“Words got me this wound and will get me well”.
“I’d rather be a word man, much better than a bird man.”
—Jim Morrison
Words are among the tools we have to grapple with the reality of our journey from birth to death. To give an example, the word (in any language) for water cannot substitute for the experience of a cool, refreshing drink, but we must have a term to describe it. The use of all language is to represent a word-less reality in symbolic terms. This representation is common to literature, art, music, philosophy, and scientific/mathematical notation. In music, for example, the placement of notes on a staff may translate to actual performance and the production of sound, or may simply remain as they are, unfulfilled. Yet words can exert their tyranny over us if allowed to. In their function, they serve as a secondary conscious reality, but a reality just the same. Paradoxically, if words are the cause of our dilemma, they also serve as our means of escape.
Moving to philosophy and religion, verbal means serve as tools is the understanding of the passage of all that is from a unified field to the many and its inevitable return. If we agree that is the case, the consideration remains as to how we may best partake of it in the most advantageous way. The question to be asked is whether there is a conscious source and destiny– the journey from the One to the many and back to the One again..
Many detailed scientific and philosophical studies have been made on the nature, the structure, of consciousness. I will leave this to others and is not attempt a consideration. Consciousness here is simply self-evident. I agree with the assertion that for us, and for the universe which we perceive and in which we live, “there is nothing prior to consciousness (Adi Da Samraj. The Method of the Siddhas, pp. 2-3).” We are part of it and it is manifested in us–organically. Anthony Campbell states that consciousness (from undifferentiated to manifested) is the one essential “given” (Anthony Campbell. Seven Stages of Consciousness: A Vision of Possibilities Suggested by the Teaching of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, p. 84). It is beyond me to describe the conscious process. All I can attempt is provide a workable vision of how we may best participate in it.
Philosophical inquiry has allowed itself to be tangled up in a jumble of words. Often it simply does not function well when it comes to describing a deeper or ultimate level of reality. The problem is that in the torrent of words a certain directness or distinctiveness of vision may be lost. “Professionals writing for professionals” in the academic world has been justly criticized, for it often results in obscurity and exclusiveness. Somerset Maugham has observed, “When the most eminent philosophers cannot always understand one another the layman may well feel resigned if he does not often understand them….The layman walks a tightrope without a pole to balance him and he must be thankful if he can somehow scramble to safety (W. Somerset Maugham. The Summing Up, p. 151).”
This was not a problem for the ancients. They formulated myths (or painted images on cave walls) as a direct vision of the reality in which they lived. Furthermore, these mythic visions were deeply held and understood by all members of that society. Clarity of conception and social cohesion worked together. Myths are not lies. They rely upon image and story to recreate deep inner truths which inform consciousness. Our ancestors were more in tune with reality in its total dimension because they relied upon this pictorial, dramatic, evocative medium to reach as far as they were able into the ultimate nature of reality. They did not allow themselves to be strangled by words even though their societies had well-developed oral traditions. These traditions, in fact, created a more powerful inner reality because they did not rely upon written documentation. The vision of the Upanishads, for example, was learned, felt, and transmitted from one generation to another long before it was set down in written form. This retained their power and effectiveness. Thoreau described the process: “A fact truly and absolutely stated is taken out of the region of common sense and acquires a mythological or universal significance.”
By allowing the symbolic archetype to assume its rightful power, the torrent of words which blinds our intent falls away, subsumed to the eloquent vision of the whole. And it is in this respect that what may be called the mythopoetic construction differs from the rhetorical methods of philosophy. It begins with the holistic conception which informs its component parts. It is visionary, unified, complete in itself, possessing an ambient, evocative, living quality, much different from the artificial distinctions upon which verbal methods alone rely. The image which we have in mind becomes an entity with a living quality. Mythic symbolization or personification has that quality of “aliveness”. This is its aim. Our methods, too, should be to work within this framework.
Years ago I chanced upon a book which has become a touchstone to my thinking. In it lies the concept of the mythopoetic. It was expressed in Ross Nichols’ introductory chapter to The Cosmic Shape: An Examination of Creative Myth (1946), whose core ideas first appeared in print in 1942. Its significance jumped out at me as I attempted to describe what is now here. The mythopoetic approach predates later religious, scientific, and political formulations. What follows is a rather dense grouping of ideas, but assertions which are necessary to establish its background.
