Shamanic Sickness in a Society without Shamans, Part 3: Perceptual Integrations
(In the last installment, the reader was introduced to Perceptual Inclusions and Spirit Induction. Part 3 is an outline of perceptual inclusions (changed to integrations) and the abilities that follow. Though much of the information has been gained from various accounts and reports, this remains a very experiential paper. The integrations and how they develop are a theory at best, yet to be deeply studied.)
The Process of Perceptual Integrations
Typically, the most common transition into shamanship begins with the physical body undergoing changes that are the basis of the shamanic illness. As discussed in the previous installments, this is the root of the pain and confusion felt at initiation for the first time. As the individual quickly realizes, all of their sensory perceptions are heightened. Through these changes, key symptoms related to their five senses can be expected. When every physical sense becomes hypersensitive, this is accompanied by perceptual integrations.
Perceptual integrations are newly initiated, personally experienced feedback from information a person gathers about the external environment. One can see the processing of the physical senses in perceptual experiences, evolving to augment a person’s perceived reality with more information and feedback from the body’s various sensory systems: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The simplest explanation is that the physical senses are being tweaked in some way to allow for the perception and experience of more information. As we know, the five senses are used to relay information from the external environment to the brain, which is then processed and organized into a perceptual experience with which we can identify — our experience of the present moment in a personally perceived reality.
The perceptual experience is used to help us navigate and interact with the external environment and leads to a foundation of reality. A person’s perceived reality is shaped by their ability to perceive what their senses gather in the external environment. For example, our skin’s sensory system tests and collects information about the weather. When we stand outdoors or stretch our arms out the door, our skin begins to collect information about the atmosphere around us. The information is divided for us into the perception of hot, warm, cool, or cold. The skin tests air pressure and moisture levels. When there is moisture in the air, the skin collects data on the amount, weight, and type of moisture to inform the type of perception that the brain will form and give as feedback: the feeling of rain on our skin, the heaviness of the air, differences in air raindrop sizes, or between raindrops and snowflakes. While this isn’t the most detailed or scientific explanation, it will help to understand the evolving perceptual locks that lie ahead.
How does gathering and processing more information about the environment relate to the development of shamanic illness and spirit harassment? Everything. Humans generally have a very limited sensory system. That’s not to say it’s not very effective, or that it doesn’t provide us with a rich and comprehensive experience of life and perceived reality. This means that our physical senses are limited to narrow bands of sensory information from much wider ranges. We only see a fraction of color in the infrared to ultraviolet range. We cannot hear the multitude of sounds labeled as infrasound and ultrasound. What creates our perceived reality is just a fraction of the sensory information out there.
According to scientists, with some exceptions, humans can see between 30 and 60 frames per minute and process still images or changes in a location beyond 12 frames per minute as motion. This means that we process information from sight much like still images in a movie. Anything moving over 60 frames per minute is usually not processed properly or at all. When something moves at less than 12 frames per second, we perceive it as a still image (think of a plant growing). We are limited to the seven common colors and their variants. We have limited to no ability to naturally process sensory information in the ultraviolet or infrared ranges.
The exception here would be children. Children may have a wider range of visual sensory data, ranging from top to bottom to ultraviolet and infrared. That being said, this could explain children’s ability to notice and see things that we cannot that are associated with paranormal phenomena such as spirits and other entities. For more information on frames per minute and view distance, see the aptly named, “How Many Frames Per Minute Can The Human Eye See Per Second,” article on the Safeguards website.
These limitations are not unique to our sense of sight. Our ability to perceive ultrasound and infrasound is almost nil. Our sense of smell is orders of magnitude smaller than that of a dog, and our other two physical senses are also limited. Given these facts, one has to marvel at how rich our perceptual experience is. However, coming back to the perceptual integrations, the reader can understand how our perceptual abilities through the sensory systems can be enhanced simply by the fact that we have such limited sensory systems. Although we can explain the abilities in this way, how they are increased can only be theorized.
Here’s the kicker. Just because we cannot perceive the higher and lower realms of information does not mean we are not affected by them, nor can it be said with certainty that beyond that various life forms cannot exist. We all know that UV rays, infrasound, and ultrasound are becoming better understood from the damage done to several US diplomats by the use of directed energy weapons (yes, they are real). Through research in the field of parapsychology, we can understand that it is entirely plausible that other life exists outside of our faculties of perception. We’ll explore this in more detail in the next part of our series.
