The Love Affair between Plastic Shaman Alberto Villoldo and New Age Pseudoscientist Gregg Braden
A new player in the plastic shaman theatre is, among many, "Shaman Durek" - Yet Another American New Thought Missionary (A Critique), who preaches the prosperity gospel of the New Thought movement, the “Fake It Till You Make It” mantra, and the self-love gospel of the “Me Generation”.
Another one, which I will make a bit more out of, because he is a bit more profound, is Alberto Villoldo. Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., is a Cuban-born psychologist, medical anthropologist and author, writing primarily in the field of neo-shamanism. He graduated in 1969 with a bachelor's degree in Inter-American Studies, followed by a master's degree in psychology in 1972, and a doctoral degree in psychology at the Humanistic Psychology Institute, now known as Saybrook University. His thesis advisor was Dr. Stanley Krippner, with whom he later co-authored Healing States: A Journey Into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism. While on the faculty of San Francisco State University, Villoldo founded and directed the Biological Self Regulation Laboratory at San Francisco State University, where he investigated the effects of energy healing on blood and brain chemistry. Villoldo cites a number of key mentors, who he says shared their Shamanic knowledge with him through his years in Peru and the Amazon. Controversy surrounds Villoldo's brand of participatory engagement as contrasted with the less participatory anthropological approach. See: Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasies, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans. By Robert. J. Wallis. London: Routledge, 2003, pg 199. Also Donald Joralemon: The Selling of the Shaman and the Problem of Informant Legitimacy, in Shamanism: Critical Concepts in Sociology edited by Adrei Znamenski,: Routledge, 2004 Villoldo also founded The Four Winds Society, "Where Modern Science Meets Ancient Wisdom." Here they offer energy medicine training: “A unique training that combines cutting-edge neuroscience with ancient shamanic teachings and practices”. You often see Villoldo performing online with a lot of the known promoters of new age scientism, as for example Bruce Lipton and Gregg Braden. A Two-day seminar with Bruce Lipton and Alberto Villoldo, “Beyond the body-mind – the emerging new human”, is described on his website like this: A renaissance in cellular biology has revealed the molecular mechanisms bridging the mind-body. Once thought to be in the domain of the genes, the control of health and behavior is now dynamically linked to the environment, and more importantly, to our perception of the environment. Learn all about the biology of personal empowerment and how you thrive in a world of change at this weekend seminar with the world’s two leading teachers Bruce Lipton and Alberto Villoldo. In that connection, read my article: Bruce Lipton and His Pseudoscientific Manifesto for American Evolutionary Supremacy. I will introduce you to Alberto Villoldo´s own New Age re-programming technique (brainwashing) in his book, The Wisdom Wheel – a Mythic Journey Through the Four Directions – by introducing another of his friends, Gregg Braden, and his new book, The Wisdom Codes – Ancient Words to Rewire Our Brains and Heal Our Hearts. Because the techniques, and the behind lying New Thought ideology, are the same. However, I have debunked Gregg Braden thoroughly in my ebook: Gregg Braden and the Rise of New Age Scientism (Scientism Critique: Part 3). Therefore you will, in that book, get a larger image of the ideas which also are lying behind Villoldo. I will not go deep into Braden´s new book, because all his books are build over the same template (perhaps they are written by using AI?). On his website Villoldo is presenting Gregg Braden with a special page: The Wisdom Codes – free masterclass with Gregg Braden – and the subtitle: Change Your Emotional Frequency on Demand! And: Gregg Braden takes us on a journey back in time to discover ancient power phrases our ancestors used in times of need. Uncover the neurolinguistic secrets of ancient texts and phrases our ancestors knew intuitively. Gregg will guide you on a heart-coherence practice to learn how to open your heart and harness the power of these ancient phrases… the Wisdom Codes. Quote by Gregg Braden: WE HAVE ALWAYS TURNED TO WORDS IN TIMES OF NEED. THEY GIVE US THE ABILITY TO DEAL WITH WHATEVER IT IS THAT LIFE BRINGS TO OUR DOORSTEP. And the page continues: Discover the science behind the healing and manifesting powers of special, chosen-for-you words, phrases, chants, parables and more. Practice word patterns embedded within ancient texts that hold the power to change how you navigate life’s greatest challenges. Unlock the Wisdom Codes for beauty and learn how to embrace and celebrate beauty as a supreme force of nature. In the book Braden begins in the usual way: New discoveries in biology and neuroscience are revealing how the structure of language – the words we think and speak – can change the way the neurons in our brains and hearts connect. But our ancestors understood this connection intuitively. They encoded powerful healing word-patterns in prayers, chants and sacred writings to preserve them for future generations. Braden is hereafter presenting the “scientifically proven” discoveries in biology and neuroscience. And here he pulls a worn out rabbit up from his magic hat: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. I won´t go into it. I have already examined all this in my article: Constructivism – The Postmodern Intellectualism Behind New Age and the Self-help Industry. I will just quote: …Unfortunately there arised a myth, which, according to Favrholdt [David Favrholdt, my professor in philosophy], has shown to be the most firm lie in the 20 century science, namely: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is about, that the Hopi Indians in New Mexico have a quite other language than ours, and therewith quite other concepts about time and space, concepts, which even should be closer to the theory of relativity than our own concepts about it. It has since shown, that this hypothesis has no foundation in reality. So, as usually Braden is basing his books on New Age pseudo-scientific nonsense, covered in an extremely well-articulated way. The problem is of course, that he combines this nonsense with ancient wisdom, and thereby utterly distorting it. I will quote two reviews of his book on Amazon, which are very precise: Review 1) I had hoped this book would shed light on some scientific research behind various spiritual practices - that was not to be. Any relevant information is very sparse and almost anecdotal. What is extremely frustrating is the very complex mantras as prayers offered in various languages with zero information about how to pronounce them! I speak three languages and have some facility in three more, including Sanskrit. Pronunciation matters, especially if you are claiming to be able to use these sacred words for something in particular. This reeks of cultural appropriation to me - just take what you like and use it as you please, without regard for tradition or consequences. Review 2) This read is actually a religious (mostly christian but utilising any religion at hand) insidious brainwashing. It's raisin d'etre appears to be to appeal as many christians, Buddhists, new age gurus, and Spiritual By passers as possible for sales and game. Attempting to use language (nothing new here) to sell under the premise the author can teach you language (nothing original or new about that idea either) to change your life. I would says a bit like the missionaries, to convert us all to God fearing Christians. Avoid the book and this guy! The problem is worst in the sense of brainwashing. The use of The Wisdom Codes will involve intentional manipulation of behavior in combination with the inducing of Braden´s worldview (The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis as the “scientific” background for his New Thought worship). When using this worldview, in combination with The Wisdom Codes, the codes, no matter what kind, comes to work as hypnosis. See my articles: Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) and Large Group Awareness Training (LGAT), The New Thought movement and the law of attraction Hypnosis, hypnotherapy, and the art of self-deception However, on Facebook, Villoldo is writing: We are all for familiar with the saying, "you are what you think you are". But have you ever had the experience of reading something profound, feeling its truth, but forgetting it the very next minute? Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to incorporate these teachings into our everyday lives? In a real and lasting way? Gregg Braden's latest scientific discoveries reveal that the words we choose to think and speak can change the way the neurons in our brains and hearts connect and behave. Our ancestors understood this connection intuitively and created specific word-patterns to provide comfort, healing, strength, and inner power in difficult times. They encoded these powerful words in prayers, chants, mantras, hymns, and sacred writings to preserve them for future generations.” In this exclusive Masterclass, Gregg Braden reveals techniques that unlock the wisdom behind his collection of power phrases. You will learn how they can bring you comfort and strength when life gets challenging. Just tap on the link below to join for free: https://thefourwinds.krtra.com/t/dis3XmfunAdT So, Villoldo is beginning his book, The Wisdom Wheel, in precisely the same style as Braden. He is introducing us to quantum mysticism, and hereafter to the same New Thought idea that our thoughts create reality. All this is combined with his traveling, his postulations about his shamanic teachers, and ancient myths. And the result is the same: brainwashing. Read my article: Quantum Mysticism: The Greatest Hoax in the 20th Century Besides his books, he is behind some very beautiful oracle card decks, as for example The Mystical Shaman´s Oracle, and The Shaman´s Dream Oracle. In the latter I suddenly stumbled upon a card named: Galactic Mushroom – The Divine Matrix. It worked! Suddenly my memory returned to my debunking of Braden´s book: The Divine Matrix. And hereafter I was quite convinced that you can experience The Divine Matrix by taking a galactic mushroom trip. On the forum of NAFPS – New Age Frauds and Plastic Shamans, the Administrator, educatedindian; writes about Alberto Villoldo: We have four other threads in here mentioning exploiters that got their training from him or claim endorsement from him but don't have a gothread explaining why he's a fraud. Iggy, there's a number of reasons why Villoldo is clearly a fraud, one of the worser ones in my opinion because of the amount of damage he's done. He's an exploiter in academia, along the lines of Castaneda, Harner, Martin Prechtel, and Mehl Madrona, which means that he knows better and just doesn't care, and also that he tries to use his academic credentials to promote the acceptance of this kind of exploitation. Like Harner, he's one of the so-called core shamanism people. There are a number of threads in here on the topic that I'd urge you to look at. Yet at the same time he claims to have been trained by alleged (and always unnamed) elders in Qero