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CIVILIZATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS - PART II
There are several important take-aways from this major
civilizatoric self-control.
One is that we here can observe that self-control unfolded
in consciousness not only stems from the ability of higher
cognition. There seems to be another system with very potent
means for enabling human self-control and is religion. In
opposition to hard core scientists like Dawkins, who view
religion as a mutation, as an unwanted anomaly, we can here
observe how crucial life-lines of trade would be impossible
without Buddhism at the Eastern end and Cristianity at the
Western end of these silk strings. Animals are not religious.
Religion seems to be a higly efficient social self-control
interface rooted in story telling ability unfolded within
consciousness. Harari is right when he calls man a story telling
animal. Without religious stories, there would be no silk
routes. Consciousness it seems, counts for two of the historically most infigting brain
interfaces: the rational mind and the religious mind.
It is in this context important to emphasize that this line of
thinking does not require an actual belief in any kind of
spirituality. We are solely looking at the civilizing power-glue
of organized religion, which is entirely different than the
question of God's existence or not.
The Emergence of Non-dual Ouroboros Consciousness
Another take-away is that the
concept of non-dual unity consciousness could not come into
existence without high tide urban development and increasing
wealth through long-distance trade. Long distance trade and the
unfoldment of long distance prioritation of sight in
consciousness is interlinked.
The cognitive part of consciousness is dual. The religious is
too but it has in it inbuilt the possibility to transcend
duality into non-duality.
Both the shamanistic
hunter-gatherer and the later agricultural-based cultures are
fundamentally based on and in a dual consciousness and the split
understanding of reality made by of the same. A non-dual
consciousness requires crisscrossing neurons combining diffent
part of the brain in pretty much the same way as silk routes can
be seen as cultural neurons.
Consciousness litterally had to expand to spacehold the vast
greographic area of the Seleucid-Ashokan culture and trade
unity.
FROM MEDIEVAL EXESS TO THE RATIONALITY OF ENGLIGHTENMENT
Let us now jump to another disruptive period, this time
taking place in Europe itself. It began in the Italian
city-states in the 15th century with the renaissance period and
it culminated with the age of enlightenment.
Norbert
Elias's observations in "The
Civilizing Process,"
elucidate
the transition from the Medieval to the Enlightenment period
implied emotional self-control:
"The soul is
here, if one may express oneself thus without comparison, much
more prepared and accustomed to leap from one extreme to the
other with always the same intensity, and often even small
impressions are uncontrollable associations, enough to trigger
the fear and the turnaround. When the structure of human
relations changes, when monopoly organizations are formed for
corporal violence and instead of the persistent feuds and wars
the more stable urgency situations due to peaceful, money- or
prestige-acquired functions keep the individual in tight reins,
the affective expressions slowly strive towards a line in the
middle."
Norbert Elias highlights that as
we progressed in the process of civilization, we transformed
from beings reliant on close-range senses to those predominantly
guided by long-range, visual perceptions. In this evolution, the
term "Enlightenment" carries a significant implication.
Emotional regulation became crucial, and our sensory experiences
shifted from direct tactile engagements to more distant
observations. This transformation is encapsulated in the term
"Enlightenment," which defines the post-medieval "Age of
Reason." For 17th-century thinkers, "The
Golden Middle Way" emerged as a paramount concept, which can
be seen as history echoing itself.
Throughout the trajectory of
civilization, long before even the medieval era, our transition
has been marked by becoming more composed beings, residing in
more harmonious environments. Consciousness, functioning as an
operative system, struggles to process intense emotional
disturbances. It is susceptible to regression because the most
recent evolutionary developments are inherently the most
delicate. Therefore, the societal emphasis on self-control
becomes indispensable for the flourishing of consciousness.
The Sensuous Middle Ages
Even in the much later period of the Middle Age, the average
person lived more spontaneously, acting on immediate sensory
experiences, at least as compared to our time. This immediate,
sensory, yet unpredictable life was led without considering
potential consequences. Distress, captivity, defeat, victory,
mutilation, unrestrained pleasure, devastation, religious
penance, and remorse were experienced within the silent and
sensory space of the body. Surveillance and punishment came from
external forces like religious and secular institutions, not
from within.
Part of a painting of Bruegel
Even until the Enlightenment period, it was customary for a man
to greet a woman by touching her chest, an act that would lead
to outrage in today's context.
Direct, unreflective, and uninhibited sensory experiences were
the prerogative of pre-industrial humans. I've personally
witnessed this kind of immediate sensory presence in India's
slums. Civil restraint is conspicuously absent there, replaced
by instinctual survival behaviors.
Odysseus to Smartphones: The
Reign of Consciousness
The famed act of Odysseus resisting the Sirens highlights
consciousness's strategic emergence. External societal
regulations prompted our internal self-control. Our primal,
emotion-driven self now contends with consciousness's
constructs. While the sensory immediacy of pre-industrial times
dominated once, now, our society steers towards visual
interfaces.
