The shaman has access to a superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition, and by being able to do that he affirms the potential for transcendence in all people. He is an exemplar, if you will.
The shaman has access to a ...
Quotes from the same author
The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.
Where psychedelics comes together with that is that it's going to require a transformation of human language and understanding to stop the momentum of the historical process, to halt nuclear proliferation, germ warfare, infantile 19th century politics, all these things. It cannot be accomplished through a frontal assault upon it by political means.
The main thing going on in the 20th century is a dissolving of boundaries, all the boundaries that historical civilization put in place.
Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.
In the way that the 15th Century discovered the New World, the 20th Century discovered the parallel continuum.