PROGRAM ABSTRACTS

Dan Moonhawk Alford

<dalford@haywire.csuhayward.edu>

Language and Consciousness

Is 'sacred language' something that only exotic languages such as Lakota have? What about English? If you say something is sacred, does it always have to mean that other things aren't sacred? Does sacred have anything to do with being animate? Does sacred have anything to do with speaking from the heart? What if ordinary talk is a special case of sacred talk instead of the other way around? If both sacred talk and ordinary talk can be turned into reality in our bodies, what does sacred talk have to do with "Shamantalk: a medicine way of speaking", a previous SAC presentation? If there is a connection between sacred language and consciousness, as we suspect, then we would expect to find cross-linguistic/cultural support; is there such?

Dan Moonhawk Alford

Matthew C. Bronson

Plenary: Talking Heads: Reflections on Twenty years of Teaching Language and Consciousness

Over the past twenty years, we have taught linguistics at the undergraduate and Graduate levels with a focus on how language and mind are inextricably intertwined in a co-evolutionary dance and the implications of this reality for anthropological and other researchers. Included have been over twenty papers, workshops and presentations given at this very conference, encompassing everything from a study of channeled discourse and a first-hand account of initiation as a Brazilian Spiritist medium to investigations of the connections between linguistics and quantum physics (they are many and deep) and the pragmatic complexities of computer-mediated communication. This presentation will focus on the trajectory of language and consciousness studies in the approach to the new millennium as this is reflected in these seemingly eclectic concerns. Of special import will be a distillation of principles and heuristics that emerge from our practice as language and consciousness educators that are relevant to all students of consciousness. Since so much of what we know and how we come to know what we know is mediated by language, no consciousness researcher's education is complete until she has begun to grapple with these critical issues.

Ralph B. Allison

4108 Welsh Way, Paso Robles, CA 93446-4178

805/237-2665 ralfalison@tcsn.net

Dissociation and Imagination: Thirty Years of Confusion Between Them

Interest and research in dissociative disorders made a steep climb in the 1970s, leveled off in the 1980s and crashed in the 1990s. Reasons for these dramatic changes will be explored. An "epidemic" of cases of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) which spread from the USA to Europe was caused by confusing the products of imagination with the products of dissociation. Adherence to Freud's

concepts of "repression of memories" led to misunderstanding human memory management. "Recovered Memory Therapy" was followed by the "False Memory Syndrome." Discovery of the "Inner Self Helper" upset theorists who rejected anything "spiritual." These same "scientific psychologists" believed patients who "remembered" their problems were due to "Satanic Ritual Abuse." Research centers established in the 1980s have now been closed. The disorder is now officially called Dissociative Identity Disorder. The professional organization is almost bankrupt and malpractice suits have been won against leaders in this field.

Hiroshi Aoyagi

Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Harvard University

319 Coolidge Hall, 1737 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA 02138 aoyagi@fas.harvard.edu

Idol Performances and the Capitalization of Adolescent Consciousness in Contemporary Urban Japan This paper examines the role played by celebrities in the development of popular consciousness in contemporary urban Japan. Based on the data gathered during 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Tokyo, I elicit how Japanese entertainment industry produces and uses young, media promoted personalities, known as pop idols, as allegorical means to stimulate the desire of young consumers and direct their attention to style of conformity. The stylized performances of pop idols define and refine "ideal images of this time," molding adolescent consciousness through standardized taste, fashion, and lifestyle, and socializing the young people into consumer values and capitalist worldviews. By revealing the ritual process as manifested in the consumer culture of contemporary Japan in a form of popular art, the present study contributes to the fuller understanding of "consciousalizing practices" that are involved in the habituation of capitalism.

John Baker

momoy@juno.com

Hallucinogens and Culture: A Long, Strange Trip Indeed!

The last 20 years have witnessed widely divergent trends with respect to hallucinogenic compounds. On the one hand, the rhetoric of prohibition has continued to propagate largely negative myths about these substances, leading many members of the public to view them as relatively new "drugs" with little or no redeeming value. At the same time, new studies have yielded evidence suggesting that humans have been constructively using these substances since before recorded history. This presentation will begin with a consideration of some of the recent archaeological evidence documenting the long relationship between humans and hallucinogens. It will then turn to current examples of the constructive use of hallucinogens in a variety of cultural contexts. This will lead to a consideration of the co-evolution of culture, consciousness, and chemicals. Implications for the future will also be discussed.

Derek P. Brereton

DPBrereton@AOL.com

"Dreaming, Adaptation, and Consciousness: The Social Mapping Hypothesis"

The social brain hypothesis states that the key formative environment of evolutionary adaptedness for humans was the social milieu itself, and that consciousness emerged as a way of successfully attributing mental states to others. Non-human primates had adapted to the natural environment for millions of years, but the hominid social environment provided unique challenges of complexity and variability. Prehominid dreaming may have been a preadaptation for the emergence of consciousness in that dreaming entails processes of mapping and body image formation. Mammalian dreaming physiology may have initially served functions of developmental stimulation, metabolic arousal, and off-line processing which were later co-opted by proto-humans in the service of social mapping.

Matthew C. Bronson

linguist@buzz.sonic.net

The Grammar of Life: Animacy, Respect and Salience in the Genesis of Linguistic Structure

Among the more anomalous of linguistic universals is the category of "animacy". this term characterizes the penchant of all human languages to "distort" otherwise orderly paradigms toward an expansion of complexity and a differentiation of grammatical and lexical forms associated with human or otherwise "animate" entities from their less animate counterparts. For example, specific human direct objects must be preceded by a personal "a" in Spanish as in "Vi a Juan." 'I saw Juan.' versus "Vi el arbol." 'I saw the tree'. The category of animacy is problematic, and, when examined in detail, constitutes a possibly fatal "limit case" for generative linguistic theories as evidence of a situation in which semantics determines syntax. With a focal attention on the process of grammar formation in Surinamese Creole languages, this presentation demonstrates the necessity of linking studies of cognition and language structure in ways that conform with actually attested evidence from the evolutionary record and cognitive neuroscience. This co-evolutionary approach, associated with evolutionary anthropologists like Terrence Deacon, stands in stark contrast to the approach of cognitive scientists like Stephen Pinker who posit a separate and autonomous syntactic component. If Occam's razor were as sharp as Pinker et al think it to be, it would surely shave away the complexities associated with animacy effects in human language. In this regard, the attempt to explain principles derived from manipulation of formal grammar by post hoc evolutionary reasoning, as in Pinker's magnum opus "Language Instinct" (1994) is prima facie fallacious. Cognitive linguistics can and does explain these effects as they play out synchronically and diachronically when animacy is imaged as a "strange attractor" built into the human nervous system, rather than as a set of necessary and sufficient conditions governing syntactic processes.

