Nearer My God to Thee

 Awake at 3am with my cat, Lucy, purring on my chest, and reading Tim's book "Beyond the Seventh Gate". I've just been reading about the ghost in the cemetery who sang "Nearer My God to Thee". Finally, I switch off my bedside lamp, and, as usual, choose a podcast to listen to. Oh! Cool! A new episode of Strange Familiars! Some time in the next ten minutes or so, I fall asleep, and wake in fright just before 5am to a ghostly voice singing (you guessed it!)... Nearer My God to Thee...

This is not the only weird synchronicity, but the culmination of many. Reading about Toad Road, Pennsylvania, I'm fascinated by the stories about a mythical "asylum" where inmates were kept by a cruel doctor since, in a town in Southern Tasmania (where I live) there are the remains of an ACTUAL asylum with stories of cruelty and dreadful conditions attached. Originally called "The Asylum" at New Norfolk, the mostly empty buildings still remain. These days, there are Ghost Tours run by a preservation committee, but there are records of the terrible circumstances endured by "patients", some of whom were reputedly the offspring of incestuous couples living in the hills thereabouts. The last patients who are still alive are residents in a local nursing home.

Tasmania was colonised by Britain as a prison when America first ceased importing Britain's felons. One of the worst places was called Sarah Island, in Macquarie Harbour, on the wild West Coast, where convicts deemed uncontrollable suffered unimaginably. Many preferred to die. One convict stabbed another in order that he be executed, rather than have to stay there.

The only access to the island was from the sea through a hazardous strait named "Hell's Gates".

The most infamous convict was Alexander Pearce who managed to escape to the mainland twice, both times cannabalizing his fellow escapees. There is a belief, amongst some Tasmanians, that the descendants of Alexander Pearce lived and live near New Norfolk, the site of the aforementioned Asylum.

Some years ago, I wrote a short story inspired by a true story told to me by a nursing home resident who grew up in Lachlan, just outside New Norfolk. The ancient lady's father had worked at the Asylum. She told me how there was a woman who had lost three children who'd drowned in the black river, and that she walked out to Lachlan every Sunday to the cemetery. The old lady's father had told his three daughters to hide if they ever saw the asylum inmate. It was only when she was older that it came to her why her father was afraid for her and her sisters.

The thing that most haunted me about the old lady's story was that the woman who had lost her children would sing "Nearer My God to Thee" every Sunday, when she visited the cemetery. Thus, that was the title I gave to my story.

It may be a stretch, but many Tasmanian convicts were Irish political prisoners. Imagine if one, or some, carried stories of Hell's Gate, the Asylum, and the dark history of Tasmanian colonisation to Pennsylvania. Apparently, 14% of Pennsylvanians are ethnically Irish. Or, even more weirdly, what if stories like these are part of our collective unconscious????

Mama

 Maria was a tiny El Salvadorian lady who I saw four times a week in one of the nursing homes where I worked. She was about four foot tall, with long, grey hair in a bun, and a giant skirt that exploded out from underneath her breasts. I don't mind admitting that Maria was probably my favourite old lady. She had quite advanced dementia.

Maria spoke only in Spanish, so I started calling her "Mama", and the name was soon taken up by some of the carers. Having a smattering of Spanish, I could inject a word here and there into our conversations, backed up with exaggerated facial expressions. Every time I saw her, Mama would ask about "tu esposo" (my husband), and I would shake my head and sadly tell her "no esposo", to which information she would look suitably sympathetic.

Mama's own esposo had died some years before, but she had a photo of him on her bedside table, and she would feed him with her dinner. Consequently, there was a permanent smear of mashed vegetables on the glass that cleaning staff would wipe off every now and again.

Mama loved to draw, and her walls would be decorated with her pencil and crayon creations. Eventually, the activities staff covered the walls of her room in large sheets of butchers' paper, so that she could continue creating what I imagined to be rainbow-coloured angels and the Virgin Mary.

The worst times for Mama and for staff were the days when she had to have a shower and a change of  clothes. Staff, understandably, dreaded the drama of trying to undress her and get her into the shower. Screams would ensue, and Mama would accuse carers of stealing her clothes. However, after the fracas, she would be clean and tidy and settled in her chair. 

