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Encounters on
the Shaman's Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
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by Dr.Hank Wesselman, P.h.D. |
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The Perennial Philosophy Revisited
In last May’s column (5/08) about The Perennial Philosophy, I opened by observing that this is a worldview that has been embraced by most of the world’s authentic spiritual thinkers and teachers.
The philosopher Ken Wilber has written about it in his book Grace and Grit (1991) in which he calls the perennial philosophy ‘universal’ because it can be found in virtually all cultures across the ages—and wherever it is found, it is essentially the same. This is really quite amazing when you think about it as there is virtually nothing on which all people everywhere agree. But this they do.
Wilber offers seven points that he considers as the most important, and we discussed them in that column. They were (and are):
Number One: Spirit exists.
Number Two: Spirit is found within.
Number Three: Most of us have no idea that this is so because we live in a world of unrelenting distraction that creates separation.
Number Four: There is a way out of this state of delusion and confusion…
Number Five: But we have to choose it…
Number Six: When we do, it brings us inevitably toward the experience of liberation that marks the end of our pain and suffering, delusion and separation… And this brings us finally to:
Point Number Seven: Having successfully completed our version of the hero’s journey (see the Meta Arts Archives 11/07), we ascend to the next level of our soul’s evolution with the potential to become world redeemers.
At this point in our personal experience of time, our primary goal becomes the alleviation of pain and suffering in the world, and we then live and act differently from the more ordinary people. We think and feel and speak from a place in which the practice of compassionate action on behalf of all sentient beings becomes our all-consuming task.
This is not about missionizing the ignorant, the unready and the unwilling. It is not our job to inflict the experience of self-realization upon others because it simply doesn’t work that way. Our personal evolution as a soul traveling across eternity takes the form of an experience that unfolds in layers for those who are prepared… for those heroes who are ready, willing, and able to assume the chase.
In August of this year, I spent two weeks teaching in Brazil where I crossed trails with one of those heroes—Dr. Ede Frecska, formerly the director and chief of psychiatry at the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Budapest, Hungary. He has written over 60 scientific papers in peer reviewed journals and books on schizophrenia and psychosis, and as we came into connection in a wonderful seminar at the Wasiwaska Institute in Florianopolis, he drew my attention toward several important papers he has published in a new book titled Inner Paths to Outer Space (by R. Strassman, et. al., 2008)
In one of this papers—‘The shaman’s journey: supernatural or natural?’-- Dr. Frecska has included some thoughts about the perennial philosophy that are worthy of our consideration here.
He precedes these thoughts by acknowledging the ‘Philosophia Perennis’ to be the view held by the great majority of eminent theologians, mystics, sages, and non-materialist philosophers across the ages. He also comments that it is ‘perennial’ because it holds profound, everlasting insights into life and nature, spanning all cultures across the globe, and that it has been taught in various forms by all the great thinkers across the time-space continuum.
Dr. Frecska then zeroes in on four critical claims about reality and human nature that lie right at the heart of this wisdom tradition (with my comments and thoughts embedded here.)
First Point: There exist two realms of reality. This assumption implies that the physical objective level of everyday reality that we all take so much for granted is only one level of experience and awareness available to us. We have discussed this in former columns.
The shamans of our traditional ancestors of the Stone Age Period were the first brave pioneers to begin to explore the nature of reality as well as the mystery of human consciousness tens of thousands of years ago, and they were the ones who discovered that the world is made up of two realms—the world of things seen and the world of things hidden. This can be seen clearly in their rock art if you know how to read it.
Today, the indigenous people still understand that these two realms present themselves together… the physical world, and the dream world from which the physical realm is ‘sourced,’ mixed into one common reality. We have explored the nature of the dream world, which is also the spirit world, in previous columns. We also explored the nature of the dreamer last month (10/08).
Second Point: All human beings partake of both realms and all the time. That means that a) that we are dreaming all the time, 24/7, even while you are (there) reading this column and I am (here) writing it; and that b) all that we are as well as all that we create and experience, mirrors the nature and existence of this two-sided reality.
