by Jonathan Horwitz ©
Introduction
"Shamanic States of Consciousness" is more than just a label to
describe the changing states of consciousness the shaman experiences
as he travels on his journey to, through, and from the Spirit World .
It is also the consciousness that resides within the shaman at all times. It
is also a part of the greater consciousness to which we are all connected at
all times. One of the great and beautiful mysteries of life is that we all
share the same consciousness, and each of us manifests it so differently.
The shaman's path is but one way to consciously come closer with awareness
to that consciousness.
Preparing for the Journey
The shamanic seance, as I and many others have experienced it, has basically
three phases: the preparation, the journey, and the return.
Already from the first steps of the preparation, the shaman's state of
consciousness starts to change, as awareness of the intimacy of the Spirits
expands. I use the word "expand" because, for me, that is
what it feels like, as if there is more in my chest, in my body, than there
is room for, and yet, at the same time, there is room enough. It is in this
deepening consciousness that the would-be journeyer to the Spirits
formulates precisely why she is going to the Other World. What is the
errand, the mission, what is the reason for contacting the Spirits? Although
my ordinary reality consciousness has only started to change, this change is
enough for me to clear away much of the everyday busyness which could
otherwise clutter my vision, cutting down on my concentration for the
mission at hand.
Lighting the sacred fire, setting up the alter, and washing the sacred
objects in smoke are all a part of the preparation, but what is also
going on is that I am becoming more and more aware of the Spirits, and as
their nearness becomes more and more tangible, so does my mission,
whether I be asking for help for others, or for myself. It is my experience
that I should be as clear as possible in my intentions: without clarity of
intention, one can easily return from a journey knowing that something has
happened, but not knowing what it was, as Alice experienced with her
adventures in Wonderland. This is also what can happen when the goal is
simply to experience the ecstasy of the shaman, but the ecstasy is only the
doorway to the world of the Spirits, while the intention is the key to
understanding.
However, there are some interesting and seemingly paradoxical aspects to
this. For example, sometimes when I get to my spirit helpers and tell them
why I have come, the mission which comes out of my mouth is not necessarily
the same as the one that I so carefully formulated before I left my body.
The reasons for this are mainly that when I first formulate the mission,
even though my consciousness has already started to change, I am still in
fairly close contact with, and influenced by, my own personal desires
concerning my life, my hopes, my fears, or, if I am working for someone
else, the life circumstances of that person who has come to me for help.
However, when I cross the threshold into the spirit world there is a shift,
and for each threshold I cross after that there are further shifts. The
deeper I get away from my own ordinary reality the further I leave my
ego-self behind. The result being that when finally I get to my teachers and
helpers in the spirit world to ask my question, my original and mundane view
of the situation is changed into a more universal perspective, and I am
shown what I need to see instead of what I thought I wanted to know.
It often happens that the mission I start with is very appropriate, but even
so, the response of the Spirits can be very surprising, as I once
experienced in a healing ceremony. Illness can happen when what seems
to be separation, or blockage, comes into the flow of life. The shaman works
together with his spirits to remove those blockages. In this particular
case, I was working with a woman who had been suffering from colitis, and
unsuccessfully treated medically, for two years. Doing the diagnostic
work I could see that there was a huge python coiled in her lower intestine.
The python told me that it was the woman's spirit-helper, and that it had
been unsuccessfully trying to get her attention for some time. I was told by
my teacher to remove the python and put it into a special stone I had, and
then give the stone to the woman. This I did. Thereby the woman not
only became aware of the python and its benevolent intentions, but she could
also communicate directly with it by holding the stone in her hand. While
removing the python from her intestine, it told me that it wanted the woman
to seek and to come into contact with her own spiritual path. I delivered
this message to her. At the time of the work, I had no personal
knowledge of the woman. After the healing, she told me that her parents were
from India. She had been raised a Hindu, but did not have a serious
religious or spiritual practice, and was in fact a psychologist working in
the psychiatric ward of a hospital in an industrial city. Two months later I
received a letter from her, telling me that that since the healing ceremony
she had had absolutely no symptoms of the illness. She also wrote that
during her holiday she had visited an uncle who was a guru. Her uncle
had giver her the same message as the python - to seek her spiritual path.
