I think it’s fairly common knowledge that ancestors held reverently close relationships with their dead. This made me wonder why, and I think I thought of an answer that is fairly straightforward and sensical. I have heard before, ambiguously in my memory somewhere, that humans are the only species that honor their dead in such a ritualistic way. It led me to think: what is the difference between the human species and any other species? Consciousness. Thus I formed an internal association that intends to link consciousness to the reason for reverent, ritualistic honoring of the dead.

I watched a documentary on the Pagans. Like many ancient civilizations, the pagans had a close relationship with their dead. They built their tombs in exact replica of their living homes, only without the fire pit in the center of the room. Why would the pagans have created such a simulated environment?

Pagans are early people. They experienced early impressions of consciousness. Their consciousness found exposure to those around them, and likely little else. Thus, their internal thoughts would have been shaped by only those isolated interactions. No awareness of people outside their group for perhaps their whole lives. The scope of their conscious consideration and informed thinking, then, would exist only between this limited exposure between themselves and other Pagans. This is where I find it could get interesting. What happens when someone in the pack dies? Does the isolated projection of the one who died die in the thoughts of the ones still living, the ones they influenced? No. Those thoughts continue. And humans were likely much more telepathic and interconnected before the advancement and interconnection of modern civilization that likely led to a decrease in dependency. Yet for the Pagan, someone dies and their internal space likely still experiences them as living. And so they would interact and interface with it as if it were still alive, though the body laid in the tomb. I believe the Pagans and other ancient civilizations experienced projections.

Thus, I can reason they honored their dead in such a reverent way because it was in their self-interest to do so. Honoring the dead, knowing they live on in the internalized projection space even after death in some sort of direct interaction way, makes it more likely that those projections will be eternally nice and helpful if they’ve been done a kindness. If a pagan died and another pagan felt the deceased to still be alive and interacting in the internal conscious space, then the deceased would be much kinder with their sentiments if they were treated honorably; they may even exist in a state of gratitude. And achieving this kindness and gratitude likely existed as an objective. There was likely much more weight placed on the power of the individual to project in the afterlife rather than power on the individual’s ability to shape their own consciousness. There likely would have been an arrangement between the living that, upon death, they wanted to bless rather than haunt the internal spaces of the remaining pack.

So I believe pagans experienced internalized thought projections of individuals and attached voices to the projections that would continue after death. The active use of voice in the internal space makes it appear as if they are still alive, and thus this cultivates a self-interest in respect for the dead, as a respect for the dead ensures greater security for the sensitive internal world of the living. Without this respect, early humans could have experienced heightened anxiety as they tried to make sense of an internal world that felt active with the faces of those who had passed and yet those faces no longer exposed themselves in sensory reality. The process of making sense of this internal world leads to thoughts around the existence of other dimensions and why ancestors were much more infatuated with the spirit realm than humans are in the modern day. They had to be.

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