Myths To Live By Part 9

Our astronauts on the moon have pulled the moon to earth and sent the earth soaring to heaven. From the deserts of Mars this Mother Earth of ours will be again seen, higher, remoter, more heavenly still; yet no nearer to any G.o.d than right now. And from Jupiter, higher, farther; and so on; and so on: our planet ever mounting, higher and higher, as our sons, grandsons, and their great-great-grandsons proceed outward on the paths that we, in these latest years, have just opened, searching, adventuring in a s.p.a.ce that is already present in our minds.

In other words, there has just now occurred a transformation of the mythological field that is of a magnitude matched only by that of the Old Sumerian sky-watch in the fourth millennium B.C., and in fact, what is dissolving is the world not only of G.o.ds and men, but of the state as well, which they, in that inspired time, brought into being. I was greatly impressed, many years ago, by the works of a man whom I still regard as having been the most acute student of mythologies of his generation: Leo Frobenius, who viewed the entire history of mankind as a great and single organic process, comparable, in its stages of growth, maturation, and continuation toward senility, to the stages of any single lifetime. Very much as the individual life begins in childhood and advances through adolescence to maturity and old age, so likewise, the lifetime of our human race. Its childhood was of the long, long distant period of the primitive hunters, fishers, root-foragers, and planters, living in immediate relationship with their animal and plant neighbors. The second stage, which Frobenius termed the Monumental, commenced with the rise of the earliest agriculturally based, urban, and literate civilizations, each structured to accord with an imagined cosmic order, made known by way of the movements and conditions of the planetary lights. For those lights were then supposed to be the residences of governing spirits; whereas, as just remarked, we now know them to be as material as ourselves. The laws of earth and of our own minds have been extended to incorporate what formerly were the ranges and the powers of the G.o.ds, now recognized as of ourselves. Hence, the whole imagined support of the Monumental Order has been withdrawn from "out there," found centered in ourselves, and a new world age projected, which is to be global, "materialistic" (as Frobenius termed it), comparable in spirit to the spirit of old age in its disillusioned wisdom and concern for the physical body, concentrating rather on fulfillments in the present than on any distant future. The residence of the spirit now is experienced as centered not in fire, in the animal and plant worlds, or aloft among the planets and beyond, but in men, right here on earth: the earth and its population, which our astronauts beheld and photographed rising above the moon into Heaven.

My friend Alan Watts in a lecture once proposed an amusing image to replace the old one (now no longer tenable) of man as a Heaven-sent stranger in this world, who, when the mortal coil of his body will have been cast away in death, is to soar in spirit to his proper source and home with G.o.d in Heaven. "The truth of the matter," Dr. Watts proposed to his audience, "is that you didn't come into into this world at all. You came this world at all. You came out out of it, in just the same way that a leaf comes out of a tree or a baby from a womb. . . Just as Jesus said that one doesn't gather figs from thistles or grapes from thorns, so also you don't gather people from a world that isn't peopling. Our world is peopling, just as the apple tree apples, and just as the vine grapes." We are a natural product of this earth, that is to say; and, as Dr. Watts observed in that same talk, if we are intelligent beings, it must be that we are the fruits of an intelligent earth, symptomatic of an intelligent energy system; for "one doesn't gather grapes from thorns." of it, in just the same way that a leaf comes out of a tree or a baby from a womb. . . Just as Jesus said that one doesn't gather figs from thistles or grapes from thorns, so also you don't gather people from a world that isn't peopling. Our world is peopling, just as the apple tree apples, and just as the vine grapes." We are a natural product of this earth, that is to say; and, as Dr. Watts observed in that same talk, if we are intelligent beings, it must be that we are the fruits of an intelligent earth, symptomatic of an intelligent energy system; for "one doesn't gather grapes from thorns."2 We may think of ourselves, then, as the functioning ears and eyes and mind of this earth, exactly as our own ears and eyes and minds are of our bodies. Our bodies are one with this earth, this wonderful "oasis in the desert of infinite s.p.a.ce"; and the mathematics of that infinite s.p.a.ce, which are the same as of Newton's mind -- our mind, the earth's mind, the mind of the universe -- come to flower and fruit in this beautiful oasis through ourselves.

Let us once more recall: when that protohuman troglodyte Sinanthropus, in his dismal cave, responded to the fascination of fire, it was to the apparition of a power that was already present and operative in his own body: heat, temperature, oxidation; as also in the volcanic earth, in Jupiter, and in the sun. When the masked dancers of the totemistic hunting tribes identified themselves with the holy powers recognized in the animals of their killing, it was again the apparition of an aspect of themselves that they were intuiting and honoring, which we all share with the beasts: instinctive intelligence in accord with the natural order of Mother Earth. Similarly, in relation to the plant world: there again, the apparition is of an aspect of ourselves, namely our nourishment and growth. Many mythologies, and not all of them primitive, represent mankind as having sprung plant-like from the earth -- the earth "peopling" -- or from trees. And we have the image of the "Second Adam," Christ crucified, as the fruit of the tree of life. There is also the Buddha's tree of wisdom; and Yggdrasil of the early Germans. All are trees revelatory of the wisdom of life, which is inherent already in the plant-like processes by which our bodies took shape in our mothers' wombs, to be born as creatures already prepared to breathe the world's air, to digest and a.s.similate the world's food through complex chemical processes, to see the world's sights and to think the world's thoughts according to mathematical principles that will be operative forever in the most distant reaches of s.p.a.ce and of time.

