Myth And Ritual In Christianity Part 4

A formal metaphysical doctrine-such as the Vedanta and various types of Buddhism--employs, therefore, a negative language in order to convey the realization that reality, life itself, is not any fact or thing, since the division of experience into things is a convention of language and thought. One cannot, for example, point to the d erence between two fingers. One can point to that which is called "fingers" but not to the difference, since the latter is an abstraction. Thus a metaphysical doctrine a.s.serts that the world of reality is undifferentiated, without, however, meaning that it is numerically one, or uniform. In the same vein, it a.s.serts that reality is eternal, which is to say non temporal rather than everlasting, since time is a concept, a theory, abstracted from memory. It a.s.serts, too, that this reality is infinite, which means not "boundlessly large but indefinable. It goes on to say that from this reality all things (i.e. differentiations) are produced out of that which is "nothing" by the Logos, which is wordand thought?

These a.s.sertions begin to sound like theology; but, from the Christian standpoint, theology does not mean anything of this kind. It seems quite incongruous to use the name "G.o.d to signify that which we experience immediately, before thought has sundered it into a world of things. This may be what Hindus mean by "Brahman" and Buddhists by "Tathata" (that.ness), but it is certainly not what the majority of thought, ful Christians have understood as G.o.d the Father. The problem arises, however, because the theologians really want to say that G.o.d is a fact, a thing-albeit the first fact and the first thing, the Being before all beings. Had it been clear that theology was not speaking of facts, the conflict between theology and natural science could never have arisen. But when, during the era of the Renaissance, this conflict first arose neither the theologians nor the scientists realized that there might have been any profound difference between the languages they were speaking. Theologians and scientists alike understood them, selves to be talking about "objective realities", which is to say-things and events. Yet-to add to the confusion-the language of St. Thomas, St. Albert the Great, and St. Bonaventure was also metaphysical. They said that G.o.d was not in the cla.s.s of things, that he was not an event in time, that he was not a body, that he had no parts or divisions, that he was eternal, infinite, and all the rest. But it is very clear that with some few possible exceptions, such as Eckhart and Erigena, the scholastics were still trying to talk about a thing--a very great thing, beyond and including all other things?

Thus B. L. Whorf has pointed out that for a people, such as the Nootka Indians, whose language contains only verbs and no nouns, the world contains no things: it consists entirely of processes. See Four Articles on Metalinguistics (Department of State, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., 1951).

2 This is clear in the Thomistic identification of G.o.d with Being. For the purely metaphysical doctrines of India, as well as for St. Dionysius pseudo Areopagite (from whom St. Thomas derived more of the words than the The confusion has its historical roots in the fact that Christian dogma is a blend of Hebrew mythology and history with Greek metaphysic and science, complicated by the fact that Greek metaphysic was never so clearly formulated as Indian, and was always in danger of being identified with highly abstract thought. Indeed, the Western metaphysicians from Aristotle to Hegel have been-above all things-the great abstractionists, the thinkers. In this respect they are at the opposite pole from any traditional metaphysic, which is radically empirical and non~conceptual. It is possible, then, that the Greeks derived a number of metaphysical doctrines from India, but, for the most part, mistook their nature and treated them as concepts-as abstractions which have an objective existence on a "higher plane" than material things! It seems to have escaped the Greek mind that a metaphysical term such as "eternity" is not a concept at all. It is the negation of the concept of time. It involves no positive statement. It merely points out that the notion of reality as extended through past, present, and future is a theory and not a real, firsthand experience.

As a result, then, Christian dogma combines a mythological story which is for the most part Hebrew, and a group of metaphysical "concepts" which are Greek, and then proceeds to treat both as statements of fact-as information about objec, Live realities inhabiting (a) the world of history, and (b) the "supernatural" world existing parallel to the historical, but on a higher plane. In other words, it talks about mythology and metaphysic in the language of science. The resulting confusion has been so vast, and has so muddled Western thought, that all our current terms, our very language, so partake of the confusion that they can hardly straighten it out. It may, there, fore, help the reader if we make a brief summary of the types of knowledge involved.

meaning), the highest Reality is "neither being nor nonibeing'-for the simple reason that both "being" and "non-being" are conceptual abstractions-like thing, spirit, matter, substance, and form.

I. SCIENCE. The record or history of facts, which are the parts of experience designated by nouns and verbs. However, "parts" is already a noun, so that the reality or realities which science discusses remain ultimately undefined.) METAPHYSIC. The indefinable basis of knowledge. Metaphysical knowledge or realization" is an intense clarity of attention to that indefinable and immediate point of knowledge which is always "now", and from which all other knowledge is elaborated by reflective thought. A consciousness of life" in which the mind is not trying to grasp or define what it knows.

METAPHYSICS (Greek and Western). Highly abstract thought, dealing with such concepts as being, nature, sub, stance, essence, matter, and form, and treating them as if they were facts on a higher level of objective existence than sensually perceptible things.

