"I am about to tell you a most unusual story, a chronicle of something that happened to me while I was living on the flank of an active volcano on the island of Hawai''i. I''m a scientist. I mention this because I do not feel that I was in any way predisposed for what was about to occur. In fact, my scientific training would seem to have preprogrammed me against such an experience." -- From SpiritwalkerThe astonishing true story of an anthropologist''s quest into a spiritual world of magic, mysticism, and meaning. Not since Castaneda''s tutelage under the Yacqui Indian guide Don Juan has there been a spiritual autobiography quite like Spiritwalker.Hank Wesselman''s incredible story of a series of encounters that would forever change his life began with what he at first tried to explain away as particularly vivid dreams, but which grew increasingly intense and insistent, ultimately propelling him on twelve fantastic journeys across time and space. Over the next three years, his journeys proved to be far more important than mere reason could explain. Eventually, Dr. Wesselman became convinced that he''d been granted a visionary encounter with what tribal people from millennia past have called the "spirit world." During his epic travels, Dr. Wesselman met shape-shifting entities, spirit helpers, and guardians, and found himself traversing a mental, physical, andspiritual landscape on a path intersecting that of a fellow traveler, a Hawai''ian kahuna mystic named Nainoa. Five thousand years into the future, Nainoa had been sent by his Chief on a journey into what used to be America, a once-powerful land of machines and magic, from which no previous voyagers had ever returned. What did Nainoa seek from Dr. Wesselman? What did the anthropologist have to learn about his own world from this exotic traveler from another time and place? Together, scientist and mystic are initiated into knowledge of non-ordinary levels of reality and given foreshadowings of imminent environmental, political, and spiritual challenges to their civilization. Without abandoning his scientific objectivity, Dr. Wesselman abandoned himself to the mystical, sometimes frightening, yet always luminous experiences that brought him beyond the boundaries of ordinary consciousness. The result is a fascinating and suspenseful adventure, an exciting and important archeological discovery, and the story of how a hard-headed scientific-realist stumbled on an important piece of the puzzle of human evolution. Socially urgent and disturbingly prophetic, Spiritwalker has a universal mythic resonance and an undeniable relevance for today as it challenges ourperceptions of our world, our reality, and our future.From the Trade Paperback edition.
