Decoding the Neurological Basis of Shamanic Visions
An interview with Michael Winkelman
(extended)
by Carolyn Arcabascio

Dr. Michael Winkelman’s teaching and research interests focus on shamanism and psychedelic medicine, applied medical anthropology, and cross-cultural relations. His research on shamanism includes cross-cultural studies, investigations into the origins of shamanism, and contemporary applications of shamanic healing in substance abuse rehabilitation. He has pioneered perspectives on shamanism as humanity’s original neurotheology and studies on the biological bases of religion.

GLIMPSE journal: What first drew you to the study of Shamanism, and specifically, to understanding the biological and neurological processes involved in the spiritual activities of shamans?
Dr. Michael Winkelman: I was drawn to the study of shamanism by the possibility that it had some universal or cross-cultural status. And these “shamanic universals,” as I call them, led me to search for their suggested biological basis. That human biology is important in shamanism is apparent from the many physical techniques used to alter consciousness. Psychedelic plants, for example, are crucial pieces of evidence, since they so reliably induce not only altered states of consciousness (ASC), but also a very specific set of experiences. This is what I came to recognize as neurognosis, biologically-based processes of knowing, which alter our experience of the world and the capacities of consciousness.

GJ: You’ve written that aspects of the animal ritual activities of our evolutionary ancestors are preserved in shamanism. For example, you discuss drumming as a “widespread mammalian adaptation,” but symbolic healing achieved through the visionary experiences of ASC as a uniquely human practice. What is the earliest evidence we have of when shamans began to develop and employ these more sophisticated cognitive capacities? What sort of early records exist that tell of shamanic visions?
MW: Evidence for the emergence of a human visionary capacity comes in direct and indirect forms. The emergence of what is considered modern human culture occurred some 40,000 years ago in what is called the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition. Significant evidence of the presence of shamanic practices is found in the same evidence of this cognitive evolution of humans. Some of the earliest direct evidence would be the still-preserved Paleolithic cave art in Europe, where it is found in association with the origins of modern human culture.

Some of this dramatic art has been seen as evidence of activities designed to induce ASC, since the features of cave sites such as darkness and isolation have the ability to produce alterations of consciousness. Some sites provide evidence of percussion instruments and bird bone flutes, and areas with primarily heel marks, as opposed to full foot imprints, suggest ritual dances took place. Other features of this art that suggest the use of caves for inducing ASC include a variety of non-symbolic representations that resemble entoptic phenomena, autogenous images that occur spontaneously during a variety of altered states of consciousness.

Prominent shamanic features of other images include representations of shamanic practices such as the soul flight, visionary experiences, death/dream states, human-animal identities and animal powers. Significant depictions of shamanic flight include “bird-men,” combining human and avian features that are seen as symbols of shamanic soul flight in cultures around the world. Other evidence of shamanic ASC has been inferred from the “wounded man” themes that may represent the shamanic death and rebirth experience. The depiction of humans prominently involves figures that combine human and animal features, a reflection of the animal transformation power of shamans and the animal powers that they controlled. One of the most impressive human representations include the famed Sorcerer of Les Trois-Fréres; this and other similar figures combining human and animal elements have no convincing explanation apart from shamanism.

The indirect evidence of the presence of shamanic visions in a far more distant past is based on inferences and knowledge regarding the neurological bases of visions. This requires combining information regarding: the dream capacity; the emergence of capacities such as long distance running; and the capacities for self-representation. First is the visual capacity that underlies dreaming. This is an ancient mammalian adaptation, but not sufficient for the out-of-body experience (OBE). The OBE requires a body-based self representation that apparently emerged about 1-2 million years ago as part of a set of adaptations that led to mimesis, the ability to represent intentionally with the body. This mimetic ability was likely a side-effect of adaptations for the ability for long-distance running. This running capacity is a uniquely human capacity that not only has a variety of adaptive advantages, but which also produces a variety of mystical experiences, including the OBE.

So I infer that once we had the capacity for long distance running we began to have these experiences spontaneously. And if we ran for our lives to the safety of our group, and collapsed into the protective environs of our clan cave or the boughs of a tree, I suspect that the exhaustion combined with extensive physical stimulation led to emergence of lucid dreaming and OBEs. These experiences provided a variety of cognitive adaptations—review and rehearsal, which are fundamental functional features of dreams—as well as the ability to use the self-awareness decoupled from the body to explore the internal representations of our psychological states as well as the external world.

