Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result might be blank stares. Everybody is surprised to understand that shamanism is not an religion but the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. More surprising could be the discovery that it’s the precursor to many major world religions, such as Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it may be practised on every inhabited continent in the world not less than 40,000 years and possibly very much longer. Historically, shamanism was 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 from shamanic experience. We no longer reside in caves or perhaps in very small communities whose members are typical proven to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that portion of us capable of fearing the dark and asking for aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of a million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people a whole lot easier works today because, although world could have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.
Ask that of a shaman is and the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, what a shaman is and does is actually explained. Inside the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one who sees’ and refers to somebody capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness to get to know and assist spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, in this experience of meeting spirits is the fact that there is absolutely no 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 the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is usual currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists dealing with sub atomic theory, regarded course it’s a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where the majority of us are only able to look at 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 right onto your pathway begins because the shaman redirects the key cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain to the correct, through the corpus collosum – which is, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, towards the visualising, sensing one. Within the overwhelming most traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by way of percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a technique to help alter consciousness, in fact only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants this way. Metaphysically, your journey begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary with every culture and tradition worldwide, are called ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker involving the worlds’ since they’re 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 is felt, smelt and experienced as clearly because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they may be qualitative spaces, states to become that reflect and secure the cause of the shaman’s journey – to ask for help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research in the cognitive sciences suggests that a persons mental abilities are hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ and the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from 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 brought to shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for many generations we lack a clear, objective knowledge of such things as spirits. Today it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; their list is seemingly endless. Personally, We’ve two understandings in the notion of spirit despite the fact that both coincide, they are not the identical but they work with me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits included in all of 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 in my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus come with an existential overview unavailable to me, but we’re essentially the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments from the Great Spirit. Most of us originate from this energy, exist inside it and return to it. It really is living this angle allowing a shaman to experience the absence of separation between issues that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or health and disease.
My second idea of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simply explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his desire of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought where you can me the key insight that there are things within the psyche that i do not produce, but which produce themselves and also have their particular life. Philemon represented a force that has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of how it could feel to get with spirit within 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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