Twenty-six year-old Jude has had strange and deeply disturbing experiences since childhood: talking raccoons, prescient crows, and visions predicting the deaths of people he knows. Only an undemanding job, rock climbing, and a new girlfriend every few months can keep the weirdness at bay.

He meets Sara, a grad student in counseling who has an intense interest in studying ESP, especially telepathy. They are drawn to each other, but Jude is afraid to reveal his premonitions, and Sara, who’s been unlucky in love, is wary of his evasiveness. They go their separate ways, though each harbors a secret longing for the other.

Life takes them on different paths until they reconnect in their fifties. Jude now teaches shamanic workshops and Sara has built a career around her unusual knack for understanding the canine mind. Is this a second chance for them to explore the truth about their uncanny experiences and to rekindle their love affair?

Cover photo by Jessica Kelley  Evergreenendurance.com

Telepathy: “The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas between minds by means other than the known senses.” (Stevenson, A. & Lindberg, C.A. (Eds.), (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, 3^rd Edition). New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press, Inc.)

Almost all dog owners believe that dogs have minds, and are not just machines  driven by instinct. During the last century, academic psychologists have caught up with that conventional wisdom. The strict behaviorist theories of the 1920s-1960s ignored the mental determinants of animal behavior, but have been supplanted by cognitive theories. These cognitive theories include mental constructs such as expectancies, values, intentions and the like to best explain why animals do what they do. (Zentall, T.R. (2002). A Cognitive Behaviorist Approach to the Study of Animal Behavior. Journal of General Psychology 129 (4), 328-363. Complete article at www.uky.edu/~zentall/pdfs/1.pdf )

But telepathy? Even if dogs do have minds remotely like our own, could we “read” Pepper’s mind, or “send” our thoughts to Toby? Some answer “yes!” Rupert Sheldrake, noted biologist and author of Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (Sheldrake, R. (1999). New York: Three Rivers Press.), is especially sympathetic to the idea of animals sensing human thoughts, and presents compelling testimonials from dog owners. But he rightly cautions that subtle sensory cues—cues of which humans are often blithely unaware—can create the appearance of telepathy. For example, you decide to take Mocha for a walk. Seemingly at the moment of your decision, she leaps to her feet and trots to where her leash hangs on a peg.

Did Mocha sense your intention? Of course! But most likely she watched you shut down your computer, glance outside the window to check for rain, and observed your big smile directed at her. These are all cues that have heralded walks in the past, so Mocha drew the sensible conclusion.

Sheldrake offers a series of thoughtful scientific experiments studying the ability of dogs to sense their owners’ intentions. One such study, “A Dog That Seems To Know When His Owner is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations,” presents compelling evidence for this type of telepathy, at least for one dog-owner pair. Visit Sheldrake’s website and look under the “research” button for this study and others. (www.sheldrake.org)

Sheldrake’s work has been resoundingly dismissed by skeptics, some of whom are even scientists. I will address these criticisms in a later blog, but for now, I believe his experiments seem to control for important extraneous variables and are carefully executed. His results, at the very least, support efforts to continue research into the area of dogs sensing the human mind.

But what about the reverse? Can humans telepathically sense a dog’s mind?

In my book, A Second Chance Life, Sara the skeptic dismisses her apparent ability to telepathically feel a dog’s distress as her own. For example, she could notice pain in her hand when she’s with a dog who has a thorn in its paw. But, she explains away her experience as paying close attention to canine behavior:

Sara stared at Jude. “Well, believe it or not, it’s like I can feel what the dog is feeling. No, that’s not exactly right. It’s more like I have a sense of what the dog is experiencing, like sensory images, like I’m in the dog’s head.”

“Sara, that’s remarkable. Just to have those feelings is remarkable, even if your diagnoses are just guesses.”

“Yes, but I don’t get something from every dog. Whatever it is I’m feeling, it’s not dependable, so I don’t want to make a big deal about it. The vet might find my opinions useful, but I don’t see myself as one of those animal communicators. I’m skeptical of those people anyway.”