I have noticed in the Orient that when the Buddhists build their temples they often choose a hilltop site with a great command of horizon. One experiences simultaneously in such places an expansion of view and diminution of oneself -- with the sense, however, of an extension of oneself in spirit to the farthest reach. And I have noticed also, when flying -- particularly over oceans -- that the world of sheerly physical nature, of air and cloud and the marvels of light there experienced, is altogether congenial. Here on earth it is to the lovely vegetable nature-world that we respond; there aloft, to the sublimely spatial. People used to think, "How little is man in relation to the universe!" The shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric world view seemed to have removed man from the center -- and the center seemed so important! Spiritually, however, the center is where sight is. Stand on a height and view the horizon. Stand on the moon and view the whole earth rising -- even by way of television, in your parlor. And with each expansion of horizon, from the troglodytal cave to the Buddhist temple on the hilltop -- and on now to the moon -- there has been, as there must inevitably be, not only an expansion of consciousness, in keeping with ever-widening as well as deepening insights into the nature of Nature (which is of one nature with ourselves), but also an enrichment, refinement, and general melioration of the conditions of human physical life.

It is my whole present thesis, consequently, that we are at this moment partic.i.p.ating in one of the very greatest leaps of the human spirit to a knowledge not only of outside nature but also of our own deep inward mystery that has ever been taken, or that ever will or ever can be taken. And what are we hearing, meanwhile, from those sociological geniuses that are, these days, swarming on our activated campuses? I saw the answer displayed the other day on a large poster in a bookstore up at Yale: a photograph of one of our astronauts on a desert of the moon, and the comment beneath him, "So what!"

But to return, finally, to the mythological, theological aspect of this moment: there was a prophetic medieval Italian abbot, Joachim of Floris, who in the early thirteenth century foresaw the dissolution of the Christian Church and dawn of a terminal period of earthly spiritual life, when the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, would speak directly to the human heart without ecclesiastical mediation. His view, like that of Frobenius, was of a sequence of historic stages, of which our own was to be the last; and of these he counted four. The first was, of course, that immediately following the Fall of man, before the opening of the main story, after which there was to unfold the whole great drama of Redemption, each stage under the inspiration of one Person of the Trinity. The first was to be of the Father, the Laws of Moses and the People of Israel; the second of the Son, the New Testament and the Church; and now finally (and here, of course, the teachings of this clergyman went apart from the others of his communion), a third age, which he believed was about to commence, of the Holy Spirit, that was to be of saints in meditation, when the Church, become superfluous, would in time dissolve. It was thought by not a few in Joachim's day that Saint Francis of a.s.sisi might represent the opening of the coming age of direct, pentecostal spirituality. But as I look about today and observe what is happening to our churches in this time of perhaps the greatest access of mystically toned religious zeal our civilization has known since the close of the Middle Ages, I am inclined to think that the years foreseen by the good Father Joachim of Floris must have been our own.

For there is no divinely ordained authority any more that we have have to recognize. There is no anointed messenger of G.o.d's law. In our world today all civil law is conventional. No divine authority is claimed for it: no Sinai; no Mount of Olives. Our laws are enacted and altered by to recognize. There is no anointed messenger of G.o.d's law. In our world today all civil law is conventional. No divine authority is claimed for it: no Sinai; no Mount of Olives. Our laws are enacted and altered by human human determination, and within their secular jurisdiction each of us is free to seek his own destiny, his own truth, to quest for this or for that and to find it through his own doing. The mythologies, religions, philosophies, and modes of thought that came into being six thousand years ago and out of which all the monumental cultures both of the Occident and of the Orient -- of Europe, the Near and Middle East, the Far East, even early America -- derived their truths and lives, are dissolving from around us, and we are left, each on his own to follow the star and spirit of his own life. And I can think of no more appropriate symbolic heroes for such a time than the figures of our splendid moon-men. Nor can I think of a more appropriate text on which to close this chapter's celebration of their doing than the following lines from Robinson Jeffers's determination, and within their secular jurisdiction each of us is free to seek his own destiny, his own truth, to quest for this or for that and to find it through his own doing. The mythologies, religions, philosophies, and modes of thought that came into being six thousand years ago and out of which all the monumental cultures both of the Occident and of the Orient -- of Europe, the Near and Middle East, the Far East, even early America -- derived their truths and lives, are dissolving from around us, and we are left, each on his own to follow the star and spirit of his own life. And I can think of no more appropriate symbolic heroes for such a time than the figures of our splendid moon-men. Nor can I think of a more appropriate text on which to close this chapter's celebration of their doing than the following lines from Robinson Jeffers's Roan Stallion: Roan Stallion:

The atoms bounds-breaking, Nucleus to sun, electrons to planets, with recognition Not praying, self-equaling, the whole to the whole, the microcosm Not entering nor accepting entrance, more equally, more utterly, more incredibly conjugate With the other extreme and greatness; pa.s.sionately perceptive of ident.i.ty. . .3

The solar system and the atom, the two extreme extremes of scientific exploration, recognized as identical, yet distinct! a.n.a.logous must be our own ident.i.ty with the All, of which we are the ears and eyes and mind.

