LA VERDAD CERCADA:
"DER ANFANG WAR DAS ENDE"
Chapter I , The Trap
" Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know."
Jean Jacques Rousseau asked this question in the Very beginning of his "Social Contract" some two hundred years ago. Unless the answer is found to this basic question, there is little use in setting up new social contracts. There has for many ages been something at work within human society that rendered impotent any and every single attempt to get at the solution of the great riddle, well known to all great leaders of humanity during the past several thousands of years:
Man is born free, yet he goes through life as slave.
-{Queda claro que para Reich. (al igual que para Rousseau) el conundrum humano no es antropologico, es decir: no nace con el hombre ("el hombre nace libre"), lo adquiere de la sociedad de sus congeneres. El nitido corolario es que la esclavitud es sociologica, impuesta en el hombre por el hombre, y de ninguna manera es el resultado evolutivo de la Transgresion Ancestral por la que fuimos arrojados del Eden (Oscar Kiss Maerth, volveremos a el mas adelante). Para Reich el susodicho conundrum comienza a enraizarse en la estructura caractereologica del hombre hace unos seis mil an~os con la caida del matriarcado y la entrada en la historia del patriarcado, la propiedad privada y el irreconciliable antagonismo de las diferentes clases sociales. Esta cambio fundametal conllevo, naturalmente, un rumbo totalmente distinto en los modos de produccion y consumicion que desembocaron en la mas crasa explotacion del hombre por el hombre con lo que se dio al traste con aquella sociedad matriarcal que especialmente estudiaron Bachofen y Lewis Morgan y sobre cuyos parametros la humanidad paso el tiempo suficiente como para que ello dejara huellas visibles en la historia y mitos, los cuales pudieron ser analizados mas tarde.}-
No answer has been found till now. There must be something at work in human society that obstructs the asking of the correct question to reach the right answer. All human philosophy is riddled with the nightmare ofsearching in vain.
Something, well hidden, is at work, that does not permit posing the right question. There is, accordingly, something in operation that continuously and successfully diverts attention from the carefully camouflaged access to where attention should be focused.
The tool used by the well-camouflaged something to divert attention from the cardinal riddle itself, is human evasiveness with regard to living Life. The hidden something is THE EMOTIONAL PLAGUE OF MAN.
-{Para Reich, ello representa la estructura caractereologica del 'armor' del hombre civilizado: un bloqueo psico-emocional que amordaza las pulsiones adversas al orden social establecido. En esto coincide totalmente con Freud en su "Descontento de la Civilizacion" -El Malestar de la Cultura-. Como dijimos, para R. el desaquicio humano es socio-economico; lo que no queda muy claro es si la raiz etiologica del problema es tambien, a su vez, socio-economica, o esta distorsionante coyuntura ya estaba 'a priori' en el llamado 'pecado original' humano; o diciendolo con Calderon de la Barca: el mayor pecado del hombre es el haber nacido; nacer en el sentido filogenetico no en el ontogentico}-
On the correct formulation of the riddle will depend the proper focusing of attention, and on this in turn will depend the eventual finding of the correct answer as to how it is possible that man is born free everywhere and yet finds himself in slavery everywhere.
-{Nace realmente el hombre siendo un ser libre?. Esta es la cuestion. Solo hay una forma efectiva y real de saberlo: separando el hombre al nacer del hombre. Lo que Linneus ya clasificaba de "homo ferus", o hombre silvestre. Los casos que se han estudiado al respecto no atestiguan en absoluto de que el hombre nazca libre.El hombre que crece sin contacto humano es, simplemente, un caso teratologico mas que psicologico, como dice Lucien Malson en su libro de los Los Nin~os Lobos y el Problema de la Naturaleza Humana: "Rather than a state of nature in which one can detect a rudimentary 'homo sapiens or homo faber', one discovers instead a condition of such abnormality that to understand it one needs not psychology, but teratology".
Entonces, como podriamos encontrar a un 'sapiens' en medio de esta teratologia?. El hombre nace, eso si, con un deposito que se puede llenar de muy distintas maneras, pero, que, indiscutiblemente, de no ser 'llenado' por el plano cultural humano, hallariamos, como dice Malson, que "their behaviour" (la de los nin~os salvajes encontrados y documentados) resemble that of the lower animals". Como se podria encajar aqui el decir que "nacemos libres"?. Nacemos ni libres ni esclavos, ni tontos ni inteligentizados, nacemos, simplemente, vacios de todo lo que caracteriza el ethos y el saber humano porque estas particularidades (del 'sapiens') no fueron adquiridas por evolucuin natural, sino por la artificialidad cultural que unos a otros nos pasamos, y los casos documentadaos de los 'nin~os silvestres' estudiados, al respecto, no dejan la menor duda de ello.}-
Certainly, social contracts, if honestly designed to maintain life in human society, are crucial tasks. But no kind of social contract will ever solve the problem of human agony. The social contract, at best, is no more than a makeshift to maintain life. It has heretofore not been able to remove the agony of life.
These are the constituents of the great riddle: Man is born equal, but he does not grow equal.
-{Esto si que cae absolutamente en el plano sociopoliticoeconomico, pues el hombre no puede estar en un plano de igualdad con los otros hombres cuando la sociedad donde vive esta regida por la obvia y la ya bien repetida 'explotacion de un hombre por el otro'.}-
Man has created great teachings, yet each simple teaching has served his oppression. Man is the " Son of God," created in His image; yet man is " sinful," a prey of the " Devil." How can the Devil and Sin be, if God alone is the creator of all being?
Humanity has failed to answer the question as to how there can be evil if a perfect god has created and governs the world and manHumanity has failed in establishing a moral life in accordance with its creator.
