Nicholas E. Brink's Blog, page 7

Three Avenues to the World of the Spirits

Three Avenues to the World of the Spirits
Ecstatic Trace is just one way to commune with the spirits or to access the world of the spirits. I began my journey that led me to discover the world of the spirits through working with my night time dreams, recording them and searching to understand their meaning. In this initial step into the world of the spirits I learned a lot about myself and overcame a number of personal limitations. My journey next led me to learn from hypnosis and hypnotic trance. These trance experiences opened the door much wider to this world of the spirits. Since I was conscious of where the journey was taking me and had the ability to give some direction to the trance experience what I experienced in this world of the spirits was greatly expanded. For about 40 years almost daily and often several times a day I ventured into this world of the spirits with my clients as a psychologist.
Then in 2004 I learned about ecstatic trance. Hypnotic trance is induced by letting go of expectations, while ecstatic trance is directed by one’s body posture and induced by rapid stimulation to the nervous system through drumming or rattling. When in a hypnotic trance one is generally relaxed and the parasympathetic nervous system likely dominates. While in ecstatic trance the energizing sympathetic nervous system generally dominates, though in both elements of the opposing nervous system also functions. These two accesses to the world of the spirits are similar in that the experiences are likely metaphoric in providing answers. The world of the spirits responds to questions being asked of it and to issues of concern, but these questions and issues may not be conscious. The world of the spirits knows what you need or what you are looking for. This world of the spirits may be found in one’s unconscious mind, or it may come to you from what I call the universal mind, i.e. a mind or source of information from beyond, a source that many believe contains all information from the beginning of time. The spirits of this world of the spirits are of your ancestors and your ancestral animal spirits guides, or they may be of the spirits of the Earth. The Great Mother Earth has created a world of interdependency of all life and substances of the Earth such that the spirits are the guides for how to survive in this world of interdependency.
My current journey into the world of the spirits is opening me to the world of the spirits of medicinal plants. Again our Great Mother Earth has provided us with the healing power of these plants if only we would open ourselves to them. I am discovering that she has a much better understanding of what we need to survive in a healthy and sustainable manner than even our modern medical establishment. These journeys into the world of the spirits are so exciting that I have been reaching out to others both by offering workshops and in my writing to show others what can become available to you on these journeys.
My next book, Applying the Constructivist Approach to Cognitive Therapy: Resolving the Unconscious Past, will be available on March 18th. It reviews these three approaches for accessing the world of the spirits: dreaming, hypnotic trance and ecstatic trance. By pre-ordering it now from Routledge Publishing you can save on the price of the book, either paperback or hardback.