Peru. Qero is the Sedona of Latin America, a mecca for Nuage falsehoods, dubious claims, silliness, and wishful thinking. Anything or anyone claiming to come from either place should be taken with a whole plateload of salt. LIke Castaneda, most of what Villoldo passes off as Native is actually from Asian traditions, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Taoism. Both men count on their victims being ignorant of not only NDN beliefs, but Asian ones too. The next post will go into that fraud's site in detail. The main reason for the rise of plastic shamanism is probably due to one American anthropologist, the already mentioned Michael Harner. I must admit, that I again is puzzled over how one person, apparently for no other reason that he is an American, can gather such global influence; because, philosophical seen, his work is a philosophical shipwreck. It is a reductionism. It claims to be founded on anthropology, and claims that New Age is a science and not an ideological movement (we will return to this). Many would probably claim that, though they might not agree with everything Harner says, then he has made a global awareness of shamanism. This is not true, though he doesn´t hesitate claiming this himself. It is only recently I have read his book. And it struck me that a person with a genuine shamanic awakening/illness wouldn´t have found any support in it. You can find explanations in books by Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade. I have explained Campbell other places, and will return to Eliade later. What Harner has created is the rise of plastic shamanism. Walsh and Grob note in their book, Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics: "Michael Harner is widely acknowledged as the world's foremost authority on shamanism and has had an enormous influence on both the academic and lay worlds.... What Yogananda did for Hinduism and D. T. Suzuki did for Zen, Michael Harner has done for shamanism, namely bring the tradition and its richness to Western awareness." Critics such as Noel and Wallis have another opinion, and I agree. They believe Harner's work, in particular, laid the foundations for massive exploitation of indigenous cultures by "plastic shamans" and other cultural appropriators. Note, however, that Noel does believe in "authentic western shamanism" as an alternative to New Age shamanism. I agree. We have talked about that. In my view it is therefore necessary to discriminate between neoshamanism (or neopaganism) and New Age Shamanism. Because people are still experiencing traditional shamanic awakenings, and this must of course come into being in a new form. "Core Shamanism", which formed the foundations for most contemporary New Age shamanism, is a system of practices synthesized, invented and promoted by Harner in the 1980s, based on his reading of anthropological texts about indigenous peoples in the Americas, primarily the Plains Indians. Harner, who was not himself indigenous to the Americas, asserted that the ways of several North American tribes share "core" elements with those of the Siberian shamans. Many non-Native American readers believe that Harner's ideas were representative of actual traditional indigenous ceremonies, when they were not actually very accurate according to subsequent critics. Some members of these tribes assert that Harner's ideas or representations were not in any way accurate, nor do they call their spiritual leaders "shamans”. Harner professes to describe common elements of "shamanic" practice found among indigenous people world-wide, having stripped those elements of specific cultural content so as to render them "accessible" to contemporary Western spiritual-seekers. Harner also founded the Foundation for Shamanic Studies which claims to aid indigenous people preserve or even re-discover their own spiritual knowledge. Core shamanism claims that it does not hold a fixed belief system, but instead focuses on the practice of "shamanic journeying." When looking closer at it, you´ll find that it heavely relies on the novels of Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda was a best-selling author of a number of books centering on a Mexican Yaqui brujo (witch, sorcerer, or shaman) and his pharmacologically induced visions. He called the brujo Don Juan Matus. Castaneda claimed he was doing anthropology, that his books were not fiction. He was granted a Ph.D. by the UCLA Anthropology Department in 1973 for his third book, Journey to Ixtlan. Critics say the work is not ethnographically accurate and is a work of fiction. Furthermore, core shamanism includes the use of rapid drumming in an attempt to attain "the shamanic state of consciousness," ritual dance, and attempted communication with animal tutelary spirits, called "power animals" by Harner." In the introduction to his book The Way of the Shaman we see all the basic New Age stuff, and how New Age is rooted in postmodernism (see my article Constructivism: the Postmodern Intellectualism behind New Age and the Self-help industry). Postmodernism doesn´t discriminate between fact and fiction; in fact, it believes that everything is fiction. This is why Harner can believe that it doesn´t matter whether Castaneda´s books are fiction or not. All other accounts of Shamanism are also just fictions. What he then believes, is that there is a common core in all these fictions. We also see the glaring contradictions typical for postmodernism. For example, Harner sincerely believes he is doing a good job. He writes: Ten years has passed since the original edition of this book appeared, and they have been remarkable years indeed for the shamanic renaissance [plastic shamanism, that is]. Before then, shamanism