4. The Origin of Religion
This is the fourth article in the series From Particles to Angels. If you are interested in this article you should read the previous articles in the series in order, beginning with the first (On Happiness).
Where does religion come from? In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 2 - Strange Creatures we saw that some people have supernatural experiences, and sometimes these get written down or become oral traditions, and these become religions. Some people speculate on the religion and so these speculations are added to and become part of the religion over time. Sometimes the supernatural experience is an encounter with a supernatural being who explicitly states that they have come so that the person having the experience can start or add to a religion. A few others may have supernatural experiences that support the religion.
The person who had the experience affirms the authenticity and importance of the experience, and convinces others who then become advocates of the religion, convincing still others to believe in it and thereby become a member of it. In this way, religion originates when ordinary people believe people who claim to have had supernatural encounters, or other people who advocate on behalf of the religion.
We saw in the article "On Happiness" that there is a strong emotional motivation to believe that there is more than this present existence, and to believe in some other, at present invisible existence. In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 1 - Deus Absconditus we sought to rationalise why that other existence is invisible.
So we have two sources: one purely a desire, and the other usually a remote and unlikely claim. Is there anything a little more tangible and closer to home that might prompt human beings to believe in such things?
"Anthropomorphism" means attributing human qualities to non-human objects. "Animism" is the belief that inanimate objects, natural phenomena or the universe as a whole possess souls. It seems to be a universal tendency for the primitive or the child to anthropomorphise objects and events in the natural world. It takes training and persistence to dissuade the primitive or growing child of this tendency. Science must overcome this tendency and convince us otherwise through logic and knowledge. So that far from anthropomorphisation being a contrivance, it is something natural and innate. We project our own humanity out into the environment. Children are prone to imaginary experiences that if experienced by an adult might be classed as a supernatural encounter or a sign of madness. Children are trained not to have such experiences, and eventually they stop, usually. Parents go to great pains to convince them: "It was only a dream." "There are no monsters." "It was only in your head." "It's your imagination." Ask and the door will be closed. In the process of freeing the child from the fear of the supernatural, we also remove the natural magic of the world. In primitive societies this kind of training does not take place, instead a relationship is formed with the world of the supernatural.
In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 2 - Strange Creatures we learned that Lyall Watson no longer had the "itch to get Claudia attached" to scientific measuring devices. The reason why he may have had such an itch was the following episode.
"After dinner her father and I sat and talked while Claudia paged through a magazine. Then very casually, he opened a tube of tennis balls that stood on a corner table and rolled one across the carpet so it came to rest right on the picture she was examining. She favoured him with one of her discerning looks and, almost in resignation, set the rivista aside and turned her attention to the ball. She held it to her cheek affectionately, and then balanced the ball on her left hand while she stroked it gently with her right.... It was a pretty scene, [b]ut my appreciation was cut short, and I hurtle back to the present in total terrified incomprehension.... One moment there was a tennis ball - the familiar, off-white, carpeted sphere marked only by its usual meandering seam. Then it was no longer so. There was a short implosive sound, very soft, like a cork being drawn in the dark, and Claudia held in her hands something completely different. A smooth, dark, rubbery globe.... Claudia seemed not to be surprised, perhaps a bit pleased, as she handed the transformed ball back to her father, who passed it on to me. I wasn't at all sure I wanted anything to do with it, until I realised what it was.... It wasn't a bald tennis ball, deprived somehow of its hair, but an everted tennis ball, one turned inside out yet still containing a volume of air under pressure.... I picked up a knife from the dinner table and, with some difficulty, pierced the rubber and let the air hiss out.... Then I cut right round the circumference and there it was, lining the interior where it had no business being, the usual furry pile.... I know enough of physics to appreciate that you cannot turn an unbroken sphere inside out like a glove."
I won't comment on whether you should believe that this event actually occurred. I will only say that if it did, that would be very significant. Lyall visits Claudia again 3 years later.
"Claudia is eight now and goes by herself to school. In the breaks between their classes, she and the other children play around the old well-head in the piazzetta, practising the lessons they have learned, confirming the consensus. Sometimes they throw and catch a tennis ball, letting it bounce and roll between them; and now that it has a name and its function is fixed and defined, it doesn't even occur to Claudia to offer it any other kind of freedom. She is one of us.
"It would be sad, and could be fatal, if we continue to allow all the clarity of childish perception to be clouded in this way. For there seem to be moments, before we become familiar with the house rules, when we are able to see right through the cracks in the cosmic egg and almost touch the truth."
Consider a man sitting motionless on the ground next to a boulder. He is silent and deep in thought, but after a while he suddenly moves. He gets up and walks away. We are not surprised by this. But if the boulder he was sitting next to were suddenly to move for no apparent reason we would find that strange. The boulder will only move if an external force causes it to move. It may move because a man pushes it or rolls it, or hitches it to a horse to drag it away, or because a strong wind blows over a tree which knocks it away, or because a nearby river that overflows its banks in a flood washes it away, or because an earthquake shakes it loose and it rolls away down the hill. It seems that living beings have an innate ability to move themselves, an ability that inanimate objects do not have. That is what the word "inanimate" means. Living beings are "self movers". They seem to have the ability to move "spontaneously", that is, to transition from a state of motionlessness to a state of motion by their own decision and will. For the ancients, the "soul" was posited as the source of this spontaneous self motion, so that anything with the capacity for spontaneous self motion was attributed a soul.
