The Accidental Shaman

How I became a dealer in altered consciousness

Part 2 of Chronicles on Consciousness and Culture: A trilogy exploring the sacred technologies of sound and the eternal human search for transcendence.

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The Buried Question

I was thirteen when I lit my father's funeral pyre.

The priest guided my trembling hands through the ancient ritual, whispering Sanskrit verses I couldn't understand whilst the flames consumed everything that remained of the man who had been the steady anchor of our family. As the only son, this sacred duty fell to me, a responsibility passed down through generations like some terrible inheritance.

The next morning, I collected his ashes and bones, all that remained of a life interrupted far too soon. We carried them to Haridwar¹, where the holy Ganga receives these last physical traces of our loved ones. Then came the final ritual: watching the family priest compress my father's entire existence into a few lines in his weathered record books—name, date, time, cause of death. Such simple data to represent such a complex life.

Standing by those sacred waters, a question roared through my teenage mind with the force of revelation: If we all end up as ashes in the river, why do we struggle so hard in life?

The moment that planted a dangerous question

The thought felt dangerous, almost blasphemous. Life should be one grand celebration, shouldn't it? If this flesh and these achievements and all our desperate grasping amount to nothing more than a handful of dust, then what's the point of the endless race? Why not dance instead of chasing? Why not love instead of compete?

But I was thirteen, suddenly the man of the house, with a mother who'd just lost her husband and two sisters who needed stability. The philosophical rebellion brewing inside me got buried beneath more immediate demands: school, responsibilities, the weight of being the family's only male.

Life, it seemed, had other plans.

And life, as I would later learn, has an uncanny way of putting you exactly where you need to be, exactly when you need to be there—even when you can't see the design until years later.

The Golden Prison

Over the next few years, that buried question would occasionally surface—usually in quiet moments when the weight of responsibility felt too heavy for teenage shoulders. But life had a way of distracting me with its demands and, eventually, its gifts.

The universe, it seemed, was about to reveal its sense of timing.

I was twenty, attending my school friend's birthday party on his terrace, when everything changed. He'd insisted I bring my guitar, and after enough cajoling, I found myself strumming a few songs for the small gathering. I wasn't particularly skilled—just someone who could manage a few chords and carry a tune—but the music felt good flowing through me.

Among the usual school crowd were some older individuals, perhaps friends of his mother. A couple of them approached me afterward, their compliments generous, their manner intriguing. "You have a spark," one said. "You're serious, focused. Given the right platform, you could do wonders."

Just like that, they extended an invitation that would reshape my life: a conference where a South Korean businessman was establishing operations in India. What harm could it do?

The Korean man was probably fifty, but carried himself with the energy of someone half his age. His sense of style was impeccable, his charisma infectious, his vision absolutely intoxicating. I spent the entire day with him, absorbing every word, every gesture, every lesson he offered.

By evening, we'd moved from his office to his home, where he continued the conversation over dinner and several glasses of soju—a Korean rice wine that went down dangerously smooth for something that packed such a punch.

Then he made an offer that took my breath away: "Follow everything I teach you for six months, and I guarantee you'll be earning six figures monthly."

I thought he was crazy.

Though in hindsight, I'm not entirely sure if it was the audacity of his proposal or the effects of the soju that made everything seem simultaneously impossible and inevitable.

To prove his conviction, he wrote me a cheque for ₹1,00,000, dated six months in the future. The condition was simple: follow his guidance completely. Show up at 9 AM every day in formal attire. Do exactly as he said.

I'd never have agreed without that tangible guarantee staring back at me.

The rest, as they say, is history. I followed him with the devotion of a disciple, absorbed his teachings like a sponge, and made my first six-figure monthly salary in the ninth month. Close enough to his prediction to feel miraculous.

What else could a twenty-year-old ask for? Within a few years, I was travelling to Korea, Japan, and the United States. I won the top ten distributor award out of thirteen countries. I was living proof that tragedy could be transformed into triumph, that a fatherless boy could become a golden success story.

Climbing toward what we think we want | Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

That buried question from Haridwar? It stayed buried beneath the intoxication of achievement, beneath an identity that felt too good to question.

But wounds don't heal just because we refuse to look at them.

