“The past is not real, it is only a collection of related assumptions”—-Elisha Scott
We are about to take a creative, whirlwind tour through history, dating back to , perhaps, a million years ago or more. The last thing I want to do is to create “alternative facts” and implant false memories that were never real, just like the ignorant biblical scholars, malicious fake news generators and conspiracy theorists of today attempt to do. The best way to get to new answers to old questions, is to discard the old questions, and ask new questions. So, here we go!
- What was our mental atmosphere like back then, when mankind was first becoming conscious?
- With humanity’s dark history, the survival of the fittest evolutionary imperative, and the fear of dangerous animals (which includes human strangers not of one’s tribe and not prone to collaborative behavior) what can we speculate about the original nature of that consciousness?
- Based upon our present understanding, could one surmise that trauma and suffering has-been with mankind from the beginning?
- Is the Garden of Eden story, and many other myths and legends from other cultures, merely stories created by ancient peoples seeking the same answers?
The previous questions are riddled with assumptions, and the answers that we might supply to questions of this nature are subject to both speculation and revisionist history. We must apply the tools of historical, anthropological, sociological, psychological, mythological, cinematic, and spiritual analysis and discernment in any endeavor of this nature. I will only touch upon the highlights of this epoch of mankind, and you should not believe me, any more than you might believe the scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and biblical writers who have already undertaken their own studies and vain attempts at understanding.
We only need to look within ourselves, and to our pasts, to see how uncertain our memories are, and extrapolate that to our human history, which is also plagued by short term, medium term, and long term memory loss. We can see how impossible it is to accurately recall and recreate memories from times long past, especially of the times when we were babies or children, though the recollections of others, coupled with insight can help in this daunting journey of discovery. Yet, as the evolution of our biological being can be witnessed through observing the stages of the development of the human embryo through its birth, so might we be able to observe the historical, evolutionary unfoldment of humanity, replicated in a compressed form through our own unfoldment, from an unconscious state as a newborn baby into the consciousness of a personal sense of self, to see if a parallel understanding may be derived.
Without a recorded history, and supersubstantial archeological records, a careless investigation and exploration can become yet another Rorschach test for all inquisitors, and we will only mostly confirm what we already think that we know. We can attempt to create our best representation for what we think their truths might have been in the earliest iterations of mankind, the times that existed before there were verbal accounts being passed down through the generations. Even though our present history has only about 5000 years of written records, some cultures have historical narratives that appear to have been passed down for at least 30,000 years. The aborigines of Australia claim a 60,000 year narrative, while Central and South American indigenous peoples and their shamans also claim lineages of tens of thousands of years.
Western European civilization appears to be an outgrowth of the migration of African tribal members at least 13000-30000 years ago. Cave drawings in Spain and France show sophisticated art capabilities, and, apparently, versions of animal and spirit worship. Many ancient cultures created sculpted objects resembling the human penis, and the pregnant woman, so the need for fertility and the reverence for all associated body parts appears to be a fundamental need for our race. Other caves have been found showing even earlier creative endeavors. in a remarkable recent, though questionable discovery, a cave was discovered that is purported to possess chiseled storage cubicles dating back one million years ago, according to carbon dating. The human race has a long history, indeed, though finding a physical, or even spiritual, starting point is probably impossible.
The earliest human creatures spoke primarily with gestures, grunts, and body language, with their evolving vocal chords eventually joining in the conversation at some unknown point in the distant past. They eventually standardized certain verbal sounds, sounds that became words that were supposed to represent that which they were seeing, doing, using, or eating. Eventually mankind made the quantum leap to symbolic writing, where animal and plant forms once used to symbolically represent life were replaced by crude symbols, which eventually evolved into hieroglyphics, and then cuneiform alphabets. It must have seemed like magic to the first humans who realized, and then taught others, that their thoughts could be approximated and shared through words, and then an ever evolving symbolic representation.
It appears that the creation, or formation of a new world had been made possible through words and concepts that were arising in the evolving consciousness. Formerly, there were mainly biological systems with limited freedom of choice responding to environmental influences, with a more instinctual response to meeting the needs of the body, and of whatever family or community that existed. We could call that world the “real world”, as it dealt with the harsh realities of a world not yet under the subjugation of the human mind. With the advent of symbolic representation of the real world, a concurrent, though alternate “reality” was created which only existed in the minds of those entertaining those new concepts and symbols. To the point that this alternate reality created within the mind, both individually and culturally, matched up with the conditions of the real world, one could say that becoming verbally conscious was an amazing evolutionary leap for humanity. They now lived in two intimately related and interdependent worlds, that of their biology, and that of their minds.