“Amazing, Sara.” Jude’s tone carried more than a whiff of irony. “You’re the trained scientist. You’re the one who wanted to study ESP back when you were a grad student and now you’re refusing to take a hard look at what could be your own telepathic talent.”

Sara snorted. “Don’t even go there. First of all, ESP means extra-sensory perception: Knowledge without input from the senses. In my case, I think I’m getting subtle visual and auditory cues from the dogs. I’m not even aware I’m picking up on them.”

Jude raised his voice. “Yes, but you feel what the dog feels.” He wanted her to admit how amazing her experiences were.

“Okay, for some screwy reason, my unconscious turns the cues into personal feelings.” Sara waved a hand dismissively. “But it doesn’t happen all that often and not with every dog. And besides, I don’t even know how often I’m right.”

Sara points to her keen awareness of dog behaviors as the reason for her unusual experiences, but telepathy could be explained in other ways, as well. My short story, The Mission, explores the boundary of telepathic experiences and psychosis. Keep in mind that two possible symptoms of psychosis, such as schizophrenia, are thought insertion and thought broadcasting. Thought insertion is “the delusion that certain of one’s thoughts are not one’s own, but rather inserted into one’s mind.” This could be just a short hop to the belief that one is receiving another’s thoughts. Thought broadcasting is “the delusion that one’s thoughts are being broadcast out loud so that they can be perceived by others.” Perhaps not that far from a belief that one is sending thoughts to another? (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4^th Edition, Text Revision (2000). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.)

In my story The Mission, Joseph Mallory is a skilled dog trainer for the Army. He struggles to understand his vivid dreams of being dog-like and his compelling hunches about his dogs having ESP. But does he truly have a telepathic communication with his animals, or is he over the edge into crazy delusions?

(Photograph from www.humanK9bond.com)

In my novel, A Second Chance Life, Sara is telling Jude about a dream she’d recently had:

“I dreamt about the summer I drove across the desert from California to Utah, to my first job. In my dream I was me, now—well, maybe (in my forties), because Casey was with me. We were driving on a two-lane highway across the Nevada desert when we saw a young woman walking on the shoulder. We stopped to see if we could help her and it was me. Me, as a young woman, walking on the road.”

Jude nodded, looking thoughtful.

“But Jude, the really weird part is that the whole thing really happened twenty-seven years ago. As I remember it, a couple picked me up when I ran out of gas on my way to Salt Lake. The woman had on a big sunhat tied with a scarf under her chin, but I remember she was just my height and had green eyes and a gap between her front teeth like mine. After they’d taken me to get gas and I was driving off, she took her hat off and her hair was like mine is now.” Sara shook her head in wonderment, the image of Madge on that hot desert highway branded on her memory.

“You think your dream-self went back in time to see your younger self?” There was no hint of mockery in Jude’s tone.

Sara raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together, the weight of doubt tugging at her hopes. “Wouldn’t it be amazing, “she said, “if a dream-self could travel along the skein of time? If a dream-self, free of physical constraints, could somehow manifest in a different place and time?”

“Is that what you think happened?”

Sara slipped into her default position of rational skepticism. “No, I think the more likely explanation is that, for whatever reason, I simply had a dream about meeting up with my younger self.” But as she spoke, she felt as if a fragile rainbow bubble popped, leaving a dull residue of fact and reality.

“Was there a message in the dream?”

“That I gave my younger self?”

Jude smiled. “That’s usually the direction advice flows.”

“In my dream, as in the reality of twenty-seven years ago, the older woman gave the younger woman a book about experiments in telepathy and encouraged her interest in paranormal experiences.”

Sara looked away, across the Sound to the clouds shrouding the Olympic range. “My memory isn’t real clear, but wasn’t that the summer of 1973? You moved out to Colorado that year.”

“Yes,” Jude said. “That was in 1973.”

“Well, this morning I dug through some cartons to find that book. You know what? I couldn’t believe it, but it was first published in 1974.”

“1974? How do you explain that?” Jude sounded baffled.

“I’m not sure.”

They ambled up the beach in silence, Sara taking long, slow strides. It could be evidence for time travel, she thought, if a book had been given to me before it had actually been published. But my memory could be faulty, no matter how real it seems.

