Hank Wesselman, P.h.D.

The Soul Cluster

Our last several columns (see the archives) have been focused upon the shaman’s relationships with their spirit helpers. The frequency with which these compassionate beings manifest themselves as animal spirits, or as combinations of animal and human form, has given rise to the popular term “power animal.”

Our last column (April 2005) was drawn from my own life and was focused upon one such spirit who serves me—the power animal I call the Leopard Man.

Needless to say, the spirit helper can also be the transpersonal essence of a plant, a tree, an elemental, or even a discarnate human—an ancestor, a revered grandmother or grandfather perhaps, or a wise old indigenous medicine woman or medicine man.

We have also mentioned how the rich legacy of rock art has preserved a record of the presence of these spirits in the human experience from the beginnings of self-awareness in our stone age past. Undoubted examples of symbolic expression appear as early as 77,000 years ago in southern Africa at the site called Blombos Cave. We will mention the significance of what was found there in future columns.

As an anthropologist who has been investigating the early stages of human evolution in Africa for more than 30 years, I suppose it was inevitable that my curiosity would draw me toward the evolution of human consciousness. The spontaneous altered states that I experienced in Ethiopia in the early 1970s opened many doors, and the subsequent continuum of visionary experiences that began in Hawai’i in the 1980s opened them even wider.

In the process, I stumbled across a piece of treasure buried within the indigenous world—a chunk of information about the nature of the human soul.

One of the first anthropologists to turn a sensitive scientific eye toward the phenomenon of spirituality among the indigenous peoples was an Englishman named Edward B. Tylor. In 1871, he produced a book titled Primitive Culture in which he suggested that the foundation for religion was to be found in the concept of the soul.

Tylor perceived the soul as a personal, supernatural essence that differs from the physical body. He proposed that the concept of the soul must have originated from tribal peoples’ awareness of the difference between being alive and being dead (in which the physical body is still present but something has departed), or between being awake and being asleep (in which the body is there, but an aspect of ourselves leaves and has dream encounters in another world.)

Tylor called the belief in the existence of the soul animism, and he proclaimed that traditional, tribal cultures extend this concept not only to human beings, but also to animals and plants, and even to inanimate things like rocks and rainbows, mountains and rivers, clouds and storms, planets and stars.

The doctrine of animism asserts that everything in existence is invested with its own personal soul, suggesting that everything everywhere is conscious and aware (and thus alive) at least to some degree. Having lived and worked for much of my life among traditional tribal peoples who are animists, I know with the certainty derived from direct experience that they hold this belief to be true.

The quest to understand the nature of the soul (and by association the nature of the self) lies right at the heart of the Great Mystery of existence. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras was one of the first in the Western tradition to record his thoughts on the subject, and in the 6th Century BC, he made the observation that each human being is composed of three principle aspects: the physical (body), the mental (mind or psyche), and the spiritual (immortal spirit aspect).

Pythagoras’ insights on these three principias have influenced the words and thoughts of countless philosophers, spiritual seekers, and healers across the ages, from Plato to Paracelsus, and it could be said that they find expression in our own time as Sigmund Freud’s id, ego, and super-ego, and as Carl Gustav Jung’s subconscious, conscious, and super-conscious minds.

The awareness of this triune nature of the self may actually have existed long before Pythagoras however, because we find it among the tribal peoples as well. And it is precisely here that we find something truly interesting. Among many of the traditional groups, there exists the clear understanding that we possess not one, but three distinct souls.

The Lakota Sioux of the Plains Indian cultures of North America, for example, distinguish between a physical soul, woniya, a cognitive soul, nagi, and a divine spiritual soul, nagila. And the Innuit (Eskimo), who traditionally lived as hunters in the circumpolar regions of North America and Greenland, proclaim that we have three souls—a breath soul that we receive at birth (anerneq), a name soul that is given to us after birth (ateq), and an immortal, spiritual soul (tarneq) that is the true essence of who and what we are.

Practitioners of Vodou in the Caribbean understand that we have three souls, and the anthropologist Michael Harner told me years ago that the Shuar (Jivaro) of the Upper Amazon perceive us as having three souls as well.

How many of the indigenous cultures once possessed this comprehension, and to what degree, is not known with certainty. After more than 200 years of assimilationist practices inflicted upon them by church and state alike, much has been lost.

The examples just given, however, suggest that awareness of the three souls had its beginnings among the hunting and gathering peoples of antiquity tens of thousands of years ago. And just why would our stone age ancestors be concerned with the nature of the soul? Because in order to experience authentic initiation, you have to know who you are.

My visionary experiences in Hawai’i drew me inevitably toward the ordinarily hidden teachings of the kahuna mystics. And there, I found this same realization of the existence of the three souls.

One of the early outsiders to investigate the spiritual wisdom of the Hawaiian kahunas was Max Freedom Long (1890-1971), a schoolteacher who lived in the islands from 1917 to 1931. His ethnographic research, recorded in his books and papers on Huna psychology and religion, have found their way into many published works.

It was Long who chose the word Huna as the name for the Hawaiian spiritual traditions, referring as it does to something hidden or concealed. Many years ago, I used the word huna in conversation with a Hawaiian elder, Kahu Nelita Anderson. She politely waited for me to finish, and then gently corrected me, indicating that the Hawaiian spiritual tradition was not called Huna.

“When you hear or see the word Huna with relation to the Hawaiian religion,” she proclaimed with her considerable authority, “you are dealing with an outsider—with someone who has limited knowledge and virtually no awareness of the deep traditions of the kahuna mystics.”

When I asked Kahu Nelita what word was used, she replied “We never had a word for it, but if one were to be used, the term Ho’omana would be appropriate.”

Mana is the Polynesian/Melanesian word for power. When you put ho’o in front of it, the noun becomes a verb that means to empower or to place in authority. This term affirms the indigenous perception of the relationship between knowledge and power. It also reveals that spiritual wisdom is a fluid process (a verb) that shifts and changes as it moves across time, not a set of rules or scriptures (a noun) that is fixed and immutable.

The knowledge of the three souls is one of the foundation stones for the Polynesian spiritual traditions. The Hawaiian kahunas acknowledged that each human possesses a lower soul (unihipili) associated with the physical body, a middle soul (uhane) identified with the mental or conscious egoic mind, and a higher soul (aumakua) which represents our personal supernatural or oversoul.

In life, these “three souls” form a unity within and around us that we think of as “the self,” yet each is distinguished by its vibrational frequency, as well as by its functions.

Correct relationship between these them is obviously essential. When there is harmony within and between them, everything works well. When there is discord, there are problems to overcome and surpass. When there is ease within and between them, we are in good health; when there is dis-ease, we experience illness.

These insights reveal that the singularity that we think of as our self is really a cluster, a mosaic—a personal soul cluster. The word soul is used here with deliberation, rather than self, for each soul aspect is a part of the same totality and each ultimately originates from the same source. But as we shall see in next month’s column, they exist in very different states of quality.

Pythagoras would have found this perspective more than interesting when considered in relation to the Greek word psyche. In the historical perspective, the Greeks considered the psyche to be the organ of both thought and emotion. From the Hawaiian perspective, however, these two quite different functions are products of two quite separate souls.

Next month, we will examine the three souls in more detail. Until that time, allow me to invoke the spirit of my great Hawaiian friend, Kahu Hale Makua, and extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of Aloha.

--and warm thoughts--Dr Hank