Cave 13b - the 164k question

[dannan14]

Now i think you get me It is a difficult task at first, but years of practice have made it simple. My biggest problem is communicating what i learn. Then again, the process is so important that i have come to realize that there is nothing to explain; anyone who is interested in gaining such perspective needs to experience it themselves.

That was really difficult for me for a long while. i thought i had a duty to reach out to people and help them see life through different angles. Now i am not inclined to help unless asked. Everyone develops different traits at different times. That is also ones of the ways in which i practice tolerance, which i think i mentioned in a previous post as being one of my weaknesses.

[john]

Shamans believe that 'thoughts are things'. This is a very potent realisation when you get it. It means that you create your own reality:

To the trained Shaman, experience is experience. There is no difference between the reality of one experience over another. If I experienced it, then it must be real. I may not at this moment understand what I have experienced, but that does not make it any less real. Shamans frequently travel into worlds well beyond logical or even conceptual reality. Shamans, using Spirit Journeys, travel through other realms by means of what traditional Western society would classically term imagination, to achieve the object of their quest, be it hidden knowledge, power, a spirit animal, or the soul fragment of a current patient. A Shaman knows that these spirit journeys are more than just idle fancy or an over-active imagination. The shaman's thoughts and feelings are literally forms of energy, a spirit double if you will, that travel to very specific locations on the Web of Power.

So what is the difference between Shamanic Sight, Visualization and Imagination? Let's begin with, what is Visualization? Visualization can be compared to a movie running through your mind, and you are the director. You choose the script, you choose the characters, you choose the location. Visualization is accomplished through the medium of your imagination. Imagination is thought form generated by the mind that allows you to project yourself beyond the bounds of current time and space, and experience beyond your normal senses. However, once you learn to use the tool of visualization effectively, the results become far to tangible to be a thought form without substance.

Visualization is connected to the subconscious mind (Lower Self), which interfaces with the Higher Self and the World of Spirit. The Subconscious speaks to our conscious (Middle) self through signs, symbols, pictures, dreams, etc. - or in other words, visualization. This is the language of the Subconscious. The subconscious constantly seeks ways to communicate with us, but the logical mind, being logical, analytical and linear, cannot hear it. However, once the logical mind does find a way to communicate with the subconscious - a code, if you will - the subconscious becomes a powerhouse of information. This "code" is the art of visualization.

The logical mind is like a robot or a computer - it cannot have any new thoughts of its own, it only re-hashes previous experiences. It is through the subconscious that we are free to explore, through the vehicle of imagination and "movies of the mind", new thoughts and experiences before they occur. During sleep, visualization is called dreaming, during waking hours, it is called daydreaming. It is difficult to control your dreams, but you can control your daydreams. The ability to direct the "movies of your mind" is confirmed by the proven fact that mortal men and women can direct these daydreams. The ability to properly direct the movies of your mind during a meditative state connects you to your intuition, or Higher Self, enabling you to receive information from a higher source than was previously possible.

http://www.shamans-cave.com/Reality_Thr ... ation.html

In other words, the bicameral mind.

I think this is connected to the findings of scientists that we only see 1 per cent of what is actually there. I think we have chosen, or settled for, in a process of negotiation with ourselves and others, to just see this lowest common denominator of 1 per cent. I have found that getting back in touch with my subsconcious and my Higher Self is expanding my awareness, so that I'm beginning to see more and more than just that 1 per cent.

Ishtar -

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world."


- Alexander Pope -


..........sounds shamanic to me. (By the way, I misattributed this to wm. Blake in a post some time back. Apologies: brain fart.)

Additionally, consider

Tibetan singing bowls

As shamanic instruments

Equal to the drum.



hoka hey



john

[Ishtar]

Additionally, consider

Tibetan singing bowls

As shamanic instruments

Equal to the drum.

john

John

Now that's just plain spooky!

We had a very strong storm here yesterday, and so I decided that I'd stay at home and do some shamanic healing work, using the energy of said storm.

And guess what I used for my sound source? Yep - Tibetan singing bowls.

I wouldn't say they were "equal to the drum", though - except in potency. The "singing" of the bowls sends vibrations through the body that resonate with the energy body and thus can move energy blockages. That is using sound as a force, whereas I would use the drum to go into trance. A drummng rhythm of between 4 to 7 beats per second causes the brain to go into what the scientists call the ''theta" state and what shamans calls trance.

[woodrabbit]

Hey all,

Returned to find feathers long since settled to the ground....tho retrospectivly quite an interesting read.
Ish, I was out on an Island at the end of Long Island and you weren't the only one who had a storm.

