DRAGONTREE 5
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Issue 5, September 2011
"THE DRAGON'S TREASURE"
THE DRAGON'S TREASURE
1. Oldest known ritual: python worship, archaeologist says
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061130_python.htm
Nov. 30, 2006
Courtesy Research Council of Norway and World Science staff
photo Shiela Coulson
An archaeologist claims to have found evidence of what may have been mankind’s earliest rituals: worship of the python, 70,000 years ago in Africa.
Until now, scholars have largely held that the first rituals occurred over 40,000 years ago in Europe, according to Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo in Norway.
Coulson argues that ancient worshippers saw the likeness of a python in this rock, and pockmarked it to mimic snake skin. Coulson said she turned up evidence of the python ceremonies while studying the origin of the San people of Ngamiland, a sparsely inhabited part of northwestern Botswana.
“Our find means that humans were more organised and had the capacity for abstract thinking” much earlier than previously assumed, she said.
Coulson said she found the evidence while seeking Middle Stone Age artifacts in the Kalahari Desert’s Tsodilo Hills, an isolated cluster of small peaks with the world’s largest concentration of rock paintings.
The hills are still sacred to the San, who call them the “Mountains of the Gods” and the “Rock that Whispers.”
San mythology holds that mankind descended from the python. Ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been made by the snake as it circled, ceaselessly seeking water. Coulson said her find shows local people had a specific place for python-related rituals: a small cave on the hills’ northern side, so secluded and hard-to-access that it was was unknown to archaeology until the past decade.
The spearheads were described as particularly beautiful, and as brought to the site from hundreds of kilometers away. (Photo: Sheila Coulson)
When she entered it this summer with three master’s students, they noticed a rock resembling a huge python’s head, she said.
The six-meter-long by two-meter-tall (20 feet by 6.6 feet) stone bore more than 300 dents that she argues are man-made.
“You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving.”
There was no sign of recent work on the rock; its surface was heavily worn, she said.
A photo supplied by Coulson alongside a statement announcing the find this week seemed to show the serpent’s “snout” planted in an extraneous stone. This, she wrote in an email, might be because it’s all a natural formation except for the dents. The snout might have been hard to reach to make modifications because the floor was two meters lower in ancient times, she added. Also, snakes in late Stone Age paintings commonly “run into or out of cracks in the wall—or into wall faces,” she wrote.
She also argued that a wealth of surrounding evidence backs her theory. The researchers dug a pit directly before the python stone and found many stones, which they said were tools used to make the pockmarks. Some of these were dated as more than 70,000 years old. They also found a piece of the wall that had fallen off during the work, and more than 13,000 artifacts, all spearheads and items that could be linked to ritual use, they said.
The stones used as spearheads aren’t from the Tsodilo region, Coulson added, but seem to have come from hundreds of kilometers away. The spearheads are better crafted and more colourful than other spearheads from the same time and area, she added, and only red spearheads had been burned.
“Stone age people took these colourful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there. Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site... All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place,” said Coulson.
An apparent secret chamber lay behind the python stone, she added, and parts of its entrance were worn smooth, suggesting many people had passed through it over the years. A shaman, she said—still a key figure in San culture—could have hidden in the chamber and had a good view of the cave interior. When he spoke from his crevice, it could have seemed as though the snake were speaking. “The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect,” she argued, adding that the priest could also have “disappeared” by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft.
While large cave and wall paintings abound throughout the Tsodilo Hills, this cave has only two small paintings, she continued: an elephant and a giraffe, painted, surprisingly, exactly where water trickles down the wall. Coulson thinks San mythology might explain this. In one San story, the python falls into water and can’t escape. A giraffe saves it. The elephant, with its long trunk, often serves as a metaphor for the python.
“In the cave, we find only the San people’s three most important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe... many pieces of the puzzle fit together here,” Coulson said. She added that she plans to submit a paper on the findings to a research journal. Normally, she acknowledged, to sustain the credibility of new findings, researchers should wait to announce results publicly until a research paper is accepted for publication. But she made an exception, she said, because these findings have already been publicized widely on Botswana TV and radio, and she has has discussed them in detail with colleagues worldwide.
Torfinn Ørmen, a zoologist who lectures on human evolution at the university and was not a member of the research team, told the school’s research magazine Apollon that “This is the oldest ritual site that we know of and it was in use before physically modern man left Africa.” The San, also called Bushmen, belong to the most ancient race of humans, he added. “Some researchers believe that modern man descended from the San. What is certain is that the San... have a very deep connection to this area of Botswana.”
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061130_python.htm
Nov. 30, 2006
Courtesy Research Council of Norway and World Science staff
photo Shiela Coulson
An archaeologist claims to have found evidence of what may have been mankind’s earliest rituals: worship of the python, 70,000 years ago in Africa.
Until now, scholars have largely held that the first rituals occurred over 40,000 years ago in Europe, according to Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo in Norway.
Coulson argues that ancient worshippers saw the likeness of a python in this rock, and pockmarked it to mimic snake skin. Coulson said she turned up evidence of the python ceremonies while studying the origin of the San people of Ngamiland, a sparsely inhabited part of northwestern Botswana.
“Our find means that humans were more organised and had the capacity for abstract thinking” much earlier than previously assumed, she said.
Coulson said she found the evidence while seeking Middle Stone Age artifacts in the Kalahari Desert’s Tsodilo Hills, an isolated cluster of small peaks with the world’s largest concentration of rock paintings.
The hills are still sacred to the San, who call them the “Mountains of the Gods” and the “Rock that Whispers.”
San mythology holds that mankind descended from the python. Ancient, arid streambeds around the hills are said to have been made by the snake as it circled, ceaselessly seeking water. Coulson said her find shows local people had a specific place for python-related rituals: a small cave on the hills’ northern side, so secluded and hard-to-access that it was was unknown to archaeology until the past decade.
The spearheads were described as particularly beautiful, and as brought to the site from hundreds of kilometers away. (Photo: Sheila Coulson)
When she entered it this summer with three master’s students, they noticed a rock resembling a huge python’s head, she said.
The six-meter-long by two-meter-tall (20 feet by 6.6 feet) stone bore more than 300 dents that she argues are man-made.
“You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python. The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving.”
There was no sign of recent work on the rock; its surface was heavily worn, she said.
A photo supplied by Coulson alongside a statement announcing the find this week seemed to show the serpent’s “snout” planted in an extraneous stone. This, she wrote in an email, might be because it’s all a natural formation except for the dents. The snout might have been hard to reach to make modifications because the floor was two meters lower in ancient times, she added. Also, snakes in late Stone Age paintings commonly “run into or out of cracks in the wall—or into wall faces,” she wrote.
She also argued that a wealth of surrounding evidence backs her theory. The researchers dug a pit directly before the python stone and found many stones, which they said were tools used to make the pockmarks. Some of these were dated as more than 70,000 years old. They also found a piece of the wall that had fallen off during the work, and more than 13,000 artifacts, all spearheads and items that could be linked to ritual use, they said.
The stones used as spearheads aren’t from the Tsodilo region, Coulson added, but seem to have come from hundreds of kilometers away. The spearheads are better crafted and more colourful than other spearheads from the same time and area, she added, and only red spearheads had been burned.
“Stone age people took these colourful spearheads, brought them to the cave, and finished carving them there. Only the red spearheads were burned. It was a ritual destruction of artifacts. There was no sign of normal habitation. No ordinary tools were found at the site... All of the indications suggest that Tsodilo has been known to mankind for almost 100,000 years as a very special place,” said Coulson.
An apparent secret chamber lay behind the python stone, she added, and parts of its entrance were worn smooth, suggesting many people had passed through it over the years. A shaman, she said—still a key figure in San culture—could have hidden in the chamber and had a good view of the cave interior. When he spoke from his crevice, it could have seemed as though the snake were speaking. “The shaman would have been able to control everything. It was perfect,” she argued, adding that the priest could also have “disappeared” by crawling out onto the hillside through a small shaft.
While large cave and wall paintings abound throughout the Tsodilo Hills, this cave has only two small paintings, she continued: an elephant and a giraffe, painted, surprisingly, exactly where water trickles down the wall. Coulson thinks San mythology might explain this. In one San story, the python falls into water and can’t escape. A giraffe saves it. The elephant, with its long trunk, often serves as a metaphor for the python.
“In the cave, we find only the San people’s three most important animals: the python, the elephant, and the giraffe... many pieces of the puzzle fit together here,” Coulson said. She added that she plans to submit a paper on the findings to a research journal. Normally, she acknowledged, to sustain the credibility of new findings, researchers should wait to announce results publicly until a research paper is accepted for publication. But she made an exception, she said, because these findings have already been publicized widely on Botswana TV and radio, and she has has discussed them in detail with colleagues worldwide.
Torfinn Ørmen, a zoologist who lectures on human evolution at the university and was not a member of the research team, told the school’s research magazine Apollon that “This is the oldest ritual site that we know of and it was in use before physically modern man left Africa.” The San, also called Bushmen, belong to the most ancient race of humans, he added. “Some researchers believe that modern man descended from the San. What is certain is that the San... have a very deep connection to this area of Botswana.”
2. MAL'TA Glacial Refugia, Siberia, 20,000 B.C.
The Mal'ta tradition is known from a vast area spanning west of Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River. The site of Mal'ta, for which the culture is named, is composed of a series of subterranean houses made of large animal bones and reindeer antler which had likely been covered with animal skins and sod to protect inhabitants from the severe, prevailing northerly winds. Among the artistic accomplishments evident at Mal'ta are remains of expertly carved bone, ivory, and antler objects. Figurines of birds and human females are the most commonly found items.
Siberian Spiral, Glacial Refugia, Mammoth Ivory, Peak of Ice Age 25,000 ya
One side is drilled with holes forming an elaborate pattern of spirals, the reverse has three zig-zag water serpents. The plaque in the Irkutsk museum has a hole through its centre - it may have been attached to a shaman's ceremonial dress or hang up in a special place. Spirals are traditionally associated with the heavens. And zigzag water serpents - sometimes just abstracted as zig zags or diamond patterns, sometimes elaborated into fiercesome dragons, are associated with the underworld - and femaleness. You can see such imagery on Chinese paintings and on European paintings, and in traditional Australian cosmic imagery too. Spirals are associated with the heavens long before anyone knew about galaxies (only since 1930) but it reveals that 25,000 years ago careful observations had been made of the patterns of nature - the winds and clouds, and the ripples over the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%27ta-Buret%27_culture
The Mal'ta-Buret' culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Paleolithic (ca. 18,000 to 15,000 BP) on the upper Angara River in the area west of Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, Russian Federation. The type sites are named for the villages of Mal'ta (Мальта), Usolsky District and Buret' (Буреть), Bokhansky District. Mal'ta consists of semi-subterranean houses that were built using large animal bones to assemble the walls, and reindeer antlers covered with animal skins to construct a roof that would protect the inhabitants from the harsh elements of the Siberian weather. Much of what is known about Mal'ta comes from Russian archaeologist Mikhail Gerasimov. Known in the anthropological community primarily for his contributions to a process called forensic sculpture (the recreation the face of an individual from skeletal remains), Gerasimov first achieved fame for his excavation of Mal’ta in 1927. At the time the discoveries he made were revolutionary for the field of anthropology. Until his findings scientists had not imagined that Upper Paleolithic societies of Northern and Central Asia were capable of the same level of culture as those of Europe. Over the course of his career Gerasimov would twice more visit Mal'ta for excavation and research, each time completing findings that were just as remarkable. Evidence seems to indicate that Mal'ta is the most ancient site in eastern Siberia, however relative dating illustrates some irregularities. The use of flint flaking and the absence of pressure flaking used in the manufacture of tools, as well as the continued use of earlier forms of tools seem to confirm the fact that the site belongs to the early Upper Paleolithic. Yet, it lacks typical skreblos (large side scrapers,) that are common in other Siberian Paleolithic sites. Additionally, other common characteristics such as pebble cores, wedge-shaped cores, burins, and composite tools have never been found. The lack of these features, combined with an art style found in only one other nearby site, make Mal’ta culture unique in Siberia.
One side is drilled with holes forming an elaborate pattern of spirals, the reverse has three zig-zag water serpents. The plaque in the Irkutsk museum has a hole through its centre - it may have been attached to a shaman's ceremonial dress or hang up in a special place. Spirals are traditionally associated with the heavens. And zigzag water serpents - sometimes just abstracted as zig zags or diamond patterns, sometimes elaborated into fiercesome dragons, are associated with the underworld - and femaleness. You can see such imagery on Chinese paintings and on European paintings, and in traditional Australian cosmic imagery too. Spirals are associated with the heavens long before anyone knew about galaxies (only since 1930) but it reveals that 25,000 years ago careful observations had been made of the patterns of nature - the winds and clouds, and the ripples over the water.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mal%27ta-Buret%27_culture
The Mal'ta-Buret' culture is an archaeological culture of the Upper Paleolithic (ca. 18,000 to 15,000 BP) on the upper Angara River in the area west of Lake Baikal in the Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia, Russian Federation. The type sites are named for the villages of Mal'ta (Мальта), Usolsky District and Buret' (Буреть), Bokhansky District. Mal'ta consists of semi-subterranean houses that were built using large animal bones to assemble the walls, and reindeer antlers covered with animal skins to construct a roof that would protect the inhabitants from the harsh elements of the Siberian weather. Much of what is known about Mal'ta comes from Russian archaeologist Mikhail Gerasimov. Known in the anthropological community primarily for his contributions to a process called forensic sculpture (the recreation the face of an individual from skeletal remains), Gerasimov first achieved fame for his excavation of Mal’ta in 1927. At the time the discoveries he made were revolutionary for the field of anthropology. Until his findings scientists had not imagined that Upper Paleolithic societies of Northern and Central Asia were capable of the same level of culture as those of Europe. Over the course of his career Gerasimov would twice more visit Mal'ta for excavation and research, each time completing findings that were just as remarkable. Evidence seems to indicate that Mal'ta is the most ancient site in eastern Siberia, however relative dating illustrates some irregularities. The use of flint flaking and the absence of pressure flaking used in the manufacture of tools, as well as the continued use of earlier forms of tools seem to confirm the fact that the site belongs to the early Upper Paleolithic. Yet, it lacks typical skreblos (large side scrapers,) that are common in other Siberian Paleolithic sites. Additionally, other common characteristics such as pebble cores, wedge-shaped cores, burins, and composite tools have never been found. The lack of these features, combined with an art style found in only one other nearby site, make Mal’ta culture unique in Siberia.
