Michael Harner’s Lost Lectures: Volume 1

"Shamanism and the World Crisis," Davos, 1983

In 1983, the International Transpersonal Association Conference was held in Davos, Switzerland. Participants included Michael and Sandra Harner, Frances Vaughan, Roger Walsh, Jack Kornfield, and Jane English. Among the special guests were the Dalai Lama, Stanislav Grof, Frederic Leboyer, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Sri Chakravarti, Gopi Krishna, Karan Singh, and Marie-Louise von Franz. [1] At the conference, Michael Harner delivered this 35 minute lecture on the topic of "Shamanism and the World Crisis." Harner's celebrated book The Way of the Shaman was published only a few years before. It is interesting to note similarities in content between the book and the lecture, but the lecture also provides some unique additional perspectives, and Harner frequently displays his famous sense of humor. The lecture was recorded to a cassette tape which ended up in storage. Around the year 2025, the tape was rediscovered in the FSS archives, and the recording was digitized and transcribed. The original audio recording is provided below for interested listeners. —Robbie Priestley, editor

Well, this morning I have a very brief period of time to communicate with you some things that I think are very important at this time in the world crisis. I'm going to start very briefly by explaining how I got involved with shamanism because many people think shamanism is a rather peculiar field. And I wouldn't want anyone to think that I was peculiar. I was doing anthropology in the upper Amazon, first in 1956 and 1957 among the Jívaro Indians [2] of eastern Ecuador. And there I studied their shamanism, but as an outside observer. In 1960 and 1961, I was studying the culture of the Conibo Indians, also in the upper Amazon, in eastern Peru. Finally, after about a half year of work with that group, the people said, listen, if you really want to learn about our understanding of the universe, there's something you're going to have to do. And in anthropology we believe in participant observation. That is, if the native people [3] are hunters, you go hunting. They're farmers, you participate in farming activities. And in this case, what they wanted me to do is participate in drinking ayahuasca, the drink that's right now very famous as William Burroughs and many other people have written about it. William Burroughs referred to it as the final fix. But what did he know? [4]

Anyway, they gave me this drink and in the hours that followed, in the evening, I was introduced to a world that I didn't imagine existed, a world of fantastic reality. Many, many things happened. It was the first genuine spiritual experience in my life. I'd been raised in church and all that, but [this was the] first spiritual experience I ever had. And I realized, wow, we've really been missing something—there's some great mystery here. And one of the first things I did was to talk to an old blind shaman in an adjacent village about my experience. And one of the things in my experience, a very deep part of the experience, that I could hardly recall the next day, was when certain creatures revealed to me [in] the moment that I was having the experience of dying, that they were the true masters of the Earth. And they had also shown me how they'd come from outer space and populated the planet, and that they were responsible for the origin of life, and the evolution of life. And they were hiding inside of all life like DNA. [5]

Well, when I talked to the shaman, I didn't mention having this vision of them coming from outer space. I just said there were these creatures and I described them who said they were the masters of the Earth. And he smiled and he said, "Oh, they're always saying that." And then he pointed up to the sky and said, they're only the masters in outer darkness. And I hadn't mentioned anything about the sky. So from that moment on, I decided to learn everything I could about shamanism. I'm still trying to. And I don't think anyone ever will. Don Jose Matsua, Huichol Indian shaman, who's about 104 years old, reputedly, says he's still learning. He's only been practicing shamanism for 46 years. The shamanic initiation never ends, and that's one of the very exciting things about it, but that's something for some other talk, some other time.

