An Introduction to Gattak

Emerging from the Cave: My Inspiration for this World

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rises as a vast pyramid above the sea. This isolated mountain range runs through northern Colombia along the Caribbean coast and is the highest coastal mountain formation on Earth. Within its folded landscape may be found examples of almost every ecosystem on the planet. There are cloud forests and alpine meadows, dry scrubland and tropical rainforests, mangrove swamps and coral reefs, high tundra and snow fields. It is also home to the most completely surviving civilization of pre-Colombian America. These are the Kogi, the Elder Brothers, for whom the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the heart of the world.

The Kogi endured the Spanish conquest and have survived the past five hundred years of settlement and political dispute by retreating ever higher into the mountains. Today they live in perilous proximity to guerilla fighters, paramilitary forces, cocaine traffickers, and modern cities, which increasintly encroach upon their territory.

The Kogi are an ecological community who believe themselves to be the guardians of all life on Earth. They see the Sierra as a single living organism at the heart of a greater organism, to which they tend. Through their mind power and meditation they keep the world in balance. They are the Elder Brothers and all non-Kogi are the Younger Brothers.

Almost all aspects of Kogi life are run by their spiritual leaders, the mamas, who are not only priests and shamans, but judges, counselors, teachers and healers. The mamas undergo intense training. Chosen at birth by divination, they are immediately removed from their parents’ home and taken high into the mountains. For the first eighteen years of life they are sequestered in a cave or ceremonial hut and are never permitted to see the light of day. If they leave the cave at night, which is very rare, they are required to wear a woven rug or basket above their head, so as not to see the moon and stars. The sojourn in the cave is a severe sensory deprivation. These harsh conditions are endured in order to alter the mama’s biological and developmental rhythms. This allows them to engage with the natural rhythms of the Sierra and of their people with a heightened sensitivity. For eighteen years, the novice sits in darkness at the heart of the world, listening for a pulse.

For the Kogi, aluna is the vital principle that animates the Universe. It is an inner world of thought and potential. It is the living intelligence of being; soul and fertility; the true essence of reality, shaping and generating the material world. In the world of aluna all things are bound together in a single life. Every action in the material world therefore has repercussions, and all actions must be undertaken mindfully. To the Kogi, concrete reality quite often is only appearance, a semblance that has only symbolic value, while the true essence of things exists in aluna. Therefore, the priests must develop the spiritual ability to see behind these appearances and recognize the aluna of the Universe. For eighteen years, the young mamas sit in darkness and listen, for aluna is the music beneath the silence.

After the training is done and the young mama is considered ready, he is told to ‘escape’ from the cave, and is allowed out into the world to witness his first dawn. He sees the distant snow-covered peaks and the blue sky; he hears the peculiar sound of birdsong and the crashing of surf; he smells the earth and flowers and trees. Released into the unknown, the mama is witness to the stunning beauty of the world.

The aim of this priestly education is to discover and awaken those hidden abilities of the mind that, at any given moment, enable a person to establish contact with the divine sphere. The entire teaching process is aimed at this slow, gradual building-up to the sublime moment of the communication between God(dess) and human.