There are many points worth repeating, and I will provide a few: the function of myth since ancient times is twofold, to explain (or attempt to control) nature through imagination; and to organize the feeling, thought, and action of a people. The need of man in contemporary society to return to nature is not eliminated by his technological mastery of it; in fact, when left alone in it he is often intimidated by its power. We need to think of ourselves not as outside of nature but as part of it. This is difficult, for we live in an age of both scientific explanations and religious dogmatism. As K.E. Barlow states, in place of these ruthless formulations we must adapt a “factually-based philosophy of broad scope”, withdrawing from our self-appointed lordship of creation to that of a gardener (i.e., a caregiver rather than a master). This is because, for better or worse, we are governed by emotive beliefs. For the delusion of the Nazi race-and-war myth [this was 1946, so that memory was still fresh] we must substitute a myth of the creative cycle, based on the rhythm of the seasons which formed “the early deification that disciplined the subconscious”. These symbols and legends operate unconscious race memories, lying between the “arbitrary elements of the unconscious…and the over-deliberate structures of intellect”. In Christianity (where Protestantism and commercialism replaced a corrupted religious system) our present problem is to find forms of expression for the time-spirit of the seasons to “enrich the spirit of devotion to the soil, and to express and to intensify co-operation with nature”. This is because, in Christianity, there is a sense of a God immanent in creation while science has focused on the “how” of creation but not the “why”. For this purpose the natural architype is the most useful and effective. The seasonal cycle was the powerful archetype behind the Arthurian and other myths. It can still be recovered, for “each generation is a new start, and this only is the world’s hope.” This attunement with nature brings with it a reverence for life, along with mystery and poetry. Notes on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land give tribute to the vegetation ceremonies for the structure of its meanings (T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land, p. 47).” This symbolism is vital to the balance of the human mind. Richard Hope notes that the modernist has tried to abstract from the whole, but the meaning of every abstract concept resides in the whole; in fact, the more abstract it becomes, the less meaning it has. “It follows that a concept in order to have meaning must…retain a marginal inaccuracy which…gives it meaning….It retains a modicum of symbolic universality…The skillful thinker balances out the marginal inaccuracies of his concepts, works by his sense of the wholeness of the situation”. Our language will lack meaning unless we give back to it the “abstract concepts of the symbolical, magical wholeness from which we have endeavored to wash them clean”. Myth is the matrix of imagination. Carl Jung has noted that these motives and symbols, called archetypes, form centers and fields of force and are the same in all cultures. The archetype is an eternal presence whether consciousness perceives it or not. Finally, for Jung the archetypes signify the sum of all the potentialities of the human psyche. Jolan Jacobi, in The Psychology of C.G. Jung, states, “Only where faith and dogma have hardened into empty forms…in our highly civilized, technicalized, rational-minded western world have they lost their magical force and left man helpless and alone.” Lyrical poet Frank Kendon comments further: “Myths … are as near to the truth (and are believed) as the people themselves can come, and they express, not control, the direction of movement and the springs of action…Myths to be effective sources of power must not yet be seen as myths. Once you have said ‘let’s pretend’ you have killed all the vital power…”
Another powerful touchstone is David Abrams’ more recent (1997)— The Spell of the Sensuous. Here is an excerpt: “For almost all oral cultures, the enveloping and sensuous earth remains the dwelling place of both the living and the dead. The ‘body’—whether human or otherwise—is not yet a mechanical object in such cultures, but is a magical entity, the mind’s own sensuous aspect, and at death…can only signify the gradual reintegration of one’s ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too, are born…a reverence for those forms that awareness takes when it is not in human form, when the familiar human embodiment dies and decays to become part of the encompassing cosmos (David Abrams. The Spell of the Sensuous, pp. 15-16).” So we have a living field [my emphasis], a dynamic landscape representative, simultaneously, of both physical reality and of human consciousness.
