Myths To Live By Part 8

We are thus on well-known mythic ground -- strange and fluid though it may seem -- as we follow in imagination the course of this ten-day inward journey. And its culminating pa.s.sages too, though strange, will be curiously (in some secret way) familiar.

The voyager, as he tells, had a "particularly acute feeling" that the world he now was experiencing was established on three planes, with himself in the middle sphere, a plane of higher realizations above, and a sort of waiting-room plane beneath. Compare the cosmic image in the Bible, of G.o.d's heaven above, the earth beneath, and the waters beneath the earth. Or consider Dante's Divine Comedy, Divine Comedy, the temple towers of India and the Middle American Mayas, the ziggurats of old Sumer. Below are the h.e.l.ls of suffering; aloft, the Heaven of light; and between, the mountain of ascending souls in stages of spiritual progress. According to Jesse Watkins, most of us are on the lowest level, waiting the temple towers of India and the Middle American Mayas, the ziggurats of old Sumer. Below are the h.e.l.ls of suffering; aloft, the Heaven of light; and between, the mountain of ascending souls in stages of spiritual progress. According to Jesse Watkins, most of us are on the lowest level, waiting (en attendant G.o.dot, (en attendant G.o.dot, one might say), as in a general waiting room; not yet in the middle room of struggle and quest at which he himself had arrived. He had feelings of invisible G.o.ds above, about, and all around, who were in charge and running things; and in the highest place, the highest job, was the highest G.o.d of all. one might say), as in a general waiting room; not yet in the middle room of struggle and quest at which he himself had arrived. He had feelings of invisible G.o.ds above, about, and all around, who were in charge and running things; and in the highest place, the highest job, was the highest G.o.d of all.

Moreover, what made it all so terrible was the knowledge that ultimately everybody would have to a.s.sume that job at the top. All those around him in the madhouse, who, like himself, had died and were in the middle, purgatorial stage, were -- as he phrased it -- "sort of awakening." (The meaning of the word buddha, buddha, let us recall, is "the awakened one.") Those all around him in the madhouse were on their ways -- awakening -- to a.s.sume in their own time that top position, and the one now up there was G.o.d. let us recall, is "the awakened one.") Those all around him in the madhouse were on their ways -- awakening -- to a.s.sume in their own time that top position, and the one now up there was G.o.d. G.o.d was a madman. G.o.d was a madman. He was the one that was bearing it all: "this enormous load," as Watkins phrased it, "of having to be aware and governing and running things." "The journey is there and every single one of us," he reported, "has got to go through it, and you can't dodge it, and the purpose of everything and the whole of existence is to equip you to take another step, and another step, and another step, and so on. . ." He was the one that was bearing it all: "this enormous load," as Watkins phrased it, "of having to be aware and governing and running things." "The journey is there and every single one of us," he reported, "has got to go through it, and you can't dodge it, and the purpose of everything and the whole of existence is to equip you to take another step, and another step, and another step, and so on. . ."

Now is it not amazing to find such a set of Oriental themes set down in the log of the night-sea voyage of a British wartime naval officer, briefly mad? There is an early Buddhist fable of just such an end to a journey, preserved in a famous Hindu book of fables, the fable of "The Four Treasure-Seekers" in the Panchatantra. Panchatantra. It is an account of four Brahmins, friends, who, having lost their fortunes, determined to set forth together to acquire wealth, and in the Avanti country (which is where the Buddha once lived and taught) they encountered a magician named Terror-Joy. This impressive fellow, when they had described to him their plight and begged for a.s.sistance, gave to each a magic quill with instructions to go north to the northern slope of the Himalayas, and wherever a quill dropped, he a.s.sured them, the owner of that quill would find his treasure. It is an account of four Brahmins, friends, who, having lost their fortunes, determined to set forth together to acquire wealth, and in the Avanti country (which is where the Buddha once lived and taught) they encountered a magician named Terror-Joy. This impressive fellow, when they had described to him their plight and begged for a.s.sistance, gave to each a magic quill with instructions to go north to the northern slope of the Himalayas, and wherever a quill dropped, he a.s.sured them, the owner of that quill would find his treasure.

Now the leader's quill dropped first, and they found the soil in that place to be all copper. "Look!" said he. "Take all you want!" But the others chose to continue, and so the leader, alone, gathered his copper and turned back. Where the quill of the second fell there was silver and its bearer was the second to return. That of the next revealed gold. "Don't you see the point?" said the fourth member of the party. "First copper, then silver, then gold. Beyond there will surely be gems." But the other held to the gold, and the fourth went on.

And so, as we read in the Indian text:

So this other went on alone. His limbs were scorched by the rays of the summer sun and his thoughts were confused by thirst as he wandered to and fro over the trails in the land of the fairies. At last, on a whirling platform, he saw a man with blood dripping down his body; for a wheel was whirling on his head. Then he made haste and said: "Sir, why do you stand thus with a wheel whirling on your head? In any case, tell me if there is water anywhere. I am mad with thirst."

