The Mystical Mountain

Even with the layers after layers of crass commercialism and nearly orgiastic excesses of parties during this time of year, I still perceive a “spirit of Christmas” alive, generally speaking, in Canadian society. Often it is small things, such as people being more “open” to wish each other well, show appreciation of others, or just slowing down a bit and reflecting more than usual. It does not matter the cultural background or religion of the person: if they have lived in this country for a couple of decades or more, a modification of behaviour (generally for the better) can be observed during this time of year. For that I am very grateful; all I can say is that I wish that there were a heck of a lot more of it and that it would last year-round.

I am reminded of a song that my children used to sing in school choir this time of year, the chorus of which went:
Christmas time, O Christmas time
Always live in my heart and mind
Lord help me not to go astray
But to live each day like Christmas Day

Back in my high school and university days, I came across plenty of controversies about Christmas, its symbols, what it represents, when Jesus may have been actually born, etc. I found all of this to be novel and mildly interesting – but ultimately of marginal value. It was all a pittance compared to what I experienced from reading the Gospel and from singing in choir during mass in a huge, packed, 19th century stone church. These experiences were real; speculation was not. If some irrefutable evidence came out that Jesus was actually born on July 19, would I advocate for a change in date for celebrating Christmas? Absolutely not! At least in the northern hemisphere, December 25 (or thereabouts) feels like the right time to celebrate the return of “light” and “hope” into our world as we patiently wait through the several months of cold and slowly increasing daylight.

So, for all those who celebrate Christmas, I wish a blessed holy day; and for those who celebrate the turn of the seasons (winter solstice, Yule, Alban Arthan) – similarly, may you have a blessed day.

In the spirit of Christmas Day, I’d like to share an abbreviated rendition of Leo Tolstoy’s short story Where Love Is, God Is. (Like all of his short stories, it is well worth reading the complete original.)

In a certain town there lived an old cobbler named Martin. He lived in a tiny room in a basement, which had one window which looked out onto the street. Through this window he could see the feet of the people who passed by and he could recognize people by their footwear and even identify those shoes and boots which he had worked on.

Martin had had a hard life. Though he married and had many children, he was now a childless widower – over the years, one by one, all members of his immediate family had taken ill and died. After burying his youngest son, who had died of fever just when he had become old enough to help out his father, Martin became despondent and stopped going to church.

One day an old man from Martin’s native village paid him a visit. The visitor had been on pilgrimages for the past eight years. Martin opened up his heart to the visitor, stating that he no longer had a wish to live.

The old man replied, “We cannot judge God’s ways. If God willed that your son should die and you should live, it must be for the best. And your despair comes because you wish to live for your own happiness.”

“What else should one live for?” enquired Martin.

“For God”, said the old man. “He gives you life, and you must live for Him. When you have learned to live for Him, you will grieve no more, and all will seem easy to you.”

Martin was silent for a while and then asked, “But how is one to live for God?”

The old man replied, “How one may live for God has been shown by Christ. Read the Gospels: there you will see how God would have you live.”

Later that day, Martin bought himself a Testament and made a habit of reading it every night. And gradually his heart became lighter and lighter. The more he read the better he understood and the clearer and happier he felt in his mind.

One winter night he read Luke’s Gospel, Chapter 7, and came to the part where a rich Pharisee invited the Lord to his house; and read how the woman who was a sinner anointed his feet and washed them with her tears and how he justified her. He read the verses:

And turning to the woman, he said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath wetted my feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair. Thou gavest me no kiss; but she, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but she hath anointed my feet with ointment.

Martin took off his glasses and pondered.

“That Pharisee must have been like me. He too thought only of himself; never a thought of his guest. He took care of himself, but for his guest he cared nothing at all. Yet who was the guest? The Lord himself! If he came to me, should I behave like that?”

Then, before he was aware of it, Martin fell asleep.

“Martin!” he suddenly heard a voice say as if someone had breathed the word above his ear.

Martin started from his sleep. “Who’s there?” he asked.

He turned around and looked at the door, but no one was there.

Martin called out again. This time he heard a reply quite distinctly: “Martin, Martin! Look out into the street tomorrow, for I shall come.”

Martin was perplexed; he did not know if he heard these words while awake or in a dream. He went back to sleep.

The next morning, as he settled into his work for the day, Martin recalled the incident in the middle of the night. Sometimes he thought that he had heard the voice in a dream; at other times he thought that no, he had really heard the words while awake.

While working, Martin looked out his window and when he saw shoes or boots that he did not recognize he went closer to the window to see the person’s face. After a while, he saw a pair of shabby old boots and recognized them belonging to Stepanich – an old man who cleared the snow before Martin’s window.

After making a dozen stiches, Martin looked out the window again and saw that Stepanich had leaned his shovel against the wall and was either resting himself or trying to get warm. Martin decided to invite the old man in for tea.

While drinking the tea and chatting with Martin, Stepanich noticed that the cobbler was periodically looking out the window.

“Are you expecting anyone?” enquired Stepanich.

Martin replied, “Am I expecting anyone? Well now, I’m ashamed to tell you, but I heard something last night which I can’t get out of my mind.” And he told Stepanich about the voice he heard and how the Lord, when he walked the earth, had kept himself mostly among common folk who were workmen and sinners just like they were.

Stepanich was moved to tears by these words. He rose and said, “Thank you, Martin, you have given me food and comfort both for soul and body.” At which point he returned to his work shovelling snow.

Martin also returned to his work and continued to look intently at the window, waiting for Christ to visit and contemplating his sayings. Many people passed by the window. Then a woman came up in peasant-made shoes. She walked past the window but then stopped by the wall. Martin looked up and saw a stranger, poorly dressed and holding a baby in her arms. By her position it was clear that she was trying to shield the baby from the cold wind. Martin could hear the baby crying and the mother unsuccessfully trying to sooth it.

Martin got up, opened the door and up some of the steps to the street level, where he called the woman to come in out of the cold. The woman was surprised to see him, but followed him in. He directed her to sit on the bed close to the stove and served her some cabbage soup which had been cooking since morning, along with some bread.

He said to the woman, “Sit down, my dear, and eat; I’ll manage the baby. I’ve had a few of my own and know how to handle them.” The woman crossed herself and sat down to eat while Martin got the baby to stop crying and even started laughing.

The woman told Martin her story. Her husband was a soldier who was sent far away, and he had now been gone for eight months. She had been working as a cook until she delivered her baby, but she was fired as soon as the child was born. She had tried to get other jobs but was unsuccessful and was having to sell all her belongings, including her winter clothes, to feed herself. She had just got a job that would begin in a week but her landlady is allowing her to stay for free.

Martin found an old cloak and gave it to the woman and some money for her to buy back the shawl that she had pawned the previous day.

The woman said to Martin, “The Lord bless you, friend. Surely Christ must have sent me to your window, else the child would have frozen. The weather was mild when I started out but now see how cold it has turned. Surely it must have been Christ who made you look out of your window and take pity on me, poor wretch!”