MYTH. A complex of images or a story, whether factual or fanciful, taken to represent the deepest truths of life, or simply regarded as specially significant for no clearly realized reason.

THEOLOGY. An interpretation of combined myth and metaphysics (3), in which both are treated as objective facts of the historical and scientific order.

The Christian account of the primal beginnings, taken simply as myth, is without doubt a marvelous tale, full of magic, poetry, and splendour. The wonderful King of kings who was alive for ever before time began, the creation-out of nothing-of the nine choirs of angels, the dark mystery of the villainous Lucifer, the six days of the making of the world, the First Man in the paradisegarden, Eve, the Serpent, and the Terrible Tree,-all this is as good a tale as ever was told, Since Hilbert, for example, mathematicians no longer attempt to define a point. Contemporary science more and more accepts the principle that it must work with a number of basic unknowns, signified by undefined terms.

and ranks with the marvels of the Arabian Nights, of the Puranas, of the Iliad and Odyssey, of Hans Andersen and Grimm. But--one must hasten to say-this is in no sense leading up to the conclusion that the story should be treated as mere poetry or mere fairytale, having no other function than entertainment.

There is no more telling symptom of the confusion of "modern thought than the very suggestion that poetry or mythology can be "mere". This arises from the notion that poetry and myth belong to the realm of fancy as distinct from fact, and that since facts equal Truth, myth and poetry have no serious content. Yet this is a mistake for which no one is more responsible than the theologians, who, as we have seen, resolutely confounded scientific fact with truth and reality. Having degraded G.o.d to a mere "thing, they should not be surprised when scientists doubt the veracity of this thing-for the significant reason that it seems an unnecessary and meaning, less hypothesis. (An excellent ill.u.s.tration of the point that "things" are really hypotheses.) Certainly, the poets and myth makers have little to tell us about facts, for they make no hypotheses. Yet for this very reason they alone have something really important to say; they alone have news of the living world, of reality. By contrast, the historians, the chroniclers, and the a.n.a.lysts of fact record only the news of death. They tell us what, precisely, did happen. And because "life" as we live it goes repet.i.tively round and round-"history repeats itself"-what, precisely, did happen is the best basis for pre. dicting what, precisely, will happen. Such information is, then, the supremely valuable information for those who have no other interest in life than to continue-to keep on keeping on.

Myth does not supply us with facts in the sense, therefore, that it gives us no useful hypotheses for predicting the future-the use of prediction being to continue, to keep on living". Because, for so many centuries, the theologians have confused eternal life with everlasting life, and salvation with temporal immortality, our culture is utterly hypnotized into the notion that mere continuity, survival, is a good-if not the supreme good. Hence we value practical facts above all other knowledge because, above all else, we need to earn our livings, to adapt ourselves to events, to master the operations of nature, to provide for the future, to benefit posterity ... to what? Obviously, to keep on going on, to keep on consuming and acc.u.mulating, longer and longer, more and more. Convinced that, in this fas.h.i.+on, we are practical, that we are getting somewhere, we do not notice that we are covering the same ground again and again-not because we love the ground so much that we want to return to it, but, on the contrary, because we want to move away from it, to that gra.s.s on the other side of the fence which is always greener.

Yet pleasure and pain are relative, and the gra.s.s on the other side soon feels like the gra.s.s on this side. To retain the sensation of getting somewhere we must soon find yet another pasture and another fence over which to cast our envious glances. It is thus that we feel alive only in terms of the sensation of moving from the less to the more-that is to say, by running around faster and faster. The princ.i.p.al reason for this practical madness is that we are not alive at all. We are dead with an , immortal, continuing death, which is perhaps what the myth means by everlasting, eternally recurring d.a.m.nation.' And we are dead because each man recognizes himself simply and solely as his past. His I,his continuity and ident.i.ty, is nothing but an abstraction from his memory, since what I know of myself is always what I was. But this is only tracks and echoes, from which the life has vanished. If the only self which I know is a thing dead and done, a was, a "has been", 1 By this interpretation the Christian myth of everlasting torture and frustra, Lion presents a marvelous parallel to the Greek myth of the punishments of Ixion, Sisyphus, and Tantalus-Ixion bound to the ever..turning wheel, Sisyphus pus.h.i.+ng the rock to the hilltop from which it ever rolls down, and Tantalus pursuing the feast which always eludes him.

speak to us. It is immensely important to distinguish this from any kind of "subjective idealism" or psychologism. In saying that Gad is the knowing but ever/unknowable "ground" or source of the mind, we are not saying that reality is "mental" or "subjective". On the contrary, that reality which we apprehend subjectively as mind is also what we know objec, lively as "things". It is both subjective and objective, or better, neither subjective nor objective. In the mind-as minds-we are that which, otherwise, we only see. It is simply the point of most intimate contact with reality, and all the pride of knowledge is put to confusion by the fact that at the point where we feel reality most intimately we understand it least.

