You can see why I think Nietzsche's philosophy was quintessentially shamanistic. It's not just ZARATHUSTRA, which is effectively a blue-print concerning what it means to be shamanised (separation from the herd) and how the shamanised individual is likely to feel (like they are creating "beyond themselves") and ultimately how the shamanised individual does not acquire "eternal life" but lets their radiance since into the Earth, towards its origins in the human experience of life as radically contingent.
Another shamanistic feature of Nietzsche's work concerns his understanding of what it means to be an individual rather than to be part of the herd. I would argue that this is the most shamanistic aspect of Nietzsche, because it is the issue most pivotal to developing an experience of human nature that isn't debased.
The crux of things shamanistic is located at the primeval level of the functioning of the "lizard brain" (for more on this term, Cf. the work of neurobiologist, Paul MacLean). Fundamental to this structure of lizard brain thinking is that it seeks to create a sense of wholeness for the psyche. This sense of wholeness pertains to a feeling of security and belongingness vis-a-vis the power structures of the day.
What I want to argue here is that Nietzsche saw both attractions and dangers to this lizard brain facilitated wholeness. He did not, let me make it quite clear, want to eschew the functioning of the lizard brain, in its drive towards wholeness by binding and repressing it. Rather, he sought to outline an ethical approach, whereby the psyche could attain its wholeness without making debilitating wrong turns. (The issue at the heart of Nietzsche's ethics became a drive towards better psychical health then, rather than a question of morality.)
In a direct sense, this brings us back to "lizard brain". The lizard brain has a way of "thinking" as it were that tends to shortchange the higher brain's nobler conceptions of what an individual ought to be. Examples of conceptions formulated in the higher mind are that the individual is (or ought to be) a discrete political entity in his or her own right, autonomously driven, and operating independently in reason and emotion. The reflexes of the lizard brain, however, short change this notion.
Let us look at this issue in closer detail. The lizard brain has a drive towards creating a satisfying feeling of inner psychical wholeness. It does not seem to care, however, how it does this. It has no ethics concerning genuine individualism, or real psychical health, to keep in mind. Rather, it is driven directly towards its goal, from infancy onwards, by inserting the developing psyche into a position within a larger psychical structure. The developing mind thus first learns to "borrow" its feeling of wholeness through becoming part of the larger adult community.
So it is that the subject grows up to find his place in the community -- and the "lizard brain" facilitates this. Yet, the cost of such typical lizard brain operations is that the subject does not truly become (and certainly not in the Nietzschean sense of the term) an "individual". Rather, he has attained his wholeness only at the cost of becoming part of the community's larger psychical structure. If he is a male, he may have been conditioned to feed off the psychical structures of women, as an ongoing process, in order to make himself feel whole. If the subject is a female, she is likely to have been taught to lose her personality in a sense of the wholeness of the community, so as to feel this fundamental wholeness of being. But in both instances, the individual is shortchanged. They are not truly whole, but "herd": They are thoroughly dependent for their psychical survival on remaining part of their communities! Yet to remain part of their communities it to be debilitated -- to become part of a group of people in whom nobody is really what they seem to be, where each is just a victim, and a function of another's projections!
Well, this is the reason why the shaman does a "dangerous crossing" over the "bridge" of the psyche that separates the higher mind from "lizard brain". He despises its reflexive and intuitive functioning, which causes him to adjust to the needs of the community at a subliminal level. Rather, he wants to requisition lizard brain's functional tendency towards achieving wholeness, so as to make an actual individual (in the truer sense of the term) into an independently functioning whole.
This is the true meaning of Nietzschean individualism.
Another shamanistic feature of Nietzsche's work concerns his understanding of what it means to be an individual rather than to be part of the herd. I would argue that this is the most shamanistic aspect of Nietzsche, because it is the issue most pivotal to developing an experience of human nature that isn't debased.
The crux of things shamanistic is located at the primeval level of the functioning of the "lizard brain" (for more on this term, Cf. the work of neurobiologist, Paul MacLean). Fundamental to this structure of lizard brain thinking is that it seeks to create a sense of wholeness for the psyche. This sense of wholeness pertains to a feeling of security and belongingness vis-a-vis the power structures of the day.
What I want to argue here is that Nietzsche saw both attractions and dangers to this lizard brain facilitated wholeness. He did not, let me make it quite clear, want to eschew the functioning of the lizard brain, in its drive towards wholeness by binding and repressing it. Rather, he sought to outline an ethical approach, whereby the psyche could attain its wholeness without making debilitating wrong turns. (The issue at the heart of Nietzsche's ethics became a drive towards better psychical health then, rather than a question of morality.)
In a direct sense, this brings us back to "lizard brain". The lizard brain has a way of "thinking" as it were that tends to shortchange the higher brain's nobler conceptions of what an individual ought to be. Examples of conceptions formulated in the higher mind are that the individual is (or ought to be) a discrete political entity in his or her own right, autonomously driven, and operating independently in reason and emotion. The reflexes of the lizard brain, however, short change this notion.
Let us look at this issue in closer detail. The lizard brain has a drive towards creating a satisfying feeling of inner psychical wholeness. It does not seem to care, however, how it does this. It has no ethics concerning genuine individualism, or real psychical health, to keep in mind. Rather, it is driven directly towards its goal, from infancy onwards, by inserting the developing psyche into a position within a larger psychical structure. The developing mind thus first learns to "borrow" its feeling of wholeness through becoming part of the larger adult community.
So it is that the subject grows up to find his place in the community -- and the "lizard brain" facilitates this. Yet, the cost of such typical lizard brain operations is that the subject does not truly become (and certainly not in the Nietzschean sense of the term) an "individual". Rather, he has attained his wholeness only at the cost of becoming part of the community's larger psychical structure. If he is a male, he may have been conditioned to feed off the psychical structures of women, as an ongoing process, in order to make himself feel whole. If the subject is a female, she is likely to have been taught to lose her personality in a sense of the wholeness of the community, so as to feel this fundamental wholeness of being. But in both instances, the individual is shortchanged. They are not truly whole, but "herd": They are thoroughly dependent for their psychical survival on remaining part of their communities! Yet to remain part of their communities it to be debilitated -- to become part of a group of people in whom nobody is really what they seem to be, where each is just a victim, and a function of another's projections!
Well, this is the reason why the shaman does a "dangerous crossing" over the "bridge" of the psyche that separates the higher mind from "lizard brain". He despises its reflexive and intuitive functioning, which causes him to adjust to the needs of the community at a subliminal level. Rather, he wants to requisition lizard brain's functional tendency towards achieving wholeness, so as to make an actual individual (in the truer sense of the term) into an independently functioning whole.
This is the true meaning of Nietzschean individualism.
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