"The soul seems to be universally defined by three features, so to speak, the production of movement, perception and incorporeality, and a connection is made between each of these and the first principles."
What then are we to make of an earthquake or volcano, or the wind and the waves? How does the motionless Earth suddenly decide to shake or erupt, or a windless day and a calm sea turn into a tempest? The primitive has no concept of impersonal force, so that soul was the ultimate source of all motion in the universe. The concept of impersonal force is the central concept of science. The primitive did not theorise that the earthquake was a god, but assumed immediately that it was, as self evident, without any reflection whatsoever. The anthropomorphised universe began as a natural assumption, which later became a theory to be put to the test when human beings began to philosophise.
Thales (c.624 – c.546 BC) was the first of the great Greek philosophers and is sometimes called the "Father of Science" or "Father of Philosophy".
"Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded about him, seems to have held soul to be a motive force, since he said that the magnet has a soul in it because it moves the iron."
"Certain thinkers say that soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods."
The ancients believed the Earth to be at the centre of the universe, so that all the stars in the sky seemed to move in neat circles over the motionless Earth, all completing their circle in unison, once per day with the sun. The Earth's moon and the other planets of the solar system that were visible to the naked eye had more elaborate motions (the Greek word "planetai" (πλανῆται) literally means "wanderers"), but these motions were still precisely predictable. So even Plato (428 - 348 BC) attributed souls to the planets and stars and called them gods.
"Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task ...."
Plato also thought the material universe as a whole possessed a soul, placed there by god when he created the universe.
"And in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body ... and he made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view he created the world a blessed god."
Science has replaced the anthropomorphised universe with one in which objects are moved by impersonal forces, and momentum is passed from object to object in a mechanical chain of cause and effect leading all the way back to the beginning of the universe. This de-anthropomorphisation has more recently been applied even to the human being, himself viewed as a machine driven by deterministic cause and effect and impersonal force, so that the soul has lost its place in the world. Science does not have the notion of being a "self mover", of spontaneous action arising from a will or anything else. Instead the source of all motion originates at the origin of the universe, with the incomprehensibly vast forces that appeared at that instant and have since filtered down to us over the ensuing millennia. That huge provisioning of a free energy supply must last the universe for its entire life and provide for every action that takes place in it. The "energy source" for life on Earth is the furnace of the sun. This energy warms and lights the Earth and is captured by plants and stored chemically by a process called "photosynthesis". When animals eat the plants they access this stored energy to fuel and build their own bodies. Carnivores get this energy when they eat the animals that ate the plants.
The man who seemed to be sitting on the ground motionless, deep in thought, was not really motionless at all, not inside. Busy cycles and processes of metabolism, respiration and circulation were going on, and information processing in the brain. So what seemed like a spontaneous action of getting up, was merely an output of this input, just another link in the causal chain initiated at the origin of the universe. So the first cause of all motion is lost to us in the mystery of the origin of the universe. And there is no place for the will.
The primitive does not make the distinction between real and unreal experiences in this regard, but takes all experiences at face value. A dream is an experience of the dream world, and the events that occur in that world are treated as being as real as anything else, but occurring in a different world with different rules.
"The concept of a supermaterial phase of mortal personality was born of the unconscious and purely accidental association of the occurrences of everyday life plus the ghost dream. The simultaneous dreaming about a departed chief by several members of his tribe seemed to constitute convincing evidence that the old chief had really returned in some form. It was all very real to the savage who would awaken from such dreams reeking with sweat, trembling, and screaming."
Science is developing some understanding of the biology of the brain, and in general terms what functions the different areas of the brain are devoted to, and how neurons communicate. But there is a gulf, what is sometimes called the "explanation gap" between information processing that goes on in the brain, and conscious experience. Despite some claims to the contrary, conscious experience is still an unexplained phenomenon. So when it is asserted that "it is all in your head" and "it is not real", the theory is yet to be confirmed because we don't really know yet how any conscious experience comes about.
"Seeing the rose as having that precise shade of red, with that precise brightness and saturation, constitutes a property of the experience itself. If this experience is indeed constituted by certain neural processes taking place in certain locations of the brain, then it ought to be possible to explain why the experience is as it is--that the rose looks to us just the way it does--by appealing to the underlying neurological phenomena. We ought to be able to say something like this: You see, since these neurons are firing in this way, that's why the rose looks reddish in this particular way, as opposed to greenish, say, or even no way at all. But once we put it that, we see immediately that it doesn't really work. After all, what could there be about the firing rates and connectivity of a bunch of neurons that explains why we're having this particular reddish type of experience? This chasm between what is going on at the neural level and what we are acquainted with in our experience is the explanatory gap."
Under the heading of "claims to the contrary" we might include books such as "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett.
"One crazy idea is from Daniel Dennett: There is no hard problem. The whole idea of the subjective movie is a kind of illusion. All we have to do is explain the objective behavior, and then we’re done. Chalmers respects the idea, but doesn’t like it: 'I say more power to him, but for me that is too close to denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfying.'"
There is an intimate link between religion and dreams. Dreams are imagined to be a means by which God communicates with human beings. Religious visions have the character of dreams and psychedelia, and religious texts not infrequently have dreamlike qualities. Why would God choose to communicate in this obscure form? Why indeed do dreams have the peculiar character they do? Why are our dreams not merely literal like our waking thought processes?
