Jan Van Ysslestyne, Why Shamans Don’t Do iPhones |395|

Alex

Administrator
Jan Van Ysslestyne, Why Shamans Don’t Do iPhones |395|
Share
Tweet


Jan Van Ysslestyne is the foremost expert on classical shamanism of the Ulichi.
395-jan-vanysslestyne-skeptiko-300x300.jpg


photo by: Skeptiko
Alex Tsakiris:
Today we welcome Jan van Ysslestyne to Skeptiko. Jan has written a very impressive new book titled Spirits from the Edge of the World and she’s here to join me in a conversation about shamanism and all sorts of related good stuff. Jan, we’re doing a take two of this interview, we did a little audio change here, but thanks again, so much, for joining me on Skeptiko.

Jan van Ysslestyne: Thank you so very much, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Alex Tsakiris: This is a really interesting topic and you were so generous to contact me you said, “Alex, I think we should talk about this amazing work I’ve done with this group of people, these native people in this remote area of Siberia and they’re the Ulchi people.” And as we were just chatting a minute ago, they are really the original shamanistic culture, that is where the name, the origin of the word shamanism comes from, these and the surrounding culture, right?

Jan van Ysslestyne: Correct, yes.

Alex Tsakiris: So, you’ve done this incredible deep dive into the work and I have to tell people that the book is really great, very well written, nicely compiled, and then I go to your website, it’s absolutely beautiful. You have these beautiful infographics with all of these teachers from the tribe and you have them laid out in their lineage and you have some great audio and video that you’ve collected. So, I guess the place to start again is to give folks a sense of how you came to study these people and what the process was like. You just told me it’s taken you a number of years, you’ve had these folks come and visit you for over ten years and you’ve learned their language. Tell us the whole story, if you would.
 
Alex's question at the end of the interview:

What is the connection between extended consciousness and technology in all forms including ET, NDE, OBE and related acronyms?
 
13 minutes in and I agree with the point made there are no western shamans.
2 seeing cups flying and plates, I've seen the same now I wonder if it was telekinesis or spirits.
3 spirits choose you for these gifts I agree mostly, I have these gifts, born with them, other people have them. Disagree with not being techniques part,that's just semantics though.
 
"I don't care about the ulchi" wow you just want their information. Sorry bud doesn't work like that, this is why the don't write things down neither do African tribes. What arrogance. You'll never get their knowledge maybe bits and pieces of distorted euro minded knowledge but never true knowledge. And who said ideas are competing? Again semantics.... I have knowledge though not on their level but more then any one pimping this stuff like Deepak Chopra and such
 
"people just want to know how to get spirits to do shit for them" that's borderline black magick depending on the intent. 2nd be careful what you ask for you'll be dealing with severe schizophrenia. What elders would you ask for help then?
Get my drift
https://www.jaysongaddis.com/the-shamanic-view-of-mental-illness/

In the interview you state people want spirits to do this stuff for them, but haven't I passed that message on this board a few times? I will reference them later.
 
I'm very abrasive don't take it personally. Too much Passio lol
 
Interesting show!

One teeny-tiny point: Ysslestyne says that the Christian creation vision treats the World as a designed artefact. Yes, this is often the case, but there's also a school of Christian creationism in which life is seen to have emerged through a divinely driven process. This is known as mediate creation. In fact, if you look at Genesis, you'll find this: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." To me, this passage strongly endorses the mediate view.

I just feel that, when approached intelligently, Christian metaphysics (especially with its neo-platonic flavourings) is not an inherently inferior framework.
"people just want to know how to get spirits to do shit for them" that's borderline black magick depending on the intent.

There's a line in Meditations on the Tarot that goes like this: "There is no "black magic", but rather sorcerers groping in the dark. They grope in the dark because the light of gnosis and mysticism is lacking."
 
hat is the connection between extended consciousness and technology in all forms including ET, NDE, OBE and related acronyms?

Seriously Alex? That's a question after this show? That's a thesis that would take a few lifetimes to write. So I will duck it for now, because I am not even halfway through.

