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.

5th anniversary of Awakening Higher Consciousness - thanks!

This is the 5th anniversary of it hitting the shelves: https://www.innertraditions.com/books/awakening-higher-consciousness.

So grateful that people are still buying copies - thanks so much for everyone who has checked it out! Keep safe!

Chapter 8 - 20th Century Psychoanalysts - Different Paths and Different Insights

Thus far in our exploration of the creative irrational we have focused on human expressions of the irrational in pre-literate and literate forms. But, being biological organisms/animals, we can’t deny the operation of the rational in a large portion of our functioning. The challenge for us as humans is to appreciate both the rational and the irrational in our lives. One of the key developments in examining this balance comes from the work of the field of psychoanalysis where the world of the human unconscious needs to be uncovered and appreciated. What the psychoanalysts found is that the denial of our unseen, irrational unconscious can result in serious mental illness for some individuals. We see that ignorance of our unconscious also can have implications for people with “normal” personalities.

As we have seen, for much of human development there were strong motivations for action and behaviours that were once considered to be primitive irrational and spiritual. These motivations led to some of the greatest works of human creation in construction and thought such as we have presented in the previous chapters. But such practices were generally lost in the evolution of the Western World in the age of Enlightenment, circa 18th Century. The re-dawning of the role of rationality as an effective worldview left behind many important aspects of our human growth and development. In this chapter we focus on relatively recent explorations of the late 19th and 20th Century that brought back into our view the need to recognize and bring into our active awareness the role of our unconscious. In this time frame, six philosopher-psychologists explored our inner psyche and captured what they saw in terms of different motivating factors that can be identified in both our inner and outer lives: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)[1], Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)[2], Alfred Adler (1870-1937)[3], Theodor Reik (1888-1969)[4], Carl Jung (1875-1961)[5] and Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)[6]. We focus our interest in the creative irrational through the most influential of the field: Nietzsche and Jung (Figure 29).

Figure 29. Friedrich Nietzsche (left) [7] and C.G. Jung (right)[8].

It was Nietzsche who began investigations into the more-than-merely personal aspects of human psychology with his most insightful and meticulous observations of human nature, based largely on his personal observations of his own nature. He was not medically trained.  He began his professional career as a philologist, and undertook intense early studies of Greek and Roman Literature at Bonne and Leipzig, Germany. At the remarkably young age of 24, he was appointed in 1869 to Chairmanship of the Department of Ancient Philology at the University of Basel.  His health was never strong, and in 1879 after only 10 years at Basel he was forced by a combination of nervous disorders and poor eyesight to resign from his University post, and shortly after returned home to live with his mother at her home near the Swiss Alps. After her death, in 1884, he was “looked after” by his sister. By 1889 he had become hopelessly insane, a condition that lasted until his death in 1900. In his last years he was dependent on the forces represented by an ambitious sister who tried to bend his inclinations to her own selfish desire for control.  

The passing on of his work and ideas was later also coloured and distorted by National Socialism in Germany at the time. The Nazis used their misinterpretations of his writings to support their own later vituperative views of European political anthropology and history.  This most deliberate misinterpretation was magnified and manipulated in support of Nazi propaganda leading to serious political upheavals that eventually triggered the Second World War. These incredible circumstances so coloured the views of European and North American Society, that even the study of Nietzsche was actively discouraged for many years. The effect still seems to condition the modern day reader’s approach to his insights. Despite the efforts of the Nazis, as well as Nietzsche’s sister, to manipulate the memory of his original thought, the published works of Nietzsche subsequently prevailed and demonstrate to us even today, his remarkable passion of soul and mind. His deeply personal psychological inquiries, developed in many directions, are illustrated vividly in his published works.[9].

During his entire sane life Nietzsche had written and published passionately, voluminously and obstinately on what eventually became a vast collection of literary works. He wrote prose and poetic works beginning with his “Birth of Tragedy”[10]. His most well-known, extensive major work is “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, published in 1889-91[11]. He held a contemptuous opinion of the morality of Western bourgeois society, which he strongly rejected as a “slave morality” in favour of a new heroic morality that would lead to what he called in his native German language the new “Übermensch” - widely mistranslated as “superman”. 

Nietzsche and the concept of the “Übermensch”

By the age of 39 in 1888 Nietzsche wrote one of his earliest and best-known books “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”[12]. This is a story of the journeys, work and teachings of its main character Zarathustra who is clearly derived from some interest Nietzsche had in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, although he never explicitly makes direct reference to it. Throughout his book he clearly rejects established church and societal practices, recognizing them as often being shallow and inadequate to give expression to the hard-to-perceive spiritual level. By his Übermensch concept he intended to identify a person who consciously attempted to raise himself to a higher level of being: a creator of a new heroic morality; one that consciously affirms life, to live at a level beyond good and evil.  It is a concept that we are much inclined to include in our discussion of our capacity to experience the creative irrational. According to Nietzsche, a conscious Being, an Übermensch, would have to have an instinctive impulse: one that would be required in order to set that person apart from “the herd” and lift him/her to a more appropriate level of being.  The whole of his writings comprises an extensive and enlighteningly objective, even if sometimes dramatic, even vituperative, style, presented in a compelling framework of allusion, passionate imagery, and metaphor.  There can hardly be a match for such a range of prose and poetic works (some he even set to music!) in any other later literary works in the Western World.

Zarathustra is a prince who finds himself on a mountaintop with an urge to travel through the world to “be man again”. He travels the world and has numerous experiences and encounters with others before returning to the mountain. The final section of his book involves his interaction with a number of “Higher Men”. In his native German they are “höheren Menschen”[13]. These Higher Men are listed as the King, the old sorcerer, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious man of the spirit, the sorrowful prophet and the ass. This concept of höheren Menschencontrasts sharply with the concept of the Übermensch.  This later concept is better appreciated as beyond-human, over-human, an existence that exists at a level above our ordinary, unthinking, collection of appetites and reactions to our external world.