It is sometimes suggested that the afterlife is a dreamlike realm. Movies like "What Dreams May Come" (1998), "The Lovely Bones" (2009) and "Jacob's Ladder" (1990) attempt to depict such a realm, and this might also be taken as implied by the movie "Inception" (2010). The extensive writings of the Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772) describe such a world in detail, like someone who read the Bible cover to cover and then dropped acid. So too the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Tibetan Book of the Dead. The suggestion here is that dreams have the strange language and processes they do because this is the language of the other world, the very substance of the other world, where language and substance are one. A language that eventually, we must learn. This model offers us an alternative means of interpreting the deceptiveness of the supernatural. A dream is not deceptive because it is logically inconsistent. Logic simply does not apply, because logic is a distillation of observations of material reality. This all fits with the idea that it was the primitive's encounter with dreams that first instilled the idea of an afterlife.
We are accustomed to treating the world in terms of a fundamental dichotomy, the distinction between "real" and "unreal", "physical" and merely "imagined" or "thought". Absolutely distinct and different. The philosophy of Idealism envisages mind rather than matter as the fundamental basis of reality so that real and unreal are only two different activities of mind. If reality and imagination are two antipodean, opposite poles, and each has a kind of reality, then we might suggest a continuum of states intermediate between these extremes, having something of the character of each, yet not exactly like either. If such exists, we have little experience of such a realm, though supernatural events seem to have this kind of character, so that attempting to decide whether they are real or not may be the wrong way of framing the question. In this case, supernatural events constitute glimpses into this possibly vast other world. Such was the assumption of psychedelic researchers. See for instance the movie "Altered States" (1980) by Ken Russell, based on the book by Paddy Chayefsky, or Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception".
These grandiose aspirations did not come to fruition. Though benefits were to be had through the psychedelic experience, it was a dangerous path, littered with casualties, from Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" to Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", as generations of lazy adolescents sought to make a party destination of revelatory experience.
"The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with...."
("The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell", by Aldous Huxley)
Because we are not permitted more than a glimpse. So that seeking more seems to have the character of trespass. Like the child who decides to drive his father's car. But if we ask the question: "Where is technology and society headed?" One answer might be: "Turning dream into reality." We exist astride two contradictory worlds seeking resolution. The psychologist Carl Jung suggested there were two modes of thinking: one easy and associative (that is, ideas are related by association, similarities), the native language of dreams; the other laborious and logical (that is, ideas are related by logical relationships), the language of matter.
There are many beings in our minds. Our parents are there, our friends, peers, acquaintances and enemies. Our "society" is there and its spokesmen. Perhaps characters from books and movies are there. Our hopes and fears are there in personified form. Whenever we act or plan or consider acting, that crowd is there passing its judgment on our actions or intended or desired actions. They encourage, ridicule, condemn, flatter, seduce, congratulate, praise, warn or interrogate us. One of the most important skills that we learn as growing souls is deciding who among this crowd and cacophony to listen to. Sometimes people will seek the advice of a dead or absent friend or loved one by talking to them in their own mind. Someone may consult an ancestor, or a saint, or a god. Prayer is communication with an idealised advisor, consultation with "the better angels of our nature". We usually call this "conscience". If we take this communion seriously it can be seen as literally intimate and personal contact with god. Considering that possibility can be visceral and profound. If one begins to imagine an actual divine presence in one's own mind.
"And I'm probably just talking to a tree right now. But if you're there ...."
"And he said, go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave."
The "still small voice" has become a way to refer to the voice of god in the mind, with the implication that one should quiet the mind to hear it. Not a literal voice but a kind of instinctive knowing. "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart" (Romans 10:8). "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." (Revelation 3:20) Of course this also opens the door to a lot of self-serving foolishness rationalising itself as divine inspiration. Religious congregations are top heavy with infallible Popes and thought police. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33), "... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3), "... his sheep follow him because they know his voice" (John 10:4), "I know my sheep and my sheep know me" (John 10:14). But the belief in this communion with an idealised guide and protector is the real tangible presence of religion in the life of the individual.
I would like to finish this article with a fairly lengthy quote from a book called "Tales Of Power" (pages 109-111) by Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda wrote a series of books in which he claimed to be describing his experiences as a pupil of a Native American sorcerer he called "Don Juan". The quote is from a chapter called "Having To Believe" and might be described as Don Juan's cautionary parable on faith.
"Remember the story you once told me about your friend and her cats?" he [i.e. Don Juan] asked casually.
He looked up at the sky and leaned back against the bench, stretching his legs. He put his hands behind his head and contracted the muscles of his whole body. As it always happens, his bones made a loud cracking sound.
He was referring to a story I had once told him about a friend of mine who found two kittens, almost dead, inside a dryer in a laundromat. She revived them, and through excellent nourishment and care groomed them into two gigantic cats, a black one and a reddish one.
Two years later she sold her house. Since she could not take the cats with her, and was unable to find another home for them, all she could do under the circumstances was to take them to an animal hospital and have them put to sleep.
I helped her take them. The cats had never been inside a car. She tried to calm them down. They scratched and bit her, especially the reddish cat, the one she called Max. When we finally arrived at the animal hospital, she took the black cat first. Holding it in her arms and without saying a word, she got out of the car. The cat played with her pawing her gently as she pushed open the glass door to enter the hospital.