As the initiate develops new perceptual integrations, not only does he have to adjust to the increase, but he is also confronted with many new perceptual experiences (i.e., the anxiety and stress of hyper perception). This increases their perceived reality in a way that expands the person’s need to assess and interact with the external environment. Due to the unfamiliarity of such alien perceptions, people experiencing this through shamanic illness initially feel mentally bothered by the unknown. A need for over-vigilance arises as the person recognizes what is real that previously seemed not to be, then must determine what poses a threat and what does not. The person can only translate the new perceptual integrations through interaction with them, and figure out what to expect. We can begin to examine the common perceptual integrations manifesting as a result of the sensory alterations caused by shamanic sickness. First, however, we need to examine synesthesia and its contributions to this matter.
Synesthesia
As if experiencing an expanded perceptual reality wasn’t enough, those who are initiated begin to re-evolve a form of perception most commonly experienced in childhood that dissipates with age. As this form of perception re-evolves, an individual must not only adapt to new and strange perceptual discoveries using each of their senses but also figure out how to deal with reality when their senses offer multi-sensory feedback about information that would normally result in just one Perception.
Synesthesia is the fascinating ability to attribute multisensory feedback to a person’s cognition, such that information received from a primary physical sense is represented by feedback as being perceived by more than one of the five physical senses. So words are perceived by sound and color, colors are perceived by sight and sound, and so on. Many who suffer from shamanic illness experience a reactivation of this perceptual ability. One can imagine the labyrinth perceptual reality becomes when the person initially attempts to navigate through multisensory feedback.
Synesthesia helps us to still the process of perception because it differentiates the feedback loop. To know how a person can perceive words through sound and color, we need to understand that our senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are not the same as our eyes, ears, skin, tongue, and nose. Our senses only capture the data and information of the external environment. This information is organized by the brain and then passed on as feedback through the perception of color, distance, solidity, etc. Sensations. As adults, we normally reduce information to as few perceptions as necessary. The sound of a bird is our brain’s feedback when we hear birdsong. In synesthesia, the sound of a bird is not only relayed from the brain to the person’s perception as a hearing bird song, but it is also feedback to them with an assigned color that the brain appears to designate to represent the particular bird’s chirping and whistling.
Have you noticed that even though the person sees the birdsong, it has nothing to do with sight or the eye? Synesthesia appears to work through the creation of a perception that combines feedback from multiple sensory systems that were not used to gather the information. The eyes weren’t used to see the color of the song, but the brain used visual feedback to perceive it anyway. When a synesthete (identifying someone with the ability to have synesthesia) hears and tastes a person’s name, they do not tongue-lick the person. Nevertheless, the brain uses the tongue’s sensory outcome for its perceptual feedback.
As we proceed, this will also help the reader understand the evolution of annoyances one is exposed to due to the development of heightened sensory sensitivities and the perceptual integrations listed below. It is best to keep in mind that the integrations and abilities below are not always experienced by everyone with a shamanic illness. Also, these examples are just the tip of the iceberg, and many truly deserve an in-depth exploration. As our focus is on becoming a shaman through shamanic illness and the impact this has on initiates within societies without shamans, these studies must be deferred to another day. Here are the most common perceptual integrations that an initiate can expect to encounter.
Auditory integrations
Beeps and Tones
People often recognize acoustic changes before noticing other sensory developments. The most commonly reported experiences are hearing a long, high-pitched tone beginning and stopping randomly in one or both ears, a series of beeps and tones typically described as electronic in nature, and of course the resulting overall increase in auditory information in the hypersensitivity of their hearing. This type of adjustment persists throughout the illness but diminishes significantly as the experience of the shamanic illness progresses.
So the person hears high-pitched tones and a series of beeps, so what? Since we all experience such symptoms from time to time, it is easy to assume that they are trivial if not mundane. There is an expanse of difference from hearing these sounds when tired to the highly electronic and sometimes described as technological beeps and tones a person undergoing shamanic sickness hears. Hearing beeps and tones when exhausted doesn’t usually have much of a series or length. For initiates, the sounds they hear do, while also including a purposefulness to the series or emotional connotation that seems to be attached to it.
This auditory integration is often misdiagnosed as, tinnitus, damage to the ear caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises such as excessively loud music, factory atmospheres, or explosive noises such as gunshots. Tinnitus is often the first term for symptoms that may be misdiagnosed in an initiate. The series of beeps and high-pitched tones can be so long and steady that people are concerned enough to see a doctor for help. Knowing no reason why it is not tinnitus, the person accepts the diagnosis. Since there are few if any real cures for it, it seems like a fairly harmless diagnosis.
