Shamanistic literature and how it differs

Shamanistic literature is open to the accusation that "there is nothing there" (so far as content goes) or that the writing "is all about the author" (that is to say --it is that and nothing more). One critic in Nietzsche's own time thus deemed Thus Spoke Zarathustra to be an exercise in style and nothing more.  This critic failed to see that Nietzsche was writing about how to double oneself to be both the one who experiences and the one who observes one's experiences, to transcend one's limitations (self-overcoming, was his term).

Unique to Nietzsche's writing is that it does away with this moral and epistemic dichotomies by using material that would otherwise be "just about me" to understand cultural wholes.

He describes the process of gaining self-understanding, along with its greatest consequence as follows:

Whatever state you are in, serve yourself as a source of experience! ... You have inside you a ladder with a hundred rungs which you can scale towards knowledge. Do not undervalue the fact of having been religious; appreciate how you have been given real access to art ... It is within your power to ensure that all your experiences -- trials, false starts, mistakes, deception, suffering, passion, loving, hoping -- can be subsumed totally in your objective. This objective is to make yourself into a necessary chain of culture links, and from this necessity to draw general conclusions about current cultural needs.

This method is to create a link between one's own evolving state of mind and the broader cultural needs of the community. Thus, for the shamanistic practitioner "self-involvement" is essential, and not only because it is also the means by which society is served.

In other words, in terms of the shamanistic structure, there is no moral schism that opposes self-enjoyment from respect for the needs of others.  We are used to that either-or form of morality, but it is profoundly incorrect:

Truly, I have done this and that for the afflicted: but I always seemed to do better I had learned to enjoy myself better. Since humanity came into being, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin! And when we learn better to enjoy ourselves, then do we unlearn best to give pain to others, and to contrive harm. --Zarathustra.