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Background
The idea that human conscious might be evolving is based on the sciences
that state the universe itself seems to be developing. One aspect of this
universe is human psychology. Another way of looking at this is to realize
that over great periods of time humans have changed and one of the first
signs of that change was the birth and rapid growth of philosophy.
Philosophy is a way of viewing the world. For example, it puts much stress
on viewing the world rationally and even develops rules of logic to make
thinking clear and precise.
The Big Bang
From the Big Bang to 2006 is a story of wonder and awe. An unbelievably
powerful explosion sets off a chain of events that is so amazing that we
would tell people they were crazy if it were not for the science behind this
story. In short, lifeless matter as subatomic particles passes through stage
after stage of development until it unfolds first as physical matter like stars
and planets and then eventually vegetable life forms and then eventually
animal life and finally, last but not least, consciousness forms and becomes
aware of the whole process.
Human Evolution
No one is sure when humans first distinguished themselves as selfconscious
beings, but we have the gist of a general story. About 5 million years ago we
have the first hominids. Jean Gebser writes of four general stages that he
called archaic, magic, mythic, and mental/rational.
The archaic stage is the stage of our earliest human ancestors. This is where
people were mainly concerned with survival and lived as hunters and
gatherers. Archaic men and women lived their lives “immersed in the
subconscious realms of nature and body and initially experienced themselves
as indistinguishable from the world that had already evolved to that point.
With self and other confused, with inner experience and external natural
world undifferentiated, with no true capacity for true mental reflection or
verbal representation, this whole period must have been an experience of a
time before time, a story before historywith no anxieties, no real
comprehension of death and thus no existential fears. This archaic structure
is especially evident in the universal myths of a Garden of Eden, of a time
before the “fall” into separation and knowledge and reflection, a time of
innocence” (Up From Eden, pp. 2223). Archaic folks came to inhabit our
planet three to six million years ago and it may very well be that they are our
ancestors until about 200,000 years ago. This was the time of stone and bone
tools and eventually the use of fire.
The magic stage is the next stage and it started about 200,000 years ago. “As
individual humans began to emerge from archaic consciousness consider
what they faced: For one, they were beginning to awaken to their own
separate existence, with all the potentials and all the perils therein. The self
was now separate from the natural world. At this early stage, then, although
the self is distinguished from the natural environment, it remains magically
intermingled with it. The logical, verbal, and conceptual mind is not yet
developed” (Up From Eden, pp. 4042). Everything is interconnected and
this leads to the magical view of the world. Thus you can draw a picture of
an animal and stab the picture before a hunt and then you will be able to kill
the animal during the hunt. This time of magic consciousness lasted until
about 12, 000 years ago, when the next stage, the mythic, began.
The mythic stage coincides with one of the most significant changes ever to
occur to humans and this was the birth of agriculture and the world of
civilization that we recognize and where we really pick up the story here in
Gentrain.
If the mythic stage started about 12,000 years ago the mental stage started
about 3,000 years ago and really came into its own during the Axial Age.
What is this age? It is the extraordinary emergence of the “axial sages” all
around the same time. It is the time of Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates and
Plato, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Moses. All of these teachers demonstrated
and taught that humans were on the verge of yet another momentous change
in consciousness. From the mythic world we enter the rational world, the
world of philosophy and ideas, the world we will explore for the next 9
months!