Questions, questions

I just finished reading The Mind in the Cave by archeologist David Lewis-Williams. It was a somewhat difficult book for me. His language is that of science and the authors he frequently references are mostly unknown to me. I found it interesting, but unsatisfactory in the end. 

He doesn't offer a tidy resolution to my perennial question "what is consciousness" or even "what were the prehistoric people telling us through their cave art?" The book is hedged on every side by the complexity of human thinking, by conflicting views of numerous writers and scientists, and of course by the long, very long passage of time from the paintings themselves: 30,000 to 40,000 years. One can't blame the author for what is outside his control, but for all that, I'm still left with too many unanswered questions.

It has made me think though, of god and why homo sapiens keep recreating that concept. The cave painters had minds like our own. They had a developed language. And they were part of a shamanistic society; the painters themselves were probably shamans, or those seeking a spiritual or "religious" experience through vision quests or similar activities. 

The paintings may represent an attempt to cross the "membrane" of the cave walls into another dimension. Hallucinations, visual, auditory, or other, were encouraged through various means, including fasting, drumming, dancing, etc., or simply descent into the darkness of a cave for a period of time. As far as I can tell there was no "god" involved, only the seeking of wisdom and power, perhaps from spirit animals or other guides of the spirit world.

40,000 years later shamans are frowned upon and the world has embraced three major religious groups. First the Jews, then the Christians, and finally the Moslems adopted a shared belief in the same god. The first chapter of the Old Testament was written about one thousand BCE, and Moslems and Christians have only been around about 2300 years. Where had this singular god been during humanity's long history?

The Romans had gods and goddesses; before them the Greeks had mostly goddesses, before them the Egyptians worshiped the sun god Ra, Isis, and various other entities. That takes us to about six thousand years BCE. How did a culture of local shamans attuned to nature and its structures and patterns become a culture insisting, first, on multiple gods and goddesses, and now on a single, omnipotent god who rules all and whose word is the only truth? How did we get here? Maybe one god is just simpler? 

Williams says, near the end of his book, that "the sense of Absolute Unitary Being—transcendence, ecstasy—is generated by 'spillover' between neural circuits in the brain, caused by . . . visual, auditory, or tactile rhythmic driving, meditation, olfactory stimulation, fasting, and so forth. The essential elements of religion are thus wired into the brain."

He tempers this idea with praise for Bach, Shakespeare, Donne, and Wordsworth and the undefinable feelings they provoke for us, but declares, "what is in our heads is in our heads, and not located beyond us." This is the pragmatic, materialistic scientist that I am bound to respect for his knowledge, but resist honoring for his blindness. I don't care a whit whether he honors religion's gods, but to make material the spiritual aspect of life, which I equate with love of the natural world, of which we are so clearly a part, feels blind and hollow. 

But perhaps I am being harsh. Maybe the author is correct and spillover neurons are all that's needed to perceive, if only for brief moments, the unity and oneness that make life worthwhile. (But is drumming required?) 

As for me, I'll continue to believe that the heart leads the brain—which gets far too much credit—and love is the source of all good, no matter how you shape it or what you call it. Because while some of us may have a shortage of neurons, there's always enough love to go around.