Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result is going to be blank stares. Many people are surprised to understand that shamanism is not a religion but the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on the planet. Even more surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to most major world religions, like the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it has become practised on every inhabited continent on this planet for at least 40,000 years and possibly a lot 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 directly from shamanic experience. We not live in caves or even in really small communities whose members are common proven to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but the brain, that section of us capable of fearing the dark and requesting the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 1 / 4 of the million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people less difficult works today because, even though world might have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask that of a shaman is and the question may evoke a couple of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. Actually, that of 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 a person capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities during an altered state of consciousness in order to meet and use spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience with meeting spirits is always that there is absolutely no separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing and you reading these words, from a cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and the non-material realities with the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is usual currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working together with sub atomic theory, regarded course it is a predominantly physical, rather than spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where most of us can only look at the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it from the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your way begins as the shaman redirects the principal cognitive process through the left cerebral hemisphere from the brain to the right, with the corpus collosum – that’s, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming most of traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will be assisted through percussive sound, for example drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a technique to aid alter consciousness, actually only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, right onto your pathway begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from the present and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary each and every culture and tradition worldwide, are referred to as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to the worlds’ as they are the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as an ‘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 could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they’re qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and offer the basis for the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research inside the cognitive sciences shows that a person’s mental faculties are hardwired to determine the ‘unseen’ and also the mystical; even Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds of the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly a natural part of human perception.
Not surprisingly, one of the questions normally asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking about spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a clear, objective comprehension of things such as spirits. Nowadays it’s really a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, We have two understandings with the thought of spirit reality both coincide, they’re not precisely the same but they benefit 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 to be able to have a very human experience. The spirits I meet on my small ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore provide an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we’re basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. Most of us originate from this energy, exist inside it and come back to it. It is actually living this perspective that enables a shaman to experience having less separation between issues that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or health insurance disease.
My second idea of spirit is a bit 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 you will find me the important insight that you have things inside the psyche that i usually do not produce, but which produce themselves and still have their particular life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of methods it can feel to get with spirit during 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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