There were five daughters who visited often, although it was painful for the youngest, who had been born years later than her sisters, with a different father. Mama would not, could not, acknowledge her. This was obviously very upsetting for that daughter. 

I really miss those old people that I saw every day of the working week. There was such a "nakedness" between us, at times, that it was transcendental. I suppose she is probably dead, now.

Unbecoming a Writer

 It's about a year since I've done any serious writing. I decided to detox myself from the phony literary world of publishers, prize-winners and book launches. I realised how much, since the age of seven, when I first stood on my father's bed to type a story on Aunty Molly's old Olivetti typewriter, I had been groomed and lured into the Cult of Literature. 

My father's room, "The Little Room", previously and euphemistically referred to as a "sunroom", was off our narrow galley kitchen. Originally, there was a plank door, but it ended up with a curtain across the doorway. I don't remember when that happened. I have a few memories of it before it was my father's bedroom. I recall mounds of fresh washing lying on the single bed, waiting to be ironed or folded. And there was the old cane basket that was my mother's only laundry basket. I had it for many years, when my own children were small. I remember the creak of it. I ended up setting fire to it, one afternoon. Lucas had been away somewhere, and we had a small birthday tea ready for him on his return. I had already hung the old basket from the central pole of the house and had thoughtlessly lit a candle on the tiny ledge underneath it. It soon caught fire and ended up with a burnt gap under one handle.

My brother slept in the Little Room when he was very ill with gastroenteritis ("tincter-tincteritis", as he referred to it). We must both have been very young. Our childhoods were plagued with various tummy wogs, most likely due to the can toilet down the back that was not enough for a family of six. 

The Little Room was unlined. There was one single bed on the left, and the aforementioned wardrobe on the right. The big, old, black typewriter could be reached by standing on the edge of the bed and leaning across. Above the doorway, there was a shelf that held miscellaneous boxes and things that seemed mysterious to me. I often dreamt of it as a passageway or portal. I think that notion went far back into my pre-verbal days. 

Being unlined, the walls of the room were pimply grey asbestos. Beside the wall joist that was halfway along the bed, there was a hole that had, possibly, been punched or kicked in at some stage. The window consisted of mottled glass louvres, and outside the window was the crimson-leaved plum tree, though it never did produce plums, so it may not have been a plum tree at all.

So, it was at the age of seven that I would lean across that abyss, pushing down the letters of the ancient typewriter with great force, teaching myself how to use caps and how to go down to the next line, how to indent, and how to go from red ink to black, that I wrote my first short story entitled "How the Red Sea Got Its Name". It was a Biblical kind of story, gory and prophetic. Likewise, my first poem, "The Weeping Willow", was very earnest. "As I watch you, weeping willow, your branches hand down straight; they fall to make a pillow for the man who opened Heaven's Gate"...I took that poem to school and my teacher read it out. At that age, I was oblivious to my peers' hatred.

And so it was at that age that I started to think of myself as a writer. In high school, my English teacher referred to me as "the Professor". I was deep and introverted. I got to read the part of Laura when we studied "The Glass Menagerie". It was my use of language and my depth that made me special, and that little kernel of the extraordinary planted itself firmly in my self-concept.

It was just like a religion! I see that now! Writing would be the means to my salvation...my immortality. Every rejection letter would be the lash of the torturer...every success of other, less thoughtful writers, my Crown of Thorns. Perhaps it was merely age, or the fact that a close friend had left a visible cult, that I started to see the reality of "the literary world". How did I ever fall for such a crock? I asked myself. 

I did not like the person that literature turned me into. I did not like the bitterness and rage I felt when I realised the feet of clay of the literary world. I started scrolling past online news of others' success. I glowered at authors spouting tired cliches on arts programs. I saw how being an ex-writer was not unlike being an ex-Jehovah's Witness. I realised how religious trauma might expand to include the trauma of aspirant authors in the DMI. 

Perhaps I exaggerate. 

