Shamanism/Indigenous Peoples Record Type: Review   ID: 628
Dreamtime & Inner Space: The World of the Shaman Kalweit, Holger
The author is an ethnopsychologist with degrees in both cultural anthropology and psychology. He is active in the German Transpersonal Association and founded the Orpheus Project for the study of NDEs in Germany. In this work on shamanism, which was originally published in German in 1984, he "deals with experiences of supernormal or paranormal people who, through their voluntary exposure to tremendous hardships and great dangers, have catapulted themselves into the world of the superconscious" (p. xv). He observes that in doing so, the shaman actually experiences the transpsychic. Furthermore, he is convinced that attaining entrance to this transpsychic realm can be accomplished "by anyone capable of summing up sufficient courage and self-discipline to overcome" [his or her] limited intellect and . . . perceptually restricted normal awareness, because beyond this 'standardized' awareness there exists a whole spectrum of expanded modes of perception" (p. xii). He describes accounts of shamanic experiences from Africa, Asia, Australia, and North and South America. These accounts are organized in 25 chapters in four main parts: "The Religion of the Twice-Born," "Shamanic Initiation," "Transformative Symbols of Consciousness," and "Religion and Science," followed by an Epilogue. An appendix lists 97 tribes and their locations, and there is an ample bibliography.
Publisher Information:	Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1988. 297p. Bibl: 267-292; Chap notes: 261-266; Ind: 293-297

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