A THEORY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN SELF-AWARENESS
by Frank Moore circa early 1970s
Self-awareness is something eternal, something which is not connected to the physical body. When we talk about the development of human awareness, what we really are talking about is how the self-awareness emerges from within into the body. This emergence of self-awareness in an individual mainly takes place during the first decade after the birth of the body and is not truly completed until fifteen to twenty-five years after the physical birth.
Likewise, before self-awareness came into the human species, there were human animals. These were mainly creatures of prey.
They lived in small packs, hunting deer, goats, etc. These packs existed because of necessity, not because of group love or loyalty. Alone a creature couldn't move fast enough to bring down any game except sick or lame animals... But a pack could maneuver a herd into an ambush. The members of a pack only communicated with one another in a hunt... They used a system or a code of noises which cannot be called a language by any means. By these noises and body gestures they could move as one being. But outside of the hunt, these noises were not used nor was there unity. Each creature had to be forever on his guard against the rest of the pack. Every day, there were fights within a pack over food, mates and sleeping grounds. But whenever the pack was attacked from the outside by hungry wild animals such as bears and wolves, or by another pack, the pack quickly became one to defend itself.
This was the life of survival, the first stage where no awareness was necessary. Every action was automatic in a sense, governed by instincts. This was the world of mechanical reaction to outside dangers... For a person with self-awareness, such a life would be unbearable because it was based on fear. These creatures, however lived this life without being aware of fear, even though they were totally controlled and shaped by fear. Understand, that fear in the state of unawareness is not negative, but as soon as awareness is born into either a world or an individual being, all fears become negative limitations which must be broken through before freedom can be reached.
The automatic stage of development is the same as what a baby goes through both in the womb and during the first months of life. But there is one main difference. The child has the comforting protection of his parents; the human animals did not have this comforting protection. Even though the animals were not aware of the fear, the fear set up a negative inner atmosphere which would influence the self-awareness. Depending on the child's parents, a child can be spared this negative preconditioning.
When self-awareness broke into the lives of these human animals, it did so in brief flashes, just like what happens on a drug experience or in a religious vision. The individual creature was whiplashed into a higher state of consciousness in which he was absolutely vulnerable. He had no way of coping with the emotional shocks which these flashes brought. These emotional shocks created fear of the unknown in these creatures, fear of the worlds beyond physical life. This fear, planted within these creatures even before they had real self-awareness, is one of the causes of the superstitious myths of the underworld, of Hell.
I have said that self-awareness is something eternal and separate from the physical body. The body is created in the womb and will at some point die. But the self-awareness, the eternal being, just emerges into the body from a deeper dimension and will go back into that dimension after physical death. In other words, there is an after-existence beyond death. But for those who don't feel comfortable with this concept of an after-existence, it can be replaced by the subconscious, the realm of the mind where we go in dreams. For example, I think the fear of the unknown world beyond is one of the main reasons why most human awareness stays in an emotional state very near the physical plane after death. In terms of the subconscious, this fear of the unknown keeps most people from exploring what is in their subconscious and keeps those persons who do start exploring the subconscious just on very emotional areas.
In those first flashes of self-awareness, not lasting over an hour and usually lasting for only a few seconds, the human animals suddenly saw themselves as well as the physical world within which they existed, and of which they were a part. For many centuries, when an individual was in this expanded state, he could only stare at the terrible beauty that was around him and within him. Just like a person in a drug experience, he did not have tools to really absorb the experience into him. So when the expanded state ended, the individual forgot the insights and the main experience he just had. He was just left with the shadows of feelings.
After several centuries of flashes, the individual in the expanded state started to see relationships, spiritual ties, between others and himself. At first, he saw these ties between his mate and himself. This was the start of the recognition of what Freud calls the "oceanic" feeling, that sense that we are connected to each other. Of course, the individual forgot this insight after the expanded state was over. But the leftover shadows of feeling were enough to start changing the lifestyle of the packs. The change first appeared in the automatic sexual process of procreation. Emotional bonds appeared tying mates together. Gradually this "oceanic" feeling in the intense state of self-awareness expanded from the mates out to those who were related to each other. Groups began to experience the expanded state together.