Now what is shamanism? I know Many of you are quite familiar with what it is, and yet I think it's useful to clarify it because not everyone agrees. There are some general uses of the concept today, and I want to be more specific. The word itself, of course, is from the Tungus tribe [6] in Siberia. And we like to use it because it has precise associations in terms of method. Because shamanism really is a method, not a religion. It's a method which produces certain results. What does the shaman do in the method? Well, the shaman goes into an altered state of consciousness to do his or her work. His or her, because both men and women may be shamans. This altered state of consciousness in some cultures is induced by psychedelic drugs, as in the upper Amazon, where I had my first experience. In other areas of the world, it's induced by drumming. And in some areas of the world there are other ways of inducing it. But basically we're talking about two main methods. One is alteration of consciousness through psychedelics in some localities, and alteration of consciousness much more widely through sonic driving—that is through percussion, monotonous repeated percussion.

In any case, the shaman works only part-time in this altered state of consciousness and is typically a farmer or mother, father, a responsible person in the community the rest of the time. The shaman works in two realities. Carlos Castaneda has talked very nicely about this when he talked of the ordinary reality and the nonordinary reality. Each reality is associated with a specific state of consciousness. The ordinary state of consciousness with ordinary reality. Although maybe perhaps not all of you are fully awake this morning, we would assume that most of you are in the ordinary state of consciousness, unless my talk drones on too long. Then the shaman moves over into the shamanic state of consciousness to do his or her work. This is not just a trance in the usual sense. In fact, the trance word is often misleading, because in the West it's often associated with the idea of amnesia—as with a spiritual medium perhaps not remembering what happened to her when she was in trance. Because the state of consciousness the shaman is in is both a psychophysiological state, usually a light trance rather than a heavy trance, and it's also a state in which one has learned methods for pursuing the work. So it's not just something of a physiological or psychological nature.

Then in addition, the shaman has a special connection with nature. This may be the form of an animal power, known as a guardian or a power animal. It may also be in the form of plant powers. It may be in the form of other powers. The important thing is not the specific power, but the fact that the shaman depends upon a hidden connection with nature, a deep emotional connection, which ordinarily would be at the unconscious level for most people. [It] becomes conscious for the shaman. The shaman makes conscious what for many people is unconscious. For the shaman in his altered state of consciousness, these natural connections to the universe become like the person sitting next to you, just as real, because the shaman in this other reality is not just seeing something. The shaman with experiences feeling, touching, tasting, smelling. The shaman becomes acquainted with the hidden powers of nature—the powers that emerge from the unconscious—and mobilizes them to help others, as well as of course himself. [7]

The shaman also is distinguished by the shamanic journey. There are many medicine people who are very good, holy people of various types, in primitive (so-called primitive) cultures. I use the word primitive in admiration, not as a pejorative term. But the shaman is distinguished by the journey. It's not really all that mysterious once one knows the methods, and the journey can be to the Upper World, in the Middle World here, or to the Lower World. And in these journeys, in an altered state of consciousness, the shaman seeks solutions to problems, solutions to health and healing. A psychologist, probably (and perhaps justifiably), would see the shaman as delving into his or her own unconscious to seek deep solutions. But the shaman also mobilizes the unconscious of others when the shaman is working. And these journeys are journeys for knowledge. The shaman is often known as a person of knowledge in many cultures. Because the knowledge comes from these journeys. They are teaching expeditions. Every journey has a purpose. Every journey results in new knowledge. And there are hidden teachers to be found in these journeys. The real teachers of shamanism are not persons like you or me. The real teachers of shamanism are found in these journeys. That's why by learning the methods one opens a door to a lifetime of learning.

One of the peculiar things about Shamanism is the fact that its methods are essentially the same all over the world where they still survive today. And this is true of cultures at the tip of Tierra del Fuego in South America, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal Siberia, Lapland in Northern Europe. Our own ancestors of many of us here in Central Europe, North and South American Indians.

Now, if we're dealing with a system that's purely fantasy, why is there in fact such a coherent system? Is the mind so limited that it can dream up nothing else? No, my opinion is we're dealing with a coherent system because the system has been found through trial and error to be a fundamental one for bringing the human mind into operation at the unconscious level. Our ancestors 10,000 years ago, 20,000 years ago, perhaps more, must have discovered through trial and error ways to help personal health, ways to help healing, ways to locate animals when food supplies are low. [...] These techniques are remarkably similar all over the world, even though people have been separated from each other at least 30,000, 40,000 years in many of these cases. [...] They represent cultures that are widely different, that have radically different kinship systems, other systems that are quite different, ecological adaptations that are quite different. Yet shamanism is the same. And today we are finding that shamanism in that method is just as applicable in our culture as it is among the Eskimo [8] or the Australian Aboriginals [9].

