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| Is FEAR keeping us from the realization of our Cosmic Soul? Has our modern, objective awareness lost sight of Meaning? |
Savior or Saviour may refer to a person who helps people achieve salvation, or saves them from something. Or a Species Redemption of Light Matter Energy?
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that describes a subject by asserting that it is, on some point of comparison, the same as another otherwise unrelated object.
Is it time to turn our awareness inwards, to the existential meaning of spiritual metaphors, in all the worlds mythologies?
Metaphor is a type of analogy and is closely related to other rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison or resemblance including allegory, hyperbole, and simile.
One of the most prominent examples of a metaphor in English literature is the All the world's a stage monologue from As You Like It: All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; — William Shakespeare, As You Like It. This quote is a metaphor because the world is not literally a stage. By figuratively asserting that the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses the points of comparison between the world and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the lives of the people within it." From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Does Metaphor & Mythology, express innate Intuition?
"Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference and/or the use of reason. "The word 'intuition' comes from the Latin word 'intueri' which is usually translated as 'to look inside' or 'to contemplate'." Intuition provides us with beliefs that we cannot justify in every case. For this reason, it has been the subject of study in psychology, as well as a topic of interest in the supernatural. The "right brain" is popularly associated with intuitive processes such as aesthetic abilities. Some scientists have contended that intuition is associated with innovation in scientific discovery. Intuition is also a common subject of New Age writings.
Intuition in Jungian psychology:
In Carl Jung's theory of the ego, described in 1921 in Psychological Types, intuition was an "irrational function", opposed most directly by sensation, and opposed less strongly by the "rational functions" of thinking and feeling. Jung defined intuition as "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.
Jung said that a person in whom intuition was dominant, an "intuitive type", acted not on the basis of rational judgment but on sheer intensity of perception. An extraverted intuitive type, "the natural champion of all minorities with a future", orients to new and promising but unproven possibilities, often leaving to chase after a new possibility before old ventures have borne fruit, oblivious to his or her own welfare in the constant pursuit of change. An introverted intuitive type orients by images from the unconscious, ever exploring the psychic world of the archetypes, seeking to perceive the meaning of events, but often having no interest in playing a role in those events and not seeing any connection between the contents of the psychic world and him- or herself. Jung thought that extraverted intuitive types were likely entrepreneurs, speculators, cultural revolutionaries, often undone by a desire to escape every situation before it becomes settled and constraining—even repeatedly leaving lovers for the sake of new romantic possibilities. His introverted intuitive types were likely mystics, prophets, or cranks, struggling with a tension between protecting their visions from influence by others and making their ideas comprehensible and reasonably persuasive to others—a necessity for those visions to bear real fruit.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), first published in 1944, attempted to provide an empirical method of identifying a person's dominant ego function, in terms of Carl Jung's theory. Beginning in the 1960s, scientists performed studies to see if MBTI results were consistent with the assumed theory that Jungian functions exist and conflict in such a way that one of them must be dominant and the others suppressed. Every study has found that instead of people's MBTI scores clustering around two opposite poles, such as intuition vs. sensation, with few people scoring in the middle, people's scores actually cluster around the middle of each scale in a bell curve. This suggests that the Jungian polarities do not exist. Most contemporary psychological research questions the existence of Jungian functions and the MBTI's ability to tell which function is dominant."
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia To further develop our intuition;
"Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find
the river of peace or highroad to the soul’s destination." _Joseph Campbell.
This is one of those posts in which I'm attempting to express my experience of euphoric mania and the inuitive sense of existential meaning which always infuses my psychoses? Please consider;
The Evolution of Light, God & Existential Meaning?
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| The Word of God, as the Evolution of Light? The Cosmos Percieving Itself, Through You? |
And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
See: John 1 (King James Version)
The Word! As a Metaphor, for the Birth of God?
Is the Biblical John expressing through metaphor, an unconscious and hidden reality of the Universe within? When we read the mythology of the worlds spiritual movements, as metaphorical interpretations of existential meaning, not history? Are we reading about the evolving nature of a Cosmic Consciousness, the Universe percieving itsself through its own evolved form? Is God, simply a metaphor for our evolved nature, as the projection of our mature Godhead? Not now, but in the future? Are we at the begining of a long prophesied Golden Age, as Science and Spirituality begin to converge? Pease consider this conversation about the nature of light and our evolving symbolization (interpretation) of life's existential meaning;
TIME - LIGHT & THE SYMBOLIZATION OF MEANING?
An unconscious urge, in the creative symbolization of existential meaning?
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| An Evolving Reality of Light Matter Energy, inside You? |
MUSES: Yes, the dimensions of time.
MISHLOVE: Symbols themselves -- words, pictures -- point to the deeper structure of things, including the deeper structure of time. I gather that you are suggesting the mind is part of a nonphysical, mathematically definable reality that can interface and interact with physical reality, and in which physical reality is embedded.
MUSES: There can be some things which are physically effective which are not physical. I can give you an illustration, a very recondite one, but there is the zero-point energy of the vacuum. The vacuum is defined in quantum physics as space devoid of radiation or matter -- no energy, no matter. Yet there is an inherent energy in there which can be measured -- this is one of the great triumphs of modern physics -- and that is physically effective.
MISHLOVE: The energy of a pure vacuum.
MUSES: Yes. Yet it obviously is not a pure vacuum. The so-called savage would say to us, "The room is empty, and the wind is a magic spirit." We know it is air. So we are like the savage in saying that the vacuum is empty. There is something there.
Muses, in effect, has been echoing the ancient claim of the Primordial Tradition that there is a fundamental unity between the universal mind and the cosmos itself -- including the unfolding of time. The structure of the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm is expressed in mathematical, scientific and mythological symbols. It is the intuitive grasp of these symbols which is ultimately the goal of astrology. Such a system must always be larger and more enduring than any rational attempt to understand or contain it. If this perspective of astrology is correct, I would predict that rationalists will forever shun astrology's pseudoscientific face. And, ironically, astrology and other "superstitions" will persist because the yearning human soul never be content with rational materialism.
A Thinking Allowed interview with Dr. Charles Muses on Thinking Allowed.com hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove PhD. He is the author of an encyclopedic volume of consciousness studies, The Roots of Consciousness."
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Intuitive Prophecies, concerning the Mind's Evolution?
6000 years on, at the dawn of the Seventh Day? (millennium)
Did the further development of the voice via language skills quicken the evolution of existential meaning? Is our metaphor of God as Creator, an evolving self-interpretation of an unconscious reality within?
Are we, The Human Race, the Universe evolved into a form which percieves and acts upon itself? Please consider;
"For the last 6000 years, human beings have been suffering from a kind of collective psychosis. For all of recorded history human beings have been -- at least to some degree -- insane?
This seems incredible because we have come to accept the consequences of our insanity as normal. If madness is everywhere, nobody knows what sane, healthy rational behavior is any more. The most absurd and obscene practices become traditions, and are seen as natural. It becomes “natural” for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for parents to oppress children, for small groups of people to wield massive amounts of power and dominate massive numbers of other people. It becomes normal for people to abuse the natural world to the point of ecological disaster, and to despise their own bodies and feel guilty for experiencing completely natural desires. It becomes "natural" for human beings to try to accumulate massive amounts of wealth that they will never need, and to endlessly chase after success, power and fame -- and also somehow “natural” that, even if they do manage to gain wealth and status, they never find contentment and fulfillment anyway, but remain constantly dissatisfied.
The aim of this book is to discover where this madness comes from, and to find out if it really IS natural to human beings. All this insanity was the result of an event which I call The Fall -- a collective psychological shift which large groups of people underwent around 6000 years ago, as a result of an environmental disaster which began in the Middle East and central Asia. A new kind of human being came into existence then, with a more defined sense of individuality, and a new way of experiencing life and perceiving the world. In some ways the new human type was an advance -- it brought technological advances, for example, and the civilizations of Sumer and Egypt (and many afterwards). But it also gave rise to pathologies such as warfare, male domination and social inequality.
We will see that before the Fall human life seems to have been fairly carefree and pleasant, even joyful. But after it life became “nasty, brutish and short,” so full of misery that countless generations could only endure it by convincing themselves that it was just a brief stopover -- to grin and bear as best they could -- before they ascended to an eternal paradise.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH HUMAN BEINGS?
If alien beings have been observing the course of human history over the last few thousand years they might well have reached the conclusion that human beings are the product of a scientific experiment which went horribly wrong. Perhaps,, they might hypothesize, other aliens chose the earth as the site for an experiment to try to create a perfect being with amazing powers of intelligence and ingenuity. And create this being they did -- but perhaps they didn’t get the balance of chemicals exactly right, or maybe some of their laboratory equipment broke down half way through because, although the creature did possess amazing intelligence and ingenuity, it also turned out to be a kind of a monster, with defects which were just as great as -- or even greater than -- its abilities."
Excerpt from, “THE FALL: THE INSANITY OF THE EGO IN HUMAN HISTORY & THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA,” by Steve Taylor.
During the altered states of mind I inhabit during a euphoric psychosis, nothing otherworldly comes into my mind, my sense of intuitive meaning comes from all I've ever seen, heard and read, perhaps the "subjective experience" of a lifetime, accessed via the mind, with the heightened metabolic energies, the body/brain/nervous systems, provide? Since 2007, in particular, I've followed the advice of two personal hero's, in Joseph Campbell & Murray Bowen, particularily Campbell's advice about constant reading;
“Sit in a room and read–and read and read. And read the right books
by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have
a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.” _Joseph Campbell.
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Hence, since 2007, I've continued to read and write about a convergence between science & spirituality. How I believe that Stephen Porges has uncovered the hidden reality of our covenant with god (the cosmos within) and the metaphorical meaning of Jesus cosmic sized parable, of "turning water into wine?" Its a chemical metaphor? Consider; |
| A Chemical Universe Within? A Brave New Idea? |
Aldous Huxley accepts the textual facts for what they in fact seem to be and then illustrates them with a telling chemical metaphor that we might now recognize as an early traumatic model for the mystical, perhaps best expressed in this story in the mystical life and psychological sufferings of Dick Price. Here is how Huxley put it in 1944:
"Nothing in our everyday experience gives us any reason for supposing that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen; and yet when we subject water to certain rather drastic treatments, the nature of its constituent elements becomes manifest. Similarly, nothing in our everyday experience gives us much reason for supposing that the mind of the average sensual man has, as one of its constituents, something resembling, or identical with, the Reality substantial to the manifold world; and yet, when that mind is subjected to drastic treatments, the divine element, of which it is in part at least composed, becomes manifest.”
Huxley's wonderful summation of our everyday experience and the nature of its constituent elements, prompted me to write;
It seems to me that we mislead ourselves with language of self-interpretation, using external object analogies to describe our own makeup, as if we are an elaborately assembled French clock? We seem to think and communicate in a narrative of a parts like description, which reflects our instinctual awareness of duality?
A mind-body split which has become dangerously lopsided in our intellectualized, cultural zeitgeist? Is it time for a brave new world to embrace a new idea? That it really is a chemical Universe and we can learn to feel it within, if we can change our metaphors of self-awareness and stop trying to sanctify the mind? That self-deluded Emperor, with no clothes?
Peter Joseph seeks a Utopian future, based on technology and all those shiny objects of an “out there,” consensus reality, not yet realizing that the real territory and the keys to the kingdom, lie within?
My statements about keys and the kingdom within lead me back in time, in that circular pattern that seems to be the nature of life's experience? As if this moment really is eternal, a subtle sense I fell into, back in October-November 2011. After all the reading about the electro-chemical activity of my brain and nervous systems, my taken for granted acceptance of my everyday vocabulary began to change. The notion of object awareness leading to a language inappropriate for an accurate description, of our inner nature had been in the back of my mind for some years. The notion begins to crystallize within my mind, as I try to write about the experience of mental illness, from the inside out: See Born to Psychosis an online memoir of my ongoing journey.
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Are Science & Spirituality Converging Now?
What would our ancestors make of this current age?
In November 2009, an Australia team of surgeon's performed an operation to separate conjoined twins.
The twin girls were born joined at the head, sharing blood vessels and brain tissue, and were successfully separated in a marathon 32 hour operation .
It got me to thinking about the nature of miracles, of Gods, Goddesses and the hidden process of emotional projection? It also led to a blog thread on TheIcarusProject.net & 6 weeks of Mania.
When the relieved, happy and smiling doctors were presented to the media I remember thinking it was a modern day miracle. I wondered how such an event would be perceived by a two thousand year old Greek historian, a Roman soldier or a Talmud educated Hebrew priest? These thoughts and the excitement phase of a manic bipolar mood swing led me to post my thoughts on TheIcarusProject.net, under a blog heading in the spirituality forum, titled;
Of Gods and Goddesses. It was the 17th September, 2010.
Time warped into our everyday reality, their perception overwhelmed by the strange sights and sounds of new perspective, what would be their immediate reaction? Based on their life experience what thoughts would spring to mind? Of Gods and Goddesses made flesh perhaps? Gods kingdom of heaven come to pass at last?
Some think that all I do and ever do is project what is inside onto the 3d movie screen of my minds eye. that all thought is metaphor and spoken words the same, old testament Gods whose names should not be uttered are perhaps a simple metaphor for an indescribable reality at a micro level that we cannot see, yet is advanced technology taking us there?