The moment the Brahmin said this, the wheel left the other's head and settled on his own. "My very dear sir," said he, "what is the meaning of this?" "In the very same way," replied the other, "it settled on my head." "But," said the Brahmin, "when will it go away? It hurts terribly." And the fellow said: "When someone who holds in his hand a magic quill, such as you had, arrives and speaks as you did, then it will settle on his head." "Well," said the Brahmin, "how long have you been here?" The other asked: "Who is king in the world at present?" And on hearing the answer, "King Vinabatsa," he said: "When Rama was king, I was poverty-stricken, procured a magic quill, and came here, just like you. And I saw another man with a wheel on his head and put a question to him. The moment I asked the question (just like you), the wheel left his head and settled on mine. But I cannot reckon the centuries."

Then the wheel-bearer asked: "How, pray, did you get food while standing thus?" "My dear sir," said the fellow, "the G.o.d of wealth, fearful lest his treasures be stolen, prepared this terror, so that no magician might come so far. And if any should succeed in coming, he was to be freed from hunger and thirst, preserved from decrepitude and death, and was merely to endure the torture. So now permit me to say farewell. You have set me free from a sizable misery. I am going home." And he went.7

The old fable as here retold is presented as a warning to all of the danger of excessive greed. However, in its earlier form it had been a Mahayana Buddhist legend of the path to Bodhisattvahood, the immediate asking of the question having there been the sign of the spiritual voyager's selfless perfection of compa.s.sion. One is reminded of the figure of the maimed king of the medieval Christian legend of the Grail, and of the question there to be asked by the arriving innocent Grail Knight, who, upon asking it, will have healed the king and himself achieved the kingly role. One thinks also of the head crowned with thorns of the crucified Christ; and of a number of other figures: Prometheus, pinned to a crag of Caucasus, with an eagle tearing at his liver; Loki likewise fixed to a crag, and with the fiery venom of a cosmic serpent dripping forever on his head; or indeed Satan, as Dante saw him, at the center of the earth, as its pivot, corresponding in this position to his prototype, the Greek Hades (Roman Pluto), lord of both the underworld and of wealth -- who is exactly (in that marvelous way that we so often find when comparing mythic forms) the Occidental counterpart of India's earth-G.o.d Kubera, the very lord of wealth and of the painful turning wheel referred to in this fable.

In the case of our schizophrenic visionary, however, the role of the mad, terribly suffering G.o.d at the summit of the universe was felt to be too much for him to a.s.sume. For who, indeed, would be able both to face and to accept to himself willingly the whole impact of an experience of what life truly is -- what the universe truly is -- in the whole of its terrible joy? That perhaps would be the ultimate test of the perfection of one's compa.s.sion: to be able to affirm this world, just as it is, without reservation, while bearing all its terrible joy with rapture in oneself, and thereby madly willing it to all beings! In any case, Jesse Watkins, in his madness, knew that he had had enough.

"At times it was so devastating," he said, in speaking of his whole adventure, "that I'd be afraid of entering it again. . . I was suddenly confronted with something so much greater than oneself, with so many more experiences, with so much awareness, so much that you couldn't take it. . . I experienced it for a moment or two, but it was like a sudden blast of light, wind or whatever you like to put it as, against you; so that you feel that you're too naked and alone to be able to withstand it."

One morning he decided to let them give him no more sedatives and to come back, somehow, to his senses. He sat up on the edge of his bed, tightly clenched together his hands, and began repeating his own name. He kept on repeating it, over and over, and all of a sudden -- just like that -- he realized that it was all over, and so it was. The experiences were finished, and he was sane.

And here, I think we can say, is our clue to the method of the adventure, if one is ever to return home. It is this: not not to identify one's to identify one's self self with with any any of the figures or powers experienced. The Indian yogi, striving for release, identifies himself with the Light and never returns. But no one with a will to the service of others and of life would permit himself such an escape. The ultimate aim of the quest, if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and power to serve others. And there is a really great, as well as greatly celebrated, Occidental tale of such a round trip to the Region of Light in the of the figures or powers experienced. The Indian yogi, striving for release, identifies himself with the Light and never returns. But no one with a will to the service of others and of life would permit himself such an escape. The ultimate aim of the quest, if one is to return, must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and power to serve others. And there is a really great, as well as greatly celebrated, Occidental tale of such a round trip to the Region of Light in the ten-year voyage ten-year voyage of Homer's Odysseus -- who, like the Royal Navy Commodore Watkins, was a warrior returning from long battle years to domestic life, and required, therefore, to shift radically his psychological posture and center. of Homer's Odysseus -- who, like the Royal Navy Commodore Watkins, was a warrior returning from long battle years to domestic life, and required, therefore, to shift radically his psychological posture and center.

We all know the great story: Of how, having sailed with his twelve ships away from conquered Troy, Odysseus put into a Thracian port, Ismarus, sacked the city, slew its people, and -- as he later reported -- "took their wives and much substance," distributing these to his own men. Clearly, such a brute was not ready for domestic life; a complete change of character was required. And the G.o.ds, who are always alert to such things, saw to it that he should fall into competent hands.

First Zeus sent upon him a tempest that tore the sails of his ships to shreds and blew them for nine days, out of control, to the land of the Lotus Eaters -- land of the hallucinogenic drug "forgetfulness," where, like Watkins in his madhouse, Odysseus and his freaked-out men were set floating on a sea of dream. Then follows the sequence of their mythological adventures, altogether different in kind from anything they had ever known.

