1 Gods 9

When you look at the popular picture of life in America — what the media presents—it’s all wrong wall material. The arts have lost their dynamic and so have hecome violent.
Take television for example. There are only two themes: violence and sex—the primary biological urges of animals. But the spiritual realizations which come to us through these realms of biological experi- 11 ence are totally missed. You have to go to some of the really great poets and great novelists of today to find people who recognize these things, and their books are not on the best-seller list. 12 11-12 #kwml

We see it In marriage, for instance. There are two stages. First is what I call the biological stage, which has to do with producing and raising children, and the other is what I would call the alchemical marriage —realizing the spiritual identity that the two are somehow one person. There comes a moment in marriage, if you 13 live long enough and stay with the game long enough, when you realize that a spiritual marriage has happened, that the two individuals are two aspects of one identity. 14 13-14 #alchemy

When the Oriental gurus come over here, they say, "What does it matter if someone rose trom the dead two thousand years ago? Are you rising from the dead today? Are you pulling your spiritual, your human consciousness out of your animal base and letting the animal base become spiritualized in your lite experience?" They’re right. That's what’s important. And that’s what the myths are about. 29

2 Symbols 30

The symbol 32 the Promised Land, for instance, has nothing to do with a geographical area that has to be conquered and maintained by military might. It is a reference to a place, or what might be called an attitude toward a place, in the human heart. 33 32-33

Heraclitus tells us, "For God all things are good and right but for men some things are good and some are evil." 35

Now, a very important dual figure of this kind is the androgyne, the male/female who are one. This is the prime symbol of 35 the realization of opposites. Marriage is an occasion for coming to an experience that transcends your own personal incarnation of one aspect, and, through the relationship in marriage, you may experience an identity with that other you, that is, experience your participation in the androgyne motif. 36 35-36

This is what’s called idolatry — mistaking the symbol for the reference. And this is the mistake of what might be called the fundamentalist position with respect to biblical symbols. 43

Then they see idolatry everywhere other than right in their own tradition, where it really is. They cannot see that these other traditions are not idolatrous, cannot be idolatrous, because their gods are symbols, not facts. 44

The Fall in the Hebrew tradition, which we have inherited, is in the same context basically as the Zoroastrian tradition. It is a recognition that life in time is not life in eternity. Now to interpret this as a fall you must see nature as a mixture of good and evil. You must separate out the good and favor it against the evil. Of course, this interpretation separates us from nature and I believe it underlies a good deal of the violence of Western progressivism. 45

all the symbolic talk is only to help you come to that realization, and, if it’s not helping you, then throw it away, just point inside and say, "It’s here." That’s the sense of the saying, "If you see the Buddha coming along the road, kill him.’ He’s not out there. He's in here. If you concretize your symbol and see the answer to everything in one external form, you have become an idolater, so kill it. 47

Well, that’s what I think a lot of our popular religion has done. It has cheapened the high spiritual symbols into chauvinistic advertisements of our own culture and its superiority to others. 48

People today are still pulling back into their in-group commitments all over the place. It’s as though there were a reluctance to make the jump that has to be made of recognizing in one’s fellow mana totally different race, and skin color, and religion. The result is that people link themselves with one group against another group, rather than adopting an attitude, "I can play ball on my team but that doesnt tum me against the other team." 52

People today are still pulling back into their in-group commitments all over the place. It’s as though there were a reluctance to make the jump that has to be made of recognizing in one’s fellow mana totally different race, and skin color, and religion. The result is that people link themselves with one group against another group, rather than adopting an attitude, "I can play ball on my team but that doesnt tum me against the other team." 52

In life, we put on the mask of a certain race, a certain 53 time, a certain group of ethical commitments, and so forth, and we stand for those, but we also know that what we are is only one half of something that the other fellow represents on the other side. That’s the only way of aristocratic battle, the knightly conflict. There was a relationship of honor between knights. Those men did not despise each other. If they — did, they wouldn’t use their swords; that — would be an insult to the sword. We don’t have this sense of knightly conflict anymore. Since Napoleon’s time, the mythology of our enemy as the demon and ourselves as bright radiant heroes has been built up. That’s a mythology all right, only it is concretized. There is no middle. 54 53-54 #kwml

3 Goddesses 57

the problem of the commercial artist. "What can I do to make money from my art?" not, "How’s my art enabling me to Hower?" This is an important problem. 66

The whole meaning of the Grail tradition has to do with 69 the problem of a person living an authentic life out of the spontaneity of his heart when that heart is a noble heart whose spontaneity is based on compassion rather than possession and conquest. In the Grail tradition, the individual was conscious of facing the wasteland, a land of people who do simply what they are supposed to do, or what is thought by the society well to do— people protessing beliefs because they have to, holding jobs that they’ve inherited, not earned, and so forth—a group of zombies, you might say. That’s what the story of Perceval represents in the Grail romances—the principle of compassion with suffering, in which you recognize your essential transpersonal identity with the very life that’s there facing you. That’s what the Grail legend is all about. 79 69-70

if you meditate on your past sins long enough, you can get lost in your sins and not know what your virtues are. Why not meditate on the virtues? Foster the virtues and let the sins fall off. Find the virtues. 72

