The Eternal Language of Truth
by Lorena Loo
by Lorena Loo
Synopsis of Theme of Talk:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way.
These are the words attributed to Jesus as recorded in the Gnostics "Gospel of Phillip." But this understanding long pre-dates Christ for it was through types and images (or symbolism) that the Mystery Schools taught knowledge of the metaphysical realm.
In this one hour talk, we will explore why it is that knowledge of the spiritual realm must ultimately come through the types and images of sacred symbolism, sacred geometry.
Transcript: (some portions edited to accommodate translation to written format)
Since the beginnings of humanity's existence on planet Earth, there has been one universal, consistent and persistent theme through the ages: the quest of the knowledge of human nature and the purpose of human existence.
Traditions developed to teach such knowledge and these fell under the umbrella category of what we call the Mysteries
In the ancient world, it was believed that the universe extended beyond the physical, that is beyond the ordinary sensory perceptions. This was the metaphysical or non material realm which was governed by natural laws. As the non physical realm influenced the physical, then if you understood the laws governing the non material realm, you would then be in harmony or consonance with the physical or material realm.
This was the purpose of the Mystery schools-to teach of this knowledge of the laws of the non physical and thus bring you into harmony with the physical realm. It was through symbolism, that most ancient of all sciences, that the Mystery schools taught. Symbolism served a twofold purpose: it both communicated the principles they were teaching as well as codified them. Now by symbolism, I mean visual symbols but also ritual and mythology as well. The visual symbols were principal and primary in their teachings but the mythology and ritual were a necessary part as well.
In terms of modern literate society, we look at this methodology as primitive and backward. Well they didn't have the methodology and machinery of modern science to tell them what the truth was; they weren't intelligent and sophisticated enough to develop a writing system so they resorted to pictographs.
The truth is quite the contrary. The ancients were not primitive and backward, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the only way to teach the truth was through symbolism and the reason why-I believe and I believe the ancients knew this-is the way our brains are constructed and function.
So what we're going to do now is explore our brains. There are two components to this: horizontal and vertical. We're starting with the horizontal. By horizontal, I mean our left and right brain, the separate cerebral hemispheres of our brain. There was a time in our evolution, certainly prior to the Cro-Magnons, that both hemispheres of our brain processed information essentially the same way. But sometime during the Cro-Magnon period, when we acquired speech, the brain had to re-wire itself to accommodate this newfound function of language. The result was what is called hemispheric lateralization which is a fancy way of saying the two brain hemispheres went their separate ways in terms of how they function. A kind of divorce, you might say.
Now we're going to do a little experiment. I want you to close your eyes. Take a few deep, relaxing breaths and then focus on the left side of your body. Sense the left side of your body, get a feel of its strengths and weaknesses. After you've done that, I want you to focus on your right side. Sense the right side of your body, get a feel of its strengths and weaknesses. Now that you've explored both sides of your bodies, answer these questions:
Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way.
These are the words attributed to Jesus as recorded in the Gnostics "Gospel of Phillip." But this understanding long pre-dates Christ for it was through types and images (or symbolism) that the Mystery Schools taught knowledge of the metaphysical realm.
In this one hour talk, we will explore why it is that knowledge of the spiritual realm must ultimately come through the types and images of sacred symbolism, sacred geometry.
Transcript: (some portions edited to accommodate translation to written format)
Since the beginnings of humanity's existence on planet Earth, there has been one universal, consistent and persistent theme through the ages: the quest of the knowledge of human nature and the purpose of human existence.
Traditions developed to teach such knowledge and these fell under the umbrella category of what we call the Mysteries
In the ancient world, it was believed that the universe extended beyond the physical, that is beyond the ordinary sensory perceptions. This was the metaphysical or non material realm which was governed by natural laws. As the non physical realm influenced the physical, then if you understood the laws governing the non material realm, you would then be in harmony or consonance with the physical or material realm.
This was the purpose of the Mystery schools-to teach of this knowledge of the laws of the non physical and thus bring you into harmony with the physical realm. It was through symbolism, that most ancient of all sciences, that the Mystery schools taught. Symbolism served a twofold purpose: it both communicated the principles they were teaching as well as codified them. Now by symbolism, I mean visual symbols but also ritual and mythology as well. The visual symbols were principal and primary in their teachings but the mythology and ritual were a necessary part as well.
