Quest Magazine

The Origins of the World's Mythologies

E.J. Michael Witzel
New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. 665 + xx pages, paper, $45.

Why do so many creation myths sound so much alike? Why can myths about a flood that nearly destroyed all of humanity be found worldwide? And why do we find motifs of an end of the world in equally farflung places?

There are two basic theories that try to account for these similarities. One is the archetypal, which argues that these universal myths point to a common structure within the human mind. The other is the diffusionist view, which claims that these resemblances point to a common source of myth in the historical past.

E.J. Michael Witzel, a professor of Sanskrit at Harvard, argues on behalf of the diffusionist view in this enormously learned and important volume. Comparing and contrasting the lore of cultures worldwide, he paints a picture of the history of myth that reaches back as far as 100,000 years.

Witzel claims that certain universal mythic elements may actually go back to the earliest stages of humanity, when the whole species still lived in Africa. He calls this strain the "Pan-Gaean" mythos (he uses the geological names of prehistoric continents to characterize these different strata). The next oldest is that of "Gondwana," a mythos that can be found today chiefly in sub- Saharan Africa and Australia. The myths of the rest of the world,”not only Europe and Asia but the Americas and even Polynesi,”are "Laurasian" They share one central feature: unlike the earlier strains, they all present a continuous and more or less similar narrative, beginning with the origins of the cosmos and the gods, extending to the birth of humanity and its different ages and finally to the end of time, whether this is portrayed as the Nordic Gmerung ("twilight of the gods") or as the Last Judgment of Christianity. Indeed, for Witzel, the creation narratives and eschatology of the Bible are only comparatively recent manifestations of the Laurasian mythos (which, he suggests, arose, probably in southwestern Asia, between 40,000 and 20,000 bc).

Why have these myths lasted for so long? According to Witzel, one reason is that, quite simply, they are good stories. Another is that the Laurasian mythos in particular recapitulates the human lifespan on a universal scale: like us, it is saying, the cosmos is born, grows to maturity, and eventually withers and dies.

Even taken as a whole (and the reasons I have just cited do not give the complete picture), Witzel's explanations for the persistence of myth are not entirely satisfying. The flood story”weird”goes back to the Pan-Gaean mythos, which, he says, is over 65,000 years old. Why should it, along with other myths that are almost as durable, have retained its fascination for so long? Whatever facts it may point to are in the remote and unattainable past. Witzel replies in part that, as others have argued, the human brain may be "hardwired" for myth and religion. This may well be the case, but it cuts against his criticisms of the archetypal view, which, after all, is also saying that myth is hardwired into the brain.

Witzel hits a wall in another way as well. He has no trouble fitting the Judeo-Christian mythos into his Laurasian scheme—but then what about the current scientific worldview, complete with its Big Bang, its gestation of the stars, and its picture of a universe that eventually collapses in upon itself? Isn't this just the Laurasian mythos recast yet again, this time by the scientific temperament?

Witzel does not go this far, and one suspects that he simply cannot. But if this is true of the scientific mythos, then we have to grant that any picture that we form of the cosmos may be simply a picture of ourselves writ large. The human being, the esoteric traditions say, is the microcosm of the universe. Is this really so, or are we simply foredoomed by the structures of our minds to see it that way?

Richard Smoley

Finding the On-Ramp to Your Spiritual Path: A Road Map to Joy and Rejuvenation

Jan Phillips 
Wheaton: Quest, 2013. 146 pages, hardcover, $14.95.

Jan Phillips, who has spent time in a Catholic religious community, now devotes her energies to writing and leading workshops on spiritual and evolutionary topics. In her sixth book, Finding the On-Ramp to Your Spiritual Path: A Road Map to Joy and Rejuvenation, she invites readers on a spiritual journey and offers tips on how to progress. Through the analogy of a road trip, Phillips describes an entry point, mentions likely pit stops, and warns readers of roadblocks they may encounter along the way to spiritual wholeness.