Like the billion neurons in our brain each capable of 10,000 connections, you could say it's like the milky way galaxy inside your head in a funny micro reflecting the macro kind of way.
So is there such a thing as prophecy, a deeper connection within the body/brain/mind, and how do we sometimes know things we should not logically know? Premonition's and the deeper truths told in old fairy tales, like "mirror mirror on the wall," how did the writer know we would find mirror neurons in the brain and how our perception of ourselves is formed by the reflective feedback we get from others, in their looks and gestures towards us, like Neytiri's "I see you" in the movie Avatar.
Maybe we are God, not individually but collectively and maybe not yet, for we all still resist the maturing process as much as possible, happy to be cradled in the bosom of family, friends and community, the social womb as some have called it.
I mean if we can perform miracle operations like the one above in the year 2009 AD and scientists are looking for the God particle by creating the conditions that existed at the beginning of the universe, what will we be up to in the year 4010 AD. This is what I wrote, back then;
27 Sep 2010:
Secrets of the Big Bang?
What was matter like within the first second of the Universe’s life?
Read about the amazing men and women who are seeking knowledge on a Grand scale by creating the conditions that existed at the begining of time and space, hoping to find a missing element (Higgs boson) or God particle as some have named it. This largest ever experiemnt will change our understanding of the universe dramatically perhaps leading to another pardigm shift in our perceptions similar to Galeleo's discovery. And as we discover this kind of awareness, what does it say about what we are to the universe itself. Are WE the universe percieving itself?
http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/lhc/lhc-en.html
I've left the writing above just as it still appears on TheIcarusProject.net, spelling mistakes and appalling grammar included. No wonder people reacted, just as mainstream others do, when the intuitive sense of existential meaning floods my mind, during periods of a manic energy cycle?
Its true, I'm no gifted intellectual or well educated writer, not poetic or artistic really, yet does that necessarily mean that I'm stupid or crazy? Trying to articulate the wordless sense of overwhelming oneness and spiritual ecstasy, which floods my mind during mania, is very tricky and only time will tell what my journey holds in store? Most assume that a voluntary embrace of psychosis, just has to be totally crazy, the word and experience has such a bad rap, in our Western culture. All I can say is that after 4 episodes of "full-term" manic psychosis in 5 years, "the trip changes, man!" To use an old 1960's, Timothy Leary style expression. Please consider a shift in perception, when we think in terms of metaphors as an objective interpretation of a chemical reality within;
From Object Like Self-Definition to Chemical?
"Evolving definitions
The concept of an "element" as an undivisible substance has developed through three major historical phases: Classical definitions (such as those of the ancient Greeks), chemical definitions, and atomic definitions.
Classical definitions
Ancient philosophy posited a set of classical elements to explain observed patterns in nature. These elements originally referred to earth, water, air and fire rather than the chemical elements of modern science. The term 'elements' (stoicheia) was first used by the Greek philosopher Plato in about 360 BCE, in his dialogue Timaeus, which includes a discussion of the composition of inorganic and organic bodies and is a speculative treatise on chemistry. Plato believed the elements introduced a century earlier by Empedocles were composed of small polyhedral forms: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth).
Aristotle, c. 350 BCE, also used the term stoicheia and added a fifth element called aether, which formed the heavens. Aristotle defined an element as:
Element – one of those bodies into which other bodies can decompose, and that itself is not capable of being divided into other."
Neuropeptides: Our Chemical Elements Within?
Neuropeptides are small protein-like molecules used by neurons to communicate with each other, distinct from the larger neurotransmitters. They are neuronal signaling molecules, influence the activity of the brain in specific ways and are thus involved in particular brain functions, like analgesia, reward, food intake, learning and memory.
Neuropeptides are expressed and released by neurons, and mediate or modulate neuronal communication by acting on cell surface receptors. The human genome contains about 90 genes that encode precursors of neuropeptides. At present about 100 different peptides are known to be released by different populations of neurons in the mammalian brain. Neurons use many different chemical signals to communicate information, including neurotransmitters, peptides, cannabinoids, and even some gases, like nitric oxide.
Peptide signals play a role in information processing that is different from that of conventional neurotransmitters, and many appear to be particularly associated with specific behaviours. For example, oxytocin and vasopressin have striking and specific effects on social behaviours, including maternal behaviour and pair bonding.
Invoking sensation awareness within, via the evocative power of music?
All Perception is Created inside You, by Chemical Reactions?
“If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor” _Joseph Campbell.
From object oriented to chemical metaphors of self-awareness & self-interpretation?
Our Evolving, Self-Definition & Awareness of The Cosmos?
Our Evolving Sense of Consciousness?
The Soul, as Cosmic-Self, Within?
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Our Evolving Science & Spirituality?
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| The Eye of God? Why do we Project such Metaphors? |
In 2012, we were mad about the possibility of a spiritual "ascension," and the Mayan Calander?
Perhaps still yearning for redemption, for that awe-full sin of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge, after our falling out of heaven, and Earth's garden of eden?
Nothing like the other animals, are we? God is Creator of Man? Man is made in his image? Or imagined in Ours? Yet what of Woman?
As Manifest Goddesses of Creation?
"The Helix Nebula (also known as The Helix, NGC 7293, or Caldwell 63) is a large planetary nebula (PN) located in the constellation Aquarius. Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding, probably before 1824, this object is one of the closest to the Earth of all the bright planetary nebulae. The estimated distance is about 215 parsecs or 700 light-years. It is similar in appearance to the Ring Nebula, whose size, age, and physical characteristics are similar to the Dumbbell Nebula, varying only in its relative proximity and the appearance from the equatorial viewing angle. The Helix Nebula has sometimes been referred to as the "Eye of God" in pop culture." From: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
What metaphors of true meaning infuse the soul, when we listen to the muse, in music?
An Orgasmic Goddess? As Seen in the Nighttime Sky?
Is pop culture lacking in meaning? Do we over-value our objective sense of reality, while undervalueing our natural intuition, as a source of true meaning? Do we now under-value the spirititual aspect of euphoric psychosis and the long tradition of a mystical interpretation, of our existence? How close do some of the lyrics of popular music, so often the inspirational gift of altered states of mind, reflect a deeper sense of true meaning? Please consider;
The Double Helix & The Stairway to Heaven?
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| Section of DNA. The bases lie horizontally between the two spiraling strands. |
"Change Ur Metaphor. Think Chemical Universe & FEEL HER LOVE. There is NO SEPARATION. ALL IS ONE! 1 love. 1 world. 1 tribe. Every WORD is a Projection of HER LOVE INSIDE YOU. Ur Electro-Chemical Connection. This AOM. This Age of Mythology. Sight the WORD & FEEL the CAVE. You can "Know Thyself" & BE ONE TRIBE!"
"U R JACOB - U R THE LADDER."
Metaphors & Meaning? - The Double Helix & The Muse in The Music?
Is our Objective thinking blind, to Metaphor & Existential Meaning?
Is our Objective thinking blind, to Metaphor & Existential Meaning?
"There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to heaven
(And) when she gets there she knows if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for."
Often the millisecond conservation urge of human homeostasis (comfort zone) need stimulates conservative thoughts, rushing over these words too fast, and assuming its about human form & a woman? Yet is the gold she seeks an object or deeper existential meaning? Is the lady a human woman or Gaia mother nature?
"Ooh ooh ooh...ooh...ooh ooh ooh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven.
There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In the tree by the brook there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
Oooh...It makes me wonder
Oooh...It makes me wonder
There's a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking
Oooh...It makes me wonder
Oooh...And it makes me wonder
And it's whispered that soon, if we all called the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forest will echo with laughter
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| The Moon & Metaphors of Meaning? A White Stone in the Book of Revelations? A Slingshot to the Stars in David & Goliath? |
If there's a bustle in your hedgerow
Don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes there are two paths you can go by
but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on
And it makes me wonder...ohhh ooh woe
Your head is humming and it won't go -- in case you don´t know
The piper's calling you to join him
Dear lady can you hear the wind blow and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind
And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll
Ooooooooooooh
And she's buying a stairway to heaven." _Led Zeppelin.
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| Jacob's Ladder - William Blake. The Double Helix in our DNA? |
"I guess I could think of those 100 billion neurons in my head & the 100 that are in my gut, as a chemical implant from outer space? Sort of makes me feel we are immersed in it when I metaphor life this way? Is that what quantum mechanics means by oneness & no separation? A chemical Universe? Just a thought? Nothing mysterious after all, just a simple, natural reality?" on November 17th 2011.
I guess I could think of it as an expression of the code written in my DNA, emerging within the reality of an Eternal Now? After all, there are notions that time is an illusion, as is all shape and form and that all that ever was and will be, happened in one eternal moment, and this is it? Which does beg the question about madness experience and what the nature of delusion really is?
In the isolated minds of people like myself, are we wrestling with the same depth of existential awareness that bleeds through every age of our common humanity? Like the reference to the white stone above, which in terms of existential metaphor can be seen as prophetic of the age of our current sense of being? Are our notions of soul a metaphor for the reality of a cosmic sense of being? A cosmos that perceives itself through our eyes?
New Living Translation (©2007)
"Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give some of the manna that has been hidden away in heaven. And I will give to each one a white stone, and on the stone will be engraved a new name that no one understands except the one who receives it."
I do believe that we are in an age when spirituality and science is converging, as science uncovers more of the hidden reality to our meaning making mind, and its attempt to interpret its true purpose. As for the new name in the above verse, I'd rename the human race WUMAN in light of our heaven sent talent for metaphysics in the hidden manna of our DNA? I do believe we would see that heaven is right where its always been, waiting for our mature perception?
“When you realize that eternity is right here now, that it is within your possibility to
experience the eternity of your own truth and being, then you grasp the following:
That which you are was never born and will never die..” _Joseph Campbell.
I find this in a thoughtless stillness these days, just looking out & seeing, feeling what I'd always rushed over? Although it takes a withdrawal from hustle & bustle into deep stillness to sense this. What comes through for me is the metaphor interpretations of thoughts that reflect on the nature of being & minds true purpose?
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Music & Metaphor - Invoking Ascension?A biography of Led Zeppelin;
Chapter 10. All That Glitters:
"The track everybody still remembers from the fourth Zeppelin album, is "Stairway to Heaven" - 'the long one.' Jimmy Page had been tinkering away at for nearly a year. As for the lyrics, written entirely by Robert Plant, 'Jimmy and I just sat by the fire, it was a remarkable setting,' he recalled years later. 'I was holding a pencil and paper, and for some reason I was in a very bad mood. Then all of a sudden my hand was writing out the words, "There's a Lady who's sure all that glitters is gold/And she's buying a stairway to heaven . . ." I just sat there and looked at the words and then I almost leapt out of my seat.' The lyrics, he explained, 'Were a cynical thing about a woman getting everything she wanted without getting anything back.'
Jimmy Page was pleased, that there was 'a lot of ambiguity implied in that number that wasn't present before.' Because he already knew the song was special? '"Stairway . . " was something that had been really crafted, The lyrics were fantastic. The wonderful thing is that even with the lyrics in front of you - you know how you listen to something and you might not quiet get what the words are but you get your own impression? With this, the lyrics were there but still got your own impression of what the song was about. And that was really important.'
Aleister Crowley's influence?
From somewhere inside his vestments he produced a small crucible which he set at his feet before the sword. Small blue flames promptly began to rise to rise from the bowl and he cast incense into it. ’We are to call upon Marchosias, a great marquis of the Descending Hierarchy,’ he said. ’Before he fell, he belonged to the Order of Dominations among the angels. His virtue is that he gives true answers, Stand fast all . . .’
With a sudden motion [the magician] thrust the end of his rod into the surging flames . . .at once the air of the hall rang with a long, frightful chain of woeful howls. Above the bestial clamour [the magician] shouted: ’I adjure thee, great Morchosias, by the power of the pact . . .’ The noise rose higher and a green steam began to come of the brazier. But there was no other answer. His face white and cruel, [the magician] rasped over the tulmut: ’I adjure thee Marchosias, by the pact and by the names, appear instanter.’ He plunged the rod a second time into the flames. The room screamed . . . But still there was no apparition.
The rod went back into the fire. Instantly the place rocked as though the earth moved under it. ‘Stand fast,’ [the magician] said hoarsely. Something else said, ‘Hush, I am here. What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose?’ The building shuddered again . . . Then from the middle of the triange to the northwest, a slow cloud of yellow fumes went up towards the ceiling, making them all cough, even [the magician]. As it spread and thined [they] could see a shape forming under it . . . It was something like a she-wolf, gey and immense, with green glistening eyes. A wave of coldness was coming from it . . . The cloud continued to dissipate. The she-wolf glared at them, slowly speading her griffin’s wings. Her serpent’s tail lashed gently, scalily . . .
What levels of reality, are expressed as intuitive metaphors?
The above passage comes from “Black Easter,” written by James Blish. Everyone who has read it since the book was first published in the late Sixties has been immediately divided into two camps; those who believe Blish had actually witnessed a genuine High Magick ritual, and those who dismissed it as science-fiction. It’s a debate that continues to this day. For in the end it comes down to belief, something you either do or do not posses - or are busy, perhaps, trying to suppress.
