In the movie, Amistad(1997), John Quincy Adams (VIth President of United States) was actually in a fix to find a convincing argument to fight the case of African slaves before the US Supreme Court and worse, to explain the impossibility of it all to Cinque (Joseph Cinque, an African slave, member of the Mende tribe, fights the US for his freedom), when...
“I would call into the past and beg my ancestors to come and help me, for at this moment, I am the whole reason, they have existed at all!”
Cinque explains to Quincy Adams on how a member of the Mende Tribe, tries to solve a problem when he sees no solution at all. Quincy Adams looks at him in total admiration and later in the court room looks to his father’s statue John Adams (IInd President United States) while saying ‘we have been made to realize (by Cinque) that, WHAT WE ARE... is WHAT WE WERE…’
Perhaps, Cinque also explained to me, that day, the very essence of PRAYER. The essence of any ritual or rites, the essence behind all of mankind’s symbols, myths!
Till then it made no sense to me why we had these prayers, funny chantings, manthras to invoke our gods.
When there is nothing left to do, logically. When everything fails, scientifically, we all return to our faiths. Hope. We do things that seem illogical. We have seen manthras and kalams...the vibrant colors and everything... (especially to cure the mentally disturbed people)
I now wonder whether there is link to all this. I mean, there could even be an explanation to all that we do.
Of all the species, the human foetus happens to take the maximum time to come out. Nine whole months. All this time, it is said to quickly 'live' through the entire evolution of life itself. In fact, we are the aggregation of all that was before us. We have within us, all the knowledge our forefathers gathered. All their traits, wishes are hard wired into those DNA sequences.
Our forefathers are our gods. In all our prayers, in all our rituals and manthras, what we basically try to do is reach out to them! Not to Brahma, Jesus or Allah or Buddha. But to ourselves. Our older selves!
As Cinque tells, .....and they must come to my help because I am the sole reason why they survived to create me!
They cannot fail us. That’s the hope. That’s the final hope.
The psychiatrist C.S. Jung once wrote that we all live in a world of values derived actually from ancients’ myths. Old tribal impulses control our conscience even without ourselves knowing it. And, when some story or event has an unusual emotional bearing on us, it’s one of those ancient connections that get tapped.
Jung goes on to claim that each person shares a ‘collective unconscious’ which is a combination of instincts produced both culturally and biologically by previous generations. Myths (sacred stories) and ritual (sacred actions) shape these instincts and values.
Is this then the basis for all our manthras , prayers and kalams, where they try to reach into the past myths and cure us from our mental disturbances with powerful symbols. Did our forefathers realize that psychological ‘shocks’ such as these were effective, much before, our modern electric ‘shocks’ came into being?
Cinque was indeed conveying something very remarkable and profound...
“I would call into the past and beg my ancestors to come and help me, for at this moment, I am the whole reason, they have existed at all!”
Cinque explains to Quincy Adams on how a member of the Mende Tribe, tries to solve a problem when he sees no solution at all. Quincy Adams looks at him in total admiration and later in the court room looks to his father’s statue John Adams (IInd President United States) while saying ‘we have been made to realize (by Cinque) that, WHAT WE ARE... is WHAT WE WERE…’
Perhaps, Cinque also explained to me, that day, the very essence of PRAYER. The essence of any ritual or rites, the essence behind all of mankind’s symbols, myths!
Till then it made no sense to me why we had these prayers, funny chantings, manthras to invoke our gods.
When there is nothing left to do, logically. When everything fails, scientifically, we all return to our faiths. Hope. We do things that seem illogical. We have seen manthras and kalams...the vibrant colors and everything... (especially to cure the mentally disturbed people)
I now wonder whether there is link to all this. I mean, there could even be an explanation to all that we do.
Of all the species, the human foetus happens to take the maximum time to come out. Nine whole months. All this time, it is said to quickly 'live' through the entire evolution of life itself. In fact, we are the aggregation of all that was before us. We have within us, all the knowledge our forefathers gathered. All their traits, wishes are hard wired into those DNA sequences.
Our forefathers are our gods. In all our prayers, in all our rituals and manthras, what we basically try to do is reach out to them! Not to Brahma, Jesus or Allah or Buddha. But to ourselves. Our older selves!
As Cinque tells, .....and they must come to my help because I am the sole reason why they survived to create me!
They cannot fail us. That’s the hope. That’s the final hope.
The psychiatrist C.S. Jung once wrote that we all live in a world of values derived actually from ancients’ myths. Old tribal impulses control our conscience even without ourselves knowing it. And, when some story or event has an unusual emotional bearing on us, it’s one of those ancient connections that get tapped.
Jung goes on to claim that each person shares a ‘collective unconscious’ which is a combination of instincts produced both culturally and biologically by previous generations. Myths (sacred stories) and ritual (sacred actions) shape these instincts and values.
Is this then the basis for all our manthras , prayers and kalams, where they try to reach into the past myths and cure us from our mental disturbances with powerful symbols. Did our forefathers realize that psychological ‘shocks’ such as these were effective, much before, our modern electric ‘shocks’ came into being?
Cinque was indeed conveying something very remarkable and profound...
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