Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing

Rating:
Summary: Deeply moving
Review: I just finished this book and was deeply moved by his description of the People are in touch with what so many of us have lost and spend money and time trying to regain through books, tapes, seminars, videos, etc. His own experience of coming into knowing was fascinating and inspiring.

As one who teaches anthropology, I found some very useful and concrete examples to share with my students to help clarify points that the texts we use don't really do justice to. Wolff makes them crystal clear and explains them in a way that is easily accessible. It will help in a classroom of college students who are only taking the course because it's required to see that our approach to life is not the only way and the assumptions we make are not universal.

This is an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: So Powerful! If a drug, the FDA would rate this book Class 3
Review: If this book was a drug the FDA would make it Class 3. It is that powerful and will have that strong an effect on your life.

While it is described as an account of a Malaysia tribe, it is, more importantly, a window into another way of thinking about WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN. That is also the name the book was originally given by it's author. Robert Wolff opens our eyes to see and think about possibilities for being human that our western world's schools and media do not teach, do not suggest.

Every person I know who has read this books says it changes the way they walk through the world, the way they see, the way they know.

It discusses ideas that impinge upon parapsychology, shamanism, Carlos Castaneda's works, intuition, healing...

The book is a precious gift that will make you feel joy and sadness-- joy from knowing the possibilities of being human, and the beauty of the Sng'oi, sadness, because the Sng'oi were reported to be "absorbed" by the Malaysian culture several years ago. They are gone.

Thom Hartmann, who wrote the forward to the book, has written several other books which share a similar vision-- Prophet's Way, Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, and Greatest Spiritual Secret.

Read this book and see if you can find a way to begin seeing and knowing, of being human, as the Sng'oi did, and see if you can find a part of them in your heart.

Rating:
Summary: What is it like to be human?
Review: My library finally found Original Wisdom and got it for me. I almost have it finished and I havn't had the book in my hands for 24 hours yet. I highly recommend Original Wisdom to anyone who wants a first hand account of what life is like outside of our Dominant/Taker Culture. Maybe our way isn't the one right way to live.

Rating:
Summary: The Real Slaves
Review: The aboriginal Sng'oi of Malaysia are often described with words like "pre-industrial" or "pre-agricultural," but it is a mistake to think of them as living in a former stage of what of our more "advanced" society has become. As Wolff shows in this book, it would be more precise to say that are living in another world - as are we.

Having spent half his youth growing up among non-Westerns, Wolff says this: "I learned early on to be in two different realities." One reality was oriented around the clock, efficiency, technology, and harsh realism. The other was fluid, timeless, almost dreamlike, "a world and at a time when people touched each other, when we knew animals and plants intimately." The bulk of this book is spent fleshing out differences between these worlds, in an attempt to teach us Westerners another way of knowing, another reality. Yet in the process of doing so, it quickly becomes apparent that the modern world doesn't quite measure up.

As slaves to an alienating industrial system, as a completely self-domesticated species, in a state of utter dependence and helplessness, the condescending glance "modern" humanity casts at so-called "primitive peoples" is extremely ironic. Traditionally referred to as "Sakai," or slaves, by modern Malaysians, the Sng'oi do not take offense. Says one Sng'oi man, "We look at the people down below [literally, from up in the mountains] - they have to get up at a certain time in the morning, they have to pay for everything with money, which they have to earn doing things for other people. They are constantly told what they can and cannot do. No, we do not mind when they call us slaves."

At one point in the book, Wolff recounts a number of silent educational trips into the rainforest with his friend/guide, Ahmeed, who was subtly trying to teach him to interact and connect with the forest on his own terms. After days of walking, Wolff became thirsty. It was precisely then that Ahmeed decided to sneak off and leave him to find water on his own. After searching for hours, he not only discovered water - he also discovered another way of seeing. "When I leaned over drink from the leaf, I saw water with feathery ripples, I saw a few mosquito larvae wriggling on the surface, I saw the veins of the leaf through the water, some bubbles, a little piece of dirt... How beautiful, how perfect." His perception suddenly "opened," and a deep feeling of connection enveloped him. "The all-ness was everywhere, and I was a part of it... I could not be afraid - I was apart of this all-ness."

Contrast this with our culture, a culture walled-in with fear; a culture that "learns - has to learn - to shut off the senses, to protect oneself from all the noise." Unlike the Sng'oi, who are brought up to listen, watch and feel their world in depth, our culture is psychological straightjacketed. Our is a culture in which many humans are brought up to act like machines only to find themselves replaced by machines built to act like humans. Perhaps that is why our economic system has set out to expand and colonize every wild space left on the globe. In the other world Wolff experienced, every day - indeed every second - was a miracle. Life, by no means perfect, was nevertheless full of smiles, stories, songs and dance. It was a world without fear and domination - that is, until Komatsu bulldozers come to clear away the forest.

The topics Wolff address in this book vary from indigenous medicine to education, from dream interpretation to surviving the onslaught of civilization. The format anecdotal, the profound wisdom of which will stay with you. This is not simply anthropology or ethnology, but a critique of modern industrial civilization and it's "Development Scheme" in the gentle voice of someone intimate with the Sng'oi. All in all, the book amounts to nothing less than an alternative way of being. I found it refreshing, insightful and transformative - three criteria for any great book.

Rating:
Summary: a soulopening view of life
Review: the true narratives in this book are expressed in simple beautiful prose. these are first-hand accounts by the author about his experience with other cultures during childhood and adulthood. my favorite was the chapter 'we take care of each other' which expressed how one village views people we would label 'mentally ill' and how they treat those people.a book not to be missed if you want to expand beyond your own cultural myopia.

Rating:
Summary: gentle touch - deeply theraputic
Review: This book is truly one of a kind. It is richly spiritual yet not religion based. It is about the author's cross cultural experience, which brought him to a realization. Those moments he started to question about his commonsense of the western beliefs are so honestly stated.

The book took me into a very different world where things were simpler. In this environment I could unwind my restless heart, and observed the very foreign culture...

The effect this book had on me has been profound and long lasting. In fact I am writing this review two years after reading it.

Rating:
Summary: You just have to read this book
Review: Well written memoirs of a western trained scientist visiting/living with tribal people over many years. this book touches on everything from crime to dreams. a must read!

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Summary: Recognizing a lost part of ones self.
Review: You've read so many of these how-to books on consciousness upliftment, havent you? You know that they are reasonably inclusive, content wise. They tell you all you have to do, all those thoughts that you must think of, and all those things that you must not, because there are unanswered questions that you can ask, but not now. In the end, it's quite a job finishing them, there's so much information.
This book is not quite like that. It takes you forward on its own momentum. It's a story. What happened then, you want to know. Did they really live this way? And they were happy? And they knew what they were doing, despite knowing about the wonders of our scientific inventions... Such questions grip you. They take over your conscíousness in a longing to find out if it is really possible to recapture that pristine way of life again. And when you return to the world that you inhabit, your longing to recapture an essence of what you sensed will leave its mark on your daily environment.