In 1982, at the seminar “Healing and Shamanism” in Alpbach, Tyrol, we met Professor Alberto Villoldo, a consciousness researcher at San Francisco State University. He had studied extraordinary healers around the world for 15 years and had become a student of the Inca shaman Don Eduardo Calderon. Don Eduardo was a healer and shaman, equally well known as a ceramicist and sculptor, living in a small fishing village in northern Peru.

That same year we travelled to Peru with Alberto Villoldo to encounter the so-called “Ancient Knowledge” through experience, guided by the fisherman, artist and shaman Eduardo Calderon Palomino. Douglas Sharon's book The Wizard of the Four Winds grew out of many years of anthropological field research into his life and work.

What is shamanism? It is an ancient body of knowledge for which there were no written records, passed from master to student through direct experience. Shamanism is a state of mind that heals - in the broadest sense. It is a healing method that thinks in synthesis and helps us imagine the whole. “Healing is self-healing,” Don Eduardo said.

Don Eduardo led us to the “places of power”: Machu Picchu and the figures of Nasca. In night-time rituals we learned to perceive the power and energy within and around us. He worked with the four directions, the four winds, trance techniques, the spiral and the mesa. We had the opportunity to encounter this ancient knowledge through experience and integrate what happened with our Western way of thinking.

For us, shamanism became an intense experience in the conscious development of human awareness. We decided to make a second journey - this time with a camera - as participant observers. The result was the 12-part series Healing States: Doorways to the Spirit World. The original version is in English; its German title is Heilen und Schamanismus: Dokumente anderer Wirklichkeiten.

We produced this 12-part documentary as independent producers, filming in Brazil and Peru. Professor Alberto Villoldo and Professor Stanley Krippner described the phenomena of healing and the outlook of shamanism from a scientific perspective. Georg Lhotsky and Eva Maria Stelljes contributed their experiences as participants.

The more deeply we explored the subject, the clearer it became that this was not about an alternative - something different or opposed - but about a connection between Western knowledge and Eastern wisdom. The series develops from the healing of the sick through spiritual power to the “healing of the healthy”: the expansion of consciousness.

In Peru, a group of scientifically trained Westerners openly and critically entered the experiential learning of a shamanic initiation journey. We wanted to draw attention to these unusual events, not prove anything - leaving doctors and scientists to consider whether this knowledge could be transferred and what traces of it might still exist in Europe.

In the summer of 1985, RTL Luxembourg broadcast the series on twelve consecutive Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. It drew strong viewing figures and many letters from viewers; an additional telephone service had to be established.

It may be said that some of the most fruitful developments in the history of human thought have occurred where two different ways of thinking truly met and entered into a real exchange.