This harks back to our column last month about the dreamer—the one who dreamed us into existence here on the physical plane at the beginning of this earthly life and the one to whom we will withdraw at life’s end. This is not some mythic monotheistic father figure called God sitting up in Heaven (the shamanic Upper Worlds). It is our own very real personal god-self—our immortal aspect or oversoul—the one who really listens to our prayers and acts in mysterious ways.
Third Point: Human beings possess the capacity, however unused and therefore atrophied, for the perception of the non-physical reality. This is an aspect of our humanness that we have explored in various guises over the past four years with the Meta Arts.
One of the easiest (and safest) ways to do this is through shamanic journeywork. This is a form of meditation practice that involves dreaming while awake, assisted by a physical stimulus (the drum or rattle) plus a focused intention. My wife and I teach this method in our Visionseeker workshops, yet it is also available through absorbing and practicing the exercises in our two small books--The Journey to the Sacred Garden—and Spirit Medicine, both of which include CDs of shamanic drumming and rattling for journeywork.
Through disciplined practice, we discover that shamanic journeywork is a learned skill that improves… with practice. Allow me to suggest that you visit the main page of our website www.sharedwisdom.com if you haven’t done so in awhile.
Fourth Point: Humans can recognize and thus know their divine spark, the self-aspect that the Hindus call the Atman, as well as its immortal source that they call the Brahman. This perception, as well as the understanding of what this perception means, is the final goal of mystical enlightenment—that the Atman and the Brahman are one.
From the perspective of what we have been exploring in these monthly columns, your personal oversoul field would correspond to the Atman, and the Brahman is the group oversoul of all humans together, pooled into one holographic field.
We are not discussing anything new here. More than two thousand years ago, the classical Greek philosopher Plato called the oversoul the entelechy (pronounced en-tell-eh-key); and the group oversoul was the still greater collective entelechy to which the singular entelechy belonged.
The Hawaiians call the oversoul ‘Aumakua, and the great gathering of all the human oversouls (that we call the human spirit) is ka po’e ‘Aumakua.
The pursuit of this revelation is, and has forever been, the greatest good of human existence. It is not about appreciating this intellectually, it is about getting it through the experience of direct revelation.
All the great messengers of the spirit, including all the great mystical masters across time, have declared with one voice that the supreme aim of humanity (the human experience) is to experience recognition of and our reunion with our personal divine source/principle/aspect.
This is and will forever be our oversoul, in turn part of a still greater oversoul.
Everything else that we are engaged in during this lifetime—including our work in the world and our ‘fan’ of relationships through family and friends and colleagues during our current walkabout here on the plane of earthly existence—all are simply and forever the river that carries us toward this ultimate goal… toward the understanding of and reunion with the ocean from which we originally came and to which we, as rivers of spirit, will inevitably return.
From this enlightened perspective, the teachings of the perennial philosophy suggest to Dr. Frecska that the cosmos is not only interconnected and pulsating with life, it is also multilayered. The physical universe is but one domain. Beyond its complex and often bewildering hierarchy lies the subtle domain of spirit. And from his perspective as a highly trained and well-published psychiatrist, the most meaningful contemporary term for this in his perspective is ‘consciousness.’
The spiritual realms cannot be known through the intellect, nor can they be measured by the scientific method. The numinous dimensional levels of the spirit world can only be approached through the contemplative methods of meditation, shamanic journeywork (a form of meditation), appropriate rituals and by following a sacred way of living.
In addition, the philosopia perennis states that our true nature is not material, but rather spiritual. In this sense, we are fundamentally and forever creators of this realm that we inhabit.
This is nothing less, according to the psychiatrist Dr Frecska, than a supra-positive cognitive scheme, and in his paper on the shamanic journey, he attempts to bring this experiential exercise into a rational context in the hope of changing the contemporary scientific worldview into one that is less negative.
