"When Myth Incarnates in the Waking World"
Steppenwolf
Here is the passage on Steppenwolf I mentioned in another thread:
Returning to my previous statement that we define sanity by functionality, the question arises of how best to define insanity, when we're so open to all experiences. Dysfunctionality would be the obvious answer, but there is more than one kind of dysfunctionality, and insanity is a strong term. We have already ruled out hallucinations. In the case of a thing you have personally experienced, you cannot be justified in concluding that it does not exist, as that which exists is that which we experience, or that with which we have a relationship. The delusions of a psychotic, however, are not actually direct experiences; they are interpretations of direct experience.
Consider the case of a sleeping disorder, in which the sufferer sees the dream images of REM sleep, superimposed over waking reality. These images may be terrifying, such as venomous spiders or snakes, but the sufferer accepts their reality without question or criticism while he is having the experience. This is only a sleeping disorder (albeit a strange one) and is not considered a form of psychosis, because no lasting delusion flows from it. The sufferer believes he is seeing spiders or snakes, but the dream passes and the images disappear. They are not worked up into a story of any kind.
How does this relate to the classical three criteria for a thing's reality? These three are vivid perception and the feeling of real-ness, agreement between observers, and continuity across time. Vivid perception, of course, is simply perception, the phantasia catalyptica of the Stoic school. An experience of the kind I am discussing feels completely real, with every bit as much surface vividness as a waking experience. The spiders, on the other hand, don't inject their venom- a lack of consummation distinctly dream-like. Our view grants reality to all types of perception, to whatever degree the thing is perceived- and the level of reality here is just below true waking.
Agreement between observers is also perception, as any other observer in the situation would inevitably be an object of perception in his own right. It goes without saying that no other observer in this situation would be seeing spiders, but to the sufferer with the sleeping disorder this can disprove nothing, as both the spider and the other observer remain objects of perception. The only conclusion he could actually draw is that he is in a position to give direct assent to both perceptions, while the other observer can give direct assent to him alone, applying (at most) provisional assent to the presence of a venomous spider in the room.
As for continuity across time, the dream images disappear again after just a few minutes, along with the sense that they were ever real. So out of the three criteria for a thing's reality, the spiders possess none completely. They appear extremely vivid but they do not strike; they cannot be observed by anyone else; and they don't last for very long. They were only ever partially real; they were less real than waking reality. The language we use and the distinctions we draw may be a little unusual, but this conclusion isn't all that far from what the subject actually means, when he says to himself, "It was just a dream."
A true psychotic, on the other hand, does not just see things. He constructs and maintains a personal mythology, believing in it absolutely on an ongoing basis. Events and interactions are re-interpreted, fitting them into the overall story. What this is, in essence, is a one-man fundamentalism, an elaborate interpretation of reality rather than direct experience. It is not personal mythologies that are at all dysfunctional, but to accept such a mythology as an absolute truth. (This is not to suggest that the sufferer from a mental illness has any choice in the matter; that depends on the particular illness.)
The problem, in other words, is not direct experience, no matter how strange or unusual the experience may be. Nor is the problem belief as such, or personal mythology as such. A personal belief system may be quite bizarre, without being any more bizarre than the teachings of many mainstream religions. The problem is obsession.
My definition of insanity, therefore, is this: obsessive fixation on a particular interpretation of reality. To be obsessed with a particular worldview is to be insane, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the degree of obsession and not on the subjective strangeness of the worldview itself. To refuse to participate in any worldview is insipid in concept and impossible in practice, so that is not a viable alternative- although it is attempted by many. The world contains many people who don't really believe in anything. It also contains a fair number who believe obsessively, captivated by their own mythologies, and to various degrees insane. In the words of William Butler Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity." Both the best and the worst here are a sorry lot.
Spiritual and mental health, then, lie in a different direction, the method we know as ringing the changes. The specific examples given above are not particularly important, they merely serve to illustrate the concept. Ringing the changes can be applied to everything, from personal interactions to metaphysical questions, and the decision to think in this expansive way is the decision to be sane.
The cliche of the blind men with the elephant is very much to the point here. Rather than arguing and creating rival orthodoxies, they should just have compared notes. If they had known anything about ringing the changes, they might not have ended up too far off the mark.
