The Primal Religions 3 000 MILLION years before

The Primal Religions 3, 000 (MILLION) years before our 4, 000 years (THOUSAND)

Africa, Australia, SE Asia, Pacific Islands, Siberia & American Natives 1. Small 2. Subsistence economies – direct product of their own efforts 3. Without dependence upon writing

The Australian Experience • Eliade: “Cosmos and History” • Archaic peoples are more “spiritual” than we are • Australian aborigines most like earth’s “original people”

The mythic world • There is “Ordinary life” and “mythic life”: Aborigines call it “The Dreaming” • For the Aborigines this means that there are not two worlds, but, rather, a single world that can be experienced in two ways • Time does not touch it: It is “everywhen”

Legendary Figures populate it • Legendary figures are in this “backdrop world. ” • The legendary figures instituted the paradigmatic acts of which daily life consists: A hunter, e. g. , each hunter becomes the First Hunter, A mother, a lover, a cook. • In their roles, they are … immortal • Go back, back – to ancestors, to (ultimately) the gods

Relationship to the sacred beings • It is Not worship • Rather, it is Participation • The line that ÷ the human from those beings is erased Ritual merger • “Everywhen” becomes now • There is only the dreaming & the conformance to it

Orality, Time, and Place • Spoken word conveys emphasis, excitement, joy • Talking enlivens • Relies on human memory • Seminars: around campfire, empower participants • People become a walking library

The virtues of not-writing! • Back to Europe: it’s said that in the Middle Ages, the uneducated could read meaning of scriptures that today only trained archeologists can interpret. • Minds become waterlogged with endless corridors

Place vs. Space • Place is not space • Concreteness of place: Not interchangeable with any other place • Two anecdotes: • The man talking to his son who went to college • The outdoor prayer, eyes open • Claude Levi-Strauss “The Savage Mind”: “All sacred things must have their place. ” Being in its place is “what makes [objects] sacred; … if they were taken out of their place … the entire order of the universe would be destroyed. ”

Eternal Time • Primal time is atemporal • Eternal now • Think of their gods in ancestral terms

Time goes in circles • “the world is renewed annually … with each new year it recovers its original sanctity, the sanctity that it possessed when it came from the Creator’s hands. ” ~ Eliade • Taoist festival Chiao: renewal through rituals that span 60 -years (a lifetime) • Respect elders • Human ancestors lead back to the tribe’s earliest ancestors, who were divine • Closer to the source

Disregard ÷ between animal & human • Totem animal is emblem, life force • An absolute need for normal order of nature to be preserved • Cooperate with surroundings. • Even rocks are alive … divine even • Does this mean primitive peoples were unclear about “things”? • No! FAMOUS for their power of observation • DISTINCTIONS AS BRIDGES, NOT BARRIERS

Art • No word for “art”: M. Mead’s woman • P 377 : “Plato Hebrew Buddha Koran…” (nice contrasts) • In Primal Religions, divisions of such severity never appear

Similarities in our life • Time to listen • Time to meditate • Time to pray – “go to church” on, e. g. , Sunday • Time to love • Or everywhen

The Symbolic Mind • The divine source from which the world is believed/felt to issue • No name: unknowable • Poly-theism, but not like the Europeans. • The holy, the sacred, the wakan (Sioux) is in all – need not be “attached” to a Sacred Being. • Appearances never exist entirely on their own • See “the more” in “the less” • THIS SPIRITUAL DIMENSION ESCAPES THE MODERN HUMAN

Bricolage: putting things together in a whole • As if left brain (parts) and right brain (wholes) • Structure and events – sequence of • Science: bedrock structure (how things work, as proven by science) leading to events (results, conclusions, technology-that-works). So it’s structure events. • Science: begins with a “well, we don’t know. ” • Magic: events, collected, become a structure. Working towards a whole. • Magic: begins with a “everything has meaning. ”

PAGE 381 “Disenchantment … scission … we see tribal peoples as wholly natural, as sons & daughters of earth & sky … brothers & sisters of animals and plants … still in touch with the magic and myth we so badly need… we celebrate them as our heroes. There is a deep, unconscious reason for this bent of thought. Every people needs to think well of its origins; it is part of having a healthy self-image. Ken Wilbur’s new book. We are no longer confident that God created us.