Ask any passer-by on any street to describe shamanism along with the result might be blank stares. Most people are surprised to learn that shamanism isn’t a religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. More surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to many major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has been practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for about 40,000 a few years possibly a lot 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 directly from shamanic experience. We will no longer are now living in caves or perhaps really small communities whose members are known to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that section of us competent at fearing the dark and requesting aid from things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost 1 / 4 of your million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people easier still works today because, even though the world could possibly have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.

Ask that of a shaman is and the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or perhaps the word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, such a shaman is and does is just explained. In the Siberian Tungus language which produced the term, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and refers to someone creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered condition of consciousness to meet up with and help spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, within this experience of meeting spirits is always that there’s no separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing and also you reading these words, between a cat and dog, between life and death, between this apparently material reality and also the non-material realities of the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is typical currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists dealing with sub atomic theory, though of course it’s a predominantly physical, rather than a spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where most of us are only able to consider the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it from the experience of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Identified as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins because shaman redirects the main cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere in the brain to the correct, from the corpus collosum – that’s, from the structuring, organising hemisphere, to the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming most of traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will be assisted using percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, such as ayahuasca, are widely advertised under western culture as a way to assist alter consciousness, in reality approximately 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, the journey begins once the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your here and now and enters worlds visible just to her. These worlds, which vary each and every 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 between the worlds’ because they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Although often considered primitive or seen as ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, Psychedelics 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. Simultaneously they’re qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and offer the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to ask about for help, healing or information through the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences shows that a person’s mental abilities are hardwired to find out the ‘unseen’ and also the mystical; 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.

Obviously, one of several questions most frequently asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided considering spirituality for most generations we lack a specific, objective knowledge of specific things like spirits. These days 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, We have two understandings with the thought of spirit and though the 2 coincide, they’re not precisely the same and yet they work with me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits as part of everything exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual physical body to be able to use a human experience. The spirits I meet in my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus provide an existential overview unavailable in my experience, but we’re critically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments in the Great Spirit. Most of us are derived from this energy, exist inside it and come back to it. It really is living this attitude that allows a shaman to see the absence of separation between stuff that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or wellness disease.

My second comprehension of spirit is more psychological and archetypal and 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 you will find me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche that i don’t produce, but which produce themselves and still have their very own life. Philemon represented a force which has been not myself.” This can be a beautifully lucid explanation of methods it may feel to interact with spirit throughout a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the whole process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
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