… I was drinking some milk on a gamela (wooden/adobe mug) on top of the kitchen cabinet and the thing stroke like a thunder. Thump! I felt the thud at the same moment, in which I was already cursing, because in that time I was still kind of rough. The thing remained over here teeming and scratching for a month and it just got worse with time. I went to Rio Branco and I had been to spiritualist centers, a brujeria adept and no doctor was able to cure it. There were even some who disillusioned me even more. It was a well spelled sorcery.

I spent more then a year in this agony and in a time like this I would be in great suffering. I would work the whole day but around four o’clock in the afternoon it would start, this thing inside me, going up and down my throat. It would last from four in the afternoon until eight o’clock at night. It was everyday this suffering. Some days I would fill a bucket. It was a horrible drivel. I even went to ask for help to a brujeria adept to see if she would figure the spell, but when she saw me she was the one to ask for help, saying that she was about to die, and in the next day she passed away. It was when some one said to me, “Go to Mestre Irineu”. I thought for a while and I said: “That’s right, I’ll go to Mestre Irineu right the way”.

After they gave me the idea of going over there I came back home and in the next day I packed my things and I left. They were having a concentration service. I arrived saying to him that I was in that state, sick and disillusioned. He looked at me and asked if I was a man. I answered to him that I didn't know, I mean, that in certain aspects I was a man, but about that spiritual work, which was strange to me, I wasn’t going to say that I was because I didn’t know, isn’t that right!? I said to him,

“I know that I am of this way, like this, but I don't know if I am man, really a man, because not everyone can say that”
And he said to me,
“If you are a man get in the line, drink the Daime and later on you come to tell me something”

All right... I went. I took the Daime, went to my spot and I sat down. Little time passed and that thing started, and I was already becoming afraid. I stood up and started to leave very slowly, because it was a concentration work and everyone was concentrated, meditating. I left walking, on the tip of my toes, and when I came close to where the Daime is served it blew a breath that I felt so smelly! I backed off. When I was close to the bench to sit down again a voice said, “The man asked if you were a man, and up to this moment you did only moan!” Well... then the old body crumbled. It remained there on the floor, and I, already out of my body, stood looking to that unfolded old thing, which was me. Suddenly two men came, that were both the two most beautiful things that I ever saw in my life. They glittered just like fire. There they caught and withdrew my entire skeleton from the inside of all that flesh without hurting anything, and they vibrated it all back and forth while I was aside, looking to everything they did.

They took away all the organs and one of them stood holding the intestine with his hands. They caught a kind of a hook, opened it, split and they took three insects of the size of a nail, which was what I was feeling walking up and down. Then one of them came very close to me, who was sat down beside the body, that was still laid on the floor, and said, “here it is: what was killing you were these three animals, but of these you don't die anymore”. Then they closed it and that was it! Do you see any mending? It does not have. Thanks to God I was cured, just like a little boy.

At the beginning the doses were of a full glass (6 ounces) and many people would fall in the salão, or they would go ask for Mestre’s help. I used to dance in the third line, next to Daniel Serra, Mestre’s nephew. Sometimes I would feel a strange energy, so I would dance while having mirações [visions], and it was all clear crystal! It was Very strong. At that time I would march and trod on the ground with force and only ahead in time was that the Daime told me, one day in a miração, that was for me to step softer in order to not offend or either to hurt anybody. Some guardians would even mock me because of my way of working. I would really work and surrender to the miração. I would receive my hymns and revise them with Mestre. And he would say, “keep on going, keep on going my son! It is just like it”.

I would not complain directly with him, but he knew. He used to say that there were some people over there drinking Daime for many years but they never saw a thing. He would also say that after he was gone, made his passage, it would be then that they would see many things happening in his General Staff, which was how the more graduated fardados were called at that time. They had ranks and special insignias: they used a rose and a five pointed star. But they had much competition and envy because of the ranks, so he leveled them all with the six pointed star, and the whole body of fardados became the General Staff.

I would sing to him the hymns that I received and sometimes I would also tell with more details the miração that preceded the hymn. And he would confirm everything. It is necessary to have calm. It is for everybody to step very softly and to do not feel proud inside that salão, because there is the time where everything shines and we want to feel prettier than the other who is passing through a downfall… be careful, proud matter, that soon you are going to be there, sat on the bench, or even stretched on the floor!

Mestre would tell that the people were still to arrive, and for me to be ready. After he passed away his spirit came to deliver me the rest, that was for me to don't fear anything, about this and that from the outside; to don’t fear anything and keep on going. That the Daime was going to guide it all. To start harvesting the Juramidam's people; taking from within the city and placing them in the forest, which is the paradise.

In the moments of the out of body experiences we can comprehend many good things, but one has to have a very strong faith. It is not like a faith, thus, without knowing in whom. But it is really a faith in who is present in this drink, in who it is invoking, which is Juramidam, and also a faith in all of the Celestial Court beings, like the ones from earth, from the forest and from the sea, and even some that live under the ground, because I walked under the ground and everything is clear just like here on the surface. Don’t you be amazed by anything, because the higher self is everything and it walks everywhere, and if I am with it I also have permission to walk where it wants.

Some times we have a false alarm, to see if we are trying to find and excuse to run off the line. The first thing that we must do when the force shakes is to be firm and to hold the spot. If you can’t manage to stay standing you sit down; if you can’t manage to be sit down you lay down and If you don’t have time to choose any of these, falls! The important is for us to receive what the Being has to give to us in this moment. During my apprenticeship I went some times to the dirt and I thank God for my downfalls because I ended up well learnt with them, and who stood only looking at me and having fun, thus, a miserable one, didn't learn anything!

We used to walk, the whole family, nine and up to twelve miles through these highways to go drink Daime. We would drink only one dose in the concentration sessions and then we would go back. After several hours we all would be still having visions. Thus, Mestre Irineu authorized me to open some spiritual works at home and to make the Daime.

***