The Spirits
At this point, it is fitting that we look at "the Spirits,"
especially as we are examining something so unknown as consciousness,
the Great Mystery. In the past I have often described
"spirits" as being bundles of the energy/power of the Universe
which present themselves to us in ways which we can understand (if we
are so inclined). To this, I would like to add Richard Noll's comment that
Spirits "can be thought of as ego-alien currents that step forward from
the shadows of the 'not-I' to introduce new information to the individual
who cannot access this information while in an ordinary state of waking
consciousness (1987:48-49)." Spirits are certainly agents of
change, as many of us come to find out sooner or later, and the change which
the shaman undergoes at initiation is certainly testimony of this. But most
importantly, the spirits are the agents of the change which make shamanism
possible: no spirits, no shamanism. I feel that it is especially important
to remember this in this day and "new" age where so many would try
to make shamanism socially acceptable, and turn it into another form of
psychotherapy. Of course, it is a form of psychotherapy, the oldest form
that exists, but that is only the surface. Beneath the surface is the
spiritual discipline and practice which come from the teachings of the
Spirits.
The Journey
The shaman's journey is often seen as a metaphor. This point of view
is handy for those with no direct experience of the shamanic journey, or who
wish to explain or understand the shamanic journey from within the
narrow framework of our time and culture, and, indeed, it is clear
that the Spirits often seem to communicate with what we call metaphor.
However, the shamanic journey is much more than metaphor.
The shaman has spirit helpers. The Spirits are not metaphors of
anything. The shaman works by asking the spirits for help. Some of the keys
for doing shamanic work are knowing how to ask for help, knowing what to ask
for, being able to receive the help offered, and being able to bring the
help back home with all its power and depth. The journey begins when the
shaman steps into the spirit world, and this generally happens while the
shaman calls to her spirit helpers, guides, and teachers, asking for their
help, as in this incantation of Ghindia, a shaman of the Orochee of eastern
Siberia:
"I am a poor woman. There is nothing that would
distinguish me from any other woman in our village. I was a poor orphan. I
was a deserted girl. My parents died very early. I do not remember my
mother. My youth was hard; my childhood was without joy and my girlhood
lonely. My relatives reared me. I have always worked hard. I was just a poor
woman, but thou noticed me. Thou, powerful spirit, chose me, a poor woman. I
became thy servant . thy humble worker. Thou didst not dislike to
enter into me. My body was pleasant for thee . Thou didst choose me
and I became a shamaness. Without thee I am only a poor woman. With
thy assistance I am powerful. All people respect me; all buseu [lesser
evil spirits] fear me. I am thy servant . thy messenger, thy worker. I have
entertained thee with my singing and dancing. My drum frightens thine
enemies. The clanging of my belt scares them away. . I have prepared food
for thee. Thy favorite dishes are ready. Come, my master, I am ready
to receive thee. Come, come!" (Lopatin , 1940-41. Anthropos
35-36:354-55. Italics added).
The deeper the shaman journeys, the closer he comes to the essence of
his power - the power of the Universe - both metaphorically and literally.
Metaphorically in that the journey takes him further and further away from
the reality of his daily life where he started, literally because the
experienced separation between him and the essential Power of the Universe
dissolves, until, in some cases, there is no separation.
The World of the Spirits
In accounts gathered from shamans in traditional cultures and experiences of
shamanic practitioners in modern western societies, it is clear that the
geography of the spirit world is extensive. These areas are often referred
to as the Upper World, Middle World, and Lower World of the shaman's
universe. Changes in them, which can be horizontal, vertical,
multi-directional, and even multi-dimensional, often seem to be synchronous
with ever deepening changes in the journeyer's consciousness. Some
practitioners feel that one travels to the Lower World to get power, healing
knowledge or primal energy, to the Middle World for practical advice and
help, and to the Upper World for answers to the great or existential
questions which Life gives us. These guidelines should be looked at as rules
of thumb, as even in traditional societies there are shaman specialists who
journey only to certain areas of the spirit world under specific
circumstances and for specific reasons.
