I Watched A Native American Supposedly Talk To His Ancestors Today

[bluewizard]

I watched a Native American supposedly talk to his ancestors today. He underwent hypnosis and began to go into a trance state as he sat down and relaxed in a recliner. My professor began instructing him on things that would get him into the state needed to suppsoedly speak to his ancestors. My professor then instructed him he was going to the Valley where his ancestors were and he began speaking into a microphone. He said things such as will you love your mother earth and would you choose food or killing your grandchildren. He also began speaking in some Native American language which he later told us was Cherokee. My professor than instructed him to ge tout of the hypnosis state and he opened his eyes and began talking to us. He said the names he was saying in the Cherokee language was the people he was supposedly talking to in the Valley with. He said the ancestors said we generally arent caring about our future generations and that doing that was a failure at life and that the President was only concerned with money and not future generations. He told us also that when he was a child he kept having a dream of a place and he got someone to take him to the place who thought he was crazy and he went to the place and the place was where his ancestors had been on the Trail of Tears. Myt professor is very into these mystical and spiritual/paranormal things. I found all this interesting even though I'm sure science disproves all of this and I don't believe in it myself. How does science disprove this anyways, especially the part about him dreaming which was weird?

[Grandpa Harley]

Hard to make a value call without him being connected to a SQUID or in a CAT scanner... He could have been making it up, or he could be in an 'altered state' which means he's not consciously making it up.

[Piprus]

That's interesting, Wiz, interesting indeed.

 

I'm inclined to believe hypnosis is a dream state, induced upon those who are susceptible to it by those who are able to manipulate issues of trust and vulnerability.

It sounds like a "testimony" of one's idealism in light of that person's ancestry.

It also sounds very much like the "speaking in tongues" phenomenon seen in the charismatic and pentecostal congregations.

The dream phenomenon could very well have originated with the tales of the "ancestors" that he could have been told since childhood, and which have stuck with him in memory until now.

 

Completely natural explanations for what you witnessed abound. But what is the real one, that is for you to reach the conclusion. After all, you were witness to it. But you're absolutely right. It is...interesting.

[Rhia]

Well, trance-like states are real, just ask any modern anthropologist. This does not mean that they were speaking to their ancestors, it was simply a trance. The thing about trances is that someone can't just "go into" one, they have to be trained, either through drugs or repeated occurrence, until they lose power of it and will seemingly "automatically" enter into such trances.

 

I suggest for further reading: E.E. Evans-Pritchard's book "Witchcraft, Oracles, & Magic Among the Azande". It's a bit old, but the theories are still there. It explains a lot about the concepts of spirits "causing" problems, as well as ancestor worship, all packed into a nice, neat little ethnography.

 

If you get the time, also, any articles concerning religion by Clifford Geertz; and the book "Argonauts of the Western Pacific" by Bronislaw Malinowski.

 

As an Anthropologist, I would rather study what exactly the implications of ancestor worship are in this guy's culture; and as well have him go through a psycho-analysis to see if there's the possibility for pathological lying, false reality, brainwashing, and whatnot.

 

Yet when I don't have my Anthropologist's hat on, I myself would say that he's fucking insane.

 

Whether or not you believe it is up to you. I suggest looking into everything and seeing what you think for yourself.

[pandora]

I can't believe they did that in your religious studies class, with the hypnotism even being done by your prof!! I got my bachelors in religious studies, and my college would have never considered sponsoring something like that during class time. They might have allowed a diversity group on campus to bring someone in, but you wouldn't see a prof doing the hypnotism! Wow. Very interesting.

 

By the way, trance states are real, and so is hypnotism. It's just the experiencer

s interpretation of these states that makes them unreliable as real sources of information about anything.