Morning Reverie

Morning Revere
With my interest in communing with the spirits of medicinal herbs I have been using ecstatic trance each morning. A couple of years ago I used ecstatic trance on an outdoor deck each morning for 365 day. When I am traveling to new places I also use ecstatic trance twice a day to experience the Earth spirits of where I am visiting at the time. Another valuable trance state is your morning revere, that state of consciousness between sleep and waking. I find this time in the morning very valuable in opening myself to the spirits. While in Denmark and Sweden I have been conscious of and used both avenues to connect with the spirits, first with my ancestral spirits as I have written about in Baldr’s Magic and then with the spirits of the Earth in Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic.
One experience in the Beowulf book I feel is quite relevant to my journeying with the spirits of medicinal herbs. From my trance experiences I have met and valued Vanadisdottir as a spirit guide. She is the governess to Wealhtheow, the princess who eventually becomes the Queen to King Hrothgar, the 4th king of Denmark in the story of Beowulf. In one sequence of ecstatic trance experiences the priestess and healer Vanadisdottir returns for a short visit to Freyja’s Pool where she was trained to become a priestess of Freyja. The sacred pool or tarn was formed from the tears of the Goddess Freyja who was flying above the Earth in search of her wandering husband. On this visit Vanadisdottir quickly fell into the routine of this sacred place that she considered home. From my ecstatic trance experiences that produced this story I felt the sacredness of her waking in the morning at sunrise, and going out in silence in this morning revere “on her own to walk in the woods, picking berries, nuts, and other plants. For their first meal all of the priestesses and novices quietly and singly walked their own individual paths collecting their morning meal, gathering enough but no more than needed for this simple meal. Only after they returned and all that they had gathered was placed on a table did they start to talk quietly, praising Freyja and the other goddesses, especially Idunn, for their morning meal, while busying themselves preparing the food,” (p. 31).
The Goddess Idunn was the healer of the pantheon of gods of the north, gods that including Thor and Oden.
On occasion I can incorporate this morning revere in my journeying with the spirits and drumming is not necessary. Just yesterday my morning reverie experience completed my experience from the day before with the medicinal crampberry.
On February 1, I had the following experience with crampbark or as we usually call it, high bush cranberry. I sat in front of this plant in the Lady of Cholula Posture:
I sat by the Crampbark with its few remaining shriveled berries. It was snowing lightly, though when the drumming ended I was quite covered with snow. It was 11o as the polar vortex was beginning to withdraw.
As I turned on the drumming I popped a couple of the berries in my mouth and they were quite flavorful. As I sat there Black Bear and his grandfather came to the bush. I have frequently met with them over the last several years. Black Bear is training to become a shaman and his teacher is the grandfather. There used to be a Lenni Lenape village just across the creek from where we have been living in Coburn. Their story today is that the grandfather was sent over to collect some of the Crampbark bark for one of the grandmothers of the village who was tending one of the women who was soon to go into labor. The Crampbark was to relax the muscles of the uterus in preparation for the fatiguing contractions of labor. Grandfather also was explaining to Black Bear that it is quite useful for muscle relaxation and muscle cramps. Though Black Bear did not think he had problems with relaxation he was aware of some of the older men who complained of having cramps in the legs at night and of their legs jumping or twitching, problems that sometimes kept them awake at night. Neither Black Bear nor the Grandfather seemed very enthusiastic about the assignment of collecting crampbark, and neither was I in sitting in the cold. My limited enthusiasm may have been projected on Black Bear and the Grandfather when usually I find them quite enthusiastic about life and in what Black Bear is learning.
After this experience I even questioned whether I should be calling upon the spirits of medicinal plants in the depth of winter when the plants are dormant. Maybe the spirits are dormant too. But this morning Black Bear and his grandfather returned to me in my morning reverie. The experience of yesterday was not finished.
Grandfather continued to explain to Black Bear that the healing nutrients of a plant flow up through the stems and branches of the plant through the sapwood layer just under the bark that is generally green. “That’s why we use that part of the stem. When the plants are asleep during the winter this flow of sap stops though there may be a little of the nutrients still there from the autumn before. Grandmother had run out of the bark she had collected from last autumn and hoped that the bark we are collecting will help her today. She should have collected more.”

Medicinal Spirit Guides

Medicinal Spirit Guides
I recently read Wolf Storl’s book The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present. It was very enlightening. One repeated theme throughout the book is the use of meditation and shamanic trance that the ancients used in journeying with the spirits of their many medicinal plants and herbs. I have frequently read stories of medicine men and shamans going on vision quests to seek visions as to what herbs to be used in specific situations of healing. For example from the book, The Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle when Russell Willier first meets with a potential patient and he does not have a clear vision as how to treat the problem, he goes on a vision quest to meditate and pray, often for several days, to seek the vision for how to treat the patient.
In our current pursuit of using medicinal herbs we tend to think like the mainstream medical establishment that there is a one to one relationship between a particular herb or pill for a particular illness or disorder, selecting from a large number of different possible herbs or pills. But the indigenous healer or shaman experienced the healing herbs in a much more spiritual manner. Going on a vision quest or using shamanic or ecstatic trance brings to the healer deeper levels of intuition, intuition that the mainstream physician ignores. By becoming acquainted with or by awakening within ourselves the spirit guides of the medicinal herbs that we find all around us we personally learn of the healing plants innermost being.
As an instructor of ecstatic trance I am excited about where these herbal spirit guides are taking me and I am looking forward to spring to where I can get out and meet these guides in their natural habitat with other joining me on these trance journeys.