There was, first, their encounter with the Cyclops and, after a costly release from his terrible cave, a period of elation, as they sailed on the winds of the G.o.d Aeolus; next, however, a dead calm and the toilsome ordeal of the twelve great ships reduced to rowing. They made it to land at the island of the cannibal Laestrygons, who sent eleven ships to the bottom, and the mighty Odysseus, up against forces now greater far than he could master, made away with a terrified crew in the one last hull remaining. Rowing wearily, still on a dead-calm sea, they advanced to what was to prove to be the crux of the entire night-sea adventure, the island of Circe of the Braided Locks, the nymph who turns men into swine.

This would be such a female as our already seriously humbled hero could not manhandle as mere booty. Her power surpa.s.sed his own. Fortunately for his fame, however, the protector and guide of souls beyond death to rebirth, the mystery-G.o.d Hermes, arrived just in time to protect him with both advice and a charm; so that, instead of being metamorphosed, the great mariner, so protected, was taken to Circe's bed, after which she directed him to the underworld and the shades down there of his ancestors. There he also met Tiresias, the blind prophetic sage in whom male and female knowledges are united. And when he had learned there all he could, he returned, much improved, to the formerly very dangerous nymph, who was now his teacher and guide.

Circe next directed him to the Island of the Sun, her own father, where, however -- in the source-region of all light -- his only remaining ship with its crew was shattered, and Odysseus, tossed alone into the sea, was carried by its irresistible tides right back to his daytime earthly wife (and life), Penelope. . . after an eight-year stop-off on the way with the middle-aged wifely nymph Calypso, and a brief pause, also, on the isle of pretty Nausicaa and her father, in whose night-sea craft he was finally carried in deep sleep home to his own sweet sh.o.r.e -- now fully prepared for his life-to-come as a considerate spouse and father.

A significant feature of this great epic of the inward night-sea adventure is its representation of the voyager as never wishing to remain at any of its stations. In the land of the Lotus Eaters, those of his men who ate the flowery food had no desire ever to return home; but Odysseus dragged them weeping to his ships, bound them in the hulls, and rowed away. And even during his idyllic stay of eight years on the isle of Calypso, he would often be found on the beach alone, gazing homeward, out to sea.

Jesse Watkins too was able ultimately to distinguish himself in his worldly role from the madman in the asylum; and, like the turning point at the farthest reach of his cla.s.sical prototype's course, where the last ship went to pieces at the Island of the Sun, so in this modern mariner's voyage, the turning point was reached at the brink of an experience of blasting light. Jesse Watkins, at that juncture, recognizing that he was not only a terrified madman about to experience annihilation, but also the sane man he once had been at home, from whose sphere of life he had become psychologically dissociated, sat (as we have heard) on his bed, clenched together his two hands, p.r.o.nounced his daylight body's name, and returned to it, like a diver to the surface of the sea.

The usual and most appropriate mythological figure to symbolize such a return to life is "rebirth," rebirth to a new world; and that, exactly, was the figure that occurred to the mind of this self-rescued patient on experiencing spontaneous remission. "When I came out," he is reported to have told, "I suddenly felt that everything was so much more real than it had been before. The gra.s.s was greener, the sun was shining brighter, and people were more alive, I could see them clearer. I could see the bad things and the good things and all that. I was much more aware."

"Can we not see," remarks Dr. Laing in his commentary on the whole experience, "that this voyage is not what we need to be cured of, but that it is itself a natural way of healing our own appalling state of alienation called normality?"

Something much the same was the view, also, of both Dr. Perry and Dr. Silverman in the papers earlier mentioned; and, as I have most lately learned, the earliest doc.u.mented proposal of this view was in a study published by C. G. Jung already in 1902, "On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena."8 In sum, then: The inward journeys of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic, and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth: the birth, that is to say, of a "twice-born" ego, no longer bound in by its daylight-world horizon. It is now known to be but the reflex of a larger self, its proper function being to carry the energies of an archetypal instinct system into fruitful play in a contemporary s.p.a.ce-time daylight situation. One is now no longer afraid of nature; nor of nature's child, society -- which is monstrous too, and in fact cannot be otherwise; it would otherwise not survive. The new ego is in accord with all this, in harmony, at peace; and, as those who have returned from the journey tell, life is then richer, stronger, and more joyous.

The whole problem, it would seem, is somehow to go through it, even time and again, without shipwreck: the answer being not not that one should that one should not not be permitted to go crazy; but that one should have been taught something already of the scenery to be entered and powers likely to be met, given a formula of some kind by which to recognize, subdue them, and incorporate their energies. Siegfried, when he had slain Fafnir, took a taste of the dragon blood and immediately found, to his own surprise, that he understood the language of nature, both his own nature and nature without. He did not himself become a dragon, though he had derived from the dragon its powers -- of which, however, he lost control when he returned to the world of general mankind. be permitted to go crazy; but that one should have been taught something already of the scenery to be entered and powers likely to be met, given a formula of some kind by which to recognize, subdue them, and incorporate their energies. Siegfried, when he had slain Fafnir, took a taste of the dragon blood and immediately found, to his own surprise, that he understood the language of nature, both his own nature and nature without. He did not himself become a dragon, though he had derived from the dragon its powers -- of which, however, he lost control when he returned to the world of general mankind.

