Sacred Activism and the Memory of a Forgotten Rainforest Civilization

Editor’s Note: Any reference to dual suns or celestial imagery in this essay is intended symbolically, reflecting ancient cosmologies and archetypes, rather than as literal astronomy.

What if the real treasure of the Amazon rainforest is not only its biodiversity, but its memory of an ancient, highly advanced civilization?

The jungle is often described as wild and untamed, a place of raw beauty and unpredictable danger. But beneath the canopy, there is a deeper pulse of a coded intelligence embedded not only in plants and animals, but in human consciousness. An ancient evolutionary science, passed through Indigenous ceremonies and DreamWork, quietly enduring in the hearts of the original people who never forgot.

I’ve spent more than two decades immersed in this ancestral memory, guided by Indigenous elders who still walk the path of the star people. Their knowledge isn’t abstract or symbolic – it’s embodied, relational and ecological. A way of life that integrates breath, emotion, community, and environment into a precise map for human evolution.

This isn’t mythology, but a remembrance of humanity’s original superconscious state.

A civilization hidden in plain sight

Far from being untouched wilderness, the Amazon holds the remains of a once-vast and sophisticated civilization. LiDAR scans and recent archaeological findings confirm what many Indigenous elders have said all along: beneath the forest lies a network of causeways, ceremonial mounds, canals, and ancient urban centers – all signs of a civilization that cultivated complexity without conquest.

These weren’t empires in the traditional sense. Their legacy wasn’t only stone and scale, but rather, it was a refined understanding of how to live in extrasensory communion with the Earth and cosmos. Their monuments still whisper through the forest: in songs, in rituals, in medicine paths carried through unbroken lineages originating from the star people – the enlightened ancestors.

Some say they vanished. Others say they became the forest itself.

This excerpt from Beyond Ayahuasca may shine some light on how the global predicaments plaguing our planet and society today can be transformed:

When I asked Don Sinchi, the chief of the Yahua tribe how can humanity today remember, he remained quiet for a long moment, eyes closed, and then began speaking. “We must connect with the enlightened ancestors in order to forge a path for ourselves.”

“How do we do that?” I asked.

With a stern expression, he said, “Though there are many prophecies left to us from the primordial times, before humans declared war on this planet and themselves, they all have one thing in common. They all draw their origin from the time of enlightened ancestors, a time when humanity was free from suffering. There are many tribes here in the Amazon, all reminiscing about a time when our planet was revolving around two suns.”

Don Sinchi continued, and as our conversation deepened, I felt myself being transported to a time before time, when the legends of the ancestors were woven into people’s daily reality and the recorded chronicles of modern society were yet to be written, while greater wisdom permeated the world.

The Enlightened Ancestors

Don Sinchi explained, “As hard as it may be for people nowadays to believe, once upon a time, people of the world experienced a continuous state of love and harmony in peaceful communion with all of life. The legends state that while humanity was anchored in the boundless wisdom of the heart, there was no such thing as dis-ease. There was also no one to heal, because everyone was always healthy. Not knowing anything apart from a heart-centered state of being, people had no need for any traditions, rituals, or medicines. They were ceaselessly nourished by nature’s all-encompassing, majestic love, and experienced every moment of life to be deeply healing.

“As time went on, humanity slowly began to forget love as the highest purpose. The greater the collective amnesia got, the more suffering became unleashed on the world. As a consequence of people’s innate connection with nature becoming severed, the delicate balance of all life on our planet also became increasingly disturbed. After all, human civilization, with its cement jungles for cities and polluting technologies invading us today, began as an idea in people’s heads. The ‘progress’ of modernity is merely ephemeral if it’s destroying the delicate balance of life on this planet   . . . and eventually, itself.”

Don Sinchi smiled, nodding in confirmation, and continued: “Just as many traditions have charted humanity’s fall from grace through myths that delineated both missteps and redemption, the Amazonian legends also provided similar explanations for the dis-ease of collective spiritual amnesia . . . for our departure from love as our primary purpose. Some legends mention that humanity’s fall from grace coincided with one of the two suns that the Earth used to orbit, when it spiraled away into another galaxy.”

He went on to explain that it was during that legendary period that the vast majority of those who remembered themselves as love crossed into another realm of existence altogether. In that otherworldly realm, they were able to maintain a state of consciousness that the pandemic of forgetfulness could not touch. Spirit portals into that realm of enlightened ancestors were opened across the planet with a series of powerful ceremonies, unifying the intentions of millions of people. This region of the Amazon was one of them. There were reports of the conquistadors describing Spanish soldiers entering completely abandoned, empty settlements with no one for miles around and food still cooking on the stoves. Don Sinchi noted that his people referred to the portal in this region as Paititi, a name originating from an ancient pre-Inca civilization—the Tiahuanacu culture. The original meaning of the word Paititi translates to “the heart of all hearts” or “the greatest treasure a heart can desire.” (It was also the namesake for the Paititi Institute for the Preservation of the Environment and Indigenous Culture, which I co-founded as part of my commitment to embodying the awakened spirit of the individual through which planetary transformation is possible.)