For days after the expanded state, the individual was left with what I have called "shadows of feelings". These shadows took the form of sadness, loneliness, and a vague sense of loss. These kinds of emotions are signs of awakening consciousness and are felt physically through the throat just as lower emotions such as fear are felt in one's belly. This sadness, loneliness, and the sense of loss created a dissatisfaction within these creatures, and this dissatisfaction pulled these creatures together emotionally in the packs.
Again, it is important to notice the similarities between what I have just described and what happened in the late 60's when the drug movement began. People could not really absorb what they had experienced on drugs into their everyday life. But they began to feel that there was something more "out there" or rather "in here". They started seeking that "something more", thereby changing their lives. However, most of them got dragged down into the dissatisfaction and became bitter and frustrated.
It is also important to note that man has always existed in a group. In the beginning, men were kept together in packs by the needs of survival, the need of protection, the need for collective action in the hunt, and the need for a selection of mates. Freud says that these outer needs changed, forcing the individual to become more dependent on the group, and to be conflicted with the basic individual's nature. I believe that the outer needs of survival remained the same, but the inner needs of the individuals had been changed by the sadness, the loneliness. They started to be pulled together emotionally by the need to share what they were starting to experience inwardly. They also began to need one another to fill the lonely, sad place in them; this is the beginning of human love.
The system of noises and physical gestures which were used in the hunt could not begin to express the new inner experiences which these humans needed to share. From this dissatisfaction and frustration grew a real language. At first the humans started giving persons, physical objects, and animals names. Soon words for the colors were coined. Then action words came into being and then simple describing words were invented. But there was a large gap of time before words for abstract ideas and concepts could appear.
As the expanded state grew in time, it lost most of its intensity. When it lasted for the entire adult lifetime, the expanded state dulled considerably. At first, when they were in the expanded state, the humans had all the powers that are now associated with ESP. But the humans focused on the material aspects of life. So when they could stay in the expanded state, they used their insights just to solve material problems. While in the expanded state, what was not directly useful in solving material problems, was pushed back into the deeper dimensions (or, if you prefer, the subconscious,) and was forgotten. What was left was what we call the mind. With this mind, the humans were on their way to becoming a race of toolmakers, a race of inventors and explorers. They discovered the secrets of fire and invented the stone axe and a stone tool for digging.
We must not confuse the physical brain with the mind. Even before they started having flashes of self-awareness, the human animals had a physical brain, as all higher animal life has. Fears, reflexes, and instincts existed, and still do exist, within this physical brain. These fears, reflexes, and instincts are what runs the automatic life of animals. This is also true of babies. But when self-awareness comes to either the race or the individual, the whole dimension of living changes. Within this new dimension of life, the instincts and the reflexes should come under the control of the new self-awareness; moreover, the fear should be dropped entirely as being absolutely useless in this new state of being. However, humans as a species held on to their fears. As the result, as I have said, the expanded state dulled because there arose a conflict between the awareness and the fears. As the major part of the self-awareness went back into the deeper dimensions (subconscious), it became covered up by layers of self-doubts and fears. Unfortunately, most individuals now follow this process of losing a large part of their self-awareness. What is left of the self-awareness is the mind. The mind was, and is, a key to release the total self-awareness.
We are now in the stage when men started uniting the packs into larger tribal groupings through wars and setting rigid separations among the human race... separations based on different lifestyles. The humans used fire and the stone spear as weapons in war. But the spear played another key role. Not only did it make the hunt easier, it also made fishing possible. Fishing allows a tribe to stay in one place. This made the evolvement of farming and the village lifestyle. It also planted the seeds for the conflict between the nomadic hunters and the stable, civilized village farmers.
We must look to the beginning of the flashes of self-awareness to trace the development of the human imagination. When the human creatures traveled in hunting packs, they did not have any shelter or protection. At night they huddled in the pack for warmth and safety while they slept. All around them while they slept was darkness, the lonely cold, and unknown, unseen dangers and horrors. Also some danger could erupt from inside the pack at any time. The night was a time of cold terror and of darkness full of menacing noises. In contrast, the individual's life during the day was totally focused on the hunt.