What can’t be denied is that such rituals do exist and are performed on a regular basis - the essence of the Abra-merlin ritual, one of the most significant and difficult to achieve (unless it happens spontaneously?) is to ‘Invoke Often’ - and not just in a few pock marked villages in remote parts of the world. In fact, there are hardly any major towns or cities in the UK that aren’t home to at least one secret society, whose purpose is the study, practice and performance of precisely such rituals. The people involved are not simple minded peasants or social outcasts but some of the brightest, most questioning minds most often drawn from the upper echelons of society.
We are not talking about simple witchcraft of the type depicted in a make-you-jump Stephen King novel or the broomstick abracadabra of a Harry Potter movie. According to the nineteenth century writer and magician Eliphas Levi, occult knowledge - that is, the hidden knowledge of the ages, going back to pre-Christian times, all the way to the Serpent and the Garden of Eden - is a product of philosophical and religious equations as exact as any science. As an earlier proponent of the magician’s art, Paracelsus, wrote in the sixteenth century: “The magical is a great hidden wisdom . . . No armour can shield against it because it strikes at the inward spirit of life. Of this we may rest assured.”
The idea that rock music might also be related to occult practices hardly began, or indeed ends with the long held view that Jimmy Page - and, ergo, Led Zeppelin - were dabblers in black magic. That is not to say that Page has never been involved in occult practices, rather, the opposite - that Page’s interest in occult ritual is so serious and longstanding it would be facile to suggest anything as feeble-minded as a pact with the Devil."
( Wall, explains in this biography that Jimmy Page was interested in “invoking” an energy which is impossible to explain by our everyday objective reason. During the live performances for which the band were famous, something atmospheric happened between musicians and audience - a fifth element. Page‘s notion of “invoking” is equated with notions of human “ascension, of transcendence, and of a personal metamorphosis?” Ideas Page agrees with.)
"So who is Aleister Crowley and what is it about him that Jimmy Page - and millions of others around the world - still finds so compelling? And how much did the guitarist's interest in Crowley's occult teachings influence his own life and work? Crowley was not a Satanist, nor did he practice black magic, his main message, as he wrote in "The Book of The Law," condensed as follows;
'There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt . . .
It is a lie, this folly against self . . .
I am alone: there is no God where I am . . .
Every man and every woman is a Star . . .
The word of Sin is restriction . . .
Remember all ye that existance is pure joy;
that all the sorrows are but shadows; they pass
and are done; but there is that which remains . . .
Love is the law, love under will . . .'
"Chapter 10. All That Glitters:
Jimmy Page: I suggested, "Lets have four symbols, and everyone can choose their own." And with the four symbols, that also made it "Zeppelin IV", so it was a completely organic process. 'My symbol was about invoking and being invocative. And thats all I'm going to say about it.' "Invoking" and "being invocative." But to invoke what? Power? Well-being? Success? As Dave Dickson says: " The only reason people get interested in magick is beacuse they are interested in power." (Or Truth, Love and Ascension?)
(Page's symbol was "ZoSo") Its important to remember that ZoSo is not a word or a name, but a magickal sign, a symbol, made up of constituent parts. Therefore we can be faurly certain that 'Z' is a stylized representation of the Capricorn astrological symbol; while the o-S-o, is likely a reference to Crowley's work. Its believed by occult followers to have some relation to an obscure Crowley work entitled "Red Dragon," another occult term for Kundalini energy. (The Red Dragon, also being a metaphor, like The Lion, for the organism's blood transported metabolic energies, powered by the heart?)
After the fourth album was released, the main focus on attempting to unravel the album's occult connections was "Stairway to Heaven," with the claim popular - that if you spun the record backwards it would reveal a Satanic message. American writer Thomas W. Friend, whose 2004 book, "Fallen Angel," goes to inordinate length to "prove" - Jimmy Page was obbsessed with the occult and he had joined in a special pact with the other members of Led Zepellin to bring down Christianity and "convert" the world's rock-buying audience to a devil-worshipping belief in Satan.
Yet "Stairway to Heaven," is a song which resonates beyond its time and place. As Jimmy himself has told me: "There's lots of subliminal stuff there. [All the albums] were put together organically, there's a lot on them - a lot of little areas that you don't catch first off, sometimes not for a long time. But the more attention you pay to them, the more you get out of them. And they were meant to be that way, and that's good."
(The Creative Process?) In "Fallen Angel," Friend picked up on Page's comment to "Guitar World" in January 2002 that, "if something really magickal is coming through, then you follow it . . .we tried to take advantage of everything that was being offered to us," with Friend adding that Robert Plant's "chanelling" of the lyrics put him in touch with malignant spirits, possibly Lucifer himself, and that Lucifer has a female consort in the form of light, hence the line in the song, "There walks a Lady we all know, who shines white light and wants to show." It causes one to step back and think again?
Further references to Lucifer follow, says friend, in the verse that goes: "And its whispered that soon, if we all call the tune, then the Piper will lead us to Reason/And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter . . ." arguing that Pan the Piper, aka the Greek God of the forests, was also characterized by Aleister Crowley as "Lucifer the Piper, the maker of music," also citing the verse in Ezekiel chapter 28:13 that describes God creating Lucifer "as the celestial composer of music, with celestial pipes."
According to Friend, "Stairway to Heaven" is nothing less than a song about "spiritual regeneration," or as he puts it: "born again Satanism," adding that the "reason" the piper leads us to in this song, is nothing less than "a worship of Lucifer." At which point one fears he doth protest too much. Certainly, the lyrics seem to be concerned with a quest for spiritual rebirth. While its unambiguously pagen imagery of Pipers, May Queens, shadows that stand taller than our soul, whispering winds, crying for leaving, for anyone who knows anything about occult beliefs, suggest a desire to get back to an older, lost world governed by older, more plentiful gods who can be directly appealed to and where personal transformation is still a tangible, and achievable goal.
As Dave Dickson says; "Reading too much into Zep's music is too easy, like misreading the Bible, whatever belief system you want to throw up, you can find it." Charlie Manson believed the Beatles were talking to him personally. Were they? No, he was actually insane. "Stairway to Heaven" is a great song, but I would be surprised if Robert Plant could put his hand on his heart and tell you what the lyrics are all about.
Robert Plant: 'Stairway to Heaven was important and it was something I was immensely proud of. You can't find anything if you play that song backwards. I've tried it, there's nothing there. . .Its all crap, that devil stuff, but the less you said to people, the more they'd speculate.
Could it be possible that Page had planted the lyrical seeds in the singers mind? Had Jimmy ever discussed the occult with the rest of band? “I may well have had discussions with Robert about mysticism,” he told Nick Kent in 2003. Kent said that Plant seemed more focused on hippy ideals of peace and love, while Page’s was the much darker presence in the band. “Whether I was attracted to the dark, or it was attracted to me, I don’t know,” Jimmy replied.
In 1975, William S. Burroughs interviewed Jimmy Page for a lengthy cover story in “ Crawdaddy.”
Burroughs wrote of seeing one of the bands three shows at Madison Square Garden in Febuary, describing the audience as “a river of youth looking curiously like a single organism: one well-behaved clean-looking middle class kid, and compared the show itself to a bullfight. “There was a palpable exchange of energy between the performers and the audience,” He noted. “Leaving the concert hall was like getting off a jet plane.
The article also discussed how “a rock concert is in fact a rite involving the evocation and transmutation of energy. Rock stars may be compared to priests.” And how the Zeppelin show “bears some resemblance to the trance music found in Morocco, which is magical in origin and purpose, - that is, concerned with the evocation and control of spiritual forces.” Adding: “ It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts - music, painting and writing - is magical and evocative, and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.”
Burroughs also wrote: “There are no accidents in the world of magic,” Page he concluded, was “equally aware of handling the fissionable material of the mass unconscious.” “I pointed out that the moment when the stairway to heaven becomes something actually possible for the audience, would be the moment of greatest danger. Jimmy expressed himself as well aware of the power in mass concentration, aware of the dangers involved, and the skill and balance needed to avoid them . . .rather like driving a load of nitroglycerine.” “There is a responsibility to the audience,” Page agreed. “We don’t want to release anything we can’t handle.” He added, “Music, which involves riffs anyway, will have a trance like effect, and it’s really like a mantra.” (see Music - Mood & Trance Like Mania?)
Selected excerpts from, “A BIOGRAPHY OF LED ZEPPELIN When Giants Walked the Earth,” by Mick Wall. (In brackets mine)
Aleister Crowley's influence?
The Curse of King Midas
‘Nay! For I am of the Serpent’s party;
Knowledge is good, be the price what it may.’
-Aleister Crowley, The Psychology of Hashish.
"Chapter 9. So Mote It Be:
The thing that dominated the room [was] a vast double circle on the floor in what appeared to be whitewash. Between the concentric circles were written innumerable words. Farthest away from all this, about two feet outside the circle and three feet over to the north, was a circle enclosed by a triangle, also much lettered inside and out. [The magician] entered the circle and closed it with the point of his sword and proceeded to the center where he laid the sword across the toes of his white shoes; then he drew a wand from his belt and unwrapped it, laying the red silk cloth across his shoulders. ’From now on,’ he said, in a normal, even voice, ’no one is to move.’From somewhere inside his vestments he produced a small crucible which he set at his feet before the sword. Small blue flames promptly began to rise to rise from the bowl and he cast incense into it. ’We are to call upon Marchosias, a great marquis of the Descending Hierarchy,’ he said. ’Before he fell, he belonged to the Order of Dominations among the angels. His virtue is that he gives true answers, Stand fast all . . .’
With a sudden motion [the magician] thrust the end of his rod into the surging flames . . .at once the air of the hall rang with a long, frightful chain of woeful howls. Above the bestial clamour [the magician] shouted: ’I adjure thee, great Morchosias, by the power of the pact . . .’ The noise rose higher and a green steam began to come of the brazier. But there was no other answer. His face white and cruel, [the magician] rasped over the tulmut: ’I adjure thee Marchosias, by the pact and by the names, appear instanter.’ He plunged the rod a second time into the flames. The room screamed . . . But still there was no apparition.
The rod went back into the fire. Instantly the place rocked as though the earth moved under it. ‘Stand fast,’ [the magician] said hoarsely. Something else said, ‘Hush, I am here. What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose?’ The building shuddered again . . . Then from the middle of the triange to the northwest, a slow cloud of yellow fumes went up towards the ceiling, making them all cough, even [the magician]. As it spread and thined [they] could see a shape forming under it . . . It was something like a she-wolf, gey and immense, with green glistening eyes. A wave of coldness was coming from it . . . The cloud continued to dissipate. The she-wolf glared at them, slowly speading her griffin’s wings. Her serpent’s tail lashed gently, scalily . . .
What levels of reality, are expressed as intuitive metaphors?
The above passage comes from “Black Easter,” written by James Blish. Everyone who has read it since the book was first published in the late Sixties has been immediately divided into two camps; those who believe Blish had actually witnessed a genuine High Magick ritual, and those who dismissed it as science-fiction. It’s a debate that continues to this day. For in the end it comes down to belief, something you either do or do not posses - or are busy, perhaps, trying to suppress.
What can’t be denied is that such rituals do exist and are performed on a regular basis - the essence of the Abra-merlin ritual, one of the most significant and difficult to achieve (unless it happens spontaneously?) is to ‘Invoke Often’ - and not just in a few pock marked villages in remote parts of the world. In fact, there are hardly any major towns or cities in the UK that aren’t home to at least one secret society, whose purpose is the study, practice and performance of precisely such rituals. The people involved are not simple minded peasants or social outcasts but some of the brightest, most questioning minds most often drawn from the upper echelons of society.
We are not talking about simple witchcraft of the type depicted in a make-you-jump Stephen King novel or the broomstick abracadabra of a Harry Potter movie. According to the nineteenth century writer and magician Eliphas Levi, occult knowledge - that is, the hidden knowledge of the ages, going back to pre-Christian times, all the way to the Serpent and the Garden of Eden - is a product of philosophical and religious equations as exact as any science. As an earlier proponent of the magician’s art, Paracelsus, wrote in the sixteenth century: “The magical is a great hidden wisdom . . . No armour can shield against it because it strikes at the inward spirit of life. Of this we may rest assured.”
The idea that rock music might also be related to occult practices hardly began, or indeed ends with the long held view that Jimmy Page - and, ergo, Led Zeppelin - were dabblers in black magic. That is not to say that Page has never been involved in occult practices, rather, the opposite - that Page’s interest in occult ritual is so serious and longstanding it would be facile to suggest anything as feeble-minded as a pact with the Devil."
( Wall, explains in this biography that Jimmy Page was interested in “invoking” an energy which is impossible to explain by our everyday objective reason. During the live performances for which the band were famous, something atmospheric happened between musicians and audience - a fifth element. Page‘s notion of “invoking” is equated with notions of human “ascension, of transcendence, and of a personal metamorphosis?” Ideas Page agrees with.)
