Post-Glacial Ancient Indian Culture

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The Post-Glacial Ancient Indian Culture

Jennifer Gidley:

"The First Post-Glacial Cultural Period—Earth as Maya, Spirit as Home

The profound Vedas, the Bhagavad-Gita, that sublime song of human perfection, are onlythe echoes of that ancient divine wisdom. (Steiner, 1986a, p. 99)The first significant post-glacial cultural period that Steiner proposed was the Asiatic — earlier called Ancient Indian — cultural period (c. 7,200-5,000 BCE) (Steiner, 1971a, p. 51-53). He commented elsewhere that the evolutionary developments that occurred during this period affected all people inhabiting the planet. At this time—early Neolithic—most people were still nomadic, although some farming had commenced in the area known as the “fertile crescent, ”which we will visit in the next section. Steiner claimed that some of the ancient south Asian— particularly Indian—people of this early Neolithic period embodied a sublime spiritual wisdom.


Indology scholar, Asko Parpola (2005) presents a contemporary academic perspective on this view. The Indus Civilization came into being as the result of a long cultural evolution in theIndo-Iranian borderlands. From the first stage of development, about 7000–4300 BCE, some twenty relatively small Neolithic villages are known, practically all in highland valleys. (p. 29)


Key Features of the First Post-Glacial Cultural Period

Steiner pointed to several key features that characterize the development of the culture and consciousness of this period, particularly in India. Although Gebser and Wilber mention some of these features in passing—in relation to cultural practices in the early Indus civilization—neither of them have identified a specific Indian or Asian cultural period during the magic-mythic transition.

• Earth as Maya, Spirit as Home;

• Internalization of rhythms of nature through poetic speech;

• Development of spiritual practice or Yoga;

• Sanskrit as complex language development.


Earth as Maya, Spirit as Home

According to Steiner, the ancient Indians perceived the physical world around them to some extent as an illusion ( Maya), regarding the spiritual cosmos as their true home and resulting in a mood of “longing” in their souls (Steiner, 1910/1939, p.200). He claimed they regarded the earth as the lowest part of this spiritual cosmos, and that it was permeated through and through with Spirit (Steiner, 1950, p. 24). Steiner also claimed that as a result of the rising sea levels, they had migrated over time through Europe—led by their leader Manu —to settle in the Indian subcontinent. He also referred to cultural and spiritual leaders in this period as the Holy Rishis, the name used in ancient Indian sacred texts, such as The Ramayana and Mahabharata (Steiner,1986a, p. 99). Steiner pointed to the sacred texts, the Vedas and the Upanishads —at first handed down orally and later formalized in writing—as the echoing vestiges of this great wisdom. While Gebser (1949/1985) refers only briefly to some revelations of the Upanishads (p. 210), Wilber(1996c) draws quite strongly on some of the ancient Indian sacred texts, claiming—likeSteiner—that they were originated by the leading-edge of culture at the time (p. 255-257). Of the three, Gebser draws more strongly on the ancient wisdom of China. (For more information oncultural-aesthetic developments in China during this period, see Appendix C.)


Internalization of Rhythms of Nature Through Poetic Speech

Steiner pointed to a significant feature of the ancient Indian culture in relation to the development of rhythm. He claimed that they experienced a special relationship with the seasonal rhythms and cycles of nature through which they developed a sense of rhythm in their thoracic organs (heart and lungs) (Steiner, 1971a, p. 52). Steiner (1950) proposed that this was enhanced by the rhythmical repetition of chanting—the later echo of this being found in long epic poems, such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Vedas, which resounded from the rhythms of their hearts (p. 18). He claimed that this rhythmic repetition strengthened the vital body as discussed above and also facilitated a new internalized form of human memory (p. 18). (See the section on Rhythmic Memory in Appendix A). It is interesting to note that the lineage of much of Wilber’s spiritual nomenclature goes back to Vedanta Hinduism (Wilber, 1996c).


Complex Language Development

Steiner proposed an important relationship between the rhythmical processes that facilitated the internalization of memory, and language development (Steiner, 1984c). Linguistic research indicates that during the Neolithic period—around 5,000-7,000 BCE—language developments included, functional diversification of speech, more autonomous speech forms within communities, more precise and explicit forms, analogical correlations and the beginnings of grammar (Foster, 1999, p. 772; Kay, 1977). Clearly in order for language to develop such systemic components, significant memory capability needed to be in place. The language development of the ancient Indians—later classified as Sanskrit —is one of the major common roots of the Indo-European language (Foster,1999; Lock & Peters, 1999This is the most widespread group of languages—spoken by around half the world’s population. Sanskrit terminology is also used by several integral theorists and in other contemporary spiritual literature to characterize potential transpersonal human development.

It is possible that it contains nuanced meanings in relation to subtle body relationships and spiritual development that have not yet been adequately expressed in modern languages such as English.


Development of Spiritual Practice or Yoga

Steiner’s major emphasis with this cultural period is that humans began to experience the loss of spiritual connection, the separation from their Cosmic/spiritual homeland , and the longing to go back to Spirit. He claimed that the ancient Indians were the first to develop practices to assist in the spiritual re-integration of human beings (Steiner, 1986a). This lineage exists to this day in India and many yoga masters have also taken their teachings to other cultures. Steiner also noted that the Chinese culture of this time also contained great spiritual wisdom, which was even more ancient. The Chinese movement form of Tai Chi could also be regarded as having a similar purpose. However, its history was not purely integrative but martial—apparently originating from Indian yoga, but taking a turn towards boxing in the Chinese context.


Summary and Relevance for Today

In summary, before farming was fully established, before writing was developed, and before the building of city-states, these ancient humans had already developed a highly sophisticated schooling in spiritual practices. Yoga was the name of the training [they] had to undergo in order to penetrate through the illusion to the spirit and primal source of being. . . . The Indian turned away from everything external and looked for a higher life only in world-renouncing ascent to the Spirit. (Steiner, 1986a, p. 99-100)

Such perspectives—if researched at all in the Academy today—are generally sequestered away in faculties of religion or subbranches of ancient history. I propose that it is time to integrate such material with the biological and evolutionary psychology discourse. Like Steiner, Gebser and Wilber, Sri Aurobindo’s work is of great significance to a new evolutionary narrative that can assist us to evolve ourselves out of our cultural and planetary hiatus. Writing at the same time as Steiner (1914-1920), he made the following plea for the active development of “integral consciousness. ”An integral consciousness will become the basis of an entire harmonization of life through the total transformation, unification, integration of the being and the nature. (Aurobindo,2000, p. 755)This is the spiritual lineage that Steiner is referring to in this first post-glacial period. It continues on in the integral consciousness movement of our times, potentially providing a nourishing alternative cultural pre-history to the primitivism that still exists in many evolutionary biology narratives. I suggest that the revival of interest in Eastern spiritualities among Westerners in recent decades reflects a searching for some of this ancient spiritual wisdom that has been increasingly suppressed in the last three centuries by the narrowing of rationality and the excesses of materialism. While clearly my research poses more research questions than it answers, it does re-open the territory."

(https://www.academia.edu/197841/The_Evolution_of_Consciousness_as_a_Planetary_Imperative_An_Integration_of_Integral_Views)