The very great physicist Erwin Schrodinger has made the same metaphysical point in his startling and sublime little book, My View of the World My View of the World.4 "All of us living beings belong together," he there declares, "in as much as we are all in reality sides or aspects of one single being, which may perhaps in western terminology be called G.o.d while in the Upanishads its name is Brahman." "All of us living beings belong together," he there declares, "in as much as we are all in reality sides or aspects of one single being, which may perhaps in western terminology be called G.o.d while in the Upanishads its name is Brahman."

Evidently it is not science that has diminished man or divorced him from divinity. On the contrary, according to this scientist's view, which, remarkably, rejoins us to the ancients, we are to recognize in this whole universe a reflection magnified of our own most inward nature; so that we are indeed its ears, its eyes, its thinking, and its speech -- or, in theological terms, G.o.d's ears, G.o.d's eyes, G.o.d's thinking, and G.o.d's Word; and, by the same token, partic.i.p.ants here and now in an act of creation that is continuous in the whole infinitude of that s.p.a.ce of our mind through which the planets fly, and our fellows of earth now among them.

XII.

Envoy: No More Horizons [1971].

What is, or what is to be, the new mythology? Since myth is of the order of poetry, let us ask first a poet: Walt Whitman, for example, in his or what is to be, the new mythology? Since myth is of the order of poetry, let us ask first a poet: Walt Whitman, for example, in his Leaves of Gra.s.s Leaves of Gra.s.s (1855): (1855):

I have said that the soul is not more than the body, And I have said that the body is not more than the soul, And nothing, not G.o.d, is greater to one than one's- self is, And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in his shroud, And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth, And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times, And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero, And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe, And any man or woman shall stand cool and super- cilious before a million universes.

And I call to mankind, Be not curious about G.o.d, For I who am curious about each am not curious about G.o.d, No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about G.o.d and about death.

I hear and behold G.o.d in every object, yet I under- stand G.o.d not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonder- ful than myself.

Why should I wish to see G.o.d better than this day?

I see something of G.o.d each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see G.o.d, and in my own face in the gla.s.s; I find letters from G.o.d dropped in the street, and every one is signed by G.o.d's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.1

These lines of Whitman echo marvelously the sentiments of the earliest of the Upanishads, the "Great Forest Book" (Brihadaranyaka) (Brihadaranyaka) of about the eighth century B.C. of about the eighth century B.C.

This that people say, "Worship this G.o.d! Worship that G.o.d!" -- one G.o.d after another! All this is his creation indeed! And he himself is all the G.o.ds. . . He is entered in the universe even to our fingernail-tips, like a razor in a razor-case, or fire in firewood. Him those people see not, for as seen he is incomplete. When breathing, he becomes "breath" by name; when speaking, "voice"; when seeing, "the eye"; when hearing, "the ear"; when thinking, "mind": these are but the names of his acts. Whoever worships one or another of these -- knows not; for he is incomplete as one or another of these.

One should worship with the thought that he is one's self, for therein all these become one. This self is the footprint of that All, for by it one knows the All -- just as, verily, by following a footprint one finds cattle that have been lost. . . One should reverence the self alone as dear. And he who reverences the self alone as dear -- what he holds dear, verily, will not perish. . .

So whoever worships another divinity than his self, thinking, "He is one, I am another," knows not. He is like a sacrificial animal for the G.o.ds. And verily, indeed, as many animals would be of service to a man, so do people serve the G.o.ds. And if even one animal is taken away, it is not pleasant. What then if many? It is therefore not pleasing to the G.o.ds that men should know this.2

We hear the same, in a powerful style, even earlier, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Book of the Dead, in one of its chapters, "On Coming Forth by Day in the Underworld," as follows: in one of its chapters, "On Coming Forth by Day in the Underworld," as follows:

I am Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time. I am the divine hidden Soul who created the G.o.ds and gives sepulchral meals to the denizens of the deep, the place of the dead, and heaven. . . Hail, lord of the shrine that stands in the center of the earth. He is I, and I am he!

Indeed, do we not hear the same from Christ himself, as reported in the early Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas? Gospel According to Thomas?

Whoever drinks from my mouth shall become as I am and I myself will become he, and the hidden things shall be revealed to him. . . I am the All, the All came forth from me and the All attained to me. Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find me there.3

Or again, two more lines of Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the gra.s.s I love If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.4

