Original
Wisdom is an unforgettable book.
Like all humans, author Robert Wolff was born a wild animal, ready to
enjoy a pleasant life, romping around in a tropical wilderness. He grew up in Sumatra, the son of Dutch
parents. His father was a doctor. The young lad suffered the misfortune of
being educated by the dominant culture. It trained him for an unnatural life of schedules,
destinations, and anxiety. His wildness
was paved over, and his consciousness became disconnected from All-That-Is.
Wolff was interested in healing, and hoped to become a
doctor, but World War II interrupted his plans.
After the war, he became a social psychologist, and worked on a number
of government projects. Work included
numerous visits to rural villages in Malaysia, where life was very laid
back. The people were “soft, gentle,
polite.” Villagers were the opposite of
city people, who tended to be “crude, loud, insensitive.”
Oddly, the patients in Malaysian mental hospitals included
whites, Indians, and many Chinese — but no Malays, who were half of the
population. Malay villages had a healthy
sense of community. They accepted the
presence of people who were odd; there was never a thought of sending them
away. Everyone knew the village thief,
and no one reported him to the police, because he belonged where he was. Malays respected one another.
Wolff was grateful that he had learned to speak several
languages, because this ability expanded his awareness. Languages are unique products of the cultures
in which they evolve. Different cultures
perceive reality in different ways, and many ideas cannot be accurately
translated from one language to another.
Consequently, it was clear to him that the Western worldview was not the
one and only way of interpreting reality.
Most Western people never learn this.
Insanity seems perfectly normal to the inmates of the loony bin.
His career began in the 1950s, the dawn of the most horrific
era in human history. Population grew
explosively, as did the ecological blitzkrieg.
Traditional cultures were being exterminated by a plague of
bulldozers. Wolff worked hard to learn
and record the knowledge of traditional healers. He believed that their skills were the
time-proven results of thousands of years of trial and error. A tremendous treasure was on the verge of
being lost forever.
He remembered the days before antibiotics, when Western
doctors were little better than witch doctors.
He detested modern healthcare, where doctors practiced medicine, not
healing. They were highly skilled at
temporarily postponing death via extremely expensive treatments — even if the
additional weeks or months of existence were meaningless. Not long ago, most of those with fading
spirits would simply have been allowed to pass to the other side in peace.
In his crusade to preserve ancient knowledge, he met a number
of healers who had not been the apprentices of venerable elders. They acquired their skills via inner knowing.
Intuition told them what herbs to use,
and the way to prepare them. These
healers told Wolff to relax; a treasure was not being lost. The wisdom was always accessible. When it was needed, someone would find it. This notion gives Western folks cramps,
because they process reality via thinking.
One day, Wolff learned about a tribe of hunter-gatherers who
lived in a remote mountain forest — the Sng’oi (or Senoi or Sakai). Meeting them opened the door to a series of
life-changing experiences, a great healing.
They were masters of intuition and inner knowing. They lived in a spiritual reality, “where
things were known
outside of thinking.”
Their camps were not close to the road. Whenever Wolff arrived unannounced for a
visit, one of the Sng’oi would be waiting for him in the forest. The guide would stand up and, without a word,
lead him to the village. This baffled
Wolff. How did they know he was
coming? When asked, they told him that
they had no premonition of his arrival.
They had experienced a feeling to go to a place and be there. When Wolff appeared, they understood why they
were there.
They knew each other’s unspoken thoughts, communicating
telepathically. Their shaman could
sometimes foresee future events. In the
mornings, the Sng’oi discussed their dreams.
Once, Wolff described a dream.
Its message, they told him, was that he was needed at home. He returned to his family, and learned that a
child had had a medical emergency.
“They had an immense inner dignity, were happy, and content,
and did not want anything.” They loved
to laugh and joke. They were often
singing and smiling. Angry voices were
never heard. Each new day was a blank
slate — no plans, no jobs, nothing that had to be done. They floated, inspired by feelings. Life in a tropical rainforest was not a tough
job.
One evening, while sitting in a group, Wolff went into a
trance, and spoke to the others, an experience he did not remember. A Sng’oi shaman recognized that Wolff had
shamanic powers, and offered to open spiritual doors for him. His name was Ahmeed, and his job description
was “to bring new knowledge to the People.”
Wolff accepted his offer.
The learning process involved long, silent walks in the
forest, with no food or water. Wolff was
frustrated, because he was thinking like crazy.
It was impossible to still his furiously roaring mind. He could not hear his inner voice. At the end of the walks, he was exhausted; his
mind fried.
Eventually, his thinker got more and more flaccid, and he
learned to pay attention. Some days, he
could float away from his mind, and vividly experience the sounds and smells of
the forest. Everything changed. The world became intensely alive. He ceased being an observer, and became a
living part of All-That-Is.
After months of practice, he gradually remembered how to be a
human being. “The all-ness was
everywhere, and I was part of it. I
cannot explain what went on inside me, but I knew that I had learned something
unbelievably wonderful. I felt more
alive than I had ever felt before. All
of me was filled with being.” He felt
great love for the people. The trees and
mosquitoes were his family.
Back in the civilized world, Wolff was no longer the same
person. Inner knowing could be painful,
and sometimes had to be turned off. He
could sense the feelings of the people around him, and this could be
overwhelming. “It was frightening to
discover how many people think nothing at all, but feel waves of anger,
resentment, and bitterness — although they act as if they are deaf and blind to
their own feelings.”
As the years passed, Wolff became whole and confident, as his
humanness recovered. Being human was so
much healthier than being civilized.
That’s his message. Even adults
can heal. It’s never too late to try. “Knowing
inside is not something unusual; it is how we are. All humans can have that connection with
All-That-Is. The connection is within
us.” Cultures without the connection are
on a bleak path.
Wolff, Robert, Original Wisdom — Stories of an Ancient Way
of Knowing, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2001.
4 comments:
Thanks a lot for introducing to me a very remarkable man, amarnath
amaranth, you're welcome! It's fascinating to see how sane people can be, how profoundly present in reality.
I have read books (many can be downloaded) by the late philosopher J. Krishnamurti. Although J.K. lived all his life in the civilized world, his teaching is to seek truth by just being in the present reality. Our distant cousins instinctively knew and practiced what J.K. discovered. amarnath
Amaranth, I haven’t read Krishnamurti. I’ve read a lot of Tom Brown books, and he learned about ways of inner knowing from his Apache mentor, Stalking Wolf. This is similar to what Wolff described.
D’Arcy Rheault is a Canadian with Anishinabe ancestry. He wrote “Anishinaabe Mino-Bimaadiziwin - The Way of a Good Life.” Amazon will sell you a copy, or you can download a PDF from the web. The PDF has an error in the file, but you can ignore it and scroll away.
He describes their seven paths to knowledge:
Primary Experiential Knowledge, thus, as an epistemic system, takes into consideration that there are various aspects of knowledge that are expressed in life. This is seen as the “Seven Directions” of Kendaaswin (knowledge); namely, Bzindamowin (learning from listening), Anishinaabe-Kendaaswin (traditional knowledge), Manidoo-waabiwin (seeing in a spirit way), Gnawaaminjigewin (to look, to see, to witness), Eshkakimikwe-Kendaaswin (land-based knowledge), Kiimiingona manda Kendaaswin (the Original Instructions given to the Anishinaabeg by Gzhe-mnidoo) and Manidoo-minjimendamowin (spirit memory).
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