I glanced at Max. He was sitting in the back. The movement of my head must have scared him, for he dove under the driver's seat. I made the seat slide backwards. I did not want to reach under it for fear that he would bite or scratch my hand. The cat was lying inside a depression on the floor of the car. He seemed very agitated. His breathing was accelerated. He looked at me. Our eyes met and an overwhelming sensation possessed me. Something took hold of my body; a form of apprehension, despair, or perhaps embarrassment for being part of what was taking place.
I felt a need to explain to Max that it was my friend's decision, and that I was only helping her. The cat kept on looking at me as if he understood my words.
I looked to see if she was coming. I could see her through the glass door. She was talking to the receptionist. My body felt a strange jolt and automatically I opened the door of my car.
"Run, Max, run!" I said to the cat.
He jumped out of the car, dashed across the street with his body close to the ground like a true feline. The opposite side of the street was empty. There were no cars parked and I could see Max running down the street along the gutter. He reached the corner of a big boulevard and then dove through the storm drain into the sewer.
My friend came back. I told her that Max had left. She got into the car and we drove away without saying a single word.
In the months that followed, the incident became a symbol to me. I fancied, or perhaps I saw, a weird flicker in Max's eyes when he looked at me before jumping out of the car, and I believed that for an instant that castrated, overweight, and useless pet became a cat.
I told Don Juan that I was convinced that when Max had run across the street and plunged into the sewer his 'cat spirit' was impeccable, and that perhaps at no other time in his life was his 'catness' so evident. The impression that the incident left on me was unforgettable.
I told the story to all of my friends. After telling it and retelling it, my identification with the cat became quite pleasurable.
I thought myself to be like Max; overindulgent, domesticated in many ways; and yet I could not help thinking that there was always the possibility of one moment in which the spirit of man might take over my whole being just like the spirit of 'catness' took over Max's bloated and useless body.
Don Juan had liked the story and had made some casual comments about it. He had said that it was not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow and take over. To sustain it, however, was something that only a warrior could do.
"What about the story of the cats?" I asked.
"You told me you believed that you are taking your chances, like Max," he said.
"I do believe that."
"What I have been trying to tell you is that as a warrior you cannot just believe this and let it go at that. With Max, having to believe means that you accept the fact that his escape might have been a useless outburst. He might have jumped into the sewer and died instantly. He might have drowned or starved to death; or he might have been eaten by rats. A warrior considers all those possibilities and then chooses to believe in accordance with his innermost predilection.
"As a warrior you have to believe that Max made it; that he not only escaped but that he sustained his power. You have to believe it. Let us say that without that belief you have nothing."
The distinction became very clear. I thought I really had chosen to believe that Max had survived; knowing that he was handicapped by a lifetime of soft and pampered living.
"Believing is a cinch," Don Juan went on. "Having to believe is something else. In this case, for instance, power gave you a splendid lesson but you chose to use only part of it. If you have to believe, however, you must use all the event."
"I see what you mean," I said.
My mind was in a state of clarity and I thought I was grasping his concepts with no effort at all.
"I am afraid you still do not understand," he said, almost whispering.
He stared at me. I held his look for a moment.
"What about the other cat?" he asked.
"Uh? The other cat?" I repeated involuntarily.
I had forgotten about it. My symbol had rotated around Max. The other cat was of no consequence to me.
"But he is!" Don Juan exclaimed when I voiced my thoughts. "Having to believe means that you have to also account for the other cat. The one that went playfully licking the hands that were carrying him to his doom. That was the cat that went to his death trustingly; filled with his cat's judgments.
That concludes the quote from Carlos Castaneda. In the next article: The Scientific Creation Myth we look at the origin of the world.
Any comments welcome.
Where does religion come from? In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 2 - Strange Creatures we saw that some people have supernatural experiences, and sometimes these get written down or become oral traditions, and these become religions. Some people speculate on the religion and so these speculations are added to and become part of the religion over time. Sometimes the supernatural experience is an encounter with a supernatural being who explicitly states that they have come so that the person having the experience can start or add to a religion. A few others may have supernatural experiences that support the religion.
The person who had the experience affirms the authenticity and importance of the experience, and convinces others who then become advocates of the religion, convincing still others to believe in it and thereby become a member of it. In this way, religion originates when ordinary people believe people who claim to have had supernatural encounters, or other people who advocate on behalf of the religion.
We saw in the article "On Happiness" that there is a strong emotional motivation to believe that there is more than this present existence, and to believe in some other, at present invisible existence. In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 1 - Deus Absconditus we sought to rationalise why that other existence is invisible.
So we have two sources: one purely a desire, and the other usually a remote and unlikely claim. Is there anything a little more tangible and closer to home that might prompt human beings to believe in such things?
