Earth is inhabited not only by people and animals, but also by Spirits, who are its most ancient inhabitants. People and animals are simply guests on this Earth and their life span is much shorter than the life span of Spirits. Spirits reside in the mountains, in rivers and stones. They live in magical objects like this drum. Sometimes Spirits enter a human being and then this person becomes a Shaman.
Once upon a time, a great civilization that lived in the area from the Ural Mountains to Sakhalin, from the Amur River and the Altai and Sayan Mountains to the Arctic Ocean existed on Earth. At this time, in this land now called Siberia lived a community closely connected to the Spirits, the great beings that, right from the wake of time, had inhabited our planet. The Spirits gave these people the true knowledge, residuals of which can still be found in modern shamanism. What is this knowledge all about? What were the Spirits telling people?
I shall reveal this to you right now!
At the beginning there only was the great non-manifested world, the dormant world without dreams. The God Tengry was the governor of this world. At some point,, he decided to create a world, a world that would sleep with dreams: the manifested world. In order to do this, he split himself into two parts: a male part Tengry and a female part, his wife Umai. As Umai started governing the physical world, the world of dreams emerged between them. Umai gave Tengry to two sons: Ulguen and Erlik. Ulguen governed the world of future; he created plants, people, stones, mountains, rivers. Erlik governed the world of past and took everything that his brother Ulguen had created away into his realm in order to make room for Ulguen’s new creations on Earth and in the dream world. All these Deities: Tengry, Umai, Ulguen and Erlik took part in the process of creating all living beings on Earth: humans, animals and plants and in the dream world, creating Spirits.
First of all, they created the world of Spirits, entities meant to help them in ruling over both the world of dreams and the world of Earth. Then they created plants, animals and, eventually, people. Each God gave a soul to each person, in such a way that each soul corresponded to a God.
Tengry gave them the main soul: Iyee-Suna. This soul is people’s inner being, their “self” and their higher spiritual essence. Ulguen gave them the soul that looked at the future, towards everything new; Erlik gave them the soul connected with memories, with the past: the store-house of memories. Umai gave them the Kut-soul, the soul of energy: the soul that helps manifestation in the physical world. This encompasses: maternal instincts, fear of death and an instinct for material possession.
Then the Gods wanted to know who of all people would serve them?
So, each one of them gave one more soul to people, and called it Jula or Sur. This is the soul of the dream body, the body that goes into dreams when being both awake and asleep. This is the body that travels in your dreams when you sleep or when you are awake and your physical body is just sitting or lying motionlessly. What God would each person end up serving was determined precisely by what God had given this body to each one of them in the first place.
Thus, each person has five souls that constitute his authentic being.
During life, people journey along the Time River. The Time River begins in Belovodie (White Waters Land), the realm of Ulguen. From Belovodie, or absolute future, everything moves down to the world of present, to the world of Umai, and from there it goes to past, the world of Erlik, the world of Sufferings and Sorrow. Then a soul lives through its second death, and from the world of Erlik it moves along the Celestial River, through the Milky Way, and then it leaves for the world of Eternity, for the world of Tengry. Then again from Tengry’s world it reaches the world of future, Belovodie, Ulguen’s world. When the soul Iyee (you can see it in the shape of all-seeing eye here) arrives in Ulguen’s world, it is nursed in the nest of the World Tree. In this nest it merges with the soul Bos (shown in the picture as bird-shaped) and, later, with the soul Sur (you see it here in the shape of a human). At this point, the ‘three-soul’ human being goes into the world of present. On Earth, a human embryo settles in its mother’s body and here it receives the soul Kut, the soul that comes to it from the ancestors. This is the energy of the family line, and a person’s genetic energy.
Many different events happen throughout one’s life, and these all are kept in one’s memory. In this way, the individual develops Tes-soul (you see it here as a fish) or soul of the past and Kut (a reindeer).
When a life comes to its end, as its life span is almost over - which often happens when a person is overfilled with memories and his Tes-soul becomes too big - this takes him to Erlik’s world, the world of past. The connection between a person’s souls is thus broken and he dies. For three more days the soul floats near the physical body. After 40 days the souls leaves Earth. Kut-soul however stays on Earth and moves into the possession of one’s closest relatives or like-minded people whereas all the other souls go to the world of Erlik, where they live for as long as the memory of this person lives. Only when this memory fades away, does the second death occur. Then Tes-soul stays with Erlik, whereas Bos-soul flies to Ulguen’s world.
Sur-soul goes to the God who originally created it and Iyee-soul goes back to Tengry.
There are, however, some exceptions.
If Bos-soul is very well developed - as it happens, for example, with Shamans or founders of either new ideas - after death this goes to Ulguen’s world, whereas Tes-soul separates and goes to Erlik’s world. The other three souls: Bos, Sur and Iyee, go to Ulguen’s world.
What happens after this?
Iyee-soul leaves the world of Tengry and from Eternity, through the Milky Way, it goes back to the world of Absolute Future, to the Land of Belovodie and Ulguen's world. Here, it meets the Bos-soul it had in the previous life. They merge and find their own Sur, sent to them by a Deity, often the same deity who had sent Sur in the previous life. When Sur-soul is found and matured in the nest of the World Tree, these three souls make their way along the Time River into the world of present, where they merge with Kut-soul and where Tes-soul starts growing.
This is how the great transformation of the Being takes place, as the souls move along the Time River from future into Eternity and from Eternity to the future.
Each person has his own destination, and some people are destined to become Shamans.
In such case, Spirits come to them at a set time in their life and open up the world of dreams to them, and guide them into this dream world. Here, one can even loose his sanity for a while, because of seeing two worlds simultaneously: the real world and the world of dreams. Yet, when one starts practicing the ritual ‘Camlanie’ (ritual shamanic singing and dancing), then he learns to discern between the worlds of nightly dreams and the real world. During camlanie one enters entirely into the world of dreams. Then, as soon as camlanie is over, he comes back to the physical world and adapts to it accordingly. When one is able to separate the real world from the world of dreams, he becomes a Shaman. At this point, the Spirits: the Spirit Iyee, the guardian-Spirit and the Spirit-helpers start coming to him and help him in camlanie. They help him in performing all rituals.
Shamans can track a person’s lost soul or rescue Kut-soul, a person’s life power, from evil Spirits as well as exorcise evil Spirit out of him. Spirit–helpers come to him to find the cause of a trouble and manifest his intention of removing the cause of the problem, so as to establish peace and order in the physical world, in the world of human beings.
Now you can see in this picture Tengry’s bow. This bow shoots Tengry’s arrow into the world. This arrow is alive. When Tengry shoots it into Umai, a new living being is born on Earth. This arrow comprises a human’s five souls: the reindeer or Kut-soul; the human-double or Sur-soul; the fish or Tes-soul; the bird or Bos-soul and, last, the all-seeing eye or Iyee-soul. When death comes, the arrow is broken and the souls fly to their God-creators.
The task and the goal of each person’s life is to wake up the dormant Iyee-soul, to become aware of being not just thoughts, feelings or body, but an all-seeing eye, the witness of all thoughts, feelings and all body's functions.
Throughout his life a person should empower his Kut-soul or life force. This is why one should never waste any power by being attached to the past. A person should develop his Bos-soul and direct it into the Unknown, and seek Belovodie. Only when Bos-soul has been directed to the Unknown, can one walk on the spiritual path.
In order to become Shamans and to travel in the dream world, people should develop Sur-soul. They should be aware of living not only in the physical world as, most of the time, they live in the world of fantasy, aspirations and ideas, the dream world with their Sur- soul.