There is always in the adventure great danger of what is known to psychology as "inflation," which is what overtakes the psychotic. He identifies himself either with the visionary object or with its witness, the visionary subject. The trick must be to become aware of it without becoming lost in it: to understand that we may all be saviors when functioning in relation to our friends or enemies: savior figures, but never The Savior. We may all be mothers and fathers, but are never The Mother, The Father. When a growing girl becomes aware of the pleasing effect that her blossoming womanhood is beginning to have upon others and takes the credit for this to her own ego, she has already gone a little crazy. She has misplaced her identification. What is causing all the excitement is not her own astonished little ego, but the wonderful new body that is growing up all around it. There is a j.a.panese saying I recall once having heard, of the five stages of man's growth. "At ten, an animal; at twenty, a lunatic; at thirty, a failure; at forty, a fraud; at fifty, a criminal." And at sixty, I would add (since by that time one will have gone through all this), one begins advising one's friends; and at seventy (realizing that everything said has been misunderstood) one keeps quiet and is taken for a sage. "At eighty," then said Confucius, "I knew my ground and stood firm."

In the spirit of all of which, let me now underscore the lesson of these purgatorial thoughts with the concluding words of that mad vision of Saint John which he beheld from his exile on the island of Patmos:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had pa.s.sed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from G.o.d, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of G.o.d is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and G.o.d himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have pa.s.sed away.". . . Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of G.o.d and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

XI.

The Moon Walk -- the Outward Journey [1970].

Are we today turning mythology into fact? Let me introduce with a pa.s.sage from Dante's Divine Comedy Divine Comedy the truly wondrous topic of this chapter. It is of that moment of the poet's visionary journey where he takes off from the Earthly Paradise, to ascend to the moon, the first celestial stop of his spiritual flight to G.o.d's throne. He is addressing himself to the reader: the truly wondrous topic of this chapter. It is of that moment of the poet's visionary journey where he takes off from the Earthly Paradise, to ascend to the moon, the first celestial stop of his spiritual flight to G.o.d's throne. He is addressing himself to the reader:

O You who in a little boat, desirous to listen, have been following behind my craft which singing pa.s.ses on, turn to see again your sh.o.r.es; put not out upon the deep; for haply, losing me, you would remain astray. The water which I take was never crossed. Minerva breathes, Apollo guides me, and the Muses nine point out to me the Bears.

That will set the mood. The breath of a G.o.ddess, Minerva, is to fill our sails, patroness of heroes; the naming of Apollo is a pleasant surprise; and we are to be guided by the Muses, teachers of all arts, pointing out to us the navigational stars. For although our voyage is to be outward, it is also to be inward, to the sources of all great acts, which are not out there, but in here, in us all, where the Muses dwell.

I remember when I was a very small boy my uncle one evening brought me down to Riverside Drive to see "a man," as he told me, "flying in an aeroplane [as they called them in those days] from Albany to New York." That was Glenn Curtis, 1910, in a sort of motorized box-kite he had built. There were people lined along the low wall at the westward margin of the city, watching, waiting, facing into the sunset. All the nearby rooftops, too, were crowded. Twilight fell. And then suddenly everybody was pointing, shouting, "There he comes!" And what I saw was like the shadow of a dark bird, soaring in the fading light some hundred feet above the river. Seventeen years later, the year I left Columbia, Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. And this year, on our television sets, we have seen two landings on the moon.

I want this chapter to be a celebration of the fabulous age in which we are living; also, of this country in which we are living; and of our incredible human race, which in the years just past broke free of its earth, to fly forth to the opening of the greatest adventure of the ages.

When I listen to some of my academic colleagues talk of their indifference to this epochal adventure, I am reminded of the anecdote of the little old lady who, when offered an opportunity to look at the moon through a telescope, commented, when she had done so, "Give me the moon as G.o.d G.o.d made it!" The only really adequate public comment on the occasion of the first moon walk that I have found reported in the world press was the exclamation of an Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti, published in the picture magazine made it!" The only really adequate public comment on the occasion of the first moon walk that I have found reported in the world press was the exclamation of an Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti, published in the picture magazine Epoca. Epoca. In its vivid issue of July 27, 1969, we see a photo of this white-haired old gentleman pointing in rapture to his television screen, and in the caption beneath are his thrilling words: In its vivid issue of July 27, 1969, we see a photo of this white-haired old gentleman pointing in rapture to his television screen, and in the caption beneath are his thrilling words: Questa e una notte diversa da ogni ultra notte del mondo. Questa e una notte diversa da ogni ultra notte del mondo.

