The Subjective Experience of Time in Andean Medicine and Psychanalysis

Monday, March 24th, 2014

Andean high shamans – called Hatun Mesayoqs perceive energetic experience outside of temporal reality as being multidimensional rather than being layered. With this being said, because they live in the high mountains of Peru, – surrounded by magnificent mountains on all sides – their experience of the natural physical world occurs within a vertical reality. In Andean cosmology, temporal reality only takes place in the middle world of Kay pacha, the realm of physical manifestation. The upper celestial realm of Hana Pacha and the lower world of Uhu pacha of mother earth, are atemporal spirit worlds, outside linear time.

Andean paqos believe time is circular. Future time is does not exist because it is a continuation of the past. Any action that brings change can only occur in the present.  Everything is based in the present pacha . A pacha refers to an allocation of energy at a specific point in time and space. Paqos refer to the experience of meeting one’s self again a taripaypacha.”

Psychoanalysis is grounded in sequential time with ego consciousness in the current pacha as a point of departure in the current pacha. As analysts we recognize that the way we remember a past event directly affects our experience in the present.

Freud acknowledged that the past lives on in the present, with both the future and past existing within dream space consciousness. Bromberg elaborated on this idea by describing the phenomenon of time condensation as an enactment of reliving the past as a frozen replica that structures the person’s image of the future and the present. Our psyches grow through experience in sequential time, and with trauma can develop different temporal directions in discontinuous states often in opposition.

Jung wrote, “The hero who overcomes the dragon brings into existence again all the ancestors, the crops, even whole nations that have been eaten by time.” Paqos believe that when we clear hoocha – trauma in the current pacha, we are clearing for the past generations of our ancestors and future generations of our children.

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