Some fifteen years ago I had the experience of meeting in Bombay an extraordinarily interesting German Jesuit, the Reverend Father H. Heras by name, who presented me with the reprint of a paper he had just published on the mystery of G.o.d the Father and Son as reflected in Indian myth.5 He was a marvelously open-minded as well as substantial authority on Oriental religions, and what he had done in this very learned paper was actually to interpret the ancient Indian G.o.d Shiva and his very popular son Ganesha as equivalent, in a way, to the Father and Son of the Christian faith. If the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is regarded in his He was a marvelously open-minded as well as substantial authority on Oriental religions, and what he had done in this very learned paper was actually to interpret the ancient Indian G.o.d Shiva and his very popular son Ganesha as equivalent, in a way, to the Father and Son of the Christian faith. If the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is regarded in his eternal eternal aspect, as G.o.d, antecedent to history, supporting it, and reflected (in some measure) in the "image of G.o.d" in us all, it is then not difficult, even for a perfectly orthodox Christian, to recognize the reflex of his own theology in the saints and G.o.ds of alien worlds. For it is simply a fact -- as I believe we have all now got to concede -- that mythologies and their deities are productions and projections of the psyche. What G.o.ds are there, what G.o.ds have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination? We know their histories: we know by what stages they developed. Not only Freud and Jung, but all serious students of psychology and of comparative religions today, have recognized and hold that the forms of myth and the figures of myth are of the nature essentially of dream. Moreover, as my old friend Dr. Geza Roheim used to say, just as there are no two ways of sleeping, so there are no two ways of dreaming. Essentially the same mythological motifs are to be found throughout the world. There are myths and legends of the Virgin Birth, of Incarnations, Deaths and Resurrections; Second Comings, Judgments, and the rest, in all the great traditions. And since such images stem from the psyche, they refer to the psyche. They tell us of its structure, its order and its forces, in symbolic terms. aspect, as G.o.d, antecedent to history, supporting it, and reflected (in some measure) in the "image of G.o.d" in us all, it is then not difficult, even for a perfectly orthodox Christian, to recognize the reflex of his own theology in the saints and G.o.ds of alien worlds. For it is simply a fact -- as I believe we have all now got to concede -- that mythologies and their deities are productions and projections of the psyche. What G.o.ds are there, what G.o.ds have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination? We know their histories: we know by what stages they developed. Not only Freud and Jung, but all serious students of psychology and of comparative religions today, have recognized and hold that the forms of myth and the figures of myth are of the nature essentially of dream. Moreover, as my old friend Dr. Geza Roheim used to say, just as there are no two ways of sleeping, so there are no two ways of dreaming. Essentially the same mythological motifs are to be found throughout the world. There are myths and legends of the Virgin Birth, of Incarnations, Deaths and Resurrections; Second Comings, Judgments, and the rest, in all the great traditions. And since such images stem from the psyche, they refer to the psyche. They tell us of its structure, its order and its forces, in symbolic terms.

Therefore they cannot be interpreted properly as references, originally, universally, essentially, and most meaningfully, to local historical events or personages. The historical references, if they have any meaning at all, must be secondary; as, for instance, in Buddhist thinking, where the historical prince Gautama Shakyamuni is regarded as but one of many historical embodiments of Buddha-consciousness; or in Hindu thought, where the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable. The difficulty faced today by Christian thinkers in this regard follows from their doctrine of the Nazarene as the unique unique historical incarnation of G.o.d; and in Judaism, likewise, there is the no less troublesome doctrine of a universal G.o.d whose eye is on but one Chosen People of all in his created world. The fruit of such ethnocentric historicism is poor spiritual fare today; and the increasing difficulties of our clergies in attracting gourmets to their banquets should be evidence enough to make them realize that there must be something no longer palatable about the dishes they are serving. These were good enough for our fathers, in the tight little worlds of the knowledge of their days, when each little civilization was a thing more or less to itself. But consider that picture of the planet Earth that was taken from the surface of the moon! historical incarnation of G.o.d; and in Judaism, likewise, there is the no less troublesome doctrine of a universal G.o.d whose eye is on but one Chosen People of all in his created world. The fruit of such ethnocentric historicism is poor spiritual fare today; and the increasing difficulties of our clergies in attracting gourmets to their banquets should be evidence enough to make them realize that there must be something no longer palatable about the dishes they are serving. These were good enough for our fathers, in the tight little worlds of the knowledge of their days, when each little civilization was a thing more or less to itself. But consider that picture of the planet Earth that was taken from the surface of the moon!

In earlier times, when the relevant social unit was the tribe, the religious sect, a nation, or even a civilization, it was possible for the local mythology in service to that unit to represent all those beyond its bounds as inferior, and its own local inflection of the universal human heritage of mythological imagery either as the one, the true and sanctified, or at least as the n.o.blest and supreme. And it was in those times beneficial to the order of the group that its young should be trained to respond positively to their own system of tribal signals and negatively to all others, to reserve their love for at home and to project their hatreds outward. Today, however, we are the pa.s.sengers, all, of this single s.p.a.ceship Earth (as Buckminster Fuller once termed it), hurtling at a prodigious rate through the vast night of s.p.a.ce, going nowhere. And are we to allow a hijacker aboard?

Nietzsche, nearly a century ago, already named our period the Age of Comparisons. There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together. And so we are right now in an extremely perilous age of thunder, lightning, and hurricanes all around. I think it is improper to become hysterical about it, projecting hatred and blame. It is an inevitable, altogether natural thing that when energies that have never met before come into collision -- each bearing its own pride -- there should be turbulence. That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind -- to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here, ("judge not, that you may not be judged!") What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes.

And now, among the powers that are here being catapulted together, to collide and to explode, not the least important (it can be safely said) are the ancient mythological traditions, chiefly of India and the Far East, that are now entering in force into the fields of our European heritage, and vice versa, ideals of rational, progressive humanism and democracy that are now flooding into Asia. Add the general bearing of the knowledges of modern science on the archaic beliefs incorporated in all all traditional systems, and I think we shall agree that there is a considerable sifting task to be resolved here, if anything of the wisdom-lore that has sustained our species to the present is to be retained and intelligently handed on to whatever times are to come. traditional systems, and I think we shall agree that there is a considerable sifting task to be resolved here, if anything of the wisdom-lore that has sustained our species to the present is to be retained and intelligently handed on to whatever times are to come.

