Science Forums 2

[Thunderbird]

Great read guys, I especially liked the story about “rabbit boy”.... Native American Jesus?
After years of reading Castaneda ,Jung and Campbell it seems to me the mythological story and subsequent religions/Gods originated as an evolutionary survival meme. Unlike animals that rely more on genes\instinct to achieve equilibrium with the environment, man needed to evolve a cultural story that unified social ties within a tribe. The plasticity of our brains made us great problem solvers and allowed us to evolve highly complex brains quickly, but as history has shown, all to well, venerable to internal chaos .

Children of the tribe were indoctrinated to the sacred story at the age maximum effect, about 12-13 yrs of age in a ceremony of transition from childhood to adulthood. The cultural meme acted as a cyclical stabilizer reinforced and updated though the generations.
Edited from an earlier thread...
Most all of man’s early history there was one culture, the hunter gather tribe. Out of this culture emerged the first myth told by every father to every son for thousands of generations. Up until the last 5-10 thousand years that is.

Before our resent time of written record and civilization there was only the hunter’s story told to the hunter’s son. The only evidence of that story exist in a few cave paintings from this time and buried at the core of modern belief systems underlying stories we share at the theater, books or in church .

The original archetypal hunters story{ Pure conjecture on my part) was told to every generation and finally adapted and revised to fit with the civilized world of the city state , and would eventually branch out to connect and create all these stories that relate to our place in the complex modern world.

The first story however was a simple cognitive device to give an equilibrium within the hunter gather tribe. A unified collective censuses in a completely hostile environment, one that we as modern man can not even fathom. I really believe the tribes that survived was because they had the best stories.

Personally the most profound story originated from one of Carlos Castaneda’s books, it was like many of his “Tales of Eternity” that always hint at more than they actually say . The story I am about to recount never really happened in the books, not in the way I will present it anyway, but the stories there hints at the first story every told. In essence I have created a more personal modern myth of my own. Its more of the anti-myth myth in its conclusion that says, “Know you’re personal-collective myth, but never take it as the ultimate truth” I have posted the following story before but it seems however the story is only a profound cognitive device to me. LOL...oh well here it is again with a new title .

The riddle of the Gods

This story starts with the old Neolithic sage Don Juan and his apprentice the modern western educated anthropology student Carlos observing some desert creatures as they scurried about in the desert chaparral.

Don Juan commented that a man could survive in the dessert by hunting those animals, But first you would need to study them and know their habits.
He explain how they followed a pattern that could be mapped as a circle around a burrow. Once these feeding cycles are learned snares could be set and escape routes could be routed, so the animals own cyclical behavior became its venerability.
But he warned his apprentice, as you follow these behaviors and set your snares every day in the same way, you also make yourself venerable because you too are being observed.
He said there were predators even more attuned to theses circular patterns of the dessert, so some day something could be waiting for you along one of your well worn paths.

He went on to say that there existed in nature an ultimate balance between awareness of these cyclical movements in the world and a spontaneity of action in ones self, an unpredictability that wells up from the spirit.
Once this balance is achieved the hunter becomes a “Magical Warrior.”
“A magical warrior can never be trapped” don Juan said or “ be caught without an escape route,” because he can never be reduced to behaviors .

This “warrior’s path” are no longer connected to cycles of the world, but of the spirit, thus he can always “see” what is coming without being seen himself. If this state can be achieved the man would never die. Death itself the recorder of all life, the supreme predator would acknowledge that the man was no longer of the world but the spirit so death was not death only another force to be utilized as an ally.

Also, he said there existed in the world animals “magical creatures.” that have achieved this balance. The average hunter would never cross the path of a magical creature, but the magical warrior may in time,.. If he was worthy. At this supreme moment in a warrior life the immortal creature would divulge the answerer to the riddle of life. The actual relationship the Gods have with mankind. Big big stuff.

Don Juan recounted that he had achieved this state as a young man and became a magical warrior, and seemed to always know instinctively what to do in any situation, until one day he was hunting on a heavily forested ridge top. He remembered hearing a strange sound that sent shivers though his body.

He knew instinctively that he was to about to have an encounter with a magical creature, and for the first time since he had reached this state he had no clue what to do.

The shivering became terror as he heard soft steps coming from behind. The terror then became shame. He suddenly understood that he was only a child in this world and he was about to encounter a king of the earth, old as the mountains. He finally then gave into his instincts and found himself doing a most inexplicable thing. He stood on his head and began to cry. After some time he felt something breathing in his ear, he fell over in a sitting position and looked up at the most beautiful deer that he had ever seen. It glowed with a light of a fierce nobility, and then it spoke “ Why are you crying ?” the deer inquired "Because I'm not worthy" the warrior replied . Then he remembered the deer lowered his head and said very clearly “ So ? ” and then ambled away....
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