The Seven Campfires of the Sioux: The Sacred Wisdom of the Lakota

The Lakota Sioux conceive that “Every Living Creature in The Universe is My Relative.” The non-dual religion of this native people embraces the whole universe as the Great Spirit – the one manifesting in the many. Thus, the vast prairie that sustains him is his altar. The high sacred Mountains where visions are inspired by holy songs and austere practices are his shrines. The sacred wisdom of the Lakota is not the providence of an esoteric clan of medicine persons, but is a communally shared belief whereby the ceremonial dance and the buffalo hunt are perceived as essentially divine. The naturalistic religion of the Lakota has a basic similarity with the Upanishads – that of the monist idea of which Everything in the Universe is God. Born of Yogic practices peculiarly American, the Lakota shares with the Vedantist and Tibetan spiritual values based on direct experience rather than mere belief. In this book the spiritual experiences of this indigenous people will be explored in conjunction with the inestimable words and teachings of three giants of modern Vedanta: Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother who will establish the fact that all religions stem from a single root.