Titled with highway terminology, complete with authentic traffic signs, each chapter describes one such phase in the pilgrimage. Readers should not be put off by the "STOP"sign that graces the first chapter. It is a much needed warning that a spiritual stance requires us to stop, look, and listen before proceeding ahead.

Similarly, chapter 2, "Lane Ends," may not sound like a good beginning for a journey to joy, but in fact most of us don't recognize the need for this type of trip until something in the conventional world has failed to work for us.

The following chapters, "Yield," "Curves Ahead," "Divided Highway," "End Divided Highway," etc., each describe an important spiritual concept. Each includes at least one simple but poignant story to illustrate the main point.

My favorite was chapter 9, "Merge." It expresses the importance of being attentive to and engaged with others— present to their experiences, whether they are feeling pain or joy. It also emphasizes the value of expressing ourselves authentically and truthfully to others. "We are mirrors to one another's mission and meaning, for ultimately we have all come here to light up the world," Phillips writes.

While the entire book is filled with spiritual gems, what struck me as the most immediately useful to someone needing a spiritual GPS appeared in chapter 10, "One Way": "Joy is the compass point for this discernment [of our own ultimate concerns, and where we should place our commitments]. If you could solve any global problem in the world, which one would bring you the most joy to solve? Your answer to that is a clue to your next step on the spiritual path."

The final chapters promote a bigger story than that offered by the typical traditional religion. Spiritual maturity is increasingly becoming understood as something broader than a particular belief system invested in some faraway transcendent deity and unduly concerned with personal salvation in the next life. Phillips would have us focus our efforts on things that are more immediate on "this world, these crises, these choices," which are in "our hands." At her recommended destination, we derive our strength from a strong and rich power that comes from within when we follow our own true path.

Certainly Phillips speaks from a frontier not too many have reached, and she is in a position to advise readers from her advanced perspective. I hope telling readers about these steps is an effective way to help them get from point A to point B. Lest the book leave anyone in doubt about Phillips' own spiritual point B, appendix 1, "An Apostle's Creed" elucidates ten of her core beliefs.

Finding the On-Ramp provides yet another way to inspire readers to travel beyond the rules and structure of conventionality and organized religion that keep us powerless and dependent on external forces. Her prescribed route alerts us to our individual callings, and promises a destination where our true bliss can be found in following them— for the sake of our own fulfillment, and for a healthy society as well.

Phillips forecasts a quietly spreading, societywide grassroots revolution wherein many are leaving their churches behind to find the Divine within. If enough of us keep finding inventive ways of presenting this concept, perhaps one day conventional society will recognize the futility of its current divisive "small story" tactics and will come to support individuals in their journey to spiritual maturity.

Margaret Placentra Johnston

The reviewer is author of Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their Church Behind (Quest Books).

Printed in the  Winter 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard,  "From the Editor’s Desk" Quest 111:1, pg 2

Spooky action at a distance. Three times.

Let me explain this cryptic utterance.

The first time: 1687. Sir Isaac Newton published his Principia Mathematica, which first set out his theory of gravity.

People had problems with this. The “mechanical philosophers”—followers of Descartes—objected to the concept of gravity because it set out a nonmechanical form of influence: the gravity of one body affected another even at a distance. Newton couldn’t explain the cause of gravity: he just posited it as a hypothesis, but it turned out to be one that worked very well.

The second time: the early twentieth century. Albert Einstein objected to quantum entanglement—the ability of objects to share a condition even though they are separated—as “spooky action from a distance.” He didn’t like quantum theory, which was at variance with his own theory of relativity. A coming Grand Unification Theory is supposed to harmonize these two theories. We’re still waiting for it.

