Neanderthals and Their Brains: Spiritual beliefs aren’t new, and honestly they aren’t even close to being new. To really help us think about this, Jesus lived about 2,000 years ago but the earliest evidence we have of spiritual activity was found within Neanderthal burials dated to about 70,000-100,000 years ago. The fact that burials were taking place was significant enough, but to add to that, the dead were often buried with tools, flowers, and were even sometimes found with painted bodies. All of this possibly suggests that the people performing these burials thought that their loved ones were going somewhere after death where they might need these things, which points to signs of a belief in the afterlife. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that compared to the human ancestors who were around prior to Neanderthals, the Neanderthals had larger brains, specifically the cortex, which is responsible for higher thought processes. The evolutionary jump may have had a spiritual link.
Cro-Magnon and Their Brains: Cro-Magnon lived between about 40,000-10,000 years ago, and they also had large brains, about the size of modern day humans. These ancestors also seemed to have very interesting spiritual beliefs. We can see ancient cave paintings with pictures of animals killed during a hunt. It is believed that the cro-magnon thought that if they imagined a certain outcome taking place, like a fruitful hunt, then it would happen. These paintings may have aided them with the imagination process. We might think of this as fanciful, but science actually backs them up a bit here.
The Empty Space in an Atom: Atoms are what make up everything around us, and since everything we see, like our bodies for example, seem solid, we tend to think of atoms as having a little bulk to them. Apparently that is just flat out wrong. If you could see an atom, you’d find it to be 99.9999999999999% empty space, but even that isn’t quite right. The empty space is actually filled with energy frequencies that make an invisible but interconnected field of information. So everything in the universe, literally everything we can see and touch and everything that is more obscure, is pretty much just energy and information, not just solid stuff and empty space.
The Matter in an Atom: The matter in an atom isn’t any more normal than the “empty space.” Subatomic matter (subatomic means smaller than or existing within an atom) is really weird and it does not have any regard for the boundaries of space or time. You can’t even pinpoint where an electron is in an atom, you can only use a probability that it may or may not be “here” at any given point in time. Subatomic matter can literally just disappear and reappear elsewhere, without having to actually travel the distance in between. Scientists also discovered something truly bizarre, which is that if they were to observe subatomic particles, they could actually affect or change the behavior of that matter. The reason they can disappear and reappear is that they exist both as a particle and as pure possibility within the quantum field of energy. When an observer places their attention on these particles, that’s when it will physically appear. Once you look away, it disappears and turns right back into energy. Human attention can literally turn pure limitless energy into physical, observable matter. Now imagine, every atom in your body, and every atom in the world around you is doing this very thing. Every atom is switching back and forth from something tangible to pure energy. Things seem less cut in stone when you look at it that way. If that was confusing, don’t worry. I’m hoping the big picture sinks in, not necessarily the details.
Back To The Cave Paintings: When we look at quantum physics, we can see the genius in what the Cro-Magnon were doing with their cave paintings. They were imagining a reality for themselves from this unimaginably vast field of energy and pure possibilities. They were acting as the observers of their futures and they tried to observe the future successful hunt into reality using a process that many of us don’t even take seriously today.
The Fertility Gods: The Cro-Magnon also made the first fertility figurines, which most of us are at least mildly familiar with. They are little sculptures of obviously pregnant females, which were typically used to ensure fertility for both women and men. This same concept seems to be applicable here as well. With a visual representation in front of them, perhaps it was easier for women to envision themselves pregnant, thus observing a future possibility into reality, as well as for men to envision their partner pregnant, thus willing their own potency into reality. Today we tend to think of these sorts of things as voo-doo or just wishful thinking on the part of the worshiper, but perhaps they were onto something that we are just now beginning to appreciate.
Sources:
The Great Courses Series The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience Lecture 2
You Are The Placebo: Dr. Joe Dispenza
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