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Spirits as Human Nature and the Fundamental Structures of Consciousness

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... The main purpose of the shamanic ceremony was interaction with the spirit world where the shaman solicited the assistance of the spirits, principally animals, to undertake a variety of tasks. Spiritual experiences reflect the stimulation and integration of innate C37S15 C37P41 C37P42 C37S16 C37P43 C37P44 cognitive operators basic to social adaptations (self and other awareness, mind reading, social incorporation/internalization of ideas and features of others (Winkelman, 2004(Winkelman, , 2019d. ...
... The interaction of psilocybin effects and ancient ritual capacities led to the evolution of shamanism and the formation of evolved aspects of optimal psychedelic set and setting (Winkelman, 2010a(Winkelman, , 2013a(Winkelman, , 2021c. Their renowned ability to induce entheogenic experiences, a sense of a spiritual other, shows these psilocybin effects involving activation of innate cognitive operators provide a natural neuro-epistemology, innate ways of knowing that reflect functions of neurotransmitter and brain systems (Winkelman, 2004(Winkelman, , 2017a(Winkelman, , 2017b(Winkelman, , 2018b. The mediation by ritual of early adaptations to psychedelic use was unavoidable given shamanism's ancient roots in hominid collective ritual capacities. ...
... This broad manifestation indicates it is not strictly a cultural belief but rather involves neurocognitive mechanisms that provide the basis for the cross-cultural similarities. The soul flight experience also manifest features of the innate cognitive structures of consciousness (Winkelman, 2004(Winkelman, , 2019d) that provide a basis for neurophenomenological characterization in terms of neurological mechanisms that produce the features of these phenomenological experiences. Metzinger (2009) proposed principal features of the out-of-body experience (OBE) involve elements of the protoconcept of the self. ...
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Shamanism is a transcultural concept for understanding roles of ritual and psychedelics in the prehistoric origins of religiosity. The origins of religiosity are revealed by parallels of shamanic and chimpanzee collective ritualizations involving group chorusing and drumming with dramatic bipedal displays. This hominid baseline was expanded with mimetic evolution of song, dance and enactment. Psychedelic substances stimulate innate cognitive dispositions manifested in shamanism such as the human-like qualities of spirits, animal identities and other spiritual and mystical experiences. These structural features of consciousness are stimulated by mimetic performances with song, dancing, and drumming; painful and exhausting austerities; and psychedelic substances. These produce altered experiences of the self which are conceptualized within indigenous psychologies as spirits and one’s soul, spiritual allies, and animal powers that can be incorporated into personal powers (i.e., animal transformation). Cross-cultural manifestation of shamanic features reveal that they are based in biology rather than merely cultural traditions.
... The ASC emphasized in shamanism engages one in a nonordinary reality (Harner 1982) and a variety of interactions with spirit powers, including the experience of self as a spiritual entity. These ASCs and spirits involve fundamental aspects of the structures of human consciousness (Winkelman 2004b) that reflect activation of ancient structures of the brain, the animal powers of our unconscious (Winkelman 2000). These structures and processes experienced as spirits provide important information relevant to the dynamics of the individual and unconscious. ...
... Spirit beliefs are projective systems that structure individual psychodynamics and behavior. Spirit identities provide social and self-modules, alternate forms of identity and reference for problem-solving and psychosocial adaptation (Winkelman 2000(Winkelman , 2004b. Spirit concepts provide the self with commandcontrol agents that can respond to conflict by providing different selves to mediate conflict within a hierarchy of social and personal goals. ...