I wanted to pick up on the use of the word 'primitive' and sort through this misconception. Let's not use it, please. It displaces contexts. Technology as we know it has nothing to do with comparative superior intellects, or superior sophistication. A rifle may be more 'complex' than a spear, but a spear can be way superior and more sophisticated tech in its own place. The idea that a rifle is 'advanced' and a spear is 'primitive' dies a horrible death when one no longer has bullets. The spear shuckers can go to a tree and replenish their arsenal. There ain't no bullet tree.

The 19th century ideas of 'primitive' and 'savage' still infest, and infect, our consciousness. Sure, if you are a flabby inner urban whitey anything 'native's going to seem 'primitive'. But its a POV, not a reality - and a shitty ethnocentric POV at that.

As Jan points out, these shamans do iPhones. Of course they do. Cultures are not purist havens of eternal ideas, but organisations of adaptive ideas. We westerners have an idiotic sense that a 'traditional culture' must remain true to the past. That is not how it works. The Ulchi will use modern technology, because it would be silly not to, but if they do not become dependent upon it, they will adapt to its absence - something we will struggle with.

We have modern tech precisely because people who didn't have it adopted it. That willingness to adopt and adapt starts with living things in general. There are parrots who have trained my partner to provide seed for them. For the parrots it is the least inefficient way of getting a feed - turn up, make noises and some idiot human obediently produced seed. Simple and easy and they adapted very quickly. Of course the Ulchi will use iPhones. It would be crazy to pass up there advantages. But will they get addicted to Candy Crush? Not likely (I hope).

I thought Jan was spot on in his criticism of neo shamanism. I have similar issues with the bullshit of New Animism. Anything that has 'neo' or 'new' in front of it is a fraud. I think the English discovered that with New Labour. But there is a point, though, in which this fake stuff acts as a transitional phase between the dessert of Western thought and the oasis of authentic knowledge. Its like training wheels on a bike - but you can BS your way into believing that all bikes naturally have 4 wheels.

So back to the crazy question. All these things are connected in that they come from the same place - the metaphysical, that other aspect of reality. Nothing that manifests in this plane of reality does not have foundations in the other. Jan notes the continuity between some sources of ideas in the West and there Ulchi shamans. In fact there is a vast continuity between many Western sources and the shamans - as you would expect if there was a reality that is consistently experienced - which there is.

There is also a BS inauthentic culture propagated by fakers and wankers that asserts linkages to the authentic - usually involving separating gullible Westerners from substantial amounts of currency. You can't buy this stuff. There are no schools. If you think shamans do what they do for money you are at risk of buying a pig in a poke.

Authentic spirits do not do commercial transactions. You can only pay for BS. Authentic spirts don't do flattery and can't be cajoled. If you reckon those guys in South America offering drug trips are shamanism please contact me. I have a great deal on a New York bridge going quite cheap. Jan makes a compelling point that may be lost on some - spirits choose shamans. nobody else. You can't learn shamanism as a knowledge and skill set. It isn't an 'ism'.

I liked Jan's observation that according to the Ulchi what we think of as psychic experiences are really spirit communications rather than some mysterious power we possess. I need to think about that a lot more, but I like it because it challenges habits of linear thought.

The idea that we should be more attentive to feeling was, I thought, a little underdone. I'd say that we should be more 'heart centred' than 'brain centred'. The brain is the focal point of the physical for us. The heart has a higher significance. When 'Enlightenment' thinkers reframed the essence of being human from soul to mind I think they also refocussed our aspirations from heart to brain - at a cost of distorting the essential harmony. In this context feeling is a more complex and sophisticated form of awareness than what we assume to be thinking. Thinking is informational, whereas feeling is relational. In the absence of information we are forced to rely on feeling. In exactly what situation can we say 'in the absence of feeling, we have to rely on information?' it should not be too much to assert that relational awareness is paramount. Absent that we have the classic pyschopath.

Humans are natively heart dominant, and for good reason. This is one of the reason why ideas of primitivism are fundamentally offensive. The head calls the heart primitive.

I am an animist, persuaded by experience that this is the best explanatory mode we have. So I presume to 'get' the shaman, but without claiming any affiliation with such a class of persons. I am way more a member of their 'tribe'. I liked Jan's ideas, and the story he told. I felt a sense of kinship with him.