I decided, about a year ago, to de-tox from the Cult of Literature. I hope I have regained some perspective. Perhaps I feel a little less wounded. The struggle continues.

The Land at the Middle of Everything

 

-Adam and Eve ~circa 1800

I clearly remember being a six-year-old in Mrs Rourke’s Grade One class at St Pat’s convent school in Blacktown. We were afraid of Mrs Rourke. She wore her white hair in a French roll, and was given to shouting at the top of her lungs, at which unpredictable behaviour my stomach would do somersaults. I recall Mrs Rourke’s religion classes, which all seemed to centre around the Garden of Eden and Original Sin. There was a sequence to our teacher’s classes: she would draw a large circle on the blackboard and tell us that it was the world. She would then draw two stick-figures that, we were told, were Adam and Eve. Between Adam and Eve there would be a tree, with a snake coiled around its trunk and one apple.

I loved gardens. My grandmother, Biddy, had a wild, wild garden with a winding path meandering through it and down to a fowl-yard. The soil smelt of old tea-leaves and earthworms. The slab of dark stone that was the back step was worn down in the middle. The shade at the back of the house was dense and cold. The bush that spilt out of Galston Gorge, where my mother played as a child, clambered right up to the end of the street. You could smell its sweetness in the sunshine, along with Uncle Wally’s rum tobacco.

I liked the idea of the Garden of Eden, and I was not the first to do so. We know that the idea of “paradise” goes right back to the Sumerians, who came from Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. We learnt about that in our first year of high school. A hippy teacher called Dawn Tracy taught us about those two rivers, and I had no clue why I should care. Turns out those two rivers flow through western Asia and through all the countries we think of when we talk about the Middle East. It was the “birthplace” of our civilization, or so they say.

The Sumerians believed that the gods lived in a fertile valley of flowers, trees, animals and precious stones. Why wouldn’t they? If you lived in a desert, you too would imagine a fertile and regularly-watered heaven. One of the first stories ever written down, and the Sumerians had the oldest known system of writing, was about a man called Gilgamesh who journeyed to find a hero called Utnapishtim, who had saved his family and animals by building a big boat, when the gods decided to send a flood in retribution for human misdeeds. There, in the garden where Utnapishtim lived, Gilgamesh discovered the secret to eternal life. That story was written about 5,000 years ago, well after the mythical “event” was supposed to have taken place.

The image of a paradise where the gods lived removed from humankind was basic to Zoroastrianism and to the early Hebrews, and thus to the three major world religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The symbolism is to be found across cultures, to such an extent that, over the centuries, beliefs about the physical existence of such a real place have developed. Indeed, the beliefs of the cult that we casually refer to as “Flat Earthers” are derived from the notion that the existence of such a place has been hidden from us by worldwide conspirators. Shambhala, Shangri La and other names have been bestowed on this place of peace, innocence and immortality. Some latter day explorers believed it to be hidden in the Himalayas, others somewhere in the Middle East, and yet others are convinced that it is concealed at the North Pole. It was the North Pole image and mythology of a place known as “Meru” that drew my attention, since the simplicity of the symbolism provoked me to take an imaginative leap of my own.

Across cultures, the images of Paradise, Eden or Meru share common characteristics. At the centre of the earth, there is a World Tree (such as the Scandinavian “Tree of Life” or Yggdrasil), often growing out of a central mountain. The roots of the tree reach down into the earth. The trunk of the tree creates the axis around which the world turns. The branches of the tree reach upwards to the place where the ancestors live. Four rivers circle the central mountain, and four islands or continents are laid out around it. At the perimeter of the island continents, there is a circular wall of mountains that encloses the hidden land.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible’s Old Testament, Adam and Eve live in the Garden of Eden until expelled by Yahweh- יהוה  -for taking the “fruit of the tree of knowledge” from the one forbidden tree. In other paradise mythologies, mankind is, likewise, exiled from the garden and made aware of evil, is suddenly “made” mortal, and is doomed to experience suffering.