“I could have been given that book by someone else later on. Maybe an older woman, maybe Mom? And confused the memories.”

Although I know of no scientific evidence for people traveling backward through time, there is plenty of evidence (anecdotal and scientific) for false and/or confused memories. An example from my own life is embedded in my creative nonfiction piece, Going Down Slow. In that story I tell about how my sister, brother, and I leave our critically ill Dad alone in his hospital room to go with our Mom to check out a Hospice. When my sister read the story, she exclaimed, “No, don’t you remember? I stayed back at the hospital so Dad wouldn’t be alone.” My memory of the three of us standing with Mom while talking to the Hospice nurse, although vivid and detailed, was simply wrong. Fabricated. (Interestingly, since being corrected by my sister, that memory has actually faded.)

Another example, in the recent news, concerned NBC Anchor Brian Williams. According to USA Today (2/6/2015), Williams claimed he’d been under fire in Iraq, but after challenges to his story, said he’d “misremembered” being hit by enemy fire in Iraq in a helicopter, when in fact, the helicopter had not been hit. His false memory created a stir in the media and cast doubt on his credibility.

No doubt you, too, have an anecdote about a false memory in your own life, though perhaps not as public as Williams’! But what about scientific evidence?

Arguably, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is the most prolific and well-known researcher in the area of false memories. (Go to You Tube to watch Loftus’ TED talk–a must-view! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elizabeth+loftus+ted+talk ) The scientific evidence she presents strongly supports the idea that misinformation (and the world is full of it), can cause memory distortion, and that false memories can actually be intentionally implanted into one’s mind. Loftus warns us that just because a person believes their own memory and relates it in detail with confidence and emotion doesn’t mean it really happened.

Considering the recent stir about Brian Williams, Loftus, whose research has apparently made her more forgiving about memory lapses, is quoted by USA Today: “Let’s give Williams a break.” (USA Today, 2/6/2015)

Photo from www.public-republic.net

I had to put Hank down today. He was a rescued German shepherd. When I got him, the shelter said he was probably about 10 years old. I’d had him for two years.

This morning, he couldn’t walk at all, not even drag himself with his front legs, the culmination of a slow loss of function in his hind end. He also refused to eat or drink, which was the sign for me to call the vet.

The vet showed up at 1:00 this afternoon. She was sympathetic and efficient. I wore my Alpha Bitch tee shirt to call up the courage to be the one who makes these decisions. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, which I appreciated. I had already done much of my grieving for this uncomplaining, easy-going old dog and didn’t want something drawn-out.

I clipped a bit of Hank’s fur. Spoke to him, and let him go.

Right now, I can’t believe he’s gone. One of my two remaining dogs searched for him in the back yard, even though those two had watched the whole procedure, including deceased Hank being taken out on a stretcher.

Is he really gone? I think Hank’s spirit, the Life Force, has returned to the universe. What will happen to him next? Dog Heaven? Reincarnation? Joining me on my spaceship adventures when I die? Hard to tell.

I am no stranger to dogs dying. My story “That Nice Girl with the Dogs,” posted on this site, is a creative nonfiction piece which describes some of these experiences.

The story is also about the death of my mother, lost to dementia.

Some deaths are quick, some slow. Sometimes love is straightforward, sometimes intensely complicated. Whatever the circumstances, we still grieve.

I’ve decided to describe Daryl Bem’s Experiment 2 from his (2011) publication, Feeling the Future (see reference below). Dr. Bem, a respected research psychologist, magician, and debunker of ESP (psi) demonstrations, seems to me an ideal person to conduct research on hunches. Also, the procedure of the experiment is relatively simple, and the results are statistically quite unlikely to be due to chance.

PARTICIPANTS: 150 Cornell undergraduates. 107 women, 43 men.

METHOD:

Procedure:

There were three steps in this experiment, all fully automated on a computer in order to reduce unintended influence by human experimenters.

1. The participant saw two side-by-side neutral pictures on a computer screen and indicated which picture he/she preferred. (The pictures are described in the Materials section below.)

