Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism as well as 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 this planet. More surprising will be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority of major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for at least 40,000 many possibly quite definitely 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 world with carved and painted images drawn from shamanic experience. We will no longer reside in caves or even in very small communities whose members are typical known to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our mind, that a part of us capable of fearing the dark and getting help from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of your million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, even though world might have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask what a shaman is and the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or maybe the word ‘witchdoctor’. In fact, such a shaman is and does is actually explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the individual who sees’ and identifies someone capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness in order to meet and work with spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, in this connection with meeting spirits is there’s no separation between anything that is: no separation between me writing and you reading these words, from your cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is usual currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists dealing with sub atomic theory, regarded course this is a predominantly physical, instead of a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where the majority of us could only think about the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it with the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.
Called a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your journey begins as the shaman redirects the principal cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere with the brain right, over the corpus collosum – which is, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming most of traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ is going to be assisted by the use of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a means to help alter consciousness, in reality approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants in this manner. Metaphysically, right onto your pathway begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition around the world, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the realm of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to the worlds’ since they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Although often considered primitive or seen as a ‘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 could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly as this ‘ordinary’ reality. Simultaneously they are qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and keep the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to ask about for help, healing or information from the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences shows that the human brain is hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ and 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.
Obviously, one of many questions normally asked by students being introduced to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking of spirituality for a lot of generations we lack a specific, objective knowledge of such things as spirits. Currently it’s a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings from the concept of spirit despite the fact that the two coincide, they aren’t the identical and yet they work with me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my personal practice and teaching, describes spirits in all that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body as a way to have a human experience. The spirits I meet in my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore offer an existential overview unavailable to me, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. All of us originate from this energy, exist there and return to it. It is actually living this attitude allowing a shaman to see having less separation between stuff that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example 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 as part of his autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought the place to find me the key insight that you have things in the psyche i do not produce, but which produce themselves and still have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” It is a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it can feel to have interaction 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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