Once symbology is introduced into the human mind, absolutely remarkable, if not miraculous, phenomenon start appearing. Consciousness expressing through symbology appears to have a self-organizing principle innate to it, and as it weighs and measures and assigns names to the objects of its awareness, a personal sense of being is also introduced into the biological system entertaining the symbology. Thus, the “word” or the act of first recognizing that a verbal sound or a specific set of symbols can represent an environmental influence is the initial generative force behind the creation, or the awakening of the personal sense of self.
I began this chapter with a question about when mankind first became “conscious”, and the story of Helen Keller is a remarkable account of that very universal process happening to a handicapped individual. Helen Keller gives an outstanding narrative of the beginning of her own sense of self, a new self which seemed to arise out of her more instinctual, or even chaotic biological response to life. Once she recognized that the letters W A T E R represented the substance that she washed with, and drank, her own unique sense of being herself also arose..Literally, understanding the word and its symbolism opened the miraculous door to her self, and both phenomenon seem to have arisen concurrently. Helen Keller’s new sense of self arose out of a life-giving and sustaining symbol, and she grew into a creative, profound, and spiritually wise human being, beloved by all who knew her.
It can be argued that once the mind of man finally became conscious of its own individual self, and then that others also might also have a self, it opened the doors to a collective mind that entertained and hosted the symbolic representations of all of the other individual life forms, human or animal, that it was witnessing, as well as it itself. It also opened Pandora’s Box, or the doors to all manners of mistaken judgement of others, and of self, opening the internal windows to illusion and fantasy, and that tragic fact of the unfoldment of consciousness remains not only a historical fact , but a present reality.
When was mankind’s first W A T E R moment? It could be said that individual man, and collective man, may have left its Garden Of Eden state with that same evolutionary unfoldment in consciousness.
In the mystical literature of the Bible, as recorded through the words of New Testament scribe John:
“The Word.became flesh, and dwelt among us”.
We cannot be certain as to what the first words taught to each other in the dawning times of human consciousness were, but by historical evidence, it would appear that the language of survival, defense, killing, eating, and sexual activity probably dominated early language building cultures.
With the advent of symbolic representation, our history was no longer totally dependent upon oral transmission, yet oral transmission still, to this very day remains a powerful, and primary, form of communication, especially for those not proficient in their reading ability, and lacking in intellectual and spiritual discernment. Words spoken in groups of people have infinitely more power in the present moment than words read from a book by an individual in the privacy of the home. We all have witnessed the remarkable power of the mob mind, and need only look at the insurrection on January 6, 2021 to see the absolutely insane, crazy making energy they can stir up within people disconnected from reality.
There are two or more sides to every story, and the epoch of mankind certainly could have been defined historically by its nearly infinite number of interactions between members of our worldwide community, past and present, and all of the resultant stories derived through those connections, be they ordered or chaotic in nature. But, in the interest of brevity and our need to create meaning and bring order out of apparent chaos of the limitless multitudes, we tend to select the stories that appear to not only carry the ethos of the age in which they originated, but also appear to support the perceptual agendas of the writers..
Our present civilization now proudly touts its written “recorded history”. History is created and maintained by the institutionalized powers, and transferred to all members of the community. Our history continues to be written to accommodate the prevailing victorious powers and understandings of the age in which it was first written.
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In the distant past, and even today among the few uncivilized indigenous tribes left, the mother, father, and whatever tribe or supportive community transferred all of their wisdom and knowledge about hunting, weapon construction and use, tool construction and use, gathering, childbirth and rearing, wound care, fire building, and survival to the children, until they were of age, and could join their father, or their mother, in the daily grind, or branch out and seek their own fortune elsewhere. Today, our parents and our culture continue the same process, transferring their knowledge, sacred or otherwise, to our children. So, not only do we live in two worlds, we also have two identities to deal with. Our collective/cultural self and our individual sense of self are rarely one person, though both now travel with us, wherever we might travel. The civilized being is plagued by schizophrenia, whether we want to face that difficult truth, or not.
We have more than a biological evolution, we also have an ongoing emotional, intellectual, and spiritual evolution. Our latter history, which is written, shows our ability to philosophize, and to form creative narratives about what the world once was, what it is now, and where it might be going in the future. Our vision of what the world once was will always be just a best guess, and, just like now, our ancestors writing their own histories, proposed myths and legends to explain that which was pre-existent to their own lives. Our myths and legends serve us well in this regard, and many times they complement what we have discovered through all of the sciences, spiritual literature, as well as through our intuitive natures.
