Chapter 9: Love, Comedy and Mystery: Power the Irrational
In approaching the irrational in humans we need to bear in mind the fact that inner or esoteric knowledge at different levels of being may be conveyed in many different forms. We have made reference several times to the knowledge we receive in direct experience at specific times and locations in our lives. In the last chapter several examples of poetry were explored as a means of perceiving the creative irrational in human’s longstanding effort to describe our higher levels of existence. Such examples attempt to provide a straightforward layout of levels. Different styles of presentation may be suited to different times and occasions with different results. Tales from other cultures have adopted other styles or devices for these purposes. A number of Greek fables and legends have been used to point to difficulties that stand in the way of our ability to see situations for what they are. Aesop's fables, such as the well-known story of the fox and the grapes, are among the many that point to the blindness that follows from pride, gluttony, or sloth. At one level of comprehension, these reminders of the "deadly sins" as dangers to personal development, point out how difficult it is to mount any efforts towards the necessary standing apart and objectivity of an observer.
It can sometimes be recognized that in this process of transmission and adoption of stories, we may lose touch with much of what might have been their intended value. They are prone to be taken on the lower level at which we find ourselves in attempts at explanation, such as in the modern weak, if not futile explanations for the conception, let alone the actual construction of the great archaeological remnants.
In this vein of our failures to understand, many of the stories developed from early writings have in modern times been turned into moral lessons, considered important for the guidance of the faulty behaviour of others towards a certain conformity with social norms. Social morality has always been an important motivation of the literal minded, and over the ages it has even been used to justify the commission of atrocities against the non-conforming. Certainly it implies a rather different, more behavioural, concept of wisdom than we are interested in developing here. It continually raises the question of what is required to maintain any desired level of personal comprehension.
The familiar poignant Greek story of the youth, Narcissus, who became so enamored of his reflection in a pool of water that he drowned in it, can at one level be taken as a moral tale of the dangers of pride. At another, closer to the symbolic, it may help us see that the unrecognized egoistic behaviour that underlies virtually all of our activity and attitudes, may contain a compelling but false concept of love and beauty that can cause us to drown in our illusions. In the story of Narcissus, if our sense of “level” is not entirely lost, our sympathy for naïve youth can show us how our early unperceived illusions lead us away from life, rather than, as in his innocence he thought, into closer contact with it.
In this chapter we explore a number of examples of the creative irrational in writings that appeal to more directly to our higher emotional sides through those truly irrational aspects of the human condition: love, comedy and the mysterious.
Love
The power and motivation of an attraction between life forms is ubiquitous. It ensures appropriate care and upbringing of offspring in support of successful procreation. It maintains connections between members of families and family groups in support of safety and security. This is true for many species. But in humans, Love takes on new levels of connection. It is a subject far beyond the ability of this book. But it is necessary to mention it in regards to the creative irrational as a trait unique to humans.
As one well-known example of the power of love in Western Culture we remind the readers of the great works of Shakespeare, in particular the interactions of Romeo and Julliet[1]. This is a story of a love connection that drives the main characters to act totally against their rational needs of food, shelter and procreation. In the end Love drives them to suicide – an act that is truly uniquely human. Nothing could be more irrational than the termination of all of an individual’s possibilities. But this is an extreme example. The power of Love is found in many of our life moments but should never be dismissed as ordinary.
There are many other literary tales told by Sufis, in very different styles. In generations past, stories told by the Persian poet Omar Khayyám, especially the “Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám”, were widely known as Sufi “Love” poetry[2]. As Shah points out however, it was less well-recognized that the translation by the Irish poet Fitzgerald, depended much more on the English then it did on the Persian original[3]. From the point of view of Sufism, since Khayyám was not the teacher of a school, but only an individual exemplar of a particular school, his poetry had lesser importance to them than that of a school, hence was hardly worthy of the extensive reviews and evaluations with which western society greeted it.