While there are many well-known themes and archetypes buried in this story, the most strikingly and well known is the concept of the Übermensch. It designates Nietzsche’s particular concept of real human nature. As there is no consensus by modern scholars on what he actually meant specifically by the word it is here more properly kept in its original German form: Übermensch. We introduce it here in our effort to bring his thoughts to our exploration of the various levels of human consciousness involved in our creative irrational side. He sees the need to get beyond the level of existence that we generally occupy. He recognizes the many different distractions that pervade our ordinary lives. The Übermensch is the part of our being that needs to be developed in order to get beyond these low level preoccupations. It is along the “right” lines of thought that some authors have translated the word as “superman”. The difficulty is that this is almost always interpreted in the physical sense instead of as something essentially internal and individual; it deals not with external super villains but with the much more threatening distractions that we harbour inside us.  In our view, Übermensch development should be a concern for all humans trying to follow their own wish toward a “Higher” sense of Being[14].

The term “Übermensch” draws our attention to this central idea of Nietzsche, that “man” as we usually find ourselves is actually many different kinds of beings, no one of whom lasts for more than a few moments at a time before another, virtually new one replaces the first, and so on “ad infinitum”. As we work on trying to be present to a central sense of ourselves by examining our more ordinary states of being we can find many examples of these many different selves that come and go in our daily lives. Earlier in this book in Chapter 1 we recounted personal examples of this process from the efforts of the authors, as well as quoting from the dramatic perceptions of Philo although in general the seeing of the multiple I’s is neither easy nor frequent. 

This human of “so many faces” but with not one that has any particular outstanding identity must be recognized in all its variations and fluctuations if we are to see the need to “transcend” this usual “asleepness” of multiple identities.  We can come to know this if we actually learn to work towards a state that more correctly expresses our potentially higher, proper and rightful state of consciousness. We need to develop our Übermensch to get over our lower-selves and bring them together into a more unified whole. Nietzsche’s use of the Übermensch concept is totally consistent with other aspects of the spectrum of awareness that we present in Table 2 in this Book. We see it as an excellent description of this difficult work towards an awakening of an objective state of “Consciousness” in ourselves. 

A second important theme that we see in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is the explicit need for the individual to awaken to see the levels of being. The following quote explicitly lays out Nietzsche’s concept of a need to awaken and shows that this awakening results in joy. He writes:

 “O man, take care!

What does the deep midnight declare?

‘I was asleep – 

From a deep dream I woke and swear:

The world is deep,

Deeper than day had been aware.

Deep is its woe – 

Joy – deeper yet than agony:

Woe implores: Go!

But all joy wants eternity –

Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”[15]

It is obvious from this passage that there is a joy to be found in the deep of eternity. This thought is repeated twice in Nietzsche’s book reflecting its importance to the author. And what kind of awakening is he referring to? It is an awakening that is tied to a death. Nietzsche deals with the need to die in the Chapter of Zarathustra entitled “Of Voluntary Death” that states:

“Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: ‘Die at the right time.”

We would be greatly mistaken to take these processes of death and awakening as an ordinary biological function instead of being a powerful metaphor consistent with all that we have presented so far in this book. Shamanic concepts of death and rebirth can be found in many different belief systems[16] dating back to the earliest civilizations as we described in our earlier book on the Ancient Egyptian stories of Osiris[17]. It can be argued that this idea of death and rebirth is the most universal archetype of human societies. Of course Nietzsche most likely got his concepts from the Christian doctrine that one must die to be reborn[18]. Here we note that Zarathustra is dealing with the necessary concomitant changes in our Being.

But Nietzsche doesn’t stop at the idea of the death of the individual, he continues his thought to the need for “the death of God”. This is the most quoted of all Nietzsche’s phrases. On face value the “death of God” could be seen as a continuation of his simple rebellious statement against all established religion and the false belief that our achievement of higher life could come from a passive participation in external religious structure. But at a higher level of understanding he is pointing to the need to stop seeing God as something external that will save our soul. There is no God sitting external to our being. 

We have the responsibility and ability to move towards this higher awareness and Being. Nietzsche seems to be pointing out the danger of getting lost in an external belief in an almighty God as represented in religion. For those of us who take solace in “an old man sitting on a cloud” this death of this God is an essential and difficult task. It is required that we develop an internal spirituality based in our own direct experience of being.

Nietzsche clearly illustrates the need to give attention to the paradoxes in our state of being by a number of references throughout his works. In “The Birth of Tragedy”[19] he explored this in the need to balance Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of our being.  In “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”[20] he seems to be contrasting the concept of the Übermensch with what he finds in the many people he encounters in his travels. 

C.G. Jung

Nietzsche’s insights initiated a line of early 20th Century psychoanalytic studies that includes the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung[21].  We focus on C.G. Jung’s work as it has provided many tools for use in personal self-study or as he calls it “the process of individuation”[22]. We greatly appreciate the result of Jung’s work and theories that provide tools for exploring the creative irrational in the form of the more-than-merely personal. Specifically he has written extensively on previously unrecognized aspects of the human psyche: 

1)    archetypes as expressions of our collective unconscious;

2)    archetypes in our personal lives; and,

3)    psychological types as generalized patterns of human behavior.

While Jung’s theories and concepts don’t fit easily into the spirituality spectrum presented above, we make an attempt to represent his concepts in Row 6 of Table 2.

Jung, writing in the mid-20th century, described ways in which we operate as collections of observable psychological patterns and habits. In his career he worked to address the advantages that might accrue to us, were we able to develop these further possibilities in ourselves. The powerful effects of Jung’s perception of psychological types has been documented by many authors who regard them as tools for “awakening” an awareness of previously unknown - but still seen as mysterious – behaviours in oneself and others. Row 6 in Table 2 presents the concepts of Jung in the context of the spirituality spectrum. As we shall see in later chapters, his work in the field of psychology dealt initially with individuals who were considered to have medical problems, but subsequently became a much broader study of humankind and ourselves as individuals in the setting of the total potential human experience. His introduction to the understanding of our individual natures and potential development starts with the classification of personality that he called psychological types. With a relatively small number of categories or classes he was able to capture the bulk of variation in the individuals he observed – including himself. As he and many others have shown, individuals can be led to observe and recognize their own psychological types with relatively little effort or background. 

Beyond the personal awareness of one’s habits, Jung further developed an understanding of the “more than personal” that he called the “collective unconscious”. That is, in these more-than-personal archetypes in our behaviour he found images and patterns that reflect societal memories shared amongst all members of the culture.  These images seemed to arise in recurring dreams and memories that are incomprehensible from any one individual’s life experiences. As a result, Jung deduced that he had to include in his model of psychology, the existence of psychic material that is beyond the strictly personal. Ultimately, however, Jung captured in his analyses the idea of the development of the whole of an individual that he distinguished with the word “Individuation”[23] within which lies the challenge of seeing and encouraging our individual creative irrational. As his work was grounded in the more concrete aspects and challenges of our lower levels of awareness it is not surprising that, although he alludes to the higher levels, he doesn’t specifically deal with the levels as more clearly recognized by religious and philosophical practices.

