Photo by Mohamed Nohassi at Unsplash

Native American wise men and sages from other religions and faiths believe that as a human being, you are both a physical being and spiritual being, surrounded by many worlds or realms. The ego or thoughts trap your physical being, the realm of flesh, and results in an unsatisfying existence. Other worlds or realms that are spiritual, meaning closer to the Creator surround this world or realm of man.

Spiritual people consider everything around them as sacred, including numbers. To the Native Americans, four is a sacred number, which represents the four winds symbolized by the cross. (Ergoes 116)

Tom Brown, Jr’s mentor, Stalking Wolf, known to him as Grandfather, believed there were four realms that circled man. The first realm is the realm of the “living dead” or physical self as mentioned above. Man is trapped in this realm without the spirit and in order to reach the other realms he must have faith. The paradox is that man cannot have faith because the physical mind needs proof before it can believe or have faith. (Brown 135-136)

The second realm, beyond man’s ‘prison’, is the realm of the ‘spirit that moves in all things’ or the hidden force. Here man can move away from the physical self. There can be a duality of flesh and spirit where he is in direct contact with “his deeper, limitless mind, his true emotions, desires, and deepest memories”. (Brown 136)

The third realm is the world of the spirit. Here you reach the world of the unseen and eternal and all those spiritual beings that once lived. We find all knowledge of the past, and all of the possible futures. This world knows no time or place. (Brown 136)

The world of the shaman is the fourth realm. The shaman had transcended his religion and walked a pure and simple path. Here man can become close to the Creator. Man can create miracles and transcend the physical world’s trappings. All should strive for this world, a world of purity and truth. (Brown 136-137)

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I’m Dave Chappuis, the writer of Midnight’s Edge: The Spirits of Sleepy Meadows and 3 other books in the Midnight’s Edge series (available on Amazon by clicking here) where I explore different realms and spirit worlds.

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Citations (further reading)

– Brown, Jr., Tom. Awakening Spirits. New York, NY. The Berkley Publishing Group, 1994.

– Erdoes, R., Lame Deer, J.. New York, NY. Simon and Schuster, 1972.