I remember a time during my teenage when a white skin human from a western country told me that religion is to understand the phenomenon of nature. Nature for me at that time was air water plants and animals. The theories defined by our education as air cycle water cycle plants and animals classification system, nomenclatures were easier to understand unless one day, when I met a shaman and saw his skills. “Is this magic?” –questions of how and hows hovered on my mind. Later on, I asked him how he got such skills. His answer was “nature.” “But I too have seen the nature, been with nature. Where is the magic in me?” The final answer of the shaman was the same.” You need to understand her phenomenon.”
I don’t personally think I have understood the phenomenon of nature till date. However, i understood that the whole universe and the entire space is our nature. Then it would be a duty to worship and love nature which I partially do and don’t.
Let me drag you people towards the ancient and primitive human cultures when the humans were closely associated with forests. Forests were the “one standing religion” and its connection with humans was the oldest creation of teaching. The rituals were performed in order to connect with external agents with the help of different elements, mind techniques and music. Such external agents present in the atmosphere of our universe would then heal and guide the individual. It was and still is the system of interconnection of the entire universe and its powers within oneself, as principle elements of a human body is same with what we have in our universe…FIRE EARTH WATER AIR AND ETHER.
I’m from a south asian continent where the shamanic influences still prevail within indigenous communities residing within greeneries, abundant natural resources and mainly isolation (from human crowd and modernity). I have heard stories of shamans who initially set up their learning processes far away from human crowd to flourish their abilities in order to create connection with any of the 5 elements. This connection thus helps a shaman to distinguish energy points, engulfing negativities and let flow the energy in the level it should be within a human body. The belief of this culture states everything is possible with the correct and precise technique.
Either you name them witch doctors or medicine men or Dhamis and Jhakris, shamanism is nearby similar throughout the world regardless people being separated by continents and oceans. All of the shamans believe in spirits and their influence in our daily lives. Above all, the shamans belong to different ethnic groups yet they don’t present themselves or their shamanic art as a part of their religion.
Shamanic Pathway:
Can anyone be a shaman? Hell no!! We are born in this earth as an innocent creature, devoid from any cultural bound, devoid from any sociological perspectives. Gradually, we become a part of these constraints or hindrances that deceive us from what we are. A true shaman or shamanka is free from all such shackles of life as he/she is chosen by “the spirits”, and it’s obvious that spirits are one of the truest forms of energies. The shamanic pathway tells there is a partition as a veil covered in between the illusory and real world, seen and unseen world. It’s a journey of going into an altered state of consciousness, to the journey outside of time and space. Its termed as “parallel universe.” This power of universe is used in psychotherapy sessions when being examined by a shaman/shamanka. To obtain such power from the antiquity, the essentials of shamanic approach is difficult to follow for people living in materialism.
To be continued….
Context and Perspectives 