The shaman experiences many shifts in consciousness during the journey.
As mentioned before, these shifts can occur with changes of location and/or
dimension in the spirit world, but there is no limit to the depth of the
shamanic journey, or to the changes of consciousness experienced by the
journeyer. For example, embodying a spirit helper is a wonderfully
empowering experience and involves a total reorientation. It can also happen
that the shaman enters into the body of one of his spirit helpers and
experiences the Universe from that spirit's being, while at the same time
maintaining her own awareness. With each of these changes the shaman's
experience of consciousness expands. Some people even experience dying
and death during the journey. Once, on one of my courses, an anthropologist,
close to seventy years old, died. Fortunately, his wife, who had died some
years before, knew that his time was not at hand and, after a deeply moving
reunion, sent him back. When he finally returned to the world of the
living he told us that when he realized that he was dead he did feel a
detached concern because of all the trouble his death would cause for me and
the course organizer. But now he was dead and that was that. But for him,
there was no question - he had died and gone to heaven: it was not a
"near-death experience", it was an experience of death.
But even deeper changes in consciousness than death are possible, and these
are not unheard of, even for practitioners with a modern western cultural
background. These experiences go beyond what we call today
"visualization" or "imagery." They include all the
senses, and sometimes even go way beyond the senses, for example, the
experience of becoming unified with what I refer to as the Power of the
Universe. To experience this is to go beyond knowing, beyond awareness, and
beyond death. This is to go into the essence of being, into what some
would call consciousness.
Animism
The animistic way of moving through life - that is, recognizing that
everything is alive - is the foundation of shamanism. It is also the basis
for understanding consciousness. Jaime de Angulo quotes one of his Pit River
Indian friends as saying to him,
"Every thing is alive, even the rocks, even that bench
you are sitting on. Somebody made that bench for a purpose, didn't
he. Well, then, it's alive, isn't it? Everything is alive. That's
what we Indians believe. White people think everything is dead.."
(Indian Tales. P.242).
To further the point de Angulo noted:
"The spirit of wonder, the recognition of life as power,
as a mysterious, ubiquitous concentrated form of non-material energy, of
something loose about the world and contained in a more or less
condensed degree by every object, - that is the credo of the Pit River
Indian (AA, ns, 28, 1926:354. The Background of the Religious Feeling in a
Primitive Tribe)."
These two statement capture the essence of the animistic experience
of life.
Further, to the point, Frank Cushing points out that
"The Ashiwi, or Zuñis, suppose the sun, moon, and
stars, the sky, earth, and sea . and all inanimate objects, as well as
plants, animals, and men, to belong to one great system of all-conscious
and interrelated life (italics added).. In this system of life the
starting point is man, the most finished, yet the lowest organism; at least,
the lowest because the most dependent and least mysterious.. all
supernatural beings, men, animals, plants, and many objects in nature are
regarded as personal existences, and are included in the one term á-hâ-i
= Life, [or] the Beings ( Cushing, Frank, 1883: 9 bid.11)."
Surrender
At this point in my life, I define shamanism as a spiritual
discipline which enables one to directly contact, use, and willingly be used
by the spirit power of the Universe, generally for the purpose of
healing or restoring balance in some way. Although shamanism is defined
by culture, the ability to shamanize is a natural human endowment . The
shaman is someone who is chosen by the Spirits to represent them in the
material world. The shaman learns to call his spirit helpers and
teachers when necessary, and to send his soul out to journey to the world of
the spirits. The shaman's mission is to ask for help from his spirits and to
bring the help back to the material world.