Knowledge seeking demands personal authenticity - and that means accepting that spirits have not sufficient interest in you to give you what you fancy you merit. You will get what you need, as assessed by spirits, not you. Trotting off to do a neo shamanic course isn't going to change that, or by-pass it.

Great show Alex.
 
Seriously Alex? That's a question after this show? That's a thesis that would take a few lifetimes to write. So I will duck it for now, because I am not even halfway through.

I wanted to pick up on the use of the word 'primitive' and sort through this misconception. Let's not use it, please. It displaces contexts. Technology as we know it has nothing to do with comparative superior intellects, or superior sophistication. A rifle may be more 'complex' than a spear, but a spear can be way superior and more sophisticated tech in its own place. The idea that a rifle is 'advanced' and a spear is 'primitive' dies a horrible death when one no longer has bullets. The spear shuckers can go to a tree and replenish their arsenal. There ain't no bullet tree.

The 19th century ideas of 'primitive' and 'savage' still infest, and infect, our consciousness. Sure, if you are a flabby inner urban whitey anything 'native's going to seem 'primitive'. But its a POV, not a reality - and a shitty ethnocentric POV at that.

As Jan points out, these shamans do iPhones. Of course they do. Cultures are not purist havens of eternal ideas, but organisations of adaptive ideas. We westerners have an idiotic sense that a 'traditional culture' must remain true to the past. That is not how it works. The Ulchi will use modern technology, because it would be silly not to, but if they do not become dependent upon it, they will adapt to its absence - something we will struggle with.

We have modern tech precisely because people who didn't have it adopted it. That willingness to adopt and adapt starts with living things in general. There are parrots who have trained my partner to provide seed for them. For the parrots it is the least inefficient way of getting a feed - turn up, make noises and some idiot human obediently produced seed. Simple and easy and they adapted very quickly. Of course the Ulchi will use iPhones. It would be crazy to pass up there advantages. But will they get addicted to Candy Crush? Not likely (I hope).

I thought Jan was spot on in his criticism of neo shamanism. I have similar issues with the bullshit of New Animism. Anything that has 'neo' or 'new' in front of it is a fraud. I think the English discovered that with New Labour. But there is a point, though, in which this fake stuff acts as a transitional phase between the dessert of Western thought and the oasis of authentic knowledge. Its like training wheels on a bike - but you can BS your way into believing that all bikes naturally have 4 wheels.

So back to the crazy question. All these things are connected in that they come from the same place - the metaphysical, that other aspect of reality. Nothing that manifests in this plane of reality does not have foundations in the other. Jan notes the continuity between some sources of ideas in the West and there Ulchi shamans. In fact there is a vast continuity between many Western sources and the shamans - as you would expect if there was a reality that is consistently experienced - which there is.

There is also a BS inauthentic culture propagated by fakers and wankers that asserts linkages to the authentic - usually involving separating gullible Westerners from substantial amounts of currency. You can't buy this stuff. There are no schools. If you think shamans do what they do for money you are at risk of buying a pig in a poke.

Authentic spirits do not do commercial transactions. You can only pay for BS. Authentic spirts don't do flattery and can't be cajoled. If you reckon those guys in South America offering drug trips are shamanism please contact me. I have a great deal on a New York bridge going quite cheap. Jan makes a compelling point that may be lost on some - spirits choose shamans. nobody else. You can't learn shamanism as a knowledge and skill set. It isn't an 'ism'.

I liked Jan's observation that according to the Ulchi what we think of as psychic experiences are really spirit communications rather than some mysterious power we possess. I need to think about that a lot more, but I like it because it challenges habits of linear thought.

The idea that we should be more attentive to feeling was, I thought, a little underdone. I'd say that we should be more 'heart centred' than 'brain centred'. The brain is the focal point of the physical for us. The heart has a higher significance. When 'Enlightenment' thinkers reframed the essence of being human from soul to mind I think they also refocussed our aspirations from heart to brain - at a cost of distorting the essential harmony. In this context feeling is a more complex and sophisticated form of awareness than what we assume to be thinking. Thinking is informational, whereas feeling is relational. In the absence of information we are forced to rely on feeling. In exactly what situation can we say 'in the absence of feeling, we have to rely on information?' it should not be too much to assert that relational awareness is paramount. Absent that we have the classic pyschopath.