The truth is that it can often be a gateway to a series of misdiagnoses that lead to further complications in adapting to spiritual transformation. First, it is reassuring to the individual because it gives a label to the symptoms and a reason for experiencing them. However, the reassurance often does not last due to the involvement of other symptoms and the differences between these beeps and tones and those experienced with tinnitus. Second, as the individual continues to experience new symptoms, medical professionals and social supports begin to lose interest and belief in the person’s complaints. A medical practitioner may tell the individual that they already diagnosed the issue and refuses to examine the issue further.
The bottom line is that, with tinnitus, a person experiences a long, constant, and consistent high-pitched sound that may not resolve or be consistent enough to stay on the same pitch and tone. It is often heard in one ear. In a shamanic illness, the tones and beeps typically vary in pitch and tone. Hearing electronic beeps is not typical of tinnitus, if at all. The sustained high-pitched sounds a person hears during an episode of tinnitus differ from the shamanic illness. The beeps which can change in pitch and tone can be experienced or perceived as being heard alternately in one ear or as being heard in both ears. Additionally, some people have reported auditory perception of radio interference and other random noises.
So what’s up with those noises? As this is an experiential article and not a scientific article and I am not an audiologist of this nature I can only share what appears to be the results of what is going on and not the internal bodily changes. What people are reporting is that these beeps and tones act as a signal to the brain to trigger perceptual engagement, which allows access to a wider range of precepts. In many accounts, people state that they eventually found that the various beeps and tones are ultimately signs of external changes, such as invisible beings or creatures that are nearby. Some identify specific beeps and tones that precede sightings of UFOs/UAPs. Others identify them as early warning systems that trigger before dangerous or accidental events. They have also been described as alerting when people with more extreme positive or negative intentions are nearby.
In the field of parapsychology, it was discovered that many phenomena can and are perceived differently by different people. Thus, one person can have the real perceptual experience of hearing, for example, the voice of an invisible entity, while another person standing right next to them can have the perceptual experience of hearing the sound of a loud knocking on a wall At the same time, a third person has in the same group may not have any perceptual experience related to the phenomenon. This is also the mechanism by which initiates can classify such beeps and tones. It is also possibly attached to how mediums are able to hear spirits and other unseen entities while others cannot because they receive perceptual feedback from more sensory data, perceptual feedback is more robust, and/or is receiving data and information from a different source.
Many accounts of experiencing the shamanism illness show what it is like to experience the new and heightened ability to perceive. As you can imagine, at the beginning of these changes in auditory perception, fear arises. In today’s societies, any hint of phantom noise, even simple beeps and tones, automatically leads a person to the media-generated, frightening assumption that they are suffering from schizophrenia or some related mental illness. This potential leads to fear, self-doubt, and shame, as many remain reluctant to speak out about all things mental illness for fear of the social and financial consequences. Even if they are misdiagnosed as having tinnitus, other symptoms canlead them to this fear, such as hearing whispers and screams.
Whispers and Screams
Many people experience hearing whispers and screams from time to time, whether they are alone in an environment with constant ambient noise, such as an aquarium, traffic, or air conditioning. Most assume that environmental noise is the culprit as our brain tries to make sense of the information fed to it by our ears. The brain will try to form words from it. That’s fine, but as one goes through shamanic illness, this type of phenomenon increases for many with the perceived voices becoming clear enough to understand what they are saying.
This occurs with the initiate as for most, in noisy environments, at times of high mental exhaustion, and sometimes just falling asleep. It will also happen more often when a person thinks less, meditates, and even when there appears to be no auditory stimulation. This increase could have something to do with a discovery about EVPs or electronic voice phenomena. This is a phenomenon of voices and conversations being captured on a recording that was not heard and spoken by individuals not present during the recordings.
Like most side topics bound to this subject, the discussion is too long to go into detail here. For our interest, it was found that the voices that appear post-recording on electronic devices are apparently placed on the recordings after rather than during the recording. It is possible that some paranormal phenomena can likewise manipulate the individual’s perceptions and initiate communication in some similar manner. Regardless of how it happens, this begins to test the person experiencing the increase. While this may not be a symptom seen by everyone suffering from a shamanic illness, for those who do experience this perceptual integration find it gradually increases.
Inner Dialogue Changes
Additionally grouped with auditory integrations are experiences that are first noticed through the change in a person’s inner dialogues. People report that their inner voice changes, from the tone of voice to vocabulary, to using unusual metaphors and expressions they’ve never used with themselves or in conversation before. The focus of the inner dialogues also changes towards insights into the world, reality, and even social or health situations. These changes can be so exotic and alien to a person’s normal thinking that they do not doubtthat the thoughts are not theirs. Once again, they are up a river without a paddle in today’s society.
