My Inner Experience
The section of the book is closer to the original non-ordinary state experience and less affected by considerations for the historical record compared to the other three parts simply because there is less of a historical record to which I could refer. The tribal people described are based very loosely on the modern-day Masaai.
The location always felt to me to be in what is now Tanzania, west of the mountain Kilimanjaro, and the time frame before 1000 C.E., but it was never very clear. So the date given in the book is random and has no special significance.
The two person spear dance that is described is real. I saw a black and white movie when I was a teenager that included it and was very impressed. And then in the Holotropic Breathwork session associated with this part of the story I experienced myself as Timo, dancing with his sister in forbidden play. Was the dance really a “memory” of something, or was my imagination just using something I already knew about to tell me what I needed to hear? The explanation that I prefer is that I was so impressed, almost stunned, by the movie I saw as a teenager because the experience was already in me, just not in my consciousness. But in the end it really does no matter. There is the story for itself, regardless of where it came from.
The attack by the short people over a conflict concerning water sharing and the death of both twins through their own choices and disagreement were a critical part of the inner experience. After all the others in the village had been killed and the well had collapsed Niwana wanted to help the short people get the well to working again but Timo was adamantly against this. The description of what happened then in the book is a simplification of the memory.
About the Masaai
The Masaai culture has proven to be robust even in the face of modern challenges. There is a lot of information (I cannot speak to its accuracy) on Wikipedia. An additional connection to my inner experience is due to the importance of cattle and children as measures of wealth. A quote from the above Wikipedia article:
“Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. A man’s wealth is measured in cattle and children (note that the wives or women are also counted as part of the children). A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor.”