This is exactly the philosophical/linguistic crisis of our age. We have lost the vision and must recover it, for “Where there is no vision the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).” Magic and wonder have been sacrificed on the altar of science, cold logic, and efficiency. Only when we allow ourselves to intellectually loosen our grip of these forces (or, more correctly, loosen the grip these forces have on us) will our true potentiality return. This is the philosophic challenge set before us. Instead of a fertile field we view a stony plane, a fractured landscape littered with tangled wrecks of postmodernism and the Age of Analysis (title of the Mentor Books anthology The Age of Analysis) which have run far afield from the odes of antiquity Just as depleted soil may be restored, so, by the power of creative language, there is hope of reconstruction. In the words of songwriter/poet Jim Morrison:
“Words got me this wound and will get me well.”
His tortured relationship with language presents poetry as both a dangerous affliction and his only means of salvation.
Or, quoting W.H. Auden,
“…the time being to redeem from insignificance”
W. Ross Winterroud explores this theme in more detail: “Just as the camera—electronic or otherwise—has a generative power…, the metaphor generates movement that sometimes escapes the control of the speaker or writer. Kenneth Burke [who has described the metaphor as “a device for seeing something in terms of something else. It brings out the thisness of a that, or the thatness of a this.”] hints at the generative quality of the metaphor when he says, ‘Indeed, the metaphor always has about it precisely this revealing of hitherto unsuspected connectives which we may note in the progressions of a dream.’ The metaphor is usually as rationally incongruous as dream materials …The symbol is…much like a metaphor….But there is perhaps a fundamental difference between symbol and metaphor….Very broadly, one might say that the metaphor seeks out similarities in the dissimilar, whereas the symbol emphasizes similarities….But in its function the symbol blurs off into a metaphor….Once the symbol got going [in Man of La Mancha, based on Don Quixote], it assumed a life of its own, it generated its own development. And, in fact, it is a common human experience to seek out the symbolic meaning of this, that, or everything. The symbol generates its own meaning and hence its own discourse (W. Ross Winterroud. Rhetoric, a Synthesis, Pp. 114-116).”
In other words, this mode of thinking holds to key to resolving the apparent contradiction between opposing philosophical currents, specifically the argument from design versus that of chance causality, existentialism and essence, integrality and phenomenology, extending to other warring factions as well. Its holistic conception seeks to approach the unity of nature, from which it is drawn.
Finally, Jung has proposed, “The symbol is the middle way, upon which the opposites unite towards a new movement, a watercourse that pours forth fertility after a long drought (Carl Jung, quoted in Joseph McHugh and Latif Harris. Journey to the Moon).”
It is not that we have a lack of images—the media is full of them. But they are the sirens’ song, ephemeral, rarely attaining the deep and true character of myth. The power of creative language in metaphor or symbol may be such that it often precedes the work which is generated from it. Its power is so overwhelming that it may assume a life of its own, its own web of deep logic, synthesizing diverse elements into a new, dynamic perspective.
When I use the verbal medium, what I really want to do is to paint a picture, one that is cohesive, clear, and convincing. My desire is to construct a vision with a powerful archetype, like those of ancient times. This has been a personal quest since my early years: to construct an argument from the universal; to express a philosophy of interconnectedness which would supersede the fractuous, myopic posturings of so much philosophical and/or religious language. It is by no coincidence that the Age of Analysis has ushered in with it the Age of Anxiety, as minds informed by a relentless division or deconstruction have carried with them a fair share of unease, cynicism, and, in the worst case, nihilism. This has only been exacerbated by digital culture and nonstop social media. Is it possible in the quest for insight to reclaim the high ideals, visionary character, and the spiritual energy of a more youthful [chronological and conceptual] age? This simple openness to the conscious process is perhaps that to which Jesus referred when he taught that only those who become as little children are fit to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
For me, this quest is one of personal necessity. I feel the need to construct a view that the conventional, current modes of inquiry have been to satisfy—the sense of the Real. This return to wholeness and functionality may be achieved by substituting images (verbal or visual) as a self-sufficient and self-evident reality, shaping itself to the form of the whole. While it is not necessarily a promotion of religion, it bows to deeper and deeper levels of significance as a part of a natural unfolding of a deeper conscious process. It prefers whatever religious truths are gleaned to be self-evident, like those alluded to by the writers of the Declaration of Independence, truths so universal and profound that their native eloquence accomplished the argument for their validity (Carl Becker. The Declaration of Independence, pp. 38-39). This is the objective–a focus is the nature of the whole of consciousness itself.
