KARGA PUJA: A TRANSPERSONAL RITUAL OF HEALING IN TAMANG SHAMANISM

The karga healing ritual of the Tamang shamans is a dramatic event and a successful means of treating the major indigenous categories of mental illness, that is, soul loss and spirit possession, when they occur simultaneously in a patient. This clinical pathology is a cross-cultural variation of the categories of dissociative trance disorder and somatoform disorder described in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association. Tamang shamans treat this relatively neurotic syndrome by evoking transpersonal experiences that are psychotherapeutic in that they alter the patient's relationships both in regard to the spiritual cosmos and to significant interpersonal relationships. Karga rituals evoke experiences analogous to "spiritual emergencies" and "rites of passage" with a death-and-rebirth scenario leading to psychological, social, familial, and spiritual renewal. Discussion is illustrated by a case vignette.