SHAMANISM AND THE COLLAPSE OF CERTAINTY

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I guess I can get a bit evangelical after a glass or two of wine, but what I think is this: that Shamanism brings everything back to Spirit, that there is a spirit in everything that is hard to define and that is certainly not part of any scientific theory, but which many of us sense.

And it's not about some kind of simple fundamentalism, like believing in Jesus, because it's not about believing in a person or a text, it's more about a simple intuition that the world is alive. An intuition that we are alive, and that what gives life meaning is simply about following what gives us that sense of aliveness.

That may not be easy, even though it is simple. It requires courage and effort and a commitment to following that thread within ourselves that is at the base of who we are, that is inspirational, and that may not conform to the personality we have built for ourselves, or that others expect us to be.

Watch American Beauty for a film on this theme, where Kevin Spacey is having a midlife crisis amongst successful advocates of the American Dream, and he is the sane one amidst people who think he is the one who has gone insane.

But back to Shamanism. It concerns the way of relating to the world of early peoples, and is based on 2 principles: that the natural world, including 'inanimate' matter is alive, and that we are part of it. And because everything has a spirit, it also has a reason for what it does.

I find this stripped back spirituality hard to argue with. You can add whatever rituals you like to it, but at bottom it comes back to these 2 principles. As I say, I suspect a lot of modern people feel this way too. They may be atheists, and more power to their elbow, because I don't believe either that we are being controlled by a guy in the sky.

The strange thing about the materialist-scientific-atheist position is that if you follow it through - if you are committed to truth, which for me underlies the Shamanic Path - then you cannot ignore the findings of quantum physics, which people have been ignoring for over 100 years now, and always will, because it does not supply simple certainties, which is what most people want, and we need to allow for that, whether or not they have 'higher education'. And an inescapable conclusion of quantum physics is that matter and consciousness cannot be separated, the observer influences the outcome; for some scientists, it is therefore inescapable that consciousness is primary, matter is secondary.

In other words, the world is alive, it is infused with consciousness. (In reality there is no such thing as 'consciousness', that is an abstraction that we mistake for a reality, as we often do: all there is, is the ongoing act of perception. Languages that emphasise verbs more than nouns understand this.)

So Shamanism, with its experience that the world is alive, but with no holy founders or books to give that perception authority, is very suited to the stripped-back point that many of us moderns find ourselves in: if you like, the Postmodern position, in which there are no longer any absolute certainties, and in which multiple viewpoints need to be given consideration, though not necessarily validity.

Philosophically, I suggest that Shamanism also finds a home within Phenomenology, a style of thought that emphasises consciousness, and the phenomena that appear within our ongoing acts of consciousness. The scientific way in which we have been 'educated' to think encourages us to think that there is an external, objective reality, which it is the object of science to explore.

But if we come back to experience, then that is all we truly have: the 'objective' world is just one more content of our subjective experience. The subjective (which is usually downgraded from a scientific point of view) is in fact all we have. An indigenous - or Shamanic - viewpoint acknowledges, rather than denies, this. As does Phenomenology.

So I guess this is my thesis tonight: that Shamanism is based on a simple, direct experience of the world, based as people used to be in a natural environment, and without the pressures to think and believe in the alienated ways that come from centuries of living in large, complex civilisations, whose belief systems reflect the need to keep large numbers of people under control. And where control and stability (which are necessary) can no longer be achieved through personal relationships, but require impersonal laws. I don't know the answer to this problem.

The position we find ourselves in is therefore in some ways parallel to that of early peoples, in that we live in a time when the old certainties provided by Christianity (and its secular successor Communism) have broken down, and all we are left with is our own immediate, unmediated experience. Which is a very natural place to be in.

We are still handicapped by the scientific brainwashing that says that the universe is dead, and that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of that inert matter. So there is that to overcome. But that doesn't have to be a big deal, because I think it is natural for us to experience the world as alive, we just need to tune into that.

So this is why I think that Shamanism is not just a special interest for people who can talk to spirits. That is a very narrow way of looking at the subject, and one that I think sometimes bedevils it through the methods of so-called 'core shamanism'.

Shamanism is a type of culture. Talking to the spirit world is a central part of that culture, but that can happen in so many different ways across the world. It is like saying that music is just about playing the piano, when there are all these other instruments, and others yet to be invented. And creating music does not happen on its own, it is part of a surrounding, and integral, culture. Shamanism also includes the cultures we find around it. Ritual and ceremony, whatever ways there are of honouring and praying to the spirits, are part of it. So let us be broad in our approach to Shamanism, and resist the attempts we sometimes see to turn it into a narrow, westernised fantasy.

We have an opportunity now, when the old certainties have broken down and we are left purely with our immediate experience, to see that as a fullness rather than as a lack, to return us closer to what we essentially are, than has been possible for a millenium.

We live in a time of free speech and freedom to live in the way we want. This is not the product of the inevitable march of 'progress' (Shamanism does not think in those terms. It thinks more in terms of wholeness, of being true to a balance within ourselves): it is, rather, a remarkable point of freedom that our large - and crazed - collectives find themselves in for now. So let us give thanks for that, while it lasts. The forces of conformity and ideology are always pressing in. They can come, as we know, from either political wing.

The inner work, the spirit work, is what really matters. So many of us have issues with authority. We see ourselves, or society, as victims of oppression and injustice, and make that our political focus. But believe me, we have it good, really good, from a historical perspective. Grab these moments of freedom while you can. As I say, give thanks for the remarkable freedoms that, for now, we have.

Stop identifying with one political party or the other, and demonising the one you don't vote for and particularly its leaders. All this is so ephemeral. Our job is to stand for something beyond all of that, not to be taking sides. Or to be fantasising about 'evil' cabals that are secretly controlling the world (a frequent failing of shamanic-intuitive types, who often cannot see what-is-what in the material world.) And to stand for the inner, the esoteric if you like. That will have a profound energetic effect, not just on ourselves, but on the world around us, though you will probably never know in what way.

An ongoing prayer: that is what I think we shamans are about, rather than direct - often polarising - action in this vast collective dream that is beyond our ken (though that can have its place, and maybe it is to do with temperament.)