Our cat and I communicate fine without benefit of language, mathematics, or art. If he is already in the house when I get up in the morning, he will typically rub his black and white sides against my leg to indicate that he wants me to dish his breakfast. If I am delayed, he will try staring at me and making one short squeak. In this non-verbal way we carry out many communications. We use signs not symbols. If I use words, they are only signs to him. These signs don’t stand for things, they just indicate potential situations.
Our cat and I are both skilled at using signs. We share this very old mode of consciousness. Signs, as I distinguish them from symbols, are expressive of an inner multi-sensory-rerun form of mental products composed of memories of whole body sensory experiences. All animal life has this level of intelligence. You and I also run a large portion of our lives with this multi-sensory-rerun form of intelligence.
Cats
Our cat is clearly a conscious being who joins me is sharing this muti-sensory-rerun form of consciousness. I, however, also spend many hours of my life fully engaged in my symbol-using art, language, and mathematics. A cat does not have the biological supports for that level of consciousness. We humans do share with cats the drive for survival that ancient India called charka one—a swirl of consciousness they located at the base of the human spin. Slightly further up the spine they located a swirl of consciousness they associated with pain and pleasure, including sex. All we animals share that swirl of consciousness as well. Near the belly or solar-plexus, they located a swirl of consciousness that has to do with the capacity for purpose and planning that I introduced above as the multi-sensory-rerun form of intelligence. Animal life also shares that form of consciousness.
The above are conclusions that are easily made with our interior sensibilities as we watch the behaviors of cats, dogs, horses, turtles, even grasshoppers. In addition to those first three swirls of consciousness, we mammals share an emotional intelligence that is only minimally present in the reptiles and birds. India located that fourth swirl of human consciousness in the heart or chest area.
Humans
In the throat or speech area of the human body, India located the symbol-using swirl of consciousness. That swirl, chakra five, is only present among living species in the human. This intensity of human consciousness uses art, language, and mathematics to construct our amazing detachments and engagements in living. A few other primates can be taught by humans possible fragments of this intelligence, but a three-year old child has a facility with symbol-using consciousness that no other species can match.
This fifth mode of consciousness is so prominent in human life that we often identify the word “consciousness” with this mode of consciousness and call “instincts” those first four modes of consciousness that we share with the other animals. This limited view of consciousness can result in a demeaning of our emotional consciousness and our multi-sensory-rerun-using consciousness, both of which are very important for our best thinking and living. We may also hold our pain-and-pleasure consciousness in contempt. Even our survival-affirming consciousness can lose its appropriate power in our lives when we attempt to make art, language, and mathematics the whole scope of our conscious aliveness. The first four chakras of consciousness are foundational for our symbol-using human consciousness. Our fifth chakra thinking is weakened when we hold these first four aspects of being conscious in weak regard.
Religion
India has also illuminated for us two more swirls of consciousness— chakras six and seven. Chakra six is located in the center of the forehead, commonly called the third eye consciousness. Therapists often call this ability “the third ear.” It actually has nothing to do with a literal eye or ear. Chakra six has to do with a direct seeing and a hearing by our human consciousness in ways that reach beyond the reach of art, language, and mathematics. Strange as it can seem to the common mind, consciousness can reach into a larger than rational Reality. We sometimes call this swirl of consciousness “intuition.” There is no way to properly understand “religion” if this aspect of consciousness is ignored.
The seventh chakra or swirl of consciousness that India observed was located at the crown of the head. Chakra seven is pictured as the most rapid spin of conscious awareness. We might even say that this swirl is swirling beyond the head, thereby connecting the crowns of the human to the entire cosmos. We find a discussion of this aspect of our human essence in Paul Tillich’s use of the word “Unconditional.” Tillich contrasts our conscious experiences of the Unconditional with our consciousness of conditional realities—realities that are impermanent, like moments, days, human bodies, planets, stars, electromagnetic radiation, feelings, pains, pleasures, thoughts, and impulses—everything that comes into being stays a while and passes back into the abyss.
We can only talk about our relationship with the Unconditional using mythic forms of language. For example, the first verse of the Bible uses a mythic form of human talk. Here is a restatement of that mythic verse in the symbols of Tillich’s vocabulary.
In the beginning was the Unconditional from which all conditional things and processes came to be and continue coming to be.
This is still mythic talk, for saying “In the beginning was” is to speak of a “time” before time began—a time before temporality or impermanence came into process. Any speech about our consciousness being directed toward the Unconditional will be mythic speech. Religion depends on mythic talk—cryptic language of some sort, such as enlightenment, resurrection, virgin birth, and hundreds of other cryptic symbols.
The Antiquity of Religion
Our symbol-using human consciousness began among some ancient upright-walking chimpanzees over a million years ago. Symbol using began with very elemental mental forms that evolved into art, language, and mathematics. We can ask ourselves which of these symbolic forms was the oldest, the most ancient, and in that sense the most basic to the structures of human consciousness.
Many linguists would say that language is older than mathematics and that poetic language is older than prose language. Based on my current intuition as well as a bit of outward data from archeological digs, I intuit that dance and sculpture are even older than poetic language. Just as the more abstract symbols of mathematics formed later than language, so the symbols of language formed later than these pre-linguistic arts. Sculpture is surely older than painting. Dance is surely older than music.
It may be true that those first sculptures were also icons used to direct human consciousness toward the Unconditional. It may also be true that those first dances were also rituals used to direct human consciousness toward the Unconditional. If that be true, then icon and ritual are religious forms that are older than language.
I have just done some informed guesses about very ancient origins. Let us notice some implications of these guess. A special sort of religion is being viewed as more basic to human consciousness than language or mathematics. Ritual, icon, and eventually myth have long been used by hominid species to direct human consciousness toward the Unconditional. Therefore, such Unconditional-oriented religion is a foundation of the human form of consciousness. So we can view religion, when so understood, as a basic practice taking place at or near the origin of the chakra-five uniquely human mode of consciousness.
Therefore, any thoroughgoing reinvigoration of any religion—Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.—requires a deep dive into this essential nature of religion that directs us toward the Unconditional—in order for there to be any valid sort of reinvention or reformation of that religion. This also means that any religion that is validly religious in this Unconditional-referencing manner can be viewed as an example of an essential social process alongside art, language, mathematics, education, politics, and sewage disposal.
Like all manifest social processes, a specific expression of religion can become obsolete or corrupt. But religion, as the directing of human consciousness toward the Unconditional, is an essential social process, a healthy social form that we cannot do without. We have discovered here an axiom of thought for fostering the good of the entire scope of social health. Such “good” religion is foundational for a healthy society. Religion, so understood, is not an option, but a necessity.
This thread of consideration will be continued in 2020.