Martin smiled and said, “It is quite true; it was He made me do it. It was no mere chance made me look out.” And he told her the story of the voice he heard at night. Shortly afterwards she left and Martin saw her out.

Martin ate some cabbage soup and returned to his work. Many people walked past his window but nobody remarkable.

After a while, Martin saw an aged apple-woman stop in front of his window. She had a large basket with a few apples in it; apparently, she had sold most of the stock. She also carried a bag of wood chips on her back, which evidently bothered her. When she put down her apple basket to adjust her bag, a boy came by and snatched up an apple. The old woman was swift and caught the boy by the arm and, scolding him, knocked the cap off his head and grabbed him by the hair.

Seeing the commotion, Martin bolted out the door and up the stairs as fast as his legs could take him. He separated them and said to the woman, “Let him go, Granny. Forgive him for Christ’s sake!”

“I’ll pay him out, so that he won’t forget it for a year,” she replied, “I’ll take the rascal to the police!”

Martin entreated the apple-woman to let go of the boy and told the boy to ask the apple-woman for forgiveness. And he gave another apple to the boy, promising the woman to pay her.

“You will spoil them that way, the young rascals,” said the old woman. “He ought to be whipped so that he should remember it for a week.”

“Oh, Granny, Granny,” said Martin, “that’s our way – but it’s not God’s way. If he should be whipped for stealing an apple, what should be done to us for our sins?”

The old woman was silent.

And Martin told the old woman the parable of the lord who forgave his servant a large debt, and how the servant went out and seized his debtor by the throat. Both the old woman and the boy stood by and listened.

“God bids us forgive,” said Martin, “or else we shall not be forgiven. Forgive everyone, and a thoughtless youngster most of all.”

The old woman then mentioned that she had seven children, but now she has only one daughter whom she lives with. And she talked about her grandchildren – especially Annie, who is inordinately fond of her grandmother. And the old woman softened at these thoughts.

“Of course it was only the boy’s childishness, God help him,” she said.

As the old woman was about to hoist the sack back onto her shoulders, the boy sprang forward and said, “Let me carry it for you, Granny. I’m going that way.” The old woman nodded and they walked off together.

Martin returned to his work. After some time, he saw the lamplighter passing on his way to light the streetlamps.  A couple hours later, Martin finished his work for the day, put away the leather and his tools, and picked up the Gospels from the shelf. He planned to open the book where he had placed his bookmark the night before, but instead it opened at another place. As he opened it, he remembered the voice that he had heard at night.

No sooner had he thought of the voice, Martin heard footsteps behind him. He turned around in his lamplit room to see who was there in the dark corner behind him. As he turned, he heard a voice whisper in his ear, “Martin, Martin, don’t you know me?”

“Who is it?” muttered Martin.

“It is I,” said the voice. And out of the dark corner stepped Stepanich, who smiled and vanished again in the dark.

“It is I,” said the voice again. And out of the darkness stepped the woman with the baby in her arms. She smiled at Martin and the baby laughed. And they, too, vanished.

“It is I,” said the voice once more. And the old woman and the boy with the apple stepped out and both smiled. And they vanished.

Martin’s soul grew glad at this. He crossed himself and then began to read the Gospel where the book had opened. At the top of the page he read:

I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in.

And at the bottom of the page he read:
Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. (Matt. xxv)

And Martin understood that his dream had come true; that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed Him.

In many Christian denominations, there is an emphasis on the Holy Trinity being in Heaven, far removed from our daily lives, even though we have prayer as a “hotline” to the Divine. But there is plenty in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that speaks of the Divine being immanent in all. As a mystic, this is the truth that I dwell on continually, while at the same time accepting that the Divine transcends all of creation. It is the supreme paradox (or, if you will, mystery) that helps to keep the faith of many alive. And among the literature that helps to keep me marvelling at this mystery, the short stories of Leo Tolstoy written 140 years ago top the list.

I’ll close with the last lines of the Christmas Carol “In the Bleak Mid-winter” (which I sang many a time in choir during Christmas Mass):
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man I would do my part
Yet what I can I give him, give my heart.
Give my heart.

During the course of his long life, Black Elk experienced the traumatic transition from a largely traditional nomadic existence subsisting on the plentiful bison herds to a conquered and humiliated people not allowed by law to practice their traditional spiritual/religious practices. Most other First Nations in North America had experienced this transition earlier and they did not benefit from the assistance of a John Neihardt to record their sacred visions and traditional lifestyle. Some Jesuit missionaries in the 17^th and 18^th centuries wrote extensively of their observations while living with First Nations from the Montagnais in eastern Quebec to the Miami in Michigan – but it was, understandably, not a totally sympathetic portrayal (their primary job being to convert the peoples whom they contacted).

What then can be said of the more extraordinary claims made by Black Elk, such as being able to heal community members based on a vision, or being able to make it rain by reciting certain prayers and performing certain rituals? A rationalist who would read Black Elk Speaks would undoubtedly consider such claims to be outlandish fabrications or, at best, that the old Lakota elder just imagined that we was doing these things. How are we to interpret these details? Surely, there is no corroborating evidence to buttress Black Elk’s claim – right?

On the contrary; there are loads of solid evidence, covering the length and breadth of North America and covering several centuries of time, that show the fact that Black Elk was, at least in practice, quite a common shaman. The evidence is provided through the extraordinary book, The World We Used to Live In, written by Vine Deloria, Jr.

But first, who was Vine Deloria Jr.? How can his book be trusted as being authoritative? Leaving aside the fact that he was one of the first published Native American intellectuals, at first glance one would not Vine Deloria Jr. to be an author of a book of extraordinary (and, to many, unbelievable) stories about the powers and abilities of shamans. Vine held university degrees in Science and Theology. Much of his career focused on native policy, politics and activism. He trained himself in history, law, politics, and education and became an expert in the legal and political situations of hundreds of tribes across the USA. Deloria’s academic career spanned more than three decades and primarily focused on political science. He played important roles in the National Congress of American Indians, the Institute for the Development of Indian Law and the National Museum of the American Indian. Not exactly the kind of resume one would automatically be associated with a collection of stories about shamans.

But it is also important to be aware that Deloria was Lakota citizen of Standing Rock and came from a long line of holy people who sought to live in peace with the natural world and serve their community. His father personally knew Black Elk, whom Vine Jr. held in high esteem. In his forward to Black Elk Speaks, Deloria called the book, "a religious classic, perhaps the only religious classic of this century."

In a way, The World We Used to Live In was Vine Deloria Jr.’s swan song, as he finished the final revisions of the manuscript mere days before he died on November 13, 2005. I have read several of his books and while I have been impressed by and learned a great deal from each of them, none come even close to the heights achieved in The World We Used to Live In. Black Elk’s legacy may have been to record his personal shamanic experiences, but I see Vine Deloria Jr.’s legacy to be recording the broad range and impressive feats of shamans all over Turtle Island (North America) which would otherwise have faded away in hundreds of forgotten documents scattered in private collections and reference libraries.