The New Year

The New Year
Going into the New Year seems a good time to look to the hope of entering the New Age. Jean Gebser looked to this New Age as a new age of consciousness, the age of time-free transparency. Back in the 1940s, when this German historian/philosopher wrote his book the Ever Present Origin, he saw the evolution of consciousness beginning with the archaic era when our hunter-gathering ancestors lived in what was a dream-like state of consciousness, a state where they readily were able to commune with the spirits of their ancestors and of the Earth.
As this evolution progressed, humans moved into the era of magical consciousness when they began to move out of this dream-like state but still recognized the power given them when they chose to enter this dream/trance state to learn from the spirits and commune with those of the tribe who happened to be away at a distance or with their ancestors. This was a time when they considered all life as their ancestors, learned how to live from them, and where and when to hunt and gather, a time when the magical power of trance was often placed in the hands of the local shaman.
But as their consciousness continued to evolve this trance state seemed to occur less frequently. The next era was the mythic era, when life and all that was of the Earth was explained with myths that came from their dream experiences. This era was the early beginning of recorded history with the recording of these myths.
The era in which we now live began about 2500 years ago when people began to think of myth and communing with the spirits of the Earth and their ancestors as superstitious, thus abandoning the power given them to listen to the spirits. It was the beginning of what we consider the rational era when what was considered real was perceived only through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. The power gained from our Ever Present Origin was lost as superstitious. Our ability to intuit that which is beyond our senses was set aside.
Now in this next up-in-coming era of consciousness, the era of time-free transparency, this power to commune with the spirits that was clearly seen in our origin is again regained and more deeply understood. It is the power that is being discovered scientifically in quantum physics, and reported in the writing of many authors with the realization that there is much beyond ourselves that we can access from the universal mind, the collective unconscious, or in the words of the ancients, the world of the spirits. This world is most obviously accessed when we open ourselves to listen to our nighttime dreams, dream experiences that are time-free, place-free and transparent. But as we learn to access this world beyond ourselves through the use of the trance-state-of-consciousness, whether hypnotic or ecstatic, we begin to learn from that which is beyond our limited world of the five senses.
This is the time to hone our skill of listening to the spirits through our dreams and trance experiences. It is the time to take the lead as we move into the new age of time-free transparency.

The Universal Mind

The Universal Mind
From where do our ecstatic experiences come? As with our nighttime dreams we first think of the unconscious mind. Consider our mind, our mind that includes that which we are aware of consciously as well as that which is unconscious. This mind we think of as residing within our brain, within the neurons that compose our brain. But there are scientists who are finding that what we think and what we know may not be restricted to just our brain but can come from beyond this physical structure that is within our skull. This mind that is beyond has been called by a number of names: the morphic field (Rupert Sheldrake), the Akashic field (Ervin Laszlo), the collective unconscious (Karl Jung), and the Divine Matrix (Gregg Braden). In my writing I generally call it the universal mind or the world of the spirits. What is the nature of this universal mind, the world of the spirits.
We know that the planets of the universe are held together by gravitational fields that determine their positions and courses of orbit. Similarly the particles of the atom are held together by electro-magnetic fields. From the thinking of Rupert Sheldrake who extends this knowledge to the next step, it would make sense that the cells of our body are composed of atoms that have their own field, and as they come together to form the organs of our body and our body as a whole each have their own field. Projecting this thinking further, our species and each species of life are held together by the field of each species, fields that Sheldrake has named morphic fields. These fields contain much of what we claim to know and think of as our mind or consciousness. The evidence for this is offered with a number of examples. One example is of the bird, the tit that learned to peck off the cap of milk bottles that sat on the door steps of homes in England to drink from the bottle. From one tit learning this source of sustenance this knowledge quickly spread to other tits and across the channel to the tits in the other countries of Europe, knowledge that spread through the morphic field of the tit through the process that Sheldrake calls morphic resonance.
In considering consciousness, the organs of our body have their ways to communicate with other organs, chemical ways many of which are at least partially understood by physiologists, to create the right chemical balance between the organs to maintain health. Also, scientists have recently reached the conclusion that the cosmos has an inner conscious life similar to our own (Gregory Matloff). Then recognizing the finite nature of our brain, there are those who believe that our brain is to process and organize incoming information, recognizing that the storage of this information is beyond the capacity of our brain. Take as an example the concept of a chair. We have learned to recognize a chair from the myriad of chairs we have experienced over our lifetime in spite of their many variations. This concept of a chair is likely stored beyond our physical brain within our individual morphic field that Laszlo and Braden believe is in the form of holographic matrix. This information is available to us instantaneously at any time and from anywhere through the receptor of the cytoskeletal structure of our brain (Laszlo). From the research in quantum physics the concept of the time free and space free nature of subatomic particles, i.e. nonlocal coherence, provides an understanding of the time free and space free nature of this holographic matrix.
This information that exists from the beginning of time in the form of a holographic matrix is available to use, but because we have limited ourselves to receiving information from our environment through our five senses we have lost that ability that our hunting-gathering ancestors had of accessing the universal mind or the world of the spirits. We now recognize that we can access it when in a state of trance as have the hunting-gathering shamans of their tribes, trance that suppresses our five senses and opens us to the world of the spirits.

