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Hughes chapter 11, Walsh Part 7, Pearce Chapter 7:

Through ought the reading there was an emphasis of the power of the mind. Hughes and Pearce talked about hypnosis and trance. Hughes referenced the composer Sergei Rachmaninov and how he had a creative dry spell. After hypnosis he produced successful symphonies. Hughes pointed out “the most remarkable fact about hypnosis is that it reveals a range of powers within the individual, inaccessible to personal consciousness, but through attainable through surrender of the will.”

That quote applies to the shamans as well. Through the trance they enter, they see a world inaccessible through any other method than what they’re doing. Pearce said that trance experience is a disengagement from ordinary reality orientation, which is true to shamans and their rituals. Pearce also references Ainslie Meares, a doctor who underwent a tooth extraction under self-induced anesthesia.
He had published widely on therapy and had also served as the president of the international society for clinical experimental hypnosis. Perhaps this was his way of proving his point?

Hughes mentioned mystics. They “offer accounts, guides, and maps of other worlds, which may incidentally be valued creative products alone.” That reminded me a lot of shamans and the way they are an inside to another reality we don’t see. Walsh said about the shaman, “ Their specialty was ‘ soul travel’ in which they experience themselves journeying through these realms as free souls, mastering and placing their inhabitants, and bringing back knowledge to their earthbound compatriots.”