5min chapter

The Emerald cover image

Animism is Normative Consciousness (Re-mixed, Re-musicked, and Re-released)

The Emerald

CHAPTER

The Nature of Religious Experience

Anthropologist David Lewis Williams says religious experience is not based on thinking things up but on direct experience felt in heightened states of awareness. The energy that rises in the Koysan dancer isn't something they believe in, it's something that rises so tangibly that they have names for all of its stages. They don't have to believe it's real; they know it and understand how to access it.

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