Humans are natively heart dominant, and for good reason. This is one of the reason why ideas of primitivism are fundamentally offensive. The head calls the heart primitive.

I am an animist, persuaded by experience that this is the best explanatory mode we have. So I presume to 'get' the shaman, but without claiming any affiliation with such a class of persons. I am way more a member of their 'tribe'. I liked Jan's ideas, and the story he told. I felt a sense of kinship with him.

Knowledge seeking demands personal authenticity - and that means accepting that spirits have not sufficient interest in you to give you what you fancy you merit. You will get what you need, as assessed by spirits, not you. Trotting off to do a neo shamanic course isn't going to change that, or by-pass it.

Great show Alex.
Thanks for a great post Mike. I thought of you several times while producing this ep so I'm glad you jumped in.

I get your many great points and agree with a lot of them, but I'm coming at this from a slightly different angle. The thing that keeps bugging me is this question what ET is doing in the extended Consciousness Realm. Because from all indications ET has developed some advanced technology in terms of manipulating our Consciousness. Screen memories. False memories. Space and time manipulation. There technology is in a whole different league.

So, I wanted to juxtapose what it an advanced species might look like compared to a group like the Ulchi. I think it causes us to reexamine what we think about in terms of primitive in some politically incorrect and uncomfortable ways.
 
Interesting show!

One teeny-tiny point: Ysslestyne says that the Christian creation vision treats the World as a designed artefact. Yes, this is often the case, but there's also a school of Christian creationism in which life is seen to have emerged through a divinely driven process. This is known as mediate creation. In fact, if you look at Genesis, you'll find this: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." To me, this passage strongly endorses the mediate view.

I just feel that, when approached intelligently, Christian metaphysics (especially with its neo-platonic flavourings) is not an inherently inferior framework.


There's a line in Meditations on the Tarot that goes like this: "There is no "black magic", but rather sorcerers groping in the dark. They grope in the dark because the light of gnosis and mysticism is lacking."
Yes on the black magicians part, there are many of them walking amongst us and others in the shadows
 
Seriously Alex? That's a question after this show? That's a thesis that would take a few lifetimes to write. So I will duck it for now, because I am not even halfway through.

I wanted to pick up on the use of the word 'primitive' and sort through this misconception. Let's not use it, please. It displaces contexts. Technology as we know it has nothing to do with comparative superior intellects, or superior sophistication. A rifle may be more 'complex' than a spear, but a spear can be way superior and more sophisticated tech in its own place. The idea that a rifle is 'advanced' and a spear is 'primitive' dies a horrible death when one no longer has bullets. The spear shuckers can go to a tree and replenish their arsenal. There ain't no bullet tree.

The 19th century ideas of 'primitive' and 'savage' still infest, and infect, our consciousness. Sure, if you are a flabby inner urban whitey anything 'native's going to seem 'primitive'. But its a POV, not a reality - and a shitty ethnocentric POV at that.

As Jan points out, these shamans do iPhones. Of course they do. Cultures are not purist havens of eternal ideas, but organisations of adaptive ideas. We westerners have an idiotic sense that a 'traditional culture' must remain true to the past. That is not how it works. The Ulchi will use modern technology, because it would be silly not to, but if they do not become dependent upon it, they will adapt to its absence - something we will struggle with.

We have modern tech precisely because people who didn't have it adopted it. That willingness to adopt and adapt starts with living things in general. There are parrots who have trained my partner to provide seed for them. For the parrots it is the least inefficient way of getting a feed - turn up, make noises and some idiot human obediently produced seed. Simple and easy and they adapted very quickly. Of course the Ulchi will use iPhones. It would be crazy to pass up there advantages. But will they get addicted to Candy Crush? Not likely (I hope).

I thought Jan was spot on in his criticism of neo shamanism. I have similar issues with the bullshit of New Animism. Anything that has 'neo' or 'new' in front of it is a fraud. I think the English discovered that with New Labour. But there is a point, though, in which this fake stuff acts as a transitional phase between the dessert of Western thought and the oasis of authentic knowledge. Its like training wheels on a bike - but you can BS your way into believing that all bikes naturally have 4 wheels.