A much better know and more ancient poem is that of Farīd ud-Dīn, also known as Aṭṭār which means “apothecary” or “chemist”[4]. The poem is known variously as “The Conference of the Birds” or the “Parliament of the Birds”[5]. It is a somewhat lengthy poem, written late in its author’s long life. He was known as “an illuminate, author and organizer” of the Sufis, and it is highly recommended reading for those interested in the famous Sufi literary traditions. Attar died over a century before the birth of the British poet Chaucer[6], in whose works references to Attar’s Sufism are to be found. It is also pointed out by Shah that there seems little likelihood that strong parallels between Attar’s initiatory Sufism and the rituals of the Order of the Garter, founded over one hundred years later in England, were illustrative of simple coincidence. It is also said that late in his life Attar was visited by the rather more famous Sufi poet, Jalluladin Balkhi, known as Rumi. It was he who made public more of the initiatory rituals of the Sufi lore pursued by Attar.
We wish to devote further attention in this book to the creative irrational in “Love” poems by looking at the work of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī or simply as Rumi[7]. He is the greatest, and currently best known and widely read of the Sufi poets. Rumi was born in Balkh, a very ancient and famous city of Northern Afghanistan. It is said to have been founded as a settlement by Alexander the Great, but after later becoming a well-know Buddhist center, was conquered by the Moslems in 653 CE, becoming an equally important centre for Moslems. It was known as a major centre for the learning that was passed on to Middle Ages Europe. It was overrun by the Mongols in the early years of the 13th century, leading the father and family of Rumi, to flee to the area of southern Anatolia. Rumi thus developed in the area of Konya, in Southern Turkey, which seems also to be the place of origin or at least dissemination of the stories of the Mullah Nasr Edin.
Rumi, inherited a school founded by his father, who is known, in parallel with the ancient Parmenides of Phocaean origin, as a great jurist, theologian and mystic, and who was also known as a Sufi. Rumi apparently accepted leadership of the school through the mutual acclaim of its students, among whom he was well-known. He in his turn wrote a large number of Love Poems, apparently as one means of describing his sense of an infinite love, found and lost again through the presence of Shams of Tabriz. The sense of deep love and loss are stunningly conveyed by the translations of one of his chief modern exponents, Coleman Barks[8], to whom we are deeply indebted for conveying the subtlety and beauty of the poems themselves. Rumi was also the founder of the Order of Maglevi Dervishes, commonly called “The Whirling Dervishes”. A large, beautiful and well-tended tomb at Konya marks the place of his interment.
We begin here with an extract from one of the visionary poems entitled “The Visions of Daquqi“, in which we feel is portrayed various aspects of the mystic. It highlights a complex non-linear thought that at one level of comprehension can be seen as irrational in nature:
‘Husam, tell about the visions of Daquqi, who said,
“I have travelled East and West not knowing which way I was going, following the moon, lost inside God.”
Someone asked, “Why do you go barefooted over the stones and thorns?”
What?”, he answered.
“What?
A bewildered lover doesn’t walk on feet; He or she walks on love. There are no “long” Or “short” trips for those. No time.
The body learned from the spirit how to travel. A saint’s body moves in the unconditioned way, though it seems to be in conditionedness.
Daquqi said,
“One day I was going along looking to see in people the shining of the Friend, so I would recognize the ocean in a drop, the sun as a bright speck.
I came to the shore at twilight and saw seven candles. I hurried along the beach toward them. The light of each lifted into the sky. I was amazed. My amazement was amazed. Waves of bewilderment break over my head.
What are these candles that no one seems to see?
In the presence of such lights people were looking for lamps to buy!
Then the seven became one in the middle of the sky’s rim.
Then that fanned out to seven again. There were connections between the candles that cannot be said.
I saw, but I cannot say.
I ran closer. I fell. I lay there awhile.
I got up and ran again. I had no head and no feet.
They became seven men, and then seven trees, so dense with leaves and fruit that no limbs were visible.
Flashes of light spurted from each fruit like juice!
And most marvelous of all was that hundreds of thousands of people were passing beside the trees risking their lives, sacrificing everything, to find some scrap of shade.