Claire M. Cassidy

Paradigms Found Consulting

6201 Winnebago Road, Bethesda MD 20816

honeeum@aol.com

Becoming the Medicine: American Acupuncturists Discuss Healing and Possession States

One of the earliest texts of Chinese medicine states that the practitioner must know as much about herself as about the client...because she will embody or become the medicine for her clients. How is this ancient demand actualized in modern urban American practice? According to acupuncturists who also employ shamanism in caring for patients, this demand requires that the practitioner purify her intentionality and alter her state of consciousness. In this paper I describe the underlying theory concerning 'health,' common diagnostic techniques that promote deep patient-practitioner linkages, the concept of "possession" as it is understood by these practitioners, and ways these practitioners prepare for and treat their patients.

Larisa Chapman

San Jose State University

Ropes That Bind: Slave Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Master

In most slave and Master relationships, an equilateral power exchange is made. The Master provides the slave with a feeling of safety and the luxury of passivity. In return, the slave must obey the master showing love and devotion in all acts of obedience. The formalization of this exchange occurs during the slave bonding ritual where the submissive's mind shifts to that of "slave consciousness." When a Master loses control of her life and the slave family breaks apart, slaves are left to fend for themselves while still under contract with a Master. This paper will explore the evolution of the slave consciousness in my continued study with a lifestyle BDSM slave family. I will examine the way that control issues, gestures of devotion, and physical submission change from the genuine to the symbolic. Though the Master maintains total control over her slaves, she begins to exact obedience by instilling fear which negates the power exchange. At this point, slaves may break contract and become dominants in their own right. But unlike the normative transition from slave to Master, this shift is abrupt and forced so the question arises whether the slave that nullifies his contract has rid himself completely of slave consciousness.

Leslie Conton

Fairhaven College, Western Washington University

Bellingham, Wa 98225

360-650-4904 fhc@cc.wwu.edu

Reflection on Contemporary Shamanic Practices: Neo-Shamanism, Core Shamanism and Shamanisms

I first address a number of the controversies surrounding the contemporary practice of shamanism in the West, often called "neo-shamanism," particularly those articulated by Native Americans, academics and ecopsychologists. Then I offer an alternative perspective based on my field research as an applied/experiential anthropologist and participant-observer of shamanic subcultures in the Pacific Northwest. As an academic cultural anthropologist specializing in the cross-cultural study of shamanism for 25 years, I a teacher of "core shamanism" for 16 years, and a practitioner for over 20 years, I present an integrative and multivocal perspective on the development, structure and function of contemporary "shamanic communities" in localized contexts. I propose that the reintegration of shamanic worldviews and practices into Western culture, as exemplified by groups in the Pacific Northwest, may prove to be less a case of cultural misappropriation or neo-colonialism than an example of the ways in which shamanism, recognizable worldwide in its fundamental practices and belief systems, has successfully survived millennia of cultural exchange, assimilation, and oppression. Is it something "neo," or is the Western revival or re-integration of shamanism reflective of the inherent resilience and adaptability of shamanism, as an ancient, coherent, and still-metamorphizing complex of beliefs and behaviors?

Leslie Conton

Workshop Shamanic Extraction Healing: Theory and Practice

One of the universal healing methods practiced by shamans worldwide is that of shamanic extraction,the removal of localized illness and pain caused by spiritual agents (intrusions). First, methods of shamanic extraction will be described, how shamans see, sense and remove spiritual intrusions, and then participants will unite in a circle of support for an actual shamanic extraction, serving both as witnesses and active participants enhancing the work of the practitioner and client. Following the extraction will be a discussion of the process, from the practitioner's, client's and participant-observers' perspective.

Barbara Crowe

Music Therapy Arizona State University

Tempe, Az 85287

Music and Consciousness: Auditory Consciousness as a Perceptual "World" in the

Cross-Modal Theory of Perception

There are numerous models defining consciousness and delineating its origins. When exploring the existence of an "auditory Consciousness" and the role music plays in its development, Geschwind's model of perceptual cross-modal translation as the basis for self-referential symbolic cognition and consciousness is of particular relevance. Music, the organization of sound and silence for the purpose of human self-expression, is historically pervasive in human culture. music, particularly the performance of music, requires the cross-modal integration of the three perceptual translations postulated in the Geschwind model - vision audition/vocalization, and touch/movement. The cross-flow between sentient modalities into and against each other accounts for the intrinsically social organization of all symbolic forms. Music becomes a unique perceptual "world" where auditory consciousness develops separately from the concept of sound "altering consciousness". Since the worlds of hearing and seeing are so different as to be considered alternative realities, a study of auditory consciousness would prove valuable.

Marlene de Rios

SEPTRION@AOL.COM

Lessons from Shamanic Healing in Brief Psychotherapy with U.S. Latino Immigrants

Drawing upon data from a book on brief psychotherapy with Latino immigrants to the U.S., with more than 400 Spanish-speaking immigrants to S. California treated by the author in psychotherapy, she compares shamanic healing techniques familiar to her from her researches in Amazonian folk healing with psychological practices of hypnosis, behavior modification and cognitive restructuring used in contemporary psychotherapy. Focusing on variables of power and control in both shamanic healing and in her healing practice, the author argues that hypnosis provides the requisitive altered state of consciousness in tuning clients' parasympathetic nervous systems, behavior modification provides the magic and dramatic outcomes similar to shamanic theatricality, and cognitive restructuring permits clients to obtain control over their emotional states and allows their rationality to triumph in distressful situations. Examples are presented to illustrate similarities."

José Luis Diaz

Centro de Neurobiologa, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México

josedg@servidor.unam.mx

"Phantastica: A psychopharmacological profile of divinatory and magic plants used in shamanistic contexts"

Botanical preparations used by shamans in rituals for divination, prophecy and ecstasy contain widely different psychoactive compounds, which are generally but incorrectly classified under a single denomination such as "hallucinogens", "psychedelics", "enteogens", and so forth. It is necessary to establish distinctions based on their mental and neural effects. Based on extensive ethnopharmacological search (Ann. Rev. Pharmacol. 17: 647-75, 1977; J. Psyched. Drugs 1l: 71-102,1979), I proposed a psychopharmacological classification of the magic plants used by the Indians of Mexico.This paper re-evaluates this taxonomy in the context of consciousness research, including other plants. I propose several main groups of psychodysleptic magic plants:

Hallucinogens. Drugs that induce strong perceptual changes (vividness, illusions, geometric hallucinations and substantive visions),

affective intensification (wonder, ecstasy), and cognitive enhancement (space-time transcendence, profound meaning, paradoxicality, transience. Prototypes: Psilocybin mushrooms, Mescaline cacti (Peyote, San Pedro), Dimethyltryptamine snuffs (Yopo, Virola), and the synthetic ergoline LSD. Ethnobotanical uses: Long lasting divination rituals, prophecy, and sacramental practice.

Trance-inducers. Drugs that produce quietness, abstraction, lethargy, mild sensorial changes, cognitive changes (reflection, concentration), and salient visual imagery change (dreamlike states similar to hypnagogic phenomena, reverie). Prototypes: Ergoline Convolvulaceae (Olloliuhqui, Morning glory seeds), Harmaline and B-carboline South American Banisteriopsis (Ayahuasca, Caapi, YagÈ). Ethnobotanical uses: Trance rituals, specific divination.

