Chapter 4: The Spirituality Spectrum
For hundreds of thousands of years modern humans lived, reproduced, evolved and distinguished themselves from the other hominin species. They interbred with Neanderthals, Denisovan and likely other hominins. Like other hominins they created art and buried their dead. As we saw in the last chapter, only Homo sapiens began pursuing creative irrational activities, most notably the creation of megalithic structures, circa 12,000 BCE. The early megalithic constructions most likely were attempts to capture impulses higher than those arising from hunger or fear. The ubiquitous alignments of their stone structures with celestial markers, whether sunrise, sunset, the Milky Way and or star clusters strongly suggest their connections with the more-than-merely personal aspects of their lives. They were definitely working to receive and transmit the creative irrational in their lives.
It was not for another 7,000 years after the beginning of the Göbekli Tepe constructions that humans developed a new method of expressing themselves. The cultures of the Sumerians and Egyptians circa 3,000 BCE establish writing. An expression that we take for granted in our modern day societies providing the societies with further opportunity to express their higher complex thoughts. As a result, the writing that we have found provides much greater insights into their motivations and worldviews. Indeed while these two advanced cultures produced megalithic architecture and art it is through writing that they were able to provide metaphor and allegory to address the more-than-merely personal aspects of life. As our discussion moves from the pre-literate period of human development to a time when human consciousness was recorded in words, phrases and literature we find evidence of more than day-to-day concerns. We can recognize a continuing development of interest in the higher, creative irrational, leading toward spiritual, aspects of human existence.Although time and culture separate us from the scribes there is a shared commonality that allows us to still appreciate and learn from their efforts[1].
Between the two extremes of human existence from purely physical to that of our highest spiritual expressions there are various levels of existence available to humans. We capture this range of existence in what we see as the “spirituality spectrum”. It is an effort to connect our most mundane, ordinary, day-to-day existence, associated primarily with our rational animal sides, with the highest spiritual expression. The spirituality spectrum as presented in Table 2attempts to capture our rational aspects in the left-hand side while the highest levels of human existence are on the right-hand side.
Table 2. Spirituality Spectrum showing a comparison of a selection of classifications of the levels of human consciousness relating to the irrational and spiritual.
We begin the Table with the oldest description of the various levels of human existence. It comes from the Ancient Egyptians initially in the Pyramid Texts circa 2,500 BCE and elsewhere in their literature and art. They first captured this range of human existence in their presentation of the various “human bodies”. Our interpretation of the Ancient Egyptian bodies is presented in the first row of Table 2 from its purely physical body form on the left, through to the existence in Ra on the right. The following rows in the Table represents a “rough” mapping of the various stages of Being as conceived of by cultures and individuals onto the structure provided by the Ancient Egyptians. We find very similar representations in a selection of later traditions from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century teacher Gurdjieff and the psychologist Jung. This presents a gross summary of the results from the many approaches followed throughout the history of human culture. In the remainder of this book we explore all of these interpretations of the human condition in more detail. The reader needs to be aware that there can be no exact equivalence drawn among the different traditions – some traditions that extend over millennia. Over such a period human consciousness and individual Being are likely to have been experienced in so many different personal ways as to defy simple classification. Yet, we need to recognize that humans have been examining and attempting to express such thoughts since the very beginning of modern human societies. As we see it, these are just different formulations of a worldview that is ultimately irrational and strongly linked to the spiritual aspects of humanity. As a result, these few examples help us to recognize expressions of the creative irrational in many traditions that have evolved over the past 5,000 years.
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[1] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions, Vt.
[2] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications
[3] http://www.gurdjieff.justwizard.com/all&ever.html & http://ae.gurdjieff.org.gr/chapters/en50/chapter47.htm