Unforgetable one-hour experience of still mind meditation during blowing this double-chambered clay vessels sitting in a circle around a big Sacred Dodecahedron.

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For over two thousand years, different cultures in Peru produced vessels psychoacoustically tuned. Instruments which produce vibrations that induce an expanded state of consciousness different from anything known today. They stopped producing their vessels when conquistadors entered their land. They did not share the vessel experience with the invaders. For hundreds of years the vessels have remained silent, waiting for this point in history to reawaken.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE VESSELS

For over two thousand years the vessels were part of generation after generation of Peruvian people. Around 1532AD the makers of Peruvian whistling vessels were conquered by the Spanish. Corresponding to this date the vessels effectively ceased to exist! We can be relatively sure of this because the Spanish conquerors, who kept detailed and copious notes of these conquered people, did not once mention the vessels. What is just as mysterious is that the Peruvians, themselves, never depicted or left any decipherable record of the vessels or their use. When an individual of one of these cultures died, his or her whistling vessel was such an intimate, personal artifact that it was not passed on to the family, but instead taken to the grave to accompany the person into eternity.

Peruvian whistling vessels were not merely ceramic utilitarian or decorative instruments. They were tuned with great skill around the primary frequency of the culture, a primary frequency which evolved, becoming higher for each new culture. By utilizing synesthesia and other sensing modalities not common to our present cultures in their tuning process, the resulting effect produced an entheogenic experience through the vibrations produced by the whistles. In my experienced opinion, the vessels are Visionary Plant allies, capable enough BY THEMSELVES to provide a profound expanded experience, and clearly enhancer/facilitators when merged with Visionary Plants. The frequencies at which they were tuned is in the amplitude/frequency range that we have only recently discovered produces an auditory illusion of being 15% louder than the true amplitude, but the consensual concept of sound does not apply here!

(It is interesting to me to observe that during present day Peruvian ceremonies, Peruvians continue to wear small empty bottles tied around their neck. Bottles which they repeatedly blow across to produce the sound of a whistle. Unfortunately, the small glass bottle will not open the portal to the shamanic realm accessed by the Peruvian whistling vessels of their ancesters.)

On April 27, 1972, Peruvian whistling vessels reawakened through a person named Daniel Stat. Daniel, a prosperous east coast businessman, purchased a vessel at an estate auction because of its antiquity. He happened to serendipitously blow through it in his study one day and the resulting experience changed of his life. His story can be read in "Animated Earth", Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1987. After producing several sets of vessels he apprenticed me before leaving the path of the vessels. I continue to produce the vessels today.

The vessels have recently experienced a rapid evolution in their effect and appearance. While writing an article for New Age Magazine, I suddenly began to have profound insights into how the vessels should be altered in their tuning and construction. My previous method of precision constructing and tuning the vessels had frozen them into the evolutionary level of one of the last cultures (Chimu) to make them. The new insights enabled me to allow to vessels to once again freely evolve to be in harmony with the present. My new approach to producing the vessels involves tuning them while in a state of self-induced synesthesia, intuitive irregular incision of resonator apertures, and the use of copal and frankincense, sacred resins of Peru and Arabia.

This evolution has resulted in the vessels producing a tremendously profound subjective as well as objective experience as opposed to the earlier predominately objective experience. The time of the onset of the expanded/altered state has changed from 20 to 30 minutes to only 2 to 3 minutes. The experience is much more entheogenic in nature. It now appears to be accumulative in that a person becomes more sensitive and responsive to the effect. The experience now seems to also have residual effects of sensitizing a person’s perception of colors, sounds (music), and the emotional states of others.

by Don Wright

Millennia ago, a technology was born that was to continue being a part of a people's life for over two thousand years. A discovery utilizing sound that could transport human beings into a new and unique realm of experience...possibly to other worlds of existence. This sound was not music, but instead a special toning of whistles which, when blown together with other such vessels, had the ability to induce what has been described as a "trance state of a spiritual nature." The sound was produced by a clay instrument which was such a personally treasured item to its owner, that it was not passed on to another person when he or she died, but followed the owner to the grave.

After being part of the life of two thousand years of generation after generation of people, the "technology" apparently was abruptly stopped and hidden when their land was invaded and conquered in 1532 AD.

Peruvian whistling vessels are instruments of sound, tuned, not by electronically controlled measuring and adjusting mechanisms, but by utilizing an innate expanded human sensing ability. While it is an ability which we all have, few realize or consciously experience this state. This particular sense is one which may be closely described as a perception resulting from a mixing or blending together of several senses (synesthesia), so that they become a single new sensory input.

The toning of the vessels is such, that one does not hear music when several vessels from one of the originating cultures are blown together, but rather is "shifted" into another realm and state of being for the duration of the whistling session.

The first experience of this is often recognized as being familiar, yet new. It seems to include a profound enjoyment of an emotional/kinesthetic/sound creation which one not only shares in creating, but also essentially becomes. An awareness also seems to develop of the participation of other beings, not of our material world, yet clearly kindred in spirit. When within this realm, timeflow awareness, self-observation, past and future preoccupation, constant internal self-dialogue, and instinctual concerns such as hunger, thirst, or sexual desire clearly diminish.