They made peculiar parasols out of pieces of wool. They tried everything.
And no one saw the trees with their tremendous shade!
The caravans had no food, and yet food was dropping all about them. If anyone had said,
“Look over here!”
They would have thought him insane or drunk.
How can this happen? Or am I dreaming?
I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit.
I might as well believe.
And I still see people searching so desperately for an unripe grape, with these vineyards all around them, heavy with perfect bunches.
. . .’
We present this extract to highlight the power and impact of love captured in poetry as another example of the creative irrational in our human natures. While many animals show strong bonds between mating pairs, parents and children and within groups of individuals, the role of love in the lives of humans goes far beyond the requirements for sex and procreation to something that is at a much higher level of human experience.
This much shorter poem is typical of the love literature entitled “Judge a Moth by the Beauty of its Candle”:
‘You are the king’s son,
Why do you close yourself up?
Become a lover.
Don’t aspire to be a general
or a minister of State.
One is a boredom for you,
the other a disgrace.
You’ve been a picture on the bathhouse wall
long enough. No one recognizes you here, do they?
God’s lion disguised as a human being!’
I say that and put down the book
I was studying, Hariri’s Maqumat.
There is no early and late for us.
The only way to measure a lover
is by the grandeur of the beloved.
Judge a moth by the beauty of its candle.
Shams is invisible because he is inside sight.
He is the intelligent essence
of what is everywhere at once, seeing.
This short poem connects the lover and the loved. It is not laid out as a logical relationship. In fact its power is in its irrationality. How would one analytically measure a moth by its attraction to a flame? Of course for the intent moth such love leads to his ultimate death by fire. In regards to the theme of the book, actions resulting in death is the ultimate in the creative irrational.
We also believe that it is worth noting the following piece entitled “This We Have Now”:
This we have now
is not imagination.
This is not
grief or joy.
Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.
Those come
and go
This is the presence
that doesn’t.
It’s dawn Husam,
here in the splendor of coral
inside the Friend, the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.
What else could human beings want?
When grapes turn to wine,
they’re wanting
this.
When the night sky pours by,
it’s really a crowd of beggars,
and they want some of this!
This
that we have now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb,
The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.
One final example of Sufi poetry that has come to our notice, although not from Rumi but from his possibly even better known successor, the great Sufi master Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, known as “Hafiz”[9], who lived and worked about one century later than Rumi. He too seems to have taken on the accouterments of the earlier Masters, writing poetry that intrigued as had Rumi’s. Hafiz was said to have written many thousands of poems of which we wish to quote one that we found especially intriguing:
Lifts Beyond Conception:
Independent
Of this body is my mind
When the Call from the Golden Nightingale
Lifts and Pours my Being thoughout
The Sky.
Independent of this mind is my
Heart.
When God unfurls even a shadow of His tress
Upon my bare shoulder.
Soverign of my illumined heart.
Is the indivisible knowledge
In the gaze of my spirit’s wings climbing to
Such a sublime height they each
Become the Sun
Itself
And reside-perched upon every throne
Known to Man.
Hafiz,
The Sufi path of Love is so astoundingly
Glorius
That
One day each
Wayfarer upon it will become
The Inconceivable-
The Creator of God
Himself. [10]
Any selection of particular poems from an anthology, is itself necessarily subjective. It has already passed through the hands of a modern translator as well as, in this case, the tastes of authors with a scientific background. The beauty and also the remarkable visions of the poet, certainly in the last of the poems quoted, seem to equal the finest perceptions of present day physics and mathematics in what is known as “system theory”[11]. It is difficult for us to place such poetry in the perspective of being the product of a 13th or 14th century writer of mystical religious tracts, without vastly broadening the scope of what modern points of view attribute to such early writers, let alone the even more ancient composers of myth. And yet we find here one of the clearest envisionings that we have encountered, referring to the movement beyond space and time required in appreciation of the perception of a new vision on dimensions in models of modern physics. Is there a hint here of our questions about how, with knowable states of being, it is possible to experience the universal guide to models of reality?
