Two giants of scientific medicine in the 19th century, both French, propounded radically different paradigms for the understanding and treatment of disease, that are still relevant today. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), chemist and microbiologist, put forward the germ theory, according to which diseases are caused by infectious microbes, that impair the functioning and structures of different organ systems. This paradigm is the basis for the use of antibiotics to destroy these invasive microbes and vaccines with low doses of the microbe to challenge the body’s immune defenses and thereby prevent systemic infection.
Pasteur’s contemporary and friend, the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), argued instead for the importance of balance in the body’s internal environment – what he called le milieu intérieur. “The constancy of the interior environment is the condition for a free and independent life.” Bernard thought that the body becomes susceptible to infectious agents only if the internal balance – or homeostasis as we now call it – is disturbed. After all, there are billions of microbes and bacteria inhabiting our guts, our blood, our whole body. Why do we sometimes sicken from them, sometimes not? When a bacterial or viral agent is “going around,” as we say, why do some people sicken and others remain healthy ?
There is an apocryphal story that Pasteur renounced his germ theory on his death-bed, saying that “Bernard is right. The microbe is nothing. The environment is everything.” The renowned 20th century French-American microbiologist René Dubos (1901-1982) agreed with Bernard’s principle: “Most microbial diseases are caused by organisms present in the body of a normal individual. They become the cause of disease when a disturbance arises which upsets the equilibrium of the body.”
Today, Pasteur’s germ theory of disease provides the rationale for the pharmaceutical industry’s billions of dollars research and sales programs for ever more potent anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs, the use of these antibiotics as a feed-additive in the disease-prone, overcrowded environments of industrial farming – with the predictable consequence that bacterial evolution is out-stripping the discovery rate of effective antidotes.
The Bernard/Dubos theory that health and resilience is a function of homeostatic balance in the internal environment is reflected in the growing influence of the ancient medical systems of India and China, as well as homeopathy and Dr. Andrew Weil’s integrative medicine. In all these approaches, the maintenance of health and prevention of disease involves conscious attention given to factors of life-style, environment, nutrition, exercise and recreation, as well as psychological well-being and spiritual practice.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Divination, altered states and psychedelics
There is a long history of different methods of inducing altered, heightened or trance-like states for divination. The word “trance” derives from Latin transire, “to pass or move across,” and is related to transit, transition and transient. All altered states involve a transition or disconnect of some kind from the waking state of ordinary life; then a period of time in which the psychological functioning of mind, emotion and perception are different; and then a return to the ordinary waking state for integration and application. Trances and altered states follow the pattern of a journey: departure, travelling through (interior) space, and then returning home. In the classic shamanic journey traditions, rhythmic drumming, rattling or chanting is used to facilitate the entering into, travelling through and returning from the spirit world – while the physical body lies prone on the ground. Research in consciousness and brain function suggest that something called auditory driving or entrainment takes place: the rhythmic beat of the drum brings the rhythms of breathing, of the heart, and of the brain into resonance or coherence with each other.
The other main method for inducing the divinatory journey trance in shamanic traditions worldwide involves psychoactive, visionary or entheogenic plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca in South America, iboga in Equatorial Africa, and the psilocybe mushroom (teonanácatl) in Meso-America. Among the Mazatecs in the highlands of Mexico there is the rare use of a infusions of a leafy plant called the “sage of the diviners” (salvia divinorum). It appears that the choice of which method is used is partly a function of ecology: in the Northern hemisphere areas of Asia (where the word shaman originates), Europe and America the use of rhythmic drumming is more common; whereas in the tropical regions, where plant diversity is greater, plants, roots and fungi have been found that profoundly alter consciousness.
The choice of method may be a function of history and the socio-political context: Michael Harner has suggested that in Central Europe the rhythmic drumming journey method (still used by the Sami in Northern Scandinavia) was, during the Middle Ages, abandoned by shamanic practitioners (known as “witches”), to avoid detection by the enforcers of the Inquisition. Instead, the silent and therefore safer use of plants was adopted for shamanic journey work, giving rise to the folklore of witches’ ointments and brews. Unfortunately, the psychoactive plants available in the Central European temperate zone are from the solanaceous nightshade family (datura, henbane, belladonna), in which the dissociative factor is particularly strong, making this method less reliable and more complicated.
It should be said too that in classic entheogenic plant divination ceremonies the ingestion of plant concoctions or preparations is usually combined with the rhythm method: the chants and songs of the mushroom curanderas and the ayahuasqueros have a soft, but persistent rhythm, and may be accompanied by the rattling of branches of dried leaves; and the ceremonies with peyote and iboga involve prolonged and vigorous drumming as well. The plant substances provide an amplification of perception, and the rhythmic auditory entrainment provides the sense of traveling through (inner) space. The Asiatic shamans say the beat of the drum is the hoof-beat of the spirit horse they are riding on their journey.
In modern societies, the successors to the shamans of indigenous peoples are the psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who seek to unravel the tangled skeins of dysfunctional mind-body patterns and integrate them into a more harmonious, less painful wholeness. The psychiatric anamnesis (“un-forgetting”) is exactly analogous to the shamanic soul retrieval, and the divinatory re-membering. The broken connections of one’s past history to one’s present condition are recalled and recollected, and can then be integrated and made whole again. Painful, traumatic or confusing experiences tend to freeze or distort the normal processing of our experience.
Though the use of entheogenic plants, fungi or psychedelic substances can amplify perception of the core question-and-answer process in divination or psychotherapy, it is not essential to it; and it does have some drawbacks, chief among them being that intensified awareness of somatic responses to the drug can make concentration more difficult, especially for an inexperienced person. Even the experienced shamans in South America, for example, will use low intensity psychoactive substances (such as tobacco) or dosages when they are dealing with particularly difficult diagnostic questions. When psychoactive drugs are used to amplify the psychotherapy process, the use of low-intensity graduated dosages, the “psycholytic” approach, is preferable to the high-dose “psychedelic” paradigm – with the probable exception of the treatment of alcohol or drug addiction, where the high dose intense experience may provide longer-lasting relief from relentless cravings and withdrawal sensations.
For contemporary seekers in the psychedelic sub-culture, the exclusive reliance on drugs when doing inner exploration (i.e. “tripping”) has the further liability of confusing the answers one receives in response to divination questions with a pharmacological drug effect. “I took this drug (or plant, or mushroom) and had this vision” is a typical account, which tends to overlook or minimize the crucial role of set (intention, question) and setting (context) in determining the contents of one’s experience.
Besides the two methods of divination we have discussed so far – the use of a non-rational symbol system and entering into an altered state of consciousness – there are some other methods that have been used traditionally to enhance perception of non-ordinary or hidden aspects of the past, present or future. Gazing into a crystal ball, also called scrying, is one of the traditional practices of focusing clairvoyant perception. Erroneously assumed to be limited to prophesying the future, the practice and the term refers to perception of normally hidden aspects of reality, past, present or future, i.e. divination.
Carlos Castaneda, in his writings on the teachings of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, lists a number of other practices to develop what he calls seeing (i.e. non-ordinary, clairvoyant perception). He stated that different individuals on the sorcerer’s path of learning to enhance their seeing ability might specialize in one or another of these natural phenomena for their concentrated gazing: fog or mist, clouds, smoke, rain, rock faces, stars, fire or streaming water. Gazing into fire is also the divinatory perception practice in Native American Church peyote ceremonies, which are held in a teepee, sitting around a fire. And gazing into streams or pools of water was a clairvoyance practice widespread in the classical period.
We can see that in all the different methods of divination, whether they involve an intuitive symbol system or an induced state of amplified perception, the core of the process is the posing of a question and the receiving of an answer. The questioner or seeker is the personal ego-self, in search of healing or guidance. The diagnostic or visionary insight is received from a source (wise self, intuition) or a being (deity, power animal, spirit guide) with access to higher, spiritual perspectives or hidden forms of knowledge. This source, is either mediated or channeled by another human being, called the diviner (or medium, psychic, teacher, sage); or it is accessed directly through a structured, intuitive inquiry process. In all cases a framework of appropriate set and setting, or intention and context, is essential to the effectiveness and usefulness of the outcome.
The other main method for inducing the divinatory journey trance in shamanic traditions worldwide involves psychoactive, visionary or entheogenic plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca in South America, iboga in Equatorial Africa, and the psilocybe mushroom (teonanácatl) in Meso-America. Among the Mazatecs in the highlands of Mexico there is the rare use of a infusions of a leafy plant called the “sage of the diviners” (salvia divinorum). It appears that the choice of which method is used is partly a function of ecology: in the Northern hemisphere areas of Asia (where the word shaman originates), Europe and America the use of rhythmic drumming is more common; whereas in the tropical regions, where plant diversity is greater, plants, roots and fungi have been found that profoundly alter consciousness.
The choice of method may be a function of history and the socio-political context: Michael Harner has suggested that in Central Europe the rhythmic drumming journey method (still used by the Sami in Northern Scandinavia) was, during the Middle Ages, abandoned by shamanic practitioners (known as “witches”), to avoid detection by the enforcers of the Inquisition. Instead, the silent and therefore safer use of plants was adopted for shamanic journey work, giving rise to the folklore of witches’ ointments and brews. Unfortunately, the psychoactive plants available in the Central European temperate zone are from the solanaceous nightshade family (datura, henbane, belladonna), in which the dissociative factor is particularly strong, making this method less reliable and more complicated.