For I never know my "own" act of knowing. I do not understand how it is done. I did not create the mechanism by which it functions. It goes on as independently of any volition or control on my part as the clouds moving above my head, or the atoms vibrating in the stones at my feet. I have to admit, then, that it is meaningless to say that I do it, or that I know. "It" does it; "it" knows. And this "it", whether as the ground of the mind or as the indefinable basis of what our senses perceive as structures and "things", is that which articulates the myths, just as it articulates the shapes of trees, the structure of the nervous system, and every other process beyond our soy called conscious control.'

The myth is revelation, consisting of "the mighty acts of G.o.d", because myth wells u ntan~ously within the mind i Though I use the word "it", I do not wish to imply the singular number, or any notion of a sort of uniform "stuff" out of which all things are made. For that which is truly indefinable escapes every concept whatsoever. In the words of St. Dionysius, the father of all Christian metaphysic, "We say that he (G.o.d) is neither a soul, nor a mind, nor an object of knowledge ... neither is he reason, nor thought, nor is he utterable or knowable; neither is he number, ceder, greatness, littleness, equality, inequality, likeness, nor unlikeness; neither does he stand or move, nor is he quiescent; neither has he power, nor is power, nor light; neither does he live, nor is life; neither is he being, nor everlastingness, nor time, ... nor wisdom, nor one, nor oneness, nor divinity, nor goodness, ... nor any other thing known to us." Tbeologia Myst.i.ta, V.

according to the same involuntary processes which shape the brain itself, the foetus within the womb, and the molecular pattern of the elements. For myth is the complex of images eventually a.s.sumed by all involuntary imagination, since, left to itself, imagination takes on a structure in the same manner as the body and the brain. Thus with their fascinating unanimity the myths tell us that the world proceeds out of the invisible and the unknown by articulation, by the power of the Word or Logos, which is "G.o.d of G.o.d, Light of Light, true G.o.d oftrue G.o.d, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom (i.e. the Word) all things were made:"

So, too, Hindu mythology maintains that everything was called into being by Vak, which is speech, or shabda, sound. Indeed, the Hindus insist that the roots oftheir sacred language, l ri _are not merely the roots of verbs and nouns, but the roots of things themselves, which come into being by the utterance of the primordial words. In the Chinese tradition the formative principle of the world is called Tao, which originally meant "speech", the creative power of the Great Ultimate (t'ai chi) which is represented by an empty circle. Obviously, it is impossible for the mind to recognize any things or structures in its experience without the ability to number and to name-prior to which the "objective" world is simply that Chaos or prima materia, which G.o.d created in the beginning of time. One must suppose that, for instance, to a cat there is not any thing to be known as a field, containing another distinct thing to be known as a tree. The field is just a state where life becomes green, and the tree where it goes up in such a fas.h.i.+on that a dog cannot follow. Before logic, before the recognition of orders in experience through name and number, there is no thought and thus no things, and it is not by chance that there is an etymological relation between thing and think, as between the equivalent Latin words res and reor, German Ding and denken, the Greek rhema and rheo.

1 The Nicene Creed.

Thus primitive thought is not so primitive as one might suppose in perceiving a mysterious ident.i.ty between things and their names-a perception which underlies the Hebrew restrictions against the utterance of YHVH, the Name of G.o.d. The convention is equally preserved in modern society, where a man who is not cla.s.sified, who has no name or belongs to no nation, does not legally exist. In the same way, modern logical philosophy often takes the position that a term without logical meaning cannot correspond to any physical reality. Thus the term G.o.d is illogical in so far as it is predicated ofall things, as in the sentence "All things were made by G.o.d", for in strict logic that which is predicated of everything is predicated of nothing. It follows, then, that if "G.o.d" has no logical meaning, no G.o.d exists-a conclusion highly disturbing to theologians so long as they insist upon G.o.d as a fact, which exists, as distinct from the mythical symbol of a metaphysical reality, a nothing, having neither existence nor nonexistence.

The moment, then, that the theologians started to explain G.o.d, they began to lose all contact with him. They treated the language of myth as the language of fact. They rationalized G.o.d, and degraded him to the level of a dead, fixed thing-dead because all things are past, inhabiting only the world of memory. Almost from its earliest beginnings Christian orthodoxy began to insist on the scientific rather than the metaphysical or mythical interpretation of the divine revelation. This was largely due to the fact that during the era in which Christianity arose, both the Hebrew and GraccoRoman cultures were much preoccupied with a craving for salvation in terms of individual immorality. Both cultures had developed in such a way as to increase that vivid sense of the ego, of individual isolation, which-ever since-has been so peculiarly characteristic of the Western mentality.'

' It is often noted that the earlier forms of both Greek and Hebrew religion almost ignored the problems of an individual survival of death. The places of the departed, the Greek Hades and the Hebrew Sheol, were realms where the To the extent that the human mind identifies itself with the individual ego, it is confusing its life with its ast since the ego is an abstraction from memory. Hence history and facts become more valuable than reality. Because the ego and its values have no real life, the real present becomes empty, and existence a perpetual disappointment, so that man lives on hope and prizes nothing more than continuity. In this general misplacement of value G.o.d, too, becomes a fact, a historical ent.i.ty, since past and fixed facts seem now more real, more certain and sure than anything else.