The third time: now. As Mitch Horowitz ably explains in this issue’s article, psi research, conducted in countless experiments over the last 150 years, has proved the existence of such powers as clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and even retrocausation—the ability of an act in the future to affect one in the past. Yet the scientific community still resists these findings, and the gross biases of the media (I mean those read by the intelligentsia) leave the hapless public believing that science has refuted the existence of psi capacities. But the exact opposite is true.

In each case, the underlying problem is the same: skepticism about proven scientific findings because many thinkers cannot accept the idea that there can be a causal connection between two events that are not proximate in time or space.

The physicists never really found a mechanism to explain gravity, so they finally had to give in and posit it as one of the fundamental forces of the universe (to be understood later on—maybe). As for quantum theory, the Nobel Prize‒winning physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

This takes us to the fundamental problem in science: causation. All of scientific theory is predicated on causation: the idea that one thing affects another in a consistent and predictable way. But there is nothing in human thought that is shakier than the concept of causation. As far back as 1913, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the [British] monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” (For more about this, see my book The Dice Game of Shiva.)

One of the most influential treatments of causation was by the Scottish philosopher David Hume in the eighteenth century. Hume begins by saying that as he looks over the whole range of things that are called causes, he can find no one characteristic they have in common: being a cause is not a property like color or size or shape; the same is true of effects. He inferred that since being a cause or an effect is not an innate property, it is a matter of relation. “This relation,” he wrote, is “constant conjunction.”

Hume’s insight had a great effect on Immanuel Kant, who said that it wakened him from his “dogmatic slumber.” Kant developed his entire philosophy as a consequence. He said that causation (like certain other basic concepts such as identity, necessity, and negation) were not the inherent properties of objects in the world but merely “categories” by which we apprehend those objects.

Kant’s theories proved revolutionary in their own right. In any event, the problem of causation has never been solved: it may have no relation to the actual world “out there” but may simply be a way employed by the human mind to make sense of it.

Of course this puts large brackets around all scientific conclusions, which are based on the premise that one specific thing or event will inexorably lead to another. But nothing of the sort may actually be the case.

Furthermore, since causation is based on “constant conjunction,” scientists stumble over what appears to be remote causation, having difficulty believing that an object can influence another despite separation in time and space. Yet, as we have seen, science itself has proved—three times now—that this does occur. One more time, a narrow and inaccurate view of causation is impeding the progress of actual scientific findings.

Science has already stretched the limits of the human mind almost beyond capacity. When it comes to acknowledge the reality of psi phenomena, it will do so again.

Richard Smoley

Printed in the  Winter 2023 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Buys, Lauren ,  "The Esotericism of the Spine and the Cerebrospinal Fluid" Quest 111:1, pg 28-30

By Lauren Buys

Behind the glare of my computer screen lay a womblike and mysterious space impregnated with Persian rugs, pink lilies, and plump billows of incense smoke. A commandingly calm voice oozed through the speakers with a sentence that immediately made me sit up a little straighter: “The energy of God in the body is the spine; it’s a very exquisite thing.”

My first sip of knowledge from the offerings of my teacher, Carolyn Cowan, stirred a thirst within me for more. What did she mean by this statement? How did she know? Was this Divinity that she spoke of within my spine too or just everyone else’s?

Living in a society obsessed with getting ahead, I’d paid little attention to the architecture that was supporting my every movement. Many of us modern-day humans, in our technologically advanced and goal-oriented matrix, tend to thrust our skulls forward, ahead of the rest of our bodies—a stunning surplus of spines moving about the world in mostly unconscious misalignment. Whether they’re craned forward to gaze at our cellphone screens to avoid eye contact with a stranger or as a desperate attempt to separate our thoughts from our feelings, our heads are getting away from us.

Anterior head syndrome is the term for this postural problem plaguing the planet. If the energy of God does reside in the spine, could our saddened postures be limiting our ability for self-actualization or liberation? Could a deeper understanding of the spine and its shrouded mysteries open us up to a higher level of awareness?

