Shamans and Medicine Men

Shamanism goes back to a very early time in human history. The literature on archaic societies shows that shamanism has a well-developed history of its own, and there is clear evidence of “shamanic elements in the religion of the Paleolithic hunters.” (Eliade 1964) Shamanism has been found in some form in Siberia, North America, South America, Indonesia, and Oceania.

It was the shamans who developed and held the myths of humankind during prehistoric ages and on into the modern age. At the turn of the twentieth century, the shaman complex was found among the Inuit in the Arctic and the people of Tierra del Fuego. Within these two groups, living at opposite ends of the vast twin continents of America, there is a strong tradition of shamanism and they share similar expressions of it.

Ancestors of the Fuegians are thought to have come from Siberia during the first wave of migration into North America about 50,000 years CE. Until the early part of the nineteenth century, they had lived an isolated and undisturbed existence. In the 1870s, Thomas Bridges established a mission among the Fuegians. His son Lucas wrote an account of life growing up among the Yahgan and Ona people entitled Uttermost Part of the Earth. In it he includes a number of fantastic and vivid descriptions of shamanic healing and magic sessions he witnessed. From these accounts and others we can get a unique and somewhat representative view into the metaphysical world of the primeval hunters and gatherers of North America. And what does their belief system include?

As was mentioned earlier, they had what some call a High God named Watauinaiwa, and they have a strong shamanic tradition. Their shamans exhibit extraordinary physical capabilities, including insensitivity to fire and other magical abilities. To them, as with many Indian people, illness is an intrusion into the body of an alien object or the loss of the soul and its imprisonment in another world realm. It is the shaman’s responsibility to remove the intruding object or to find and retrieve the lost soul. “The core of shamanism is the experience of going to a spirit world and being shown visions or given songs that are taken back and shared with one’s community in ceremony or used in individual healing rites.” (Mills in Walter 2004)

Shamans are sensitive individuals, philosophically and religiously gifted, the dreamers and visionaries of the group. Through natural ability and intense training under an instructor they become attuned to the subtler forces of the natural and supernatural world. Possessed, some think, with a touch of madness, they can enter a trance at will, during which time they become a conduit between this world, the spirit world, and the land of the dead. It is thought that these visionary trips formed the basis of the people’s ideas about the soul and the afterlife.

Shamanism in its purest sense is a technique of ecstasy, but not every ecstatic should be considered a shaman. Only a shaman can enter a trance at will. (Eliade 1964) Shamans cure the sick and can travel to realms beyond the ordinary senses, even into the land of the dead. Upon returning, they would tell incredible tales of adventure in which they used their clairvoyant vision to locate a soul, battle with spirits, and traverse barriers and obstacles to return to the world of the living with the rescued soul.

The following account from John Swanton describes how a Tlingit shaman cured sickness. The techniques explained here are representative of shamans in general.

How a Tlingit Shaman Cured Sickness
He cured by blowing or sucking, or by passing over the affected parts carved objects supposed to have power. Sickness was usually attributed to witchcraft, and after pretending to draw a spear or some other foreign object from the sick man, the shaman designated who had sent it into him. Shamans themselves had power to bewitch people. They could put spirits into inanimate objects and send them out to do mischief. It appears from various stories that eagle down and red paint were also use in curing, for they are employed in restoring the dead to life. (Swanton 1909)

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Soul

Throughout history, in all parts of the world, people have held a concept that in Judeo-Christian tradition is referred to as the soul and some other cultures refer to as the Double. The ancients had other names: to the Egyptians it was Ba; the Greeks called it Daimon and soul; the Romans referred to it as Genius for men and Iuno for women; and the Scandinavians called it Fylgja. It is the immortal portion of a person, for some time encased in a physical body, that transcends time and space and connects to the entire kosmos. (“Kosmos” is a Greek word meaning the whole of all existence, the physical, mental, and spiritual realms, as opposed to “cosmos,” which refers to only the physical aspect of existence.)

Most Indian people had a well-developed concept of the soul before Christian contact, but it was quite different from the Euro-American idea. The Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that a person’s soul is created at birth by God and is unique for all time. It lives out one lifetime and that is all.

In the Christian model, if a person has led a righteous life, at death his or her soul would go to heaven, a place above the sky, to be in the presence of God and the angels. If the person committed minor, or venial, sins the soul went to purgatory for a time to expiate their sins and then went to heaven. If the person led a wicked life and committed an unforgivable, or mortal, sin the soul went to hell, a place of perpetual fire beneath the earth, a realm of evil and suffering, where it would burn forever and never see the face of God.