It is at this point, too, that G.o.d is identified with Absolute Goodness, with morality. For goodness, in this sense, is the kind of action which we know by memory and experience, as a matter of fact, to lead to survival. The good can always be recognized because it is simply the abstract name for positive content of memory, and "good action" is the law, the method of returning more and more to the safe ground we have known. Morality is the wisdom of experience, of memory, which cannot tell us how to live, but only how to go on being dead. This is why even St. Paul insists again and again that the Law of Moses cannot give life, that a goodness which is the mere obedience of a precept always presupposes and fosters its own opposite-evil and sin. "For when we were in the flesh (i.e. the world of fact), the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead dead continued only as shadows and memories. Thus Hades and Sheol were "the past", so that beyond death there was no expectation of any real Life for the individual. Early Hebraism distinguished between nefesh, the individual soul, and ruach, the spirit, which G.o.d had originally breathed into Adam. At death the body returned to the dust, the nefesh to Sheol, but the mach, being essentially divine, was reabsorbed in G.o.d. See Ecclesiastes 12: 7. It was not until some two centuries before Christ that the Hebrew mind became concerned with individual immortality, conceived not merely as the survival of the nefesh, but as resurrection, in which the body was restored as well as the soul. Even while Christ was alive, however, the powerful sect of the Sadducees was opposed to the resurrection doctrine.

6.

wherein we were held, in order that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the Letter. al For in the world of fact and past experience good and evil are as relative to one another as pleasure and pain. The good which we remember is recognized in contrast with the evil which we remember. Without evil good cannot be recognized. Therefore, as the mind ever returns to the good which it has known, it necessarily recreates the evil-not only because the two are mutually related, but even more because the remembered good is a dead good, breeding evil as its particular corruption. The good which is not in relation to evil is always a grace t nsaught, a gift unsolicited, for-as with happiness-the act of reaching for it pushes it away. Naturally, however, the mind which is ever seeking more and more of the remembered good does not intend to recreate the evil. For such a mind is selfdeceived, confusing itself with its past, its life with its death, and thus does not realize that it condemns itselfto action in a mechanical repet.i.tive circle. When, therefore, such a mind conceives its rationalized, moralistic G.o.d, this G.o.d must of necessity be accompanied by a Devil whom he does not intend to create. Furthermore, the whole art of this Devil will lie in deception, and the whole problem of evil will be lost in unfathomable mystery. For the origination of evil is a problem and a mystery because man identifies himself with his past, and does not realize it.

Yet a myth is an extraordinarily difficult thing to kill, for it continues to be devastatingly revealing even when one has tampered with it, and changed its form by rationalistic or moralistic interpretation. We have suggested that the Devil is in many ways the most significant figure in the whole Catho, lic myth, bearing in mind that the Christian Devil is the product of Catholic moral philosophy, working upon the earlier Hebrew myth of the Dark Angel who simply personifies the wrathful aspect of G.o.d. For the theological Devil is a 1 Romans 7: s-6.

G.o.d and Satan 7 3 symbol which, without any conscious intention, reveals the whole confusion of the mentality which produced it.

The story of the Fall of Adam foreshadows what the later myth of the Fall of Lucifer makes vividly clear-that the mentality which produces them is one increasingly confused by self/consciousness. No sooner do Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the Tree than they become painfully aware of their nakedness; the shame and the awkwardness of the self; conscious mentality is here revealed in its beginnings. With the Fall of Lucifer this predicament has become far more appalling4 The theological myth states that Lucifer fell because he loved himself more than G.o.d, because he became ins fatuated with his own created beauty. Consequently the essence of all malice is equated with love of self, as distinct from love of G.o.d.

But the confusion of the self/conscious mentality is its failure to see that it is not really self/conscious at all. It is a mentality baffled by what is, in itself, the marvelous and indispensable gift of memory. Upon memory rest all the achievements of human culture. Yet it is not really so surprising that the human memory should be a source of confusion-for the very reason that it is so clear, so sensitive, and so retentive that it can create the most persuasive illusions of reality. To the extent that they are recognized as illusions, memory serves us well just as the mirror serves us well when we do not confuse the reflection with the thing reflected. But when what is remembered is mistaken for what is, for reality, we are as confused as if we were trying to drive a car looking only into the reavvision mirror.

For theology there is, then, a very deep mystery in Lucifers origination of evil. The Christian consciousness cannot understand Lucifer's mistake because it is making the same mistake itself. It thinks that it is self/conscious, and that it can commit the evil of self/love. But in actuality the "self which we know and love is not the self at all. It is the trace, the echo, of the self in memory, from which all life, all selfhood, departs in the moment that we become aware of it. Selffconsciousness is thus a feat as impossible as kissing one's own lips.