Mammoth Hunters of the last Ice-Age, their legacy, and "World Surveyor Man". About 75,000 years ago, the super volcano under Lake Toba in what is now Sumatra blew up in such a spectacular explosion that its effects and debris can still be found over most of the planet. The massive amounts of dust blown high into the atmosphere blocked the sun's rays and caused the whole planet to plunge immediately into an ice-age lasting more than 60,000 years. For weeks after, it rained sulphuric acid. There were massive extinctions. The early human population also plummeted.
It was the more resourceful humans up to the challenge, that survived. In India, recently excavated stone tools, show that the makers were "modern" humans with a technology that enabled them to survive the dust, after effects and climate changes.
In Indonesia, they took to their boats. We don't know when boats were invented and first used, since they were always made from organic materials that rarely leave any trace. We do know that early humans in what is now Indonesia must have used boats. During the ice ages, when most of the moisture in the atmosphere was bound up in the massive ice-caps and glaciers, Indonesia, which has the earliest dated remains of definite human ancestors - to 2 million years ago (found in east Java), was part of south-east Asia. Most of its islands were joined together along with what is now Malaysia, Borneo and the gulf of Thailand, Sumatra, Java, Bali - this lost part of Asia is called Sundaland. It was separated from the continental plate of Australia - which included Papua New Guinea by open seas, peppered with islands like Sulawayo, and Flores. Some islands like Flores, as well as the Australian continent are separated by deep sea trenches marking the edges of boundary plates, which even in the most severe ice age remained as open seas and since this was on and near the equator, never froze. During the ice ages, in this region, the rain forests became less dense, but the living was still easy compared to the northern parts of the world.
People may have reached the shores of northern Australia as much as 120,000 years ago - and even during an ice-age, this part of the world was separated from south-east Asia by seas wide enough to keep Australia's wild-life and vegetation unique. Early humans would have had to cross open seas to some of the Indonesian islands too - since because of the deep ocean trenches it did not all become dry land. Flores was first colonised by Homo Erectus and by the little "Hobbits" perhaps as much as a million years ago - certainly more than 200,000 years ago - and they had to take themselves and family across open sea, with hungry sharks, and hungry crocodiles, and difficult sea currents to get there. Unless they had a sturdy boat to protect them, they would never have made it.
Exploding vocanoes might have given the inhabitants of this part of the world the challenge to develop the technology to take to the sea. Though fortunately not always of the scale of Toba, the world exploding behind you would have been a powerful incentive to take to the boats - invent them if you didn't have them yet, and head for a more peaceful land. And with the boats comes more technology - and knowledge to be passed on. Navigating by the currents, the sea-birds, the winds, the position of the sun, and the stars at night. As well as the skills to make a leak proof vessel and move it safely to another shore. And survive with fresh water and food.
Some of the traditional skills that enabled people to cross the Pacific and colonise even tiny islands have survived.
Until the last ice age, the early humans struggled to survive during the ice-ages. They either managed to migrate further south - or they died out. In south-eastern Britain then linked to what is now Germany by "Doggerland", the ancient Brits either migrated to Spain or the South of France or failed to survive.
New immigrants turned up in the north, thousands of years later when the climate warmed up. Here is a description of Neanderthal life in what is now the English Midlands, and then possibly as far north as humans in Europe are known to have lived at the time.
In Siberia it would have been more difficult for these early humans to escape the cold. There were great glaciated mountain ranges between them and a tropical paradise.
However not all northern Asia, that is Siberia, was covered by ice. Being such a vast land mass, rainfall or snow is low, the land is dry and the ground is frozen.
In the last ice age, the frozen Arctic ocean blocked the mouths of the great Siberian rivers, so they backed up and formed huge frozen lakes. Diring Yuryakh would have been on the banks of such a lake formed by the River Lena.
http://www.cosmicelk.net/mammothhunters.htm
The map has the locations of some modern towns to show the locations. It shows the southern boundaries of the great ice fields, the glaciers over the mountains, and the great lakes formed by the iced up rivers. It also shows possible paths of human migration. And they are into the north, as well as to the east and across the north Pacific into America - and west into Europe.
This time humans were no longer defeated by the cold weather, they had developed the technology - clothing, housing, food collecting skills, to be up to the challenge.
Palaeolithic sites abound in North-Eastern Siberia even up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The people who lived them were primarily mammoth hunters. They have been blamed for the extinction of the mammoth. But mammoth did not die out completely until as late as 4,000 years ago. And it was also the climate change which replaced much of their mossy tundra with grassland which also left them to adapt or die. The nearest surviving relatives to the mammoths are the Asian elephants still living in India, Thailand etc. - which were mostly domesticated.
Mammoths were once so plentiful, their bones are still easily found today. When the spring thaw comes and the ice breaks up and rushes down the river to the sea, the mammoth remains get washed out of the ancient permafrost where they had breathed their last.
Someone showed me a mammoth tooth they had found on the beach near the Lena pillars. "What do you think this is?". "A mammoth tooth" I said. "How do you know?". - She suddenly remembered I was a historian not a zoologist. "Can you think of any other animal round here that would have a mouth big enough for teeth that size?" - It was about the size of a brick.
Mammoth tusks are still carved into little ornaments. This modern ivory carving is legal (despite being a limited resource) as if the mammoth was killed by humans (and many show signs that they were), it was a long time ago. You can buy an authenticated mammoth ivory shaman, or mammoth as a souvenir. But these carvings are nothing like the beautiful filigree caskets that were made in the 18th and 19th centuries, which can now be seen in museums.
The ice-age mammoth hunters had such a advanced culture, that until improved means of carbon dating from the 1960s on, it was firmly believed until carbon dating was available to indicate how long ago they lived, that these were neolithic people living after the ice age. It was assumed, despite increasing evidence that they were wrong, that no one could have lived in this northern region - and therefore emigrated to America before the end of the ice age.
The Dyuktai site by the Aldan River, was originally thought to have been occupied by people ancestral to the the American Clovis culture of about 12,000 years ago, which was believed to have been the earliest people in America. This is now known not to be the case - there are sites in South America dated to as much as 35,000 years ago and apparently inhabited by people much like the early Australians - so they probably had come by boat across the north Pacific. The Dyuktai people lived from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. There are similar sites with similar tools of similar age in Yakutia. The tools are not identical to those of the Clovis.
During the last ice age, the chains of islands across the North Pacific formed an almost continous coast line. It was actually warmer there than today, since the Bering straits were continuous land between Chukotka and Alaska. It was frozen tundra, inhabited by animals like mammoths, but any route into America was blocked by the massive ice shield over the north of the American continent. The land of Beringia though did block off the worst of the cold Arctic winds from the Pacific Ocean. Passage to the shores of California and beyond was made even more easy by the direction of the ocean current that way. So it was less easy to return back again to Asia. And why should they when they reached the warmer lands by the California coast and beyond. Not only genetics but similarities in legends, culture etc. reveal origins from Siberia. But these were later - at the end of the Ice Age and later. The earlier immigrants to America appear to have come from South-East Asia and resembled the remaining earlier populations of that part of the world, like the Ainu from what is now Japan - then linked to the mainland, and the Austro-nesians from South-East Asia - then part of the Asian continent as Sundaland.
The mammoth hunters had a similar cultural life style from central Europe across south Siberia, and up the Lena valley, in north-eastern Siberia, and across the North Pacific into America. Ice-age settlements dating back around 30,000 years have been found in the Yana river valley a long way above the Arctic Circle, and at a time when the climate was colder than it is now - the tools used bear a similarity to those found in America.
The mammoth hunters are ancestors not only of native Americans, but of Europeans. This has been confirmed not only by the comparisons of similar stone tools, but by mitochondrial DNA testing and other biological genetic tests. Y-chromosome DNA testing of men in a village near Oxford, indicated that European men had originated in South Siberia some 40,000 years ago. Their ancestors were also the Siberian mammoth hunters. It was also discovered that the Welsh people had Siberian ancestry from about 30,000 years ago, and they had a common ancestry from Siberia as the Basques - who had retained their own language, whereas the Welsh had acqired a Celtic language later. Further Y chromosome testing carried out recently shows a recent common ancestry of Caucasoid and Native American Y chromosomes, and a close identification of the latter with the Siberian Altai (of the South Siberian Altai mountain region) and of the Ket (all that survives of the original population by the Yenesei river).
Evidence for settlements along the coasts of North America would have been destroyed, as all the coastal land sank and flooded after the ice age. Since settlements have been dated to around 35,000 years ago in South America, the continent must have been colonized much earlier.
The Mammoth Hunter culture stretches from the Atlantic coast (and may even have reached North East America that way) across central Europe and South Siberia, and dates from about 55,000 years ago - when the physical type was still the rugged "Neanderthal" - to about 15,000 years ago - when the great mammoth herds were a thing of the past and the ice-age was coming to an end in rapid climate changes. Mammoths lingered on - much reduced in size from the giants of the ice-age, on isolated islands in the Arctic and North Pacific to as late as 4,000 years ago when even these were hunted to extinction.
We can talk about a "mammoth-hunter culture" because although there are many differences over such a vast period of time - there is clear evidence of interaction, trade routes, and the sharing of ideas.
From about 55,000 years ago to about 15,000 years ago, the mammoth hunters are distinguished by their yurts built of mammoth bones. During that time their physical appearance changed from the rugged Neanderthal type to the more modern type like ourselves. This was part of the process of neotony. It is the process found in domesticated animals like dogs and cats. It is the retention of juvenile characteristics. In this case we were domesticating ourselves with our improved technology. We did not improve physically. We became less robust and strong. Our faces are flatter, our noses thinner so our sinuses more likely to get bunged up, our mouths smaller, so we get impacted wisdom teeth, and our teeth have weaker roots so they are more likely to rot. And also our brains shrunk to two-thirds of the Neanderthal size. Shortly before birth, the modern human foetus loses lots of brain cells. What we have lost is much of our innate senses - our ancestors were far more in tune with their environment.
The architecture of the yurts improved until 15,000 years ago, they were neatly constructed with the bones fitted together in patterns. Society seems to have developed too, with larger villages and the yurts arranged along streets. And with a ceremonial lodge as a main feature.
This time humans were no longer defeated by the cold weather, they had developed the technology - clothing, housing, food collecting skills, to be up to the challenge.
Palaeolithic sites abound in North-Eastern Siberia even up to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The people who lived them were primarily mammoth hunters. They have been blamed for the extinction of the mammoth. But mammoth did not die out completely until as late as 4,000 years ago. And it was also the climate change which replaced much of their mossy tundra with grassland which also left them to adapt or die. The nearest surviving relatives to the mammoths are the Asian elephants still living in India, Thailand etc. - which were mostly domesticated.
Mammoths were once so plentiful, their bones are still easily found today. When the spring thaw comes and the ice breaks up and rushes down the river to the sea, the mammoth remains get washed out of the ancient permafrost where they had breathed their last.
Someone showed me a mammoth tooth they had found on the beach near the Lena pillars. "What do you think this is?". "A mammoth tooth" I said. "How do you know?". - She suddenly remembered I was a historian not a zoologist. "Can you think of any other animal round here that would have a mouth big enough for teeth that size?" - It was about the size of a brick.
Mammoth tusks are still carved into little ornaments. This modern ivory carving is legal (despite being a limited resource) as if the mammoth was killed by humans (and many show signs that they were), it was a long time ago. You can buy an authenticated mammoth ivory shaman, or mammoth as a souvenir. But these carvings are nothing like the beautiful filigree caskets that were made in the 18th and 19th centuries, which can now be seen in museums.
The ice-age mammoth hunters had such a advanced culture, that until improved means of carbon dating from the 1960s on, it was firmly believed until carbon dating was available to indicate how long ago they lived, that these were neolithic people living after the ice age. It was assumed, despite increasing evidence that they were wrong, that no one could have lived in this northern region - and therefore emigrated to America before the end of the ice age.
The Dyuktai site by the Aldan River, was originally thought to have been occupied by people ancestral to the the American Clovis culture of about 12,000 years ago, which was believed to have been the earliest people in America. This is now known not to be the case - there are sites in South America dated to as much as 35,000 years ago and apparently inhabited by people much like the early Australians - so they probably had come by boat across the north Pacific. The Dyuktai people lived from 33,000 to 10,000 years ago. There are similar sites with similar tools of similar age in Yakutia. The tools are not identical to those of the Clovis.
During the last ice age, the chains of islands across the North Pacific formed an almost continous coast line. It was actually warmer there than today, since the Bering straits were continuous land between Chukotka and Alaska. It was frozen tundra, inhabited by animals like mammoths, but any route into America was blocked by the massive ice shield over the north of the American continent. The land of Beringia though did block off the worst of the cold Arctic winds from the Pacific Ocean. Passage to the shores of California and beyond was made even more easy by the direction of the ocean current that way. So it was less easy to return back again to Asia. And why should they when they reached the warmer lands by the California coast and beyond. Not only genetics but similarities in legends, culture etc. reveal origins from Siberia. But these were later - at the end of the Ice Age and later. The earlier immigrants to America appear to have come from South-East Asia and resembled the remaining earlier populations of that part of the world, like the Ainu from what is now Japan - then linked to the mainland, and the Austro-nesians from South-East Asia - then part of the Asian continent as Sundaland.
The mammoth hunters had a similar cultural life style from central Europe across south Siberia, and up the Lena valley, in north-eastern Siberia, and across the North Pacific into America. Ice-age settlements dating back around 30,000 years have been found in the Yana river valley a long way above the Arctic Circle, and at a time when the climate was colder than it is now - the tools used bear a similarity to those found in America.
The mammoth hunters are ancestors not only of native Americans, but of Europeans. This has been confirmed not only by the comparisons of similar stone tools, but by mitochondrial DNA testing and other biological genetic tests. Y-chromosome DNA testing of men in a village near Oxford, indicated that European men had originated in South Siberia some 40,000 years ago. Their ancestors were also the Siberian mammoth hunters. It was also discovered that the Welsh people had Siberian ancestry from about 30,000 years ago, and they had a common ancestry from Siberia as the Basques - who had retained their own language, whereas the Welsh had acqired a Celtic language later. Further Y chromosome testing carried out recently shows a recent common ancestry of Caucasoid and Native American Y chromosomes, and a close identification of the latter with the Siberian Altai (of the South Siberian Altai mountain region) and of the Ket (all that survives of the original population by the Yenesei river).
Evidence for settlements along the coasts of North America would have been destroyed, as all the coastal land sank and flooded after the ice age. Since settlements have been dated to around 35,000 years ago in South America, the continent must have been colonized much earlier.