Humanity has been ravaged by war and murder of all sorts ever since the inception of written history. No attempt to remove this plague has ever succeeded.
Humanity has developed many kinds of religions. Every single kind of religion turned into another way of suppression and misery Humanity has devised many systems of thought to cope with Nature. Yet nature, functional and not mechanical, as it really is, has slipped through its fingers.
Humanity has run after every bit of hope and knowledge. Yet, after three thousand years of search and worry and heartbreak and murder for heresy and persecution of seeming error, it has arrived at little more than a few comforts for a small sector of humanity, at automobiles and airplanes and refrigerators and radios.
After thousands of years of concentration upon the riddle of the nature of man, humanity finds itself exactly where it started: with the confession of utter ignorance. The mother is still helpless in the face of a nightmare which harrasses her child. And the physician is still helpless in the face of such a small thing as a running nose.
It is commonly agreed that science reveals no permanent truth. Newton's mechanical universe does not fit the real universe which is not mechanical but functional. Copernicus' world picture of " perfect" circles is wrong. Kepler's elliptical paths of the planets are nonexistent. Mathematics did not turn out to be what it so confidently promised to be. Space is not empty; and nobody has ever seen atoms or the airgerms of amebas. It is not true that chemistry can approach the problem of living matter, and the hormones xlid not keep their promises either.The repressed unconscious, supposedly the last word in psychology, turns out to be an artifact of a brief period of civilization of a mechano-mystical type. Mind and body, functioning in one and the same organism, are still separated in man's thinking. Perfectly exact physics is not so very exact, just as holy men are not so very holy. Finding more stars or comets or galaxies won't do it. Neither will more mathematical formulas accomplish it. Philosophizing about the meaning of Life is useless as long as one does not know what Life is. And, since " God " is Life, which is certain, immediate knowledge common to all men, there is little use in searching or serving God if one does not know what one serves.
Everything seems to point to one single fact: There is something basically and crucially wrong in the whole setup of man's procedure of learning to know himself. The mechano-rationalistic view has completely ' broken down.
Locke and Hume and Kant and Hegel and Marx and Spencer and Spengler and Freud and all the others were truly great thinkers, but somehow it left the world empty after all and the mass of mankind remained untouched by all the philosophical digging. Modesty in proclaiming truth won't do it, either. It is often no more than a subterfuge for hiding one's evasion of the crucial point.
Aristotle, who governed thinking for many centuries, turned out to be wrong, and little can be done with Plato's or Socrates' wisdom. Epicurus did not succeed and neither did a single saint. The temptation to join the Catholic point of view is great after the deleterious experience of the latest great effort of humanity, made in Russia (despues de que lo expulsaron del partido comunista, Reich se torno contra la Union Sovietica), to come to grips with its fate. The devastating effect of such attempts has revealed itself too drastically.
Wherever we turn we find man running around in circles as if trapped and searching the exit in vain and in desperation.
It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man's emotional structure, his character structure.
There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who will end the pain of man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself...too late.
The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap.
The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?
One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it. This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap. But the crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap. WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE?
The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all.The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:
THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OH A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL
-{Aqui ha tocado R. un punto interesantisimo que implica muchas, muchas cosas, que pertenecen al mas claro tabu, es decir: pertenencen al reino de lo que no se puede pensar: a la comarca 'foucault-iana' de "lo-no-oensado". Y la pregunta derivada de ello es: Por que la Humanidad crucifica a sus propios redentores, por que? Por que se Impide y se asesina a los que tratan de andar hacia la salida de La Trampa? Es que los 'entrampados' no quieren que nadie se salga del encierro porque ello pondria en manifiesta evidencia, con respecto al 'liberado', la situacion de prisioneros en la que todos vivimos? Es que tenemos que auto-castigarnos por una terrible transgresion ancestral (contra las Leyes de la Naturaleza, "contra una prohibicion divina') y no queremos, en nuestro subconsciente colectivo, que nadie pueda escaparse de la punitividad con la que debemos pagar esa horrorosa desobediencia? Esta aqui anclada la teologia mitica del 'pecado original'? Al respecto, fue Sade el que dijo de que el mayor crimen que un hombre podia cometer es el de "iluminar a los otros hombres". Este, como veremos mas adelante, fue el epicentro del libro de Reich: 'La Muerte de Cristo'}-
It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is within the trapped ones.
-{Quiere decir aqui Reich que el comundrum esta dentro del mismo hombre? Entonces no es sociologico, es inherente a la criatura humana?}-
All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don't they see and move toward the clearly visible exit?
As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep.
-{Interesante: "solo unos pocos logran salir de la trampa en la oscuridad de la noche cuando los otros estan durmiendo". Pero que clase de simbolismo demiurgico y criptologico implica aqui R.? Es ese 'arbol de la vida', guardado por arcangeles con espadas de fuego, que esta ahi, ahi...y que de poderse alcanzar (pero con clase de 'contrasen~a' vamos a persuadir a los arcangeles para que nos dejen pasar?), mientras los demas "duermen", seria la unica manera de dejar La Trampa atras?..."Mientras los demas duermen"?. La 'salvacion' es tan solo individual? Es que para 'escaparnos' tenemos que mantener a los otros "durmiendo" para que no nos vean y nos puedan delatar...o crucificar?}-
This is the situation in which Jesus Christ finds himself. And this is the behaviour of the victims in the trap when they will kill him.
The functioning of living Life is all around us, within us, in our senses, before our noses, clearly visible in every single animal or tree or flower. We feel it in our bodies and in our blood. Yet it remained for the trapped ones the greatest, most inaccessible riddle of all.However, Life was not the riddle. The riddle is how it could have remained unsolved for such a long period of time. The great problem of biogenesis and bio-energetics is easily accessible by direct observation. The great problem of Life and the origin of Life is a psychiatric one; it is a problem of the character structure of Man who succeeded so long in evading its solution.
