Hank Wesselman - Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future

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I AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU A MOST UNUSUAL STORY, A chronicle of something that happened to me while I was living on the flank of an active volcano on the island of Hawaii. I now believe that where I was residing had something to do with what happened, although during most of my life, I would have scoffed at the very idea of such a connection.

Im a scientist, an anthropologist who works as part of an international team of specialists investigating the ancient eroded landscapes of eastern Africas Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. My early academic training was in ecology and evolutionary biology, so my research involves reconstructing the environments of prehistoric sites from which the stone tools and fossilized remains of humanitys earliest ancestors have been recovered.

Scientists tend to focus on their goals within an exclusively scientific, intellectual view of the world. I am no exception. I mention this to show that I was in no way preprogrammed for what was to occur. In fact, my scientific training and prejudices would seem to have preprogrammed me against having such an experience.

One morning just before dawn about ten years ago, I experienced a full-fledged, spontaneous altered state of consciousness. During this event, my physical body was largely paralyzed by somatic sensations that could have been very frightening had they not been so exquisitely pleasurable. Quite suddenly, the word ecstasy achieved entirely new levels of meaning for me. While I was in this state of expanded awareness, I had a vivid visionary encounter with what a tribal person might call a spirit.

I was considerably shaken by this event, yet reason prevailed, and I chose to write it off as a lucid dreamas one of those odd things that happen in life that we never completely understand. I had almost forgotten about it when I had anotherand then one more, just to make sure I was paying attention. My curiosity was roused, and any residual fear overcome. I wanted more direct experience of this extraordinary phenomenon, but the episodes stopped at this point, leaving me baffled about how to proceed.

Several years later, my family and I moved to upcountry Kona, where I taught anthropology at the local branch of the University of Hawaii. There, between 1985 and 1989, I experienced a series of spontaneous altered states that were quite remarkable. All were accompanied by the same exquisite, paralytic sensations, and all were heralded by curious visual hallucinationsspots and lines of light, zigzags, grids, and vortexes.

In the first of this series, my consciousness was brought dramatically into contact with that of another man. I felt as though I were inside his physical body. I could see what he was seeing and hear what he was hearing. I could listen to his thoughts, and as if this were not enough, I could tap into his memory banks and receive information as a multilayered complex of thoughts, emotions, impressions, memories, and judgments. He seemed totally unaware of my presence. It was as if I were there as a visitor, an invisible one. To say that this surprised me would be an understatement of vast proportions.

I had heard other peoples tales of things such as channeling and shamanic journeying, and they had caused me to wince with embarrassment more than once. Now here I was, a trained scientist, experiencing the awesome jolt of the real thing myself. My carefully constructed scientific worldview began to come apart.

I had twelve altered-state episodes over the next four years. They were largely spontaneous in the sense that I could not deliberately induce them, yet each time, my conscious awareness merged with the same mans. At first, our lives seemed intertwined only occasionally, but gradually our lives moved toward each other more and moreconverging. Without any previous knowledge that such a psychic journey was possible, I found myself involved in quite a different sort of expedition from the scientific field trips and digs I was used to, one in which my investigations extended far beyond the ordinary nature of reality into the inner realms of the human mind and spirit. During these extraordinary experiences, I learned much information, both disturbing and enlightening.

Sounds fantastic, doesnt it? In my dark moments, I wondered more than once if I was going crazy, yet the anthropologist in me would calmly observe what was happening, make mental notes during the altered state, and then take actual notes when it had subsided. Eventually I created a journal of the scenes and sensations I had experienced. In my attempts to understand how and what I was seeing through the other mans eyes, I did research into many disciplines. Most helpful were my investigations of an area of anthropology about which I knew almost nothingshamanism.

In Western society, many people associate the word shaman with a masked and costumed tribal person who dances around a fire in the dark, accompanied by drumbeats, in a naive, mysterious ritual. In reality, however; the individual shamanapart from his cultural shell of mask, costume, and ritualpossesses a very real skill, one that distinguishes him from other kinds of religious practitioners.

All true shamans are able to achieve expanded states of awareness, visionary perceptions of what tribal people often call the spirit world. They usually exercise this unusual ability to heal members of their communitiesspiritually, psychologically, and physically. Directed by strong, altruistic motivations, the traditional shaman is a master of trance.

As a biological anthropologist, I was not particularly attracted by shamanic masks, costumes, songs, chants, and charms, although these can be very beautiful and very powerful things in themselves. In seeking to understand my altered-state experiences, however, I became interested in the old time-tested shamanic methods of achieving expanded states of awareness, and I specifically researched those that were non-drug-induced.