was stating clearly what many Amazonian people consider to be true. Who was I to rule out the possibility of communication between humans and other species? Perhaps shamans know things about nature that science has yet to discover. Instead of contradicting Flores, I wanted to grasp his point of view. I asked if he still spoke with the owner of animals.
"In this case, yes, I have been practicing this for a very long time, in regards to everything I do. Because all things have to be done from the heart, and this is true concerning taking an animal, or a plant," he said. "The last time I spoke with the owner of animals was a week ago. For example, to come and settle here, I had to ask the owner of animals."
"Can you tell me what he or she looks like?"
"He appeared in the form of a jaguar sitting at my side, and he was looking at me. I was also looking at him. He transformed himself into a person. Then he told me, "You may pa.s.s. You may come here.""
Later that day, we went for a walk in the forest. Flores hobbled along the path slowly. His accident had left him with a permanent limp. We reached a spot above a small waterfall and sat on boulders next to the stream surrounded by trees. We talked for a while about his wounded leg. For someone who had risked death, he showed impressive fort.i.tude. I asked if he considered death to be a problem.
"It is not a problem," he said, laughing.
"Are you not afraid of death?"
"I am not afraid of death because death comes to me and I am good friends with it. It will decide when to take me."