IT IS THE BASIC EVASION OF THE ESSENTIAL WHICH IS THE PROBLEM OF MAN.This evasion and evasiveness is a part of the deep structure of man. The running away from the exit out of the trap is the result of this structure of man. Man fears and hates the exit from the trap. He guards cruelly against any attempt at finding the exit. This is the great riddle.
All this certainly sounds crazy to the living beings in the trap. It would mean certain death for the speaker of such crazy things if he were within the trap together with them; if he were a member of a scientific academy which spends much time and money on studying the details of the walls of the trap. Or, if he were a member of a church congregation which prays, in resignation or hope, to get out of the trap. Or if he were the provider for a family whose only concern is not to starve in the trap. Or if he were an employee of an industrial concern which does its best to make life in the trap as comfortable as possible. It would mean death, in one form or another: by ostracism, or by being jailed for the violation of some law, or, under appropriate conditions, the electric chair.
Outside the trap, right close by, is living Life, all around one, in everything the eye can see and the ear can hear and the nose can smell. To the victims within the trap it is eternal agony, a temptation as for Tantalus. You see it, you feel it, you smell it, you eternally long for it, yet you can never, never get through the exit out of the trap. To get out of the trap simply has become an impossibility. It can only be had in dreams and in poems and in great music and paintings, but it is no longer in your motility. The keys to the exit are cemented into your own character armor and into the mechanical rigidity of your body and soul.
This is the great tragedy. And Christ happened to know it.
If you live in a dark cellar too long, you will hate the sunshine. You may even have lost the power of the eye to tolerate light. From this comes hate toward sunlight.
The living beings in the trap, in order to adjust their offspring to the life in the trap, develop elaborate techniques to keep life going on a tight, low level.There is not space enough in thetrap for great swings of thought or action. Every move is restricted on all sides. This has, in the long run of time, had the effect of crippling the very organs of living Life. The sense of a full life itself has gone from the creatures in the trap.
Still, a deep longing for happiness in life and a memory of a happy Life long past, before the entrapment, has remained. But longing and memory cannot be lived in real life. Therefore, hatred of Life has grown from this tightness. Let us subsume all manifestations of this hatred against the Living under the heading " Murder of Christ.
ORIGINAL SIN: A MYSTERYLife is plastic; it adjusts to every condition of its existence with or without protests, with or without deformation, with or without revolt. This plasticity of living Life, one of its greatest assets, will be one of its slave chains when the Emotional Plague will learn to misuse the plasticity of Life to its own ends. One and the same Life is different at the bottom of the deep sea, and different on a high mountain ridge. It is different in the dark cave and different again within the blood vessel. It was different in the Garden of Eden, and different in the trap that caught humanity.
Life knows nothing of traps in the Garden of Eden; it just lives paradise, innocently, gayly, without an inkling of a different kind of life. It would refuse to listen to an account of life in the trap; and, if it listened, it would comprehend it with its " brain " only, not with its heart. Life in paradise is fully adapted to the conditions in paradise.
Within the trap, Life lives the life of souls caught in a trap. It adjusts quickly and completely to the Life in a trap. This adjustment goes so far that nothing will remain beyond a faint memory of Life in paradise, once Life has been caught in a trap. Restlessness, hurry, nervousness, a dim longing, a dream long past — yet, still around somehow — will be taken for granted. No trace of an inkling that these are signs of a dim memory of Life in paradise long past will disturb the peace of soul of the captives. The adjustment is complete. It reaches proportions beyond the limits of reason.
The Life in the trap will soon become completely self-absprhed as Life in a prison is supposed to be. Certain character types will develop which will belong to Life in the trap, and would not make sense where Life walks the world freely. These characters, molded by bearing Life in prison, will greatly vary among themselves. They will disagree and fight each other. They will, each in his own manner, proclaim the absolute truth. Only one characteristic will they all have in common: They will join together and kill in unison whoever will dare to ask the basic question:
HOW IN THE NAME OF A MERCIFUL GOD DID WE EVER MANAGE TO GET INTO THE UGLY PREDICAMENT OF THIS NIGHTMARE OF A TRAP? "
WHY DID MAN LOSE PARADISE.?
And:What did he actually lose when he fell victim to sin?
Man in the trap has, over the millenia, created a great book: the bible. This book is the story of his fights and anguishes and glories and hopes and longings and sufferings and sinnings in the entrapment. It has been thought and written in many languages by many different people. Some of its basic features can be found in places far apart, in the written and unwritten memory of man. That things had, once upon a time long past, been quite different, that somehow man once had fallen to the devil, to sin and ugliness, is common to all accounts of the distant past.
The bibles of the world are the accounts of man's fight against man's sin. There is so much the Bible tells about the life in the trap, and so little about how men got into the trap.
It is obvious that the exit out of the trap is exactly the same as the entrance into the trap, through which they were driven from paradise. Now, why does nobody say anything about it except in a very few paragraphs which are as one to a million to the rest of the Bible, and in a veiled language which is meant to conceal the meaning of the words?
The downfall of Adam and Eve is obviously, beyond any doubt due to something they did against the Laws of God in a genital way:
" And they ivere both nailed, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."
(Genesis 2: 25)
From this it follows that in paradise man and woman were not aware or ashamed of nakedness, and this was God's will, and the way of Life. Now, what happened? The Bible says
(Genesis 3: 1-24):
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God hath made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said: "Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden"
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said: "Ye, shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, gnawing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to malfe one wise, she took the fruit from the tree thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they new that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked ? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is that that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shall thou go, and dust shah thou eat all the days of thy life:
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shali bruise his heel.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shah bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shall not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy safe; in sorrow shah thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shah eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of thy face shah thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou fallen: for dust thou art, and unto dust shah thou return.