Another thing about shamanism is that it's found in societies that are not class stratified. It is found in societies that do not have state religions. [It] tends to disappear with class, stratified societies, with the state, and with state religions. Shamanism is inherently subversive because each shaman is a prophet. Each shaman gets the direct revelations himself or herself. This is dangerous. You can't have any leaders in shamanism. Everybody is a leader. So it's not surprising that it survives in the egalitarian hunting and gathering and horticultural societies in remote parts of the world, but rarely in the major civilizations. And also, it is not a faith, it's a method. The shaman depends upon his or her own senses for first-hand information about the nature of the universe. The shaman doesn't accept it from some book written by some other people centuries or thousands of years ago that's maybe true, maybe not. But the shaman depends upon firsthand observation, empirical observation. There's a great relationship between shamanism and science, and I think that's part of the reason that shamanism appeals to many highly educated people today.

You just simply accept as real what you see when you're doing the shamanic work—when you're in the shamanic state of consciousness. That does not mean you have to accept it as real when you're in the ordinary state of consciousness. The shaman is a person who moves between realities and like a great scientist is able to use intuition, insight. In other words, to engage in divination, to get revelation, and then move back into ordinary reality and the ordinary state of consciousness to write that lengthy, long paper that the scientists would write afterwards. But the insight, the intuition, these are routine things for the shaman. And there are special techniques. When the shaman has a serious problem to solve, the shaman picks up the drum, or maybe gives it to the assistant, and says, look, I'll be back in 20 minutes—I've got to go get a solution. In the Western world, a scientist perhaps struggles for weeks, months, maybe years with a problem, and then just as he's getting onto an airplane, the solution comes to him. If he only had a drum and 15 minutes.

Now there are many misconceptions about shamanism. One is that shamanism is inextricably connected with use of drugs. That is, of course, true in some cultures. And those are the ones that usually don't use drums. If you tried to use the two together, in most cases, you'd drive yourself crazy. That's what the Indians in the upper Amazon say. But there are some cultures, such as in Siberia, where they apparently did both—and it would be interesting to know the details. But what we're talking about is not drugs. In fact, we're not even talking about drums, although drums are a wonderful instrument for this work. What we're talking about is another hidden reality, which can be opened by various doors. Dying is one of them. The experiences of the dying or near dying, as described by Kübler-Ross, Moody, and others. [10] These are just old experiences to people who've done shamanism. You go through the tunnel, and there are the people staying around, and you go to the right and up the hill. You know, so what else is new? Why wait to die to have these experiences? It's also important to prepare yourself for your own death. So you know the way. You might not be able to read the Tibetan Book of the Dead in the dim light of your dying room. So why not go there yourself ahead of time? Well this is one of the classic roles of the shaman. To travel, to be a psychopomp or conductor of souls, to know the terrain. And to help others, when they die, to leave this world and to enter the other successfully, it helps one also.

Now back to the drum, because the drum is the method that we are using successfully now in the modern world in shamanism. A drum is a very mysterious thing. I've only been able to find three papers in English language on the effect of drumming on the nervous system—which is rather peculiar when you consider that we have long marched to war to kill people to the sound of a drum. We've long engaged in a happy recreation to the sound of the drum, and shamans for tens of thousands of years have used drums for their work. Three papers in the English language. I think that's because it's so close to us, so [much a] part of us, that we don't even notice it. We think it's just natural. Well, the drum is the instrument that's being used today in the new shamanism. And we find—though there's been very little research—that the main amplitude [11] of the typical drum that's used is in 4 to 7 Hz or 4 to 7 cycles per second, which is equivalent to the theta range of EEG waves. [12] There's only been one test that I know of of a shaman doing the shamanic journey hooked up to EEG equipment. And that test was done by Joe Camilla in San Francisco, who is very experienced with these things. And in this case, the shaman in ten minutes got into a wave pattern that Joe Camilla said he'd only encountered once before, that was with Japanese Zen masters in deep meditation.