Modern cognition emphasizes sight, intensified by media and
technology. The repercussions of this visual dominance might be
the trade-offs between our body's interoceptive well-being and a
visually oriented brain, leading to auditory experiences being
dominated by visual descriptions.
Especially in times of change, our various biological layers
become misaligned.
Our adaptability is remarkable, yet the evolutionary baggage we
carry - a complex blend of outdated biogenetic software and
hardware - challenges our ability to navigate pressing issues
like our growing digital reality.
External Control Dictated Self-Control
It's crucial to note that the first semblance of inner
self-control emerged due to the need for external regulation. To
participate in complex social structures, and more broadly to
live civilly, we must be considerate of others.
Consciousness may be small, but it remains vigilant. It's
fragile, yet cunning. By forming intricate networks with other
individuals' consciousnesses, it tricks our inner cyclops. It
wraps itself in the protective blankets of civilization.
Advanced civilizations reduce the risk of catastrophes. We
shield ourselves and one another through civil wisdom and
self-restraint.
The body remains primal, an animal residing within us. Its
operating system is emotions within attention. It has become
increasingly terrified of the constructs that consciousness has
formed. Since the time of Odysseus, we've attempted to subdue it
with the conscious mind's thoughtful tendrils.
TOWARDS THE DISTANT-SENSING CONSCIOUS BEING
From the Middle Ages onward, humanity's distant senses have
been honed at the expense of immediate sensory experiences. The
Church slowly taught us the concept of sin and thus distance
ourselves from our immediate sensory existence. Simultaneously,
we were trained to read and heed wise words, replacing older,
more direct forms of communication and control.
Then at much later stages came television, introducing us
literally to "distant viewing". This explosion of information
and the ability to navigate distant worlds prepared us for
computer interfaces. Today, our gaze is glued to the screens of
our smartphones. Are we transitioning towards a global,
disembodied symbiosis with computer circuits?
From a civilizational perspective, we've rapidly evolved into
self-regulating systems managed by visual interfaces. Jacques
Lacan's concept of the "Big Other" has been digitized.
Lacan and The Gaze of the Other
We are but actors on the world stage. For Lacan, we are always
conscious of 'the other's' gaze, even before we ourselves look.
The gaze of this
"Big
Other" shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world.
I would argue that we, by evolutionary history, are herd
animals. Our survival has always depended on the group and our
place within it. This all-pervading collective gaze of the
group, or what I would term, not the "big other" but "the Big
Others", is what truly shapes us.
This civilizational reprogramming of our sensory hierarchy has
shifted energy and priority from awareness to consciousness.
Only in consciousness we can alienate ourseves and in duaity
look at ourselves with the gaze of the Big Others. The
immediate, bodily-focused attention of our past has been
superseded by a distancing collective shaped consciousness in a
increasingly more civilized world. The body, in this process,
becomes subject to the apparatus of consciousness.
The dominance of sight in our cognitive processes became
radically more pronounced with the mass-medial advent of reading
and writing. Gutenberg made thoughts visible instead of heard.
Currently, we're witnessing another surge in the prioritization
of visual senses. Since smartphones became ubiquitous, our
reliance on and cultivation of sight for both personal and
societal navigation has deepened. Just imagine for a second, how
much teenage brains might have changed, daily staring for hours
into a smartphone. I am sure that millions of neurons used for
anchoring the body in interoceptive (well)being, have been
traded off with visual highways in the brain. Therefore it can
be no surprise that our day-to-day interactions, auditory
perception frequently yields to the primacy of sight. As a music
teacher, it's intriguing for me to hear phrases like, "Have
you seen that concert?" Such expressions underscore the
pervasive influence of visual cognition.
The Age of Remote Viewing
This intensified focus on the visual may have relegated our
more instinctual, awareness-based systems, leading me to
speculate on its implications for mental well-being.
Many of the ailments of modern society, including existential
alienation, are largely created as a consequence of our cultural
escape from the immediate experiences of our close senses.
Electronic gadgets, especially smartphones, engage our distant
senses, such as hearing and vision, to an extent that even the
last 50 years of the TV era has not achieved on its own, but has
prepped us for. Until the day when we can feel, smell, and taste
in virtual reality environments, the rapid deprivation of our
immediate sensory needs continues. At the same time, our
yearning for the lost physical sensation increasingly tries to
be satisfied through vision. Like Narcissus, we search in the
visually created mirror image for the fullness that only the
immediate sense of touch can provide. Our culture, reflected in
countless small interactive screens and the mass media's
production of reality, becomes a scopophilic attempt to reclaim
the lost immediate sensory richness and innocence. (Note:
"Scopophilic" refers to taking pleasure in looking, especially
in a voyeuristic sense.)
Western Societal
Dynamics
Today, our Western society is simultaneously playful and
excessively regulated. Highly advanced urban environments
connected globally through information technology operate under
constant pressure, continually pushing beyond their limits. This
ever-changing reality most urgently requires the higher
consciousness's cognitive functions' sublime and creative
capacity for innovation. The paradox is that while this societal
structure has created the conditions for intensified
consciousness in flow, it is through this society's constant
internal pressures that the very flame of this consciousness is
repeatedly extinguished.