Thus, the shaman is a servant of the people and a servant of the Spirits at
the same time. Being a servant of the people and a servant of the Spirits at
the same time is not an easy job, as Ghindia's invocation indicates. It
often does not leave much room for the individualism we pay so much homage
to in the western world. The shaman is often required to make a pact with
the spirits, which often contains certain taboos. If one will be a powerful
shaman, this can only happen with the participation of the Spirits, and this
calls for surrender.
The Return
But what happens to the shaman after his return from the spirit world?
Up until now, we have been talking about shamanic states of consciousness
only in relation to the shamanic journey. My first teacher (in ordinary
reality) of shamanism used to say that a shaman is a shaman only when he is
shamanising. From one point of view this is true enough, but it is not the
only truth. The path of the shaman is a spiritual path, no matter
which state of consciousness he is in. If the shaman wanders too far from
the path, from the dictates of his spirit helpers and teachers, he risks
losing them. The Spirits are constantly a part of his daily awareness, and
this has an effect on his ordinary reality consciousness. It also has
an effect on how others regard him. As Don Handelman (1972) so
perspicaciously points out, most people who do not have direct recourse to
the spirit world fear the shaman simply on the basis of his ready access to
the Spirits (84-101).
The more the power of the Spirits flows through her, the more powerful the
shaman becomes, as long as the power is used properly; that is, as defined
by the Spirits. After initiation, perhaps the most important teaching from
the Spirits for the would-be shaman is how to live with power in her own
daily life in a way which is acceptable to the shaman and acceptable to
the society she lives in. Without learning these teachings, the neophyte
risks insanity, or, perhaps worse, being feared as a lunatic, or merely
dismissed as a neurotic. These teachings are necessary because the more she
works with the Spirits, the more conscious the shaman becomes: more
conscious of the spirits as entities, or containers, of the power of the
universe, and therefore more conscious of the energy/power of the Universe,
and more aware that the energy/power of the Universe is the power that is in
her, and that it is the source of - and the same as - her own power, her
own deep consciousness. With this realization comes the knowing that
there is no separation between the power of the individual, the individual's
consciousness, the power of the Universe, and Universal consciousness. They
are one and the same. In other words, as one of my teachers in
this reality once told me, "Everything that's me isn't ME."
Conclusion
Non-recognition of the animistic nature of the Universe is one of the major
stumbling blocks which keeps western science from understanding
consciousness. If we think everything is dead, we separate everything from
us. With this point of view it is very difficult to investigate
consciousness except as something removed from our own being. From the very
little I've learned it seems clear that the place to start to study
consciousness is from the inside, that is, from my own connection to
consciousness. Something so beautiful, so deep, so all-encompassing as
consciousness cannot be fully studied with only a western scientific
approach. The scientists of the East have been studying consciousness for
several thousands of years, and shamans, by moving into and with shamanic
states of consciousness, have been studying consciousness for perhaps
a hundred thousand years or more. The results of these studies clearly show
the inter-relationship of life and consciousness. Life is consciousness.
Everything is alive. Everything has consciousness, and it is this
consciousness which joins us all together.
This paper was originally written
for the meeting of
the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness
held in Tucson, Arizona, April, 2000
Literature cited:
Cushing, Frank H. (1883): Zuñi Fetiches. Second Annual
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Washington, DC. (Reprinted KC
Publications, Las Vegas,
Nevada. 1987)
Di Angulo, Jaimi (1926): The Background of Religious Feeling in a
Primitive Tribe. American Anthropologist, ns.
Di Angulo, Jaimi (1953): Indian Tales. New York
Handelman, Don (1972): Aspects of the Moral Compact of a Washo
Shaman. Anthropological Quarterly, 45,2. Washinton DC
Lopatin, Ivan A. (1940-41): A Shamanistic Performance to Regain the
Favor of the Spirit. Anthropos 35-36. Freiburg
Noll, Richard (1987): The Presence of Spirits in Magic and Madness.
In Nicholson, Shirley (ed.) Shamanism, An Expanded View of Reality. Wheaton,
Ill.
Thank you to Jonathan Horwitz for kind permission to copy
this article.
http://shaman-center.dk/