"So who is Aleister Crowley and what is it about him that Jimmy Page - and millions of others around the world - still finds so compelling? And how much did the guitarist's interest in Crowley's occult teachings influence his own life and work? Crowley was not a Satanist, nor did he practice black magic, his main message, as he wrote in "The Book of The Law," condensed as follows;
'There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt . . .
It is a lie, this folly against self . . .
I am alone: there is no God where I am . . .
Every man and every woman is a Star . . .
The word of Sin is restriction . . .
Remember all ye that existance is pure joy;
that all the sorrows are but shadows; they pass
and are done; but there is that which remains . . .
Love is the law, love under will . . .'
"Chapter 10. All That Glitters:
Jimmy Page: I suggested, "Lets have four symbols, and everyone can choose their own." And with the four symbols, that also made it "Zeppelin IV", so it was a completely organic process. 'My symbol was about invoking and being invocative. And thats all I'm going to say about it.' "Invoking" and "being invocative." But to invoke what? Power? Well-being? Success? As Dave Dickson says: " The only reason people get interested in magick is beacuse they are interested in power." (Or Truth, Love and Ascension?)
(Page's symbol was "ZoSo") Its important to remember that ZoSo is not a word or a name, but a magickal sign, a symbol, made up of constituent parts. Therefore we can be faurly certain that 'Z' is a stylized representation of the Capricorn astrological symbol; while the o-S-o, is likely a reference to Crowley's work. Its believed by occult followers to have some relation to an obscure Crowley work entitled "Red Dragon," another occult term for Kundalini energy. (The Red Dragon, also being a metaphor, like The Lion, for the organism's blood transported metabolic energies, powered by the heart?)
After the fourth album was released, the main focus on attempting to unravel the album's occult connections was "Stairway to Heaven," with the claim popular - that if you spun the record backwards it would reveal a Satanic message. American writer Thomas W. Friend, whose 2004 book, "Fallen Angel," goes to inordinate length to "prove" - Jimmy Page was obbsessed with the occult and he had joined in a special pact with the other members of Led Zepellin to bring down Christianity and "convert" the world's rock-buying audience to a devil-worshipping belief in Satan.
Yet "Stairway to Heaven," is a song which resonates beyond its time and place. As Jimmy himself has told me: "There's lots of subliminal stuff there. [All the albums] were put together organically, there's a lot on them - a lot of little areas that you don't catch first off, sometimes not for a long time. But the more attention you pay to them, the more you get out of them. And they were meant to be that way, and that's good."
 |
| A Sun's Supernova - The Elements of Light & Life? |
Further references to Lucifer follow, says friend, in the verse that goes: "And its whispered that soon, if we all call the tune, then the Piper will lead us to Reason/And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, and the forests will echo with laughter . . ." arguing that Pan the Piper, aka the Greek God of the forests, was also characterized by Aleister Crowley as "Lucifer the Piper, the maker of music," also citing the verse in Ezekiel chapter 28:13 that describes God creating Lucifer "as the celestial composer of music, with celestial pipes."
According to Friend, "Stairway to Heaven" is nothing less than a song about "spiritual regeneration," or as he puts it: "born again Satanism," adding that the "reason" the piper leads us to in this song, is nothing less than "a worship of Lucifer." At which point one fears he doth protest too much. Certainly, the lyrics seem to be concerned with a quest for spiritual rebirth. While its unambiguously pagen imagery of Pipers, May Queens, shadows that stand taller than our soul, whispering winds, crying for leaving, for anyone who knows anything about occult beliefs, suggest a desire to get back to an older, lost world governed by older, more plentiful gods who can be directly appealed to and where personal transformation is still a tangible, and achievable goal.
As Dave Dickson says; "Reading too much into Zep's music is too easy, like misreading the Bible, whatever belief system you want to throw up, you can find it." Charlie Manson believed the Beatles were talking to him personally. Were they? No, he was actually insane. "Stairway to Heaven" is a great song, but I would be surprised if Robert Plant could put his hand on his heart and tell you what the lyrics are all about.
Robert Plant: 'Stairway to Heaven was important and it was something I was immensely proud of. You can't find anything if you play that song backwards. I've tried it, there's nothing there. . .Its all crap, that devil stuff, but the less you said to people, the more they'd speculate.
Could it be possible that Page had planted the lyrical seeds in the singers mind? Had Jimmy ever discussed the occult with the rest of band? “I may well have had discussions with Robert about mysticism,” he told Nick Kent in 2003. Kent said that Plant seemed more focused on hippy ideals of peace and love, while Page’s was the much darker presence in the band. “Whether I was attracted to the dark, or it was attracted to me, I don’t know,” Jimmy replied.
Chapter 12. The Golden Gods:
In 1975, William S. Burroughs interviewed Jimmy Page for a lengthy cover story in “ Crawdaddy.”
Burroughs wrote of seeing one of the bands three shows at Madison Square Garden in Febuary, describing the audience as “a river of youth looking curiously like a single organism: one well-behaved clean-looking middle class kid, and compared the show itself to a bullfight. “There was a palpable exchange of energy between the performers and the audience,” He noted. “Leaving the concert hall was like getting off a jet plane.
The article also discussed how “a rock concert is in fact a rite involving the evocation and transmutation of energy. Rock stars may be compared to priests.” And how the Zeppelin show “bears some resemblance to the trance music found in Morocco, which is magical in origin and purpose, - that is, concerned with the evocation and control of spiritual forces.” Adding: “ It is to be remembered that the origin of all the arts - music, painting and writing - is magical and evocative, and that magic is always used to obtain some definite result.”
Burroughs also wrote: “There are no accidents in the world of magic,” Page he concluded, was “equally aware of handling the fissionable material of the mass unconscious.” “I pointed out that the moment when the stairway to heaven becomes something actually possible for the audience, would be the moment of greatest danger. Jimmy expressed himself as well aware of the power in mass concentration, aware of the dangers involved, and the skill and balance needed to avoid them . . .rather like driving a load of nitroglycerine.” “There is a responsibility to the audience,” Page agreed. “We don’t want to release anything we can’t handle.” He added, “Music, which involves riffs anyway, will have a trance like effect, and it’s really like a mantra.” (see Music - Mood & Trance Like Mania?)
Selected excerpts from, “A BIOGRAPHY OF LED ZEPPELIN When Giants Walked the Earth,” by Mick Wall. (In brackets mine)
* * *
The Intuitive Power of Psychosis?
Was Christ Psychotic?
Does this Metaphor'd Story reveal the Prophetic power of Psychosis?
The Ministry and Crucifixion of Jesus
A study in Enthusiasm, Envy and Manic-Depression.
ARGUMENT:
"In all probability Jesus Christ was crucified while suffering from a psychosis, from a total loss of mood control known as a manic reaction. The following essay is taken up for the most part in adducing the evidence for such a hypothesis. This particular manic-depressive psychosis would seem to have been generated over the long term by other people's envy of the ability and goodness of Jesus (and, above all, of the enthusiasm enhancing these characteristics), and by the lack on the part of Jesus of the emotional and social wherewithal to cope realistically with this envy. During the potential healing crisis which a psychosis may represent, Jesus began unconsciously to assert himself to something like his inherent stature, to assume a Son of God authority which a very large number of people have since attributed to him as his due. At the time, this self-assertion was out of touch with social and political reality. Whether eventually he would have obtained the emotional insight necessary to exploit his great gifts in society without stress is something we cannot know, because the psychosis was interrupted by the crucifixion. To persons who consider Jesus only as the Son of God, these unrealised possibilities may not matter. In a secular age we may nevertheless do well to consider more openly, with a view to eventual catharsis, the type of human envy, which drastically cut short such an outstanding life.
INTRODUCTION:
The possibility that Jesus became psychotic was suggested initially by the juxtaposition in the Synoptic Gospels of two unusual incidents, the curse on a fig tree for not bearing fruit in advance of the season, and the physical disruption of the moneychangers' activities in the Temple. On further examination the hypothesis was borne out in three ways, by the straightforward description of Jesus’ character and activities, by striking parallels in the later Marcan record with the classical symptomatology of a manic-depressive reaction, and by a psychodynamic analysis of the teachings of Jesus, both in particular and taken as a whole.
This essay, under the title Cross and Psychosis, appeared in 1970 in FAITH and FREEDOM Vol 24 Nos 70-71, then published at Manchester College Oxford England. Raymond Lloyd read philosophy, politics and economics at Exeter College Oxford where he graduated in 1956. He later became deeply interested in problems of human behaviour. From 1961 (to 1980) he was on the staff of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations at its headquarters in Rome. At this stage (in February 2000) the only changes to the original essay have been minor ones in style and paragraph layout.
The first two of these three lines of evidence will be examined in the sections entitled 'The Personality of Jesus' and 'The Psychosis of Jesus'. The third aspect of the evidence will be given under the heading 'A Psychodynamic Interpretation', and that will be followed by a section entitled 'Towards an Existential Understanding' which will attempt to see from the perspective of Jesus himself whether there were other courses of action available in the family, social and political circumstances of his time. To begin with, several points should be made with regard to methodology, both in psychodynamics and New Testament studies.
Psychodynamics:
The particular hypothesis put forward here may be original, and it aims also to be comprehensive, but this kind of inquiry has a long, if interrupted, history. That Jesus was psychologically different has been suspected by many people, explicitly by his own family and many of his contemporaries and implicitly by modern theologians such as Professor Rudolf Bultmann who, in his 1961 Heidelberg lecture translated in Braaten and Harrisville's The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ, acknowledges as certain that Jesus suffered the death of a political criminal, and states that, as this death can scarcely be understood as an inherent and necessary consequence of his activity, 'we may not veil from ourselves the possibility that he suffered a collapse'.
More particularly there were several books written on the psychology of Jesus, in the early years of this century, by doctors such as de Loosten, Binet-Sangle and Hirsch, stating in general that Jesus suffered from paranoia. The authors, however, wrote with two disadvantages. First, they were out of touch with contemporary New Testament scholarship, and so based their diagnosis primarily on the questionably historical 'I am' discourses of St. John's Gospel. Such evidence was effectively refuted by Albert Schweitzer in the dissertation he wrote for his medical doctorate in 1913, The Psychiatric Study of Jesus. Secondly, these doctors, and Schweitzer himself, were writing at a time when not only psychoanalysis, but even systematic clinical descriptions of disturbed emotional states, were in their infancy. Thus, much of Schweitzer's psychiatric evidence for refuting the diagnosis of paranoia was later in effect discounted by Dr. Winfred Overholser, in his otherwise sympathetic foreword to the second English translation of Schweitzer's thesis published in 1948.
As we shall see later, Schweitzer himself may have come nearer the truth in pointing out that the Gospel record is probably best understood in the light of Jesus’ apocalyptic expectations, but without Schweitzer realizing that these might signify a manic reaction. Other German theologians had been troubled by the ecstatic nature of these expectations, particularly Oskar Holtzmann, whose War Jesu Ekstatiker? was published in 1903, but he could bring only ethical and not psychological tools to their analysis. Nor has there been much serious psychological study since, and this perhaps for three reasons. First, until a short time ago, modern theologians had shown a singular lack of interest in the historical Jesus, in preference for the Christ of the Kerygma; and while a new quest has recently begun, the idea of studying personality has usually been considered, in the words of Dr James M. Robinson, as not being, a factor of real relevance to theology today'. Second, the practice of psychoanalysis, which can certainly throw new light on the subject, has been limited to a surprising degree to persons brought up in a Jewish milieu, who either know little, or are not interested, or are too tactful to throw light on the ethico-emotional basis of the teachings and life of the founder of Christianity. And third, to anticipate, manic-depressive psychosis itself has not received as much attention from analysts as neurosis or paranoid schizophrenia, partly because manic-depressive psychosis usually clears itself up spontaneously (if often superficially), and partly because analysts, in their capacity as researchers and scientists, tend to possess personalities out of tune with the manic-depressive." _Raymond Lloyd.
A selected excerpt from A Psychodynamic Study of Jesus
At Shequality.org Which is dedicated to Political Parity among both Women and Men.
* * *
History? Or Metaphors of The Mind's Evolution?
Did Jesus actually exist though? Is his life story a mythology about the birth of the mind & our species, existential journey to the stars? Is the story of "The Agony in the Garden refering to the events in the life of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament, between the Farewell Discourse at the conclusion of the Last Supper and Jesus' arrest." A story in metaphors of existential meaning, about our struggle for mature self-awareness, and acceptance and understanding of what we are? Our responsibility within the Universe that WE ARE?
Its difficult to grasp, via our minds conscious awareness and taken for granted sense of objectivity, this sense of duality, the reality of oneness, of no separation? Yet this is exactly what our most advanced science is continuing to prove, as the foundation of ALL reality. Is it only a taken for granted language use, which maintains our old-world view of a mechanical Universe? Our parts-like words of description for all we percieve, externally? Yet is the Universe we see without, not the same within? In all its glorious chemical elements? Please watch & contmplate, a Chemical Universe Within;
We are not Objects? We are not PART of the Universe? We are The Universe?
Our notions of God - Are Projected from a hidden reality Within?
The Parts Logic, is Cartesian Clockwork Universe, Thinking?
The True Depth of Our Reality is Unthinkable?
The Body Contains The Universe Within?
