From Alfonso Domingo's "The Mother of the Voice in the Ear"

(a reminder of where our dreams are taking us!)

Once there was a time when humanity was not alone on the earth, a time when we were companions of lightning and rain, water and fire. A new burning, vigorous blood used to run through our veins. Our eyes had a calm, tender light. The secret of strength could be found on our foreheads. This strength was remote and powerful, as constant as the wind that chisels shapes on rocks, a cyclical and animated energy that was always distinct in terms of its uniformity, like the waves of an infinite sea that is never sad.

There was an era, once, when the moon used to speak and the sun brought everyone a new day like a newly-made wonder. At night, you could read the sky, and the stars were more than just lit and distant points.

At that time, humanity considered itself not an owner, but yet another creature, and it participated in the profound and intimate order of things. In that age, humanity could see the invisible thread that united it with other creatures and could pronounce the secret name of trees and plants, the one that should only be proclaimed in their company and their presence in order to feel their tenuous heartbeat, the green, subtle and vital breath that pushes them off the earth and lifts them to greater heights.

The Mother of the Voice of the Ear has taken me to that remote epoch, lost in the night of time, when humanity possessed that special gift in its gaze and on its skin. The human gaze knew, knew the stones and rocks, each mineral and its virtues, merely by passing eyes and mind along their edges; by walking over them, by touching them with hands and caressing their surface. It knew about colors and tones, shadows and shinings.

At that time, humanity could call the animals and distinguish in the night their sounds and their songs, their fears of death, their struggles and dialogues. Life was not something absurd and incomprehensible. We knew the instruction manual of the world. Original sin meant losing that gaze.

--Alfonso Domingo, “The Mother of the Voice in the Ear,” (1991) in Ayahuasca Reader, (Ed. Luis Eduardo Luna and Steven F. White), 2000, p. 217.