Applying the same method to the world that we live in, can we not create a more complete approximation of the world as a whole, independent of all orthodoxies whether scientific or religious?
Let's return to the example of a personal mythology, as dramatized by Hermann Hesse in the novel Steppenwolf. The protagonist of the novel, one Harry Haller, believes himself to contain two natures: the fierce and lonely "wolf of the steppes" and the cultured and civilized man of the intellect. Torn between his two natures, he lives in despair, unable to reconcile himself with human society and believing himself unfit for it, while at the same time holding himself aloof from it and in some sense superior. This character's private mythology has become destructive and dysfunctional, marked by obsession, a fixed idea. Not surprisingly, he considers suicide, but holds off when he reads a pamphlet, the Treatise of the Steppenwolf, which says exactly this:
The division into wolf and man, flesh and spirit, by means of which Harry tries to make his destiny more comprehensible to himself is a very great simplification... His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.
The conclusion of the Treatise is that what is needed is humor, for "humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism."
Haller later visits the Magic Theater, a surreal wonderland of bizarre and conflicting realities, all designed to encourage the Steppenwolf to expand beyond the fixed ideas of his private mythology. The Magic Theater is virtually an allegory for ringing the changes, teaching that what is important is neither to accept a single reality nor divide life in two, but to live simultaneously in multiple worldviews and to play with them all.
The concept can be applied to any number of things, including every aspect of mundane existence. In one's personal interactions it is indispensable. Applying the art of magic to one's daily life is very much within this spirit, but I am not talking about any formal occultism. Most esoteric systems are both rigid and elaborate, possible objects of obsession rather than routes to freedom. They are things to ring the changes on, rather than with, although they can offer riches if approached wisely. My preference is to approach the source, the Realm of Myth of which all such systems are interpretations. I am talking about being magic and not just "working" it.
So how can this actually be done? How can ringing the changes be attained and lived? There's no easy answer, but I can provide an example. My father David Douglas Thompson, the creator of Relationship Theory, passed away several years ago. The term "ringing the changes" was his own invention, and he never explained why he used that term, although it puts me in mind of a number of different bells ringing at the same time to produce a resonance. He was also very skeptical of any formal system of occultism, and of dogmatic systems in general. The core ideas of Relationship Theory had appeared to him in a mysterious dream, and he spent the next few decades working out the implications, without any formal training in philosophy or metaphysics.
Considering the origins of the Theory in an unusual dream, it is perhaps not surprising that I dreamed of its creator, more than a year and a half after he passed away, as a bringer of gnosis from the land of the dead:
1
At the edge of the water, the mist comes in.
Sorrow brushes my neck, just as light as a dream.
There is a distant horn across the deep, flat bay-
It is only a warning to keep the boats away,
But I shudder, regardless, at the ebb and the flow,
For the things that must come
And the things that must go
For the things that dwell deep, on the ocean's floor,
And the hint of a message from the farthest shore.
2
And you stand there again, with a demon's mad eyes,
But as silent, and solemn, and fearful as me.
And the wind drops to nothing, as empty and still
As the depths of the ocean. And there, in the chill,
We are both of us haunted. The things we have done,
Either you as my father
Or me as your son-
Though we drown them as deep as the ocean's floor,
They cannot be erased or denied anymore.
3
It is I who speaks first. "After all, though," I say,
"I'm a demon as well. None has known me but you."
And the wind from the ocean moans out once again
Like the cold, subtle touch of this loss on my skin.
And you nod there, in silence, inclining your head.
"Let me tell, you then, son,
Of the things of the dead,
Of the song that I heard in the ocean's roar
And the secret knowledge of the other shore."
4
So you speak, for a time, and I hear, with respect
Of the burdens and wisdom and songs of the dead.
Then the horn cries again from across the dark bay
And you look in my eyes. "They have called me away."
I had no chance to speak- when I blinked, you were gone.
And of all of those words
I remember not one.
But I will have cause to recall them once more
When I stand at your side on the farthest shore.