Literal interpreters of the Eden-Meru story believe that the land exists in a physical form, but is somehow hidden by geography, conspiracy, or the state of the explorer’s soul when he/she goes searching for it. However, there are many who look on the mythology as symbolic of man’s search for peace and wisdom. My own theory, however, is somewhere in between, as I do believe that Eden-Meru is a real and physical “place”, but not in the way readers might think.

My own proposition is that Paradise or Eden-Meru represents the human brain and its capacity for transcendence, and that the fall from paradise is the history of mankind’s evolution (macro) reflected in the development of the foetus (micro), in particular.

[1]The central mountain is surrounded by open water, and then further out by four large islands that form a ring around the Pole.

 As we all know, the brain and spinal cord are surrounded by cerebrospinal fluid. This fluid provides a stable environment for delicate neurological structures against the forces of gravity and sudden acceleration and deceleration (speeding up, changing direction and slowing down). Cerebrospinal fluid also carries nutrients to the brain and takes waste away. It is vital in the development of the foetal brain.

There are four surrounding island continents that have high mountains along their southern [outer] rims…

The cerebral cortex is divided into four sections, called "lobes": the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe. The frontal lobe is important for thinking and control of voluntary movement or activity. The parietal lobe processes sensory input, while the occipital lobe is primarily responsible for vision. The temporal lobe is the part of the brain in charge of memory storage, the process of hearing sounds, visual recognition of faces and objects, and the use of language. “The cerebral cortex, especially that part customarily designated "neocortex," is one of the hallmarks of mammalian evolution and reaches its greatest size, relatively speaking, and its widest structural diversity in the human brain”. - Jones, Edward G., Peters, Alan (Eds.) Cerebral Cortex, Comparative Structure and Evolution of Cerebral Cortex.

In humans, the skull (“the outer rim”) is supported by the highest vertebra, called the atlas, permitting a nodding motion. The atlas turns on the next-lower vertebra, the axis, to allow for side-to-side motion. The human cranium, the part that contains the brain, is globe-shaped and relatively large in comparison with the face. In most other animals, the facial portion of the skull, including the upper teeth and the nose, is larger than the cranium.

Already, we can see a picture building up, layer upon layer. The subconscious metaphor of an Eden, represented by the complex geography of the world at the centre of everything, may be a modern human memory of its own evolution and divergence from non-human primates. As early humans became more “human”, was there a species memory of primate origins that was passed down through myth?

[…]‘thinking with imagery’ and even ‘thinking with the body’ must have preceded language by hundreds of thousands of years. It is part of our mammalian inheritance to read, store and retrieve emotionally coded representations of the world, and we do this via conditioned associations…- Stephen T Asma, ‘The Evolution of Imagination’

---

[1] *Unreferenced passages in bold font:- https://rgdn.info/en/mirovaya_gora._v_mifah_i_legandah_mira The World Mountain – Mount Meru in myths and legends of peoples of the world, prepared by “Arbat” (Russia).

 

X-ray art of Arnhem Land

It may seem far-fetched to imagine that early man could have a notion of his interior body-schema, but pre-literate cultures have been drawing “x-ray” interior maps for millennia. X-ray art can be seen in the Mesolithic (“middle” “stone”) art of northern Europe,  as well as in Siberia, the Arctic Circle, North America, West Papua, New Ireland, India, and Malaysia. It is well-known from the Aboriginal rock art and bark paintings of Arnhem Land. X-ray art is always related to the sacred and ceremonial. It represents the unseen, and is, therefore, numinous or “otherworldly”.

The Human Cranium

-Meru and Kailasa, antique diagram

…this mountain (Meru) was made of lodestone, and was the source of the earth’s magnetic field. For some creatures, the magnetic field that hugs our planet serves as a compass for navigation or orientation.

It has always been suspected, but a new study has proven, that humans can sense the earth's magnetic field. The study, published in the journal eNeuro, provides the first direct evidence, from brain scans, that humans can sense electro-magnetic fields, probably through magnetic particles in the brain. Literature about standing stones and megaliths has, in the past, suggested this sense, that, in modern times, may be drowned out by the busy electro-magnetic stimulation (radio waves, micro-waves etc.) present in modern life.

