Altered States

It’s been a little more than a year since I started becoming interested in the notion that there is much more to our minds than we are normally able to perceive or experience. I’ve found all of what Hughes points to be well put together as well as strike some chord with another work that I’ve come in contact with. There are, of course, a few ideas that I find to be exceedingly interesting such as Shamanism and nearly everything in the third chapter.

Shamanism is something that I was originally open to, due to the fact that I’m not, by any stretch, what someone would consider a spiritual person. However, I was introduced to the idea in a class last year when we viewed Cabeza de Vaca, a film based on the personal journal of a Spanish explorer who was transformed, if you will, into a Shaman by his captors. Since then I have found myself playing more and more with the idea of shamanism and the abilities expressed by these people, so much so that I purchased The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner, and hope to use it to help expand myself as a human being.

I found the passage about Joseph Beuys quite interesting. There is an almost storybook quality to his transformation into shamanism. I was especially intrigued by his interactive dialogue with a coyote. After reading it I sat and thought about the month that I spent living alone this past summer with my dog Leroy. It was not at all uncommon for us to have literal, verbal dialogue, which I would then question and laugh about later, as I surely thought I was losing my mind.

Aldous Huxley, in Heaven and Hell makes the point that our brains only let us experience what is necessary for survival, saying that even though our brains may have the power for much greater accomplishments it is the job of a filter to lock out all of the stimuli that could possibly hinder the survival of our species. This notion is brought up at the beginning of chapter three and almost gets as far as Huxley does. I think it would have been wise of Hughes to add that there are notions that suggest Shamans, as well as those aided by psychedelic drugs are somewhat able to reduce this filter and see more clearly, as it were. This would help to link some of the subject matter from the previous chapters to the following.

The question: “How many people am I?” is quite an interesting one. That one line describing a picture in the book drove me mad, as well as comforted me. I have found myself, on occasion, wondering whether or not there is another me. As though I’m living some real version of Fight Club, but I have yet to meet my alter ego. This is especially troubling when it comes to my dreams. I don’t have crazy, fanciful dreams anymore. For a long time now they consist of what seem to be memories of the present, for which I participated but have no formal memory of. They occur much more often than not, and are always in full color with faces. As though there is another me, and we are in contact through my dreams. It is for this reason that I’ve begun to write down nearly all of my dreams as soon as I wake up, to keep some kind of record on this “other Andy.