-{Hagamos aqui una parada tactica. Esto de ser 'condenados' de la manera que 'polvo eres y polvo seras', esto de ser 'sentenciados' con esta nueva sufriente conciencia de la muerte, de nuestra muerte, implica que antes de la Transgresion el concepto de 'muerte' (de nuestra implacable desaparicion de la existencia) era opuesto a este tan acongojante y doloroso sentimiento ante la muerte, o sea, con ello se introduce el sufrimiento (como castigo) en la vida humana, que, anterior a la Transgresion, debido a que la aprehension emocional e intelectual de la muerte era totalmente armonica (como la propia vida que teniamos) y en consononcia con el equilibrio inmanente en todo proceso natural, no nos producia tal angustia. En otras palabras: el sufrimiento a morir no esta objetivado intrinsecamente en la muerte de 'per se' (que es un eslabon mas del proceso cosmico natural), sino que es producido por el particular cortex cerebral, que, como 'castigo', se adquiere despues de haber 'comido el fruto prohibido'. Y otro punto esencial es el de 'condenar' a la mujer a "parir los hijos con dolor". Las hembras de los antropoides carecen totalmente de este especifico 'dolor', tienen, naturalmente, las intrinsecas dificultades fisicas de todo parto, pero nunca el genuino dolor de la hembra humana, por que? Muy simple: despues de haber comido del 'fruto prohibido', la cabeza humana comenzo a crecer en manifiesta desproporcion al can~o vaginal que se mantuvo desarrolandose de acuerdo con las leyes de la evolucion natural y no pudo, morfologicamente, mantenerse a la par con el crecimiento exagerado del volumen craneal, de ahi que, alcanzado cierto desnivel entre ambos, en el parto, la cabeza del infante, al pasar por el ahora estrecho (en proporcion) pasadizo del can~o vaginal, produce tales gritos y dolor...el mismo con el que, en el mito, dios castigo a la mujer...Sabia Dios que con la Transgresion cometida la cabeza creceria en inconsonancia con el can~o vaginal?. De lo que no cabe duda es de que el castigo previo este acontecimiento}-
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was fallen.
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
-{El 'Arbol de la Vida' --la armonia perdida-- no es que haya desaparecido, esta aqui, con nosotros, pero "Querubines con espadas de fuego la guardan y nos impiden el paso". Y volvemos a lo que deciamos antes: quizas por esto que R. dice que "Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep".}-
There was a serpent in paradise, more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." To the Christian commentator, the serpent, in his Edenic form, is not to be thought of as a writhing reptile. The serpent originally was " the most beautiful and subtle of creatures. Traces of that beauty remain despite the (later) curse. Every movement of the serpent is graceful, and many species are beautifully colored. In the serpent, Satan first appeared as an angel of light. The serpent, thus, is a symbol of Life itself and the male phallus.
Then, somehow, out of nowhere as it were, disaster strikes. Nobody knows or has ever known or ever will find out how and why it happened: The most beautiful serpent, the "Angel of Light," the " most subtle of creatures," " less than man," is cursed and becomes " God's illustration in nature of the effect of sin": it changes from "the most beautiful and subtle of creatures to a loathsome reptile."
And, as if a special counsel had met to veil the most dramatic, the most devilish, the most disastrous happening in the history of the human race, and to remove it forever and ever from any grasp by intellect or heart, this catastrophe becomes mysterious and untouchable; it becomes a part of the great mystery of the entrapment of man; it doubtless contains the solution to the riddle as to why man in the trap refuses to simply walk out of the trap using the exit through which he had come into the trap.
The Biblical interpreter himself says at this point: "The deepest mystery of the atonement is intimated here," i.e., in the change of the serpent from the " most beautiful and subtle of creatures to a loathsome reptile."
Why all this? Let's hear (again)
There was a peculiar tree in the Garden of Eden, and God had said to man in paradise: "Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden."
And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden;But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not cat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
(Genesis 3: 2,3)
Did anyone ever in the course of six thousand years explain that tree? No one ever did so. Why?
The mystery of this tree is a part of the mystery of man's entrapment. A solution of the mystery of the tree could possibly answer the predicament why man is in the trap. The solution of the mystery of the forbidden tree would certainly point to the entrance to the trap, which, used the other way around, would become an exit out of the trap. Accordingly, no one ever thought of solving the riddle of the forbidden tree, and everybody in the trap was busy for millenia to scholas-ticize, talmudize and exorcise the predicament of being within the trap, using millions of books and myriads of words, with one single goal in mind: To prevent the solution of the riddle of the forbidden tree.
The serpent, still beautiful and subtle, knew better. " And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
Now, since the beautiful serpent thus brought about man's downfall, what in the name of sanity does all this mean:If man in paradise, living happily the ways of God, eats from a certain tree, then he will be like God, his eyes will be opened, and he will " know good and evil." How does such a devilish tree manage to get into God's garden in the first place?
And if you eat from such a tree which bears the fruit of knowledge and you become like God himself, why then do you lose paradise?
The Bible, to my knowledge, doesn't tell. And it is to be doubted that anyone ever asked such a question. The legend doesn't seem to make sense: If the tree is a tree of knowledge, to know the difference between good and evil, what's bad, then, in eating of its fruits? If you eat of its fruits, then you certainly can follow God's ways better, and not worse. Again, it doesn't make sense.
Or is it forbidden to know God and to be like God, which means to live God's ways, even in paradise?
