DAVID LEWIS-WILLIAMS
THE MIND IN THE CAVE
Consciousness and the Origins of Art
Thames&Hudson 2004
pg 144
The San religion
At first, I found all this San ethnography impenetrable: it was not easy to see how I could relate it to the rock art images. Then there was a breakthrough. I realized that the ethnography - the San myths and their own explanations of specific images - did not explain the art in any direct sense. Even San people's comments on specific rock paintings, such as the invaluable ones that Orpen garnered, did not provide the simple answers for which rescarchers were hoping. On the contrary, both the ethnography and the art require explanation because both are permeated and structured by a set of metaphors and by San notions of the cosmos, which I discuss in detail shortly. Much of the painted and engraved imagery, even that which appears most realistic, is shot through with these metaphors and shows sigus of having been processed by the human mind as it shifted back and forth along the spectrum of consciousness. The same metaphors necessarily structured the explanations of images that San people provided. The San explained the images in their own terms, not in the language of anthropologists.
To illustrate how metaphor, mind, image, society and cosmos coalesce I describe the San cosmos and spiritual realms. I argue that, at this fundamental level, the working of the universal human nervous system is a principal informing agency. The relevance of this discussion to west European Upper Palaeolithic art will become increasingly apparent as I distinguish between experiences that derive from the human nervous system and those that are culturally contributed and are therefore specific to the San.
A cosmos in the brain
San religion is built around belief in a tiered universe. As do other shamanistic peoples throughout the world, the San believe in a realm above and another below the surface of the world on which they live.
Concepts of a tiered universe are, of course, not restricted to shamanistic religions. Heaven above, Hell below, and the level of anxious humanity in between appear in one form or another across the globe. Why should this be so? In the materiality of daily life there is, after all, no evidence whatsoever of hidden spiritual realms above and below.
The answer to this question is, I argue, to be found in a set of widely reported mental experiences. These reports come not only from laboratory experiments but also from an artremely broad range of shamanistic (and other) societies. The experiences fall into two categories: those that are taken to relate to an underworld, and those that are interpreted as relating to a realm in the sky above.
In discussing the underworld, we may group underground and underwater experiences. In Chapter 4, I described the sensation of passing through a vortex, or tunnel, as subjects move along the intensified spectrum and into Stage 3 of deeply altered consciousness. Tunnel experiences also occur in dreams and near-death experiences. Often there is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. As we saw, Siegel notes that the first iconic images appear on the sides of this enclosing vortex. Here, I suggest, is the reason why so many peoples around the world believe in passing underground to a subterranean realm. The notion has its origin in altered states of consciousness and then becomes part of socially transmitted culture so that even those who have never experienced the far end of the intensified trajectory accept the beliefs.
At the same time, subjects often experience sensations of inhibited breathing, distorted vision, sounds in the ears, difficulty in moving, weightlessness, and a sense of being in another world. These sensations are frequently interpreted as being underwater. Both underground and underwater travel are widely reported shamanistic experiences. It is important to remember that these experiences are the result of the way in which the human brain and nervous system are neurologically constructed and the ways in which they operate electro-chemically in altered states of consciousness. To this extent, the experiences are universal.
The precise ways in which they are rationalized are culturally situated and hence differ in some ways from society to society: some people speak of entering caves, others of following the roots of a tree, and still others of going down animal burrows, rather like Alice. Similarly, and depending to some extent on the environment in which people live, others speak of diving into the sea or deep pools.
Both underwater and underground experiences seem to be reflected in Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream'. Having taken opium as an anodyne, the poet fell into 'a profound sleep, at least of the external senses' during which time he experienced vivid imagery. Having been interrupted in the urgent task of writing down his recollections of his vision by the now-famous man from Porlock, he found he could later remember little 'with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images'. Out of these he fashioned'Kubla Khan', including the following lines from near the beginning of the poem:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
However they are interpreted, the fundamental sensations of being underground or underwater remain universal: they are the most obvious, most logical explanations for the effects created by the behaviour of the nervous system in altered states. An 'introcosm' is projected onto the material world to create a cosmology.
We can now turn to records of San beliefs to see, in their own words, how they respond to the sensations I have described.
Both underground and underwater experiences are evident in an account of a shamanistic journey that K"au Giraffe, a Ju/'hoan San shaman, gave Megan Biesele. He began by saying that his 'protector' (or 'animal helper') and Kaoxa (God) came and 'took'him: We travelled until we came to a wide body of water. .. Kaoxa made the waters climb, and I lay my body in the direction they were flowing. My feet were behind, and my head was in front...Then I entered the stream and began to move forward...My sides were pressed by pieces of metal. Metal things fastened to my sides. And in this way I travelled forward, my friend. ..And the spirits were singing. After reaching the spirit world, Kaoxa taught K"au how to dance and told him that his protector, the Giraffe, would give him potency. Then, suddenly, K"au finds himself once more underwater: But I was under water! I was gasping for breath, I called out, 'Don't kill me! Why are you killing me? My protector answered, 'If you cry out like that, I'm going to make you drink. Today I'm going to make you drink water. . .'The two of us struggled until we were tired. We danced and argued and I fought the water for a long, long time. . . Then, my friend, my protector spoke to me, saying that I would be able to cure. He said that I would stand up and trance. He told me that I would trance. And the trancing he was talLing about, my friend - I was already doing it... Then my protector told me that I would enter the earth. That I would travel far through the earth and then emerge at another place.
Here the underground and underwater experiences are mixed. But we can see how the San understand the universal experiences of altered states. Struggle, fear, the idea of death, gasping for breath, constricting pressure on the sides of the body, they are all present.
Another type of sensation also derives from the structure and functioning of the human nervous system. Subjects experience weightlessness and a sensation of rising up that is often associated with attenuation. They feel that they are looking down on their surroundings and that their limbs and bodies are exceedingly long. Throughout the world, these experiences are, understandably enough, rationalized as floating and flying. The most obvious explanation of these sensations is that the subject is flying through the air. Shamanistic flight is, of course, as widely reported as underground journeys.
As with the underground experience, travel through the sky also appears in K"au Giraffe's account. He spoke of ascending to the sky: When we emerged [from the ground], we began to climb the thread - it was the thread of the sky! Yes, my friend. Now up there in the sky, the people up there, the spirits, the dead people up there, they sang for me so I can dance.
Taken together the neurologically generated experiences of travelling underground and flying are, I argue, the origin of notions of a tiered cosmos. This is, I believe, the best explanation for so universally held beliefs that have no relation to the material experience of daily life. Such beliefs were not inferred from observations of the natural environment. Nor did they easily and swiftly diffuse from a single geographically located origin because they made excellent sense of the world in which people lived. Rather, they are part of the in-built experiences of the full spectrum of human consciousness.
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