Comedy
In our culture, ideas that are important enough to be accompanied by a persistent belief that their subject matter, particularly of what constitutes the higher, must also be a serious business, it follows as almost a habit that the serious is represented as needing to be accorded a certain solemnity; an attitude that is socially sanctioned by the more conservative among us as evidence of right attitude. But this popular modern view is sometimes thrown into question by ancient parables and myths. We need to examine the usefulness of different models, which emerge in quotes such as these from Schopenhauer:
“A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man.”[12]
and
“the only divine quality in man is humour because humour is a consciousness behind consciousness, an ego behind ego, an observer on a different level."[13]
For readers who have spent time in the directed solemnity of a church, synagogue or mosque these statements may come as a bit of a shock. An appreciation of the challenges of understanding attitudes that are “appropriate” and important are illustrated in the different ways in which the tales of different traditions are told. From what is said in the foregoing quotes, the telling of a joke holds the power of exposing the reader to an unexpected change in level[14]. This change in levels of appreciation is the main feature of making jokes, as indeed it is of any joke telling, no matter what the origin of the culture from which it is told. The culture gives us the setting of the factual material and can be recognized by the background used. For example the most common basis of modern Western joke telling such as encountered in sitcoms depend on the misfortunes and foibles of the characters. In contrast, the Mullah Nasr Edin stories of the mid-eastern mode present a way of thinking and presenting ideas that doesn’t rely on weakness and misfortune but highlights “the fool” as a person who has limited awareness of his situation – and begging the question in the reader of how to be “less of a fool”[15].
One popular bearer of wise observations in the humorous is Mullah Nasr Edin, or simply Nasreddin, in the tales of the Sufi traditions originating from the Middle East [16]. These stories have their own particular comedic style that is virtually the opposite of the seriousness used in the much older pedagogical lessons contained in the Hebrew stories such as those of King Solomon. The Mullah and his associates repeatedly expose us to paradoxical situations in which the customary logic of our rational ways of thinking contrives to end us up in some kind of trouble. That is, the stories build upon the habitual associations of ordinary “thinking” to create a given expectation that is then turned on its figurative head. It is the technique of any good jokester. The fact that what ought to be a perfectly sensible idea is found to have an inappropriate result may show us something of the assumptions we make without seeing them. It may also remind us of the essential need for the “sly man”, one whose senses are so alert that they are constantly watching out for the possibility of being tricked or tricking others into any one of our unrecognized but frequent deviations from the strait path.
One of the best known examples of Mullah stories, that has been copied from its original setting into that of many other cultures, is that of a man who, one night came upon the Mullah, down on hands and knees carefully searching the ground under a street light. He had lost his key. What seemed a long time after joining the unsuccessful search, the man enquired just where the Mullah thought he had lost his key, to which the Mullah replied, "Oh! I lost it in my house, but there is no light in there so I came out here to look."
Another favorite story tells of the Mullah travelling to a neighbouring town to attend the bazaar with his friend Abdullah, who was something of a trickster. After the two friends had spent a long and tiring day slowly making their way through the dense crowds in the market, they secured a bed to rest for the night in a huge hall with many other weary travellers. The Mullah was so hesitant and procrastinating about choosing a place to sleep that Abdullah enquired of him what the trouble was. The Mullah confided that he was so confused by all the new things and the crowds that he was afraid that if he went to sleep he would even forget his own name! At which Abdullah replied,
"Don't worry, old friend. You see these balloons? Well, all you have to do is tie one on your toe, and when you wake up you will see the balloon and know that you are the one with the balloon tied to your toe!"
The Mullah's mind was somewhat put at ease and so after tying on the balloon, he went to sleep. However, while he was asleep his friend jokingly removed the balloon and tied it on his own toe. In the morning Abdullah was awakened by the loud lamentations from the Mullah.
"What's the Matter?" he enquired innocently.
"Oh, woe is me", moaned the Mullah. "I knew something terrible was bound to happen. I can see by the balloon on your toe that you are me. But who, then, am I?"
