A Shaman’s Apprenticeship September 12, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
Beach has been interested, nay fascinated, this summer, by the way in which certain people have serial transformative ‘psychic’ experiences as they grow through adolescence and towards middle age: let’s use very loose terminology and call it the shaman ‘s apprenticeship. In a modern industrial or post industrial society these experiences are usually ignored, kept private or turned into a vampire series on HBO. However, every so often there are interesting accounts.
Beach, in his reading, ran into Love, Sex, Fear and Death: the Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment by Timothy Wyllie, (ed) by Adam Parfey. In the chapter ‘My Life Inside the Process Church’ Timothy Wyllie (TW) describes the way that he got sucked into what he later described as a cult. However, in his very detailed description, which runs to more than a hundred pages, he also describes a series of spiritual experiences that he clearly continues to consider ‘true’. Beach was particularly fascinated by the way that there is a clear progression in these experiences. Warning: it starts slow…
1) [23 in 1965?] ‘Two years had passed when I had one of those unforgettably bizarre moments in life, pregnant with significance. I was browsing the shelves of a bookshop in Notting Hill Gate when a thick and heavy edition of Idries Shah’s seminal work The Sufis mysteriously dropped from the top shelf and struck me sharply on the head. I didn’t fully understand the implications at the time, but as a wake-up call it really got my attention and I would have been foolish to ignore it.’
2) [25 in 1965?] Then as I idly watched what we used to call Channel X [static once TV stations have closed down], the haphazard blitz of electrons started to revolve into discernible images. I thought it might be a trick my eyes were playing on me, but the effect continued to grow into more recognizable images. I jerked upright when I realized I was being shown moving snapshots of my life. Something was displaying images that only I would know about.
3)[29 in 1966] One evening when we were all sitting around on deck chairs and the town had grown quiet around us, we started the meditation that was to change my life. Within a few minutes of closing my eyes and quieting my mind I suddenly and unaccountably found myself flung into a raging river, crashing off underwater boulders, struggling to surface and breathe, until I finally gave up fighting and drowned. It was real and it was frightening. Although on some levels I must have known I was lying safely on a deck chair, all my senses told me I was being battered to death in an unstoppable torrent of water. It was then, as I was still lying down, that I was shown, as if on a movie screen that filled my visual field, very rapid images of what I knew to be all my previous incarnations. Many hundreds of them flashed before my inner eye. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. It was so completely unexpected and was suffused with such a profound reality that it was utterly convincing. I remain to this day still certain of its authenticity and thankful for the experience…
4) [90 in 1973] My back had given out so thinking that water would give me some relief I ran a bath and painfully settled back into it. Closing my eyes I relaxed. The next thing I knew I was plucked out of my body and I could see it there lying in the bath, far below me. I’ve written in a previous book, Dolphins ETs and Angels more fully about the Near Death Experience I underwent, so I will only include the highlights here. After being lifted out of my body I was informed by a Being of Light that indeed I was dying and that I’d completed what I came to do in this lifetime and was being given the choice to continue or to return to my body. I was then blessed to see angels, to be healed of my ailment and taken for a tour of the higher regions, before being popped back in my body, healed and healthy.
It is interesting how these experiences survived TW’s cold chicken from the Process Church. He describes (3), for example, as ‘typical of a shamanic initiation’: a solitary spiritual initiation with perhaps a single teacher. He, likewise, recognizes that (4) is a Near Death Experience, though claims (certainly sincerely) that he knew nothing of these when the experience took place. It is nice to report that TW’s spiritual side has survived the Process Church as even a ten second look at his website will demonstrate: that is if Dolphins, ETs and Angels hadn’t already given you the clue…
Of course, back then, TW fit these four very neatly into his Process life: in fact, they were arguably responsible for that life. For instance, the book on the head drove him back into the arms of the heads of the Process Church: after (4) he wrote a letter to the church’s boss, Mary Ann asking her advice. The worst was (3), though, where TW woke up from his vision and turned to Mary Ann and said ‘Were you the river?’ She, of course, didn’t miss a beat and said ‘yes’, thus sealing him in the organization for several years.
