The First Man

A Pioneer

Indic writings refer to the Athi Manitha or the original man in the Gita but make no further mention of it. But without much else to go on … I resorted to my own insights into the issue and came up with something I thought I'll share.

Well … okay … the point about the first man is to locate in us the point of contact, especially with the passions, that bears a special attachment to the qualities of man … social nature, likes companionship, looks up to father and mother and so forth. Okay … its not a person … what it appears to be is a store of past behavior that is linked to our breath, speech and our sense of being fair in our dealings with others.

Where did it come from? … well … that's my point. I figure its a construct of nature … possibly spanning 60,000 years since man learnt to play a musical instrument and was fond of being gentle, compassionate and perhaps was given to crying at the suffering he viewed in the world. I first met him in my adolescence and he has been with me since.

I'll have to say a few words about how I met him. I figure I was about 12 years of age and I remember this ball of light I appeared to be in. It used to come and go. Then suddenly one day I saw him … he was this brown skinned kid with dark eyes and hair … who had a highly developed intuitive sense of people and to some extent the natural world. Guess what? I had always thought it was someone else … but just lately in a mild recurrence of the ball of light experience, it occurred to me that what I had seen was the kid I was! The light had positioned my view outside the body to see the physical me.

I wish I had something to say about that … but I don't. I'm wondering though about the ball of light experience … how it relates to our minds and the tremendous sense of positive nature it brings to a person. It creates an assurance that everything is all right … that what I view outside my window has a purpose and it moves with a greater intelligence than what I'll ever have. It focuses my attention on the plainly ordinary and tells me that there is something special in that … if I cared to find out.

I figured I'll have to credit this concept of nature, kid, first human impulse or what else we might want to call it for turning my life around these many years. He has a simple honesty that is not only elegant but is wondrous to experience in a time when we don't know which way to turn. So I did some digging. The first recorded writings on man's self realized truths comes to us from about 1800 bc. Its called the Epic of Gilgamesh and records the observations of a gentleman called Gilgamesh who is reported to be King of Uruk.

I'm not sure if this is the individual we might refer to as the first man but certainly nature, human civilization and the events following the Egyptian empires till to-date appear to have positioned him in our experience as the representation of the first human. I had gone to sleep later and viewed/dreamt myself sitting in the food store in Ur, talking to a wizened gentleman about life's wisdom. When I awoke it occurred to me why I had left his contact behind on some occasions … he has this powerful intrinsic sense of imagination that affirms in pictures what I like to think is true.

I'm thinking these days maybe I was a little harsh is dealing with that. I used to call it a self fulfilling prophecy … but I'm back in contact with it … with some moderation that science and life's experiences has taught me. Who knows … we may learn to get along a bit now.