An Ecology of MInd (9 page)

"Anyone else with a different time period?" there were no replies so Michael moved on.

"The Catholic Church used the Papal Inquisition to defend itself against any beliefs that it considered dangerous or heretical. It did not matter if those
beliefs were accurate or not, only that they were seen as a threat. Threats included almost any scientific observations, theories or experimental results.
It also included religious beliefs different than those stated by official church doctrine and the Pope. The Papal Inquisition was officially launched in
the year 1227 AD."

"Can anyone tell me when the Inquisition officially ended? Anyone? Okay, hold up your hand if you think it officially ended in the 1700s." A number of
hands went up. "Good, hold up your hand if you think it officially ended in the 1800s." A slightly smaller number of hands went up.

"Would you find it surprising to discover that the Inquisition did not officially end until the year 1963?" There were rumblings of disbelief, and Michael
noticed some people looking a bit hostile as if he was attacking their Church.

"That is within the life times of many of your parents and definitely of your grandparents. The Inquisition went through periods where there was a lot of
activity such as you mentioned, tortures, burnings, etc., but it also had quieter periods. There were no burnings at the stake by the Catholic Church that
I am aware of in the 1960s but still, that was when the Inquisition officially ended."

"This suppression of thought or perceived threats is not unique to the Catholic Church. Some Muslim countries still have a form of religious police that
carry out the same function."

"No matter which religious group is doing it, it is still an active suppression and removal of differing thoughts. It does not have to be that way.
Numerous scientific researchers have religious beliefs of some sort, and don't deny or suppress experimental results because of them."

"Another religious historical fact that many people are not aware of, is that even before the Catholic Church had people breaking away to form the
Protestant religions, the Pope was not the sole head of Christianity. The Christian faith received official legal status in the Roman Empire by an edict
issued by Constantine the Great in the early fourth century. There developed an organization where there were five Patriarchs of the Christian faith. Their
locations were Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch and Constantinople. All of these locations except Rome, eventually fell to Muslim conquest and the only
patriarch to remain was the Pope."

"Not an earth-shattering change to your mental constructs I admit. Even so, it is an interesting fact you can add to your one on early Christianity to make
it correspond with reality a little better."

"For the next historical item about religion I want to look at the Muslim religion. Both, in the past and today there are many tensions between some
members of the Muslim religion and some of those of Christianity. Historically, there have been many wars between the members of the two religions. Many of
you will have very definite mental constructs in this area."

"The Muslim religion began in 622 A.D., and its followers went on to conquer much of the east. Can any non-Muslim in the class name some of the prophets of
the Muslim religion?" No hands went up. "Okay, can any non-Muslim name one prophet in the Muslim religion?" This time most of the hands in the class went
up.

"Yes, you miss in the front here."

"Muhammad?"

"Muhammad, yes correct, thank you. Can anyone else name a different one?" Again, no hands went up."

"Well, there are many prophets in the Muslim religion, but included among them are: Adam, Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon, Job, Moses and Jesus. Do any of
those sound familiar? If you are Christian, you may recognize them from the Old Testament and Jesus from the New Testament of the Christian religions. The
Muslim religion is from the same roots as the Jewish religion and the Christian religions. They are all classed by scholars as being one of the Abrahamic
religions because Abraham and his one god were at the root of all three."

"For Muslims, Jesus was a holy man, but only a prophet and not the son of God. For them, the final prophet was Muhammad"

"The Muslims splintered from Christianity in much the way that the Christians splintered from Judaism and the Protestants splintered from Catholicism, and
each has splintered further. Their roots, however, are the same."

"It seems odd that a concept of a single god would lead to so much disagreement among his believers. You'd think it would be a unifying factor for human
societies. It was even a god that was invisible and everywhere so that people couldn't argue about the appearance or location of god. That root religious
concept though, led to one of the largest splintering of human belief systems in the history of mankind. Later in the seminar you may understand better why
it splintered so much."

HE SAT UNDER A SLIGHT ROCK overhang next to a fire he had made. He had a couple of hides around his shoulders and two spears beside him within easy reach.
He was deep in thought. It was two days since his tribe was slaughtered. He had not traveled far. He had taken enough bits of assorted foods from the
ruined camp to feed him without having to hunt for the past two days, but that would not last much longer. Despite his original injuries and the emotional
trauma, he was feeling very good physically. Emotionally, he was not doing that well.

He kept seeing images in his mind of the dead bodies of his parents, of Sinjee, of the whole tribe. He tried to remember what they looked like in life, and
he could easily bring up happy images, but his mind kept shifting them into the dead, lifeless faces they had after being slaughtered by the No Chins.

In an effort to redirect his thoughts away from the grisly images he tried to think about the changes in him.

