"Humankind is about to enter the floral stage of its evolutionary development. On the mythological level, which is to say, on the psychic/symbolic level (no less real than the physical level), this event is signaled by the death of Pan. Pan, of course, represents animal consciousness. Pan embodies mammalian consciousness, although there are aspects of reptilian consciousness in his personality, as well. Reptilian consciousness did not disappear when our brains entered their mammalian stage. Mammalian consciousness was simply laid over the top of reptilian consciousness, and in many unenlightened—underevolved, underdeveloped—individuals, the mammalian layer was thin and porous, and much reptile energy has continued to seep through. When our remote ancestors crawled out of the sea, they no doubt had the minds of fish.
Characteristics of mammal consciousness are warmth, generosity, loyalty, love (romantic, platonic, and familial), joy, grief, humor, pride, competition, intellectual curiosity, and appreciation of art and music. Inlate mammalian times, we evolved a third brain...whose principal part was the neocortex, a dense rind of nerve fibers about an eighth of an inch thick that was simply molded over top of the existing mammal brain. Brain researchers are puzzled by the neocortex. What is its function? Why did it develop in the first place?
Moreover, neuromelanin absorbs light and has the capacity to convert light into other forms of energy. So Ely was correct. The neocortex is light-sensitive and can, itself, be lit up by higher forms of mental activity, such as meditation or chanting. The ancients were not being metaphoric when they referred to "illumination."
With the emergence of the neocortex, the floral properties of the brain, which had, for millions of years, been biding their time, waiting their turn, began to make their move— the gradual move toward a dominant floral consciousness. When life was a constant struggle between predators, a minute-by-minute battle for survival, reptile consciousness was necessary. When there were seas to be sailed, wild continents to be explored, harsh territory to be settled, agriculture to be mastered, mine shafts to be sunk, civilization to be founded, mammal consciousness was necessary. In its social and familial aspects, it is still necessary, but no longer must it dominate.
We need a more relaxed, contemplative, gentle, flexible kind of person, for only he or she can survive (and expedite) this very new system that is upon us. Only he or she can participate in the next evolutionary phase. It has definite spiritual overtones, this floral phase of consciousness. The most intense spiritual experiences all seem to involve the suspension of time. It is the feeling of being outside of time, of being timeless, that is the source of ecstasy in meditation, chanting, hypnosis, and psychedelic drug experiences.
Although it is briefer and less lucid, a timeless, egoless state (the ego exists in time, not space) is achieved in sexual orgasm, which is precisely why orgasm feels so good. Even drunks, in their crude, inadequate way, are searching for the timeless time. Alcoholism is an imperfect spiritual longing.
In a hundred different ways, we have mastered the art of space. We know a great deal about space. Yet we know pitifully little about time. It seems that only in the mystic state do we master it. The "smell brain"—the memory area of the brain activated by the olfactory nerve—and the "light brain"—the neocortex—are the keys to the mystic state. With immediacy and intensity, smell activates memory, allowing our minds to travel freely in time. The most profound mystical states are ones in which normal mental activity seems suspended in light. In mystic illumination, as at the speed of light, time ceases to exist. With an increased floral consciousness, humans will begin to make full use of their "light brain" and to make more refined and sophisticated use of their "smell brain."
We live now in an information technology. Flowers have always lived in an information technology. Flowers gather information all day. At night, they process it. For one thing, information gathered from daily newspapers, soap operas, sales conferences, and coffee Hatches is inferior to information gathered from sunlight. (Since all matter is condensed light, light is the source, the cause of life. Therefore, light is divine. The flowers have a direct line to God.
Our own nocturnal processing is part-time work. The information our conscious minds receive during waking hours is processed by our unconscious during so-called "deep sleep." We are in deep sleep only two or three hours a night. For the rest of our sleeping session, the unconscious mind is off duty. It gets bored. It craves recreation. So it plays with the material at hand. In a sense, it plays with itself. It scrambles memories, juggles images, rearranges data, invents scary or titillating stories. This is what we call "dreaming." Some people believe that we process information during dreams. Quite the contrary. A dream is the mind having fun when there is no processing to keep it busy. In the future, when we become more efficient at gathering quality information and when floral consciousness becomes dominant, we will probably sleep longerhours and dream hardly at all.
Plants collect odors as well as emit them. The rose may be in an olfactory relationship with the lilac. Another possibility is that between the trees a kind of telepathy is involved. There is also the possibility that all of what we call mental telepathy is olfactory. We don't read another's thoughts, we smell them. We know that schizophrenics can smell antagonism, distrust, desire, etc., on the part of their doctors, visitors, or fellow patients, no matter how well it might be visually or vocally concealed. The olfactory nerve may be small compared to a rabbit's, but it's our largest cranial receptor, nevertheless. Who can guess what "invisible" odors it might detect? As floral consciousness matures, telepathy will no doubt become a common medium of communication.