Why drove Vine to write this book? He explains it as follows:

A collection of these stories, placed in a philosophical framework, might demonstrate to the present and coming generations the sense of humility, the reliance on the spirits, and the immense powers that characterized our people in the old days. It might also inspire people to treat their ceremonies with more respect and to seek out the great powers that are always available to people who look first to the spirits and then to their own resources.

For the skeptic, one of the most convincing things about The World We Used to Live In is that many of the accounts are made by non-Indigenous people (Christian priests, trappers, police) who would naturally downplay or explain away the feats of shamans that they saw with their own eyes. There is power in the testimony of a person who says that they cannot explain, let alone believe, what they experienced but insist that their account is true. 

One of the oldest accounts included in the book is from The Jesuit Relations of 1642. In it the Jesuit records the story of a man who as a teenager went on a vision quest and after fasting for 16 days, saw a beautiful old man come down from the sky and foretold his future – details such as how he would live to a ripe old age, how many children he would have and the sequence of their genders. The heavenly visitor (which the Jesuit called a Demon) then offered the youth human flesh to eat, which he refused; and then offered bear fat, which he then ate. The visitor often returned to the man and promised to assist him. The Jesuit stated that what the ‘Demon’ told the man had come true and that he had been immune to the numerous communicable illness that had devastated his community. Further, this man had uncanny success in hunting and had the ability to predict the number of animals that his friends would catch in their snares or during a hunt.  

The typical traditional medicine man was given the power to heal people through a vision in which a spirit in the form of an animal or plant would teach them the power via the singing of healing songs and specific remedies (often herbal). But not always. Some are downright odd. Deloria quotes an account of Sitting Bull who, after being shot in the back by some Crows, and bleeding in the chest, back and mouth, asked a local Cheyenne to point him to an ant-mound. Sitting Bull collected a handful of ants, swallowed them, and said “Now, I shall be well,” whereupon he mounted his horse and left. He made a full recovery.

Another story is of a medicine man by the name of White Crow, who was called to heal a woman – but he did not bring with him the usual paraphernalia of rattle, drum, or medicine kit often associated with medicine men. White Crow did not even sing or talk to the ill woman. He simply sat beside her for some time and then took a root out of his pocket, cut it in two, and gave one piece for the woman to chew and swallow and the second piece for her to chew and rub on her chest. Her recovery was almost instant.

Yet another odd healing was recounted by the captain of the ship The Bear while anchored somewhere in the Alaskan islands. When some natives were on board trading with the sailors, one native girl suddenly fell gravely ill and started to vomit copious quantities of blood from her lungs. Before the ship’s surgeon could be called, the medicine man of the people promptly went to the girl, blew in each ear and tapped her on the chin. Within two minutes the girl had made a complete recovery as if she had never been ill. The captain stated that he had never seen anything so marvellous before in his life.

Many accounts have been given of reviving people from death itself. A Saulteaux shaman named Northern Barred Owl, from the Lake Winnipeg area, is recorded to have travelled to cure a girl but the girl died shortly before he arrived at the community. Undeterred, Northern Barred Owl lay down beside the girl and tied a piece of red yarn around her wrist. Then he went into a deep trance and did not move at all for some time. Eventually, he moved – and the girl moved as well, matching his moves. After some time, both awoke. The shaman told the family and other observers that his soul followed the girl on her way to the realm of the dead and when he found her, he brought her back to the land of the living with the help of the red yarn.

The World We Used to Live In includes many accounts of ill individuals who could not be cured by any ‘White doctor’ and so a native medicine man was called in the hope of a cure. In one case, the family of a woman suffering from an unspecified illness called a shaman as no White doctors had been able to cure her. The shaman told the ill woman’s husband that her guardian spirit had left her body and was now stuck in the mud of the river. The shaman then had his guardian spirit listen for the song of the woman's guardian spirit. The shaman then started to sing a song, upon which the woman arose and sang it together with him. Her guardian spirit was returned and she was cured.

Ethnographer Charles Lummis described the common practice of medicine men using a hollow bone or other hollow object to suck out an illness (attributed to an invasion by tiny entities) from a patient. Such “operations” usually resulted in the procurement of some object - shells, parts of plants, stones, and other objects - to demonstrate that he had ejected the entity that had made the person ill. Skeptics have easily dismissed such cures as the equivalent of stage magic: that is, slight of hand. Certainly, instances of medicine men using trickery in this regard have been found. But does this mean that every single cure of this nature is a trick? Doing so involves applying a logical fallacy. It is also difficult to “explain away” cures in which the medicine man is wearing nothing but a breech cloth and is surrounded by people when treating the patient. An example below defies logic or attempts at “explaining it away”:

A shaman dances up to a sick person in the audience, puts the top of the feather against the patient, and with the quill in his mouth sucks diligently for a moment. The feather seems to swell to a great size, as though some large object were passing through it. Then it resumes its natural size, the shaman begins to cough and choke, and directly with his hand draws from his mouth a large rag, or a big stone, or a foot-long branch of the myriad-bristling buckhorn-cactus-while the patient feels vastly relieved at having such an unpleasant lodger removed from his cheek or neck or eye!

Shamans typically provided various services to community members: one of the fairly common ones was finding lost objects. Among the peoples of the Great Plains, this was typically accomplished with the help of the shaman’s sacred stones. A particularly vivid and detailed account was given by Bull Head describing the exploits of a shaman named White Shield, performed within a house:

One old man lost part of a harness. Knowing that White Shield often recovered lost articles by the aid of the sacred stones, he appealed to him, asking him to find the missing part of his harness and also a handsome tobacco bag and pipe.

White Shield came, and in giving the performance held the stone in the palm of his hand, saying, "This will disappear." Bull Head said that though he watched it very closely, it suddenly vanished from before his eyes. The length of time that a stone is absent depends on the distance it must travel in finding the lost object. In this instance the stone was gone a long time. At last a rattle was heard at the door. White Shield stopped the singing, and said, "The stone has returned; be ready to receive it." He then opened the door, and the stone was found on the doorstep.

White Shield brought it in and heard the message. The stone said that the missing articles had been taken by a certain man who, for fear of detection, had thrown them into the river. The stone said further that the articles would be brought back that night and left where they had been last seen. The next morning all the missing articles were found in the place where they had been last seen. Their appearance indicated that they had been under the water for several days.

Sacred stones had multiple purposes, as shown in a story about Lakota shaman Bear Necklace, as follows:

Charging Thunder said that his father [Bear Necklace], while on a buffalo hunt, was thrown from his horse, falling on a pile of stones and injuring his head. He lay unconscious almost all day and was found in the evening. His wound was dressed, and when he regained consciousness, he said that all the rocks and stones "were people turned to stone."

