Sex in the palaeolithic period

[john]

Ishtar -

Are you managing shamanism to appease civilisation, or managing civilisation to appease shamanism?

John, I think I'm genuinely not understanding your larger point here. I can't see the link you're making between civilisation and shamanism and how it relates to this topic.

Could you please have another go at explaining? Sorry.

First of all, evolution is precisely and exactly and only composed of many, many "aberrant organisms" which were more successful than their predecessors.

This may be a matter of definition, and perhaps "aberrant" was the wrong word for me to use. If they evolved from their predecessors, but evolved differently, that may be because the conditions were such that those who evolved in a so-called "aberrant" way were more suited to grow in such conditions, and therefore, they survived. So this is just evolution.

But Nature is the visible face of Spirit, the power of this universe. So she rejects all that that doesn't support her wider purpose, (Her own/the Earth's survival) which is why she's now building up to getting rid of us! Think of it like when a foreign substance enters the body. In a healthy body, the immune system would kick in to produce substances to kill it and eject it from the body.

My point was that Nature has rules, as some people (not necessarily your good self) think that to be natural is to be free to do what you like. That's not my experience.

Ishtar -

I'm in agreement; to wit

the quote from Lawrence, "Persephone, released from hell on a cold day in spring." (I know that this is not an exact quote, but can't lay my hand on the book at the moment)

However, the real point I'm making is the parallel between cognitive ("primitive") thinking as apposite to intellectual thinking, on the one hand, and the societal ("primitive") human worldview as apposite to the civilised human worldview, on the other.

So here are three wildly disparate books, all of which approach the same subject.

1.) Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

2.) Charles Olson "The Special View of History", (Oyez, Berkeley, 1970)

3.) Gontran de Poncins "Kabloona", (Cornwall Press, Cornwall N.Y., 1941)


Ultimately, you fetch up in the no man's land between unselfconscious cognition and self conscious intellect........which is just my point.

i.e, equate shamanism with unselfconscious - and unselfish - cognition and civilisation with self conscious - and selfish - intellect,

then see where it leads you.


john

[Ishtar]

Blimey John. I’m sorry if I’ve fallen into a no mans land. On the other hand, maybe I’ve stumbled upon the missing link!

I think my view is very similar to Poncin’s in that I disagree with the view that the further you go back in history, and the closer Man lives to the Earth, the more primitive he is. For me, it is almost the other way round.

My ideas (and experiences of shamanism) are also closer to those of Jaynes, except that I differ slightly in nuance: he believes that prehistoric humans had no consciousness of their own but were almost like robots of the gods in terms of free will and free thinking. This is a basic misunderstanding suffered by most post so-called Enlightenment thinkers. My shamanic work tells me that man was working in tandem, in equal partnership with the ‘gods’ or ‘spirits’. Let me explain further.

I am very much at the beginning of the shamanic path, but even my small experiences, so far, have shown me that the ‘gods’ or the ‘spirits’ are benevolent all-knowing beings. But they are not all all-powerful. In fact, in order to effect any change in human society, they need to work in partnership with those humans who want to work with them - after all, we have free will.

My experiences from this have also brought me to the conclusion that Man chose with his free will to break this relationship many millennia ago, and this is what is referred to in many cultures’ sacred writings (not just the Bible) as The Fall. Once this Fall occurred, Man no longer had the guidance of his spirits and was left to cope on his own. Ever since that initial separation from a holistic relationship, he has been breaking everything up into ever smaller and smaller chunks, schisms into schisms, and he has separated God/gods (religion) from Nature (science) and this is at the crux of most of the world’s problems today.

I hope that was the question you were leading to ....if not, please correct me.

[john]

Blimey John. I’m sorry if I’ve fallen into a no mans land. On the other hand, maybe I’ve stumbled upon the missing link!

I think my view is very similar to Poncin’s in that I disagree with the view that the further you go back in history, and the closer Man lives to the Earth, the more primitive he is. For me, it is almost the other way round.