I fear Beags was referring to me on Sunday:

Some people on this thread are on drugs!

I would like to assure him and others, that though I might treat my sharing of my explorations with a light touch, that I take the pursuit quite seriously and anyone who has had the opportunity to visit this palpably multidimensional universe, knows that there is nothing recreational about it.
I find it quite literaly an always open door to an understanding of the universe that would take many lifetimes to explore. Its one thing to read about this and that, but the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of the likes of Terrance Mckenna, William James and the ancient seamless lineage of Ayahauscaros and Shamans seems like the right thing for me to do. If not now....when?!

If I may jump a bit....

Ishtar wrote:

In other words, the bicameral mind.

I think this is connected to the findings of scientists that we only see 1 per cent of what is actually there. I think we have chosen, or settled for, in a process of negotiation with ourselves and others, to just see this lowest common denominator of 1 per cent. I have found that getting back in touch with my subsconcious and my Higher Self is expanding my awareness, so that I'm beginning to see more and more than just that 1 per cent.

As good an explantion for Feng Shui as any, so many maps to the same place.

I would like to throw in to the dialogue the work of Felicitas Goodman, who was (died 2005) a respected anthropologist who wondered if there was a connection between the stylized "yogic" postures found in Mayan Altar sculpture and trance states...

Felicitas documents the effects of body posture on trance experience. Intrigued by the physical changes that take place during trance states, she began to record the observations of students who entered a trance-like condition while concentrating on the sound of Goodman's rattle for 15 minutes. Whenever she led a workshop in trance journeys--whether in Berlin, Vienna, New Mexico or Ohio--her subjects' journeys always lasted for 15 minutes, but where they went and what they saw, heard and learned, maintains Goodman, depended on the particular body posture they had assumed. One position conjured up sensations of flying; other postures took subjects into an underground realm; in some the journeyer was transformed into an animal. From the "Tennessee diviner" to the "healing Bear," the postures are derived, according to Goodman, from ancient, even prehistoric traditions, known to us through cave drawings, anthropological description and other sources.

This is where I get excited,... where the anthropological and the archaeological can actually meet in a fresh and vibrant way in the experential.

Felicitas Goodman's website:
http://www.ritualbodypostures.com/index.html

What fun it would be to have dinner with Julian Jaynes, Felicatas Goodman, Terrance Mckenna and of course Eddie Izzard.

[Ishtar]

OK, let’s talk about ‘drugs’.

Just the very word ‘drug’ implies a substance that will make us dozy, to say the least, and blur or distort our perceptions of ‘reality’. Then there’s so-called ‘recreational drugs’ such as the purple hearts or speed that was popular in the Sixties and Seventies. None of these are anything to do with shamanism.

For millennia, shamans (although by no means most) have been known to go into trance with the use of psychotropic herbs. We know that the Vedics used soma (which most think was probably the flyagaric mushroom). And the South American shamans used ayahuasca, peyote and datura, and still do today.

Virtually no scientific work has been done on whether hallucinations caused by psychotropic herbs are just random images being produced from the subconscious (common Western, rational scientific view, although not proved by them) or whether they are the key to an altered state which is as equally valid as this ‘normal reality’ state (view of shamans plus Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castenada, Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey plus his Merry Pranksters).

Jeremy Narby has also done some very good work in his book “The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge”. And of course, we cannot forget Michael Harner who was the first anthropologist to take ayahuasca in the 1960s to experience subjectively, first hand the shamanic altered perception, rather than just viewing it objectively from the outside.

So while you could take the view that these substances are ‘drugs’ that create a false sense of reality, the forest shaman of South America sees them as the key to help him enter another reality which is, in fact, part of this reality in that it makes it whole.

Perhaps another way of looking at this is to go back to our earlier discussions about the fact that we only see about 1 per cent of what really is. The shaman uses psychotropic herbs to enter into more of this ‘what really is’. to expand his perception, in order to discover more about the natural universe.

(John – you’ll be interested to know that Jeremy Narby calls this ‘forest television’.)

Ironically, one of the benefits of work by the South American shamans is now being plundered by Western drug companies (e.g. Haliburton) which are run by the self same people who are responsible for the laws about the legality or otherwise of drugs.

The drug companies have discovered the herbs of the Amazonian rainforest and are in the process of harvesting them. So how are they identifying which plants or herbs do what? They are relying on the expertise of the forest shamans, who hold this knowledge in great detail. And how did the forest shamans acquire this expertise on their natural environment? Well, they say that they acquired it by taking psychotropic herbs like ayahuasca and datura. In this way, they were able to enter into the spirit dimension and talk to the spirits of each plant to learn what its properties are.