The Parts Logic, is Cartesian Clockwork Universe, Thinking?
The True Depth of Our Reality is Unthinkable?
The Body Contains The Universe Within?
A Jesus Story as metaphor, for our Species Resonsibility?
According to all four Gospels, immediately after the Last Supper, Jesus took a walk to pray (John 18:1). Matthew and Mark identify this place of prayer as Gethsemane. Jesus was accompanied by St. Peter, St. John and St. James the Greater, whom he asked to stay awake and pray. He moved "a stone's throw away" from them, where He felt overwhelming sadness and anguish, and said "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it." Then, a little while later, He said, "If this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done!" (Matthew 26:42). He said this prayer three times, checking on the three apostles between each prayer and finding them asleep. He commented: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak". An angel came from heaven to strengthen him. During his agony as he prayed, "his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground". This Cup of Life? Life is the Resurrection? All those elements of Light Matter/Energy, crucified to evolve Your Nature?
More of my own sense of existential meaning, as unconsciously stimulated, intuition;
Below is a post I made during the rush of a euphoric psychosis, in June 2012;
 |
| A Metaphor'd story of the Mind? |
“Andrew Newberg and his colleagues have, in their seminal book “Why God Won’t Go Away,” brought together a vast amount of research on the brain substrates underlying a variety of different spiritual experiences. The application of this type of brain research to trauma transformation is a rich area of further research and exploration. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) gets its name from being a relatively autonomous branch of the nervous system. Its basic, yet highly integrated function has to do with the regulation of energy states and the maintenance of homeostasis.
The ANS is composed of two distinctly different branches. (Although the parasympathetic branch is dived into a primitive (nonmyelinated) and an evolutionarily recent (myelinated) branch.)” _Peter Levine, “In an Unspoken Voice.”
It is this myelinated branch of parasympathetic stimulation of the heart & therefore metabolic rate, ventral vagal complex (VVC), which is metaphorically eluded to in the mythology of the Christian Bible. “The Ark of The Covenant.” Put very simply, it’s the secret of your Smile, and those two hundred muscles of your head & face.
And of coarse you don’t want to know about this, inside your Cartesian “mind-set” awareness of being, because life truly flows in “unconscious” spontaneous, physiological reactions, like when you feel the pure joy of being alive here in heaven.
The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?
Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.
“Rather than describing the autonomic nervous system as a linear ‘arousal’ system focused on the sympathetic nervous system, or a balance system focused on the opposing influences of the sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways, the function of the autonomic nervous system is hierarchically organized. As emphasized above, the hierarchical organization is phylogenetically determined and can be summarized as the following three sequential functional subsystems:
1. The ventral vagal complex VVC: a mammalian signaling system for motion, emotion, and communication. 2. The sympathetic nervous system SNS: an adaptive mobilization system supporting fight or flight behaviors. 3. The dorsal vagal complex DVC: a vestigial immobilization system. Each of these three neural constructs is linked with a specific response strategy observable in humans.
Each strategy is manifested via differentiated motor output from the central nervous system to perform specific adaptive functions: to immobilize and conserve metabolic resources DVC, to mobilize in order to obtain metabolic resources SNS, or to signal with minimal energy Expense VVC.” _Stephen Porges, “The Polyvagal Theory.”
To paraphrase the late & truly great Harry Chapin;
“Something keeps calling our name.
Something keeps calling our name.
Or is it just the rustling of the wind.
Or is it just that we need our friends.
Something keeps calling our name, our name.
Sometimes we don't talk too much, or touch hardly at all.
How can we hope to share this life, divided by a subjective wall?
Is it time to taste the truth and toss it of our tongue?
You see the world has come a-calling, and it's bleeding at our door.
Are we supposed to turn away, or is this what we're here for?”
Is it time for realization? 1 Species, 1 World, 1 Universe, 1 Love.
Is it time to realize, that the Universe is a friendly place & FEAR is only the shadow "within" & not really "out there." With the realization of a “meant to be” eternal now, can we stop fighting ourselves & get on with building a new Jerusalem, here on Earth’s green & pleasant land?
Everything we really need is “inside” us, health, wealth & happiness are not “objects,” they are metaphors for the hidden reality of a holistic sense of well being. The very best medicine, is literally contained within our laughter & our heart felt smile.
Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?
Science & Spirituality are converging in this 21st century A.D. Although to an Eternal Now, Time means nothing & everything? Perhaps this is why the existential metaphors always apply to “this” here & now.
Such is the silly stuff I go through during the height of “psychosis,” my brain dis-ease?"
Again, nothing unnatural or otherworldly comes into my mind during a euphoric psychosis, the sense of oneness so common in the experience of bipolar disorder's euphoric mania, simply heighten's my existential understanding of years and years of reading and observing. I suggest that the gift of a "hyper-vigilance" of the nervous systems, left over from truamatic experience, is the key to heightened "awareness."
Five years ago, when I first began to read the literature of neuroscience, I fully expected to learn how my brain was responsible for my bipolar type 1 condition. How my consistent experiences of spiritual Ecstasy in euphoric mania were stimulated by my faulty and diseased brain chemistry? I did not expect to read consistent references to my body, and its autonomic nervous system (ANS), in relation to symptoms in mental illness, and spiritual experience. Yet over and over again I read about the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of my (ANS). Unexpected, because such information is hardly ever part of mainstream reporting on research into mental illness experience and causation?
How is my nervous system responsible for my perceptions of a Cosmic Oneness?
Consider an excerpt from Roland Fischer's brilliant paper on hallucination, delusion and the role our autonomic nervous system plays in both our normal and abnormal perceptual awareness;
“During the ”I”-state of daily routine, the outside world is experienced as separate from oneself. With increasing ergotropic (sympathetic nervous system) and trophotropic (parasympathetic nervous system) arousal, however, this separateness gradually disappears, apparently because in the “Self”-state of ecstasy and samadhi, cortical and subcortical activity are indistinguishably integrated.
This unity is reflected in the experience of Oneness with everything, a Oneness with the universe that is oneself.
Space and Increasing Hyper and Hypoarousal
We call man’s symbolic interpretation of his CNS activity “perception-behavior” and regard creative, “hyperphrenic,” and ecstatic states, as well as Zazen and samadhi, as perceptual-behavioral interpretations of ergotropic and trophotropic arousal, respectively.
We may now consider some of the perceptual-behavioral changes, or transformations, that gradually develop as the level of arousal increases and decreases along each continuum. One of the most conspicuous transformations is that of “constancies”, which in the normal state of daily routine form a learned structure of primary ordering of space and time “out there.”
Although the newborn infant’s only reality, in the beginning, is his CNS activity, he soon learns, by bumping into things, to erect a corresponding model “out there.” Ultimately, his forgetting that his CNS activity had been the only reality will be taken by society as proof of his maturity, and he will be ready to conduct his life “out there” in (container) space and (chronological) time.
The adult interprets his CNS activity within this structure of similarity criteria, or “constancies,” and thus experience can be said to consist of two processes: the programmed (subcortical) CNS activity; and the symbolic or perceptual-behavioral (cortical) interpretation, or metaprograms, of the CNS activity.
It should be emphasized that the projection of our CNS activity as location in the physical dimension of space and time "out there" was learned at, and is hence bound to, the lower levels of arousal characteristic of our daily survival routines. All of this is to say that the constancy of the "I" is interfered with as one moves along the perception-hallucination continuum from the "I" of the physical world to the "Self" of the mental dimension; Analogously, the perception-meditation continuum also involves a departure from the "I" to the "Self."
The further we progress on the perception-hallucination continuum from the normal through the creative, psychotic, and, ultimately to the ecstatic state, the more complete is the transformation, or "unlearning," of the constancies of the physical dimension. Input, or outside information in general, is gradually reduced along this continuum.
Thus, Saint Teresa of Avila tells us in her autobiography that, at the peak of a mystical experience, "... the soul neither hears nor sees nor feels. While it lasts, none of the senses perceives or knows what is taking place". Space, then, which was gradually established in ever widening circles during childhood, gradually contracts with increasing arousal and ultimately disappears.
"Self": The Knower and Image-Maker; and "I": The Known and Imagined.
At the peak of trophotropic arousal, in samadhi, the meditating subject experiences nothing but his own self-referential nature, void of compelling contents. It is not difficult to see a similarity between the meditative experience of pure self-reference and St. Teresa's description of her ecstasy: in both timeless and spaceless experiences the mundane world is virtually excluded. Of course, the converge is true of the mundane state of daily routine, in which the oceanic unity with the universe, in ecstasy and samadhi, is virtually absent.
Thus, the mutual exclusiveness of the "normal" and the exalted states, both ecstasy and samadhi, allows us to postulate that man, the self-referential system, exists on two levels: as "Self" in the mental dimension of exalted states; and as "I" in the objective world, where he is able and willing to change the physical dimension "out there." In fact, the "I" and the "Self" can be postulated on purely logical grounds. See, for instance, Brown's reasoning that the universe is apparently ... constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself... but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore, false to, itself.
In our terminology, the "Self" of exalted states is that which sees and, knows, while the "I" is the interpretation, that which is seen and known in the physical space-time of the world "out there." The mutually exclusive relation between the "seer" and the "seen," or the elusiveness of the "Self" and the "I" may have its physiological basis in the mutual exclusiveness of the ergotropic (sympathetic nervous system) and trophotropic (parasympathetic nervous system)systems.
Such "I"-"Self" communication is the creative source of art, science, literature, and religion.” _Roland Fischer. A Cartography of the Ecstatic and Meditative States
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An Evolving Body-Mind, Expressed in Metaphors & Myth?
"The Icarus Myth, A Story of an Evolving Human Body-Mind?
In Greek mythology, Icarus (the Latin spelling, conventionally adopted in English; Ancient Greek: Ἴκαρος, Íkaros, Etruscan: Vikare) is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. The main story told about Icarus is his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall into the sea where he drowned. The myth shares thematic similarities with that of Phaëton—both are usually taken as tragic examples of hubris or failed ambition—and is often depicted in art.
The Lament for Icarus by H. J. Draper Icarus's father Daedalus, a talented and remarkable Athenian craftsman, built the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete near his palace at Knossos to imprison the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull monster born of his wife and the Cretan bull. Minos imprisoned Daedalus himself in the labyrinth because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a clew (or ball of string) in order to help Theseus, the enemy of Minos, to survive the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur.
Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Daedalus tried his wings first, but before taking off from the island, warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea in the area which today bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos." From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| A Symbol of our Frontal Lobes? A symbol of existential meaning? |
Where is the real Labyrinth of which the legend speaks? Can it be found inside us, along with the famous wings which may be depicted on the Arc of the Covenant? Do we get a sense of something elese, when we percieve metaphors of existential meaning, beneath our objectifying logic? Did Moses mean false idols or ideas? Consider;
From Mad Visions or Mental Illness? Part 2
Think twice? The Evolutionary journey of a hidden process?
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Are all our great legends, existential metaphors for the hidden journey of our maturing self perception?
Why are I/we here? Where do I/we come from? Where are I/we going?
Just what is this daily perception awareness we call the Mind? Is it all about the brain in our head and our taken for granted sense of ourselves and others? Or is there a more holistic and deeper reality involved in the nature of our evolving perception?
Our DNA's Symbolic Knowledge?
Labyrinth: Ancient Mystical Tool for Tending of Soul
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[The labyrinth] is at once the cosmos, the world, the individual life, the temple, the town, man [and woman], the womb or intestines of the Mother (earth), the convolutions of the brain, the consciousness, the heart, the pilgrimage, the journey, and the way.
It is cosmos to those who know the way, and chaos to those who lose it. It is Ariadne's thread, whose windings create the world and yet enable us to unravel it or ravel it.... _Purce.
The Middle Ages marked a period of increased interest on the part of the Church to incorporate the popular folk symbol of the labyrinth into ecclesiastical architecture, and so throughout Europe, labyrinths were built in churches and cathedrals as part of the sacred space used by the worshipers. It was a common spiritual practice for Christians to walk church or cathedral labyrinths in lieu of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It is for this reason that the labyrinth was also known by the name of "Chemin De Jerusalem" or Path to Jerusalem. The faithful would make their way along the labyrinth path, arriving at its center which represented Jerusalem, The Holy Land. Lima de Freitas writes that it was common for penitents to "walk on their knees" as they made their pilgrimage.
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| Lymphatics of the smallintestine. |
The syncretism which allows for the incorporation of powerful symbols and practices, such as the joining of a preChristian symbol such as the labyrinth, with the spiritual discipline of pilgrimage, demonstrates the Churches recognition of the power of these symbols and practices in the life of the common people. It is easy to see how, at a time when worship involved little more than "being present" at Mass while it was being "said or sung" by the priest in Latin, with his back toward you, it would appeal to the common faithful to take part in a "walking prayer" or meditation, where they could be totally involved in "body, mind, and spirit."
In a Church that was strictly patriarchal, and hierarchical in nature, the labyrinth represented the rise of a more feminine form of spirituality. In Walking A Sacred Path , The Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress, writes of the 12th century German mystic Hildegard of Bingen's definition of divinity as "a circle, a wheel, a whole".