The second interpretation of Paititi was especially misleading to many of the colonial explorers, whose hearts only knew greed for material possessions. For the indigenous people, however, the greatest treasure was the ancient heritage of infinite human potential.

Don Sinchi said, “After the mass exodus of the ancients, a few of the enlightened ancestors stayed behind, to help all those who got trapped in the limbo of oblivion. These noble souls remained here on Earth just long enough to initiate lineages of living wisdom as reminders of who we all really are. This was the greatest of all treasures entrusted to us by those lineages—an energetic blueprint for the realization of infinite human potential. Only by rekindling humanity’s primordial wisdom again and again can future generations be resuscitated from a spiritual coma amid the most severe global crisis that is yet to come.”

I looked at Don Sinchi with some confusion. I understood that there were prophecies across spiritual and religious traditions that point to a catastrophic event with the power to break or remake humanity in a new light. I wondered if this was what he meant.

He seemed to read my mind. “At the end of the enlightened era here in the rainforest, all the tribes still lived in harmony, guided by the very last of the remaining enlightened ancestors. The legendary spiritual forefather of our ancestral wisdom is still revered throughout the rainforest today by different names, like Shapuinguito, Shapi Shiko, or Yoshin Tayta. The legends say that he lived for thousands of years and was wise beyond measure. All of the tribes regarded him as their great chief and a medicine man of such magnitude that he could heal people with a blink of an eye.

“Shapuinguito was an exceedingly just and compassionate being of light. Inevitably, though, the day came when he foresaw a new era of greater darkness approaching the Earth. The benevolent king was very sad for his fellow humans, who kept forgetting themselves as conduits of Universal Love. He also knew then that his time on this planet was coming to an end, leaving him no choice but to continue his evolutionary journey beyond the stars. Summoning his closest friends, he informed them that, being the last of his kind, it was time for him to leave his earthly shell behind and join the rest of his people.

“The great king left behind one magical forest being, who was his apprentice to keep helping our Yahua people; his name is Mayantu, and we still receive his healing help and guidance to this day. Before departing, Shapuinguito foretold the time when ignorance and confusion would reach a boiling point all over the world. He said it would be the darkest hour right before the dawn. Our enlightened ancestor revealed to us that it was all part of our universal parents’ divine plan for catalyzing human evolution.

“Shapuinguito’s last instructions for his closest student were to bury his body in a specific location and wait for two sacred plants to grow on his tombstone. Alchemically merging these two plants together in a particular way would allow ordinary people to access the dimension of Paititi. Because Paititi was his final destination, he could be contacted there with the help of these sacred plants. People who could reach that sacred dimension would then get the same healing and wisdom they were getting from Shapuinguito when he was alive on Earth. More so, the great healer said that those two plants would only be effective when engaged skillfully, the way his closest apprentices were taught. Without his instructions, it would be futile to navigate the infinitely vast ocean of the Great Spirit to the realm of enlightened ancestors—a place where there is no time, and everything is known.”

Don Sinchi said that Shapuinguito, the last enlightened being of the rainforest, mentioned prior to his departure that although he was the last of his kind, there used to be many others like him, who’d also stayed behind all across the planet. I recognized that this concept was similar to the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the bodhisattva, someone who reaches enlightenment but delays leaving this earthly plane out of the compassionate desire to guide other suffering beings to their salvation. And perhaps it is no different from accounts of light beings and ascended masters who come to our planet in order to plant the seeds of liberation in hearts that ache for more than the push-and-pull between desire and aversion, which inevitably leads to suffering. I wondered whether these ancient, enlightened beings Don Sinchi was talking about had been in communication with one another with respect to how they could bring Universal Love back into human consciousness.

Don Sinchi explained that the last of the enlightened ancestors foresaw with great precision all the crucial evolutionary thresholds of humanity throughout time. Using clairvoyance, they collaborated on co-founding the lineages of living wisdom to keep the higher potential of humanity alive as a reminder to subsequent generations of humans. Different lineages across the world were designed to make distinct teachings and tools available at the right times, in ways that would be the most relevant to the collective evolutionary journey. Over time, these instructions were turned into the various spiritual traditions that are practiced today around the world. All of them had once been directly relevant to humanity’s original heritage and birthright, but eventually, spiritual amnesia brought dogma into the original wellsprings of living wisdom. As the teachings became concretized into specific “rules” and instructions, the direct experience of divine union that was so essential for the enlightened ancestors was eroded until it became practically absent.

