25 Dec
The Human Memory of Oceanic Oneness . . .
With rare theological insight, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was among the first of modern thinkers to suggest that infancy, in a sense, represents a re-dramatization of the Fall from the Paradise story. At the infant’s earliest stage of psychological development, the infant experiences an “oceanic oneness.” As the baby nurses from its mother’s breast, it does not distinguish between itself and the world, but rather the world is an extension of itself, “in which the infantile ego is sufficient unto itself.”[1] The infant’s world, however, is only temporary. All parents—sooner or later—will impose restrictions, eventually severing the infant’s continuous pursuit of carefree indulgence and desire toward pleasure. As the child matures, s/he develops a sense of self-identity. Soon, the child realizes the impossibility of its former existence. For all practical purposes, paradise has been lost.
C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann add that the Paradise parable points to a preconscious stage of infancy in which the ego’s center of human consciousness has not yet been activated.[2] Neumann refers to the bond of mother and child as “existence in unitary reality” that embraces both mother and child. Neumann believes that at this stage of the child’s evolving consciousness, the image of the mother is not perceived as a separate and independent entity. The mother is seen as an extension of the child’s body and consciousness. There is no subject, object, ego, or self; the infant has no individual experience or perceptions, except for the one experience with the mother—one of total connectedness.[3]
While the child is within the womb, the unborn enjoys the bliss and serenity that may be compared to Paradise. According to Neumann, Adam was like an infant in the womb waiting to be psychologically born. Had he not “sinned,” Adam would never have experienced pain or pleasure as we know these experiences; one would be the same as the other. He would have existed in a neutral state, a condition without desire, and a state of being that would embrace the opposites. It could, indeed, be called a state of Paradise or what Joseph Campbell (1904–87) referred to as “bliss.” In speaking of the birth trauma as an archetype of transformation, Campbell states:
- In the imagery of mythology and religion this birth (or more often rebirth) theme is extremely prominent; in fact, every threshold passage—not only this from the darkness of the womb to the light of the sun, but also those from childhood to adult life and from the light of the world to whatever mystery of darkness may lie beyond the portal of death—is comparable to a birth and has been ritually represented, practically everywhere, through an imagery of re-entry into the womb.[4]
The “re-entry into the womb” is what may be identified as a psychological return to the function of intuition, whether it is immediately after birth or in any later experience of transformation. It is a way of returning to the mother while in the world, rather than in the womb, which was the original experience. This particular experience is one of the recurring themes of Genesis as is evident in the Akedah of Isaac, and the individuation of Jacob and Joseph. Each crisis they experience becomes a crucible for change and spiritual transformation.
- Mircea Eliade’s View of the Fall: The Emerging Contours of Profane Existence
Mircea Eliade also expands the Paradise story in a way that goes far beyond anything Freud, Jung, and Neumann propose. He asserts that it would be wrong to assume that “religious man” existed only in an infantile state of being; Adam was created with intelligence to manage and take care of the Garden. Archaic man believed he contributed to the maintenance of the cosmos. All his interactions with the inanimate, vegetative, and animal worlds made a cosmic difference. The secular man, who lives in a purely profane mode of existence, lives only for himself and society. “For him, the cosmos does not properly constitute a cosmos—that is, a living and articulated unity.”[5]
Eliade asserts that the Paradise story characterizes a reality in which Heaven and Earth exist in perfect harmony; it is a place where man could communicate with all of nature. Primordial man lived with a closeness that was full of spontaneity and freedom. He did not see himself as distinct from nature; within his being he embraced all the forces of nature of which he considered himself to be a part. However, as a result of the Fall, primordial man’s super-consciousness receded into a state of unconsciousness. Adam becomes more of a terrestrial being than a spiritual being—out of touch with his ultimate sense of reality, alienated from God, nature, his wife, and finally, himself.
Memory of the Fall exists in myths of all peoples around the world. Every civilization and culture has regarded the human condition as if it were under a spell of unnatural limitations and separateness. All religions try to correct this through dreams of Utopia and Messianism. Even secular humans yearn to reconnect with the world as their ancestors did. Retreats into the country and mountains away from the urban jungles reflect the deeply rooted yearning of moderns to rediscover the cosmic unity that pervades human existence, albeit unrealistic if not impossible to achieve. With respect to the modern secular consciousness, Eliade writes that a new type of “Fall” has occurred in our world—one where human beings are even more disconnected from the depths of their own beings than ever before:
- From the Christian point of view, it could also be said that nonreligion is equivalent to a new “Fall” of man—in other words, that nonreligious man has lost the capacity to live religion consciously, and hence to understand and assume it; but that, in his deepest being, he still retains a memory of it, as, after the “Fall,” his ancestor, the primordial man, retained intelligence enough to enable him to rediscover the traces of God that are still visible in the world. After the first “Fall,” the religious sense descended to the level of the “divided consciousness;” now, after the second, it has fallen even further, into the depths of the unconscious, it has been “forgotten.” [6]
