The color blue is notable for having not been mentioned in ancient writings:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...is-actually-a-relatively-recent-hue-to-humans
Again, the Odyssey is noted as Homer describes things like the sky as being the color of 'Copper' or 'Iron' and the sea being 'Wine Like' all things we know today that would unlikely to be used to describe something we know as blue. This theory is controversial with some arguing that you can't wholly rely on these types of examples as language changes over time, mistranslation occurs, and analogy/metaphor has advanced in how we utilize it.
That's the one. I don't find it controversial at all, but then I'm not an active subscriber to the mainstream narrative on just about anything haha. But seriously, I don't see why it should be controversial at all given what we understand about perception; that it's not the physical apparatus but the mind which constructs the worldview we see. If it can flip the retinal image upside down, if it can see things which aren't real (hypnosis), then there may be an evolution or growth in the minds capability separate from the physical apparatus.
I'll check it out - interesting as one could speculate that the suppression of psychedelics is, and always has been, rooted in a desire to maintain control.
Ricard Bucke was sober when he experienced it, as I imagine many of the others listed in his book were (Francis Bacon, Goethe, Blake). And yes, I absolutely believe psychedelics have been kept illegal because of the potential they hold. Whether this was a conscious deliberation or not, is the question. I think there's a possibility that the decision was made intuitively,
through the elites, by culture itself.. digressing into another topic here, but I believe culture is an egregore and out of self-preservation it exerted pressure through them.
There has been some speculation that Janes' bicameral mind could be a way to consider the vastly different expressions of human experience when the Spanish met the Aztecs - perhaps the Spanish were encountering advanced bicameral humans whose relative dominance of surrounding areas along with geographic isolation from other advanced civilizations, prevented the evolution of consciousness in the same way, leading instead to a form of magical consciousness that facilitated profound cosmological understanding and the ability to commune with spirits in a way that had long been forgotten in other parts of the world. It's incredibly difficult to make heads or tails of any of this, but fascinating to contemplate nonetheless.
Given the history we know about the RC Church, and the examples of other cultures/tribal peoples (e.g. Australian aborigine) that display completely different ontological constructions of reality, which in themselves defy our own paradigm, I have no doubt in my mind that the history we're told about the Spanish conquests of the America's is a complete whitewash. To the point, I think they plain made up the stuff about human sacrifice and the barbarism, in order to absolve themselves from what they did.. which was eviscerate a parallel civilization, and possibly quite a benign one too.
It's possible they retained a magical state of consciousness, not 'descending into history' as McKenna calls it. It's also possible that, again, this thing isn't a linear progression. I think of the writings by Joseph Chilton Pearce, about transcendence actually being our natural state, and how it has a definite biological basis.. which gets blocked by the cultural process itself. I'm more inclined to the latter conclusion personally.
I think it was the conquest of the America's and the encounters with a vastly different style of human that really clued the RC Church into things, ultimately leading to Jesuit's like Teilhard de Chardin speculating on the future of human consciousness - I think he probably got his ideas from reading their private materials.