Important to this presentation are Jung’s thoughts concerning influences that exist beyond the life and history of us as individuals. He sees the human psyche as including components of our individual lives, but also components that extend beyond personal history to include broader aspects common to humankind. Jung was on the track of a more normal if superior development of human possibilities beyond repression of bad experiences and emotions.  Rather than restrict himself to mental illness, as Freud had done, Jung, influenced by Nietzsche, proposed that we must consider the whole of life as the period over which psychological influences will be determined, including influences that are not readily identified within one’s life. That is, there is a need to include concepts of the “collective unconscious” to explain some of our motivations and reactions. His development of psychological types helps us to see that we are not entirely unique individuals that result from unique lives. We share general traits with others that can be perceived through a limited number of our behavioural patterns. Such an expansion of our understanding of ourselves, beyond our totally personal, is critical to our “proper” development.

Even in the early stages of his studies, Jung perceived that problems in psychological development required a more general theory than just personal history, experience and memory.  He held it to be related not only to early life factors, but that most patients displayed reactions that continued to be developed throughout their entire lives. That is, their behaviour could not be characterized only by events that were the proximate cause of their infirmities, but required insights into the whole of their life. As we have already indicated, he found incontrovertible evidence that not only what we call our consciousness but additional relatively unknown elements of our unconscious are involved. In what follows we need to weigh these theories and the evidence supporting them in more careful detail.

Jung’s approach was one of exploring broad patterns in individual and personal as well as group behaviour.  It led his studies toward the more comprehensive view of a psychology that became a philosophy of the whole person.  It was ultimately based on many years of observations of patients, and was also coupled with his personal, especially widely-based, studies of the whole cultural environment in which psychological factors arise.  Coupled with his own personal breadth of experience, it led Jung to an appreciation of the innate need we have to direct our intellectual and practical efforts towards what emerges as most satisfying to us individually as apparently personal configurations of our life’s many facets. They are factors that can only be understood and developed from within our whole cultural context.  His studies and the lectures he gave about them took him through the entire lives of his subjects and into studies conducted over many different environments.  They arose in the course of his extensive travels and lectures in both America and Europe in a way that the other researchers had not considered necessary or even possible.  We shall in later Chapters direct our efforts towards a study of the many ramifications of this understanding.  It was only later in his own life that he characterized his researches into the long courses of psychological development of individuals with their different life histories as what he called a process of “individuation”.

It was only after Nietzsche’s death that this work came to the attention of Jung. In his last, summary book entitled “Memories, Dreams and Reflections”[24], Jung says, “The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me that is a supra-personal task, which I accompany only by effort and with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question that preoccupied my ancestors, and which they could not answer? Could that be why I am so impressed by the problem on which Nietzsche foundered, the Dionysian, to which the Christian seems to have lost the way?”  Nietzsche was thus seen to have formulated the question concerning the hidden role of the unconscious in our worldview. Although he wasn’t able to fully clarify an answer, he left a vivid trail for others to follow. 

The common thread amongst their interests was the previously unappreciated but now known to be most important role of the unconscious in how we live our lives. Over time their research resulted in medical practices and techniques for dealing with the personal psychological concerns raised by the clinical practices initiated at the turn of the 20th century. Characteristics that had been generally unseen or unnoticed by the medical profession became of key importance in treatment of patients with neurosis.

            It is through the personal searches undertaken by these great investigators that at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, the Western world has been able to turn attention towards concepts and experiences of our unconscious selves that were formerly unnoticed and thus start to better appreciate the role of the unconscious in our actions.  A balanced combination of our thoughts, our bodily experiences and our emotions can, together, enable us to appreciate the value that is to be found in what has become our eternal search for a sense of the significant in ourselves in terms that are usually referred to as our “Being”. It is to this appreciation that we now turn our attentions, directing it toward that part of our psychological nature and development that many of us initially perceive in our heads, but necessarily expand it here to a closer study of the development of our emotional attitudes and of a necessary but hard to perceive need to nurture and develop our capacity for receiving and recognizing direct impressions in both our conscious and unconscious selves. 

 

The Creative Irrational in the Human Psyche

According to Jung, Nietzsche’s character was intensely connected with the need for balance between strong positive and negative forces. This is best shown in Nietzsche’s scarcely controlled contempt for his polar opposite in the world; the musical genius, Richard Wagner, of whom Nietzsche wrote, “Everything about him is false. What is genuine is hidden or decorated.  He is an actor, in every good and bad sense of the word.” Nietzsche found expression of the extremes of human psychology in the opposition of the Greek Apollonian versus Dionysian tendencies. We delve deeper into these tendencies in terms of our rational and irrational sides and the need for their recognition and reconciliation later in this chapter. 

Nietzsche captured the need to balance the forces in his image of what he termed “the blonde beast” to be represented as a lion[25].  His metaphorical presentation of “the lion”, as just a beast of prey doing what it is meant to do in life without judgment of being good or bad, was intended to illustrate his interest in seeing our life at the correct level of operation. In his works Nietzsche dwelt at length with his concept of the “higher” in human consciousness, a concept that attracted Jung to the need to balance what is higher with what is lower in ourselves[26]. That is, while Nietzsche himself recognized the need for balance, in the end his contributions show how difficult this is to maintain, to the point where in his passionate evaluation of values he broke out into extremes that showed that he was overcome by his own unrecognized opposites, and so falling under the power of the uncontrollable Dionysian or “Lion-nature” in himself. 

The writer/poet Nietzsche and the five other researchers introduced above were, of course, bound within the confines of the mores of the society or societies of which they were a part.  The initiator, Nietzsche in particular, railed against the morality aspects of his surroundings.  The others worked to make it clear that unconscious processes needed to be included in the understanding of both normal and troubled humans. Work continues today on understanding the extent to which our irrational unconscious sides control our judgment, actions and decisions[27] and we will revisit this again in Chapter 9. The combined efforts of this field of scientific study enable us to make the necessary distinction between what may be regarded as conscious behaviours and the scarcely recognized but powerful unconscious, primarily irrational elements that together with the more rational conscious parts constitute our total behavioural system. It takes us a rather long time to even recognize let alone assimilate all of these combined influences. In particular, one must become familiar with the intellectual constructs and concepts as well as detailed direct observations of one’s own behaviours to begin to appreciate the power that the conjunction of conscious and unconscious elements has on us. In such a case, Gurdjieff’s “three-brained beings” phrase becomes less of a metaphor and more of a clear simple description of our state. 