Spiritual Growth

Spiritual Growth
The intent of ecstatic trance can be directed to accomplish a number of different goals. We first think of it for healing and spiritual growth. Beyond these intents you can open yourself to visiting ancestral spirits and spirits of the Earth. In visiting the ancestors there is much to be learn in how to live sustainably upon the Earth, and from the spirits of the Earth we can find ways of healing the Earth in our need to heal the destruction that we have imposed upon her by our greed. We can communicate with the spirits of the flora to find ways of healing and with the spirits of fauna to learn ways to live in oneness with all that is of the Earth. But returning to spiritual growth there is much we have learned throughout our lives from our cultural institutions of family, school, and religion. Much of what we have learned is limiting or even false which limits the way in which we experience the world around us. Ecstatic trance can carry us beyond this limitation. I often think of the words of Carlos Castenada: tonal and nagual. Tonal is the way in which we experience the world, but there is much beyond the tonal, that of the nagual. The nagual is that which we have not experienced, but it is important for us to open ourselves to the nagual for our spiritual growth by experiencing it.
Breaking free of the tonal can be difficult. When someone asks you who you are, you likely begin with a list of personal beliefs and attributes. Throughout life when someone questions these beliefs you likely have found answers that defend them even though these beliefs are limiting and even false. These defenses of your limiting beliefs come from the misconceptions you already hold, and they only add to your limiting beliefs layer upon layer in a snowballing way, even though their reality has never been validated through experience. You initially learned them when your parents, school or religion told you that they were what you should believe.
The experiences that come to you in ecstatic trance, being generally metaphoric in nature, have something to say to you that can take you beyond these limiting beliefs. In that they are metaphoric their messages are initially not understood, but as you open yourself to these messages, seeking their meaning, they can take you into the world of the nagual, a new world of spiritual growth.

