Hunt_reviews

I found Hunting with the Heart moving, inspirational, well written, well structured (in terms of the balance among its various constituent parts/dimensions), authoritative and, above all, interesting and gripping read. This is an unusual book because it is a combination of several different genres: autobiography, psychology, ethology, spirituality, history. Therefore, it should stand or fail depending on how well these seemingly disparate parts fit in together. According to my reading, the strength of the book lies in the very remarkable cohesion that binds all these parts together. In an astonishing openness, the author reflects on the development of his life as it connects with all his various activities, preoccupations, searches, researches, encounters, meditations, etc. He addresses these parts with
reflection and humility, with astute observational skills, humour and compassion.

Regardless of whether the readers agree with his direction or not, whether they accept or not his beliefs, they will find it difficult not to be touched by the sincerity of his seeking and the sheer power of his writing. More specifically, I wish to confirm that his treatment of psychological and research issues is sound academically and methodologically. He writes with the authority of a pioneer in certain fields as well as with scientific credibility.

Renos K. Papadopoulos, Ph.D. Professor of Analytical Psychology University of Essex

I found the entire book to be beautifully – soulfully – written, compelling, fascinating, informative and inspiring. It is not a book that can easily be categorized, but I am convinced that it will have a broad and loyal readership, beyond any of the several distinct disciplines it probes.
As an ethnoecologist and botanist with a long-standing interest in natural history of any kind, I found much to hold my attention from both ecological and cultural perspectives.
I believe we need more books of this type, books and writings that transcend the conventional disciplines, and draw on and integrate ideas and examples from across the spectrum of human experience and knowledge.
There is so much strife in the world, and angst about our impacts on the earth and all the other living things with whom we share the planet. Our conventional ways of looking at our problems and trying to solve them are not really working well. We need, I believe, a different value system and a different way of looking at our requirements for living a fulfilling and meaningful life. We need a different way of thinking and drawing together ideas. Graham’s book gives much for consideration in this regard. His humanity and empathy permeate his writing, and as such, he serves as a role model for all of us.

Nancy J. Turner, PhD, FLS, OBC, FRSC Distinguished Professor School of Environmental Studies University of Victoria British Columbia, CANADA

IT is impossible to pigeonhole this book, or its author. A one-time professor of psychology at the University of Cape Town, Saayman has combined the story of his study of baboons in the bushveld and whales off the Southern Cape coast with Jungian interpretations of the human condition, his personal life including a painful divorce with the sort of out-of-body experiences that are commonly known as astral travel, and South African historical events with indigenous cosmology.

He comes closest to Laurens van der Post, also a Jungian, in his search for the mystical in all aspects of life.

It is a particularly courageous book for a scientist to write, with its paranormal descriptions written with disarming honesty but also with a trained researcher's observations and recall. Saayman was no doubt aware that many of his conclusions would be dismissed by some conventionally-minded members of the academic community, but that has not stopped him from being true to his own vision.

Other professors of analytical psychology and social science in Britain, Canada and South Africa, more open to Saayman's subjective approach, have recognized in this autobiography a genuine attempt to seek the cohesion that links everybody and everything at a spiritual level.

For the layman it is an absorbing insight into a scientist's inner and outer life.

At first I was puzzled by this book. Seeming to be an autobiography documenting the author's journeys through 'outer and inner space'; the first several chapters seemed to be almost exclusively dedicated to studies of baboon troops and dolphins. But there were hints here and there of something else to come. Then, slowly but surely, one enters the journey into inner realms as experienced and explored by the author. The work consequently ranges between the author's trials and tribulations in his outer life, not least relationship problems and what comes with that, through to his ever-expanding experiential study of the inner realm of spirit. Precisely because of the purely rationalist, scientific orientation of the writer, when it comes to his reportage of his inner journeys, there is a calm and entirely believable ambience to what he has to say. And his explorations are significant, from personal out of body travels to the importance of ancient petroglyphs and rock art showing shamanic scenes of intersecting dimensions of experience. This is not a story that starts down a particular track and moves directly towards an end, rather it meanders, twists and turns, moving from outer world events to inner world experience in a way that is sometimes almist dreamlike, but always united, one realises, by a thread of continuity. This is the story of one man's odyssey through life, but viewed through the dual vision of the outward looking and inward gazing eye. Fascinating and well worth it, all the more so because the author is local, proving yet again that one doesn't need to travel to distant shores to find extraordinary people with extraordinary tales to tell.

"Beautifully – soulfully– written, compelling, fascinating, informative and inspiring."

Nancy J. Turner PhD, FLS, OBC, FRCS, Distinguished Professor School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria.

"Moving, inspirational, well written, well structured, authoritative, and above all, an interesting and gripping read."

