Thursday, December 10, 2009

Message from Echan

Message to Australians about Earth Pilgrims

On the occasion of presenting this film outside of Japan for the first time I would like to take note of the fact that the Aboriginees have the longest tradition of sacred pilgrimage, walkabout, on Earth. It might be no coincidence then that this vast treasure trove of true pilgrim culture, Australia, has called me to present this film.
As our entire planet faces more and more challenging demands on it ( and we inevitably all are involved) it might be a good time to check out the core message of Earth Pilgrims. Please join us to firmly ground this message in the ancient Earth of Australia.


Echan Deravy
Sanda, Hyogo
Dec 11 2009

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Echan Deravy's vision - The East West Merging Point

Here you will find information on the activities of one man who has a rather unusual mission in Japan. In fact it appears so unusual that we are hard pressed to pigeonhole it. Perhaps then it behooves us to look back at where this radical communicator has come from. In doing so we'll get a more comprehensive vision that will do justice to over three decades of evolving creativity. The key word linking his entire Japanese sojourn would undoubtedly be 'Transformation'.

First let's look at the transformations he himself has gone through. That forms the basis upon which his current 'message' rests. If nothing else, Echan Deravy is a disciple of change with a deep faith in the power of metamorphosis.

September 1974: After five years of trans planet travel and adventure Echan arrives in Japan with the intention of entering a zen monastery at age 22. He entered zen instead and left the monastery behind. For the next 15 years oriental philosophy was the central focus of his life and involved balancing the raising of a family (through university teaching positions and a unique acupuncture center) with martial arts practice and the complex study of oriental medicine. By the time he left Japan in 1989 he had acquired a Japanese level one proficiency certificate, an acupuncture and moxibustion license to practice issued by the government and a fifth dan ranking in the way of the bow-oft referred to as zen archery. He had completed a cycle that was dominated by study and internship with some of the last true masters of Japan's waning traditions.

It seemed like the school of rough knocks. Japan can appear a very strict environment to do anything in. The rules of social life go back a long way-long before people like Echan showed up in fact...

The next 12 years saw Canada unfold in his vision. In the pristine environment of Vancouver island a Corporation came into being. Japan Consultants Inc. was to pioneer business links between Canada and Japan through real estate consulting. As president of the corporation Echan was responsible for all aspects of the overseas investing via both private and corporate transactions.


Extremely valuable first hand experience was gained in the particular sensitivities of that quixotic character-the Japanese businessman. Canada's CBC channel featured the work Echan had done to bring investors to the economically strapped town of Kimberly in their television special 'Venture'. 15 years as a student and a teacher as well as a doctor of oriental medicine had now transformed into a short but powerful burst of activity as an international wheeler and dealer. Then, theJapanese economy crashed.

So did Echan. He fell hard as did many others both inside Japan and around the world. An inflated economy was likened to a bubble. It burst. The resulting stress and overall disintegration of a very promising business career propelled Echan to transform yet again. By 1993 he and his wife had co-written and published their first book to be written about consciousness, evolution, the couple and individuation as well as the now rather well known prophecies concerning 2012.

A new career as a writer, public speaker (in Japanese) and worldwide adventure and research/ seminar facilitator began. Over the next several years 37 worldwide and completely amazing workshops had taken Japanese to Peru, Mexico, Egypt, Europe, Ireland and Scotland as well as England, Italy, Hawaii, Australia, Costa Rica and Greece. He had literally created a new genre. Never before had the concept of showing up at a specified location on your own (as opposed to an itinerary and flight plan all booked by a travel agency) to begin a study of Mayan sacred sites or climbing the Andes to get to Machu Pichu been proffered to the discriminating Japanese traveler. It was a huge success. Attention to detail, painstakingly learned at the point of a needle literally had metamorphosed into this. But there was to be more.