4 Initiations 82

I’m a scholar. I read. I remember my friend Alan Watts once asked me, "Joe, what is your yoga?"’ And I said, "My yoga is underlining sentences." Old Will Rogers used to say, All I know is what I read in the newspapers. Well, all I know is what I read in books—with a little bit more added. 82

I always say that if you go through for your Ph.D. you're in the dependency position until you're thirty-five or forty and, in fact, you may never get out of it. And, you know, there is a very simple test! You can judge by the number of footnotes a scholar applies whether or not he’s got his own authority or is simply hoping that somebody will feel that he has the right authori- 85 ties. It’s an important point sensitive point, in the academic world. 86 85-86

In rituals and in myths, most of th problems involved in finding male adult hood come about because the male has to ‘ntend to become an adult. It is different for the female. For the young woman, it happens to her. With her first menstruation she’s a woman. Next thing she knows 88 she’s a mother. She doesn’t have to work this thing out. It’s working itself out on her and the problem of the woman is to realize who and what she has already become. The problem of the male, on the other hand, is to become what he can be. All the myths know this and all the myths build it up. 89 88-89

these initiations of breaking a man, smashing him, giving him pain, or called "the male menstruation." That is to say, something is now living through his life that’s not simply his personal intention. This happens naturally with a woman. She lives a life of nature whether she wills or nils, and if she nils, then she doesn’t have her life at all. But with the male, nature doesn’t do this to him. Society does it, and life does it, and he's got to learn to live for something else besides his own little ego will. That’s the sense of the mythic initiations. 90

I know that my own work of scholarship has been a disregarding of the claims of life and an insistence and dedication to the claims of my skill. 91

The ritual for the girl with her first menstruation was normally just to sit in a hut and realize what was happening to her, that she was now a vehicle of a transpersonal power. These things 4, | were happening to her outside her own iy personal wishes, and it was not up to her to make decisions regarding them. So you could say that life overtakes the women. But the transpersonal power of nature never overtakes a boy in the same way, So in the traditional societies he had to be broken into becoming a vehicle of something —not a vehicle of nature like the girls, but a vehicle of the society. Typically, mythologically, woman is the vehicle of nature and man is the controller of society, but he has to control it in terms of the social order and not his own personal wishes. And when you think of what was done to the young men! It’s horrific the way they were smashed up! They were not 93 the same thing they were before the initiation. They were totally transformed. 94 93-94

Also marriage is an ordeal basically of losing yourself in a higher polarity, the androgyne relationship. I think one of the problems in mar - 100 riage is that people don’t realize what it is. They think it’s a long love affair and it isn't. Marriage has nothing to do with being happy. It has to with being transformed, and when the transformation is realized it is a magnificent experience. But you have to submit. You have to yield. You have to give. You can’t just dictate. 101 100-101

Also, if one goes into a convent, I mean seriously, one goes through a death and resurrection. Sometimes, there is an actual ritual enactment of a simulated death and you come up 101 with another name. You are now Brother Felicitas instead of Mike Jones. The name is changed. The old characters are left behind and a new spiritual self is born. But, in general, our education has nothing to do with these rituals. Our education is mostly concerned with the communication of information and that’s not enough. There’s no real ordeal of transformation. 102 101-102

And for the male, the female is life. She is the challenge of life. 103

5 Animals 104

That’s the problem of our existence, you might say, to read through our temporal experience the eternal life that we are experiencing. 108

Marriage is the killing of your Separate. ness. You become one part of the large; unit. You’re no longer the separate one. 110

Marriage and death, and birth and death ceremonies have a lot in common. 111

Where it [the symbol of the winged fish] would appear, it would represent exactly the same thing as the feathered serpent. That is to say, something that represents the abysmal, or the earthbound, or the waterbound that takes off and is in flight. So it combines the two principles of bondage to the earth and release from it. That’s the important thing to realize in life. You don't have to be quit of your bondage in order to experience the release. The two go together.

How would that be experienced in an individual’s life?

In an individual’s life all this is really a great mystical experience. The individual no longer identifies himself with the history of his carnal body but with the consciousness that informs that body. When you are identified with the consciousness rather than with the vehicle, the bondage of the vehicle has nothing to do with the bondage of the consciousness. You are free 122 in bondage. Mythologically, the shackles fall without ever leaving your wrists. This is the condition of what in Buddhist tradition is known as the Bodhisattva, the one whose being is illumination. He knows that in the world, in the field of bondage, the eternal power plays. And so you have this forming a joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.
You cant eliminate the sorrows of the world. Time involves sorrow, and if you're in the field of time, that is the experience of your carnal body. But that which is participating in this has another dimension, the eternal dimension, and it can joyfully affirm this. This is the way that St. Augustine reads the Crucifixion. Jesus came to the cross like a bridegroom to the bride. That’s to say, you come voluntarily to eternity, participate voluntarily in the processes of time, which are of sorrow and death. And so he comes to the cross, 123 which is the cross of life and time, voluntarily. When you get that affirmative aspect you’ve got a sense of Christianity that is heroic. The accent in our tradition. however, has been on Christ’s suffering and our sins having poured their weight upon his shoulders, and this poor, poor man, how he suffered for you. That's not it! There’s the other Crucifixion, of Christ triumphant, with his eyes open, voluntarily on the cross. That’s where we all are, and when you can identify yourself with that myth, youre released. Do you see what I mean? This is the bird flight linked to the serpent bondage in one image. When the ego is capable of that participation in the Crucifixion, then you are in the imitatio Christi. You really are in the imitation of Christ and you have achieved the goal, I would say, of the Christian message. 124

