I do not know if past lives exist and I do not seek, in this article, to persuade you that they do, I merely seek to tell you about a recent ‘connection’ I experienced with another soul. I can offer you no name or concrete evidence of this particular soul ever having existed, so you might choose to see this account as merely a flight of fantasy. As ever, with my ongoing shamanic journey, what I am interested in is not so much the chance to offer ‘proof’ of something supernatural to you but rather to impart what I learned from my own unique experience. Feel free to have your own experience and then to go on to interpret it in whichever manner you so choose.
Shamans across the world actually differ in their opinion on the subject of reincarnation, although the Quero seem much more inclined than most to believe in it. In a world in which physicists have established that energy never vanishes but goes on in some form or another, in which biologists are beginning to acknowledge that some memories might be encoded in our DNA, in which mathematicians tell us that parallel universes are now a certainty, I personally think that at least some ‘connection’ with past lives might be possible.
Aren’t those moments of deja vu interesting, though? And how often have you met a precocious child and heard someone remark that they are ‘an old soul’? Many people who visit Peru, in particular, experience the oddest feeling that they have been there before. Indeed, Chris Waters often talks about leading trips to Peru as, “bringing people home”.
For my own part, on my trip to Peru in 2015 I climbed Wayna Picchu and felt a strong attachment to that particular mountain. In later journeys and visions I saw myself as a priest, living on the mountain and descending each morning and evening to ‘oversee’ the rising and setting of the sun.
Of course, when you visit that extraordinary place, it’s rather lovely to imagine that you once lived amongst the Inca there, perhaps even holding an important role, isn’t it? And don’t people who experience past lives frequently remember lives as Napoleon but rarely as a minor player in history? Is, then, citing knowledge of a past life just an odd version of wish fulfilment?
Perhaps. But what if you begin to experience glimpses into a past life which is not heroic? What if history might even judge the part you played as villainous, even evil? How would you feel about that?
Shamans are positively encouraged to embrace their shadow selves, so shouldn’t we embrace such lives, as warmly as we would lives of great nobility? When we experience such connections, I think that we really need to ask ourselves, what are we unwilling to see and what might we learn from a part of ourselves that we have previously obscured or rejected?
When I first visited Peru in 2015 I had a wonderful time amongst places which seemed to radiate positive, even sacred energy. Yet there was one place where I felt extremely uncomfortable – Sacsayhuaman, an Incan citadel on the northern outskirts of Cusco. Much of the fighting between the Inca and the invading conquistadors was in and around this site, particularly when the puppet Emperor, Manco Inca, lay siege to Cusco. I felt considerable unease upon my first visit there but I imagined that it must just be because of the landscape’s blood-soaked history. Those of us who open ourselves up to this work, strive to be more empathic, so it stands to reason that places of death and destruction will affect us, quite as much as those which were built to celebrate life and harmony.
Sometime before my return visit to Peru in 2016, however, I began to entertain the notion that my unease with Sacsayhuaman was not because, as I had supposed, I held some affinity with the slaughtered Inca, but, on the contrary, because I had some sort of connection with the invading conquistadors.
I did not understand how this could be. I’m a nice guy, I try to do good in the world – how could I have a connection to a group of people who so horribly violated a culture for which I felt such an affinity and love?
Other strange feelings surfaced when our journey began. My friend, shaman and fellow traveller, Claire Kedward, began to feel that we had some connection in this period of history but she felt that we had been on opposing sides. We also began to sense that there might have been some kind of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story to this past relationship and an increasing horror that we might have been responsible for each other’s death. If we were not directly responsible, we suspected that we had at least been involved in a battle on opposing sides and that neither of us had survived this event. I also felt that we would find more answers when we visited Sacsayhuaman together.
Interestingly, Claire had quite an extreme reaction to my purchase of a ‘power staff’ at Pisac, as it slightly resembled a spear, and she felt particularly uncomfortable when I ‘armed’ myself with it. I wondered how our friendship might be affected as this particular story unfolded for us, as I sensed it soon would. I also looked around our coach and wondered if anyone else was involved in this story. Was there a reason that this particular group was on this particular journey? Chris, for instance, often expressed a dislike of Sacsayhuaman and there was an extraordinary moment on this trip where she was refused entry to the site, her entry pass having become damaged by the deluge at Killarumiyoq the previous night. I wondered if the fates were conspiring to block her entry to the citadel because they recognised a past connection, like mine, to the conquistadors?
Entering Sacsayhuaman, I felt the same unease as the previous year but I noticed that it was particularly projected towards the more fortified right hand side of the site. Climbing up the steps on the left hand side, I found that I felt much more at ease. Claire and I got a strong sense that there had once been a bridge between the two sites. I thought of the site as being like two hemispheres of the human brain and considered the havoc that is caused when the corpus callosum (the biological ‘bridge’ between the two hemispheres of the brain) is damaged. Following Claire’s suggestion, we visualised a rainbow bridge connecting the two halves of the citadel and a further sense of calm ensued.
Reaching the top of the left hand side of Sacsayhuaman, I suddenly knew that this was where I had died. Or where, at least, the conquistador with whom I had some kind of affinity had died. Leaning against a rock I wondered upon what, knowing that I was encountering my very last moments upon this earth, I might have gazed?
Would I have looked towards the great city of Cusco to my right, towards the other half of the mighty citadel below, or towards the setting sun?
Then I saw the great, snowy-white peak of the mountain (or ‘Apu’) Ausangate in the distance and I knew, instinctively, that, yes, this is what I would have chosen to look at in my last moment – that beautiful mountain…
As I lay there, I wondered, again, why on earth I felt I might have any kind of connection with a conquistador.