These islands are separated by four large inward-flowing rivers, which are aligned as if to the four points of the compass– though of course there is no north, east, or west at the North Pole: every direction from this centre is south. [my italics]

The brain has a dense blood supply. Arterial blood supply to the human brain consists of two pairs of large arteries, the right and left internal carotid and the right and left vertebral arteries.

The other name of the Meru is Jayadhara, which means “Jaya support”, or the structure that supports the sun. Throughout human history, and in many cultures, there has been an analogy drawn between the land of the gods in the sky, and the solar star, or sun. In Indian cosmology, Mount Meru is the axis of the earth, around which the stars revolve, and above which the sun shines. Continuing the conceit, we come to the zenith of the nervous system: the pineal gland. This pea-sized, pine-cone-shaped gland is located in the middle of the brain. “Once a revered tool of seers and mystics, it’s now largely dormant, its divine purpose lost over the ages. It’s the organ of supreme universal connection and its significance appears in every culture throughout the world” (from Gaia, an online blog).

In some species of amphibians and reptiles, the pineal gland is a light-sensing organ, known as the parietal eye, and is also called the third eye. René Descartes believed the human pineal gland to be the "principal seat of the soul".

This great spaceship, suspended above our heads like a Christmas ball… A big transparent ball that we almost expect to see turn to rain the snow on the roof of the world of the gods.

People who claim to have the capacity to “see” with their third eyes are sometimes known as seers. Spiritual traditions from India refer to the third eye as the ajna (or brow) chakra. The third eye refers to the gate that leads to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness. It is often associated with mystic experiences such as religious visions, clairvoyance, observation of the chakras, the ability to perceive auras, precognition, and out-of-body experiences, such as astral travel and lucid dreaming. Buddhists regard the third eye as the "eye of consciousness".

The human spine has evolved a number of adaptions that help it handle upright walking, such as its typical S shaped curvature.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that one of the major evolutionary steps in the journey to becoming modern humans was the development of an upright posture, or bipedalism. Perhaps the mythical snake or serpent in Christian mythology (referring to a paradise that we know as Eden) was a reference to the newly-evolved s-shaped spine? If you recall Genesis, you may remember the story that Eve was cursed with delivering her offspring in pain and anguish thenceforth, after having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. ‘To the woman he said, "I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children”. (Genesis 3:6).

[…] such a pelvic form had profound obstetrical consequences for australopithecines, resulting either in a different mechanism of birth from either later humans or nonhuman primates (Tague and Lovejoy) or in degree of difficulty during labour (Berge et al).

 (-Yearbook of Physical Anthropology [Vol. 35, 1992)

Why did Mrs Rourke, circa 1960, draw the tree at the centre of her simplistic earth illustration? The human nervous system- that is, the structures in the brain combined with the spinal cord and motor and sensory nerves- can be seen to look like Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree of Scandinavian myth, the axis of the world,  and recognised as the Tree of Life.

…floors or terraces [in the World Tree] are identified with “heavens” or cosmic levels […] By climbing them, the pilgrim approaches the Center [sic] of the World and, on the upper terrace, he enters the “pure sphere”.

…it is on the loftiest mountain plateau of the Inner Continent, several thousand feet higher than any portion of the surrounding country. It is the most beautiful place I have ever beheld in all my travels. In this elevated garden all manner of fruits, vines, shrubs, trees, and flowers grow in riotous profusion…

(- Willis George Emerson, “The Smoky God”)

The World Mountain is located in the centre of the universe, with stars, planets and many suns revolving around it. There are thirty-three gods who communicate with each other there.

The vertebral column usually consists of 33 vertebrae. A spinal nerve carries motor, sensory, and autonomic signals between the spinal cord and the body. In the human body there are 31 pairs of spinal nerves, one on each side of the vertebral column. Neurons (or nerve endings) communicate with one another by releasing chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and glutamate, into the small space between two neurons. Glutamate is the major "excitatory" neurotransmitter in the brain, which means that it helps to activate neurons and other brain cells.