If, say, ten percent of the population are capable of having psychic experiences, what percentage are capable of having these kind of transformative bangs in their mind? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Floodmouse writes, 25 Sep 2016, You asked: “If, say, ten percent of the population are capable of having psychic experiences, what percentage are capable of having these kind of transformative bangs in their mind?” I would have to answer, 100% of the population are capable of having psychic transformative experiences, but not everyone who is capable of accomplishing something, will actually accomplish it in their lifetime. Transformative religious experiences (whether in a Christian or non-Christian context) usually occur in people who have some kind of trauma or need that is not satisfied by “normal” social rituals. Many people who practiced as shamans had a physical deformity. Similarly, many people who study T’ai Chi do so because they have an illness or weakness that they want to overcome. This would make a great topic for a dissertation, if no one has done it already, but unfortunately I don’t have any citations from the literature. I no longer own the book I wanted to cite, and (sorry) I’m way too lazy to go back through my notes from college. To take an example from popular literature, instead: In Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone” and “End of Watch,” the main characters suffer serious injuries / coma, and their traumatized state leads them to have psychic visions. Traumatized teens are credited (or blamed) for poltergeist manifestations. To paraphrase a Christian proverb, you need to “seek” before you will “find.”
Norm K writes, 25 Sep 2016: If, say, ten percent of the population are capable of having psychic experiences, what percentage are capable of having these kind of transformative bangs in their mind? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Your best short cut is good old fashioned mushrooms. A quarter ounce of dried mushroom should open that door if there is a door. I know a blogger who is adamant that one dose cured his chronic depression, for good, some 20 years ago.
Bruce T on the shaman’s experience 29 Sep 2016: As someone who had similar experiences to Wyllie in his life and have known others who have experienced the same, I feel a bit sorry for folks like Wyllie who jump down the rabbit hole. Idries Shah’s book falling from the stacks, pure coincidence. Patterns and visions in TV screens, mirrors, or even bare walls, pareidolia, the same as the Man in Moon or bunnies in the clouds, the mind orders random patterns into recognizable shapes. Throw in a little sensory deprivation, and you’ll go over the deep end with full blown hallucinations. It’s why true solitary confinement breaks people in no time. It all depends on your belief systems and experiences on encountering these “things”. If you know what pareidola is, you’re able to recognize the phenomena, if not, it becomes something else entirely.
I’ve had near-death experiences at three times I can recall in my life. Once in a fall from a roof at nine, the classic flashback of all the events in your life all at once, in a less than one second fall that seemed to last forever. The second was at twelve when a cousin and I got “rimmed” following a deer trail down a cliff. We couldn’t get back up due to rotten sandstone, so were stuck with a simple option, fall straight on the rocks thirty plus feet below or jump for a tree branch roughly eight feet feet below and ten feet out to swing down to softer ground? Of course, we chose the latter. I had the same phenomena as the roof fall during the jump to the branch. I didn’t think we had a chance of making the leap nor was I sure the branch would hold if we did make it. I was busy explaining to my cousin while hanging on the branch how to land with bent knees and roll off his toes as to not break his legs to think about the minor NDE that had occurred in the initial leap? That came later, realizing that business about you life flashing before your eyes was true. If it happened twice, it was good enough for me.
The final NDE came in a car accident at 19 when a friend and I went flying over a guard rail due to blow out soared well over 100 feet through air in a spin from a 70-80 foot bluff and miraculously landed upright breaking both axles, with the roof of the car barely scraping the ground on the passenger side where I was seated resulting in a nice concussion. This one caused the full blown NDE sans the being of light and dead relatives. I guess atheists don’t get that part?