Though living in Canada Echan was soon required to be lecturing all over Japan and thus crossed the Pacific over 60 times in ten years to deliver leading edge concepts to the growing audiences from Hokkaido to Okinawa. His ability to communicate with pioneers in diverse fields in the West and then to introduce those concepts to Japan kept him far ahead in the changing times. Finally after one plane too many Echan got the message to return to live in Japan now that the children were adults. This is where it really began to get interesting!

He was the first to bring remote viewing training to Japan and to teach it to hundreds over the next nine years in Japanese. Long before crop circle books were being written he was in the 'field' with Japanese actually feeling the crop transformation up close and personal. Whether it was diving with cetaceans or exploring ancient temples his adventurous spirit drew literally hundreds to participate in world seminars and literally millions to hear his message via the internet and television.

Since 2002 his corporation Maranatha Japan has done translation, interpretation, publication, and media appearances as part of his mission to assist Japanese in becoming sovereign individuals capable of making theor own informational choices. The ongoing central work of public speaking has resulted in much more high profile creativity. Audiences around Japan now look to Echan for hints about what is likely to be happening in the next few years as human consciousness obviously has to evolve if we are to survive. I mean if this is not obvious then there would in fact be no market for Echan's unique brand of transformative communication. He is a 'talking shaman' who takes the job very seriously yet evokes a great deal of laughter at his events.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Echan's interview


Interview: Echan Deravy Director, Earth Pilgrims
By Felicia Weiss 28 September 2009


Can you tell us about your background and how an Irishman ended up living in Japan?

I was born in Scotland of an Irish mother and Scots father so my first nationality is British. Later in life I received a republic of Ireland passport, as well as a Canadian one, so I have three nationalities and am currently a permanent resident of Japan. I have been a traveler all my life. After exploring 75 countries in search of some kind of a hint of what lays beyond the matrix of our ’societies’, I decided to enter a zen monastery at the age of 22 in 1974. I went to Kyoto and discovered it was not to become a monk, but a kind of esoteric scholar. I rigorously studied the language and culture as a lay practitioner of zen, while pursuing certification in martial arts and oriental medicine. I was an acupuncturist and university lecturer for many years before becoming a writer and lecturer on consciousness in the early nineties. Japan has been like a decades long university course that still is in session.

In your personal life, how have you turned inward for peace?

Thanks to Felicia Weiss I ended up translating Power vs. Force into Japanese with my wife doing the lion’s share of this hugely challenging work. David Hawkins is making something very clear that relates to peace. It requires a 600 level plus calibration on a 1000 scale to achieve peace consciousness. Love consciousness begins at 500. So it should be obvious that politicians and activists who bark on about peace at levels of consciousness far below these are seriously wasting both our time and their own. Peace is not a result. It is a primary cause. It is not a reaction to war, it is the very foundation of civilized and conscious life. The idea that we can protect ourselves from enemies and thus have peace is patently absurd. Either you have it, peace in your heart, or you do not. So how do you get it? One must somehow raise one’s consciousness, but there is the quandary. In zen we had great ways to express this like ‘trying to pull yourself off the ground by yanking up on your own bootstraps.’ Sure we can and must make efforts, but then there is also the working of something entirely different. Call it grace. Call it the Lord. Call it what you will. I call it prayer. I prayed constantly as I walked. It was enormously demanding and tremendously fulfilling. The power of prayer becomes the engine of peace. Its cleansing spirit reveals our focus on the inner workings of the monkey mind and the jaded heart. It is essential for us, thus motivated by virus infected brains and dilapidated hearts to overcome the primal fear that underlies all emotions that keep us from peace. No amount of positive thinking does that. You need a spiritual life that is real. The heart generates an electromagnetic field thousands of times stronger than the puny brain. That should tell us something about the heart and why we should not lose heart now. So to conclude; peace will never result from any cerebral strategy, no matter how much money and defense systems you throw at the ‘problem’. Peace comes from a heart that knows gratitude and humility. Earth pilgrims shows us people like that in the high Andes of Peru. Simple.

How do you feel about the future of our planet?

