This is Part II of the Introduction to "Teachings of the American Earth, Indian Religion and Philosophy" by Dennis and Barbara Tedlock.
========================= The realm that Radin, Eliade, and Lame Deer all have in mind is open to all men in all places at all times, but it is also universally hard to talk about in ordinary language [metaphoricity, incompleteness of any symbolic system- Arlo]. Carlos Castaneda has called it "nonordinary" or "separate" reality, as opposed to "ordinary" reality. The Hopis refer to it as 'a'ne himu, "Mighty Something." It is open to what Martin Heidegger calls contemplative as opposed to calculative thought, or thinking that is oriented toward meaning as opposed to thinking that is oriented toward results. One must "release oneself into nearness" rather than propel oneself at a definite target, or, as a Papago relating his vision quest puts it, "I somehow tried to move toward my desire." [follow Quality? -Arlo] For the American Indian in general, it is a world composed entirely of persons, as opposed to the everyday world of ego and object [active, participatory oneness as opposed to S/O- Arlo]. For the Hopi, Tewa, Zuni, and Wintu it is the realm of soft, unripe, unmanifest essence, as opposed to hard, ripe, manifest form. Its location in space, for the Eskimo, Beaver, Sioux, Hopi, Tewa, and many others, is above and below the horizontal plane of our everyday world, and it is reached through a vertical axis that passes through the seeker. For the Sioux, Hopi, Tewa, and Papago, it is also encountered at the periphery of the horizontal plane. In these upper, lower, and peripheral regions, linear, historical, irreversible time gives way to a time which is far in the "past" when viewed "objectively," but the very present moment when experienced. [static quality versus DQ??- Arlo] Sometimes the entering of this other world just happens. Black Elk, a Sioux, had his first and greatest vision during a childhood illness. Don Talayesva blundered into a Hopi shrine as a boy and was captured by the being who lived there. Isaac Tens, a Gitksan, was out cutting wood one evening when a loud noise carried him into the other world. More commonly, the experience must be sought. In some ways of seeking, the mind is prepared with drugs. In the contemporary Native American Church, the peyote cactus is used as a sacrament, and in various Southwestern and California tribes, it is the Jimsonweed that shows the way to the other world. The Papago use tobacco as a path, following the exhaled smoke with their thoughts. Whether or not drugs are used, the body and mind must be purified or emptied. A Sioux, for example, must take a sweat bath before his vision quest, and the Peyotist must bathe and put on clean clothes. Both the Sioux and Papago fast from food and water; the Peyotist is purged of whatever is in him by his sacrament, which may cause him to vomit. The mind must be set upon the sacred task itself and emptied of all else; as Black Elk says, the seeker "must be careful lest distracting thoughts come to him." The Papago on a pilgrimage even ties up his hair so that he will not distract himself or others by having to brush it back from his face in the wind; he must concentrate on the rules of the journey and give no thought to home. In this emptying of the everyday mind, the seeker humbles himself; in the words of Black Elk, he must see himself as "lower than even the smallest ant." This means that he must let go of the self, which belongs to the calculative world of ego and object [tie in with Zen? -Arlo]. He experiences this letting go as death itself; as Lame Deer puts it, "You go up on that hill to die." The death which opens the way to the other world requires a special setting. The Zuni priest, when he seeks contact with the rainmakers of the world-encircling ocean, secludes himself in a windowless room, four rooms removed from any outside door. The Eskimo shaman who seeks to travel to the bottom of the sea puts himself behind a curtain in the sleeping place of a darkened house. Participants in the Ghost Dance of the Plains, seeking visions of their lost relatives, moved in' a circle on consecrated ground just outside the camp. The members of the Native American Church, though they live in modem houses, set up a tipi for their visions of Jesus, the Peyote Spirit, and the Water Bird. The Sioux, seeking the knowledge of the oneness of all things, goes away to a mountaintop and places himself within a sacred circle [archetype used in ZMM? -Arlo]. The Papago salt pilgrim travels on foot and horseback all the way to the edge of the world and even beyond, walking into the ocean until four waves have broken behind him. The experience itself is difficult to translate without destroying its nature, for ordinary language belongs to the world of the self and is concerned with the differentiation of the multitude of objects [metaphoricity again- Arlo]. Black Elk puts the matter this way: "While I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like on being." One approach to this problem of inexpressibility is to approximate the experience of oneness by using language in a way that draws the speaker and his subject closer together than the would ordinarily be [Art and Analogy - Arlo]. The nouns that best express a speaker's nearness to his subject are those of blood relationship. The seeker, a Black Elk says, must "know that all things are our relatives," an he must use terms of relationship whether he is talking about coyote, a willow, a lump of salt, the earth, or the sun. The verb that draw speaker and subject most strongly together are those of being and becoming [Zen? -Arlo]. An Ojibwa, describing what happened during a boyhood fast, says that when he discovered that his own body was covered with feathers, he realized that he had become an eagle. Black Elk, speaking of a visionary encounter with the Spirit of Earth, says, "I stared at him, for it seemed I knew him somehow and as I stared, he slowly changed, for he was growing backwards into youth, and when he had become a boy, I knew that he was myself." moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
