The Shaman's Near Death Experience

When we look at many of the ancient shamanic cultures of yesteryear, be it the Altai Shaman, the Mudang Shaman, the Siberian Shaman, the Tamang Shaman, the Tungus Shaman, or the Yakut Shaman, there is one prerequisite that the prospective shaman or the shaman to be must satisfy in order to gain his or her shamanic abilities, and that is to undergo the near-death experience. The near-death experience from all accounts can be the result of a natural illness or a result of an induced illness that reduces the shaman-prospect to the near-death state.

Before we go any further it would be appropriate to define or give a definition to the word shaman and though they sometimes act as healers or medicine men or women, shamans are not always necessarily healers.

Shamans in short are those among us who have the ability to see and communicate with spirits and it is with the help of these spirits that shamans are able to concoct remedies and foretell the future or remove hexes and maledictions.

Therefore, anyone who is able to see and communicate with spirits though that is not always necessarily the case, may if he or she chooses to, become a shaman.

The shaman or the prospective shaman acquires the ability to see and communicate with spirits by undergoing the near death transition, though it is not the only way a person can see or communicate with spirits, some albeit rarely, are born with the ability to see spirits while others who are old and have come to terms with death or are ready to move on to the next stage also sometimes gain the ability to see spirits, but the designation of shaman belongs only to those who use their abilities to see and communicate with spirits to help others and that may be to cure an illness or to cause someone an illness i.e. it works both ways, and hence the classification of white and black magic.

Even today, despite the advent of modern technology, there are those among us that still resort to shamans to achieve a specific outcome, and the shaman normally charges according to the help that is required.

To some extent it is an interesting field of study but one that requires some fortitude and it is most suited to those who have come to terms with death. To borrow a phrase from the Tibetan Book of Death or the Bardo Thodol “death is inevitable” i.e. it is something that we all have to accept.

The book was written by the Indian Prince turned monk Padmasambhava. According to the Tibetan Book of Death, the spirit remains in the mortal world for a certain number of days before it takes on a new life (rebirth) or crosses over.

Even if the body dies the spirit can remain and these are the spirits that shamans come in contact with. From what we can gather from those that have undergone the near-death experience, the prospective shaman comes close to death and at the time he or she is about to die, the spirit leaves the body and that departure from the body is very much like ascending a tree, hence the term “the shaman tree”, and as the prospective shaman’s spirit ascends the shaman tree, he or she comes in contact with other spirits.

According to some sources the spirit that the prospective shaman’s spirit comes in contact with sits on the highest limbs of the tree while other sources are more vague, but all sources agree that it is during this journey that the prospective shaman comes in contact with the spirit that later aids him or her once the prospective shaman becomes a full-fledged shaman.

Once the prospective shaman has gained sight of the spirit and returns to his or her body and is nursed back to health, the prospective shaman is on his or her way to becoming a full-fledged shaman.

The new shaman continues to see the spirit he or she had come in contact with during the near-death experience whereas others around the shaman cannot and in time begins to communicate with the spirit which becomes the source of the shaman’s abilities.

Copyright © 2019 by Dyarne Ward and Kathiresan Ramachanderam