These changes are often seen by the sufferer and others as signs of schizophrenia and often lead to the diagnosis of a mental illness. The most terrifying consequence of our ignorance of shamanic illness and similar high initiations is that changes such as these lead to psychiatric hospitalizations, misprescribed psychotropic drugs, and sometimes even suicide. If the initiate had access to a community of shamans much of the negative reactions to these integrations would probably not occur. Because the process of shamanic sickness is known and experienced commonly in such a community, the integrations would be more easily identified and remedied.
For those in contemporary society, we should understand that there are key differences between the voices of schizophrenia and those of a spiritual initiation or transformation. These differences can help a person understand their situation as different from that of mental illness. For example, one who experiences symptoms of schizophrenia often reports hearing negative and attacking comments from a single to multiple voices that cause paranoia and negative thoughts about themselves or others. With shamanic sickness, the voices will be minimal and present more as a knowing or one-sided discussion with the other side somehow making the person aware of what they respond to. Aside from possibly getting a warning about a person or very, extremely, bad situation, voices of a negative type aren’t typical of shamanic sickness.
Other facts differentiate the two. A person experiencing this type of initiation will often develop paranoia, worrying if they are okay or what others may think of them if they find out. The paranoia developed from worry or shame is different from paranoia caused by delusions of grandeur (thinking they have something or are something that is highly special causing them to be the target of bad people). Another thing to consider is that the typical onset of schizophrenia usually occurs younger in adulthood, somewhere around the ages of 18 to 26 often after a catalyst of stress or other triggering event. Though it can develop at other ages, knowing it usually doesn’t may reduce anxiety and fear. Indeed, schizophrenia doesn’t always present with symptoms of negativity or derision, however, it is these types of symptoms most fear. For more on schizophrenia, check out this article from The Recovery Village, titled, “Schizophrenia Statistics and Facts.”
Visual integrations
Many initiates see spherical shapes of darkness and high-intensity white light from their peripheral vision. They notice fluorescent-colored lights between the sizes of a needlepoint up to that of a firefly traversing nearby. Blurry, static-like, highly transparent spheres between the sizes of baseballs to soccer balls are another phenomenon seen through this perceptual development.
Lights, Auras, and Spheres
Most often reported are translucent colored auras around humans and other living things. When one gains the ability to see cues of bioenergy (e.g., through seeing auras), one gains the ability to become aware of another person’s temperament, personality, and mood through the subtle difference in the bioenergy field around the person to become. Well, that’s nice and useful. But do others want a person to know such information about them? How would they react if they knew they could be read with just a glance? How would you react? Similar reports have been shared about seeing the outlines of humanoid or animal-like beings but without being around anything other than space as if it were outlining a spirit.
Apparitions and Shadow Beings
More horrifying of the integrations are the abilities to see full-body, partial-body, or shadow-like apparitions. Initiate reports about seeing these, are sorted and varied. They have been reported as being seen in peripheral vision to spot glimpses of them when not paying attention or when engaged in a monotonous task, and include reports of longer lasting, more physical-looking, sightings that happen through full vision rather than from the corner of one’s eyes.
As for shadow beings, entities that start as two-dimensional “movements” of and within actual shadows, they are a phenomenon sighted in several situations studied in parapsychology. They are often perceived after a person has had a near-death experience (NDE) or a trauma-induced death experience. You will find reports about them pertaining to investigating hauntings of abandoned buildings and discussion threads about witnessing them in wooded areas or cemeteries.
The determining factor in seeing these beings is the person’s ability to adjust to a reality larger than thought possible. This again highlights an initiate’s surrender to the shamanic path as a remedy. It is the quickest option for relief, through learning and understanding what is happening so the person has knowledgeable social support.
Touch integrations
Insects and Bad Actors
From my own experience with shamanic illnesses, I have to say that this is the most difficult (albeit very fascinating) perceptual integration when triggered. It is a trying experience. There are a multitude of things we touch or by which we are touched. There is the sensation of insects, small animals, and even worms landing or crawling on the person. Unseen entities, or bad actors, can truly harass a person through this, as the sense of touch allows for them to be touched as well as touch others in the energy field. It is a very disturbing experience that can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for some people who have been called to the path in this way.
Without other shamans, or living in a culture that embraces shamans and the path, initiates most likely cannot expect these sensations. As other shamans assist the initiate with shamanic illnesses, they have a greater chance to learn about the nature of that which he or she is experiencing. Greatly needed from other shamans is the knowledge of how they can use protection, removal, or other elimination methods to keep these sensations in check.