For clinical practitioners and suffering patients, the message here is that there is no tragedy in being human. The problem, rather, is that people who have been severed from their spiritual roots tend to see life as a disaster.
Until next month, allow me to invoke the exalted spirit of Chief Hale Makua, my great Hawaiian friend… and with his blessing (and his words), I 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 the strongest force in the Universe… your Aloha.
With warm thoughts—Dr Hank
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Dr. Hank Wesselman, P.h.D
Anthropologist, Shamanic Teacher, Healer, & Author
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Dr Hank Wesselman PhD., holds advanced degrees in anthropology and zoology from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Since 1971, he's conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins--fieldwork that has allowed him to spend much of his life living and working with traditional peoples, rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders.
During this time, he has worked with many notables including Prof F. Clark Howell, Dr Don Johanson, "Lucy's" discoverer, as well as members of the famous Leakey family.
He is currently engaged in fieldwork in northern Ethiopia with the Middle Awash Research Project headed by Prof Tim White, where he is reconstructing the paleoenvironments of sites dated between four and six million years old that have yielded the fossilized remains of humanity's earliest ancestors.
Dr Wesselman has taught anthropology for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawai'i at Hilo's West Hawai'i campus at Kealakekua; California State University at Sacramento; American River College and Sierra College in northern California; and Kiriji Memorial College and Adeola Odutola College in Western Nigeria, where he first became interested in indigenous spiritual traditions while living among people of the Yoruba Tribe as a US Peace Corps Volunteer during the 1960s.
Dr Hank (as his students call him) is also a shaman in training, now in the 23rd year of his apprenticeship. His autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker describes an ongoing continuum of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, resumed in Hawai'i in the 1980s, and continue to the present day.
Combining the sober objectivity of a trained scientist with a mystic's passionate search for deeper understanding, Hank's books and teachings contain revelations about the nature of reality, the self, as well as the shaman's spiritual worlds.
Since 1994, he has offered seminars and training workshops at many internationally-recognized centers such as the Esalen Institute in California, the Omega Institute near New York, and the New Millennium Institute in Hawai'i.
Hank's newest books include the Journey to the Sacred Garden: A Guide to Traveling in the Spiritual Realms, and Spirit Medicine: Healing in the Sacred Realms (co-authored with transpersonal medical practitioner and soul retrieval specialist Jill Kuykendall).
He currently serves on the advisory board of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners, is a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and is featured in Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans by Hillary S Webb.
In addition to his scientific publications, he is at work on a book about his expeditionary field experiences in Africa.
He has also written a small book for children: Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf.
Contact info and workshop schedule:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
email:
hw@sharedwisdom.com
Notes & Updates
from Dr.Hank
Descriptions of the workshops and presentations offered by Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill Kuykendall, as well as the website links to the centers where they will be held in 2007, are now taking form on their web site:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
Soul Catchers
I discovered, quite by accident almost 15 years ago, that I am married to a great soul catcher. My wife Jill Kuykendall was trained in the Western medical paradigm and has worked as a physiotherapist in acute care rehabilitation in hospital as well as home health settings for more than 25 years.
Today, Jill works primarily in transpersonal medicine and has a private practice devoted to soul retrieval. Clients come to her from all over the country, as well as from abroad and she is usually booked up months in advance.
Interestingly, the transpersonal nature of this work means that it is “nonlocal’ and is just as effective when done long-distance, revealing that Jill can still do the work on behalf of those who cannot travel to meet with her in her office.
Jill is the co-author with me of Spirit Medicine and wrote the chapters on soul loss, soul retrieval and more. As you may be aware, we have a website <www.sharedwisdom.
com> where Jill has a page describing the nature of her work in soul retrieval.
For those interested, there are also two hour-long interviews with me posted on the Broadband Learning Channel <www.bblc.tv>, one of which is focused upon health, illness and healing the soul in the indigenous perspective.
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