Though this ingenious short story the reader is exposed to one of the greatest questions every encountered by humans: “Who am I?” Just as we recognize that a picture “paints a thousand words”[17], this joke raises questions on which thousands of books have been written.
Among other characteristics to be emphasized in the comedy of the Sufi tradition is the notion of the ultimate unity of all things, to which attention is drawn through humorous vignettes, illustrating the essential circularity of reality.
“The Mullah was walking alone on a deserted road. Night was approaching, when a troop of horsemen approached. In a sudden burst of imagination, fear brought to mind how they might try to rob him, or impress him into the army. In this fear he jumped over a nearby low rock wall and found himself in a graveyard, where he threw himself down.
Of course the travelers, innocent of any such motives, were curious at his observed behaviour and so followed him around the fence, and came upon him lying perfectly still in the graveyard on his back on the ground. Out of curiosity, one of them said,
“What is the matter - can we help? Why are you here?”
The Mullah realizing his mistake, said, “It’s more complicated than you think! You see, I am here because of you, and you, you are here because of me!”
A final example illustrates the fact that we often pay lip service to our consideration for telling the “truth” to others, when it does not necessarily turn out that way. This tale at the same time serves to illustrate the importance given by the Sufis to actions rather than words.
One day, the Mullah was up repairing the shingles on his roof when a man called him to come down into the street. The Mullah did as asked, and when he approached the fellow on street level he asked him, “What do you want?”
“I need money,” was the reply.
“Why didn’t you tell me that when I was up on the roof?” asked the Mullah.
“ I was ashamed to beg,” answered the man.
“Come up on my roof” said the Mullah and the man followed him up.
When they got there the Mullah proceeded to continue fixing his roof, saying nothing. After a few moments, the man coughed. Without looking up the Mullah said,
“I have no money to give you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that when we were down below?” exclaimed the man.
“Well, if I had done that, how could you have recompensed me for bringing me
down?” asked the Mullah.
In the extensive exposition of the beliefs and practices of the Sufis, Shah recounts many more tales of Nasrudin[18]. The humour of the ridiculous that is used by both these stories adds to a directness that is such a significant part of learning. Jokes are a widely appreciated currency. The special subtlety that conveys the contradictions can be perceived at various levels of meaning without any particular special preparation of the auditor, see as evidence the receptiveness of young children for a good joke. In general, the telling of the message always has the element of surprise that attracts the discoverer in us, whereas explanation would require enough words and complexity to test the patience of the most avid puzzle-solver. Cultural context also helps prepare a listener for special, more difficult interpretations. But as is the case with many ancient myths and stories, some of the intended sense may come simply in the course of repeated hearings of the original; it is a technique we have earlier noted as an aspect of the age-old art of story-telling.
The Mystery of Time and Space
In the foregoing Sufi literature in particular we are introduced gently to some of the more difficult, what are often described as esoteric, problems of our personal and internal views of time and space. Especially in the scientific period of Western society, through which we have just come, if phenomena were not externally tangible or measurable or explicitly rational, they were clearly suspect as “subjective,” hence by definition were in the field of the internal which Science defines before-hand as suspect, or simply “illusory.” While our belief is that this age of literality needs to be challenged, it is not clear to what extent we are comfortable with others in finding the limits of perception between reality and illusion. We need to clarify our necessarily personal questions about this. Without at least explicit recognition of some of the uncertainties, we cannot be confident with development of what is represented in the metaphors of myth.
The problem was clearly laid out in Rumi’s poem, “The Vision of Daquqi.” There he especially clearly portrayed the use of memories in our personal search for reality through what may only be imaginary, mechanical or automatic internal mental associations. The images that emerge from the poems of Rumi and Hafiz are as sensitive as are images conveyed by a modern van Gogh painting. Can this imagery be understood as their authors intended and communicated it to us? And if so, how do we know that our own delicate impressions are received and understood comparably by other human beings? We need to examine questions of sensation that arise during mental and emotional responses to our esoteric and exoteric worlds.
