According to the Ngaju Dyak people of Indonesia, the journey between the world of spirits and the world of man is a distance bridged by death. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
“The Ngaju believe that there are two supernatural worlds, one above the world of mankind and one below it.”
Anne Schiller is author of Small Sacrifices: Religious Change and Cultural Identity among the Ngaju of Indonesia.
“The two supernatural worlds are both inhabited by beings that are kindly to men. However the upper world, above the world of humankind is by far the most important. At the very zenith of of the upper world is a place called the Prosperous Village, and that’s where the Ngaju people believe that they go when they die.
“When a Ngaju Dyak dies, they believe that the soul, the human soul, breaks into three pieces. So, in fact, one soul can become three. There’s a soul of the hard parts of the body; there’s a soul of the soft parts of the body, and there’s the soul of the intellect. And that probably corresponds most closely with our own notion of a human soul. For a long time, these souls are separate. Two of them remain in the grave with the body and one of them goes to a waiting room in a cosmological upper world.”
Not until the deceased person’s relatives have carried out an elaborate death ritual, can these three souls finally be reunited in the Prosperous Village.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.