Tony Samara, the author of A Shaman’s Wisdom, is a contemporary spiritual teacher whose approach of consciousness borrows inspiration from Zen Buddhism and South American shamanism while taking a clear distance from these conceptual systems and others. In this book, he answers questions asked by a social anthropologist, Christian Ghasarian. In a conversation of simple tone, Tony Samara speaks about moments in his life that helped him understand things, important journeys and encounters, the interest and the limits of Zen Buddhism and South American Shamanism that he personally went through. He also addresses themes such as the essence of consciousness, spirituality and religions, energy points in the body, health and diseases, relationships and sexuality, spiritual discipline, students’ expectations on teachers, sacred plants, masculine and feminine aspects, attachment to forms, dreams’ messages and many other topics related to spiritual life… Tony Samara also tackles fundamental anthropological issues such as the relativity of cultural models, the influence of ready-to-think social ideas on people’s behaviour, the psychological mindset produced by mass programmed aspirations and the universality of human quests and dilemmas for example. While avoiding the traps of abstractions and dogmatism, he constantly emphasises the emancipating potential associated with taking a distance from ingrained certitude, always coming back to the necessity to unlearn what is preventing spiritual awareness. His largely intuitive philosophy points out the sameness behind the apparent differences. Through an unusual spiritual quest and itinerary, this book explores universal concerns beyond psychological and cultural frames and invites the reader to acknowledge the essence of life. It is necessary to put the cultural program into question and completely go to the point where we look at things with clear consciousness, not with the idea that we know everything .Tony Samara