So long as this mistake remains undetected, the mind is condemned to wander in a veritable maze of illusions and shams. Even in its most heroic efforts to be genuine and honest it is selfdeceived, and this comes out nowhere more clearly than in the urgency with which the Christian consciousness struggles to repent and to be truly contrite-to transform its own will. For the self which we perceive in memory and take for our own is always a liar, and nowhere more so than when it says that it is a liar. The reason is simply that selfconscious, ness is itself a lie, a deception, in that it is not true. When, therefore, the penitent says, "I am a sinner", his statement is as problematic as the famous paradox of Eubulides, "I am lying"-a statement which is false if it is true. The problem in the "I am lying" paradox is that one is trying to make a state/ ment about the statement one is making-which is impossible. Similarly one cannot think about the thought one is thinking, or know the self which is knowing. The mind falls for this kind of nonsense only because memory provides the convincing illusion of achieving the impossible. Thus the Christian peni tent is always tormented by his inability to repent honestly-to achieve a contrition which is genuine, and which does not have the same motivation as the sin. Perpetually he finds that his will mocks him with masks, that the honest act of the will has a dishonest intent, for ever and for ever in an exasperating infinite regression.

Thus it is not at all surprising that the Christian mentality is profoundly haunted by the Devil, for it finds the Liar everywhere--even in admitting the lie. No one is more acutely aware of his sinfulness than the Christian saint, because he realizes that he is proud of his humility-and worse, proud because subtle enough to realize that he is proud. Obviously, then, the Devil is credited with an almost infinite intelligence for subtle falsification, whereas in truth this is not subtlety at all, but merely the endless maze of confusion resulting from an unperceived mistake.

In the end we must face the inevitable conclusion that the most deceptive of all the masks of the Liar is the very figure of the absolutely righteous G.o.d. Not infrequently, Christians have had the uncomfortable intuition that the theological G.o.d is a monster and a bore. Men are commanded to forgive the offences of their brethren even when they are repeated until "seventy times seven", but G.o.d does not forgive one offence save on the condition that you repent and grovel. Men are taught that it is an evil to do good works in order to be praised, but the moralists G.o.d demands to be praised for ever and ever. Men are taught that the very essence of evil lies in egotism and selfishness, but the Lord is ent.i.tled to bl.u.s.ter, "I am the Lord, and there is none else! Me only shalt thou serve!" and is, furthermore, said to have been occupied from all eternity with nothing but the love and contemplation of his own excellence. Granting even that the excellence of G.o.d is such that it is a "which than which there is no whicher", so that there is nothing more admirable to contemplate, even for G.o.d himself, the whole concept is profoundly monstrous unless there can be one redeeming condition.

This condition is that G.o.d may remain eternally surprised at himself, eternally a mystery to himself, so that he is genuinely amazed at his own glory, so that he does not know how he manages to be G.o.d. "Let not your left hand know what your right hand doeth." Only this will free G.o.d from the vicious circle of the great lie. G.o.d is only lovable if he is not pretending to be selfconscious-to be impossible. Fortunately, the purely mythological G.o.d fulfils this condition. He creates the world, and then-surprise!-sees that it is good. But in devising the theological G.o.d, the theologians let their logic run away with their sanity. G.o.d had to be omnipotent and omniscient, and so it seemed illogical that he should not have the most absolute knowledge and control of himself. Yet, after all, it was at this point that their logic crashed along with their sanity. If G.o.d has to control himself, he is not G.o.d. If he has to to illumine, himself, light. And a G.o.d who does not perform the contra action of knowing himself as an object is still omniscient, knowing all things, since he himself is not in the cla.s.s of things.'

As we have seen, the myth of necessity reveals G.o.d in the human image-since no higher image is available. But the image of G.o.d is always modified by the kind of man, the type of mentality, in whose terms it is cast. Thus the image of the Christian G.o.d is in terms of the Western and Christian mentality--a type of human consciousness which is to an extraordinary degree "split" into "I" and "me". Three of the greatest moulders of Christianity-St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Martin Luther-were aware of the problems and contra diction of selfconsciousness almost to the point of torment, and yet never perceived the underlying fallacy upon which the illusion is based.

As a result Christianity has not been able to deliver the Western world from the split mindedness, the schizophrenia, which renders it such a danger to human culture as a whole, the more so since it is equipped with immense technological power. On the contrary, Christianity has been expounded by an orthodox hierarchy which has consistently degraded the myth to a science and a history, and resisted the metaphysical interpretation which other great orthodox traditions have always allowed. Thus "theologized", the myth is unable to n It does seem strange that, to the best of my knowledge, theologians have overlooked this point, in view of their handling of a.n.a.logous problems relating to the divine omnipotence. When asked, "Could G.o.d make himself cease to exist!" they have always replied that the question is nonsense, in that it asks whether Being could be the same as Nothing. The same reply-that the question is nonsense-should have been given to the question, "Does G.o.d, or can G.o.d, know himself!" The failure to give the same answer is, of course, due to the fact that the theologians thought that they knew themselves.

liberate Western man from history, from the fatal circle of a past which repeats itself faster and faster, from a life which loses all touch with reality in its increasing absorption in the arid fantasies of abstraction. For the living G.o.d has become the abstract G.o.d, and cannot deliver his creatures from the disease with which he is himself afflicted.

