revision of earlier suppositions

To correct an earlier point I made somewhere in my thesis drafts -- one which turns out to be an error -- shamanism never involves any "transcendence of self". Buddhism does, but shamanism doesn't. Rather, the objectivity acquired by a shaman is through the melting of emotional bounds that previously forced a particular attitude towards authority out of him. Yet now, he is no longer beholden to power -- powerful individuals as well as powerful ideas -- since the emotional bonds that bound him to fit into his society in a narrow and ordinary way have been broken. The way that power is used strikes him as arbitrary. The events that do take place because of power are tinged with a quality of either the comic or the tragic or both.

This loosening of the bonds enables the concrete self to become "spirit". Metaphorically, the psychologically crystalised bonds break and become liquid -- the liquified self thus becomes free of its earthly bonds.