At this stage of the mystical experience, it is the abundance of dopamine in the brain that fills the person with unspoken satisfaction. […] There, humans exhibit differences in gene expression when compared to the other primates.

Specifically, the researchers’ results showed that interneurons expressing genes that code for dopamine synthesis are present in humans’ striata but not in non-humans. This, they say, is part of what makes human brains uniquely human. - Stav Dimitropoulos, How Does Neuroscience Explain Spiritual and Religious Experiences? (blog)

In the Judeo-Christian scriptures, Adam and Eve are told by Yahweh that they may eat anything in the Garden of Eden, except “the fruit of the tree of knowledge”. There are various theories about what this “fruit” might have been. Predictably, there are those who assume that, because it was Eve who tempted Adam, the fruit was sexual. Others construe the imagery as meaning that man and woman have created their own downfall through science and technology. But what if the sanction against the fruit was not primarily about the actual fruit, but the act of reaching up for it? Does the narrative refer to the transition to becoming upright human animals? Is the species memory of “being cast out of Paradise” a memory of human life before mankind became erect?

"[…] the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked."

– Genesis 2

What could the myth mean by “naked”. Does it mean “hairless”, as opposed to having an overall covering of hair, as in other primates?

Our sweaty hairlessness, the theory goes, allowed us to hunt for longer, chasing nutritious large game that eventually helped give us the energy we needed to fuel growing brains.

-Melissa Hogenboom, earth (BBC webpage).

Interestingly, the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, the need to cover themselves, and the loss of the close relationship with other animals in the Garden of Eden were all connected events in the Old Testament. Until they were cast out of Paradise, Adam and Eve were companions of all the animals, and they could even speak to each other. What happened to turn man against his companions, and instil the fear of man in those relatives of his? Was man cast out of paradise at the point at which he evolved beyond the vegetarian diet of earlier primates?

The human gut consists mainly of the small intestines, which are responsible for the rapid breakdown of proteins and absorption of nutrients. The ape's gut is primarily colon, which indicates a vegetarian diet. This structural difference supports the hunting hypothesis in being an evolutionary branching point between modern humans and modern primates. Buss also cites human teeth in that fossilized human teeth have a thin enamel coating with very little heavy wear and tear that would result from a plant diet. The absence of thick enamel also indicates that historically humans have maintained a meat-heavy diet. Buss notes that the bones of animals [that] human ancestors killed found at Olduvai Gorge have cut marks at strategic points on the bones that indicate tool usage and provide evidence for ancestral butchers. – wikipedia, citing Buss, David (1999).

There is that other troubling and incongruous assertion in Genesis: was Eve created from Adam’s rib? Why would ribs be important in this memory of the evolutionary watershed that is the development of an upright posture? Like every other part of this creation myth, the story of Adam’s rib is possibly a species memory of the evolution of the bipedal human’s ribcage, as opposed to the hominids who preceded.

[…] humans and other great apes differ in the relative mediolateral dimensions of the upper and lower ribs, which leads to a difference in the overall contour of the rib cage (barrel-shaped in humans, conical or funnel-shaped in the great apes, as seen in anterior view). […] The overall shape of the hominoid thorax may be an adaptation that serves to better dissipate tensile forces in the body during under-branch suspensory behaviours.

(- Centre for Academic Research & Training in Anthropogeny, MOCA)

Yet another change brought about by the evolution to bipedalism would have been related to the fact that early humans experienced changes in their vestibular systems. The vestibular system in a modern human is the sense that maintains the upright positioning of the head and neck, and it originates in the labyrinths in the inner ear. Thus, once again, reaching up for the fruit may have been more significant than the fruit, itself.

[…] the evolution of large vertical canals accompanied the evolution of bipedalism, suggesting that the anterior and posterior canals are important for bipedal balance.

- Brian L. Day and Richard C. Fitzpatrick, Cell Press

Now, there is that other issue that I have not yet mentioned, but that cannot be ignored, and that is the fact that, in Genesis, it was Eve who “tempted” Adam to eat of the fruit that would lead them to be cast out from the garden. Resulting from this action, all daughters of Eve would be subjected to pain in childbirth, women would be dominated by men (because societies would be hunter-based), son would murder son (competition and territoriality), and mankind would be born with the stain of the “original sin” (evolutionary step) henceforth.

