Henry Gellis is an established Southern California investment executive who helps to inform Awaken.com, an online health and wellness journal. The publication, in which Henry Gellis is a founding investor, offers a wealth of timely and informative articles across a spectrum that includes philosophy, spirituality, yoga, sustainability, and healthy living.
One recent Awaken.com piece, “Mystical Experience of Jane Goodall, PhD,” brought focus to a formative experience in the life of a pioneer in the conservation movement. A central mission of Dr. Goodall’s life was 55 years spent within Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park studying wild chimpanzees’ family relations and social interactions.
As Dr. Goodall recounted it, returning from an extended six-week US trip that centered on conferences, fundraising, and lobbying efforts, she again found herself in the wild place she loved and entered into a “state of heightened awareness.” The sheer beauty of what she saw around her, with no price tag attached, brought her to a state where sense of self was nonexistent. Rather, she found herself one with the earth, trees, and chimpanzees, and imbued with “the spirit power of life itself.”
This mystical experience, which lasted a single afternoon, had a profound impact on Dr. Goodall’s entire way of looking at life. From that moment on, she drew from the wellspring of a timeless truth, of which she felt mainstream science captured only a tiny part. This became a source of strength which she could always draw on when life turned “harsh or cruel or desperate.”