I have thought about this problem a good deal and have come to the conclusion that when the symbolic forms in which wisdom-lore has been everywhere embodied are interpreted not as referring primarily to any supposed or even actual historical personages or events, but psychologically, properly "spiritually," as referring to the inward potentials of our species, there then appears through all something that can be properly termed a philosophia perennis philosophia perennis of the human race, which, however, is lost to view when the texts are interpreted literally, as history, in the usual ways of harshly orthodox thought. of the human race, which, however, is lost to view when the texts are interpreted literally, as history, in the usual ways of harshly orthodox thought.

Dante in his philosophical work the Convito Convito distinguishes between the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical (or mystical) senses of any scriptural pa.s.sage. Let us take, for example, such a statement as the following: distinguishes between the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical (or mystical) senses of any scriptural pa.s.sage. Let us take, for example, such a statement as the following: Christ Jesus rose from the dead. Christ Jesus rose from the dead. The literal meaning is obvious: "A historical personage, Jesus by name who has been identified as 'Christ' (the Messiah), rose alive from the dead." Allegorically, the normal Christian reading would be: "So likewise, we too are to rise from death to eternal life." And the moral lesson thereby: "Let our minds be turned from the contemplation of mortal things to abide in what is eternal." Since the anagogical or mystical reading, however, must refer to what is neither past nor future but transcendent of time and eternal, neither in this place nor in that, but everywhere, in all, now and forever, the fourth level of meaning would seem to be that in death -- or in this world of death -- is eternal life. The moral from that transcendental standpoint would then seem to have to be that the mind in beholding mortal things is to recognize the eternal; and the allegory: that in this very body which Saint Paul termed "the body of this death" (Romans 6:24) is our eternal life -- not "to come," in any heavenly place, but here and now, on this earth, in the aspect of time. The literal meaning is obvious: "A historical personage, Jesus by name who has been identified as 'Christ' (the Messiah), rose alive from the dead." Allegorically, the normal Christian reading would be: "So likewise, we too are to rise from death to eternal life." And the moral lesson thereby: "Let our minds be turned from the contemplation of mortal things to abide in what is eternal." Since the anagogical or mystical reading, however, must refer to what is neither past nor future but transcendent of time and eternal, neither in this place nor in that, but everywhere, in all, now and forever, the fourth level of meaning would seem to be that in death -- or in this world of death -- is eternal life. The moral from that transcendental standpoint would then seem to have to be that the mind in beholding mortal things is to recognize the eternal; and the allegory: that in this very body which Saint Paul termed "the body of this death" (Romans 6:24) is our eternal life -- not "to come," in any heavenly place, but here and now, on this earth, in the aspect of time.

That is the sense, also, of the saying of the poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite." And I think that I recognize the same sense in the lines of Whitman that I have just cited, as well as in those of the Indian Upanishad, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Book of the Dead, and the Gnostic and the Gnostic Thomas Gospel. Thomas Gospel. "The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article ent.i.tled "Symbolism: Communication or Communion?" "The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common," wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article ent.i.tled "Symbolism: Communication or Communion?"6 "But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines." "But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines."

"The true symbol," he states again, "does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle, not to another point on the circ.u.mference. It is by symbolism that man enters affectively and consciously into contact with his own deepest self, with other men, and with G.o.d." " 'G.o.d is dead'. . . means, in fact, that symbols are dead."7 The poet and the mystic regard the imagery of a revelation as a fiction through which an insight into the depths of being -- one's own being and being generally -- is conveyed anagogically. Sectarian theologians, on the other hand, hold hard to the literal readings of their narratives, and these hold traditions apart. The lives of three incarnations, Jesus, Krishna, and Shakyamuni, will not be the same, yet as symbols pointing not to themselves, or to each other, but to the life beholding them, they are equivalent. To quote the monk Thomas Merton again: "One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.' The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object." but as 'sacrament' and 'presence.' The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object."8 Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a "presence" or "eternity" that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton's words: "to another point on the circ.u.mference") and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ("the center"): and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself.

Some weeks ago I received in the mail from the psychiatrist directing research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, Dr. Stanislav Grof, the ma.n.u.script of an impressive work interpreting the results of his practice during the past fourteen years (first in Czechoslovakia and now in this country) of psycholytic therapy; that is to say, the treatment of nervous disorders, both neurotic and psychotic, with the aid of judiciously measured doses of LSD. And I have found so much of my thinking about mythic forms freshly illuminated by the findings here reported, that I am going to try in these last pages to render a suggestion of the types and depths of consciousness that Dr. Grof has fathomed in his searching of our inward sea. The t.i.tle of the work, when it appears, will be Agony and Ecstasy in Psychiatric Treatment Agony and Ecstasy in Psychiatric Treatment (Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1972). (Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books, 1972).