In this respect, of course, the power of the irrational has been remarkably strongly conveyed by the great masters of art in the form of the images of the Ancient Egyptians. We add here an image that contains much symbolic content that speaks of the dependence of humans on their concepts and worldview (Figure 33). Much of the understanding of our lives is based on our unquestioned concepts whether irrational or not. In the example in the figure, the source of all life is portrayed as not just the physical nourishment of the body, but of the very irrational concept of the quality of life itself. A poignant reminder is given in the image of the goddess, Mut, allowing the Pharaoh in the form of a young man, to breath the influence of the ankh, symbol of life itself, into his nostrils.
Figure 33. Pharaoh breathes in life in the form of the ankh. Abydos, Egypt.
There is a vast literature related to this more than physical worldview. We cannot review it all in a single Chapter. Much of it appears to result from particular psychological phenomena that, if not abnormal, are at least outside what we need for our usual purposes. Nor can we venture into fields as foreign to our natures as those once popularly invoked by séances, or other approaches to necromancy and equally questionable magical practices that were called “spiritualizations.” These generally appear to us today to have represented the influence of isolated, perhaps abnormal, personal psychologies, which we now feel justified to dismiss as “special” to the point of being aberrant. We make no attempt to evaluate them further here. We have in mind for study instead the imagery that is within the normal lines of artistic inquiry, hence more readily defined as “natural”. It is still seen as difficult to anticipate or explain experiences of life that are beyond normal life. We have already provided one example of these rare occasions in Chapter 1 with the quote from Philo[19]. Saint Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus continues to have world-wide influence in the perpetuation of the Christian beliefs. While such “mysterious” events are perceived as transient and rare, they are accepted as normal-enough to be part of the human condition.
We believe that there are at least two classes of such phenomena that arise in us, often unintentionally, but which seem to come from genuinely mysterious relations between our customary view of our external world, and what appear to us as esoteric phenomena. The first of these phenomena is usually referred to as “predictive dreams” that give rise to questions about the accepted orderly sequence of time events that are customary for us. The second, is a more general relationship between events observed in our personal lives that we usually call “coincidences.” Their significance appears important to us but cannot be “explained” by appeal to accepted ideas about either space or time. In general they are experienced as incidents of almost extra dimensional extension such as was dramatically described by Philo who had no prior examples to help him with understanding. His experiences even preceded the experience which affected St. Paul so dramatically on his journey along the road to Damascus, an experience that changed the nature of his whole outlook on life.
For predictive dreams, the written evidence is very limited. They have not been well documented, aside from the principal reference written by Dunne[20]. In our personal experience, tests of these dreams may be made using a simple technique suggested by Dunne. He suggested that by using it, observations made in the dream are verifiable later according to externally established criteria. The process does not explain them.
While predictive dreams are rarely mentioned in our adult world, we found that once the possibility of having predictive dreams was accepted and mentioned by us, many others told us that they had experienced them as well. In fact, we found that occurrences were much more common than we had first believed, apparently because there is a general reluctance to mention them. The recipients recognized that they were so inexplicable that telling them risked exposing themselves to accusations of some kind of mental imbalance. Such is often the power of “public opinion” over expressions of our personal, but unusual experiences.
The method of study suggested by Dunne, was regarded at the time as far from ordinary. He described a simple procedure for first recording and later recalling the details of such dreams. Since it was originally published in 1927, the book has become widely known as a credible attempt to understand what the author refers to as the “multidimensionality of time,” using statistically and mathematically valid principles of mathematical analysis. He proposed an explanation related to what he called “the infinite regress.” While these special dreams are now much better known than when he first wrote about them, and the infinite regress is much less well recognized or even accepted for describing aspects of the real world, the idea of predictive dreams is still not commonly accepted in scholarly circles, and is generally questioned by others unless instances are verified by personal experience.