Planets come and go. I feel we are all far too planetary retentive. The point is not the planet, but rather this astonishing creature called the human being, who is being called to a much higher order of existence and service to the galactic community. We are the leading edge of a bio-computer program called DNA that has been riding the waves of history and chaos for longer than we can possibly conceive. We understand almost nothing about time and space (90% of the universe is dark matter is the best we can come up with??), we have almost no clue about the historical past despite thousands of theories, and we cannot even co-operate at the most fundamental level thus avoiding violence and discord. The planet is not the problem. The problem is the pilgrim on that planet. When is he or she going to re-awaken to the fact that the journey is just getting underway and that a humbler attitude to all that is might be relatively useful at this ‘point’. I feel that the peace that surpasses all human understanding and the humility of a mother Theresa or a Nelson Mandela makes the regular orbiting of Earth around a very common G type star pale in comparison. Just as you will not find your God by looking outside in the darkness, (when the light is actually on inside) our future does not necessarily depend as much as one might imagine on the state of a wee planet. That is the spirit we need to embody. Even with our shields down, warp drive out for the count and power levels at threshold lows the crew of Spaceship Earth will come up with something that the ship’s computer itself could never have imagined…

What led you to create the film “Earth Pilgrims”?

Disillusionment. Age. Exasperation. But not necessarily in that order! I had become a rather well-known public speaker and writer in Japan, especially as a proponent of the idea that not only is conscious evolution now imperative, but also of the now popular idea that there seems to be a time limit set on humanity’s awakening i.e. 2012. I had interviewed dozens of scientists and thinkers over the years including Deepak Chopra, John C. Lilly, Fred Alan Wolf, Graham Hancock, Terence McKenna, Hunbatz men and a whole host of shamans and maverick researchers in multiple fields to get a holistic view of this shift we all talk about. I had brought their work and my interpretation of it to Japanese attention via books, interviews, television and 37 actual research trips to sacred sites around the planet. We did not just study crop circles for example, we went into them and lay down in them with Colin Andrews back in the mid-nineties. I took remote viewing to Japan and taught over 700 people.
After 15 years of this I wondered if I was even making a dent in the combined hallucination that government and media had generated in the minds of the people. People nodded their heads enthusiastically at me, then went back to sleep. I was now 55. Was I making a difference? Time to go on a walkabout and reflect on what I had done. After 1300 kilometers of Japanese rice paddies and highways I suddenly realized that a documentary film was the only option left. It was that or sliding into an oblivion called ‘well at least I tried’.


How did you select the people you interviewed?

Synchronicity really played a large part. In Japan there is an interesting expression used when talking about the creation of art. It is Musakui. This means for example that a potter will choose his clay and have a rough idea of what he wants in a pot. But as the wheel turns the pot evolves. He may then set it outside to dry and a bird might scratch the surface of the clay. The potter will incorporate these unforeseen elements into the design so that the pot finishes its own creation in a sense. I knew I wanted to show why a pilgrim spirit will soon be very important to all of us as our multiple system collapse inexorably escalates. But I did not have a script until filming ended! Satish Kumar was a conscious first choice because I literally needed a man who had walked his talk in the pilgrim world. He had walked from India to Europe on a peace march and at my age had walked all over Britain. On both occasions he took no money. I can relate to that. The remaining guests appeared at the right time. Rumi was there in my mind from the beginning because without a true spiritual master in the film, one that could not be easily appropriated by any religion despite the fact that he was born in Islamic Afghanistan, I knew I would not be able to express the pilgrim properly.
How were you able to obtain the excellent footage of the woman known as Peace Pilgrim?Dogged persistence. I spent a year tracking down footage having started with Friends of Peace Pilgrim. This eventually took me full circle back to Friends. I finally received the go-ahead to use the footage even though it was a for profit enterprise. But a lot of praying and visualization really did happen in the interim. I had to have a powerful woman in there, who could balance all those meaty guys, intellectually speaking of course. Who more perfect than the great saint of America’s highways and byways, Peace Pilgrim?


What has been the response to “Earth Pilgrims” so far and what is your hope for those who view your film?