In terms of modern literate society, we look at this methodology as primitive and backward. Well they didn't have the methodology and machinery of modern science to tell them what the truth was; they weren't intelligent and sophisticated enough to develop a writing system so they resorted to pictographs.
The truth is quite the contrary. The ancients were not primitive and backward, they knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the only way to teach the truth was through symbolism and the reason why-I believe and I believe the ancients knew this-is the way our brains are constructed and function.
So what we're going to do now is explore our brains. There are two components to this: horizontal and vertical. We're starting with the horizontal. By horizontal, I mean our left and right brain, the separate cerebral hemispheres of our brain. There was a time in our evolution, certainly prior to the Cro-Magnons, that both hemispheres of our brain processed information essentially the same way. But sometime during the Cro-Magnon period, when we acquired speech, the brain had to re-wire itself to accommodate this newfound function of language. The result was what is called hemispheric lateralization which is a fancy way of saying the two brain hemispheres went their separate ways in terms of how they function. A kind of divorce, you might say.
Now we're going to do a little experiment. I want you to close your eyes. Take a few deep, relaxing breaths and then focus on the left side of your body. Sense the left side of your body, get a feel of its strengths and weaknesses. After you've done that, I want you to focus on your right side. Sense the right side of your body, get a feel of its strengths and weaknesses. Now that you've explored both sides of your bodies, answer these questions:
Which side of your body is more feminine?
Which side is more masculine?
Which side do you consider the lighter side?
Which side the dark side?
Which side is more masculine?
Which side do you consider the lighter side?
Which side the dark side?
The great majority of people, especially if they are right-handed, feel that the right side of their body is more masculine and lighter whereas the left side is more feminine and dark, mysterious even
A psychologist named William Domhoff took a large sample of people and asked them to rate the concepts "left" and "right" on several dimensions. In his sample, he found that people regarded left as bad, dark, profane and feminine; right as the opposite, good, light, sacred, masculine.
These are very interesting results because each side of your body crosses over to the opposite side of the brain. The left side of your body is controlled primarily by your right cerebral hemisphere, the right side of your body the left cerebral hemisphere. There is a strong tendency then to disregard our right brain because it somehow has connotations of bad, dark, profane, and feminine.
A number of years ago, there was a type of experiment carried out in a supermarket. Two experimenters took four identical nylon stockings from left to right on a table and asked shoppers to indicate their preference. The majority picked the stocking on the far right, even though it was identical in all respects to the other three. The various reasons they gave for their choice was that it was the stocking of better texture, color, durability, smoothness or elasticity. No one gave the real reason which was simply it was the stocking on the right.
Most people have an enormous bias toward the right side of their body and hence their left brain. Advertisers are keenly aware of this and make use of it in their advertising. If you watch a commercial where an advertiser is comparing their brand to Brand X, you will see that the advertiser's product is always situated to your right, product X to your left. The right is good, light, sacred, Luke Skywalker. The left is bad, dark, profane, Darth Vader.
Below is a graphic of a handout I gave to people attending the talk. Take a look at it and see what constitutes left brain consciousness and right brain consciousness and what the left brain controls versus the right brain. Now this is a general but not hard-coded rule. For the great majority of people, especially if they are right-handed, this will hold.
A psychologist named William Domhoff took a large sample of people and asked them to rate the concepts "left" and "right" on several dimensions. In his sample, he found that people regarded left as bad, dark, profane and feminine; right as the opposite, good, light, sacred, masculine.
These are very interesting results because each side of your body crosses over to the opposite side of the brain. The left side of your body is controlled primarily by your right cerebral hemisphere, the right side of your body the left cerebral hemisphere. There is a strong tendency then to disregard our right brain because it somehow has connotations of bad, dark, profane, and feminine.
A number of years ago, there was a type of experiment carried out in a supermarket. Two experimenters took four identical nylon stockings from left to right on a table and asked shoppers to indicate their preference. The majority picked the stocking on the far right, even though it was identical in all respects to the other three. The various reasons they gave for their choice was that it was the stocking of better texture, color, durability, smoothness or elasticity. No one gave the real reason which was simply it was the stocking on the right.
