My Brother’s Keeper

Now a very different thing was happening. It was a complete shift from what had happened before. It was almost like dropping down into a world of dreams. What I experienced was the turmoil of images to do with animals, animals, human beings, all mixed up. At times there was an inclination in me to turn away and not see what was appearing. This was because some of images were about humans mating with quite gross animals. But as I watched my intuition was unfolding to what I felt to be the meaning of the imagery. This is quite difficult to summarise because I have a clear sense of it but the sense encompasses so much. So I need to try to explain this.

What I understood was that the human body, the human being, emerged out of what had already been developed in nature and particularly in the animal kingdom. The animal kingdom holds within it an immense range of behavioural responses. There is everything from incredible aggression, to great skill, to the drive to procreate. Whenever a new thing emerges in nature it does so from what pre-existed it. The human being was shaped out of physiological, biological, sociological and instinctive drives that already existed in other creatures, and especially in the creatures that immediately preceded it. And what I was sensing was that such changes are not simple things. An incredible amount of background and events in the environment, are part of the possibilities in which the change occurs. I felt it as rather like having a huge box of tools and objects and meeting a situation which stimulates you to test out these tools to see if any can affect what is confronting you. Lots of the tools would be tried but maybe wouldn’t make any change. But gradually certain tools connected with what was faced and would produce a change. So I was sensing that certain types of behaviour, certain possibilities, certain physiological processes, were what came into play as this new creature was developing, this human being. So this was the background that I was seeing in these very powerful images. The background of possibilities. The background of sexual behaviour, of social behaviour. And these were the very foundations of what we now know as human identity or the human psyche. Those foundations are still there. They are still within us as the very fundamental levels of our personal awareness. Because it wasn’t simply a body that was being formed, it was a particular type of awareness, a particular type of consciousness.

Our present identity has arisen out of a strange mixture between animal behaviours, between the budding physiological and psychological changes occurring in this new creature. The sexual imagery suggested a huge range of possible behaviours were in some way basic to what was developing into human identity. Reflections of some of this we see in the myths, where we have half humans half animals. We have strange mating between creatures to bring forth particular types of awareness or ability. But gradually the whole sequence of experiences led to something that I then lived through.

I lived through an experience in which I had a brother. This brother was a very beautiful being. He was almost angelic, or at least had an awareness of the divine, a full sense of eternity and his place in it. And this brother, who trusted me implicitly, because that was his nature, I got to dress up as an animal, saying that we were going to take part in a carnival. And I sent him out through a door knowing that there were those waiting to kill him with arrows. And when he was out and shot I walked out and shot an arrow through his heart. Some of his blood spotted me on the breast. And this event is still there in humanity’s unconscious, because this was a story of humanity’s pain.

As this experience came to a close I understood that here again was a story that had been expressed in mythology. The story of Loki and Baldur, Cain and Abel, were about the same event. And understanding came to me slowly of what the story depicted. It was that our original developing identity held in it an awareness of survival drives to deal with the world, but also it still held a direct awareness of the sources of existence, the foundations of our own consciousness. The foundations existed in what we call eternity, and a sense of non-duality, an awareness of the origins of the universe and of life in it. I suppose we would say this is like a divine being, but we were that being. We held within us that divine awareness as well as awareness of the world. But a critical point was reached where the drive to survive killed out that divine awareness. The drive to survive, the motivation to kill or be killed, dominated. And as I understood it, we are the children of that event. We are the results of that change. Our present mind and form of identity is based upon those beginnings.

I also see the Jesus myth as an expression of the same killing of the beautiful being. And the death of that wonderful life saved us, allowed us to exist. We live with that blood on us.

But what I also sensing was that at the point of growth we are now in as a species, allows us to reclaim that part of us. We can bring about the resurrection of that divine being that is at our core. That being that is buried in the foundations of who we are.

I am my brother’s keeper!