My advise is not to overload ER with aya cases of people having a "hard time".

Maybe it was the guys time anyway, sheit happens, like the guy who was playing table tennis and got a stroke. Is table tennis dangerous? Was his coach too tough on him?

I don't want to minimize guild here, just offering options, I feel sorry for this all, for him and his family.

This Mancoluto, bragging about himself on youtube how special he is, he ruin the whole scene, and now possible persons lives too.

Ahh yes, you mean the man who looked the boys parents straight in the eyes and told them his son had wandered off somewhere??

Yep, that's the man, a self declared spiritual highlight.
h++p://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8R6W6nWDs
++ --> tt

Still many bought the BS, despite red flags on the forum starting 2 years ago.

This guy?

Well shit does happen. The world is too crowded btw...cry for the lost, but only briefly. And then there's creeps who claim to have special powers and whose mouths spill filthy lies all over the place. Drag this fat looser shaman out into the forest and end him already.

Yes taking ayahuasca with a shaman too serious. Later on ill up a post I've been working on. I think this story had to happen to open peoples eyes. Cheers

This is a curious case of capitalism co-opting ayahuasca and the upper amazon and being beat by karma. From what I've read and saw there were MANY airs put on by this retreat center as well as Mancoluto. Before they were open to the public they put a lot into bringing out influential players in the psychedelic community as sort of celebrity endorsement and then made a documentary about themselves. They cut down a lot of rainforest to build huge tin roofed grandiose non traditional buildings. Then to top it off, they were buying ayahuasca with toe admixture, which is only used for EXPERIENCED voyageurs, and giving it to newcomers letting them run around the jungle instead of watching over them. They obviously were trying to put on an air that they were the next level to bring in more business. Apparently they weren't as much a healing center but rather an "enlightenment" center. To me it sounds like they were running an expensive jungle jail. I really wonder how many people were staying there at a time.

Now to get into this story of kapitalism karma, I mean for gods sake they were so blinded by money that they were willing to hide this kids body and lie to continue business. That says it all. I think the westerners who put together the retreat should be in just as much trouble as this so-called shaman. It is the most blatent case of capitalism co-opting ayahuasca and is a good dose of karma for those involved.

Reading over this thread again I also wanna add that shamans are not some kind of deity and never have been seen as such. shamans have always been seen with duality and were usually shunned community members that were either deeply respected or ferociously feared but never liked in the sense of a friend. the community doesn't know if they are a sorcerer or a healer so there's a basic understanding not to directly trust shamans unless they have proven helpful.

I think the fault really lies in the westerners who setup the retreat. So many people on here try to paint them as good guys that god duped by a shaman... Bullshit, they knew exactly what they were doing and probably welcomed this guys many airs b/c it provided mystique for their retreat. they should have worked with a real ayahuasquero and not a peyote shaman. they should not have allowed toe infused brew or the careless environment.

"Rob", is the man that set up Chimbre according to what he says, video says. He was warned about his uneducated decision to use manculoto as a Shaman many times over, but he never addressed the issue, preferring to dodge it with his "other projects", and orphanage: And anyone that knows Cambodia, will be VERY wary of the word "orphanage" ......!

Do your own research, make your own mind up. Rob seems like a nice guy, but also seems to be a bit ignorant to say the least. It's almost like he jumped in too early, rather than took his time to feel the rythm of the jungle, (and DO HIS RESEARCH-PROPERLY!)..

What's sad is the fact that the Chimbre project could have been so much better if only Rob took the time to contact the good Ayahuasca people who speak his own language, instead of rushing into a questionable project.

Coulda woulda shoulda. They didn't though. It's easy to look back on things and say that it could have gone better after they didn't.

I can't say anything on Rob's character but he should be held just as accountable since he setup the retreat. I'm sure he had a say in every misstep that Chimbre has made thus far. People can be the nicest guys in the world but money can make them careless. Doesn't mean they're bad people, but they need to learn the lesson that money does not come before people. Safety should have been priority #1 from the onset of the opening of Chimbre which obviously wasn't the case. Even people who got sneak peak previews of this retreat reported that they didn't feel it was safe for the public yet they still opened the damned thing.

It's a disgrace of the ayahuasca tradition in the upper amazon. The western influence there clearly hit it's boiling point.

TBH, i think it's more about the fact that Rob'e Peruvian, but has never really known Peru.

If he knew that in Peru there were some great con artists then maybe things may have been different..

Sincerely, i'm sorry to say this.

Yeah. Definitely a shame. Just sad at all angles.