Book Review - A Cree Healer

Book Review: A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle: Healing Plants, Practices, and Stories by David Young, Robert Rogers and Russell Willier
Russell Willier, the Cree Healer, tells his own fascinating story, the story of how he became a healer, the sixty one herbs that he uses in healing, where he collects them and how he uses them. He is very concerned with the effectiveness of his healing ritual, and the herbs that he has found most effective in curing a wide range of problems, but he does not want those who would seek to make money from these herbal cures, such as the pharmaceutical companies, to learn of the power of his medicine. So for this book he generally does not give the complete recipe of the combinations of herbs he uses.
When he was young he would go with the elders of his reserve to collect the herbs that they sought, thus he learned at a young age the preferred medicinal herbs and where they could be found. Later in life he realized the importance of passing on the knowledge of being a healer, knowing that this information was on the verge of being lost through the death of the elderly healers. This knowledge was traditionally passed on orally from generation to generation and was not to be written, but fearing the loss of this knowledge he agreed to work with a research group at the University of Alberta to share his story. Willier’s treatment of the skin disorder of psoriasis was the focus of this research since this disorder and the progress in its healing is quite observable. Though the doctors were quite impressed with the results of Willier’s treatment, he was not. He believed he would have been more effective back in his community on the reserve where he could have better followed the ritual of healing. His focus would be on the whole person including the spiritual, psychological and physiological sides of the person, whereas the medical establishment was concerned mainly with the physiology of the problem, in this case psoriasis, and the herbs used in treatment. When Willier first meets with a potential patient and he does not have a clear vision as how to treat the problem, he goes on a vision quest to meditate and pray, often for several days, to seek the vision for how to treat the patient.
In Willier’s concern for preserving the medicine ways of his people a major hindrance is the destruction of the Earth with clearcutting, dam building, fires, and draining of wetlands that destroys the habitat of so much of the flora and fauna that he so depends upon. Dam building has destroyed so many species of fish that no longer are able to swim up river to spawn. Fires destroy the nests and eggs of birds and especially ducks. Wet lands are drained again destroying the habitat of so many birds and animals, moose and deer are over hunted, and with the loss of so many habitats the medicinal plants are disappearing.
Next Russell Willier offers several stories of his experiences as a healer. The first several were of facing death, and the delay of death. Most interesting is the lack of fear of his people in facing death. This expected fear is diminished when the dying person is visited by the spirits of loved ones who have died earlier, reassuring experiences that upon death you would be with the spirits of those who loved you.
Part II of this book describes what and from where he collects the sixty one medicinal herbs he uses. He and the other two authors of the book went on two gathering journeys with Willier throughout northern Alberta to identify the herbs and describe the habitat in which each herb was found. The herbs are generally collected in the fall. Each of these sixty one herbs is then described as how it is used. I was unfamiliar with a few of the herbs, some of which are likely not found in Pennsylvania and Southern New York. Though with my interest in medicinal plants I was quite familiar with many of them, flora that grows near where I live. I will select several of these to describe in this review: Poison or Water Hemlock, Sweet Grass, Red Osier Dogwood, Northern Gooseberry and High Bush Cranberry.
We live along Elk Creek in central Pennsylvania and along the creek Water Hemlock, or as we call it, Poison Hemlock has taken hold and is actually becoming quite invasive. Because of its poisonous nature we have been trying to eradicate it, pulling it up with gloved hands and putting it in plastic bags. I learned a lot from Willier’s description of how it can be used and its uses in treating cancer. Yet, he strongly warns the users of its potential danger, including death. I now have much more respect for it.
Also along the creek is a nice stand of Red Osier Dogwood. In the process of our move to the Hudson Valley of New York we have dug up and transplanted a number of these dogwoods to plant along the small brook that runs along the property where we will be living. Again I did not know of the medicinal qualities of this attractive plant, qualities directed towards healing the spiritual side of the person through burning it as a substitute for tobacco. Also the soft pithy center of the stem of the dogwood can be removed or eaten by the larva of the goldenrod gall, which hollows out the stem thus making an excellent pipe stem. Beyond these uses, the white berry juice is a wonderful hair conditioner.
I have also planted and nurtured three eatable viburnum: Nannyberry, Black Haw and the High Bush Cranberry. I enjoy eating these berries as I walk along the creek in the fall. Willier reports that the inner bark of the High Bush Cranberry is sometimes call cramp bark because of its antispasmodic properties to relax the uterus and relieve menstrual pain when used in combination with Valerian root. It is also used when a pregnancy is threatened by miscarriage. I have layered for rooting several High Bush Cranberries and have transplanted them at our new place in the Hudson Valley.
Several years ago I planted Sweet Grass in a half-barrel to grow it separated from the other grasses that grow along the edge of our pond. Whenever I walk near this barrel I pick a blade of this grass to chew and enjoy its flavor and smell, and have moved it to the Hudson Valley. Again I have appreciated its spiritual application in healing by using it dried in a braid to burn for smudging as part of our ecstatic trance ritual. From Willier I learned that it can also be used to wash chapped and wind-burned skin or to treat sore eyes when the stems are soaked in water.
Another plant that I have grown to eat is the Gooseberry, a very tasty berry. Again this book has taught me something new of its medicinal properties. An infusion of its leaves is helpful in preventing the formation of kidney stones, something for which I have been recently diagnosed. The juice of the berry can also help in the relief of certain skin conditions.
Besides these plants others that grow plentiful in our area for which I am quite familiar include Yarrow, the Wild Strawberry, Arrow-leaved Coltsfoot, Blue Aster, Sage, Stinging Nettles, False Solomon’s Seal and Hazelnut. Again we have transplanted both Sage and several Hazelnuts in New York. I continue on my pursuit to learn more about the medicinal qualities of the flora that grows near where I live, and will continue hunting for these plants. Reading of Willier’s experiences with these plants open new doors for me in this learning.
The rituals used in the healing setting such as the sweat lodge, smudging, rattling, drumming and chanting are each elements for inducing the altered consciousness state of ecstatic trance. This ecstatic state of trance that takes an individual beyond the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, takes the person into the world of the spirits where answers to questions and directions for living are found. “A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle” is a very useful resource in selecting medicinal herbs and in understanding at a deeper level the medicine ways of the indigenous peoples of western Canada. In my past reading about medicinal herbs so many of the books offer the scientific research on the plant that generally points to its individual ineffectiveness. Willier’s story makes a clear statement for the power of knowing how to combine these herbs and the power of the associated ritual in their use for healing. As a psychologist who has used hypnotic and ecstatic trance for years, I have valued highly the additional power of adding trance to the healing process. The book is an enjoyable and fascinating read.