It should be said too that in classic entheogenic plant divination ceremonies the ingestion of plant concoctions or preparations is usually combined with the rhythm method: the chants and songs of the mushroom curanderas and the ayahuasqueros have a soft, but persistent rhythm, and may be accompanied by the rattling of branches of dried leaves; and the ceremonies with peyote and iboga involve prolonged and vigorous drumming as well. The plant substances provide an amplification of perception, and the rhythmic auditory entrainment provides the sense of traveling through (inner) space. The Asiatic shamans say the beat of the drum is the hoof-beat of the spirit horse they are riding on their journey.
In modern societies, the successors to the shamans of indigenous peoples are the psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who seek to unravel the tangled skeins of dysfunctional mind-body patterns and integrate them into a more harmonious, less painful wholeness. The psychiatric anamnesis (“un-forgetting”) is exactly analogous to the shamanic soul retrieval, and the divinatory re-membering. The broken connections of one’s past history to one’s present condition are recalled and recollected, and can then be integrated and made whole again. Painful, traumatic or confusing experiences tend to freeze or distort the normal processing of our experience.
Though the use of entheogenic plants, fungi or psychedelic substances can amplify perception of the core question-and-answer process in divination or psychotherapy, it is not essential to it; and it does have some drawbacks, chief among them being that intensified awareness of somatic responses to the drug can make concentration more difficult, especially for an inexperienced person. Even the experienced shamans in South America, for example, will use low intensity psychoactive substances (such as tobacco) or dosages when they are dealing with particularly difficult diagnostic questions. When psychoactive drugs are used to amplify the psychotherapy process, the use of low-intensity graduated dosages, the “psycholytic” approach, is preferable to the high-dose “psychedelic” paradigm – with the probable exception of the treatment of alcohol or drug addiction, where the high dose intense experience may provide longer-lasting relief from relentless cravings and withdrawal sensations.
For contemporary seekers in the psychedelic sub-culture, the exclusive reliance on drugs when doing inner exploration (i.e. “tripping”) has the further liability of confusing the answers one receives in response to divination questions with a pharmacological drug effect. “I took this drug (or plant, or mushroom) and had this vision” is a typical account, which tends to overlook or minimize the crucial role of set (intention, question) and setting (context) in determining the contents of one’s experience.
Besides the two methods of divination we have discussed so far – the use of a non-rational symbol system and entering into an altered state of consciousness – there are some other methods that have been used traditionally to enhance perception of non-ordinary or hidden aspects of the past, present or future. Gazing into a crystal ball, also called scrying, is one of the traditional practices of focusing clairvoyant perception. Erroneously assumed to be limited to prophesying the future, the practice and the term refers to perception of normally hidden aspects of reality, past, present or future, i.e. divination.
Carlos Castaneda, in his writings on the teachings of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, lists a number of other practices to develop what he calls seeing (i.e. non-ordinary, clairvoyant perception). He stated that different individuals on the sorcerer’s path of learning to enhance their seeing ability might specialize in one or another of these natural phenomena for their concentrated gazing: fog or mist, clouds, smoke, rain, rock faces, stars, fire or streaming water. Gazing into fire is also the divinatory perception practice in Native American Church peyote ceremonies, which are held in a teepee, sitting around a fire. And gazing into streams or pools of water was a clairvoyance practice widespread in the classical period.
We can see that in all the different methods of divination, whether they involve an intuitive symbol system or an induced state of amplified perception, the core of the process is the posing of a question and the receiving of an answer. The questioner or seeker is the personal ego-self, in search of healing or guidance. The diagnostic or visionary insight is received from a source (wise self, intuition) or a being (deity, power animal, spirit guide) with access to higher, spiritual perspectives or hidden forms of knowledge. This source, is either mediated or channeled by another human being, called the diviner (or medium, psychic, teacher, sage); or it is accessed directly through a structured, intuitive inquiry process. In all cases a framework of appropriate set and setting, or intention and context, is essential to the effectiveness and usefulness of the outcome.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
What is Divination?
Essentially, divination is a structured inquiry to obtain knowledge about past, present or future, either from sources within oneself, or from another individual, sometimes called a diviner or psychic. In traditional cultures and esoteric traditions as well as the contemporary “New Age” sub-culture divination is usually practiced in conjunction with a symbolic system such as the ancient Chinese I Ching, the Nordic Runes, astrology, the medieval Tarot cards, or the reading of patterns of stones or bones or small sea-shells, or gazing into a crystal ball. In Graeco-Roman times the professional diviners, called augurs, interpreted the patterns made by flying flocks of birds, or a slaughtered animal’s entrails.
We may regard such systems as divination tools or accessories, through which the mind of the questioner-seeker and the diviner are taken out of the usual cognitive framework of rationality and causality. In the business world, it is often said that in order to solve problems or devise new approaches, we have to “think outside the box.” A problem always and only exists as a problem within the usual framework of our rational thinking. So the non-rational divination symbol systems serve to shift our perspective, our point of view, out of the box. We can see that at the core of all these methods there is the process of asking a question and obtaining an answer.
In addition to the use of these formalized symbolic accessories, there is another and more direct way to access inner spiritual knowledge, and that is to go into a heightened or expanded state of consciousness. In an expanded state of consciousness, such as a shamanic drumming journey, or an experience with a psychoactive plant substance, or a concentrative meditation, we transcend the time-space framework of ordinary reality, and can ask our questions from the spirit world, or the divine world (hence the term ”divination”). Thus the essential process in divination involves a questioner or seeker (also sometimes called “querent”) asking questions and the diviner obtaining answers, by non-rational, non-analytical means. In the inner traditions of shamanism and alchemy the querent and the diviner are one and the same person, accessories are dispensed with, and one taps into direct intuitive knowing.
The importance of being clear and explicit about one’s question cannot be over emphasized. If we approach a wise person or teacher or counselor we can hardly expect to learn from them unless we are clear about what we are asking. Similarly, in any kind of divination process, whether using a symbolic template, or going into an expanded state of consciousness, the value and significance of the information or guidance received is very much a function of the manner of the question. Asking a question is a basic gesture of receptivity. If we are in a conversation and I ask you a question, any question, even a mundane one (such as “What time is it?”) I am then receptive to what you are going to say next. If I haven’t asked the question, I may or may not be receptive to what you are going to say, because my attention may be elsewhere occupied. So, when in a spiritual divination, I ask a question, addressing my inner wise self, or my intuition, or my shamanic power animal, or my ancestral spirit guide (however I conceive of this inner wisdom source), the next thought, or image, or feeling or memory that comes to mind is the response, from that wise source.
The simplest and most direct expression of this self-divination process is the phrase “I asked myself…” If I’m pondering or reflecting on any kind of issue, whether in relation to work, or interpersonal relations, or creative expression, the use of that phrase implies the belief that there is a part of me that is wiser and more knowledgeable than I am personally, at this time. Otherwise, why would I be asking the question? So, I would like to suggest to the reader, that from time to time as you read the thoughts I am presenting, you stop and ask yourself whether what is being said “rings true” or, in other words, is confirmed by your own inner wise self.
This process, divining by simply asking your inner wise or guiding self, is also involved in the practice known as dream incubation. This is one of the best ways to increase the meaningfulness of one’s dreams: before you go to sleep you ask your inner guide, your dream-weaver, for help in solving a particular issue. Whatever dreams may come can then be much more readily interpreted as symbolic answers to the question you posed.
Divination and the scientific method
Modern individuals, trained in a scientific outlook, tend to shy away from divinatory practices, fearing to give any credence to what they consider ignorant and irrational superstition. However, to say that divinatory practices are non-rational is not to say they are irrational, or based on superstition. It has been said that the divination systems, such as the Tarot or the I Ching, are simply ways of structuring intuitive knowledge. Intuition plays a significant role in the empirical research methods of science. It is intuition from which the scientist obtains the hypotheses and theories, which are then tested by observation and experiment. Albert Einstein was famous for describing the divinatory “thought-experiments” (as he called them) by means of which he arrived at his theory of relativity: he said he imagined himself traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light, and asked himself what would happen to the dimensions of space.
My friend, the pioneering English biologist Rupert Sheldrake, author of A New Theory of Life and other works, has pointed out that a scientific experiment is essentially a sophisticated form of divination – the asking of a question. In a typical experiment, whether in the natural or social sciences, all the known variables but one are held constant, so that the observations that are made (the dependent variable) can be reasonably attributed to the one parameter that is allowed to vary in a controlled fashion (the independent variable). An experiment is a divination situation in which we are asking a question of Nature, and testing our understanding of the underlying laws and forces (called “theory”).
Divination, in other words, is an empirical procedure. Intuitive knowledge is subjected to testing and verification by experience. Just as an experiment gives us results that are then used to confirm or disconfirm our theory or hypothesis, so the knowledge obtained by intuitive divinations are also subject to verification or confirmation. In the realms or medicine and healing, the divination to discover the cause of the illness is the process of diagnosis; and the confirmation of the diagnosis is in the healing or cure of the illness. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is the old saying, which should perhaps be more accurately stated as “the proof of the rightness of the recipe for the pudding is in the eating.”