The drum is a powerful instrument. In fact, it's so powerful that it's often been outlawed in human history. In Haiti, it was outlawed by the French government a long time ago. And in Northern Europe, it was outlawed by the church in Scandinavia among the Laplanders, and to this day—Sandra and I have just returned from there—the Laplanders are scared to death to admit they know anything about a drum. It's considered a sin to have a drum. Now people say, isn't shamanism dangerous? I agree completely. Particularly during the Renaissance, it was extremely dangerous. The Inquisition was after them right and left. [...] But I'm sometimes bemused by people who think it might be dangerous. Here we are on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Annihilation by non-shamanic cultures. Some fellow comes out with a drum and suggests we might get in touch with the spirits of nature and all other humans, try to make a spiritual connection, and [they] say, isn't that dangerous?

Another question is, aren't shamans crazy? [...] A colleague of mine, L. Bryce Boyer, a Freudian psychoanalyst, decided to find out whether this was true. He assumed it was, by the way, and he went to the Mescalero Apache in the southwestern United States. Spent a number of years there and came to the conclusion that there was no serious psychopathology among the shamans, that the successful shamans were completely normal, and that the less successful shamans, like less successful businessmen in Western society, were somewhat neurotic.

Now, the old and new the new shamanism—I wanted to make a brief comparison. Who is the new shaman? Well, typically the new shaman is a college-educated person with a fairly strong partial education in science. A person who's [a] skeptic, skeptic enough that he cannot live on faith based on books written by other people (except my book of course). But my book is a methods book. It doesn't tell you more, and you can throw it away once you learn the methods. And this is typically a person who is looking for some spiritual life, who's looking for some method of helping personal health and well-being, of getting in contact with the planet around him. This is the typical new shaman. And typically the person is quite successful in their ordinary life, but it's not enough for them. The new shamanism is used for essentially the same basic uses the old shamanism was.

Today, there are problems of health and healing, as we all know. We have much wonderful modern technology that was not available in the ancient cultures. There are truly miracles of modern medicine. We all know that. But there still is something missing, and we all know that too. All the pills and injections and knives in the world will not provide the spiritual dimension of personal healing. Now the physicians talk about the placebo effect, or they talk about psychosomatic illness, and many physicians will readily admit that a very high percentage of their patients get well for reasons that they have nothing to do with, that they cannot discern themselves. They talk about attitude, will to live, and so on. The "placebo" term itself really means nothing. It means they don't know why the patient's getting better. "Psychosomatic"—the same thing. I suggest that what the shaman has been doing for a long, long time—and what present-day practitioners of shamanism are doing—is they are helping the brain mobilize the natural immune defense system through the limbic system, through the hypothalamus, through the lower part of the brain.

We have much information coming in now—most of it preliminary—but much information coming in suggesting that emotional and even visualization, emotional factors and visualization can mobilize the body's natural immune defense system. [13] I think this is part of what shamans have been doing for a long time. And I think this is part of what the placebo effect is about. But the placebo effect usually means giving a neutral injection or a sugar pill. But if you really want a good placebo effect, bring in the drum. Add that to the sugar pill. Now bringing in a drum is not too easy in some situations. They aren't ready for us completely yet. But we have modern technology too. So now the new shaman can take his Sony Walkman, with a cassette playing of sonic driving (i.e. drumming), put the earphones on his head, put it on the head of the relative who's sick in bed, and the nurse can look in on them and think that they're just listening to rock and roll. So there are new things happening this way.

