Death as an Altered State (Ally)mirror_trigger_NDEs.pdf

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Alexander Skelton

Shamanic Death

Death as an Altered State (Ally)/mirror/trigger

NDEs

This paper is meant to serve as an exploration as well as an ambassadorial membrane between

the concentric conceptual circles of western scientific/cultural relations of death (with its linear endpoint

reasoning) along with the traditional and into modern shamanic perspectives on the realm of death,

involving the manners with which one should relate to it. The primer for this discussion would

undoubtedly be an understanding of death as a mirror through which one comes to know, understand,

and grow from one’s life. However, in order to truly understand such a dialogue, we must first illustrate

the less understood side of the picture by fleshing out a modern definition of shamans and their function

as they are and have been.

First and foremost, it should be understood that traditions like shamanism, the Dao, or

Buddhism are not necessarily religious systems, such as those of a JudeoChristian understanding,

where one is stuck within a dogmatic system but instead are more tuned to ways of relating to life (such

as the Dao, whose translation happens to be “The way”) and as such cannot be understood within the

same framework. For this reason I choose to adopt a Jungian view towards a definition of of ‘religion’

(workable in both a personal and interpersonal way):

Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of the mind which could be

formulated in accordance with the original use of the word religio, which

means a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors

that are conceived as “powers”: spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals,

or whatever name man has given to such factors in his world as he has

found powerful, dangerous, or helpful enough to be taken into careful

consideration, or grand, beautiful, and meaningful enough to be devoutly

worshiped and loved. (qtd. in Jironet)

This definition of religion is valuable as it limits the notion to a peculiar attitude of the mind, not

the practices or rituals that accompany it. But while we are adopting a Jungian view, I would like to

add the slight bifurcation of the thoughtchannel by adding a note that states/attitudes of mind produce

changes in individual rituals and practice in a reciprocal fashion. People’s beliefs and values (essentially

their states of mind) are the foundations with which people interpret reality and, therefore, their lives.

Shamanism is one of those methods that strives towards honoring traditional biological and

psychological interventions rather than attempting to compete with them. Not only did Jung come to the

conclusion that man possesses a process known as a natural religious function, but also “that his

psychic health and stability depends on the proper expression of this, just as much as on the

expression of the instincts”(Jironet). Expression of the religious function is the forming of symbols,

myth, and ritual that could be considered essential molecules for religion.

Consider for a moment that Shamanism itself is not a religion; however, it is globally recognized

as the basis of all religions. This comes from how the shaman was able to glean information from nature

and come to the understanding of all things being in union, even through the experience of death. The

importance of this understanding is that it challenges the wellknown Western tendency of denying death

and, furthermore, succeeds in transcending the limitations of our conscious mind and physical reality.

Mircea Eliade

was the first to make a comprehensive study of shamanism across the globe. What he

Director of the History of Religions Department at the University of Chicago until his death in 1986

Alexander Skelton

Shamanic Death

discovered was the shaking notion that the shaman had discovered a practice that allowed the

practitioner to leave their physical body and to traverse to other worlds, including, but not limited to, the

Upper realm, the Middle realm, and the Lower realm, each with its inherent governing systems (Perry).

It is by exercising that exact ability that the shaman was able to serve and will continue serving now as a

conductor of souls between this world and the world after.

Essentially, we can interpret shamanism as not a system of belief or faith but as a system of

knowledge (an inherited attitude of minds if you will) which is directly experienced first hand by the

senses. The world that Shamans work in is not a consensus reality, i.e. what we have agreed is reality.

The Shaman sees experiences with all the senses and is the mediator between the everyday physical

world and an alternate reality. The roots of shamanism predate recorded history with the earliest

findings dating back over 40,000 years. While it may be a large claim, I feel it pertinent to assert

Shamanism as the ancestral mother of the human spiritual experience.