At the same time, the fact that some insight or point of view comes from an intuitive source does not guarantee its correctness or appropriateness. Intuitive perceptions can be mistaken, just like ordinary sense perception. I may see a man walking down the street, and after a while, as the distance between us gets smaller, I realize the figure is really a woman – I correct my perception by further observation. My teacher Russell Schofield used to say that when he obtained an intuitive perception about something that seemed unusual, he would ask again and again, sometimes nine or ten times, to determine if the answer he was getting to his question was consistent. So in any divination, if the answers we get are unclear or unbelievable, we can ask repeatedly for further confirmation or clarification.
(extracted from Alchemical Divination, 2009)
We may regard such systems as divination tools or accessories, through which the mind of the questioner-seeker and the diviner are taken out of the usual cognitive framework of rationality and causality. In the business world, it is often said that in order to solve problems or devise new approaches, we have to “think outside the box.” A problem always and only exists as a problem within the usual framework of our rational thinking. So the non-rational divination symbol systems serve to shift our perspective, our point of view, out of the box. We can see that at the core of all these methods there is the process of asking a question and obtaining an answer.
In addition to the use of these formalized symbolic accessories, there is another and more direct way to access inner spiritual knowledge, and that is to go into a heightened or expanded state of consciousness. In an expanded state of consciousness, such as a shamanic drumming journey, or an experience with a psychoactive plant substance, or a concentrative meditation, we transcend the time-space framework of ordinary reality, and can ask our questions from the spirit world, or the divine world (hence the term ”divination”). Thus the essential process in divination involves a questioner or seeker (also sometimes called “querent”) asking questions and the diviner obtaining answers, by non-rational, non-analytical means. In the inner traditions of shamanism and alchemy the querent and the diviner are one and the same person, accessories are dispensed with, and one taps into direct intuitive knowing.
The importance of being clear and explicit about one’s question cannot be over emphasized. If we approach a wise person or teacher or counselor we can hardly expect to learn from them unless we are clear about what we are asking. Similarly, in any kind of divination process, whether using a symbolic template, or going into an expanded state of consciousness, the value and significance of the information or guidance received is very much a function of the manner of the question. Asking a question is a basic gesture of receptivity. If we are in a conversation and I ask you a question, any question, even a mundane one (such as “What time is it?”) I am then receptive to what you are going to say next. If I haven’t asked the question, I may or may not be receptive to what you are going to say, because my attention may be elsewhere occupied. So, when in a spiritual divination, I ask a question, addressing my inner wise self, or my intuition, or my shamanic power animal, or my ancestral spirit guide (however I conceive of this inner wisdom source), the next thought, or image, or feeling or memory that comes to mind is the response, from that wise source.
The simplest and most direct expression of this self-divination process is the phrase “I asked myself…” If I’m pondering or reflecting on any kind of issue, whether in relation to work, or interpersonal relations, or creative expression, the use of that phrase implies the belief that there is a part of me that is wiser and more knowledgeable than I am personally, at this time. Otherwise, why would I be asking the question? So, I would like to suggest to the reader, that from time to time as you read the thoughts I am presenting, you stop and ask yourself whether what is being said “rings true” or, in other words, is confirmed by your own inner wise self.
This process, divining by simply asking your inner wise or guiding self, is also involved in the practice known as dream incubation. This is one of the best ways to increase the meaningfulness of one’s dreams: before you go to sleep you ask your inner guide, your dream-weaver, for help in solving a particular issue. Whatever dreams may come can then be much more readily interpreted as symbolic answers to the question you posed.
Divination and the scientific method
Modern individuals, trained in a scientific outlook, tend to shy away from divinatory practices, fearing to give any credence to what they consider ignorant and irrational superstition. However, to say that divinatory practices are non-rational is not to say they are irrational, or based on superstition. It has been said that the divination systems, such as the Tarot or the I Ching, are simply ways of structuring intuitive knowledge. Intuition plays a significant role in the empirical research methods of science. It is intuition from which the scientist obtains the hypotheses and theories, which are then tested by observation and experiment. Albert Einstein was famous for describing the divinatory “thought-experiments” (as he called them) by means of which he arrived at his theory of relativity: he said he imagined himself traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light, and asked himself what would happen to the dimensions of space.
My friend, the pioneering English biologist Rupert Sheldrake, author of A New Theory of Life and other works, has pointed out that a scientific experiment is essentially a sophisticated form of divination – the asking of a question. In a typical experiment, whether in the natural or social sciences, all the known variables but one are held constant, so that the observations that are made (the dependent variable) can be reasonably attributed to the one parameter that is allowed to vary in a controlled fashion (the independent variable). An experiment is a divination situation in which we are asking a question of Nature, and testing our understanding of the underlying laws and forces (called “theory”).
Divination, in other words, is an empirical procedure. Intuitive knowledge is subjected to testing and verification by experience. Just as an experiment gives us results that are then used to confirm or disconfirm our theory or hypothesis, so the knowledge obtained by intuitive divinations are also subject to verification or confirmation. In the realms or medicine and healing, the divination to discover the cause of the illness is the process of diagnosis; and the confirmation of the diagnosis is in the healing or cure of the illness. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is the old saying, which should perhaps be more accurately stated as “the proof of the rightness of the recipe for the pudding is in the eating.”
At the same time, the fact that some insight or point of view comes from an intuitive source does not guarantee its correctness or appropriateness. Intuitive perceptions can be mistaken, just like ordinary sense perception. I may see a man walking down the street, and after a while, as the distance between us gets smaller, I realize the figure is really a woman – I correct my perception by further observation. My teacher Russell Schofield used to say that when he obtained an intuitive perception about something that seemed unusual, he would ask again and again, sometimes nine or ten times, to determine if the answer he was getting to his question was consistent. So in any divination, if the answers we get are unclear or unbelievable, we can ask repeatedly for further confirmation or clarification.
(extracted from Alchemical Divination, 2009)
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Mythic Dimensions of Domination and War
I wish now to examine some of these more esoteric as well as mythic perspectives on the roots of war and domination. Other writers interested in the problems of war in society have investigated its mythic dimensions. A notable recent example is the Jungian psychotherapist and scholar James Hillman, now in his 80s, who recently published A Terrible Love of War (Hillman, 2005). Hillman says that war is normal, not just usual. It is inhuman in the same way the gods, including Mars and Venus, are inhuman. Venusian qualities of beauty and love belong to war as do the Martian qualities of violence and aggression. Hillman concludes that war is inherent in the existence of states, and identifies the exclusive worldviews of the monotheistic religions as a major contributing factor.
In my own research, have been led to a view that recognizes at least two (or possibly more) kinds of archetypal forces or spirits guiding and inspiring the lives of individuals and societies. One group are those who support the peaceful, creative unfolding of life’s evolutionary potentials and the preservation of the planet’s life-support system. The pursuit of knowledge and the development of technology is integrated with respect for all living beings, and reverence for the spiritual reality of the universe. The other kind are those who have chosen the adaptation of accumulating and taking from others, using violence and war, and can thus be aptly described as counter-evolutionary. I would like now to examine some mythic and legendary prototypes of this kind of dualistic heritage.
World mythology is filled with stories of rival brother gods, such as the Egyptian Osiris and Seth, the Sumerian Enlil and Enki, or the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. Some myths tell of feuding groups of deities, such as the Aesir and Vanir of the Norse people, and of battles between “gods” and “titans” or “monsters,” found on planet Earth in earlier times. In both Hindu and Buddhist mythology, we have the conception of devas and asuras, – the former beneficent light-beings, the latter violent and destructive dominators. Both are supra-human spirits, inhabiting their own worlds, which nevertheless intersect and interact in consciousness with the world of humans, in complex ways.
The persistent legend of the high civilization of Atlantis, which is said to have collapsed in a catastrophic flood, about ten thousand years before our time, also has this theme of a struggle between highly advanced beings, some creative and constructive and another group on imperialistic and exploitative path. In our time, such myths have been given new formulations in the literature on UFOs and ETs, where the rival “gods” of ancient times are technologically highly advanced beings from extra-terrestrial civilizations who have been intervening in human affairs for a very long time.
Buddhist Myths of Devas and Asuras
Buddhism is basically a non-theistic religion, in which the essential moral teachings involve not so much an appeal to a book of rules handed down by an omnipotent creator and his priesthood, but rather the exhortation to practice meditative yogic methods designed to raise consciousness. Moral and peaceful behavior would then follow naturally from the inner peace and equanimity of a person who is in touch with their true essential nature, their “Buddha nature.” Unconsciousness or ignorance of your own spiritual essence, along with craving and hatred, are the “three poisons” at the core of all human life. They are symbolized by the three inter-linked animals at the hub of the great ever-cycling Wheel of Birth and Death.