Their knowledge of the plants, acquired in this way, is proving of immense value to the drug companies. This wouldn’t be the case if the ingesting of psychotropic herbs led merely to useless random and unreal hallucinations about imaginery 'gods' or spirits.

[woodrabbit]

Quote from Ishtar above:

The drug companies have discovered the herbs of the Amazonian rainforest and are in the process of harvesting them. So how are they identifying which plants or herbs do what? They are relying on the expertise of the forest shamans, who hold this knowledge in great detail. And how did the forest shamans acquire this expertise on their natural environment? Well, they say that they acquired it by taking psychotropic herbs like ayahuasca and datura. In this way, they were able to enter into the spirit dimension and talk to the spirits of each plant to learn what its properties are.

When you think about it, its hard to imagine that tribes of 40 to 60 people could meaningfully sustain/maintain their numbers given the inevitable poisoning that would ensue from trial and error....the more traditional and emperical way of discovering whats good for you and whats not.

[dannan14]

Quote from Ishtar above:

The drug companies have discovered the herbs of the Amazonian rainforest and are in the process of harvesting them. So how are they identifying which plants or herbs do what? They are relying on the expertise of the forest shamans, who hold this knowledge in great detail. And how did the forest shamans acquire this expertise on their natural environment? Well, they say that they acquired it by taking psychotropic herbs like ayahuasca and datura. In this way, they were able to enter into the spirit dimension and talk to the spirits of each plant to learn what its properties are.

When you think about it, its hard to imagine that tribes of 40 to 60 people could meaningfully sustain/maintain their numbers given the inevitable poisoning that would ensue from trial and error....the more traditional and emperical way of discovering whats good for you and whats not.

That is where concepts like Traditional Chinese Medicine's Doctrine of Signatures comes in. There are many such tools for determine the properties of a plant, but that is the only one i could think of at the moment.

The basic gist of the Doctrine of Signatures is that the part of the plant that needs to be used will look somewhat like the part of the body that it is supposed to be used on.

Then there are also more obvious methods like, 'this herb or mushroom has a peppery flavor or is strongly acidic, it is probably poisonous'

Then again poisons can taste bitter too, but so do many medicines. Trial and error is a big part of discovery, but the errors don't have to be fatal to know if a plant isn't fit for consumption.

All that being said, i still find it hard to accept that the body of knowledge that makes up various herbalistic traditions was developed in only a few hundred or few thousand years.

The recent research on which hominids could talk (i think the hyoid bone is crucial in these arguments) has pushed the potential for speech back far enough that herbalism may well have developed over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. That i can dig.

[Digit]

Some fruits, in the broad sense, can be poisonous to some animals but not others, the Yew and the Bluebell come to mind here, but I rather think I might be more inclined to try some plant part that has already been cropped by other animals than those which are avoided, and how does an animal know which to avoid I wonder?

[woodrabbit]

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby:

So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush combining a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzymee of the digestive tract which would otherwise block the halucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their conciousness. It's as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants AND the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from (the voice the) the hallucinogenic plants.

[john]

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby:

So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush combining a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzymee of the digestive tract which would otherwise block the halucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their conciousness. It's as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants AND the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from (the voice the) the hallucinogenic plants.

Woodrabbit -

That is the bicameral mind at work.

"We are/were smarter than we think".

Selfconsciousness and the I/Thou intellectual watershed destroyed a lot of awareness.

This, of course was ceaselessly pursued by politicians/priests/agents of commerce in their goal of physically possessing the entire output and lives of the general population.

They have succeeded.

But the roots and bones of the bicameral are still there, encoded in our genes.

Simply put, intense negative cultural pressure - including warfare and genocide - has been brought to bear on those who "think" bicamerally.

We all have the potential, but lack the development.

Simple example from this morning.

I get up around 5 AM, and the first thing I do is brew a mug of tea and go out on the front deck of my house, which faces the small valley I live in, to greet the dawn and drink my tea. So I go out this morning, in the half-light, and the first thing I hear is crow-talk. Loud crow-talk.

Now you must understand that my understanding of crow-talk is not words in English happening in my brain, but something way more direct.

But I have to use words to describe this.

What the crows were yelling was

"Owl, owl

Get the owl,

Chase the owl away,

Bad owl,

Bad owl".

And so forth.


Now, I will reiterate that the crow-talk did not happen in me as words,

But as direct and clear communication

And not to sound to freakin' far out,

Inter-species communication on top of it.

