Reaching out to hear the Spirits
Reaching out to hear the Spirits 12-9-19
As I have spoken of before, according to Jean Gebser as we leave the 4th era of consciousness, the rational era in which we have denied the reality and importance of the spirits and enter the fifth era, the era of time-free transparency in which we again can listen to and value the spirits, the spirits that come to us from beyond our five senses. This return to the earlier eras in which our ancestors, the hunter-gatherers, lived, they lived with the spirits that gave them direction in living in oneness with the Earth. We are now rediscovering this ability of listening but now with deeper understanding of the importance of the spirits that come to us through altered states of consciousness such as the state of ecstatic trance.
Another writer, Julian Jaynes, adds another dimension to this evolution in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Our Wednesday morning group is taking an ecstatic trance journey though our own Judeo-Christian myths as recorded in the Biblical book of Genesis. The seven stories of Genesis are of a journey of leaving the Garden of Eden because of learning the knowledge of good and evil, knowledge that has led us to the destruction we are now experiencing in Global Climate Change, to eventually returning to the Garden as we again listen to the spirits. These stories were initially passed down orally before their recording approximately 6000 years ago. After the first three stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah comes a brief interlude when the Tower of Babel is built that according to Jaynes was built because the people were no longer hearing the voice of God so sought this way to reach to heaven to again hear God. Jaynes attributes this new deafness to a neurological mutation in the brain that improved the connection between its two hemispheres when before the right hemisphere heard what was coming from the left as if it came from outside the body. But in looking at these stories from a mythic viewpoint, stories that many take as literal history, the Tower comes at the right time in explaining our journey back to the Garden of Eden, the paradise in which our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in peace and health. The Tower was built after the great flood when God destroyed all that was of the Earth because of their corruption, saving only Noah and those he brought upon the ark. The final four stories of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and finally Joseph show the journey back to discovering how to listen to the voice of the spirits through dreaming as evident in the final story of Joseph with his ability to interpret dreams that brought him great prestige.
As I have spoken of before, according to Jean Gebser as we leave the 4th era of consciousness, the rational era in which we have denied the reality and importance of the spirits and enter the fifth era, the era of time-free transparency in which we again can listen to and value the spirits, the spirits that come to us from beyond our five senses. This return to the earlier eras in which our ancestors, the hunter-gatherers, lived, they lived with the spirits that gave them direction in living in oneness with the Earth. We are now rediscovering this ability of listening but now with deeper understanding of the importance of the spirits that come to us through altered states of consciousness such as the state of ecstatic trance.
Another writer, Julian Jaynes, adds another dimension to this evolution in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Our Wednesday morning group is taking an ecstatic trance journey though our own Judeo-Christian myths as recorded in the Biblical book of Genesis. The seven stories of Genesis are of a journey of leaving the Garden of Eden because of learning the knowledge of good and evil, knowledge that has led us to the destruction we are now experiencing in Global Climate Change, to eventually returning to the Garden as we again listen to the spirits. These stories were initially passed down orally before their recording approximately 6000 years ago. After the first three stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah comes a brief interlude when the Tower of Babel is built that according to Jaynes was built because the people were no longer hearing the voice of God so sought this way to reach to heaven to again hear God. Jaynes attributes this new deafness to a neurological mutation in the brain that improved the connection between its two hemispheres when before the right hemisphere heard what was coming from the left as if it came from outside the body. But in looking at these stories from a mythic viewpoint, stories that many take as literal history, the Tower comes at the right time in explaining our journey back to the Garden of Eden, the paradise in which our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in peace and health. The Tower was built after the great flood when God destroyed all that was of the Earth because of their corruption, saving only Noah and those he brought upon the ark. The final four stories of Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and finally Joseph show the journey back to discovering how to listen to the voice of the spirits through dreaming as evident in the final story of Joseph with his ability to interpret dreams that brought him great prestige.
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