Though the human being is an organism which exists only in terms of a marvelously intricate and intimate relations.h.i.+p with its social and natural environment, the Western consciouv ness feels itself to exist primarily as the ego-a dissociated island of awareness, detached from the very body which it inhabits, let alone the environment. It follows, then, that the Western G.o.d is likewise a discarnate ego-a detached souliexisting in total separation from the physical universe just as Western man feels himself to be separate from his own body.

Furthermore the division of the human mind into "I" and "me" presents the problem of self~control in such a way as to lead to endless confusion-since the human being tries to dominate and regulate his emotions and actions, which are concrete, with the force of an ego and will, which is purely abstract. As a result, man is thrown into a state of conflict with himself which can never be resolved in the terms in which it is proposed. Goodintentioned "I" wrestles with wayward "me" like a rider on an unbroken horse. "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast 1 Primitive Christianity (St. Paul) had a trichotomous conception of man's nature, such that he was held to consist not only of body (soma) and soul (psyche, n jesh), but also of spirit (pneuma, roach). It is very clear that spirit was something of a supra,individual nature-a divine element transcending the ego. With the development of Christian theology the distinction between soul and spirit was virtually obliterated, so that as spirit became identified with soul the whole supernatural order became identified with the merely psychic-i.e. the world of things existing on a higher level or in a more subtle state than material bodies. The conception of G.o.d underwent the same degradation. G.o.d became naturalized, and fell from the rank of a metaphysical reality to that of a psychic being, a cosmic ego.

away." But this conflict between "I" and me is not so much a selftconsciousness as an unconsciousness-a failure to see that the righteousness of "I" has the same motivation as the sinful, ness of "me", both alike being attempts to save, to continue, myself-the illusory abstraction from memory.

This conflict is reflected in the irreconcilable war between G.o.d and Satan, where the absolutely righteous G.o.d is, after all, the final mask of the Devil just as the "good" motives oil" are a disguising of the "selfish" motives of "me". The myth itself contains a number of strong hints as to the ultimate ident.i.ty of G.o.d and Satan, but this is the one thing to which the theological interpretation is most resolutely opposed-because it coincides with the special blind.spot of the Western mind. For the Christian consciousness has always taken a peculiar delight in judging and condemning, in having a "scapegoat" upon which to vent the full fury of its indignation. Yet this familiar psychological mechanism is easily recognized as the "protest complex", whereby the insincerity of one's motives is conveniently hidden by violent condemnation of the same insincerity in others. Nothing advertizes the inner ident.i.ty of G.o.d and Satan so much as the uncompromising enthusiasm wherewith the partisans of G.o.d do battle with their Satanic enemies.

But the myth itself belies the theology. Reconsider the Preface of the Cross from the Roman Missal:

Who didst set the salvation of mankind upon the Tree of the Cross, so that whence came death, thence also g life might rise again, so that he who by the Tree was vanquisher might also by the Tree be vanquished, through Christ our Lord.

The poison of evil and death comes into the world, into the heart of the First Adam, through the Serpent on the Tree. Healing comes through the Second Adam, Christ crucified 1 r Corinthians 9: 27.

FIG. 2 ENGRAVED GEM FROM AN EARLY CHRISTIAN RING.

(After Didron) on the Tree of the Cross-of which Christian imagery discovers a "type" in nehushtan, the brazen serpent which Moses erected in the wilderness so that all who looked upon it were delivered from a plague of serpents. The process is h.o.m.oeo pathic-similia similibus curantur, likes are healed by likes.'

Let us remember, also, the myth which identifies the Wood of the Cross with the staff or beam taken from the Tree of Eden, so that the Cross which is medicina mundi is of the same Tree which bore the fruit of knowledge, the poison of death.

Now the serpent.and.tree is a common mythological theme, for one calls to mind not only the World Ash, Yggdrasil, of Norse mythology, with the worm Nidhug at its roots, but more particularly the Kundalini symbolism of Hindu Yoga. One thinks, too, of the Aesculapian symbol of the Caduceus, of the two serpents entwined about the rod-one of poison and the other of healing-a symbol which pa.s.sed into Christianity . The identification of Christ with the nebusbtan'serpent is based on John 3: 14, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." Thus Christian art often employs the motif of the serpent on the cross as an emblem of Christ. See the engraved stone from Gori's Thes. Diptych., vol. iii, p. rho, reproduced also in Lowrie's Art in the Early Church, pl. 33a (New York, 1947). Cf. Tertullian, De Idolatria, iii; also St. Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancta, iii. 9, "Imago enim crucis aereus serpens est: qui ptoprius Brat rypus corporis Christi: ut quicunque in c.u.m aspiceret, non periret."