The Mammoth Hunter culture stretches from the Atlantic coast (and may even have reached North East America that way) across central Europe and South Siberia, and dates from about 55,000 years ago - when the physical type was still the rugged "Neanderthal" - to about 15,000 years ago - when the great mammoth herds were a thing of the past and the ice-age was coming to an end in rapid climate changes. Mammoths lingered on - much reduced in size from the giants of the ice-age, on isolated islands in the Arctic and North Pacific to as late as 4,000 years ago when even these were hunted to extinction.
We can talk about a "mammoth-hunter culture" because although there are many differences over such a vast period of time - there is clear evidence of interaction, trade routes, and the sharing of ideas.
From about 55,000 years ago to about 15,000 years ago, the mammoth hunters are distinguished by their yurts built of mammoth bones. During that time their physical appearance changed from the rugged Neanderthal type to the more modern type like ourselves. This was part of the process of neotony. It is the process found in domesticated animals like dogs and cats. It is the retention of juvenile characteristics. In this case we were domesticating ourselves with our improved technology. We did not improve physically. We became less robust and strong. Our faces are flatter, our noses thinner so our sinuses more likely to get bunged up, our mouths smaller, so we get impacted wisdom teeth, and our teeth have weaker roots so they are more likely to rot. And also our brains shrunk to two-thirds of the Neanderthal size. Shortly before birth, the modern human foetus loses lots of brain cells. What we have lost is much of our innate senses - our ancestors were far more in tune with their environment.
The architecture of the yurts improved until 15,000 years ago, they were neatly constructed with the bones fitted together in patterns. Society seems to have developed too, with larger villages and the yurts arranged along streets. And with a ceremonial lodge as a main feature.
Swans, first sign of spring
http://www.donsmaps.com/ukrainevenus.html
Mal'Ta Venus Figurines
The vast territory of North and Central Asia represents a poorly understood region in the prehistoric era, despite intensive excavations that have been conducted during the past century. The earliest human occupation in this region probably began sometime around 40,000 years ago. Small groups of big-game hunters likely migrated into this region from lands to the south and southwest, confronting a harsh climate and long, dry winters. By about 20,000 B.C., two principal cultural traditions had developed in Siberia and northeastern Asia: the Mal'ta and the Afontova Gora-Oshurkovo.
The Mal'ta tradition is known from a vast area spanning west of Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River. The site of Mal'ta, for which the culture is named, is composed of a series of subterranean houses made of large animal bones and reindeer antler which had likely been covered with animal skins and sod to protect inhabitants from the severe, prevailing northerly winds. Among the artistic accomplishments evident at Mal'ta are remains of expertly carved bone, ivory, and antler objects. Figurines of birds and human females are the most commonly found items.
Paleolithic art of Europe and Asia falls into two broad categories: mural art and portable art. Mural art is concentrated in southwest France, Spain, and northern Italy. The tradition of portable art, predominantly carvings in ivory and antler, spans the distance across western Europe into North and Central Asia. It is suggested that the broad territory in which the tradition of carving and imagery is shared is evidence of cultural contact and common religious beliefs. Some of the most well known examples are the so-called Venus figurines. One such figurine, illustrated here, is from the site of Mal'ta and dates to around 21,000 B.C. It is carved from the ivory of a mammoth, an extinct type of elephant highly prized in hunting that migrated in herds across the Ice Age tundra of Europe and Asia. Like most Paleolithic figurine carving, the image is carved in the round in a highly stylized manner. Typically, there are exaggerated characteristics such as breasts and buttocks, which may have been symbols of fertility.
Source: Mal'ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the glacial refugia, fertility became a matter of life and death for the tribe and species. Fertility became a singular necessity and may have been invoked ritually. Perhaps the best example of Paleolithic portable art is something referred to as “Venus figurines”. Until they were discovered in Mal’ta, “Venus figurines” were previously found only in Europe. Carved from the ivory tusk of a mammoth, these images were typically highly stylized, and often involved embellished and disproportionate characteristics (typically the breasts or buttocks). It is widely believed that the emphases of these features were meant to be symbols of fertility. Around thirty female statuettes of varying shapes have been found in Mal’ta. The wide variety of forms, combined with the realism of the sculptures, and the lack of repetitiveness in detail are definite signs of developed, albeit early, art.
At first glance what is obvious is that the Mal'ta Venus figurines are of two types: full figured women with exaggerated forms, and women with a thin, delicate form. Some of the figures are nude, while others have etchings that seem to indicate fur or clothing. Conversely, unlike those found in Europe, some of the Venus figurines from Mal’ta were sculpted with faces. Most of the figurines were tapered at the bottom, and it is believed that this was done so they could have been stuck into the ground or otherwise placed upright some other way. Placed upright they could have symbolized the spirits of the dead, akin to "spirit dolls" used nearly world-wide, including Siberia, among contemporary people.
The only widely known Upper Paleolithic art from Asia are these figurines from Mal'ta. Although other examples of Paleolithic Asian art do exist, few of it has gained much attention outside of Asia. The reason why these garner so much interest is that they seem to be nearly identical to European female figurines of roughly the same time period. The suggested similarity between Mal'ta and Upper Paleolithic civilizations of Western and Eastern Europe coincides with a long-held belief that the ancient people of Mal'ta were related to the Paleolithic societies of Europe. These similarities can be established by their tools, dwelling structures, and art. These commonalities draw into question the origin of Upper Paleolithic Siberian people, and whether the migrating peoples originated from Southeastern Asia or quite possibly from Europe.
On the other hand, one can argue that as a group the Mal'ta Venus figures are rather different from the female figurines of Western and Central Europe. For example, none of the Siberian specimens indicates abdominal enlargement as man European examples do. And few offer clear enough evidence of gender to define them as female as breasts are often lacking. More conclusively, nearly half of them show some facial details, something which is lacking on the so-called Venus figures of Europe. A definitive answer on the origins of these peoples and their culture may never be able to be reached.
In addition to these female statuettes there are a bird sculptures depicting swans, geese, and ducks. Through ethnographic analogy comparing the ivory objects and burials at Mal'ta with objects used by 19th and 20th century Siberian shamans, it has been suggested that they are evidence of a fully developed shamanism.
Also there are engraved representations on slabs of mammoth tusk. One is the figure of a mammoth, easily recognizable by the trunk, tusks and thick legs. Wool also seems to be etched, by the placement of straight lines along the body. Another drawing has three snakes appearing on it. The three snakes have their heads puffed up and turned to the side. It is believed that they were similar to cobras.
The Mal'ta tradition is known from a vast area spanning west of Lake Baikal and the Yenisey River. The site of Mal'ta, for which the culture is named, is composed of a series of subterranean houses made of large animal bones and reindeer antler which had likely been covered with animal skins and sod to protect inhabitants from the severe, prevailing northerly winds. Among the artistic accomplishments evident at Mal'ta are remains of expertly carved bone, ivory, and antler objects. Figurines of birds and human females are the most commonly found items.
Paleolithic art of Europe and Asia falls into two broad categories: mural art and portable art. Mural art is concentrated in southwest France, Spain, and northern Italy. The tradition of portable art, predominantly carvings in ivory and antler, spans the distance across western Europe into North and Central Asia. It is suggested that the broad territory in which the tradition of carving and imagery is shared is evidence of cultural contact and common religious beliefs. Some of the most well known examples are the so-called Venus figurines. One such figurine, illustrated here, is from the site of Mal'ta and dates to around 21,000 B.C. It is carved from the ivory of a mammoth, an extinct type of elephant highly prized in hunting that migrated in herds across the Ice Age tundra of Europe and Asia. Like most Paleolithic figurine carving, the image is carved in the round in a highly stylized manner. Typically, there are exaggerated characteristics such as breasts and buttocks, which may have been symbols of fertility.
Source: Mal'ta (ca. 20,000 B.C.) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In the glacial refugia, fertility became a matter of life and death for the tribe and species. Fertility became a singular necessity and may have been invoked ritually. Perhaps the best example of Paleolithic portable art is something referred to as “Venus figurines”. Until they were discovered in Mal’ta, “Venus figurines” were previously found only in Europe. Carved from the ivory tusk of a mammoth, these images were typically highly stylized, and often involved embellished and disproportionate characteristics (typically the breasts or buttocks). It is widely believed that the emphases of these features were meant to be symbols of fertility. Around thirty female statuettes of varying shapes have been found in Mal’ta. The wide variety of forms, combined with the realism of the sculptures, and the lack of repetitiveness in detail are definite signs of developed, albeit early, art.
At first glance what is obvious is that the Mal'ta Venus figurines are of two types: full figured women with exaggerated forms, and women with a thin, delicate form. Some of the figures are nude, while others have etchings that seem to indicate fur or clothing. Conversely, unlike those found in Europe, some of the Venus figurines from Mal’ta were sculpted with faces. Most of the figurines were tapered at the bottom, and it is believed that this was done so they could have been stuck into the ground or otherwise placed upright some other way. Placed upright they could have symbolized the spirits of the dead, akin to "spirit dolls" used nearly world-wide, including Siberia, among contemporary people.
The only widely known Upper Paleolithic art from Asia are these figurines from Mal'ta. Although other examples of Paleolithic Asian art do exist, few of it has gained much attention outside of Asia. The reason why these garner so much interest is that they seem to be nearly identical to European female figurines of roughly the same time period. The suggested similarity between Mal'ta and Upper Paleolithic civilizations of Western and Eastern Europe coincides with a long-held belief that the ancient people of Mal'ta were related to the Paleolithic societies of Europe. These similarities can be established by their tools, dwelling structures, and art. These commonalities draw into question the origin of Upper Paleolithic Siberian people, and whether the migrating peoples originated from Southeastern Asia or quite possibly from Europe.
On the other hand, one can argue that as a group the Mal'ta Venus figures are rather different from the female figurines of Western and Central Europe. For example, none of the Siberian specimens indicates abdominal enlargement as man European examples do. And few offer clear enough evidence of gender to define them as female as breasts are often lacking. More conclusively, nearly half of them show some facial details, something which is lacking on the so-called Venus figures of Europe. A definitive answer on the origins of these peoples and their culture may never be able to be reached.
In addition to these female statuettes there are a bird sculptures depicting swans, geese, and ducks. Through ethnographic analogy comparing the ivory objects and burials at Mal'ta with objects used by 19th and 20th century Siberian shamans, it has been suggested that they are evidence of a fully developed shamanism.
Also there are engraved representations on slabs of mammoth tusk. One is the figure of a mammoth, easily recognizable by the trunk, tusks and thick legs. Wool also seems to be etched, by the placement of straight lines along the body. Another drawing has three snakes appearing on it. The three snakes have their heads puffed up and turned to the side. It is believed that they were similar to cobras.
3. Psychosocial Genomics:
Explorations in the Psychobiological Effects of Dragon Culture
by Iona Miller, 2011
“Nothing, it seems turns on gene expression and brain plasticity as much as
the presence of others of the same species!” -- Ernest Rossi, M.D.
"Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside."
-- The Conference of the Birds, Sufi Poems of Farid ud-Din Attar
"Individual consciousness is only the flower and the fruit of a season, sprung from the perennial rhizome beneath the earth; and it would find itself in better accord with the truth if it took the existence of the rhizome into its calculations. For the root matter is the mother of all things." -- C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation
Explorations in the Psychobiological Effects of Dragon Culture
by Iona Miller, 2011
“Nothing, it seems turns on gene expression and brain plasticity as much as
the presence of others of the same species!” -- Ernest Rossi, M.D.
"Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subside."
-- The Conference of the Birds, Sufi Poems of Farid ud-Din Attar
"Individual consciousness is only the flower and the fruit of a season, sprung from the perennial rhizome beneath the earth; and it would find itself in better accord with the truth if it took the existence of the rhizome into its calculations. For the root matter is the mother of all things." -- C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation
Biopsychosocial Modulation & Amplification
Semper Occultus
Mutual Interpenetration
Recent research on neuroplasticity and psychosocial genomics lends compelling support to the theory that psychosocial forces shape neurobiology. Investigations of neuroplasticity demonstrate that the adult brain can continue to form novel neural connections and grow new neurons in response to learning or training even into old age. This means under facilitating circumstances, we have the capacity to awaken undreamed of potential within ourselves, moreso if our Dragon subculture supports and reinforces such emergent capacities.
These findings are complemented by the contributions of psychosocial genomics, a field of scientific inquiry that explores the modulating effects of experience on gene expression. Findings from these new sciences provide external validation for the biopsychosocial perspective and offer important insights into the manifold means by which socioenvironmental experiences influence neurobiological structure and function across the life course.
Rapport
Neuro-gnosis and Biorapport are supportive concepts with experiential evidence. Rapport is the psychobiological basis of trance induction that builds associative networks. If you wish to influence someone, you must be prepared to be influenced by them in return. To wish otherwise isn’t to influence, it’s to control. Mirroring synchs emotional states. When communication with the unconscious mind shows a person's unconscious mind that you understand it, the unconscious responds very favorably.
Rapport is a trusting connection. It may not mean you trust that person, since trust is earned, but it means you TRUST THE PROCESS. Your aim is to build an empathic and compassionate relationship, to resonate with their spirit, thoughts and emotions -- to understand each other’s point of view. From common ground you can lead towards areas in which your influence will be helpful -- with mutual understanding. The shared state emerges when your minds are synchronised, when you are both living in a shared echo, a mutual emotional map of the universe. But divergent opinions can also be transformative, if challenging.
In the context of contemporary Dragon culture and the Dragon Court this phenomenology takes on powerful meaning. We realize we have the capacity to change one another, unconsciously or pro-actively, collectively and individually. We inspire one another. The Court is enlivened by the cooperation and dedication of all members of our society. This is a natural and ancient part of being Dragon and an intrinsic part of our transformational process and reclaimation of our dragon heritage. We perturb one another's thinking with our differences, and resonate with our similarities and mutual experiences. Rather than a linear process, it is nonlocal and global -- irrelevant of physical proximity. Blood calls to blood.
Dragon Gene-Expression
Research suggests, we can literally turn on one another's genes, perhaps operating hyperdimensionally in primordial domains beyond the emotional and cognitive. Dragon life activates latent parts of our DNA blueprint, awakening dormant potential and a supercharged holographic model, or Light Body. Dragon culture has always advocated looking at a multidimensional reality governed by forces that are invisible or disguised to theories generated by other paradigms. Without the paradigm, the theory is impossible to formulate. Without the theory, no hypothesis can be tested. Experiments come along after the ability to ask new questions, not before.