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| Ariadne's thread? A DNA Strand Metaphor? Stock Photo Image |
As the Feminine Wisdom and the grounding of the circular path of the labyrinth is counter posed to the masculine thrust of jutting steeples and sinewy spires, a third place is created, a sacred centering space, where the Divine is encountered. Mircea Eliade writes that "in cultures that have the conception of three cosmic regions--those of Heaven, Earth, and Hell--the 'centre' constitutes the point of intersection of these regions. It is here that the break-through on to another plane is possible...."
Today, again we find symbols that had been repressed for many years, once again finding their way into our reality. C.G. Jung, addresses this phenomena, he says of symbols:
"where they are repressed or neglected, their specific energy disappears into the unconscious with unaccountable consequences. The psychic energy that appears to have been lost in this way in fact serves to revive and intensify whatever is uppermost in the unconscious- tendencies, perhaps that have either had no chance to express themselves or at least have not been allowed an uninhibited existence in our consciousness."
It would appear that because the power of the labyrinth has been repressed in our culture, for all intents and purposes, it has been relegated to the realm of the collective unconscious, where it has persisted." From Approaching the Labyrinth
A Curious case of Two Brains?
100 Million Neurons in Our Head & In Our Tummy?
Are all our great legends, existential metaphors for the hidden journey of our maturing self perception? Why are I/we here? Where do I/we come from? Where are I/we going?
Just what is this daily perception awareness we call Mind? Is it all about the brain in our head and our taken for granted sense of ourselves and others? Or is there a more holistic and deeper reality involved in the nature of our mindful perception?
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| Our 2nd 100 Million Neuron Brain? |
"Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system"
"The second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. "A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut," Mayer says. Butterflies in the stomach—signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response, Gershon says—is but one example. Although gastrointestinal (GI) turmoil can sour one's moods, everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above. For example, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve—a useful treatment for depression—may mimic these signals, Gershon says."
In evolutionary terms it makes perfect sense that the gut has such an influence on mood, when survival depended on instinctual movements and food and water resources. With its 100 million neuron cells equaling the stellar performers in our head, it would not be such a stretch of intuitive interpretation to label the gut the first brain, not the second? This kind of science research into the nature of human development, is perhaps challenging our taken for granted perceptions of our mind? Is the flood of new information provided by our technology age, begging us to re-define our nature and the origins and stimulus of our perception? From: Mad Visions or Mental Illness? Part 2
Are we following a meant to be, DNA thread?
Ariadne's thread (logic
Ariadne's thread, named for the legend of Ariadne, is the solving of a problem with multiple apparent means of proceeding - such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma - through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes. It is the particular method used that is able to follow completely through to trace steps or take point by point a series of found truths in a contingent, ordered search that reaches a desired end position. This process can take the form of a mental record, a physical marking, or even a philosophical debate; it is the process itself that assumes the name.The key element to applying Ariadne's thread to a problem is the creation and maintenance of a record - physical or otherwise - of the problem's available and exhausted options at all times. This record is referred to as the "thread", regardless of its actual medium. The purpose the record serves is to permit backtracking - that is, reversing earlier decisions and trying alternatives. Given the record, applying the algorithm is straightforward:
- At any moment that there is a choice to be made, make one arbitrarily from those not marked as failures, and follow it logically as far as possible.
- If a contradiction results, back up to the last decision made, mark it as a failure, and try another decision at the same point. If no other options exist there, back up to the last place in the record that does, mark the failure at that level, and proceed onward.
This algorithm will terminate upon either finding a solution or marking all initial choices as failures; in the latter case, there is no solution. If a thorough examination is desired even though a solution has been found, one can revert to the previous decision, mark the success, and continue on as if a solution were never found; the algorithm will exhaust all decisions and find all solutions.
Distinction from trial and error
The terms "Ariadne's thread" and "trial and error" are often used interchangeably, which is not necessarily correct. They have two distinctive differences:
"Trial and error" implies that each "trial" yields some particular value to be studied and improved upon, removing "errors" from each iteration to enhance the quality of future trials. Ariadne's thread has no such mechanic, making all decisions arbitrarily. For example, the scientific method is trial and error; puzzle-solving is Ariadne's thread.
Trial-and-error approaches are rarely concerned with how many solutions may exist to a problem, and indeed often assume only one correct solution exists. Ariadne's thread makes no such assumption, and is capable of locating all possible solutions to a purely logical problem
In short, trial and error approaches a desired solution; Ariadne's thread blindly exhausts the search space completely, finding any and all solutions. Each has its appropriate distinct uses. They can be employed in tandem - for example, although the editing of a Wikipedia article is arguably a trial-and-error process (given how in theory it approaches an ideal state), article histories provide the record for which Ariadne's thread may be applied, reverting detrimental edits and restoring the article back to the most recent error-free version, from which other options may be attempted.
Applications
Obviously, Ariadne's thread may be applied to the solving of mazes in the same manner as the legend; an actual thread can be used as the record, or chalk or a similar marker can be applied to label passages. If the maze is on paper, the thread may well be a pencil.
Logic problems of all natures may be resolved via Ariadne's thread, the maze being but an example. At present, it is most prominently applied to Sudoku puzzles, used to attempt values for as-yet-unsolved cells. The medium of the thread for puzzle-solving can vary widely, from a pencil to numbered chits to a computer program, but all accomplish the same task. Note that as the compilation of Ariadne's thread is an inductive process, and due to its exhaustiveness leaves no room for actual study, it is largely frowned upon as a solving method, to be employed only as a last resort when deductive methods fail.
Artificial intelligence is heavily dependent upon Ariadne's thread when it comes to game-playing, most notably in programs which play chess; the possible moves are the decisions, game-winning states the solutions, and game-losing states failures. Due to the massive depth of many games, most algorithms cannot afford to apply Ariadne's thread entirely on every move due to time constraints, and therefore work in tandem with a heuristic that evaluates game states and limits a breadth-first search only to those that are most likely to be beneficial, a trial-and-error process.
Even circumstances where the concept of "solution" is not so well defined have had Ariadne's thread applied to them, such as navigating the World Wide Web, making sense of patent law, and in philosophy; "Ariadne's Thread" is a popular name for websites of many purposes, but primarily for those that feature philosophical or ethical debate.
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Is Science & Spirituality Converging Now?
When Sensed in Metaphors of Our Evolving Journey?
Is God & the Cosmos Within? Where all is ONE?
Are we living through a time of realization? 1 Species, 1 World, 1 Universe?
Are we beginning to realize, that the Universe is a friendly place & FEAR is only the projected shadow from "within" & not really "out there." As we emerge into a post industrial age, are science and spirituality converging, in a common recognition that all human perception is created from within? That fearful judgment of others, and an often mystified sense of a shadow within, is simply nature's instinctual urge for survival? Are we falling into a realization of the consequent nature of reality in our perception of time and human history? As science continues to show us the chemical foundation of our reactive nature, can we learn to still the mind and sense the subtle nature of a quantum reality within? Can we learn to perceive our-true-self with altered, existential metaphor?
Words are only metaphors, metaphors for a hidden reality within?
Do our "objective" metaphors explain the reality within?
Does the theory of evolution Diminish God? Or does our latest science allow God to Be?
JZ Knight's e-motive use of language causes many to dismiss her, in equally e-motive reactions?
“The life of feeling is that primordial region of the psyche that is most sensitive to the religious encounter. Belief or reason alone does nothing to move the soul; without feeling, religious meaning becomes a vacant intellectual exercise. This is why the most exuberant spiritual moments are emotionally laden.” _Carl Jung.
“During the ”I”-state of daily routine, the outside world is experienced as separate from oneself. With increasing ergotropic (sympathetic nervous system) and trophotropic (parasympathetic nervous system) arousal, however, this separateness gradually disappears, apparently because in the “Self”-state of ecstasy and samadhi, cortical and subcortical activity are indistinguishably integrated. (In euphoric mania, it is the metabolic energy of elation which so fires my brain, that cortical and subcortical activity are indistinguishably integrated?)
This unity is reflected in the experience of Oneness with everything,
a Oneness with the Universe that is One-Self." _Roland Fischer.
What is The True Nature of Our Existential Reality?
The 1960's? The beginning of a Revolution? A Rise in Mass-Consciousness, towards Realization?
The 1960's? The beginning of a Revolution? A Rise in Mass-Consciousness, towards Realization?
Why does Buddist Art have a Cosmic Theme?
What does Buddha teach about being & reality?
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| Is the key to expanded consciousness a balance of felt/thought sense? As taught by The Prince of Sense-Ability?
There are two worlds?
1. The world of the mind. 2. The world of reality. The world of reality is real, the world of the mind isn’t real. The attribution of reality to the mental objects of our mind, is the cause of mental suffering. We suffer because of the “fantasies” in our mind. “The fantasies of your thought are not real. They are generated by your attachment, and therefore by your desire, your hate, your anger, your fear. The fantasies of your thought, are generated by yourself” _Buddha. We suffer because we mistake the fantasies of our mind for reality. It is fundamental, therefore, that we learn to distinguish between reality and the fantasies of our mind.
Presence in Reality
Presence in reality is not possible if your mind is overwhelmed by thoughts. When the mind is emptied, it is possible to turn your attention spontaneously to reality. But what is reality? Reality is the environment that surrounds us. In fact, for each of us, the environment that surrounds us is our reality. This isn’t such a trivial fact, which we unknowingly or unconsciously take for granted . Try this little test. We are in New York, sitting on the terrace of the Times Square Brewery. I ask you, ‘Do you think the Place Pigalle in Paris is real?’ You probably answer, ‘Yes.’ But it isn’t. If you are in New York, in Times Square, the environment that surrounds you is Times Square in New York, not The Place Pigalle in Paris. Therefore “your reality” is Times square New York. Paris and The place Pigalle are not the environment that surrounds you. They aren’t your reality. They are only in your mind, in your memory, not in your reality. Herald Square in New York isn’t real to you either, if your in Times Square. Because Herald Square isn’t the environment that surrounds you. Herald square isn’t real to you. Do you understand what I’m saying? Your reality is the environment that surrounds you, and which you percieve with your senses. In other words, your reality is your surrounding, wherever you are. Nothing else. Paris and the Place Pigalle may be the reality of someone in Paris, but this is not your reality. Your reality is only the surrounding environment of wherever you are right now. If you behaved as if you where in Paris, you would not be intune with reality. You would not be present in your reality. There are two worlds: 1. The world of the mind. 2. The world of reality. The world of reality is real, the world of the mind isn’t real. Of the objects which present themselves to our consciuosness, in fact, some belong to the reality that surrounds us , while others belong to our mind – that is, to our memory. (the body/brain and its nervous stimulation). We tend to falsly believe that “both” kinds of mental objects are real, yet this is a false assumption based on our past, not the present reality, by which we are surrounded and unknowingly immersed in. Only the mental objects which belong to the surrounding environment are real, not those which belong to our memory ( the body/brain nervous energy of the past) Your probably thinking that this is a very debatable point? Especially, if your still strongly anchored to the world of your mind, here’s proof though. A relitive of yours who has died is undoubtedly still present in your memory, yet it is obvious that they are NOT present in the environment which surrounds you, (or even in the environment which doesn’t surround you), which means that they are no longer real. The attribution of reality to the mental objects of our mind, is the cause of mental suffering. We suffer because of the “fantasies” in our mind. “The fantasies of your thought are not real. They are generated by your attachment, and therefore by your desire, your hate, your anger, your fear. The fantasies of your thought, are generated by yourself” _Buddha. We suffer because we mistake the fantasies of our mind for reality. It is fundamental, therefore, that we learn to distinguish between reality and the fantasies of our mind. A state of “Buddha-ness – truly awake” involves awareness of the distinction between the world of the mind and the world of reality.
Most people in the Western world, love the mind and the power of its creations, and rightly so, yet true presence in reality does not negate the power of the mind, it simply offers a way out of suffering.
Suffering generated by our own mind, due to confusion about the distinct difference between objects of reality and the mental objects of the mind, as NOT real? Buddhism has one essential purpose: liberation from suffering. All it is saying is, you cannot defeat the fantasies of your mind, by staying within your mind. You need to come out of your mind and enter reality. This is why “attenuating” thought allows us , quite naturally and without effort – in other words, spontaneously – to implement the second power of Buddha-ness (truly awake): presence in reality. Deprive your fantasies of your approval and they will vanish” _Buddha.
In true reality, there is no suffering!
This is a simple truth, which is difficult for us to accept. Again, using an extreme example: You have just lost a loved one. You think that reality is the cause of your suffering, because in reality the person you have lost is no longer there for you. But this is precisely the Buddha’s point? In reality that person is no longer there, but that’s ALL. In acceptance of true reality, there is no suffering. The sun continues to rise, the clouds continue to sail across the sky and the birds continue to sing. Your suffering, is only “inside” you. Yet you think that reality is the cause of your suffering, and you mistakenly, unknowingly, attribute your suffering to “reality” itself. But “suffering” is not an object which can be found anywhere in true reality. Suffering, is a “mental state.” In other words, suffering is “inside” your mind, not in reality. A famous Zen koan says: “Show me the hand which is holding your suffering.” You can’t do it, because “mental suffering” belongs to the world of the mind and not the world of reality. True presence in reality, is not a question of “intellectual knowledge,” but of “experience.” EXERCISE: 1. Calm your breathing, relax your body, observe with a “felt sense,” your thoughts. 2. Come out of your thoughts and observe (sense) the environment around you. 3. Perform common actions, (interactions with reality). Do the dishes using your senses to interact with your surrounding reality, to discover true presence. To Be in Reality.” Excerpts from “HOW TO BECOME A BUDDHA IN 5 WEEKS: The Simple way to SELF-REALIZATION” by Giulio Cesare Giacobbe.