After this he found some stones. He could talk to them and depended on them for help. Once a war party had been gone two months; no news of them had been received, and it was feared that all were killed. In their anxiety the people appealed to Bear Necklace, asking him to ascertain by means of the sacred stones, what had become of the war party.

Sitting Bull was present and made an offering of a buffalo robe to the sacred stones and asked that he might become famous. Bear Necklace wrapped one of the stones in buckskin and gave it to him. Sitting Bull wore it in a bag around his neck to the time of his death, and it was buried with him. Bear Necklace then gave correct information concerning the absent war party. At that time he proved his power to give information by the help of the sacred stones, and afterwards the stones always told him the names of those who were killed in war, the names of the survivors, and the day on which they would return. This information was always correct.

To the Western mind, such stories are simply absurd. Stones are inanimate objects; how can they possibly communicate or travel on their own volition? Yes, that is one way of perceiving stones. But not the only way. And many tribal peoples around the world believe that every speck of creation is conscious and that certain persons are sensitive enough to perceive such consciousness and communicate with it. No empirical method can be used to prove either position, as consciousness, or the lack thereof, is beyond the measurements of any scientific instruments. It is a matter of belief, not science.

One of the most well-known and well-documented feat of shamans among the Algonquin peoples is the spirit lodge (or the "shaking tent" described by anthropologists). The first known Westerner to witness the spirit lodge was Samuel de Champlain in the early 17^th century; they continue to this day. For this ceremony, a special lodge is built, sometimes up to ten feet tall, out of heavy timber poles and covered with skins.

The medicine man goes enters, usually alone, and after blessing the enterprise by smoking a pipe, sings sacred songs, summoning the spirits to the ceremony. After some time, the lodge begins shaking, mostly at the top of the lodge, increasing in violence until the spirit enters it. Then strange voices are heard. At this point, the medicine man asks the spirits the questions that people have posed and receives answers from the spirits. The answers are often very detailed and include details of the immediate social and physical environment that could not be known beforehand by the medicine man. The lodge shakes extremely violently, sometimes to the point of tipping over – a feat that can last hours and requires a level of strength and endurance far beyond that of one man inside it. Once all the questions have been answered, the tent becomes quiet again, and the exhausted medicine man emerges.

Here is a skeptical Westerner’s description of a more or less typical “shaking tent” experience (narrated to J.G. Kohl), but with an interesting sequel:

Thirty years ago, said this white man, I was present at the incantation and performance of a "jossakid" (local name for a medicine man) in one of these lodges. I saw the man creep into the hut, which was about ten feet high, after swallowing a mysterious potion made from a root, he immediately began singing and beating the drum in his basket-work "chimney." The entire cage began gradually trembling and shaking, and oscillating slowly amid great noise. The more the necromancer sang and drummed, the more violent the oscillations of the long case became. It bent backwards and forwards, up and down, like the mast of a vessel caught in a storm and tossed on the waves. I could not understand how these movements could be produced by a man inside, as we could not have caused them from the exterior.

The drum ceased, and the jossakid yelled that the spirits were coming after him. We then heard through the noise and crackling and oscillations of the hut two voices speaking inside, one above, the other below. The lower one asked questions, which the upper one answered. Both voices seemed entirely different, and I believed I could explain them by very clever ventriloquism. Some spiritualist among us, however, explained it through modern spiritualism, and asserted that the Indian jossakids had speaking media, in addition to those known to us, which tapped, wrote, and drew.

Thirty years later (i .e. shortly before he met Kohl), the narrator came across a very old Indian, lying on his death-bed, whom he recognized to be the very jossakid who had given the strange performance described above. Since that date, this Indian had become a Christian, and, of course, had renounced his former pagan practices. Kohl's narrator sat down beside the dying Indian, and began to talk to him.

“Uncle,” he said to him, “Dost thou remember prophesying to us in thy lodge thirty years ago, and astonishing us, not only by thy discourse, but also by the movements of thy prophet lodge? I was curious to know it how it was done, and thou saidst thou hadst performed it by supernatural power, "through the spirits." Now thou art old, and hast become a Christian; thou art sick and canst not live much longer. Now is the time to confess all truthfully. Tell me, then, how and through what means thou didst deceive us?”

"I know it, my uncle," the sick Indian replied. "I have become a Christian, I am old, I am sick, I cannot live much longer, and I can do no other than speak the truth. Believe me, I did not deceive you at the time. I did not move the lodge. It was shaken by the power of the spirits. I only repeated to you what the spirits said to me. I heard their voices. The top of the lodge was full of them, and before me the sky and wide lands lay expanded. I could see a great distance about me, and believed I could recognize the most distant objects.”

Sometimes a shaman will make a demonstration to flummox the critics. A. Irving Hallowell wrote of an account in which two White witnesses to a spirit lodge ceremony declared it to be all fakery. This was communicated to the shaman who said that he would do the same the next evening and asked them to pay him $5 if he was able to dispel their doubts. A sturdy 40-pole lodge was constructed; the shaman demonstrated to the doubters its sturdiness. The shaman then stood outside the empty lodge’s door, took off his black broadcloth coat, folded it and shoved it into the lodge, which began shaking at once and voices were heard inside. Needless to say, the shaman was paid his $5.

A fairly common feature of the spirit lodge ceremony was to tightly bind the shaman beforehand and when the ceremony is over, the shaman walks out of the lodge free from the bonds and the loose sinew bonds are tied in innumerable knots which would have taken a single human many hours to accomplish.

The World We Used to Live In includes numerous other powers and abilities possessed by shamans, including the ability to communicate with animals, birds and plants; miraculously making plants grow or bear fruit; changing the weather; healing with plants and stones; materialize and dematerialize objects; moving impossibly huge boulders; handling live embers without injury; invulnerability to arrows and bullets; becoming invisible; temporarily animating inanimate objects; and producing anomalous objects or objects out of season. There is no way to determine how much of these exploits were trickery (personally, I believe that only a small percentage observed was faked) but if even 99% of it was trickery, what about the remaining 1%? How can a 17^th century shaman produce chunks of ice in July or give accurate details about the state of a war-party, to the man and the horse, that has been missing for two months? Unless the reader is a devout follower of scientific materialism, at least some of the things that Deloria describes in this book will blow the reader’s mind.

Deloria delves into a discussion of these seemingly miraculous (or at least super-human) abilities of the shamans of North America from various perspectives. Most importantly, however, he includes a description of the “native” beliefs about the nature of the world. The Omaha described their traditional views as follows:

An invisible and continuous life was believed to permeate all things, seen and unseen. This life manifests itself in two ways: first, by causing to move-all motion, all actions of mind and body are because of this invisible life; second, by causing permanency of structure and form, as in the rock; the physical features of the landscape mountains, plains, streams, rivers, lakes, the animal and man. This invisible life was also conceived of as being similar to the will power of which man is conscious within himself a power by which things are brought to pass. Through this mysterious life and power all things are related to one another, and to man, the seen to the unseen, the dead to the living, a fragment of anything in its entirety. This invisible life and power was called Wakonda.