Indian people believed the human soul to be preexistent, meaning that it existed before birth, and that souls come from the gods or the Great Spirit. Coming from the gods makes the soul supernatural, but the Indian soul is also sensual, connected to the body through the senses as well as the intellect, and local as opposed to a distant, abstract entity as in the Christian model.

In the Indian model, a soul could be reborn to live again in a newborn person. Some believed that a soul could reincarnate in more than one person at the same time, particularly a person of high social standing. They also believed that all living creatures possess a soul and that even inanimate objects have a soul, but that only humans are fully self-aware.

There are numerous accounts from shamans of fetal consciousness and soul activity during the embryonic period, such as precognition, prophetic vision, and clairvoyance. There is an account included in this book from a Winnebago medicine man recalling memories of time in his mother’s womb (see “T. C.’s Account of His Two Reincarnations,” pp. XX–XX).

According to Ake Hultkrantz, who wrote a seminal work on American Indian soul beliefs, many Indian groups thought that a person has within them two souls. While soul concepts vary widely among the various groups, the belief in a dual-soul was widespread in all regions of North America. The exception was the Pueblo people of the Southwest, who were influenced by the Mexican high culture’s concept of a unitary-soul. The dual-soul concept was also found through out pre-Christian Europe.

One of the souls in this duality is the free-soul, seen as the immaterial double of a person. The free-soul is fully emancipated, with a spiritual existence of its own. During deep sleep, trance, or in times of sickness or delirium, this free-soul is able to leave the body and travel to other realms. For the ordinary person, free-soul travel is random wandering, but a shaman can direct his free-soul travel and is even able to go to the land of the dead and return.

The free-soul stays with the person throughout his or her lifetime and at death the leaves the body either through the mouth or fontanel and begins its journey to the realm of the dead. The deceased retains his consciousness, or ego, in the realm of the dead but loses all carnal desire. In most groups, it is usually the free-soul that is reborn.

The second part of this duality is the body-soul, or life-soul, sometimes called the breath-soul. This soul animates the body and facilitates movement and consciousness. Among several groups, the life-soul is thought to reside in the chest, and many connect it with the heart. Quite possibly, the many rock drawings of animals and men found in the Southwest are the earliest representations of Native soul beliefs, for they show a lifeline running from the mouth to the heart. For many people, the heart was the seat of the soul, and the breath coming through the mouth in the form of words expressed a person’s soul.

At death, the life-soul can wander for a time in the land of the living as a malevolent ghost, but eventually the disincarnate life-soul dissipates and merges with the wind, the clouds, and sometimes the Great Spirit, or it just disappears and is gone forever. Some believe the soul goes to live in the Milky Way. While a person is alive, if the life-soul leaves the body and cannot return, the person dies.

The Indian soul is preexistent, but where does it reside before being incarnated on earth? The location varies widely among different groups. For the Pueblo people and most agrarian tribes, the unborn dwell in the land of the dead in the underworld, but in a different place from the dead. The Salish of Shoalwater Bay believed the souls of children came from the rising sun. The Chinook believed this as well. The Montagnais believed children come from the clouds; the Eastern Shawnee thought children live on little stars in the Milky Way. The Mandan believed babies are incarnated stars. The Oglala believed that Skan, the sky god, gave man his free-soul and life-soul. For the Fox Indians it was the Great Spirit that gave people their life-soul and the culture hero (an entity of mythological time who changes the world through intervention or discovery) their free-soul.


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That’s My Chair: The Gitxsan Reincarnation Case of Rhonda Mead

This contemporary rebirth story is by Antonia Mills, professor of First Nations studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. She has been doing research with First Nations of northern British Columbia since 1964, first with the Dane-zaa (Beaver Indians) and then with the Gitxsan, beginning in 1984, and the Witsuwit’en since 1985. She served as an expert witness for the landmark Delgamuukw land claims case. She is the author of Eagle Down Is Our Law: Witsuwit’en Law, Feasts, and Land Claims (1994), co-editor (with Richard Slobodin) of Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief among North American Indians and Inuit (1994), and the editor of Hang Onto These Words: Johnny David’s Delgamuukw Evidence (2005). She is currently working on the book "That’s My Chair: Rebirth Experience of the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en," assisted by a grant from the Aboriginal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Rhonda Mead’s Story

Since the summer of 1984, I have been documenting reincarnation belief among the Gitxsan, a First Nation tribe whose ancestral home is in northern British Columbia, Canada. My first trip to the Gitxsan was at the invitation of Ian Stevenson, the pioneer of reincarnation studies, who had been investigating cases of reincarnation within the Gitxsan and other First Nation tribes in British Columbia and Alaska. Dr. Stevenson told me that there was a Gitxsan family that claimed an elderly relative had reincarnated as her own great-granddaughter.