Once we left the road and went over the rail time seemed to slow down dramatically. I was certain we were done, my only conscious thought being, “Ah shit, nineteen and done.” as we flew through the air upside down. The next thing I’m aware of is I’m looking at myself from the perspective of the drivers seat, but I can also see my friend next to me as if he’s below and to the side of me. At times it was if I was looking at myself through his eyes, very weird. Then the flashback starts with a very warm comfortable feeling. It seems to go on forever until the car touches down and I’m shocked back to reality by the landing, watching the dust rise in a cloud as we settle. My first thought is “Ah crap, I’m still alive.” in semi-disappointment, most likely due to the knowledge I’m going to start hurting like Hell and soon? My second is more of a reaction, I reach over and push my buddy out the door to safety, then wiggle out of the seat belt and kick the jammed passenger door open.
About that time a truck load of drunk good ol’ boys roll up. I ask them if they can give us a ride to the hospital as my buddy is acting strange. One guy says, “Him? Your head is swelled up like a punkin’ and you’re bleedin’. You boys get in the front, we’ll get in the back and (pointing to the driver) he’ll get you to the hospital. I thank them profusely as it’s the end of December and freezing cold. I don’t remember much of the trip to the hospital, except my buddy and the driver trying to keep me awake.
My buddy was nicked up, but I got the worst of it, as the only roof impact was to the left side of my head. For some reason I’d put on a seat belt that night, which I never wore. As I look back on it, I’m sure it was because it was that we had couple of drinks at a holiday party and my friend didn’t really know the roads? I had severe concussion and minor skull fracture. If I hadn’t put on the belt it would have flattened my skull down to the ears, the end of me. I’d felt my head hit the roof as it was. Many of my friends and more religious well-wishers had me thinking in my concussed state that Providence had a plan for me and that’s why I had put on the seat belt? Once I fully recovered, it took over year before I was feeling fully myself, that went the way of the dinosaurs as far as I was concerned. My relatives and friends not so much. Many of them still believe I’m here for a reason, and many people I tell the tale to of a spiritual bent feel the same. All I can say is if it was divine providence, it works slowly, that’s been nearly forty years ago. The only thing I learned was watch yourself on sharp turns on cliff tops.
We’ve spoken of the ideas of Julian Jaynes before. I think his ideas apply to the NDE and many mystical experiences. When people are exposed to unusual stress they can’t deal with, the mind comes up with coping mechanisms to deal with them. The NDE, the voice of God, an idea of a message, synchronicity, etc.. Depending on your bent and knowledge going in, you interpret these things as you’re conditioned to. As you know I have tonic-clonic seizures, the old “grand-mal”. I’ve found the onset and and recovery to be similar to so called mystical and NDE experiences. They start with auras and auditory hallucinations at times and the coming out the warm comforting feeling is very similar to coming out of the NDE’s I’ve experienced, from the deep magenta color and buzzing sound when coming out of it, to the “Ah crap, I’m alive” feeling. Two, you often have mystical feelings in the weeks after a severe seizure, it’s very common.
To me they’re very closely related phenomena based mainly in the brain’s reaction to coming, perceived and survived trauma. As I’ve had three NDE’s and more seizures than I can count I’ve always found the seeming relationship between them to very interesting. While I wouldn’t wish epilepsy, concussions, or skull fractures on anyone, they’ve certainly given me a unique outlook on these types of phenomena. Maybe that’s my gift from Providence?
I honestly think that my interest in the unusual side of the human experience is the thing that kept me from going down the rabbit hole. I was interested enough in the physical and psychological cause of such phenomena before the incident at nineteen to go down the path that Wyllie did. However, I knew many people in my age group who did, either searching for instant enlightenment through psychedelics, some bogus arcane school of learning, or a charismatic cult leader. I was lucky that I was brought up by people who made sure I knew the tricks and tactics of quasi-cults in churches ran by manipulative ministers in my boyhood. By the time was eight I was well on the way to being wise to the tricks of those people and how to spot them. It’s the same game with the many hucksters that populate all religions, the traditions are simply different. It’s all about control, exploitation, power, and profit when it comes to cults. I feel sorry that Mr Wyllie he had to go through it before he came out the other side. I hope he’s able to live a happy, healthy, whole life these days.