The signs do, however, with effort appear and eventually become guides to the role of the “unconscious” elements of our psyche on the whole, that had been especially neglected in explicit terms in studies of patients, perhaps because of the difficulty of perceiving and assigning causes.  Concern with this problem virtually requires the researcher to regard himself as becoming “one” with his patient, yet reserving the distance that is necessary for an objective view. The difficulties became especially evident through Nietzsche’s work, but need to become more apparent for us personally if we should wish to be able to join the beings concerned with the impediments to the sense of our unity of “being”. 

These concepts deal with understanding ourselves as more-than-merely personal. The idea that there exist aspects of our unconscious that extend beyond our own individual life histories allows us to connect with a broader world of forces that predates and surrounds us as humans. The psychological types concept provides an understanding of the limited number of general “types” of individuals that develop in the modern Western world. For many, this may be the first encounter with their type that opens the door to observing themselves as non-unique. These examples or tools all pertain to a personal sense of the creative irrational.

 

Building on Opposites  - From Übermensch to Enantiodromia

 In the past several chapters we have been presenting examples of the creative irrational in human worldview that are useful for those who wish to initiate and continue with work of self-study. The seeing of our collective unconscious in archetypes and experiencing aspects of our psychological makeup are all useful approaches to our work especially when we accept that these motivations are shared with the multitudes of humanity. We share much with our fellow occupants on this Earth. In this section we look towards Nietzsche and Jung who help us explore the changes in attitude necessary to incorporate the opposing sides of ourselves in order to rise above them to a higher level of perception to exercise the ultimate need for the experience of the creative irrational in our personal lives. As we shall see this points us conclusively to the fact of our need for a deeply personal work. 

This work is firmly rooted in our “direct experience” of ourselves in the greater world.[28] It requires a special degree of “alertness” in the present moment to what is taking place in our own inner parts. We need to be aware that under appropriate circumstances we can actively participate in a distinct process of momentary transformation by which our understanding is raised from one level to another higher one.  With sufficient accustoming of ourselves free of imagination to an experience of this idea we will already have to sense that there are certain vectors in the direction that our study needs to take. To fully appreciate the meaning and value of any event in our life we can scarcely do better than to refer back once again to the work of Nietzsche and the expansion of his work by Jung (Figure 29) into concepts of “enantiodromia” and “individuation” in support of the general need for the recognition and reconciliation of opposites. They may often appear to require almost a superhuman effort to raise us to the new level of understanding that can come only as a result of the creative irrational in ourselves.

A particularly important insight into this effort is found in the broader studies of human nature expressed in the line of study initiated by Nietzsche[29]. He dramatically expressed his understanding of our nature through his notable evocation of the stories of the two Greek gods Dionysius and Apollo, whose characters were used as metaphors for our conflicting internal tendencies. He recognized the unmistakable struggle within us that occurs as the result of interactions between our two opposing tendencies.  He held that they underlie our internal struggle to be more aware of our irrational unconscious sides and their power to direct our thoughts and actions continues to be a living force. Nietzsche’s work, based on his own philological background[30], lives on in the many doctors and researchers directly involved as psychologists.  He initiated a line of questioning concerning the need to pay attention to, if not fully understand, our underlying conscious and unconscious motivations and continue to drive us in daily life today. 

Nietzsche’s main line of thought and writing revolved around the need for individuals to awaken to their own higher selves. We see this as an expression of the requirement to bring oneself into a state where “work” to raise ourselves to the full potential of our being. As Nietzsche put it:

 “…. life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘ I am that which must overcome itself again and again.”[31]

We believe that such a work is a lifelong effort that is essential to development of Being towards “Higher Consciousness”. We see this as our innate but necessarily individual creative human will towards a larger sense of our Being, one that leads us on towards what is Spiritual.

Nietzsche, having been raised in the home of his father who was a Lutheran pastor, developed strong attitudes towards established religions.  He wrote of the need to “inquire”, reflecting his early, objective scrutiny of a strict religious following. Contained within his questions about spirituality was the appropriate application of logic and reason. In one of his first writings he moves beyond his criticism of established religions into a critique of, on the one hand, the hyper-rational and logical thinking and its opposite relating to the irrational creative aspects of human character. In his book “The Birth of Tragedy”[32], among other publications, he uses the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysius to characterize these two paradoxical aspects of the rational and irrational.

This division of particular behaviours into their component opposing aspects has also been recognized by writers of all ages. For example, in ancient Sumerian the differences in the behaviour of the two principle gods Enlil and Enki are outstanding and clear illustrations[33]. Egyptian stories of Osiris and Seth capture it as well. In the Christian and Muslim teachings there is God and Satan operating in opposition to one another. There are many other cultural and religious examples of the importance of such oppositions.

In Nietzsche’s use of Apollo and Dionysus he saw an inherent opposition between the two sides that represent our rational and irrational sides respectively.  The modern Western World sees in itself the overwhelming image of an innocent, pure, beautiful and ultimately rational Apollo. This superficial attitude towards this specific god-image is to completely misunderstand and neglect both his origin and his nature. Apollo found in Homer’s stories from Ancient Greece, circa 850 BCE, was a god of the Trojans working against the Greeks. Coming from Anatolia, Apollo was a terrible god who brought death and disease[34]. In these beginnings it seems that it was difficult to discern whether he brought the trouble or helped to alleviate it. Centers dedicated to Apollo could be found in Delphi and Delos in the 8thcentury BCE. These were sites where oracles could be addressed with questions concerning the future. This Greek view of Apollo offers quite a contrast to the logical, rational aspects that are captured in today’s view of the god. While Apollo is conventionally credited with the development of rationality in modern philosophy, as we shall see later in Chapter 10, Kingsley[35] questions this simplistic interpretation of our attributions of character to him in a strong and original manner. In his interpretation, Apollo is recognized as the god who is the source of our ability to probe the literal understanding of our 20th century morality.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche used the Apollonian type to represent the ideal balanced, intellectual, even aloof, orderly approach to life.  Such an individual is very much in control of events, correctly interpreting and acting on their importance.  Apollo’s reasonable and responsible approach conveys a sense of a balanced, hence superior judgmental capacity that is unmistakably conveyed to surrounding associates. In all respects he assumes a dominant position in the world.  