This story had all the classic characteristics of being a Gitxsan rebirth case: the elder, Susan Albert, had made a prediction she would return after death; after she died, she appeared to several relatives in what are referred to as “announcing dreams”; the child, Rhonda Mead, fulfilled the conditions and desires of her maternal great-grandmother, Susan Albert, in her new life; Rhonda acted from the point of view of Susan Albert, and she recognized objects belonging to the elder as hers; finally, she had a birthmark on her arm similar to a tattoo on Susan Albert’s arm.

I first met Rhonda’s family and began to document this case when Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, had brought her children to visit the grandparents, Margaret and Ed Elton। Susan Albert’s daughter Margaret, Rhonda’s grandmother, referred to her late mother as a Gitxsan princess—that is, someone well born into an important family: Susan Albert’s brother was the head chief of their matrilineal house।

In 1973, Susan Albert was around seventy-six years old and feeling her age. For some time she told her family that it was time for her to go. Margaret told me, “Whenever she got up to give her testimony [in church], she always asked the Lord if He would take her, and this is what [happened]. She had a stroke and she never regained consciousness.”

Susan Albert herself anticipated being reborn for some time before she passed on. Her daughter Margaret reported, “During the years, Mother [Susan Albert] always claimed she wanted [her granddaughter] Cynthia to be her mother when she came back.” Margaret said her mother was explicit about the qualities she wanted in her next life. According to Margaret, Susan said, “I want to be born beautiful, clever, and not poor anymore. And I’m going to have blond hair.”

When Susan Albert died, her granddaughter Cynthia was pregnant. Cynthia’s cousin Katie had thought that Cynthia was going to have a boy, until she dreamed of Susan Albert. She told Cynthia that she was going to have a girl, who would be the reincarnation of Susan Albert. That was the first announcing dream of Susan Albert as Rhonda.

As Cynthia’s expected due date approached, Susan Albert’s daughter Margaret flew to Vancouver to attend the birth. On the eve of the baby’s birth, Margaret dreamed of her mother so vividly that she said, “Mother, what are you doing in Vancouver?” From this dream, Margaret knew her mother was returning, and she said to Cynthia’s husband, “Don’t count on a boy. Mother was here.” This was the second announcing dream of Susan Albert as Rhonda.

The baby girl, Rhonda Mead, was born a blond, though this is not surprising, since her father is non-Indian, as is her maternal grandfather. Rhonda also met Susan Albert’s other specifications of wanting to be “clever and not poor anymore.” In 1984, when Rhonda was eleven, her mother told me that she was getting certificates for outstanding academic achievement in school. Since Rhonda’s father had a steady job at the Vancouver airport, Rhonda was comfortably situated. Additionally, Rhonda exhibited marked precocity and memories appropriate to her great-grandmother, Susan Albert.

The public health nurse who visited Cynthia three weeks after the birth noted that baby Rhonda was atypically advanced. The nurse said Cynthia should treat Rhonda like a five- or six-month-old baby, because she could pull herself up like a baby of that age. Before Rhonda was eight months old, she was able to walk and talk. Her mother noted several times that she was talking before she had teeth.

When Rhonda was fifteen months old, Cynthia brought her to visit her maternal grandparents (Margaret and Ed Elton) in Hazelton, British Columbia. When Rhonda came into the house, she insisted that her uncle Fred get out of the easy chair in which he was sitting, saying, “That’s my chair.” Cynthia said, “She just screamed bloody murder if anybody sat in her chair. She just used to squirm and push Fred away.” To her relatives, Rhonda’s response to the chair showed that she was Susan Albert come back, because the chair was indeed one of two that had belonged to Susan Albert that her daughter Margaret had brought from her mother’s house after her (Susan Albert’s) death.

When it was time to eat, Rhonda refused to be seated until she was brought a chair that had been sitting near the bathroom with things piled on it. This was the other chair that Margaret had brought from Susan Albert’s home after her death. Margaret reported that Rhonda “threw everything off of it and brought it in and sat down, and she wouldn’t let anyone else [use it]. She says, ‘That’s my chair.’” Margaret’s husband, Ed, added that although Rhonda could barely see over the edge of the table while sitting on the chair, she insisted, “That’s my chair.”

On this same trip, Rhonda went around her grandmother’s house stuffing clothes piled for laundry into shopping bags. Her grandfather Ed noted that this was just like Susan Albert, who, “being short of closet space, kept unseasonal clothes in old flour sacks. There was a time when we were reminded that Susan Albert was getting her way.” On subsequent visits to her grandparents, Rhonda continued to chase her uncle Fred out of “her chair.” Years later, Rhonda’s grandmother, Margaret, remarked to her son Fred that Rhonda was “becoming more mortal now; she’s not making such a fuss about the chair.” Fred replied, “That’s what you think. She’s still trying to pull me off her chair.”

