An informal 'phenomenological' narrative:
My father’s father descended from the Creator, whose
abode is not here, but Heaven, and His ways we cannot know. In our city, the
priests have means to contact our Father, but my family does not understand
them. My father’s father understood the Father, for they were kin, but we have
forgotten. It does not matter, our lives are in His hands. There are many gods
and goddesses, and He is just the sometimes leader of them all, though we do not
know how.
The priests tell us that there was a time that our ancestors
walked with the Creator, but then something terrible happened. We pray twice
daily to be returned to before the mistake. I pray very hard, but the last time
I prayed hard, my sister died anyway. My uncle said I must pray harder, so
something must be wrong with me.
I am being trained to be a potter, because I am very good
with my hands, and I see things about making. My brother was a potter; my other
brother plows. One of my sisters died; they will not tell me what happened to my
other sister.
We are fortunate, for we have a strong house. This is because
my father’s father was descended from the Creator. Also, in the blood fight
that took this city from the others, our family fought well, and so we have this
house.
The day of sacrifice is the best day, because everything
comes from the Creator and we must give some of it back. My family sacrifices
beautiful birds, which we raise for this. There are dark rumors about what
goes on in the Temple, but I don’t believe them. We see the sacrifices here,
with the birds. The blood of the bird returns to the earth. Blood is the life we
are given, so we give it back. To eat a thing is to be that thing, so after the
bird is blessed by the priest, we eat it, because now it is food . .. of the
gods, and the gods are in it. So in this way we become strong, and the elements
leave us alone. And yet, the last time I prayed for my sister, she died anyway,
so there must be something wrong with me.
One Taste; p.144-145.
“The emergence and acquisition of language…..brings in
its broad wake a complex of interrelated and intermeshed phenomena, no the least
of which are higher and higher cognitive styles, an extended notion of time, a
new and more unified mode of self, a vastly extended emotional life, elementary
forms of reflexive self-control and the beginnings of membership. …Now the
deep structure of any given language embodies a particular syntax of perception,
and to the extent an individual develops the deep structure of his native
language, he simultaneously learns to construct, and thus perceive, a particular
type of descriptive reality, embedded, as it were in the language structure
itself. From that momentous point on, as far as that Outward Arc goes, the
structure of his language is the structure of his self and the “limits of his
world.”
Pg. 25 Atman Project
“Like the magical
primary process, this paleologic thinking frequently operates on the basis of a
whole/part equivalency and predicate identity; but unlike the pure primary
process, which is strictly composed of non-verbal images, precausal thinking is
largely verbal and auditory- it is constructed through linear word-and-name,
with abstract and auditory symbols. Unlike the image of the primary process, it
is true type of thinking-proper, operating with protoconcepts, verbal
abstractions and elementary class formation. This is precisely why Sullivan said
that this precausal thinking, which he called “autistic thinking or
language,” is the verbal manifestation
of the parataxic.”
Pg. 26 Atman Project
“I, however am
reserving “magical” for the previous stage of “magic images” and the
pure primary process. “ Mythical,” on the other hand, seems best to describe
this present stage of paleologic- more refined than magic, but not quite capable
of logical clarity: there is our mythic-membership stage. But I would like to
add that mythic thinking, in its mature
forms, is not at all pathological or distortive, but rather joins with the
higher phantasy ( of vision-image) to disclose depths of reality and high modes
of archetypal being quite beyond ordinary logic.”
Atman Project
pg. 27
“Precausal
thinking is more or less abstract, but is of rudimentary abstractions shot
through with mythical elements.”
Atman Project
pg.28
“Rudimentary
language formation and precausal thinking infuse the entire consciousness of
this early membership level. But the more language itself develops, the more
paleologic sinks into the background….”the growth of speech gradually
transforms prelogical thinking into logical, organized and adjusted thinking
which is a decisive step towards the reality principle.”
Atman Project pg. 28
“The reason that
most childhood experiences are forgotten is not so much that they are repressed
( some indeed are), as that they do not fit
the structure of membership description and thus one doesn’t have the terms
with which to recall them.”
Atman Project
Pg.28
“Through the use
of language the child can, for the first time, construct a representation of a series
or sequence of events, and thus he begins to construct a world of vast
temporal extension. He constructs a solid notion of time - not just an extended present of imaged objects (as in the
previous stage), but a linear chain of abstract representations running from
past to future.”
Atman Project
Pg.29
“But as I tries
to demonstrate in Up from Eden , there
is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness- as the child himself
soon discovers. For notice immediately that language itself carries some sort of
tense, in its verbs, and as the child
looks at the world through the eyes of language, he not surprisingly sees a
temporal or tensed world - and thus a
world of tension, time and anxiety being synonymous ( as Kierkegaard knew).
Likewise, he learns to construct and identify
with a tensed self-sense- he gains a past and looks to a future.
The price he pays for this growth in consciousness is an increased recognition
of his own separateness and thus his own vulnerability. For a child is, to a
greater and greater degree, beginning to awaken from his slumber in the
subconscious- he is, so to speak, being ejected from that paradisiacal state of
ignorance and thrust into the world of separation, isolation and
mortality……. On the positive
side, however, as verbal seriality allows the binding of time and the
construction of a tensed-membership world, so does it participate in the
child’s increasing ability to delay, control, channel, and postpone his
otherwise impulsive and uncontrollable activities…..
The child must conceive and recall the world of time- understand past, and
future in abstract terms- if he is to actively gear his responses to that
world.”
Atman Project
pg.30
“Not only does
language help establish a higher-order membership reality and a higher-order
self, it also serves as a major vehicle through which actions acceptable to this
to this membership world may be communicated, generally by the parents.
By means of word and thought, the child internalizes the early parental
prohibitions and demands, and thus creates what has variously been called the
“pre-conscience (Fenichel), “sphincter morality” (Ferenczi), the “early
moral superego” (Rank), “pre-super ego,” “forerunners of superego,”
“ visceral ethics,” or the “inner mother.” Note, however, that at this
stage the “inner mother” is no longer just a nexus of images- as was the
Great Mother if the image-body stage- but a nexus of verbal representations as well. It is not highly organized nor
tightly bound, however, and thus tends to degenerate if the corresponding
authority is not actually present.”
Atman Project
Pg.31
“Language and the
emergent function of abstract thinking immensely extend the child’s affective
and conative world, for emotions are now freed to run through the world of time,
and to be evoked by time- specific temporal desires, as well as concrete
temporal dislikes, can for the first time be entertained and vaguely
articulated……”
Atman Project
Pg.31
cognitive style-
autistic language: paleologic and
mythic thinking; membership cognition affective elements- temporal desires, extended and specific likes and
dislikes motivational/conative
factors- protovolition, roots of willpower and autonomous choice, belongingness
mode of self- verbal,
tensed-membership self
Atman Project
Pg.32