Out of This World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein

«Mircea Eliade defined shamanism not as a religion properly speaking, but as a "technique of ecstasy," a system of ecstatic and therapeutic methods whose purpose is to obtain contact with the parallel universe of the spirits and to win their support in dealing with the affairs of a g» — recoge la definición de Eliade del chamanismo como técnica del éxtasis; el corte trunca la frase

«Free Spirit Seeks Free Spirit: An Outline of Shamanism 33 Dark Treasures: OtherwordlyJourneys in Mesopotamian ReliBion So Puppets, Playhouses, and Gods:Journeys throueh Other Worlds in Ancient EBYPt 60 Crane Riding, Soul Raising,- and Ghost Brides in Taoist China 7I Journeys through the Mind: Buddhism and Otherwo» — el índice declara el alcance comparativo: Mesopotamia, Egipto, China taoísta, budismo

«In the most typical shamanist areas a distinction is made between "white" and» — la partición entre chamanes blancos y negros

«the very same shaman may act as a healer within his own ethnic or regional group and as a sorcerer toward outsiders» — y cómo esa partición depende del grupo, no de la persona

«Sumerian written records are available from 3500 B.C.E. Does this make it easier to understand the treasures of a past immersed in the darkness of faded millennia» — abre Mesopotamia con la antigüedad de sus registros

«the wealth of Egyptian tomb inscriptions we will meet in the next chapter are far more enigmatic, for they are not woven into a coherent narrative» — compara: las inscripciones egipcias son más enigmáticas porque no narran

«Around 4000 B.C.E. the Sumerians built an advanced civilization around the cities of Ur, Uruk, and Kish, with their mysterious ziggurat temples» — la datación que da para la civilización sumeria

«A few years ago, I realized that a general history of otherworldly journeys should be written, for there is no other way to assess the possible unity in their variety.» — declara el motivo del libro: solo una historia general permite calibrar si la variedad de los viajes al otro mundo esconde alguna unidad.

«Two courses I gave at the University of Chicago in 1988 and 1989 helped me to organize and largely write this book.» — sitúa el origen del libro en dos cursos de Chicago, uno sobre religión y cuarta dimensión y otro sobre viajes de otro mundo en religión y literatura.

«All in all, my survey of shamanism remains extremely brief.» — acota él mismo el alcance de su tratamiento del chamanismo, aunque esa categoría organice el libro entero.

«The only possible conclusion one can draw is that anyone opening this book falls into one or more of these categories.» — de las encuestas Gallup que abren el libro —94 % cree en Dios, 67 % en vida después de la muerte, 23 % en reencarnación— saca que el lector mismo está dentro de la muestra.

«And, without fostering the misplaced ambition of giving all these phenomena an "explanation," this book will nonetheless endeavor to assess how people in different temporal and geographical settings would themselves explain their experiences.» — fija el programa: no explicar los fenómenos, sino reconstruir cómo los explicaban quienes los vivieron.

«The historian gathers documentation, written or not, and tries to describe within the cultural setting all other worlds people claim to have explored.» — define la tarea del historiador como descripción de los otros mundos dentro de su marco cultural, y dice que ése es el grueso del libro.

«The epistemologist uses the material gathered by the historian in order to examine the truth of the claims of all these otherworldly explorers.» — y la del epistemólogo como examen de la realidad de esos mundos: si son físicos, paralelos o mentales, y cómo se accede a ellos.

«The common denominator of the many psychological approaches to the problem of otherworldly journeys and visions is that all of them agree on one fact, and probably on one fact only: that the explored universes are mental universes.» — sostiene que lo único en que coinciden los enfoques psicológicos es en situar esos universos en la mente del explorador.

«Unfortunately, no psychological approach seems able to provide sufficient insight into what the mind really is, and especially into what and where the space of the mind is.» — y ahí pone el límite: ninguno de esos enfoques dice qué es la mente ni dónde está su espacio.