Listening to the Spirits

Listening to the Spirits

My Weekly Blog
Now as we leave the rational era of consciousness of the last 2500 years and move into the new age of consciousness we again are learning to value listening to the spirits as did our hunting-gathering ancestors, but how do we or can we listen? Though many have considered our nighttime dreams as unreal or meaningless, they are full of meaning and everything in our dreams is messages from the spirits. But there are other ways we can open ourselves to the spirits. Current and ancient shamans have used vision quests that may last several days and energetic dancing that can last for hours, each until one falls into a fatigue triggered trance. Though these are effective and exciting ways of listening to the spirits, from my experience as a psychologist the use of hypnosis and ecstatic trance are also effective ways of reaching out to the spirits but with much less expenditure of energy. Yet still there are those who would consider the experiences of hypnosis and ecstatic trance as superstitions or hallucinations, as avenues “of the devil.” My six books on hypnosis and ecstatic trance, especially “The Power of Ecstatic Trance,” and “Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers,” describe how to attain these trance experiences for listening to the spirits. Briefly, hypnosis is induced through slow speech of affirmation and of quieting the mind. The mind with its rational activity so quickly interferes with listening to the world from beyond our five senses, the world of the spirits. And ecstatic trance is attained through rapid stimulation to the nervous system through drumming or rattling. Both are avenues to side-step that which is experienced through the five senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch, sensory experiences that interfere with listening to the world of the spirits from beyond.
The word “trance” has been avoided and not understood by many people. In my recent reading of Charles Eisenstein’s “The More Beautiful World That Our Heart Know is Possible” and the story of Russell Willier, “A Cree Healer and His Medicine Bundle,” each refers to finding deeper understanding through attending to or meditating on some question, ways that I believe are in reality an altered states of consciousness, the state of trance. Eisenstein says that we need attend to our attitudes that separate us from the Earth. Willier seeks to learn about the healing nature of a plant by hold it against his heart and meditate on it. I have used these techniques and realize that their effectiveness in finding answers to questions is achieved by going into a trance. I am sure that in paying attention to and meditating upon certain questions take these two writers into a state of trance, a state of consciousness that was so much part of the lives of our hunting and gathering ancestors but rejected in the world we are now leaving, the world of rationality.