Anthropomorphism and Animism
It is standard in religion to state that the universe and the things in it were created by a god or gods, and popular science books on cosmology sometimes seem to suggest that gods are invented by primitive people to explain natural events and the origin of the universe. "What is the sun?" "It is a god." "Why does the Earth quake?" "It is a god under the ground." But I think this may be putting the cart before the horse. If one believes that gods exist, it is natural to credit them, or identify them with any wondrous events that we see. But I do not think they were invented for this purpose. The instinct to invent gods is prior to any desire for physical explanations and natural philosophy. Most people aren't that interested in physics, astronomy and cosmology. They are interested in not dying. But the instinct to invent gods seems to precede even concerns over personal mortality."Anthropomorphism" means attributing human qualities to non-human objects. "Animism" is the belief that inanimate objects, natural phenomena or the universe as a whole possess souls. It seems to be a universal tendency for the primitive or the child to anthropomorphise objects and events in the natural world. It takes training and persistence to dissuade the primitive or growing child of this tendency. Science must overcome this tendency and convince us otherwise through logic and knowledge. So that far from anthropomorphisation being a contrivance, it is something natural and innate. We project our own humanity out into the environment. Children are prone to imaginary experiences that if experienced by an adult might be classed as a supernatural encounter or a sign of madness. Children are trained not to have such experiences, and eventually they stop, usually. Parents go to great pains to convince them: "It was only a dream." "There are no monsters." "It was only in your head." "It's your imagination." Ask and the door will be closed. In the process of freeing the child from the fear of the supernatural, we also remove the natural magic of the world. In primitive societies this kind of training does not take place, instead a relationship is formed with the world of the supernatural.
In Cosmic Conspiracy - Part 2 - Strange Creatures we learned that Lyall Watson no longer had the "itch to get Claudia attached" to scientific measuring devices. The reason why he may have had such an itch was the following episode.
"After dinner her father and I sat and talked while Claudia paged through a magazine. Then very casually, he opened a tube of tennis balls that stood on a corner table and rolled one across the carpet so it came to rest right on the picture she was examining. She favoured him with one of her discerning looks and, almost in resignation, set the rivista aside and turned her attention to the ball. She held it to her cheek affectionately, and then balanced the ball on her left hand while she stroked it gently with her right.... It was a pretty scene, [b]ut my appreciation was cut short, and I hurtle back to the present in total terrified incomprehension.... One moment there was a tennis ball - the familiar, off-white, carpeted sphere marked only by its usual meandering seam. Then it was no longer so. There was a short implosive sound, very soft, like a cork being drawn in the dark, and Claudia held in her hands something completely different. A smooth, dark, rubbery globe.... Claudia seemed not to be surprised, perhaps a bit pleased, as she handed the transformed ball back to her father, who passed it on to me. I wasn't at all sure I wanted anything to do with it, until I realised what it was.... It wasn't a bald tennis ball, deprived somehow of its hair, but an everted tennis ball, one turned inside out yet still containing a volume of air under pressure.... I picked up a knife from the dinner table and, with some difficulty, pierced the rubber and let the air hiss out.... Then I cut right round the circumference and there it was, lining the interior where it had no business being, the usual furry pile.... I know enough of physics to appreciate that you cannot turn an unbroken sphere inside out like a glove."
("Lifetide", by Lyall Watson, pages 20-21.)
I won't comment on whether you should believe that this event actually occurred. I will only say that if it did, that would be very significant. Lyall visits Claudia again 3 years later.
"Claudia is eight now and goes by herself to school. In the breaks between their classes, she and the other children play around the old well-head in the piazzetta, practising the lessons they have learned, confirming the consensus. Sometimes they throw and catch a tennis ball, letting it bounce and roll between them; and now that it has a name and its function is fixed and defined, it doesn't even occur to Claudia to offer it any other kind of freedom. She is one of us.
"It would be sad, and could be fatal, if we continue to allow all the clarity of childish perception to be clouded in this way. For there seem to be moments, before we become familiar with the house rules, when we are able to see right through the cracks in the cosmic egg and almost touch the truth."
("Lifetide", by Lyall Watson, pages 375-376.)
Consider a man sitting motionless on the ground next to a boulder. He is silent and deep in thought, but after a while he suddenly moves. He gets up and walks away. We are not surprised by this. But if the boulder he was sitting next to were suddenly to move for no apparent reason we would find that strange. The boulder will only move if an external force causes it to move. It may move because a man pushes it or rolls it, or hitches it to a horse to drag it away, or because a strong wind blows over a tree which knocks it away, or because a nearby river that overflows its banks in a flood washes it away, or because an earthquake shakes it loose and it rolls away down the hill. It seems that living beings have an innate ability to move themselves, an ability that inanimate objects do not have. That is what the word "inanimate" means. Living beings are "self movers". They seem to have the ability to move "spontaneously", that is, to transition from a state of motionlessness to a state of motion by their own decision and will. For the ancients, the "soul" was posited as the source of this spontaneous self motion, so that anything with the capacity for spontaneous self motion was attributed a soul.
"The soul seems to be universally defined by three features, so to speak, the production of movement, perception and incorporeality, and a connection is made between each of these and the first principles."
("On the Soul" by Aristotle, Book I)
What then are we to make of an earthquake or volcano, or the wind and the waves? How does the motionless Earth suddenly decide to shake or erupt, or a windless day and a calm sea turn into a tempest? The primitive has no concept of impersonal force, so that soul was the ultimate source of all motion in the universe. The concept of impersonal force is the central concept of science. The primitive did not theorise that the earthquake was a god, but assumed immediately that it was, as self evident, without any reflection whatsoever. The anthropomorphised universe began as a natural assumption, which later became a theory to be put to the test when human beings began to philosophise.
Thales (c.624 – c.546 BC) was the first of the great Greek philosophers and is sometimes called the "Father of Science" or "Father of Philosophy".
"Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded about him, seems to have held soul to be a motive force, since he said that the magnet has a soul in it because it moves the iron."
("On the Soul" by Aristotle, Book I)
"Certain thinkers say that soul is intermingled in the whole universe, and it is perhaps for that reason that Thales came to the opinion that all things are full of gods."
("On the Soul" by Aristotle, Book I)
The ancients believed the Earth to be at the centre of the universe, so that all the stars in the sky seemed to move in neat circles over the motionless Earth, all completing their circle in unison, once per day with the sun. The Earth's moon and the other planets of the solar system that were visible to the naked eye had more elaborate motions (the Greek word "planetai" (πλανῆται) literally means "wanderers"), but these motions were still precisely predictable. So even Plato (428 - 348 BC) attributed souls to the planets and stars and called them gods.
"Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task ...."
("Timaeus" by Plato)
Plato also thought the material universe as a whole possessed a soul, placed there by god when he created the universe.
"And in the centre he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body ... and he made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view he created the world a blessed god."
("Timaeus" by Plato)
Science has replaced the anthropomorphised universe with one in which objects are moved by impersonal forces, and momentum is passed from object to object in a mechanical chain of cause and effect leading all the way back to the beginning of the universe. This de-anthropomorphisation has more recently been applied even to the human being, himself viewed as a machine driven by deterministic cause and effect and impersonal force, so that the soul has lost its place in the world. Science does not have the notion of being a "self mover", of spontaneous action arising from a will or anything else. Instead the source of all motion originates at the origin of the universe, with the incomprehensibly vast forces that appeared at that instant and have since filtered down to us over the ensuing millennia. That huge provisioning of a free energy supply must last the universe for its entire life and provide for every action that takes place in it. The "energy source" for life on Earth is the furnace of the sun. This energy warms and lights the Earth and is captured by plants and stored chemically by a process called "photosynthesis". When animals eat the plants they access this stored energy to fuel and build their own bodies. Carnivores get this energy when they eat the animals that ate the plants.
The man who seemed to be sitting on the ground motionless, deep in thought, was not really motionless at all, not inside. Busy cycles and processes of metabolism, respiration and circulation were going on, and information processing in the brain. So what seemed like a spontaneous action of getting up, was merely an output of this input, just another link in the causal chain initiated at the origin of the universe. So the first cause of all motion is lost to us in the mystery of the origin of the universe. And there is no place for the will.
Imagination and Dreams
When I open my eyes I look out upon the material world. Whether my eyes are open or closed I can also see a second world, the world of imagination and memory. This second world seems to occupy its own separate space, not superimposed upon the material world. When we sleep and dream, this other world can seem as real as the waking world. This other world has its own rules. Hallucinations can also seem as real as anything else we experience. In certain forms of schizophrenia hallucinations can occur routinely, as if the machinery of dreams is working while the person is awake. Religious and other supernatural experiences such as the voice of god, visions of Mary, or lights in the sky are generally attributed to the imagination. It should be remembered in all this that experience is raw data, like the data collected as part of conducting an experiment. A dream is an experience, a hallucination is an experience, a normal waking experience is an experience, and a supernatural event is an experience. When we apply the label "real" to some of these and "unreal" to others we are applying a theory to raw data. Declaring raw data "unreal" based on a theory, is not to declare a fact. An experience however is a fact. In this case, the theory is that the unreal experiences are manufactured by the mind of the person having the experience. We certainly seem to be able to manufacture and influence imaginary experiences, but some seem to impose themselves upon us independently of our will, autonomously. Just as our experiences of the material world are sometimes responsive to our will and sometimes not, so too are imaginary experiences. Even if some immaterial experiences are manufactured by the brain, this does not mean they all are. We do not need to reduce all these experiences to a single explanation.The primitive does not make the distinction between real and unreal experiences in this regard, but takes all experiences at face value. A dream is an experience of the dream world, and the events that occur in that world are treated as being as real as anything else, but occurring in a different world with different rules.
"The concept of a supermaterial phase of mortal personality was born of the unconscious and purely accidental association of the occurrences of everyday life plus the ghost dream. The simultaneous dreaming about a departed chief by several members of his tribe seemed to constitute convincing evidence that the old chief had really returned in some form. It was all very real to the savage who would awaken from such dreams reeking with sweat, trembling, and screaming."
("The Urantia Book", 86:4.1)
Science is developing some understanding of the biology of the brain, and in general terms what functions the different areas of the brain are devoted to, and how neurons communicate. But there is a gulf, what is sometimes called the "explanation gap" between information processing that goes on in the brain, and conscious experience. Despite some claims to the contrary, conscious experience is still an unexplained phenomenon. So when it is asserted that "it is all in your head" and "it is not real", the theory is yet to be confirmed because we don't really know yet how any conscious experience comes about.
"Seeing the rose as having that precise shade of red, with that precise brightness and saturation, constitutes a property of the experience itself. If this experience is indeed constituted by certain neural processes taking place in certain locations of the brain, then it ought to be possible to explain why the experience is as it is--that the rose looks to us just the way it does--by appealing to the underlying neurological phenomena. We ought to be able to say something like this: You see, since these neurons are firing in this way, that's why the rose looks reddish in this particular way, as opposed to greenish, say, or even no way at all. But once we put it that, we see immediately that it doesn't really work. After all, what could there be about the firing rates and connectivity of a bunch of neurons that explains why we're having this particular reddish type of experience? This chasm between what is going on at the neural level and what we are acquainted with in our experience is the explanatory gap."