Buddhism did adopt and adapt some of the key cosmological myths of their Vedic and Hindu religious ancestors, including the conceptions of devas and asuras. Devas are the “shining ones,” light spirits, analogous to “angels” in Western religion. They guide and inspire humans in their artistic and creative endeavors, and remind them of their spiritual essence. Asuras are violent and envious demons, armed with weapons, focused on materiality, who are forever competing with the devas and attacking all forms of life in general. Whereas in the Indian Vedic (and related Persian Zoroastrian) mythology the focus is on the competition and struggle between the light and dark, good and evil, deities, Buddhism developed a more sophisticated analysis expressed in the symbolism of the six worlds of existence (samsara), linked by the twelve-fold chain of interdependent causation.
The iconic image of the Wheel of Samsara, which could also be called the Wheel of Earthly Existence, portrayed in numerous temple paintings throughout the Buddhist world, is held in the grip of a gigantic demon, representing the ceaseless flow of time and entropy. At the hub of the churning wheel are the three “poisons” (unconsciousness, craving and hatred) and around the outside rim of the wheel are the twelve links of the chain of interdependent mutual causation. The six worlds of possible existence are arrayed around the wheel, turning ceaselessly in cycles of birth, death and rebirth. These worlds can be regarded as realms of consciousness and reality inhabited by various beings, both human and non-human.
One of the six realms is specifically designated the human realm, and is considered the most favorable realm for humans –because it has the greatest freedom of choice and therefore possibilities for liberation. Human beings may be incarnated into any of the six realms, in any given life-time, according to their karma; and within one life-time, humans can find themselves, temporarily, in the state of consciousness associated with that realm (Metzner, 1996). Our spiritual growth challenge then is to recognize and identify the world we are inhabiting by raising consciousness; and thus we learn to gradually free ourselves from the thrall of the three poisons.
One of the six worlds is the world of animals: this does not mean that humans may reincarnate as animals, as some simplistic beliefs hold. It means rather that we, as human beings, are essentially living in the consciousness of the animal realm, along with the animal spirits, when we are focused exclusively on instinctual mammalian survival programs. There is also a realm of pretas – “hungry ghosts,” with huge bellies and thin throats, forever craving and forever frustrated. This could be considered an apt symbolic portrayal of the realm of humans fixated in addictive and obsessive states of consciousness.
The realm inhabited by the devas is an angelic world of great natural and aesthetic beauty, peace and harmony. Heaven, in the Buddhist conception, is not so much a realm we may enter into after we die. It is, like all states, a temporary state into which we come by good karma and spiritual disciplines. We are in the deva realm when we are in heavenly, blissful states of consciousness. There is a hell world, opposite on the Wheel of Samsara, which is marked by extreme pain, suffering and victimization. “Hell” may be a purely subjective state of painful illness or madness; or it may also be experienced in an objective environment of war, torture and violence. In Buddhism, heaven is not a promised after-life reward and hell is not a threatened punishment – both are impermanent states of consciousness. We are in these realms for varying lengths of time, or perhaps sometimes for an entire lifetime, in accordance with the law of choices and consequences (karma).
In the iconic images of the Wheel of Life found in Tibetan Buddhism, the deva deities are sitting peacefully in a garden setting, an ecological paradise, full of flowering plants, peaceful lakes and musicians playing. The asura realm is located next to the deva realm on the Wheel, and the asuras are shown as horse-mounted, armed warriors, brandishing their weapons and howling with frightful noise. In an image eerily symbolic of our present ecological catastrophe, where industrial mega-corporations backed by military gangs are devouring the rainforests and other biosphere resources, the asuras are cutting down the fruit-laden giant tree that the deva gods are contemplating and enjoying. Opposite the asura realm on the Wheel of Samsara, lies the realm of the addicted and frustrated pretas. This could also be regarded as a symbolic portrayal of the global situation, where massively armed and violent gangs amass huge illicit profits from trafficking in drugs which hold millions in addictive bondage. The asuras correspond most closely to what I (and other writers) have called dominator or counter-evolutionary, or “dark force” spirits.
In both the Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, the devas, the spirits of peace and sustainability, and asuras, the spirits of violence and domination, are present in human civilization and history in varying proportions. According to Indian traditions, there are cosmic cyclical ages, the yugas, extending over tens of thousands of years, in which either the peaceful devas or the violent asuras are more prominent. Modern researchers like John Major Jenkins, in his work Galactic Alignment (Jenkins, 2002), relate these ages to the 26,000 year cycle of precession. All sources, agree that the present age, the Kali yuga, is the climax or low point, of an age ruled by the war-like asuras. The fact that for most of recorded history, at least in the past 6,000 years, since the Kurgan intrusions into Old Europe, Western societies have been ruled by warrior-chiefs, autocratic monarchs and emperors, and in our time, military juntas, this conception has an undeniable plausibility.
As far as I know, the Buddhists, while recognizing the transience of all rulers and empires, do not have a cosmic time-table for the change-over from one age to another. They would say that, both for the individual and for societies, the balance of peaceful and violent forces is a matter of the choices made by human individuals, and the groups to which they belong. Undoubtedly, the certain knowledge of the transience of all phenomena, including political ones, would help one to maintain equanimity and dignity even in the face of the most outrageous violations of human decency and morality, and to continue to counter the virulent depredations of the asuras and their human incarnations. Whether the defense against armed predatory plunder will inevitably lead to continuing cycles of violence and vengeance, or whether war can be countered and contained by active, yet non-violent struggle for peace and sustainability, can be seen to be the central challenge of our planetary civilization.
The Legend of the Downfall of the Civilization of Atlantis
A vast literature exists, ranging from the scientific and scholarly, to the speculative and mediumistic, telling of a lost civilization on an island in the Atlantic, that was so completely destroyed, with all its records, in a cataclysmic flood, that it has been lost to historical memory. As a proto-historical legend, the story of Atlantis was first recorded in the 5th century BCE by the Athenian Plato, the god-father of Western philosophy, who said he heard the story from ancient Egyptian sources. In the 20th century, the Atlantis legend was revived in a major way by the gifted American psychic Edgar Cayce, who left a multitude of paranormally channeled readings concerning Atlantis (Hope, 1991).
According to Cayce and other psychic pre-historians, Atlantis was a civilization with a naval empire, whose ships dominated the globe, engaging (in its later stages) in plundering warfare with various other societies, including the Athenian, as recorded by Plato. The empire was ruled by a theocratic priesthood of humans with highly advanced psychic abilities, vastly extended life-spans and extraordinarily advanced technology of genetic engineering. Later myths told of these beings as “gods,” because of their apparent “immortality” (actually supra-human longevity), and seemingly supernatural capacities. Esoteric mystical schools of modern times call them high-level initiates, adept at working with the energies of multiple dimensions of consciousness and reality. Atlantean scientists apparently mastered technologies based on crystals and sound vibrations, both for building pyramids and military weaponry.
According to Edgar Cayce, some of these high-level adepts had chosen a “dark force” path of sorcery and exploitation, using their super-human abilities to create animal-human hybrids for the purposes of work or sexual slavery. Others in the ruling priesthood adhered to a mystical path of oneness and respect for all beings, and attempted to counteract or ameliorate the depredations of the dark force dominators. In the modern channelled ET literature, it is often proposed that the Atlanteans actually came to Earth from another star-system (Sirius being a favored candidate), for the purpose of establishing colonies on Earth.
In accounting for the downfall of this powerful global empire, there are several versions: one is a classic “punishment of the wicked” scenario, as in the Biblical legend of the Great Flood, in which the karmic consequences of the dark ones’ activities came back to destroy them. Other writers point to the physical and geographical evidence that there actually were planet-wide catastrophes around the 11th and 10th millennium BCE – and suggest that the Atlantean technocrats were blind to the consequences of their physical interventions on the Earth’s energy-systems. In either case, so the story goes, those of the ruling elites who could see the catastrophe coming, years ahead of time, sent out expeditions to establish settlements in different parts of the world, where the indigenous people were taught the rudiments of the Atlantean sacred science and structures (for example, pyramids) containing coded memories were built. This activity is then said to have led to the beginnings of the ancient Egyptian, Meso-American, Northwestern European and perhaps other civilizations.
One psychic pre-historian that I came to know, stated that a number of souls of the Atlantean scientists who had been involved in the hyper-development of the physical, biological, and psychical technologies of that empire, were now reincarnated, again as visionary scientists and engineers, to try to prevent the same or similar misuses occurring again. Undeniably, there are eerie parallels between the putative pre-collapse situation of Atlantis, and our own time, where the dominator forces of techno-industrial exploitation are pushing the Earth’s ecosystems to the brink of collapse, while scientific and environmental groups and their allies, struggle to build and maintain sustainable communities at a local and regional scale.
The Wars of the Gods in Norse Mythology
In the religious mythology of the Nordic-Germanic people, there is fascinating evidence for the interaction between the Indo-European Kurgan invaders and the Old European cultures. We find this in the myths of the prolonged warfare and eventual peacemaking between two families of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. I have discussed these myths in my book The Well of Remembrance, basing my interpretation on the archaeo-mythological work of Marija Gimbutas (Metzner, 1994). She has proposed, on the basis of the archaeological record, that the invasions of the Indo-European nomadic herder tribes called Kurgans into the agrarian matricentric cultures of Old Europe, starting in the 5th millennium BCE, led to initial warfare, and eventual hybridizing of cultures and religious worldviews. In this kind of approach to the interpretation of mythology, ancient stories and epics are seen as recordings of even more ancient oral traditions concerning actual events in pre-historic times, often overlaid with fantastic elaborations. Such a view of mythology is consistent with that of Robert Graves, Mircea Eliade, and Zachariah Sitchin, whose work on Sumerian myth we shall discuss further below.
