Ask any passer-by on any street to explain shamanism and the result might be blank stares. Most people are surprised to find out that shamanism is not an religion nevertheless the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology on this planet. Much more surprising may be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority of major world religions, including the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, which continues to be practised on every inhabited continent on the planet for around 40,000 years and possibly very much 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 worldwide with carved and painted images drawn directly from shamanic experience. We no longer are now living in caves or perhaps really small communities whose members are all proven to us. Many people live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but the brain, that a part of us competent at fearing the dark and seeking the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost one fourth of your million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people that much easier works today because, although the world could have changed, fundamentally we’ve not.

Ask that of a shaman is along with the question may evoke a number of words about Native American ‘medicine men’ and the word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, that of a shaman is and does is simply explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and refers to an individual creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities when it’s in an altered state of consciousness in order to meet and help spirit helpers. Exactly what the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this connection with meeting spirits is there is absolutely no separation between whatever is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from your dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities from the spirit worlds. This concept of ‘oneness’ is common currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists working together with sub atomic theory, though of course this is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists are attempting to describe. However, where most of us can only think about the notion of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it from the experience of the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Called a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms right onto your pathway begins because the shaman redirects the main cognitive process in the left cerebral hemisphere in the brain off to the right, over the corpus collosum – that’s, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. Within the overwhelming tastes traditions around the globe this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted by the use of percussive sound, such as drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, like ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the western world as a means to aid alter consciousness, in fact only about 10% of traditional shamans use plants like this. Metaphysically, your journey begins if the shaman’s consciousness shifts from your present and enters worlds visible only to her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition worldwide, are described as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the whole world 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 seen 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 could be felt, smelt and experienced as clearly because this ‘ordinary’ reality. At the same time they’re qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and keep the basis for the shaman’s journey – to ask about for help, healing or information through the spirits. Contemporary research inside the cognitive sciences shows that the human being brain is hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ and also the mystical; 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, among the questions most regularly asked by students being shown shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking about spirituality for most generations we lack a specific, objective knowledge of things like spirits. Today 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, I’ve two understandings with the thought of spirit even though both coincide, they aren’t the same but they help me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own practice and teaching, describes spirits in all of that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body to be able to have a human experience. The spirits I meet on my own ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and thus have an existential overview unavailable to me, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments in the Great Spirit. Most of us result from this energy, exist within it and go back to it. It is in reality living this attitude that allows a shaman to experience having less separation between items that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, such as life and death or health insurance disease.

My second understanding of spirit is much more psychological and archetypal and it was very simply 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 key insight there are things from the psyche which I don’t produce, but which produce themselves and have their very own life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself.” It is a beautifully lucid explanation of precisely how it might feel to interact 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.
For more details about Psychedelics you can check this internet page: visit site