Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result might be blank stares. So many people are surprised to understand that shamanism is not an religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on the planet. Much more surprising is the discovery that it’s the precursor to many major world religions, like the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent in the world for around 40,000 many possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism was 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 straight from shamanic experience. We no more are now living in caves or in small communities whose members are common recognized to us. Many of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that part of us able to 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 less difficult works today because, although world could have changed, fundamentally we have not.
Ask exactly what a shaman is and the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or maybe the word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, that of a shaman is and does is merely explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the saying, ‘shaman’ means ‘the person who sees’ and refers to an individual capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness to get to know and help spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, in this connection with meeting spirits is the fact that there isn’t any separation between any situation that is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from your dog and cat, 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 utilizing sub atomic theory, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, rather than spiritual, oneness that such scientists are attempting to describe. However, where the majority of us can only look at the perception of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the experience with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins since the shaman redirects the principal cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere in the brain to the correct, over the corpus collosum – that is certainly, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. Within the overwhelming most traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by the use of percussive sound, for example drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a means to help you alter consciousness, actually no more than 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, your journey begins in the event the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the present and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition around the world, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the whole world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between your worlds’ because they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro cactus is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and is felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well these are qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and offer the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to inquire about help, healing or information through the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences suggests that a persons mental abilities are hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ as well as the mystical; perhaps the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds with the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
Unsurprisingly, one of several questions most frequently asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking of spirituality for several generations we lack a clear, objective knowledge of specific things like spirits. Nowadays it’s really a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; the list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings from the thought of spirit despite the fact that both coincide, they aren’t exactly the same nevertheless they work for me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my very own practice and teaching, describes spirits included in all that exists. I am a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body to be able to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and for that reason offer an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we are essentially the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. Many of us are derived from this energy, exist there and resume it. It is in reality living this perspective allowing a shaman to experience the possible lack of separation between issues that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, including life and death or wellness disease.
My second knowledge of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and was very simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought the place to find me the key insight that we now have things from the psyche i usually do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their unique life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” It is a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it might feel to have interaction with spirit throughout a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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