29 percent said they believed in ghosts haunting houses (Gallup and Newport 1990, p. 5). In addition to believing in such things, a good number claim to actually have experienced them. The Gallup report stated that “1 in 4 Americans believe they have had a telepathic experience in which they communicated with another person without using the traditional five senses, 1 in 6 Americans have felt they have been in touch with someone who had already died, [and] 1 in 10 claim to have seen or been in the presence of a ghost” (Gallup and Newport 1990, p. 1). Belief in paranormal phenomena connected with spiritual cosmologies is not limited to the general population. According to one survey (Wagner and Monet (1979), 57 percent of American college professors expressed belief in extrasensory perception. Another survey found that 30 percent of the heads of the divisions of the American Association for the Advancement of Science also believed in extrasensory perception (McClenon
1982).
But in the midst of this sea of persons committed to spiritual cosmologies there have arisen connected islands of scientific elites who are strongly committed to the materialistic cosmologies. And they have spread over the planet a web of economic, political, cultural, and intellectual institutions, founded on their materialistic cosmologies, and this web has somehow managed to attain a certain dynamic force and power, relative to the international institutional expressions of spiritual cosmologies. In this book, I am principally addressing myself to those people who have become entangled in this network of dominant materialistic institutions but who feel suffocated by it and wish to restore the planetary dominance of spiritual cosmologies. The first step must be a thorough critique of the assumptions underlying the materialistic cosmologies in their institutionalized manifestations, especially in educational institutions. To put it simply, students should begin to question the materialistic cosmologies imposed upon them by their teachers. And teachers can begin to question their administrative superiors, who in turn can question theirs. The representatives of institutionalized manifestations of materialistic cosmology should be confronted by advocates of spiritualist cosmologies in such a way that they begin to acknowledge them and negotiate with them. To some extent this is already happening.
In January 1999, I went to Capetown, South Africa, to present a paper on aspects of forbidden archeology at the World Archeological Congress, a major international conference. At one of the sessions I attended, a woman archeologist involved in major excavations at the Hittite site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey explained how the scientists in charge of the project, which is funded by such major multinational corporations as Shell, Glaxo-Wellcome, and Visa, were taking into account the alterna-
248 Human Devolution: a vedic alternative to Darwin’s theory
tive cosmologies of various parties interested in the site, including the New Age goddess worshipers. The cosmology of the modern goddess worshiper is a mystical one, quite different, in key respects, from that of a professional archeologist committed, as I assume most are, to the materialistic cosmology of modern science. But in this circumstance, the representatives of the materialistic cosmology found themselves compelled to negotiate with representatives of a spiritualistic cosmology.
The director of the Çatalhöyük site is archeologist Ian Hodder, of Cambridge University in England. While some members of the orthodox archeological establishment are striving to maintain their exclusive authority and control over the process of picturing the past for the rest of society, some few archeologists, such as Hodder, are starting to take notice of the evolving situation represented by personalities such as the goddess worshipers and this forbidden archeologist, with his roots in the ancient Vedic tradition of India. In a perceptive article in antiquity, Hodder (1997, p. 699) wrote: “Day by day it becomes more difficult to argue for a past controlled by the academy. The proliferation of special interests on the ‘fringe’ increasingly challenges, or spreads to, the dominant discourse itself.” The forbidden archeology phenomenon has done both. Over the past few years, I have certainly been working to challenge the “dominant discourse.” Indeed, through my presentations at mainstream archeological conferences, sometimes resulting in my papers appearing in otherwise orthodox professional academic publications, the challenge has in fact spread into the realm of the dominant discourse itself. Of course, this is not just true of me and my work, but of that of many others working in the fields of alternative history and archeology. Hodder (1997, p. 699) took notice of the alternative knowledge communities springing up on the web, acknowledging that “many are extremely well informed.” He then said that “it is no longer so easy to see who is ‘in’ the academy and who is ‘outside’” (1997, p. 700). Hodder was instrumental in involving New Age goddess worshipers and ecofeminists in the ongoing exploration and development of the Çatalhöyük site. Hopefully, things will continue to progress in this direction, with academy-trained archeologists and well-informed representatives of alternative wisdom traditions cooperating to produce new ways of understanding the past. Hodder (1997, p. 694) cited efforts by North American archeologists to “work together with native Americans and integrate the use of oral traditions in archeological interpretation.” The American archeologists involved in one such effort (Anyon et al. 1996, p. 15) said that it shows “scientific knowledge does not constitute a privileged view of the past . . . it is simply another way of knowing the past.” My own effort has focused on bringing the spiritual cosmology of ancient India into mainstream archeological discourse, thus contributing to our understanding of human origins.
Human Devolution and Cosmology
The human devolution concept can only be understood in the context of a spiritual cosmology, involving levels of matter, mind and spirit. In the first part of this chapter, I will review some of the expressions of spiritual cosmologies in the West, from the time of the Greeks and Romans to the time of Newton. In this way, I hope to provide any new spiritual cosmology that may rise to prominence in the West with a cultural pedigree, and also the heritage of a longstanding and substantial evidential foundation.
In the second part of this chapter, I will demonstrate that spiritual cosmologies, greatly resembling those that were once dominant in the West can be found in many other times and places in the world’s history. The demonstration will be based upon reports of traditional beliefs of non-Western peoples gathered over the past two centuries by social scientists and scholars of comparative religion. Such scientists and scholars have advanced various theories about the origin and function of spiritual cosmologies, differing greatly in their conclusions. It is not, however, my purpose to disentangle the history of their agreements and disagreements, but rather to point out that in the course of their presentations they bring to our attention a wealth of detailed observations confirming that the overwhelming majority of peoples and cultures on this planet have accepted, and still accept today, spiritual cosmologies.
My demonstration will take the form of soundings or test bores, spaced (or timed) widely and somewhat randomly. If we propose that there is an underground deposit of a certain kind of ore extended through a certain region, we may execute several widely spaced test drillings, and if all the test drillings over this particular region show the presence of that ore, then we may safely conclude our initial proposal is probably correct. Now to determine the exact boundaries of the ore deposit, horizontally and vertically, and the concentration and purity of the ore at different places, will take a much more intensive systematic mapping effort. But the initial test results will have justified that endeavor.