The ancient Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and Hindus all taught that within the human composition lay the laws, elements, and powers of the universe. Everything that existed outside of man had its analogue inside of man. Pagan mystery teachings focused on demonstrating the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm—between God and human. They also held that there was a microcosm of the entire physical body within the brain.

By studying the human constitution, the sages, hierophants, and priests of antiquity were able to understand the greater mysteries of the celestial blueprint. Every part had its secret meaning; every measurement formed a basic standard by which it was possible to measure all parts of the cosmos.

It was believed that the human being herself was the key to the riddle of life, for she was the living image of the divine plan. The human body, not the individual but rather the house of the individual, was thought to have been the tomb of a sacred principle. In hatha yoga, the spine is considered the center of our sacred anatomy, the axis mundi, a ladder to the Divine. To the early anatomists, the upper vertebrae of the spine were known as Atlas: the same Atlas as the giant of Greek mythology, who carried the heavens upon his shoulders (the heavens being represented by the cranial sphere). In ancient Hindu thought, the spine was represented by the Ganges River, a river of life flowing downward. Its tributaries were the distributors of nerve instinct and impulse to all parts of the body.

Before we go any further into esotericism, let’s take a look at the more practical and scientific side of the spine and the magical fluid with which it is bathed.

In the womb, the first part of the fetus to develop is the neural tube. From this tube, the spine is manifested downwards, carrying the central nervous system along with it. The central nervous system, which can be thought of as the electrical wires that run the machine that is your body, then branches off to form all the vital organs (that Ganges River analogy begins to make more sense here).

The entirety of this developing central nervous system is immersed in a substance known as the cerebrospinal fluid. In fact, the brain and spinal cord of the growing fetus are both organized around this clear fluid. As adults, we make 450 to 600 milliliters of it (over two and a half cups) per day and have approximately 150 milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid in us at all times.

The cerebrospinal fluid bathes the outside of the brain and the cavities within it, known as ventricles. Then the fluid travels down the hollow central canal of the spinal cord and saturates the outside of the spinal cord too. Although the spinal cord ends at L2 (the second lumbar spinal vertebra), the cerebrospinal fluid continues to move down through to S2 (the second sacral spinal nerve), where the root chakra and the kundalini energy, esoterically speaking, reside.

Although many people (including me) have spent most of our lives knowing very little about it, the role of the cerebrospinal fluid is huge. It is a vehicle for the transmission of information to the brain, a transporter of nutrients and hormones to the central nervous system, an instructor of stem cells on whether to proliferate or differentiate, a manager of circadian rhythms, a regulator of appetite, an eliminator of waste, and a shock absorber for the brain, pineal, and pituitary glands.

Among the brain cavities mentioned above is the third ventricle, the exact midline space of the head, which is surrounded by the pituitary gland in front, the pineal gland in the back, and the hypothalamus and thalamus on either side. This third ventricle is called the Crystal Palace by Daoists, the Cave of Brahma in Sanskrit texts, and the Third Eye by Theosophists, and it happens to be filled with cerebrospinal fluid.

On the inner walls of this third ventricle are cilia: slender antennae with receptors to monitor information, light, growth factors, hormones, flow, movement, and vibrations. Through the water experiments performed by the Japanese researcher Masaru Emoto, we know that fluids absorb, store, and transmit energy. We also know that our ancestral cerebrospinal fluid was seawater and that it evolved as a way to receive signals from the environment. Could this mysterious liquid be the fluid conductor of Source energy into our bodies? Could this essence be the Divine spark that allows us to be aware of our beingness?

Dimethyltryptamine, more familiarly known as DMT or the “spirit molecule,” is widespread throughout the plant kingdom. It has been used in shamanic rituals to create mystical, psychedelic experiences. Hypothesized to be released at birth and death and during vivid dreams, this amber substance is also endogenously present in the cerebrospinal fluid. Randolph Stone, the founder of polarity theory, stated, “The soul swims in the cerebrospinal fluid.” Dr. Andrew Still, founder of the American School of Osteopathy, envisioned the cerebrospinal fluid as an intermediary in the movement of divine intelligence.