«Obviously, when we go inside our mind space (which is infinite, for there is no end to our imagining more space), we do not really know where we go.» — describe el espacio mental como infinito por construcción, y reconoce que no se sabe adónde se va al entrar en él.

«Yet the universal validity of their explanations is highly questionable.» — pone en el mismo plano al chamán, la bruja y el psicoanálisis: los tres son procedimientos válidos solo mientras se compartan sus premisas.

«We cannot actually understand, for example, what dreams are, if we cannot answer such basic questions as where dreams and visions take place, what dreams are made of, and the like.» — hace depender la comprensión del sueño de preguntas previas sobre dónde ocurre y de qué está hecho.

«Even if we describe our mind space with all its strange "mind stuff" as a complete universe existing in parallel with the world perceived as being outside us, the two of them are still dependent on each other to various degrees: the outside world could not exist without the mental universe that perceives it, and this mental universe in turn borrows its images from perceptions.» — sostiene la interdependencia de los dos mundos: el exterior no existiría sin quien lo percibe, y el mental toma sus imágenes de la percepción.

«For example, although snakes can barely see, they scan the outer world through a temperature detector,» — apoya en la variedad de aparatos perceptivos —abeja, delfín, serpiente— que el mundo interior difiere con la especie.

«Yet in all these cases a correlation between the inner world and the outer world exists.» — y aun así mantiene que en todos los casos hay correlación entre los dos mundos.

«Many of them have admitted that the outer world is a construct of our perception, and is thus deprived of "objectivity."» — recoge de los propios científicos la admisión de que el mundo exterior es un constructo de la percepción.

«Thus, the world outside us and the world inside us are not truly parallel, for not only do they interfere with each other in many ways, but we cannot even be sure where one of them ceases to be and the other commences.» — niega el paralelismo entre los dos mundos: interfieren, y la frontera no es localizable.

«According to the cognitive viewpoint adopted here, the belief of the inhabitants of the Cook Islands that the other world is right under the island and its entrance is a cave (a view substantially shared by many peoples of various cultures who think they can point out the entrance to the netherworld) is less infantile than it appears.» — de ahí que rehabilite creencias tenidas por ingenuas, como situar el otro mundo bajo la isla con entrada por una cueva.

«The optimist and the pessimist see the same glass as either half full or half empty; the philosopher Wittgenstein would say that they do not live in the same world.» — atribuye a Wittgenstein la fórmula de que percepciones distintas equivalen a mundos distintos.

«We cannot go further without exceeding the competence of the historian. Yet this survey, however short and inconclusive, has been sufficient to show how complex the whole matter is, and how ill-prepared we still are to fully understand our mind world.» — se abstiene de seguir: declara que el asunto excede la competencia del historiador y que el mundo mental sigue sin entenderse.

«Yet the phenomenon we are dealing with is so widespread that we certainly are entitled to call it universal.» — y aun con ese límite mantiene la universalidad del fenómeno como dato.

«the person who is the victim of an accident, or who receives a special yet cumbersome and unexpected ecstatic vocation leading to visions, has a particular call that is by no means the result of a quest, and can even be quite contrary to the world view and the social and mental habits of the recipient.» — distingue la vocación extática impuesta por accidente o llamado de la que resulta de una búsqueda, y admite que puede contrariar el mundo del que la recibe.

«otherworldly journeys should not be too lightly dismissed as being mere products of imagination, on the other they can undeniably be envisioned as a literary genre.» — sostiene las dos cosas a la vez: ni mera imaginación, ni menos que un género literario.

«with the help of ethnosemiotics, we can establish that human beings had beliefs concerning other worlds long before they could write.» — apoya en la etnosemiótica que las creencias sobre otros mundos son anteriores a la escritura.

«the final result in each case can be very close to texts that circulate in the community of the original transmitters.» — explica por intertextualidad que relatos independientes acaben pareciéndose a los que circulan en la comunidad de origen.