My ideas (and experiences of shamanism) are also closer to those of Jaynes, except that I differ slightly in nuance: he believes that prehistoric humans had no consciousness of their own but were almost like robots of the gods in terms of free will and free thinking. This is a basic misunderstanding suffered by most post so-called Enlightenment thinkers. My shamanic work tells me that man was working in tandem, in equal partnership with the ‘gods’ or ‘spirits’. Let me explain further.

I am very much at the beginning of the shamanic path, but even my small experiences, so far, have shown me that the ‘gods’ or the ‘spirits’ are benevolent all-knowing beings. But they are not all all-powerful. In fact, in order to effect any change in human society, they need to work in partnership with those humans who want to work with them - after all, we have free will.

My experiences from this have also brought me to the conclusion that Man chose with his free will to break this relationship many millennia ago, and this is what is referred to in many cultures’ sacred writings (not just the Bible) as The Fall. Once this Fall occurred, Man no longer had the guidance of his spirits and was left to cope on his own. Ever since that initial separation from a holistic relationship, he has been breaking everything up into ever smaller and smaller chunks, schisms into schisms, and he has separated God/gods (religion) from Nature (science) and this is at the crux of most of the world’s problems today.

I hope that was the question you were leading to ....if not, please correct me.

Ishtar -

You're getting warm.......

"except that I differ slightly in nuance: he believes that prehistoric humans had no consciousness of their own but were almost like robots of the gods in terms of free will and free thinking. This is a basic misunderstanding suffered by most post so-called Enlightenment thinkers."

Do not confuse cognition with "consciousness."

In my opinion, Jaynes erred due to his predilection for "consciousness", i.e., self consciousness, which is the trigger point in multiple cultures for loss of innocence and subsequent myth cycles.

The misapprehension is this; cognition allows total functionality and knowledge "within the moment" without any loss of identity. Consciousness does not.

Zen, for example.

Shinto, for another, if you want a latter shamanic worldview.

Poncins correctly identified this partition, as he "passed through the veil" with the Inuit on his Artic journey.

Consciousness, i.e., self consciousness denies this first and absolutely as a precondition for what is referred to as "higher knowledge."

Which is an intellectual abstract with no basis in reality.

A good example of this is Gary Snyder's "Cold Mountain Poems" - translations of the poems of Han-Shan.

(Press 22, Portland, Oregon, second edition, June 1972.)

A final point; the two are not exclusive, although a very common assumption is that they are forever and definitively mutually exclusive.

This is yet another example of the pernicious influence of self conciousness upon the bedrock of our relationships and understandings of "the universe as is", i.e., cognition, which, one way or another, form our identity and our actions.

No wonder we seem to be forever hammered between the Scylla and Charybdis of this (self) conscious enforced duality.

john

[Ishtar]

In my opinion, Jaynes erred due to his predilection for "consciousness", i.e., self consciousness, which is the trigger point in multiple cultures for loss of innocence and subsequent myth cycles.

I think we assume it's self consciousness (in the case of Adam and Eve) t because they immediately set about hiding their bodies with fig leaves. But my interpretation of that story goes back to what I was saying in my last post about the gods/spirits being all-knowing, but not all powerful, and therefore man using his free will to break away from the relationship.

They ate the apple from the Tree of Knowledge after all - surely a metaphor for not trusting the all-knowing spirits/gods/God to guide them (they rejected the advice not to eat the apple), thus severing the relationship and causing The Fall.

I think we assume a lot about prehistoric man when, really, we can only guess at his state of awareness (let's try that word) and there is no evidence at all, as far as I know, to suggest that they were any less intelligent (another word for it) than us. For instance, the Vedics (around 3000 BC) were advanced astronomers who'd worked out the measurements of the Earth as well as the speed of light.

The misapprehension is this; cognition allows total functionality and knowledge "within the moment" without any loss of identity. Consciousness does not.

I think I've lost you a bit here. Could you give me an example of a being who is only conscious and another who has cognition. That might help.

Poncins correctly identified this partition, as he "passed through the veil" with the Inuit on his Artic journey.

"Passing through the veil" is something I do when I undertake a shamanic journey. But I don't change in consciousness or cognition. I'm still the same person. It's just that I can see a wider reality, more dimensions and not just visually, but with every sense - touch, smell, taste etc.