Why Eve?

[Sexual] Selection, one may say with some confidence, has shaped the evolution of the human mitochondrial genome. This miniscule piece of genetic information has already been a key part of the study of human evolution and population dispersal, and it seems likely to continue playing an important role as we tease out the role of selection.

(- Elson, Turnbull and Howell, American Journal of Human Genetics)

Darwin correctly realized that sexual selection could be mediated by male–male combat or by a female's choice of attractive males [my Italics]. His original definition of sexual selection, which appeared in The Origin of Species, appears to emphasize male–male combat [i.e., “a struggle between the males for possession of the females” but even then he was clearly aware of female choice. (-Jones and Ratterman, Mate choice and sexual selection: What have we learned since Darwin?)

In humans, as in most multicellular organisms, mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother's ovum. (- Wikipedia)

In other words, it was Eve’s mitochondrial DNA that not only was one of the main sources of genetic divergence through her sexual selection of a mate, but it was through Eve that the changes caused by that divergence continued on down through the generations.

It is fair to propose that, according to our species memory of being “cast out of Paradise”, we have inherited a nostalgia for the way we were before we evolved into an upright species, and that the blame is put on the female/mother for her supreme role in selection of a male partner, and her crucial place in the increments of evolution, through her mitochondria.

We have established, hypothetically, that the fall from Paradise was a species memory of the evolutionary step that encompassed achieving upright posture, losing body hair and becoming better hunters, but what does that have to do with the seat of Paradise being the human brain and spinal cord. As I mentioned, briefly, at the beginning, this narrative is about the evolution of mankind (the macro narrative) and the evolution of the foetus (micro). At the intersection of the two, I believe, is the germ of the archetype of Paradise.

Watching human baby brains grow is a little like watching evolution in action. A new study shows the human brain regions that expand the most during infancy and childhood are the same parts that expanded the most during evolution as humans diverged from other primates. – Livescience (blog)

Like a fractal, the evolution of the foetal brain contains within it the story of human evolution. It is possible that, within our nostalgia for a time before we were upright, there is the sense of loss that originates in expulsion from the maternal womb.

According to legends about the country of Meru, the land possessed a perfect climate and atmosphere that allowed humans to be fourteen feet tall and to live for a thousand years. In Genesis, when expelled to the outer world, Adam and Eve and their descendants were exposed to a vastly inferior environment wherein they began to age and to become aware of their mortality. Post-Eden, man is now considered one tenth of what man was in the Golden Age of humanity “when Gods and men walked and talked together”. If we accept that the symbolism of Eden/Paradise/Meru may belong to an ancient memory of the brain and its evolution, we might also consider why it is that the story of a “fall” or expulsion occurred in this widespread narrative.

As the brain cannot retrieve the data of our foetal state directly, it will employ a great tool to remind us about our stay inside the womb in order to relate to a state of total well-beingness [sic], and that tool is called nostalgia.

-Tom Thomas, Nostalgic (Quora online forum)

 […] to remember and cherish our earlier developmental periods as better and blissful. Hence the participant deity stems from the perfect beginnings before time. The participant religions anchor their rituals on techniques of “going back”. - Shlomo Giora Shoham, The Genesis of Genesis: The Mytho-Empiricism of Creation

Just as modern man experiences a nostalgia for earlier evolutionary phases, before bipedalism, he experiences the germ of that nostalgia in his sense of loss at being expelled from the womb, the original “Eden”. 

This place is called by inhabitants the "navel of the earth," or "the cradle of the human race."

In Vedic India, intuitive knowledge of human consciousness and the universe was rendered into myths and symbols of profound insight, remarkable beauty and power, unintelligible to the modern intellect trained in analytic discourse. It seems likely that they were the result of intuitive faculties of mind that are no longer well developed or may one day yet become far more prevalent, as the capacity to read, write and calculate was at one time a rare endowment and considered a sign of genius.