A Book Review: Animated Earth: A Story of Peruvian Whistles and Transformation

I was drawn to Daniel Statekov’s book, “Animated Earth: A Story of Peruvian Whistles and Transformation” because of my experience with the Peruvian Whistles in 2007 while at the Cuyamungue Institute in New Mexico. I joined with a number of other whistle blowers in the Kiva at the Institute and we blew life into the clay vessels. The eerie sound with its overtones was quite trance inducing for calling the spirits. I think we used seven vessels.
Daniel Statnekov’s book is of a very personal journey beginning with the purchase of his first vessel at an auction in 1972. He was living a life of financial prosperity in Eastern Pennsylvania. He referred to where he lived as a little estate and he was living as a country squire. His first experience with the whistle vessel took him flying through the universe on a journey that ended in terrifying blackness, an experience that told him of the black emptiness of his life as a scheming business executive, a life of trying to impress others and making a name for himself. As a result of this transformational experience he became obsessed with the whistle vessel such that he eventually quit his job and left his marriage of affluence. He began enjoying walking in the nearby woods and fields, and breathing the colors of the flowers into his body.
His research into the whistle vessel first led him to Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute where the whistle was evaluated by an acoustic engineer who offered nothing noteworthy, nor did an EKG evaluation of while blowing the whistle. He wrote many letters in his search for answers and eventually received an answer from the curator of the American Museum of Natural History who he found had a collection of these whistles, some over two thousand years old and from a number of different pre-Inca Peruvian cultures including the Chimu, Chancay and Mocha. His whistle was made by the powerful Chimu people of between 1200 and 1500 AD in a territory that stretched for about 600 miles through a Peruvian river valley. When the Inca came into power the Chimu were absorbed into the Inca culture. The curator had nothing to add to Statnekov’s interest in the spiritual or ritualistic use of the whistle while describing the anthropological interest in the whistles as limited to cataloguing and describing them and that the vessels were considered amusing as liquid containers. The vessels were referred to as “huaca” or spiritual objects. In Peru everything is thought of as alive. The smallest object has a soul. The llama, potatoes, rocks, and rivers all have “huacas.” A person’s body is “alpacamasca” literally translated as Animated Earth, the book’s title.
The curator told him of the creation myth of Viracocha creating heaven and earth and causing the sun and moon to rise out of Lake Titicaca. He then fashioned man out of clay and breathed life into him. This triggered the thought that the potters who made these whistles were re-enacting the creation myth, though the curator thought Statnekov’s thought was highly speculative.
The curator did suggest that an acoustic evaluation of a larger number of these vessels might be revealing and suggested that Statnekov have his acoustical engineer come to the museum to evaluate the other whistles. One thing noted in this evaluation was that with most musical instruments the sound is projected outward, but with these whistles the sound was directed back onto the blower. The sounds were in a very narrow range of frequencies. Nothing otherwise was noteworthy of the whistles except for one which had at least five overtones, tones that would resonate in one’s head.
Statnekov’s questions took him beyond the protocol of anthropology as he sought to understand the spiritual dimension of these whistle vessels. His practice of its spiritual dimension is beyond the anthropologist’s concrete cataloging and description of where and when such artifacts are found and made. This pursuit eventually put him at odds with a number of academics. This conflict I found especially interesting in that the anthropologist Felicitas Goodman’s interest and practice in ecstatic trance must have placed her also at odds with mainstream anthropology. Her research into the induction of ecstatic or shamanic trance, her practice and valuing of this form of trance and the re-enactment of this shamanic practice did not fit with the research protocol of an anthropologist. The personal value I find in the practice of ecstatic trance as an instructor of this trance state, a topic that I have frequently written about, would also place me in the same at odds position.
Statnekov’s research to this point was published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1974. A professor of Andean Studies in Los Angeles found Statnekov’s theory of specifically pitched whistles intriguing, which led Statnekov to Los Angeles. At this point he had bought two more whistles and when all three were played together the effect was astonishing. As he reported, it sounded like a cyclone in the room with the feeling of the sound traveling through his head, washing his mind. In Los Angeles he contacted the Director of the U.C.L.A. Museum of Cultural History and found that the director had a storeroom full of items made by the people who made the whistles including a number of whistles. When experimenting with this new find of whistles he found they had the same effect.
Also available at the museum was an extensive collection of around ten thousand photographs of Moche pottery, a more recent culture from the same river valley as the Chimu. This pottery was highly decorated with painted scenes of the life of the Moche. He was given the opportunity to study these photographs and looked for scenes of how these whistle vessels were used in the culture. Many of the pottery in these pictures had been found in graves. The studying of these ten thousand pictures took Statnekov several months. Many of the scenes showed in the top-half fantastic half-animal half-human figures while the bottom half were of scenes of daily life. The top-half were suggestive of spirit journeying. But no whistle vessel was to be seen in this artwork. He was drawn to the conclusion that these spirit vessels were of such sanctity that they could not be portrayed, but he could tell no one of his speculative thinking.
While at UCLA he also met a professor in acoustical physics who invited him to demonstrate these whistles to his class of graduate students. The effect of blowing into five whistles was explained as an example of an auditory beat in the brain. When the range of pitch of these whistles is narrow the overtones create a beat in the brain. One graduate student wanted to continue in this research with Statnekov. Together they found that playing a number of the whistles at the same time produced up to seven overtones of the basic frequency, overtones that integrated with each other to create the beats that enhanced the overall effect. They found that the whistles from a particular culture were very close together in frequency but different from those of other cultures. The Gallinazo, Vicus and Moche whistles fell within the 1200 to 1300 cycle range; the Chancey and Recuay in the 2000-2100 range and the Chimu and Inca in the 2600 to 2800 range. Seventy three whistles were examined in this research. This was the first real evidence these whistles were created with specific intent.
Word of the results of this research spread and Statnekov was invited to demonstrate the effect of the whistles at Esalen in the Big Sur. There he learned of the teaching that air contains an esoteric substance or principle from which all vital activity of life is derived. In playing the whistles an otherworldly wail of phantom tones saturated the room. One explanation is that the brain makes a tremendous effort to locate the sound that does not have a location in space so cannot be processed in the usual way.
From a group of physicists who were visiting Esalen he learned that the synchronized electrical activity between hemispheres of the brain is a “frequency following response,” with the brain’s electrical activity following the beta waves of 30 cycles/sec of normal brain electrical activity, the alpha waves of deep relaxation are 8 to 12 cycles/sec, or the delta waves of deep sleep are 1 to 3 cycles per second. Consciousness may not be biological but universal like is found with sub-atomic particles with no clear separation between matter and space. Mystics say all is one, that everything of the universe is interdependent and all are interconnected, “a living reality conscious of itself. Only man’s mind divides the world in space and time, but all is “connected through the spirits.”
Concerning the relativity of time, light from the North Star takes 640 years to reach Earth, light from the sun takes eight minutes, and from the two bright stars in Orion’s Belt take 1100 and 1500 years to get here. What you see is the results of different events that only appear to you as happening at the same time. Only your mind orders events into a sequence that you define as “time.” The universe is an aggregate of non-simultaneous events. In the spiritual realm there is no division of time, of past, present and future.
From a Tibetan Buddhist who had a bone ceremonial trumpet he learned that it was made from the thigh bone of a woman who during her lifetime was considered a person of deep and peaceful persuasion and holy. The Tibetan tradition is that after death such holiness remains in a cellular alignment within their bones. When breath is blown through the bone molecules of their holy substance are released into the air along with our breath, invoking their memory.
From Statnekov’s first trip to Peru, Cusco and Machu Picchu one thing noted was seven nooks in an ancient wall that he thought might have been for seven whistles. Returning to California he found a potter in Santa Monica who was willing to work with him in making replicas of the vessel whistles, a project that took him several years to perfect.
Statnekov’s continued research to understand the power of the Peruvian whistle took him to a gathering of the Rainbow Family near Chimayo, New Mexico where he was to demonstrate the whistles. There he observed a healing circle and learned that dis-ease is characterized as a disturbance in the body’s natural rhythms like breathing and heart rate, the so called biorhythms, and that a change in a rhythm changes the whole person. Early healers discovered that sounds could bring about balance or equilibrium with these rhythms.
He then moved to a place a short distance from the Cuyamungue Institute where I was first introduced to these whistles, to Chimayo where he began assembling two whistles each morning. On his second visit to Peru, this time with four others including Andrew Weil, a Dutch woman of the group explained to him the legend of the acoustical key that foretells that one day a certain sound will unlock for us an ancient door that leads to an altogether different reality, a different dimension. Special priests reputed to be scientists of sound supposedly could cut large stones along precise harmonic lines and then move the stones into position through resonating sound, thus they were able to build the great megaliths found around the world. The ancients with their exceptional power to move mountains and build the pyramids showed Statnekov another explanation of the powers of the people of the time of the whistle.
Though I am an extremely long way from being able to cut stone and move boulders, with my continued practice of ecstatic trance I am discovering more and more power from these trance experiences.