The Apollonian individual presents a marked contrast to what Nietzsche presented as it’s opposite: the Dionysian nature. All Greek gods reflected multiple aspects of life. Dionysus was originally conceived as a bearded old man dressed in robes. Later he took the form of a young, naked, sensuous, often androgynous, male. Although widely associated with wine and drunkenness, Dionysus also expressed the conditions of ecstasy, fertility and religiosity[36].

For Nietzsche the Dionysian as an individual is found in an intuitive and sensual life on the irrational axis of Jung’s functional types that were described in Chapter 1. This manifestation is often expressed in Nietzsche’s writings in dramatic social terms.  It may show up as an impulsive, obstinate, pleasure-seeking, uncontrolled being, whose very aim in life seems to be the cultivation of the irrational.  But the approach may also display a distinctly refreshing quality in the very originality and freedom of expression from the norms of the conventional society that it plays upon.   But it should be noted that its unpredictability may also present family and associates with the uncomfortable consequences of the very volatility and unexpectedness that they would be expected to cope with. To the well-controlled, overly rational Apollonian type, such Dionysian behaviour reflects weak and vacillating impulses, resulting from the influences of a shameful unconscious that is a result of our failure to have been faithful to this same logical morality.  In the average Western World situation of the early 20th Century, these Dionysian impulses were seen as motivations that clearly needed to be brought into line in accordance with established morality.  That is, they should be” rooted out” so that the result would be in accord with the opinions of those admirable beings who aspire to and espouse “right” behaviour. As many psychoanalysts found in the treatment of their patients, if these popular efforts of both individuals and society toward self-improvement were not found sufficient, the erring subjects would then have to seek the aid of the psychiatric profession. It was confidently believed that psychiatric analysis would be able to mediate the obvious and needed cures, to which the ministers of religion who once had been expected to carry out this function had been unable to rise. 

A somewhat superficial knowledge of the different characteristics represented by Apollo and Dionysus may have already have been gleaned in part from our own early upbringing. For example, at the height of ascendancy of the various “temperance” movements in North America during the prohibition of the 1920’s, the character of Dionysus was portrayed and remembered as the depths of debauchery shown by the habitual drunkard. By appropriate contrast, then, the upright, clear-minded and handsome Apollo could be seen as a model of an easily comprehended and attractive opposite, an ideal to be followed. Such cultural motivations continue to rise throughout history. In more recent times such moralistic dichotomies results in the continued restriction and suppression of groups of humans who are not upstanding enough, too weak to benefit the masses, overly lazy, or truly mentally ill and/or addicted to substances. Extreme conservatives, financial protectionists, and in politics and human interactions, positions are often justified by discussions of right and wrong. But as we shall see the dominance of the “logical might” may not be sufficiently “right” in the context of our own personal will towards a sense of Being. We make the case here for a necessary balance.

Greater exposure to stories involving the two gods helps us to realize that these initial and facile understandings and distinctions between Dionysius and his fellow god, Apollo, are not so quickly and simply understood and interpreted. In fact, our appreciations of them have been changing over time. Now it is more generally understood that Dionysius reflects the hidden, more sensitive, emotional parts of one’s psyche.  While this is not inconsistent with circumstances of unruly orgiastic behaviour, his role can be seen within a much broader emotionally sensitive, creative individual that is additional to the logical aspects of Apollo. The two supporting sides can be seen more clearly in music, with its strong mathematical basis that can bring audiences to tears or laughter. These two sides of every individual, the rational Apollonian and the irrational Dionysian, are the basis of our individual work to reconcile opposites within us by the work of finding a higher level of consciousness, to which Gurdjieff also made reference. But what did Nietzsche see as the way to a productive and useful resolution?

By all accounts it is the Dionysian quality of Nietzsche’s personal behaviour,  reflected in his writings, that posed both its attraction and repulsion for Jung.  Jung was seemingly fascinated by Nietzsche’s writings, although Nietzsche the man had actually died before Jung was well into his professional career.  However Jung was certainly fully aware of both his writing and his ideas, and explicitly recognized this influence in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, which we quote as follows:

“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. That is a supra-personal task, which I accompany only by effort and with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied my ancestors, and which they could not answer? Could that be why I am so impressed by the problem on which Nietzsche foundered: the Dionysian side of life, to which the Christian seems to have lost the way?”[37]

Jung’s continuation of Nietzsche’s exploration appears particularly with Jung’s apparent respect for the “compensatory” aspects of the Nietzschean style that shows up so clearly in his own appreciation of the actions of the “collective unconscious” and the “compensatory” modes of its operation in the “conscious” behaviour of both himself and his patients. Jung believed that these “compensatory” modes were the basis for Nietzsche’s principal books[38].  Such appreciation depends on an understanding of the importance of this compensatory mechanism, and on how consciously, if with difficulty, we must be able to perceive the results of our own unconscious motivations in relation to our everyday life.  It is well understood by scholars of psychology that Nietzsche was aware of this part of his nature and willingly displayed it in his writings.  His closer associates, of whom there were but few, knew that he was not always in control of his manifestations during his ordinary life. While he himself recognized the many I’s that are within us, he was no more able than we are to keep his attention focused on any one of them. In the end, Nietzsche’s own neurotic nature eventually got the better of him and eleven years before his death he became hopelessly insane.

            It is through this sense of meaning, conveyed to us so strongly through Nietzsche’s publications that we are enabled to attempt to understand our own natures, prospects and preferences. The observable contrasts and their reconciliation, such as captured by Jung’s later concept of “enantiodromia”, were certainly the springboards from which Nietzsche’s understanding of our unconscious need for compensation arose. 

We are familiar with the image of the eastern Yin and Yang graphically showing a possible balancing and the working together of opposites (Figure 30).

Figure 30. The Yin and Yang symbol[39].