At one point during this visit, Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and Rhonda’s grandparents were talking about prices and mentioned the figure “seven dollars.” Rhonda, who apparently had not been following the adult’s conversation until that point, said, “That’s my dog.” This was another strong indication to them that Ronda was Susan Albert come back, for Susan Albert had purchased a dog for seven dollars, and “having a sense of humor,” as her son-in-law put it, had named the dog Seven Dollars. The dog had died before Susan Albert’s death and was not a frequent subject of conversation, so it was unlikely that Rhonda had heard the story.

On another occasion during that visit, Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and Rhonda’s grandmother, Margaret, were looking through Margaret’s jewelry. Rhonda came up, picked up a bracelet that had belonged to Susan Albert, and said, “That’s my bracelet.” The incident with the chairs, the dog, and the jewelry confirmed a linkage that was suspected before she was old enough to speak. Given Rhonda’s precocity, her identification with Susan Albert’s belongings, and her fulfillment of Susan Albert’s request to be blond, smart, and well off, Rhonda’s family was convinced that she was indeed Susan Albert reincarnated as her great-granddaughter.

A final indication that Rhonda is her great-grandmother returned is a birthmark on her right wrist that resembles a curving brown line. This is said to correspond to the tattoo of an S (for Susan) that Susan Albert had on the same part of her right arm. In talking to Rhonda in 1984, when she was eleven years old, she did not remember saying any of the things she was reported to have said about her chair, her dog, or her bracelet. Her grandmother Margaret said, “After a certain age, it [the awareness] leaves; but then the genes are still there, so the idiom still comes out.” Margaret said she didn’t know why the memories fade and added that the dreams she used to have, in which her mother, Susan Albert, appeared and warned of danger concerning Rhonda, ceased as well. At one point during the interview, I asked Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, if her grandmother, Susan Albert, ever chided her for smoking. Rhonda, eleven years old at this point, answered with an emphatic “Yes.” Everyone assumed she had answered for the late Susan Albert.

In 2008, I talked to Rhonda’s mother, Cynthia, and learned that Rhonda was married and had four children. Her first child was a girl, born in 1999 after her grandmother Margaret had passed away. When I asked Cynthia if she thought that Rhonda’s daughter was Margaret come back, she said, “We aren’t sure.” Unlike many other Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en adults who recognize their lives as being impacted by who they were in a previous incarnation, Rhonda does not now identify herself as Susan Albert reborn.
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Rhonda Mead’s story and many other intertwined rebirth cases from the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en of the Pacific Northwest are recounted in the forthcoming book That’s My Chair: Rebirth Experience of the Gitxsan and Witsuwit’en, which describes the wealth of interconnected cases that have been documented over twenty-four years, from 1984 to 2008, to be published in 2010.


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Eastman

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858–1939), a great North American Indian, also known as Ohiyesa, was a prolific writer and articulate spokesman who worked tirelessly for the cause of justice for the Indian people.

The first missionaries, good men imbued with the narrowness of their age, branded us as pagans and devil-worshipers, and demanded of us that we abjure our false gods before bowing the knee at their sacred altar. They even told us that we were eternally lost, unless we adopted a tangible symbol and professed a particular form of their hydra-headed faith. We of the twentieth century know better! We know that all religious aspiration, all sincere worship, can have but one source and one goal. We know that the God of the lettered and the unlettered, of the Greek and the barbarian, is after all the same God.

—Charles Alexander Eastman, "The Soul of the Indian"


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Winnebago Shaman Initiation

Here is a tale of metamorphosis, human-to-human reincarnation, and shamanic initiation, as told by a Winnebago shaman. He was a warrior, and while on the warpath he was killed; but he was unaware of what happened and returned home. Once there, he realized that no one could see or hear him and he suspected that he was dead. He went back to look for his body and found it lying where it had fallen, and he knew then that he was indeed dead.

Between human lives, he lived life as three different kinds of animals—a fish, a bird, and a buffalo He retained human consciousness throughout these multiple lives and was eventually reborn as a human Before he returned to the human world, the spirits initiated him as a shaman, and he acquired extraordinary powers. He could heal the sick, cause a person to die, and bring a person back to life again.

