Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism and also the result will likely be blank stares. Most people are surprised to understand that shamanism is not an religion however the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on the planet. Even more surprising could be the discovery that it is the precursor to many major world religions, like the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which has been practised on every inhabited continent on earth for at least 40,000 many 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 around the world with carved and painted images drawn straight from shamanic experience. We not are now living in caves or perhaps in tiny communities whose members are common seen to us. Most of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our mind, that section of us competent at fearing the dark and asking for the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of your million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people easier still works today because, although the world might have changed, fundamentally we haven’t.

Ask exactly what a shaman is along with the question may evoke a few words about Native American ‘medicine men’ and the word ‘witchdoctor’. The truth is, that of a shaman is and does is simply explained. Within the Siberian Tungus language which produced the phrase, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one who sees’ and refers to an individual capable of making a ‘journey’ to alternate realities whilst in an altered condition of consciousness to meet up with and use spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, with this connection with meeting spirits is the fact that there is 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 of the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists utilizing sub atomic theory, regarded course it is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists making the effort to describe. However, where many of us could only think about the thought of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the example of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Called a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms your journey begins because shaman redirects the key cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain to the right, with the corpus collosum – that is, from your structuring, organising hemisphere, for the visualising, sensing one. Inside the overwhelming majority of traditions all over the world this ‘breakthrough’ will be assisted using percussive sound, like drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, including ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a method to help you alter consciousness, in reality no more than 10% of traditional shamans use plants in this manner. Metaphysically, the journey begins when the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible simply to her. These worlds, which vary with each and every culture and tradition all over the world, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the an entire world of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker relating to 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, 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 because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they may be qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and offer the reason for the shaman’s journey – to ask for help, healing or information from the spirits. Contemporary research from the cognitive sciences implies that the human mental faculties are hardwired to determine the ‘unseen’ along with the mystical; even the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds of the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.

Not surprisingly, among the questions most often 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 comprehension 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; the list is seemingly endless. Personally, We have two understandings with the concept of spirit and though the two coincide, they aren’t the identical and yet they work for me. The main Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits as part of all of that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body in order to use a human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and therefore provide an existential overview unavailable if you ask me, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. All of us originate from this energy, exist within it and resume it. It is in reality living this attitude which allows a shaman to have the lack of separation between things that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or wellness disease.

My second idea of spirit is a lot more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his personal experience of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the crucial insight there are things within the psyche that we don’t produce, but which produce themselves and still have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself.” This is a beautifully lucid explanation of methods it may feel to have interaction with spirit after 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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