 Jung introduced the term “individuation” as the synthetic process of “integrating the unconscious opposites”[40].   Elsewhere he defines it more specifically as a “syzygy of energies” that is usually the anima/animus pair, but also reflects other "opposites," as we have seen in his treatment of our rational and irrational types. He uses it in the sense that it must be a “completing” process.  It brings the elements composing it together into a new form of “wholeness”, an integration of opposites [41]. That is, it is an illustration of the process of bringing the wholeness of “the one” into a state of consciousness in a single “fell swoop”. Jung calls these actions a process of “natural transformation”; that is, they comprise a form that accomplishes the aim of “the union of opposites” into a completely new level of human being.

In Jungian psychoanalysis, individuation is treated in the therapeutic, medical context of patient care. According to Stein[42], therapy is fundamentally geared toward promoting and facilitating, or toward unblocking and restarting, the individuation process. He lays out three main stages of the individuation process and two major crisis periods. The three stages of individuation are: 

“a)    the containment/nurturance (i.e., the maternal, or in Neumann’s terminology the ‘matriarchal’) stage;

b)    the adapting/adjusting (i.e., the paternal, or, again in Neumann’s terminology, the ‘patriarchal’) stage; and, 

c)     the centering/integrating (in Neumann’s terminology, the individual stage).

These can be coordinated with Erickson’s seven stages of psychological development. The two major crises of individuation fall in the transitions between these stages, the first between adolescence and early adulthood and the second during midlife.”

From this perspective, individuation is a natural process that can be traced distinctly in an individual’s psychological development. From a medical perspective, most individuals go through this process of individuation without becoming medical patients in need of psychoanalytical treatment. From the perspective of this book, we inquire as to where the Jungian use of the term individuation fits on the spectrum of self-study leading to the arising of a Sense of Self. General medical objectives do not deal with an individual’s pursuit of enlightenment, which is more generally the interest of religion, but are we able to place individuation in a useful context related to the question of the strength of our own wish for a sense of Being?

 Jung wrote: 

     “Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man that which lives of it and causes like.  Therefore God breathed into Adam a living breath that he might live. With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived.  She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should reach the earth, entangling himself there so that life should be lived; as Eve in the garden of Eden could not rest content until she had convinced Adam of the goodness of the forbidden apple.  Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness.  A certain kind of reasonableness is its advocate, and a certain kind of mortality adds its blessing.  But to have soul is the whole venture of life, for soul is a life-giving demon who plays his elfin game above and below human existence, for which reason - in the realm of dogma - he is threatened and propitiated with superhuman punishments and blessings that go far beyond the possible deserts of human beings.  Heaven and hell are the fates meted out to the soul and not to civilized man, who in his nakedness and timidity would have no idea what to do with himself in a heavenly Jerusalem.[43]”

Failure to reconcile important emotional opposites within us is recognized in psychology as the stuff that neuroses are made from. That is, psychology recognizes the large part of our nature that is associated with unconscious elements.  They appear in habits of body and emotion that we have discussed above, as well as in our unquestioned attitudes towards them. As long as we fail to bring about a relation among these various conflicting functionings, we are liable to become trapped into struggles between what we think we want, and what is ordained by the unconscious sides of our nature. As Jung[44] put it:

“Underlying our appetites are desires; underlying our desires are needs; and underlying our needs are goals. At each level of the peeling away of the layers of our unrecognized motivations, we encounter new sets of contradictory elements that may command the field unless they are resolved by being seen in their successively broader settings.” 

Psychoanalysis has been used to show that as long as these contradictory elements are held separate from one another, they create tensions that inhibit a development that depends on the free circulation of energies. The “impeded” energy easily explodes into irrational behaviour. So, for example, is explained the zealousness of religious "temperance" leaders, or the immoderacy of the modern activist environmentalists, whose externalized moral judgments, fortified by tensions, prevent them from recognizing their own unconscious urges to violence. On both sides it is seen as justifiable righteous anger in the face of perceived evil. 

The process of resolving unrecognized and possibly deeply fundamental dichotomies or contradictions in our nature was termed by Jung a process of enantiodromia [45]. This remarkable word for a remarkable phenomenon he credits to the Greek Heraclitus, who recognized the inevitable "running contrariwise" of the forces within us. By enantiodromia Jung meant the process that makes the tug-of-war between alternatives relatively unimportant. It is a process through which the opposing forces are enabled to flow together in such a way as to provide an under-current of energy for the real, higher goals of our lives. It is a phenomenon that is essential to sustaining the kind of development that he called "individuation". It also appears to be a process that ancient knowledge understood. It lies behind the resolution among disparate forces that the stories personify in the form of oppositions between gods of all cultures and time periods from the Sumerian Enlil and Enki, Ancient Egyptian Seth and Osiris and the Christian dichotomy of God and Satan. 

The need for a neutralizing higher sense of purpose between the polar opposites of our ordinary life points to a direction that can be seen and understood in relation to simple events. It may show up in the simple reluctance to undertake studying for an exam or beginning to start writing an essay. Our lives are filled with other almost trivial examples: the struggle between eating or not eating that extra piece of cake must surely take into account the present strength of my aim to lose weight. If I "think" about it too long, would I go jogging? And how does this state of initial resistance to physical exertion compare with the sense of being alive that appears after the effort has been successfully undertaken? The feeling that I "should" get up in the morning, versus the delicious warmth of lying in bed, may easily be resolved when I remember that I wanted to go enjoy a quiet relaxing day of fishing. Even the automatic tendency to snap back at a neighbour's stupid remark, or react to his accidental intrusion on a corner of my new, carefully laid-out lawn, may disappear altogether if I remember, in time, that I want to borrow his brand-new lawnmower, and he won't lend it if he is angry with me.

In these examples of opposites, when I compare the two levels of awareness of which I have direct experience, it is apparent that my sense of purpose requires a centre of attention in me that cannot be found in the automatic reactions. In the sleep of reaction between unconscious opposites there is something missing, and that something is, in fact, an awareness of myself! The sense of awakening to a larger framework that allows release from the tension between opposites has in every case an element of standing aside from them. To the habitual ordinary mind one must add a freedom in the emotional energies to generate an active awareness at the very site of reaction and that invites a balanced response. In encounters with my neighbour, for example, the added element of perspective that accompanies the attention of self-awareness enables a freedom from my reactive temper. The energy is enabled to flow in the service of another, broader and more desirable purpose. The examples we use may describe minor incidents, but experience shows us that more than incidental effects can be involved. That is, most of our personal examples are trivial compared to the levels of opposites that are represented in the stories.

