Myths, shamans and seers | Phil Borges | TEDxRainier

For over thirty years, Phil Borges has been documenting indigenous and tribal cultures, striving to create an understanding of the challenges they face. Accompanied by his stunning photographs, he tells the story of visiting traditional shamans in many parts of the world.

Phil's work is exhibited in museums worldwide and his award winning books have been published in four languages. His most recent book, Tibet: Culture on the Edge highlights the effect of climate change and technology on Tibetan Culture. Borges teaches and lectures internationally and is co-founder of Blue Earth Alliance.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

Thank you.

You know, one of the sayings
that the Tibetans have that I really love

is that every one you meet,

everyone you come in contact with,

everyone that's in your life

at some time has been your mother.

And they tell this story
to their children,

and they use this story as a tool

to deepen their compassion,

and they tell this story in a way

that allows them to widen their compassion

so they expand their circle of compassion,

as they call it,

to include all sentient beings.

And I was given the opportunity

to look a little more deeply
into their culture

when I was invited to go and watch

the medium that is -

the medium that channels -
how to explain this? -

the medium that channels
the Dalai Lama's oracle.

And it was in this little monastery
very near the Dalai Lama's house,

near the Dalai Lama's compound
in Dharamsala, India.

They brought him into the room,

and they put a hat on his head
that weighed about 80 pounds,

and he started to go into trance,

his eyes rolled back,

the monks started chanting
and beating drums,

and then he started talking
in this high-pitched voice.

And as he was talking,

the monks came up and
started writing everything he said.

He talked for about ten minutes,

and when he finished,
he sort of rolled back his eyes,

the monks took off his hat,
and they carried him out of the room.

As I watched this whole thing,

it was so surreal and theatrical

I almost thought
that a curtain could come down

and the monks would come out

and take a bow with the medium
at the end of it.

But two days later,
I got to interview him.

And his name was Thupten;
he's 30 years old; he's a monk -

thirty years old at the time.

He was very humble; he was very honest.

I didn't notice anything about him

that would make me think
he was putting on an act.

And I asked him,
"How did you get this job?

(Laughter)

How did you come into this?"

And he said that when he was 12 years old,

he started hearing voices
and he started feeling very sick.

He didn't know where the voices
were coming from;

he was very frightened.

And an older monk took him aside
and told him he had a gift.

And he said, "This is the way
you handle this state."

The monk showed him
how to go into the trance,

how to come out of the trance.

He spent a year with him.

And he ended up becoming the medium
for the Dalai Lama's oracle,

the Nechung Oracle.

It was about a year after that
I heard the Dalai Lama interviewed.

He said, "You know, you people in the West

really don't understand
what the Nechung Oracle is;

you think it's strange.

But he actually gives us
very important information."

And he said, "He actually predicted
the invasion of our country;

he let me know when it was time
for me to leave and go into exile,

and so we get very important
information out of him."

So it was about two years after that

that I was in Northern Kenya
visiting the Samburu people,

doing a little piece
for Amnesty International,

and my guide that I had with me,
who was Samburu,

turned to me and said,

"You know, these people have been told
that we are coming, by their predictor."

And he went on to say

that the predictor said we
were going to be taking photographs,

we were going to be interviewing,

and he said, "The predictor also said

that you hide when
you take your photographs."

And I do anything but hide
when I take my photographs.

I'm about this close to the person,
in their face with my Hasselblad.

And a little bit after that, I remembered
I brought a new camera with me.

It was a panoramic camera, a view camera,

and this is what I look like
when I'm taking those pictures.

(Laughter)

So I said, "Hmm."

So we tracked down the predictor,

and she was a 37-year-old
woman named Sukulen;

she had five kids.

And she had the same story
as Thupten, the medium,

only she was not only having
auditory hallucinations,

she was having visual hallucinations.

She felt very sick,

and she had a grandmother that came to her

and told her that she was gifted,

told her she could be
of service to her community.

So I decided I would start
seeking out these people

and see what this was all about.

So I went around the world;

I went to Africa, Asia,
North and South America, Indonesia;

I went up to Arctic village,

interviewing these people.

This is one of the people
I interviewed, Namid.

She's in Mongolia.

She's a healer,

and she had the very same situation:

hallucinations,
a mentor came and helped her.

And so as I interviewed these people,

the majority of them had this situation
usually in adolescence.

I started thinking: you know,
if you're a 13-year-old child,

and you start hearing things
and seeing things and feeling sick,

and you're taken to the doctor,

and if you're leaving
the world of agreement, like this,

which is very frightening,

if you're taken to a doctor here,
you're not told you're gifted;

you're usually told
that you have a mental problem.