Gene expression is the cellular process that decodes the genetic information in DNA and converts it into proteins. It is regulated at many levels: when messenger RNA is transcribed from DNA; when mRNA is translated into proteins; and at the epigenetic level, when the structure of chromatin, coils of DNA wound around histone proteins, is altered. Although most discussion of gene expression focuses on the regulation of transcription, the other components of the process are also crucial. Yet little is known about how they are integrated. (Rossi, 2010)
Work by Tom Misteli at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and his team provides a striking example of the integration of seemingly disparate components in gene-expression regulation (Luco et al., 2010). They describe how patterns of alternative splicing of newly made RNA, a key regulatory mechanism, can themselves be regulated by specific chemical modifications in the chromatin. They also found that a given set of modifications to histones predicts patterns of RNA splicing. The authors conservatively estimate that this mechanism occurs in dozens to hundreds of genes in the human genome. This remarkable study makes a connection between a quintessential transcription-regulation mechanism, histone modification, and a post-transcriptional process, alternative splicing. It shows that chromatin can regulate not only how much of a protein, but also which protein, is made in a cell. We have seen a surge of intriguing studies suggesting that molecules that were thought to regulate transcription also direct epigenetic modifications, modify alternative-splicing patterns and participate in the intracellular transport of RNA.
Deep Psychobiology
Dragon culture modifies synaptic connections that underlie associative learning. Psychological, social, and cultural signals modulate gene expression. Psychosocial Genomics measures changes in the deep psychoblological process of “activity or experience-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity” associated with creativity and healing. Psychosocial genomics produces long-term changes in behavior, vision and worldview, through learning and morphological changes in gene expression that alter the strength of synaptic connections. Structural changes alter the anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells of the brain. Stated simply, the regulation of gene expression by social factors makes all bodily functions, including all functions of the brain, susceptible to social influences. (Rossi)
Dragons exert a therapeutic, novel and excitatory effect on each other. This shared trance of focused awareness is born of resonance and amplification through feedback, a consensus paradigm or worldview, rooted in the Tree of Knowledge or gnosis. Not only does dragonkin transform us, our male and female ancestors are nested within us like Russian matryoshka dolls, as fractals of the universal. Surprise motivates memory and learning in a self-reinforcing culture. It primes the pump of the unconscious. Classical theories offer no no satisfying understanding of the dragon sense of adventure, quest, spiritual striving, and the experience of the numinosum — the sense of fascination, mystery and the tremendous. This is our Dragon Legacy.
Uber-thought
The research of Waelti, Rossi and others opens a new model of the relationships between the most interesting and motivating experiences of consciousness and the molecular dynamics of memory and learning that are described as the “novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect” (Rossi, 2002). It isn't what is expected and easily predictable in human affairs that is motivating, but the exact reverse. That which is surprising, unknown, and unpredicted garners our attention and sets us forth on the human quests for problem solving and creative adventure in the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis dynamics of mind-body communication and healing explored by the new discipline of psychosocial genomics.
The neuro-molecular dynamics of the brain state and physiological substrate of priming underlies its potential efficacy - priming plasticity. priming may be the key to controlling the strength of chemical transmission between nerve cells. The roots of cognition, behavior, learning and memory are embedded in the brain’s intricate network of nerve cells and their specialized points of contact, the synapses. Synapses can convert electrical impulses into chemical signals and back again, as well as modulate the strength of the transmitted signals. This ability to modify the strength of transmission -- known as synaptic plasticity -- is theorized as the cellular basis of the brain's ability to compute, learn and remember.
Mutual Interpenetration
Recent research on neuroplasticity and psychosocial genomics lends compelling support to the theory that psychosocial forces shape neurobiology. Investigations of neuroplasticity demonstrate that the adult brain can continue to form novel neural connections and grow new neurons in response to learning or training even into old age. This means under facilitating circumstances, we have the capacity to awaken undreamed of potential within ourselves, moreso if our Dragon subculture supports and reinforces such emergent capacities.
These findings are complemented by the contributions of psychosocial genomics, a field of scientific inquiry that explores the modulating effects of experience on gene expression. Findings from these new sciences provide external validation for the biopsychosocial perspective and offer important insights into the manifold means by which socioenvironmental experiences influence neurobiological structure and function across the life course.
Rapport
Neuro-gnosis and Biorapport are supportive concepts with experiential evidence. Rapport is the psychobiological basis of trance induction that builds associative networks. If you wish to influence someone, you must be prepared to be influenced by them in return. To wish otherwise isn’t to influence, it’s to control. Mirroring synchs emotional states. When communication with the unconscious mind shows a person's unconscious mind that you understand it, the unconscious responds very favorably.
Rapport is a trusting connection. It may not mean you trust that person, since trust is earned, but it means you TRUST THE PROCESS. Your aim is to build an empathic and compassionate relationship, to resonate with their spirit, thoughts and emotions -- to understand each other’s point of view. From common ground you can lead towards areas in which your influence will be helpful -- with mutual understanding. The shared state emerges when your minds are synchronised, when you are both living in a shared echo, a mutual emotional map of the universe. But divergent opinions can also be transformative, if challenging.
In the context of contemporary Dragon culture and the Dragon Court this phenomenology takes on powerful meaning. We realize we have the capacity to change one another, unconsciously or pro-actively, collectively and individually. We inspire one another. The Court is enlivened by the cooperation and dedication of all members of our society. This is a natural and ancient part of being Dragon and an intrinsic part of our transformational process and reclaimation of our dragon heritage. We perturb one another's thinking with our differences, and resonate with our similarities and mutual experiences. Rather than a linear process, it is nonlocal and global -- irrelevant of physical proximity. Blood calls to blood.
Dragon Gene-Expression
Research suggests, we can literally turn on one another's genes, perhaps operating hyperdimensionally in primordial domains beyond the emotional and cognitive. Dragon life activates latent parts of our DNA blueprint, awakening dormant potential and a supercharged holographic model, or Light Body. Dragon culture has always advocated looking at a multidimensional reality governed by forces that are invisible or disguised to theories generated by other paradigms. Without the paradigm, the theory is impossible to formulate. Without the theory, no hypothesis can be tested. Experiments come along after the ability to ask new questions, not before.
Gene expression is the cellular process that decodes the genetic information in DNA and converts it into proteins. It is regulated at many levels: when messenger RNA is transcribed from DNA; when mRNA is translated into proteins; and at the epigenetic level, when the structure of chromatin, coils of DNA wound around histone proteins, is altered. Although most discussion of gene expression focuses on the regulation of transcription, the other components of the process are also crucial. Yet little is known about how they are integrated. (Rossi, 2010)
Work by Tom Misteli at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and his team provides a striking example of the integration of seemingly disparate components in gene-expression regulation (Luco et al., 2010). They describe how patterns of alternative splicing of newly made RNA, a key regulatory mechanism, can themselves be regulated by specific chemical modifications in the chromatin. They also found that a given set of modifications to histones predicts patterns of RNA splicing. The authors conservatively estimate that this mechanism occurs in dozens to hundreds of genes in the human genome. This remarkable study makes a connection between a quintessential transcription-regulation mechanism, histone modification, and a post-transcriptional process, alternative splicing. It shows that chromatin can regulate not only how much of a protein, but also which protein, is made in a cell. We have seen a surge of intriguing studies suggesting that molecules that were thought to regulate transcription also direct epigenetic modifications, modify alternative-splicing patterns and participate in the intracellular transport of RNA.
Deep Psychobiology
Dragon culture modifies synaptic connections that underlie associative learning. Psychological, social, and cultural signals modulate gene expression. Psychosocial Genomics measures changes in the deep psychoblological process of “activity or experience-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity” associated with creativity and healing. Psychosocial genomics produces long-term changes in behavior, vision and worldview, through learning and morphological changes in gene expression that alter the strength of synaptic connections. Structural changes alter the anatomical pattern of interconnections between nerve cells of the brain. Stated simply, the regulation of gene expression by social factors makes all bodily functions, including all functions of the brain, susceptible to social influences. (Rossi)
Dragons exert a therapeutic, novel and excitatory effect on each other. This shared trance of focused awareness is born of resonance and amplification through feedback, a consensus paradigm or worldview, rooted in the Tree of Knowledge or gnosis. Not only does dragonkin transform us, our male and female ancestors are nested within us like Russian matryoshka dolls, as fractals of the universal. Surprise motivates memory and learning in a self-reinforcing culture. It primes the pump of the unconscious. Classical theories offer no no satisfying understanding of the dragon sense of adventure, quest, spiritual striving, and the experience of the numinosum — the sense of fascination, mystery and the tremendous. This is our Dragon Legacy.
Uber-thought
The research of Waelti, Rossi and others opens a new model of the relationships between the most interesting and motivating experiences of consciousness and the molecular dynamics of memory and learning that are described as the “novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect” (Rossi, 2002). It isn't what is expected and easily predictable in human affairs that is motivating, but the exact reverse. That which is surprising, unknown, and unpredicted garners our attention and sets us forth on the human quests for problem solving and creative adventure in the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis dynamics of mind-body communication and healing explored by the new discipline of psychosocial genomics.
The neuro-molecular dynamics of the brain state and physiological substrate of priming underlies its potential efficacy - priming plasticity. priming may be the key to controlling the strength of chemical transmission between nerve cells. The roots of cognition, behavior, learning and memory are embedded in the brain’s intricate network of nerve cells and their specialized points of contact, the synapses. Synapses can convert electrical impulses into chemical signals and back again, as well as modulate the strength of the transmitted signals. This ability to modify the strength of transmission -- known as synaptic plasticity -- is theorized as the cellular basis of the brain's ability to compute, learn and remember.
Dragon Legacy, Nicholas de Vere
Neuro-gnosis
Neurognostic structures organize experience and cognition, and correspond somewhat to Carl Jung's archetypes. Jung left a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the ontological status of the archetypes and the collective unconscious, because of the inadequacy of the science of his day. Modern developments in the neurosciences and quantum physics - especially the new physics of the vacuum - allow us to develop Jung's understanding of the archetypes further. Direct neurophysiological-quantum coupling suggests how neural processing and quantum events may interpenetrate.
He insisted that the archetype is not merely another word for the physiology of the image or thought. While it included the physiological basis of knowledge, the concept was intended to run deeper - deep into the instincts and beyond, outward into the universal ground of existence. Archetypes form the total ground - the collective unconscious - upon
which conscious cultural and personal experience develops. These structures are the products of natural selection, and are the impressions left by recurrent experiences of the species upon the nervous systems of individuals.
They generate (or "cause") an endless variety of transformations that are experienced as images and ideas had in dreams, fantasies and visions. These images and ideas bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning, and
the archetypes themselves are involved in the development of consciousness. The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their
impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego.
The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by "spirit" we mean the order of the quantum sea. Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal - the transcendental - through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.
When Michael Persinger suggests in his book, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), that certain experiences of unity with the Godhead may be mediated by structures in the temporal lobes, such an analysis need not imply a reduction of transpersonal experiences to neurophysiology. Among other things, to reduce these experiences to their neurophysiological foundations begs such questions as the profundity of insight, or the causation-at-a-distance that may accompany such experiences. Neurognostic or archetypal structures in the brain may transduce insights pertaining to the universal structure of the quantum sea. Each human brain may indeed prove to be a microcosm that contains - like the proverbial mustard seed, or the more modem hologram - all the wisdom of the ages, requiring only the optimal conditions of development for each person to individuate into a sage.
Rossi reports that neurogenesis can occur in the motor cortex simply through the act of imagining playing the piano (Pascual-Leone, Amedi, Fregni, & Merabet, 2005). Similarly, taxicab drivers develop the areas of their brains involved in spatial relationships by memorizing the labyrinthine streets and avenues ofthe cities in which they work (Maguire et al., 2000). Although the underlying mechanisms are different, neuroplasticity research suggests that challenging learning experiences can lead to the development of brain tissue in a manner analogous to the ways that physical exercise can lead to the development of muscle tissue.
One area of research that has found significant evidence of mental training leading to neuroplastic modifications in brain activity focuses on the study of meditation. Meditation, although greatly varying in technique and purpose across the diverse spiritual and cultural traditions in which it is used, may be generally defined as the intentional practice whereby one grasps "the handle of cognition" to cultivate a competent use of one's own mental capacities, gaining agency over thought and emotion (Depraz, Várela, &Vermersch, 2003). Such intentional mental training has been shown to induce functional neurobiological changes.
Jung's reference to the essential unknowability of the archetypes-in-themselves also applies to neurognostic structures. Neurognosis may also refer to the functioning of these neural structures in producing either experience or some other activity unconscious to the individual. This usage is similar to Jung's reference to archetypal imagery, ideas, and activities that emerge into and are active in consciousness. This includes ancestral / genetic memory. We cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly. In the inward experiencethe connection between the psyche and the outward image or creed is first revealed as a resonance, relationship or correspondence.
Jung's genius was in steering a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of mind-body dualism - that is, between experiential relativism on the one hand. and physical reductionism on the other. It was clear to Jung that an individual's
experience is both structured by processes universal to the human psyche, and the manifestation of individuation. Holding the tension of the opposites one transcends them.
You can't wait to discover something without knowing how it is going to happen. Expectancy and surprise in the neuro-psycho-physiology generate detectable changes in the dynamics of gene expression and neurotransmission. Regulation of the priming step of the neurotransmitter release has important consequences for memory, learning, problem solving, and behavior change at the synaptic level. A synaptic protein called RIM, among others, is involved in a key regulatory step of synaptic plasticity facilitated by priming the synaptic vesicles between neurons to release their neurotransmitters. Cultural Genomics has profound implications for understanding the human condition.
The molecular messengers generated by stress, injury, and disease can activate immediate early genes within stem cells so that they then signal the target genes required to synthesize the proteins that will transform (differentiate) stem cells into mature well-functioning tissues. Such activity-dependent gene expression and its consequent activity-dependent neurogenesis and stem cell healing is proposed as the molecular-genomic-cellular basis of rehabilitative medicine, physical, and occupational therapy as well as the many alternative and complementary approaches to mind-body healing.
The therapeutic replaying of enriching life experiences that evoke the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect during creative moments of art, music, dance, drama, humor, literature, poetry, and spirituality, as well as cultural rituals of life transitions (birth, puberty, marriage, illness, healing, and death) can optimize consciousness, personal relationships, and healing in a manner that has much in common with the psychogenomic foundations of naturalistic and complementary medicine. The entire history of alternative and complementary approaches to healing is consistent with this new neuroscience world view about the role of psychological arousal and fascination in modulating gene expression, neurogenesis, and healing via the psychosocial and cultural rites of human societies.(Rossi, 2003).
The bioinformatics of psychosocial genomics in alternative and complementary medicine.
A single genotype, the genetic blueprint of an organism, can be expressed in a multiplicity of distinct physiological and behavioral forms, known as phenotypes. The mechanisms by which such different phenotypes are expressed are just beginning to be understood, but they appear to involve the regulatory effect of internal and external environmental signals on stress hormones, which in turn modify gene transcription processes (Kandel, 1998; Rossi, 2004).