Or is all this the cooked-up fantasy of man in the trap, regarding a faint memory of a past life outside the trap? It doesn't make sense. Man is haunted all through the ages by the request to know God, to follow God's Ways, to live God's love and life; and when he starts seriously to do so by eating from the tree of knowledge, he is punished, expelled from paradise, and condemned to eternal misery. It simply does not make sense, and we fear that no representative of God on earth has ever asked this question, or even dared to think in its direction.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
(Genesis 3: 6,7)
When man thus was first trapped, confusion beclouded his mind. He did not understand why he got into the trap. He felt he must have done something wrong, but he knew not what wrong he had done. He had not felt ashamed being naked, and then, suddenly, he felt ashamed of his genital organs. He had eaten from the tree of forbidden " knowledge," which, in Biblical language means, he " knew " Eve, he embraced her genitally. For this now he has been expelled from the Garden of Eden. God's own most beautiful serpent had seduced them; the symbol of wavy, living Life and of the male sexual organ had seduced them?
From here to the life in the trap there is a wide, deep gap in comprehension. In its adjustment to the life in the trap, Life developed new forms and means of existence; forms and means which were unnecessary in the Garden of Eden, but were crucial for life in the trap. A silent and suffering and dreaming and toiling mass of humanity, cut off from God's Life, provided the broad foundation on which grew priests, and the prophets against the priests; the kings, and the rebels against the kings; the great healers of man's misery within the trap, and with them the great quacks and the medical " authorities," the trauma-turgists and the occultists.
With the emperors there came about the freedom peddlers, and with the great organizers of man in the trap were born the political prostitutes, the Barabbases and the sneaking vermin of bandwagon riders; Sin and Crime against the law, and the judges of Sin and Crime and their executioners; the suppression of liberties unlivable in a trap, and the Unions for Civil Liberties within the trap. Also, from the mire grew great political bodies called " parties," designed either to keep up what they called the " status quo " within the trap, the so-called " conservatives " (since they tried to preserve the law and order which had been established to keep life in the trap going), and, opposing them, the so-called " progressives " who fought and suffered and died at the gallows for advocating more freedom within the trap.
Here and there such progressives conquered power over the conservatives and began to establish " Freedom in the Trap" or "bread and freedom in the Trap." But, since there was no one who could "give" the broad herd of men bread and freedom, since they had to work for it, the progressives soon became conservatives themselves, for they had to maintain law and order just as their eternal enemies, the conservatives, had done before. Later, a new party arose which thought that the masses of suffering humanity in the trap should rule Life in the trap, and not the priests or kings or dukes. They tried hard to get the mass of people on their legs and into action; but apart from a few murders and the destruction of the homes of some rich men in the trap, little happened.
The broad mass of humanity just repeated what it had heard and seen from above for millenia, and nothing changed; only the misery became greater when a very clever party was formed which promised to humanity a " PEOPLE'S FREEDOM IN THE TRAP "
***************************************************
Hasta aqui Wilhelm Reich.
Took me 40 years to find the meaning (eso espero) of the "Tree of the Knowledge" reflected in any possible way in the metaphorical o mythological oral o written tradition of any ancient human culture on the Earth. Few steps, 'a priori', are necessaries to follow the process:
1)
In the anthropogenesis of Sigmund Freud (S.F.) and Wilhelm Reich (W.R.) we have:
"Of course these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. The primal father die at their hands, and now they accomplished their identification with him by devouring him and each acquire part of his strength. The totem feast, which is perhaps mankind's first celebration, would be the repetition and commemoration of this memorable criminal act with which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions and religion"
('Totem and Taboo', Sigmund Freud; p. 183)
"Freud interpreted the religious concept of the fall from grace, as an expression of a prehistorically act of murder. On the other hand, the Biblical myth of Adam and Eve, as well as the catholic ideology of hereditary sin, are revealed as basically myths of a sexual transgression. This does not exclude the possibility that the sexual transgression was accompanied by an act of murder."
('Sex-Pol', W. R.; pp. 221-222)
"The downfall of Adam and Eve is obviously, beyond any doubt, due to something that they did against the Laws of God -of the Nature- in a Genital Way" .
('The Murder of Christ', -'M C.'- , W.Reich.; p.11-2)
"But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said: 'Ye shall not eat of it; neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die'...Did anyone ever in the course of six thousand years explain that Tree? No one ever did so. Why? The mystery of this tree is part of the mystery of man's entrapment. A solution of the mystery of the tree could possibly answer the predicament why man is in the trap"
('La Muerte de Cristo' ,W.R., p. 11-3)
2)
Now we pass to "The Beginning was the End", by Oscar Kiss Maerth:
"One ape discovered that eating the fresh brain of one's own kind increases the sexual impulses. He and his descendants became addicted to brains and hunted for them. It was not until later that they noticed that their intelligence increased as a result. The outcome of this process is HOMO SAPIENS...After I had recognized the truth concerning man's origin I hesitated to proclaim it, but when I thought of the Genesis story in the Bible…the decision was made easier for me…because in these few pregnant lines -of the Genesis- the truth concerning the origin of mankind had already been told many thousands years ago, but was no longer understood. What Genesis describes in images is totally in accordance with what I have apprehended." (pp. from 36 to 204)
3)
In 1959, G. Zegwaard published in the 'American Anthropologist, num. 61, "Headhunting Practices of Netherlands New Guinea".And this is what he had to say about the Asmat people that practice 'headhunting' in the south coast of the island of New Guinea:
"For the Asmat people…the human body is associated with a TREE: the legs compare to the plank roots, the trunk to the human body, the arms to the boughs, AND THE HEAD TO THE TOP WITH THE FRUIT SITS IN THE TOP."
(Quoted from 'The Anthropology of Cannibalism', by Laurence R. Goldman; p. 136)5)
Now, before we continues, it is important to make a parenthesis to take a brief pause to see cannibalism in historical retrospective.