Touching Energy, and Other Things
It started for me with a constant numbness and biting within my fingertips. Every bit of cold shocked and gnawed at them even during the warm seasons. This went on for many months before I notice that the numbness felt on the fingers seemed selective. Sometimes it would be all four that were numb from tip to mid finger. Other times it was only the first and middle fingers but only half of the middle finger. Eventually, I found that the numb biting sensation was replaced with feeling Bioenergy. But it’s not just that, it’s also the touching of unseen animals and human spirits. It is being able to cause wind by pushing energy in a certain way or being able to “throw” a dart of energy at someone. Nothing too wild, just enough that the person may feel a breeze.
Yes fun, fantastic, and amazing. That is until I began experiencing a sensation of worms coming out of my fingertips, then out of my scalp. The sensation of piano wire being pulled from my skin was something else I have experienced with this perceptual integration. Eventually, it calms down and an initiate learns the connection of their thought to this. Having proven enough by other people experiencing a pull or push somewhere in or out of their body from a distance was the only what I learned if it was a tactile hallucination or actual bioenergy.
The Spirits of Pets and People
This may include the sensation of animals such as dogs and cats walking on the furniture next to where the individual sits or lays. They may begin to notice the sensations of someone standing next to them or somewhere in the same room with them. There are often phantom sensations as if hands are placed on the shoulder, chest, or back. This takes the ability to see apparitions and invisible entities to the next level and frankly can be scary as hell, even for those who realize what they are going through. In contemporary society, again through media, the evolution of the scientific method, and academic stigma, we have been conditioned to think of these phenomena as evil or at the very least insane.
In the next installment, we will discuss what it is like to put all these new perceptual abilities together with synesthesia. Imagine for a moment that you are feeling the sensation of an unseen entity next to you and through this integration can also sense the entity’s intent or emotional state. Consider what it is like to have such an entity then touch your shoulder while having an instant knowing that it intends to cause discomfort. As we put all of this together, the reader will get a full picture of the harassment one goes through in this manner. We will also work into how these integrations work with telepathy and other psi experiences.
Taste and Smell integrations
Many report being able to smell differences in the people around them and claim they can smell the pheromones they emit. When this occurs, people begin to perceive variants in the way others smell that align with the person’s emotions or intentions. Another interesting aspect of this is that it is reportedly a perception that some use to understand or assess non-human beings and use such integration to determine the difference among entities. It is reported that this aids an individual with identifying that which can’t be seen.
As for new sensations of taste, there are reports of heightened senses of taste, albeit, probably more accurate would be that the enhanced ability of smell enriches the taste experience. I can’t say much more about this, but the information is out there for those who are curious.
Putting It All Together
The new inclusions lead to new abilities if the person can comprehend them. Such a dramatic expansion of perceptual reality changes a person significantly. Even if only one sensory process were affected, a person would likely have great difficulty adjusting. The more there is to see, the more there is to consider. How do you see the value of the new inclusions that serve to warn and that serve to act? How do you translate what you perceive? Are the perceptions evil? Is the person who perceives it evil? Do these perceptions, identify a major psychological crisis to which the person should respond? What will others think of the person? What does the person think about themselves? We can see the harassment starting to form. This is simply adjusting the initiate to be able to interact with the spirits and ancestors. True harassment begins as the initiate begins to validate the realness of their experience through shared experiences with others, physical trace evidence, and much more. The reader can see the insanity of such an initiation, Imagine experiencing it.
Each inclusion brings benefits, but to gain these new perceptions, one must adjust to the new reality, often while attempting to interact with others and go about daily routines normally, as if nothing has changed. While inclusions are relatively easy to understand as changes to the natural process of sensory perception that can be made, many find them difficult to accept or even acknowledge. Often these integrations are viewed as paranormal rather than an evolution of perception. Such things still carry a stigma today that can lead to isolating and labeling a person. While a shaman living called to the path in this way would be celebrated and recognized by a community that accepts shamanism, in a society without them one tries to remain hidden, ashamed, or afraid of what is happening and not recognized by the community.
Why do initiates develop different integrations instead of everyone developing all of them? I assume that it has something to do with the person’s innate perceptual abilities relating to how they may evolve, a strength and weakness mechanism, increasing integrations most likely to be used successfully, and/or it is relative to the community to which the person belongs. This is speculation, but you have to start somewhere.
In part 4, we will continue this exploration into shamanic sickness by revealing how the multi-sensory perception integrations work together to present as various Psi abilities and layout information about Spirit Induction. Following the spirit and ancestor’s harassment theory, we will delve into other psychic abilities that become available to the initiate and common communications, spending a length of the series on hands-on and distance or remote healing through what is commonly called bioenergy. We will map out the struggles and barriers that present after the initial sickness and discern what it means to become a healer to a community that doesn’t recognize shamanism and what it means to be a shaman without a name.
D.J. Rees, May 2023
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