Some shamans believe that we choose a particular life in order to learn something new and I began to wonder if choosing the life of a conquistador had been a conscious decision. When the Inca first saw the conquistadors arriving, they had not seen ships before and thought that these strange people who miraculously emerged from the sea must be gods. This notion was reinforced by the conquistadors’ gleaming armour and by their muskets, which seemed to reproduce thunder. Their behaviour, too, was incomprehensible to the Inca – they slaughtered men, women and children, yet they said they came in peace and at the command of a benevolent God. Thus, I began to wonder if a wise, old shaman, perhaps even the one I had felt an affinity with on Wayna Picchu, had decided that, when his life came to an end, he would choose to be re-born as one of the mysterious invaders, in order that he might better comprehend them.
I certainly felt that there was much reluctance in my conquistador, that he had not been a ‘natural’ conqueror but that he had accepted that he was a soldier and that he had orders, which he must follow. That does not excuse the atrocities he might have committed but it certainly helped me to empathise with him. Perhaps, though, if he were a reincarnation of that wise, old shaman, he still retained some sense of his previous connection to the Inca, which served to encourage his love for Claire’s Incan woman? Perhaps this sense of a connection had also fuelled his unease at the way the Inca were being treated by his people?
We entered the long tunnel beneath the left hand side’s fortifications, which is in complete darkness and which plays very much on fears of claustrophobia and of death. One of our group had a mild panic attack but I reassured her and we all assisted her in making the unnerving journey. However, instead of the euphoria which she and many others felt upon being ‘born again’ into the light at the far end, I experienced a sudden and extreme headache. Luckily, Chris alerted our friend and shaman, Chino, who placed his hands at my temples and worked quickly, as if he were extracting thorns from my skull. I felt enormous relief, as the intense headache cleared within moments.
Soon after this, however, I began to dwell upon my conquistador’s fears at the moment of his death. I worried that, if he had been alone, as I felt he was, that his own Catholic upbringing might have led him to fear dying without being given final absolution but, even stronger, I felt that if he had some sense of connection to the Incan traditions, through a previous incarnation, he would also fear that he was not receiving the shamanic death rites. Perhaps, then, my own fear of death in this life was linked to this moment, of having once died, whilst afraid?
When we reached Lake Titicaca, I was lucky enough to be offered a private shamanic session with Chino and, feeling unnerved and exhausted by my recent experiences at Sacsayhuaman, I eagerly accepted. Peruvian shaman work in a slightly different manner to shamans who practice our westernised version of their healing techniques (although there is, naturally, much that crosses over) – there is no discussion, instead they work fast and intuitively. As Chino worked, I had a strong vision of him having been present at the death of my conquistador. Whether Chino was projecting himself into this particular moment in time, or whether he had been present in the form of his own ancestor or a previous incarnation, I could not be certain, but I knew that his presence there was very soothing. I realised that my conquistador was getting the rites that he had craved at the point of death and that these now allowed him to pass over gently and without any fear. History, or ‘his story’, depending on your point of view, was being re-written. Whatever the case, the palpable sense of relief the conquistador felt rippled back into my own time stream, so that, when I opened my eyes at the end of the session, I felt that an enormous burden had been taken off my shoulders and I positively floated down the hotel corridor to my bedroom, to enjoy a very deep and contented sleep.
Upon my return home, I began to research the conquistadors, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of their actions and of what had motivated them. I became angry at reading of treaties broken, confidences betrayed and massacres perpetrated. However, I loved the story of Atahualpa, who, upon being told by a priest that the bible was ‘the word of God’, had thrown down the book in disgust, since, when he had held it to his ear, it had refused to speak to him. Atahualpa was used to the notion of ancestors and sacred places speaking directly to him but this bible was impertinently silent!
Atahualpa’s actions, however, enraged the conqueror, Pizarro, and led immediately to a terrible massacre and, ultimately, to Atahualpa’s own execution and the fall of the Incan Empire. A misunderstanding in how the gods communicate with us, then, led directly to the destruction of an Empire.
I considered the desire for atonement. I read about the conquistadors building the church of Santo Domingo upon the foundations of Coricancha – the temple of the Sun at Cusco. This served to create a mighty symbol of the oppression of an entire culture, which continues to stir controversy and debate into the present day. Ought not the Church seek to atone by agreeing to the tearing down of Santo Domingo, so that the temple of the Sun might be restored? It is obviously very unlikely but many Peruvians would like nothing better.
I asked myself questions about what it meant to wield power over others? I wondered, if I were in the shoes of a conquistador, whether I would have reacted any differently, caught up in the lust for conquest and gold, driven by a fanatical devotion to the church, as the only ‘true’ religion? However misguided, I concluded that they must have believed that what they were doing was right and just. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I realised that it was all too easy to condemn, I had to strive to understand.
So, whether you believe that I once had a previous life as a conquistador, or whether you believe that this was all a flight of my imagination, or whether you think that it represents some kind of connection with my subconscious, I have to say that I don’t think that it really matters! Whatever might be the truth, I think that it provided me with a fascinating journey into the shadows and it certainly inspired me to discover more about the history of the Incan people and, indeed, the conquistadors, who, unsuccessfully, sought their eradication from history.
Finally, I sought forgiveness from and attempted to understand my conquistador, so that, wearing a replica of a conquistador’s helmet and holding a replica of Pizarro’s sword, I no longer felt shame but, instead, a sense of inner peace. It is time to welcome this particular shadow part home and to move on from that past life, in order that I might better live my own.