Earliest reports go back to the fifth century B.C. when Herodotus, in his 'Histories', report such practice among the Scythians tribes. The 'Pekin man', a predecessor of the 'homo sapiens', around 500.000 B.C., had been known to eat the brain of his fellow man. Many of the skeletal remains found in the Stone Age caves show signs of cannibalism.
In the same way, human remains of 'Homo sapiens neanderthalensis', from the Pleistocene deposit of Sants Croce Cave, in Bisceglie (Apulia), Italy, has shown the same evidence of cannibalism. In America, the new continent, Columbus, Americo Vespucci, Lopez de Gomara, Bernardino de Sahagun, etc., reported that cannibalism was well extended among the different peoples of the continent. In Africa, Asia and Oceania, the same practice was found everywhere.
The New York Time published an article by Nicholas Wade under the title: 'Scientist says humans have cannibal past', in which a report by 'Science' journal, Dr. Simon Mead, reach the conclusion that "genetic evidence pointing to widespread cannibalism is likely to influence a long-standing debate among scientists". (See Marta Soldevila. She is in disagreement with such premise)The result of excavations up to now show unequivocally that cannibalism started at the same time as the process of human development, no early and no late.6) Now, bringing cannibalism through 'historical detour' to the present, we can return to the Asmat people and put together all the pieces of the puzzle:
The forbidden TREE of the Paradise was Man, and the forbidden Fruit, his Head!, an this was what God forbid man to eat.And this is why, when they -Adam and Eve- ate such "fruit" happen the same when the Asmat people eat the human brain
-{Obviamente, sobre su pasado canibalista, el hombre arrastra un tremendo sentimiento subconsciente colectivo de culpa; en el mito del Genesis, debido al poderoso tabu que ello representa, no pudo articular su mensaje de una manera directa, sino que se valio de analogias, tropos y simbolismos cuya significacion se perdio en las grietas del tiempo, pero, no obstante, dejo vividamente retratado los suficientes elementos como para que pudieramos "leer entre lineas"...unas lineas que nos hacen ver clarisimamente que no puede haber en la tierra ningun "fruto" que produzca conocimientos (que se transmitan geneticamente) y que estimule el deseo sexual, y si no que se lo pregunten a un canibal actual (al respecto el libro de Oscar Kiss tiene bastantes referencias sobre ello)}-
"The eyes of them both were opened" (Genesis), and, in the case of our origin in the Garden of the Eden,…hey new knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Genesis)
GOD PROHIBIT MAN TO EAT FROM THE 'TREE OF KNOLODGE': FROM ITS FRUIT: THE HEAD THAT SITS IN THE TOP -OF THE TREE- OF THE HUMAN BODY.
The consequence of this anomaly is given in the actual reality in which cannibalism, through its perfect representation, capitalism, is going 'to eat' another Prohibited Fruit: the Entire Plane. In this case, the punishment will be 'a little different' from what we received in the Garden of the Eden.
"In eating the brain man consumed the substances concentrated in it. Both, his brain and his capacity for though, increased disproportionately. From this arose the biological unjustified surplus of intelligence which later turned into a disease condition. At the same time the functions of the central nervous system, originally in equilibrium, were disturbed by the same means, the pituitary gland being particulary affected; this controls among other things hair growth and sexuality. Because of the constant new supply of brain substances, the distribution of hormones and other secretions was thrown into confusion. A new distribution system had to be developed. This became the cause of physical defects such as the loss of a coat of hair and of the female signs of fertility. The result is a physically and mentally ill creature at odds with himself and with Nature, who neither knows nor understands himself. The huge discrepancy between his almost unaltered form and his enormously increased intelligence forces man into further abnormal and self-destructive acts. He himself names this unhealthy process 'progress'…which is drawing inexorably nearer to the extremely dangerous state in which man will destroy himself by mentally running amok: a lunatic genius"
(Oscar Kiss Maerth; pp. 38-39)
The same creature that is actually in the border to the most apocalyptic transgression of all History…for long as any one can remember: 'to eat' the most forbidden "fruit" of all: he himself: The Planet.
-{No hablamos sin evidencias: el "canibalismo" continua incrementandose, en todas las esferas, mas que nunca. Hablamos muy en serio. Y aqui va una de esas evidencias, que, por el calado cientifico de sus manifestantes, creo que hay que tenerla muy en cuenta, lo contrario seria ir en el 'Titanic' hasta ultima hora y creer que es tan solo una 'via de agua pequen~a'.
Following are brief excerpts from an "Urgent Warning to Humanity" which was issued by sixteen hundred Nobel prize winning and other scientists from around the world in 1992 (in New York):
"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities indict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish lor human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain lile in the manner that we know."
"Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about....No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished..."
"We the undersigned senior members of the worlds scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship ol the earth and the lile on it is required, if vast miseries are to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated"}-
Terminemos analizando el por que el cerebro humano llego a alcanzar su nivel actual bajo el estimulo del canibalismo.
Hace aproximadamente dos milones an~os el contenido craneal de los monos antropomorfos, incluyendo los antepasados del hombre, era de unos 400 centimetros cubicos (c.c.). Desde entonces el contenido craneal de los monos antropomorfos solo ha aumentado en un 5%, dentro del marco de la evolucion natural. Tambien sus capacidades intelectuales se incrementaron en la medida proporcional.
En el caso del hombre nos encontramnos con una situacion totalmente diferente.El proceso de formacion del hombre no tuvo lugar dentro del marco de una evolucion natural, porque en un proceso de evolucion natural, el incremento de la inteligencia, el aumento del cerebro y el crecimiento del craneo guardan una relacion directa, se desarrollan simultaneamente y de forma proporcional.
