A Brief History of Consciousness
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Over the hills and far away,
In a time of long past
Every morning brought a noble chance.
We drank the spirit of each golden day
Triumphed in existence and
Thundered through the sapphire deeps.
The land was green, robust and mysterious.
Life and Death walked hand in hand.
Coyotes howled, grasses swayed;
Deer reposed along the eaves
of great forests while dew
slipped into the meadows.
Upon a hill their arose wisps
of smoke that rose like clouds,
then faltered and then merged invisibly
into the air. Forms strove within the
smoke as one shape competed with another
for dominance. At the base of the writhing
trunk of smoke, a fire hissed as fatty droplets
of deer flesh sputtered and flamed.
The day advanced, clouds raised their towers and
thundered. Sweet rain fell and rolled down the hills.
A rivulet gathered strength and then was diverted
into a channel carved by men. The waters slipped
along a contour and wound their way to a freshly
tilled and seeded field. There they fanned out like
a thousand fingers and seeped into the soil.
Quietly the seeds received the waters and did their magic.
Young shoots, full of vigor broke through the earth
and unfurled tiny leaves. The sun shined, more
waters came and the plants grew and matured.
In the fall, men and women came and counted the harvest.
There was happiness and dancing. Food was abundant,
even during the winter. The next year, many children
were born.
And so the process continued, but not always with
the same happy results. The fresh waters and warm
sun did not always come as desired. The elders
were consulted and their memories searched.
The partnership between man and nature seemed to
be tenuous and unpredictable. There was little stability
except in the night sky. Patiently, the stars were searched,
the Wanderers were counted and the moon was queried.
Through all the heavens, patterns were conceived.
The natural communities of plants and animals were
also observed. Although they waxed and waned,
their vigor and permanence seemed to be assured.
There was an unspoken agreement between Life and Death
and tradeoffs among the seasons. A secret music
harmonized everything and made everything fit.
From the rhythm of the seasons, calendars were
devised and time as we know it began.
Now people knew what to expect, but
their expectations were not always met.
Men and women dreamed of tomorrows that never came,
never existed. The divide between man and nature grew.
Extreme measures were taken to cross the chasm.
Women dripped their menstrual blood into the fields,
cattle were sacrificed and the Wanderers were beseeched.
The natural partnership between Life and Death
became a mystery.
And yet, there was progress. People lived longer,
families grew and their cattle and fields multiplied.
Life was blessed and Death forgiving. There was
time for dances, time for love and time to dream,
beautiful dreams in which the walls dissolved
and old men flew like children.
They flew at night and then in the morning,
under the stark light and growing heat of the sun,
their dreaming became a conscious planning and
scheming for tomorrows they could only imagine.
With great fervor they poured their thought and emotions
into these abstractions, and spiced them with strange fears.
Colossal figures, pyramids, towers and hanging gardens
were imagined and built for the first time on this earth.
Many hands and motivations went into these constructions.
Beauty was served but tainted with a desire to control and
possess what cannot be possessed or controlled. And so the
expectations of men and women were often against them.
Innocent blood stained the Earth.
The things that had been named, became just names.
Causes and effects were confused,
Natural regularities were misconstrued.
Order was forced. Happiness was fleeting.
A new dream arose, a dream for freedom
from bondage.
But not all bonds can be broken.
Even the wind is not truly free, and neither are the
waves of the sea nor the wandering planets, nor the
nor the coyotes nor the deer nor the swaying grasses.
They are coupled and yet, they are open-ended,
undetermined and undeterred.
Men and women dreamed of freedom from oppression,
freedom from prejudice and freedom from injustice.
They reflected upon their past and wondered how they
might improve their lot. Fortune smiled on some and
frowned on others; people pondered these strange turns
of events. The goals of stability, consistency and
predictability remained, but their means were elusive.
One man's reality was to another a mere fantasy.
There was no tierra firma upon which people could agree.
Mankind's personality was exploding into a myriad
of selves who competed and fought against one another.
Simple tasks that were once done without thinking
(like storing food for winter) were now done consciously.
From our reflecting minds, our memory and language,
a second mind, an autonomous double was born who
thought and hesitated before he or she acted. And from
the double their arose another and another still, each acting
back on its predecessors. Simple experiences became enriched
with multiple meanings and troubling ambiguities.
A reintegration of the atomized first man was desired,
but the sought for unity was elusive. And so Nature again
was searched for guidance and examples. Her fury and
extremes appeared to be reconciled and ordered by universal
seeming principles. One could perform a simple experiment
and repeatedly get the same type of results regardless
of when or where the experiment was performed.
Natural phenomena were harmoniously unified
within a framework of Universal Laws.
Nature seemed to run like a great and efficient
clockwork. And so people sought to likewise mechanize
the affairs of men and women. Some benefits and
efficiencies were realized. Soon there was the dream
to centrally plan and mechanize entire societies.
Each person was given a simple role to play,
a single row to hoe as though they were cogs of
a machine. The hoped for productivity and efficiencies
did not pan out. People were unhappy and surly.
The mechanical vision of the universe had its merits,
But nature seemed to be ruled by "the law of the higgledy-piggledy".
It had no central planning and no ordained clockwork.
It continually folded back upon itself like a clock returning
to a previous state, and yet their was a sense of evolution,
of irreversible sequences that could not be retraced.
The centrally-planned clockwork-like societies could not
deliver the sought for order or stability. On the one hand,
nature seemed to be chaotic and vulnerable and on the other
hand, wondrously ordered and enduring. Her individual members
seemed to be free and on equal terms with all of the other members.
Each had its role to play and yet each was free. Each received its
due and each gave its life in return. And everything was in motion,
in flux, without ever repeating its past. Newness prevailed
because everything was surrendered to something beyond it,
to a wholeness, a holy grail that one can only think and cannot hold
and cannot accommodate into a single vision or even a totem pole
of images. It is beyond images, beyond imagination, beyond any
single model. Only through a play of opposites might it be brought
into our consciousness, and yet it is the root of existence, the source
of order, the origin or origins, the birth of the gods.
You can't see it but you can join with it and be with it.
It cares for you. Trust it, and you live. Part from it and
you are ruined. Grasp it and it slips from your mind.
Don't ask "what it is?" It already includes everything.
You can ask "how it works" and learn tricks of its trade.
And you can ask why, and learn what you are.
Through all the ages, many gods were served,
but no one really knows why. Did the gods need us
or was our service expressions of love and respect
rippling through our expanding consciousness?
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© A Brief History of Consciousness is copyrighted 12/30/98.
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