LHOTSKY FILM

A young Brazilian psychologist goes into a trance and famous artists from the past like Van Gogh, Modigliani, and others return to paint new masterworks through him. They bring a message of the continuity of life after the death of the body, and of the evolution of the spirit. They also describe how many psychological and physical ills are due to negative influences from the spirit world. Luis Gasparetto demonstrates his trance painting abilities as well as his spiritual psychotherapy, where he teaches his patients to develop their psychic abilities.

The followers of Umbanda, the native American religion of Brazil, believe that one should settle for nothing short of the direct experience of the divine. In a trance state they incorporate the spirits of their ancestors, the old black slaves and the Indian medicine men, who then do psychic healings through them.​

In north Brazil, a Christian healer named Brother Macedo tends to hundreds of poor and destitute persons who come to him every day. He transmits to them what he claims is the healing energy of God.

Dr. Edson Quieroz, a Brazilian medical doctor, performs conventional surgery three days per week. The remainder of the week, he performs psychic operations with a dirty surgical scalpel on dozens of patients who cannot afford hospital care. Dr. Edson claims that it is not him, but the spirit of Dr. Adolph Fritz, a German medical doctor who died in World War I who performs the actual operations without the use of anaesthesia, or sutures. Our team of researchers visits the new surgeon of the rusty knife.

Eliezer Mendes is a Brazilian medical doctor who cures epileptics and schizophrencis using mediumship and trance states, in which his patients return to past lifetimes to find the origin of their disease. In the last 20 years he has had an 85 percent success rate in healing epilepsy. He demonstrates his regression techniques with a young schizophrenic woman who died by drowning in a previous lifetime.

The Japanese Buddhists and the African slaves brought their mystical practices with them to Brazil. Four times per year the Buddhist monks walk over a 20 foot long bed of red-hot coals to demonstrate that we have powers and abilities of which we do not suspect.

In north Brazil, the African Candomble is practiced today as it was 300 years ago when the first slaves arrived in the new world. In the temple of Yemenja, a young man is initiated as a disciple of the god Ogun, and enters into mystical communion with the Orishas.

Don Eduardo Calderon, a Peruvian medicine man, leads a group of western apprentices through the steps and trials of becoming a shaman. The journey begins on the tree of life, a giant figure etched on a mountain side, where his students go in quest for a vision of healing and self-knowledge. In the Nasca plains they explore the monolithic figures carved on the desert floor, ritual designs crafted by ancient shamen, and used to journey into inner space.

Before one becomes a healer, one must become free of the past, erasing all personal history. In a night time ceremony, in the desert, the shaman's students learn to heal themselves. Don Eduardo demonstrates the use of power objects, with which he diagnoses disease and calls on the forces of nature. High in the Andes, the shaman summons the spirits of the four winds, and his nature allies the eagle, the horse, the jaguar, and the serpent.

The students of the shaman undergo a symbolic death in a canoe-shaped stone. They then call on the spirits of the medicine men and women who once lived in the now destroyed city of the Incas. The chief archeologist in Machu Picchu describes the origins of the city, while inside the ruins, in a bed of stone, Don Eduardos apprentices experiences the spirit flight, the techniques for out of body travel.

The medicine man uses a guinea pig for diagnosis, and finds that several of his students are suffering from black magic. The shaman explains that the worst kind of black magic is that which we do on our selves. This is the dark night of the soul, as the apprentices confront their fear, and then take part in the most ancient ritual known to humanity, a fire ceremony where they bring an offering of healing and place their hands into the fire.

In the Temple of the Moon in northern Peru, Don Eduardo teaches his students to develop the "inner vision", to see into the world of the spirit. For centuries, medicine men have brought their students to see these ancient ruins to learn the physical and spiritual healing arts, and to meet the master that led inside the temple. They build a medicine spiral between the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

In the Chimbe lagoons, Don Eduardo performs the ritual of shamanic initiation. This is the first time that westerners have undergone the tests and trials for becoming persons of knowledge. After initiation, they become responsible for their own self-healing, and become caretakers of the earth, and in a night- long ceremony, make their first spirit journey.

The shaman makes a fire circle, a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, which his apprentices must enter to perform the Dance of the Four Winds, to become connected with the four directions of the spirit world. Several months later, six of his students come together to reflect on their journey of initiation into the world of the American Indian medicine man.