Debido al canibalismo, a la continua ingestion de materia encefaliza, el cerebro humano paso de 400 c.c. a un volumen de 1500-1600 c.c., por lo tanto se ha cuadruplicado en un espacio de tiempo sin precedentes, y los antropologos no saben como razonar este incremento en tan breve espacio de tiempo evolutivo.
Marx y Engels (en 'El Origen de la Familia') lo explican con la ridicula hermeneutica de ubicar las causas de ello en "el trabajo", en el "desarrollo de las manos", de esta manera no hacen mas que confundir los efectos con las causas que estan hallando, ya que es 'el trabajo' y el 'uso de las manos' del "homo habilis" lo que evidencia todo lo contario (a sus tesis), a saber: el sorprendente aumento craneal que ya se habia alcanzado (que queda sin explicar suplantandolo por "las manos"), al mismo tiempo que surgio otra gran 'extran~eza': que la inteligencia no aumento ni cuatro ni cien veces, sino mil veces, en total desajuste biomolecular con el entarimado morfologico-funcional del resto del 'corpus' humano.
Esto significa que una inteligencia mil veces superior ha tenido que acomodarse en un cerebro que solo ha aumentado cuatro veces su taman~o. Es lo mismo como si en una caja de fosforos se quisiera meter a la fuerza un cerebro electronico de la dimension de un camion. Asi, el cerebro, incitado al crecimiento por el continuo consumo de otros cerebros, no pudo desarrollarse plenamente debido al reducido taman~o del craneo, el cual crecia a un ritmo mas lento de lo que hubiera sido necesario.
A consecuencia de ello, el cerebro, obligado a aumentar, comenzo a ser comprimido. Como efecto de ello surgio en el cortex cerebral humano esta enorme cantidad de circunvoluciones. Entonces lo que ocurrio fue que, como al igual que los cables de un receptor de radio, los conductos cerebrales estan rodeados de una masa aislante con el fin de que no se produzcan cortocircuitos ni funciones equivocadas, pero la falta de espacio en el craneo hizo que estos circuitos cerebrales, al tener que reducir su masa aislante para poder acomodarse al volumen oseo del craneo, en algun punto se produjo un 'corto-circuito' con el cual el hombre perdio sus capacidades para la perepcion ultrasensorial y la transmision inarticulada del pensamiento (al perderse surgieron las lenguas como medida de emergencia)
Desde entonces es incapaz de percibir la existencia del mundo inmaterial, su verdadero yo, su origen y su destino, y quedo sentenciado a acarrear un antagonismo mortal que no lo sufre ninguna criatura viviente en el Cosmos: la perpetua contradiccion entre su mente y su cuerpo, entre sus instintos y su aparatus reflexivo, unica forma de entender el por que puede avanzar enormemente en el ultimo (poniendo a un ser humano en la Luna) y mantenerse atrozmente retrasado en el otro (el hambre, la miseria, las guerras, la CIA y las cloacas de las alcantarillas humanas: bien tapaditas ellas para que nadie las huela)
Esta es (tambien) la causa de su desamparo animico, que quiere eliminar (inutilmente) mediante continuas disposiciones materiales. Esta interminable cadenas de medidas materiales condenadas al fracaso es lo que denomina "progreso", un absurdo incremento de objetos materiales que solo ensancha la destruccion del medio ambiente, el descontento y la insatisfaccion, pues por cada problema que 'soluciona', la misma causistica inmanente en estas 'resoluciones' , crea mil problemas mas a resolver, que, a su vez, al ser resueltos, vuelven a generar mas problemas nuevos.
Atrapado en esta Trampa, por su ofuscacion espiritual, el ser humano lo que hace, con sus respuestas, es perpetuar, en el continuum de una orgia de consumicion patologica sobre la que cada dia devora su propio habitat natural, un apetito canibalistico insaciable que esta extinguiendo, no solamente a las mismas especies que comparten el Planeta con el y que forman un esencial enclave ecologico de la biodiversidad que necesita para su propia sobrevivencia, sino que esta asentando, con el Canibalismo de su "sagrado progreso", una cadena de dan~os irreversibles que lo llevara a su propia autodestrucion. Porque mil seiscientos Premios Nobel y cientificos del mundo entero no pueden, no pueden estar equivocados al firmar esta resolucion:
"We the undersigned senior members of the worlds scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship ol the earth and the lile on it is required, if vast miseries are to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated"
Paleontologos, biologos, fisicos, antropologos, sociologos, etnobotanicos, euruditos y doctos, todos sin etiquetas politicas ni partidismos ideologicos, todos estan de acuerdo en que en la actualidad estamos asistiendo a la extincion (la Sexta desde el origen de la vida) de especies mas escalofriante de todos los tiempos en cuanto que no es producida por cataclismos incontrolables o cambios extraordinarios en el clima, sino que esta siendo manufacturada por una criatura muy 'especial':
el sacrosanto "homo sapiens".
Por eso, el libro de Oscar Kiss, "Der Anfang war Das Ende", 'El Principio fue el Fin', representa el exponente mas antonomasico de que, en el origen filogenetico del hombre, el proceso canibalistico del Principio ("Der Anfang") que lo catapulto a la genialidad de convertirse en "sapiesns al "comer la fruta prohida" (el Balance Cosmico agredido), ya estaba incrustado y predeterminado, dialecticamente, el posterior Fin ("Das Ende") de terminar canibalizandonos a nosotros mismos y al Planeta...hecho que tan patentemete vemos ya en ese espeluznante Urgent Warning to Humanity .