According to the Nordic-Germanic mythic history, there were two families or clans of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. The Aesir were primarily sky- and warrior-gods, including Odin, Tiwaz and Thor the Thunderer. The Vanir, including Nerthus, Njörd and the brother-sister pair Freyr and Freyja, were primarily earth- and nature-deities, associated with prosperity and peace. The two groups of gods were portrayed in the myths as warring rivals, although there are also stories of peacemaking attempts and cooperation. Presumably these myths reflect the conflict, drawn out over many centuries, between the invading Indo-Germanic tribes from the East and the aboriginal populations of Old Europe, who resisted the attempted assimilation. It seems probable that after the Indo-Germanic people had settled in Central Europe, the Vanir continued to be the gods of the farmers and fishermen, while the Aesir were worshipped by the military aristocracy, who had appropriated the land and established their domination.
In the Eddas, the mythic poems that are our prime source for the Nordic myths, the aesir envied and craved the wealth of the vanir, and “thus war came into the world.” The archaeological evidence from the cultures of Old Europe shows that it was in fact the patriarchal Kurgan or Aryan invaders, with their sky- and battle-gods and gleaming weapons, who brought warfare to the peaceful agrarian societies, with their deities of fertility, abundance and peace. The new religion that the descendants of both peoples developed was a hybrid of Eurasian shamanic warrior cults and the earth-based fertility magic of the indigenous inhabitants.
For the migrating Indo-Germanic people, the lands to the West were fabulously rich and fertile lands, where they could graze their herds and learn farming from the indigenous people. Both peoples had developed the arts of extracting metals such as copper, bronze, gold and iron from the earth, and gold was highly prized for its malleability in shaping shining ornaments. The wealth, both agrarian and mineral, of the peaceful cultures of Old Europe, personified in the figure of Gullveig, the "Golden Goddess", undoubtedly did arouse the greed and envy of the rapacious invaders. Gold seems to have been an obsession for the Indo-Europeans wherever they went, including the Spaniards and Portuguese who invaded the Americas – an obsession that has triggered more than one blood-drenched military adventure.
The characterization of the aesir, as attacking and invading the lands of the vanir out of rapacious envy for their wealth, parallels the mythic imagery of the asuras as “envious titans” attacking the fruit-laden tree of abundant life that the devas are peacefully enjoying. The names aesir and asuras may actually have same linguistic root, according to some scholars The hell world, like the heaven world, is impermanent.. The idea that it is the “gods” who bring war into the world, and drag their human followers into their competitive struggle, is one we will encounter again in Zachariah Sitchin’s work on Sumerian mythology.
In my own research, have been led to a view that recognizes at least two (or possibly more) kinds of archetypal forces or spirits guiding and inspiring the lives of individuals and societies. One group are those who support the peaceful, creative unfolding of life’s evolutionary potentials and the preservation of the planet’s life-support system. The pursuit of knowledge and the development of technology is integrated with respect for all living beings, and reverence for the spiritual reality of the universe. The other kind are those who have chosen the adaptation of accumulating and taking from others, using violence and war, and can thus be aptly described as counter-evolutionary. I would like now to examine some mythic and legendary prototypes of this kind of dualistic heritage.
World mythology is filled with stories of rival brother gods, such as the Egyptian Osiris and Seth, the Sumerian Enlil and Enki, or the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. Some myths tell of feuding groups of deities, such as the Aesir and Vanir of the Norse people, and of battles between “gods” and “titans” or “monsters,” found on planet Earth in earlier times. In both Hindu and Buddhist mythology, we have the conception of devas and asuras, – the former beneficent light-beings, the latter violent and destructive dominators. Both are supra-human spirits, inhabiting their own worlds, which nevertheless intersect and interact in consciousness with the world of humans, in complex ways.
The persistent legend of the high civilization of Atlantis, which is said to have collapsed in a catastrophic flood, about ten thousand years before our time, also has this theme of a struggle between highly advanced beings, some creative and constructive and another group on imperialistic and exploitative path. In our time, such myths have been given new formulations in the literature on UFOs and ETs, where the rival “gods” of ancient times are technologically highly advanced beings from extra-terrestrial civilizations who have been intervening in human affairs for a very long time.
Buddhist Myths of Devas and Asuras
Buddhism is basically a non-theistic religion, in which the essential moral teachings involve not so much an appeal to a book of rules handed down by an omnipotent creator and his priesthood, but rather the exhortation to practice meditative yogic methods designed to raise consciousness. Moral and peaceful behavior would then follow naturally from the inner peace and equanimity of a person who is in touch with their true essential nature, their “Buddha nature.” Unconsciousness or ignorance of your own spiritual essence, along with craving and hatred, are the “three poisons” at the core of all human life. They are symbolized by the three inter-linked animals at the hub of the great ever-cycling Wheel of Birth and Death.
Buddhism did adopt and adapt some of the key cosmological myths of their Vedic and Hindu religious ancestors, including the conceptions of devas and asuras. Devas are the “shining ones,” light spirits, analogous to “angels” in Western religion. They guide and inspire humans in their artistic and creative endeavors, and remind them of their spiritual essence. Asuras are violent and envious demons, armed with weapons, focused on materiality, who are forever competing with the devas and attacking all forms of life in general. Whereas in the Indian Vedic (and related Persian Zoroastrian) mythology the focus is on the competition and struggle between the light and dark, good and evil, deities, Buddhism developed a more sophisticated analysis expressed in the symbolism of the six worlds of existence (samsara), linked by the twelve-fold chain of interdependent causation.
The iconic image of the Wheel of Samsara, which could also be called the Wheel of Earthly Existence, portrayed in numerous temple paintings throughout the Buddhist world, is held in the grip of a gigantic demon, representing the ceaseless flow of time and entropy. At the hub of the churning wheel are the three “poisons” (unconsciousness, craving and hatred) and around the outside rim of the wheel are the twelve links of the chain of interdependent mutual causation. The six worlds of possible existence are arrayed around the wheel, turning ceaselessly in cycles of birth, death and rebirth. These worlds can be regarded as realms of consciousness and reality inhabited by various beings, both human and non-human.
One of the six realms is specifically designated the human realm, and is considered the most favorable realm for humans –because it has the greatest freedom of choice and therefore possibilities for liberation. Human beings may be incarnated into any of the six realms, in any given life-time, according to their karma; and within one life-time, humans can find themselves, temporarily, in the state of consciousness associated with that realm (Metzner, 1996). Our spiritual growth challenge then is to recognize and identify the world we are inhabiting by raising consciousness; and thus we learn to gradually free ourselves from the thrall of the three poisons.
One of the six worlds is the world of animals: this does not mean that humans may reincarnate as animals, as some simplistic beliefs hold. It means rather that we, as human beings, are essentially living in the consciousness of the animal realm, along with the animal spirits, when we are focused exclusively on instinctual mammalian survival programs. There is also a realm of pretas – “hungry ghosts,” with huge bellies and thin throats, forever craving and forever frustrated. This could be considered an apt symbolic portrayal of the realm of humans fixated in addictive and obsessive states of consciousness.
The realm inhabited by the devas is an angelic world of great natural and aesthetic beauty, peace and harmony. Heaven, in the Buddhist conception, is not so much a realm we may enter into after we die. It is, like all states, a temporary state into which we come by good karma and spiritual disciplines. We are in the deva realm when we are in heavenly, blissful states of consciousness. There is a hell world, opposite on the Wheel of Samsara, which is marked by extreme pain, suffering and victimization. “Hell” may be a purely subjective state of painful illness or madness; or it may also be experienced in an objective environment of war, torture and violence. In Buddhism, heaven is not a promised after-life reward and hell is not a threatened punishment – both are impermanent states of consciousness. We are in these realms for varying lengths of time, or perhaps sometimes for an entire lifetime, in accordance with the law of choices and consequences (karma).
In the iconic images of the Wheel of Life found in Tibetan Buddhism, the deva deities are sitting peacefully in a garden setting, an ecological paradise, full of flowering plants, peaceful lakes and musicians playing. The asura realm is located next to the deva realm on the Wheel, and the asuras are shown as horse-mounted, armed warriors, brandishing their weapons and howling with frightful noise. In an image eerily symbolic of our present ecological catastrophe, where industrial mega-corporations backed by military gangs are devouring the rainforests and other biosphere resources, the asuras are cutting down the fruit-laden giant tree that the deva gods are contemplating and enjoying. Opposite the asura realm on the Wheel of Samsara, lies the realm of the addicted and frustrated pretas. This could also be regarded as a symbolic portrayal of the global situation, where massively armed and violent gangs amass huge illicit profits from trafficking in drugs which hold millions in addictive bondage. The asuras correspond most closely to what I (and other writers) have called dominator or counter-evolutionary, or “dark force” spirits.
