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