As I answer this we have only shown it a limited number of times in Japan since its release at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Tokyo on June 6. I discovered that Japanese are very reticent to air their views directly to the director! However we have received very moving responses from those who wrote about their feelings. Their comments are to be found on our Japanese website. Our English website will also have this function. Visit: www.earthpilgrims.com
My intuition is that the film is also a kind of consciousness barometer. For those who think our planetary scale problems are exaggerated and that evolution is a theory that only applies to other species, the meaning of the film might not be readily apparent. For those who do sense that our current crises represent far more than the Shakespearian ‘much ado about nothing’, the film offers an original perspective that is not about saving the world. It is more about ‘getting with the program’ so to speak! May I facetiously call it the New Way of Operating, or the NWO for short?
For those who do view this film, more than once being heartily recommended, my hope is that it will be spiritual edutainment in the best sense. I would hope they come away from seeing it inspired with a Hopi-like understanding that ‘WE really are the the ones we have been waiting for’.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Documentary Film "Earth Pilgrims"



I am inviting Mr Echan Deravy from Japan and hold Echan's talk and film "Earth Pilgrims" viewing in February 2010.



Please find below the details:

DATE: ( SUNDAY ) 7TH FEBRUARY, 2010
WHERE: PARRAMATTA RSL CLUB
TIME: 14:00 ~ 17:00
FEE: $50 P/P
BOOKING: kynad@optusnet.com.au or
0425-271-047

From a world swamped in problems, in a global civilization on its last march towards the edge of the cliff, how can we reconnect with a deeper, more meaningful way of life? How can we make a difference?

What happens when 60,000 Quechua Indians gather to give thanks to the vital life force that sustains them? What can we learn from those who put harmony and balance before gain? What is an Earth Pilgrim?

Every person has an image of a pilgrim. In Japan it is probably the image of the ohenrosan in Shikoku. This movie was conceived while the director was actually walking the roads of Shikoku on that pilgrimage. But this is not a movie about that kind of pilgrim. It is a message about the deeper meaning of being a pilgrim in the modern world. It is about the great dangers our planet is now facing and about how the pilgrim spirit can help us all.

The film follows director Echan Deravy as he travels in search of the meaning of Earth Pilgrim-a new kind of pilgrim, a pilgrim that we can all become in our hearts. The film was shot on location in Britain, Japan, Israel, the US and Peru as well as Hawaii. It is a documentary which includes the wise advice of several leading thinkers and an astonishing older woman. It is not about saving the world it is about how we change our way of being in the world. We do that by becoming a new kind of human that Echan calls Earth Pilgrims. It is an internationally released 90 min film available on DVD from 23 July, 2009 in English, and later in Spanish and other languages.



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Director's Message:

In my culture, the Celtic culture of Scotland and Ireland we have the story of King Arthur and his knights of the round table. They had to go on a quest to find the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is a symbol of higher understanding. In this movie I go in search of a higher understanding by asking people as I travel on a world pilgrimage to give me advice. I meet people in very different fields such as anthropology, ecology, shamanism, physics and plant healing. I do two major pilgrimages. One in Shikoku was 1300km and the one in Peru was not long at all. It was high. We climbed to 5 thousand meters in the Andes with 60,000 native people to film the Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage. Rumi, my favourite poet speaks to us throughout the movie to remind us of our spiritual life as pilgrims. The film is a quest to answer the riddle of our times. Why is the Earth falling apart? The answer lies in the heart of each person.


The answer may be in our all becoming Earth Pilgrims..