("The Explanatory Gap" by Joseph Levine, in "The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind", B. McLaughlin, A. Beckerman, S. Walter editors, pp.282-3.)
Under the heading of "claims to the contrary" we might include books such as "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett.
"One crazy idea is from Daniel Dennett: There is no hard problem. The whole idea of the subjective movie is a kind of illusion. All we have to do is explain the objective behavior, and then we’re done. Chalmers respects the idea, but doesn’t like it: 'I say more power to him, but for me that is too close to denying the datum of consciousness to be satisfying.'"
There is an intimate link between religion and dreams. Dreams are imagined to be a means by which God communicates with human beings. Religious visions have the character of dreams and psychedelia, and religious texts not infrequently have dreamlike qualities. Why would God choose to communicate in this obscure form? Why indeed do dreams have the peculiar character they do? Why are our dreams not merely literal like our waking thought processes?
It is sometimes suggested that the afterlife is a dreamlike realm. Movies like "What Dreams May Come" (1998), "The Lovely Bones" (2009) and "Jacob's Ladder" (1990) attempt to depict such a realm, and this might also be taken as implied by the movie "Inception" (2010). The extensive writings of the Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772) describe such a world in detail, like someone who read the Bible cover to cover and then dropped acid. So too the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Tibetan Book of the Dead. The suggestion here is that dreams have the strange language and processes they do because this is the language of the other world, the very substance of the other world, where language and substance are one. A language that eventually, we must learn. This model offers us an alternative means of interpreting the deceptiveness of the supernatural. A dream is not deceptive because it is logically inconsistent. Logic simply does not apply, because logic is a distillation of observations of material reality. This all fits with the idea that it was the primitive's encounter with dreams that first instilled the idea of an afterlife.
We are accustomed to treating the world in terms of a fundamental dichotomy, the distinction between "real" and "unreal", "physical" and merely "imagined" or "thought". Absolutely distinct and different. The philosophy of Idealism envisages mind rather than matter as the fundamental basis of reality so that real and unreal are only two different activities of mind. If reality and imagination are two antipodean, opposite poles, and each has a kind of reality, then we might suggest a continuum of states intermediate between these extremes, having something of the character of each, yet not exactly like either. If such exists, we have little experience of such a realm, though supernatural events seem to have this kind of character, so that attempting to decide whether they are real or not may be the wrong way of framing the question. In this case, supernatural events constitute glimpses into this possibly vast other world. Such was the assumption of psychedelic researchers. See for instance the movie "Altered States" (1980) by Ken Russell, based on the book by Paddy Chayefsky, or Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception".
These grandiose aspirations did not come to fruition. Though benefits were to be had through the psychedelic experience, it was a dangerous path, littered with casualties, from Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" to Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly", as generations of lazy adolescents sought to make a party destination of revelatory experience.
"The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with...."
("The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell", by Aldous Huxley)
Because we are not permitted more than a glimpse. So that seeking more seems to have the character of trespass. Like the child who decides to drive his father's car. But if we ask the question: "Where is technology and society headed?" One answer might be: "Turning dream into reality." We exist astride two contradictory worlds seeking resolution. The psychologist Carl Jung suggested there were two modes of thinking: one easy and associative (that is, ideas are related by association, similarities), the native language of dreams; the other laborious and logical (that is, ideas are related by logical relationships), the language of matter.
The Guide
Have you ever had an argument with yourself, in your own mind, and lost the argument? Sometimes we lose an argument with ourselves because the truth is the truth or because logic unavoidably leads us there. We might wish it to be one way, but truth and logic say otherwise. Sometimes though we lose an argument with ourselves on a matter not decided by facts or logic, but decided by an ethical or moral sensibility. We may want it to be one way, but we know that this desire is selfish, hypocritical or petty. We possess a kind of moral compass.There are many beings in our minds. Our parents are there, our friends, peers, acquaintances and enemies. Our "society" is there and its spokesmen. Perhaps characters from books and movies are there. Our hopes and fears are there in personified form. Whenever we act or plan or consider acting, that crowd is there passing its judgment on our actions or intended or desired actions. They encourage, ridicule, condemn, flatter, seduce, congratulate, praise, warn or interrogate us. One of the most important skills that we learn as growing souls is deciding who among this crowd and cacophony to listen to. Sometimes people will seek the advice of a dead or absent friend or loved one by talking to them in their own mind. Someone may consult an ancestor, or a saint, or a god. Prayer is communication with an idealised advisor, consultation with "the better angels of our nature". We usually call this "conscience". If we take this communion seriously it can be seen as literally intimate and personal contact with god. Considering that possibility can be visceral and profound. If one begins to imagine an actual divine presence in one's own mind.
"And I'm probably just talking to a tree right now. But if you're there ...."
("Avatar" by James Cameron (2009))
"And he said, go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave."