Jung is at pains to point out that by the process of enantiodromia he does not mean a disappearance of the formerly opposing forces or simply an awareness of their differences. Instead he intends to draw attention to the development of the perspective that allows us to learn that the level at which we encounter opposites is not the level at which we find our purposes to be best served. In order to learn to live with such forces we have to find within us a level of understanding that is able to make use of the energies that would otherwise be tied up in unconscious oppositions. They are inevitably kept separated by our various partial appreciations of ourselves, by our failure to be attentive either to the many "I's" or to the different levels at which they appear. Study of examples given in the cultural stories may, in fact, be a particularly effective way of establishing the actuality of the scales at which different levels may appear, enabling us to better understand the often unrecognized levels of phenomena that are of such importance in our experiences.

To undertake a bridging between opposites requires an additional force; one that is characteristic of a different level of being than the elementary oppositions themselves. This missing force seems to be a necessary sense of myself and my aim in relation to the opposing elements[46]. To step outside the points of conflict between the existing forces, we need to create in ourselves a separate place to move to. This place is one we recognize as giving us a sense of unity, quite beyond the oppositions. This is a principle that the ancients clearly intended that we be able to examine through myth, and one to which we alluded earlier in this discussion. 

            Another way that the reconciliation of opposites can be represented visually is in the Vesica piscis of Sacred Geometry[47]  (Figure 31). The reconciliation of the opposites creates a new area between the two circles.

Figure 31. The Vesica piscis[48].

Figure 32 shows how the simple Vesica piscis can express many important creative irrational relations in Sacred Geometry such as the Golden Ratio.

Figure 32. The Vesica piscis, shown above, and below, its representation to include geometric directions for its construction[49].

We believe that these two processes of individuation and enantiodromia are different aspects of the rarely explicitly appreciated but essential phenomenon of “transformation”. In the case of individuation we are envisaging a longer time scale than is implied with the term enantiodromia[50]. This latter word we use in a sense of the immediate completing of a particular finite process; completing a particular phenomenon that may be only part of a longer developmental process.  What arises from this union is an obligatory successor point of view that can then become the beginning of a new encounter in another process that is logically distinguishable as the beginning of a new event at a higher level of understanding.  

As Jung well understood, this transformation into a totally new state always depends on the union of an original set of opposites.  It is the union of the original “do” or “don’t” opposites resolved into a new understanding that has been illustrated as a natural part of the process of joke-telling by the Sufi writer Rumi[51] as we presented in the last Chapter and by Arthur Koestler[52]. As Koestler points out, the unexpected resolution of an opposition set up by the joke-teller always results in a sudden, “explosive” but harmless energy release, of the sort shown by the laughter elicited in joke telling. It results in an unexpected change from one level of thought to a quite new level; one that is a logically unexpected event that nevertheless evokes that sense of agreement that is always at a level of understanding above where the original confrontation took place.  Jung termed this process an enantiodromia to express the nature of the process of “arising” that is experienced at the always new level of understanding that is unveiled. That is, the phenomenon of “enantiodromia” gives rise to a complex, if delicate, process of an immediate increase in the sense of personal understanding to a new level, which, as might be said in English colloquial language is “no joke”(!)  in the sense that it accomplishes the needed defusing of the short-term build-up of energy in the original confrontation of opposites.

Psychoanalysis and the Creative Irrational

What has this discussion on Nietzsche and Jung provided us in the way of presenting the importance of the creative irrational to individual and species success? In the late 18th and early 19th Century these researchers were forced to face the irrational unconscious in their efforts to understand and treat their patients. What they found is of use to our present day efforts to observe and appreciate the necessary balance between our rational and irrational sides. Rather then the common approach at the time of denying and burying the irrational impulses, they found great profitability in recognizing and supporting that sides of our nature that could not be denied. The creative irrational of humans is essential to our full sense of Being.

—— Chapter 9: Love, Comedy and Mystery: Power the Irrational — Awakening Higher Consciousness ——

———— Table of Contents ———————————-

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrich_Nietzsche

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Reik

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor Frankl

[7] Kaufmann, W. 1959. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books.

[8] http://www.biography.com/people/carl-jung-9359134

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich Nietzsche.

[10] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.

[11] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.

[12] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.

[13] https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/A Good Atheist Secularist Sceptical Book Collection/Also Sprach Zarathustra Nietzsche  English_Deutsch final.pdf – pp. 432

[14] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions.

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and-rising_god

[17] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions.

[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_again_(Christianity)

[19] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.

[20] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.

[21] Jung, C.G. 1958.  Psychology and Religion:  West and East.  Vol. 11, The Bollingen Foundation, New York. 261 pp.

[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_in_Jungian_psychology

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation

[24] Jung, C.G. 1961.  Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Random House, New York. 

[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality

[26] Jung, C.G. 1953. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. Vol. 7. The Collected Works.  Bollingen Series XX.  Pantheon Books. Princeton University Press. 329 pp.

[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

[28] Shaw, F.S. 2010. Notes on The Next Attention: Chandolin 1993-2000. Indications Press, New York. 360 pp.

[29] Kaufmann, W.  1974.  Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. (4th edition) Princeton University Press. 532pp.

[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philology

[31] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.

[32] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.

[33] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egyptian and Sumer. Inner Traditions. Vermont

[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo

[35] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing, Inverness, California.

[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

[37] Jung, C.G. 1965. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Random House.

[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche

[39] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang

[40] Jung, C.G. 1959. Collected Works, vol. 9.1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.  Bollingen Series. XX. Pantheon Books.

[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

[42] http://murraystein.com/individuation.shtml

[43] Jung, C.G. 1959.  The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.  Volume 9.1 of the Collected Works. Bollingen Series XX.  Pantheon Books. Pp. 26-27.

[44] Jung, C.G. 1953. Psychology and Alchemy. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 563 pp. 

[45] Jung, C.G. 1953. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. vol. 7. Bollingen Series XX, Pantheon Books, New York. 329 pp.

[46] Ouspensky, P.D. 1949. In Search of the Miraculous. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. New York and London.

[47] Lawlor, R.  1992.  Sacred Geometry, Philosophy and Practice.  Thames and Hudson, London.

[48] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_piscis

[49] http://portal.groupkos.com/index.php?title=POVRay_scene_Vesica_pisces.pov

[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia

[51] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi

[52] Koestler, A. 1969. “The Act of Creation”.  Hutchinson of London. 491pp.