«The Italian scholar Carlo Ginzburg (see chapter 2, below), who studied European witchcraft for twenty-five years, came to the conclusion that witchcraft was still practiced in certain zones of eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century as a direct derivative of shamanism.» — atribuye a Ginzburg, y no a sí mismo, la conclusión de que la brujería europea del siglo XIX deriva directamente del chamanismo.

«Explanations such as genetic transmission or the unhelpfully vague affirmation that some collective unconscious lies behind our individual psyche have no cognitive basis.» — descarta la transmisión genética y el inconsciente colectivo por falta de base cognitiva.

«In other words, the cognitive assumption of this book is that a simple set of rules would generate similar results in the minds of human beings for a virtually infinite period of time.» — formula el supuesto del libro: un conjunto simple de reglas produce resultados parecidos en mentes humanas durante un lapso casi ilimitado.

«In many cases we can establish that the rules show such dependence upon shamanism that they are probably derivatives thereof.» — y hace derivar muchas de esas reglas del chamanismo, con el probably como límite.

«A Middle Platonist like Plutarch of Chaeronea (ca. SO120 C.E.) adheres to the received data but reinterprets them according to a more sophisticated scientific hermeneutics.» — pone a Plutarco como caso de repensamiento activo de la tradición: acepta los datos recibidos y los reinterpreta con otra hermenéutica; el OCR estropea la datación ca. 50–120.

«Cognitive transmission is historical; yet it presupposes constant rethinking of old beliefs, and therefore constant failures of memory, deletion, and innovation.» — el modelo incluye el olvido y la innovación como parte del mecanismo, no como ruido.

«Obviously, many sets of answers are possible, and the debate can be cut short only by assuming a position of authority.» — sostiene que la exploración de un problema admite muchas respuestas y que solo la autoridad zanja el debate.

«(As in the case of most if not all metaphysical questions, we cannot find hard proof that parts of the human soul can reincarnate in plants or animals, but we have no evidence to the contrary either.)» — se abstiene expresamente sobre la metempsicosis: no hay prueba a favor ni en contra.

«Let all who enter here know: they are in for a tour of heaven and hell.» — Lawrence E. Sullivan abre el prólogo diciendo que el libro no recorre un más allá sino muchos: cielos, infiernos, paraísos, purgatorios, limbos y laberintos.

«loan Couliano does not saunter; he moves at the brisk pace of someone familiar with the rooms with their furnishings through which he threads his way.» — Sullivan describe a un autor que se mueve con soltura por materiales de épocas y culturas en las que no siempre es especialista, y asume el riesgo de compararlas; el escaneo imprime loan por Ioan.

«He examines side by side the normally separate genres of fiction and factual science, and disparate figures like Bohr and Borges, Einstein and Gilgamesh.» — para Sullivan el método del libro es la yuxtaposición deliberada de géneros y figuras que las disciplinas mantienen separados.

«He is not beyond teasing the reader with enigmatic juxtapositions intended to introduce doubts and ambiguities.» — Sullivan advierte que parte de esas yuxtaposiciones busca sembrar duda, no cerrar una demostración.

«"There will always be a dimension that leads to the unknown," writes Couliano--be .it the one of myth, of the fourth dimension, or of the nth dimension.» — Sullivan cita a Couliano para fijar el hilo del libro: siempre queda una dimensión que conduce a lo desconocido, sea la del mito, la cuarta o la enésima.

«Berkeley went even further. He denied the existence of absolute space or time or motion-ideas that were winning a hearing with the championship of Sir Isaac Newton.» — Sullivan recuerda que Berkeley negó espacio, tiempo y movimiento absolutos justo cuando Newton los volvía doctrina.

«On mathematical and philosophical grounds, Berkeley argued that all motion is relative.» — Sullivan atribuye a Berkeley, por vía matemática y filosófica, la relatividad de todo movimiento.

