The original trip to receive the warning was ominously interrupted by the Covid pandemic. On December 4th of 2021, after meticulous health precautions, I set out in search of the spiritual leader (Mama) of a very remote Kogi community. It turned out to be one of the most physically rigorous and spiritually important adventures of my life.

Backing up in time, well before my trip, a 1990 BBC and award winning documentary producer, Alan Ereira, made contact with this same tribe. His charge was to receive and disseminate a message to help us realize that if we failed to understand the consequences of our technologically driven and earthdetached way of life, there would be egregious consequences to humankind.

The Kogi -- descendants of the ancient Tairona culture -- have long observed how intruders continuously represented a threat to them, to their very existence. So meeting with Ereria was considered a desperate attempt to garner cooperation from the industrialized populations living below them.

Ereira’s remarks about the Kogi were pointed and terse. He straightforwardly interpreted the Kogi’s view of us as moral idiots, greedy beyond comprehension, concerned only with immediate gratification. We are regarded as primitive and backward, unable to think on our own or communicate with the spirit world. Our manmade technologies substitute for original thinking which keeps us detached from the guiding Mother.

This farming culture believes they must maintain a strict barrier between them and people living at lower elevations. In Ereira’s book, The Heart of the World, he described the Kogi as mysterious people in hiding. They feared outsiders who would likely, as history showed, push them from their mountain haven and further pillage their sacred cultural artifacts. As a result, the Kogi developed a culture of silence and secrecy. Communication with the lower world was strictly forbidden. Their way of life had to be strictly concealed. Today that is changing, slightly.

Some of the most traditional communities are on the unvisited backside and at the highest altitude of a national park. Through an enlarged consciousness from their home atop the world, the Kogi assert Younger Brother is undermining the natural balance and survival of the planet, physically and morally. They regard their role as being guardians of the world, residing on what they believe is Mother’s pulsing heart.

Much of the region’s wildlife has been pushed upslope where it can safely coexist alongside the Kogi who do not hunt. The result is an unnatural game preserve. The tribe’s homeland has evolved into something like an historical and philosophical preserve. And what the Kogi observe from this sentinel vantage point is the retreat of ice fields, lakes that have dried up, vegetation now growing in foreign places, but not a jaguar to be seen.

With this backdrop I was bewildered upon learning the area Mama was willing to receive me, the first American to ever visit the village. One of my tasks, as the spiritual leader described it, was to carry their urgent message to large groups.

Some restraints were placed on my assignment. Details of their location, for instance, would prudently be left unidentified. Voyeuristic and scavenging Westerners might find ways to climb to their communities only to result in this, their last sanctuary, being trashed like the valleys below. The name of the Mama will also be left out of my writings and speeches so as to discourage people from trying to visit him.

Being a very quiet and isolated people, they are loath to come down from the mountain and approach the Younger Brothers and their mechanized world. Their gaze, unlike ours, is not to screens and distracting toys, but to the physical environment – our very real Mother. But today they do cautiously concede our technology could possibly be used for protective purposes.

One day at sundown, as blood sucking mosquitos swarmed around the Mama and myself, he casually waved them away. He likened the insects to modern human extractive practices and our addiction to distracting technologies.

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Ancient stone formations with carvings dating back to the Tairona era still exist. The Mama led me to a heavily forested area and quietly enjoined me to assist him in pulling away years of vegetation that enshrouded an astonishing archaeological relic that previously was kept hidden from the world.

 The antiquity was about five feet high by three feet wide and revealed carved symbols identifying ancient ancestors, esteemed leaders whose spirits and skeletal remains rest just below snowcapped peaks. A reverent ceremony was performed. Together we sang in the ancient Tairona language, summoning the ancestor’s presence, honoring sacred old ways, and committing ourselves to protecting Mother going forward.

Upon viewing the stone artifact from my knees – what the Mama instructor called a “book” that retained ancient memories -- I was asked to transmit my intentions and deliberations into two small stones he placed in my hands. Later, with my thoughts being absorbed by the rock, the stones were inserted into a fissure that would merge my thinking with the knowledge of the long departed elders. My pledges would become part of a living and expanding memory on the mountain suggesting how generations past, present, and future would work collectively for a magnanimous cause, the preservation of all life forms on this planet.