The Sounds That Induce Trance

The Sounds That Induce Trance
Every so often it’s important to return to the fundamentals of ecstatic trance. Ecstatic trance is induced by the rapid stimulation to the nervous system by such sounds as the beats as from a drum or a rattle. In my collection of such stimulation I have CDs by Michael Harner using the didjeridu, the musical bow and a singing chorus.
Sound is the essence of trance induction. The Tibetan Buddhists use chanting, and from India we see the use of chanted mantras. The conch shells from the Pacific Islands, the steer horns from northern Europe and the Shofar rams horn used in the rituals of Judaism are other examples.
One very powerful inducer of trance that I have experienced is the whistle vessels of ancient Peru. I have just finished reading Daniel Statnekov book on his research of these Peruvian whistles. I first experienced these whistles at the Cuyamungue Institute in NM, very close to Chimayo where Statnekov has lived and where he made replicas of these whistles. The whistles produce many overtones especially when several are played together, sounds that induce trance. An acoustical analysis of many of these whistles from a number of ancient Inca and pre-Inca Peruvian cultures demonstrated that within a particular culture the range of frequencies of the sound of the whistles was very narrow, though this narrow range differed from culture to culture. From this analysis Statnekov concluded that they were pitched intentionally for the produced sound, a sound that with its numerous overtones produced trance.
As a result of his research Statnekov has been frequently invited to give demonstrations of the power of these whistles. At two of these demonstrations, first with the healing Rainbow Family in their meeting in New Mexico and then on a journey to Peru he learned of other dimensions of the power of such ecstatic trance and the power of sound.
While with the Rainbow Family he observed a healing circle, and when hearing an explanation of the circle he learned that dis-ease is characterized by a disturbance in the body’s natural rhythms, the so called biorhythms. Early healers had discovered that sounds could bring about the needed balance or equilibrium within the person to provide healing. A change in a rhythm changes the whole person, e.g. the rhythm of breathing, or the heart rate.
On his second visit to Peru, this time with four others, a group that included Andrew Weil, one in the group, a Dutch woman, explained to him the legend of the acoustical key that foretells that one day a certain sound will unlock for us an ancient door the lead into an altogether different reality, a different dimension. Special priests reputed to be scientists of sound supposedly could cut large stones along precise harmonic lines and then move the stones into position through resonating sound, thus building the great megaliths found around the world. The ancients had the exceptional power to move mountains and build the pyramids, again showing Statnekov another explanation of the powers of the people of the time of the whistle.
The practice of ecstatic trance is a beginning in bringing us back to the powers of our ancient hunting-gathering ancestors. Two pipe postures we use in ecstatic trance is the Adena Pipe Posture from a burial mound in Ohio, a divination posture, and the Mayan Whistle Posture again found in a grave. These pipes or whistles likely had the same effect as the Peruvian whistles when blown.