Though we do not give much emphasis and accept it as an integral entity of life, how our psyche works is uniquely out of the ordinary, strange and bizarre. Given below are some of my thoughts on this egocentric nature of the psyche.
Each individual has its own operational entities associated with its psyche. This includes its preferences – likes and dislikes, secrets, behavior patterns to various situations, affiliations to various organizations such as sports teams and political parties, affinity to superstitious ideas, religions and many other boundless things that we can think of. However, undoubtedly the beliefs (i.e. religions, superstitions and other metaphysical phenomena and supernatural ideas) that each individual associate itself, is one of the principal drivers of our ego system. Belief system is the strongest domineering elements of the human psyche. It is estimated that about 90% of the world population follow some form of a religion. The rest 10% cannot be ruled out as materialists. Most of these people too have some alliance to belief systems or may have metaphysical ideas. I make this assumption due to the fundamental nature of our psyche. It is interesting to note that in Japan the total number of people who have accounted for following religious practices is more than the population of Japan. This is simply because many people follow more than one religion.
Our affiliation to belief systems is such that one of the surprising outcomes is, it is not rare to find people who could be motivated to sacrifice their lives in the name of belief system. This is quite evident from the reports that we find in the newspapers and hear from other communication media. Most people, who commit suicide in the name of religion, believe that the act of suicide is an easy ticket to get them to the heaven that they strongly believe in. Or perhaps may be assuming that such acts will help to gain an exceptional level of comfort in the next life. History tells us that there have been many wars in the world because of the practice and conflicts originating due to supernatural belief systems. Most wars have been motivated by religious instincts. The word “belief” implies something that is not confirmed. As an example, say that someone tells you that he has a gem in his closed fist. Then if we think what he says is true then the mental accord we have constitute a “belief”. The very moment he opens his palm and shows the gem the belief does not exist any more and it turns into a state of “knowing”. In fact that moment gives you a state of realization of the truth. As such, there is a difference between belief and actual realization or experiencing it. Mental streams that are associated with belief systems always have certain degree of doubts attached, as per above logic.
It is interesting to investigate why the belief systems are so strongly bonded to us. I tend to think that the bondage to belief systems in us is associated with two streams of inputs. One stream of input is directly connected to our genes. We inherit genes from our ancestors for over millions of years through the evolutionary process. The process of evolution dictates progressive transmission of changes and as such we should invariably inherit the information from our ancestors. The other stream of inputs is from our parents, friends, clergy, schools, other social elements and miscellaneous sources including the mass media we come across from our childhood. As regards to genes, we need to understand the living cells in our bodies are new as few seconds and old as over millions of years. This is simply because there are no births of cells. Cell re-generation occurs by division.
In this process of division the old cells are always associated with the new cells. We are part of the process of cell division. All our present cells in the body have components derived from the very original human cell ever existed. These have been passed on to us by our parents in the form of single cells having links to rudiments from our primitive ancestry. Thinking along the fundamental of evolutionary process, I am in the opinion, that the processes of cell divisions have a mechanism of etching the favorable data which are useful to the human survival process. The characteristic which is commonly explained as instincts in all living beings is one of the key properties that we have inherited this way. Instincts are associated with both physical and mental sectors of living beings. No proper scientific explanation for “instincts” exists to date. Supporting the subject of cells been able to carry memory, there are recorded incidents of human organ recipients experiencing the behavioral characteristics of the donors of the organs.
This accentuates the possibilities of the donor cells carrying the behavioral patterns of the donor, influencing the psyches of the recipients. In other words, though not proven by any scientific means, it may be possible, the donor cells carrying behavioral information that in turn be transmigrated to the recipients brains. When one considers the immensity of the single cell generom data this is not a surprising matter. As an estimate – if a single cell generom data is recorded in the form of yellow page telephone directories, these directories could be stacked up to 32 ft. Though impossible to imagine, this gives us an idea of the enormity of data that could be associated with the trillions of cells in our body.
Are you ready to rewire your beliefs? I used a technique called PSYCH-K ® to do so. Interested?
How to make an appointment: Send an email to info@lucianapierangeli.com
In order to understand the history of belief systems, it will be good to get an idea as to how and when the origins of these ideas intruded the human brain. The earliest fossils of humans so far found are about 4.5 millions years old. According to historical findings we have been originally hunters. Primitive man was a food hunter. Prior to the first ever historically known civilizations, the hunting-man era lasted over a few million years. The forces of nature influenced the hunting man’s daily activities. Primitive man did not understand the laws of nature. Hunters developed superstitious ideas. Superstitious beliefs influenced their life a lot. Hunters did not live as long as people do now.