Most people have an enormous bias toward the right side of their body and hence their left brain. Advertisers are keenly aware of this and make use of it in their advertising. If you watch a commercial where an advertiser is comparing their brand to Brand X, you will see that the advertiser's product is always situated to your right, product X to your left. The right is good, light, sacred, Luke Skywalker. The left is bad, dark, profane, Darth Vader.
Below is a graphic of a handout I gave to people attending the talk. Take a look at it and see what constitutes left brain consciousness and right brain consciousness and what the left brain controls versus the right brain. Now this is a general but not hard-coded rule. For the great majority of people, especially if they are right-handed, this will hold.
© Copyright Lorena Loo
In recent years, neuroscientists have seen which parts of the brain are active when we read with the use of fMRIs. Using people ranging in age from 6-22, they looked at brain activity when they learned to read and as they became more proficient at it. They found that we learn to read the same way we learn to speak, by sounds and one sound at a time. We first perceive the letters of abstract writing, then we put together the correct sounds (phonemes) that are associated with the letters or groups of letters and string groups of sounds as words. So we are actually converting abstract letters on the written page into sounds but the conversion is so rapid it seems that we are reading whole words.
Another thing they discovered is that as children learn to read, the left temporal lobe regions of the brain were used and they would switch off the visual parts of their right brain. As they grew older and became more proficient at reading, they suppressed the visual areas of the right hemisphere.
This has very profound implications because it indicates to me that as we become more literate, we suppress our right hemispheric abilities. When that is not used, we lose the ability to connect with our right brain. Reading forces us into a left hemispheric modality because we are assembling parts of a whole rather than dealing with the gestalt itself.
The word cat, c-a-t, neccesitates that we break it down and assemble the parts back into an abstract "whole" which is the word cat. That is left brain. The image of a cat, on the other hand, is a whole unto itself. That's the gestalt.
Now we going to briefly look at a culture where right brain consciousness is a way of life.
The Trobianders are a tribal people who inhabit the Trobriand Islands of Papua, New Guinea. They are typical of what we have labelled primitive cultures or societies and have been the subject of a number of studies by anthropologists.
The passage below is an example of how Trobianders describe their activity of planting a coconut. Take a minute to read the passage either quietly to yourself or aloud if you prefer.
Thou-approach-there coconut thou-bring-here-we-plant-coconut thou-go thou-plant our coconut. This-here-it-emerge sprout. We-together-push-away this we-push-away this-other coconut-husk-fiber together sprout it-sit together root.
Did you find that passage very awkward to read and/or understand? If you are right brained or think you are right brained and you found that passage awkward to read and understand, then you are more rooted in left brained consciousness than you think.
The Trobiander's description of planting a coconut sounds so awkward to us is because it totally lacks linearity. The Trobianders are a people that lack linearity in everything they do. They possess a totally present-centered awareness where every action exists only in the present and that is contrary to left brain thinking which is linear and temporal. To the Trobianders everything is in the eternal moment.
Let's look at another quick example. The word for an unripe yam in the Trobriand language is bwabawa and for an overripe yam it's yowana. They have two separate words for a yam in two separate states of being. In English, we have the noun yam and then proceed to add an adjective such as unripe, ripe or overripe to describe its state. But by so doing, we've created a timeline, a progression from under ripe yam to ripe yam to over ripe yam. That is time and that is a left brain thing. The Trobianders have no word for "to be," no word meaning "to become," no word for "history." Being is identical with the object. Timeless, non lineal, right brain.
Left hemsipheric consciousness then is separate and different from right hemispheric consciousness. Prior to the development of speech, our archaic predecessors communicated via gestures, facial expressions, tonal changes in their voice and melodic sounds or imitating the sounds of nature. Theirs was the world of communication by the visual-spatial and non verbal sounds which is our right hemspheric consciousness today.
Now there is a bundle of neuronal fibers called the corpus callosum which acts as a communications bridge between the two hemispheres of our brain so that they can "talk to one another" you might say, though not always very successfully. In the 1940s, there was a groundbreaking neurological procedure performed on patients with epilepsy. The intent was to stop the seizures they experienced altogether or at the very least, limit them to one cerebral hemisphere. To do that, the neurosurgeons severed the corpus callosum of these patients. There were, however, unexpected side effects. All of the patients reported that they sometimes found the right side of their body in conflict with their left.