The Muskogee stated that:

The power could be invoked by the use of charms and the repetition of certain formulae. 'By a word' wonderful things could be accomplished; 'by a word' the entire world could be compressed into such a small space that the medicine man who was master of the word could encircle it in four steps. It was power of this kind which was imparted to medicines, yet the source of this power was after all the anthropomorphic powers, which, at the very beginning of things, declared what diseases were to be and also appointed the remedies to be employed in curing them.

So, why did Vine Deloria Jr. write this book? Was it to show off the supposed spiritual powers of peoples who are now a faint glimmer of what they used to be? And if so, what value is there in that? In his introduction to the book, Deloria is clear that he sees these accounts as an antidote to the current trend of modernism that, “has prevented us from seeing that higher spiritual powers are still active in the world.” Further, his stand is that, “We need to glimpse the old spiritual world that helped, healed, and honored us with its presence and companionship. We need to see where we have been before we see where we should go, we need to know how to get there, and we need to have help on our journey.”

May this great work of Vine Deloria Jr. fulfill his intention and may it greatly exceed the reach that he had anticipated. Over the past couple of centuries peoples around the world have been forced (sometimes at gunpoint) to abandon their belief in a world full of spiritual beings and wonders and that humans can live in harmony with such beings, much to humanity’s benefit; and replaced it with a cynical, shallow world view that only acknowledges that something which is tangible to the senses is real and that there is no higher meaning to live than mere existence. No; there is more in heaven and earth than is described in all the scientific tomes; The World We Used to Live In, and other books like it, help to provide a glimpse of a world that still exists and that we can ourselves experience if we are willing to put in the hard work of breaking the illusion continuously being created by mainstream society and its institutions, and look within ourselves and sharpen our “inner senses” to see that there is far more to creation, and to ourselves, than is popularly believed.

Through much of my life I have had the good fortune that whenever I was curious about a particular spiritual path, people who were knowledgeable about – or practitioners in – that path, would just pop into my life. One such incident happened in my very early twenties, when I was curious about the religion, spirituality and mysticism of the First Nations peoples of North America. As soon as I sent out to the Divine a wish to learn about the spiritual life of First Nations, a new person joined the small spiritual community that I felt at home. His name was Stewart and he grew up in a part of Saskatchewan where it was almost impossible not to be exposed to First Nation culture. This was in the mid-1980s and Stewart’s biker-looks (very long beard and hair down to his waist) raised eyebrows among some of my friends. But soon I saw that despite his biker/hippy appearance and strong New Age orientation, Stewart had a very open heart – and so, we became fast friends during the couple of years that he called Toronto home. Early in our friendship, Stewart recommended that I read the book Black Elk Speaks – a narrated autobiography of an Oglala Sioux holy man whose long life (1863 – 1950) coincided with his people’s transition from a traditional lifestyle to being a conquered people living on government-dictated reservations – written down by John G. Neihardt in 1931. I was transfixed by virtually every aspect of the stories told by Black Elk – but, most of all, I was fascinated by Black Elk’s spiritual experiences.

Here is Black Elk’s description of his first mystical experience:

It was when I was five years old… I was going to shoot at the kingbird with the bow my Grandfather had made, when the bird spoke and said: ‘The clouds all over are one-sided.’ Perhaps it meant that all the clouds were looking at me. And then it said: ‘Listen! A voice is calling you!’ Then I looked up at the clouds, and two men were coming there, headfirst like arrows slanting down; and as they came they sang a sacred song and the thunder was like drumming… I sat there gazing at them, and they were coming from the… north. But when they were very close to me, they wheeled about toward where the sun goes down, and suddenly they were geese… I did not tell this vision to any one. I liked to think about it, but I was afraid to tell it.

After that, Black Elk was visited by ‘the voices’ from time to time when he was out alone but it happened only occasionally, and he did not know what these voices wanted of him. This changed when he was nine years old and fell ill. This time he had a very elaborate experience - the ‘Great Vision’ as he called it. Black Elk describes its beginning as follows:

When we had camped again, I was lying in our teepee and my mother and father were sitting beside me. I could see out through the opening and there two men were coming from the clouds, headfirst like arrows slanting down, and I knew they were the same that I had seen before. Each now carried a long spear, and from the points of these a jagged lightning flashed. They came down to the ground this time and stood a little way off and looked at me and said: ‘Hurry! Come! Your Grandfathers are calling you!’… I went outside the teepee, and yonder where the men with flaming spears were going, a little cloud was coming very fast. It came and stooped and took me and turned back to where it came from, flying fast. And when I looked down I could see my mother and my father yonder, and I felt sorry to be leaving them.

According to Black Elk’s account, in his vision, the cloud took him to a place where the Six Grandfathers were having council. And he knew that these Six Grandfathers were not old men but were the Powers of the World: one Grandfather for each of the four cardinal directions, as well as a Grandfather of the sky and a Grandfather of the Earth. Each Grandfather gave Black Elk a gift and many teachings and prophecies. A black stallion, a bay horse and a disembodied voice also spoke to him. These visions were to be the blueprint for Black Elk to live his life.

Black Elk describes the end of his ‘Great Vision’ as follows:

Then I saw my own teepee, and inside I saw my mother and my father bending over a sick boy that was myself. And as I entered the teepee, someone was saying: ‘The boy is coming to; you had better give him some water.’

Then I was sitting up; and I was sad because my mother and my father didn’t seem to know I had been so far away.

Black Elk states that as soon as he awoke, he felt well enough to run around, but his parents prevented him from doing so, stating that he had been ill for twelve days, lying as if he were dead all the while.

Then he says something that struck a chord of recognition in me that I have remembered clearly more than forty years after first reading it:

… as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me.

I am sure now that I was then too young to understand it all, and that I only felt it. It was the pictures that I remembered and the words that went with them; for nothing I have ever seen with my eyes was so clear and bright as what my vision showed me; and no words that I have ever heard with my ears were like the words that I heard. I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years.

The next morning… I felt well as ever; but everything around me seemed strange and as though it were far away. I remember that for twelve days after that I wanted to be alone, and it seemed I did not belong to my people… I would be out alone away from the village and the other boys, and I would look around to the four quarters, thinking of my vision and wishing I could get back there again. I would go home to eat, but I could not make myself eat much; and my father and mother thought that I was sick yet; but I was not. I was only homesick for the place where I had been.

Those who have had mystical experiences know well how this nine-year-old Black Elk felt. There may be a ‘gift’ of having one foot in each world, but there is also a ‘price’ – and it is a sense of alienation from one’s social circle, not because of others’ behaviours towards you, but because you understand that others simply won’t be able to relate to your most important and vivid experiences in life.

