The Power of Kausay and Levels of Perception

Monday, February 25th, 2013

Medicine people learn to source, or draw life energy, or kausay, from Pachamama because, unlike people, the land is constant and the energy is always there. Shamans live their lives by tending to kausay, or fertility in nature.  Kausay is the building block of shamanism and Incan medicine. Kausay is life force. It is the energy of creation, experienced in the body as a vibration, and in the heart as a feeling of universal love. It is often seen as an intense light, or experienced as clarity, or a vibration bringing sense of all-knowing wisdom. It is what is experienced in altered states of ecstasy when paqos enter into the spirit world of energy.

The expression of kausay occurs by being in ayni, in an open reciprocal relationship with Pachamama. What is taken from the land is returned to the land in gratitude so that it can be born again. Everything in nature, and all living things, occurs in the order of “right relationship,” or kausay pacha. Everything comes from and returns to Pachamama.

According to Inca cosmology, being in ayni (“right relationship”) comes as an expression of munay (unconditional, universal love) with the collective. In Inca shamanism, the definition of “collective” is much broader than how it is understood in modern Western culture. Besides referring to “mass culture” and society, the term collective refers to the energetic relationship existing among all living things. For paqos, this consists of Pachamama, (Mother Earth), plants, animals, and humans living in the physical realm of the natural world. The expression of the collective in the spirit world includes the Apus (the collective mountain spirits) and Santa Tierras (feminine spirits residing in the earth that are an aspect of Pachamama).

Paqos move into altered states of consciousness between states in ordinary and nonordinary reality through shifting levels of perception. Ordinary reality has to do with physical reality, while nonordinary reality pertains to the energetic, spiritual world. In Peruvian shamanism, there are four levels of psychic engagement, or states of perception. The first level of perception is the literal level, taking place in ordinary reality. The literal level is the physical world of everyday experience.

The second level is the symbolic level, and includes both left hemisphere and right hemisphere brain functioning with the capacity for abstract thinking and imagination, respectively. It is the territory of dreams, metaphors, and images, -including fantasy and imagination, and language and verbal communication.

The third level pertains to the mythic or archetypal level of the collective unconscious that Carl Jung described. It is where synchronistic events connect. In the collective psyche of Peruvian cosmology, three mythic beings appear in the form of animals. They are the guiding principles, which manifest as emanations of the spirit world and correspond to the energy centers in the body – the Belly, the Heart, and the Mind.

The fourth level of perception in Peruvian shamanism is the energetic or essential level. This level is pure energy where form, time and space no longer exist. This is the level where transformation and healing occurs.

Shamanism is an intersubjective rather than an intrasubjective experience. The focus is feeling connection with the collective – not an individual journey. The medicine people say it takes heart. Shamans begin with the collective, and through the collective heal the personal. In the West, our approach is healing yourself first and then you can heal the others. Shamanism focuses on giving back to the community and to the collective:

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