Who tells the story? Many times, the greatest, most courageous and intelligent heroes of our race remain anonymous, though their stories were captured by others.. They died before they could even create a story, thus the survivors, usually less qualified and relatively more uninformed, are the historians, and their story, not the story of the real heroes, are accepted as the narrative. Religious texts abound with such exposition. Our American history also has suffered under the need to present the prevailing propaganda of the time, as it looks back and interprets other’s historical accounts of what actually transpired, and molds it into a more self-supporting and self-aggrandizing cultural ethos and narrative.
When we were under the law of “survival of the fittest”, we really had to measure up, and use all of our physical, emotional, and intuitive resources at maximum power, coupled with community and individual knowledge (wisdom) to have any hope of not becoming a meal for a stronger and hungrier predator than we were, or a victim of a hunter/aggressor from another tribe.. Biologically, the men of our species usually were blessed with the greatest physical assets, while the women, through their capacity for becoming impregnated, were the carriers of the species future, plus messengers from a deeper realm of human potential through their heightened intuition and Earth centered wisdom. Women within many ancient cultures were regarded as healers and carriers of “medicine”. They were loved, honored, respected, and protected by the community for those very reasons. Modern anthropological studies continue to confirm that early indigenous women were held in at least as high esteem as the hunter/gatherer/warriors of ancient times, so it can be surmised that in our pre-history the balance of the masculine and the feminine through mutual understanding, acknowledgement, and equality existed and supported the good for all.
The larger the community became, the more the equilibrium between men and women became disturbed, Size indicates prosperity, and the bigger communities either traded with friendly neighbors, or were attacked by others seeking to help their own tribes. As our history shows an almost universal, steady progression of conflict and war, cultures took their strongest citizens and made them into defenders, or aggressors, to preserve the tribe’s rights to resources, which were usually scarce. Biologically, the male warrior usually was considered as the best choice, and a whole consciousness eventually developed around that difference in biology. The best male might be considered the one who brings home the most game, gather the most berries, raise the most crops (a more recent development) and/or are most fearless and aggressive, within certain community proscribed limits. The best female might be considered the one most willing to support the hunter/gatherer and the defenders, through family support, maintenance of the home, meal preparation, healing of wounds, and birthing and raising the family, especially while the men go about their business.
Yet, mankind’s story, when told by the historical progression of women, would be much different than the story told by the history that men might present. History is rarely described and defined by the ones who were stuck at home caring for the wounded and the children, by the submissive ones, by the artists or sculptors, or by the losers in any conflict. Our history is no different, being described, and defined, by those in power, which are predominantly white male influences..
There is an imbalance within the field of the human spirit. Masculine energy has dominated our specie’s relationship with the universe, the world, the plants and animals, and with each other for most of recorded time, and well before the human race had any capacity to keep records. Men carried the seed for life, yet they did not have the love, respect, and nurturing ability that the female of the species seemed to naturally possess. Was this merely an environmental response, or a biological response, or a combination of the two?
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- Our feminine nature has been minimized and marginalized, mythologically, since the beginning.
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- Let’s fly united in our potential for healing!
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- Oh, empowered, divine, feminine human being! We have missed you, for thousands of years!
In the Hebrew based mythological story of The Garden Of Eden, we even see the beginning of male denial and scapegoating of the female for listening to the voice of the serpent, which now becomes the voice for the development of consciousness itself. With eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man, and woman, now may hesitantly approach divine knowledge, yet forever remain outside of their original ignorant unconscious state of being. The “flamings swords of the cherubim” guard the Garden and keep us out, for eternity.
The serpent in the Garden of Eden remains a fascinating, enlightening archetypal image. The serpent is always in contact with the ground, or with the limbs in the trees, depending upon where it lives, so it serves as a great metaphor for those in continuous contact with our planet. And, mothers have a much more earth centered understanding of life, being the bearers of human life itself, so the snake is also a metaphor for the earth centered and connected woman. As the Earth gave life to us, so did the woman give life to the human. Women learned early about the Earth’s capacity to heal us, through judicious application of its plants and herbs, and spiritual awareness and empathy. Women tended to see a more complete picture than did the men, due to the very constitution of their neural networks. Women tended to see the forests and the trees, while the men remained obsessed about the trees. And, in a later development, the more earth attuned women were actually persecuted and burned at the stake for being witches.
