Connecting all physical matter — channels through consciousness flows.

Man’s/woman’s identification with nature allowed him/her to utilize those inner channels. He/she could send his/her own consciousness swimming, so to speak, through many currents, in which other kinds of consciousness merged. The language of love is one basic language. Man/woman loved nature, identified with its many parts, and added to his/her own sense of being by joining into its power and identifying with its force.

It is not so much that “Man”/”Woman” personified the elements of nature as that he/she threw his or her personality into its elements and rode them, so to speak. Love incites the desire to know, and communicate with the beloved; so language began as man/woman tried to express his/her love for the natural world.

Initially language had nothing to do with words, and indeed verbal language emerged only when man or woman had lost a portion of his/her love, forgotten some of his or her identification with nature, so that he or she no longer understood its voice to be his/her also. In those early days man and woman possessed a gargantuan arena for the expression of his/her emotions. He or she did not symbolically rage with the storms, for example, but quite consciously identified with them to such a degree that he or she and his or her tribesman or tribeswoman merged with the wind and lightning, and became a part of the storm’ forces. They felt, and knew as well, that the storms would refresh the land, whatever their fury.

Because of such identification with nature, the death experience, as we understand it, was in no way considered an end. The mobility of consciousness was a fact of experience. The self was not considered to be stuck within the skin. The body was considered more or less like a friendly home or cave, kindly giving the self refuge but not confining it.

The language of love did not initially involve images, either. Images in the mind, as they are understood, emerged in their present form only when man or woman had, lost a portion of his or her love and identification, and forgotten how to identify with an image from its insides, and so began to view it from outside.

In a way the language of love followed molecular roots — a sort of biological alphabet, though “alphabet” is far too limiting a term.

Each natural element had its own key system that interlocked with others, forming channels through which consciousness could flow from one kind of life to another. Man and woman understood himself/herself to be a separate entity, but one that was connected to all of nature. The emotional reaches of his/her subjective life, then, lept far beyond what we think of as private experience. Each person participating fully in a storm, for example, still participated in his or her own individual way. Yet the grandeur of the emotions was allowed full sway, and the seasons of the earth and the world were jointly felt.

The language or the method of communication can best be described perhaps as direct cognition. Direct cognition is dependent upon a lover’s kind of identification, where what is known is known. At that stage no words or even images were needed. The wind outside and the breath were felt to be one and the same, so that the wind was the earth breathing out the breath that rose from the mouths of the living, spreading out through the earth’s body. Part of a man or woman went out with breath — therefore, man’s and woman’s consciousness could go wherever the wind traveled. A man or woman’s consciousness, traveling with the wind,became part of all places.

A person’s identity was private, in that man/her always knew who he/she was. He or her was so sure of his/her identity that he/she did not feel the need to protect it, so that he or her could expand his/her awareness in away now quite foreign to us.

Take the English sentence: “I observe the tree.” If the original language had words, the equivalent would be: “as a tree, I observe myself.”

Or: “Taking on my tree nature, I rest in my shade.” Or even: “From my man/woman nature, I rest in the shade of my tree nature.” A man/woman did not so much stand at the shore looking down at the water, as he/she immersed his/her consciousness within it. Man’s or woman’s initial curiosity did not involve seeing, feeling, or touching the object’s nature as much as it involved a joyful psychic exploration in which he or she plunged his or her consciousness, rather than, say, his or her foot into the stream — though he or she did both.

If that language I speak of had been verbal, man/woman never would have said: “The water flows through the valley.” Instead, the sentence would have read something like this: “Running over the rocks, my water self flows together with others in slippery union.” That translation is not the best, either. Man or woman did not designate his or her own as the only kind of consciousness by any means. He/she graciously thanked the tree the gave him or her shade, for example, and he/she understood that the tree retained its own identity even when it allowed his or her awareness to join with it.

In our terms, the use of language began as man and woman lost his/her kind of identification. I must stress, that the identification was not symbolic, but practical, daily expression. Nature spoke for man/woman and man/woman for nature.

In a manner of speaking, the noun and the verb were one. The noun did not disappear, but expressed itself as the verb.

In a kind of emotional magnification unknown to us, each person’s private emotions were given an expression and release through nature’s changes — a release that was understood, and taken for granted. In the most profound of terms, weather conditions and the emotions are still highly related. The inner conditions cause the exterior climatic changes, though of course it now seems to you that it is the other way around.

We are robbed, then, or we rob ourselves, of one of the most basic kinds of expression, since we can no longer identify ourselves with the forces of nature. Man and woman wanted to pursue a certain kind of consciousness, however. In our terms, over a period of time he/she pulled his/her awareness in, so to speak; he/she no longer identified as he/she did before, and began to view objects through the object of his own body. He or she no longer merged his or her awareness, so that he/she learned to look as a tree as one object, where before he/she would have joined with it, and perhaps viewed his/her own standing body from the tree’s vantage point. It was then the mental images became important in usual terms — for he or she had understood these before, but in a different way, from the inside out.

Now he and she began to draw and sketch, and to learn how to build images in the mind that were connected to real exterior objects in the presently accepted manner. Now he/she walked, not simply for pleasure, but to gain the information he or she wanted, to cross distances that before his/her consciousness had freely traveled. So he or she needed primitive maps and signs. Instead of using whole images he/she used partial ones, fragments of circles or lines, to represent natural objects.

He/she had always made sounds that communicate emotions, intent, and sheer exuberance. When he/she became involved with sketched or drawn images, he or she began to imitate their form with the shape of his/her lips. The “O” was perfect, and represents one of his or her initial, deliberate sounds of verbalized language.