The reaction of a skeptical materialist to all this is very easy to imagine. We tell ourselves there's an afterlife because we're afraid of our mortality, and all heavens and hells are mere human creations, desperate attempts to appease our fears. Except I have no particular opinions about life after death. I don't know whether there's an afterlife or what form it might take; I don't know whether we reincarnate or whether death is the end. I am happy to play with the idea that that was really him, that my father actually brought me some mysterious knowledge "from the farthest shore" even though I can't remember any of it. I'm also willing to play with the idea that what I saw was not my father, but a symbolic manifestation from the Mythic Realm. And I'm willing to play with the idea that this was "just a dream."
The point is that all those options, if they're left open and alive, preserve intact a sense of wonder, a mysterious awe and joy. It isn't that, because I'm playing, I don't really believe in any of them. I believe in all of them at once, but in none of them obsessively.
According to a traditional proverb from the Scottish Highlands, "he who interprets his omens luckily will himself be lucky." Applying the mentality of ringing the changes, "he who interprets his life magically will himself be magic." To think this way and to live this way is to "incarnate myth in the waking world," producing a life filled with wonder and awe. This is a type of internal alchemy, like that described by the Chinese philosopher Hsuan-Tsang, in his Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only:
Changing with the wisdom of one who is free and at ease. This means that he who has realized the freedom and the ease of mind can change and transform earth [into gold] and so forth without fail according to his desires.
The phrase that I use for this is "spontaneous fluidity," the state of complete mental and spiritual health. With freedom and ease of mind, earth can change into gold. Doctrines can change into magic gateways. Myths can change into truths. All of this is not gained through obsessive belief, but through a willingness to play with the possibilities, to be changed by them, and to incarnate them. The spirit of madness is the spirit of fixation. The spirit of sanity is the spirit of play.
Returning to my previous statement that we define sanity by functionality, the question arises of how best to define insanity, when we're so open to all experiences. Dysfunctionality would be the obvious answer, but there is more than one kind of dysfunctionality, and insanity is a strong term. We have already ruled out hallucinations. In the case of a thing you have personally experienced, you cannot be justified in concluding that it does not exist, as that which exists is that which we experience, or that with which we have a relationship. The delusions of a psychotic, however, are not actually direct experiences; they are interpretations of direct experience.
Consider the case of a sleeping disorder, in which the sufferer sees the dream images of REM sleep, superimposed over waking reality. These images may be terrifying, such as venomous spiders or snakes, but the sufferer accepts their reality without question or criticism while he is having the experience. This is only a sleeping disorder (albeit a strange one) and is not considered a form of psychosis, because no lasting delusion flows from it. The sufferer believes he is seeing spiders or snakes, but the dream passes and the images disappear. They are not worked up into a story of any kind.
How does this relate to the classical three criteria for a thing's reality? These three are vivid perception and the feeling of real-ness, agreement between observers, and continuity across time. Vivid perception, of course, is simply perception, the phantasia catalyptica of the Stoic school. An experience of the kind I am discussing feels completely real, with every bit as much surface vividness as a waking experience. The spiders, on the other hand, don't inject their venom- a lack of consummation distinctly dream-like. Our view grants reality to all types of perception, to whatever degree the thing is perceived- and the level of reality here is just below true waking.
Agreement between observers is also perception, as any other observer in the situation would inevitably be an object of perception in his own right. It goes without saying that no other observer in this situation would be seeing spiders, but to the sufferer with the sleeping disorder this can disprove nothing, as both the spider and the other observer remain objects of perception. The only conclusion he could actually draw is that he is in a position to give direct assent to both perceptions, while the other observer can give direct assent to him alone, applying (at most) provisional assent to the presence of a venomous spider in the room.
As for continuity across time, the dream images disappear again after just a few minutes, along with the sense that they were ever real. So out of the three criteria for a thing's reality, the spiders possess none completely. They appear extremely vivid but they do not strike; they cannot be observed by anyone else; and they don't last for very long. They were only ever partially real; they were less real than waking reality. The language we use and the distinctions we draw may be a little unusual, but this conclusion isn't all that far from what the subject actually means, when he says to himself, "It was just a dream."