The Corporate Exodus

For the next five years, I played my part in the corporate theatre with Academy Award-worthy dedication. What started as following a Korean mentor's guidance became something far bigger than either of us had imagined.

We grew from 2 offices to 21 offices across India. I wasn't just successful—I was the success story. The company made me their poster boy, living proof of what was possible when talent met opportunity. Most days, I found myself on stage, speaking to hundreds of people, sharing the principles that had transformed a grieving thirteen-year-old into a corporate phenomenon.

I traveled to multiple cities, training teams and inspiring crowds, spreading the gospel of achievement. I recall being welcomed with garlands in one town, standing before a vast audience that hung on every word I spoke. The love and affection were intoxicating, the respect I commanded wherever I went both flattering and dangerous.

The kind of success that hits you in your early twenties can be harmful. My confidence was sky-high; my belief in my invincibility was absolute. I was living the dream life—not just for my family, but for everyone watching. The fatherless boy who'd become a golden success story, the poster child for resilience and determination.

I built teams, closed deals, and mentored young executives who reminded me of my twenty-year-old self. "Time is money," I'd tell them, mapping out their five-year plans whilst my own time slipped away in fifteen-minute calendar blocks. I taught them about goal-setting and dream-chasing, principles I'd absorbed and now dispensed like a guru of achievement.

My mother was proud. My sisters were settled. I was everything I was supposed to be.

Until I wasn't.

Like many high-growth companies, we discovered that rapid expansion brings complexities that success can't always solve. The reasons for our downfall were beyond my control—a complex web of regulatory and political challenges that our leadership chose to confront rather than accommodate.

I was too young to understand the behind-the-scenes politics, too focused on what I did best: traveling, expanding markets, and being the living example of what this opportunity could bring to people's lives. It was my first job, and I believed—blindly, entirely—in both the product and the ideology that had transformed my own life.

When the issues began, our president assured us they were temporary. The products were stuck at customs, bureaucratic hurdles that money and patience could resolve. He'd achieved the impossible before—growing us from 2 to 21 offices—so why wouldn't he solve this too?

What I didn't understand then was that when you grow so quickly and so big, you build enemies along the way. Authorities don't like meteoric rises they can't control. Everyone wants their share. The truth was that the product remained stuck at customs, held hostage by a system that demanded accommodations our leadership refused to make.

The specifics matter less than the result: eighteen months of promises that turned into eighteen months of unpaid incentives. Eighteen months of hope slowly curdling into disillusionment. When I finally walked away from that corporate dream, I wasn't just leaving money on the table; I was reclaiming time that had been held hostage by hope.

But the corporate collapse was just the beginning. My carefully invested savings—those sure bets that had seemed so logical, so safe—vanished like morning mist. And then, as if the universe had decided to orchestrate a perfect storm, my relationship crumbled under the weight of uncertainty and change.

I found myself stripped of everything I'd used to define myself: the successful executive, the prudent investor, the perfect partner. All the costumes from the play I'd been performing were suddenly gone, leaving me staring at a stranger in the mirror.

The buried question that had been dormant since I was thirteen began to stir in the depths of my consciousness. That dangerous thought from the banks of the Ganga: If we all end up as ashes, why do we struggle so hard?

Maybe, I thought in those dark moments, it was time to stop struggling and start surrendering.

Like all good things, it had come to an end. But perhaps that ending was just the beginning of something else entirely.

Finding Rhythm in the Ruins

I hadn't planned on being in that club at all.

Months after my world had collapsed, I was still wandering through the ruins of my former life like a ghost haunting his funeral. The golden boy who'd once commanded audiences of hundreds now struggled to command his reflection in the mirror. Friends had drifted away—not from cruelty, but from the simple discomfort of witnessing someone fall from such heights.

I wasn't planning to alter my consciousness that night—I was already changed enough by circumstance. But my DJ friend had other ideas, and frankly, I was beyond caring about consequences. The man who'd once weighed every decision against quarterly projections was now someone who'd forgotten what caution even meant.

What happened next defied every assumption I'd held about healing and transformation. The music didn't just move through me—it seemed to excavate buried parts of myself I'd forgotten existed. Layer by layer, the grief I'd been carrying since my father's death, the pressure of being the family's anchor, the weight of always having to have answers—it all began to dissolve into something lighter, more spacious.

