Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Mythology


ON MYTHOLOGY
A study conducted on Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks, revealed that when individuals are in a state of concentrated meditation and prayer the neurons stop firing in the parietal lobe of the brain; the area responsible for spatial orientation and physical awareness.  Another study showed that when individuals suffer from temporal lobe seizures and also others who have had that region of the brain stimulated using electrodes produce sensations that are considered intense religious euphoria or experience.  Atheists look at that and interpret it as proof that there is nothing spiritual going on at all.  “There you go.”   But I’m not devout to anything yet and so I say simply, “I don’t know…”   But for me some interesting questions arise for the thought experiment; do we remove a portion of our ego when we turn off the region that is aware of our physical body?  Isn’t it our egos that have fooled us into thinking we’re individuals separate from the universe in the first place?  Does that portion of the physical brain naturally block or impede our true connection with the universal consciousness?  Is the parietal lobe our anchor to the physical realm?  Or is it all electricity and energy distribution?  Is it all in our heads?  I struggle with this debate all the time. 
There have been other studies that suppose our brains naturally need to impose order to everything; that we need to understand everything as having a cause-effect relationship.  We simply can’t accept chaos.  Things cannot happen randomly. 
I’m currently enrolled in a mythology class.  The semester just began and the second chapter in the book looks at the origins of myth.  Where do they come from?  The book breaks down several competing theories.  There’s the Archaic view that basically says that, to the ancient Greeks, myths were substitutions for history and theology, but also offered examples of heroic actions that promoted certain courageous standards for not only their citizens but their leaders as well.  There were “externalist” theories that state that myths were a prescientific attempt to explain natural phenomena.   Some believe that myths derived from explanations for certain ancient rituals and customs; as justifications.
The “internalists” view myth like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung did, as stemming from our subconscious; that they are expressions of the human mind.   Jung had his mythological archetypes. 
My friend Matt Savage wonders if myths were actually viewed as fiction but accepted and celebrated as holding universal truths worthy of veneration.  He likened it to Harry Potter or Star Wars.  We know these stories are fiction but we celebrate them as our modern mythology.
There was the Hellenistic theory that supposed that the ancient gods were based on leaders from the distant past whose exploits had been so exaggerated over time that they took on divine qualities.    I like this theory for reasons I’m unaware of other than it supports my theory on the Biblical stories and oral tradition.  I compare it to the game of telephone.  Each time the story is told to the next person it takes on a subtle but important variation.  But over thousands of years those variations have grown to the point that what’s left is nearly a completely different tale.   But boiled down and below them there was once some truth to them. 
That leads into a section I found to be missing from the text book; the Ancient Alien Theory.  A kid seated behind me brought it up in class.  As much as I don’t trust the Ancient Alien theory its hard to watch the so-called History Channel and not come away with at least a few more questions than you have answers on that subject.  The idea is that mythology comes from the ancients’ misunderstanding of technology well beyond their wildest imaginations and so the aliens became gods.
A competing theory to the aliens is the ancient demonic theory.  This one I’ve employed in a series of books that have yet to be completed, but that I started over ten years ago.  The idea is that the ancient gods were actually powerful demons that corrupted and subverted the truth and tricked ancient man into worshipping them.  The idea that the act of being worshipped made them extremely powerful makes more sense to me as far as their motives are concerned, than the ancient aliens needing to create a race of workers to build the pyramids.  What also makes the ancient demon theory such an intriguing one to me is how these pagan gods influenced history all the way into our modern world.   Think about Christianity’s relationship with the pagans.  Constantine wasn’t the Christian saint they’ve made him out to be.  He was still a pagan worshipper long after he legitimized Christianity.  But what people don’t realize is that he corrupted the faith and from that moment forward the pagan’s controlled it.  When Rome took over Christianity it no longer belonged to the pure of heart.   They stepped into the shadows, these demon gods, but they never left.  And plenty of evil was done in the name of the church.   According to the theory, that evil was orchestrated by these demonic forces, to be carried out under the false name of God.  Why does the Vatican have an ancient Egyptian monolith in its courtyard? 
The idea that for thousands of years mankind made blood sacrifices to these demons, which we know from the stories weren’t shining examples of morality.  Zeus raped a lot of virgins.   The conspiracy folks will say these pagan demons are still at work in our world today, whispering into ears if not making straightforward deals with extremely powerful people.   If you want to lose your mind look into pop music and hidden symbolism throughout it.  It will make your hair curl.   
But I have to leave it with the understanding that I don’t claim to have any answers only questions.  I see patterns in things, but then again that’s what all of our brains do automatically.   We look for and some times fill-in patterns everywhere we look.  But sometimes the patterns fit and tell us things.