Portals Into Other Worlds-- Are They Real?

For many years science fiction writers and readers have been fascinated by portals, opeinings to other worlds. Is it the fantasy element, transporting without moving, curiosity about what's on the other side, imagination in action, or something else that feeds our fascination?

The worlds portrayed through portals are generally fantastic. Worlds where magic happens, worlds in the historic or mythic past, future worlds, or worlds with different cosmologies.

Public school English classes in the U.S. have been offering reading experiences about portals to students for over fifty years. "The Veldt," published in 1951, written by Ray Bradbury is an example. In this short story parents have set up a play area for their children inside a portal in the house. It is a virtual reality, a jungle. The parents are warned by their psychologist not to allow the children to spend too much time inside where all of the children's wishes can manifest. The parents begin to worry that something strange is happening and the psychologist tells them to shut it down. But, when the parents threaten to shut down the portal, the chidren beg, the parents succomb. The children invite the parents in,and lock them inside where they are slaughtered by the jungle animals who have come alive. Wow!

But perhaps it's not only being virtually transported into fantastic worlds that fascinates us. Perhaps we have real world personal knowledge of portals. Perhaps this knowledge lives in our cells, a Jungian collective unconscious memory of the experience.

The experience of openings to other worlds. Spirit worlds.

Thousands of years ago people all over the world were in contact with the spirit worlds. Often their lives often depended on it. They contacted the spirits to find food and shelter. These people are our relatives, our ancestors. We have memories.

As the world moves more and more into material consciousness, we need legitimate frameworks within which to exercise and understand our other-than-material experiences. Also we need ways to save and honor our traditions. Science fiction, inadvertantly, is one of these frameworks. It legitiizes our relationship with portals. We can say, "It's speculative fiction," and no one will look at us as if we're strange. Except insofar as to read science fiction, one might be strange.

Shamanism is another such framework. An ancient tradition in which the shaman journeys through portals to other worlds to get help to do healing and divination. The shaman journeys through a portal into the spirit world to receive help from the spirits. For tens of thousands of years people all over the world have done this work. There is a movement today to preserve and continue this work. The practice of shamanism is growing.

What's really fantastic is that anyone can access portals to the spirit worlds.

c Alesia Kunz