When Black Elk was seventeen years old, he knew that the Great Vision had endowed him with a powerful intuition that is of great practical power (such as having a ‘hunch’ where game is or where enemies are hiding themselves), but he was tormented by the feeling of responsibility given to him by the Six Grandfathers and by the many other things that he saw in his vision and not knowing what to do about it. He describes his situation as follows:

A terrible time began for me then, and I could not tell anybody, not even my father and mother. I was afraid to see a cloud coming up; and whenever one did, I could hear the thunder beings calling to me: ‘Behold your Grandfathers! Make Haste!’ I could understand the birds when they sang, and they were always saying: ‘It is time! It is time!’ The crows in the day and the coyotes at night all called and called to me: ‘It is time! It is time! It is time!’

Time to do what? I did not know… I could not get along with people now, and I would take my horse and go far out from camp alone and compare everything on the earth and in the sky with my vision…

When the grasses were beginning to show their tender faces again, my father and mother asked an old medicine man by the name of Black Road to come over and see what he could do for me. Black Road was in a teepee all alone with me, and he asked me to tell him if I had seen something that troubled me. By now I was so afraid of being afraid of everything that I told him about my vision, and when I was through he looked long at me and said: ‘Ah-h-h-h!,’ meaning that he was much surprised. Then he said to me: ‘Nephew, I know now what the trouble is! You must do what the bay horse in your vision wanted you to do. You must do your duty and perform this vision for your people upon earth.’

Following my first reading of the book, I took Black Road’s advice to heart. And whenever I, or members of my family, have an unusual vision, I strongly advocate that the vision be enacted as literally as possible. And when such visions have been enacted, the results have been truly extraordinary.

Following the destruction of the traditional Sioux lifestyle by eliminating the bison (1883), the young adult Black Elk worked on Wild West shows across the USA, Britain and Europe from 1886 to 1889. Though he was valued by his people as a healer, Black Elk decided to experience the world of the ‘Wasichus’ (non-Natives) to see if there was anything he could learn from them that would help him to “bring the sacred hoop together and make the tree to bloom again at the center of it” as per his Great Vision.

While on tour, his show went to Paris, where a local girl took a fancy to him and took him home to meet her family. This was in 1889 and Black Elk was terribly homesick which also manifested as physical illness. One time while at this French girl’s house, Black Elk had what we nowadays call an ‘out-of-body experience’. While sitting down to breakfast with this French family, Black Elk looked up to the ceiling and saw it rotating, and then a cloud descended and picked him up. The cloud took Black Elk across the Atlantic and the eastern half of the USA back home to Pine Ridge. He saw his family’s teepee amongst a large gathering that surprised Black Elk as it looked very different from when he had left his family. Black Elk desperately wanted to get off the cloud and be with his family, but he feared that the fall would kill him. But he saw his mother look up at the cloud and he felt sure that she saw him. Soon afterwards the cloud carried him back to the same house in Paris where the adventure began. When Black Elk regained consciousness, he discovered that he had been in a near death-like state for three days.

Shortly afterwards Black Elk left the show and returned home, where he found that Pine Ridge and his family’s teepee were located exactly as he had seen them in his vision. Black Elk’s mother told him of a strange dream she had had in which she saw him on a cloud, but he could not stay. The following year (1890) was the Battle of Wounded Knee and the forced settlement of the Sioux people on reservations.

The book ends with a postscript by the author in which Black Elk, now a sad old man who believed that he had failed to bring into this world the glorious vision that he had received as a nine-year old, requested Neihardt to take him to Harney Peak in the Black Hills (renamed Black Elk Peak in 2016) – the ‘center of the world’ in Black Elk’s Great Vision, where he had received so many gifts and teachings from the Six Grandfathers. Here, Black Elk, dressed and painted as he was in his Great Vision, holding the sacred pipe in his right hand, sent a prayer to the Great Spirit and the Six Grandfathers, which includes the words:

Today I send a voice for a people in despair.

You have given me a sacred pipe, and through this I should make my offering. You see it now.

From the west, you have given me the cup of living water and the sacred bow, the power to make live and to destroy. You have given me a sacred wind and the herb from where the white giant lives – the cleansing power and the healing. The daybreak star and the pipe, you have given from the east; and from the south, the nation’s sacred hoop and the tree that was to bloom. To the center of the world you have taken me and showed the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only mother – and there the spirit shapes of things, as they should be, you have shown to e and I have seen. At the center of this sacred hoop you have said that I should make the tree to blossom.

With tears running, O Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather – with running tears I must say now that the tree has never bloomed. A pitiful old man, you see me here, and I have fallen away and have done nothing. Here at the center of the world, where you took me when I was young and taught me; here, old, I stand, and the tree is withered, Grandfather, my Grandfather!

Again, and maybe the last time on this earth, I recall the Great Vision you sent me. It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives. Nourish it then, that it may leaf and bloom and fill with singing birds. Hear me, not for myself, but for my people; I am old. Hear me that they may once more go back into the sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree!

In sorrow I am sending a feeble voice, O Six Powers of the World. Hear me in my sorrow, for I may never call again. O make my people live!

It is hard to imagine the agony of Black Elk’s life: being given a sublimely beautiful vision by the Divine, doing the best he could to implement it, and instead of seeing a cultural revival of his people, seeing the depths of despair that is the lot of a freshly conquered, disempowered and impoverished people. But to his credit, Black Elk did what he could to communicate and record the spiritual wisdom of his people during the last few decades of his life.

But the Divine has its own timing. Black Elk Speaks is arguably the single most widely read book within the vast literature on Native Americans which, along with his later book, The Sacred Pipe – an account of the seven sacred Lakota Sioux ceremonies – have been the backbone of the gradual resurgence of pride in First Nations culture and spirituality. This, combined with the births of multiple white Bison in traditional Sioux territory in recent years – a supremely auspicious omen among the Sioux and even beyond, due to the popularity of the legend/prophecy of the White Buffalo Woman told by Black Elk in The Sacred Pipe – there is resurgent hope and renewed determination to rebuild the sacred hoop and the blossoming of the sacred tree (metaphorically speaking) from Black Elk’s Great Vision. Nearly a century after the publication of Black Elk Speaks, it can be truly said that the mystical vision given to a 9-year-old Sioux boy in 1872 in some obscure corner of the Great Plains has managed to spread to the four corners of Turtle Island (North America) and beyond and has deeply affected countless lives.

One of the big ‘take-aways’ that I had from Black Elk’s autobiography is that his spiritual journey was not initiated by him; rather, spiritual beings revealed themselves to him – even sometimes when he dreaded them. It reminded me just a bit of stories in the Bible when angels would take people by surprise to make an important announcement or, in the case of Jacob, wrestle with a human. It is not as though the figures in these stories of the Bible were praying for an angel to appear to them. But Black Elk’s experience had a different ‘feel’ to it than what I had gathered from Christianity or even quite a few other religions that I was well versed in by that point. To my mind, Black Elk was practically ‘seized’ by the Divine beings that revealed themselves and/or their messages to him, and the Divine gifts that they gave him came unasked for. Intrigued, I wanted to learn more. And there I explored the experience of shamans (I am using this as a generic term for holy people / medicine people in tribal societies as opposed to its traditional meaning pertaining to medicine people of Siberia).