Sure enough, not a minute later, a Great Horned Owl

Broke out of the cedar trees just West of my house

And headed East, down the valley,

Pursued by dive bombing crows.

Now, for me,

This is not an event of divine visitation, but

A daily conversation with the world,

That plain, that simple.

I can only imagine what it would be like if

I had a fully cognizant bicameral mind.



hoka hey


john

[Forum Monk]

John,
Just to play the devil's advocate.

Isn't it likely that your example of inter-species communication is really just an awareness on your part of past experience. Perhaps you have noted in the past certain behaviors and patterns of caws followed by the appearance of crows chasing a fleeing owl or similar predatory bird. You associate the pattern of behavior to the crows alerting the presence of danger.

It doesn't seem unusual or weird to me, but neither does it seem to be some primordial awakening of interspecies communicative skills. Just some guy by virtual of the fact he spend a little more time than the average Joe observing the behaviour of the animals around him being capable of associating certain conditions to particular behaviours.

[dannan14]

Just some guy by virtual of the fact he spend a little more time than the average Joe observing the behaviour of the animals around him being capable of associating certain conditions to particular behaviours.

That actually sounds like a good way to learn another language to me.

[woodrabbit]

John

...if I can borrow your line from your "Sacred Cows make the best Hamburger" thread....

I believe the real roots of the I Ching are in the (Shamanic) Paleolithic, were fomalised in the Neolithic, and, unfortunately, categorized with the advent of the written word.

The random energy numerical generator of the I Ching, whether by sticks, coins or stones acts as the bicameral bridge between the known and the unknown, much as the drum, drone or brew does for the shaman. All may have roots in the way past, but all very much alive and available in the present.

[Ishtar]

John - I know of sages and gurus in India who talk to the birds. There is one guru near Haridwar who constantly has a crow on his shoulder, talking into his ear. They say that the crow is the easiest to understand and they are very aware of the actions of crows when it comes to omens.

It's interesting, too, that you link the death of the bicameral life to reading and writing. I say this because, out of all my shamanic practitioner training group, I found it the most difficult to journey. Now, even a year later, some of my 'clients' who I teach to journey, can get there quicker and have far more vivid experiences than I did at their stage of development.

I think this may be because I'm a writer. I've been a writer all my life in one guise or another - journalist, book writer, editor - and these days I earn my crust writing websites.

My shaman teacher, Simon, is also a writer, and thus he has been very sympathetic to my stumblings because he too found it difficult to journey in the beginning, some 30 years ago.

I said to him:

"But I've been meditating since my 20s. Surely I should find it the easiest?"

And he said no, that that was a completely different thing and that I had to "start again at the beginning of a new road."

But it does beg the question - why, or how? How is it that man's development of literacy marked the death knell for the bicameral mind? And do artists (who deal in visual images rather than words) find it easier to enter the bicameral state? Or musicians?

[Ishtar]

Shamans can talk to all sorts of animals (not just birds) and a tradition that was very much alive in the UK in bicameral times was bee shamanism - so much so that what we now call the British Isles were known as the Isles of Honey.

The tradition of bee shamanism, where the shaman is a bee keeper and talks to the bees, is still alive here in tiny pockets, and my own teacher, Simon, is from that tradition.

I mention this, woodrabbit, because you used the term 'bicameral bridge' in reference to the implements used when throwing the I Ching. Simon's own teacher (who passed over more than 20 years ago) was a highly respected and much loved shaman in the bee tradition, and he was given, by his teachers, the Celtic name from the Mabinogian of Bid Ben Bid Bont. It means "Who would be a leader, must be a bridge." So Simon's teacher became known as Bridge.

Bridge would draw pictures of bees and other animals on his hives and he explained it thus to Simon:

"...these are our our modern petroglyphs - our 'cave paintings', which connect us back to the earliest members of our cultus. Archaeologists have not understood that the cave paintings, as our hive paintings, were not executed as art. Why were these masterpieces - that drew gasps of envy from Picasso - hidden in deep, dark caverns, sometimes in passages so narrow that only a single person could crawl to see them?

"Simple: The walls of the caves were known to be 'membranes', beyond which lay the realm of the wise teachers [bicameral world]. The spirit animals and the artist-shaman drew the animals through the membrane and then fixed them onto the surface. The handprints on these walls and the marks of the fingers in soft clay indicate moments when our ancestors reached out to these spirits. When we draw on our hives today, this is the principle we're executing."

From The Shamanic Way of the Bee by Simon Buxton.

Interesting the different uses of the word 'draw' and 'drew' there and typical of a shaman poet to connect them up.