>I would say that it almost certainly can be considered the same thing (if you want to go down the pseudo-shamanic route) :-)<

Perhaps you don't need to go down the shamanic route. We're all in different states of consciousness (perception) all the time - who is to say which one is real? Is your dream state any less real than your awake state? Is your 'intoxicated' state any less real than your sober state? The only reference point for most of us is when we revert to the 'normal' (sometime between 9am and noon under normal circumstances :-) but even that is 'relative'. I known artists and poets in a continuously different state of perception to my own <i>all</i> the time - they are no more wrong in that state than I am right in mine :-)

There is, after all, no absolute in the way to perceive that which is (or indeed that which is not).