Hi Alexandre-

C'etait un homme bien interressant, mais il y en a des autres, meme ici. Chaque a son gout, hein?

As I was discussing a few days ago with someone else, there seem to be three levels of the activity that we find on this forum. The first level is the discovery of somethitng that can be experienced, and the clarification needed to truly have the experience. The second level occurs when clarification has proceeded sufficiently that we can describe to others, in an objective language, those things that we have discovered subjectively.  The third step is that we can collect the wide varieties of personal experiences together and project their subjective properties sufficiently that we can teach, helping others to bypass pitfalls, and to stay focussed and on task for their own self development.

I get the impression that this forum consists of a lot of people who have already reached the level at which they can help others. Then there are perpetually those who ask questions because they are doubtful and uncertain about the personal details of their own lives. And of course we all are hanging out having new and interesting experiences all the time. The problem with hanging out is that we tend to become static. In that sense, Kardec has a great basic description, but somehow it is still his, it doesn't tell me much about me. I suspect that the same may be tue of others who have specific questions.

Personally, I'd like to understand more about Brazilian spiritualist practices, both the more formal ones like Santeria and Ombanda, in which the practitioners become mounts for the spirits, and also the less formal practices of the indigenous shamans in the Amazon Basin who are more directly connected to finite aspects of nature. I'd like to be able to use these ideas in my analytic therapy practice when people come to me with assorted entities, energies, and spooks hanging off their inner psyches.

However, all that said, your post is a great reference, and I copied the journal article for future use. Kardec is one of the greats of the last century.

dave

You guys seem to have an ongoing conversation going on here. I'll have to investigate the links (later) to try to gain insight into that.
But It dies seem we get the same questions over time...it becomes more challengin gto give fresh answers...so maybe telling people to google (my how quickly nouns can become verbs) or dogpile is not a bad idea.

Dave a quick thought...I love to dance, as in ballet and all that jazz and I even have "done" some West African. (My friend has a tape made at Omega whe baba Olatunji was still alive that proves that, but that is another story).

There is a tradition..I think there is...but people don't talk about it openly...about the spirits "taking" you ie to do the dance. One woman who was teaching and performing once "gushed " about an experience she had...
"they took me the spirits took me"... I liked and respected this person and I do believe something happened. I'm not sure what. Maybe some dancers would be more accessible to you?..you know, the traditon with the drummers is that sprirts live in the drums..and don't touch someone's drum without permission!

No doubt that rhythm counts a lot while talking in to changing our awareness level. I’ve been to an “Umbanda session” (the way we call it here) and I got really strong feelings about the energetic of the place. That was a very pleasant experience and could see that despite of the “primitive” cover the non-physical beings acting there expressed a deep wisdom. There are some very well detailed books about this subject here but they are Portuguese written.

Dave

I have never tried using a repetitive drum beat for meditation. I have a tape that I thought was bogus that uses a metronome but it irritates me and I don't use it. Hmm seem like a metronome would work. I could probably pick one up and it might have other uses...

I was in a dance class that used live music when I got my first taste of thae effects of drums. We were standing in a circle doing our warm-up (modern dance, very fluid style, I forget the names) and the drummer really took us over. She knew what she was doing (she prob had a djembe, maybe a large conga). Mesmerizing!

I had a realy bad dream once...one of those dreams that isn't totally a dream but I don't know what to call it. There was some evil group in power ansd something was going to happen...somehow they were going to take my child away from me...but what was so unusual for me was that in this experience, there was the constant overriding presence of a horrible drum beat, like you'd expect to see in a horrible movie where someone is about to be sacrificed. I woke myself up from that one. I don't know where I got the sound and feel of the drum though. I don't usually have sounds in my dreams. I wouldn't call it either African or Druid...just evil.

I took a drum class once..most people used djembes...it was REALLY POWERFUL when we all sat on stage and hit the drums simultaneously and the sound came back to us!

Sorry you got skinned...how did you manage to get yourself into such a predicament?

Wait...we have a little electic keyboard that we never use. Maybe I can generate the kind of drum beat you mention on that.