8o Myth and Ritual in Christianity when it was adopted for the bishop's pastoral staff in the Eastern Churches.'

In the symbolism of KundaliniYoga the tree is the human spine considered as a flowering plant. At the top, within the head, is the thousand/petalled lotus sabasrdra, emblem of the sun beneath the dome of the firmament, arches type of the skull, since here as in almost all mythologies man is seen as the universe in miniature. At the root of the spinal-tree, at the s.e.xual organs, there sleeps the serpent Kundalini entwined about the phallus. So long as the serpent remains at the root of the tree, asleep, man is "fallen"; that is to say, his divine consciousness is asleep, involved in the darkness of maya, since at this stage the divine has identified itself with the finite world. But when the divine consciousness awakens, Kundalini ascends the tree and pa.s.ses up to the thousand/ petalled lotus in the head.

Thus the serpent has two roles, which, in Hindu mythology, correspond to the two "movements" in the eternal play (lila) of G.o.d: the one where G.o.d (Vishnu) sleeps, and dreams that he is the multiplicity of individual beings, and the other where G.o.d awakens and realizes his proper divinity. Downward in the roots, the serpent is the divine One asleep, enchanted by his own spell; upward in the sunlotus, the serpent is the same divine One disenchanted, free from the illusion that he is divided into many things. Therefore the dual role of the serpent in Christian mythology might suggest the same idea-that Lucifer and Christ axe two distinct operations of the Divine, respectively the "wrath and the love of G.o.d, the 1 See British Museum, Guide to the Early Christian and Byzantine Antiquities (London, 1903), p. 87. Possibly the crook.shaped pastoralstaff of the Western Church has a similar origin, for it closely resembles the serpentine litmus, or divining-rod, shown in an Etruscan sculpture reproduced in Murray's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. ii, p. 1566-an object which, again, resembles the official "sceptre'" or nyoi carried by Buddhist abbots in the Far East One must recollect the story that, as a sign of the power of G.o.d, Moses' staff was changed into a serpent to confound the Egyptian magicians.

shadow and light of the world drama. Interpreted in this fas.h.i.+on, the Fall would stand for man's forgetting of his divine nature, for involvement in the illusion of individuality. Salvation would be the recollection (anamnesis) of his divinity, the awakening or birth of G.o.dhead in man.

But, as one can only expect, theology will admit nothing of this kind, since it is the product of a mentality still very much under the spell of illusion. Yet, as a result, whole areas of Christian dogma do not make sense, or, at least, sense only of a very tortuous kind. If it is maintained, for example, that the Fall of Adam involves the whole human race, this is only because Adam-Man-is inclusive of each particular man. Contrariwise, there can only be Redemption for the human race if Christ, the Second Adam, is likewise inclusive of each particular man-if the Incarnation of G.o.d in the man Jesus is representative of G.o.d in every man, as Adam represents Lucifer in every man. Yet, with rare exceptions, the theologians insist that the G.o.dhead is incarnate in one man only-the historical Jesus. This confinement of the Incarnation to a unique event in the historical past thus renders the myth dead and ineffective for the present. For when myth is confused with history, it ceases to apply to man's inner life. Myth is only "revelation so long as it is a message from heaven--that is, from the timeless and non historical world-expressing not what was true once, but what is true always. Thus the Incarnation is without effect or significance for human beings living today if it is mere history; it is a salvific truth" only if it is perennial, a revelation of a timeless event going on within man always .l 1 This problem will be discussed more fully when we come to the proper part of the story. The orthodox theological explanation of how the race is saved by the Incarnation of G.o.d in Christ is peculiarly confused, because the myth was rationalized according to the inadequate categories of Greek philosophy. Thus when G.o.d became man, he was held to have united himself with human nature, but not with any human person, since Christ was human in nature, but divine as to his person, Consequently, G.o.d has united himself with the nature of each man, but not with the person of each man. This would make sense if theology would go on to state that the person (nefesh, psyche, soul) is not the real Still more repugnant to the theologians is the perception of the divine in Lucifer, the realization that the two serpents are one-Lucifer in descent and Christ in ascent. The nearest which the Church approaches to anything of this kind is the embarra.s.sing pa.s.sage which is sung on Holy Sat.u.r.day at the blessing of the Paschal Candle:

0 truly necessary (eerie necessarium) sin of Adam, which the death of Christ has blotted out. 0 happy fault (O felix culpa) , which merited such and so great a Redeemer.

With this one might compare the words of Isaiah 45: 7, "I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things."