In losing everything I thought defined me, I was finding something else: the courage to fall completely.

I found myself moving with an abandon I hadn't felt since childhood, swaying under the strobe lights as the music washed over me like waves of liquid sound. For the first time in months, I wasn't thinking about quarterly targets, five-year plans, or what people would think. I was present, simply alive, simply dancing.

The night stretched into dawn, and as we sipped morning chai, he asked about my current ventures and what was keeping me occupied these days. Knowing full well I wasn't doing anything, he proposed something that would change both our lives.

"Why are you just partying here? Why am I just playing at clubs? Why don't we start our record label and create something big together?"

We talked until sunrise, and slowly the real proposition emerged. He had the musical talent and underground connections. I had the communication skills and business experience. He could see where the electronic music scene was heading—toward something bigger than the underground parties he'd been playing. International artists were seeking local connections, CDs that could be exported to Germany and Japan, and a network waiting to be established.

I had no idea what I was saying yes to. No understanding that this pragmatic alliance would accidentally transform both of us into something neither had planned to become. All I knew was that, for the first time in months, I felt curious about what was to come next.

"Why not?" I said. "I've got nothing left to lose."

How wrong I was. I had everything left to gain—just not in the way either of us expected.

Becoming the Medicine

What had started as an unlikely partnership between a fallen corporate executive and an ambitious young DJ quickly revealed itself to be something far more significant than either of us had imagined.

Within months of that dawn conversation over chai, we'd moved from the theoretical to the tangible. Business cards printed, website live, distributor contacts established across three continents. Our first compilation was called "In Lak'esh"—a Mayan greeting meaning "I am another you"—and I wrote a poem that was printed on the inner sleeve of the CD. Even then, without fully understanding it, we were channeling something ancient about interconnectedness and shared consciousness.

But the real transformation began when we organized our first gathering with the Misted Muppet—a young, beautiful Israeli artist named Dagan whose music seemed to contain frequencies that bypassed the mind and spoke directly to the soul. Picking him up from the airport, driving him through Delhi's chaos to the scrublands outside the city, where urban noise finally gave way to something older and more primal, we realized we weren't just organizing entertainment. We were importing consciousness technologies.

The scene was migrating from Goa's beaches to India's cities, carried by people like us who'd tasted something transcendent and couldn't forget the flavor. What had been confined to foreign backpackers and local Goans was now calling to urban Indians, who were hungry for experiences their corporate lives couldn't provide. We became unwitting ambassadors of a consciousness revolution, bridges between worlds.

After Dagan came Vibe Tribe, Electric Universe, Space Cat, Space Buddha, Eskimo, and DNA—artists whose names would become legendary in the underground circuit. I still have the original flyers from those gatherings, artifacts of a time when magic felt possible and transformation happened on dance floors under starlit skies.

What struck me most was the love people poured onto these artists. Hundreds of dancers would treat them not as celebrities, but as medicine men, shamans with synthesizers instead of drums. And in many ways, that's precisely what they were—individuals behind consoles regulating the brainwave patterns of entire crowds, guiding collective journeys through carefully crafted sonic landscapes.

The music itself operated on frequencies that directly resonated with the brain's rhythm centers. Psychedelic trance builds from around 125 BPM² to 150 and beyond, with its distinctive four-on-the-floor beat and sixteenth bass notes creating frequencies around 10 Hz—precisely the alpha brainwave range associated with heightened awareness and meditative states. But it was the sacred architecture we accidentally created that made the real difference.

Our parties followed an ancient pattern we didn't consciously understand: opening sets that gently pulled people away from ordinary consciousness, building toward the dark psytrance peaks around 2 AM when the music hit 160 BPM and the barriers between self and cosmos dissolved completely, then slowly descending into progressive trance as sunrise approached—a collective rebirth witnessed by hundreds of souls dancing in synchrony.

We worked in tandem with labels from Mumbai and Calcutta. If we booked an artist, they'd organize gigs in their cities. If they managed to book someone, we'd host them in Delhi. The network grew organically, fueled by nothing more than love for the music and the experiences it facilitated.

I remember Elmar from Vibe Tribe making music at my home—I didn't even have a proper studio, just decent speakers and a desktop computer. Other artists visited my house too. Eitan from DNA once stayed over. These international artists were becoming part of our extended family. The casualness of it all belied the profundity of what was happening.