2. AFTER the participant indicated which picture was preferred, the computer randomly selected one of those two pictures as the “target.”

3a. IF the participant had, in step 1, already selected the target picture as preferred, the computer flashed a positive picture three times for 33 milliseconds each time.

3b. IF the participant had, in step 1, already selected the nontarget picture as preferred, the computer flashed a negative picture three times for 33 ms each time.

(When pictures or other stimuli are presented for such tiny time periods, the stimuli are called subliminal. The participant is generally not consciously aware of subliminal stimuli.)

Materials: All of the pictures used in this experiment were taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). (See reference below.)These pictures have been rated by various groups of people as to their emotional “pull.”

Some pictures are rated as neutral, for example, a chair against a blank wall. Some are rated as negative, for example, a spider or an angry human face. Some are positive, for example, children laughing or puppies snuggling.

In summary, participants indicated a preference for one of two pictures. If the preferred picture was then randomly selected as “target,” participants were subliminally rewarded with a positive picture. But if that preferred picture was the (randomly selected) “nontarget,” participants were subliminally punished with a negative picture.

HYPOTHESIS:

The idea is that if participants can somehow “feel” the future, can somehow access the emotional pull of the future subliminal picture, then, over many trials, they will tend to prefer the positive target picture and avoid choosing the negative nontarget picture.

If participants cannot feel the future, then, over many trials, they will indicate a preference for the target picture 50% of the time.

RESULTS:

If you’re not familiar with parapsychological (psi) research, you may be disappointed by the results of this study.

As with many psi experiments of this type, the results support psi, but the effects are very small. In this study, participants showed a “hit rate” (preferring target pictures) of 51.7%, not much above the chance rate of 50%. This might suggest that feelings about the future are rather weak and somewhat hit-or-miss. Certainly, for an individual person, these “hunches” are only occasionally better than chance. Nevertheless, these results are statistically significant. In other words, the feelings about the future are weak, but very likely “real” – not due to chance.

But wait. Are you feeling doubts rise up like a wall? Wondering about the experimental design- was it truly solid? Wondering if the particular statistical analyses used were appropriate? Wondering if these results can be reproduced in other laboratories by other experimenters?

You’re not alone. If you google criticisms about Bem’s Feeling the Future, you’ll see many people have weighed in with critiques, and supportive comments as well.

My personal position, after reading Bem’s paper and several of the critical articles, is that the experiments are solid designs with careful controls for extraneous variables. But yes, it would be useful to use a variety of statistical approaches with the data.  And the most crucial question remains: can these results be replicated?

Experiments have been, and are being, conducted all over the world in attempts to replicate Bem’s findings. We’ll take up these results in a future blog. Any hunches about the outcomes?

(Featured image from designstacks.net)

REFERENCES

Bem, D. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100: 407-425. (caps.ucsf.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bem2011.pdf)

Lang, P.J., Bradley, M.M., & Cuthbert, B.N. (2008) International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual. Technical Report A-8 University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

But Dr. Bem was not only a professional magician. He also debunked demonstrations of ESP (ExtraSensory Perception- today called “psi.”) For example, he appeared in an Introductory Psychology video series in which he revealed how a magician “sets up” card and mind-reading tricks. (See the Annenberg Learning website for the series produced by Dr. Phillip Zimbardo called “Discovering Psychology, updated edition, Unit Two).

During my career as a psychologist, I didn’t bother following psi research. Like many of my colleagues, I assumed the scientific “evidence” demonstrating the existence of psi was probably flawed, marred by inadequate design and over-enthusiastic interpretation of data. Not that I had actually seen any of the studies. After all, they were generally not published in the mainstream psychology journals I read.

But in 2011, a headline in the New York Times grabbed my attention: “Top Journal Plans to Publish a Paper on ESP . . .” The journal was the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), perhaps the most respected journal in its field regarding rigor of peer review and importance of research topics.

The author of the paper was Daryl Bem, and his laboratory studies to be published in JPSP claimed to support the idea that future events could causally influence current emotions and behaviors even when these future events were random and unknown to anyone. In other words, the studies were touted to support presentiment (emotions based on the future) and precognition (cognition based on the future).