A true psychotic, on the other hand, does not just see things. He constructs and maintains a personal mythology, believing in it absolutely on an ongoing basis. Events and interactions are re-interpreted, fitting them into the overall story. What this is, in essence, is a one-man fundamentalism, an elaborate interpretation of reality rather than direct experience. It is not personal mythologies that are at all dysfunctional, but to accept such a mythology as an absolute truth. (This is not to suggest that the sufferer from a mental illness has any choice in the matter; that depends on the particular illness.)
The problem, in other words, is not direct experience, no matter how strange or unusual the experience may be. Nor is the problem belief as such, or personal mythology as such. A personal belief system may be quite bizarre, without being any more bizarre than the teachings of many mainstream religions. The problem is obsession.
My definition of insanity, therefore, is this: obsessive fixation on a particular interpretation of reality. To be obsessed with a particular worldview is to be insane, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the degree of obsession and not on the subjective strangeness of the worldview itself. To refuse to participate in any worldview is insipid in concept and impossible in practice, so that is not a viable alternative- although it is attempted by many. The world contains many people who don't really believe in anything. It also contains a fair number who believe obsessively, captivated by their own mythologies, and to various degrees insane. In the words of William Butler Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity." Both the best and the worst here are a sorry lot.
Spiritual and mental health, then, lie in a different direction, the method we know as ringing the changes. The specific examples given above are not particularly important, they merely serve to illustrate the concept. Ringing the changes can be applied to everything, from personal interactions to metaphysical questions, and the decision to think in this expansive way is the decision to be sane.
The cliche of the blind men with the elephant is very much to the point here. Rather than arguing and creating rival orthodoxies, they should just have compared notes. If they had known anything about ringing the changes, they might not have ended up too far off the mark.
Applying the same method to the world that we live in, can we not create a more complete approximation of the world as a whole, independent of all orthodoxies whether scientific or religious?
Let's return to the example of a personal mythology, as dramatized by Hermann Hesse in the novel Steppenwolf. The protagonist of the novel, one Harry Haller, believes himself to contain two natures: the fierce and lonely "wolf of the steppes" and the cultured and civilized man of the intellect. Torn between his two natures, he lives in despair, unable to reconcile himself with human society and believing himself unfit for it, while at the same time holding himself aloof from it and in some sense superior. This character's private mythology has become destructive and dysfunctional, marked by obsession, a fixed idea. Not surprisingly, he considers suicide, but holds off when he reads a pamphlet, the Treatise of the Steppenwolf, which says exactly this:
The division into wolf and man, flesh and spirit, by means of which Harry tries to make his destiny more comprehensible to himself is a very great simplification... His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.
The conclusion of the Treatise is that what is needed is humor, for "humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism."
Haller later visits the Magic Theater, a surreal wonderland of bizarre and conflicting realities, all designed to encourage the Steppenwolf to expand beyond the fixed ideas of his private mythology. The Magic Theater is virtually an allegory for ringing the changes, teaching that what is important is neither to accept a single reality nor divide life in two, but to live simultaneously in multiple worldviews and to play with them all.
The concept can be applied to any number of things, including every aspect of mundane existence. In one's personal interactions it is indispensable. Applying the art of magic to one's daily life is very much within this spirit, but I am not talking about any formal occultism. Most esoteric systems are both rigid and elaborate, possible objects of obsession rather than routes to freedom. They are things to ring the changes on, rather than with, although they can offer riches if approached wisely. My preference is to approach the source, the Realm of Myth of which all such systems are interpretations. I am talking about being magic and not just "working" it.
So how can this actually be done? How can ringing the changes be attained and lived? There's no easy answer, but I can provide an example. My father David Douglas Thompson, the creator of Relationship Theory, passed away several years ago. The term "ringing the changes" was his own invention, and he never explained why he used that term, although it puts me in mind of a number of different bells ringing at the same time to produce a resonance. He was also very skeptical of any formal system of occultism, and of dogmatic systems in general. The core ideas of Relationship Theory had appeared to him in a mysterious dream, and he spent the next few decades working out the implications, without any formal training in philosophy or metaphysics.
Considering the origins of the Theory in an unusual dream, it is perhaps not surprising that I dreamed of its creator, more than a year and a half after he passed away, as a bringer of gnosis from the land of the dead:
1
At the edge of the water, the mist comes in.