Shamans serve a grand psychosocial and spiritual function within their society through the

entrance of trance: the initiation of near death experiences. Operating under the above method, the

shaman serves as the vehicle of human awareness/consciousness to enter an ecstatic state (also known

as a trance) in order to have a “mystical” experience.

They then return to homeostatic reality where

they are able to integrate and disseminate the lessons and new viral memes of the experiences in order

to help progress individuals and community through this life and the next. In many faiths, this modus

operandi exists as the stage “the return to marketplace,” or the final stage in the paradigm of the hero’s

journey (Campbell). This return is one of the essential ways the the shaman influences the community

a.k.a the Tribe, and rhetorically it connects the shaman’s personal experience of the trance and near

deathexperiences to the community at large.

However, due to cultural baggage that is a part of the word ecstasy, we must look at the roots

of the word and how shamans have employed it. Ecstasy comes from the the Greek word ekstasis,

which literally means to be placed outside. This is a very important facet of the experience to understand

as it is generally understood to stand for a state of exaltation in which a practitioner stands outside of or

transcends his or herself. Ecstasy may be found within the realms of magical transformation or flight of

consciousness to even psychiatric remedies of distress as they occur. There are, in essence, a trinity of

response types that the journeyer experiences in regards to the ecstatic experience being the

physiological response, the emotional response, and the intuitive response/perception. We find the

physiological response to the experience involves the participants’ attention being withdrawn and the

nervous system itself is in a closed circuit from physical sensory input. The body exhibits reflex inertia,

involuntary nervous responses, i.e. “frenzy”. The emotional response can be understood through the

experience of overwhelming feelings of awe

, anxiety, joy, sadness, fear, astonishment, passion, etc.

Finally the intuitive response acts to accommodate a communication of a direct experience and

understanding of the transpersonal experience as it expands the states of awareness or consciousness

within the individual (Shamanism GeneralOverview). However the biggest problem is that in order to

interpret the religious experience of ecstasy or trance we need some sort of evidence of the phenomena

outside the fact that people claim they experience these things.

Eliade would suggest that in order to attempt any definition of the phenomenon of religion, you

must know where to look for the evidence of (first and foremost) expressions of religion that can be

seen in the ‘pure state” that is those which are simple and as close to possible to their origins and that

the evidence of this sort is nowhere to be found” (Kunin 127). However, what she wrongly asserted is

Also known as journeying in most cultures

This is the true meaning of awesome, as in so aweinspiring that you drop to your knees

Alexander Skelton

Shamanic Death

that there is no evidence of this sort to be found. Even from a western perspective, we need simply

look at the 'neuropsychological' model and it’s claims that we can come to understand some of the

experience of shamanic trance through the telltale marks of the shamanic experience (therefore religious

phenomena) through the venue of abstract rock art which are typically carved or painted signs

(essentially grids, dots, zigzags, and the like) in proximity to or embedded in the petroglyphs. “These

abstract signs are interpreted as entoptic phenomena (phosphenes and form constants), which

according to Dowson and LewisWilliams are pseudoimages created by the optic system under

duress

. The entoptics are said to mix and coalesce with 'true iconic' (and culturespecific) hallucinations

during a threestage trance experience” (Dematte). “It can be seen, then that some hierophanies

are, or can in this way become, of universal value and significance, whereas others may remain

local or of one period they are not open to other cultures, and fall eventually into oblivion even

in the society which produced them (Kunin 130).” As far as shamanic hierophanies go, due to their

primeval and essential rootedness within the human condition, we are able to see that the phenomena

and methods of shamans have served and can still serve humanity continually through the interpretation

of such symbolism and thus stand as signposts throughout time to help point individuals and tribes in a

harmonic or progressive direction.

Through systematically interpreting such images humanity has been able to delve into the

inherent complexity of the primitive “religion” or to be more clear, the religious phenomena of the human

experience. Eliade talks about this stating “We find everywhere, even apart from these traces of higher

religious forms, a system into which the elementary hierophanies fit (Green).