The serpent is also recognized for the way that it winds around its victims, or coils before it strikes. It is an obvious reference to the cunning nature of thought itself, winding around its victims, and coiling before it strikes. Our limited thinking, even with all of its knowledge, attempts to baffle us with its bullshit, while it instinctively strikes out at others when feeling threatened. The serpent metaphor does successfully represent our biological and instinctual needs, like our unevolved thinking nature, our natural reflexes, our unenlightened sexual activity and our need for self preservation. In some early cultures, the serpent was even worshiped as a God, or even feared as the devil, probably because of the pain, suffering, and sometimes death that ensued from failing to follow its edicts, such as avoiding contact with others, or thoughts within ourselves, of a poisonous nature.
Before I enter the portion discussing the Common Knowledge Game in detail, it is beneficial to provide some information about the physiological similarities and differences in the brain between men and women, and how we process information and express ourselves, as a result of those differences and similarities. I will also post some quotes from the New Testament of the Christian Bible, to show how men have attempted to suppress the nature of the feminine, both within the women in their lives and culture, and within their own “masculine” minds. Both of these factors have ultimate importance in the Common Knowledge game, providing the basic foundation for perception for our collective consciousness, and unconsciousness.
Wow, there really is a difference! How did THAT get in there?!
It’s no secret that men and women are different, biologically, historically, emotionally, and spiritually, and extend beyond what the eye can see. Research reveals major distinctions between male and female brains. Scientists generally study several areas of difference in male and female brains: including structure, activity, processing, and chemistry. The differences between male and female brains in these areas show up all over the world, but scientists also have discovered exceptions to every so-called gender rule. Some men are very sensitive, immensely talkative about their feelings, and naturally eschew the masculine way of doing things. As with all gender differences, no one way of doing things is better or worse. The differences are simply generalized differences in typical brain functioning, and it is important to remember that all differences have advantages and disadvantages.
Scientists have discovered approximately 100 gender differences in the brain, and the importance of these differences cannot be overstated. Understanding gender differences from a neurological perspective not only opens the door to greater appreciation of the different genders, it also calls into question how we parent, educate, and support our children from a young age. None of us are doomed to remain tethered to a solely male or a female perspective, though our culture and our religions certainly have dedicated much time, historically, to maintain the status quo and the division between the sexes.
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- For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.-—1 Peter 3:1
- Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a world by the conduct of their wives-–1 Corinthians
- The women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church—-1 Timothy 2:12-14
- I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.—-1 Timothy 2:
- To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.“—–Genesis 3:16
Before I leave this discussion about myths and our origins, and the differences between the sexes, I would like to speculate that if I had a different early childhood, and if the first word that I learned was the unifying, life giving word W A T E R, rather than the conflicted, confused, sometimes abandoned experience that I had around the words M O T H E R and F A T H E R, I too, might have had a much less fragmented understanding of life, and a more positive experience as a child and young adult. My early life experience and how consciousness ordered my sense of self was definitely not of the same nature as the beloved Helen Keller’s, though I was at least was loved by my grandparents, parents and pets.
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Once we become conscious, there does not appear to be any obvious way of going back to permanent unconsciousness of our self, except through neurological damage or disease. Yet, many seekers of truth and knowledge throughout time have claimed that by meditating upon their body, their biology, and their breath, rather than the endless stream of words, thoughts, and concepts that seem to be constantly present, a door may open revealing the possibility of such an experience, however.
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I propose that there is a way to be born again, but it is an unusual path, characterized by much pain and suffering, The aspirant must be absolutely disgusted with the past, willing to be freed from it, and to be open to new possibilities for a refreshed life experience.
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Does anyone really know the way back “home”?
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Would we return to a pre-verbal or non verbal state of being, or would we recognize words for what they are, and use them with more love and care, or perhaps a conscious blend of the two states? Perhaps we will discover that words only have limited, relative value rather than absolute value, in the search for our real origins.
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Jesus, in the new testament, proclaims:
- “Unless you are born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.“, and
- ““It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”, and, finally
- “My Kingdom is not of this world”.
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So, even prophets and biblical writers understood the difficulty of such an undertaking.
Most of the human race continues to be born into ancient times, using the tools of ancient, unenlightened thought, and they embody a continuation of the same mental and material processes that our ancient ancestors practiced. There is an exciting alternative to the repetition and continuation of our human and personal history, however, but to be a part of that evolutionary leap, we must be “born again”.
Welcome to the next chapter!