(1 Kings 19:11-13)
The "still small voice" has become a way to refer to the voice of god in the mind, with the implication that one should quiet the mind to hear it. Not a literal voice but a kind of instinctive knowing. "The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart" (Romans 10:8). "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." (Revelation 3:20) Of course this also opens the door to a lot of self-serving foolishness rationalising itself as divine inspiration. Religious congregations are top heavy with infallible Popes and thought police. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33), "... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3), "... his sheep follow him because they know his voice" (John 10:4), "I know my sheep and my sheep know me" (John 10:14). But the belief in this communion with an idealised guide and protector is the real tangible presence of religion in the life of the individual.
I would like to finish this article with a fairly lengthy quote from a book called "Tales Of Power" (pages 109-111) by Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda wrote a series of books in which he claimed to be describing his experiences as a pupil of a Native American sorcerer he called "Don Juan". The quote is from a chapter called "Having To Believe" and might be described as Don Juan's cautionary parable on faith.
"Remember the story you once told me about your friend and her cats?" he [i.e. Don Juan] asked casually.
He looked up at the sky and leaned back against the bench, stretching his legs. He put his hands behind his head and contracted the muscles of his whole body. As it always happens, his bones made a loud cracking sound.
He was referring to a story I had once told him about a friend of mine who found two kittens, almost dead, inside a dryer in a laundromat. She revived them, and through excellent nourishment and care groomed them into two gigantic cats, a black one and a reddish one.
Two years later she sold her house. Since she could not take the cats with her, and was unable to find another home for them, all she could do under the circumstances was to take them to an animal hospital and have them put to sleep.
I helped her take them. The cats had never been inside a car. She tried to calm them down. They scratched and bit her, especially the reddish cat, the one she called Max. When we finally arrived at the animal hospital, she took the black cat first. Holding it in her arms and without saying a word, she got out of the car. The cat played with her pawing her gently as she pushed open the glass door to enter the hospital.
I glanced at Max. He was sitting in the back. The movement of my head must have scared him, for he dove under the driver's seat. I made the seat slide backwards. I did not want to reach under it for fear that he would bite or scratch my hand. The cat was lying inside a depression on the floor of the car. He seemed very agitated. His breathing was accelerated. He looked at me. Our eyes met and an overwhelming sensation possessed me. Something took hold of my body; a form of apprehension, despair, or perhaps embarrassment for being part of what was taking place.
I felt a need to explain to Max that it was my friend's decision, and that I was only helping her. The cat kept on looking at me as if he understood my words.
I looked to see if she was coming. I could see her through the glass door. She was talking to the receptionist. My body felt a strange jolt and automatically I opened the door of my car.
"Run, Max, run!" I said to the cat.
He jumped out of the car, dashed across the street with his body close to the ground like a true feline. The opposite side of the street was empty. There were no cars parked and I could see Max running down the street along the gutter. He reached the corner of a big boulevard and then dove through the storm drain into the sewer.
My friend came back. I told her that Max had left. She got into the car and we drove away without saying a single word.
In the months that followed, the incident became a symbol to me. I fancied, or perhaps I saw, a weird flicker in Max's eyes when he looked at me before jumping out of the car, and I believed that for an instant that castrated, overweight, and useless pet became a cat.
I told Don Juan that I was convinced that when Max had run across the street and plunged into the sewer his 'cat spirit' was impeccable, and that perhaps at no other time in his life was his 'catness' so evident. The impression that the incident left on me was unforgettable.
I told the story to all of my friends. After telling it and retelling it, my identification with the cat became quite pleasurable.
I thought myself to be like Max; overindulgent, domesticated in many ways; and yet I could not help thinking that there was always the possibility of one moment in which the spirit of man might take over my whole being just like the spirit of 'catness' took over Max's bloated and useless body.
Don Juan had liked the story and had made some casual comments about it. He had said that it was not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow and take over. To sustain it, however, was something that only a warrior could do.
"What about the story of the cats?" I asked.
"You told me you believed that you are taking your chances, like Max," he said.
"I do believe that."
"What I have been trying to tell you is that as a warrior you cannot just believe this and let it go at that. With Max, having to believe means that you accept the fact that his escape might have been a useless outburst. He might have jumped into the sewer and died instantly. He might have drowned or starved to death; or he might have been eaten by rats. A warrior considers all those possibilities and then chooses to believe in accordance with his innermost predilection.
"As a warrior you have to believe that Max made it; that he not only escaped but that he sustained his power. You have to believe it. Let us say that without that belief you have nothing."
The distinction became very clear. I thought I really had chosen to believe that Max had survived; knowing that he was handicapped by a lifetime of soft and pampered living.
"Believing is a cinch," Don Juan went on. "Having to believe is something else. In this case, for instance, power gave you a splendid lesson but you chose to use only part of it. If you have to believe, however, you must use all the event."
"I see what you mean," I said.
My mind was in a state of clarity and I thought I was grasping his concepts with no effort at all.
"I am afraid you still do not understand," he said, almost whispering.
He stared at me. I held his look for a moment.
"What about the other cat?" he asked.
"Uh? The other cat?" I repeated involuntarily.
I had forgotten about it. My symbol had rotated around Max. The other cat was of no consequence to me.
"But he is!" Don Juan exclaimed when I voiced my thoughts. "Having to believe means that you have to also account for the other cat. The one that went playfully licking the hands that were carrying him to his doom. That was the cat that went to his death trustingly; filled with his cat's judgments.
That concludes the quote from Carlos Castaneda. In the next article: The Scientific Creation Myth we look at the origin of the world.
Any comments welcome.
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