For our immediate purposes the importance of this early work lies in the fact that it casts light on the problem of how readily, in the absence of experiences verified by us personally, we may reject or restrict acceptance of observations of even relatively common phenomena unless they seem to be in full accord with prior expectations. A successful application of Dunne’s technique to one of our own dreams, showed us how our apparently embedded personal beliefs of the uni-directionality of time, are at variance with our own direct experience. The reason for such common rejection is not well understood, but seems related to the fact that we see no “reasonable” explanation for what we know happened with us. However, acceptance of the possibility is of major importance in relation to problems raised in the structuring of myths and their significance. The science that we have been taught can influence us to be strongly suspicious of any inner experiences that are not strictly within external limits that are accepted by our peers.
A second example concerns a problem of communication raised and reviewed in some detail by Jung in a number of his essays. The evidence for what are commonly called “meaningful coincidences,” was known and studied extensively by him in relation to his psychiatric practice. He named the instances cases of “Synchronicity,[21]” which he defined as an “acausal connecting principle.” As a major source of his ideas about the importance of simultaneity between events, he made sincere acknowledgement to his friend Richard Wilhelm, in a tribute published in Wilhelm’s book, “The Secret of the Golden Flower.[22]” He pointed out that Wilhelm’s book actually originated in the East in writings and traditions established by the Chinese poet and philosopher, Lao-tzu, and his commentaries on the traditional Tao-Te-Ching. Its findings correspond with the central ideas of the Tao[23].
Jung described his investigations of these phenomena in his psychological studies of patients, in which he often found evidence for the occurrence of acausal connections. As he pointed out, they are views of events in our external world that are in essential agreement with what can be understood from Eastern philosophies, but are little studied and generally not accepted in Western cultural circles. This changed after Jung’s exposé and careful observations and studies of them were published. The phenomena appeared in the minds of many of the patients he interviewed. That is, while the occurrence of predictive dreams was noted for many individuals, hence are properly called esoteric phenomena, they seem to relate directly to events or influences outside us, or between ourselves and others, hence become phenomena that appear in our exoteric world, where we try to judge them.
Here again it seems necessary to point out that while the occurrence of “coincidences” is frequently noticed in the ordinary world, its significance is usually dismissed with a shrug as unusual but of no lasting significance. This may be because of the lack of a context for it in Western experience, literature or traditions. This deficiency has however, now been more than adequately overcome in a book by Peat[24], a professionally qualified physicist who originally worked and published with Bohm[25]. His work places the Ideas of Synchronicity in perspective in the physical principles of variation that arise in characteristics of motion. But one of his most original contributions arises in his perceptions of Synchronicity and principles of Divination that have dominated the thinking of some of the lesser known societies that make up what we term “civilization.” As he puts it, “scientific explanations sometimes fail to capture the essence of actual experience....” which he exemplifies in characteristics of social organization and beliefs of the Naskapi Indians of Labrador and the Neolithic Shang people of the Yellow River of China.
In more modern times these early beginnings have been shown to be related to the formulations of Information Theory and the experimental understanding made clear by the work on dissipative structures by Prigogine[26]. His work focused on energetic systems such as fast flowing streams that produce chaotic, yet stable and somewhat reproducible structures such as whirlpools and eddies. Through such studies the relation of this scientific work to the understanding that has emerged in the I Ching becomes a part of a more comprehensive view of the whole of our Universe. They represent an upsetting of our sometimes almost naive expectations of the stability of both space and time in relation to what we accept as reality.
We do not propose here to try to study either of these two phenomena in further detail. However, it will be obvious to our readers that they are phenomena that need to be acknowledged and taken into account in our studies of the subject matter of myths and the uses that myths make of metaphor. That is, we have before us evidence that the worlds to which humankind is exposed have characteristics that seem foreign to our ordinary experience, but must, at the very least, be a reflection of the operation of levels of laws that are above or below those recognized in our personal hierarchies of ideas. What we have termed higher levels of perception in relation to some of the phenomena described in myth, may well have a quality of reality that we cannot judge without sufficient preparation of our own powers of perception and discrimination.