One patient reported that as she was reaching into a drawer with her right hand to take out a pair of socks, her left hand suddenly slammed the drawer shut on her right hand. Another patient complained that his left hand kept unbuttoning and trying to pull off a shirt he had just put on. Still another patient reported that while he was grocery shopping, after he had placed a few items into his cart with his right hand, his left hand would pull the items out of the cart, place them back on the shelf and then replace them in the cart with other items altogether. Apparently his right brain had a totally different preference for food items than his left brain.
Other subsequent split brain patients have also experienced such conflicts between the right and left halves of their body. One woman reported that when she overslept, her left hand would slap her repeatedly until she woke up.
Another thing they discovered is that as children learn to read, the left temporal lobe regions of the brain were used and they would switch off the visual parts of their right brain. As they grew older and became more proficient at reading, they suppressed the visual areas of the right hemisphere.
This has very profound implications because it indicates to me that as we become more literate, we suppress our right hemispheric abilities. When that is not used, we lose the ability to connect with our right brain. Reading forces us into a left hemispheric modality because we are assembling parts of a whole rather than dealing with the gestalt itself.
The word cat, c-a-t, neccesitates that we break it down and assemble the parts back into an abstract "whole" which is the word cat. That is left brain. The image of a cat, on the other hand, is a whole unto itself. That's the gestalt.
Now we going to briefly look at a culture where right brain consciousness is a way of life.
The Trobianders are a tribal people who inhabit the Trobriand Islands of Papua, New Guinea. They are typical of what we have labelled primitive cultures or societies and have been the subject of a number of studies by anthropologists.
The passage below is an example of how Trobianders describe their activity of planting a coconut. Take a minute to read the passage either quietly to yourself or aloud if you prefer.
Thou-approach-there coconut thou-bring-here-we-plant-coconut thou-go thou-plant our coconut. This-here-it-emerge sprout. We-together-push-away this we-push-away this-other coconut-husk-fiber together sprout it-sit together root.
Did you find that passage very awkward to read and/or understand? If you are right brained or think you are right brained and you found that passage awkward to read and understand, then you are more rooted in left brained consciousness than you think.
The Trobiander's description of planting a coconut sounds so awkward to us is because it totally lacks linearity. The Trobianders are a people that lack linearity in everything they do. They possess a totally present-centered awareness where every action exists only in the present and that is contrary to left brain thinking which is linear and temporal. To the Trobianders everything is in the eternal moment.
Let's look at another quick example. The word for an unripe yam in the Trobriand language is bwabawa and for an overripe yam it's yowana. They have two separate words for a yam in two separate states of being. In English, we have the noun yam and then proceed to add an adjective such as unripe, ripe or overripe to describe its state. But by so doing, we've created a timeline, a progression from under ripe yam to ripe yam to over ripe yam. That is time and that is a left brain thing. The Trobianders have no word for "to be," no word meaning "to become," no word for "history." Being is identical with the object. Timeless, non lineal, right brain.
Left hemsipheric consciousness then is separate and different from right hemispheric consciousness. Prior to the development of speech, our archaic predecessors communicated via gestures, facial expressions, tonal changes in their voice and melodic sounds or imitating the sounds of nature. Theirs was the world of communication by the visual-spatial and non verbal sounds which is our right hemspheric consciousness today.
Now there is a bundle of neuronal fibers called the corpus callosum which acts as a communications bridge between the two hemispheres of our brain so that they can "talk to one another" you might say, though not always very successfully. In the 1940s, there was a groundbreaking neurological procedure performed on patients with epilepsy. The intent was to stop the seizures they experienced altogether or at the very least, limit them to one cerebral hemisphere. To do that, the neurosurgeons severed the corpus callosum of these patients. There were, however, unexpected side effects. All of the patients reported that they sometimes found the right side of their body in conflict with their left.
One patient reported that as she was reaching into a drawer with her right hand to take out a pair of socks, her left hand suddenly slammed the drawer shut on her right hand. Another patient complained that his left hand kept unbuttoning and trying to pull off a shirt he had just put on. Still another patient reported that while he was grocery shopping, after he had placed a few items into his cart with his right hand, his left hand would pull the items out of the cart, place them back on the shelf and then replace them in the cart with other items altogether. Apparently his right brain had a totally different preference for food items than his left brain.
Other subsequent split brain patients have also experienced such conflicts between the right and left halves of their body. One woman reported that when she overslept, her left hand would slap her repeatedly until she woke up.