I make no attempt at a formal or systematic philosophy. What lies here (and elsewhere) is more of a series of notes to myself as I have attempted over many years to write what might be called a handbook for consciously dealing with the realities of life. From an early age I was motivated to seek, in the words of Will Durant, “the consolation of philosophy”, believing that possessing an adequate philosophy is not only a necessary task but part of a life well-lived. I had to have a philosophy. Not being well versed in the subject, I just started to think and write. Perhaps it was an attempt to put some orderliness into my existence. Maybe it was the search for inner peace. Thoughts ranged from the purpose of life, meaning, the nature of consciousness, ethical principles, and what I call “the fields”: the field of thought, the field of action, the field of sense, and the field to where all of these lead, for in reality there are not several fields but one. The writing process was (and is) what I have done with students over the years—write, rewrite, rewrite, constantly improving and refining. I have taken my own advice, for my writing process is a continual series of additions and revisions. At one time I envisioned these posts as a book, but the potential of the internet changed all that—I would much rather sell you an idea than a book.
The archetype of the field is my mythopoeticmedium. In it I can relate to all of the beautiful landscapes I have had the pleasure to experience. Its rich and powerful imagery mines the deeper meaning and provides an emotional quality alternately described as richness, fullness, or salience. It is an evocative image which leads where it will from the changeability of experience to the root and soul of its nature, described in a previous post, The Field at the End of All Fields. This is a perennial compass, oriented toward that which serves as a store of value, unique to each individual but universal in its character as well. Its method requires intuition and inquiry to the locus of meaning, a self-orientation (Referring to Francisco Peccorini Letona’s A Method of Self-Orientation to Thinking), as well as a real-time awareness of the “is-ness” of that perception in the present moment and each successive realization, picking out the pattern in the design.
Again, quoting Nichols:”Myth becomes a common individuation, a common ground emergent into the individual’s unconscious and thence into his consciousness from the mass-dreams of the race. Myth appears as the essential shape of the cosmos of man, both externally in the turning year and internally as the process whereby he assimilates the particular events of life into his own pattern. (Nichols and Kirkup. The Cosmic Shape, p. 36).”
Jung saw the goal of a higher degree of consciousness as a balancing of functions, recovering from a sickness caused by one function or another usurping the rest. This balance, this perspective, this recovery is the goal. In it is found true meaning, for “meaninglessness is the worst thing that can assail us.” What we seek are “permanently valuable ideas” versus skepticism. This is Albert Schweitzer’s definition of elemental thinking—fundamental questions about man’s relationship to the universe (Charles R. Joy. Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology, pp. 4, 12).” Our challenge, then, is to find the intense divine life, which “floods in a moment every sense (Goethe. Faust, quoted by Joy, p. 208).” This is a beautiful vision of existence, if only we could intuit the means to live in this new reality.
Francisco Peccorini Letona, one of my philosophy professors, weighed in on the role of the genuine thinker as “one who cares for the Being of things” and lies at the source of other thinking which is calculating and not meditative (Francisco L. Peccorini. A Method of Self-Orientation to Thinking, p. 30). He agrees with Martin Heidegger that we have lost the “know how” to think, an ability that has led to a worship of technology. This can only be recovered by a “whole” approach, describing it as “the horizon which encircles the view of a thing, as the field of vision. It goes beyond the appearance of objects” and no longer clings to what is evident in the horizon, “an openness which surrounds us; an openness which is filled with views of the appearances of what to our re-presenting are objects.” It stands in opposition to Being, which is more distant. Through deductive reasoning (“thinking about thinking”) it is possible to “determine the nature of Being as that which is nearest to us, gathering everything together and letting everything return to itself, to rest in its own identity (Martin Heidegger, quoted in Peccorini, pp. 5-7).”
A final note: to supplement my writing, I once gathered various photographs which spoke to me in a further attempt to link the text with images representing its concepts. While not included here, these photos exemplified Ansel Adams’ philosophy of the power of the photographic image. This is worthy of mention because pictures can function as symbols and are often more eloquent than words. They are simply more images that I have placed on my cave wall.
Divinepersonhood 