After thinking for a while, he took a flint knife and held up his arm, so he could see it near the fire. He took the knife and cut his forearm. It hurt,
and he could see the skin separate and his arm started to bleed. He thought "Heal" and again had a sense of his mind reaching out and contacting something,
and he watched his arm heal rapidly. He thought to himself as hard as he could "Don't cut." He then took the knife and tried to cut his arm again. He could
see the knife press the skin and tissue of his arm as if he were pressing a blunt stick against it, but it did not cut the tissue of his arm.

He stopped concentrating on not being cut and tried the knife again. It still did not cut his arm. He tried cutting his left arm. It did not cut either. He
sat and thought some more. He still did not know what had happened to him or how he was doing what he was doing, but it seemed he could do more than just
heal. He wished he had paid more attention to the stories of the Shaman. Maybe they would have shed some light on things. As it was, he was trying to
figure things out by trial and error, and he kept having a nagging feeling that he was not asking the correct questions or trying the right things, like it
was all just beyond his grasp. It was a clear cool fall night and when he looked up at the stars, it seemed like they were silently mocking him.

So far, he managed to stop his bleeding and heal himself. His last test or trial had made it so his knife did not cut him at all. He looked at the rock
next to him and thought of something else to try. Carefully, he tried hitting the rock with his fist, but not too hard. It hurt. He tried his knife on his
arm again, and it did not cut. The command he had thought had been "Don't cut" and that still seemed to be working.

He thought the command "don't damage" while he concentrated on his whole body. Next, he tried hitting the rock again, but not very hard. It did not hurt
this time, so he tried hitting it harder. He still felt no pain. He tried a swiping blow that would normally have scraped the skin off his knuckles and
hurt a lot, but there was no pain and his hand was undamaged.

The fire had burned down a bit so he added another couple of pieces of wood to it and leaned back to think more about these new developments. He was no
farther ahead on understanding how. There was still the sensation of reaching out to something when he did these things, but he had no idea of what or how.
He still had no idea of why either, and since he did not understand how or why, he did not have any idea of how long it would last.

He suddenly had another thought. He picked up a spear and stood up. He concentrated on the spear and thought as hard as he could, "Don't break." Next, he
swung the spear against the rock wall. The flint point shattered, and the end of the wooden handle broke off.

Well, he thought; it seemed he did have limits. Whatever he was doing only seemed to work on his body and not other objects. Too bad he ruined one of his
two spears finding that out. He sat back down and stared into the fire.

The last command he had concentrated on was "Don't damage." It worked for hitting the rock with his hand. He looked down for a bit then slowly started
moving one callused foot closer to the fire. He could feel the heat, but even when he got closer he did not feel pain from it. Steeling himself, he put his
whole foot into the flames. He felt no pain, and his foot did not blacken or turn red like he had feared it would. In fact, the heat of the fire had a nice
feeling. The feeling was not extreme, just .... comfortable.

It looked like his mental command "don't damage" affected more of his body than just his hand. With a sigh, he lay back down and got comfortable to try to
sleep. He would try some more tests in the morning to see if the changes stayed or not. What he kept thinking about as he lay there waiting for sleep, was
if he could not be damaged, the No Chins were going to be in a lot of trouble once he tracked them down.

How or why he could do these things he did not understand, but he knew one thing. Tomorrow he was going to war. The No Chins were going to pay for the
death of his family and tribe. He would kill them all.

DR. PEARSON DECIDED IT WAS TIME to change the topic slightly. "Alright everyone, let's move on to some stuff that might be a little less emotionally
charged."

"Most of us in this room are American citizens. America in many ways is a privileged society with high levels of education. It is a country which has sent
people into space on several occasions. Information can be disseminated through the internet, television, radio, newspapers, magazines and books to
virtually every member of American society. As well, education up to the end of high school is free to all citizens."

"Societies on the planet today literally range from the Stone Age to the Space Age, and American society is unarguably near the top of the range. Within
our society, you as students at Harvard are among the elite in terms of education."

"Despite what I said about American society, a survey showed that twenty-five percent of Americans still think the Sun revolves around the Earth? Discovery
that the Earth orbits the Sun is usually attributed to Copernicus in the 1500s. It was actually known at least as early as the ancient Greeks three
thousand years ago."

“Another survey also showed that thirty-seven percent of Americans could not locate the United States on a map of the World. One of the people surveyed
about where the United States was on a map, responded with "Why would I need to know that, I live here?"

"So, what's going on here? First, it was the sun, now basic geography seems to be lacking."

"There is publicly funded education to all citizens of this country. This is basic information that we all should have learned in school when we were
young." It seems that many people in this supposedly highly advanced and educated country, have very little understanding of the world around them."

“Now we have looked at the general American population but what about you? Rightly, or wrongly, I am assuming that you as students at Harvard and part of
the intellectual elite of the country do not fall into this category and have at least a basic understanding of world geography and your place in it.
Perhaps you don't."