I don't change essentially from who I am, except in one regard. Experienced shamans who spend a lot of time in this state beyond time and space stay incredibly young. Many of them, you couldn't guess their age. They have the looks and physique of a 40 year old but the wisdom of someone who's 100. Maybe this gives us a clue as to why the ancient kings lived for so long? It's better than Botox!

[john]

I think I've lost you a bit here. Could you give me an example of a being who is only conscious and another who has cognition. That might help.

Ishtar -

Pres. G.W. Bush (conscious) and the Dalai Lama (cognitive). And yes, I'm dead serious.

john

postscript -

By the way, I am referring to two levels of acuity, here. There is the shift from (self) consciousness to cognition and, secondly, the shift from cognition to shamanic awareness.

j

[Ishtar]

Or maybe it's the difference between selfish and Self-ish.

[War Arrow]

I think we assume a lot about prehistoric man when, really, we can only guess at his state of awareness (let's try that word) and there is no evidence at all, as far as I know, to suggest that they were any less intelligent (another word for it) than us.

This is an interesting inversion of the more common thread type which starts off on serious debate and descends into arguments. Here we seem to have started off with the latter and descended into debate.
Anyway, whilst not necessarily wishing to weigh in upon this topic, as an aside I strongly agree with what you've said here. I suspect that the average level of thought devoted by any one person on an average day is at least the same then as it is now, except in the present there's so much extraneous information clogging up our heads that most of us might as well be thinking about nothing at all. There's a passage in a Laurens van der Post book (can't remember which one, think it's also quoted in a Dawkins book - again I can't remember which one) in which the author initially assumes a bushman he is walking with has some sort of supernatural insight based on said bushman suddenly claiming that his brother had walked this path about an hour before, had obviously caught some game animal and would presently be waiting for them at such and such a place - as turned out to be the case. It turned out the observation had been made based on the bushman seeing faint footprints which he somehow recognised as being those of his brother plus X amount of extra weight, and said footprints were in such a place as to suggest the man had passed by at a specific time (suggested by his walking in the sun and where the shadow of a nearby bush would have fallen one hour earlier - if you see what I mean). The bushman's observation of such details had become so finely attuned that it seemed like he could not imagine not picking up on these things on an almost unconscious level. As a further aside, I'm very dubious about the idea of telepathy etc, but if there is such a thing I suspect it might somehow relate to this, a subconscious ability to read certain physical signals to a high degree without actually being fully aware of the process.

Anyway... possibly not of direct relevance but there you go. Please continue.

[john]

"Passing through the veil" is something I do when I undertake a shamanic journey. But I don't change in consciousness or cognition. I'm still the same person. It's just that I can see a wider reality, more dimensions and not just visually, but with every sense - touch, smell, taste etc.

Ishtar -

I was not implying that Poncins was passing through the Shamanic veil, nor did he.

What I was speaking to is that Poncins repeatedly - as a matter of fact, it is a major theme throughout his book - relates episodes in which his fundamental cognitive architecture changed, often very uncomfortably with respect to his (self) consciousness. Note that he emphasizes the point that his (self) consciousness does not change UNTIL his cognitive architecture changes as part of being effortlessly Inuit. Until then, his civilised self often rages against the seeming irrationality of the behavior of the people he travels with. Remind you of Zen, perhaps? It does me.

The beauty of his book, to me, is the narrative of a suburban western european who chose to pass through the veil of western self-consciousness into the cognitive universe of the Inuit.

In my opinion he succeeded magnificently, not only in his personal experience, but also in his ability to communicate it.

Hoka hey

john

[Ishtar]

The beauty of his book, to me, is the narrative of a suburban western european who chose to pass through the veil of western self-consciousness into the cognitive universe of the Inuit.

In my opinion he succeeded magnificently, not only in his personal experience, but also in his ability to communicate it.

john

I hadn't actually read the book - only knew about it. But now you've inspired me to order it from Amazon!

I wonder if there's a way to change one's own cognitive architecture without having to live with the Inuit, or any other such community?