Their destiny depended on the agility, strength and the ability to cope with the injuries that they sustained during the hunt. Just as old animals become pray to predators, most hunters did not have natural deaths but became the pray to wild animals. According to studies of the evolution of the human brain, it has been found that some extra ordinary features and changes that had taken place in our brains, has really happened very lately. And in fact it had taken place relatively recent times – nearly 100,000 years ago compared to the human existence of 4.5 million years. The weight of the brains of our ancestors lived prior to about 70,000 years have been small, specifically about one third of what we have now.
According to information based on archeological diggings, it is rather strange to find that the primitive man lived during 2,000,000 BC to about 70,000 BC had been very primitive in many ways. He had been using the same type of stone tools for nearly two million years with no improvements, what so ever. Improvements started to evolve suddenly about 70,000 – 60,000 years ago, due to some reason which is still being debated. At this time the brain started to become large in size and people became innovative. The reason for the sudden growth and mental development of the brain is not known, but some attribute this to the change in food habits; use of fire; though this theory has been not confirmed fully. We were still hunters at 70,000 BC, with improved primitive weapons.
After the primitive hunter men became herders and gatherers (collectors and growers) at around 10000 to 8000 years ago, people had more time to socialize, do things other than gathering food. Most importantly, they had spare time to think. But like the hunter, the herders too, held on to their superstitious ideas. Natural events like rain, drought, floods, pest problems, plant diseases and weather conditions, which affected their prosperity, were regarded as signs of either good or bad luck. This is the era at which various belief systems appeared to have been originated. A remarkable difference between the “hunter” and the “hunter & gatherer” was their longevity.
And hence the experience of natural deaths – in other words deaths without violence or injury; contrarily to hunters’ deaths. A death was a supreme shock and a mystery to the ancient man. He was unable to understand the reason for dying. When a person who was living a moment ago dies, he wondered as to what really happened to that person. This led to conceive the idea of a “spirit” in man and the eventual development of rituals and burial customs associated with deaths. There were no burials when they were hunters as the bodies were eaten by the animals. Long life led to extended families. Children could see their grand parents and some times even their great grand parents. Such situations did not exist for the primitive hunter due to short life period. People observed that some children born to their families resembled their ancestral grand parents. This observation led to the idea of the rebirth of their ancestors and hence the origination of reincarnation or the rebirth concepts. This concept was caught up in certain societies and as they had enough evidence to believe this idea.
Primitive men believed that the ancestors, from whom they sought help when they were living, could even help them in their “spirit” life. At the same time they feared that the ancestors would take them away to the world of the dead if they disobeyed the spirits. Spirits were considered as super human – more powerful than man. The ancestors that they saw in their dreams confirmed the belief that the spirit worlds exist. To seek favors from the ancestors, the men experimented by performing rituals for the dead. It appeared that some of those experiments were bringing positive results. These results led to the authentication of their belief in a spiritual order. The rituals they performed were passed down to their next generation and magnified in many proportions along the chain of propagation.
The development processes of the belief systems are still continuing today to suit the environment of the modern man. The belief systems have played a strong role in the evolvement of the modern man. The belief system is an extremely domineering characteristic of our psyche and a complex entity to understand. The primitive belief systems helped the man to bring comfort and hope in their life. It also provided the means of dealing with the fears caused by death and natural events that were not understood by the primitive man. Characteristically human psyche is an information seeking entity. Intuitively it needs to understand the reason and the meaning of every event happening around him. People will not let anything materialistic or spiritual go away when they think that those will provide “comfort” and “meaning” to the psyche. The “meaning” supplement the “comfort” of the psyche. The mental comfort is the driver of the decisions we make. Though the words such as “meanings” or “the ideas” are individual specific and relative; we need to understand that these words and internal dialogues are always provided by our own psyche to comfort ourselves. The psyche gets into very unsettled status, when reasons and the meanings are not known. The psyche calm down quickly when a reason or meaning is found.
If we go back to our primordial periods and think of the liberties that they could exercise on belief systems, they had no choice. Irrespective of whether the people liked or not, the prevailed belief systems have been forced upon them to accept. The ones who did not obey the social norms and behavioral expectations of their own clans were mercilessly killed and decimated form the tribal societies existed at these times. These practices are exercised even today to a lesser extent among some radical groups. This is a valid fact to demonstrate why such rebellion ideas were not propagated further in the human evolutionary process. In other words basically those genes with radical ideas have been purposely destroyed to prevent any propagation. Unfortunately, to a lesser extent you may find this behavioral role put into operation in various ways even today by radical religious institutions.
Belief systems are part and parcel of the human evolutionary process. Probably our gene system is programmed to carry such entities permanently in the psyche’s innate mechanisms. A recent article in the time magazine reveals the phenomena of a “God Gene” giving emphasis to this fact. In respect of belief system the primitive elements that we carry in our psyche is programmed to safeguard the existing ego entities tenaciously. We also have to realize the fact, that our psyche is attuned to a rhythm of consciously agreeing with the content of our belief system, simply to harmonize our mind-body integration. Our psyche has a psychological tendency to fight any intruding ideas; akin to our body system is programmed to fight with any diseases that are harmful to us.