«Couliano also seems to emphasize relativity in his study of the perceptions of space.» — Sullivan lee el libro como un estudio de la relatividad de las percepciones del espacio, y marca con el seems que es su lectura.

«Just as Berkeley assured us that there is "no substance without a mind," Couliano fuses tradition and thought in an axiom worthy of Giambattista Vico: traditio is percipi.» — Sullivan condensa la transmisión cognitiva en un axioma propio, calcado del esse est percipi de Berkeley y puesto bajo el nombre de Vico.

«Couliano's notion of cognitive transmission seems designed to deal with multifaceted traditions and with the clash of the many traditional worlds imagined throughout history.» — Sullivan separa a Couliano de Berkeley: donde aquel imaginaba un mundo único sostenido por la percepción divina, la transmisión cognitiva sirve para tradiciones múltiples y en choque.

«Matter has already been relativizedeven evacuated-e--bv subatomic physics, on the one side, and pluridimensional cosmological theory, on the other.» — Sullivan sostiene que Couliano no necesita disolver la materia como Berkeley porque la física subatómica y la cosmología pluridimensional ya la relativizaron; el OCR estropea evacuated by.

«The world of Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Rudy Rucker is not the one of George Berkeley.» — Sullivan marca el corte: hoy la materia cede ante la percepción sin desaparecer del todo, cosa que en Berkeley no ocurría.

«Couliano's aim is to have us realize--literally to make realother possibilities.» — Sullivan atribuye al libro el propósito de hacer reales otras posibilidades alterando las percepciones recibidas.

«For Couliano, the multiplicity of worlds seems to be an epistemological necessity, a function of the way the mind works in space.» — Sullivan resume la tesis: los mundos se multiplican por cómo opera la mente en el espacio, no por acumulación de creencias.

«However advanced our knowledge of the surrounding world, the space of the inner mind expands beyond it.» — de ahí, según Sullivan, que el espacio mental siempre desborde al conocido.

«Couliano draws freely on the discoveries of cybernetics, physics, literary theory, psychoanalysis, cognitive theory, neurophysiology, mathematics, ethnography, and epistemology.» — Sullivan enumera las disciplinas de las que el libro toma material.

«He investigates this _possibility in extended case studies. He examines, for instance, the Puraatory if Saint Patrick, a twelfth-century work associated with the extraordinary cave at Lough Derg where Christ appeared to Saint Patrick.» — Sullivan pone el Purgatorio de San Patricio como muestra del estudio de caso extenso; el OCR estropea Purgatory of.

«Couliano has set forward parts of his case in other writings on gnosticism, flights of ecstasy, and Renaissance magic.» — Sullivan sitúa el libro como continuación de trabajos previos del autor sobre gnosticismo, éxtasis y magia renacentista.

«After all, he points out, worlds can be adequately perceived (only?) from dimensions that do not exist within them.» — Sullivan recoge el principio dimensional del libro, con el paréntesis dubitativo incluido.

«For example, it is easier to perceive the properties of a two-dimensional world if one is cognizant of one's own existence in a three-dimensional one.» — y lo ilustra con el salto de dos a tres dimensiones.

«Couliano is betting that, on severalgrounds, it can be demonstrated that cultural creations havebeen held unjustifiably distant from one another: the imaginings of pure math and physics, the myths of ancient peoples, and the poetry, utopias, ecstasies, visions, and dreams of historically scattered humankind.» — Sullivan formula la apuesta del libro como apuesta, no como resultado: matemática, mito y poesía se han mantenido separados sin justificación.

«Readers will be prodded by the general conclusions Couliano draws from time to time throughout the book and by the summary analyses at the end.» — Sullivan anticipa que las conclusiones generales del libro incomodarán al lector.

«Couliano sets out to gUide the perplexed reader's imagination as it descends through ancient netherworlds, strays through medieval Erewhons, or soars through edenic paradises.» — Sullivan compara la función del autor con la de un psicopompo que abre ruta por una historia aún sin cartografiar.