“Our science should be based upon a perception of the truth and not on mere belief or opinion. Information received from men can only assist us in forming opinions, but it constitutes no knowledge. True knowledge consists in a direct recognition of the truth and is taught by Nature herself.” Paracelsus (1493-1541)

"In capitalism, "science" must serve the objectives of elites" The Canadian

David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensuous says;

"Any healer who was not simultaneously attending to the intertwined relation between the human community and the larger, more-than-human field, would likely dispel an illness from one person only to have the same problem arise (perhaps in a new guise) somewhere else in the community. Hence the traditional magician or medicine person functions primarily as an intermediary between human and non human worlds, and only secondarily as a healer"

The healing that I am endeavouring to embody is predicated on such a notion of community, and such a community made manifest in language and deed. For true healing to occur, i feel, relationships must be known and felt, such that the breakdowns in those relationships may be addressed clearly and decisively when they arise (thus limiting dis-ease). In today's culture of global exchange, relationships are often transitory, shallow and disposable. Relationship as utility. All too often relationships are based upon an arbitrary and abstracted economic exchange. In many instances throughout our day, relationships are conducted through the exchange of small pieces of plastic which have scant relation to the nature of our embodied presence in the world, and the impact such transactions have upon our world. Our culture defines itself by the exchange of money for things, and the imbalance of this situation is demonstrable in the breakdown of human to human relationship and the relationships of humans to the broader world that they inhabit, the "more-than-human field".

Martin Prechtel explains this breakdown of the relationship of humans to the realm of spirits thus;

"You see, the spirits are not being fed properly and are being forgotten, but still life continues and the still make the fields fertile. So they are forced to make raids and they are seen as forces of nature. And if you see an AIDS epidemic or a big boat sinking, that is the spirits having to take what they need. The energy transfer. So when they are forgotten they have to come and take what they need or else they will die. The spirits feed us through the natural world all around us. We feed the spirits by offering them gifts, human artifacts, which the spirits are unable to create themselves. We need what the spirits give and the spirits in turn want what we have.When the spirits are forgotten this reciprocal relationship goes out of balance and the spirits become malevolent forces rather than benevolent forces in human life"

These notions are perhaps difficult to assimilate for a mind conditioned by a modern, industrial society, but the notion that we humans are the sole agents of sentinece in the cosmos seems to me to be the height of hubris, certainly as illogical as any tales of other dimensional beings which the European and Christian empires have tried to brutally suppress in indigenous peoples around the world. From the very realm of science comes an example which highlights this most poignantly here;

Despite our great technological advancements (which allow me in part to communicate this now) there is so very much that we do not know, but we do know in our hearts, that the way that we are currently conducting ourselves is not serving us well.

I recently had the great pleasure to meet with Kulavadhuta Satpurananda and when I discussed with him notions of spirits he suggested that we need to understand that what we call spirits are simply the projections of our minds upon Spanda, the subtle creative pulse of the universe as it manifests into the dynamism of living form. I have an intuitive understanding of this fact, and am at heart, and in essence a non-dualist. Until, however, I attain and exist in that ultimate attainment, I am, in part a member of the human community, and as such have a relationship to all the myriad other manifestations of Spanda in the worlds, human, spirits, deities and demons. All such manifestations are ultimately of the same source, and we are all amongst it trying to find our own way home.