CONTINUED FROM ST. LAWRENCE 9 9-24-25
The shaman believes that every illness is the result of acting or living in a way incompatible with psychic or physical needs. He must respect and nurture his powers.
The shaman must continually keep his balance and never allow himself to be distracted by tempting desires, greed, envy, hatred, or false hopes. He must stand by his inner truth, lest his powers turn on him and destroy him.
“Somewhere there must be primordial forms whose images are ideas. If we could see them, we would understand existence, and the connection between mind and matter.
Caves are places of safety and refuge, mystery. It is in the underground, where earth and water meet, that a man may marry mystery and power.
Deep in the heart of the earth, down a pit, or in a cave, the shaman may acquire his powers and spirit allies. His mind is there opened. “Whoever reaches the heart of being by penetrating to the very center of the being, partakes of the whole”.
Elves, and men of light exist in underworld creations. Occasionally a seeker will find his way into the lower world and alliance with its creatures. These creature will then guide and empower the initiate.
The dance of the underworld, or celestial, beings is timeless, transpersonal, and full of joy and bliss. For great joy pervades the rhythms and harmonies at the center of cosmic vitality.
Definition: abreaction. The emotional release of a patient, who to a therapist, puts into words an idea he has been repressing.
Phenomena of light are characteristic of all mystic experience, and part of the process of transpersonal change. Encounter with beings or spirits of light, bearers of light, is common as well.
There is a transforming light at the end of the tunnel. In an OBE, for existence.
Light is synonymous for holiness, enlightenment, wholeness, health. All manifestations of light bring about changes in us. They acquaint us with spiritual reality.
The radiance of the shaman reaches out to the realm of the dead. Through radiance the shaman teaches and heals. Through inner light he sees things, events, souls, that are hidden from others.
Illumination may also affect reality, providing for an abundant harvest and hunt, or the healing of disease and protection from enemies.
Sometimes the soul itself is called the body of light. The powerful shamans soul is shining with healing and knowledge. He reflects the non-terrestrial light of the mystical realm. He sometimes absorbs crystals, and unites with primordial powers.
Illumination leads to an expansion of psychic capabilities, and entry into another dimension of existence and perception.
Lightning, like a crystal, can also bring about a spiritual illumination. Inner luminosity is often preceded by a visible physical phenomena of light, such as a fireball, lightning, pillars of fire, a figure of light, or simply a light beam. However, balls of light, or fireballs, are the weapons of evil sorcerers as well.+.
A shaman whose light fades becomes ill. And he who loses his light will die soon after.
In Hawaii, flying balls of fire are said to be especially common, caused by black magic.
Inner lumination will arise suddenly, without warning, after long periods of diligent sacrifice. This is universal, mystical, and ancient.
Spiritual experiences of light occur after ego collapse, rigorous sacrifice, or intense concentration, and meditation. They are supreme phenomenae.
There is an initiation where a tree is circled nine times as it is climbed by the teacher, initiate, and the other celebrants.
The world tree is a symbol of cosmic experience, upon which Gods and mortals ascend and descend. In some cultures there are World Mountains, or World Pillars. Ladders, ropes, or cords in others.
A shaman is made by marking with his symbol a special tree on a mountain top, the center of creation and the zenith of power.
PORTALS:
One Siberian shaman related, “As I looked, I noticed a hole in the earth. The hole became larger and larger. We descended through it and arrived at a river.” And with this vision of the river of the dead began his journey into the beyond. Spirits too need a place of entry.
A sick man was guided by the spirits into the underworld. There he was defecated upon by spirit animals. These animals asked what he wanted. The sick man then said he desired to be healed. Thereupon the animals held a great celebration, and the man recovered his health. When he reappeared at his village, all the people were overjoyed. “He who was sick has returned to us whole”, they said. He told them everything that happened, and was amazed when they said he had been gone three years, for he thought he had been gone only three days. The world of expanded consciousness is subject to a different time scale.
For tribal people, life is a vital energy that comes directly from the Creator of Being.
Spirit helpers and power objects may help contact with the creator.
Contact with greater or lesser gods is facilitated with psychoactive drugs. This divine contact informs where game can be found, or when to carry out an important fishing trip.
A shaman is intimately connected with the well being of the planet. He is able to let the vital energy of more powerful Givers of Life pass through him to his people. He understands deeply natural processes, and their relationship to man.
The shaman must overcome fears and dangers, dangers that reflect the dissolution of ego, to achieve his powers.
The biologist may have loving empathy for life, but the shaman is way ahead of the scientist. For the scientist seeks explanation, while the shaman seeks oneness, integration, living in and through the mystical forces of all life.
Sit in meditation, crystal in hand.
Crystals are universal symbols of enlightenment and divine light. They are used in healing, exorcism, for clairvoyance, and to infuse the shaman with inner light and power.
“Fanny danced for five days, inside the sweat lodge, and only after vomiting up something was she able to dance with all her strength, and true abandon”. +.
“The path of the mystic is always one of suffering. Not only because of the asceticism
Involved, but above all, because of the great pain that disentangling the personal ego involves”.
A shamanic technique may be anything that disrupts and confuses the normal stream of thoughts, the habitual experience of emotions, and ordinary psychological processes, and then produces a new rhythmic pattern. Such techniques are universally employed by all shamanic schools, secret societies, and orders of healers. Dancing is a profound way of restructuring consciousness, and thereby entering another world.
Dancing is one of the oldest and most effective ways of inducing psychic clarity, and cleansing the consciousness. Dancing, with fasting, is a powerful way of entering a transcendental state.
The rhythm of life, a cosmic vitality at the very source of life processes.