In both the Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, the devas, the spirits of peace and sustainability, and asuras, the spirits of violence and domination, are present in human civilization and history in varying proportions. According to Indian traditions, there are cosmic cyclical ages, the yugas, extending over tens of thousands of years, in which either the peaceful devas or the violent asuras are more prominent. Modern researchers like John Major Jenkins, in his work Galactic Alignment (Jenkins, 2002), relate these ages to the 26,000 year cycle of precession. All sources, agree that the present age, the Kali yuga, is the climax or low point, of an age ruled by the war-like asuras. The fact that for most of recorded history, at least in the past 6,000 years, since the Kurgan intrusions into Old Europe, Western societies have been ruled by warrior-chiefs, autocratic monarchs and emperors, and in our time, military juntas, this conception has an undeniable plausibility.
As far as I know, the Buddhists, while recognizing the transience of all rulers and empires, do not have a cosmic time-table for the change-over from one age to another. They would say that, both for the individual and for societies, the balance of peaceful and violent forces is a matter of the choices made by human individuals, and the groups to which they belong. Undoubtedly, the certain knowledge of the transience of all phenomena, including political ones, would help one to maintain equanimity and dignity even in the face of the most outrageous violations of human decency and morality, and to continue to counter the virulent depredations of the asuras and their human incarnations. Whether the defense against armed predatory plunder will inevitably lead to continuing cycles of violence and vengeance, or whether war can be countered and contained by active, yet non-violent struggle for peace and sustainability, can be seen to be the central challenge of our planetary civilization.
The Legend of the Downfall of the Civilization of Atlantis
A vast literature exists, ranging from the scientific and scholarly, to the speculative and mediumistic, telling of a lost civilization on an island in the Atlantic, that was so completely destroyed, with all its records, in a cataclysmic flood, that it has been lost to historical memory. As a proto-historical legend, the story of Atlantis was first recorded in the 5th century BCE by the Athenian Plato, the god-father of Western philosophy, who said he heard the story from ancient Egyptian sources. In the 20th century, the Atlantis legend was revived in a major way by the gifted American psychic Edgar Cayce, who left a multitude of paranormally channeled readings concerning Atlantis (Hope, 1991).
According to Cayce and other psychic pre-historians, Atlantis was a civilization with a naval empire, whose ships dominated the globe, engaging (in its later stages) in plundering warfare with various other societies, including the Athenian, as recorded by Plato. The empire was ruled by a theocratic priesthood of humans with highly advanced psychic abilities, vastly extended life-spans and extraordinarily advanced technology of genetic engineering. Later myths told of these beings as “gods,” because of their apparent “immortality” (actually supra-human longevity), and seemingly supernatural capacities. Esoteric mystical schools of modern times call them high-level initiates, adept at working with the energies of multiple dimensions of consciousness and reality. Atlantean scientists apparently mastered technologies based on crystals and sound vibrations, both for building pyramids and military weaponry.
According to Edgar Cayce, some of these high-level adepts had chosen a “dark force” path of sorcery and exploitation, using their super-human abilities to create animal-human hybrids for the purposes of work or sexual slavery. Others in the ruling priesthood adhered to a mystical path of oneness and respect for all beings, and attempted to counteract or ameliorate the depredations of the dark force dominators. In the modern channelled ET literature, it is often proposed that the Atlanteans actually came to Earth from another star-system (Sirius being a favored candidate), for the purpose of establishing colonies on Earth.
In accounting for the downfall of this powerful global empire, there are several versions: one is a classic “punishment of the wicked” scenario, as in the Biblical legend of the Great Flood, in which the karmic consequences of the dark ones’ activities came back to destroy them. Other writers point to the physical and geographical evidence that there actually were planet-wide catastrophes around the 11th and 10th millennium BCE – and suggest that the Atlantean technocrats were blind to the consequences of their physical interventions on the Earth’s energy-systems. In either case, so the story goes, those of the ruling elites who could see the catastrophe coming, years ahead of time, sent out expeditions to establish settlements in different parts of the world, where the indigenous people were taught the rudiments of the Atlantean sacred science and structures (for example, pyramids) containing coded memories were built. This activity is then said to have led to the beginnings of the ancient Egyptian, Meso-American, Northwestern European and perhaps other civilizations.
One psychic pre-historian that I came to know, stated that a number of souls of the Atlantean scientists who had been involved in the hyper-development of the physical, biological, and psychical technologies of that empire, were now reincarnated, again as visionary scientists and engineers, to try to prevent the same or similar misuses occurring again. Undeniably, there are eerie parallels between the putative pre-collapse situation of Atlantis, and our own time, where the dominator forces of techno-industrial exploitation are pushing the Earth’s ecosystems to the brink of collapse, while scientific and environmental groups and their allies, struggle to build and maintain sustainable communities at a local and regional scale.
The Wars of the Gods in Norse Mythology
In the religious mythology of the Nordic-Germanic people, there is fascinating evidence for the interaction between the Indo-European Kurgan invaders and the Old European cultures. We find this in the myths of the prolonged warfare and eventual peacemaking between two families of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. I have discussed these myths in my book The Well of Remembrance, basing my interpretation on the archaeo-mythological work of Marija Gimbutas (Metzner, 1994). She has proposed, on the basis of the archaeological record, that the invasions of the Indo-European nomadic herder tribes called Kurgans into the agrarian matricentric cultures of Old Europe, starting in the 5th millennium BCE, led to initial warfare, and eventual hybridizing of cultures and religious worldviews. In this kind of approach to the interpretation of mythology, ancient stories and epics are seen as recordings of even more ancient oral traditions concerning actual events in pre-historic times, often overlaid with fantastic elaborations. Such a view of mythology is consistent with that of Robert Graves, Mircea Eliade, and Zachariah Sitchin, whose work on Sumerian myth we shall discuss further below.
According to the Nordic-Germanic mythic history, there were two families or clans of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. The Aesir were primarily sky- and warrior-gods, including Odin, Tiwaz and Thor the Thunderer. The Vanir, including Nerthus, Njörd and the brother-sister pair Freyr and Freyja, were primarily earth- and nature-deities, associated with prosperity and peace. The two groups of gods were portrayed in the myths as warring rivals, although there are also stories of peacemaking attempts and cooperation. Presumably these myths reflect the conflict, drawn out over many centuries, between the invading Indo-Germanic tribes from the East and the aboriginal populations of Old Europe, who resisted the attempted assimilation. It seems probable that after the Indo-Germanic people had settled in Central Europe, the Vanir continued to be the gods of the farmers and fishermen, while the Aesir were worshipped by the military aristocracy, who had appropriated the land and established their domination.
In the Eddas, the mythic poems that are our prime source for the Nordic myths, the aesir envied and craved the wealth of the vanir, and “thus war came into the world.” The archaeological evidence from the cultures of Old Europe shows that it was in fact the patriarchal Kurgan or Aryan invaders, with their sky- and battle-gods and gleaming weapons, who brought warfare to the peaceful agrarian societies, with their deities of fertility, abundance and peace. The new religion that the descendants of both peoples developed was a hybrid of Eurasian shamanic warrior cults and the earth-based fertility magic of the indigenous inhabitants.
For the migrating Indo-Germanic people, the lands to the West were fabulously rich and fertile lands, where they could graze their herds and learn farming from the indigenous people. Both peoples had developed the arts of extracting metals such as copper, bronze, gold and iron from the earth, and gold was highly prized for its malleability in shaping shining ornaments. The wealth, both agrarian and mineral, of the peaceful cultures of Old Europe, personified in the figure of Gullveig, the "Golden Goddess", undoubtedly did arouse the greed and envy of the rapacious invaders. Gold seems to have been an obsession for the Indo-Europeans wherever they went, including the Spaniards and Portuguese who invaded the Americas – an obsession that has triggered more than one blood-drenched military adventure.
The characterization of the aesir, as attacking and invading the lands of the vanir out of rapacious envy for their wealth, parallels the mythic imagery of the asuras as “envious titans” attacking the fruit-laden tree of abundant life that the devas are peacefully enjoying. The names aesir and asuras may actually have same linguistic root, according to some scholars The hell world, like the heaven world, is impermanent.. The idea that it is the “gods” who bring war into the world, and drag their human followers into their competitive struggle, is one we will encounter again in Zachariah Sitchin’s work on Sumerian mythology.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
A Meditation on Oneness and Wholeness
There are those, associated with political, religious, corporate or military organizations, who proclaim the need for oneness of purpose and goals. The resulting hierarchical structures of leadership and control can be efficient and productive – but run the risk of degenerating into authoritarian domination systems that violate the foundational ethical principle known as the Golden Rule.
There are those who seek to experience oneness by becoming absorbed in blissful states of deep meditation, aesthetic contemplation, or erotic union. The resultant states of oneness can be supremely satisfying and inspire creative expression – but run the risk of degenerating into detached and superior attitudes that fail to adequately engage the physical and social realities of our world.
I prefer to go with those who follow the path of inclusive wholeness, accepting of the diversity and multiplicity of their own being, and all other beings they encounter, human and non-human; as well as the diversity of communities and cultures and worlds. Such a one would be practicing respectful balanced interchange of giving and receiving in relationship to all other beings and with the Macrocosmic Creator Source Oneness.
Sonoma, Feb 2009
There are those who seek to experience oneness by becoming absorbed in blissful states of deep meditation, aesthetic contemplation, or erotic union. The resultant states of oneness can be supremely satisfying and inspire creative expression – but run the risk of degenerating into detached and superior attitudes that fail to adequately engage the physical and social realities of our world.