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As East meets West & Science & Spirituality Converge
Are we falling deeper within?
From an Object Like Self-Definition to Chemical?
The concept of an "element" as an undivisible substance has developed through three major historical phases: Classical definitions (such as those of the ancient Greeks), chemical definitions, and atomic definitions.
Classical definitions
Ancient philosophy posited a set of classical elements to explain observed patterns in nature. These elements originally referred to earth, water, air and fire rather than the chemical elements of modern science. The term 'elements' (stoicheia) was first used by the Greek philosopher Plato in about 360 BCE, in his dialogue Timaeus, which includes a discussion of the composition of inorganic and organic bodies and is a speculative treatise on chemistry. Plato believed the elements introduced a century earlier by Empedocles were composed of small polyhedral forms: tetrahedron (fire), octahedron (air), icosahedron (water), and cube (earth).
Aristotle, c. 350 BCE, also used the term stoicheia and added a fifth element called aether, which formed the heavens. Aristotle defined an element as:
Element – one of those bodies into which other bodies can decompose, and that itself is not capable of being divided into other."
Neuropeptides are small protein-like molecules used by neurons to communicate with each other, distinct from the larger neurotransmitters. They are neuronal signaling molecules, influence the activity of the brain in specific ways and are thus involved in particular brain functions, like analgesia, reward, food intake, learning and memory.
Neuropeptides are expressed and released by neurons, and mediate or modulate neuronal communication by acting on cell surface receptors. The human genome contains about 90 genes that encode precursors of neuropeptides. At present about 100 different peptides are known to be released by different populations of neurons in the mammalian brain. Neurons use many different chemical signals to communicate information, including neurotransmitters, peptides, cannabinoids, and even some gases, like nitric oxide.
Peptide signals play a role in information processing that is different from that of conventional neurotransmitters, and many appear to be particularly associated with specific behaviours. For example, oxytocin and vasopressin have striking and specific effects on social behaviours, including maternal behaviour and pair bonding.
Invoking sensation awareness within, via the evocative power of music?
All Perception is Created inside You, by Chemical Reactions?
“If you want to change the world.
You have to change the metaphor” _Joseph Campbell. Our Evolving, Self-Definition & Awareness of The Cosmos? Our Evolving Sense of Consciousness? The Soul, as Cosmic-Self, Within?
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More from Steve Taylor's “The Fall: The insanity of the ego in human history and the dawn of a new era.”
SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH HUMAN BEINGS?
If alien beings have been observing the course of human history over the last few thousand years they might well have reached the conclusion that human beings are the product of a scientific experiment which went horribly wrong. Perhaps,, they might hypothesize, other aliens chose the earth as the site for an experiment to try to create a perfect being with amazing powers of intelligence and ingenuity. And create this being they did -- but perhaps they didn’t get the balance of chemicals exactly right, or maybe some of their laboratory equipment broke down half way through because, although the creature did possess amazing intelligence and ingenuity, it also turned out to be a kind of a monster, with defects which were just as great as -- or even greater than -- its abilities.
THE MANIA FOR POSSESSION:
The aliens would perhaps also be puzzled by the fact that we are, in Walt Whitman’s phrase, “demented with the mania of owning things” – the way that so many of us devote so much of our time to trying to obtain material goods which we don’t need and bring no real benefits to us. Why do human beings have this mania for buying new clothes, new jewellery, new cars, new antiques and ornaments, new furniture, when they already have enough of these things, and many have no function or use to them anyway?
Why do they feel the desire to live in luxurious big houses, to drive the most expensive cars, to surround themselves with the most luxurious furniture, when a smaller house, when they already have enough of these things, and many have no function or use to them anyway? Why do they feel the desire to live in luxurious big houses, to drive the most expensive cars, to surround themselves with the most luxurious furniture, when a smaller house, a smaller car and simple furniture would suit their purposes just as well?
As we’ll see, the Native Americans were equally baffled by this aspect of the European psyche. As Sitting Bull said:
“The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it. The love of possession is a disease with them. They take tithes from the poor to support the rich who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbours away.”
In a similar way, an objective observer might be puzzled by the way that it’s so important for many of us to be a “success” in our lives, or at least to be admired and respected by other people. Some of us put all of our time and energy into getting ahead in our careers, in the hope that we’ll eventually become “special and important” people. Some of us dream of being famous pop stars and TV stars, certain that if we were our lives would be infinitely more satisfying, while many of us try to gain respect from others by wearing particular clothes, possessing certain objects (such as flashy cars, expensive jewellery or the latest fashionable furniture and kitchen equipment), going to certain places (such as “trendy” restaurants and clubs) or behaving in a certain way.
The aliens might ask themselves: Why aren’t they content to just be as they are? Why isn’t it enough for them to just live their lives from day to day, doing what they have to do to keep themselves alive, rather than always feeling that they have to “get on” in the world and make other people admire them? This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if possessions and status could actually satisfy us. But part of the problem is that many of us are never satisfied with our lives as they are, and live in a permanent state of wanting . A new car or a new house might satisfy us for a short while, but then discontent arises again, and we want an even better one.
You might feel satisfied for a short while when you become the manager of your company, when your first novel is published or when your song is played on the radio, but then the glow of ego-satisfaction fades and you start to hanker after a higher level of success. And this never-ending cycle of wanting takes place in other areas of our lives too. Many of us feel an almost constant desire to change our lives in some way – to get a better job, find a new partner, live in a different house in a new area, improve our appearance. However, whenever any of these desires is realised, a new one takes its place almost straight away.
What’s wrong with human beings?
There seems to be a kind of psychological discord inside us, an inner discontent that continually plagues and torments us. To an extent we’re all troubled souls like van Gogh or Friedrich Nietzsche, paying for our talent with psychological imbalance and turmoil. Again, it’s not surprising that philosophers and writers have concluded that unhappiness is human beings’ natural state, or that, in the words of Doctor Johnson, “man is not born for happiness.”
In fact, the Buddha’s statement that “life is suffering” refers more strictly to this internal suffering rather than the social suffering of war and oppression. (As one passage from the Buddhist scripture the Dhammapada states: “An enemy can hurt an enemy, and a man who hates can harm another man; but a man’s mind, if wrongly directed, can do him a far greater harm.” )
And again, it’s very likely that this internal suffering has contributed to the dissatisfaction with life which has prompted human beings to console themselves in a belief in an idyllic afterlife. If we were happy we would be able to live with ourselves, to exist within our beings, rather than needing to constantly have our attention focused outside ourselves. Or as Pascal wrote; “If our condition were truly happy we should not seek to divert ourselves from thinking about it.”
Similarly, if we were truly happy we wouldn’t have to chase after external sources of well-being – such as possessions and status – as a compensation for our lack of inner well-being, and we wouldn’t want anything apart from what we genuinely need.
So what went wrong? Should we assume that human beings are just naturally violent, sadistic and discontented, so that there’s nothing we can do about it, as the evolutionary psychologists (who tell us that war and patriarchy are the result of natural and sexual selection) and the physicalist scientists (who tell us that they’re the result of hormones and brain chemicals) would have us believe? Or, as the myths of a “Fall” which are common to many of the world’s cultures suggest, was there an earlier time of relative harmony, a time when these problems didn’t exist, and a point when for some reason a giant change occurred, and we “fell” out of harmony and into social chaos and psychic disorder?
It’s my intention in this book to show that this latter scenario is the true one, and that there really was a point in history when something went wrong with human beings. The amazing thing is that, although at first they might not seem to be connected (especially the social problems and the psychological ones), all of the problems I’ve dealt with in this chapter can be traced back to the same fundamental cause. This is even true of human beings’ positive achievements as well, our creativity, ingenuity and technological and scientific prowess. The plus and negative sides of the human race’s balance sheet are the positive and negative effects of the same phenomenon: namely, The Fall, or – to use a more precise term – the Ego Explosion.
THE PRE-FALL ERA:
ONE IMPORTANT THING to remember about these social and psychological problems is that, as I’ve hinted, they haven’t always been a part of human life. In fact, in terms of the whole of human history, they are a fairly late development. For hundreds of thousands of years until around 8000 BCE , all human beings lived as hunter-gatherers – that is, they survived by hunting wild animals (the man’s job) and foraging for wild plants, nuts, fruit and vegetables (the woman’s job). Hunter-gatherer communities were small (with usually no more than a few dozen people) and mobile, moving on to a new site every few weeks or months when an area’s supply of food began to dwindle. They were also – at least, judging by contemporary hunter-gatherer groups – fairly fluid, with a changing membership.
As anthropologists such as Lee and DeVore 1 and Turnbull 2 have pointed out, contemporary foraging groups interactwith each other a lot. They regularly visit each other, make marriage alliances, and often switch membership. Scholars used to assume that men provided most of the food in these societies, probably because it’s so normal for the male to be the main breadwinner in our society. However, recent research (and observation of present-day hunter-gatherers like the Australian Aborigines) has shown that in actual fact women provided 80 to 90 per cent of food – a fact which has led some anthropologists to suggest that these peoples should be renamed gatherer-hunters. 3 Another assumption we tend to make about life in prehistoric times is that it was tough and bleak, and full of hardship and suffering. And while there’s no doubt that the hunter-gatherers’ lives were very hard in some ways – with short life spans, for example, the danger of attack by wild animals, and a lack of protection from the elements and against disease – in other respects, their lives were actually easier than ours in the modern world. When anthropologists began to look systematically at how contemporary hunter-gatherers use their time, they discovered that, far from exhausting themselves in their search for food, they only actually spent 12 to 20 hours per week searching for it – between a third and a half of the average working week in the modern world! It was this that led the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins to call hunter-gatherers “the original affluent society.” As he noted in his famous paper of that name, for foraging peoples, “the food quest is so successful that half the time the people do not seem to know what to do with themselves.”
Or as Christopher Ryan points out in discussing Thomas Hobbes’ famous summary of human life as “nasty, brutish and short,” “There is every reason to conclude that human life in the Pleistocene [between 1.8 million years and 10000 BCE ] was – relative to our own lives and even more so when compared with the lives known to Hobbes and his own contemporaries – rather low-stress, communal, peaceful and rich in many important ways.” Similarly, Robert Lawlor notes that Australian Aborigines who still live as hunter-gatherers only spend around four hours per day searching for food, and devote the rest of their time to leisure activities such as music, storytelling, artwork and being with family and friends. Research has also shown that – strange though it may sound – the diet of hunter-gatherers may actually have been better than many of ours in the modern world.
(assumptive - instinctual - intelligence?)
What’s even more interesting to us, though, as regards the thesis of this book, is that hunter-gatherer societies show little or no evidence of the problems which have characterised human life for the past few thousand years. The general assumption about early human beings which is least accurate of all is the myth that they were violent “savages” who constantly foamed at the mouth with aggression and went around bashing each other over the head with sticks. The truth of the matter could hardly be more different. Archaeological studies throughout the world have found almost no evidence of warfare during the whole of the hunter-gatherer phase of history – that is, right from the beginnings of the human race until 8000 BCE . There are, in fact, just two clear and unambiguous instances of group violence during all of these tens of thousands of years. A cluster of sites around the Nile valley shows some signs of violence from around 12000 BCE.
The lack of evidence for warfare is striking. In 1999, for example, three separate overviews of the archaeological evidence in different parts of the world were made, all of which showed no evidence of war during all of the Upper Palaeolithic period (40000 to 10000 BCE ). There are no signs of violent death, no signs of damage or disruption by warfare, and although many other artefacts have been found, including massive numbers of tools and pots, there is a complete absence of weapons. As Ferguson points out, “it is difficult to understand how war could have been common earlier in each area and remain so invisible.”
Archaeologists have discovered over 300 cave “art galleries” dating from the Palaeolithic era, not one of which contains depictions of warfare, weapons or warriors. Because of evidence like this, the archaeologist W.J. Perry has written, “it is an error, as profound as it is universal, to think that men in the food-gathering stage were given to fighting… All the available facts go to show that the food-gathering stage of history must have been one of perfect peace.” 16 Even more plainly, in the words of another anthropologist, Richard Gabriel: For the first ninety-five thousand years after the Homo sapiens Stone Age began [until 4000 BCE ], there is no evidence that man engaged in war on any level, let alone on a level requiring organized group violence. There is little evidence of any killing at all.