The tragedy of Christian history is that it is a consistent failure to draw the life from the Christian myth and unlock its wisdom. This whole failure is epitomized in the problem of Lucifer, who should have remained the symbol, not of "deliberate malice", but of the necessary "dark side" of life, of shadow revealing light by contrast, of darkness as the Light (lucie) Bearer (fer). He would correspond to what the Chinese call yin as distinct from yang, the dark, negative, and feminine aspect of life, in complementary opposition to the light, positive, and masculine-the two represented together as the interlocked commas or fish, one black and one white, one ascending and one descending. In the West, this same symbol man, but only the abstract and illusory man. But it takes the very opposite standpoint, and insists that it is the psyche precisely which has to be saved, and since this is that pan of man's being which Christ did not a.s.sume, the salvation of the soul remains an impossibility. Yet the Gospels do not actually propose the salvation of the psyche. Cf. John 8: al, "Whither I go, ye cannot come", and thus to ascend to heaven man must "deny himself" (Mark 8: 34) because "no man bath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven". (John 3: 13.) Similarly, in Matthew 16: 25, "Whosoever would save his psyche shall lose it"; and in Luke 14: 26, "If any man come to me, and hate not ... his own psyche also, he cannot be my disciple."

FIG. 3 DESIGN FROM AN ENGRAVED GEM IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

(Early Christian) The two birds suggest Mundaka Upanishad, 3. I. I., "Two

birds, fast bound companions, clasp close the selfsame tree. Of these two, the

one eats sweet fruit; the other looks on without eating." (Trs. Hume.) These

birds, in the Hindu figure, are respectively the jiva (ego) and the atman (true

Self), the spirit enchanted and disenchanted.

is found as the zodiacal sign of Pisces, and the two opposed fishes are a common motif of early Christian gems-Christ himself being the ascending fish.l A truly problematic evil arises in human life when the necessary dark side of existence is not accepted and "loved" along with the light-that is, when the human mind sets itself such goals as the total retention of pleasure and the total elimination of pain. Paradoxically, devilish behaviour is the necessary consequence of not coming to terms with Lucifer, of refusing to admit that life is w.i.l.l.y,nilly a coincidence of opposites. Thus, in the complex picture of Christian mytho, logy, Lucifer has a double role. He is the necessary negative or 1 Serpent and fish are often mythological equivalents, being alike legless. The Greek IxeYc, by a play on the letters, suggested Christ, since each letter would be the initial letters of the phrase IHCOYC (Jesus) XPICTOC (Christ) YIOC (Son) OEOY (of G.o.d) CG)THP (Saviour). But, as Austin Fatter remarks in his Rebirth of Images, "The name IxeYc for Christ was also a play on letters, but it would not have been made unless the result had appeared to mean something." p. 64 n.

dark aspect of life, personifying the "wrath" of G.o.d-the dark angel Sammael. He is also the Liar, the illusion of self consciousness and self/love, personifying the mistake, the missing/of themark,' which the human mind has made in confusing its ident.i.ty with a self" abstracted from memory. In both roles he is a "disguise" of G.o.d. In manifesting a universe of relativity, the metaphysical "absolute", the unde fined, appears as the defined, and positive is defined in relation to negative, life in relation to death, light in relation to darkness -G.o.d appearing as two faced like Ja.n.u.s. In becoming "enchanted" or identified with the abstract and illusory self, that which suffers the enchantment is the ever/unknown "ground of the human mind-the roach or pneuma-which is always divine in principle, and which never really" becomes the individual save in seeming, in dream. Thus Lucifer is G.o.d seeming to be selfconscious, to be an ego, an individualized thing.

Both these senses of the myth have been missed by Christian theology, so that what is now personified or symbolized by the theological Satan is not one of the aspects of G.o.d but the very illusion of "self", in which orthodox Christianity most fervently believes. After all, it is not so surprising that that which it professes to hate most enthusiastically turns out to be identical with the ideal which it tries to love, the monstrously righteous G.o.d. Such predicaments are the inevitable penalty for the pursuit of a mirage, or for running after a shadow. For the zeal with which you follow measures the speed with which it eludes your grasp.

In sum, then, the tragedy of Christianity is the confusion of its myth with history and fact. For this is the realm of the abstract and the dead-of the seeming self Degraded to this realm, Christ and Lucifer alike became images of the ego, of the past and dead man who does not liberate but only binds. For this predicament the myth goes on to offer its own un, heeded solution.

To muss the mark is the original meaning of aap r w, to sin.

CHAPTER III.

Advent FROM the very beginning, of course, the Lord G.o.d had fore seen what Lucifer and Adam would do, and that by their disobedience the whole universe would become subject to death and corruption. Therefore in the secret counsels of his wisdom he had already prepared the remedy, which was to consist in the extraordinary act of descending into his own creation, becoming himself a creature-man-and, by making the life and death of created being his own, deliver it from the curse. For in taking the risk of creating beings with freedom of action, the Lord G.o.d was prepared to suffer the risk himself, and to experience the whole burden of anguish which it would involve. This is the real reason for the Christians veneration of Christ. It is not simply that he is a great teacher, wonder.worker, and exemplar, but much rather that Christ is G.o.d himself sharing the fate of his erring creatures.