For indeed that was was "a different night from all other nights of the world"! Who will ever in his days forget the spell of the incredible hour, July 20, 1969, when our television sets brought directly into our living rooms the image of that strange craft up there and Neil Armstrong's booted foot coming down, feeling cautiously its way -- to leave on the soil of that soaring satellite of earth the first impress ever of life? And then, as though immediately at home there, two astronauts in their s.p.a.ce suits were to be seen moving about in a dream-landscape, performing their a.s.signed tasks, setting up the American flag, a.s.sembling pieces of equipment, loping strangely but easily back and forth: their pictures brought to us, by the way, through two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles of empty s.p.a.ce by that other modern miracle (also now being taken for granted), the television set in our living room. "All humanity," Buckminster Fuller once said, in prophecy of these transforming forces working now upon our senses, "is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe." "a different night from all other nights of the world"! Who will ever in his days forget the spell of the incredible hour, July 20, 1969, when our television sets brought directly into our living rooms the image of that strange craft up there and Neil Armstrong's booted foot coming down, feeling cautiously its way -- to leave on the soil of that soaring satellite of earth the first impress ever of life? And then, as though immediately at home there, two astronauts in their s.p.a.ce suits were to be seen moving about in a dream-landscape, performing their a.s.signed tasks, setting up the American flag, a.s.sembling pieces of equipment, loping strangely but easily back and forth: their pictures brought to us, by the way, through two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles of empty s.p.a.ce by that other modern miracle (also now being taken for granted), the television set in our living room. "All humanity," Buckminster Fuller once said, in prophecy of these transforming forces working now upon our senses, "is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe."

From the point of view of a student of mythology, the most important consequences of what Copernicus wrote of the universe in 1543 followed from his presentation there of an image controverting and refuting the obvious "facts" that everybody everywhere could see. All mankind's theological as well as cosmological thinking, up to that time, had been based on concepts of the universe visually confirmed from the point of view of earth. Also, man's notion of himself and of nature, his poetry and his whole feeling system, were derived from the sight of his earthbound eyes. The sun rose eastward, pa.s.sed above, leaning southward, and set blazing in the west. The Polynesian hero Maui had snared that sun to slow it down, so that his mother could have time to finish her cooking. Joshua stopped both the sun and the moon, to have time to finish off a slaughter, while G.o.d, to a.s.sist, flung down from heaven a hail of prodigious stones: "and there was no day like that before it or after it, when Jehovah hearkened to the voice of a man."

The moon was in ancient times regarded, and in parts of the world still is regarded, as the Mansion of the Fathers, the residence of the souls of those who have pa.s.sed away and are there waiting to return for rebirth. For the moon itself, as we see it, dies and is resurrected. Shedding its shadow, it is renewed, as life sheds generations to be renewed in those to come. Whereas against all this, which had been confirmed and reconfirmed in the scriptures, poetry, feelings, and visions of all ages, what Copernicus proposed was a universe no eye could see but only the mind imagine: a mathematical, totally invisible construction, of interest only to astronomers, unbeheld, unfelt by any others of this human race, whose sight and feelings were locked still to earth.

However, now, in our own day, four and one-quarter centuries later, with those pictures coming down to us from the point of view of the moon, we have all seen -- and not only seen, but felt -- that our visible world and the abstract construction of Copernicus correspond. That fabulous color photograph of our good earth rising as a glorious planet above a silent lunar landscape is something not to forget. Giuseppe Ungaretri published in that issue of Epoca Epoca the first verse of a new-world poetry in celebration of this moon-born revelation: the first verse of a new-world poetry in celebration of this moon-born revelation:

Che fai tu, Terra, in ciel? Che fai tu, Terra, in ciel?

Dimmi, che fai, Silenziosa Terra?

What are you doing, Earth, in heaven?

Tell me, what are you doing, Silent Earth?

All the old bindings are broken. Cosmological centers now are any- and everywhere. The earth is a heavenly body, most beautiful of all, and all poetry now is archaic that fails to match the wonder of this view.

In contrast, I recall the sense of embarra.s.sment that I felt two Christmas Eves ago, the night of the first manned flight around around the moon, when those three magnificent young men up there began reading to us, and sending down as their message to the world, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void," and so on; all of which had nothing whatsoever to do with the world that they were themselves then actually viewing and exploring. I later asked a number of my friends what they had felt when they heard that coming down to them from the moon, and all, without exception, replied that they had found it wonderfully moving. How very strange! And how sad, I thought, that we should have had nothing in our own poetry to match the sense of that prodigious occasion! Nothing to match, or even to suggest, the marvel and the magnitude of this universe into which we then were moving! There was that same old childhood dream of some Babylonian-born Hebrew of the fourth century B.C., telling of the dawn of a world which those three men up there, even as they read, had refuted! How very disappointing! Better by far, it seemed to me, would have been those beautiful half-dozen lines from the opening of Dante's the moon, when those three magnificent young men up there began reading to us, and sending down as their message to the world, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning G.o.d created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void," and so on; all of which had nothing whatsoever to do with the world that they were themselves then actually viewing and exploring. I later asked a number of my friends what they had felt when they heard that coming down to them from the moon, and all, without exception, replied that they had found it wonderfully moving. How very strange! And how sad, I thought, that we should have had nothing in our own poetry to match the sense of that prodigious occasion! Nothing to match, or even to suggest, the marvel and the magnitude of this universe into which we then were moving! There was that same old childhood dream of some Babylonian-born Hebrew of the fourth century B.C., telling of the dawn of a world which those three men up there, even as they read, had refuted! How very disappointing! Better by far, it seemed to me, would have been those beautiful half-dozen lines from the opening of Dante's Paradiso Paradiso:

To the glory of Him that moves all things, penetrates through the universe, and is resplendent in one part more, and in another less.