Death

For an “Americanowesterner” to even attempt to consider this concept the most basic of

definitions of what is to be considered as dead, one may peruse the presidential commission for The

Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical Behavioral Research, a 177 pg presidential

treatise on the subject and peruse through its legal axioms in an attempt to recognize what death actually

is. As humans this seems to be as difficult for us to define and agree upon as the term religion. Under

such a discourse we find supposed flat platforms of thought which will allow us to possibly relate some

of the above themes in what we can consider the realm of death is; leaving us with a loci of navigation in

traversing the definitional realm of death. A simple question for the subject is “What can we consider

dead or essentially, when is a person to be considered the status of “Is Dead,” in regards to legal and

cultural aspects of human perspective. As put forward by said committee:

“A determination of death immediately changes the attitudes and behavior

of the living toward the body that has gone from being a person to being a

corpse. Discontinuation of medical care, mourning and burial are examples

of customary behavior; people usually provide intimate care for living

patients and identify with them, while withdrawing from contact with the

dead. In ordinary circumstances, the time at which medical diagnosis

causes a change in legal status should be synchronous with the time that

social behaviors naturally change” (President’s Commission 77).

The western medical/scientific discussion about death essentially stops at this point. As this

In this case, shamanic trance

Alexander Skelton

Shamanic Death

paper is attempting to be a explorative membrane into the how western thought and shamanic methods

can walk hand in hand, we must use a different venue to continue the discussion. Luckily, Near Death

experiences may function as the hinge of understanding within the frame of this discussion, as they are

the closest we can come to the realm of death while still being alive enough to tell the tale. This is

essential as shamans have been utilizing the realm of neardeath experiences (when the soul is said to

have left the body or when the body is dying and the soul is traveling) as a pedagogical tool used to

better themselves, the community, and the universe at large after the experience.

Let us reference for the moment, the indigenous people of South America who not only were

the first to grow tobacco but were also pivotal in discovering all known ways of utilizing such a

medicine. The shamans on the Orinoco have reportedly made it a practice to utilize severe tobacco

poisoning (high amounts of tobacco also causes hallucinations) to induce neardeath experiences

(Prance 202). They do this under the auspices that humanity’s physical body hungers for food, but the

spirit’s hunger is for tobacco. Such ceremonies usually involve the shaman taking such quantities of

tobacco that their heart stops. After a period of about ten minutes, the initiates take a hit of tobacco

smoke and blow it into the shaman’s mouth and into their lungs. The effect of the tobacco that they

cultivate is so powerful that when it is blown into the shaman’s lungs it wakes the body through a

massive stimulation of the participants central nervous system. After they had woken up from such an

event they would discuss their visions and divine their meanings.

Death is a difficult thing to comprehend, however we have within the species memory the ability

to draw upon experiences confronting such situations (death) and coming back from it. While Shaman’s

may traverse the realm of death or alternate realities through direct experience, for the purpose of an

academic paper the closest we can get to the subject of death lies within the realm of near death

experiences (which will be referred to as NDEs from this point on). While NDEs in the past have been

disregarded due to the difficulty of measuring such an experience, they now hold a documented

existence as what can be studied as a clinical phenomenon. The idea of NDEs are finding their way

from the shelves of esoteric, transcendental, and religious definitions towards being an actual route of

direct spiritual experience.

Having studied shamanic practice and neardeath experience, Perry suggests “a journey of this

kind can learn that this realm is not one that awaits us only after death. It exists now and is, in principle,

available in life to anyone who has learned the pathway” (Perry). This being the case, I find NDEs as the

most logical signpost for coming to understand more fully the realm of death, and the subjectivity that the

experience wholeheartedly adopts. J. Timothy Green

speaks of how the first 20 years of neardeath

studies have thoroughly documented the existence of NDEs and the field of neardeath studies appears

to be evolving from a purely academic one to include an applied clinical component (Green). Through

such endeavors humanity can globally come to the recognition that they are a vital phenomena in relation

to the radical changes they instill in those that experience them.