Sorrow brushes my neck, just as light as a dream.
There is a distant horn across the deep, flat bay-
It is only a warning to keep the boats away,
But I shudder, regardless, at the ebb and the flow,
For the things that must come
And the things that must go
For the things that dwell deep, on the ocean's floor,
And the hint of a message from the farthest shore.
2
And you stand there again, with a demon's mad eyes,
But as silent, and solemn, and fearful as me.
And the wind drops to nothing, as empty and still
As the depths of the ocean. And there, in the chill,
We are both of us haunted. The things we have done,
Either you as my father
Or me as your son-
Though we drown them as deep as the ocean's floor,
They cannot be erased or denied anymore.
3
It is I who speaks first. "After all, though," I say,
"I'm a demon as well. None has known me but you."
And the wind from the ocean moans out once again
Like the cold, subtle touch of this loss on my skin.
And you nod there, in silence, inclining your head.
"Let me tell, you then, son,
Of the things of the dead,
Of the song that I heard in the ocean's roar
And the secret knowledge of the other shore."
4
So you speak, for a time, and I hear, with respect
Of the burdens and wisdom and songs of the dead.
Then the horn cries again from across the dark bay
And you look in my eyes. "They have called me away."
I had no chance to speak- when I blinked, you were gone.
And of all of those words
I remember not one.
But I will have cause to recall them once more
When I stand at your side on the farthest shore.
The reaction of a skeptical materialist to all this is very easy to imagine. We tell ourselves there's an afterlife because we're afraid of our mortality, and all heavens and hells are mere human creations, desperate attempts to appease our fears. Except I have no particular opinions about life after death. I don't know whether there's an afterlife or what form it might take; I don't know whether we reincarnate or whether death is the end. I am happy to play with the idea that that was really him, that my father actually brought me some mysterious knowledge "from the farthest shore" even though I can't remember any of it. I'm also willing to play with the idea that what I saw was not my father, but a symbolic manifestation from the Mythic Realm. And I'm willing to play with the idea that this was "just a dream."
The point is that all those options, if they're left open and alive, preserve intact a sense of wonder, a mysterious awe and joy. It isn't that, because I'm playing, I don't really believe in any of them. I believe in all of them at once, but in none of them obsessively.
According to a traditional proverb from the Scottish Highlands, "he who interprets his omens luckily will himself be lucky." Applying the mentality of ringing the changes, "he who interprets his life magically will himself be magic." To think this way and to live this way is to "incarnate myth in the waking world," producing a life filled with wonder and awe. This is a type of internal alchemy, like that described by the Chinese philosopher Hsuan-Tsang, in his Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only:
Changing with the wisdom of one who is free and at ease. This means that he who has realized the freedom and the ease of mind can change and transform earth [into gold] and so forth without fail according to his desires.
The phrase that I use for this is "spontaneous fluidity," the state of complete mental and spiritual health. With freedom and ease of mind, earth can change into gold. Doctrines can change into magic gateways. Myths can change into truths. All of this is not gained through obsessive belief, but through a willingness to play with the possibilities, to be changed by them, and to incarnate them. The spirit of madness is the spirit of fixation. The spirit of sanity is the spirit of play.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by alchemistra on -
I have never understood the position of atheists. To me, it is as rigid and unsupported as a fundamentalist's faith. I can understand agnosticism though.
I would have to agree with Thoreau, that "most people lead lives of quiet desperation." I would go so far as to say they're not happy!
I would like now to make a distinction between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure satiates temporarily, but happiness is a sustainable state, which is why there are so few happy people.
If you like steak, you say "Great, we're having steak tonight!" But if you get served steak every night for 5 years, its highly probably that soon you'll be saying, "Please, not steak again, I'm so tired of steak!" Steak gave you pleasure (temporary) not happiness (enduring).
Choose anything you like to define happiness, self esteem, wealth, the bliss of ignorance, or anything else. If it is removed, or changed you will not experience that 'happiness' any more. It wasn't happiness, it was pleasure. Brief, limited, not-sustainable.
About
© 2009 Created by CS Thompson on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