I came from above, and I am holy. This is my second life on earth. Many years before my present existence, I lived on this earth. At that time everyone seemed to be on the warpath. I also was a warrior, a brave man. Once, when I was on the warpath, I was killed. It seemed to me, however, as if I had merely stumbled. I rose and went right ahead until I reached my home. At home I found my wife and children, but they would not look at me. Then I spoke to my wife, but she seemed to be quite unaware of my presence. What can be the matter, I thought to myself, that they pay no attention to me and that they do not even answer when I speak to them.


All at once it occurred to me that I might, in reality, be dead. So I immediately started out for the place where I had presumably been killed and surely enough, here I saw my body. Then I knew positively that I had been killed. I tried to return to the place where I had lived as a human being, but for four years I was unsuccessful.

At one time I became transformed into a fish. However, the life of the fish is worse than ours. They are very frequently in lack of food. They are nevertheless very happy beings and have many dances.

At another time I became transformed into a little bird. When the weather is good the life of the bird is very pleasant. But when it is cold they are compelled to undergo many hardships on account of the weather as well as on account of lack of food. When it was very cold, I used to go to the camp of some people who were living in the neighborhood and try to steal some meat from their racks.

A little boy used to stand near these racks, and we were very much afraid of him because he carried something in his hands with which he shot and which made a dreadful noise. Whenever he shot it we would all fly away. What the boy was using was a bow and arrow. At night we slept in a hollow tree. If I entered the tree first and the others came in behind me, I would be almost squeezed to death. If, on the other hand, I waited until the last, I would sometimes have to stay outside, and when the weather was cold, I might have frozen to death.

At another time I became a buffalo. The cold weather and the food did not worry me much then, but as buffaloes, we would always have to be on the alert for hunters.

From my buffalo existence I was permitted to go to my higher spirit-home, from which I originally came. The one in charge of that spirit-home is my grandfather. I asked him for permission to return to this earth again. At first he refused, but then after I had asked him for the fourth time, he consented. He said to me, "Grandson, you had better fast before you go, and if any of the spirits take pity upon you [i.e., bless you], you may go and live in peace upon earth." So I fasted for four years, and all the spirits above, even to the fourth heaven, approved of my coming. They blessed me.

Then I fasted ten days more, and then twenty and then thirty. Finally, all the spirits blessed me, even those under the earth. When I was ready to come to this earth, the spirits gathered together in a council-lodge and “counseled” about me. All the spirits were present.

They told me that I would never fail in anything that I wished to do. Then they decided to make [a] trial of my powers. They placed a spirit-grizzly bear at one end of the lodge and sang the songs that I was to use when I returned to earth. Then I walked around the lodge holding a live coa1 in the palm of my hand and danced around the fireplace saying wahi! and striking the hand containing the coal with my other hand. The invulnerable bear fell forward, prone upon the ground, and a black substance flowed from his mouth.

Then they said to me, "You have killed him. Even so great a spirit as this you have been able to kill. Indeed, nothing will ever be able to cross your path." Then they took the bear I had killed and cut him into small pieces with a knife, piled these in the center of the lodge, and covered them with some dark material. "Now," they said, "you must again try your powers."

I asked them for the articles that I would have to use, and they gave me a flute and gourd. Then I made myself holy. All those who had blessed me were present. I walked around the object that lay piled up in the center of the lodge and breathed upon it. This I did for the second time, and all those within the lodge breathed together with me. Four times I did this, and then the spirit-grizzly bear got up and walked away in the shape of a human being.

“It is good," they said. "He has restored him to life again. Surely he is holy." After a while they said to me again, "Just as you have done here, will you always do below. Whenever you wish to, you will be able to kill a person or restore him to life. Most assuredly you have been blessed."

Then they placed a black stone in the shaman’s lodge that stood above. There again they made a trial of my powers. There I blew four times on the stone, and I blew a hole though it. For that reason, if any person has a pain and he lets me blow upon it, I can blow it away. It makes no difference what kind of a pain it is. My breath was made holy by the spirits.

The spirits on the earth and those under the earth also gave me a trial of my powers. They placed an old, rotten log before me. I breathed upon it four times and spat water upon it, and it got up in the shape of a human being and walked away. My ability to spit water upon the people whom I am treating I received from an eel, from the chief among the eels, one who lives in the center and in the deepest part of the ocean. He is absolutely white, and he is the one who blessed me. Whenever I spit water it is inexhaustible, because it comes from him, the eel.

Then I came to this earth again. They, the spirits, all gave me advice before I left them. When I came upon this earth I entered a lodge, and there I was born again. As I said, I thought that I was entering a lodge, but in reality I was entering my mother’s womb. Even in my prenatal existence, I never lost consciousness.