So back to the crazy question. All these things are connected in that they come from the same place - the metaphysical, that other aspect of reality. Nothing that manifests in this plane of reality does not have foundations in the other. Jan notes the continuity between some sources of ideas in the West and there Ulchi shamans. In fact there is a vast continuity between many Western sources and the shamans - as you would expect if there was a reality that is consistently experienced - which there is.

There is also a BS inauthentic culture propagated by fakers and wankers that asserts linkages to the authentic - usually involving separating gullible Westerners from substantial amounts of currency. You can't buy this stuff. There are no schools. If you think shamans do what they do for money you are at risk of buying a pig in a poke.

Authentic spirits do not do commercial transactions. You can only pay for BS. Authentic spirts don't do flattery and can't be cajoled. If you reckon those guys in South America offering drug trips are shamanism please contact me. I have a great deal on a New York bridge going quite cheap. Jan makes a compelling point that may be lost on some - spirits choose shamans. nobody else. You can't learn shamanism as a knowledge and skill set. It isn't an 'ism'.

I liked Jan's observation that according to the Ulchi what we think of as psychic experiences are really spirit communications rather than some mysterious power we possess. I need to think about that a lot more, but I like it because it challenges habits of linear thought.

The idea that we should be more attentive to feeling was, I thought, a little underdone. I'd say that we should be more 'heart centred' than 'brain centred'. The brain is the focal point of the physical for us. The heart has a higher significance. When 'Enlightenment' thinkers reframed the essence of being human from soul to mind I think they also refocussed our aspirations from heart to brain - at a cost of distorting the essential harmony. In this context feeling is a more complex and sophisticated form of awareness than what we assume to be thinking. Thinking is informational, whereas feeling is relational. In the absence of information we are forced to rely on feeling. In exactly what situation can we say 'in the absence of feeling, we have to rely on information?' it should not be too much to assert that relational awareness is paramount. Absent that we have the classic pyschopath.

Humans are natively heart dominant, and for good reason. This is one of the reason why ideas of primitivism are fundamentally offensive. The head calls the heart primitive.

I am an animist, persuaded by experience that this is the best explanatory mode we have. So I presume to 'get' the shaman, but without claiming any affiliation with such a class of persons. I am way more a member of their 'tribe'. I liked Jan's ideas, and the story he told. I felt a sense of kinship with him.

Knowledge seeking demands personal authenticity - and that means accepting that spirits have not sufficient interest in you to give you what you fancy you merit. You will get what you need, as assessed by spirits, not you. Trotting off to do a neo shamanic course isn't going to change that, or by-pass it.

Great show Alex.
Spot on
 
All these skeptics made a career debunking obvious frauds. But looking at the big picture at least we know how they pull these tricks off
 
Imo stay away from anything that has new or neo or covens etc. Just my personal opinion it's a poop show of people flinging their egos around. And as one person told me if you see a shaman in south America and try to get enlightenment or dmt they will give you some and kick you in a ditch and walk away
 
The beginning of the show (the drumbeats) got me thinking of two events which occurred in my life which convinced how deeply spiritual music/sound is. I guess in sense EVERYTHING is “spiritual” but there is something special about sounds/music.

I’ve never seen any ghosts/crytpids/UFOs. I don’t have any experiences which I would call “paranormal.” But there are two events surrounding music where I know I was touched by SOMETHING in a time of need THROUGH music.

Once, I had just gotten a basic physical and the Doc told me that he thought my heart didn’t sound right. (It ended up being nothing at all). But he sent me to a cardiologist and on the way there I began to really panic. “What if im dying? I’m only 19. What if death is the end? What if my existence is almost over?” I turned some music on and tried taking some breaths as I now believe I was having the beginnings of or a minor panic attack. The music soothed me deeply and in a way that I cannot even begin to describe. It permeated all of me and told me that everything was okay, irregardless of what this doctor had to say. If I’m to die, so be it. I can’t really die. There was no logic involved but I KNOW it was something speaking to me through the music. The feeling was blissful and overwhelming.