In the heaven that most of his light receives have I been, and I have seen things, to recount which, descending, I neither know how nor have the power.

To predict what the imagery of the poetry of man's future is to be, is today, of course, impossible. However, those same three astronauts, when coming down, gave voice to a couple of suggestions. Having soared beyond thought into boundless s.p.a.ce, circled many times the arid moon, and begun their long return: how welcome a sight, they said, was the beauty of their goal, this planet Earth, "like an oasis in the desert of infinite s.p.a.ce!" Now there there is a telling image: this earth, the one oasis in all s.p.a.ce, an extraordinary kind of sacred grove, as it were, set apart for the rituals of life; and not simply one part or section of this earth, but the entire globe now a sanctuary, a set-apart Blessed Place. Moreover, we have all now seen for ourselves how very small is our heaven-born earth, and how perilous our position on the surface of its whirling, luminously beautiful orb. is a telling image: this earth, the one oasis in all s.p.a.ce, an extraordinary kind of sacred grove, as it were, set apart for the rituals of life; and not simply one part or section of this earth, but the entire globe now a sanctuary, a set-apart Blessed Place. Moreover, we have all now seen for ourselves how very small is our heaven-born earth, and how perilous our position on the surface of its whirling, luminously beautiful orb.

A second thought that the astronauts, coming down, expressed was in reply to a question from Ground Control asking who was then doing the navigating. Their immediate answer was, "Newton!" Think of that! They were riding back securely on the mathematics of the miracle of Isaac Newton's brain.

This stunning answer brought to my mind the essential problem of knowledge considered by Immanuel Kant. How is it, he asks, that, standing in this place here, we can make mathematical calculations that we know will be valid in that place over there? n.o.body knew how deep the dust on the surface of the moon was going to be, but the mathematicians knew exactly how to calculate the laws of the s.p.a.ce through which the astronauts would fly, not only around our familiar earth, but also around the moon and through all those miles of unexplored s.p.a.ce between. How is it, asked Kant, that mathematical judgments can be made a priori a priori about s.p.a.ce, and about relationships in s.p.a.ce? about s.p.a.ce, and about relationships in s.p.a.ce?

When you walk past a rippling mirror, you cannot predict what the dimensions of your pa.s.sing reflection are going to be. Not so, however, in s.p.a.ce. Through the whole of s.p.a.ce there are no such transformations of the mathematics of dimension. When we saw on our television screens that parachuting s.p.a.cecraft of the second moon flight descending from the sky to the very spot in the sea that had been programed for its splashdown, we all became eyewitness to the fact that, although the moon is over two hundred thousand miles away from us, a knowledge of the laws of the s.p.a.ce through which it moves was already in our minds (or at least in Newton's mind) centuries before we got there. Also known beforehand was the fact that speeds out there could be timed according to earthly measure: that the distance covered in a minute out there would be the same as in a minute here. Which is to say, we had prior knowledge of those matters. And we know, also, that the same laws will apply when our s.p.a.ceships get to Mars, to Jupiter, to Saturn, and even out beyond.

s.p.a.ce and time, as Kant already recognized, are the "a priori forms of sensibility," the antecedent preconditions of all experience and action whatsoever, implicitly known to our body and senses even before birth, as the field in which we are to function. They are not simply "out there," as the planets are, to be learned about a.n.a.lytically, through separate observations. We carry their laws within us, and so have already wrapped our minds around the universe. "The world," wrote the poet Rilke, "is large, but in us it is deep as the sea." We carry the laws within us by which it is held in order. And we ourselves are no less mysterious. In searching out its wonders, we are learning simultaneously the wonder of ourselves. That moon flight as an outward journey was outward into ourselves. And I do not mean this poetically, but factually, historically. I mean that the actual fact of the making and the visual broadcasting of that trip has transformed, deepened, and extended human consciousness to a degree and in a manner that amount to the opening of a new spiritual era. forms of sensibility," the antecedent preconditions of all experience and action whatsoever, implicitly known to our body and senses even before birth, as the field in which we are to function. They are not simply "out there," as the planets are, to be learned about a.n.a.lytically, through separate observations. We carry their laws within us, and so have already wrapped our minds around the universe. "The world," wrote the poet Rilke, "is large, but in us it is deep as the sea." We carry the laws within us by which it is held in order. And we ourselves are no less mysterious. In searching out its wonders, we are learning simultaneously the wonder of ourselves. That moon flight as an outward journey was outward into ourselves. And I do not mean this poetically, but factually, historically. I mean that the actual fact of the making and the visual broadcasting of that trip has transformed, deepened, and extended human consciousness to a degree and in a manner that amount to the opening of a new spiritual era.