The mountains are regarded as energetic links to an enormous layered universe - - above and below. Each family hut has two wooden stakes projecting from the roof that face in the direction of two prominent sacred peaks and a connecting piece between the stakes. The symbolism is significant: we must all merge with powers beyond our imagination. But clarifying visions, born of meditations, must be attempted. We are to recognize our primeval connections and how one weak link can cause the world to crumble.

I submit, admittedly with slight embarrassment, the reason the Mama chose to share the Kogi history, mission, and relics with me was because of what the Mama perceived as an “evolved energy” sensed before and immediately upon my arrival. This occurred without looking into my eyes but for a few brief moments, as that is not his primary way of divining information. Instead he sat quietly nearby stirring water in a bowl awaiting clearness.

It is the Mama’s worldview, if humans fall out of harmony due to their inattentiveness, sickness certainly follows and people may be cast off Mother, much like a pandemic might ensure. If we maintain the current posture of defiance rather than defense of nature’s functions, personal and worldly destruction will commence.

Mamas are regarded as the enlightened ones of the tribe and recognize from their urgent viewpoint unified help is required to sustain nature’s balance. He asked for my support and from all those I could reach.

This culture aligns itself with a vast guiding intelligence, Aluna, an ordering and regulating consciousness. Aluna is the Mother of all, the essential life force infused in all planetary life. She allows the Kogi to think in far-reaching cosmic terms, remembering the past, and recognizing patterns that illuminate an ethically sustainable future.

Each adult male carries a poporo in his hands, a gourd filled with baked and ground sea shells that yield lime. They continuously probe and stroke the gourd -- a form of meditation. Frequently the stirring stick is licked when the lime activates a wad of coca leaves under their lips. The repetitious process has a meditative and stimulating effect.

The chemical combination is seen as a medicine for their high altitude environs. Imbibing it they can walk for miles on steep trails carrying heavy loads, rarely succumbing to fatigue. With the mind remaining active, time can be spent meditating for very long periods, aligning one’s small self with the giant universe and primordial forces. One young man recalled going five days without sleep and with little appetite while remaining very active.

They remain steadfast to an age-old and transcendent belief system passed on by an oral tradition. It is continuously contemplated, kept alive through evening discussions in a dark ceremonial hut and through private divination with poporo in hand. Aluna creates a connecting bridge between human spirit and the entire universe. This mysticism could easily be dismissed as superstition by contemporary society because of our short term memory and limited planning. From their perspective, high in the Sierra Nevada Range, a quiet certainty lives on. This is a culture that reveres the Mother and is holding out for moral solutions to the declining health of the planet.

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My Kogi interpreter was the third child, a male, of an anticipated seven offspring. In that sequence, immediately upon birth, a child is whisked away to a cave where it is left unattended in the dark. The numbers portend a Mama is in the making. Accordingly, if the infant strongly survives the first night, thereafter he will be isolated in a hut for nine years.

There, in continuous darkness, his teachers and appointed caregivers – which may not include parents – will guide his visionary development. Traveling in the dreamworld, the initiate learns never to confuse the physical world with the Real World – the greater consciousness of Aluna. With primordial lessons learned, he emerges well on his way to being a Mama. Feeling an overwhelming awe over what was once only imagined, it is now seen in its florid magnificence. Thereafter he devotes a lifetime to reverently protecting Mother and all Her inhabitants.

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I hope readers will be inclined to regularly step back from addictive technologies and spend increased time outdoors. Listen carefully while surrounded by silence and in darkness. You may feel reassurance recognizing you are an integral part of something immense, a life sustaining energy, Aluna. The recipient of expanded consciousness.

As disease and climate change ravage the planet and its inhabitants I, like the Kogi, search for hope. My thoughts go to Jane Goodall who reminds me that each of us has a role to play in our planet’s survival, no matter how small. Every day we can impact Mother’s health by thoughtful acts. And the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions can make a difference. Join the Kogi movement.

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Additional Reading:

The Elder Brothers: A Lost South American People and Their Wisdom by Alan Eriera