When someone asks what good is shamanism, just answer, what good is problem solving? Because every problem that we can face in an ordinary state of consciousness, we can face also in the shamanic state of consciousness. Why limit yourself to only one mode of problem solving? Why limit yourself to only one reality? Why be fixated there? Our ancestors weren't. And they managed about three million years of survival, which is considerably more than we seem to be doing. So when you have a problem, the modern shaman puts on the earphones or gets the drum, or sometimes even without the drum, and spends that 15-minute journey to get that deep revelation. So in the new shamanism, we have concern with self-healing. We have a concern with healing of friends and relatives. We have a concern with problem solving. We have the discovery of joy, ecstasy, shamanic ecstasy. We discover, in fact, that that hidden universe is not what Dante said (he was a good writer though). [14] But that hidden universe is a pretty safe place. It's part of our own home.

It's not something to be afraid of. The keep-out signs were not placed there by our ancient ancestors. They were placed there by ecclesiastical political authorities. They were placed there in the so-called Age of Enlightenment when Western medicine ruled out visualization because [it was a] journey of the spirit—and therefore unscientific. Go past those keep out signs and discover the thing they've been trying to keep you from. And now, in death and dying, there's a new role for the shaman. To help the person make preliminary journeys, the terminally ill person has a chance to prepare, in a calm and peaceful way. And there are new shamanic communities arising because the shaman is pretty lonely in the present world. And so very naturally, people [are joining] together in local communities, taking turns drumming in small groups. Meeting weekly, having a potluck supper afterwards, and attempting to get a richer life. And they must be succeeding, for these groups are multiplying every week. But the healing tasks that they're interested in are far greater than just themselves or their friends and relatives.

They are concerned with healing the planet in this time of crisis. And is this because they had some pre-programming about this, perhaps in some cases, but another interesting thing that comes out of opening those doors and moving beyond is your appreciation of nature, your appreciation of what the Sioux people call all our relatives, all our relations, all living things, the plants, the animals, other humans, and even the planet itself, the rocks. In our unconscious, at a deep level, we recognize our unity. Long before Charles Darwin, shamans were being tortured for claiming that we were related to the animals. They knew it. You know it. We all need to know it very rapidly, that we are all connected.

And it's not a matter of shamanic faith. It's a matter of shamanic discovery. A person does not necessarily enter shamanism with a view that the world, the universe is all one, but it comes from these journeys, from these discoveries, at a deep level of the unconscious, far deeper than any reading or lecture. So, why is shamanism out of the closet now? Well, for one thing, people are reinventing it, rediscovering it on their own. Many of the techniques of shamanism are techniques such as visualization. Going into an altered state of consciousness, certain aspects of psychoanalysis, hypnotherapy, meditation, positive attitude, stress reduction, mental and emotional expression of personal will for health and healing. These are things that are coming out anyway. People are reinventing shamanism.

But why bother then with shamanism itself? Because, frankly, we have not discovered everything yet. So why not learn from the greatest experts of all? Those few individuals surviving in the so-called primitive societies that have this ancient knowledge—our own knowledge to be returned to us, our own heritage to come back home—who can teach us ancient methods for healing, for helping others, and for getting in touch with the planet and all life forms. I call shamanism a form of spiritual ecology. Not again because it's pre-programmed, but because you discover through your journeys—through your work—a deep personal reverence that I think is already there—[it] just needs to be brought to consciousness. A deep personal reverence for all things. Nationality, race, species—these things don't matter anymore.

This is needed in this time of global crisis, with an ecological catastrophe which is even destroying now the trees in the beautiful Alps here. An ecological crisis which may deplete the oxygen supply for our great-grandchildren. An ecological crisis and also a spiritual crisis. The prejudice against other people, the belief in fixed ideologies based upon books. This time, I think, has to come to an end. We have to depend on ourselves, our own resources. And when we depend on our own resources, we discover this unity. This unity that has so long been hidden from us. They say there was a time when the humans and the animals could talk to each other in shamanic cultures. And they say the last persons that can still do this are the shamans.