What I found through this exploration was a world in which a certain person of a village seemed to be “chosen” by the Divine (but not in way that Harry Potter was the “chosen one”) for inscrutable reasons. And once chosen, the individual would be transformed in a harrowing, seemingly violent way: often described as being physically torn into pieces and then re-assembled in a different way. Never again would that individual be the same: he (or she) was destined to be a misfit who had only one foot in “this world” and the other foot in the “world of spirit”.  Fortunately, in traditional tribal societies, there seemed to be at least one other community member who would recognize the traumatized young person as being “marked” by the spirits (it takes one to know one) and would help to orient him/her to this new way of being. And, given that many other members of the village would have at least some spiritual experiences via vision quests, or something similar, the “shaman” would be accepted as part of society and be sought after for healing, advice, and seeing the future. I am not the only person who harbours the belief that the “shaman experience” may be universal across the globe but in non-tribal societies, their life is a lot harder. And in the modern West there is a high likelihood that a “shaman” will be committed to a mental institution perhaps for life (the same fate can befall mystics in general, especially for those who do not learn the art of using great discretion in communicating their experiences to others).

Well, there’s plenty more to explore regarding Black Elk and mysticism which the next two posts will delve into.

When I was early in my exploration of mysticism, its core and its expressions, I came across an unexpected analogy that has stuck with me ever since. The analogy states that those who love God belong to one of two camps. One camp is the “monkeys”: baby monkeys cling tenaciously to their mother. Such people dwell on the Divine and trust in the Divine, but utilize their own abilities as they cling to the Divine. The second camp is the “kittens”: the extent of the kittens’ effort is to mew to the mother to take care of them, trusting that when the mother picks them up, they are in safe hands (or fangs, I suppose, in this case). While both camps are legitimate, the way of the kitten is superior, as the trust and faith in the mother (the Divine in this analogy) is more complete.

Also, while in my late teens I read a wonderful biography of St. John of the Cross (declared a Doctor of Mystical Theology of the Universal Church by Pope Pius XI in 1926). It is still one of my favourite biographies from which I learned a great deal. But at that age, given the literalist bent of mind that I had at the time, I was really bothered by one event in the saint’s life – his escape from incarceration. For those who are not familiar with the story, here’s a short summary:

In 1577, John of the Cross was abducted by a group of his fellow Carmelites who opposed his attempts at reforming the Carmelite Order and was taken to the Carmelite monastery in Toledo. There he was tried by a court of his fellow friars and was sentenced to prison within the monastery. For nine months, John was isolated in a tiny cell, and had to bear the darkness, extremes in temperature, near-starvation and lashings. During the octave of the Assumption, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to John, showing him how to escape through a small window in a room adjoining his cell. 

The mystic in me should have appreciated this Divine revelation and the fact that it was during his incarceration that John began composing his mystical poetic masterpieces The Dark Night of the Soul and Spiritual Canticle – and therefore it can be seen as a catalyst for this great mystic to share his wisdom and experience with the world. But, no, I thought that it would be more “proper” for John to be released without any effort on his part. Yes, I was a blockhead.

And then, one day, it stopped. I clearly remember the day in which I learned that my present accommodation was coming to an end due to change in ownership of the domicile I was living in, but no new “steppingstone” was appearing. I was scared. I was racked with doubt. But there was no option but for me to look in the newspaper for a room to rent. As it happened, I got good accommodation in a location that I wanted and at a reasonable price, and I was happy in my new place. But I was troubled by this shift: it had seemed that I was being forced to move from being a “kitten” to a “baby monkey” – a spiritual demotion, as it were – and I could not understand why I was being “demoted” by God.

Well, I got used to having to take some initiative (though I am not sure that “control” is the right verb) in my life in terms of my living space, my studies, my work, and my hobbies. And in the process, I matured and grew up. Gradually, I took spiritual advice less literally.

Never again did the same string of extraordinary coincidences happen in which everything just got orchestrated around me and all I had to do was ask the Divine for help. However, there have been several other times in my life in which unexpected events took place that required extreme leaps of faith – and I simply went on the “ride” to whatever the destination might be – and my life has been much the richer for doing so. In the meanwhile, however, on a day-to-day basis for most of my life I have had to do the same mundane things as the vast majority of people and make the mundane choices and decisions that keep myself, my family, and the world going (at least, at the external level).

But what to think of the baby monkeys and the kittens? Doesn’t the gospel teach: Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? (Matthew 6:26-27)

During my youth, my focus was on verse 26. No, I wasn’t a loafer; I expected to have to earn my bread by “the sweat of my brow”. In fact, due to my poverty, I ended up working every day of my summer “vacation” from early May to the end of August, during my undergraduate years. But as I have matured, I have kept in mind verse 27. This passage has more to do with the mind than one’s physical situation. And herein, to me, lies the solution.

It is possible to perform one’s duties to society, family and self, and to take initiative in all affairs that pertain to the world – and still depend totally on the Divine. It is possible to conduct one’s worldly affairs with a spirit of detachment regarding the results of one’s actions. Every action can be performed as a prayer, as an offering to God, knowing that God will take care of our needs no matter what. No need to worry oneself.

Now that I am living in my seventh decade, I see the monkey vs. kitten comparison in a different light. Why does the baby monkey cling so tightly to its mother? Because it is afraid of falling. The kitten has no fear, even though it is being suspended by the scruff of the neck and is utterly helpless. There it is: fear. That to me is the key. One can be active in the world, performing whatever duties one has and doing so ethically, and do so fearlessly. This is not to say that one should believe that everything will work out how one anticipates them – far from it! No, it is acting with the faith that God will guide and protect us because we do everything as offerings to Him. In this way we are an “internal kitten” while being an “outward monkey” (acting with responsibility). At least, that is how I make peace with this advice at this particular stage in my life.

I recently borrowed a couple collections of Rudyard Kipling poems from my local library. I have never really read any of his works but recently became acquainted with his poem “The Beginning” in which every quatrain ends with “the English began to hate”, published in 1917 after his son died in WWI – and I decided that I should become familiar with his work. Now, some people may clutch their pearls at such an announcement. “What – Kipling? The ‘White Man’s Burden’ Kipling? OMG, he’s so Victorian and so pro-Empire and so Raaaycist and so Eeeevil! How can you possibly read such vile trash?” My reply: I am an adult who can make his own decisions and make up his own mind. Besides, I have read widely from English literature from Chaucer on to the present day and at this point little surprises me. Besides, I like to read the works of people who have been long dead: it gives a window into not only the thoughts of the poet/author, but also into a time which had different experiences, different mores, different values than are prevalent today. So, I guess you can call me a bit of a time-traveller!

