Ask any passer-by on any street to spell out shamanism and the result will probably be blank stares. Everybody is surprised to find out that shamanism is not an religion though the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. More surprising is the discovery that it is the precursor to most major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it continues to be practised on every inhabited continent on earth for around 40,000 many possibly greatly longer. Historically, shamanism would have been a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs all over the world with carved and painted images drawn from shamanic experience. We no more live in caves or in tiny communities whose members are typical proven to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that part of us effective at fearing the dark and asking for aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people easier still works today because, although world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask exactly what a shaman is and also the question may evoke a couple of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, that of a shaman is and does is actually explained. Within the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and identifies a person able to make a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered state of consciousness to get to know and help spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, within this experience of meeting spirits is the fact that there isn’t any separation between something that is: no separation between me writing and you reading these words, between a dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and also the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, though of course this is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where most of us is only able to consider the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the connection with 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 key cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere with the brain right, over the corpus collosum – which is, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. From the overwhelming tastes traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by way of percussive sound, including drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a way to help you alter consciousness, actually approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, the journey begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the here and now and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary each and every culture and tradition worldwide, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the realm of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between your worlds’ because they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen 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 is felt, smelt and experienced as clearly since this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they are qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and secure the basis for the shaman’s journey – to inquire about help, healing or information through the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences points too a persons mental faculties are hardwired to view the ‘unseen’ and the mystical; 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.
Unsurprisingly, one of the questions most often asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for many generations we lack an obvious, objective comprehension of things like spirits. Currently it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their email list is seemingly endless. Personally, I have two understandings in the idea of spirit despite the fact that the 2 coincide, they are not exactly the same nevertheless they work for me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits within everything that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body as a way to have a human experience. The spirits I meet on my own ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore provide an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we’re critically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments with the Great Spirit. We all come from this energy, exist within it and resume it. It really is living this angle allowing a shaman to try out the possible lack of separation between stuff that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, including life and death or health and disease.
My second understanding of spirit is a lot more psychological and archetypal and it was plain and simply explained by CG Jung in their autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the important insight that you have things inside the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and possess their unique life. Philemon represented a force that has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of the way it can feel to activate with spirit after a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the operation of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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