It is indeed a wonderful thing that we have become more
conscious beings within the last 2500 years. However there is a
trade off in the sense that every blessing always comes with a
curse. Hegel's dialectic way of thinking fit quite well here:
Thesis-anti-thesis: synthesis.
After this brielf exploration of the anachronistic workings
of ancient and more recent operative systems within the brain,
it is time to delve deeper into the mystery of awareness.
In
the subsequent exploration, I will traverse the intimate
realm of our senses, unearthing the dormant 'God' of awareness
concealed in our body's depths. As Meister Eckhart profoundly
stated:
"I am certain as I
live that nothing is so close to me as God. God is nearer to me
than I am to my own self; my life depends upon God's being near
me, present in me."
Sources
Seleukos Nikator, Constructing a Hellenistic Kingdom - John D.
Grainger
Bactria, The Histoty of a forgotten Empire - H. G. Rawlingson
The Greek Experience of India - Richard Stoneman - 2019
Alexander the Great - Robin Lane Fox
A History of Christianity - Diarmaid Mc Culloch
The Silk Roads - Peter Frankopan
Hellenism in ancient India - Bannerjee, Gauranga Nath
The Story of Civilization ( II to V) - Will Durant
The Art and Architecture of India - 1996. B. Rowland
Buddha Statuen - Leonhard Adam - 1925
Buddha in Indien - Kunsthistorisches Museeum in Wien - 1995
The Jaina Path of Purification - Padmanabh S. Jaini
Collected Papers on Buddhist Studies - Padmanabh S. Jaini
Konge for en dag (King for a Day) - 1946 - Kaare Foss
Richard Stoneman -
Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and
the Alexander Romance - 1995 - Richard Stoneman
The Bible and the Buddhist
(Sardini, Bornato [Italy] 2001) Duncan McDerret:
An Intriguing but Isolated Figure:
Dr. Phil Christian Lindtner
www.Jesusisbuddha.com
- curated by Dr. Phil Christian Lindtner
Dr. Christian Lindtner is a figure
who has stirred considerable controversy and, as a result, finds
himself on the periphery of mainstream academic discourse. Yet,
it is important to acknowledge that many of his scholarly
observations are indeed corroborated and credible. Nonetheless,
from my perspective, Lindtner, like many specialists, may
exhibit a certain obliviousness to topics beyond his immediate
expertise. For instance, his assertion that Jesus was a
non-historical figure, used to underpin his theory that the New
Testament is essentially a reiteration of Buddhist scriptures,
can be challenged. The evolution and adaptation of the Jataka
Tales demonstrate the flaw in such a provocative claim. Stories
and myths evolve and transform as they traverse cultures. Upon
reaching new lands, they often become personalized, centering
around a local figure, thereby acquiring a unique, localized
expression. Thus, Christianity is not merely a facsimile of
Buddhism; rather, it has been profoundly influenced by Buddhist
teachings and adapted them within its own spiritual and cultural
framework.
To illustrate the transmutation of stories across cultures,
consider the tale of a clever young man from the reign of the
Indian Emperor Akbar in the 16th Century, which later became
associated with the Danish King Christian IV in the 17th
Century. In the Indian narrative, a bright youth impresses Akbar
with his wit at a crossroads and is subsequently invited to the
royal palace at Fatehpur Sikri. Upon his arrival, he is extorted
by a guard demanding half of whatever reward he receives from
the emperor. Cunningly, the young man requests 100 lashes from
Akbar, who, upon understanding the situation, admires the young
man's ingenuity and offers him a position in his ministry
instead.
Fast forward to Denmark, where a similar story unfolds with King
Christian IV. On a winter day, he purportedly rescues a young
man who had fallen through the ice while traveling between
Copenhagen and Skåne. The king invites the man to his court, and
the narrative from Fatehpur Sikri ensues. Within 50 years, this
story migrated from India to Denmark. The likely scenario is an
amalgamation: the Danish king may have saved someone from
drowning, and this act was later embellished with Akbar’s tale
to portray Christian IV as a generous monarch.
Examining the New Testament’s depiction of Jesus, we encounter
two distinct portrayals: one is a more confrontational figure,
while the other embodies non-violence and forgiveness. The
grafting of narratives onto a local figure doesn't always
seamlessly align with the individual's character, suggesting a
historical basis for Jesus. The discrepancies in these stories
indicate the layers of narrative added over time, pointing to
Jesus as a tangible historical figure.
More Controversial Yet
Thought-Provoking Sources:
While I recognize the following sources as inspirational, I
don't view them as entirely reliable for academic rigor:
Jesus Lived in India - Holger Kersten
Lost Years of Jesus - Elizabeth Clare Prophet
These sources and personal experiences while travelling for
years in India and Nepal, have contributed to my nuanced
understanding of the complex relationships between Eastern and
Western philosophies and religions.
Gunnar Mühlmann
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