Very briefly, the first order of induced experience that Dr. Grof reports upon, he has termed the "Aesthetic LSD Experience." In the main this corresponds to that which Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, The Doors of Perception, described back in 1954, after he had swallowed and experienced the effects of four-tenths of a gram of mescalin. What is here experienced is such an astounding vivification, alteration and intensification, of all experiences of the senses that, as Huxley remarked, even a common garden chair in the sun is recognized as "inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying." described back in 1954, after he had swallowed and experienced the effects of four-tenths of a gram of mescalin. What is here experienced is such an astounding vivification, alteration and intensification, of all experiences of the senses that, as Huxley remarked, even a common garden chair in the sun is recognized as "inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying."9 Other, more profound effects may yield sensations of physical transformation, lightness, levitation, clairvoyance, or even the power to a.s.sume animal forms and the like, such as primitive shamans claim. In India such powers (called Other, more profound effects may yield sensations of physical transformation, lightness, levitation, clairvoyance, or even the power to a.s.sume animal forms and the like, such as primitive shamans claim. In India such powers (called siddhi) siddhi) are claimed by yogis, and are not supposed to have accrued to them from without, but to have arisen from within, awakened by their mystic training, being potential within us all. Aldous Huxley had a similar thought, which he formulated in Western terms, and of which I expect to have something to say a bit later on. are claimed by yogis, and are not supposed to have accrued to them from without, but to have arisen from within, awakened by their mystic training, being potential within us all. Aldous Huxley had a similar thought, which he formulated in Western terms, and of which I expect to have something to say a bit later on.

The second type of reaction, Dr. Grof has described as the "Psychodynamic LSD Experience," relating it to an extension of consciousness into what Jung termed the Personal Unconscious, and the activation there of those emotionally overloaded contents that are dealt with typically in a Freudian psychoa.n.a.lysis. The grim tensions and terrified resistances to conscious scrutiny that are encountered on this level derive from various unconscious strains of moral, social, and prideful infantile ego-defenses, inappropriate to adulthood; and the mythological themes that in psychoa.n.a.lytical literature have been professionally a.s.sociated with the conflicts of these sessions -- Oedipus complex, Electra complex, etc. -- are not really (in their references here) mythological at all. They bear, in the context of these infantile biographical a.s.sociations, no anagogical, transpersonal relevancy whatsoever, but are allegorical merely of childhood desires frustrated by actual or imagined parental prohibitions and threats. Furthermore, even when traditional mythological figures do appear in the fantasies of this Freudian stage, they will be allegorical merely of personal conflicts; most frequently, as Dr. Grof has observed, "the conflict between s.e.xual feelings or activities and the religious taboos, as well as primitive fantasies about devils and h.e.l.l or angels and heaven, related to narratives or threats and promises of adults." And it will be only when these personal "psychodynamic" materials will have been actively relived, along with their a.s.sociated emotional, sensory, and ideational features, that the psychological "knot points" of the Personal Unconscious will have been sufficiently resolved for the deeper, inward, downward journey to proceed from personal-biographical to properly transpersonal (first biological, then metaphysical-mystical) realizations.

What Dr. Grof has observed is that, very much as patients during a Freudian psychoa.n.a.lysis and in the "psychodynamic" stages of a psycholytic treatment "relive" the basal fixations (and thereby break the hold upon them) of their unconsciously rooted affect and behavior patterns, so, in leaving this personal memory field behind, they begin to manifest both psychologically and physically the symptomatology of a totally different order of relived experiences; those, namely, of the agony of actual birth: the moment (indeed, the hours) of pa.s.sive, helpless terror when the uterine contractions suddenly began, and continued, and continued, and continued; or the more active tortures of the second stage of delivery, when the cervix opened and propulsion through the birth ca.n.a.l commenced -- continuing with an unremitting intensification of sheer fright and total agony, to a climax amounting practically to an experience of annihilation; when suddenly, release, light! the sharp pain of umbilical severance, suffocation until the bloodstream finds its new route to the lungs, and then, breath and breathing, on one's own! "The patients," states Dr. Grof, "spent hours in agonizing pain, gasping for breath, with the color of their faces changing from dead pale to dark purple. They were rolling on the floor and discharging extreme tensions in muscular tremors, twitches and complex twisting movements. The pulse rate was frequently doubled, and it was threadlike; there was often nausea with occasional vomiting and excessive sweating.

"Subjectively," he continues, "these experiences were of a transpersonal nature -- they had a much broader framework than the body and lifespan of a single individual. The experiencers were identifying with many individuals or groups of individuals at the same time; in the extreme the identification involved all suffering mankind, past, present and future." "The phenomena observed here," he states again, "are of a much more fundamental nature and have different dimensions than those of the Freudian stage." They are, in fact, of a mythological transpersonal order, not distorted to refer (as in the Freudian field) to the accidents of an individual life, but opening outward, as well as inward, to what James Joyce termed "the grave and constant in human sufferings."

For example, when reliving in the course of psycholytic treatment the nightmare of the first stage of the birth trauma -- when the uterine contractions commence and the locked-in child, in sudden fright and pain, is awakened to a consciousness of itself in danger -- the utterly terrified subject is overwhelmed by an acute experience of the very ground of being as anguished. Fantasies of inquisitorial torture come to mind, metaphysical anguish and existential despair: an identification with Christ crucified ("My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?"), Prometheus bound to the mountain crag, or Ixion to his whirling wheel. The mythic mode is of the Buddha's "All life is sorrowful": born in fear and pain, expiring in fear and pain, with little but fear and pain between. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." The question of "meaning" here becomes obsessive, and if the LSD session terminates on this note, there will generally remain a sense of life as loathsome, meaningless, a hateful, joyless inferno, with no way out either in s.p.a.ce or in time, "no exit" -- except possibly by suicide, which, if chosen, will be of the pa.s.sive, quietly helpless kind, by drowning, an overdose of sleeping pills, or the like.

