Messages from the Future
Hank Wesselman
1995 (First of a Trilogy)
http://www.sharedwisdom.com/ (video interviews)

Spiritwalker would make an engrossing mystery novel, one of those that's difficult to put down - but I had to keep remembering with a kind of a shock that not only is it being presented as autobiographical, but if it is a true story it reflects directly on us, here and now.

 Wesselman, your more or less standard left-brain anthropologist, is unexpectedly cast into out-of-body experiences in which he travels to what turns out to be 5,000 years in the future, and experiences that world through the body of a man who is apparently his descendent in the distant future, or himself in an alternate reality.

He unfolds the story of the culture of this man, Nainoa, and his people, as gleaned from his experiences “there.” Nainoa is living near what used to be Berkeley, California, where Wesselman lives at the outset - but Nainoa lives farther inland, because the coast has been swallowed by the rising ocean and the Central Valley has become an enormous lake. When Wesselman moves with his family to Hawaii for a sabbatical, the contacts intensify and he is drawn inextricably into the life of Nainoa, who is living in a “primitive” agricultural society based on the traditional Hawaiian culture, from where they emigrated  –  primitive in terms of current technology, but advanced in their understanding of the “time-tested technology of transcendence, pioneered by the shamans of the traditional peoples.”

Spiritwalker is a great story and a good introduction to the shamanistic, “dreamtime” world view. It powerfully creates the experience of other realities which we cannot access in our ordinary state of consciousness but which are interpenetrated with our own. Wesselman is a scientist and anthropologist whose specialty is studying Africa’s Great Rift Valley, reconstructing the environments of prehistoric sites from which the fossilized remains of humanity’s earliest ancestors have been recovered. His training in perceiving his surroundings in great detail and wishing to understand what is beneath the surface enliven his descriptions with detail and historical references.

Because of the striking coincidence that the sea of 5,000 years in the future has swallowed coastal California exactly where Wesselman was living, apparently due to global warming, there is also a serious question presented. Right now, is our refusal to face the worldwide disaster that increased global climate change will certainly cause going to prove fatal? Are we right now causing the collapse of all our societies as we know them, and is it possible to move fast enough to prevent this? This question is not emphasized in this book, but gives an undertone of urgency to the story.

Realizing he is in the process of being educated by these experiences, Wesselman ultimately leaves the field of straight anthropology and enters the path of the shaman, as did anthropologist Michael Harner before him (author of The Way of the Shaman, a guide which first brought the richness of shamanic cultures to the attention of Westerners.)

Wesselman postulates that a widespread spiritual reawakening is taking place - one that is cutting across socioeconomic levels of achievement and status, one that is transcending cultural, political, and ethnic boundaries as well.

This social movement is intensely democratic and appears to be made up of people who hold a set of beliefs and values that differ from those of the general public. This new belief complex is quietly, yet definitively, gaining acceptance among increasing numbers of well-informed and well-connected individuals, many of whom are in professional and social positions from which they can influence the larger society's ideas and trends.
Anthropologists might call this a new kind of cultural revitalization movement and observe that such a shift in the dominant cultural pattern of a society happens only once or twice in a thousand years.

1.The belief that everything and everyone is part of a pattern and thus interconnected.
2. The belief in the existence of an alternate reality, often referred to as the 'other world', the 'spirit world', the 'dreamtime', or simply, 'the sacred' by the traditional peoples. Modern mystics often refer to it as 'nonordinary reality'.
3.The belief in the ability of some individuals to achieve transcendent states of consciousness in which it becomes possible to enter into this alternate reality for problem-solving and the healing of self and others. This belief is usually accompanied by a strong desire to personally experience the alternate reality.
4. The belief in the existence of spirit helpers and spirit teachers who reside in the alternate reality.
5. The belief that everything, both living and inanimate, is imbued with its own personal supernatural essence or soul. This includes the certainty that everything everywhere is aware and thus 'minded' to some degree.
6. The belief in the existence of an impersonal supernatural power or vital force that is highly dispersed throughout the Universe, but which can be highly concentrated in certain places, objects, and living beings as life-force.
7. The belief in a personal energy body around and within which the physical body is formed. This energetic aspect can be perceived by those with psychic awareness as an aura, and modern mystics know that it can be enhanced through centers located within it--the chakras and meridians in Eastern thought.