With reptile consciousness, we had hostile confrontation.
With mammal consciousness, we had civilized debate.
With floral consciousness, we'll have empathetic telepathy.
A floral consciousness and a data-based, soft technology are ideally suited for one another. A floral consciousness and a pacifist internationalism are ideally suited for one another. A floral consciousness and an easy, colorful sensuality are ideally suited for one another. (Flowers are more openly sexual than animals. The Tantric concept of converting sensual energy to spiritual energy is a floral ploy.) A floral consciousness and an extraterrestrial exploration program are ideally suited for one another. (Earthlings are blown aloft in silver pods to seed distant planets.) A floral consciousness and an immortalist society are ideally suited suitedfor one another. (Flowers have superior powers of renewal, and thelogevity of trees is celebrated. The floral brain is the organ of eternity.)
Lest we fancy that we shall endlesly and effortlessly be as the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, let us bear in mind that reptilian and mammalian energies are still very much with us. Externally and internally.
Obviously, there are powerful reptilian forces in the Pentagon and the Kremlin; and in the pulpits of churches, mosques, and synagogues, wheredeathist dogmas of judgment, punishment, self-denial, martyrdom, and afterlife supremacy are preached. But there are also reptilian forces within each individual. Myth is neither fiction nor history. Myths are acted out in our own psyches, and they are repetitive and ongoing. Beowulf, Siegfried, and the other dragon slayers are aspects of our own unconscious minds.
At the birth of Christ, the cry resounded through the ancient world, "Great Pan is dead." The animal mind was about to be subdued. Christ's mission was to prepare the way for floral consciousness. In the East, Buddha performs an identical function. It should be emphasized that neither significance of their heroics should be apparent. We dispatched them with their symbolic swords and lances to slay reptile consciousness. The reptile brain is the dragon within us. When, in evolutionary process, it became time to subdue mammalian consciousness, a less violent tactic was called for. Instead of Beowulf with his sword and bow, we manifested Jesus Christ with his message and example. Jesus Christ, whose commandment "Love thy enemy" has proven to be too strong a floral medicine for reptilian types to swallow; Jesus Christ, who continues to point out to job-obsessed mammalians that the lilies of the field have never punched time clocks.)
At the birth of Christ, the cry resounded through the ancient world, "Great Pan is dead." The animal mind was about to be subdued. Christ's mission was to prepare the way for floral consciousness. In the East, Buddha performs an identical function. It should be emphasized that neither Christ nor Buddha harbored the slightest antipathy toward Pan. They were merely fulfilling their mytho-evolutionary roles.
Christ and Buddha came into our psyches not to deliver us from evil but to deliver us from mammal consciousness. The good versus evil plot has always been bogus. The drama unfolding in the universe—in our psyches—is not good against evil but new against old, or, more precisely, destined against obsolete.
Just as the grand old dragon of our reptilian past had to be pierced by the hero's sword to make way for Pan and his randy minions, so Pan himself has had to be rendered weak and ineffectual, has had to be shoved into the background of our ongoing psychic progression. Because Pan is closer to our hearts and our genitals, we shall miss him more than we shall miss the dragon. We shall miss his pipes that drew us, trembling, into the dance of lust and confusion. We shall miss his pranksterish overturning of decorum; the way he caused the blood to heat, the cows to bawl, and the wine to flow. Most of all, perhaps, we shall miss the way he mocked us, with his leer and laughter, when we took our blaze of mammal intellect too seriously. But the old playfellow has to go. We've known for two thousand years that Pan must go. There is little place for Pan's great stink amidst the perfumed illumination of the flowers.
When Western artists wished to demonstrate that a person was holy, they painted a ring of light around the divine one's head. Eastern artists painted a more diffused aura. The message was the same. The aura or the halo signified that the light was on in the subject's brain. The neocortex was fully operative.
Maybe, as Dr. Dannyboy has postulated, all these things, including disease and our relationship with time, are merely bad habits. If so, an ultimate victory is possible. For individuals, if not for the mass. And maybe evolution—playful, adventurous, unpredictable, infuriatingly slow (by our standards of time) evolution—will rescue us eventually, according to a master plan.
To physically overcome death—is that not the goal?—we must think unthinkable thoughts and ask unanswerable questions. Yet we must not lose ourselves in abstract vapors of philosophy. Death has his concrete allies, we must enlist ours. Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.
Thus, thou must vow upon this day that shouldst thou be living still when these events transpire, that thou wiltst battle them and refuseth prosperity to any immortalist thrust that doth not rise from man's soul and heart as well as his mind. Do promise me now."
Alas, because they fight with reason only, making no advance in the area of soul and heart, true immortality wiltst be denied them.
If I am truly immortal, I am my own grandchild, my own descendant, my own dynasty."