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The use of psychedelic substances for medicinal and therapeutic purposes has been around for many thousands of years. These practices are closely related to shamanism, which has an antiquity stretching back to the dawn of modern human cultural capacities. Shamanism and the ritual use of psychedelic plants co-evolved deep in prehistory, as hunter-gatherer diets inevitability included psychedelic mushrooms, contributing to selection for the characteristics of our evolved psychologies and ideal set and setting. Clinical management of psychedelic medicines is central to shamanic healing traditions which are repositories of millennia of clinical experience and knowledge regarding the best applications of these substances. These ethnomedical traditions constitute a clinical science with important guidelines relevant to contemporary applications of these substances, providing a range of strategies and "best uses" approaches regarding the application of psychedelic medicines. This knowledge includes ritual structures in preparation for their use, guiding their application and producing optimal effects; conceptual frameworks for managing these entheogenic experiences, and preparatory practices that enhance their psychoactive effects and therapeutic processes.
... Intentionality, as argued by Winkelman (2004), plays a crucial role in generating a maximum level of fusion in thoughts or experiences, establishing the Ego and consciousness within an individual (Laughlin, 2024). The intentional nature of an object gives rise to consciousness, facilitating the processing of information from the preconscious to the conscious mind through external resources such as visual images and brainstorming (Fedotov & Baidyuk, 2023;Sklar et al., 2021). ...
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Communities face increasingly complex social and technological challenges , and traditional approaches to problem-solving often fall short. We can unlock innovative solutions that transcend individual limitations by tapping into the collective consciousness. The representatives of societies must understand the dynamics of social value creation to initiate social change mechanisms. The framework presented in this article combines insights to guide the process of cultivating group consciousness. It is developed on the foundations of Freudian consciousness and Jung's idea of collective unconscious and unfolds the formation of group values in respective stages of interactive, collective , and transcendent consciousness.
... Consequently, incipient psychedelic divination practices were mostly functional, likely taking advantage of dishabituation, creative generation, and alternative noetic and epistemic pathways in instrumental ways; at the same time, given the way they supported ostensive detachment (e.g., by reinforcing the notion that the information in question was provided by the spirits; see Winkelman, 2004), they were capable of overriding individual and collective paralysis, facilitating adaptive strategic thought and group decision making. ...
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Our hominin ancestors inevitably encountered and likely ingested psychedelic mushrooms throughout their evolutionary history. This assertion is supported by current understanding of: early hominins’ paleodiet and paleoecology; primate phylogeny of mycophagical and self-medicative behaviors; and the biogeography of psilocybin-containing fungi. These lines of evidence indicate mushrooms (including bioactive species) have been a relevant resource since the Pliocene, when hominins intensified exploitation of forest floor foods. Psilocybin and similar psychedelics that primarily target the serotonin 2A receptor subtype stimulate an active coping strategy response that may provide an enhanced capacity for adaptive changes through a flexible and associative mode of cognition. Such psychedelics also alter emotional processing, self-regulation, and social behavior, often having enduring effects on individual and group well-being and sociality. A homeostatic and drug instrumentalization perspective suggests that incidental inclusion of psychedelics in the diet of hominins, and their eventual addition to rituals and institutions of early humans could have conferred selective advantages. Hominin evolution occurred in an ever-changing, and at times quickly changing, environmental landscape and entailed advancement into a socio-cognitive niche, i.e., the development of a socially interdependent lifeway based on reasoning, cooperative communication, and social learning. In this context, psychedelics’ effects in enhancing sociality, imagination, eloquence, and suggestibility may have increased adaptability and fitness. We present interdisciplinary evidence for a model of psychedelic instrumentalization focused on four interrelated instrumentalization goals: management of psychological distress and treatment of health problems; enhanced social interaction and interpersonal relations; facilitation of collective ritual and religious activities; and enhanced group decision-making. The socio-cognitive niche was simultaneously a selection pressure and an adaptive response, and was partially constructed by hominins through their activities and their choices. Therefore, the evolutionary scenario put forward suggests that integration of psilocybin into ancient diet, communal practice, and proto-religious activity may have enhanced hominin response to the socio-cognitive niche, while also aiding in its creation. In particular, the interpersonal and prosocial effects of psilocybin may have mediated the expansion of social bonding mechanisms such as laughter, music, storytelling, and religion, imposing a systematic bias on the selective environment that favored selection for prosociality in our lineage.