Pa.s.sing to an intensive reliving of the second stage of the birth trauma, on the other hand -- that of the tortured struggle in the birth ca.n.a.l -- the mood and the imagery become violent, not pa.s.sive but active suffering being the dominant experience here, with elements of aggression and sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic pa.s.sion: illusions of horrendous battles, struggles with prodigious monsters, overwhelming tides and waters, wrathful G.o.ds, rites of terrible sacrifice, s.e.xual orgies, judgment scenes, and so on. The subject identifies himself simultaneously with both the victims and the aggressive forces of such conflicts, and as the intensity of the general agony mounts, it approaches and finally breaks beyond the pain threshold in an excruciating crisis of what Dr. Grof has aptly named "volcanic ecstasy." Here all extremes of pain and pleasure, joy and terror, murderous aggression and pa.s.sionate love are united and transcended. The relevant mythic imagery is of religions reveling in suffering, guilt, and sacrifice: visions of the wrath of G.o.d, the universal Deluge, Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses and the Decalogue, Christ's Via Crucis, Bacchic orgies, terrible Aztec sacrifices, Shiva the Destroyer, Kali's gruesome dance of the Burning Ground, and the phallic rites of Cybele. Suicides in this Dionysian mood are of the violent type: blowing out one's brains, leaping from heights, before trains, etc. Or one is moved to meaningless murder. The subject is obsessed with feelings of aggressive tension mixed with antic.i.p.ation of catastrophe; extremely irritable and with a tendency to provoke conflicts. The world is seen as full of threats and oppression. Carnivals with wild kicks, rough parties with promiscuous s.e.x, alcoholic orgies and baccha.n.a.lian dances, violence of all kinds, vertiginous adventures and explosions mark the life styles struck with the ferocity of this stage of the birth experience. In the course of a therapeutic session a regression to this level may be carried to culmination in an utterly terrifying crisis of actual ego-death, complete annihilation on all levels, followed by a grandiose, expansive sense of release, rebirth, and redemption, with enormous feelings and experiences of decompression, expansion of s.p.a.ce, and blinding, radiant light: visions of heavenly blue and gold, columned gigantic halls with crystal chandeliers, peac.o.c.k-feather fantasies, rainbow spectrums, and the like. The subjects, feeling *cleansed and purged, are moved now by an overwhelming love for all mankind, a new appreciation of the arts and of natural beauties, great zest for life, and a forgiving, wonderfully reconciled and expansive sense of G.o.d in his heaven and all right with the world.

Dr. Grof has found (and this I find extremely interesting) that the differing imageries of the various world religions tend to appear and to support his patients variously during the successive stages of their sessions. In immediate a.s.sociation with the relived agonies of the birth trauma, the usual imagery brought to mind is of the Old and New Testaments, together with (occasionally) certain Greek, Egyptian, or other pagan counterparts. However, when the agony has been accomplished and the release experienced of "birth" -- actually, a "second" or "spiritual" birth, released from the unconscious fears of the former, "once born" personal condition -- the symbology radically changes. Instead of mainly Biblical, Greek, and Christian themes, the a.n.a.logies now point rather toward the great Orient, chiefly India. "The source of these experiences," states Dr. Grof, "is obscure, and their resemblance to the Indian descriptions flabbergasting." He likens their tone to that of the timeless intrauterine state before before the onset of delivery: a blissful, peaceful, contentless condition, with deep, positive feelings of joy, love, and accord, or even union with the Universe and/or G.o.d. Paradoxically, this ineffable state is at once contentless and all-containing, of nonbeing yet more than being, no ego and yet an extension of self that embraces the whole cosmos. And here I think of that pa.s.sage in Aldous Huxley's the onset of delivery: a blissful, peaceful, contentless condition, with deep, positive feelings of joy, love, and accord, or even union with the Universe and/or G.o.d. Paradoxically, this ineffable state is at once contentless and all-containing, of nonbeing yet more than being, no ego and yet an extension of self that embraces the whole cosmos. And here I think of that pa.s.sage in Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception The Doors of Perception where he describes the sense that he experienced in his first mescalin adventure of his mind opening to ranges of wonder such as he had never before even imagined. where he describes the sense that he experienced in his first mescalin adventure of his mind opening to ranges of wonder such as he had never before even imagined.

Reflecting on my experience [Huxley wrote], I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, "that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this ma.s.s of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful." and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this ma.s.s of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful."