-          Garry Jacobs, A Brief History of Mind and Civilization, Cadmus, 2016

The image of “Paradise/Eden/Meru” that has remained vital throughout modern human history and mythology may be a pre-verbal schema of the brain and spinal cord, representing a nostalgia for the innocence of pre-bipedal hominids and, simultaneously, of the developing foetus, which is, in itself, the evolution of modern man on an individual scale.

[…]there are deep embodied metaphorical structures within language itself, and meaning is rooted in the body (not the head).

Rather than being based in words, meaning stems from the actions associated with a perception or image. Even when seemingly neutral lexical terms are processed by our brains, we find a deeper simulation system of images. […]It is possible that Homo sapiens of 40,000 years ago were graphically literate before they were verbally literate.

(- Stephen T Asma, ‘The Evolution of Imagination’ (2017).

Why attempt to decode a rich mythology, such as the all-pervasive symbolism of “Paradise”, and turn it into some kind of mundane analysis of the human brain and the story of foetal expulsion from the womb? It is only as a 21^st Century human that we can look on the mysteries of the human brain, of foetal development and evolution as mundane. Modern science is a bit like butterfly collecting. By the time you have euthanized your specimen and pinned it to a corkboard, the butterfly is no longer the enchanting beast that it once was. Science can make us uninspired, as can that other party-pooper, organised religion. 

How wonderful, indeed, would such a country be: a place of mystery and wisdom at the heart of everything? And the most wonderful thing of all…it is a country hidden deep inside our DNA.

Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken, tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees—crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.

"This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me," whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. "Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!"

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

 

A favourite passage in a favourite book… but a product of its time, nonetheless, for, is it not Her that we remember?  Is it not the innocent earth, the untouched “Paradise”, the womb of the archetypal Mother that we long for? The Greek words nostos (‘return home’) plus algos (‘pain’) are the root of that bittersweet ache that we mean by “nostalgia”.  

In the telling and infinite re-telling of myths about “paradises”, humankind has created an unattainable place out of its interior life: the geography of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system, that, to the contemporary rationalist, may seem mundane and knowable, but to humans of times past, represented the most awe-inspiring of mysteries.

"Plan of the Brain-Mental Action" Sivartha 1912 Human Mind Antique Book

 

Here I Rest My All - Gedartes

 I included this poem in my book as a response to your poem. Some folks got curious about you and margarete so i showed your book and read your interview online.

I wrote this poem as an antiphon to your poem at the religious congress in Anaheim. It was raining that night.

So first i read tennyson to my family

Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower—but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

Then your poem

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

I read neruda

Ged sent Yesterday at 20:43

Then your poems

Then i showed them the paintings of kandinsky and had some comparative amateur analysis with some of your poems.

You know what. This world this time is different. I don’t think I’m crazy to say your writing is far superior than the usuals. I personally admire your works more than Nerudas. I love Neruda but sounds cheesy when I translate his poems in Filipino—it’s like watching a telenovela.

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:20

Subjective yes one may say but hey it’s a matter of aesthetic sense.

That can happen again and again; but who can argue with the finished work? Looking back at the lives of the greats who weren’t widely acknowledged in their time, you begin to think what’s for the masses. Should I give in and compromise the language? When Beethoven was asked why symphony no.7 is more famous than the 8th, Beethoven said because 8th is better. Don’t know if that is true but same goes with other artists—in music arts literature etc.

You sent Yesterday at 21:26

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:28

When I read your book I thought I was in a time machine or inside an old camera.

Ged sent Yesterday at 21:28

A different lens

HERE I REST MY ALL

-Gedartes

Here I rest my all

in some bread

across the sacred;

in some solitudes passing

through your skin.

Here I rest my heart in midnight rain

as you fall asleep;

your dreams- my songs

in ripples and sloping winds;

your arms- a flock of sheep;

unfenced;

like mists in the landscape,

like landscapes in the mist;

and your eyes closed,

and I remain

dripping- a phrase

of shutters and gutters.

Consider this as a prayer,

if you must,

and I will end it

with a dance.