GJ: Can you describe what happens in the brain when shamans achieve ASC through external agents and processes?
MW: Shamanic forms of ASC involve manipulation of the autonomic nervous system, which ultimately produces a slowing of the brain wave discharges into a more synchronized and coherent pattern. It also results in relaxation, drowsiness, and apparent unconsciousness. I say apparent because the shaman continues to have experiences although appearing unconsciousness.

These conditions of altered consciousness also involve an integration of the various levels of the brain. In essence, the lower brain’s patterns come to dominate the frontal cortex, which is synchronized by the slow waves of the limbic system. Agents and procedures that invoke this pattern include drugs such as hallucinogens, amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana; endogenous opiates; long-distance running; hunger, thirst, and sleep loss; auditory stimuli such as drumming and chanting; sensory deprivation; dream states; meditation; and a variety of psychophysiological imbalances or sensitivities resulting from injury, trauma, disease, or hereditarily transmitted nervous system conditions.

Neurobiologist Arnold Mandell proposed that these agents and activities link the R(reptilian)-Complex, or behavioral brain, with the limbic, or emotional brain. This results from the reduction of the “gating” of emotional responses in the hippocampus, which also frees the visual cortex from the normal inhibitory processes, releasing an internal visual system that underlies the dream processes. It is considered a visual symbolic system that preceded language. Although not unique to shamanism, these activities in the brain manifest for shamans as soul flight or out-of-body experiences. Shamanic practices and rituals create a greater level of excitation in the body and nervous system by pushing it to exhaustion. In the collapse phase, the person may remain insensible to the external world, but the brain’s dream dynamic is activated, and with training, shamans can deliberately manipulate this inner symbolic world.

GJ: Does the interaction between unconscious and conscious regions of the brain allow for this kind of deliberate manipulation?
MW: Most of the brain's nerve "wiring" is bottom-up, or ascending, from lower structures to higher structures. The converse is very limited. Hence you can rationally decide that smoking cigarettes is dangerous to your health but the addiction is maintained at lower levels, and your rationalizations about quitting can be powerless in the face of the lower biological urges. Consequently, when we can enter into those lower dynamics we have a greater ability to control them, as well as higher cognitive processes. Hence the ASC, which takes us into the emotional brain, can have very powerful effects.

The visual/visioning system is one of these systems that operates through the lower brain structures, as opposed to the higher structures that manage language. Hence the power of images to evoke emotions, and vice versa. Using images to evoke emotions is one of the ways in which shamanic healing can have its effects, since these visual symbolic systems are directly involved in the organic responses of the body.

GJ: In your view, do shamanic healing techniques and visionary practices have a place within modern medicine?
MW: There are many applications of visualization and shamanic healing practices in contemporary medicine. Perhaps the most noted application of visualization has been in the treatment of cancer, where we discovered decades ago the usefulness of visualizing the body’s healing processes.

ASCs can facilitate many aspects of healing, including relief of pain and stress and focus of attention. Meditation has been shown to be an effective tool for many conditions, and the use of hypnosis is also an area in which many different conditions are being successfully treated through alterations of consciousness. Other shamanic therapies are found in drumming, dance, dance movement therapy, and music therapy—activities that a growing body of research shows are effective treatments.

We’re also just beginning to discover the healing power of belief in the spirit world. Whether or not we think that spirits are empirically real, the power of a belief in a spiritual being to affect our health is an empirical reality. Conceptions of the spirit world can provide important therapeutic resources, where spirits represent unconscious dynamics, as well as mental and psychosocial processes.

Ritual is also a powerful tool for eliciting the unconscious powers of our mind and the healing capacities of our body. I have shown in Shamanism: A Biopsychosocial Paradigm of Consciousness and Healing that ritual has deep evolutionary roots as a community bonding and social healing resource. Some of the unexplored aspects of shamanic healing include the power of ritual to elicit a variety of physiological responses, as in the case of community bonding eliciting endogenous opioid responses.

I would argue that we evolved through spirituality and the capacity for altruistic actions to elicit healing responses, and that these practices are still an intrinsic part of human nature that have many applications in the modern world. We ignore them at our peril.

GJ: Is eliciting these healing responses one of the goals in controlling the direction of a soul flight or out-of-body experience?
MW: The control of the soul flight has many objectives; I would view them primarily in terms of accessing information. Our brain is a complex information processing system that largely excludes most information from consciousness. You've heard that we only use 5% or 10% of our brain; the information in the rest of the brain is generally screened out. ASCs enhance access to this information stream, hence the ability of soul flight to bring information into the complex dream-like visual construction of reality. In shamanic healing this information may be about the patient, and used to construct a diagnosis about the psychosocial dynamics underlying the affliction.

