Seeds of Worship

“As the child’s first feeling is for its mother and nurse, so the first aspirations of the awakening consciousness in primitive man were for those whose element he felt within himself, and who yet were outside, and independent of him. Devotion arose out of that feeling, and became the first and foremost motor in his nature — for it is the only one which is natural in our heart, which is innate in us, and which we find alike in human babe and the young of the animal.” ............Madame Blavatsky

“The great antique heart, how like a child’s in its simplicity, like a man’s in its earnest solemnity and depth! heaven lies over him wheresoever he goes or stands on the earth; making all the earth a mystic temple to him, the earth’s business all a kind of worship.

Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet hover, doing God’s messages among men. Wonder, miracle, encompass the man — he lives in an element of miracle. The essence of it lives through all times and all eternity!” ............Thomas Carlyle

It was Jean Gebser who categorized the evolution of consciousness and its transition into five distinct levels. In the primitive level, which he called Archaic, is the one that both Madame Blavatsky as well as Thomas Carlyle bring out in their writings.

The term "archaic" as used here is derived from the Greek "arce", meaning inception, or origin. This state of consciousness is also termed as "Zero dimensional" as humans were totally immersed in the world unable to extricate himself or herself from that world. They were identical with that world.

This is the feeling of the infant who has just emerged from the womb. Humanity at large had just emerged from the womb of nature through a process of evolution. His six layer neocortical network was still in its nascent state with all its innate capacities untapped. The first step in the awakening of self awareness was the sensing of the objective nature of elements which were outside his existential framework but which was very much felt to be the essential elements of his or her sustenance.

The mystical nature of the objective world emerged from the understanding in the human mind about the concept of space and time. As a biped and hunter-gatherer space was integral to man's existence.

There were no delineated spaces in his life as there were no demarcations in his existential functions with respect to space and time. He was in a consciousness of ever present origin both in space and time. Rightly Gebser’s magnum opus, The Ever-Present Origin (first published in Germany in 1949 but not translated into English until 1984) had the most appropriate name to his insights into human consciousness.

The very first sustaining external agency was the mother and the first seeds of worship or devotion was directed in that dimension. This is the reason that we find the "Mother Goddess" worship was the most ancient. The source from which man comes and the source which sustains him, mother earth, was the first seed of worship sown in the heart of man.

Archaeological investigations have revealed that the Upper Palaeolithic, Venus von Willendorf, (Image attached to this post) is estimated to have been carved 24,000–22,000 BCE and was one of the oldest images of worship.

The next level of evolution of human consciousness was the Magical structure wherein humanity was still integral in its relation to nature.

As Gary Lachman writes in his book "A Secret History of Consciousness":

"This doesn’t differ greatly from the archaic, but the separation from origin has increased. Where in the archaic structure there is identity between consciousness and the world, in the magical structure there is unity between them. At this stage, our ancestors lived in a kind of group or tribal consciousness, which was still strongly linked to nature. Gebser speaks of a “vegetative intertwining of all living things” during this stage, and he links Jung’s notion of “synchronicity”—“meaningful coincidence”—and the effects, aptly, of “magic” to this structure.

Thomas Carlyle captures this ethereal feeling in his poetic excellence wherein the magic of heaven overhead and angels hovering as God's messengers, man lives in an age of miracles or as Gebser named it in an age of magic.

This is a short article to highlight the emergence of self conscious awareness in mankind and his alienation from his integral nature with the true source. The seeds of worship was sown to nurture the connectivity to the source but the many branches of the full grown tree seem to relish and wallow in self glory in the false notion of an independent ego driven existence.

New seeds are being spawned as humanity is nudged to ascend to an integral consciousness level and establish a  holistic approach through spiritual insights which underlie the great ancient traditions and marvellous discoveries of science. 

Love to all.