In the NYT article, some critics of Bem’s work thought his paper might be “an elaborate joke,” or “an embarrassment to the field,” or “should undergo special scrutiny,” or that the study used improper statistics. (The New York Times, 1/6/2011)

But to my mind, this was Professor Bem, a renowned and respected scientist who had, in the latter part of his career, turned his attention to psi research. And who better to conduct these studies than the great debunker himself? Who better to know how to design an experiment that controlled for (eliminated) extraneous factors—factors that could offer an alternative explanation for apparent psi results?

I’m going to offer a somewhat simplified description of one of Bem’s studies in my next blog. But for now, if you wish, you can read his entire article at JPSP’s online publication of “Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect,” 100, 407-425. (caps.ucsf.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bem2011.pdf)

(Featured image from amazingkidsparties.com.au)

A prophesying power animal plays a role in my novel, “A Second Chance Life.” In the following scene, Jude tells his friend Sara about a raccoon who he believes is quite extraordinary:

In the hush of the closed-up car, Jude said, “Well, I guess it all began when I was seven. See, I wanted a puppy real bad. A little puppy I could play with, and tell him everything . . .

“So did you get a puppy?” (Sara asked.)

. . . “No. When I asked my mom, she said, ‘No dog, because your little sister has bad allergies. How about a turtle?’ You can imagine, I was bummed . . .

“But then, that very same night, after everyone had gone to bed, I heard this scratching outside my window. I stood on my bed and looked down into the vegetable garden that ran along the side of the house. There was this raccoon, balanced on her haunches, looking up at me with that dark mask they have. She had her paws folded across her pouched belly, like she was waiting. Two little fuzzy mounds—her babies—dug around in the dirt next to her. She kept looking at me, like I was supposed to say something, so I started talking to her. I told her about wanting a puppy. I told her about my dad. I told her how hard it was in school. Then she rounded up her babies and waddled away. I fell asleep feeling a whole lot better, almost like making up for not having a puppy.

“Did she ever come back?”

“Yep. Pretty soon I’d hear her rummaging outside the window almost every night. She’d sit back on her hind legs and shine her eyes up at me. I’d ask her things, like, how will I do on the spelling test? Will I get that basketball for Christmas? Will I get to pitch for the baseball team? After awhile, she started to answer me. She had a high, whistly voice and she was always right, like she knew what was going to happen. She’d say, ‘you’ll get seventy percent on the test’ and I would. ‘You’ll get a basketball,’ and I did. And she told me ‘No, you’re not that good at pitching,’ and I wasn’t.”

. . . “What did your parents think about the raccoon?”

“My parents? I never told my dad. I told my mom about the whole thing . . . She made me promise not to tell anyone—not my friends, and especially not my dad. She said I had a creative mind and an excellent imagination, and I was to tell her about the animals helping me if they kept on. I think she put my experiences in the category of “imaginary playmates” and assumed I’d outgrow it.”

Jude’s mother interpreted his experiences as imagination, and one could assume that Jude already suspected the answers to his questions, and simply imagined he’d heard them from a raccoon. After all, he was a little boy in need of someone to confide in.

The idea of prophecies, power animals or not, is a fascinating one. But is it possible to truly “see” into the future?

In a partial answer to this question, there are some intriguing current scientific studies about glimpsing the future, studies that are published in respected, peer-reviewed journals. Since I promised science as well as psi and psychology at this site, the next blog will take a look at some of this science.

“That night, Cougar, Sam’s guardian spirit for the last several years, padded into his dreams, into the cabin. Sam lay on his side in the bunk, arms folded under his head, and watched the cat, belly brushing the floor, slink silently to the cot where Jude lay sprawled, a leg dangling over the side. The beast whuffed a bare toe, then glided to snuffle at Jude’s face, her whiskers twitching forward, the big cat’s way of breathing in the essence of a man.

Cougar stepped onto the cot, bracing her muscled body on front legs. She nosed Jude’s shirt and with claws sheathed, pawed off the tangled blankets. She studied the sleeping man-form, then dropped to the floor. Cougar fixed yellow eyes on Sam, blinked, then sat. A growling purr rattled in her chest.