Cognodysleptics. Drugs that induce changes in thought (discontinuity, flight of ideas, retrieval difficulties, reference, sense of time disruption), imagination (proliferation, vividness, shifting, automatic scenes), and affective functions (well being, euphoria, hilarity). Prototypes: Marijuana (THC) and other terpene-containing plants such as Salvia divinorum, Calea zacatechichi, Nepeta cataria. Ethnobotanical uses: Short-term divination, Oneiromancy.

Deliriants. Drugs that induce delirium: dim and clouded consciousness, attention disruption, stupor, confusion, disorientation, perception distortion, difficulties in recollection, affective alterations (anxiety, irritability, excitation), behavioral disorganization (restlessness, ataxia, dysarthria). Prototypes: Tropane (scopolmine, hioscyamine) Solanaceae (Atropa, Mandragora, Toloache, Datura, Solandra), Wild tobacco, Amanita muscaria (muscimol).

Ethnobotanical uses: Magic and sorcery rituals, harm or stupefy enemies, purification, and exorcism.

One important question concerns the core mental effects required for a drug to be used in shamanistic rituals. Regardless of their different effects, all of the drugs used in this way produce the following effects: (1) Light headedness, (2) Intensification of experience, and (3) Intensification of imagery and reverie. This constellation was probably the reason why in his classification of psychoactive compounds the pioneer German psychopharmacologist Louis Lewin established in 1924 a group of drugs under the appropriate name of Phantastica.

Iain Edgar

Department of Anthropology, University of Durham

43, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN U.K.

Tel: +44 (0) 191 3747524 (direct)

I.R.Edgar@durham.ac.uk

Consciousness, Anthropology and the Dream

Dreams have, since time immemorial, both reflected the culture of those who dream them and have been used by them, with or without the help of soothsayers, to shape their personal lives and that of the culture of which they form part. Anthropologists have also, since the beginning of their discipline, commented on and analyzed dreams in diverse cultures and in turn derived from these and other analyses, theoretical principles and approaches. This paper introduces and reviews the subject of the anthropology of dreaming. Firstly, I consider the history of anthropological interest in the dream; secondly, I present examples of the use by ethnographers of both their own dreams and those of their informants; thirdly, I consider a range of theoretical issues involved in the study of dreams. Overall my paper asserts the significance of dream and its elucidation in modern society as a vital source of understanding and information about the culturally constituted and becoming self.

Jennifer Eustis

How did the Myth of the New World Enter Into the National Consciousness of the American People?

There has been much talk about American myths by many scholars. It isn't difficult to skim books with titles such as The Foundation Myths of the American Nation or Myths of a New Nation. In fact, there appears to be a proliferation of the term myth. This leads to one of my original questions residing in the fact of the origin of all this discussion. Interestingly enough, the second most used word besides myth is new. Adventurers, like Christopher Columbus, discovered new islands. They met a new kind of peoples. Immigrants, the early and later ones, saw a new life in a new world full of new opportunities, new beginnings and new foundations. To the colonies of North America, and later the United States of America, new had already become a household name. New embodied the meaning of the existence, creation and development of the colonies and the nation to be called the United States of America. The new become a true story repeated over and over again with each immigrant's fascination of acquiring a new way of life. The new had become a myth shared by those who had already come and those who wanted to come. Yet, how was this myth created? More importantly, how did this myth enter into the collective consciousness of the people of the colonies and then later the American people?The point of this paper is to discuss primarily how this myth of the new world came to be and be shared by many on different levels of understanding. I would like to use a philosophical approach to this cultural study on the United States of America. Stemming from reflections of Plato, in particular The Republic, how the concept of the New World became a myth will be analyzed. From diverse thoughts on collective consciousness, using such references as Mr. Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, Gilbert Durand or Philippe Claret, I hope to shed light on how this myth touched the minds of the American people resulting in a collective consciousness of the myth of the New World.

Charles A. Flowerday

Editor, Conservation and Survey Division,

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, NE 68588-0517

(402) 472-7533

cflowerd@unlnotes.edu

The Ecopsychology of Liberation: The Hebrew Prophets as Mystics of Political Ecology

Reconstruction of Judeo-Christian ethics for environmental consciousness has largely neglected the social justice ethos expounded through the liberationtradition stemming from the Exodus; its fullest flowering is in the propheticconsciousness. This tradition offers rich opportunities for expanding political,class and ecological awareness:

* Broader social justice implies ?treading lighter on the land? (via reduced consumption, less material values, more spiritual fulfillment).

* Its focus on social and ecological redemption offers a rich source of symbolic imagery for sustainable development. The restoration of the land follows from social justice, based on the awareness that intensive plantation agriculture founded on debt slavery was both socially and ecologically unsustainable. The prophets were most intensely, mystically conscious of this connection.

* This tradition should help reconcile a debilitating debate between those committed to greater socio-economic equality and those promoting environmental protection.

Adam Frank

Folklore Program Dept.of Anthropology

The University of Texas at Austin

Austin, Texas

512-374-9296 afrank@mail.utexas.edu

Social Action and Consciousness in a Global Context

Drawing on recent fieldwork with two very different social movements –the China Falun Gong movement and the Free Burma movement -- this paper examines the relationship between social action and consciousness in a global context. Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual development and meditation practice. When the Chinese government banned the practice in Summer 1999, hundreds ofpractitioners converged on Washington, DC to stage protests. The Free Burma movement, in contrast, is primarily made up of exiled Burmese student leaders and American student activists who are working for the restoration of democracy in Burma. One might characterize Falun Gong as "self turned outward" and the Free Burma movement as "the social turned inward." The focus of this paper is on how participants in each movement conceive the self in terms of raising public consciousness in America regarding issues that lie outside the experience of the average American.

Lourdes Giordani

Albright College Reading, PA

LourdesG@alb.edu

Virtual Nature versus Ecologies of the Heart: A Brief Comparison

As technologies that make virtual nature a reality proliferate, it is pertinent to ask how virtual nature will transform peoples' experience and valuing of nature. Given the fact that humans have spent most of their evolutionary history experiencing nature directly, and that as E. O. Wilson suggested, our affection for nature may be genetically programmed, we must also inquire how human consciousness may change as we increasingly dwell in human-made/altered environments. This paper explores these questions by considering recent studies on peoples' responses to virtual nature, and by comparing these responses with those of some Amerindian peoples, in particularly, those of former Amerindian peoples.

Jane Granskog

California State University, Bakersfield

3100 Pomona St., Bakersfield, CA 93305-2147

jgranskog@csub.edu

Work: 661-664-3117; Home: 661-871-4364

Places in the Heart: Explorations in the Symbolic and Spiritual Significance of the Meaning of Home

The places with which we identify have a significant effect upon how we define ourselves and relate to the world around us. However, very little attention has been given to exploring the complexities of "place" within the anthropological literature. This paper explores the multiple layers of the symbolic significance of "home" upon our identity. I argue that, along with the importance of family socialization processes and cultural/ethnic heritage, the geographical location of where we are born and raised and the indigenous ancestors that occupied that "home" place play a subtle yet critical role in whom we become. Based on several shamanic journeys undertaken as part of my participation in the Three Year Program in Core Shamanism offered by the Foundation of Shamanic Studies, I examine the spiritual significance that growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the heart of Menominee territory has had upon my own life course.

Richard A. Haag

Shenandoah University Winchester, VA

HaagR@mediasoft.net

The Concept of Personality in Sufism: Its Implications for Scientists

Sufism says that the competing disciplines and perspectives in science result from our failing to cognize the truth of the human being. Lacking an absolute meeting ground, we have yet to discover laws that stand the test of time. For science to proceed, it must come to know the mystery of the genuine human personality. Acquiring such knowledge is the most fundamental principle of sufism. My paper contrasts the Sufi concept of the human being to three major related topics in contemporary psychology: personality theory, psychological disorders, and psychotherapies. Personality theorists, not knowing the true nature of the human being, have no sound basis for either understanding psychological disorders or developing therapies to alleviate them. I conclude by examining the Sufi instruction for scientists to penetrate the surface of things so we may understand the laws of infinite existence and become aware of the rational energy and power governing us.

J.Edward Hazelton

Affiliation Meharry Medical College

1005 Dr. D.B.Todd Jr. Blvd.

Nashville, TN 37208-3599

(615) 386 9144 JEHAZ@MSN.COM

Conscious and Cultural Confusions in Nonverbal and Verbal Communication.

Different cultures and subcultures use different physical movements in communication that are often not recognized between such cultures. Similar confusions arise between people with different cultures, although the same language words are being used, there is a lack of a recognition of subtlecultural implications in speech exchange and of cultural hand and bodysigns. The conscious awareness of between not only people but also among mammalian species will be discussed with especial emphasis on body movement, and the conscious acquisition of cultural nonverbal communication and the evolution of movement and interpersonal exchange. The contrasting development of verbal language in our own species and recognition of this language consciously among us will be elaborated. Throughout this paper the significant recent contributions of Sheets-Johnstone on the primacy of movement, Loevenger on ego development and language levels, and Jenny Wade on the evolution of consciousness, will be compared toward research goals and enquiry. Printed brief notes and a short bibliography will be provided.

J.Edward Hazelton

Workshop: Language Without Words: Culture, Consciousness and Body Action.

This Workshop will be Experiential initiated with basic theory as an introduction, and when appropriate. Innate bodymovements are expressed by all mammals and other animals. We can be aware of these movements when reminded or in a mirror. By contrast we learn hand, face and the whole body by our culture and family upbringing. Although acquired these actions can be learnt either consciously or unconsciously, even in utero. The group members will have actual experience in expressing different cultural exchanges. The confusion between different cultures is often awkward and even dangerous, and role play will be applied within the group. Kinesis theory has a large literature and will be discussed. Peoples bodies develop, as they mature into fixed postures and patterns, often demonstrating both cultural and emotional actions unconsciously. Alexander Principal is used in the training of the actors to consciously create a character from postural change. USE AFFECTS FUNCTIONING. The members will experience these body actions and changes. The rest of the session will develop into role play for the members to become aware of change in themselves, but how to become much more aware of kinesic cultural differences. Verbal language will be involved concurrently at this stage.

Gilah Yelin Hirsch

Department of Art, California State University, Dominguez Hills, gilah@linkline.com

Proprioception, Reflection, Recognition: The Positive Affect of Paradigmatic Form

Over a period of thirty years, I have developed a series of conjectures showing consonance between physiological systems and perceptual patterns affecting health and behavior. These ideas have led me to believe that consciousness of intentionality is hard-wired in our physiological bodies, and that the focus of consciousness clearly points toward behavior benefiting the greater good. Cell communication, facilitated by the presence of Calcium, is essential for healthy cellular function. Using this as a meta-model I will show other physiological conditions as expressed in positively affective individual or cultural behavior. Examples from various disciplines will include Western and Tibetan medical systems; the presence of universal alphabetic morphology; the individual in society as electron in a valent community; and the concept of beauty as cross-cultural metaphor reflecting congruence between internal perceptual apparata and externally perceived phenomena.

Jonathan Horwitz

Scandinavian Center for Shamanic Studies

Ballonparken 140

Artillerivej 63

DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark

+45 3254 2808

ballon140@get2net.dk

chan_tam_tham@yahoo.com

Shamanic States of Consciousness: What am I Doing Here?

During the shamanic seance, the shamanic practitioner goes through several changes in consciousness while contacting and interacting with his spirit helpers and teachers. These changes, whether experienced through calling the spirits to herself, or by journeying to them, are discussed from the experiential point of view of the practitioner. Included in the discussion are possible short and long term effects on the practitioner.

Jonathan Horwitz

WORKSHOP: Introduction to Shamanic Journeying and Healing

At The Threshold: Introduction to the Shamanic Journey and Shamanic Healing

In this three-hour workshop, participants will be introduced to some of the basic techicniques used by shamans to contact the spirit world to ask for help, power and healing. Central to the work will be the power of the circle, therefore, it is requested that only those who are sincerely interested in learning these simple techniques, and willing to participate fully, attend. Those who are experienced in shamanic journeying are welcome. Participants are also requested not to partake of hallucinogens, euphorics, or alcohol in the day before the workshop. Circumstances permitting, we will finish with a healing ritual. Participants should bring paper and pencil, a cushion or blanket, and a rattle (a matchbox will do).

Participants are asked only to come if they wish to participate fully, not to use any form of stimulants or euphorics (including alcohol) in the 12 hours preceding the workshop, and to bring a small rattle, and a blanket or cushion to sit on. Jonathan Horwitz has been studying shamanism since1972, and has been teaching experiential shamanic courses since 1986. His main interests are in shamanic spiritual ecology, shamanic healing, and shamanism as a spiritual path in modern western culture.

Constantine Hriskos

c_hriskos@yahoo.com

Prisms of Culture and Consciousness: The Origins and Development of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness: Part 2: the SAC years

As we celebrate our Twentieth Anniversary conference it is time to reflect on where we have been, what we have achieved and what we can contribute to the study of consciousness in the new millennium. The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness did not have its beginnings in anthropology alone but in the study of the anomalous experiences and phenomena that brought many disciplines together in the seventies. Since its foundation SAC articulated many critiques that reached their culmination in the rejection of absolute forms of knowledge and authority and argued for a celebration of the 'native point of view'. And, while much of anthropology has become fragmented and overly specialized eschewing larger questions and issues, SAC continues to pursue the most elusive yet grandiose of subjects: the nature of consciousness itself in all its varieties and manifestations. This panel is an attempt to bring into view the path that we have taken to the 'present' so as to better allow us to move forward, continue the conversation with our sister disciplines and pose even "Bigger" questions together. Toward that end a history of the organization will be presented for the first time after which we will open up the floor to our discussants, all of whom have played a significant part in that history.

Scott C Hurley

hurley@U.Arizona.EDU

Buddhist Cleric or Lay Person? The Blurring of Identities in Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhism.

Recently, in the Republic of China (R.O.C.), a number of Buddhist movements have eroded the boundary, so central to traditional Chinese Buddhism, between the monastic order and the laity. In these movements, lay people play important administrative functions and take part in religious practices alongside monastics. As a result, traditional categories of praxis have been alternatively interpreted.I argue that this unique relationship between clergy and laity, and the concomittant reinterpretation of traditional forms of Buddhist practice, constitute a paradigmatic shift in the religious consciousness of the Taiwanese, indicating a new way of thinking about the world. In my paper, I examine the role that the following three conditions have played in the development of this new paradigm: implementation of doctrinal innovations created in the 1950's; the reconstitution of traditional Buddhist mythologies to justify the emphasis on the laity; and the importance placed in the R.O.C. on modernization.

Barbara Joans

Merritt College

165 Alhambra Street

San Francisco, CA 94123

104347.13@compuserve.com

Matriarchy, Minotaurs and Magic: The Once and Future Woman

Using both contemporary Goddess theory and the mythic writings of Campbell and Graves, there are reported to be three great stages in women's lives. The stages are said to correspond to the waxing, waning and fullness of the mood and are considered linked in blood, tides and hormonal fluids to the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone. But the old arch typical stages of the antiquarians no longer apply. The ancient divisions of female development into roughly three stages are no longer relevant. The triple Goddess worshipers are wrong. Times have changed and so have the stages. This paper reassesses those antique concepts and modifies them for modern use. Contemporary women live through four stages and need to reevaluate consciousness in terms of continuing evolutionary processes.

Jonathan Kaplan

jhkaplan@mesatop.com

The "King" Must Die--Long Live the "King": Of Kingship, Consciousness, and Comparativism

An extensive survey of "kingship" literature--historical, ethnohistorical, and ethnographical -- finds that key assumptions underlying the principle analyses of "kingship," in addition to the constitution of Self and Society, which enable a "transparent hermeneutic," appeal to an existential ontology of consciousness. Accordingly, their usefulness may be evaluated at least indirectly based on the current status of philosophical existentialism. Regardless of the purely theoretical support or lack thereof to be given to these studies, what is remarkable is the great extent of a seeming overlap between "emic" (and hermeneutical/existential) accounts of "kingship," which find ubiquitously a central and essential duality, manifested often in a mythological or folkloric twinship; and existentialism, per se with its particular formulation of a dialectical concept of consciousness. The ramifications are either of a useless tautology or of a new comparative grounding or anthropology.

Fred Keogh

vicki.c.keogh@USA.dupont.com

Real Experiences, Wrong View

In May of 1989, I was allowed to attend an elaborate increase rite of the Hoti, a native Venezuelan group, where shamans "talked" to the animals to encourage their reproduction and the general success of the hunt. A few nights later, I had a dream in which I would hunt seven animals the next day. It turned out that this came to pass. My paper revolves around this incident and an out-of-body experience described by Mark Plotkin in ‘The Shaman's Apprentice.’ I will discuss how these experiences cannot happen according to the worldview of our dominant intellectual culture. I will also discuss some theories that attempt to integrate these "impossible" occurrences into the mainstream and the likelihood of their success.

Philip M. Klasky

The Storyscape Project of the Cultural Conservancy

2760 Golden Gate

San Francisco, California 94118

pklasky@igc.org (415) 752-8678

House of Night: The Role of Mojave Creation Songs in Cultural Preservation and Environmental Protection

As part of my graduate research into the rich oral traditions and consciousness of the Mojave/Mohave people and in order to establish aboriginal land rights in the context of the fight to stop a nuclear waste dump on traditional lands, I studied their songs. Mojave/Mohave Creation songs are multi-dimensional oral maps with mythopoetic descriptions of the natural landscape and a narrative that includes seasonal and celestial cycles and a "storyscape" of landmarks and sacred sites. The songs describe the mythical journeys of the Mohave's spirit mentors while serving as a practical guide for the ancient traveler through the exacting desert environment with directions to sources of food and water. Recently, a cache of aging reel-to-reel tapes containing ancient songs thought to be lost were discovered on the Reservation. Through the Storyscape Project,we are now working with Mojave elders to restore and translate these songs adding to our knowledge of how these indigenous people perceived their landscape.

Paul Kockelman

pkockelm@midway.uchicago.edu

Language, Intentionality, and Consciousness

An adequate account of intentionality requires a theory of communication that takes into consideration the many structural levels of language through which intentionality is semiotically mediated, along with scales of overtness associated with these levels, and thus possibilities for speakers' conscious awareness of them. This paper therefore poses questions regarding intentionality both in relation to, and by analogy with, those posed regarding the relation between linguistic structure, pragmatics, and ideology. It offers a retrospective on the semiotic mediation of intentionality and the relationship between language-structure and linguistic ideology. And it provides an overview and analysis of recently completed fieldwork concerning the role of language in the constitution of intentionality among speakers of Q'eqchi' Maya.

Stanley Krippner

Saybrook Graduate School

skrippner@saybrook.edu

An Indigenous Charter from Brazilian Shamans.

In April, 1998, the National Encounter of Pajes was held outside of Brasilia, Brazil. Pajes, or shamans, from some 40 tribal nations had assembled to combat "ecopiratism," the theft by the biotechnology industry of their resources and tribal knowledge. This encounter was sponsored by the National Foundation for the Indians. It resulted in a Charter of Indigenous Peoples which called for a stop to "ecopiratism." Especially odious were instances were the Coriell Cell Company has gone into Amazonian villages, lured the shamans into the rainforest, and proceeded to draw blood from the village inhabitants. This blood was later sold on the Coriell website to groups interested in using the DNA for their own purposes (e.g., to help soldiers and privately employed workers to withstand equatorial heat). I met with the shamans in Brasilia following their conference, and was given a copy of the Charter. Since that time, I have published it in Shaman's Drum and other periodicals, and have located the website of Coriell where the DNA is being sold. I will present the Charter and discuss its implications for indigenous people and for students of the anthropology of consciousness.

Timothy Mitchell

Texas A&M University

Dept. of Modern and Classic Languages

College Station, Tx 77843-4238

Alcohol and the Sacred in Mexico and Spain

Much effort has gone into persuading heavy drinkers to negatively reframe their alternative states of consciousness. I conceive such states as adventures in psychic reorganization, each with its own fractal-shaped self-cluster, defensive arsenal, and temporal mode. Following discussion of the crucial role alcohol plays in Mexican folk religion, I will show how it also facilitated the "de-Indianization" of Mexico; tequila was the psycho-active drug most conducive to the emergence of new egocentric identities. Although the mestizo cantina does not possess the sacrality of the Tarahumara tesgüinada (for example), it still constitutes a communal spatio-temporal zone fro magical self-experiencing. I will compare the Mexican cantina with Spain's classic flamenco juerga, where intoxicated nocturnal explorations of musical emotion often took participants over the liminal threshold into the realm of trance.

Jeff L. MacDonald

Affiliation: International Refugee Center of Oregon

Near-Death Experiences and the Orphic Journey

Since the birth of research into near-death experiences (NDE's), medical and psychological researchers have claimed that the NDE is a univeral phenomenon. In previous works (MacDonald 1983, 1989) I examined this claim by utilizing cross-cultural evidence for universality both in terms of modern studies and the ethnographic literature. In particular I have compared the elements of NDE's and deathbed visions to ethnographic and folkloric accounts of journeys to the land of the dead. In this paper I consider the relationship between the NDE, the shamanic journey, and the myyth of Orpheus' journey to the land of the dead--a common folklore motif in the mythology of the old and new worlds. I examine the purposeful aspects of such journeys versus the spontaneous nature of the NDE. Finally, I discuss the implications of NDE's for the anthropology of consciousness.

Jacquelyn Messinger

Dept. Of Anthropology

Cal. State Bakersfield

Liminality in the Aging Process: Spiritual Aspects of Communitas Across Age Groups

Globally speaking, the fastest growing age group are those individuals aged 65 and over. In western societies these individuals all too often find themselves without a kin based support group and reliant on a far flung dependency network that often leaves them without a sense of belonging. This paper focuses on the transformation of self awareness and concept of self/self identity that transpires as one undergoes the ageing process. This redefinition and sense of self awareness/identity appears closely related to the spiritual aspects of communitas as it relates to involvement in the "communities" the individual becomes associated with in their search for belonging. Comparisons will be made utilizing data from Oregon and Taiwan.

James A. Overton

Department of Cognitive Science

University of California at San Diego

joverton@cogsci.ucsd.edu

The Imagino-Hypothesis: The role of imagery and imagination in cognition, clinical hypnosis, placebo, and shamanic healing.

The human imagination is a highly complex and unique neurocognitive faculty of the mind-brain that voluntarily creates, experiences, and manipulates an internal reality, often in parallel to, and largely independent of the external world that surrounds it. This paper hypothesizes that this same neurocognitive faculty is not only responsible for characteristically human cognitive capacities, such as language, but also for the ability of the human mind-brain to effect profound psychological and/or physiological changes upon itself and the rest of the human organism. This paper presents the Imagino-Hypothesis, a neurocognitive theory of imagination within the context of consciousness, and its role in various healing practices and traditions.

Marshall Pease

mpease3@juno.com

Fire and Ice

The capabilities of a newborn infant - capabilities he or she needs to begin interacting with and learning about the world - seem too remarkable to be explained by pure genetics. I suggest they are explainable only as a result of patterns of consciousness, cognition and comprehension brought in by the spirit at birth or before. I suggest, therefore, that we that are what I call fire spirits who have incarnated in order to experience intention and selfhood. In this view, the Fire Domain from which we arise cannot store pure data but can retain relations among data types, analogous to the non-local relationships observed in quantum physics. This view has a number of wide-ranging implications, several of which are explored in the paper.

William Plank

Professor of French

Editor at Large, **The Montana Professor**

Montana State University-Billings

Billings, MT 59101

home: dplank@imt.net

office: wplank@msu-b.edu

The Implications Of Quantum Non-Locality For The Archaeology Of Consciousness

Bell's Inequality, a laboratory set-up whereby the differential polarity

of photons is measured and correlated will be briefly explained. It provides empirical and mathematical evidence that local reality (i.e., the existence of an independent object in the external world, which is then independently perceived and measured by an "objective" observer) is not an accurate way to understand the nature of reality or of consciousness. Thus Bell's Inequality, by dealing with subatomic particles, has broken through the self-deception of the "coarse-graining" consciousness and puts the consciousness into an intimate unity with the thing observed (and without some touchy-feely mysticism). Bell's Inequality, the most amazing scientific demonstration of modern times, used the behavior of sub-atomic particles to hoodwink the coarse-graining and presumptuous personal consciousness. Coarse-graining, as used by Murray Gell-Mann, will be briefly explained. Thus the world is not a question of a consciousness measuring and perceiving an independent object, but it is a question of a quantum configuration of object, measuring device and perceiver (which invalidates phenomenology or consciousness-as-epiphenomenon. I believe the concept can equally and most certainly be applied to animal consciousness, providing support for the continuity of biological consciousness (as Nietzsche understood). Quantum is thus seen as an empirical experiment in ontology, and likewise an experiment in metaphysics (as Abner Shimony of Boston University used the term). It is more than interesting that Nietzsche in **Beyond Good and Evil**, section 36, had an intuition of what Bell's theorem demonstrates--the unified configuration of perceiver and perceived and the impossibilithy of understanding conscious as an epiphemenon laid on top of some putative structural complexity and appearing as if by magic. The question, "Is the moon still there when Einstein is not looking atit?" is only a failing strategy to preserve Platonism or philosophicalidealism; it is, in fact, only half a question, the other half being: "Is Einstein still there when the moon is not shining?"

Jean Paul Provost

Dept of Sociology/Anthropology

Indiana-Purdue University

Fort Wayne, Indiana 46802

Provost@IPFW.edu

Mind, Experience and Health: Lessons for the Millennium from Traditional Amazonian Trance Healers.

This paper will report on the way Amazonian Trance Healers use psychophamacological means to achieve cures from "dis-ease". The paper will focus upon the manner in which Amazonian shamans use psychotropic plants, dramatic settings and group communitas to put patients into a state of euphoria, which the shaman then manipulates to achieve recovery from the condition of "dis-ease". The main point is that as in many other cases, "the medium is the message" or in this case the shaman is "The Cure". The paper will then attempt to show how modern medicine can be improved from adopting some of the lessons learned from the study of traditional healers.

Thomas B. Roberts

troberts@niu.edu

Entheogens, Culture, and Consciousness: Questions Answered and Questions Asked

In the last 20 years, entheogens (psychoactive plants and chemicals used in a spiritual context) have received increased public attention and interdisciplinary academic study; this interest shows signs of expanding. This presentation will identify contributions the anthropology of consciousness has made to the study of entheogens and will frame unanswered questions. Among them: Origin of religion: What work remains to be done on the Wassonian thesis that psychoactive plants played a significant part in the early development of religions? Indo-European Invasion: Did the Indo-Europeans introduce entheogens into the lands they conquered, or did they adapt native plants to "the soma function?" Contemporary entheogenic churches: How are indigenous cultures being influenced by consciousness tourism? Will Western culture adopt entheogens such as marijuana, ayahuasca, peyote, and synthetic chemicals? Cultural expectations vs. direct experience: To what extent are entheogenic experiences determined by cultural memes? Is primary religious experience more basic than culture?

Robin Rodd

University of Western Australia - Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas

Dpto. de Antropología, IVIC, Km. 11, Careterra

Panamericana, Apartado 21827, Caracas, Venezuela 1020-A

thylacine_rr@hotmail.com Phone: 58-2-504-1250

Hallucinogens and the Altered State in Venezuela

In this paper an interpretation of the last 20 years of literature on the use of hallucinogens in Venezuela is given. Particular attention is paid to the relationships of hallucinogens to altered states of consciousness, shamanism and symbolic structures. It is argued that while the use of snuff hallucinogens have figured prominently in the lives of several upper Orinocan indigenous communities, the relationships between hallucinogens, emic conceptions of consciousness, and shamanic ideology have, for the most part, not been addressed in recent Venezuelan scholarship. There remains much scope for investigation of the ways in which the use of hallucinogens and so called "external" or sensory stimuli condition shamanic practice andideology. Some further lines of research are suggested.