... This latter finding implies a heightened susceptibility to high-arousal or "dis-ease" states (Evans et al., 2019;Ventola et al., 2019). It further seems that factors like transliminality can capitalise on humankind's potential biological basis or genetic predisposition for encounter experiences, and anomalous experiences in general (McClenon, 2004(McClenon, , 2012Winkelman, 2004Winkelman, , 2018. Moreover, ghostly episodes (and related encounter experiences) and psychogenic illness both involve apparent psychological contagion, or the instigation of successive (episodic) perceptions or experiences due to priming effects or demand characteristics within individuals or groups (Houran & Lange, 1996;Laythe et al., 2017;O'Keeffe & Parsons, 2010). ...
Article
Research suggests a Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S) is defined by the recurrent perception of anomalous subjective and objective events. Occurrences are traditionally attributed to supernatural agencies, but we argue that such interpretations have morphed into themes of “surveillance and stalking” in group-stalking reports. We tested a series of related hypotheses by re-analyzing survey data from the 2015 Sheridan and James study to explore statistical patterns in “delusional” group-stalking accounts (N=128) versus“non-delusional” (control) accounts of lone-culprit stalking (N=128). As expected, we found that (i) account types had different Rasch hierachies, (ii) the Rasch hierarchy of group-stalking experiences showed a robust unidimensional model, and (iii) this group-stalking hierarchy correlated significantly with spontanous “ghost“ experiences. However, we found no clear evidence for “event clustering” that might signify contagious processes in symptom perception. Findings support the viability of the HP-S construct and the idea that experiences of group-stalking and haunts share common sources.
... It might sound like an amusing or curious claim, but "haunted houses" could be among the oldest problems in environmental psychology, i.e., the scientific study of the transactions and interrelationships between people and their surroundings (Bell et al., 2001;Devlin, 2018). In this context, anthropologists note that haunt experiences have been important aspects of shamanism in both early and contemporary societies (Hunter, 2018;McClenon, 2004;Winkelman, 2004). For instance, "shaking tent" rituals involved a special cylindrical lodge or tent to contact "spirits" for guidance on hunting, healing, and even locating missing persons. ...
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This paper contains a narrative overview of the past 20-years of environmental research on anomalous experiences attributed to “haunted house.” This exercise served as a much-needed update to an anthology of noteworthy overviews on ghosts, haunts, and poltergeists (Houran and Lange, 2001b). We also considered whether new studies had incorporated certain recommendations made in this anthology. Our search revealed a relative paucity of studies (n = 66) on environmental factors that ostensibly stimulate haunt-type experiences. This literature was diverse and often lacked methodological consistency and adherence to the prior suggestions. However, critical consideration of the content revealed a recurring focus on six ambient variables: embedded (static) cues, lighting levels, air quality, temperature, infrasound, and electromagnetic fields. Their relation to the onset or structure of witness reports showed mostly null, though sometimes inconsistent or weak outcomes. However, such research as related to haunts is arguably in its infancy and new designs are needed to account better for environmental and architectural phenomenology. Future studies should therefore address four areas: (i) more consistent and precise measurements of discrete ambient variables; (ii) the potential role of “Gestalt influences” that involve holistic environment-person interactions; (iii) individual differences in attentional or perceptual sensitivities of percipients to environmental variables; and (iv) the role of attitudinal and normative influences in the interpretation of environmental stimuli. Focused scrutiny on these issues should clarify the explanatory power of evolutionary-environmental models for these and related anomalous experiences.
... Some cognitive and evolutionary psychologists have even argued that human beings are neurologically "hard-wired" for anomalous, mystical, or numinous experiences (J. Evans et al., 2019;McClenon, 2004McClenon, , 2012Persinger, 1983;Winkelman, 2004). ...
