DREAMTIME INN ER S PAC E @ THE WORLD OF THE SHAMAN & a: * HOLGER KALW EIT MB FOREWORD BY ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS | DREAMTIME & INNER SPACE DREAMTIME W& INNER SPACE The World of the Shaman Holger Kalweit Translated from the German by Werner Wiinsche FOREWORD BY ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS SHAMBHALA Boston & London 1988 For Julia and Amelie Shambhala Publications, Inc. Horticultural Hall 300 Massachusetts Avenue Boston, Massachusetts 02115 ©1984 by Holger Kalweit and Scherz Verlag, Bern and Munich (for Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag) Translation ©1988 by Shambhala Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 FIRST EDITION Printed in the United States of America Distributed in the United States by Random House and in Canada by Random House of Canada Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kalweit, Holger. Dreamtime and inner space. Translation of: Traumzeit und innerer Raum. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Shamanism. 2. Shaman. 3. Psychical research. I. Title. BL2370.S5K3513 1988 291.6'2 87-28842 ISBN 0-87773-406-2 (pbk.) CONTENTS FOREWORD VI INTRODUCTION Snake Does Not Bite Man; Snake Bites What Man Thinks XI PART ONE The Religion of the Twice-Born 1. A Geography of Death 2. Life beyond Birth and Death 3. The Reality of the Soul 2] 4. Soul Journeys and Teachings about the Beyond 3] 5. The Body/Spirit Connection: Ropes of Air and Invisible Threads 48 6. The Out-of-Body Experience 52 7. The “True Earth” 56 PART TWO Shamanic Initiation 73 8. Suffering Kills, Suffering Enlivens: Sickness and Self-Healing 75 g. Rituals of Dismemberment and Bone Displays in the Underworld 94 10. Imaginary Friends, Partial Personalities, and Genuine Spirits of the Dead 111 l. Sacred Weddings, Spirit Marriages, and Dream Sexuality 127 12. The Song of Power: Joy, Joy, Joy! 144 13. Sacred Drugs: Where the World Is Born 160 14. The Acquisition of Power by Inheritance, Transmission, and Change of Sex 175 15. The Rejection of Power 182 16. The Loss of Power 187 PART THREE Transformative Symbols of Consciousness 193 17. In the Bowels of the Earth 195 18. Experiences of Light and Balls of Fire 201 eVe CONTENTS 19. Ascending the World Tree 209 20. Portals to Heaven and the Underworld 213 21. Rulers of Nature and Givers of Life 216 22. Crystal Came Whirling, Crystal Came Raining 220 23. The Rhythm of Life 225 24. Walk in Balance, Walk in Beauty 229 PART FOUR Religion and Science 233 25. When the Anthropologists Arrive, the Gods Leave the Island 235 EPILOGUE Too Much Think about White Man, No More Can Find Dream 253 APPENDIX: Tribes and Their Locations 257 NOTES 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 INDEX 293 ° Vile FOREWORD his book gives an astonishingly comprehensive account of the prac- tices and experiences of many different types of tribal healers and shamans from the most diverse regions of the world, ranging from so- called primitive African tribes, to Eskimos, Australian aborigines, North American Indians, and many others. Their narratives are, at first sight, rather difficult to comprehend, be- cause in their descriptions of initiatory experiences shamans frequently make use of extremely unfamiliar and symbolic language. Perhaps one would have to be a shaman oneself to appreciate them in their full depth. After all, these are reports about extraordinary experiences in a “fourth di- mension” penetrated by these men and women, who went through enor- mous inner struggles and great sufferings in their search for paranormal powers, for an ability to heal and/or foresee the future. On the other hand, I am grateful and happy that a book such as this should remind me that always and all over the world people have known about an existence after death and endeavored to prepare themselves by preempting it—an existence in which we no longer have need of a physi- cal body and can communicate by a kind of telepathy rather than words. This mode of “being” enables us to travel through other realms, and on our passage to these other planes of reality we have to overcome many an obstacle. Here, in fact, we reap what we have sown—a person who has led a good and compassionate life is able to cross the river of death without dif- ficulty, whereas others, according to the degree of self-perfection and goodness they have attained in the course of their lives, have to struggle for either a short or apparently endless period of time before reaching the other shore. Only a few of us who live in modern Western civilization understand that benevolent “helping spirits” and “imaginary friends” are by no means projections of an imagination gone riot. The critically ill children in my eVile FOREWORD care refer to these spirits as their “playmates.” They are very real compan- ions to them—guides and helpers at a time of isolation, loneliness, and suf- fering. Such companions are known by children everywhere. Only when children grow up in an unbelieving world, that tends to laugh at such fol- lies, do they as a rule lose their ability to recognize these helpers. It is extremely important that our modern Western culture subject its values and opinions to a critical examination—particularly its views about sickness and suffering. In order to promote such a reexamination I have founded a worldwide organization called Shanti Nilaya, that has taken the following statement for its basic motto: “If we were to protect all ravines against all storms and avalanches we would never be able to admire the beauty of their scarred surfaces.” People who have gone through great tri- als and tribulations in their early life—like the shamans, whose experi- ences are recorded in this book—often are particularly gifted, believing that they are guided, that there is a life after death, and that the whole of life is a school for spiritual growth. If we can, at least occasionally, sever the chains that bind us to our mate- rial world and turn inward, we are rewarded by an expansion of our con- sciousness and a corresponding insight into the realities beyond this three-dimensional world. We will then become aware of our true spiritual potential, of what has been called the “divine spark” that dwells in every one of us. Those who have experienced revelations of this kind will be aware of the remarkable similarities between them and the shamanic experiences dealt with here. They will thus find confirmation of what they already know: namely, that the basic experiences of humanity all over the world are the same and that we all have acommon source, to which we shall return when we have learned our lessons and overcome our trials. For we all are chil- dren of the same God. ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS - Ville