Experiences modulate gene expression. In turn, experience-dependent modifications to neural tissue may be driven by epigenetic processes (that is, changes in gene expression produced by environmental determinants) .The human environment is constantly conditioned by social experiences, which, when transduced by the nervous system into electrochemical signals, may modulate protein synthesis in the nuclei of nerve cells, ultimately leading to changes in the replication and growth of neurons. Social experience can change gene expression, leading to the restructuring of the
brain through neuroplasticity.
Creative adaptation
Psychological experiences of trauma, stress, and surprise evoke psychobiological arousal to engage the levels of gene expression and protein synthesis could also facilitate neurogenesis, creative problem solving and healing. The complementary dynamics of expectancy and surprise act as a complex system of creative adaptation to facilitate rehabilitation and healing on many levels of human experience from mind to gene expression. Psychosocial experiences of expectancy, by contrast, may prime more focused and predictable hypnotic responses by modulating neurotransmitter release at the synaptic vesicle level between neurons. We can all learn to facilitate our evolving consciousness with numinous experiences of Art, Beauty, Truth, and Happiness in our daily creative work of building a better brain.
Current research has identified at least three different mechanisms whereby environmental factors such as trauma, stress and surprise can interact with the genomic level.
1. Modulation of gene expression;
2. Alternative splicing of genes to produce different proteins, and
3. Translocation of neuritic mRNA during long-term neuronal hypersensitivity.
Since these three psycho-genomic mechanisms are fundamental in integrating mind-gene communication (information transduction) during health, stress and healing (Rossi, 1990, 1994, 2002)
Emergent Interactionism
These new biopsychosocial sciences are consistent with a view of human beings as holistic, recursive systems structurally coupled with their environments in a process of mutual change (Maturana & Várela, 1987). Intentionality and volition can generate changes in the structure of the brain, the very organ assumed to produce such mental phenomena (Schwartz & Begley, 2002). With this finding, it is evident that human experience is not driven solely from the bottom up by neurobiology and genetics. Instead, there is growing evidence that psychosocial experience can exert a macrodeterministic, top-down force on our biology.
In the philosophy of emergent interactionism, Roger Sperry (1987), Nobel laureate neuroscientist, described macrodeterminism as a higher order, molar level of organization that determines and conditions the activity of lower order, nested subcomponents. Hence, human beings, who are at one level assemblies of organ systems comprising aggregates of cells, which are in turn composed of organic molecules made up of subatomic particles, are not merely the sum of these physical elements. Instead, the consciousness that emerges from the interaction of these components
can act back upon its physical substrate. Thought, emotion, and action trigger neural activity, which can lead to a reorganization ofthe brain, shaping future psychosocial experience. From this perspective, we are not the passive products of neurophysiology and heredity; rather, through our behavior in the social environment, we become active agents in the construction of our own neurobiology and, ultimately, our own lives. We have the power to transcend and transform their limitations into opportunities for growth and well-being.
Genealogists are now using molecular genealogy -- comparing and matching people by matrilineal DNA lineages-mtDNA or patrilineal Y-chromosome ancestry and/or racial percentages tests. People interested in ancestry now look at genetic markers to trace the migrations of the human species. You can trace your genealogy by DNA from your grandparents back 10,000 or more years. But which parts have you activated and which parts remains dormant?
Anyone can be interested in DNA for ancestry research, learning how different populations from a mosaic of communities reached their current locations. From who are you descended? What markers shed light on your deepest ancestry? You can study DNA for medical reasons or to discover the geographic travels and dwelling places of some of your ancestors. How do Europeans in general fit into the great migrations of prehistory that took all to where they are today based on their genetic DNA markers and sequences? Where is the geographic center of their origin and the roots of all people? Specifically, how can you interpret your DNA test for family history? And then, knowing that, what are you able to do with it that might be extraordinary?
Neurognostic structures organize experience and cognition, and correspond somewhat to Carl Jung's archetypes. Jung left a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the ontological status of the archetypes and the collective unconscious, because of the inadequacy of the science of his day. Modern developments in the neurosciences and quantum physics - especially the new physics of the vacuum - allow us to develop Jung's understanding of the archetypes further. Direct neurophysiological-quantum coupling suggests how neural processing and quantum events may interpenetrate.
He insisted that the archetype is not merely another word for the physiology of the image or thought. While it included the physiological basis of knowledge, the concept was intended to run deeper - deep into the instincts and beyond, outward into the universal ground of existence. Archetypes form the total ground - the collective unconscious - upon
which conscious cultural and personal experience develops. These structures are the products of natural selection, and are the impressions left by recurrent experiences of the species upon the nervous systems of individuals.
They generate (or "cause") an endless variety of transformations that are experienced as images and ideas had in dreams, fantasies and visions. These images and ideas bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning, and
the archetypes themselves are involved in the development of consciousness. The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their
impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego.
The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by "spirit" we mean the order of the quantum sea. Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal - the transcendental - through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.
When Michael Persinger suggests in his book, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), that certain experiences of unity with the Godhead may be mediated by structures in the temporal lobes, such an analysis need not imply a reduction of transpersonal experiences to neurophysiology. Among other things, to reduce these experiences to their neurophysiological foundations begs such questions as the profundity of insight, or the causation-at-a-distance that may accompany such experiences. Neurognostic or archetypal structures in the brain may transduce insights pertaining to the universal structure of the quantum sea. Each human brain may indeed prove to be a microcosm that contains - like the proverbial mustard seed, or the more modem hologram - all the wisdom of the ages, requiring only the optimal conditions of development for each person to individuate into a sage.
Rossi reports that neurogenesis can occur in the motor cortex simply through the act of imagining playing the piano (Pascual-Leone, Amedi, Fregni, & Merabet, 2005). Similarly, taxicab drivers develop the areas of their brains involved in spatial relationships by memorizing the labyrinthine streets and avenues ofthe cities in which they work (Maguire et al., 2000). Although the underlying mechanisms are different, neuroplasticity research suggests that challenging learning experiences can lead to the development of brain tissue in a manner analogous to the ways that physical exercise can lead to the development of muscle tissue.
One area of research that has found significant evidence of mental training leading to neuroplastic modifications in brain activity focuses on the study of meditation. Meditation, although greatly varying in technique and purpose across the diverse spiritual and cultural traditions in which it is used, may be generally defined as the intentional practice whereby one grasps "the handle of cognition" to cultivate a competent use of one's own mental capacities, gaining agency over thought and emotion (Depraz, Várela, &Vermersch, 2003). Such intentional mental training has been shown to induce functional neurobiological changes.
Jung's reference to the essential unknowability of the archetypes-in-themselves also applies to neurognostic structures. Neurognosis may also refer to the functioning of these neural structures in producing either experience or some other activity unconscious to the individual. This usage is similar to Jung's reference to archetypal imagery, ideas, and activities that emerge into and are active in consciousness. This includes ancestral / genetic memory. We cannot understand a thing until we have experienced it inwardly. In the inward experiencethe connection between the psyche and the outward image or creed is first revealed as a resonance, relationship or correspondence.
Jung's genius was in steering a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of mind-body dualism - that is, between experiential relativism on the one hand. and physical reductionism on the other. It was clear to Jung that an individual's
experience is both structured by processes universal to the human psyche, and the manifestation of individuation. Holding the tension of the opposites one transcends them.
You can't wait to discover something without knowing how it is going to happen. Expectancy and surprise in the neuro-psycho-physiology generate detectable changes in the dynamics of gene expression and neurotransmission. Regulation of the priming step of the neurotransmitter release has important consequences for memory, learning, problem solving, and behavior change at the synaptic level. A synaptic protein called RIM, among others, is involved in a key regulatory step of synaptic plasticity facilitated by priming the synaptic vesicles between neurons to release their neurotransmitters. Cultural Genomics has profound implications for understanding the human condition.
The molecular messengers generated by stress, injury, and disease can activate immediate early genes within stem cells so that they then signal the target genes required to synthesize the proteins that will transform (differentiate) stem cells into mature well-functioning tissues. Such activity-dependent gene expression and its consequent activity-dependent neurogenesis and stem cell healing is proposed as the molecular-genomic-cellular basis of rehabilitative medicine, physical, and occupational therapy as well as the many alternative and complementary approaches to mind-body healing.
The therapeutic replaying of enriching life experiences that evoke the novelty-numinosum-neurogenesis effect during creative moments of art, music, dance, drama, humor, literature, poetry, and spirituality, as well as cultural rituals of life transitions (birth, puberty, marriage, illness, healing, and death) can optimize consciousness, personal relationships, and healing in a manner that has much in common with the psychogenomic foundations of naturalistic and complementary medicine. The entire history of alternative and complementary approaches to healing is consistent with this new neuroscience world view about the role of psychological arousal and fascination in modulating gene expression, neurogenesis, and healing via the psychosocial and cultural rites of human societies.(Rossi, 2003).
The bioinformatics of psychosocial genomics in alternative and complementary medicine.
A single genotype, the genetic blueprint of an organism, can be expressed in a multiplicity of distinct physiological and behavioral forms, known as phenotypes. The mechanisms by which such different phenotypes are expressed are just beginning to be understood, but they appear to involve the regulatory effect of internal and external environmental signals on stress hormones, which in turn modify gene transcription processes (Kandel, 1998; Rossi, 2004).
Experiences modulate gene expression. In turn, experience-dependent modifications to neural tissue may be driven by epigenetic processes (that is, changes in gene expression produced by environmental determinants) .The human environment is constantly conditioned by social experiences, which, when transduced by the nervous system into electrochemical signals, may modulate protein synthesis in the nuclei of nerve cells, ultimately leading to changes in the replication and growth of neurons. Social experience can change gene expression, leading to the restructuring of the
brain through neuroplasticity.
Creative adaptation
Psychological experiences of trauma, stress, and surprise evoke psychobiological arousal to engage the levels of gene expression and protein synthesis could also facilitate neurogenesis, creative problem solving and healing. The complementary dynamics of expectancy and surprise act as a complex system of creative adaptation to facilitate rehabilitation and healing on many levels of human experience from mind to gene expression. Psychosocial experiences of expectancy, by contrast, may prime more focused and predictable hypnotic responses by modulating neurotransmitter release at the synaptic vesicle level between neurons. We can all learn to facilitate our evolving consciousness with numinous experiences of Art, Beauty, Truth, and Happiness in our daily creative work of building a better brain.
Current research has identified at least three different mechanisms whereby environmental factors such as trauma, stress and surprise can interact with the genomic level.
1. Modulation of gene expression;
2. Alternative splicing of genes to produce different proteins, and
3. Translocation of neuritic mRNA during long-term neuronal hypersensitivity.
Since these three psycho-genomic mechanisms are fundamental in integrating mind-gene communication (information transduction) during health, stress and healing (Rossi, 1990, 1994, 2002)
Emergent Interactionism
These new biopsychosocial sciences are consistent with a view of human beings as holistic, recursive systems structurally coupled with their environments in a process of mutual change (Maturana & Várela, 1987). Intentionality and volition can generate changes in the structure of the brain, the very organ assumed to produce such mental phenomena (Schwartz & Begley, 2002). With this finding, it is evident that human experience is not driven solely from the bottom up by neurobiology and genetics. Instead, there is growing evidence that psychosocial experience can exert a macrodeterministic, top-down force on our biology.
In the philosophy of emergent interactionism, Roger Sperry (1987), Nobel laureate neuroscientist, described macrodeterminism as a higher order, molar level of organization that determines and conditions the activity of lower order, nested subcomponents. Hence, human beings, who are at one level assemblies of organ systems comprising aggregates of cells, which are in turn composed of organic molecules made up of subatomic particles, are not merely the sum of these physical elements. Instead, the consciousness that emerges from the interaction of these components
can act back upon its physical substrate. Thought, emotion, and action trigger neural activity, which can lead to a reorganization ofthe brain, shaping future psychosocial experience. From this perspective, we are not the passive products of neurophysiology and heredity; rather, through our behavior in the social environment, we become active agents in the construction of our own neurobiology and, ultimately, our own lives. We have the power to transcend and transform their limitations into opportunities for growth and well-being.
Genealogists are now using molecular genealogy -- comparing and matching people by matrilineal DNA lineages-mtDNA or patrilineal Y-chromosome ancestry and/or racial percentages tests. People interested in ancestry now look at genetic markers to trace the migrations of the human species. You can trace your genealogy by DNA from your grandparents back 10,000 or more years. But which parts have you activated and which parts remains dormant?
Anyone can be interested in DNA for ancestry research, learning how different populations from a mosaic of communities reached their current locations. From who are you descended? What markers shed light on your deepest ancestry? You can study DNA for medical reasons or to discover the geographic travels and dwelling places of some of your ancestors. How do Europeans in general fit into the great migrations of prehistory that took all to where they are today based on their genetic DNA markers and sequences? Where is the geographic center of their origin and the roots of all people? Specifically, how can you interpret your DNA test for family history? And then, knowing that, what are you able to do with it that might be extraordinary?
The deep psychoblological basis of consciousness and the nascent possibilities for future research in therapeutic hypnosis and all the mind-body therapies.
How can the experience of beauty and truth really be alike? Well, they are both deeply meaningful and motivating for one thing - most people like them!
The really surprising thing is that beauty and truth both heighten the activity of your brain with wonderful excitement!
This heightened activity of our brain turns on "activity-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity" to optimize human consciousness, sense and sensibility at the deepest level of our being!
There is a profound secret of evolution and genius hidden in this! It is an example of how the highest and brightest experiences of our mind and consciousness can modulate the organic molecular-genomic foundation of our physical being.
This implies that our consciousness, mind, brain, and genes activate and co-create each other!
Does this suggest to you any insight into what "enlightenment" is supposed to mean?
Only you can really answer to this question by exploring how your own mind and brain co-create each other. How? By asking yourself a few simple questions.
What are you most curious about?
What seems so exciting that you want more of it?
What is so enlightening that it actually wakes you up with wonder?
What are the most beautiful and fascinating experiences of your life?
What is the truth you would really like to understand?
Medatating sincerely on these questions in your daily life and dreams may be the royal road to enhancing your health, wealth, and creativity.
