On Vision and Being Human: Exploring the Menstrual, Neurological and Symbolic Origins of Religious Experience

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Lulu.com, 2015 - Religion - 342 pages
Visionary and religious experiences are ubiquitous among human beings, but why do we experience them as coming from a hidden reality beyond the senses? Why should we believe in the existence of deities despite the mundane evidence of our own eyes? Why do we as intelligent primates ascribe any importance to these 'imaginary' realities at all? This creative and speculative thesis seeks to answer these questions in a new way, gazing into the content of visions themselves and exploring the various inner realities that gave rise to these transformative and meaningful aspects of our humanity. Focusing upon symbolic cognition as a fundamental organising principle of human experience, a diverse series of musings upon the nature of reality, consciousness, and our evolutionary origins seeks to transcend our modern artificial boundaries to arrive at a holistic, and delightfully playful, human image for the twenty-first century. An original visionary thesis illustrated with 30 beautiful drawings.
 

Contents

Acknowledgements
8
1
17
3
25
5
35
Emergent Objectivity and the Noumenon
45
8
51
11
73
12
83
Other ThreeTier Visionary Systems
197
Object Permanence and the Noumenon
199
On Menstrual Synchrony
200
Handaxes and PreSymbolic Cultural Behaviours
202
On Menstrual Migraines
206
On Phylogenetic and Ontogenic Archetypes
208
On Music
210
The Goddess Kamakhya and the Queen of the Night
213

14
95
15
107
17
117
In The Darkness I Can See My Own Brain
125
19
139
20
149
22
159
24
173
25
183
Definitions of Symbols and Symbolism
189
On Pareidolia
195
Defining the Art Artefact in a Middle Palaeolithic Context
215
On the Coopting of Menstruation and Male Power
216
Ainu Relationships Between Humans and Gods
220
Forward into the Prehistoric
221
Timeline of Relevant Features of Human Evolution
224
Notes References
226
List of Illustrations and Commentary
294
Bibliography
303
Index
326
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