was rapidly disappearing from the Planet as missionaries, colonists, governments, and commercial interests overwhelmed tribal peoples and their ancient cultures. During the last decade, however, shamanism has returned to human life with startling strength, even to urban strongholds of Western “civilization,” such as New York and Vienna. This resurgence has come so subtly that most of the public is probably unaware that there is such a rich thing as shamanism, let alone conscious of its return. There is another public, however, rapidly growing and now numbering in the thousands in the United States and abroad, that has taken up shamanism and made it a prat of personal daily life. Harner presents the problem of that shamanism is about to disappear, and blames the missionaries, colonialists, governments, and commercial interests, but it never occurs to him, that he himself, and his movement of Core shamanism, represents every single of these problems, maybe except governments. We have already shown how. Hereafter he goes on with another New Age aspect, the aversion towards religion. He writes: One reason for the increasing interest for shamanism is that many educated, thinking people have left the Age of Faith [written with upper-case letters] behind them […] Notice how this is a rhetoric trick which resembles that of Atheist fundamentalism. In the next sentence is presented the aversion towards tradition: […] They no longer trust ecclesiastical dogma and authority to provide them with adequate evidence of the realms of the spirit or, indeed, with evidence that there is spirit. Secondhand or thirdhand anecdotes in competing and culture-bound religious texts from other times and places are not convincing enough to provide paradigms for their personal existence. They require higher standards of evidence […]. So, a lack of respect for tradition and therefore a lack of respect for the indigenous people he claims to support. In the following sentences he presents New Age scientism (pseudoscience) as a valuable “methodology.” Again this is fully in thread with atheist fundamentalism, and its science-fetishism: The “New Age” is partially an offshoot of the Age of Science [written in upper-case letters], bringing into personal life the paradigmatic consequence of two centuries of serious use of the scientific method. These children of the Age of Science, myself included, prefer to arrive firsthand, experimentally, at their own conclusions as to the nature and limits of reality. Shamanism provides a way to conduct these personal experiments, for it is a methodology, not a religion. So, what readers are instructed to believe, is that Harner´s Core shamanism is simply a scientific methodology. With his concepts of the “Age of Faith” and the “Age of Science”, Harner is creating a typical postmodern Newspeak trick. The name Newspeak is the name George Orwell gave the language, which the rulers in his dystopian novel 1984, had created. The intention with it is to control thinking, to make some ideas impossible to think, including concepts such as good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly. In this connection they are using concepts such as old-thinking and new-thinking, so that people get a feeling of guilt, everytime they use concepts within old-thinking. The rulers are doing this by connecting concepts within old-thinking with the word thought-crime. The overriding intention is of course to eliminate critical thinking, or said in another way: eliminating that people think for themselves. NewSpeak is today widespread in the positive thinking environment (which is rooted in the New Thought movement, and supported by postmodernism). A long line of “old” words – which according to the ideals of positive thinking – are negative, are in our society systematical being replaced with new, more “positive” sounding words. The idea is that you through thoughts and language can eliminate negativity and suffering. Let´s look at a concrete example of how Harner introduces postmodern NewSpeak in order to defend his Core Shamanism. Harner writes about the critics of Carlos Castaneda: To understand the deep-seated, emotional hostility that greeted the works of Castaneda in some quarters, one needs to keep in mind that this kind of prejudice is often involved [prejudice towards nonordinary states of mind]. It is the counterpart of ethnocentrism between cultures. But in this case it is not the narrowness of someone´s cultural experience that is the fundamental issue, but the narrowness of someone´s conscious experience. The persons most prejudiced against a concept of nonordinary reality are those who have never experienced it. This might be termed cognicentrism, the analogue in consciousness of ethnocentrism. It is staggering to see how he ignores those he claims to be an expert in, and a supporter of: namely the traditional shamans themselves. He is simply not taking their protests seriously. Harner does this in a way that borders to racism. If something could be termed ethnocentrism, it is this form of white American New Age shamanism. Instead he continues his contradictions in a paternal way: Anthropologists teach others to try to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism by learning to understand a culture in terms of its own assumptions about reality. Well, Core shamanism does the direct opposite, right? It involves cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture (White American New Age culture). Because of the presence of power imbalances that are a byproduct of colonialism and oppression, cultural appropriation is distinct from equal cultural exchange. Particularly in the 21st century, cultural appropriation is often