Article
We review the premise, popularity, and profitability of paranormal tourism, which involves visits to any setting or locale for the explicit purpose of encountering apparent supernatural phenomena for leisure, investigation, services, products, or conventions. This niche sector can offer an inherently engaging conceptual framework for seasonal or year-round space activation and monetization by businesses situated in specific settings or cities. On a broader level, the niche also illustrates how tourism–hospitality brands and operations can navigate and even capitalize on three paradigm shifts that have disrupted contemporary markets, that is, the mobilities, performative, and creative turns. This assertion is underscored with a case analysis of a historic site that successfully leveraged paranormal themes as part of its space reactivation and rebranding. Finally, our market study suggests that the success factors of paranormal tourism might indicate a fourth paradigm shift across the wider tourism–hospitality industry, whereby the experience economy is transforming to an enchantment economy.
... Many studies on paranormal belief and experience strongly suggest there is an "encounter-prone personality" grounded in a permeable (or thin) mental boundary structure (e.g., Houran, Kumar, et al., 2002;Parra, 2018). This profile might even capitalise on the potential biological basis or genetic predisposition for anomalous experience (McClenon, 2004(McClenon, , 2012Winkelman, 2004Winkelman, , 2018. ...
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Research suggests a “Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S)” defined by recurrent and systematic perceptions of anomalous subjective and objective anomalies. Such signs or symptoms are traditionally attributed to “spirits and the supernatural,” but these themes are hypothesised to morph to “surveillance and stalking” in reports of “group-(or gang) stalking,” We tested this premise with a quali-quantitative exercise that mapped group-stalking experiences from a published first-hand account to a Rasch measure of haunt-type anomalies. This comparison found significant agreement in the specific “signs or symptoms” of both phenomena. Meta-patterns likewise showed clear conceptual similarities between the phenomenology of haunts and group-stalking. Findings are consistent with the idea that both anomalous episodes involve the same, or similar, attentional or perceptual processes and thereby support the viability of the HP-S construct.
... Furthermore, they promote or reinforce social interaction and status. These facets might even collectively capitalize on humankind's potential biological basis or genetic predisposition for anomalous experience (McClenon, 2004;Persinger, 2007;Winkelman, 2004). In short, our sociocultural perspective hypothesizes that ghostly episodes possess a particularly persuasive and flexible brand personality relative to other human experiences, and even those of an anomalous or putative parapsychological nature. ...
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A review of nearly 20 years of sociocultural research and trends on "ghostly episodes" (ghosts, haunted houses, and poltergeists) suggests that personal accounts, group investigations, and popular depictions of anomalous experiences function as active, meaningful, and potent cultural memes. These, in part, reflect interpersonal or group dynamics grounded in Durkheimian models, as well as Social Identity and Conflict theories. Expanding on and integrating these themes, this paper provides a general framework that explains the enduring popularity of ghost narratives in terms of their versatility, adaptability, participatory nature, universality, and scalability (VAPUS model). This perspective implies that ghostly episodes, as experiences and narratives, embody and exemplify the marketing concepts of "brand personality" and consumer engagement. Accordingly, social and cultural influences are discussed as important and inherent contextual variables that help to produce, promote, shape, and sustain these narratives.
Article
The almost complete absence of any reference to the terms shaman and shamanism in Biblical Studies has its roots in the historical prejudice in Western scholarship against them, and originated from colonial ethnocentrism and Christian notions of superiority. However, the shaman, defined as a practitioner who based on the alteration of ordinary consciousness serves a community with particular functions, represents a recognisable pattern in numerous cultural settings while the growth in the multidisciplinary study of shamanism in recent decades shows a growth in one of the oldest patterns of religious activities in human history. The study of shamanism does not only provide a body of comparative research but analytical models for explaining the most extraordinary and anomalous aspects found also in biblical texts, namely, prophesy, divination, healing and exorcism as well as heavenly journeys and spirit possession.
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