EDUCATION AND DEATH STUDIES

    The healing methods of shamans and psychopomps may require a length of time before becoming orthodox in America, as medical-mechanical systems currently in place have been instituted through carefully controlled capitalist funding for education and research.  The modern medical staff delivers ultimate attempts to increase and maintain the patient's life-force, with excessively priced drugs
(which are chemical derivatives from plants), and expensive technological equipment (which can only save patients if they are viable).

    The overt recognition of a total healing system based on what may be called occult or paranormal factors, would cause a fervor of great magnitude for the American people, larger than that which occurred in the lives of Cayce and Solomon.  Massive amounts of research monies might have to be rerouted if the alternative system convinced the many educators, philanthropists, medical specialists, physicians, researchers and their foundations, therapists, and technicians.  Hospitals as well as staff would have to make many revisions and alterations.  A holistic educational system would be necessary for the training of the Neo-shaman physician, therapist, and technician.  This academic program would be open to any discipline that is encouraged to seek the knowledge found in the sacred space of the ASC for the enlightenment of the American people of the New Age.

    Lauded by the poor, and destitute, the practice of alternative healing by shamans would cause alarm for wealthy drug and medical technological equipment companies.  Interaction between Native and Euroamerican curing methods as discussed by Ake Hultkrantz (1992), Professor of Comparative Religion, University of Stockholm, questioned economic incentives in their attempt to further the suppression of shamanic healing.  Hultkrantz stated that certainly the attempted eradication of the Native shaman has failed and orthodox medicine would profit if a mutual collaboration of medical systems were to be expressed for the good of all people.  An expert on cross-cultural Native American healing traditions, Hultkrantz states that Native American medicine will continue because of its appeal to those who cannot find a holistic religious interpretation of their ailments in present Western medicine.

    The naturalist approach in all previous cultures is functionalist and their rituals were utilized for psychological health. The preservation of ancient and traditional wisdom is a grasp at power, and an approach toward the thing that men continue to seek, immortality.  As surely as certain species are listed as endangered, shamanism as the art form of healing the community, is also endangered.  Shamanic methods have been, thus far, embraced for their contributions and used to educate the neo-shamans which are slowly emerging from the various schools in America and Europe, yet it is necessary to hasten the process as the population and medical emergencies increases. 

    A study by Maglio & Robinson (1994) showed that death education does not appear to be an effective means of lowering death anxiety.  One recommendation would be to alter the focus and composition of death education.  Analyzing various modalities, one study by Durlak (1978), found that death education with experiential exercises was significantly more effective in changing attitudes toward death than was an educational workshop not containing such elements.  In another study, Miles (1980) noted that while experiential approaches generally result in least anxiety, they also result in more positive views of death.  Maglio and Robinson believe that perhaps because the atmosphere in experiential interventions is non-threatening and the participants are able to work through personal fear and anxiety, and insecurity about death and dying. 

    Rasmussen's study (1994), found female undergraduate college students reported higher levels of anxiety than males.   Women were generally regarded as the weaker sex, stated Okafor (1994), and they were culturally expected to show fear and anxiety in situations where the males play the man.  Death anxiety occurs when a person does not have an understanding of what it means to be dead, and they fear the dying process.

    Imagination is the most valuable resource for classroom experientials.  A person can find value by learning how to adapt while living, through imagining loss.  When a person imagines or experiences losses:
   
    We have negative adaptation to the preciousness of 
    things, and deprivation kills the adaptations... and
    restores our sense of the preciousness of, for example,
    the dead child, or even of food, water, sleep, absence
    of pain, ability to breathe, to walk, etc.

   Imagining our own death would seem to yield the benefit of appreciation for life and a greater capacity to value each moment.  Beliefs regarding the consequences of suffering can be of great moral value, and serve as a tool for learning in the classroom.  When we attempt, however, to entertain anxiety-producing thoughts and images, unconscious defense mechanisms may operate to disrupt such images.  Few of us choose to entertain thoughts of imagined loss, whether in therapy or in an educational learning situation.  We are inclined to imagine loss, states Vickio, "only when prompted by external cues as in the case of a loved one barely avoiding and accident or other calamity, or when imagining someone's personal loss.

    Great personal belief in religion did not lead to less fear of death, but religious beliefs did assume an active role in the confrontation of death.  Overall, the spiritually mature elder respondents in Thomas' study (1994) indicated that they "placed a positive value on death, viewing it as a continuation of, and source of meaning for, their present life.

    The result of the studies above reflect contemporary American society, and its need for a revamping of the treatment of the dying by clergy, medical professionals, educational and legal systems, and the family.  America must address the utilization of non-essential prescribed drugs and medical treatment, and dare to reach into the ASC for help, not only for the families as survivors, but for the dying.  Humankind does not have the established hour of their transition to the realms of the Creator, and we are between worlds at any given moment.  

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