We can also see evidence for this when we look at the peoples in the world who still live as hunter-gatherers, or at least who did until very recently. Some anthropologists advise against seeing contemporary indigenous cultures as representative of the cultures of the past, and this is true in the sense that every indigenous culture in existence has now been disrupted – and in many cases destroyed – by the influence of more “civilised” peoples. There is probably no genuinely indigenous or primal culture left in the world. But, at the same time, I believe it’s valid to see these peoples at the times when Europeans first had contact with them (and for a period afterwards) , as a kind of window through which we can look back at the history of the whole human race. These were cultures which had been unchanged for thousands of years. As the anthropologist Robert Lawlor writes, for instance:
“Traditional archaeological evidence holds that Aboriginal culture has existed in Australia for 60,000 years, but more recent evidence indicates that the period is more like 120,000 or 150,000 years. The Aborigines’ rituals, beliefs and cosmology may represent the deepest collective memory of our race.”
MALE DOMINATION AND INEQUALITY?
Patriarchy and social stratification appear to have been absent during the hunter-gatherer phase of history too. As the anthropologist Knauft has remarked, hunter-gatherers are characterized by “extreme political and sexual egalitarianism.” The fact that women provided so much of the tribe’s food strongly suggests that they had at least equal status to men – it’s difficult to see how they could have low status when they performed such an important economic role. The healthy, open attitude the hunter-gatherers had to the human body and to sex – illustrated by the nakedness of some present-day Aborigines and their frank attitude to sex – suggests this too, since, as we’ll see later, the oppression of women is closely connected to a sense of alienation from the human body, and a negative attitude to instincts and bodily processes.
There is also some archaeological evidence to suggest that ancient hunter-gatherer societies were egalitarian, with no status differences. In archaeology, one of the most obvious signs of social stratification is grave differences – in size, position and the possessions which are placed in them. As we’ll see, in stratified societies there are larger, more central graves for more “important” people, and these graves also have a lot more possessions in them. But the graves of the ancient hunter-gatherers are strikingly uniform, with little or no size differences and little or no grave wealth.
At the same time, hunter-gatherer groups also have methods of ensuring that status differences don’t occur. This is done by sharing credit and putting down or ridiculing anybody who becomes too boastful. The !Kung of Africa swap arrows before going hunting, and when an animal is killed, the credit doesn’t go to the person who fired the arrow, but to the person who the arrow belongs to. If any person becomes too domineering or too arrogant the other members of their group gang up against them, or ostracise them. As Christopher Boehm summarizes, “This egalitarian approach seems to be universal for foragers who live in small bands that remain nomadic, suggesting considerable antiquity for political egalitarianism.”
There are probably some cultural reasons for this egalitarianism, of course – the mobility of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, for example, which worked against the accumulation of property (since it would’ve been difficult to carry it from place to place). In addition, the small size of the groups and their lack of technology meant that there were none of the different social roles which can be the basis of classes or castes. But there’s such a striking absence of social oppression that these factors don’t seem to suffice as an explanation. As we’ll see, it’s likely that there’s a much more fundamental reason – which is also the reason for the hunter-gatherers’ lack of warfare and their sexual equality.
In other words, early human beings seem to have been completely free of the social suffering which has made the lives of so many millions of human beings a misery in more recent times. Although the fact that contemporary hunter-gatherers appear to be content suggests this, it’s obviously impossible to say for certain whether their ancient counterparts were free of our psychological suffering too. Probably the only thing it’s possible to say about them directly is that, since our obsession with material goods and with gaining success and status is largely caused by our psychological discord, the fact that hunter-gatherers apparently had no need for possessions and status suggests that there was no psychological discord inside them which they needed to compensate for. And since our inability to do nothing is also – at least to a large extent – the result of our psychological discord (because we need activity to escape from it), the fact that hunter-gatherers lived relatively inactive, leisure-filled lives might also suggest this.
It’s important to remember that here we’re dealing with a period of time stretching from the human race’s beginnings hundreds of thousands of years ago until around 8000 BCE . The archaeological and ethnographic evidence overwhelmingly suggests that during the whole of this period human groups didn’t wage war with one another, didn’t dominate and abuse members of the opposite sex, and didn’t oppress and exploit each other.
And this era of peace and equality didn’t end here either.
THE EARLY HORTICULTURALISTS:
At around 8000 BCE , beginning in the Middle East, human beings started to abandon the hunter-gathering lifestyle. Instead of foraging for plants they started to cultivate them, and instead of hunting animals they started to domesticate them. Nobody knows for sure why this happened, although the consensus is that it was due to a population increase, which meant that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle could no longer feed people. There’s some evidence for this in Chinese mythology, which says that in ancient times people ate animals and birds, until the population grew so large that there were no longer enough to feed everyone. And at this point the legendary ruler Shen-nung taught the people how to cultivate plants. Environmental change may have been a factor too. The earth grew gradually warmer from 17000 to 8000 BCE , and the migration patterns of animals altered as a result. 44 This may have meant that our ancestors had to choose between following the animals to their new habitats or finding a new way of keeping themselves alive.
It’s also probably a mistake to speak – as historians sometimes do – of a “Neolithic revolution,” since the transition from foraging to horticulture actually took thousands of years. After beginning in the Middle East, it gradually fanned out into Europe, Asia and North Africa – and also developed independently in some places – but the process was so slow that horticulture only reached both Britain and China (in the far West and East respectively) towards the end of the third millennium BCE . At the same time, there were large parts of the world where people never made the transition – most of North and South America, the whole of Australia, and many other areas.
There are some authors and scholars who believe that the transition from the hunter-gathering to the agricultural (or, more strictly, horticultural) lifestyle was the point when the human race’s social problems began. Jared Diamond, for instance, describes agriculture as “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” The historian W. Newcomb suggests that “in a very real sense true warfare may be viewed as one of the more important consequences of the agricultural revolution.”
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS:
As with the hunter-gatherers, the fact that – despite their settled lives with some division of labour – these peoples don’t seem to have become obsessed with accumulating material goods or with gaining status and power suggests that there wasn’t a fundamental unhappiness inside them which they needed to find compensation for. In other words, they didn’t suffer from “psychological discord” to the same extent as us. These cultures also seem to be completely free of the atmosphere of sin, repression and suffering which was a characteristic of later Christian, Hebrew and Islamic cultures, for instance. Instead, there’s an atmosphere of lightness and joy, a sense of the sacredness of life and the beauty of the world, which makes it difficult to imagine that they suffered from psychological discord. According to Nicolas Platon, for instance, the artwork of the ancient Cretans showed a “delight in beauty, grace and movement,” and an “enjoyment of life and closeness to nature.” 70 Whereas later cultures were obsessed with death and the afterlife, for them “the fear of death was almost obliterated by the ubiquitous joy of living.” While another archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, wrote that Minoan (or ancient Cretan) art showed “the most complete acceptance of the grace of life the world has ever known.”
There are other important characteristics of these peoples which it’s important to mention briefly, and which also – suggesting, again, that there are really no fundamental differences between them – generally apply to hunter-gathering peoples. First of all, these peoples’ attitude to nature seems to have been very different from ours in the modern world. Whereas we’re more likely to experience a sense of separateness from nature and see it as a supply of resources which we’re entitled to exploit and abuse – and are seriously damaging our planet’s life-support systems as a consequence – these peoples seem to have had a strong attachment to the natural world and a deep reverence for it.
This is clear from the artwork of the Old Europeans, for example, which, as Riane Eisler writes, depicts a “rich array of symbols from nature” which “attest to awe and wonder at the mystery of life.” These were practically everywhere in their villages and towns – images of the sun, of water, serpents and butterflies (as well as many goddess images) which were painted or drawn on the outside and inside walls of houses, in shrines, on vases, on bas reliefs, and so on. There are also numerous drawings of “cosmic eggs,” and representations of the goddess as part human and part animal, which suggest that the Old Europeans had a sense of the interconnectedness of nature. These peoples obviously didn’t have the capability to abuse and damage the environment – because of their small population and low level of technology – but it’s clear that their sense of the sacredness of nature would have prevented them from doing this anyway.
This attitude to nature was closely connected to both the hunter-gatherers’ and simple horticultural peoples’ religious life. An important difference between them and later peoples is that to them there was apparently no separation between religion and the rest of their lives, and no sense of the divine as being separate and apart from the world. To them God or Spirit was everywhere and in everything. This was obviously part of the reason why these peoples had such a deep respect for nature: because they saw it as an expression of Spirit. In fact, it’s doubtful that the concept of gods – as higher beings who watch over the world and control its events – had any meaning to them whatsoever. It was only after 4000 BCE that people began to conceive of gods and goddesses.
There’s probably another connection here with the hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural peoples’ attitude to sex and their own bodies. Since they revered the natural world, it’s not surprising that they had both a positive attitude to the natural processes and instincts of their own bodies, and lacked the sense of division from the body and sexual shame which characterizes later peoples. Most hunter-gatherer peoples live their lives either mostly or completely naked, and, as we’ll see later, their frank attitude to sex is startling even by present-day European standards. Archaeologists have also discovered a massive number of sexually explicit images and objects from the hunter-gatherer era, including phallic objects made of flint, figurines depicting sexual intercourse and the so-called Venus figurines, which show women in sexually inviting poses.
THE EARTH 6,000 YEARS AGO:
It’s worth pausing for a moment here, to try to picture what the world was like at the end of the simple horticultural era, just before the Fall. At 4000 BCE the world’s population was still small – probably no more than 100 million. By this time horticulture had spread over large areas of the Middle East, Europe, Asia and North Africa, but had yet to reach western Europe or east Asia. Most of the earth’s surface – including the whole of Australia, the Americas and most of Africa – was still inhabited by hunter-gatherer peoples. But as I’ve tried to show, the differences between the hunter-gatherers and the simple horticulturists were only superficial. They shared the same fundamental characteristics: peacefulness, equality, an absence of male domination, a reverence for nature and sexual openness.
From the evidence we have, it seems that this is how all human beings lived until 4000 BCE . In Saharasia James DeMeo uses the term “matrism” to refer to cultures which are “democratic, egalitarian, sex-positive and possess very low levels of adult violence.” He contrasts this with later “patrist” cultures, which “tend to inflict pain and trauma upon infants and young children subordinate the female possess high levels of adult violence, with various social institutions designed for the expression of pent-up sadistic aggression.” And until 4000 BCE all human societies, it seems, were “matrist.” As DeMeo writes, “There does not exist any clear, compelling or unambiguous evidence for the existence of patrism anywhere on Earth significantly prior to c. 4000 BCE .”
It sounds like paradise, and in a way – despite high death rates, a lack of medical care and other problems – it was. In fact, as we’ll see in Chapter 5, this is exactly how it seemed to later peoples, who remembered this pre-Fall period of history in their mythology, as a Golden Age or an era when “The men of perfect virtue” lived. No human groups invaded other groups’ territory and tried to conquer them and steal their possessions. There were no wandering bands of marauders who raided villages, and no pirates who lived by attacking coastal settlements. Everywhere the status of women was equal to that of men and nowhere were there any different classes or castes, with different degrees of status and wealth. Life was certainly hard in some ways, particularly for the converts to a horticultural way of life, but at the same time, a spirit of natural harmony seems to have filled the whole planet, a harmony between human beings and nature and amongst human beings themselves. Human beings may have been oppressed by nature to an extent, but they were free from oppression by other human beings. Human groups didn’t oppress other groups, members of the same groups didn’t oppress each other, and men didn’t oppress women.
But everything was about to change. A seismic shift in history was about to occur.
THE FALL:
FROM AROUND 4000 BCE onwards a new spirit of suffering and turmoil enters human history. It is now – and only now – that a “horrifying sense of sin” becomes manifest in human affairs. At this point, it seems, a completely new type of human being comes into existence, with a completely different way of relating to the world and to other human beings. In Riane Eisler’s words, now comes “the great change – a change so great, indeed, that nothing in all we know of human cultural evolution is comparable in magnitude.”
Selected excerpts from, “The Fall: The insanity of the ego in human history and the dawn of a new era,” by Steve Taylor.
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A New Age Yearning & Intuition?
Intuition is also a common subject of New Age writings.
Intuition in Jungian psychology:
In Carl Jung's theory of the ego, described in 1921 in Psychological Types, intuition was an "irrational function", opposed most directly by sensation, and opposed less strongly by the "rational functions" of thinking and feeling. Jung defined intuition as "perception via the unconscious": using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious. Are we yearning for the balancing power of the feminine archtype? An age of The Goddess?
What metaphors of true meaning infuse the soul, when we listen to the muse, in music?
An Orgasmic Goddess? As Seen in the Nighttime Sky?
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From my own sense of intuition about existential meaning;
The ascension is not a rising to “above” it’s a Fall, just as its always been, when you seek awareness of the Universe within, & truly feel the presence of this Eternal Now. In Eastern mysticism, such experience is known as a Kundalini awakening, or in the “stillness” of the great Prince, Buddha being?
Is it time to re-address the tribal metaphors of life’s meaning, to a species understanding? In a Universe of 96% dark matter/energy. Life is “The Resurrection.” That great symbol of sacrifice we see in Christ on the Cross, as all the Light Matter Energy, sacrificed to create your life? How does the Universe become Eternal? By evolving into a form which can act upon itself, YOU & your children’s, children’s children, forever & ever, Amen! Or whatever metaphor of gratitude you use.
The literal tranliteration of the word Buddha, is AWAKE.
Are awaking/evolving a Universe within, where ALL is ONE?
Is the existential meaning of Messiah, a Species Metaphor?
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