I've not had much experience of Zen - apart from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the Seventies, and I can't even remember much about it.

[Ishtar]

[ The bushman's observation of such details had become so finely attuned that it seemed like he could not imagine not picking up on these things on an almost unconscious level. As a further aside, I'm very dubious about the idea of telepathy etc, but if there is such a thing I suspect it might somehow relate to this, a subconscious ability to read certain physical signals to a high degree without actually being fully aware of the process.
.

I agree. There's nothing 'magic' about working in what some people label "the metaphysical". We just call something 'magic' because we haven't yet discovered the natural law for why it exists.

Most of us live in a consciousness that is just an agreement. We have agreed that this is reality, and this is not, and we bought into this agreement at a very early age, practically from birth.

When we learn to work with the so-called metaphysical, all that's happening is that the blinkers are taken off, the agreement is torn up and we begin to see in a wider and deeper way, into hitherto unsuspected dimensions. This is why shamans and other such sages ("wise men") are also called seers (see-ers) - they can see more than anyone else.

And it's not just 'seeing'. All the senses and our abilities are widened in their capacities, including communication skills. On the subject of telepathy, I have experienced two different kinds.

1. The person speaks to you without any sound coming out of their mouth. (My guru speaks to me in this way).

2. Instant transmission - which is bit like a brain download from one being to another. I've experienced this a few times when communicating with the spirits during a journey.

[Digit]

All the Shamanic 'trips' I have seen demonstrated, TV, National Geographic, have been preceeded by some form of drug use, that immediately suggests amongst doubters that it is the drug talking, after all, users of LSD have been know to leap from buildings believing they can fly, a common Shamanic claim.

[Ishtar]

All the Shamanic 'trips' I have seen demonstrated, TV, National Geographic, have been preceeded by some form of drug use, that immediately suggests amongst doubters that it is the drug talking, after all, users of LSD have been know to leap from buildings believing they can fly, a common Shamanic claim.

Some people use psychotropic plants like ayahuasca to open up the "Doors of Perception" as Aldous Huxley termed it. This is particularly prevalent in south America. And of course, we know that the Vedics used Soma. They also use the plant to get in touch with its spirit, which they use as a guide. Of course, this is not possible with LSD as it is not a natural herb but is created in a laboratory, and therefore any spirit its components ever had would be completely mashed.

But most people don't use psychotropics. Most people use the beat of a drum to enter what scientists call 'the alpha state' and what shamans call 'ecstatic trance'. It has been found that this is easily achievable so long as the drum is beaten between 4 and 7 beats a second.

I use the drum myself. I don't take psychotropic herbs. I also sometimes use Sami music (the Sami are the reindeer herders of Scandinavia and have a long shamanic tradition.) and other music that has been especially created to hit a certain harmonic. I also sometimes use mantras. Sound is key - it is the primal cause of creation.

[Digit]

In my case there has never been drums, Gurus, nor natural or artificial stimulants, neither have I had any control.

[john]

The beauty of his book, to me, is the narrative of a suburban western european who chose to pass through the veil of western self-consciousness into the cognitive universe of the Inuit.

In my opinion he succeeded magnificently, not only in his personal experience, but also in his ability to communicate it.

john

I hadn't actually read the book - only knew about it. But now you've inspired me to order it from Amazon!

I wonder if there's a way to change one's own cognitive architecture without having to live with the Inuit, or any other such community?

I've not had much experience of Zen - apart from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the Seventies, and I can't even remember much about it.

Ishtar -

Tell me what you think, once you have read it.

john

[Ishtar]

In my case there has never been drums, Gurus, nor natural or artificial stimulants, neither have I had any control.

You need to have control in such situations otherwise you could run into danger. Also without control, you are powerless - therefore the spirits are of no use to you, and you are of no use to the spirits.

You need to be protected and guided by your spirit guides, so the first thing you need to do is to find them. Shamanic drumming can take you into a space where you can get into the lower world and the upper world. In the lower world, you can find your power animal guide. In the upper world, you can find your tutelary spirit guide who will usually appear in human form.

If you'd like some personal guidance on this, I'd be happy to help via PM.