SPIRITUAL ONENESS, SOULFUL RELATIONSHIP, AWESOME EXPERIENCE

Like Linsey, many participants described spiritual experiences in the rainforest. Eleanor Matthews, for example, a school-teacher and environmental activist, described the relaxing of boundaries of the individual self, akin to the deep ecological concept of 'ecological self'⁽¹⁵⁾.

"I feel as though I am allowing the outside into me, rather than trying to preserve my space for myself, by shutting out noise, or things of that sort."

Rosey, a single mother of three living an alternative lifestyle amidst the rainforest, when asked how she usually feels in natural environments, answered

"Very small. Very small and yet very expansive. Very insignificant and yet in touch with everything that ... you know how the primitive tribes, are short-sighted because they can't see long distances because they're so close to the forest.. and they don't get that expansive sight but yet... I feel like I can, my SPIRIT can SPREAD amongst the trees."

In this quotation, Rosey makes an oblique reference to the indigenous forest people, and their co-evolution with the forest, adapting their physical vision and spiritual vision in ways to suit life in that environment. Aboriginal myths and stories, however, were not referred to by any participants in their descriptions of the rainforest. Indeed, feelings of alienation from Aboriginal land were more commonly mentioned. As Linsey, the young woman who originally connected to the forest through European fairies, explained

"I do feel a spiritual connection, it's a faint thing that's growing stronger, that I'm learning about just by sitting and looking at it. I used to think that I'm not really part of that because I'm not Aboriginal or something."

It was interesting to note, however, as Linsey continued to explain this alienation, that her story assumed the reality of Aboriginal spirits.
"Sometimes I feel a bit scared or something. ... I think a lot about the Aboriginal past and so on, and there are spirits and things. (...) I don't like running away from those sorts of fears, and sometimes I go out right in the middle of the night, when it's really dark, and there's no moon, and you're thinking, what are the little things doing?"

The concept of 'spirit of place' was only occasionally apparent, and usually embedded within a rather 'psychological' discourse. Phil, a 40-year-old man living without a permanent dwelling, but wandering throughout a dry forest valley and among a community of alternative lifestylers, described his relationship with nature as "Soulful. Yes, sort of love and awe combined." He went on to say

"This land has a sort of character vibration or spirit of its own. The land, yes, and you know you see big rocks on tops of hills and they evoke some sort of thing - that could be a little city of people or something in your imagination, so there's resonation between mind and what you associate with what you see."

The words "soul" and "spirit", and the concepts of 'merging' and being 'at one' with nature, were largely confined to the alternative lifestylers and to a lesser extent the environmental activists. It appears that 'spiritual oneness with the rainforest' is part of a 'new-age' sub-cultural discourse, although I question whether it is a sub-culturally specific experience (merely being articulated in more 'mainstream' ways). The most overtly 'spiritual' experiences of participants corresponded most closely to an Eastern mysticism, a cosmological identification with the whole environment⁽¹⁶⁾, and the dissolving of the ego. The absolute awe inherent in this experience is well expressed by a very active environmentalist, John Irwin, who described it using more biological, and less spiritual, language.

"It's a HUMBLING thing too. Particularly environments where there's a lot of diversity and you can feel things buzzing around you (...) particularly mangroves and rainforests. That's a humbling thing because you can sit down and NOTHING cares less whether you're there or not. But you feel part of it. And it's also the same sort of experience when you go out into a very arid bare landscape, like the central deserts, and you're just this little figure in a very vast area. It's just a really good feeling to be walking along, you know there's a lot of things living around there, but it's sort of INVIGORATING because - oh how to explain it? - you feel like a real concentration of life walking along when you're not surrounded by other obvious things."

John's account illustrates the ineffability of sacred experience as he struggles to use conventional language to describe the realms of the spirit and the soul. This quotation also provides evidence for the similarity of rainforest and desert experience - i.e., deep rainforest is just as profound a mythic 'other' for the Euro-Australian psyche.

FOOTNOTES
(15) For a review of literature on 'ecological self', see my article 'Towards ecological self: Deep ecology meets constructionist self theory.' (1996, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 93-108)
(16) See page 54 of John Cameron's article 'Reflections on soul, spirit and environment' (1996, Temenos, 3, 49-55) for a good summary of Fox's typology of self-identification with nature.


[Return to EDGE OF THE SACRED RAINFOREST]