CHAPTER 32

Comparing States of Mind: Shamans, Yogis, Meditators, and Schizophrenics

If mind is comprehended, all things are comprehended.

—Buddhism’s Ratnamegha Sutra

Previous comparisons between different states of consciousness have often been imprecise and superficial. For example, many writers have claimed that shamanic, schizophrenic, Buddhist, and yogic states are the same, but with phenomenological mapping, major differences leap into view.

SHAMANIC AND SCHIZOPHRENIC STATES

People who argue that shamanic and schizophrenic states are equivalent seem to assume that there is only one shamanic ASC and one schizophrenic state. Yet we have already seen that there are multiple shamanic states, and the same is true of schizophrenia.8

To simplify things, let’s focus on the acute schizophrenic episode. This can be one of the most devastating of all human experiences. At its worst, extreme psychological disorganization disrupts thinking, emotions, perception, and identity. Victims can be overwhelmed, plunged into a nightmare of terror, haunted by hallucinations, swept from reality, utterly confused about who they are, and lost in a private, autistic world. In terms of our experiential dimensions we can map a typical episode and compare it to the shamanic state as follows.

Control is lost. The victim cannot halt the process or modify experiences. Awareness of the environment may be distorted by hallucinations, and fragmented thinking can make communication difficult. Concentration is drastically reduced, and the patient becomes highly agitated. Emotional responses are often distorted and bizarre, and the episode is usually extremely unpleasant.

So destructive is the process that the schizophrenic’s experience can be utterly disorganized and incoherent. This disorganization extends even to the sense of identity, and the patient may feel that he is disintegrating and dying and be unable to locate his own boundaries. This may occasionally result in a sense of being outside the body or of merging with the universe, but the episode is brief and uncontrolled. The whole experience is an incoherent, fragmented nightmare.

Compared carefully, the acute schizophrenic episode is obviously very different from the shamanic journey. The latter experience is meaningful, coherent, and consistent with the journey’s purpose. The shaman has good control, heightened concentration, and a clear sense of identity. He leaves his body and roams at will, and in marked contrast to the schizophrenic’s terror, the shaman’s journey may be a source of wonder and delight.

There are also major differences in social functioning. Recall that shamans are often outstanding members of the community who display considerable intellectual, artistic, and leadership skills. In stark contrast, such skills and contributions are rare among schizophrenics. Although it is understandable that early researchers sometimes labeled shamans as schizophrenic, it is also clear that this is no longer appropriate.

COMPARISONS WITH OTHER TRADITIONS

Popular writings often equate shamans with masters of other spiritual traditions, especially Buddhism and yoga, and also equate their states of consciousness. Such claims are sadly superficial.

Dimension	Shamanism	Schizophrenia
Control • Ability to enter and leave ASC at will	Yes: good control	Dramatic reduction of control: inability to halt the process or to control the experience
• Ability to control the content of experience	Partial control
Awareness of Environment	Decreased	Often decreased and distorted
Ability to Communicate	Sometimes	Decreased; communication usually distorted
Concentration	Increased	Great reduction of concentration
Mental Energy/Arousal	Increased	Increased; agitation may be extreme
Calm	Decreased	Decreased
	+ or – (Positive or Negative)	– – Usually very negative, often distorted and inappropriate
Identity or Self-Sense	Separate self sense, may be a nonphysical “soul”	Disintegrated, loss of ego boundaries; inability to distinguish self from others
Out-of-body Experience	Yes, controlled ecstasy	Rarely, uncontrolled
Content of Experience	Organized, coherent imagery determined by shamanic cosmology and purpose of journey	Often disorganized and fragmented

Table 2. Comparison of the shamanic journey state to an acute schizophrenic episode.

Shamans induce multiple ASCs—for example, journey, mediumship, and drug states—while Buddhism and yoga employ even more. For example, Buddhism has literally dozens of meditation practices, and each meditation may develop through several distinct states and stages. A Buddhist practitioner may therefore cultivate scores of ASCs during training.121

Comparing the states of shamanism and other traditions is therefore a complex business, and careful comparisons reveal major differences. Let us therefore outline central yogic and Buddhist meditations and then compare some of their advanced states with the shamanic journey.

Classical yoga uses a concentration practice that stills the mind until it can be fixed unwaveringly on the breath or a mantra. To do this, the yogi withdraws attention from the body and outer world to focus inward. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita, “The tortoise can draw in his legs. The seer can draw in his senses.”290 As a result, outer awareness is largely lost. The yogi can now focus undistractedly on ever more subtle internal objects, until finally only pure, unbounded, blissful consciousness remains.93, ae The classical yoga sutras of Patanjali describe this process succinctly and exquisitely:

Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.333

Whereas classical yoga is a concentration practice, the classical contemplation of Buddhism, which is called Vipassana or insight meditation, is an awareness practice. Whereas yoga withdraws awareness from outer objects, Vipassana meditation cultivates fluid attention to all objects. All stimuli, both inner and outer, are examined precisely and minutely. The aim is to investigate the workings of mind and thereby cut through the distortions and misunderstandings that usually cloud awareness. “To see things as they are” is the motto of this practice, and the seeing can become very sensitive indeed.