You either have depression,
you have bipolar, schizophrenia,

your brain chemistry
isn't quite in balance,

so they'll give you drugs
to balance that, so you're drugged.

And it's a whole different experience.

And you can imagine
the outcome is totally different.

If you are told you that you
are of service to the community,

that your talents
can be used, you're gifted,

that would give
a totally different outcome

than if you told you're diseased.

Our culture has a hard time

with nonrational states of consciousness,

and that's one of the things
I learned from this project.

I heard that there was a 10-year-old boy

that was in the process
of being mentored to be a shaman,

and he was up on this border
of Afghanistan and Pakistan,

in a little group of people
called the Kalash.

So I booked a flight to Islamabad -

I took my 16-year-old son Dax with me -

and we headed for the Kalash territory.

The Kalash are animists;

they believe in the spirits
of the mountains,

the spirits of the rivers,

the spirits of the forests,

and they're completely
surrounded by Islam,

and they hold onto their traditions.

There's about 3,000 of them.

When I arrived and asked about the boy,

they said, "There's no boy here."

In fact, this 10-year-old boy

turned out to be a 60-year-old
goat herder by the name of Janduli Kahn,

and he was their shaman.

So I got a guide, and we
went up the mountain to meet him,

and I did my typical interview:

"How did you get into this?"

In his case, it was an older shaman
that mentored him.

"And what do you do?"

He was a seer as well as a healer.

"And how do you induce these trances?"

The trances in each culture
are induced in very different ways.

In the Amazon, it's psychoactive
plants like ayahuasca.

In Siberia and in Mongolia,

they're beating a drum next to their head.

In Pakistan, what they did
is they took some juniper branches,

they sacrificed an animal,

poured the blood of that animal
on those juniper branches,

and then the shaman inhaled the smoke.

So Janduli Kahn wanted
to do a ceremony for me.

And I tried to talk him out of it

because he would have to sacrifice
one of his animals;

he had 60 goats,
and I didn't want him to do that,

but he said, "I have to do it.

My spirits - I have to thank my spirits
for sending you here;

you've come so far."

So there was no talking him out of it.

So in the morning,
his sons started the ceremony.

They started the fire
with the juniper branches,

and then they started praying
to the mountain gods

and started praying
for about five minutes.

And then they sacrificed the animal,

poured the blood
over the juniper branches,

and he started inhaling the smoke,
and then he went into trance.

And he was real quiet before this trance,

and he hardly said anything after,

and I was asking the sons,

I said, "Did he say anything
after he came out of this trance?"

And they said, "He only said that
your journey is going to be difficult,

but you will be safe."

And so my son and I left the mountain,

we got in the jeep with our driver
and headed up into the Hindu Kush,

and he started getting ill.

And he got more and more ill
as the days progressed,

for about four days,

and I was panicking.

We were in the middle of nowhere
without a doctor,

and a doctor miraculously appeared
and really saved him.

People ask me,

"What is it about shamans?

What type of power do they have?

How do they get their power?"

And I have no idea.

I know they tap into something.

Maybe they're tapping
into the collective unconscious

that Carl Jung talked about;

maybe they're tapping
into a parallel universe

that our astrophysicists
are starting to tell us about.

I have no idea.

The thing I do know
is their stories that they tell -

their myths of the spirits of the land,

the spirits of the forest,
the spirits of the rivers -

those myths connect them to the earth

in a way - in such a profound way
that I will never know;

I will never be connected in that way.

Joseph Campbell, who studied
myths and cultures all over the world,

said, "Cultures are created,
maintained and transformed

by stories we often refer to as myths."

And these myths,

the myths have sort of
a negative connotation

in our world;

they're really thought of as being untrue,

but "Myths are neither true nor false,
but symbolic stories" -

they're metaphors -

"that give us meaning
and teach us how to act."

So some of the myths we grew up with,

that determine our relationship
with the earth over time,

have not been the healthiest.

You know, fill the earth,
subdue it, rule over the animals.

These myths are talking
about domination and control

versus the myths
of these indigenous cultures

that have more reverence and respect.

And these myths are starting to fray.

Joseph Campbell said,

you know, right now we don't have
any myths that are governing us.

We're waiting for a new myth to be born.

And that myth has to, number one,

speak to the planet
and speak to everyone on it.

I'm going to close with just one
of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein.

He said, "We human beings
tend to experience ourselves

as something separate
from the whole we call 'The Universe.'

This is actually an optical illusion
of our consciousness.

It's like a prison for us.

Our task is to free ourselves
from this prison

by widening our circle of compassion

to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.

This is the only true foundation
for our inner peace and security."

Thank you very much.

(Applause)