REFERENCES
Eric L. Garland and Matthew Owen Howard. An Introduction to Psychosocial Genomics: How the body speaks to us about the effects of non-invasive processes such as therapeutic hypnosis; Hill, R. 2010 . Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis 31 (1), pp. 5-16
http://integralsocialwork.com/documents/neuroplasticity.pdf
Laughlin, Charles D., Archetypes, Neurognosis and the Quantum Sea
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_3_laughlin.pdf
Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis & Rehabilitation, Ernest Rossi, et al
The Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis, Psychotherapy, and Rehabilitation Ernest Lawrence Rossi
http://www.asch.net/portals/0/journallibrary/articles/ajch-51/51-3/rossi51-3.pdf
THE CREATIVE PSYCHOSOCIAL GENOMIC HEALING EXPERIENCE ©:ADMINISTRATION, RATIONALE, & RESEARCH
An Open Invitation to Mind-Body Psychotherapy Clinical & Experimental Research; Ernest Rossi, David Atkinson, Jane Blake-Mortimer, Salvatore Iannotti, Mauro Cozzolino, Stefano Castiglione, Angela Cicatelli, Erika Chovanec, Richard Hill, Claude Virot, Bhaskar Vyas, Jorge Cuadros, Michel Kerouac, Thierry Kallfass, Helmut Milz, Claire Frederick, Bruce Gregory, Margaret Bullock, Ella Soleimany, April Rossi, Kathryn Rossi, & Stanley Krippner.
http://www.ernestrossi.com/ernestrossi/Research%20Group%20Papers/Protocol%20CPGHE%20v1.3.pdf
A Pilot Study of Positive Expectations and Focused Attention via a New Protocol for Optomizing Therapeutic Hypnosis and Psychotherapy Assessed with DNA Microarrays: The Creative Psychosocial Genomic Healing Experience. The Journal of Sleep and Hypnosis.
Prospects for Exploring the Molecular-Genomic Foundations of Therapeutic Hypnosis with DNA Microarrays. (2005/2006)
The Bioinformatics of Integrative Medical Insights: Proposals for an International PsychoSocial and Cultural Bioinformatics Project (2006)
The ideodynamic action hypothesis of therapeutic suggestion: Creative replay in the psychosocial genomics of therapeutic hypnosis. (2005)
The Genomic Science Foundation of Body Psychotherapy. (2004)
Stress-Induced Alternative Gene Splicing in Mind-Body Medicine. (2004)
Gene Expression and Brain Plasticity in Stroke Rehabilitation: A Personal Memoir of Mind-Body Healing Dreams. (2004)
The Bioinformatics of Psychosocial Genomics in Alternative and Complementary Medicine. (2003)
Gene Expression, Neurogenesis, and Healing: Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis (2003)
A Bioinformatics Approach to the Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis (2002)
Psychosocial Genomics: Gene Expression, Neurogenesis, and Human Experience in Mind-Body Medicine. (2002)
Creativity and the Nature of the Numinosum: The Psychosocial Genomics of Jung’s Transcendent Function in Art, Science, Spirit, and Psychotherapy. (2005)
Sacred Spaces and Places in Healing Dreams: Gene Expression and Brain Growth in Rehabilitation. (2002)
Art, Beauty & Truth: The Psychosocial Genomics of Consciousness, Dreams, and Brain Growth in Psychotherapy and Mind-Body Healing. (2004)
Einstein’s eternal mystery of epistemology explained: The four stage creative process in art, science, myth, and psychotherapy. (2005)
Eric L. Garland and Matthew Owen Howard. An Introduction to Psychosocial Genomics: How the body speaks to us about the effects of non-invasive processes such as therapeutic hypnosis; Hill, R. 2010 . Australian Journal of Clinical Hypnotherapy and Hypnosis 31 (1), pp. 5-16
http://integralsocialwork.com/documents/neuroplasticity.pdf
Laughlin, Charles D., Archetypes, Neurognosis and the Quantum Sea
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_3_laughlin.pdf
Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis & Rehabilitation, Ernest Rossi, et al
The Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis, Psychotherapy, and Rehabilitation Ernest Lawrence Rossi
http://www.asch.net/portals/0/journallibrary/articles/ajch-51/51-3/rossi51-3.pdf
THE CREATIVE PSYCHOSOCIAL GENOMIC HEALING EXPERIENCE ©:ADMINISTRATION, RATIONALE, & RESEARCH
An Open Invitation to Mind-Body Psychotherapy Clinical & Experimental Research; Ernest Rossi, David Atkinson, Jane Blake-Mortimer, Salvatore Iannotti, Mauro Cozzolino, Stefano Castiglione, Angela Cicatelli, Erika Chovanec, Richard Hill, Claude Virot, Bhaskar Vyas, Jorge Cuadros, Michel Kerouac, Thierry Kallfass, Helmut Milz, Claire Frederick, Bruce Gregory, Margaret Bullock, Ella Soleimany, April Rossi, Kathryn Rossi, & Stanley Krippner.
http://www.ernestrossi.com/ernestrossi/Research%20Group%20Papers/Protocol%20CPGHE%20v1.3.pdf
A Pilot Study of Positive Expectations and Focused Attention via a New Protocol for Optomizing Therapeutic Hypnosis and Psychotherapy Assessed with DNA Microarrays: The Creative Psychosocial Genomic Healing Experience. The Journal of Sleep and Hypnosis.
Prospects for Exploring the Molecular-Genomic Foundations of Therapeutic Hypnosis with DNA Microarrays. (2005/2006)
The Bioinformatics of Integrative Medical Insights: Proposals for an International PsychoSocial and Cultural Bioinformatics Project (2006)
The ideodynamic action hypothesis of therapeutic suggestion: Creative replay in the psychosocial genomics of therapeutic hypnosis. (2005)
The Genomic Science Foundation of Body Psychotherapy. (2004)
Stress-Induced Alternative Gene Splicing in Mind-Body Medicine. (2004)
Gene Expression and Brain Plasticity in Stroke Rehabilitation: A Personal Memoir of Mind-Body Healing Dreams. (2004)
The Bioinformatics of Psychosocial Genomics in Alternative and Complementary Medicine. (2003)
Gene Expression, Neurogenesis, and Healing: Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis (2003)
A Bioinformatics Approach to the Psychosocial Genomics of Therapeutic Hypnosis (2002)
Psychosocial Genomics: Gene Expression, Neurogenesis, and Human Experience in Mind-Body Medicine. (2002)
Creativity and the Nature of the Numinosum: The Psychosocial Genomics of Jung’s Transcendent Function in Art, Science, Spirit, and Psychotherapy. (2005)
Sacred Spaces and Places in Healing Dreams: Gene Expression and Brain Growth in Rehabilitation. (2002)
Art, Beauty & Truth: The Psychosocial Genomics of Consciousness, Dreams, and Brain Growth in Psychotherapy and Mind-Body Healing. (2004)
Einstein’s eternal mystery of epistemology explained: The four stage creative process in art, science, myth, and psychotherapy. (2005)
COLLECTIVE PSYCHE & PARADIGM SHIFT
The Psychic System
COLLECTIVE PSYCHE is a meta-theory of mankind and the primordial field of consciousness/matter, first proposed by Jung. We have no control over the collective psyche, the dynamic totality of all conscious and unconscious psychic processes. It is a self-organizing process with its own structure and flow (archetypes and dynamics).
Global sociopolitical life mirrors this condition (including deeply ingrained conflict, the will to live and depression). Systemic global problems are mirrored in each of us. So are collective delusions. But our collective hearts are increasingly crying out for something beyond that myopia.
We must uncover and challenge the disabling myths of the collective psyche, triggering the drive to reach for the inspirational and extraordinary. Change starts with the questions we ask because they are embedded with the potential to shift our awareness to more expansive and unexpected views. Can we harness what we’ve learned the hard way?
When we contemplate the same images, seeds are planted that may be unseen but express themselves through metaphor. Poised at the critical edge of creative process, we can reconfigure our strategies and resources into a living system with transcultural dialogue. All we have to do is apply decentralized, wise, creative, compassionate decisions wherever we can.
If consciousness is the root of matter, as some physics models suggest, it includes everything we imagine, experience and know as well as what we cannot know. The dichotomy of psyche and matter has collapsed in the transpersonal perspective. Realizing we share the same field, the new paradigm encompasses psyche and Cosmos.
Real awareness is being present in the moment. The confluence of future and past is eternally present now, pregnant with potential. Collective psyche “remembers” the future before it arrives, runs all superimposed scenarios in the multiverse before collapsing into ordinary reality. Collective psyche can provide prescient glimpses into possible futures. Can we, therefore, change undesireable timelines and outcomes using collective psyche as applied human survival technology?
Both individual and collective psyche possess layers that lie below consciousness. We can examine the beliefs and behavior of our global society, in general, just as we can analyze and foster emergent creativity in individuals with therapeutic effect. Is collective perversion inherent in the very processes that make us human? Collective behavior often defies apparent rationality by being toxic, pathological and malignant.
None of us is uncontaminated by what goes on outside of ourselves in the world. We all feel “violated” by some form of psychosocial trauma. This is the root of alienation. Have we become strangers to ourselves by projecting collective blame and suppressing collective wisdom?
How can we kindle a cultural placebo effect for spontaneous healing? What initiations do we need to find new meaning and make a collective transition away from “collective neurosis” toward the newly emerging concept of spiritual wellnes and compassionate maturity?
Will we assume a higher level of personal and social responsibility or remain numb to our collective dysfunctional behavior? What forces are undermining our collective psyche and why do we permit them to remain in play? How can we process and transmute our collective guilt into effective transformation? Can we stop transmitting our collective dysfunctionalities to future generations?
Can we heal the traumas imprinted on our collective psyche, recognizing there will always be conflicts from organizing principles in the psyche? Archetypes are composed of autonomous dynamic tensions arising spontaneously in individuals and the collective psyche.
The Transcendent function, according to Jung, resolves the split between opposing dynamics and recognizes the spiritual dimension of the psyche. Flow describes the state of harmonious order.
Can we take a collective spiritual journey beyond competing religions and isms toward collective vision? “Recovery” has taken on new meaning in the collective psyche since the global economic crash. We have to “take stock” of the new situation. As economic foundations crumble, we can’t afford to be irrationally complacent.
Psyche, Science & Society
How can we modify the processes arising in the political context without changing the social context? The collective shadow of the old paradigm still plagues us with collective memory of political events, state terrorism, covert action, control mechanisms, public visibility (transparency), collective violence, class conflict, collective security, provincial national and cultural interests.
Psychosocial trauma is repeated as violations of person and property, competition for scarce resources, discrimination, our collective involvement in torture and such Frankensteinian science as biowarfare. In the asymmetric war of repressor and repressed, these are only a few of the manifestions of such tensions and our reactions (collective action) to them.
The insult is to our entire biopsychosocial being. Our institutional approach to trauma breaks down somewhere in the process. Global trauma occurs in the context of global drama. Traditional therapeutic paradigms don’t work for this kind of trauma inflicted in the macro-social context of savage plutocracy, hegemonic capitalism and brutal totalitarianism. But there are pre-existing conditions in the structure of society and we have to deal with them as best we can.
The ghosts of such large-scale structures can only be exorcised for collective welfare by the introduction of new information, new contexts, new meaning, new structures and new paradigms. Models of collective history and psychological perspectives on society effect our worldview. The collective psyche of many groups has been brutalized. We need new models of collaboration and conflict resolution at the individual and collective level.
The collective psyche itself demands resolution or at least makes us obsess on its elusive nature. To find peace in the world, we must find it within. Images arising in the collective psyche are internalized as dreams and visions. We sense autonomous forces beyond us at work. Deity resides in the collective psyche. Even in physics and life sciences, psyche and matter are no longer split.
Collective intelligence and identity are externalized online in social networking and digital alchemy. The web is a window on collective psyche that invites eruptions from its depths. This superset is a new human identity, embodying that tangibly greater than self. We are practicing higher order collective cooperation, collectively reinventing ourselves as a species. Collective conversation moves at the speed of light.
Openness, inclusivity, decentralization, nonlocality and virtuality are keywords. We are not only merging with one another, we are e-merging our nervous systems with our technology. We are letting go of personal identity to collective intelligence in a new way, teaching one another as we explore that frontier beyond the doors of perception. We are each a unique center.
EDGEucation
Our collective aspirations are guided by archetypal fantasies. Our disenchantment and collective grief is arguably over loss of the world soul. The collective psyche points toward and guides us through the transition period we now face. New images are arising, reframing the future. Images have healing properties. They speak to us in our sleeping and waking dreams, forging shared stories relevant to everyone in the process as well as the Cosmos itself.
We cannot separate our psychophysical symptoms from the collective environment. There is a missing dimension in our worldview and mindscapes. We sense it, even though the market and media have attempted to drain all depth from our experience. Emergent events are not merely responses to economic and climatic conditions or social engineering, but eruptions of the collective unconscious.
Mobilized, the archetypal dynamics and creative forces of the collective psyche perturb psychosocial trends, creating new possibilities. Archetypes are the psychic skeleton fleshed out by events that matter. We can’t keep our collective skeletons in the closet anymore. We can no longer charge the future to pay for our past. The marks have wised up and no longer trust the control systems.
What doesn’t effect the Collective Psyche? Perhaps humanity has never faced more multi-dimensional challenges. We need to retrieve and upgrade our human survival technologies for our metamorphosis. Healing emerges from pathology. Edge artists are the shamans of the new millennium.
Maybe we are still addicted to the Hermetic myth of futurism when we need to live in the here and now. Like Hermes, the future is a perennial Trickster: this is what you want, this is what you get — lowered expectations. Why do we hurry to live in the future? Futurism speculates about the unknown, robbing us of the present and its opportunities.
There is no quick cure for collective ills but we can find new metaphors, deeper meaning and more relevant stories. There is no therapy but moving forward creatively into the future, experimenting with solutions. Inspiration can emerge from infinite potential in any instant.
Participatory Wisdom
The only certain way to heal the personality or the world is getting to the source of wisdom. Collective consciousness is tied to the health of each individual. Healing power emerges from integration. Looking within, we arouse our tacit knowledge for participatory wisdom — the active wisdom of the collective psyche.
The same patterns are at work in the individual and collective psyche, something ungraspable in the depths. Larger patterns are at work in the collective. Global awareness, multiculturalism and multinationalism are basic to the collective psyche. But we fear the loss of old boundaries. Is this our collective Borderline disorder, emphasizing relationship disturbances that challenge our beliefs about ourselves? Is it the source of our unremitting crisis and vulnerability?
Joy is the only antidote to anxiety. We need to create better environments, newer myths, and more compassionate beliefs so we can thrive, not just survive. Rather than conspicuous consumption, new buzzwords include ZPG, “downsizing,” “aging lean,” “design intelligence.”
We need new models for creative art and science that move us beyond the nihilism of postmodernism into the transmodern era. The exhausted culture must die for the new to emerge from its ashes. The collective death-wish plays out in a myriad of ways. The psyche is not amenable to reduction. It cannot be contained or restricted.
