Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism and also the result is going to be blank stares. So many people are surprised to learn that shamanism isn’t a religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on earth. Much more surprising may be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority of major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has become practised on every inhabited continent on earth for about 40,000 a number of possibly greatly longer. Historically, shamanism would be 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 straight from shamanic experience. We no more reside in caves or even in very small communities whose members are all seen to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that portion of us effective at fearing the dark and getting aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people less difficult works today because, although the world might have changed, fundamentally we have not.
Ask such a shaman is and the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. Actually, exactly what a shaman is and does is simply explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and is the term for an individual able to make a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness to meet and use spirit helpers. What the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, within this experience of meeting spirits is there is no separation between any situation that is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, from a 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 typical currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, though of course it is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where the majority of us can only think about the perception of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your way begins because shaman redirects the primary cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain to the right, over the corpus collosum – which is, from your structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. Within the overwhelming tastes traditions around the world this ‘breakthrough’ will probably be assisted through percussive sound, including drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, like ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a method to aid alter consciousness, in reality approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, your way begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the here and now and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary each and every culture and tradition around the world, are identified as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the realm 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 viewed as a ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro shamanism is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and can be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and secure the cause of the shaman’s journey – to ask about for help, healing or information in the spirits. Contemporary research within the cognitive sciences shows that the human mental abilities are hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
And in addition, one of the questions most regularly asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for several generations we lack a definite, objective idea of things like spirits. These days it is a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings with the idea of spirit despite the fact that both the coincide, they’re not precisely the same nevertheless they benefit me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my personal practice and teaching, describes spirits within all of that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body so that you can possess a human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore have an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we’re basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments in the Great Spirit. Many of us are derived from this energy, exist inside it and resume it. It really is living this perspective that allows a shaman to have the possible lack of separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or wellness disease.
My second idea of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and was very simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal expertise of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the key insight that there are things in the psyche which I usually do not produce, but which produce themselves and also have their particular life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of how it can feel to activate 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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