Cast and Crew

Echan Deravy

Echan Deravy, a lifelong pilgrim from Scotland, passed through 75 countries before settling in Japan where he established himself as an author and public speaker on issues of planetary concern, metaphysics, spirituality, and remote viewing. Echan has become a vital link between Japanese culture and the West, acting as interpreter for figures such as Graham Hancock and leader of many journeys with Japanese to sacred sites around the planet. He currently has over a dozen books in print in Japanese and a series of DVD talks recorded over the last 6 years-all in Japanese. His key concern is conscious evolution.
Click to visit his homepage at http://www.echan.jp/


Satish Kumar

Satish Kumar is an Indian, currently living in England, who has been a Jain monk and a nuclear disarmament advocate, and is the current editor of Resurgence, founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies and of The Small School. His most notable accomplishment is a "peace walk" with a companion to the capitals of four of the nuclear-armed countries - Washington, London, Paris and Moscow, a trip of over 8,000 miles. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.
Click to visit his homepage at http://www.resurgence.org/

Wade Davis

Wade Davis (born December 14, 1953) is a noted anthropologist and ethnobotanist whose work has usually focused on the observation and analysis of the customs, beliefs, and social relations of indigenous cultures in North and South America, particularly the traditional uses and beliefs associated with plants with psychoactive properties. Among Davis' many books are The Serpent and the Rainbow (about the process of zombification in Haiti) (1986), Passage of Darkness (1988), One River (1996), and Shadows in the Sun (1998).
Click to visit his homepage at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock is the author of the major international bestsellers The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods and Heaven's Mirror. His books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into 27 languages. His public lectures and TV appearances, including the three-hour series Quest For The Lost Civilisation, have put his ideas before audiences of tens of millions. He has become recognised as an unconventional thinker who raises legitimate questions about humanity's history and prehistory and offers an increasingly popular challenge to the entrenched views of orthodox scholars.Click to visit his homepage at http://www.grahamhancock.com/

Piece Pilgrim

Peace Pilgrim (July 18, 1908 – July 7, 1981) born Mildred Lisette Norman, was an American pacifist, vegetarian, and peace activist. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season. Starting on January 1, 1953, in Pasadena, California, she adopted the name "Peace Pilgrim" and walked across the United States for 28 years. By 1964 Peace Pilgrim had walked 25,000 miles, at which point she stopped counting, though continued to walk for peace until her passing.
Click to visit her homepage at
http://www.peacepilgrim.org/

Paul Temple

Paul Temple, born in England in 1953, began his life studying botany at U.C.N.W. of Bangor, later becoming a teacher in Canada, before moving to India for more than ten years where he studyied and taught Sanskrit sacred song, meditation, and Vedanta Philosophy. Paul has been a lifetime gardener, and student of the shamanic tradition with particular interest in the entheogenic use of sacred plant medicines, and their traditional and contemporary role in the development of human consciousness. For the past several years he has divided his time between BC Canada, and the mountains and jungle of Peru.Click to visit his homepage at http://web.mac.com/paultemple1

Rene Franco

Rene Franco Salas is the leader and organiser among the natives people of Pisac in Peru, and is active teaching indigenous Quechua shamanism to visitors. He has been a participant of the Qoyllur Rit'i pilgrimage throughout his life, and works for the protection of traditional Quechua culture through education and ceremony. He can be reached through Paul Temple, who collaborates with him in various projects.

Nassim Haramein

Nassim Haramein is a Swiss born physicist. In the past 20 years, Mr. Haramein has directed research teams of physicists, electrical engineers, mathematicians and other scientists. He has founded a non-profit organization, the Resonance Project Foundation, where, as the Director of Research, he explores unification principles and their implications in our world today. The foundation is actively developing a research park on the island of Hawai'i where science, sustainability, green technology, and permaculture come together.
Click to visit his homepage at http://theresonanceproject.org/

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was educated at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty years. He is the author of numerous Rumi translations and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Bill Moyers's poetry special, "Fooling with Words."
Click to visit his homepage at http://www.colemanbarks.com/

Jelaluddin Rumi

Jelaluddin Rumi (September 30, 1207 - December 12 1273) was born in Balkh, Afghanistan to a theologian and mystic father. Around 1215 Rumi moved to Konya, Turkey, where after his father's passing, he became a sheikh in the dervish learning community. His life was spent in a state of divine connection, which expressed itself through his friendships and through his poetry, which have become more popular today then ever in history, thanks in part to translations rendered by Coleman Barks. He remains an important figure in Sufi and Islamic culture.