Transforming Consciousness: Contemporary Understandings and Shamanic Methods
It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is
the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience.
—Eckhart Tolle 369
How can we induce desirable states of consciousness? This has been a central question animating spiritual traditions for thousands of years. Each tradition has forged its own answer, developed its own practices, and evolved its preferred states. Yet there are general principles at work, and knowing them will enable us to better understand shamanic methods. Charles Tart offers a useful theory involving three stages of induction:
• Destabilization of the initial ordinary state,
• Transition to a new state,
• Stabilization of the new state.361
In the first stage, destabilizing forces disrupt usual brain-mind function. Destabilizers can be sensory, social, physiological, or chemical. Examples include sensory input such as intense music and drumming, physiological disturbances such as hunger and sleep deprivation, or chemicals such as psychedelics. Specific mental exercises that can function as destabilizers include contemplative disciplines such as intense concentration or mantra recitation.
When destabilizing forces are sufficiently intense, they disrupt the usual state of consciousness, and transition toward another state begins. The contours of this new state will depend largely on the combination of “patterning forces” operating on it, forces such as beliefs, physiology, drugs, or the environmental setting. These patterning forces impose a specific organization on brain-mind function and thereby induce a corresponding state of consciousness. During the third and final stage, consciousness settles into the new state, which, if sufficiently stable, will endure as a stable state or even trait of consciousness.
Hypnosis provides a good example. A standard hypnotic induction procedure—e.g., relaxation and imagery—destabilizes the usual waking state. However, the nature of the state and experiences that follow can vary dramatically according to the different patterning forces—instructions, expectations, etc.—that the hypnotist employs. When the hypnotic state stabilizes, it may endure until new instructions (patterning forces) are given.
The ability to access altered states is a learnable skill. Entering a specific state for the first time can be difficult but may become easier with practice. For example, a person who first smokes marijuana may be disappointed, but further attempts may be increasingly successful. This is a curious phenomenon known as “reverse tolerance,” in which a drug’s effects become more powerful with repeated use.361
Mature Potentials of Altered States
The fact that the ability to enter alternate states can be developed and refined points to four important implications and potentials. These potentials are greater ease, independence, stabilization, and infusion.
• Ease means that practitioners can enter desired states more easily and rapidly.
• Independence implies that practitioners may become less dependent on supportive preparations or external aids such as drums or drugs.
• Stabilization transforms a fragile, temporary altered state into an increasingly imperturbable and enduring altered trait. Stabilization transforms transient states into enduring stages, peak experiences into plateau experiences, epiphanies into personality, temporary gifts into permanent abilities, and flashes of illumination into abiding light. Examples of enduring meditation states include TM’s continuous “cosmic consciousness” and Tibetan Buddhism’s unceasing “Great Contemplation.”264
• Infusion occurs when qualities and capacities of an ASC begin to permeate the waking state. For example, meditators who master states of calm and concentration will eventually enjoy these qualities throughout the day.
These potentials are evident in shamanism. For example, spirit vision initially requires arduous training, but over time becomes increasingly sensitive and accessible. As Eliade summarized, shamanic training “has as its object transforming the apprentice magician’s initial and momentary ecstatic experience…into a permanent condition.”83 This infusion of the sacred into daily experience is one of the great goals of spiritual life.
SHAMANIC TECHNIQUES
Shamans have used these principles for centuries. Their techniques for inducing ASCs span sensory, social, psychological, physiological, and chemical approaches.
Preparatory rituals include periods of solitude and prayer and the creation of the appropriate set and environmental setting. Contemporary psychedelic users are well aware that set and setting are enormously important in determining the quality of psychedelic experiences. Skillful users therefore go to great lengths to optimize expectations and the environment,132 and shamans do likewise.
Timing is critical. Séances are usually held at night so that the spirits and geography of other worlds can be better seen, presumably because of “perceptual release,” the process by which subtle objects become visible as stronger stimuli are withdrawn. For example, house lights mistakenly left on may only become recognizable when night falls. Likewise with subtle shamanic experiences.
Physiological techniques are common. Ascetic preparations may involve a day or more without food, sleep, sex, or even water. Temperature extremes include icy cold winter streams or the searing heat of the sweat lodge. The séance itself may include intense rhythmic stimulation such as dancing and drumming, as well as ingestion of sacred drugs. Any of these techniques can disrupt normal physiology and consciousness; rhythm and psychedelics are particularly potent.
Rhythm
…we have been making music since the dawn of culture. More than 30,000 years ago early humans were already playing bone flutes, percussive instruments and jaw harps—and all known societies throughout the world have had music.
—Norman Weinberger 403
Mystics the world over have long recognized the power of rhythm—especially music, singing, and dancing—to evoke powerful emotional and sacred states. The Bible relates that over 2,000 years ago, when the prophet Elisha sought inspiration, he requested, “‘But now bring me a minstrel.’ And when the minstrel played the power of the Lord came upon him.” As Evelyn Underhill, author of the classic text Mysticism, noted,
Dancing, music and other exaggerations of natural rhythm have been pressed into the same service by the Greek initiates of Dionysus, by the Gnostics, by innumerable other mystic cults. That these proceedings do effect a remarkable change in the human consciousness is proved by experience: though how and why they do it is yet little understood.375
Shamans also employ rhythm, and drums and rattles are their favored instruments. Drumming probably facilitates shamanic states and journeying in several ways. First, it acts as a concentration device. It continuously reminds the shaman of her purpose, drowns out distracting stimuli, and reduces the mind’s incessant tendency to wander. Concentration is a crucial spiritual skill,392 and shamans discovered a quick and easy way to attain it.
Second, drumming can also destabilize ordinary consciousness. Charles Tart says that in his experience, loud drumming can overwhelm stabilizing forces, making an abrupt change of state very easy. Interestingly, Zen teachers make use of the same principle. Numerous stories relate how they trailed students, crept up behind them, and suddenly yelled at the top of their voice. The ideal result is an instant satori.
Drumming is commonly assumed to harmonize neural activity, and two apparently supportive studies have been widely quoted.253, 254 In both, electroencephalograms (EEGs or brain waves) of subjects listening to drumming seemed to show auditory driving responses. Auditory driving occurs when a repetitive sound evokes or “drives” similar EEG frequencies in the brain. Unfortunately the studies are flawed and give us little reliable information.3
We do not know the precise effects of drumming but we do know that music has far-reaching effects on the brain. For example, the sensitivity and even size of the auditory cortex changes, and the brain devotes more neurons to personally important tones.403 But whatever the mechanisms, anyone who has been entranced by music is well aware of rhythm’s potential for affecting states of mind.
When a drum is played at a tempo of some 200 to 220 beats per minute, most Western novices can journey to some extent, even on their first attempt.146 With greater expertise, shamans can become less dependent on external stimulation12 as would be expected if accessing altered states is a learnable skill.
OVERVIEW OF SHAMANIC TECHNIQUES
Whatever the precise neural mechanisms involved, it is clear that shamans discovered a wide variety of psychological, physiological, and chemical aids to modify consciousness and welded them into an effective technology of transcendence. The techniques were relatively simple and were probably first discovered accidentally, such as when the tribe faced hunger, fatigue, and dehydration, or accidentally ate psychedelic plants. Because of their valuable effects, these techniques were likely remembered and repeated. Thus our forebears would discover and rediscover humankind’s first technology of transcendence, through which would pour the sacred visions that inspired and sustained humankind for thousands of years.