The area of the world where tanks are trudging through sand and bombs are exploding in the night sky is no ordinary location.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden, and from there it divided. It had four headstreams. The name of the first is the Pishon; the second, Gihon. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
Genesis 2:8-14
The area of the world where tanks are trudging through sand and bombs are exploding in the night sky is no ordinary location. Our human species was nurtured in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. As early as 9000 BC, humans were cultivating wild wheat and barley in ancient Mesopotamia (‘between the rivers’), and domesticating dogs and sheep, evolving from food hunters to food producers.
Historians have always referred to the place as the Cradle of Civilization. Seven thousand years ago, people were building homes and temples there, trading with others, irrigating fields, and experimenting with government. Five thousand years ago, they were developing the skills of writing and mathematics, and making art.
A momentous turning point in human evolution happened there: we became truly human. Biblical legend places the Garden of Eden at that spot, a location symbolizing the birth of our species as thinking, feeling, self-reflecting beings apart from the animal kingdom.
Images coming to us on our television screens are showing vast destruction in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. Thousands of warriors are converged there with their tanks, bombs, planes, and missiles. As early as the third week of the war, one of the world's great collections of antiquities was destroyed in the looting of Baghdad. The National Museum of Iraq was home to artifacts spanning seven millennia of civilization. Most of the museum's contents were stolen or destroyed over a two-day period.
In the midst of the conflict, our human history, and with it our spiritual history is being annihilated. Iraq is the home of Abraham, patriarch founder of three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
If what we are watching were a dream, instead of real, waking life events, how might we interpret these images? If we are destroying our own Cradle of Civilization, what could that mean?
Taking a long view, beyond the tangled morality of this war and its grisly statistics, beyond the politics and personalities of the moment, in symbolic terms, we seem to be returning to the cradle to eradicate it. We humans are destroying our nest. But why? Could we be doing it in order to mark the end of our species childhood and the beginning of our adulthood? We may be going up to the next step in human evolution –– and erasing all evidence of our childhood as a sign that we are ready to make the climb.
Joseph Dispenza is the author of God On Your Own: Finding a Spiritual Path Outside Religion. www.lifepathretreats.com.