History as Necrophilia

The distinction between prehistoric man and his historic successors is that prehistoric man escaped from nature by turning within the tribe or group that he belongs to, while man from the historic era uses his individual ego to isolate him from nature. Prehistoric man did not need an historical identity as a fixed definition that made him separate and special because prehistoric man had a special place within a tribe that, in turn, had a special place in the universe. His life might ebb and flow, but the specialness of his group and his contribution to that specialness survived by promising him an island of immortality in the swirling sea of flowing time.

The man without a nation, clan, family, tribe, or individual ego is isolated from everything but nature, and, faced with the terror of the all-destroying nature, must either join one of these units in their war on the universe or he must have the courage to accept his role in the flow, finding his immortality in being part of the flow itself. For all but the few, perhaps an occasional Lao Tzu, Buddha, or Jesus, men have needed to belong and acquire a history.

While nature, with its dynamic flow, is immortal, the man of the prehistoric tribe or the historic memory creates only mortal death.

1. Separation Anxiety

The sense of being separate from his world, with an individual identity that is the product of a life history, pervades man’s existence, leading to his propensity for violence and his constant state of anxiety. Man’s history is his neurosis, and it is only by his transcending his sense of himself as a continuous object in time that man can become reunited with his world.

Anxiety is the experience of “becoming” while ecstasy is the experience of “being.” The struggle to “become” something different than what you are seduces you into a sense of self-loathing and regret, leading you to feel guilty for what you “have been” in the past and afraid of what you might “become” in the future. The sacredness of what you are “being” is lost in the illusion that you should “become” something else.

To be integrally intelligent means to be without the self.

J. Krishnamurti

So egotism has as its root in the cardinal necessity by which each individual persists to be what he is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

2. Fear of the Unknown

Man is alienated from the universe by his unwillingness to accept the unknown. He craves for security and certainty in his life, but finds himself in a world that is inherently uncertain. If he accepts the great unknown that is his nature, man experiences “being” in the world, but if he turns his back on Nature, he assumes the burdens of conflict and anxiety as he struggles to “become” something in the world.

Western civilization’s relationship with Nature is that of alienation. Western man considers himself apart from Nature, a superimposition of something grand atop something that is mundane. He believes that civilization progresses while Nature remains quaintly “very natural.” Western civilization measures its members by the distance they have traveled from the “natural state.” He measures his wisdom by how much of the unknowable that he knows.

Western civilization, more than others, is dominated by the myth of guilt and redemption, and, like a carrot on a stick, the repressed and enslaved man of western civilization seeks redemption and scorns the temptations of freedom in order to obtain a reward in heavenly eternity. Man’s goal is a paradise that is apart and alienated from the unknowable Nature and is the product of the knowing mind.

The mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

J. Krishnamurti