The effect of the vessels may, in fact, be the only existing doorway to this beautiful and intensely profound type of experience that doesn't require altering the body chemistry with an ingested entheogen (shamanic inebriant such as peyote, ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, etc.). Because there is no lingering substance in the body, shortly after the whistling session has stopped, everyone returns to their pre-experience state, beautifully enriched by the memory of what happened.

For several seconds, to usually less than five minutes, after the session, most people realize an empathetic and almost sibling feeling for other people in the group, even though they may all be complete strangers. Most people also discover a heightened enjoyment and appreciation of sound, humor, and softness in speaking. After a few minutes I have, upon occasion, ended the silence which follows a vessel session,m by playing a recording of Pachebel's Cannon in D, frequently observing one or more members of the group crying with joy in the beauty of the music.

"Where in the world did they come from?" "What did the people who made them use them for?" "Why, after two thousand years of making them, would they suddenly stop?" These are questions often asked when I present a set of vessels. They originated in pre-Columbian Peru. As to how they used them, and why they stopped, we don't know. The vessels, made by those pre-Columbian cultures in Peru, appear to have been personal, treasured possessions, even to the extent of being placed into the grave with its owner. There has even been speculation that extraterrestrial tehnological contributions to ancient these Peruvian cultures which could possible alsobe reflected ib the vessels.

I find it profound that a people, culture after culture, through two thousand years of making and having whistling vessels as part of their life, would abruptly cease making and using them. They stopped making them when the Spanish conquered their land around 1532 AD.

Not only did the Spanish--who kept copious records of the cultures they conquered--not mention the vessels, but the Peruvians themselves did not, in any way we have yet discovered, create images of the vessels and their use. Because of this, we don't have a clue as to how or why they were used. Recent research, however, has proven that the vessels were in fact finely tuned, with each culture having it's own primary frequency around which the culture's vessels were tuned. Because of the difficulty of such precision tuning, it is only rational to assume that the whistle was not a novelty afterthought in a drinking pot, a theory often proposed in scientific articles about vessels of this period.

We don't have language sufficient to describe the experience of the vessels, or scientific knowledge of its precise method. I have tried to describe it somewhat in this article, but my only tools to accomplish this are metaphors which barely carry the same "flavor or feeling tone" of the experience itself. While similar to an "out-of-body" or hallucinogenic experience, analogies simply do not exist. Someone might say that an aspect of the experience is "being in an ocean of experience when a wind of sound, physical feeling, and emotion drifts over and enters your body flowing inside, and then moves out and on to somewhere else." This makes writing or talking about the vessels quite difficult.

A PERUVIAN WHISTLING SESSION

Participants at a typical "whistling session" as we call them, might be described as sober, non-altered people of different age, education, experience, physical condition, etc., often strangers to one another. This group will sit down on the floor together in a close circle. After brief instructions, without any common goal, or clear expectation of what is about to happen, they put the spout of the clay pot they are holding to their mouthes and blow into them, creating a unique "whistle." They blow continuously from forty-five minutes to hours without a break, doing nothing else, with nothing else occurring in the room.

The "participants" usually will be completely surprised about the length of time they were blowing the vessel, and will feel deep gratitude for having had the experience, often expressing regret that it is over. I can't recall one group process, other than a Peruvian Whistling session, that commands the absolute attention, without cough, without quiet whispered remarks or conversation between participants, without spontaneous sighs, yawns, stretches, or looking about, for even a fraction of the time most groups blow the vessels.

Daniel Statnekov, a wealthy antique collector, after being told this was a rare artifcat at an auction, purchased a special vessel, which was ultimately to have a profound affect upon his life. He discovered their special capability, and developed a way to reproduce them. Statnekov was, in my opinion, selected through a very special whistling vessel whose mission was to bring vessels once again into human experience.

The vessel, wending its way for over four hundred years, from person to person, avoiding being broken or lost, century after century, finally reached the point in time and space where it would intersect with the path of a "reincarnated Peruvian Whistling Vessel O'Sensei", a person who was most perfectly suited in all ways to restore the existence of the vessels into human experience.

This point in time and space was at an estate auction on the East Coast. The rest of this story can be found in Statnekov's book: Animated Earth, by Daniel K. Statnekov (North Atlantic Books, CA, ISBN 1-55643-000-0).

I met Daniel during my studies at Boston College, where I was studying psychology and theology. My interest and direction of study was to discover, understand, and utilize techniques of consciousness self-manipulation and control. This interest was instrumental in my discovery of a set of vessels that Daniel Statnekov had made and given to Professor Baer, a psychology professor whom I greatly admired. Professor Baer "presented" the vessels to a gathering of people that I attended. At this gathering, and my first experience of the vessels, a recognition of, and bond with, the vessels occurred for me that would ultimately result in my becoming a vessel maker.

Since my apprenticeship with Daniel in the northern mountains of New Mexico in 1980, where he passed on to me his tools, molds and spiritually charged clay, I have been growing in my understanding and ability to create the vessels.

I am tremendously excited about having the boundaries of our world, once again, expanded and redefined by experiences of these incredible instruments. Peruvian whistling vessels, unavailable to human experience for hundreds of years, have once again entered our lives. New Frontier has made arrangements with Don Wright to conduct a National Peruvian Whistling week, September 16-22 (4 hrs daily whistling) at the Nepal Institute in the Great Smoky Mountains.

©1996 New Frontier Magazine.