Now many of you, in fact, are shamans, whether you know it or not. All I'm suggesting is that you wake up. In fact, I would say almost all of you are shamans. [...] You know, the Sioux call us human people, and then there's the rock people, the animal people, and the plant people. But about 90% of human people seem to be able—just in a matter of maybe 14 hours—to wake up and utilize these ancient possibilities. The time of the anthropocentric religions and anthropocentric ideologies of the universe, I think, is past. They are not helping us be modest, humble before the powers of the universe.

We have to come and realize, as shamans have long realized, that we are just one species among many, and that we have a special responsibility because of our destructive characteristics. We are very dangerous, you know, [and so have a] special responsibility to look after them. I think about two species a day are disappearing through our work. And we may be one of them very shortly. I hope not. I have hope. I think something is happening. And my last statement here is this: you've all gone camping, hiking in the mountains, spent a lovely week alone, or a few days alone somewhere in some wilderness place with nature. And then you've come back to some city and been utterly shocked by what you found. That's because you are coming back to a people in trance. The real trance is in the living rooms of the world where people sit mesmerized by television. The real trance is where people believe what they read in newspapers. The real trance is to be found in civilization, not in shamanism. Yes—too much civilization may be dangerous, thank you.

Note: this recording was digitized from a 40-year-old cassette tape. The audio is generally of good quality, but it is not perfect. There is a segment with noticeable distortion around the 29 minute mark, which lasts for less than 60 seconds.

Editor: Robbie Priestley, FSS Executive Director
Text and Audio Copyright ©2026 the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Editor's Comment: Harner's frequent use of masculine pronouns such as "he" was considered to be accepted use of language in 1983 when this lecture was recorded, and it was not intended to be exclusionary. Additionally, Harner frequently uses the term "Indian" when referring to Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. This was also accepted use in 1983, and it was not intended to be derogatory towards Indigenous Peoples.

1. [Grof Legacy Project]
2. The name these Indigenous Peoples of Eduador and Peru prefer is "Shuar." The term "Jívaro Indians" is now no longer used due to its colonialist associations.
3. The preferred contemporary term for "native people" is considered to be "Indigenous Peoples."
4. Harner is jokingly referring to William S. Burroughs' 1953 semi-autobiographical first novel Junky, which concludes with the statement "Yagé may be the final fix." [Flood 2016] Yagé is another name for ayahuasca. Burroughs seems to be implying that, in ayahuasca, he finally found the deeper level of meaning and experience he was searching for in his other drug experiments.
5. For more information, see [Harner 1980:5]
6. Preferred contemporary terms would be "Tungus peoples," or possibly "Tungusic peoples," or possibly "Tungus-Manchu peoples."
7. See Editor's Comment in the Acknowledgments above.
8. The name these Indigenous Peoples of the arctic prefer is "Inuit." The term "Eskimo" is now no longer be used due to its colonialist associations.
9. The preferred contemporary term would be "Indigenous Peoples of Australia." The term "Australian Aboriginals" is now no longer used due to its colonialist associations.
10. Harner is referring to Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926—2004) and Dr. Raymond Moody (1944—present).
11. Harner does not actually mean "amplitude" here but "frequency."
12. EEG means electroencephalogram, a medical test that measures the brain's electrical activity.
13. For more information see Shamanism and Immune Response by Sandra Harner available as a recording on CD at the FSS web store.
14. Harner is probably referring to Dante Alighieri's famous work Divine Comedy.

• Flood, Alison
  2016 How William Burroughs's drug experiments helped neurology research.
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/21/how-william-burroughss-drug-experiments-helped-neurology-research
• Grof Legacy Project
  2026 History of the International Transpersonal Association.
  https://groflegacyproject.org/resources/history-of-the-international-transpersonal-association/
• Harner, Michael
  1980 The Way of the Shaman. New York: Harper & Row (revised 1990).