I prefer to go with those who follow the path of inclusive wholeness, accepting of the diversity and multiplicity of their own being, and all other beings they encounter, human and non-human; as well as the diversity of communities and cultures and worlds. Such a one would be practicing respectful balanced interchange of giving and receiving in relationship to all other beings and with the Macrocosmic Creator Source Oneness.
Sonoma, Feb 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1960s - II
It is possible to apply the consciousness expansion of concept to the forms and patterns of collective consciousness: to mass-mind images and memes, to scientific paradigms and worldviews, to the ideologies of spiritual practice and religious devotion. In my book The Expansion of Consciousness (2008), I pointed out that the decade of the 1960s was a time of several interconnected movements of socio-cultural transformation that profoundly changed Western society, and more indirectly other countries in the world as well: the environmental movement, the women’s liberation movement, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the revolution in sexual and family relations and an explosion of new forms of expression in music and the visual arts. Even though there is no evidence of a direct causative connection between ingestion of psychedelics and these socio-cultural transformation movements, each of them represents an expansion of collective consciousness, a transcending of existing limited conventions, attitudes and norms, similar to what is classically associated with psychedelic experiences in the individual.
The historian Theodore Roszak, in his very influential 1968 book The Making of a Counterculture, identified and described these transformation movements as constituting a kind of quasi-revolutionary culture in opposition to the mainstream. Although these social movements were countercultural or even, at times, revolutionary, in that they challenged unjust, limiting or outmoded attitudes and practices of the dominant social order, it is important to recognize that being against something was not the primary intention behind these movements.
In an infant’s struggle to be born, ultimately into a larger world and way of being, there may be a phase of intense and sometimes violent opposition to the limitations of the existing order (represented by the mother’s body). This kind of opposition, which may even threaten the mother’s life, is not however the ultimate aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is rather to emerge from a condition that has become intolerable, too limiting, into an expanded world of greater freedom and possibilities for growth. Let us look at these movements, which continue in various ways to this day, through the dual lens of counterculture and expanding consciousness.
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, raised awareness of environmental despoliation and is generally considered the beginning impetus for the American environmental movement, and for major conservation and preservation organizations and policies that persist to this day. The very title Silent Spring refers to an experience of expanded consciousness: if we do not hear the singing birds we are accustomed to hear, we naturally ask – why not? This question in turn leads us to investigate environmentally destructive processes caused by human technology – which we then engage as activists to ameliorate, for the health and wellbeing of humans and the integrity of the ecosystems which we inhabit along with other animal and plant species of life.
This process is analogous to the kind of therapeutic “course-correction vision” that drug addicts and alcoholics often report when relating their experience with plant-based entheogens such as peyote or ayahuasca: under the influence of these botanical sacraments, a person may report becoming clearly aware of hitherto hidden patterns of thought and behavior that are leading them in a self-destructive direction – and therefore feel empowered to make health preserving new choices. I have published several accounts of this kind of healing vision in my edited volumes on the sacred mushroom and on ayahuasca. Also in these books are accounts by individuals who in the early 1960s were powerfully affected by their psychedelic experiences and became committed environmental activists for the rest of their lives (including myself).
Many individuals and groups integrated their expanded conscious visions for a food supply free of chemical additives and pesticides into the development of the organic food movement, which in the ensuing decades emerged as a wide-spread and viable alternative to industrial factory farming. Similarly, the recognition of the industrial pollution of the atmosphere and water supply was channeled into political advocacy for clean air and water preservation. Thus, we see that the environmental movement counters and critiques the destructive and polluting effects of industrial corporations and seeks to preserve and enhance the integrity of both wilderness and built environments.
The women’s liberation movement critiques and counters the sexist discrimination of deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes and institutions and seeks to establish equality in work and pay and to protect the rights of women to make their own choices in the areas of sexuality and child-bearing. The 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique launched the women’s liberation movement, with its “consciousness-raising” groups, in which women-only groups met in council to discuss issues of identity and relationship. Questioning themselves and each other – who am I, besides being someone’s wife, daughter, sister, lover, secretary? And such consciousness expanding questions would naturally lead to making new and healthier choices in life-style, work and creative expression.
The anti-war movement countered the American war-machine, with all the formidable power and resources that it disposes – and this opposition could and did result at times in flare-ups of public violence between state authorities and countercultural rebels and dissidents. But the underlying intention and vision of the anti-war movement is to be oppositional only temporarily, and then to further the peaceful unfolding of the civilization’s potentials in all their diversity.
Similarly, the civil rights movement countered racist discrimination practices, the legacies of slavery, principally in schools and housing. But its ultimate intention vision, as in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), was to see a society in which black children and white children, and those of other races, could go to school together in freedom and peace. In the 19th century, waging war against the slave-holding South was not the ultimate intention of the abolitionist movement -- rather it was the emancipation of slaves.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” was one of the Reverend King’s memorable inspired sayings. And it is probably because of King’s unshakeable commit to the practice and advocacy of non-violence that the counter-cultural impulse in the civil rights and anti-war movements did not lead to more violence than it did. Even so, the repressive forces of the established power-elites, who saw their positions and wealth threatened by the counter culture, exacted a heavy toll: the assassination of four dynamic and popular leaders – the Kennedy brothers, and M.L. King and Malcolm X. Interestingly, at the present time of 2009 and beyond, American society again will examine the atavistic residues of slavery and racial discrimination under the presidential leadership of a younger, and multi-cultural African-American.
The movement for increased freedom of sexual expression, supported also by the women’s movement, by the invention of the contraceptive pill, and by the books of zoologist Alfred Kinsey on human sexual behavior (1943, 1953), countered and critiqued many unexamined and prejudicial religion-bound conventions of marriage and family; but ultimately aimed for wholesome, non-patriarchal alternatives to the so-called “nuclear household.” There was a wave of communitarian experimentation, as has happened periodically in American history. Intentional communities sprang up, such as the one Leary, Alpert and myself participated in for a few years at Millbrook, New York, experimenting with new forms of extended family relations, sexuality and child-rearing, A conversational memoir by Ram Dass and myself of the Harvard and Millbrook years is forthcoming under the title Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (Synergetic Press, 2009).
The vision motivating the counterculture of the 1960s was pioneering innovation, reform and liberation, based on an expanded awareness of the needs of the whole society (as in the civil rights, women’s liberation and sexual revolution), of all of humanity (as in the peace movement) and the regional ecosystem and biosphere (as in the ecology movement). The innovative and pioneering aspects of these socio-cultural transformations are particularly obvious in the breakthroughs that occurred from new discoveries in the sciences, and new forms of celebratory expressions in the arts. Here we don’t necessarily see opposition to an existing order, but simply a highly energized, innovative and creative “moving beyond” into an expanded worldview.
On the other hand, the countercultural and revolutionary elements in these movements, especially in the political and economic sphere tends to produce violent backlash and repression by the dominant culture, as “the empire strikes back.” This in turn leads to intensification of the rebellious oppositional forces, bringing about an escalation of violence and destruction – all tendencies that we can see being played out in subsequent decades, to the present day.
Undoubtedly, an energizing and amplifying influence in the growth of the expanding consciousness culture during the 1960s was the widespread availability of inexpensive psychedelic drugs, as well as cultivated mushrooms, for personal use by increasingly large numbers of people. This certainly amplified the innovation and creativity in the arts and sciences and added much larger numbers of spiritually committed individuals to what before were relatively small minority movements. Whether psychedelics also amplified the rebelliousness and confrontational resistance movements of the 1960s, is impossible to say. Some would argue that the greater physical violence of the revolutionary movements was more connected to amphetamine use.
American society had developed into a highly stratified and diversified system, with multiple internal divisions of class, race and religion, and competing interest groups, both overt and covert. Multiple traumatic shocks to the body politic occurred during the sixties: the assassinations of two white leaders (JFK and Robert Kennedy) and two black leaders (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X). The revolutionary changes in society and culture envisioned and initiated by the counterculture, were met with violent backlash from the establishment forces of empire, domination and control. As part of this backlash, possession and use of psychedelic drugs was criminalized and all legal research on their consciousness expanding possibilities came to a halt.
Perhaps this is the impact of a very different series of developments that also started at the end of WWII: the expansion of the global military hegemony of the American Empire. Outgoing US Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of this development in his presidential farewell speech (1961), in which he spoke of the threat posed by the “growing and unwarranted power” and influence of the “military-industrial complex.” In the light of later developments his warning was chillingly prescient.
Going beyond the political and economic changes brought by the counter-cultural movements of expanded consciousness, our global human civilization may be involved in change processes at the level of planetary evolution. Processes of desertification, deforestation and the destruction of habitats have plunged planet Earth into what has been called a “sixth extinction.” At the same time, industrial civilization’s addiction to carbon fuels as energy source has brought the biosphere to the brink of catastrophic collapse through global over-heating.
Many individuals who have worked in a respectful and spiritual way with plant and fungal teachers, as well as working shamanically with animal spirit guides, have reported increasing communication from the spiritual realms of Nature in response to their divinatory questioning. Their messages and visions have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on ecosystems, with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life, and with the development of sustainable, bioregional economies and communities.