I was curious about how the different lineages of the world could join together in a single stream of wisdom to awaken our human potential. It seemed to me that humans were too busy attempting to one-up each other to prove that their gods and traditions were more legitimate than anyone else’s. Understandably, many people in the secular West have a desire for connection with the sacred, but they are simultaneously disillusioned by the various “holy wars” that tend to obscure the bigger question: Can we, as one humanity, boldly step into our birthright of Universal Love to create a more harmonious world?

Don Sinchi responded, “Another prophecy of Shapuinguito is meant to be fulfilled when humanity reaches its darkest hour, when unseen chaos will run amok in people’s hearts. It will be during that time that the remaining ancestral lineages from all over the world will reunite, guiding humanity home to the original heaven on Earth. Our ancestral lineage will have an essential role in the final merger of planetary wisdom.”

As Don Sinchi shared, the Amazonian ancestral lineage is especially supported by nature’s capacity to bridge the practical with the spiritual. In the Amazon, human beings’ relationship with their true nature is made tangible. Mother Nature is the most evolved expression of Universal Love and consciousness, weaving the tapestry of life through all beings. According to Don Sinchi, Mother Nature’s evolutionary love is exponential because all life-forms hold her creative essence. Indeed, life on this planet is a tiny expression of her vast potential, which extends into the farthest corners of the universe.

I remembered what the elder said about Shapuinguito’s instructions to bury his body in a location where two plants would grow. “Don Sinchi, can you say more about the two plants you mentioned?”

He smiled. “Because ours is a wisdom lineage of direct experience, the two plants are mentioned in the prophecy as skillful instruments to help us fully face ourselves and remember our heritage as star beings, just like the enlightened ancestors who traversed the universe with the power of their consciousness.”

Don Sinchi explained what this meant. His great-grandfather, a powerful healer who was also the chief of the Yahua tribe, had shared that the ancestors of all the rainforest tribes were star people imbued with wisdom and light. Their unified civilization had birthed Evolutionary Science, which included the discipline of sacred plant medicines to help guide humanity through our collective dark night of the soul and back into the natural flow of life. Although I inquired as to the exact time period when Evolutionary Science had originated, Don Sinchi merely grinned at my naivete.

“Such spans of time cannot be measured in years,” he said. “My great-grandfather told me that this wisdom comes from time immemorial. It was bequeathed upon our nation by the star beings who, among many other mystical abilities, had tremendous powers to heal others.”

As Don Sinchi explained, the two sacred plants, Ayahuasca and Chakruna, were living proof of the Amazonian lineage, representing the complementary opposites of the universe, such as spirit and matter, without which life as we know it would not be possible. The two plants had to be cooked together in order for the medicine of Ayahuasca to be effective. Brought together harmoniously, they awaken the interdimensional nature of our being.

Ayahuasca is not the destination

In Beyond Ayahuasca, I share the story of my journey from escapism to apprenticeship. The title itself is an invitation to go deeper, beyond the growing global fascination with plant medicine, and into the ancestral context that gives these traditions their meaning.

Ayahuasca is powerful, but it was never meant to be central. Among the Yahua and other nations, it is one ally in a much wider matrix of transformation, woven with sacred dreaming, communal rites of passage, breath practices, and eco-somatic teachings passed through oral memory.

Without this living lineage, the medicine loses its root system.

Sacred activism without resistance

We live in a time of unraveling. Old paradigms are dissolving, and collective wounds rise to the surface. In this space of disorientation, the world doesn’t need more arguments. The world needs more remembering.

Sacred activism, in this light, is not about protest or resistance. It’s about living in a way that makes forgetting impossible. About honoring what truly sustains life: reciprocity, reverence, and rootedness.

The book itself is an offering, but it doesn’t stop at the page.

All proceeds directly fund the Yahua Ancestral School Initiative, a collaboration with one of the few remaining Yahua families deep in the Peruvian Amazon.

After escaping enslavement under Colombian rubber barons just a generation ago, their people now face the threat of cultural extinction.

The ancestral children’s school is a living sanctuary for their language, songs, medicinal knowledge, crafts, and values to be preserved and shared with the next generation – not as museum relics, but as tools of resilience.

This is reciprocity, not charity.

Echoes of a deeper future

What if the future of humanity depends on the memory of its original nations?

What if the guidance we need most doesn’t come from new technologies or ideologies, but from elders who’ve walked through greater darkness than ours and emerged with clarity and compassion?

In a time when meaning itself is dissolving, Beyond Ayahuasca is a living rite of passage. Not a solution, but a seed. Not a sermon, but a story that invites the reader to remember their place in the web of life.

Sometimes the most radical act is to sit by a fire, listen to the wind in the trees, and ask:

What did the forest remember… that we forgot?

With deep gratitude to Graham Hancock, whose profound dedication and scrupulous, unbiased scientific work in uncovering the true history of humanity and the Earth has been an immense affirmation and inspiration on my own path.