the trees cannot record something that did not occur. They cannot
record events before they happen. This may seem obvious because I
used the word "record," but here I put the cart before the horse. We
(and the Uduk) call this a "recording" process precisely because these
constraints are imposed on the way trees acquire information. Where
do the constraints come from? The Uduk are not theologians, so very
few people there would waste much time on speculations of this sort.
It is clear however that you can have the constraints without having
an explicit theory of these constraints. Trees record what happened
and not what did not happen because they are, so to speak,
[70] “impressed" with what happens in the same way as our eyes and ears
cannot help but see and hear. Our intuitive concept of a mind sug-
gests that minds form such impressions asevents occur and because
they occur, and the same is intuitively assumed of ebony trees.
The mind-concept is such a rich source of inferences that we use it
spontaneously even in cases where some of its usual assumptions are
challenged. Consider for instance a fairly typical case of possession
among Mayotte islanders described by Michael Lambek. During a
trance the person "is absent, no one can say where," so that standard
communication with him or her is impossible. This violates a crucial
intuition that the mind is the "executive center" that plans and controls
the person's behavior. So the idea of someone who is around, is alive and
awake, yet "isn't there" in the sense of conscious experience is counter-
intuitive. Notice however that people do not stop here. They assume
not just that the possessed person's mind has "gone away" but also that
anothermind has "come in." A spirit has invaded the person and is now
in control. Now these spirits take on all the standard assumptions about
the mind. People talk with the invading spirit. They generally negotiate
its return to its usual base and the return of the dislodged mind to its
body. These negotiations are based on the kind of tacit projection of
psychological expectations described above in the case of ordinary
ghosts. The spirits are assumed to know certain facts, to have beliefs.
They are also described as wanting certain events to happen. These
complex hypotheses form a necessary background to all the conversa-
tions that take place in these counterintuitive circumstances. Mayotte
spirits come in different shapes and act in different ways. Some outra-
geous types always insist on drinking perfume and will not go away until
they have taken a swig or two from a bottle of cologne.^6
This very short tour of a few non-Western notions has taken us
through most of my list of unfamiliar religious concepts. Most but not
RELIGION EXPLAINED