These relations require that we make the effort to question widely accepted yet superficial views of both space and time. Conventional science has already investigated them and finds convincing evidence to support serious consideration of another generality, perhaps expressible through the addition of other “dimensions.”[27] This stands out in the fact that our intellectual faculties cannot readily explain such well-known phenomena as love and justice using modern science. We can personally observe phenomena related to them, but they require a fundamental change in perceptions to find a point of view in accord with any testable scientific methodology. These two enigmatic phenomena do, however, require examination of our own preconceptions. Do they provoke unexpected perceptions of what we might call different “levels of being?”
A Summary Evaluation
We can gradually come to realize that the world in which we live, when sensed in our fullest capacity for comprehension, communication and mutual interaction, can lead to an appreciation of levels of a reality that are beyond our customary expectations and experiences. Taking them together we begin to comprehend the necessity for the voluntary undertaking of a “preparation’ that has been understood by the myth makers, but bears little relation to what we, in our present western world know as “education.” In the process we may begin to develop a taste for what is meant by the phrase “levels of understanding”[28].
The extent to which this depends on a coming together of new facts, unexpected experiences, and on the guidance available from others whose experience transcends ours, depends on a number of intangibles of which we can learn with time. But whatever transpires, we need to have help from outside ourselves in order to appreciate them. It should by now be clear that all this embodies a wisdom beyond our present conscious rational comprehension.
Perhaps there is no other route through which meanings that have been attributed to this expression by the intelligence of our minds alone can with patience be extended to what is real. Gradually the examples of unknown and unrecognized aspects of our experience help us appreciate that our personal development cannot take place without the leaven of questions arising from an intelligence that balances the understanding of our minds with our inner emotional and physical sensitivities, which we sometimes simply call “the heart”.
We believe that the foregoing examples can help us appreciate the strong creative irrational forces of love, comedy and mystery in the life of modern day humans.
———- Chapter 10: Science versus Humanities; Rational versus Irrational - The Irreconcilable? ——-
———————- Table of Contents ——————————-
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romeo_and_Juliet
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam
[3] Shah, I. 1964. The Sufis. Doubleday, New York. 404 pp.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attar_of_Nishapur
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conference_of_the_Birds
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Chaucer
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
[8] Barks, C. (translator). 2004. The Essential Rumi. Harper One. New York.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez
[10] Hafiz, Shams-ud-din Muhammed. 1999. The great “Sufi Master”. The Gift: Poems. Translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Penguin Compass. 333 pp.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
[12] Schopenhauer, A. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/196118-a-sense-of-humour-is-the-only-divine-quality-of
[13] Schopenhauer, A. https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2017/03/08/carl-jung-people-always-have-some-scapegoat/
[14] Arthur Koestler. 1967. The Ghost in the Machine. Hutchins of London.384 pp.
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin
[17] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_picture_paints_a_thousand_words
[18] Shah, I. 1964. The Sufis. Doubleday, New York. 404 pp.
[19] Sandmel, S. 1979. Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction. Oxford Univ. Press. Oxford. 204 pp.
[20] Dunne, J. W. 1939 (original 1927). An Experiment with Time. Faber and Faber, London. 256 pp.
[21] Jung, C.G. 1969. “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” pp 417-531, in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Volume 8. The Bollingen Series, XX.Pantheon Books. New York.588pp.
[22] Wilhelm, R. and C.G. Jung. 1999 . The Secret of the Golden Flower. Routledge London. pp 137.
[23] Fung Yu-LAN. 1989 (original edition 1931). Chuang-Tzu; A Taoist Classic. Foreign Languages Press, Beijing. 150 pp. See also: Merton, Thomas. 2010. The Way of Chuang Tzu. New Directions, New York. 159 pp.
[24] Peat, F.D. 1987/88. Synchronicity; The Bridge Between Matter and Mind. Bantam New Age Books, New York. 245pp.
[25] Bohm, D. and F.D. Peat. 1987. Science, Order and Creativity. Bantam Books, New York.
[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system
[27] Greene, B. 1999. The Elegant Universe. New York, W.W. Norton & Co.
[28] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions.