Mysticism, Shamanism, Spiritualism -- Young Oon Kim

In her classic book entitled Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill warned bluntly that in the condition of psychic instability which is characteristic of the religious man's movement to higher states of consciousness, man is at the mercy of suggestions and impressions he receives from the spirit world. Hence, in every period of true mysticism there appears also an outbreak of occultism, illuminism or other perverted forms of spirituality. Underhill is especially wary, she says, of the even more dangerous and confusing borderland region where the mystical and psychical meet. Occultism accompanies mystical activity but should not be confused with it, for this feeble, deformed and arrogant mystical sense does not attain the Absolute, this author maintains.¹

Since the New Religions these days are often criticized as examples of such wild occultism, I think that it is now necessary to re-examine and re-assess Underbill's argument. This is not to deny the value of her study of mysticism. Under the guidance and inspiration of her teacher, Baron von Hiigel, she was attempting to assert the objective existence of a transcendent realm and refute the subjectivist, rationalistic and reductionist explanations of mystical phenomena espoused by modernist theologians like James Bisset Pratt, Rufus Jones, and Dean William R. Inge as well as psychologists such as James Leuba.² However, one can ask if she did not go too far in her fear of the mysterious, the parapsychological and the so-called "occult."

In the following article, I propose to revise Underbill's blanket condemnation of the borderland where the mystical and psychical meet. First, we shall look at the oldest sources of mysticism, seen in the archeological remains of Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures. Next we shall briefly note the continuation and elaboration of this ancient shamanism, notably in the traditional religion of Korea, prior to the importation of Buddhism and Confucianism from imperial China. Then we shall highlight the parapsychological dimension of Christian mysticism from Saint Teresa of Spain in the Counter-reformation to the present day Thus I hope to provide enough material to make a positive case for the reality of the spirit world and the need for recognizing our continuous relationship to it.

I.

In his lectures on the history of religion, Mircea Eleade has reminded his students at the University of Bucharest, the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes in Paris and the University of Chicago that there is a real unity to the spiritual history of humanity which originates at least as far back as Neolithic and even Paleolithic times. The roots of religious experience, thought and practice are clearly evidenced by 30,000 B.C. because of artifacts discovered in Spain, France, the Ukraine, southern Italy, the Ural Mountains of Russia and elsewhere.

Eleade cites a remarkable example of such Paleolithic religious art discovered deep in a cave at Lascaux, France. This painting shows a wounded bison thrusting its horns toward an apparently dead man lying on the ground. The fallen hunter's pike-like weapon is pressed against the animal's belly. Near the man is a bird on a perch.

At first glance this caveman art looks like the picture of a common hunting accident. But why would a prehistoric artist take the time and labor to portray such a typical event, especially deep within a cave which is difficult to reach? In 1950 Horst Kirchner gave a profoundly religious explanation for this Paleolithic art. This was not the picture of a prehistoric hunting accident but depicted an ancient shamanic seance. The speared bison represents a sacrificial animal, and the prostrate man is in a deep trance. The bird nearby symbolizes the soul of the believer and the man is travelling to the spirit world to ask for a blessing in some tribal hunting expedition.³

For many years anthropologists and historians of religion have labored to rediscover the world view of primitive peoples. This "religion of the caves," as scholars term it, is deciphered from a painstaking analysis of prehistoric engravings, paintings, cult objects, statuettes and the contents of ancient burial sites. While such artifacts by themselves cannot provide the whole story, their meaning is illumined to some extent by similar items in later cultures as well as the myths and rites of remaining aboriginal tribes in isolated regions of the present world (Australian primitives, Atncan Pigmies, Latin American Indian tribes, etc.).⁴

What then was humanity's oldest religion? Paleolithic man performed sacred dances. He engaged in special ceremonies for the dead. He put on sacred robes -- a deer skin, a horse's tail and deer antlers, for example. He worshipped a god of the wild animals, the Lord of Wild Beasts, so to speak; and as numerous statuettes reveal, he also revered a goddess of fertility, a divine Earth Mother. Paleolithic peoples believed in a mysterious kinship of themselves and certain wild animals. They were convinced of the immortality of the soul and the need for worship of ancestral spirits. They invoked the aid of supernatural powers for success in food-gathering activities, recognized a sacred dimension in acts of procreation, established special sanctuaries and honored those who possessed the supernatural power of communicating with the spirit world (shamans and shamanesses).

This ancient religion persisted and was undoubtedly developed for tens of thousands of years prior to the Neolithic age when men and women turned from a hunting society to an agricultural economy. Humans became farmers gradually between 9,000 and 7,000 B.C. -- a momentous revolution in the whole lifestyle of men and women. As archeologists have discovered, in Thailand by 9,000 B.C. villagers were cultivating peas, beans and roots of certain tropical plants. Scientists also now know that sheep, goats, pigs and dogs were domesticated in various parts of the world from 8,000-6,500 B.C.

Inevitably, the change from a hunting society to an agricultural one altered and deepened ancient man's religious concepts and practices. During the Paleolithic age, hunters naturally emphasized their mystical oneness with the animals. However, during the subsequent Neolithic age they supplemented this awareness with "the mystical solidarity between man and vegetation," to use Eleade's phrase. ⁵

What were some of these new concepts of humanity's relationship to the divine? For one thing, an analogy was discovered between the fertility of the earth and feminine fecundity. As men and women mated to produce children, so the sky above mates with the earth beneath to produce an abundant harvest. This idea led to belief in the importance of a cosmic marriage between the masculine deity of heaven and the feminine divinity of earth. Yin/yang theology and many cultic practices grew out of this concept. Secondly, the role of the woman as mother and priestess was stressed. A woman was seen as one who knows the mystery of creation. As no man can ever realize, a female understands the secret of birth, death and resurrection. And thus from an awareness of the sanctity of motherhood it was natural to develop religions of the dying and risen god who transcends the pain and terror of mortality. Thirdly, Neolithic religion gave birth to the notion of a cyclical view of life. As the moon has its cycle and nature passes through four seasons, so humans are subject to a continuous circle of life, death and rebirth.

Neolithic religion possesses several clear features. It revolves around cults of fertility indicated by countless statuettes of pregnant goddesses and belief in the storm god symbolized by the sacred bull. Agricultural religion created various rituals connected with the mystery of vegetation. Also quite naturally, Neolithic farmers pondered the secrets of the sun, moon, stars, producing the occult art of astrology and the beginnings of the science of astronomy⁶ According to the anthropologists, all subsequent faiths are derived from this primordial religious worldview and built upon its Paleolithic-Neolithic foundations.

Against the background of such a many millennia-old understanding and experience of spiritual phenomena, it becomes easier to appreciate the true relationships which exist among separate topics like mysticism, the occult, spiritualism and shamanism. From the very dawn of religious consciousness these different elements have been intertwined in a single spiritual philosophy of life. Every one of them goes back to the beginnings of human awareness.

Of course, in the onward course of history, these aspects of authentic religion have taken on new and varied forms. At times they have degenerated into mere folklore or superstitions. At other times they have been revived and revitalized with amazing inspiration or intensity. As the biblical prophets pointed out, there is a vast difference between the exalted worship of the God who demands a religion of justice, mercy and humility and the syncretistic Hebrew-Canaanite practices of many kings of Israel and their unenlightened subjects. Similarly, there was in Christendom an unbridgeable gulf between the mysticism of a St. Bernard of Clairvaux or St. Francis and the superstitious folk-Catholicism of the average peasant. Even so, it would be foolish to ignore the inspiration and profound validity of these basic religious beliefs and practices.

II.

The ancient faith of Paleolithic hunters and Neolithic farmers survives to the present day. It is at the core of Amerindian tribal rites, Haitian voodoo and traditional Japanese Shinto. In Korea we call this original religion shamanism or "Sinkyo" (belief in spirits) or the faith and practices of the Mudang (female mediums and exorcists).

When Protestant missionaries started preaching in Korea in the late 19th century, they denounced and ridiculed this widespread folk religion as superstition and "demon worship." For example, Presbyterian missionary James S. Gale in his book Korea in Transition (1909) describes shamanism as follows:

The whole land of Korea is plagued by demon-worship as Egypt in Moses' time became infested with locusts. Spiritualist mediums, exorcists, fortunetellers, astrologists, believers in hill gods and dragons exist everywhere. Koreans believe that earth, air and sea are peopled by invisible demons. These spirits haunt certain trees, springs, lakes and mountaintops. They live on the roof of every home, the fireplace, the chimney, the doorway. Spirits infest earth, sky and water. By the thousands these demons waylay the traveler as he leaves home. They are beside him always, behind him, dancing in front of him and whirring over his head.

Gale goes on, saying that spirits of the dead who passed from earth under some wrong keep tormenting the living until their wrongs are avenged a thousand fold. Many spirits have found no resting place and so remain at large, more dangerous than even a tiger. Gale therefore concludes, belief in spirits surrounds Koreans with indefinite terrors and keeps them in a perpetual state of nervous apprehension.⁷

In recent years such a derogatory picture of Korean shamanism has been gradually replaced by a more objective interpretation. Eleade's book entitled Shamanism (1964) was of enormous benefit in educated circles. And more recently Korean and other Asian scholars have published positive evaluations of "Sinkyo," shamanic folk dances and folk art, the rituals of the Mudang and their roots in the distant past. For English readers, Jung Young Lee's Korean Shamanistic Rituals (1981) is a good sample of recent re-evaluation.

According to J. Y. Lee, the contemporary practices of the Mudangs may involve over 80% of the South Korean population. However, these present-day rites should be viewed as "a deteriorated form of traditional faith."⁸ Traditional Korean shamanism originated long before the introduction of Confucianism and Buddhism and was for many centuries the national faith. As such, it contained some basic elements which persist in shadowy form to the present day. First, Mudangs are not simply members of a traditional priestly class: they exercise power because they are able to make direct contact with the spirit world. Second, Korean shamanism claims to be closely connected to the founding of the Korean nation, symbolized by the Tangun myth. Thirdly, the Mudangs have always believed that divine powers should be worshipped in mountain-side or mountain-top shrines. Fourthly, women take the highest priestly role in Korean shamanism, which indicates its close relationship to the fertility religion of the very ancient Neolithic society. Finally, at least in its oldest forms, the religion of the Mudangs is based on worship of the one supreme God of heaven and earth, "Hananim." In other words, there is a strong monotheistic element in ancient shamanism, so it was natural for the first Korean Protestants to identify the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition with Hananim, the high-god of the Mudangs.

III.

In her study, Mysticism, Underhill shows how the experience of immediate contact with spirit world has been an outstanding feature of the Christian tradition from apostolic times to the opening decades of the 19th century. Especially in the chapters on "Voices and Visions" (part 2, chapter V) and "Ecstasy and Rapture" (ibid., chapter VII) she gives striking illustrations from the writings of the mystics of their personal contacts with supernatural beings and discarnate spirits.

According to Underhill, St. Teresa d'Avila (1515-1582) let her life be completely governed by voices she heard from the spirit world. They told her when and where to go on a journey. They advised her which houses to purchase for nunneries and monasteries for the Carmelite order. Sometimes the spirits commanded her not to found a community in a certain place which she had thought would be favorable, and just as often they ordered her to begin work in an area which appeared to be impossible. In small things as in great ones, Teresa relied upon such spiritual guidance -- even when such supernatural advice involved her in great hardships, ran counter to her personal judgment or interfered with her carefully laid-out plans.⁹

By listening to spiritual voices, this Carmelite nun revitalized Catholicism during the troubled years of the Protestant Reformation. She also greatly improved the state of monastic life in Western Europe. Most importantly, she gave birth to the magnificent school of Spanish mysticism which was carried on by her talented disciple, St. John of the Cross (1542-1591). Like few others, Teresa and John proved that Christian mystics could be exceptionally talented organizers and practical administrators as well as profound contemplatives.¹⁰

But earlier Catholic mystics experienced the same kind of guidance and inspiration from the spirit world. The Dominican monk Henry Suso (circa 1295-1365) was a trained philosopher and theologian who often heard voices from above. In fact, he claimed that his book of one hundred meditations on the Passion of Christ were dictated to him by a spirit speaking not in Latin but in German. Two centuries earlier, the Benedictine saint Hildegarde of Bingen (1098-1179) claimed that her prophecies came directly from the spirit world, so she prefaced her writings with the words, "Thus saith the Living Light."¹¹

The Bible contains many examples of visions of discarnate spirits: Abraham is visited by three angels, Jacob wrestles with a supernatural spirit at the river Jabbok, Stephen and St. Paul experience a vision of the risen Jesus, etc. Similar events continued to occur throughout Christian history to the present day.

Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), a Franciscan nun whose writings greatly influenced many later mystics, repeatedly saw visions of Jesus. Once she saw a vision of him as a child 12 years old while she took Holy Communion. Another time she declared, "I saw Him most plainly with the eyes of the mind...first living, suffering, bleeding, crucified; and then dead upon the cross."¹²

Particularly memorable was St. Catherine of Siena's experience of holy betrothal to Jesus in 1366 A.D. One day he appeared to her, saying that he was ready to espouse himself to her. Suddenly she saw with him the Virgin Mary, St. John, St. Paul, King David and St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order she belonged to. While David played nuptial music on his harp, Mary took Catherine's hand and extended her finger toward Jesus. Jesus placed a diamond ring on Catherine's finger, saying, "Lo, I espouse thee to Myself and this will preserve thyself ever without stain until thou dost celebrate thy eternal nuptials with Me in Heaven." Then he and the others vanished. But Catherine claimed that the engagement ring remained on her finger forever, even though it was invisible to everybody else.¹³

Histories of the Christian saints also contain numerous anecdotes about the extraordinary mystical powers with which these holy men and women become endowed. In many cases contact with the spirit world enables one to possess gifts of faith healing, extrasensory perception, prophecy of future events, out-of-body experiences and trance communications or actual travel to spiritual realms. Various theories have been worked out by theologians and philosophers of religion to explain such strange phenomena. But the facts of mystical phenomena and psychic powers are really beyond reasonable doubt.

IV.

Let me give four interesting examples from the post-Enlightenment modern world.

A.

The late 18th century poet William Blake was a baptized member of the Church of England who strayed far away from the conventional path of Anglican orthodoxy. Blake (1757-1827) is unique in British artistic life because he has won great posthumous fame as a painter, engraver and poet. His books, like The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793), reveal how his elaborate mystical symbolism and metaphysical poetry were expressions of his unusual visionary powers. In 1788 the spirit of his brother Robert (who had died at age 21) came to Blake and showed him an entirely new method of printing from etched copper plates.¹⁴ The poet's mind was also greatly stimulated by Swedenborg's writings which had appeared for the first time in an English translation.¹⁵ But by temperament and in his faculty for seeing visions while fully awake, Blake had a natural ability to experience the spiritual world.

For one thing, he possessed an unusual gift of seeing at first glance the basic character and future fate of people he met. At age 14 his father introduced him to a painter who was to have been the boy's art teacher. But Blake stubbornly refused to become the man's pupil, telling his father that such a wicked individual was fated to become a criminal and be sentenced to die. In later years the man was hanged as a crooked businessman and forger.¹⁶

Like St. Teresa, Blake said that his books were dictated to him by spirits. Of his poems, "Milton" and "Jerusalem," he reported that he wrote them from immediate dictation, twelve to thirty lines at a time, without premeditation, study or labor and sometimes even against his will.¹⁷ At age eight he saw a vision: a tree was filled with angels whose wings sparkled like the stars, Blake told his parents.¹⁸ His father threatened to spank the child, to teach him not to tell lies to his elders. The warning was to no avail. When he was a grown man, Blake insisted that he acted under explicit direction of "Messengers from Heaven," daily and nightly¹⁹ On his deathbed, he told those around him that he was not the real author of any of his books and paintings; they were the works of his "celestial friends."²⁰

B.

Padre Pio (1887-1968) was a Capuchin friar in southern Italy who became world-famous because he bore on his body the five wounds of the crucified Jesus (the stigmata).²¹ From early childhood, this sickly son of a peasant family was subject to visionary experiences, but he didn't tell anyone about them until he was a grown man. At age 15 he joined the Capuchin order of Franciscans and four years later he took his final vows as a life-long friar. Throughout his life, Padre Pio suffered terribly from asthma and acute bronchitis. He also indulged in extreme ascetic practices, depriving himself of sleep, starving his body and whipping his back. In 1910 he was ordained a Catholic priest, and that same year the wounds of Christ suddenly appeared on his hands, feet and side.

Padre Pio's unusual condition naturally attracted the attention of the church authorities. Father Agostino, his provincial superior in the Capuchin order and later his spiritual director, wrote in his diary in November 1911 that he personally witnessed Padre Pio assaulted by the Devil and then going into ecstasy to meet Jesus, Mary, his guardian angel and St. Francis. These ecstatic trances usually lasted for an hour or more. First Satan would appear as a wild beast, a naked woman or sometimes a Capuchin friar. After an agonizing struggle, Padre Pio would banish these demonic powers by invoking the name of Jesus and then he would see visions of good spirits, like Christ, the Madonna or his guardian angel.²²

There are many carefully documented accounts of Padre Pio's abilities to perform faith healings. On February 15, 1949, an admirer of the friar was badly hurt in a dynamite explosion. All the skin on his face was torn off and his right eye was blown out of its socket. While the victim was lying in the hospital, he felt that somehow he had been visited by Padre Pio. After ten days in the hospital, the patient had his bandages removed and discovered that the skin had grown back on his face and his right eye was back in place and in good working order.²³

Padre Pio possessed other rare qualities. For twenty-one days he lived off nothing but the nourishment derived from the communion wafer and sips of holy wine. His body and anything he wore gave off a strong odor of sanctity, a perfume-like aroma of violets and honeysuckle. He could read people's hearts and tell them of their sins or problems when they went to him at the confessional. He also had an uncanny knowledge of the future, more than once predicting the death of a fellow-priest or friar.

More significantly, Padre Pio seems to have possessed the ability to be in more than one place at the same time. Out of several such incidents, let me cite only one told by Cardinal Barbieri of Uruguay. Monsignor Damiani had expressed the wish to live near Padre Pio but was told he was needed in his own diocese. However, Padre Pio promised to be with him when he died. In 1941 in Uruguay, Cardinal Barbieri awoke one night because of a loud knock on his door. He looked up to see a Capuchin pass down the hall toward the room where the dying monsignor was staying. He got up and rushed to the dying man's room. He found on the desk a note which said in the monsignor's handwriting, "Padre Pio came. "²⁴ Yet it was well-known that Padre Pio never left his little village in southern Italy.

C.

The experience of Saint Teresa in the 16th century and William Blake in the 18th century has reoccurred in our own time. Rob and Jane Roberts of Elmira, New York, are an example. Rob is a painter and his wife, Jane, is a novelist and poet. In the autumn of 1963 they began playing with an Ouija board their landlady found in the attic. After a few experiments, they started receiving messages from a man in Elmira who had died about twenty years earlier.

But the big event in their lives took place on December 3, 1963. The couple started to get messages from an entity who called himself "Seth." By the 15th ofthe month Mrs. Roberts was able to go into a light trance and become the direct medium for extensive and carefully worked-out messages from Seth, which her husband writes down.²⁵

Their first book, The Seth Material, was published in 1970 and contained the beginning of an elaborate philosophy about the nature of the spirit world dictated word for word from a discarnate entity through Mrs. Roberts to the world at large. Continued communication with this remarkable spirit personality has produced additional books entitled Seth Speaks, Adventures in Consciousness, The Nature of Personal Reality, etc.

For our purposes there is no need to elucidate or evaluate the contents of the Seth material. We refer to Mrs. and Mrs. Roberts merely as contemporary illustrations of the fact that from Paleolithic times to the present, men and women have experienced direct contact with a world which transcends the conventional framework of space and time.

D.

My final example of psychic experiences comes from contemporary Korea: the astonishingly successful Pentecostalist preacher, Dr. Paul Yonggi Cho. His biographer aptly sums up his career with the title of her book, Dream Your Way to Success.²⁶

Dr. Cho was born in 1936 during the harsh occupation of Korea by the Japanese imperialists, but he is now the pastor of the Full Gospel Central Church in Seoul which has over 150,000 members, making it the largest single congregation in the entire world. He was hospitalized at age 18 with a seemingly fatal case of acute pulmonary tuberculosis. While in the hospital, a teen-age girl visited him, tried to convert him to Christianity and left him a Bible. Having been warned that he had less than a month to live, Cho was ready to try anything to stay alive. Reading the Bible and praying for help, he was soon healed. But by becoming a Christian, the teenager infuriated his parents and was disowned as their son.

Cho next attempted to enter medical school. Since he had not been able to graduate from high school because of his illness, he purchased a forged diploma and was accepted. However, the authorities discovered his deception and promptly expelled him. Still determined to be a doctor, Cho became a hospital orderly in Pusan and read medical books loaned him by the resident doctors. But as a result of overwork, he took sick again and had to live with his grandmother. Fearful of a reoccurrence of tuberculosis, Cho again sought help. This time the novels of Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winner, revived his determination to live. He returned to the hospital staff and lived in the dormitory.

Soon he was attracted to the preaching of a young American ex-Marine at the YMCA. The man invited Cho to live with him and take his big meal every day at the home of an American missionary. Cho then gave up his hospital work and became the clergyman's interpreter.

One night he tried to test the efficacy of the prayers which the Christians were always preaching about. Feeling hungry, he prayed for food. Immediately, someone knocked at his door and offered him a box of noodles and kimchi from a nearby restaurant. After the delivery boy left and Cho had eaten his meal, he suddenly saw someone else in his room. It was Jesus, dressed in a white robe and wearing a crown of thorns. Jesus urged him to become a preacher for his kingdom.

When he told the American missionary about this experience, arrangements were made for him to enroll in the Full Gospel Institute in Seoul. In 1958 he graduated and joined an older student, Mrs. Choi (his future mother-in-law) in starting a new church in the city. For 12 years Pastor Cho preached an evangelistic message based on three points: "hereness," "nowness" and love. During this same period he also discovered that he possessed the gift of faith healing which naturally attracted many members to his church. But there is no need to elaborate further on Cho's successes and his present international reputation. Like St. Teresa, Swedenborg, Blake and Padre Pio, Yonggi Cho is proof of the reality of a spirit world which we can depend upon for unusual power, truth and love.

Notes:

1. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (1955 ed.), p. 149.

2. Contrast Underhill with J. B. Pratt, The Religious Consciousness (1920); R. Jones, Studies on Mystical Religion (1909); W. R. Inge, Studies of English Mystics (1906); J. Leuba, A Psychological Study of Religion (1912).

3. M. Eleade, A History of Religious Ideas (1978) vol. 1, pp. 18-19; this art is depicted in E. O. James, History of Religion (1957).

4. E. O. James, "How Religion Began," History of Religion (1957), pp. 1-30.

5. Eleade, op. cit., p. 40.

6. Ibid., pp.40-55.

7. James S. Gale, Korea in Transition (1909), pp. 82-88; cf. G. Underwood, The Call of Korea (1908), 84-99.

8. Jung Young Lee, Korean Shamanistic Rituals (1981), p. 25.

9 Underhill, op. cit.-, p. 276.

10. Ibid., p. 468.

11. Ibid., p. 276.

12. Ibid., p. 288.

13. Ibid., p. 291.

14. Encyclopedia Britannica (1968), vol. 3, p. 756.

15. June K. Singer, The Unholy Bible (1970), p. 21.

16. Ibid., p. 17.

17. Underhill, op. cit., p. 66.

18. Michael Davis, William Blake (1977), p. 14.

19. Underhill, op. cit., p. 294.

20. Ibid.

21. John A Schug, Padre Pio (1976); also Oscar de Liso, Padre Pio (1960).

22. Schug, op. cit., p. 36.

23. Ibid., pp. 172-175.

24. Ibid., pp. 201-202.

25. Jane Roberts, The Seth Material (1981 ed.), pp. 16-24.

26. Nell Kennedy, Dream Your Way to Success (1980).

Some Additional Reading

Boyer, Louis, et al. The Spirituality of the Middle Ages. NY: Desclee Co., 1968, vol. 2.

Castaneda, Carlos. The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

__. A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1971.

__. Journey to lxtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1972.

__. Tales of Power. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1974.

Cloutier, David. Spirit, Spirit: Shaman Songs, Incantations. Providence: Copper Beech Press, 1973.

Ducasse, C.J. The Belief in Life after Death. Springfield: C. C. Thomas, 1974.

Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. NY: Pantheon, 1964.

Halifax, Joan, ed. Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives. NY: Dutton, 1979.

Hardinge, Emma. Modern American Spiritualism. NY: University Books, 1970. Hardy, Alister. The Biology of God. NY: Taphnger, 1975.

__. The Spiritual Nature of Man. NY: Oxford, 1979.

Harlow, S. Ralph. A Life After Death. NY: Doubleday. 1961.

Harner, Michael. The Way of the Shaman. NY: Bantam, 1982 (Harper and Row, 1980).

Hultkrantz, Ake. "A Definition of Shamanism." Temonos 9 (1973), 25-37.

__. The Religions of the American Indian. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979.

Inge, W R. Mysticism in Religion. Westport: Greenwood, 1976.

Kelsey, Morton. Afterlife. NY: Paulist Press, 1979.

Lewis, I.M. Ecstatic Religion. Harmondsworth; Penguin, 1971.

Louth, Andrew. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.

Maloney, George A. "Mysticism and Occultism," Inward Stillness. Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1976, pp. 213-228.

Moore, E. Garth. Try the Spirits: Christianity and Psychical Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Perry, Michael. "The Hereafter: How Will You Survive?" Spiritual Frontiers. Fall, 1981.

Reinhard, Johan. "Shamanism and Spirit Possession, "pp. 12 -- 18 in Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas, ed. John Hitchcock and Rex Jones. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1975.

Rose, Mary Carmen. "Some Fruits of the Mysticism Survey," Spiritual Frontiers. Fall, 1982.