I feel very uncomfortable revealing these experiences because they sound so strange. Are they the ramblings of a machugigna, a nut? Or is there something to them? Personally, I take them all with a grain of salt. What I can use, I use. What I can't use in addressing my life challenges, I release back into the Mystery. With that preface, I want to talk about an even stranger phenomena, that of shamanic encounters with extraterrestrial forms of intelligence. My first experience of this order took place in 1983 during an all night Native American healing ceremony in Northern California. Healing energy swirled around the tipi, touching all who were there with its power, beauty, and presence. It continued on this way for several hours with singing, praying, chanting, and drumming. Then it seemed to reach some kind of required critical mass and suddenly rose up in the form of a flying circular disk and flew out through an opening at the top of the tipi, spiraling up into the night sky. I watched as it zoomed away, spinning off other circles of pulsating disks of light as it went. The disks looked exactly like flying saucers. They spread out in all directions, and in my altered state I could see them circling the planet. I watched in fascination as they spun down from the sky into gatherings where people were praying together for healing. Their presence brought kupuri, guidance and inspiration, from the central fire in the tipi to all those who were open to receiving it.

Then I saw a shaman alone in the dark night of the jungle. He was in deep communion, drumming and chanting, praying for his people. I watched a rainbow beam of energy emanate from his body and extend straight up into the sky. I followed the path of this energy up into the black night until it entered a vortex of flashing lights. I saw that the lights were flashing from a control panel on the ceiling of a huge flying saucer high up in the stratosphere. It was communicating with the shaman; they were working together. The shaman's ceremony was a means of activating a complex communication system between an interstellar entity and planet earth. I watched in fascination until, suddenly, my mind was lifted out of my cranium and transported up to the ship, where it slowly merged into the ceiling panel. This panel was also in communion with a huge energy field in a distant galaxy. My mind was then transported beyond the speed of light from the spaceship to this distant galaxy, where some kind of psychic surgery was performed. During the procedure, I felt absolutely no pain. It was all energy transformation. When the procedure was completed, my mind was instantaneously transferred back to the spaceship, then back into my body here on earth, and I "heard" the following words: It is not for you to know or understand what has taken place. Just know that the shamans of light throughout the history of your planet have been working with us. What you speak of as "the upper world" is the realm of your higher self but it is beyond the range of your imagination. Your job is to stay open to it. Information has been placed inside of you that will come forth as it is needed. You cannot hold on to it. You are simply a receiver and channel through which it expresses itself.

Is it all delusion? Is it communication with beings from outer space or intelligence from another dimension? Quien sabe? Who knows? What I focus my attention on is the daily occurrences of my life and what the waves of the Great Mystery wash up onto the shore where I sit with my observing witness. I especially notice what I am doing, or perhaps more appropriately, what I'm "being used" to do. I track the consequences of what I see and feel during my experience, and I also notice the feedback of others and the consequences they experience. Here is an example of what I mean:

I asked the same medicine man who helped me through my bout with poison oak to visit a class I was teaching at a local junior college, which prepared people to go out on a quest. He brought ten or twelve of his people with him. With intimidating ferocity, he spoke about the sacredness of the quest, the sweat lodge ceremony, and Native American spirituality. "This is not for fun and games. When you go out on a quest and you humble yourself, when you suffer and give away of your self and pay attention, day and night, to the many ways the Great Spirit can speak to you through the forces of nature, then you may receive a vision. It may be a dream, an animal, a voice, a presence sent to help you if you are truly sincere and patient. But in receiving this gift, you also incur greater responsibility in life, which you carry right up to your death. Do not go any farther if you are not willing to carry this responsibility all of your days. You must be careful, you must be respectful. The Great Spirit is watching your every move and your every thought. It is strong medicine." After the class, I went out to dinner with the medicine man and his people. I was very disturbed. I personalized all he had said to the students, thinking he was criticizing me, saying I shouldn't be taking people out on quests. I told him of my concerns. "No," he said. "You understand, you have respect. You are a bridge builder between cultures. It is important for you to do this work. Keep taking the people who are ready, who are sincere. Take them into the sweat lodge, take them out on quest. Help them to learn the teachings of Mother Earth and the Great Spirit. Help them to learn that when they hurt the earth, they hurt themselves, and when they hurt themselves, they hurt the earth. Help them to walk the Good Red Road. We are all related. We must all learn to live together in harmony with the laws of nature. Then we will survive."

I continued on my path. Today what the "voices" told me long ago about working with corporate executives has come true. Sometimes I am invited out to a company's headquarters to work on-site, using ceremony and ritual. Sometimes they fly here to Northern California and I take them through a sweat ceremony by the Pacific Ocean. We watch the sun sink into the sea, then enter the lodge, a dome-shaped structure with a framework of willow branches covered by blankets and tarps. Inside, it is dark, the womb of Mother Earth. We take off our clothes, get down on the ground and crawl in on our hands and knees. We sit on the bare earth around a hole dug into the center. It is the passageway down into the lower world. Soon red hot rocks heated in the ceremonial fire outside (the "stone people," the oldest people on the planet) are brought into the lodge and placed in the hole. When each stone has been properly thanked, greeted, and blessed, the flap is closed, plunging the occupants into pitch darkness. Nothing can be seen except the shimmering rocks radiating heat and medicine into the lodge. Soon, water is poured on to the glowing rocks and they "breathe." Steam shoots out and the purification gets intense. Four rounds of prayers and sweating are conducted in this way, one round for each of the surrounding directions. Physical bodies are cleansed by the steam, while emotions, psyche, and spirits are cleansed by the power of prayer. Inside the womb-like structure, there is no separation by age, color, size, sex, or economic or social status. All are as infants together inside the womb of our Mother Earth, seeking cleansing, healing, and renewal. When the ceremony is completed hours later, participants emerge revitalized to walk a healing path as children of the earth.