The first step of that booted foot onto the moon was very, very cautious. The second astronaut descended, and for a time the two moved about carefully, testing their own balances, the weights of their gear in the new environment. But then -- by golly! -- they were both suddenly jumping, hopping, loping about like kangaroos; and the two moon-walkers of the following voyage were giggling, laughing, enjoying themselves like a pair of lunatic kids -- moonstruck! And I thought, "Well now, that lovely satellite has been out there circling our earth for some four billion years like a beautiful but lonesome woman trying to catch earth's eye. She has now at last caught it, and has caught thereby ourselves. And as always happens when a temptation of that kind has been responded to, a new life has opened, richer, more exciting and fulfilling, for both of us than was known, or even thought of or imagined, before." There are youngsters among us, even now, who will be living living on that moon; others who will visit Mars. And their sons? What voyages are to be theirs? on that moon; others who will visit Mars. And their sons? What voyages are to be theirs?

I wonder how many of my readers saw that motion picture, 2001, 2001, of the imagined s.p.a.ce odyssey of a mighty s.p.a.cecraft of the not very distant future, a future indeed that most of those watching the film would themselves live to see. The adventure opens with some entertaining views of a community of little manlike apes a million or so years ago: a company of those apelike hominids known to science today as Australopithecines, snarling, fighting with each other, and generally behaving like any agglomeration of simians. However, there was among them one who had in his dawning soul the potentiality of something better; and that potential was evident in his sense of awe before the unknown, his fascinated curiosity, with a desire to approach and to explore. This, in the film, was suggested in a symbolic scene showing him seated in wonder before a curious panel of stone standing mysteriously upright in the landscape. And while the others continued in the usual way of ape-men, absorbed in their economic problems (getting food for themselves), social enjoyments (searching for lice in each other's hair), and political activities (variously fighting), this particular one, apart and alone, contemplating the panel, presently reached out and cautiously felt it -- rather as our astronaut's foot first approached, then gently touched down on the moon. And he was followed, then, by others, though not all; for indeed there remain among us many still who are unmoved by what Goethe called "the best part of man." These remain, even now, in the condition of those prehuman apes who are concerned only with economics, sociology, and politics, hurling bricks at each other and licking then their own wounds. of the imagined s.p.a.ce odyssey of a mighty s.p.a.cecraft of the not very distant future, a future indeed that most of those watching the film would themselves live to see. The adventure opens with some entertaining views of a community of little manlike apes a million or so years ago: a company of those apelike hominids known to science today as Australopithecines, snarling, fighting with each other, and generally behaving like any agglomeration of simians. However, there was among them one who had in his dawning soul the potentiality of something better; and that potential was evident in his sense of awe before the unknown, his fascinated curiosity, with a desire to approach and to explore. This, in the film, was suggested in a symbolic scene showing him seated in wonder before a curious panel of stone standing mysteriously upright in the landscape. And while the others continued in the usual way of ape-men, absorbed in their economic problems (getting food for themselves), social enjoyments (searching for lice in each other's hair), and political activities (variously fighting), this particular one, apart and alone, contemplating the panel, presently reached out and cautiously felt it -- rather as our astronaut's foot first approached, then gently touched down on the moon. And he was followed, then, by others, though not all; for indeed there remain among us many still who are unmoved by what Goethe called "the best part of man." These remain, even now, in the condition of those prehuman apes who are concerned only with economics, sociology, and politics, hurling bricks at each other and licking then their own wounds.

Those are are not the ones that are heading for the moon or even noticing that the greatest steps in the progress of mankind have been the products not of wound-licking, but of acts inspired by awe. And in recognition of the continuity through all time of this motivating principle in the evolution of our species, the authors of this film of which I am speaking showed again symbolically that same mysterious panel standing in a hidden quarter of the moon, approached and touched there by s.p.a.ce travelers; and then again, floating free in most distant s.p.a.ce, mysterious still -- as it has always been and must forever remain. not the ones that are heading for the moon or even noticing that the greatest steps in the progress of mankind have been the products not of wound-licking, but of acts inspired by awe. And in recognition of the continuity through all time of this motivating principle in the evolution of our species, the authors of this film of which I am speaking showed again symbolically that same mysterious panel standing in a hidden quarter of the moon, approached and touched there by s.p.a.ce travelers; and then again, floating free in most distant s.p.a.ce, mysterious still -- as it has always been and must forever remain.

One of the earliest signs of a separation of human from animal consciousness may be seen in man's domestication of fire -- which I would like to relate to the symbolism of that slab. When this domestication occurred, we do not know; but we do know that as early as 400,000 B.C. fires were being kindled and fostered in the caves of Peking Man. What for? That is something else that we do not know. It is clear that the hearths were not used for cooking. They may have been used for heat, or to keep dangerous animals away; more likely, though, for the fascination of the dancing flames. We have from all over the world innumerable myths of the capturing of fire; and in these it is usual to represent the adventure as undertaken not because anyone knew what the practical uses of fire would be, but because it was fascinating. People would dance around it, sit and watch it. Also, it is usual in these myths to represent the separation of mankind from the beasts as having followed upon that fundamental adventure.

