Ask any passer-by on any street to describe shamanism as well as the result is going to be blank stares. Most people are surprised to find out that shamanism isn’t a religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. A lot more surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to many major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which may be practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for around 40,000 years and possibly greatly longer. Historically, shamanism was obviously a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs around the globe with carved and painted images drawn from shamanic experience. We not are now living in caves or in tiny communities whose members are known to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that a part of us able to fearing the dark and seeking help from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, although the world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.
Ask that of a shaman is along with the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. In fact, what a shaman is and does is merely explained. Within the Siberian Tungus language which produced the saying, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one who sees’ and identifies a person creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities while in an altered condition of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. What the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience of meeting spirits is there is absolutely no separation between anything that is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, from the cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality along with the non-material realities with the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is normal currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists dealing with sub atomic theory, though of course it is just a predominantly physical, rather than spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where the majority of us is only able to consider the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it with the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins because the shaman redirects the key cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere in the brain to the correct, with the corpus collosum – which is, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming most of traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will be assisted using percussive sound, including drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, for example ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the West as a means to help alter consciousness, the truth is only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, your journey begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts through the here and now and enters worlds visible simply to her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition around the globe, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between your worlds’ as they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as a ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, Psychedelics is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly simply because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they’re qualitative spaces, states for being that reflect and offer the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to inquire about help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences points too a person’s brain is hardwired to determine the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds with the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.
And in addition, one of many questions most frequently asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking about spirituality for most generations we lack a specific, objective comprehension of things like spirits. Currently it’s a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; the list is seemingly endless. Personally, We’ve two understandings in the thought of spirit even though the two coincide, they’re not the same yet they work with me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my very own practice and teaching, describes spirits included in everything exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body so that you can have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and for that reason provide an existential overview unavailable if you ask me, but were fundamentally the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. Most of us come from this energy, exist inside and go back to it. It really is living this perspective which allows a shaman to see the absence of separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example life and death or wellness disease.
My second idea of spirit is much more psychological and archetypal and was very simply explained by CG Jung in their autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his desire of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the insight there are things from the psyche i don’t produce, but which produce themselves and have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” This is a beautifully lucid explanation of the way it may feel to have interaction with spirit after a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the entire process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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