Jamie, what i mean is:

Like when you try your best to heal a patient with herbal medicines, you commune with the spirit world and try and heal the illness....then you turn around and pull a hot coal (that you really pulled from the fire) "out of the patients body", wowing the villagers and claiming to have removed a deamon from the patient.

Or rolling an egg along the patients body, purifying the patient, right...then you crack open the egg and show them the spot of blood inside the egg. You pulled out the ill blood....or used a fertilised egg when the embryo was just beginning to develop.

You could call that a wise application of placebo effect, or charlatanry. As you wish. Placebo effect and sleight of hand both probably have a long long tradition with medicine men and shamans the world over....doctors, acu-puncturists and reiki people too.

I feel that there are many "real deal" healers the world over who dabble in a bit of sleight of hand, one way or another.

I'm in agreement with most if not all of what Alberkloid is saying here.

What i don't understand is why Rob allowed Chimbre to be built the way it was. It could have so easily been constructed in a better manner, giving clients safe accomodation which could have been monitored, etc.

He spent too much time and effort trying to make a "statement" about his enlightenment, and his dream. Constructing a show off style lodge, and talking about other projects, that he forgot to think about the clients simple safety.

Let this serve as a lesson to anyone else with big ideas like this. Ressponsability isn't something to take lightly and brush off with building another orphanage.

That's a buzzkill. I saw Chimbre on the Drugs Inc. episode on Psychedelics and it
seemed like a fair place.

I've read into it a bit ( Steve Beyer's and others' accounts on that forum) and
automatically my mind associated Chimbre founder/manager Rob Velez & his Shaman advisor/expert
with these 2 characters from LotR:

Wormtongue; Mancoluto King Theoden: Rob Velez

Sometimes people with good intentions, people like Rob Velez, can be so naive to trust people they shouldn't. Because they prefer to focus on the good present in all people, they shy away
from observing & acknowledging the evil in people. And so it often happens that these good-willed people are deceived by evil, manipulative, harmfull people. The claims that this Mancoluto makes.... Why do so many people fail to notice this man is a dangerious ego-maniac suffering from extreme Megalomania?

Why wasn't Rob observant & critical enough to notice that this "Shaman" was a trickster that would endanger the lives of his students and the future existance of the entire Shamanic Centre, as well as the legality and availability of Ayahuasca plants (or what's left of it) around the world?

Damn.

Rob was warned by others over and over again. I don't think this should affect Ayahuasca tourism, because Chimbre was run like a disaster waiting to happen, unlike the majority.

Here's a video showing Manculotos' arrest, and another Shaman explaining Ayahuascas safety profile.

http://www.youtube.com/w...eature=player_detailpage

xantho, shouldn't your sorcery debate be on a new thread, we've got 2 interesting but seperate topics running in this thread now...

Recently an 18-year-old man from Northern California died after ingesting an ayahuasca brew at Shimbre Center in Peru. This particular ayahuasca center was apparently started by a Wall Street finance guy who became disillusioned with that life, and hence invested a considerable sum of money in a "shamanic healing center" in the southern Amazon, together with a native "shaman"; that "shaman" apparently (is accused of) burying the man's body, in an attempt to hide the death, and Peruvian authorities were contacted after the man failed to return to his home country. Several years back, I was invited to participate in this particular center, but declined for multiple reasons, primarily the fact that the people who were extolling the virtues of this place did not seem like particularly wholesome individuals. I post this here perhaps as a "warning sign" to be careful about who you associate with, trust your instincts; there are certainly plenty of good ayahuasca providers quietly doing good work in their communities (it's a very practical medicine in jungle societies, for certain ailments and for its very effective application of cleaning out one's digestive system from meat byproducts, parasites, etc), but the "ayahuasca tourism" trend (which in its worst forms treats ayahuasca as an exciting commodity), as well as basic facts about human nature, means that some less-than-wholesome individuals also capitalize on the gringo influx. That's my observation/opinion anyways.

The website of the centre:
http://shimbre.org/

News report about the teen's death:
http://aimperu.blogspot....alifornia-teen-dies.html

EDIT:
Another news report (http://tinyurl.com/8ulmv8d) shows that the "shaman" and centre were featured in a 2011 documentary called "Stepping into the Fire", and a review on IMDB describes him as "first-level master shaman descended from one of the earliest civilizations in Amerindian history, Chavin."

Hopefully there will be a medical report, since ayahuasca is quite safe if properly administered.

I think there's a thread on this already bro

https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=36502