Politics, Economics, War, Disease, Natural Calamities, Science and Technology, Natural Resource shortages, the Population Bomb, Pandemic, Forced Migration, Climate Shift, Energy Crisis and more have the capacity to instantly morph our worldview and lifestyles.
Destructive states need to give way to an opening of imagination as we continue to free our collective selves from oppressive mythologies. Hopefully, we can find a more sustainable means of existence. Therapeutic interventions can be performed by anyone at any level.
For example, consumers are radically revisioning their spending, saving and investment patterns. Artists are learning what it means to design new bodies and virtual environments. Art can be read as the archives of collective vision. Our collective intelligence is transforming through social networking. We can retrieve our geneologies and test our DNA to find out exactly who we are and where we come from. What we find is we are all more closely related than we formerly thought.
We can benefit by a wide-ranging holistic examination of nature and our own nature as a species. Humans, science tells us, are 99% genetically identical to primates and even closer to one another — we are one family of man. Battles are symptoms. In psychology, symptoms are where boundaries are shifting.
Collective psyche is as multi-faceted as mankind. The meme biological “race” — a social construction — is an irrelevant folk belief that is culturally ingrained divisive view. The global human population is genetically homogeneous compared to other mammals. There are no subspecies in our global family.
Dysfunctional Family of Man
However, we are dysfunctional, detached, alienated. The collective demands of our culture have drained us. We have endured unbearable collective “cognitive dissonance” between the traditional and transitional paradigms. Such mental epidemics arise in the collective soul. One treatment is to reinvest in perennial collective values, such as democracy. If you hold a value, you must speak for it. Lack of passion indicates numbing.
We yearn for something deeper than consumerism in terms of mass mind. Fragmentation is the metaphysical and existential condition that leads to compulsive creation of the false self as compensation for lack of authentic identity. Omega points embody our existential despair, our apocalyptic yearning, our narcissistic desire to have everything reflect our own emptiness.
Despair can lead to suicidal thoughts. In Suicide and the Soul, James Hillman suggests the impulse to suicide is psyche’s intense desire to change, and die symbolically to be reborn or renewed. We also long for renewal in our global culture and for the sake of our offspring. But do we have to be collectively self-destructive in the process?
Collectively, we are experiencing a disorder of adaptation that manifests in dissociation. Distrust, greed, apathy and burn-out are symptomatic. We have only recently crashed from a series of socially manufactured hyper-manic investment “bubbles,” awakening us from a delusion of limitless growth.
We’ve become numb and overwhelmed. Numbness masks our collective spiritual hunger, which is the root of all addiction. Our paranoid culture is hyper-vigilant with Post-Traumatic Stress.
Holding all this tension is “weathering” or wearing us out. Economic collapse has sent many back to square one, desperately trying to reinvent themselves for survival. Old personas grow constrictive when we are role-bound into conventionality or the equally cliche eccentricities. Even your rebellions are socially engineered. Identified with the social mask, when we lose our job or ‘mission’ we lose our identity.
In the same way, we have to reinvent our culture, fractally, from the bottom-up and top-down. Some areas of cultural activity are more pathological and malignant. We literally and metaphorically need to ‘cut it out.’
Ancient cultures have much to teach us in this regard; we need to listen deeply to one another. Psycho-spiritual forces of transformation are also in play, such as conceptual reorientation and memes that remain to play out, such as 2012 and technological singularity.
The Collective Psyche is also vulnerable to manipulation through a variety of means that modulate the order/disorder scale. Propaganda is used for organizing chaos in accord with specific agendas through memes, media, education, social values, military, medicine, politics, intelligence and business. Ideas are replicators, much like genes, and can be “cancerous” and require radical treatment.
Zeitgeist
The very Fabric of Reality is woven in our collective thoughts and embodiment. Consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious where all minds are entangled. This matrix determines the context and meaning of individual and collective being.
Currently, we are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift. For the first time in history we have sweeping knowledge of the historic panoply of our planet and humanity’s place in it. We know who we are but we don’t know where we are going, except into the Great Unknown, the abyss that represents the universal Mystery. Indications are that we are becoming “transhuman.” The sadpart is most of have failed to becoming “fully human,” living up to our human potential, before the transition.
Shared beliefs and attitudes operating as a unifying social force create Collective Consciousness which embodies the Social Cradle. This fractal and systems awareness can be raised to new heights through transformations in tacit and articulated knowledge with behavior rooted in new understanding. This is how new self-organizing order emerges from the death of outworn toxic systems.
In therapy, we hae to get to the root of the problem for more than a “bandaid” cure. Negative instinctual forces tend to keep this positive potential in check, but we are also capable of making quantum leaps in consciousness, particularly since our survival depends on it. We need to develop a system we can trust in once again.
The social drive behind transformation is the over-arching awareness that we are all in it together. New physics has revealed a deeper level of reality where we are at one with each other, the world and Cosmos. We need to begin operating from realization of that interconnected awareness.
Culture’s Strange Attractors
Both individuals and cultures have internal maps of reality that condition their beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. C.G. Jung introduced the model of a Collective Unconscious and also a Collective Consciousness. Its primary structures are archetypes or patterns behind our religious, mythical, thought and social lives.
All the most powerful ideas in history arise from archetypes: religious ideas; the central concepts of science and philosophy. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality.
The Collective Psyche is complexed, subject to distortions in healthy dynamics. They revolve around the perennial problems of mankind — the Strange Attractors of collective life. Projections territorialize the aspects of the collective psyche, but we are all part of that collective body.
Collective behavior also has a Shadow-side as we find in individuals. It causes us to project evil onto other individuals, groups and nations, disowning our complicity. Often there is an abyss between our overt and covert intentions and their real-world effects due to a myopia that prevents us seeing into our collective blind spots.
What is going on in the collective psyche? Oppositional thinking and projection mean we live in a time of accelerating polarization: us versus them, good versus evildoers, and splitting and projection based in creeds, isms, and other congealed dogmas. What we need to examine are the effects, not intentions, of those beliefs.
Cultural narcissism and oppositional thinking are deterants to peace in the world. We need to begin taking collective responsibility for our pathology to overcome our collective denial that has fouled our environment and interpersonal relations at the individual, national and global level.
Frontiers of Consciousness
We gain in meaning and value by fearlessly examining our collective psyche to find hidden dynamics at work below the surface of events that could make or break our intergenerational futures. These dynamics are conditioned by archetypes just like individuals share these common drives for good and evil.
Global Architectronics is the evolving architecture of our common culture, shaped by a variety of internal and external forces. Some of them plague mankind and some have the potential to raise us to a higher level of being in the world and with one another.
The dynamics of Chaos Theory illuminates the process of radical culture change and the challenges of our currently shifting society. We are in unprecedented flux and recognizing that changes in one area of the globe potentially effect the whole system. There are no “closed societies” in the Information Age. This is the era of Glocalization.
Order emerges from chaos, but chaos also overwhelms us when order breaks down in our bodies, minds or societies. Then we need emergent healing that comes from deep within, not introjected from outside of ourselves but welling up from our core. In this new Depression, we need deep healing, individually and collectively.
Our sick system needs to heal from corruption and mismanagement. The planet needs to heal from human impact and overpopulation. It is a complex problem which can only be addressed by a radical shift in healing paradigms and means. The transformative process takes many forms in working with chaos through nature’s way.
COLLECTIVE PSYCHE is a meta-theory of mankind and the primordial field of consciousness/matter, first proposed by Jung. We have no control over the collective psyche, the dynamic totality of all conscious and unconscious psychic processes. It is a self-organizing process with its own structure and flow (archetypes and dynamics).
Global sociopolitical life mirrors this condition (including deeply ingrained conflict, the will to live and depression). Systemic global problems are mirrored in each of us. So are collective delusions. But our collective hearts are increasingly crying out for something beyond that myopia.
We must uncover and challenge the disabling myths of the collective psyche, triggering the drive to reach for the inspirational and extraordinary. Change starts with the questions we ask because they are embedded with the potential to shift our awareness to more expansive and unexpected views. Can we harness what we’ve learned the hard way?
When we contemplate the same images, seeds are planted that may be unseen but express themselves through metaphor. Poised at the critical edge of creative process, we can reconfigure our strategies and resources into a living system with transcultural dialogue. All we have to do is apply decentralized, wise, creative, compassionate decisions wherever we can.
If consciousness is the root of matter, as some physics models suggest, it includes everything we imagine, experience and know as well as what we cannot know. The dichotomy of psyche and matter has collapsed in the transpersonal perspective. Realizing we share the same field, the new paradigm encompasses psyche and Cosmos.
Real awareness is being present in the moment. The confluence of future and past is eternally present now, pregnant with potential. Collective psyche “remembers” the future before it arrives, runs all superimposed scenarios in the multiverse before collapsing into ordinary reality. Collective psyche can provide prescient glimpses into possible futures. Can we, therefore, change undesireable timelines and outcomes using collective psyche as applied human survival technology?
Both individual and collective psyche possess layers that lie below consciousness. We can examine the beliefs and behavior of our global society, in general, just as we can analyze and foster emergent creativity in individuals with therapeutic effect. Is collective perversion inherent in the very processes that make us human? Collective behavior often defies apparent rationality by being toxic, pathological and malignant.
None of us is uncontaminated by what goes on outside of ourselves in the world. We all feel “violated” by some form of psychosocial trauma. This is the root of alienation. Have we become strangers to ourselves by projecting collective blame and suppressing collective wisdom?
How can we kindle a cultural placebo effect for spontaneous healing? What initiations do we need to find new meaning and make a collective transition away from “collective neurosis” toward the newly emerging concept of spiritual wellnes and compassionate maturity?
Will we assume a higher level of personal and social responsibility or remain numb to our collective dysfunctional behavior? What forces are undermining our collective psyche and why do we permit them to remain in play? How can we process and transmute our collective guilt into effective transformation? Can we stop transmitting our collective dysfunctionalities to future generations?
Can we heal the traumas imprinted on our collective psyche, recognizing there will always be conflicts from organizing principles in the psyche? Archetypes are composed of autonomous dynamic tensions arising spontaneously in individuals and the collective psyche.
The Transcendent function, according to Jung, resolves the split between opposing dynamics and recognizes the spiritual dimension of the psyche. Flow describes the state of harmonious order.
Can we take a collective spiritual journey beyond competing religions and isms toward collective vision? “Recovery” has taken on new meaning in the collective psyche since the global economic crash. We have to “take stock” of the new situation. As economic foundations crumble, we can’t afford to be irrationally complacent.
Psyche, Science & Society
How can we modify the processes arising in the political context without changing the social context? The collective shadow of the old paradigm still plagues us with collective memory of political events, state terrorism, covert action, control mechanisms, public visibility (transparency), collective violence, class conflict, collective security, provincial national and cultural interests.
Psychosocial trauma is repeated as violations of person and property, competition for scarce resources, discrimination, our collective involvement in torture and such Frankensteinian science as biowarfare. In the asymmetric war of repressor and repressed, these are only a few of the manifestions of such tensions and our reactions (collective action) to them.
The insult is to our entire biopsychosocial being. Our institutional approach to trauma breaks down somewhere in the process. Global trauma occurs in the context of global drama. Traditional therapeutic paradigms don’t work for this kind of trauma inflicted in the macro-social context of savage plutocracy, hegemonic capitalism and brutal totalitarianism. But there are pre-existing conditions in the structure of society and we have to deal with them as best we can.
The ghosts of such large-scale structures can only be exorcised for collective welfare by the introduction of new information, new contexts, new meaning, new structures and new paradigms. Models of collective history and psychological perspectives on society effect our worldview. The collective psyche of many groups has been brutalized. We need new models of collaboration and conflict resolution at the individual and collective level.
The collective psyche itself demands resolution or at least makes us obsess on its elusive nature. To find peace in the world, we must find it within. Images arising in the collective psyche are internalized as dreams and visions. We sense autonomous forces beyond us at work. Deity resides in the collective psyche. Even in physics and life sciences, psyche and matter are no longer split.
Collective intelligence and identity are externalized online in social networking and digital alchemy. The web is a window on collective psyche that invites eruptions from its depths. This superset is a new human identity, embodying that tangibly greater than self. We are practicing higher order collective cooperation, collectively reinventing ourselves as a species. Collective conversation moves at the speed of light.
Openness, inclusivity, decentralization, nonlocality and virtuality are keywords. We are not only merging with one another, we are e-merging our nervous systems with our technology. We are letting go of personal identity to collective intelligence in a new way, teaching one another as we explore that frontier beyond the doors of perception. We are each a unique center.
EDGEucation
Our collective aspirations are guided by archetypal fantasies. Our disenchantment and collective grief is arguably over loss of the world soul. The collective psyche points toward and guides us through the transition period we now face. New images are arising, reframing the future. Images have healing properties. They speak to us in our sleeping and waking dreams, forging shared stories relevant to everyone in the process as well as the Cosmos itself.
We cannot separate our psychophysical symptoms from the collective environment. There is a missing dimension in our worldview and mindscapes. We sense it, even though the market and media have attempted to drain all depth from our experience. Emergent events are not merely responses to economic and climatic conditions or social engineering, but eruptions of the collective unconscious.
Mobilized, the archetypal dynamics and creative forces of the collective psyche perturb psychosocial trends, creating new possibilities. Archetypes are the psychic skeleton fleshed out by events that matter. We can’t keep our collective skeletons in the closet anymore. We can no longer charge the future to pay for our past. The marks have wised up and no longer trust the control systems.
What doesn’t effect the Collective Psyche? Perhaps humanity has never faced more multi-dimensional challenges. We need to retrieve and upgrade our human survival technologies for our metamorphosis. Healing emerges from pathology. Edge artists are the shamans of the new millennium.
Maybe we are still addicted to the Hermetic myth of futurism when we need to live in the here and now. Like Hermes, the future is a perennial Trickster: this is what you want, this is what you get — lowered expectations. Why do we hurry to live in the future? Futurism speculates about the unknown, robbing us of the present and its opportunities.
There is no quick cure for collective ills but we can find new metaphors, deeper meaning and more relevant stories. There is no therapy but moving forward creatively into the future, experimenting with solutions. Inspiration can emerge from infinite potential in any instant.
Participatory Wisdom
The only certain way to heal the personality or the world is getting to the source of wisdom. Collective consciousness is tied to the health of each individual. Healing power emerges from integration. Looking within, we arouse our tacit knowledge for participatory wisdom — the active wisdom of the collective psyche.
The same patterns are at work in the individual and collective psyche, something ungraspable in the depths. Larger patterns are at work in the collective. Global awareness, multiculturalism and multinationalism are basic to the collective psyche. But we fear the loss of old boundaries. Is this our collective Borderline disorder, emphasizing relationship disturbances that challenge our beliefs about ourselves? Is it the source of our unremitting crisis and vulnerability?