According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. . . Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pa.s.s that circ.u.mvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-pa.s.ses may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate "spiritual exercises," or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-pa.s.ses there flows, not indeed the perception "of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe" (for the by-pa.s.s does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality."10

Now it strikes me as evident through all this that the imagery of mythology, stemming as it does from the psyche and reflecting back to the same, represents in its various inflections various stages or degrees of the opening of ego-consciousness toward the prospect of what Aldous Huxley has here called Mind at Large. Plato in the Timaeus Timaeus declares that "there is only one way in which one being can serve another, and this is by giving him his proper nourishment and motion: and the motions that are akin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe." It is these, I would say, that are represented in myth. As ill.u.s.trated in the various mythologies of the peoples of the world, however, the universals have been everywhere particularized to the local sociopolitical context. As an old professor of mine in Comparative Religions at the University of Munich used to say: "In its subjective sense the religion of all mankind is one and the same. In its objective sense, however, there are differing forms." declares that "there is only one way in which one being can serve another, and this is by giving him his proper nourishment and motion: and the motions that are akin to the divine principle within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe." It is these, I would say, that are represented in myth. As ill.u.s.trated in the various mythologies of the peoples of the world, however, the universals have been everywhere particularized to the local sociopolitical context. As an old professor of mine in Comparative Religions at the University of Munich used to say: "In its subjective sense the religion of all mankind is one and the same. In its objective sense, however, there are differing forms."

In the past, I think we can now say, the differing forms served the differing and often conflicting interests of the various societies, binding individuals to their local group horizons and ideals, whereas in the West today we have learned to recognize a distinction between the spheres and functions, on one hand, of society, practical survival, economic and political ends, and, on the other hand, sheerly psychological (or, as we used to say, spiritual) values. To return to the name, once more, of Dante: there is in the Fourth Treatise of the Convito Convito a pa.s.sage in which he discourses on the divinely ordained separation of state and Church, as symbolized historically in the joined yet separate histories of Rome and Jerusalem, the Empire and the Papacy. These are the two arms of G.o.d, not to be confused; and he rebukes the Papacy for its political interventions, the authority of the Church being properly "not of this world" but of the Spirit -- the relationship of which to the aims of this world is exactly that of Huxley's Mind at Large to the utilitarian ends of biological survival -- which are all right and necessary too, but are not the same. a pa.s.sage in which he discourses on the divinely ordained separation of state and Church, as symbolized historically in the joined yet separate histories of Rome and Jerusalem, the Empire and the Papacy. These are the two arms of G.o.d, not to be confused; and he rebukes the Papacy for its political interventions, the authority of the Church being properly "not of this world" but of the Spirit -- the relationship of which to the aims of this world is exactly that of Huxley's Mind at Large to the utilitarian ends of biological survival -- which are all right and necessary too, but are not the same.

We live today -- thank G.o.d! -- in a secular state, governed by human beings (with all their inevitable faults) according to principles of law that are still developing and have originated not from Jerusalem but from Rome. The concept of the state, moreover, is yielding rapidly at this hour to the concept of the ec.u.mene, i.e., the whole inhabited earth; and if nothing else unites us, the ecological crisis will. There is therefore neither any need any more, nor any possibility, for those locally binding, sociopolitically bounded, differing forms of religion "in its objective sense" which have held men separate in the past, giving to G.o.d the things that are Caesar's and to Caesar the things that are G.o.d's.

"G.o.d is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circ.u.mference nowhere." So we are told in a little twelfth-century book known as The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers. The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers. Each of us -- whoever and wherever he may be -- is then the center, and within him, whether he knows it or not, is that Mind at Large, the laws of which are the laws not only of all minds but of all s.p.a.ce as well. For, as I have already pointed out, we are the children of this beautiful planet that we have lately seen photographed from the moon. We were not delivered into it by some G.o.d, but have come forth from it. We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. And the earth, together with its sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth, we are told, from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from s.p.a.ce. So that we are the mind, ultimately, of s.p.a.ce. No wonder, then, if its laws and ours are the same! Likewise, our depths are the depths of s.p.a.ce, whence all those G.o.ds sprang that men's minds in the past projected onto animals and plants, onto hills and streams, the planets in their courses, and their own peculiar social observances. Each of us -- whoever and wherever he may be -- is then the center, and within him, whether he knows it or not, is that Mind at Large, the laws of which are the laws not only of all minds but of all s.p.a.ce as well. For, as I have already pointed out, we are the children of this beautiful planet that we have lately seen photographed from the moon. We were not delivered into it by some G.o.d, but have come forth from it. We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. And the earth, together with its sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth, we are told, from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from s.p.a.ce. So that we are the mind, ultimately, of s.p.a.ce. No wonder, then, if its laws and ours are the same! Likewise, our depths are the depths of s.p.a.ce, whence all those G.o.ds sprang that men's minds in the past projected onto animals and plants, onto hills and streams, the planets in their courses, and their own peculiar social observances.

Our mythology now, therefore, is to be of infinite s.p.a.ce and its light, which is without as well as within. Like moths, we are caught in the spell of its allure, flying to it outward, to the moon and beyond, and flying to it, also, inward. On our planet itself all dividing horizons have been shattered. We can no longer hold our loves at home and project our aggressions elsewhere; for on this s.p.a.ceship Earth there is no "elsewhere" any more. And no mythology that continues to speak or to teach of "elsewheres" and "outsiders" meets the requirement of this hour.

And so, to return to our opening question: What is -- or what is to be -- the new mythology?

It is -- and will forever be, as long as our human race exists -- the old, everlasting, perennial mythology, in its "subjective sense," poetically renewed in terms neither of a remembered past nor of a projected future, but of now: addressed, that is to say, not to the flattery of "peoples," but to the waking of individuals in the knowledge of themselves, not simply as egos fighting for place on the surface of this beautiful planet, but equally as centers of Mind at Large -- each in his own way at one with all, and with no horizons.

Reference Notes