The initiate learns the songs and dances of the other worlds. He uses them when he needs to summon up his powers. Sharing these powers of enlightenment is the call of the shamanic life.
Enlightenment is sacred knowledge. It is also light within. It is also the expulsion or the extrication of darkness or disease. Life, in other words, is an endless celebration, an eternal dance.
The shaman’s song of power, and the ecstatic, trance inducing dance demonstrate the true power of rhythm and sound. Song and dance can bring about a change of consciousness that brings us closer to the source of life.
“The meaning of medium ship is balance”. There must be equilibrium of physical, mental, and spiritual strength and balance. The shaman must be motivated in selflessness.
The imbalanced shaman, egotistical or sinful, risks the fire of hell.
“When the anthropologists arrive, the gods leave the island”.
Enlightenment is to die, but in another sense it is to wake up and find the “I”, the real self, pervades the universe and all other beings. To find that the mountains, and the seas and the stars, are part of one’s body, and that one’s soul is in touch with the soul of all creatures.
The idea is again proposed that man uses only a small bit of his potential.
Mysticism is considered to be a genuine union with reality.
Plato compares everyday consciousness with a boat whose captain and navigator have been locked below deck, and the remaining crew is weak minded. A person must be freed from the endless flow of thoughts to achieve a higher state.
Vomiting, the sweat lodge, smoke, fasting, prayer, and sacrifices are techniques used to free a mind from the endless succession of thoughts, and obsession with material possessions.
“All spirituality aims at the surrender of the ego and the discovery of cosmic unity, a trans-individual cosmic self.”
Surrendering in prayer, offerings, rites and ceremonies frees us from greed lust and egocentricity. One learns a new way of experiencing the world.
It is hard, because of dreams, inner dialogue, imagination, creativity, etc. to determine where ordinary consciousness ends and altered state begin.
Science needs to evolve to the point of accepting the existence and importance of altered states.+.
Altered states are invoked in 58%of all cultures. They are used to generate harmony and coherence, ally the strength of tradition, teach, empower, control reality, contact other dimensions, aid in self discovery, and help transcend time and space.
The search for psychic power and joy is one of mankind’s most ancient motivations.
Maslow describes a healthy person as non-manipulative, not interfering, not abstracting, without expectation or demands. This person would have a great love for the world, seeing it objectively and without distortions. He would be free from subjective projections.
Supreme creativity and peak experience are identical.
He is free of strategies, fear, defensiveness, and inhibition.
Failure, depression, and hopelessness can generate an inspired or mystical state as well.
Abraham Maslow believed modern scientific thought is presumptuous, leaving out the spiritual and phenomenal and declaring itself the only true way.
Comment on the quote, “When the scientists arrive, the Gods leave”.
With mainline scientists employing Cartesian, Newtonian, and discursive thought processes, there is a predisposition toward the denial of anything that cannot be observed as physical change. In other words scientists deny anything that cannot be touched weighed or measured.
Unfortunately, the whole realm of psychic, spiritual, experience is alive in a realm that is not easily measured or diagrammed. The realm of the phenomenal or spiritual is not observable to anyone who is not predisposed to spiritual experience.
Doubt acts as a force inhibiting the flow of spirit, and its manifestations. Jesus was inhibited by the doubt of his contemporaries. When he was innately capable of great miracles, in his own hometown, he was almost powerless.
A self realized, growth motivated person will have more transpersonal experiences, be more creative, expressive, will have richer emotions, and be capable of genuine empathy with his fellow man.
The realized person will have a strong sense of “I”, which he can easily transcend. He will be able to solve his problems in a contemplative and meditative manner. He will have love for the world. Time and space are forgotten. Self realization is a state marked by awe, modesty, and wonder.
Maslow believes psychology is transcending it’s limitations, is coming to grips with the transpersonal and the phenomenal. A new view of man’s expanding limitations is evolving.
There is a great similarity in all cultures, worldwide. Shamanism has much in common with all other mystical disciplines as well. The shamanic view is part of a universal mystical tradition.
Shamanism plays the same role in tribal cultures as does mysticism in Buddhism and Christianity.
Science cannot recreate the feeling of sacredness that pervades an altered state. Nor can scientists clearly understand the shaman’s metaphorical retellings of an altered state experience.
Religion is not the telling of a spiritual experience, as the terrain is not the map.
The text suggests that those who study this realm should be both shaman and scientist, adept in two worlds.
The scientist should experiment with psycho-active drugs, fasting, prayer, and the search for visions. The ethnologist should become an apprentice of the shaman, combining scientific curiosity with mystical seeking.+.
The more we manage to close the gap between the scientist and the shaman, the closer we
come to a truly transpersonal , and transcultural science.
A true ethnological science would feed upon western thoughts and methods as well as sensitively opening of the self to the reality of shamanic mysticism.
The text restates the limitations inherent in western scientific research methods and the patterns of western thought.
Western science has no map that shows the exact location of indefinable, unknown, parapsychic phenomena. Science, based on the normal state of consciousness, is inadequate for the examination of altered states.
The scientific principles of a continuous flow of time, and a stream of consciousness, are inadequate for a study of non-ordinary realities. Realities where thoughtless space and timelessness are realities.
In conclusion, science is just beginning to grasp how to research non-western frames of awareness. As ones frame of awareness will determine how we experience our reality.
The book referred to here, in this essay, comes to a close saying, “too much think about white man, no more can find dream”.
Tribal cultures are rapidly disappearing. A question is whether or not shamanism will keep its potency as it is passed onto new generations. Will shamanism be understood by, and become a positive force for future generations? Will a whole, healthy, and holy adaptation of shamanism survive to contribute to the societies of the world in the coming generations? +.