There may be a profound and mysterious shift occurring in the balance of life on this planet. The dominant and dominating role of the human in relation to the natural world has brought about unparalleled ecological disaster, degradation of habitats and loss of species. Could it be that the profound consciousness-raising and compassion-deepening effects of the visionary plant brews and tinctures are signaling an evolutionary initiative coming from other, non-human, intelligences on this planet? Instead of the usual attitude of arrogant and exploitative superiority, those who have experienced mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca and other entheogens are more likely to find themselves humbled and awed by the mysterious powers of nature, and strive to live in a simpler way that minimizes environmental harm and protects and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life.
The historian Theodore Roszak, in his very influential 1968 book The Making of a Counterculture, identified and described these transformation movements as constituting a kind of quasi-revolutionary culture in opposition to the mainstream. Although these social movements were countercultural or even, at times, revolutionary, in that they challenged unjust, limiting or outmoded attitudes and practices of the dominant social order, it is important to recognize that being against something was not the primary intention behind these movements.
In an infant’s struggle to be born, ultimately into a larger world and way of being, there may be a phase of intense and sometimes violent opposition to the limitations of the existing order (represented by the mother’s body). This kind of opposition, which may even threaten the mother’s life, is not however the ultimate aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is rather to emerge from a condition that has become intolerable, too limiting, into an expanded world of greater freedom and possibilities for growth. Let us look at these movements, which continue in various ways to this day, through the dual lens of counterculture and expanding consciousness.
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, raised awareness of environmental despoliation and is generally considered the beginning impetus for the American environmental movement, and for major conservation and preservation organizations and policies that persist to this day. The very title Silent Spring refers to an experience of expanded consciousness: if we do not hear the singing birds we are accustomed to hear, we naturally ask – why not? This question in turn leads us to investigate environmentally destructive processes caused by human technology – which we then engage as activists to ameliorate, for the health and wellbeing of humans and the integrity of the ecosystems which we inhabit along with other animal and plant species of life.
This process is analogous to the kind of therapeutic “course-correction vision” that drug addicts and alcoholics often report when relating their experience with plant-based entheogens such as peyote or ayahuasca: under the influence of these botanical sacraments, a person may report becoming clearly aware of hitherto hidden patterns of thought and behavior that are leading them in a self-destructive direction – and therefore feel empowered to make health preserving new choices. I have published several accounts of this kind of healing vision in my edited volumes on the sacred mushroom and on ayahuasca. Also in these books are accounts by individuals who in the early 1960s were powerfully affected by their psychedelic experiences and became committed environmental activists for the rest of their lives (including myself).
Many individuals and groups integrated their expanded conscious visions for a food supply free of chemical additives and pesticides into the development of the organic food movement, which in the ensuing decades emerged as a wide-spread and viable alternative to industrial factory farming. Similarly, the recognition of the industrial pollution of the atmosphere and water supply was channeled into political advocacy for clean air and water preservation. Thus, we see that the environmental movement counters and critiques the destructive and polluting effects of industrial corporations and seeks to preserve and enhance the integrity of both wilderness and built environments.
The women’s liberation movement critiques and counters the sexist discrimination of deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes and institutions and seeks to establish equality in work and pay and to protect the rights of women to make their own choices in the areas of sexuality and child-bearing. The 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique launched the women’s liberation movement, with its “consciousness-raising” groups, in which women-only groups met in council to discuss issues of identity and relationship. Questioning themselves and each other – who am I, besides being someone’s wife, daughter, sister, lover, secretary? And such consciousness expanding questions would naturally lead to making new and healthier choices in life-style, work and creative expression.
The anti-war movement countered the American war-machine, with all the formidable power and resources that it disposes – and this opposition could and did result at times in flare-ups of public violence between state authorities and countercultural rebels and dissidents. But the underlying intention and vision of the anti-war movement is to be oppositional only temporarily, and then to further the peaceful unfolding of the civilization’s potentials in all their diversity.
Similarly, the civil rights movement countered racist discrimination practices, the legacies of slavery, principally in schools and housing. But its ultimate intention vision, as in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), was to see a society in which black children and white children, and those of other races, could go to school together in freedom and peace. In the 19th century, waging war against the slave-holding South was not the ultimate intention of the abolitionist movement -- rather it was the emancipation of slaves.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” was one of the Reverend King’s memorable inspired sayings. And it is probably because of King’s unshakeable commit to the practice and advocacy of non-violence that the counter-cultural impulse in the civil rights and anti-war movements did not lead to more violence than it did. Even so, the repressive forces of the established power-elites, who saw their positions and wealth threatened by the counter culture, exacted a heavy toll: the assassination of four dynamic and popular leaders – the Kennedy brothers, and M.L. King and Malcolm X. Interestingly, at the present time of 2009 and beyond, American society again will examine the atavistic residues of slavery and racial discrimination under the presidential leadership of a younger, and multi-cultural African-American.
The movement for increased freedom of sexual expression, supported also by the women’s movement, by the invention of the contraceptive pill, and by the books of zoologist Alfred Kinsey on human sexual behavior (1943, 1953), countered and critiqued many unexamined and prejudicial religion-bound conventions of marriage and family; but ultimately aimed for wholesome, non-patriarchal alternatives to the so-called “nuclear household.” There was a wave of communitarian experimentation, as has happened periodically in American history. Intentional communities sprang up, such as the one Leary, Alpert and myself participated in for a few years at Millbrook, New York, experimenting with new forms of extended family relations, sexuality and child-rearing, A conversational memoir by Ram Dass and myself of the Harvard and Millbrook years is forthcoming under the title Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (Synergetic Press, 2009).
The vision motivating the counterculture of the 1960s was pioneering innovation, reform and liberation, based on an expanded awareness of the needs of the whole society (as in the civil rights, women’s liberation and sexual revolution), of all of humanity (as in the peace movement) and the regional ecosystem and biosphere (as in the ecology movement). The innovative and pioneering aspects of these socio-cultural transformations are particularly obvious in the breakthroughs that occurred from new discoveries in the sciences, and new forms of celebratory expressions in the arts. Here we don’t necessarily see opposition to an existing order, but simply a highly energized, innovative and creative “moving beyond” into an expanded worldview.
On the other hand, the countercultural and revolutionary elements in these movements, especially in the political and economic sphere tends to produce violent backlash and repression by the dominant culture, as “the empire strikes back.” This in turn leads to intensification of the rebellious oppositional forces, bringing about an escalation of violence and destruction – all tendencies that we can see being played out in subsequent decades, to the present day.
Undoubtedly, an energizing and amplifying influence in the growth of the expanding consciousness culture during the 1960s was the widespread availability of inexpensive psychedelic drugs, as well as cultivated mushrooms, for personal use by increasingly large numbers of people. This certainly amplified the innovation and creativity in the arts and sciences and added much larger numbers of spiritually committed individuals to what before were relatively small minority movements. Whether psychedelics also amplified the rebelliousness and confrontational resistance movements of the 1960s, is impossible to say. Some would argue that the greater physical violence of the revolutionary movements was more connected to amphetamine use.
American society had developed into a highly stratified and diversified system, with multiple internal divisions of class, race and religion, and competing interest groups, both overt and covert. Multiple traumatic shocks to the body politic occurred during the sixties: the assassinations of two white leaders (JFK and Robert Kennedy) and two black leaders (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X). The revolutionary changes in society and culture envisioned and initiated by the counterculture, were met with violent backlash from the establishment forces of empire, domination and control. As part of this backlash, possession and use of psychedelic drugs was criminalized and all legal research on their consciousness expanding possibilities came to a halt.
Perhaps this is the impact of a very different series of developments that also started at the end of WWII: the expansion of the global military hegemony of the American Empire. Outgoing US Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of this development in his presidential farewell speech (1961), in which he spoke of the threat posed by the “growing and unwarranted power” and influence of the “military-industrial complex.” In the light of later developments his warning was chillingly prescient.
Going beyond the political and economic changes brought by the counter-cultural movements of expanded consciousness, our global human civilization may be involved in change processes at the level of planetary evolution. Processes of desertification, deforestation and the destruction of habitats have plunged planet Earth into what has been called a “sixth extinction.” At the same time, industrial civilization’s addiction to carbon fuels as energy source has brought the biosphere to the brink of catastrophic collapse through global over-heating.
Many individuals who have worked in a respectful and spiritual way with plant and fungal teachers, as well as working shamanically with animal spirit guides, have reported increasing communication from the spiritual realms of Nature in response to their divinatory questioning. Their messages and visions have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on ecosystems, with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life, and with the development of sustainable, bioregional economies and communities.
There may be a profound and mysterious shift occurring in the balance of life on this planet. The dominant and dominating role of the human in relation to the natural world has brought about unparalleled ecological disaster, degradation of habitats and loss of species. Could it be that the profound consciousness-raising and compassion-deepening effects of the visionary plant brews and tinctures are signaling an evolutionary initiative coming from other, non-human, intelligences on this planet? Instead of the usual attitude of arrogant and exploitative superiority, those who have experienced mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca and other entheogens are more likely to find themselves humbled and awed by the mysterious powers of nature, and strive to live in a simpler way that minimizes environmental harm and protects and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life.
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