Then I grew up and fasted again and again, and all those spirits that blessed me before sent their blessing again. I can dictate to all the spirits that exist. Whatever I say will come to pass. The tobacco you (the patients) offer me is not to be used by myself. It is really intended for the spirits. A person is sick and he offers me tobacco. I am on earth to accept it and to try to cure him. (Radin 1923)

Tales such as this, told by shamans in both the New World and Old World, are believed to form the leitmotifs of many myths and supernatural beliefs of archaic people. Some researchers go so far as to say shaman stories form the basis of many legends and fairytales of the modern era.


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Quantum Phyics

Chapter One Modern Science: A New View of Reality

I have included this chapter on modern science because the discoveries made by the New Physics scientists could help open our minds to the possibility that there are other ways of thinking about our world and our lives than the ones we were brought up to believe. More than one hundred years ago, Albert Einstein introduced a set of revolutionary ideas about the nature of reality. His theory of relativity and mass-energy equivalence, e=mc2 (the mass of an object is in reality a form of its energy), caused a profound change in thinking among twentieth-century scientists, who had to ask themselves: How much do we really know about our world?

Classical science as developed by Isaac Newton supplied us with a mechanistic model of the universe that served us well for the past three hundred years। Classical science contends that the universe is composed of two fundamental entities, material objects (matter) and three-dimensional space, and that space has an independent existence from the objects within it. In the classic model, we have solid bodies moving through empty space set in motion by the forces of gravity. Matter is built from fundamental building blocks (atoms), and the way to understand complex systems is by breaking them down into their constituent parts, for when you know enough about the parts, you can understand the whole. Furthermore, time is seen as an absolute quality flowing at a constant rate from the past to the present and into the future, independent of matter and space. These ideas of classical physics work well in what’s called the zone of middle dimensions, the realm where we all live. But these theories fail as we move into very large dimensions and very small dimensions. Scientists, using modern technology and advanced mathematics, looked out at the astrophysical world and into the subatomic world and realized that Newtonian physics didn’t work there.

The New Physics, as it is called, has linked matter, space, and time in a totally new way. Along with the three dimensions of space that define the location of an object, we now must include time as an integral fourth dimension. Space and time are no longer thought of as separate entities; they are considered a dimensional continuum known as the space-time continuum.

Einstein’s theory of relativity demolished the long-held concept that time progressed at a fixed rate. Einstein showed that time is a variable dependent on the speed of the frame of reference. He demonstrated with thought problems and complex mathematics that time is relative and can expand or contract depending on the situation of the observer. He liked to tell the story of a young man who sat with a beautiful girl for an hour and how for him it seemed like just a minute. Whereas if the young man sat on a hot stove for one minute it would seem like an hour. Time duration depends on the observer.

Time’s relativity has been proven by the experiment of observing two synchronized atomic clocks, one on board the space shuttle launched into space and one on Earth. At the end of the space trip, the space shuttle clock was slower than the Earth clock.

Furthermore, astronomers can actually look back in time a million years or more. If you look at our nearest star, you will see it as it existed four years ago, because that’s how long it takes the light from that star to reach your retinas here on Earth.

Quantum Theory and the Bootstrap Hypothesis
The “bootstrap hypothesis,” developed by the noted scientist Geoffrey Chew, built on the theories of the New Physics and introduced another set of revolutionary ideas about the nature of reality. The bootstrap hypothesis rejects the mechanistic view of the universe. It claims that matter and space are an inseparable whole and that there are no ultimate constituents of matter. It further contends that there are “no fundamental entities whatsoever—no fundamental laws, equations, or principles—and thus abandons another idea which had been an essential part of natural science for hundreds of years.” (Capra 1991, 286) Instead, it maintains that the universe is a dynamic web of interrelated events in which none are more fundamental than any other, and it is their interaction that determines the structure of the whole of the universe.

In the microworld of quantum physics we find matter and antimatter, matter coming into existence and going out of existence, time moving backwards, fields of instantaneous influence at a distance, and other phenomena that defy the very basic laws of classical physics. Scientists observing the activities of the microworld are finding that it is beyond their ability to create a theory that describes what’s going on.

That’s the subatomic world, the world that none of us can perceive. But what about the world of people, automobiles, pollution, and all the rest—the “zone of middle dimensions”? How does it really behave?

Bell’s theorem, developed by the late physicist John S. Bell, gives us some of the answer. Bell’s theorem is a mathematical proof that, in effect, says our common-sense ideas about how the world works are woefully inadequate. It contends that not only does the microworld behave in ways that are contrary to common sense, the macroworld, the “real” world, behaves in irrational ways. These ideas cannot be dismissed as fantasy, because they are based on proven quantum observations that have been shown to be correct in explaining things like subatomic particles, transistors, and the energy of the stars.

