LOOKING FOR HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BRAIN IS LIKE TRYING TO FIND THE ANNOUNCER ON THE RADIO

Nassim Haramein

Playa Blanca, Puerto Jiménez, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica

On August 11, 2024, Puerto Jiménez is expected to experience the typical, humid tropical weather of the rainy season:

Chance of rain: Very high (up to 90–96%), with showers that may be heavy and prolonged.

Temperatures: Warm and humid. Daytime highs range from about 29 to 32 degrees, while nighttime lows rarely drop below 24–25 degrees.

Cloud cover: The sky is mostly gray and overcast; sunny spells are rare.

Feels-like temperature: Due to high humidity, the feels-like temperature at midday is often higher, reaching up to 32 degrees.

Recommendation: Be prepared for showers, especially in the afternoon. Rain gear and waterproof bags are recommended for outings.

This morning I found a big spider under my bed in my little beach cabin. It was pretty big—you don’t see spiders that big in Germany. I’m annoyed that my front door has such a big gap.

That said: if you leave the spiders here alone, they’ll leave you alone too. They just sit there, reminding me of my age-old fear of spiders—which, thankfully, I’ve since overcome. Back in the day, I used to run screaming out of the room—no, out of the house—when a spider (small by local standards) would sit there, looking so black and menacing in the white shower tray. These spiders here don’t just sit there. They run at lightning speed and they can jump pretty high, too. And if you like to wander barefoot through the house in the dark, you might step on one of these palm-sized spiders. Then it can deliver a painful bite, and that’s not without risk. But it’s never happened to me. Somehow, I always sense their presence.

Like the snake that suddenly slithered right through the middle of my girlfriend’s living room in the middle of the night during a ritual, right past my yoga mat. But that’s another story. I like to keep this kind of information to myself, because many of my friends and family members wouldn’t come visit me if they knew what goes on here. Some knowledge makes you lonely, at least in the human world; you’d rather keep it to yourself. But aside from that, not many people come anyway. It’s just too far away and too different. I live in the jungle, after all.

On top of that, there was a big frog sitting right outside the door of my beach hut—more like a fat toad. I wasn’t entirely unfazed by these two guests, especially because of the spider—I haven’t caught it yet. I’m saving that for later, because I need to concentrate hard so I can successfully guide it outside without it hopping away and hiding under or inside one of my cabinets. I think I need a cat to help me keep my house in order when it comes to this spider situation.

First of all, I look forward to my morning coffee, which I brew using this little, funny red coffee filter; it takes a while, and just like every morning, it’s a little ritual. This little red filter, with its handle that you can flip up, looks a bit like a strawberry basket. But the handle is cleverly designed and important, because otherwise you’d burn your fingers when taking it off the cup. With the steaming cup in my hand, I send the fat frog on its way and head to the water. Like every morning, I gaze at the cloud formations and the rising sun. It’s magical every single time. 

Far out at sea, I sense the presence of a whale. I’m thrilled. Right after coffee, I grab a slice of bread with jam and another with honey, along with my drum, and head toward the mangrove nursery at the other end of the beach. There’s no one there at this early hour. I sit down by the water. It’s low tide. 

Most people from my old life don’t like it when I sing. And as a small child, I was led to believe that I couldn’t sing at all because I couldn’t hit the right notes. I believed them for a long time. A very long time. Many decades. Until one day I was sitting in a shamanic seminar. The shaman spoke very movingly and beautifully about his late wife, and how almost no one had attended her funeral because, due to her long illness, she had been forgotten by all her friends over the years. She herself suffered, as my mother likes to say based on her own situation, from forgetfulness. Apparently, this is contagious. These two women infected all their friends with their forgetfulness. Something about this story served as a wake-up call for me, and I felt the need to sing for this deceased woman and for my mother. 

The shaman points toward the center of the circle, where all the pieces of fur, bones, amulets, fish bones, and stones that the participants had brought with them are lying. My little whale bone, which I found last year on the beach near Carate, was among them. 

Suddenly, my father’s 80th birthday comes to mind—the time I bravely stepped forward, having rehearsed a song because I finally wanted to overcome this trauma. I no longer wanted to accept this lifelong “death sentence” of my off-key singing, because I’d always enjoyed singing so much. But the performance that evening in front of the family and all the birthday guests went completely wrong; it was embarrassing for everyone, and I barely managed to talk my way out of it by claiming I was coming down with a cold. To this day, this story is a running gag at every family gathering. 

I see myself standing up and stepping into the center of the shamanic circle, with maybe 40 people around me, just like at the 80th birthday party. I have no idea what’s driving me this time. A death wish—or something worse.

So here I am, standing among all these fossilized bones, barely able to stand on my own two feet. My knees were shaking like leaves, and I’d just had a major birthday blackout, but the class participants are waiting patiently; while some are just as embarrassed as the guests were back at the party, others seem to already be familiar with this moment. When I finally start beating the drum, all the birthday guests have suddenly vanished.

I play the drums.

At some point, my voice begins. A song that seems to come from the depths of the ocean. Here I am now, at the very bottom, together with my little whale bone, without a single ray of light, and it is completely dark. I hear myself singing. I’m surprised myself. “It” sings inside me. The whale comes and simply takes me down with it. It sings with me. We sing together. I see patterns of rainbow-colored stripes, lines moving through the space in a kind of dance. The two women down in the dark water—they hear us, and the colored beams of light move in the water to the rhythm of the singing like colorful snakes, and the women come and sing along. Finally, the whale brings the two old women up on its back, and they sit down in the middle of the circle. From now on, they will watch over what happens in this seminar.

When I’m done, I look around. The instructor is crying. Others look down at the floor, looking embarrassed. Some have their eyes closed. I bow and walk back to my seat.

A quote by a physicist named Nassim Haramein comes to mind. He conducts research on the unified field. “Looking for human consciousness in the brain is like trying to find the speaker in a radio.”

As I sit here on the beach at Playa Blanca, next to the mangrove farm, I find myself thinking: For me, it was one of the bravest things I’ve ever done. 

I gaze out over Golfo Dulce and share my bread with him. Strawberry jam with honey. Then I muster up that old courage once more and begin to drum and sing. After a few minutes, the female whale swims into the bay. She has her baby with her. We sing together and enjoy each other’s company. Somewhere in time and space, the sound waves we create together meet and merge into a beautiful pattern of rainbow-colored rays above the Golfo Dulce. 

Just then, the water starts rising again. And it starts to rain. I go back and find the spider sitting in front of my beach hut. Good for you, madam, that’s the way to go. With my broom, I give the lady a final nudge across the patio and out into the bushes. I’m glad the door has such a wide crack.