Sometimes this mechanism can be so strong one can even resort to a path of sacrificing its life, if it deems necessary to do so to safeguard its belief system. However in doing so, psyche convinces itself the reason for doing it and more over strike harmony with its body-mind system prior to committing the act. Though it may be scientifically incorrect to express that our psyches have properties such as allergies in psychological sense, it is logical to express that there may be psycho allergies specific to each person. Also, it is logical to think that these may be common in groups of people who are following radical stream of dogmas; simply because the source material can condition the psyches of the entire group.
Though the nature of our adult psyche will fall in line with the characteristics explained above, in rare occasions an intruding idea may have a place to reside in the psyche if the new ideas can provide comfort and meaning to that particular person. Such new ideas may carry a high probability of gradually integrating into that person’s psyche or lead him to explore more outside its belief system.
Among other things, being able to safeguard and sustain the belief system is one of the primary characteristics of the human psyche. More than anything else belief system brings a lot of comfort to the psyche and helps to get on with the day to day problems that man encounter in life. The psychological comfort provided by the religious and superstitious observances keep the harmony of the mind-body relationship intact. High spiritual practices bring serenity to the psyche which is similar to an addiction in psychological sense.
People have adopted many spiritual practices such as chanting, meditation, listening to hymns etc., to sustain the serenity of the psyche. This is a good practice than violence. We are highly depending on our belief system and anchor our hopes and comfort on it. This fact is true and undeniable. It is evident that this phenomena is very effective, applicable and extremely helpful to the man to get on with life events. It has been proven that the psychological aspect of it has a tremendous influence of the physiology of our mind-body system, thus enhancing the survival process when we are in grave situations. There are recorded incidents where people have done supernormal feets when they have been faced with critical helpless situations.
Going back to thousands of years, non of the natural phenomena such as day and night, hot and cold, sun and moon, thunder and lightening, rain and drought, wind, diseases, animal migrations, tides, floods, tsunamis, cyclones, earth quakes, volcanoes, stars, eclipses, meteorites, etc., were known to the primitive man. All these natural phenomena were considered as creations of supernatural powers. Along with these ideas of supernatural power, the superstitious ideas generated by the man, conditioned the human psyche continuously. Our psyche still carries reminiscence of these ideas, even in the so-called modern age. Until proven otherwise, as explained before in the example of gem in the fist, the residual elements of our primitive psyche will play a domineering role in the continuum of our life system. Our psyche has a fascination to wonder and mysticism.
Wonder and mysticism were what we faced all the time as the primitive man. In fact the primitive man was greatly feared by every thing happening around him. All natural things were pushed into the mystic or wonder events until we found concrete reasons and meanings to them. People like Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein brought meaning to some of these wonders. Science helps us the way to interpret the true nature of things and wonders around us. Even after the proper meanings and explanations were found, when the realistic facts reaches our psyche it still takes a significant transition time to get these factual ideas to be deposited in our psyche firmly. Transition time is part of the mechanism of how our psyche operates to absorb reality.
However, sometimes even the most obvious proven evidence may not matter much pursue us to abandon some of the etched ideas we have in our psyches. Even at present day there are people who attempt to oppose valid scientific knowledge and try to reverse the scientific leaning process. Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, states superstitious beliefs are held even among the most skeptical scientists as he says that “humans are born to be superstitious”. The 2004 American presidential candidates John Kerry and John Edward both carried lucky charm items during their election campaigns. Both lost. Every supernatural and metaphysical belief system will go on forever in the future until people find proper meanings and evidence to support them.
That is the only way the psyche can be comforted and prevent any internal mental conflicts. We need to understand that we are the present participants in the human evolutionary process. Thousands of years from now people will evaluate us and call us primitive; similar to how we evaluated our ancestors now. Similar to our opposition for any adverse assessment on us by the future generations, primitive man would not be happy if they were aware that we were considering them as primitive. However, the logical reasoning has to go-on and will go-on, making pathways for a better future.
Are you ready to rewire your beliefs? I used a technique called PSYCH-K ® to do so. Interested?
How to make an appointment: Send an email to info@lucianapierangeli.com
As a finishing note I realized that the content of this article was written with my conditioned mind and hence the characteristics of the psyche we discussed are truly applicable to my own. Good luck!
Shelton Ranasinghe
B.Sc (Eng), C.Eng, P.Eng, MIMech E(London), MIE(Australia), FIE(Sri Lanka),
ASME(USA)
Author of Buddha Impetus to Primitive Psyche
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3850614
