The Shamanic Journey to Drum and Rattle
Today in the Western world, people often say that shamans enter an 'altered state of consciousness'. Well, altered perhaps, but intentionally so and very different from what the 'norm' is in the contemporary world, which certainly is not something to brag about!
The shamanic state of consciousness has been referred to as ecstasy, trance, etc., and is a form of consciousness practiced and developed in order to reach another, shamanic reality. This is done in order to do such things as find answers to questions from spirit teachers, gain assistance in solving problems, find a way back to wellness and health, or regain a natural empowerment with the assistance of power animals.
Unfortunately, shamanism when it was first being 'rediscovered' by the western world in the '60's, embraced a serious misconception: there was assumed to be an automatic association between entheogens (plant teachers) and shamanism. However, this mistaken notion led us to stumble onto something else that was even more important.
The problem started with people like the student anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, whose creative mix of imagination and experience fueled the cultural imagination. Castaneda's literature sold a great many copies, yet was soundly denounced by his own anthropological community. Yet, an unfortunate, automatic association was established between entheogens and shamanism.
When Richard Alpert (Ram Das), Tim Leary, and Ralph Metzner 'turned on' and 'tuned in’, a mesmerized a public quickly assumed that simply ingesting a substance was the path to deep understanding. This was an easy path to follow, for even among the conservative groups, people were already 'tuned in' to the idea of a quick fix. America, and much of the western world was emboldened by a fantasy that problems could be solved by a pill (such as in medicine) or 'tinkering with things' such as with science. This fantasy was driven into the culture at that time through television, radio and educational institutions.
Ralph Metzner was the one of the 'turn on, tune in' of the abovementioned group to focus on shamanism, yet even Michael Harner, whose solid anthropological research leaves us today knowing the predominantly shared elements of shamanic theory and practice, initially thought that shamanism and entheogens were simply two parts of the same basic stuff.
People like Metzner and Harner traveled to South and Central America to find the shamans and participate in their ceremonies and learn from their plant teachers. Naturally, they found what they were looking for, wrote about it (which fed the popular imagination) and the rest of the automatic association between entheogens and shamanism is simply a matter of history.
However, when people like Michael Harner continued to pursue serious shamanic study, the reality of shamanism was found to be quite different from what the imagination of the '60's produced. It was discovered that most shamanic activity throughout the world does not - and did not - use entheogens. This is because a shamanic state of consciousness found, for instance, during the shamanic journey is far more reliably reached, maintained and navigated through the 'sonic driving' of a drum or a rattle at about a four to seven Hz, rapid beat.
It has been found that the monotonous rhythm of a rattle or drum at this beat induces the altered state of consciousness in which the ability of the human brain to image is remarkably facilitated. This is a process called brainwave entrainment, with the drumbeat or rattle stimulating the production of brain waves in the low alpha and theta range, a state which is associated with heightened creativity and vivid imagery.
A corollary explanation for the ability of sonic driving to encourage shamanic trance is that with each beat, the drum or rattle attracts the attention of a brain that is naturally constructed to attend to stimuli. Because the brain is unable to attend to two external stimuli simultaneously, this helps the brain to focus. Clearly, the rattle or drum’s sound helps mask other noises or movement in the environment. It is theorized that the brain eventually reaches a kind of ‘comfort level’ with what it eventually categorizes as an inconsequential stimuli that it must, nonetheless, return to with each beat. Like meditation practices that focus on the breath, the drum or rattle enables the brain to ‘give up’ worrying about stimuli from the environment, including that from the practitioner’s own body. The shamanic practitioner is thus freed to more fully attend to altered states of consciousness.
Many teachers such as myself, follow and encourage practitioners to also take the more ancient and widespread path of 'riding the shamanic drum-horse'. Our journeying ability is already established in our very genetic code. It is part of our human heritage!