New Physics scientists posit that matter cannot be separated from the space surrounding it. Further, it speculates that matter is in reality a condensation of energy in a surrounding field and that particles of matter seemingly come into existence out of nothing, the void. What we used to think was empty space is in reality a continual dynamic of creation and destruction. It is thought that matter at the subatomic level is surrounded by interpenetrating fields and behaves very much as light does.

Quantum mathematical analysis also points to the possibility that superluminal connections (that is, faster than the speed of light) in the material world may exist. According to the classical laws of physics, to effect change over a distance there has to be a signal transmitted at the speed of light. It turns out this may not actually be the case. Quantum theory points to a universe that is of one substance that cannot be separated into parts, and it seems that anything done in one place has an instantaneous effect on the system many miles away. Now that’s a revolutionary idea, and if it is true, it could explain phenomena such as telekinesis, telepathy, extrasensory perception, premonition, and other psychic mysteries.

In view of these new observations about the nature of the universe, in 1927 a group of esteemed scientists met and formulated a set of theoretical principles known as the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (CIQM). This was a defining moment in modern science, for CIQM refuted the idea that there could be a one-to-one correspondence between theory and reality, a hallmark of classical science. Classical science asserts that there is one world and it is just as we experience it; this is it and it is exactly as it appears. CIQM says that the world is quite different from the way we think it is. CIQM doesn’t explain specifically what the world is like, just that it is not as substantive as we perceive it. And so this eminent group of scientists had to acknowledge that it was impossible to construct a theoretical model of reality.

Considering what the New Physics is discovering about the universe, I think it wise to keep an open mind about what is possible and what is not. We should not cling too tightly to our notions of reality. As astonishing as these theories are, new theories about the nature of reality will quite likely be developed and present something even more fantastic to future generations.


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The Great Mystery

The following entry is from The Soul of the Indian by Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) in which he presents his understanding of Indian spirituality. He is writing from the perspective of the early 1900s, but this worldview is still held by many Indian people today.

Ohiyesa’s story is an amazing one of adaptation and success. He came from a mixed-ethnic family of Santee Dakota and Euro-American ancestry. His maternal grandfather was a graduate of West Point and served many years in the United States Army. He was brought up by his paternal grandmother in traditional Dakota style in the wilderness of Manitoba, Canada, until he was fifteen. The traditional Dakota lifestyle was quickly disappearing, and Ohiyesa’s father had the foresight and ability to arrange a Western education for him.

Ohiyesa was a quick learner, earning an undergraduate degree and going on to become a medical doctor, one of the first American Indians to do so. During the early 1900s he served as reservation doctor for the Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation, again the first Indian to hold that position. It was during this time that the terrible Wounded Knee Creek massacre occurred, and he treated the wounded and dying from this grave tragedy.

As a result of his experience at Pine Ridge, he became active in Indian rights issues, and after leaving there, he traveled extensively across America and to England giving speeches in support of Indian causes. He did much to further the cause of Indian justice and increase understanding between Euro-Americans and Indian people.

Ohiyesa’s Story

The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, [and] free from all self-seeking. It was silent because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselytizing, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

There were no temples or shrines among us, save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening campfire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas—He needs no lesser cathedral!

That solitary communion with the Unseen, which was the highest expression of our religious life, is partly described in the word bambeday, literally “mysterious feeling,” which has been variously translated “fasting” and “dreaming.” It may better be interpreted as “consciousness of the divine.”

The first bambeday, or religious retreat, marked an epoch in the life of the youth, which may be compared to that of confirmation or conversion in Christian experience. Having first prepared himself by means of the purifying vapor-bath, and cast off as far as possible all human fleshly influences, the young man sought out the noblest height, the most commanding summit in all the surrounding region. Knowing that God sets no value upon material things, he took with him no offerings or sacrifices other than symbolic objects, such as paints and tobacco. Wishing to appear before Him in all humility, he wore no clothing, save his moccasins and breechcloth. At the solemn hour of sunrise or sunset, he took up his position, overlooking the glories of earth and facing the “Great Mystery,” and there he remained, naked, erect, silent, and motionless, exposed to the elements and forces of His arming, for a night and a day to two days and nights, but rarely longer. Sometimes he would chant a hymn without words, or offer the ceremonial “filled pipe.” In this holy trance, or ecstasy, the Indian mystic found his highest happiness and the motive power of his existence.

When he returned to the camp, he must remain at a distance until he had again entered the vapor-bath and prepared himself for intercourse with his fellows. Of the vision, or sign, vouchsafed to him, he did not speak, unless it had included some commission which must be publicly fulfilled. Sometimes an old man, standing upon the brink of eternity, might reveal to a chosen few the oracle of his long-past youth.