We also organized gigs in the mountains, such as in the Parvati Valley and Manali, where people from all over the world would converge under Himalayan peaks for some of the most transcendent sunrises imaginable. I lost 10 kilograms just from dancing, dropping from 75 to 65 kilos through sheer ecstatic movement.

As the organizer, I had a ritual: wait until early morning, when everyone was present and all logistics were sorted, then walk right into the middle of the dance floor, close my eyes, and jam away to glory for the next few hours. In those moments, I wasn't running a business—I was participating in mass healing, a form of collective therapy disguised as entertainment.

I was participating in mass healing, collective therapy disguised as entertainment.

But it was on one particular night, under a canopy of stars outside Delhi, that I fully understood what we'd accidentally created...

The location was perfect—a natural amphitheater formed by gentle hills, far enough from the city that light pollution couldn't steal the stars. As dusk settled, people began arriving in small groups: software engineers still carrying the stress of corporate deadlines, artists hungry for inspiration, seekers who had felt the pull of something they couldn't name, and backpackers who had followed the music from Goa's beaches to Delhi's outskirts.

By midnight, nearly three hundred souls had gathered, their faces illuminated by the soft glow of the stage lights and the fierce clarity in each other's eyes. The opening DJ had already begun the gentle seduction, starting at 125 BPM—slow enough to let people shed the armor of their daily personas, fast enough to start the ancient rhythm that would carry them through the night.

I watched from the sidelines as the transformation began. Office shirts were peeled off and tossed aside. High heels were abandoned for bare feet that could feel the earth's pulse. Makeup—that careful mask of urban presentation—was washed away by sweat and liberation, revealing faces that glowed with something far more beautiful than cosmetics could provide.

The music was doing what it had done for millennia, just in a new form. At 140 BPM, with four bass notes per beat, the sound was literally entraining brainwaves to 10 Hz—the alpha frequency associated with heightened awareness and transcendent states. But the science couldn't explain the magic I was witnessing.

As the BPMs climbed toward 150, then 160, something profound happened to the crowd. Individual dancers began to move as one organism, breathing in unison, swaying together, lost in a collective trance that dissolved the boundaries between self and other. Every glance exchanged held profound recognition—that wordless acknowledgment of shared humanity that transcends all the roles we play in our daily lives.

A woman in her thirties, someone I'd seen looking stressed and disconnected at the beginning of the night, was now dancing with tears streaming down her face, not of sadness, but of pure release. Whatever she'd been carrying, whatever wounds she'd been protecting, the music was washing them away layer by layer. Her movements weren't choreographed; they were cathartic, her body expressing emotions her mind had forgotten how to process.

Nearby, a young man who had arrived looking angry and lost was spinning with his arms outstretched, his face tilted toward the stars, laughing with the pure joy of someone who had just remembered what it felt like to be alive. The conditioning of years—the fears and limitations—was falling away like old skin.

This wasn't a party. This was mass therapy. This was ancient healing dressed in electronic frequencies, shamanic ritual disguised as entertainment. Hundreds of people were accessing dimensions of consciousness they'd never experienced before, facilitated by nothing more than rhythm, bass, and the sacred space we'd accidentally created.

Around 3 AM, at the peak of the dark psytrance³ set, something extraordinary happened. The entire crowd seemed to breathe as one being. In that moment, the artificial divisions between dancer and music, self and other, individual and cosmos ceased to exist. We were all part of one giant symphony, each person a unique note in an infinite song.

As the music began its slow descent toward sunrise—BPMs dropping back to 140, then 130, melodies becoming lighter, more hopeful—I finally understood what I'd become. Not a party organizer or record label owner, but an accidental facilitator of transcendence. A dealer in altered consciousness.

The healing wasn't just happening to the dancers. Standing there, watching hundreds of souls remember what they truly were beneath all the conditioning and pain, I felt my buried wounds beginning to surface and dissolve. That thirteen-year-old boy who'd lit his father's funeral pyre, who'd asked why we struggle when we all end up as ashes—he was finally getting his answer.

We struggle not because struggle has meaning, but because joy has meaning. Connection has meaning. Love has meaning. And sometimes, in spaces like this, we remember that life was always meant to be one grand celebration.