The main difficulty with understanding these experiences is that it is very difficult to ascertain

whether or not the experience of the experiencer is valid or not scientifically. The problem is that while

remaining in Ordinary State Consciousness, it is impossible for a researcher to prove scientifically that

someone has left their physical body, traveled down a tunnel, entered into a light, met and conversed

with dead friends and relatives, and so on (Green). However it is at this juncture that we must assert the

idea that Direct experience is truth to the individual. The problem truly lies in the idea that experience is

subjective and, like all other subjective phenomena, is impervious to direct scientific study. However,

Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in California

Alexander Skelton

Shamanic Death

my own belief is that shamanism will need to pass the test of scientific surveillance before it achieves

wider acceptance in our society. Fortunately, this may be easier than it might appear.

How Science Sees NDEs

NearDeath Experiences and the PhysioKundalini Syndrome (276278)

Somewhat problematically there is still no accepted scientific etiology for NDEs. This may be

due to the complex nature of NDEs not facilitating an easy definition (such as the term death). It does

not lend itself a simplistic mechanistic explanation. The experience is universally regarded by those who

report it as spiritually authentic. So while we may not be able to define it, We are not left in paradox

(regarding its trigger and authentic nature) due to its ability to promote and garner authentic spiritual

growth (Greyson).

One of the Difficulties in addressing NDEs is that western culture has been haphazardly shaped

to not accommodate for what has been globally recognized phenomenon (NDE) or for dealing with the

personal and interpersonal ramifications of such an experience. Due to the lack of illumination on the

subject when NDEs do occur within an individual in a western society, such individuals are unprepared

for the tidal waves that it can create in their world perception. The much more common form of

accepting these people within the folds of society becomes easily realized through psychiatric ventures,

using the structure of the medical community to errantly (and commonly) label with titles of psychotic

disorders. This has created a sense of Disease and Disease within the our community. In short this

problem demands attention (Greyson).

The surface definition of NDEs amount to the experience of those who have come close to

death (even physically died [clinical death] and been resuscitated). This situation facilitates a

transpersonal experience where, much like in a dream, the content of the experience reflects the

contextual variables of an individuals life. The most general reports of NDEs include (but surely are not

limited to!) “tunnels/vortexes, extreme light, extreme dark, religious/spiritual guides appearing,

awareness that time is not as it was, feeling of movement away from what you were towards

something else, and clarity of the process while immersed in it” (Greyson).

We need but simply look at Carl Jung’s near death experience to see how such a phenomena

could affect an individual’s entire attitude towards life. Found in his biography Memories, Dreams,

Reflections the Swiss psychiatrist wrote at length about his own premature encounter with death. “His

vivid encounter with the light, plus the intensely meaningful insights led Jung to conclude that his

experience came from something real and eternal. Jung's experience is unique in that he saw the Earth

from a vantage point of about a thousand miles above it” (Cooke). After the experience he would

mention how it was akin to shamanic journeying and his incredibly accurate view of the Earth from outer

space was described about two decades before astronauts in space first described it. Subsequently, as

he reflected on life after death, Jung recalled the meditating Hindu from his neardeath experience and

read it as a parable of the archetypal Higher Self, the Godimage within (Jung 1963).

However while science documents the existence of the phenomena, shamanism actually

attempts to continually access that dimension of existence for an extreme amount for reasons. Shamans

come to access such states usually through natural experience or by the application of Entheogens to

their systems. Entheogens

are and have been tools to catalyze the experience of confronting and thus

knowing one’s self.

Many religions and shamanic traditions have made use of entheogens, but the consider for a

It has been put by many shamans that entheogens could be considered "substances that generate the experience of

Death as an Altered State (Ally)mirror_trigger_NDEs.pdf

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