Renos K. Papadopoulos, PhD, Professor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex.

"An extraordinarily courageous book, an extraordinary book by an extraordinary writer. "

Victor Nell PhD, Emeritus Professor and Research Fellow, University of South Africa.

HUNTING WITH THE HEART: A VISION QUEST TO SPIRITUAL EMERGENCE by Graham S. Saayman.

It is well known that the onset of spiritual development is accompanied by upheavals of the psyche, often with psychic episodes. This is an account of such events by an author educated as a behavioural scientist at McMaster University and at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. His extensive biological and psychological training makes his account of “spiritual emergence” of particular interest. Of added interest to JSPR readers is that the author came to know the late Professor Michael Whiteman personally, which encouraged him to explore of some of Whiteman’s ideas.

During a period of family crisis, a sleep of “deep surrender” is reported, “And out of this deep unconsciousness came a sudden awakening” which “carried my essential self, as on the crest of a soughing tidal wave, up and out through the crown of my head to hang now gently floating and bobbing like a jellyfish, suspended in a serene etheric ocean.” There was “no bodily structure and I had no physical shape.” He was only “distantly aware” of his physical body “as it lay like an abandoned husk, dead to the world.” Gradually it became clear to him “that I now occupied another dimension more closely resembling pure thought.”

Following Whiteman’s classification of separative or entered states, Saayman treats his ‘other dimension’ experiences as being of primary separation type, “with the subject, conscious and lucid, located in a non-physical sphere of existence whilst the physical body is fully asleep .”

The experiences were sufficiently real to Saayman to be greatly disturbing; the two realities of physical and non-physical experience “did not match or reconcile”. It was only with time that he entered a “third way, and that is to live in two worlds at once and to equally honour both.” With practice, including yoga therapy, he experienced “a series of excursions into inner space,” which he named “‘Interspace’ because it was sometimes like exiting and re-entering through a crack that shifted and opened very slightly in the surface of our normally perceived reality... I understood from the beginning that Interspace was another place altogether. Interspace was as different from the world of nocturnal dreams as it was from everyday material reality.”

A developmental progression of OBE episodes is outlined. Initial experiences were not stabilised due to an emotional reaction to the uncanny. For example, he describes being “launched” on waking from sleep, to find that “I was floating horizontal to the staircase... My right arm had passed through the perpendicular balustrades that supported the handrail on the side of the narrow staircase... Although I felt no sensation my earth-bound judgement protested that none of this was possible... The idea of pain and the physical impossibility of what I had seen condensed my etheric form so that it was unable to sustain its flight and I sank down and found myself in my body in the bed.”

An interpretation in accord with Whiteman’s views (and with the author’s views in litt.) is that the perception of a physical staircase was mistaken; the writer seemed to have entered a “duplicate space” mimicking a physical space and mistaken for it on account of the experient’s physicalistic preconceptions and emotional reactions. If the entered space was not strictly physical space, then the problem of “physical impossibility” does not arise, the experience not being actualised in physical space. One-space misapprehension of this kind is common among inexperienced reporters, and regrettably is virtually established in literature on OBE. There seems to be no possibility of progress in OBE research until a multispace understanding is reached.

With experience, Saayman’s reported experiences gained in the various factors that Whiteman (e.g. 1986) listed as contributing to a “General Index of Reality”. His last reported experience appears to have been a case of secondary separation in Whiteman’s classification. “Wide awake and fully aware of what seemed to be an intention to move my consciousness upwards, I was telling myself not to be afraid but to allow the process to proceed. This effort of will to calm and think myself upwards succeeded a number of times in accomplishing a total separation, but each time anxiety brought me back down to dock briefly in the physical... And then, as I began to rise steadily upwards, I saw to my right, side by side, the faces of two men... The lower halves of their torsos were not visible... as if they had not fully emerged from a different plane... I came to understand them as two potent teachers of enormous positive energy and great patience who had known me for a long time as a struggling but obstinate and frequently doubting student who would not or could not adequately apply his lessons.”

It has to be said that this book is not designed as a rigorous, technical study. It is primarily autobiographical, with a cocktail of descriptions of many professional encounters with African animals, the formation of a Jungian institute in Cape Town, and insights into African—mainly Zulu and Khoisan—belief systems and spirituality. The writing is elegant, often poetic, and makes a generally thoughtful incursion into life’s meaning and its potential for spiritual development. Perhaps from someone so well qualified one may hope for a more focused and rigorous treatment of matters of joint interest to him and Whiteman.

JOHN POYNTON 14 Mordern House London NW1 6NR

Whiteman, J.H.M. (1986) Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life vol. 1
An Introduction to Scientific Mysticism. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.