EPILOGO:
Lo que no deja de permanecer un tanto oscuro, a pesar de todo lo expuesto (y esto da una clara magnitud de la 'sui generis' demencia humana), es eso mismo que trataba Reich en su 'Trampa' de que se siguen crucificando a todos aquellos que se aproximen a su salida, y ello viene dado, entre otros, en el hecho de que hoy en dia se tienen todos los medios tecnicos necesarios para construir una existencia social un tanto racional sobre la faz de la tierra, y, sin embargo, parace ser que esos "medios tecnicos" no estan en equilibrio con los necesarios y complementarios medios emocionales-instintuales que (segun se ve) no tenemos (acoplados) para alcanzar esa meta. Y una vez mas vemos la fundamental contradiccion vital que acarreamos en nuestro ser "entre mente y cuerpo": entre ese cerebro hiperdesarrollado y biopaticamente desajustado con el resto de la entera funcionalidad de nuestro organismo fisiologico porque este evoluciono al compas de la evolucion natural y aquel se incremento artificialmente a velocidades meteoricas, lo cual produjo esta 'sui generis' criatura humana que despues de dos millones an~os cada vez le cuesta mas justificar su perenne descontento e insatisfaccion,
lo que, subconsciente, le causa un desasosiego y una desorientacion que su llamado "progreso" (con sus absurdas respuestas materiales y y sus infantiles pragmatismos) lo unico que hace es multiplicar todos los males en progresion geometrica.
Dificilisima coyuntura de la cual sera imposible salir sino se produce 'un nuevo tipo de hombre' ("el nuevo hombre" en el que creia Ernesto Guevara?) , y con el, una Total Revolucion que, destruyendo la incivilizada estructura de la Dictadura Capitalista (la mas Canibalistica de toda la Historia), se pueda llegar a estructurar unos distintos valores y necesidades, unas diferentes avenidas de produccion y consumision (en las que el hombre no tenga que explotar al hombre y a la Naturaleza de forma tan estupida) que puedan desarmar a esos arcangeles que guardan la entrada al 'Arbol de la Vida'.
Ese "Arbol de la Vida' al que si tardamos mucho tiempo en llegar lo vamos a encontrar ya marchito y a los arcangeles muertos de tantas desgracias como estan viendo desde su guardia ancestral.
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P.D.
Es interesante (y complementario) agregar la epigenesis antropologica de Terence McKenna. Si Oscar Kiss ubica la transformacion del antropoide en 'homo sapiens' sobre las bases del canibalismo, la consumicion de cerebros, McKenna la situa en la ingestion de plantas psicotropicas que le proporcionaron a nuestros ancestros sus primeras ventajas evolutivas. Veamos.
"For perhaps tens of millennia human beings have been utilizing hallucinogenic mushrooms to divine and to induce shamanic ecstasy. I propose to show that the human/mushroom interaction is not a static symbiotic relationship, but rather a dynamic one through which at least one of the parties has been bootstrapped to higher and higher cultural levels. The impact of hallucinogenic plants on the evolution and emergence of human beings is I a heretofore unexamined phenomenon, yet it promises to provide an understanding of not only primate evolution but also the emergence of the cultural forms unique to Homo sapiens."
(THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, p. 142)
"There is a hidden factor in the evolution of human beings that is neither a "missing link" nor a telos imparted from on high. I suggest that this hidden factor in the evolution of human beings, the factor that called human consciousness forth from a bipedal ape with binocular vision, involved a feedback loop with plant hallucinogens. This is not an idea that has been widely explored, though a very conservative form of this notion appears in R. Gordon Wasson's Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality. Wasson does not comment on the emergence of humanness out of the primates, but he does suggest hallucinogenic mushrooms as the causal agent in the appearance of spiritually aware human beings and the genesis of religion. Wasson feels that omnivorous foraging humans would have sooner or later encountered hallucinogenic mushrooms or other psychoactive plants in their environment.
The strategy of these early human omnivores was to eat everything and to vomit whatever was unpalatable. Plants found to be edible by this method were then inculcated into their diet. The mushrooms would be especially noticeable because of their unusual form and color. The state of consciousness induced by the mushrooms or other hallucinogens would provide a reason for foraging humans to return repeatedly to those plants, in order to reexperience their bewitching novelty. This process would create what C. H. Waddington (1961) called a "cre-ode," a pathway of developmental activity (in other words, a habit).
Habituation to the experience was ensured simply because it was ecstatic. "Ecstatic" is a word unnecessary to define except operationally: an ecstatic experience is one that one wishes to have over and over again. It has been shown in experimental situations that if one creates a situation in which N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) can be delivered to a monkey on demand, then a large number of monkeys exposed to that experimental apparatus will prefer the DMT over food and water. DMT was used in these experiments because it is a very short-acting, overt hallucinogen that occurs in many different plant species (Jacobs, 1984). Though we cannot analyze the laboratory monkeys' state of mind, it is very clear that something in the experience impels them to return to the stimulus again and again.
Wasson's idea that religion originated when an omnivorous proto-human encountered alkaloids in the environment was countered by Mircea Eliade, the most brilliant expositor of the anthropology of shamanism and the author of Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy." (THE ARCHAIC REVIVAL, p. 144)
El conundrum en el que cae McKenna, al mantener esta hipotesis, es el de como explicar el incremento craneal de 400centimetros cubicos a 1.500 en tan poco tiempo (aproximadamente un millon de an~os). Es indudable que canibalizando cerebros conllevaria mas facilmente al aumento de este organo que comiendo plantas psicotropicas. De todas maneras lo que si parece seguro es que esta ultima ingestion pudo llevar a nuestra especie a desarrollar unos sentidos y adaptaciones que, una vez adquiridas, llevo a repetir y propagar el consumo de ciertos hongos y plantas como beneficio evolutivo de los individuos que la practicaban, con lo cual se perpetuo su rutinario consumo.
