January 2008
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10 Reads
Speech, the arts, and worship arrived as a burst of light. An interior sun rose, beginning with the first spoken word, when the human species made the leap from instinctive awareness to representative thought. This kind of meaning occurs when a speaker devises a verbal sign (or a gesture, picture, etc.) to communicate to a hearer (or viewer). The sign is not the reality it represents, nor is it the same as a sense experience of the object. The universe is full of potential meanings, but this particular kind exists only as the product of interactive, conscious communication. Meaning is the first fruit of the fully human mind. It is our signature creation. Like God’s word, speech creates a new universe. We began to tell stories, creating mental/verbal replicas of the outer world, re-creating and adding to its rhythms and shapes. What was outside is also inside. The order and complexity of the physical world can be abstracted, assimilated by the mind and reproduced, multiplying meaning in the minds of others. Dance, poetry, drawing, and rituals reiterate nature’s patterns, the order of the waves and flying birds. As a species, we are possessed by the creative rhythm, increasing the tempo, ad-libbing, turning up the volume. Consciousness is fertile; every poem, every idea, theory, and equation is a seed of the cosmos, reproducing itself in a flow of signification.