Bali

Bali is a complex combination of aboriginal culture and influences of other cultures, especially Hindu of India. The local animism has been fused with the Hindu gods and goddesses, though ancestor worship is the prevailing system. Abram spends time in Bali living in a one-room hut on a family compound belonging to a medicine man and his family that practices ancestor worship and deep connection to the natural world. He has a number of personal experiences that lead to the book’s inquiries. One was watching the constellations in night of sky and the reflection of them in the water between the rice paddies. He was aware of a sense of weightlessness as if he were both above and below the stars, and this was compounded by fireflies about him, giving him a sense of being within the stars, too. He also visited a pre-Hindu site that...