The New Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness - Part 3

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Dear All,

 

Part 2 of The New Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness ended with:

 

" At this typhonic level, then, life was lived totally in the present. This was

the pre-logical state of consciousness before the development of language. It is

uncertain exactly when language began to develop. Many people put it

comparatively late. Wilber places this stage at about 200,000 BC. Many think

that language did not really develop, apart from very simple words and

exclamations, until about 50,000 BC. "

 

Here is Part 3.

 

violet

 

 

The New Psychology and the Evolution of Consciousness

 

(Part 3)

 

 

(p.36) The development of language characterises the next stage, which Wilber

calls the verbal membership stage. The ability to use words are signs.

Previously, if you wanted for instance to convey to somebody a message about a

tree, you had to go up to the tree and touch it to indicate " tree " , but once you

have a word " tree " that word is accessible wherever you go. So language brings

release from bondage to the concrete world and to the present. With words one

can distinguish oneself from the body. A word is a symbol which re-presents the

object, a tree, a fellow human being, one's own body, and so on. The word for an

object makes that object present mentally without that object having to be

present in its concrete embodiment. This enables the human mind to span both

space and time. Language is the beginning of the first stage of liberation.

 

(p.37) The beginning of a sense of time heralded the beginning of the

possibility of living in extended time, and there developed remembrance of the

past and anticipation of the future. With this came the great change in economic

life from hunting to agriculture. As long as people were hunters only they lived

in small tribal groups and they lived from day to day, hunting food and eating

it as it came their way. This was living in the present indeed. Once agriculture

had developed there came the beginning of planning for the future. Crops were

sown and plans made for them to be harvested in the future. The early farmers

could look back on the past and see for instance that a particular havest had

not been good, and they could begin to fathom the reason for that and act

accordingly. At that stage there was the beginning of a clear separation from

the world around and there was therefore the possibility of control of the

world. While undifferentiated from the world, early man was simply moulded by

his environment. But as separation through language began to take place the

beginnings of control became possible. Early agriculture was a beginning of the

control of the world. The development of agriculture probably took place about

10,000 BC, marking a major turning point in human history.

 

The next stage of the verbal membership level is that of mythical knowledge,

myth being symbolic knowledge made possible through language. Once language

developed, awareness of the world around could be expressed in symbols and the

great myths are symbolic stories which reflect the world as early man

experienced it. It would be incorrect to think that primitive man saw trees, for

instance, as we do. We see trees as outside us because our minds have been

accustomed through language to think of trees as objects, and to investigate and

use them. Early man by contrast would have seen something much more like a nymph

or a dryad. Such entities are images or archetypes of forces which (p.38) arise

in consciousness. All ancient peoples, it seems, had the experience of being

surrounded by spirits. Rather than perceiving a three-dimensional world of

objects as we do, they lived in a world of " powers " or " presences " to which they

had to relate. Through these experiences the whole world of mythology was built

up. The ancient world lived the myths as archetypal forms by which they could

structure the universe and interpret experience. They formed a total structure

of reality in which reality was symbolised in the form of gods and goddesses and

spirits of all kinds. In this way the whole order of nature became present

through the myths and their symbols to those who participated in them. This

stage of evolution was fundamental among all ancient peoples, and it is

important to remember that mythology still largely determines the lives of many

tribal and other peoples at the present time. It is, in fact, a basic feature of

religious consciousness even among educated people today.

 

The world of myth is the world of the imagination while the earlier stage, the

typhonic, is the world of the emotions. The same stages are apparent in the

development of the individual. The child has first a body consciousness and

later begins to develop an emotional consciousness in relation to the mother,

brothers and sisters and others, while later still the imaginative consciousness

develops. From about five years onwards the child lives in the imagination.

There was a stage in the development of humanity corresponding to this stage in

the development of the individual. At this level the characteristic thought

process was what is known as concrete operational thinking. This way of thinking

applied to man's practical life. He had to farm and to do his work and he did it

with imaginative vision within the context of myth. In many people in India

today, for instance, a strong element of mythical thinking is still evident and

all the rituals that accompany ploughing and sowing and harvesting, birth and

marriage and death, are a survival of mythical consciousness. (p.39) Until as

recently as fifty years ago, this was normal throughout the greater part of

India. That is why in every village there is the temple and there are the gods,

and the whole village lives its life within that mythological world. This type

of consciousness is disappearing as modern education becomes the norm.

 

This world of symbolic imagination is typical of what is known as palaeological

thought. This is thought which is not fully logical and which operates largely

with images and symbols. In this mythological world people had not learnt to

reason accurately or to make clear logical distinctions, and so all sorts of

confusions and superstitions easily came to form part of the worldview. But in

spite of the problems associated with this stage of consciousness it was also a

time of deep insight.

 

New Vision of Reality (Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and

Christian Faith)

Bede Griffiths

Templegate Publishers - Springfield, Illinois

ISBN 0-87243-180-0

Pgs.36-39)