[MD] Teachings from the American Earth (Part II)

[Arlo Bensinger]

This is Part II of the Introduction to "Teachings of the American 
Earth, Indian Religion and Philosophy" by Dennis and Barbara Tedlock.

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The realm that Radin, Eliade, and Lame Deer all have in mind is open 
to all men in all places at all times, but it is also universally 
hard to talk about in ordinary language [metaphoricity, 
incompleteness of any symbolic system- Arlo]. Carlos Castaneda has 
called it "nonordinary" or "separate" reality, as opposed to 
"ordinary" reality. The Hopis refer to it as 'a'ne himu, "Mighty 
Something." It is open to what Martin Heidegger calls contemplative 
as opposed to calculative thought, or thinking that is oriented 
toward meaning as opposed to thinking that is oriented toward 
results. One must "release oneself into nearness" rather than propel 
oneself at a definite target, or, as a Papago relating his vision 
quest puts it, "I somehow tried to move toward my desire." [follow 
Quality? -Arlo] For the American Indian in general, it is a world 
composed entirely of persons, as opposed to the everyday world of ego 
and object [active, participatory oneness as opposed to S/O- Arlo]. 
For the Hopi, Tewa, Zuni, and Wintu it is the realm of soft, unripe, 
unmanifest essence, as opposed to hard, ripe, manifest form. Its 
location in space, for the Eskimo, Beaver, Sioux, Hopi, Tewa, and 
many others, is above and below the horizontal plane of our everyday 
world, and it is reached through a vertical axis that passes through 
the seeker. For the Sioux, Hopi, Tewa, and Papago, it is also 
encountered at the periphery of the horizontal plane. In these upper, 
lower, and peripheral regions, linear, historical, irreversible time 
gives way to a time which is far in the "past" when viewed 
"objectively," but the very present moment when experienced. [static 
quality versus DQ??- Arlo]

Sometimes the entering of this other world just happens. Black Elk, a 
Sioux, had his first and greatest vision during a childhood illness. 
Don Talayesva blundered into a Hopi shrine as a boy and was captured 
by the being who lived there. Isaac Tens, a Gitksan, was out cutting 
wood one evening when a loud noise carried him into the other world. 
More commonly, the experience must be sought. In some ways of 
seeking, the mind is prepared with drugs. In the contemporary Native 
American Church, the peyote cactus is used as a sacrament, and in 
various Southwestern and California tribes, it is the Jimsonweed that 
shows the way to the other world. The Papago use tobacco as a path, 
following the exhaled smoke with their thoughts.

Whether or not drugs are used, the body and mind must be purified or 
emptied. A Sioux, for example, must take a sweat bath before his 
vision quest, and the Peyotist must bathe and put on clean clothes. 
Both the Sioux and Papago fast from food and water; the Peyotist is 
purged of whatever is in him by his sacrament, which may cause him to 
vomit. The mind must be set upon the sacred task itself and emptied 
of all else; as Black Elk says, the seeker "must be careful lest 
distracting thoughts come to him." The Papago on a pilgrimage even 
ties up his hair so that he will not distract himself or others by 
having to brush it back from his face in the wind; he must 
concentrate on the rules of the journey and give no thought to home. 
In this emptying of the everyday mind, the seeker humbles himself; in 
the words of Black Elk, he must see himself as "lower than even the 
smallest ant." This means that he must let go of the self, which 
belongs to the calculative world of ego and object [tie in with Zen? 
-Arlo]. He experiences this letting go as death itself; as Lame Deer 
puts it, "You go up on that hill to die."

The death which opens the way to the other world requires a special 
setting. The Zuni priest, when he seeks contact with the rainmakers 
of the world-encircling ocean, secludes himself in a windowless room, 
four rooms removed from any outside door. The Eskimo shaman who seeks 
to travel to the bottom of the sea puts himself behind a curtain in 
the sleeping place of a darkened house. Participants in the Ghost 
Dance of the Plains, seeking visions of their lost relatives, moved 
in' a circle on consecrated ground just outside the camp. The members 
of the Native American Church, though they live in modem houses, set 
up a tipi for their visions of Jesus, the Peyote Spirit, and the 
Water Bird. The Sioux, seeking the knowledge of the oneness of all 
things, goes away to a mountaintop and places himself within a sacred 
circle [archetype used in ZMM? -Arlo]. The Papago salt pilgrim 
travels on foot and horseback all the way to the edge of the world 
and even beyond, walking into the ocean until four waves have broken 
behind him.

The experience itself is difficult to translate without destroying 
its nature, for ordinary language belongs to the world of the self 
and is concerned with the differentiation of the multitude of objects 
[metaphoricity again- Arlo]. Black Elk puts the matter this way: 
"While I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more 
than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all 
things in the spirit and the shape of all shapes as they must live 
together like on being." One approach to this problem of 
inexpressibility is to approximate the experience of oneness by using 
language in a way that draws the speaker and his subject closer 
together than the would ordinarily be [Art and Analogy - Arlo]. The 
nouns that best express a speaker's nearness to his subject are those 
of blood relationship. The seeker, a Black Elk says, must "know that 
all things are our relatives," an he must use terms of relationship 
whether he is talking about coyote, a willow, a lump of salt, the 
earth, or the sun. The verb that draw speaker and subject most 
strongly together are those of being and becoming [Zen? -Arlo]. An 
Ojibwa, describing what happened during a boyhood fast, says that 
when he discovered that his own body was covered with feathers, he 
realized that he had become an eagle. Black Elk, speaking of a 
visionary encounter with the Spirit of Earth, says, "I stared at him, 
for it seemed I knew him somehow and as I stared, he slowly changed, 
for he was growing backwards into youth, and when he had become a 
boy, I knew that he was myself."