Of course, I had known about Kipling my whole life. I grew up with Disney’s animated Jungle Book and even had a drinking cup with an image of Baloo the Bear on it when I was a wee lad. I remember buying a copy of the Guiness Book of World Records 1973 in an airport bookstore when my family was enroute somewhere and devoured the thing (except for the sports stuff) – and in it was the record for the most popular greeting card of all time: it was from the 1910s or 1920s, if I recall correctly, and on it was an illustration of a young couple on a date. The young man asks the young lady, “Do you like Kipling?” and her reply was “Why, I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled.” I guess Kipling was all the rage back then. I have no idea why I remember these bits of trivia, but that’s the way my brain works.

By now I have read a fair number of Kipling’s poems. And besides appreciating his seemingly effortless style and the various “voices” that he uses, I also appreciate a lot of his themes: the bittersweet life of the expatriate (having been one for a few short periods of my life), the common sense of the common folk, the soldier who is lionized during times of war and despised after the war, and – what I found most surprising – a yearning for, and savouring of, the sensory experiences associated with his birthplace: India. This latter point I appreciate on two fronts: one, I understand what it is to miss even the simple things of one’s birth-country when separated from it for an extended period of time; and two, having lived in India twice in my life, there are certain sounds and smells and sights of that country that I miss to this day.

I also envy Kipling’s time, when a talented writer could achieve considerable fame and fortune, as much of the public read voraciously and children in school were taught to memorize a lot of poems (my parents, who were schooled between the two World Wars, were probably the last generation in the West to experience that; my mother was able to recite quite a few of those poems from memory well into her nineties). Ah, the days before radio, and then television, and then computer screens, and now phone screens sucked the time, attention, and life out of society! Not as though I am jealous of Kipling: my creative writing talent is a “candle” standing next to his “sun”.

As a whole, I have enjoyed Kipling’s poems. I can see why he was so popular: he was not being pretentious or elitist or trying to impress other poets within a small circle of mutual admirers. No; he spoke elegantly about matters that a good proportion of the British population at the time could relate to, appreciate, and sometimes laugh at.

Going through the book of collected poems I became familiar with the themes that Kipling was fond of and returned to time and again. Nothing grandiose. Nothing particularly profound. That all changed while I was in the midst of reading "The Answer”, which I reproduce in its entirety below:

 A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,

Cried out to God and murmured ‘gainst His Wrath,

 Because a sudden wind at twilight’s hush

 Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.

 And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,

 Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,

 ‘Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well –

 ‘What voices heardst though when thy Petals fell?’

 And the Rose answered, ‘In that evil hour

 ‘A voice said, “Father, wherefore falls the flower?

 ‘“For lo, the very gossamers are still,”

 ‘And the voice answered, “Son, by Allah’s Will!”’

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward,

 Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:

 ‘Sister, before We smote the Dark in twain,

 ‘Ere yet the Stars saw one another plain,

 ‘Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task

 ‘That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask.’

 Whereat the withered flower, all content,

 Died as they die whose days are innocent;

 While he who questioned why the flower fell

 Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.

 Well, this was a whole new Kipling – one whom I did not expect! A Kipling who could give me goosebumps!

Granted, it is in the nature of a poet to be reflective and to dive deeply into the human condition. This is why poets and authors of fiction are usually at the forefront of a culture change: they are the sensitives who are not only able to sense certain shifts in the collective unconscious but are also consciously aware of it and are able to appropriately express it – and even steer it to some degree. Oftentimes they can seem to be prophetic. In a sense, they dwell on the fringe of society as they can see things that are not apparent to the overwhelming majority of people.

Just the same, we are in the habit of categorizing or classifying poets. If one wants a mystical trip, read Blake or Whitman, but not Kipling, right? I guess it goes to show that more people than what one might suspect may have “mystical moments” from time to time. Perhaps there are more “gems” like “The Answer” among Kiplings’ poems – I can’t say for sure, as I am far from having read all of them. There may also be other poets who have similar such “gems” hidden among their works. Good reason for us to keep on reading the works of dead poets!

I cannot say with certainty whether Kipling penned “The Answer” honestly or whether it was tongue-in-cheek – I don’t know enough about the man and the poet to say it. And although it would be good, I suppose, to know the answer to the question, in the end it does not matter that much to me. Why? The reason is that communication is not precise the way mathematics is. Kipling wrote the poem with certain thoughts in his mind and certain feelings in his soul; unless he actually explained what they are, we can never know for certain what they are.

That’s part of it. But another part of it is that communication has a ‘sender’ (in this case, Kipling) and a ‘receiver’ (in this case, all people who have read the poem). Suppose that a poll is taken of Kipling’s readers with the question “What did Kipling’s poem ‘The Answer’ mean to you?” The poll results would include a large number of replies in one or a few interpretations, followed by a smaller number of outliers. But would the poll reveal the “real” meaning of the poem (based on the largest number of replies)? Of course not! Such an exercise would be absurd. What I am getting to is this: something which is considered to be ‘common’ or ‘worldly’ for most people can be supremely, ecstatically divine to a mystic. It is a matter of perception. There is a story of the 19^th century Hindu mystic saint Ramakrishna going into ecstasy over the sights of common things (a flock of white cranes with dark clouds behind them, a boy standing with one leg slightly bent and his two arms bent at the elbows) because of what they meant to him spiritually. When I was a young man, I was surprised when a middle-aged mystic friend told me that he liked a popular love song; when I stated my surprise, he told me that the lyrics of the song reminded him of his soul’s yearning for God. Lesson learned.

In the same way, not only do mystics recognize and identify with stories or songs that directly address mysticism but can – sometimes for uniquely individual reasons – see the Divine in ‘common’ things. Ultimately, it matters little what the composer/writer’s ‘intention’ of a song or story was; if the listener or reader is finely attuned to the Divine, then that person will be reminded of the Divine during the experience of listening or reading. As the perception, so the experience.

But what of the premise of the poem – that everything is fated from before the beginning of time? Does it not rankle our sensibility of being able to influence our own fate, or even contradict plain common sense? Can every little thing that happens be willed by the Divine? And, if so, why? I am no theologian or deep scholar of religions, but I do know that during the devout Medieval times, it was believed that angels are able to see all past, present, and future simultaneously. And if that is so with angels, would it not be true higher up the “great chain of being” to God? I see no reason why this would not be so. Such things are supremely difficult for our minds to comprehend, being as they are subject to the sensory experiences that are bound by both time and space. It is like trying to imagine something that is without form. What impresses me the most in the poem “The Answer”, however, is how compassionately the Divine answers the question of the fallen rose, as if it is just as beloved to the Divine as anything else in creation. Perhaps from the Divine vision, all are one. It is this thought that I find to be highly transcendental and mystical and consequently fills my being with bliss. I hope that I am not alone in this regard.