considered harmful, and to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating, minority cultures, notably indigenous cultures and those living under colonial rule. Often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures' cultural and religious traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and songs. Let me continue with the concept of plastic shamanism: Among critics, the misuse and misrepresentation of indigenous intellectual property is seen as an exploitative form of colonialism, and one step in the destruction of indigenous cultures. The results of this use of indigenous knowledge have led some tribes, and the United Nations General Assembly, to issue several declarations on the subject. The Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality includes the passage: We assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any "white man's shaman" who rises from within our own communities to "authorize" the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians; all such "plastic medicine men" are enemies of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. Article 31 1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states: Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions. Many Native Americans have for example criticized what they deem to be cultural appropriation of their sweat lodge and vision quest ceremonies by non-Natives, and even by tribes who have not traditionally had these ceremonies. They also contend that there are higher safety risks when the ceremonies are conducted by non-Natives, pointing to deaths or injuries in 1996, 2002, 2004, and several high-profile deaths in 2009 (I have written about this in my article on the white New Age shaman, James Arthur Ray: James Arthur Ray and The Sweat Lodge Tragedy). In 2015, a group of Native American academics and writers issued a statement against the Rainbow Family members whose acts of "cultural exploitation... dehumanize us as an indigenous Nation because they imply our culture and humanity, like our land, is anyone's for the taking." We have seen that the critics Noel and Wallis also see Harner's teachings as based on cultural appropriation and a misrepresentation of the various cultures by which he claims to have been inspired. Geary Hobson sees the New Age use of the term "shamanism" as a cultural appropriation of Native American culture by white people who have distanced themselves from their own history. Harner wouldn´t care, because he would regard such critics as influenced by his own invented term: cognicentrism. He continues: Western shamans can do a similar service with regard to cognicentrism. The anthropologists´ lesson is called cultural relativism. What Western shamans can try to create, to some degree, is cognitive relativism. What does that mean? That means that the traditional shamanic experiences are relative, and that Core shamanism (relativism) is the absolute truth. The contradiction of relativism in a nutshell. What is implied in this is that traditional shamans, if they protest, must be seen in the light of ethnocentrism. Orwellian thought police comes to mind. A typical guilt by association trick. This is typical postmodernism. You can see this practiced in all universities today (in the end of my article Feminism as Fascism, I have included some links to the discussion of how the postmoderne thought police works on the universities). So, Michael Harner has an aversion towards tradition, especially religion, and as a typical New Ager he also has an aversion towards preparatory work. He writes about the shamanic method he advocates (which to his praise is drug free): Shamanic methods require a relaxed discipline, with concentration and purpose. Contemporary shamanism, like that in most tribal cultures, typically utilizes monotonous percussion sound to enter an altered state of consciousness. This classic drug-free method is remarkably safe. If practitioners do not maintain focus and discipline, they simply return to the ordinary state of consciousness. There is no preordained period of time of altered state of consciousness that would tend to occur with a psychedelic drug. So, the only alternative to his own idea of “nonordinary consciousness” is psychedelic drugs. He continues: At the same time, the classic shamanic methods work surprisingly quickly, with the result that most persons can achieve in a few hours experiences that might otherwise take them years of silent meditation, prayer, or chanting. For this reason alone, shamanism is ideally suited to the contemporary life of busy people […] Again, this is typically New Age. Take NLP for example (Neuro-linguistic Programming); NLP wants you to think that the only thing that separates the average person from Einstein or Pavarotti or the World Champion Log Lifter is NLP. Michael Harner wants you to believe that the only thing that separates you from a Shaman (no matter what culture this might be) is a Michael Harner workshop. And here you in addition get yourself a certificate, which even traditional shamans haven’t got…against money of course (traditional shamans never ever take money). This also opens the final question of what it is precisely he understands with his term “nonordinary consciousness”? Is that something he actually has experienced? Hardly. But as all other New Agers he speaks lecturing about something he hasn´t experienced. Don´t try to be a lecturer in nonordinary consciousness before you actually knows what is is about!!! Karma in that direction will be horrible. This article is an extract from my ebook: Plastic Shamanism versus the Traditional Shamanic Awakening Related: Philosophy of Mind |
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