The next morning, Sam woke with the dream bright in his mind. He knew Cougar was telling him that Jude was worth her attention, and so, was not an ordinary man. Even more, by sitting next to Jude and not harming him in any way, she was offering protection, maybe, or an alliance. It seemed as if Cougar was telling him that he and Jude would be connected somehow.”

Shamans in many cultures have what anthropologists often call “power animals” (guardian spirits). These entities are associated with non-ordinary reality, and are experienced as real to the shaman. For a brief, excellent discussion of differences in the form, function and possession of power animals in North and South Native-American cultures, see anthropologist Michael Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman” (Harper & Row, 1990). But despite cultural differences, power animals are commonly seen as beneficial, and they allow the shaman to use the particular strengths and knowledge of a species. For example, Crow might fly to a distant place to gather information. Furthermore, a shaman can communicate with his guardian spirit and even morph into the form of that animal.

The general idea of a guardian spirit certainly occurs in groups other than Native-American cultures. One example is the pooka, a Celtic spirit said to appear as a horse, goat, or rabbit. The pooka can sometimes be malevolent, but the giant rabbit in Mary Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize play “Harvey” is a benevolent spirit, and can predict events and stop time. I recommend the 1950 movie of the same name starring Jimmy Stewart, a classic adaptation of the play.

My short story, “There When You Need Him,” is a variation on the guardian spirit theme. It’s set in the U.S. Midwest, and follows Emily, a woman who is self-reliant to a fault, as she copes with her fear of death.

(Cougar image from picstopin.com)

In the late 1970’s, I was a psychology trainee on a psychiatric unit of a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. And I was scared. Patients talked nonsense, tried suicide, and shuffled aimlessly through the corridors looking downright miserable. They were medicated into submission and sometimes locked into restraints. I had no clue as to how to help them.

But I was lucky to have Myron, one of the Aides, who took me under his wing. Myron was not afraid. He explained the therapies, the staff politics, and the stories of some of the patients. More importantly, he had a depth of empathy and understanding that comforted the patients as well as myself. We became friends.

Over the years, Myron turned to shamanic practices as a means to heal people in emotional turmoil (http://myroneshowsky.com). As a psychotherapist, I was interested in Myron’s shamanic work, but remained somewhat skeptical about its usefulness until I realized I was an ignorant skeptic. In the mid 1990’s, I signed up for one of his beginner’s Shamanic Practices workshops.

The workshop was great fun. No drugs, but lots of relentless drumming to evoke a proper state of mind (www.stanford.edu/group/brainwaves/2006/MaxfieldABSTRACT.pdf). We lay on the floor, closed our eyes and imagined traveling to a magical lower world, looking for our power animal. I loved the idea of having a power animal, a buddy at my side. Then we paired up and tried some healing.  For example, my partner’s power animal, an eagle, used its beak to break up the fasciitis knots in my heel. In another lesson, we studied the surface of an ordinary rock and imagined story scenes in its mottled crevices.

Throughout the two days of the workshop, I was acutely aware of using my imagination at all times: to find a power animal, to “see” the events of a journey, or to experience the spirit guides of the upper world. I never for a minute lost the sense of agency, or forgot that I was creating the experience. And because of that, the workshop did not feel like a novel experience. Instead, I saw the shamanistic techniques as an interesting way to tap into my own unconscious and intuitive sources of knowledge, not as entering a profoundly different realm.

Fast forward fifteen years. I was writing a scene in my novel (“A Second Chance Life”) in which Sara, a skeptical psychotherapist, asks her friend Jude to lead her in a shamanic Journey. He agrees, and the Journey she undertakes was easy to write. I used my own experience from Myron’s workshop.

But there was another Journey I included in the book, one that was not so easy to write. This Journey is undertaken by the Indian shaman Tsitsuga’ in order to help Jude, his young apprentice, accept his gift of “seeing.” I’d tried many times to imagine Tsitsuga’’s Journey and kept drawing a blank. So I decided to simply mention it and move on with the plot.

But my writer’s group would have none of that. They challenged me. “C’mon, give us the details. What’s a real shaman’s journey like?”

