In the beginning, we are immersed in novelty, wonder, and natural intimacy… the raw and often chaotic momentum of direct experience. Slowly, as we become comfortable in our human vehicle, we emerge into relation with knowledge, language, and habits of mind oriented upon the structural conservation of specific categories, identities, etc.. Innocence is slowly lost to the relatively invasive powers of the habits of representational consciousness and human culture. Yet is it not ironic that the intelligences we acquire our intelligence with fade in the wake of the peculiar variety to which they are exposed, and before which they will too regularly fall? Where, indeed, do these primeval ways of learning –ways of learning- disappear to?

Perhaps because we are trained to think of life as having essentially two stages, for us, it usually does. Childhood and adulthood. But it is not really thus. Were it not inhibited, we would occasionally… spontaneously or possibly even intentionally… undergo ‘rebirth’, and this would involve not only being returned to wonder and dynamic identity, it would reforge all of our relationships with language, memory and thought, purging them, as it were, in the heady fire of an intelligence more ancient than representation.

And this process, would, in turn, catalyze a re-emergence from the second childhood into a vastly broader and more ancient array of cultures. New forms of knowledge, and new ways of liberating oneself from the bonds and dangers of language while optimizing its powers. Presumably, this process would repeat more than a few times in a lifetime, with each spiritual ‘bath’ at once deepening our sense of wisdom and connectedness, and also reforging our intellect in ever-more close likeness with clarity and understanding.

I do not want you to imagine that by rebirth I mean some ritual. I definitely do not mean that. Nor some therapeutic method. I mean something that is either authentically spiritual, or else bears the true hallmarks. What the actual nature of such experience is, is not here my real concern. Only that we understand and acknowledge this as one of the forms our development might ordinarily proceed along, given the proper opportunity, and, perhaps, encouragement.

Such a process is usually similarly harrowing and unique for each person. It cannot be described very well because it is happening in waking consciousness. It is at once profoundly spiritual, and deeply reflective of other peculiar idiosyncrasies of the person who undergoes it. It may happen unexpectedly, with or without spiritual interest or training. It may also happen with them. Or in spite of them.

One should be very cautious about telling an elaborate ‘religion story’ about such experience, in part because if the model one takes is false, it will alter the future birthing-iterations in its likeness — a catastrophic outcome. For this reason, the best model is an extremely flexible and general one, and a reasonably workable answer to what the experience actually is may best be kept simple: it is an anciently conserved expression of a human developmental rhythm, not entirely mystical and neither merely mechanical. It can be understood by comparison to the broader implementation of a paradigm we are familiar with from our common experience waking and dreaming.

We fall into an experience of dynamic identity and relation, which is somehow integral to forming memory and even, perhaps, comprehending identity. Dreaming. This catalyzes new ways of seeing and understanding, while awake, during which time we both elaborate the habitually enstructuring methods of representational awareness, and collect what will in many cases somehow come to fertilize the next phase of dreaming.

I believe we must try to retrieve such birthrights as these without creating cults around them. I am not sure precisely how to proceed, for my fellows seem so determined to either reject or worship that it is somewhat difficult to establish an authentic path among the confusing compulsions and goads so common to our times and minds.

If we keep our language simple and our descriptions loose, and if we attend closely what we learn and experience with a mind more open than categorical… we shall discover the way to recover our ways. Together.