Photo by The Nomadic Daughter

As dawn painted the sky in shades of possibility and the last progressive trance notes carried the crowd gently back to consensus reality, I walked into the center of the dance floor, closed my eyes, and danced with the gratitude of someone who'd finally found his purpose.

I wasn't just organizing parties. I was serving medicine. And in healing others, I was healing myself. As Raja Ram⁴ from Shpongle would later articulate, what I was witnessing that night:

'Dance is the answer... when you really get into the dance, you lose yourself... you forget your name, you forget your job... what you are involved in is in the NOW. The NOW is blissful.'

That's exactly what I was seeing—hundreds of people accessing pure presence, forgetting everything except the joy of being alive.

The Departure

The realization didn't come as a dramatic epiphany, but rather as a quiet, knowing sense that settled into my bones for months, as I witnessed transformation after transformation. We weren't just organizing parties. We were holding space for modern vision quests, facilitating journeys that people would remember for the rest of their lives. And somewhere while facilitating all this transformation, my own deepest wound began to heal.

But even as our underground community flourished, the larger scene was beginning to shift. What had started as intimate gatherings of a few hundred seekers was growing into something bigger, more visible, more attractive to forces that had nothing to do with consciousness or healing.

The first signs were subtle. Promoters from the mainstream club circuit began showing interest in our "concept." Sponsors started approaching with offers to fund larger events in exchange for branding opportunities. The word "commercial" started appearing in conversations about bookings and venues.

More troubling was what was happening to the music itself. The sacred architecture we'd carefully cultivated—those opening sets, peak-hour journeys, sunrise healings—was being compressed into shorter, more palatable formats for club environments where people came to be seen rather than transformed.

The parties themselves began changing character. What had once been gatherings where people arrived in simple clothes, ready to dance barefoot on earth under stars, were slowly being replaced by events where image mattered more than experience. The selfless communion we'd cultivated was giving way to something more performative, more concerned with documentation than transcendence.

I watched as the pure intention that had driven our scene—that desperate hunger for authentic connection and consciousness expansion—got diluted by business plans and profit margins. The very magic we'd accidentally created was being reverse-engineered, packaged, and sold back to people as an "experience."

But perhaps most telling was what was happening inside me. The buried philosophical question that had driven me since my father's death—why do we struggle when we all end up as ashes?—was no longer buried. Through countless nights of watching people shed their conditioning and remember their true nature, through facilitating so many journeys from separation to unity, I'd found my answer.

Life, rather than being a cruel joke ending in ash, was actually an extraordinary gift—a chance to experience consciousness, to touch the infinite, to love and be loved. The thirteen-year-old boy who'd lit his father's funeral pyre had finally made peace with both life and death. The healing was complete.

Which is perhaps why I began to feel a different kind of restlessness. I found myself drawn more to those early morning moments after parties when the crowd had dispersed and only a few souls remained, sitting in silence as the sun painted the sky in shades of gratitude. The scene no longer needed me; it had its momentum, its direction, its inevitable evolution toward commercialization.

A new calling was emerging—something quieter, more inward. It was time for a different kind of seeking.

I said goodbye to the scene that had healed me and signed up for a yoga teacher training course in the mountains. It was time to experience in the body what I had felt in the mind. Liberation.

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"Which raises the deeper question: what were we accessing dancing on earth under the stars? In the final part of this trilogy, I'll explore how ancient practices found their newest expression..."

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1. Haridwar: One of India's seven sacred cities, located on the banks of the Ganges River. A major pilgrimage destination where Hindus scatter the ashes of deceased family members.

2. BPMs (Beats Per Minute): The tempo measurement in music. Psytrance typically ranges from 125 to 160 BPM, with different tempos creating distinct psychological effects—slower tempos for opening sets and faster tempos for peak experiences.

3. Progressive psytrance vs. dark psytrance: Progressive focuses on melodic, uplifting sounds with gradual builds, typically played during sunrise sets. Dark psytrance is characterized by heavier, more intense basslines, making it ideal for peak nighttime experiences.

4. Raja Ram: Legendary psytrance producer, founder of Tip Records, and founding member of Shpongle and 1200 Micrograms.