James Rutherford

rutherjh@rrcol.com

An Ecological Organic Paradigm: A Framework of Analysis for Moral and Political Philosophy

A modern version of the organic paradigm can be based on behavioral ecology, ecology being the study of the interrelationships between an organism and its environment. The ecological organic paradigm describes four general human mental functional capacities and associates them, in the context of evolutionary and psychological development, to four general categories of experience with which we have to cope, adapt, and interrelate. The ecological organic paradigm is compatible with both natural and cultural evolution. The framework can accommodate both descriptive and normative concepts of human nature and it can accommodate both the individual and

social dimensions of human knowledge and activity.

Mark Schroll

Nebraska Environmental Resource Center

Room 236, Nebraska City Union

Lincoln, NE 68588-0462

Email: rockphd@hotmail.com

Re-inventing the Mythos of Euroamerican Science: Mythic Insights From an 11-year Recurring Dream

We have come to this conference because we are outsiders. We recognize both the strengths and the limitations of EuroAmerican science's socially constructed framework. We recognize the value of alternate states of consciousness. Our research and experiences have allowed us to begin remembering our ancestral conversations and our original ecological wholeness. But how, and by what means, can we encourage others to begin this act of remembrance? How can we assist others in understanding that no single cultural perspective tells the complete story of the universe? How can we assist others in recognizing that our story of the universe includes both the human and nonhuman worlds? How can we assist others in joining us in this quest for a new story of the universe and a new spirit of science? How can we begin to create a new mythos that recognizes the value of logos/rationality and eros/participatory consciousness? This is the challenge we have yet to face as the Anthropology of Consciousness celebrates its 30th Anniversary and prepares to embark on the journey of sharing its visionary and mutagenic experiences. Meeting this challenge is the focus of my presentation, offering the analysis of an 11-year recurring dream as a means of re-inventing the mythos of EuroAmerican science.

Stephen A. Schwartz

harmony@intrepid.net

Prisms of Culture and Consciousness: The Origins and Development of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness: Part 1: the early years

This paper describes the early history of what has become the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC). It covers 1973 to 1980 but, particularly, the seminal events which led up to, and which occurred at the annual meetings of the American Anthropology Association in Mexico City in 1974. At those meetings a paradigm within anthropology, begun decades before, was shattered and the process was very painful. The cause of the pain was two symposia: The Rhine-Swanton symposium, which led directly to the founding of the SAC, and a symposium on the challenge to anthropology represented by Carlos Castenada and his writings. The founding of the SAC can only be understood properly in this cultural context. Through a series of best selling books, beginning with his 1968 dissertation, written in fulfillment of his doctorate in the anthropology department of UCLA, Carlos Castenada, attacked the way a critical part of anthropology was conducted. His argument in its essence was that one could not understand the Shamanic world view, without becoming a shaman. No informant could ever convey this, because so much of it was experiential. More fundamentally, yet, the argument implicit in all his work was that non-technological cultures can be as insightful as their technological counterparts; albeit in different areas of human functioning. Two insights central to this worldview are particularly relevant to SAC: an aspect of human consciousness exists independent of time and space susceptible to volitional control; and, there is an interconnection between all life forms which must be understood if the universal impulse humans feel towards the spiritual is to properly mature. The SAC can be seen in pure Kuhnian terms as a response to the reassessment that Castenada forced on anthropology.

Stephan A. Schwartz

The Engineering Of Psi - Explorations In Applied Remote Viewing

Remote Viewing is a technology that has been studied at laboratories around the world for almost 30 years. In randomized controlled double blind studies it has been found to replicate with the robustness of many other perceptual experiments. It has also proven quite useful in the location and reconstruction of archaeological sites, and the reconstruction of their

cultures. This paper covers 17 years of Remote Viewing research in anthropological and archaeological settings and describes a working

methodology for obtaining and analysing such data.

Andrew Smart

PO Box 304 Broadbeach Qld 4218 Australia

0414 846 103

The Evolution of the Illusion of Freedom

The most fundamental change in the evolution of human consciousness occurs in the transition from a shaman led egalitarian society to a priest ruled hierarchal society. The imposition of a rigid dominance social hierarchy system, (the organon) upon a naturally evolved, flexible dominance system generates conflict between natural consciousness and artificially constructed political consciousness. In egalitarian societies, the success of a culture is reflected in the successful adaptation of the band or tribe to nature. In priest ruled societies, hierarchal influenced culture requires the control of humans to control nature. In expansionary societies (military/economic ruled), culture requires humans to dominate other cultures. How the elements of natural consciousness, indicators of place in the natural hierarchy, to share love, trust, values, respect and to detect deceit are hijacked by hierarchal cultures to further the evolutionary success of the organon are introduced in this presentation.

John Smart

UC San Diego School of Medicine

3191 Morning Way, La Jolla, CA 92037

The Destiny of Species and the Informational Singularity: Understanding Emergent Physical Constraints on the Evolution of Information and Consciousness in Complex Systems

Consciousness may provide the best metaparadigm for emergent complexity. Various "constraints" on the future evolution of information and consciousness have been proposed, each with properties of emergent physical processes, each suggesting a "destiny" or general attractor for the evolution of complex systems. Constraints, while operating at all scales, may not be recognized as emergent until a system reaches a high level of recursive complexity. Both "Moore's Law," and hyperexponential growth in Internet bandwidth may simply be manifestations of relentless Information Exponentiation (IE). IE may be an incessant Univeral constraint because Information, with each new recursive cycle, appears to "figure out" ever more clever ways to reencode itself using less space, matter, and energy (Substrate Shift), so that its exponential growth has historically been unaffected by environmental limits (unlike the growth of any particular substrate, such as a biological population). In addition, Information Integration, Inertia, Mirror Worlds, Space-Time Collapse, Freedom Collapse, Ethics, and Consciousness have all been suggested as emergent and irreversible constraints of complex systems. If true, this model provides suggestions for improving our near-term ethics as we rapidly approach a complex future.

S. David Stoney

Dept. of Physiology Medical College of Georgia

Augusta, GA, 30912

706-721-7850 dstoney@mail.mcg.edu

Entrainment of Embodied Human Consciousness to Cyclic Climate Pattern

Recent geophysical data indicate that climate often "flickers," with abrupt (decade or less) transitions between brief warm and cold states superimposed on longer glacial/interglacial cycles. I hypothesize that, for many peoples, embodied human consciousness (EHC) is linked to the long-term climate cycles. The hypothesis states that the bimodal nature of EHC, with one pole in quantum wholeness and another in the brain, in conjunction with the human need for meaning, causes EHC to oscillate between two modes. During glacial periods the participatory mode dominates: one's self-identity and sense of meaning derive primarily from a felt sense of mystical interconnection with one's social group and the world. During interglacial periods an alienated mode becomes dominant: one's self-awareness is individuated, meaning is externalized and quantified, and sense of interconnection is weak. A strategy for breaking the hypothesized cyclic dependence of consciousness on climate is presented.