The Native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity. They forget, perhaps, that his religion forbade the accumulation of wealth and the enjoyment of luxury. To him, as to other single-minded men in every age and race, from Diogenes to the brothers of Saint Francis, from the Montanists to the Shakers, the love of possessions has appeared a snare, and the burdens of a complex society a source of needless peril and temptation. Furthermore, it was the rule of his life to share the fruits of his skill and success with his less-fortunate brothers. Thus he kept his spirit free from the clog of pride, cupidity, or envy, and carried out, as he believed, the divine decree—a matter profoundly important to him.

It was not, then, wholly from ignorance or improvidence that he failed to establish permanent towns and to develop a material civilization. To the untutored sage, the concentration of population was the prolific mother of all evils, moral no less than physical. He argued that food is good, while surfeit kills; that love is good, but lust destroys; and not less dreaded than the pestilence following upon crowded and unsanitary dwellings was the loss of spiritual power, inseparable from too close contact with one’s fellow men.

All who have lived much out of doors know that there is a magnetic and nervous force that accumulates in solitude and that is quickly dissipated by life in a crowd; and even his enemies have recognized the fact that for a certain innate power and self-poise, wholly independent of circumstances, the American Indian is unsurpassed among men.

The red man divided mind into two parts—the spiritual mind and the physical mind. The first is pure spirit, concerned only with the essence of things, and it was this he sought to strengthen by spiritual prayer, during which time the body is subdued by fasting and hardship. In this type of prayer, there was no beseeching favor or help. All matters of personal or selfish concern, as success in hunting or warfare, relief from sickness, or the sparing of a beloved life, were definitely relegated to the plane of the lower, or material, mind, and all ceremonies, charms, or incantations designed to secure a benefit or to avert a danger were recognized as emanating from the physical self.

The rites of this physical worship, again, were wholly symbolic, and the Indian no more worshiped the Sun than the Christian adores the Cross. The Sun and the Earth, by an obvious parable, holding scarcely more of poetic metaphor than of scientific truth, were in his view the parents of all organic life. From the Sun, as the universal father, proceeds the quickening principle in nature, and in the patient and fruitful womb of our mother, the Earth, are hidden embryos of plants and men. Therefore our reverence and love for them was really an imaginative extension of our love for our immediate parents, and with this sentiment of filial piety was joined a willingness to appeal to them, as to a father, for such good gifts as we may desire. This is the material or physical prayer.

The elements and majestic forces in nature, Lightning, Wind, Water, Fire, and Frost, were regarded with awe as spiritual powers, but always secondary and intermediate in character. We believed that the spirit pervades all creation and that every creature possesses a soul in some degree, though not necessarily a soul conscious of itself. The tree, the waterfall, the grizzly bear, each is an embodied Force, and as such, an object of reverence.

The Indian loved to come into sympathy and spiritual communion with his brothers of the animal kingdom, whose inarticulate souls had, for him, something of the sinless purity that we attribute to the innocent and irresponsible child. He had faith in their instincts, as in a mysterious wisdom given from above; and while he humbly accepted the supposedly voluntary sacrifice of their bodies to preserve his own, he paid homage to their spirits in prescribed prayers and offerings.

In every religion there is an element of the supernatural, varying with the influence of pure reason over its devotees. The Indian was a logical and clear thinker upon matters within the scope of his understanding, but he had not yet charted the vast field of nature or expressed her wonders in terms of science. With his limited knowledge of cause and effect, he saw miracles on every hand—the miracle of life in seed and egg, the miracle of death in a lightning flash and in the swelling deep! Nothing of the marvelous could astonish him, as that a beast should speak or the sun stand still. The virgin birth would appear scarcely more miraculous than is the birth of every child that comes into the world, or the miracle of the loaves and fishes excite more wonder than the harvest that springs from a single ear of corn.

Who may condemn his superstition? Surely not the devout Catholic or even Protestant missionary, who teaches Bible miracles as literal fact! The logical man must either deny all miracles or none, and our American Indian myths and hero stories are perhaps, in themselves, quite as credible as those of the Hebrews of old.

If we are of the modern type of mind, that sees in natural law a majesty and grandeur far more impressive than any solitary infraction of it could possibly be, let us not forget that, after all, science has not explained everything. We have still to face the ultimate miracle, the origin and principle of life! Here is the supreme mystery that is the essence of worship, without which there can be no religion, and in the presence of this mystery, our attitude cannot be very unlike that of the natural philosopher, who beholds with awe the Divine in all creation.

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