GJ: How are shamanic visions communicated among people? Are they recorded? Are they passed on through oral tradition?
MW: Shamanic visions may remain private personal experiences, shared with close groups, and may enter into the group’s mythology. Perhaps the most interesting is the direct interpersonal sharing of shamanic visions through co-journeying or clairvoyance. Time and time again, novices have begun to recount their incredible journeys to elders, who respond knowingly with comments like, “Yes, we went there, too,” or indications that they too experienced the journey of the novice. This suggests that for some, the soul journey is not some exclusively personal experience, but rather an entry into a non-ordinary reality that nonetheless has objective features subject to consensual validation.

GJ: Can you describe, either generally or taking a particular case into account, what one "sees" during soul flight?
MW: Perhaps the most classic aspect of the soul flight experience is something akin to what it must be like to fly with your body, but not the physical body, rather a disembodied ephemeral aspect of the self. The soul flight experiences recounted to me often involve seeing incredible beings, immense cities of unknown architecture, and intricate patterns of flowing colors, sounds and feelings. There probably is no end to the variation in soul flight experiences, from something that appears no different from ordinary reality, to dream-like symbolic manifestations, to classic mythological worlds, to incredible unearthly scenes that defy the wildest imagination. I think that the variations might be partially understood in terms of the different aspects of the worlds shamans seek to know. In shamanic cosmologies there are a number of levels to the universe. Contemporary shamanistic practices emphasize three principal aspects, the lower, middle and upper worlds. While any of these may be experienced in terms of something ordinary, I think that the middle world, thought to correspond to the human plane, is most likely to be experienced as something like ordinary reality. But even “ordinary reality” and the middle world may be “seen” in its spiritual essence, luminescent, with unusual colors, features, and entities. Lower world experiences are often recounted in terms of encounters with animals and nature, while upper world experiences are frequently characterized in terms of higher spiritual beings and powers. But these stereotypical aspects are but a glimpse of the possible experiences of soul flight—I would say that they could be of anything, including worlds beyond our imaginations.

GJ: Where have you conducted your research?
MW: My research on shamanism has been both ethnological (cross-cultural) and ethnographic/participatory. The cross-cultural research done from my office and libraries has covered shamanic practices in dozens of societies around the world and across time. This was the basis for my work identifying the universal features of shamanism and distinguishing shamans from other magico-religious practitioners, published as Shamans, Priests and Witches (Arizona State University: 1992).

As to my own participatory research, I would characterize it as involving shamanistic practices rather than shamanism, because most contemporary practices lack some of the features found in more ancient forms of shamanism. My research began in Mexico, and included: Espiritualistas, particularly in central Mexico and Baja California; and a brief engagement with Maria Sabina and the mushroom traditions of Oaxaca. I went to some of Michael Harner’s Core Shamanism workshops for both personal development and academic knowledge, and subsequently spent some time engaging with people here in Arizona who follow his practices. Subsequently I was invited to engage in a variety of practices involving the use of ayahuasca, most recently involving my Fulbright research on the health and well-being of members of the Uniao de Vegetal and Santo Daime churches in Brazil.

GJ: In your fieldwork, has there been a specific event that was especially significant for you, both personally and professionally?
MW: My first significant shamanic experience in field work happened in 1980, during my first years of graduate school. Stanley Krippner had invited me to accompany him and a group of psychologists on a trip guided by Mexican psychiatrist Salvador Roquet to visit Maria Sabina and some of other Mazatec shamans in Oaxaca Mexico. We did a mushroom ceremony with one of them. During the night I felt a song enter me and an impulse to dance; the leaders didn’t let me unfold the experience there. But the next day I awoke with a radiance that others noted. I knew I had found my path, that my career would involve the scientific study of these ancient spiritual practices and traditions.

My most significant shamanic experience happened in 2001. I had an opportunity to attend my first ayahuasca ceremony, which was carried out by an individual trained in the Peruvian traditions. They use icaros, sacred songs, to guide the ceremony. I had spent a lot of time during the weeks leading up to the ceremony sorting through my intentions—what did I want to get out of this work? At the last moment I abandoned my numerous purposes and told the brew “show me what I need to know.” The results were immediate and overwhelming. The most significant of my revelations, somehow starkly revealed in the dark clanging sounds of the icaros, was that these traditions have an important message for the modern world that we ignore at our personal and collective peril. Ayahuasca told me that we need to prepare for catastrophic changes on the planet. That very night a colleague, an anthropologist-shaman Luis Eduardo Luna emailed me inviting me to come to Brazil and participate in some ayahuasca workshops. These conjunctions led me on my current path to create sustainable communities in the central highlands of Brazil.

Dr. Michael Winkelman's website
http://michaelwinkelman.com/neurotheology/