All three disciplines cultivate self-control. Practitioners can enter and leave their respective states at will, although shamans may require external assistance such as drumming. Both shamans and insight meditators exert partial control, while yogis in samadhi have considerable control over mental processes.

Dimension	Shamanism	Buddhist (Vipassana) Insight Meditation	Patanjali’s Yoga
Control • Ability to enter and leave ASC at will • Ability to control the content of experience	Yes Partial	Yes Partial	Yes Extreme control in samadhis
Awareness of Environment	Decreased	Increased	Greatly reduced sensory and body awareness
Ability to Communicate	Sometimes	Usually	None
Concentration	Increased; fluid	Increased; fluid	Greatly increased; fixed
Mental Energy/Arousal	Increased	Usually decreased	Greatly decreased
Calm	Decreased	Usually increased	Greatly increased; extreme peace
Affect	+ or – Positive or negative	+ or – Positive or negative (positive tends to increase as practice deepens)	+ + Highly positive; ineffable bliss
Identity or Self Sense	Separate self sense, may be a nonphysical “soul”	Self sense is deconstructed into a changing flux: “no self”	Unchanging transcendent Self, or Purusha
Out-of-Body Experience	Yes, controlled ecstasy (“ecstasies”)	No	No; loss of body awareness (“enstasis”)
Content of experience	Organized, coherent imagery determined by shamanic cosmology and purpose of journey	Deconstruction of complex experiences into their constituent stimuli. Stimuli are further deconstructed into a continuous flux.	Single object (“samadhi with support”) or pure consciousness (“samadhi without support”)

Table 3. Comparison of the shamanic journey state with advanced yogic and Buddhist meditative states.

There are major differences in perceptual sensitivity to the environment. According to both classical accounts and recent research, Buddhist insight meditators can cultivate perceptual sensitivity to remarkable levels.33; 34 By contrast, awareness of the environment is usually reduced in the shamanic journey and drastically reduced in yogic samadhi states. Eliade defined samadhi as “an invulnerable state in which perception of the external world is absent.”82

These differences in environmental awareness are reflected in communication. Shamans may communicate with spectators during their journeys.284 Buddhist meditators can do so if necessary, but for yogis even attempting to speak may break their intense concentration. This fixed, unwavering yogic concentration contrasts with both the shamanic journey and Buddhist insight meditation, where attention moves fluidly between objects.

There are also differences in energy levels. Shamans are usually energized during their journey. However, insight meditators gradually develop greater calm, while in yogic samadhi, calm may become so profound that some mental processes, such as thinking, cease temporarily.32

The sense of identity differs drastically. The journeying shaman is a free-flying soul or spirit. However, the Buddhist meditator’s microscopic awareness becomes so sensitive that it dissects the sense of self into its components. Thus the meditator perceives not a solid unchanging ego but rather a flux of thoughts and images that compose that ego. This is the classic Buddhist insight of “no self,” which sees through the illusion of egoity and thereby frees the meditator from egocentricity.120

The yogi’s experience is different yet again. In the higher reaches of meditation, attention is fixed inwardly and immovably on consciousness. Only consciousness remains in awareness, and this is therefore what the yogi experiences him- or herself to be—pure consciousness, ineffable, blissful, beyond time, space, or any limitation. This is samadhi, the highest reach of yoga. And it is this experience—the union of self and Self—that gives yoga, which means union, its name. This blissful union contrasts with the sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful experiences of both the shaman and Buddhist.

Yogis’ pure consciousness also contrasts with the shaman’s complex journey images. The Buddhist meditator has yet a third type of experience. Here awareness becomes so sensitive that all experiences are eventually broken down into their components, and the meditator perceives a ceaseless flux of microscopic images that arise and pass away with extreme rapidity.121, af

Neither the yogi or Buddhist meditator experience the shaman’s out-of-body experience (OOBE) or ecstasy. In fact the yogi may lose all awareness of the body and become absorbed in the inner bliss of samadhi (“enstasis”). Eliade, whose theoretical knowledge of both shamanism and yoga was probably as extensive as anyone’s, emphasized the difference:

Yoga cannot possibly be confused with shamanism or classed among the techniques of ecstasy. The goal of classic yoga remains perfect autonomy, enstasis, while shamanism is characterized by its desperate effort to attain the “condition of a spirit,” to accomplish ecstatic flight.84

In summary, contrary to many claims, shamanic, schizophrenic, Buddhist, and yogic states are clearly distinguishable.

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