More recently, perhaps 10 years ago, (age 28 or so), I had a very similar experience. I had music going as I was cleaning the house and began to panic again (seemingly out of nowhere) about my own mortality. Immediately, as if I was directed, I began focusing on the music I had playing. Same result. An incredible feeling of bliss and overwhelming sense that everything is okay and that whatever happens to my body cannot affect my consciousness (me) in the long run. No logic involved, it wasn’t the lyrics to the songs, but I know something spoke to me through the music. My fear of death mostly disappeared that day. Those two experiences remain the most profound moments of my life from a spiritual standpoint and I wish I could explain them better. Because I can’t really explain what happened.

The two songs? The first was Back on Earth by Ozzy Osbourne, the second was Of Wolf and Man by Metallica. The lyrics to Back on Earth actually are quite spiritual in a sense but Of Wolf and Man is not a spiritual tune (lyric-wise) at all.

Grant Cameron has a book called “The Paranormal world of music” (or something close to that). I think I ought to read it.
 
I liked that show, not least because Jan talks in a straightforward manner about what are obviously esoteric subjects. Right now, I am only about half way through, so I'll comment further when I have finished.

David
 
he thing that keeps bugging me is this question what ET is doing in the extended Consciousness Realm.

I agree this is hard to deal with. But then problem is, I suspect, the limit of our imaginations in a reality that isn't as fixed as we tend to think. We have to fo back to the understanding that what we see and think we know about 'reality' remains a representation in our brains/minds. We want to think of ET as Sky People as literal or figurative - but only as either/or, and never as both/neither. Jan objects to our linear habits of thought and this is a prime example.

I think we are trying to get ahead of ourselves. We don't need rational theories of origin and nature to accept that ET is. In fact the very term ET belongs to that stream of thought. A relational form of consciousness interprets presence and character in a very different way. Asking what is the nature of the relationship is very different to asking what is the nature of the agency I am relating to - a question we think we need to ask to validate the proposition that the agency exists. Its all arse about.

Robert Monroe proposed that some agencies dwell in a non-material state as their primary condition of being - whole cultures. So how might they engage with those of us in physical reality? If they are not dependent on physical reality they can present to our consciousness in ways that are meaningful to us. So to a shaman they will be understood in one way and to a Westerner habituated to think in terms of high tech in another. We are conditioned to our cultural story, and nearly everything we experience is mediated by it.

We dream often in absurd metaphors because our brains are struggling to make sense of a lucid metaphysical reality which doesn't quite conform to physical reality. We can lucid dream in the metaphysical reality but our brains are still processing the experience because we remain linked to the physical body. Both things happen at the same time but we can be aware of only one - so either lucid or mad metaphor.

I suspect we can also have lucid living or we dwell in a cultural metaphor (normality). The agency we call ET appears in our normality in metaphoric guise because we do not possess the capacity for lucid awareness. That awareness requires a relational consciousness (heart), and that takes a transformative effort to attain it. We are mostly stuck with a metaphoric consciousness that is hard to escape and even harder to arrange into a really useful tool for understanding. Beyond this I have no bloody idea.
 
I agree this is hard to deal with. But then problem is, I suspect, the limit of our imaginations in a reality that isn't as fixed as we tend to think. We have to fo back to the understanding that what we see and think we know about 'reality' remains a representation in our brains/minds. We want to think of ET as Sky People as literal or figurative - but only as either/or, and never as both/neither. Jan objects to our linear habits of thought and this is a prime example.

yeah, but that gets back to the crude example of the iPhone... I mean, we have some realities to deal with here.

BTW I just finished an interview with https://www.marisaryan.com/ she had some interesting answers to these questions :)
 
Robert Monroe proposed that some agencies dwell in a non-material state as their primary condition of being - whole cultures. So how might they engage with those of us in physical reality? If they are not dependent on physical reality they can present to our consciousness in ways that are meaningful to us. So to a shaman they will be understood in one way and to a Westerner habituated to think in terms of high tech in another. We are conditioned to our cultural story, and nearly everything we experience is mediated by it.



.

This is the explanation which I tend to favor. It’s also possible that ET are sitting on another planet here in our universe and are entering these realms just as we are. But I find that explanation less likely. But, I also consider both explanations to be likely highly insufficient, just in the sense that it’s probably more complicated than we can postulate. But perhaps not!
 
Back
Top