If you were to tag a single molecule of cerebrospinal fluid and follow it throughout the course of the day, it would move through the four different ventricles of the brain, all the way down through the spine to the sacrum, and back up again. In a healthy person, it would take twelve hours for this process to reach completion. Simply speaking, we flush our brains with this substance twice a day.

Since the breath is the vehicle for delivering energy to the brain and we have the ability to control and manipulate the breath, we can use it to accelerate the movement of the cerebrospinal fluid. Through this breath control and the application of tightening and squeezing the muscles typically used to digest our food, assist in elimination, or create a baby (also known as the body locks or bhandas), we begin to rapidly push the cerebrospinal fluid up into the brain. As the breath is held, the cerebrospinal fluid creates a mechanical stress, a pressure against the pineal gland. As the breath is released, a stimulation of the cilia takes place, and sacred chemicals (dimethyltryptamine and serotonin) are released from the pineal gland, which allows for the opening of the thalamic gate at the brain stem. This gate, which is usually closed, is connected with the reticular activating system or RAS. The RAS is responsible for our levels of awareness. Most stimulation of the RAS comes from our senses, from what we see or what we hear. If we were in bed at night and heard a tinkering at our front door or something rattling at the window, our RAS would be responsible for that awareness.

However, when our senses are closed off and the sympathetic nervous system and pineal gland are aroused through the control of breath and the application of the body locks, the thalamic gate opens. Energy from the lower centers of our body moves right into the brain, causing superconscious states of gamma brainwave patterns. This would feel like bliss, ecstasy, an orgasm of the brain—a release of the kundalini energy.

Our spinal columns are made up of thirty-three vertebrae. The number thirty-three has many sacred associations. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified at the age of thirty-three. The thirty-third time that the name of the patriarch Jacob is mentioned in Scripture, he has a vision: “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12). There are thirty-three deities described in Vedic litanies. This number is also regarded sacred among secret societies in Europe and America.

Included in these thirty-three vertebrae is the sacrum. Sacrum, literally translated, means sacred bone. It consists of five fused vertebrae. Could these five fused vertebrae represent the five senses brought under control in order for the thalamic gate to open? Just as David in Scripture had to strike Goliath, the egoic giant within us, with five stones between his brow, could silencing our five senses allow energy to be correctly elevated to the space between the brow—the third ventricle, the area of the pineal gland? Is it also possible that the anointing, the chrism, and the oil of gladness spoken of in the Bible, could refer to the sacred secretions released by the pineal gland upon activation through the pressure created by the cerebrospinal fluid? Is the Promised Land, “filled with milk and honey,” a metaphor for a state of transcendence reached through the process of raising the kundalini energy or the Christ seed? Could reaching this milk and honey‒filled heaven be the result of liberation experienced through the release of serotonin and DMT (serotonin being a milky substance and DMT amber in color, like honey)? “And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Genesis 32:30). “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22).

That compelling sentence spoken in my first kundalini yoga class enabled me to delve into a world of which I previously had almost no knowledge but will continue to make all the difference in my own spiritual practice. The spine, serpentine in its flexibility but strong enough to support the entire architecture of our bodies, is a structure that, if paid attention to, can be a powerful magic wand. Our bodies, the robes of our spiritual nature, are actual universes that may be used to access the Divine within each and every one of us. If we take a moment to breathe, pay attention to the inner workings of our miraculous beings, to pull our anteriorly positioned heads out of our cellphone and television screens, and bring ourselves back into alignment with our truth, we may be able to climb the ladder of ourselves, slay the egoic Goliath causing our inner turmoil, and reach the Promised Land of liberation, even if for a moment.

Born and raised on the luscious coastline of Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa, Lauren Buys is a Kundalini Global Yoga teacher who now resides in New York City.