Joy is the only antidote to anxiety. We need to create better environments, newer myths, and more compassionate beliefs so we can thrive, not just survive. Rather than conspicuous consumption, new buzzwords include ZPG, “downsizing,” “aging lean,” “design intelligence.”
We need new models for creative art and science that move us beyond the nihilism of postmodernism into the transmodern era. The exhausted culture must die for the new to emerge from its ashes. The collective death-wish plays out in a myriad of ways. The psyche is not amenable to reduction. It cannot be contained or restricted.
Politics, Economics, War, Disease, Natural Calamities, Science and Technology, Natural Resource shortages, the Population Bomb, Pandemic, Forced Migration, Climate Shift, Energy Crisis and more have the capacity to instantly morph our worldview and lifestyles.
Destructive states need to give way to an opening of imagination as we continue to free our collective selves from oppressive mythologies. Hopefully, we can find a more sustainable means of existence. Therapeutic interventions can be performed by anyone at any level.
For example, consumers are radically revisioning their spending, saving and investment patterns. Artists are learning what it means to design new bodies and virtual environments. Art can be read as the archives of collective vision. Our collective intelligence is transforming through social networking. We can retrieve our geneologies and test our DNA to find out exactly who we are and where we come from. What we find is we are all more closely related than we formerly thought.
We can benefit by a wide-ranging holistic examination of nature and our own nature as a species. Humans, science tells us, are 99% genetically identical to primates and even closer to one another — we are one family of man. Battles are symptoms. In psychology, symptoms are where boundaries are shifting.
Collective psyche is as multi-faceted as mankind. The meme biological “race” — a social construction — is an irrelevant folk belief that is culturally ingrained divisive view. The global human population is genetically homogeneous compared to other mammals. There are no subspecies in our global family.
Dysfunctional Family of Man
However, we are dysfunctional, detached, alienated. The collective demands of our culture have drained us. We have endured unbearable collective “cognitive dissonance” between the traditional and transitional paradigms. Such mental epidemics arise in the collective soul. One treatment is to reinvest in perennial collective values, such as democracy. If you hold a value, you must speak for it. Lack of passion indicates numbing.
We yearn for something deeper than consumerism in terms of mass mind. Fragmentation is the metaphysical and existential condition that leads to compulsive creation of the false self as compensation for lack of authentic identity. Omega points embody our existential despair, our apocalyptic yearning, our narcissistic desire to have everything reflect our own emptiness.
Despair can lead to suicidal thoughts. In Suicide and the Soul, James Hillman suggests the impulse to suicide is psyche’s intense desire to change, and die symbolically to be reborn or renewed. We also long for renewal in our global culture and for the sake of our offspring. But do we have to be collectively self-destructive in the process?
Collectively, we are experiencing a disorder of adaptation that manifests in dissociation. Distrust, greed, apathy and burn-out are symptomatic. We have only recently crashed from a series of socially manufactured hyper-manic investment “bubbles,” awakening us from a delusion of limitless growth.
We’ve become numb and overwhelmed. Numbness masks our collective spiritual hunger, which is the root of all addiction. Our paranoid culture is hyper-vigilant with Post-Traumatic Stress.
Holding all this tension is “weathering” or wearing us out. Economic collapse has sent many back to square one, desperately trying to reinvent themselves for survival. Old personas grow constrictive when we are role-bound into conventionality or the equally cliche eccentricities. Even your rebellions are socially engineered. Identified with the social mask, when we lose our job or ‘mission’ we lose our identity.
In the same way, we have to reinvent our culture, fractally, from the bottom-up and top-down. Some areas of cultural activity are more pathological and malignant. We literally and metaphorically need to ‘cut it out.’
Ancient cultures have much to teach us in this regard; we need to listen deeply to one another. Psycho-spiritual forces of transformation are also in play, such as conceptual reorientation and memes that remain to play out, such as 2012 and technological singularity.
The Collective Psyche is also vulnerable to manipulation through a variety of means that modulate the order/disorder scale. Propaganda is used for organizing chaos in accord with specific agendas through memes, media, education, social values, military, medicine, politics, intelligence and business. Ideas are replicators, much like genes, and can be “cancerous” and require radical treatment.
Zeitgeist
The very Fabric of Reality is woven in our collective thoughts and embodiment. Consensus reality is formulated and ratified at the level of the human unconscious where all minds are entangled. This matrix determines the context and meaning of individual and collective being.
Currently, we are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift. For the first time in history we have sweeping knowledge of the historic panoply of our planet and humanity’s place in it. We know who we are but we don’t know where we are going, except into the Great Unknown, the abyss that represents the universal Mystery. Indications are that we are becoming “transhuman.” The sadpart is most of have failed to becoming “fully human,” living up to our human potential, before the transition.
Shared beliefs and attitudes operating as a unifying social force create Collective Consciousness which embodies the Social Cradle. This fractal and systems awareness can be raised to new heights through transformations in tacit and articulated knowledge with behavior rooted in new understanding. This is how new self-organizing order emerges from the death of outworn toxic systems.
In therapy, we hae to get to the root of the problem for more than a “bandaid” cure. Negative instinctual forces tend to keep this positive potential in check, but we are also capable of making quantum leaps in consciousness, particularly since our survival depends on it. We need to develop a system we can trust in once again.
The social drive behind transformation is the over-arching awareness that we are all in it together. New physics has revealed a deeper level of reality where we are at one with each other, the world and Cosmos. We need to begin operating from realization of that interconnected awareness.
Culture’s Strange Attractors
Both individuals and cultures have internal maps of reality that condition their beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. C.G. Jung introduced the model of a Collective Unconscious and also a Collective Consciousness. Its primary structures are archetypes or patterns behind our religious, mythical, thought and social lives.
All the most powerful ideas in history arise from archetypes: religious ideas; the central concepts of science and philosophy. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality.
The Collective Psyche is complexed, subject to distortions in healthy dynamics. They revolve around the perennial problems of mankind — the Strange Attractors of collective life. Projections territorialize the aspects of the collective psyche, but we are all part of that collective body.
Collective behavior also has a Shadow-side as we find in individuals. It causes us to project evil onto other individuals, groups and nations, disowning our complicity. Often there is an abyss between our overt and covert intentions and their real-world effects due to a myopia that prevents us seeing into our collective blind spots.
What is going on in the collective psyche? Oppositional thinking and projection mean we live in a time of accelerating polarization: us versus them, good versus evildoers, and splitting and projection based in creeds, isms, and other congealed dogmas. What we need to examine are the effects, not intentions, of those beliefs.
Cultural narcissism and oppositional thinking are deterants to peace in the world. We need to begin taking collective responsibility for our pathology to overcome our collective denial that has fouled our environment and interpersonal relations at the individual, national and global level.
Frontiers of Consciousness
We gain in meaning and value by fearlessly examining our collective psyche to find hidden dynamics at work below the surface of events that could make or break our intergenerational futures. These dynamics are conditioned by archetypes just like individuals share these common drives for good and evil.
Global Architectronics is the evolving architecture of our common culture, shaped by a variety of internal and external forces. Some of them plague mankind and some have the potential to raise us to a higher level of being in the world and with one another.
The dynamics of Chaos Theory illuminates the process of radical culture change and the challenges of our currently shifting society. We are in unprecedented flux and recognizing that changes in one area of the globe potentially effect the whole system. There are no “closed societies” in the Information Age. This is the era of Glocalization.
Order emerges from chaos, but chaos also overwhelms us when order breaks down in our bodies, minds or societies. Then we need emergent healing that comes from deep within, not introjected from outside of ourselves but welling up from our core. In this new Depression, we need deep healing, individually and collectively.
Our sick system needs to heal from corruption and mismanagement. The planet needs to heal from human impact and overpopulation. It is a complex problem which can only be addressed by a radical shift in healing paradigms and means. The transformative process takes many forms in working with chaos through nature’s way.
EVOLUTION OF BELIEF PARADIGMS
Stage 1: Archaic: Survival, the Ground Zero of Existence. Self-preservation, isolation; antisocial. Paranoid or idiosyncratic beliefs.
Stage 2: Tribal: Truster/Trickster. Social; love, belonging. Self-sacrifice vs. selfishness. Transgression; taboo. Ethnocentric magical and superstitious beliefs.
Stage 3: Egocentric: Power; Esteem; Autonomy, heroic. Unscrupulous Competition/Hero. Shame vs. honor. Exploitation vs. Respect. Mythic beliefs.
Stage4: Moral/Patriotic. Rules; Initiative. Shame and guilt vs. conformity and conventionality; purpose, virtue. Systematized truths. Emotional, nostalgic beliefs.
Stage 5: Materialist. Reasoning; mental analysis. Rational beliefs, truth; goodness; consumerism, greed. Head vs. heart. Progressive if rewarded, compulsive, workaholic. Perspective. Rational beliefs.
Stage 6: Wise Empath. Service, rapport, intimacy, empathy. Politically diplomatic. Inner wisdom, meaning. Self-actualization. Intuitive, mystical beliefs.
Stage 7: Distancer/Self. Paradoxical; individuated, reclusive; universalist. Deconstruction and Synthesis, gestalt, the big picture. Integral, synergetic beliefs.
Stage 8: Global Village. Complex Dynamic Beliefs. Post-Metaphysical Integrative Spirituality. “Express Self Now, but not at the expense of Others or the World, so that Life May Continue.” Integrative Sustainable beliefs. Synarchy, joint harmonious rule.
The sophistication of our beliefs about the way ourselves and the world works has evolved over time. But not everyone lives in the Present, with a belief system that is consistent with our current rational knowledge. Beliefs are influenced by emotional and psychosocial pressures.
Many people are firmly invested in the spiritual practices of by-gone eras, for good or not so good. Regardless, time and technology march on, impacting our psychophysical organism with challenges never faced by humanity before. The future-oriented are already living there. As has been pointed out: "The future is already here; it just isn't evenly distributed." To truly live mindfully in the Now, which is all we ever actually have, is to live at your Cosmic Zero Point. http://myzeropoint.50megs.com
For thousands of years, tribes were so well adapted to their environments, they had little need to evolve. Their worldviews and reality differed, but not so overwhelmingly as for repressed cognitive dissonance to drive them to higher-numbered stages
Belief systems are like reality wormholes into the past. Part of us can live in the 14th, 17th, or 19th century, depending on eclectic spiritual ideas we have embraced or gotten stuck in. The same individual, such as a religious scientist, can embrace conflicting beliefs from different centuries. Compartmentalization is the only way to deny this cognitive dissonance.
Self-regulatory techniques can be adopted without this psychological baggage, with or without maintaining the spiritual or religious context. Somewhere on the planet, humans are living in every niche of the evolutionary belief spectrum. Which existential experience you perceive depends on the filters of your options (environment), beliefs and values.
Each stage represents a limited understanding and repressions until its liabilities force us into the next stage. Alternating stages are self-expressive and social. First new traits and states are emergent; then they stabilize. Our archetypal experiences can be regressions or expressions of our present highest state of development or emergent, then stabilized intuitions of still higher states. Each stage is a worldview with its own needs, belief style and existential ground. Each is its own trance state, a lens through which the world is perceived with certain distortions. Each can be a trap of complacency as we enjoy its rewards.
Stage 1: Archaic: Survival, the Ground Zero of Existence. Self-preservation, isolation; antisocial. Paranoid or idiosyncratic beliefs.
Stage 2: Tribal: Truster/Trickster. Social; love, belonging. Self-sacrifice vs. selfishness. Transgression; taboo. Ethnocentric magical and superstitious beliefs.
Stage 3: Egocentric: Power; Esteem; Autonomy, heroic. Unscrupulous Competition/Hero. Shame vs. honor. Exploitation vs. Respect. Mythic beliefs.
Stage4: Moral/Patriotic. Rules; Initiative. Shame and guilt vs. conformity and conventionality; purpose, virtue. Systematized truths. Emotional, nostalgic beliefs.
Stage 5: Materialist. Reasoning; mental analysis. Rational beliefs, truth; goodness; consumerism, greed. Head vs. heart. Progressive if rewarded, compulsive, workaholic. Perspective. Rational beliefs.
Stage 6: Wise Empath. Service, rapport, intimacy, empathy. Politically diplomatic. Inner wisdom, meaning. Self-actualization. Intuitive, mystical beliefs.
Stage 7: Distancer/Self. Paradoxical; individuated, reclusive; universalist. Deconstruction and Synthesis, gestalt, the big picture. Integral, synergetic beliefs.
Stage 8: Global Village. Complex Dynamic Beliefs. Post-Metaphysical Integrative Spirituality. “Express Self Now, but not at the expense of Others or the World, so that Life May Continue.” Integrative Sustainable beliefs. Synarchy, joint harmonious rule.
The sophistication of our beliefs about the way ourselves and the world works has evolved over time. But not everyone lives in the Present, with a belief system that is consistent with our current rational knowledge. Beliefs are influenced by emotional and psychosocial pressures.
Many people are firmly invested in the spiritual practices of by-gone eras, for good or not so good. Regardless, time and technology march on, impacting our psychophysical organism with challenges never faced by humanity before. The future-oriented are already living there. As has been pointed out: "The future is already here; it just isn't evenly distributed." To truly live mindfully in the Now, which is all we ever actually have, is to live at your Cosmic Zero Point. http://myzeropoint.50megs.com
For thousands of years, tribes were so well adapted to their environments, they had little need to evolve. Their worldviews and reality differed, but not so overwhelmingly as for repressed cognitive dissonance to drive them to higher-numbered stages
Belief systems are like reality wormholes into the past. Part of us can live in the 14th, 17th, or 19th century, depending on eclectic spiritual ideas we have embraced or gotten stuck in. The same individual, such as a religious scientist, can embrace conflicting beliefs from different centuries. Compartmentalization is the only way to deny this cognitive dissonance.
Self-regulatory techniques can be adopted without this psychological baggage, with or without maintaining the spiritual or religious context. Somewhere on the planet, humans are living in every niche of the evolutionary belief spectrum. Which existential experience you perceive depends on the filters of your options (environment), beliefs and values.
Each stage represents a limited understanding and repressions until its liabilities force us into the next stage. Alternating stages are self-expressive and social. First new traits and states are emergent; then they stabilize. Our archetypal experiences can be regressions or expressions of our present highest state of development or emergent, then stabilized intuitions of still higher states. Each stage is a worldview with its own needs, belief style and existential ground. Each is its own trance state, a lens through which the world is perceived with certain distortions. Each can be a trap of complacency as we enjoy its rewards.