Can life have meaning without myth?

It has the meaning even if you don’t know what it is.

What’s the difference?

The myth helps you to know how to read these things, that’s all. The meaning is always there. Sometimes you can come to it by yourself. Great poets come to it, so why not you? Well, we're not all great poets. 129

6 Underground 130

This poses the problem of translating your own local inherited mythology, or religion, as we like to call it, into a cultural worldview, in order to see the essential meaning in the symbol — to see the earth from the moon, so to speak. In order to do that, the best way to learn is through comparative studies, to see how, for instance, the imagery of the Christ story and the imagery of the Buddha story are two local transformations of the same imagery. 136

7 Conflict 156

Spengler’s definition of a nation is "a folk informed for war." 170

8 Freedom 179

But there’s a beautiful paper by Schopenhauer called On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual. It’s a lovely paper. He says that at a certain stage of life, when you’re well along, you look back and it seems as though your lite has been composed by a novelist. It has an order. It has a continuity. You suddenly realize that events which at the time seemed to have been just chance meetings actually played an important part in the structuring of this plot. 179

But who is the author of our lives? Who is the builder of this interlocking dream? When Schopenhauer comes to this image he says, "It is as if?" He doesn’t say, "It is. And that’s very important! The great mythological point of view is, "It is as if." He says, "It is as if the world were a dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream too, as if everything interlocks with everything else like the instruments in a symphony." We have the same insight also from the Orient. Chuang-tzu's wonderful saying that’s frequently referred to, "I dreamed I was a butterfly dreaming I was a man." We are all manifestations of an energy that we don't control and our life is, as it were, a dream. 180

I have a little formula I use in my own thinking. Myth is the social dream and dream is the individual myth. By following your dreams you can discover the realm dynamics of your life course, your life intention, and your life impulse. Your mind can then furnish the implementation to achieve these aims and ends. Otherwise, one’s living from the head. 184

What are the highest buildings? They are economic buildings, either high apartment houses or office buildings. And that tells you what’s running the culture. This shift of accent is what’s known as the end of the culture. Spengler in The Decline of the West saw this, that our culture is in the stage of early Rome. The beginning of the end is the utilitarian, politically organized state. 187

At the end of the last century and the first of this, there lived a very great German anthropologist named Adolf Bastian. He was a wide traveler as well as an an- 190 thropologist and medical man, and he recognized that throughout the world the same mythological symbols occur: death and resurrection, virgin births, promised lands, and all this kind of thing. He called these "elementary ideas." Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, came in on this discovery by asking the important psychological question, "What is it in the human psyche that supports and makes for all these symbols and motifs being found everywhere throughout the world?" It was Jung who called them archetypal images, arche being an all-enclosing type—a type that is found everywhere.
And Bastian had another observation. These elementary ideas appear in different forms and with different interpretations in parts of the world at different times, and he called these "‘folk ideas’ — the folk idea being a folk inflection of the tary idea. 191 us are stuck to our folk inflection of the elementary idea, but all we have to do to have a world culture is to turn our folk into a metaphor for the elementary, to realize the universal humanity in your folk tradition, which isn’t peculiar just to you. 190-192

I can remember Good Friday meditations. I was a good little Catholic boy, and between noon and three o'clock on Good Friday, we’d have meditations on the Crucifixion during which we were to think of the weight of Jesus’ cross, and how our sins have weighed down the cross, and how we should ask for forgiveness, and all this kind of stuff, instead of realizing that we’re all carrying our cross. The cross symbolizes the earthly body, and what Jesus was doing was going through the cross to the father and transcendence. That's why he returns Easter Sunday radiant. It's 195 exactly the same motif as that of the Buddha seated, touching the earth, dismissing the Lord of Life, Death, Lust, and Duty. The Buddha has come to the realization of the spirit, and so it pours forth. This is the whole parable of myth—that you should hecome a vehicle of the radiance of the transcendent either by belonging to this community, which is itself a manifestation, or by realizing it in yourself, Our culture has lost it. We don’t believe it.

Are you saying you’re the Second Coming?

Everyone is the Second Coming as soon as one has the experience. You’re it! Change the focus of your eyes. The central mountain is everywhere. Is everywhere. It is not going to be everywhere. It's here now. That’s the real message of myth. 196 195-196