I am prone to speculate that when we were very small, there was a companion intelligence linked with ours. And that as we entered the world of human communication, we rather precipitously lost contact with it. Yet it remains associated with us. And it was by its sacrifice that we entered the world of the humans, the world of language, of static monotonus identity. Of structured handles for experience, which we would confuse with experience. And these replaced that relationship. Yet I say it still exists, uniquely, in and as each of us.

I would not be surprised to discover that many of our stories about ‘god’ actually relate to this companion, and its loss to experience in our ancestors. Think about it. Our distant ancestors didn’t lose it as quickly as we do because they were not as profoundly representational. So many or nearly all adults still had preserved the relationship with the companion, and could relate to each other through this as well. As it began to fade, adults would gather together to explore or reflect on why it was leaving. It was leaving as representation’s hold on their minds expanded, just as it does in indigenous cultures. And as it left, more and more profoundly absent, these gatherings became like graveyards for the memory of the companion. They went from places of mutual recognition and experience to places of funerary celebration. All diversity was lost, unified stories emerged, and the companion became ‘the god who departed’.

Our minds may be peculiarly adapted to hear and respond to the companion’s signal. But the assets involved are co-opted in childhood, during our enlanguaging and enculturation. As a replacement, we have religions, which are the dead fetishes of a long-forgotten actual relationship. But again, I say this relationship is still active within us. It is simply buried beneath both the funerary artifacts and stories and the nature of our relationships with language and representation. It is possible to divest ourselves of the former and transform the latter in such a way as to restore the transport of contact with the companion; the twinlike nonhuman intelligence that accompanied us in early childhood.

In our representational cultures, we are largely exchanging our wings for a crutch. The one I am using here. Language. Those wings belong to a nonhuman intelligence. They do not fly in the dimension of space, but of knowledge and relation.

Get your wings.