Fire is revered generally as a deity to this day. The lighting of the household fire is in many cultures a ritual act. We hear of the holy Vestal Fire as the most honored G.o.ddess of Rome. The fascination of fire, like that of the symbolic panel in the film of which I have been telling, may be taken as the earliest sign in the records of our species of that openness to fascination and willingness to adventure for it at great risk which has been ever the essential mark of the uniquely human -- as opposed to common animal -- faculties of our species, and which is eminently represented in the adventure to which I am here giving praise.

I have discussed in earlier chapters some of the other orders of fascination by which the members of our species have been led to surpa.s.s themselves: the fascination felt by hunting tribes in the animal forms all about them, by planting tribes in the miracle of the planted seed, and by the old Sumerian priestly watchers of the skies in the pa.s.sages of planets and circulation of stars. It is all so mysterious, so wonderfully strange! Nietzsche, it was, who called man "the sick animal," das kranke Tier; das kranke Tier; for we are open, undefined, in the patterning of our lives. Our nature is not like that of the other species, stereotyped to fixed ways. A lion has to be a lion all its life; a dog, to be a dog. But a human being can be an astronaut, a troglodyte, philosopher, mariner, tiller of the soil, or sculptor. He can play and actualize in his life any one of any number of hugely differing destinies; and what he chooses to incarnate in this way will be determined finally neither by reason nor even by common sense, but by infusions of excitement: "visions that fool him out of his limits," as the poet Robinson Jeffers called them. "Humanity," Jeffers declares, "is the mold to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, the atom to be split." And what fools us out of our limits in this way? for we are open, undefined, in the patterning of our lives. Our nature is not like that of the other species, stereotyped to fixed ways. A lion has to be a lion all its life; a dog, to be a dog. But a human being can be an astronaut, a troglodyte, philosopher, mariner, tiller of the soil, or sculptor. He can play and actualize in his life any one of any number of hugely differing destinies; and what he chooses to incarnate in this way will be determined finally neither by reason nor even by common sense, but by infusions of excitement: "visions that fool him out of his limits," as the poet Robinson Jeffers called them. "Humanity," Jeffers declares, "is the mold to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, the atom to be split." And what fools us out of our limits in this way?

wild loves that leap over the walls of nature, the wild fence-vaulter science, Unless intelligence of far stars, dim knowledge of the spinning demons that make an atom.1

In the beginning, as it seems, it was the fascination of fire that fooled man onward to a life style formerly unknown, where family hearths would become the centers and revered sanctifiers of distinctly human circles of concern. Then no sooner was he separated from the beasts than it was the animal and plant models of life that impressed themselves on man's imagination, luring our human species on to large mythological patternings both of the outward social orders and of inward individual experiences of ident.i.ty: shamans living as wolves, ritualized covenants with the buffalo, masked dancers, totem ancestors, and the rest. Or a whole community might govern itself according to plant laws and rites, sacrificing, dismembering, and interring its best and most vital members to increase the general good. "Truly, truly, I say unto you," we read in the John Gospel, in continuation of this image, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life shall lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:24-25). Or again, Christ's parable at the Last Supper of himself as the True Vine: "As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches" (John 15:4-5).

As here expressed, the mythic imagery of the plant suggests an organic partic.i.p.ation of the individual life in the larger life and body of the group, "fooling him out of his limits." Comparably, among hunting tribes with their rites based on mythologies of covenants with the animal world, a reciprocity is recognized that extends the bounds of concern of the human spirit to include much more than its own most immediate interests. The most exalting fascination that has ever, up to now, inspired human thought and life, however, was that which seized the priestly watchers of the night skies of Mesopotamia about 3500 B.C.: the perception of a cosmic order, mathematically definable, with which the structure of society should be brought to accord. For it was then that the hieratically ordered city-state came into being, which stands at the source, and for millenniums stood as the model, of all higher, literate civilization whatsoever. Not economics, in other words, but celestial mathematics were what inspired the religious forms, the arts, literatures, sciences, moral and social orders which in that period elevated mankind to the task of civilized life -- again fooling us out of our limits, to achievements infinitely beyond any aims that mere economics, or even politics, could ever have inspired.

Today, as we all know, such thoughts and forms are of a crumbling past and the civilizations dependent on them in disarray and dissolution. Not only are societies no longer attuned to the courses of the planets; sociology and physics, politics and astronomy are no longer understood to be departments of a single science. Nor is the individual interpreted (in the democratic West, at least) as an inseparable subordinate part of the organism of a state. What we know today, if we know anything at all, is that every individual is unique and that the laws of his life will not be those of any other on this earth. We also know that if divinity is to be found anywhere, it will not be "out there," among or beyond the planets. Galileo showed that the same physical laws that govern the movements of bodies on earth apply aloft, to the celestial spheres; and our astronauts, as we have all now seen, have been transported by those earthly laws to the moon. They will soon be on Mars and beyond. Furthermore, we know that the mathematics of those outermost s.p.a.ces will already have been computed here on earth by human minds. There are no laws out there that are not right here; no G.o.ds out there that are not right here, and not only here, but within us, in our minds. So what happens now to those childhood images of the ascent of Elijah, a.s.sumption of the Virgin, Ascension of Christ -- all bodily -- into heaven?

What are you doing, Earth, in heaven?

Tell me, what are you doing, Silent Earth?