When the self-awareness dulled in the humans, they started projecting their possessive desires onto the animals they were hunting, causing these animals to become favorable demigods in the human mind. In the same way, human fears came to be projected onto the vague shapes and the frightening noises of the night. Thus, these shapes and noises came to be actually alive as demons. The human emotional thoughts actually gave these demigods and demons their own outer reality and existence. In other words, there was no concrete line between what was the human inner imagination and what was the outer reality. It was very much like the world of a five-year-old child. I think when we are adults, in reality, there still is no rigid line between what is inside us and what is happening outside around us in the "real" world; but the rational part of our mind creates the rigid bar between what is "me" and the rest of the reality, so that the "me" will not get swallowed up by the rest of the reality. If we understood the inter-play and the inter-relation of the "inner imagination" and the "outer reality" better, there would be no need for this rigid bar. We would not get swallowed up if we knew how to use this inter-play. The state in which these early humans lived can also be compared to the dream state, the drug experience, and the state of so-called insanity.
In their everyday life, it was common for these early humans to meet terrible demons and beautiful demigods. Every tree and every animal were given, by the humans, a new and very magical dimension. This dimension had to be dealt with before every hunt, later, before every battle, and much later still, before every planting. Having visions was an everyday affair, as was hearing voices, later after the humans started thinking in words. The emotional tint of this state of living for the individual, before the appearance of language, depended on the character of the individual's mind. If he had a spiritual memory of the pure expanded state of self-awareness, the world in which he lived had a tint of wonder and awe. Unfortunately, for most of these early humans, the terrors of the night stood foremost in their minds. As the result, the emotional world for most early humans was filled with almost unbearable horrors and grotesque demons.
Before the arrival of language, individuals had no way of sharing with one another their experiences in this world of emotions. Each individual was on his own inside this world. In the dream state of sleep, and after death, the individual stopped going into the deeper levels of consciousness. Instead he remained in an emotional state very similar to the one in which he existed when he was awake or alive. Slowly there developed around each individual what I call the "Maya Sac". The Maya Sac is the system of symbolic illusion which the individual tends to surround himself when he goes to sleep or when he physically dies just as the physical body while it is in the womb, surrounds itself with a sac of liquid. This Maya Sac reflects the emotional tint of the person's life. If the emotional life was one of awe and wonder, the Maya Sac was a complex system of illusions which created an unreal paradise with the individual and his desires at its center. On the other hand, if in life the person's emotional world was filled with the night's terrors, his Maya Sac was a hell in which all his fears would be manifested as horrible demons. The Maya Sacs took away the chance of growth and learning that is there when the person can explore, in sleep or after death, the deeper levels of his consciousness. Moreover, the spiritual memory which the person retained after coming back to waking life from dreams or from the between-lives existence... his spiritual memory of the Maya Sac he just left, reinforces his new emotional world, setting its tone or tint. Now we can see the reinforcing cycle of illusion.
After the discovery of fire and after the human language had developed to the point where it was capable of crudely communicating human inner experiences and feelings, the humans started sharing their emotional world with one another. This happened when the pack and later the tribe, huddled around the communal fire for protection against the terrible night demons that lurked in the black just outside the firelight. As they waited for sleep to come, one by one of the pack told tales to these others with whom he felt an emotional bond.
As these tales, which now would be called religious myths, were told, there would be a release of a highly emotional charge of creative energy from the taleteller which both he and the listeners would actually physically feel and see. These early humans considered it as magical. This release was the root of the human artistic impulse. Unfortunately, most of these inner tales came out of emotional worlds which were shaped by fear. These tellings of tales created a tribal emotional world which drew its qualities from the common qualities shared by most individual emotional worlds in the tribe. This tribal emotional world provided a connection between the various individual emotional worlds. This event in the physical world, because of the immense emotional shift from individual imagination to group imagination, caused a change: There appeared over-groups of individual Maya Sacs. These Over Maya Sacs became the various Lands of the Dead, in which the illusions from the individual Maya Sacs melted together forming an over-system where there was a dream existence of spirits waiting for other lives. Most of these Lands of the Dead were based on the terrors of the night; thus, they mostly were versions of Hell. Through the spiritual memory, images of these Lands of the Dead found their way into the tribal myths. These myths, by giving these worlds of terror energy, reinforced these Hells, and the Maya Cycle gained in force. These Hells sealed the physical planes off from the deeper, finer dimensions of spiritual existence (or subconscious).