Eika Tai

Coordinator, Japanese Program

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

etai@sfsu.edu (Eika Tai)

Passing is Believing: Ethnic Consciousness of Asian Residents in Japan

The majority of Asian redients in Japan (Zainichi) pass as Japanese. I examine their ethnic consciousness as it unfolds in their interaction with Japanese. Born and raised in Japan, they perform Japanese and feel that they are Japanese. They are also accustomed to using Japanese names instead of their ethnically-marked legal names. In interethnic interaction, neither Zainichi nor Japanese are conscious of their ethnicities since they exhibit or notice no significant cultural differences and ethnicity rarely becomes a topic in everyday conversations. Such unconsciousness confirms for Japanese their social perception of ethnic homogeneity, and reinforces for Zainichi their feeling of being Japanese. Thus in interethnic interaction, Zainichi do not consciously pretend to be Japanese, but unconsciously affirm that they are Japanese. In so doing, they inadvertently participate in the reproduction of the myth of ethnic homogeneity in Japan.

Edith Turner

Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia

100 Brooks Hall, University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA 22903

804-924-7044 elt9w@virginia.edu

Death and The Ultimate Change of Consciousness, and the Near Death Experience

This paper is concerned with the comparative study in anthropology of the ultimate change of conscious, that which occurs at death--and particularly with the phenomenon of the near death experience, popularly known as the NDE. The public is familiar with Moody's book, Life After Life; Justine Owen in Personality Studies at the University of Virginia made a hospital survey of NDEs; a neurophysiological article has appeared in Anthropology of Consciousness; and Jeffrey Macdonald has published on the topic and done much research on ethnographic accounts. Otherwise publications by actual anthropologists in anthropological publications are rare. In this paper I combine the handling of the social context of the accounts and an exploration of the theoretical implications of the accounts-as-fact. In the paper I cite two fieldwork cases of multiple experience among the Iñupiat of Alaska, and one of a Baha'i member who afterwards changed his religion. A condition necessary to do such "ultimate" fieldwork is perhaps the "ultimate" rapport, a willingness to go all the way with the interlocutor over a matter that is supremely personal. In the paper I discuss the problems of the study of the NDE and the philosophy of

anthropology involved.

Charles Whitehead

University College London

19 Rydal Rd. London SW16 1QF, UK

ucsacbw@ucl.ac.uk

Anthropological psychologizing and what we need to do about it

During much of the past century, many anthropologists, adopting Freudian or Piagetian models, characterised `primitive thought' as childlike or pre-logical. This is rather like explaining a photograph of a UFO by arguing there must be something wrong with the camera, without considering a possible origin in real-world experience. Attempts to import an updated cognitive science into anthropology have suffered because cognitive theories themselves have barely begun to accomodate embodied experience, let alone the power of collective performance and social-mirroring behaviour to turn make-believe into make-belief, and invert universals of intuitive ontology (such as the difference between appearance and reality). We need cross-fertilization between disciplines rather than a one-way transfusion. This more collaborative approach may be illustrated by a recent brain-scanning study of role-play, which raised the possiblity that `theatre of mind' is a default condition for human thought.

George Williams

Federal Communications Commission

5480 Wisconsin Ave, #525

Chevy Chase, MD 20815

(202) 418-0867 gwilliam@fcc.gov

Conciousness, Self-Organization, and the Holy Grail

In the paper, I consider the possibility that we are connected to a self-organizing field of collective consciousness, which allows a kind of feedback between personal desires or intentions and motivations to fulfill such needs. The notion of a self-organizing collective consciousness is suggested by Carl Jungís concept of synchronicity and perhaps by evidence that groups of meditators can lower the crime rate in a particular area. I proceed by considering the simplest shapes or structures that would allow such collective feedback. Next I examine the close correspondence between such a structure and various myths such as the Holy Grail, the Cornucopia, the Tree of Life, and the Fountain of Youth. Such myths and related rituals, I argue, may stimulate and promote the self-organizing property of collective consciousness.

Michael Winkelman

Anthropology-Arizona State University

Tempe, AZ 85287-2402

The Shamanic Paradigm in Evolution, Healing and Consciousness

Cross-cultural studies establish the etic basis of shamanism and point to the psychobiological foundations of the practices. The universal presence of shamanism in hunter-gatherer societies establish its fundamental role in human sociocultural evolution. The basic forms of metaphor represented in shamanic universals suggest that the practices played a role in human cognitive evolution. This paper examines these universals from psychobiological perspectives to illustrate shamanism as a biologtically based paradigm for representation, consciousness and healing.

Kathleen Zuanich Young

Western Washington University

kyoung@cc.wwu.edu

A Course In Miracles On-Line: Cyber Consciousness And Channeled Guidance.

In this paper, based on five years of daily participant-observation among several list serve communities of students and teachers of "A Course in Miracles," I discuss the concepts death, illusion, love, fear, and "what is real" as perceived by various members of the list serve. The spiritual psycho-therapy based on the channeled writing of Helen Schuman draw the list serve participants to discuss their lives and each other via the internet in discussion geared toward explicating "miracles" and the creation of miracles that are perceived as "real," albeit unseen. Relationships are sustained for years on-line, based on a channeled text that asserts "Nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists." The metaphysical is expedient and all else is perception and illusion. I conclude that relationships are forged in the malleable present and as such may be manipulated as a means to resolve, wage, or collaborate with American ideals of individualism and positive thinking, in uniform and culturally constructed ways specific to the internet.

Hong Zhang

Drew University Dept. German, Russian & Chinese

Madison, N.J. 07940

973-408-3120 hzhang@drew.edu

Post-Maoist Shamanism: Healing and Health Care in Rural China.

Since the inauguration of Deng Xiaoping's New Responsibility System in the Chinese countryside, China's peasants have been encouraged to work hard at seeking their own prosperity. In that same period, however, many of the social services that were provided by the collective and commune have disappeared as agricultural production was returned to the level of the individual household. Such things as old age security and affordable health care have become pressing concerns for most of China's rural residents. In such a climate, Shamanic practitioners who had been denounced and exiled in previous political campaigns are now in great demand as they fill the needs of their local communities by providing a range of services from more traditional shamanic healing and contact with the spirit world to herbal treatments, massage therapy, counseling, etc. This paper examines the roles played by these contemporary shamans, the people they treat, the services they provide and their prospects for the future.

Mira Zussman

Comparative Religious Studies

San Jose State University

1434 10th Ave San Francisco, CA 94122

Preserving the Forbidden--From Tatouage to Tamazight

The paper addresses the subversive act of cultural preservation in the face of religious and political suppression. Both Tamazight --the Berber language-- and Tatouage --permanent body engraving-- have been suppressed under the long- standing Arab Islamic rule in North Africa. Neither Tamazight nor tatouage have disappeared. This paper documents the historical and cultural conflict which underlies the suppression, and discusses what is at stake. The hypothesis here is rather extreme: that Amazigh (Berber) women for centuries have been preserving their forbidden written language, tribal symbols, and magical formulae on their bodies and in their handicrafts in the form of "decoration." The paper examines 1) the contemporary battle lines between Islamic scripturalism and Amazigh nationalism in Algeria, Morocco and France; 2) the rise of the Imazighen liberation movement in North Africa and in the Amazgha diaspora; and 3) the role of our tattooed grandmothers in the villages of the Kabyle and Atlas mountains.