“How the hell should I know?” I wanted to yell at them. “I’m not a shaman.” But I was embarrassed by my failure of imagination. Why couldn’t I just come up with something?

Then it hit me. Unlike my own imagined journey in the shamanic practices workshop, Tsutsiga’’s Journey feels real to him. He believes that the spirit world exists independently of his imagination. Nonordinary reality, just like ordinary reality, exists apart from the traveler and can push against him with its own inexplicable whims and purposes. That’s why it feels real. Only in the imagined world does a person have complete agency.

And maybe because of the sense of agency, emotions in an imagined world have a once-removed quality. They are subtly altered by the knowledge that events are “being made up.” But in the reality of the spirit world, Tsitsuga’ has emotions with immediacy. They feel real, just like in ordinary reality.

I knew that Tsitsuga’ would enter the spirit world as himself, a man with desires, values and emotions. He would bring his powers, his allies, and a question he hopes to answer. He would confront a world different from ordinary reality, but real, nevertheless.

I was ready to imagine his Journey.

Eagle photo provided by tpk-photography.com

But there’s a flip side to ghost stories: A person from the ordinary world enters the spirit realm. Visionaries, prophets, psychics and shamans are examples of people who claim to experience non-ordinary reality. Shamans, in particular, can supposedly then influence reality from the vantage point of the spirit world.

My first exposure to shamanism was “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” by Carlos Castaneda (Ballantine Books, 11^th Printing: 1972). Castaneda’s doctoral thesis turned cult classic enthralled me and my college friends. At that time in our lives we were searching for meaning, wisdom, and guideposts in living. This book, about the teachings of Don Juan, a Yaqui brujo, suggested a Way leading to knowledge and power. Eagerly, we naively attempted the “magic” the author described.  We tried to find a sitio (a special spot of personal strength, pp. 19-20) in our dorm rooms. We searched for “power objects” (a feather or stone, pp. 10-13) while walking to class. And we wondered about the reality of Castaneda’s visions. Were they just drug-induced hallucinations? Or did Castaneda truly visit another world? Did he actually become a crow (p. 173)? Was he really at risk of dying from a witch’s conjuring (pp. 189-193)?

One possible take on the reality of the non-ordinary world, and one I endorse, is described in my book, “A Second Chance Life.” In it, Jude is a white man who follows traditions taught to him by his Indian mentor, a healer and seer named Tsitsuga’. Part of the traditions involve Jude journeying into non-ordinary realms. In the following scene, his skeptical friend Sara questions his experiences.

“Do you think your journeys are real?” she asked.

Jude had been confronted with this question countless times before. “Real as opposed to . . . what?”

“Real as opposed to, well, something you imagine. Something determined by inner, personal factors, including your unconscious mind.”

“I don’t believe I physically in this body journey to the spirit world or shapeshift or travel to other earthly places. My experiences are imagined, yes, they are images in my mind. Is mind real? Yes, I believe it is. It’s not physical, it’s something immaterial, but real nevertheless, and so are the spirit worlds.”

Jude felt Sara was testing him, maybe wondering how open he’d be to her skeptical, scientific input . . .

“But your journeys are personal, right?” Sara continued. “Determined by your own mind, and the places don’t exist unless you imagine them.”

“Sara, I can’t answer that. I don’t think there’s a way to know. But here’s something to consider: Spirit worlds can be agreed upon by a group of people. They can be accepted as “real” in that way. There are striking commonalities about spirit worlds in shamanic traditions from many different cultures.”

The shamanic traditions are fascinating to many people. Indeed, workshops which teach distilled, simplified shamanic practices proliferated in the U.S. after the publication of anthropologist Michael Harner’s excellent book “The Way of the Shaman,” (Harper & Row, original publication in 1980). Today, you can find hundreds of websites for non-Native American shamanic practitioners.

Ordinary people, coaxed by curiosity, have attended workshops and have taken shamanic journeys, learned some basic healing ideas, and even dabbled in shapeshifting.

Real or not?

You could try it and decide for yourself. I did, and decided . . .well, I’ll save that for the next post.