Chapter 7: A Modern Allegory of the Spirituality Spectrum: The Gurdjieff Work

Of course human examination of who and what we are has continued throughout the ages and we have much written material to contribute to our present day understanding. Next in our presentation of the creative irrational we select the much more recent the works of 19th and 20th Century researcher G.I. Gurdjieff. Next in the Table 2 in lines 4, we cite the works describing the terminology developed by this 20th Century mystic, philosopher and spiritual teacher[1]. Gurdjieff studied the esoteric teachings of cultures in the Middle East. He developed his own approach to the question of human existence based on the various potential “Reasons” of a human. At the base of his teaching is the idea that we as individuals are not a single whole entity. On the left hand side of the spectrum in Table 2, we note that he taught that we are a collection of three independent Reasons or functionings.  Gurdjieff called them “Reason of Body” “Reason of Feeling”’ and “Reason of Thinking”, thus emphasizing the virtual separation among the various members of the set as separate entities. Gurdjieff argued that as a result of this separation and isolation of functions within us, we live our lives in a waking sleep. As a result, he referred to average humans as “Three-Brained Beings” because of the prominence that these lower three Reasons have in our ordinary lives. He taught, however, that the existence of higher, more fully conscious levels of existence are natural for real human existence. His metaphoric style, with many new and unfamiliar terms, deliberately requires hard work on the part of the reader who ventures to comprehend it. Nevertheless, the body of his work can be seen as similar to others that we present in this book.

As we have shown, we are far from being the first to consider these ideas of levels of consciousness and higher Being.  Expressions of the more-than-merely physical world have been made by humans since the beginning of time. In fact we are arguing that this is what makes us human. Appreciation for this, our creative irrational, is a common thread that runs through the history of Homo sapiens.  In this section we present a look into the work of an individual from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, G.I. Gurdjieff, who spent his life working with individuals to help them awaken from their waking sleep, to experience the more-than-merely physical components of life within us so that we might become more like the “real” humans we need to be[2].

Gurdjieff was born in 1855 in Alexandropol, Armenia in the southern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas[3]. He spent his life travelling and searching the world for an understanding of the human condition. He developed and taught a system of self-study based on ancient esoteric knowledge that has since become known as “The Work”. He established a centre for study and work called “The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”, in Fontainebleau, France just south of Paris where he died in late 1949. Groups following his method continue to function in various locations around the globe today.  It is important to note that Gurdjieff intentionally demanded constant work of his students to continually challenge themselves physically, emotionally and mentally to develop their levels of consciousness. He refers to such a practice of constant challenges as “Conscious Labours and Intentional Suffering”. He maintained that only by aspiring to such a manner of self observation could a person hope to develop one’s Self, which he recognized as the aim of all sensible human beings. We find ourselves much indebted to him. Later authors have been publishing for decades attempting to convey the substance of his teachings[4].  Readers are encouraged to explore the extensive body of work that exists. Intensive study must be left to readers to undertake for themselves. 

In approaching his thoughts on the human condition it is important to note that language was not a challenge to Gurdjieff. He was a polyglot speaking Armenian, Greek, Russian and Turkish along with a working facility with several European languages including English. Yet, when we come to his writings he presents readers with seemingly absurd images and concepts. Gurdjieff produced three books that are referred to as the “All and Everything” trilogy. They are “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson”[5], “Meetings With Remarkable Men”[6] and “Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ ”[7]. In none of these books does he simply and clearly lay out his ideas about the state of humans and his recommendations on how to improve consciousness. Readers are constantly required to struggle to decipher the meaning of long and involved sentences and paragraphs. He avoided using words that would easily allow us to make a mental note and mindlessly move on. He was well aware of how easily we get distracted by our lower Reason of Thinking, or as he called it “Degindad” (Table 2). 

In regard to the levels of a real human, Gurdjieff’s view is buried in Beelzebub’s Tales where he writes about one of the “Laws of the Universe” that he called “Heptaparaparshinokh”. The basis of this Law is that any active process can be regarded as consisting of a series of seven distinctive steps. Its name comes partially from the Greek word for the number seven “Hepta”. We can gain some insights into this meaning from something that we are accustomed to hearing in music as the “octave”. There we have a succession of seven tones in an octave scale, an eighth tone beginning the repeat of the original sequence one octave higher. In such a situation the final note following any sequence of seven musical notes in the scale leads to the repeat of the pattern. We in the Western World have learned and become accustomed to calling it an octave[8].  Gurdjieff alternatively refers to Heptaparaparshinokh as “The Law of Octaves”.  Of course most musicians understand that development of this octave series is not an isolated event, but follows a particular historical series that most of us have now become accustomed to. For example, we may take the first three notes of this octave scale: “Doh, Re, Me”.  Almost everyone who has done any group singing will recognize how seemingly natural it is for us to sing this simple sequence repeatedly – up three notes, then down three notes, then up again. The simple repetition seems quite natural to us, and is often utilized by singers “warming up”. Such simple practices can effectively impress on us a certain feeling, tone or mood. Musically Gurdjieff, as all artists, composed pieces in which the Law of Octaves is used to deliberately promote certain moods in the listener.

But Gurdjieff definitely did not restrict the application of Heptaparaparshinokh to music alone. The study of this Law of Seven permits us to seek to understand psychological ideas of harmony other than those that are strictly associated with physical phenomena, but that are still a part of our living experience. For instance, it is useful in appreciating our inability to hold an intention beyond the initial motivation for action. It draws attention to our difficulty in progressing from an initial movement of the “do, re, me sequence” to a full octave through the difficult intervals of the “me” and “fa” steps in the octave progression. These naturally occurring difficult intervals impede our reaching goals and objectives in our lives. So whether it is an intention to lose weight, or to be more relaxed, or to be a better person, Gurdjieff’s concept of Heptaparaparshinokh seems to capture some key properties that are not clearly recognized in our usual functioning. It is evident that there is much important information buried in the obscure lexicon of Gurdjieff’s writing that applies to the creative irrational and the spiritual levels that can be experienced in much of our daily lives. 

Three Brained Beings

Recognizing that Gurdjieff deliberately avoided clear language, what can we present here that could contribute to our creative irrational concept, spirituality and the levels of human consciousness? Of critical importance, the basic Gurdjieff model of the average modern everyday participant in Western culture was that we are “three-brained beings”. He meant this in no way as a complement. He identified the body, emotion and mind as separate, distinct independent functions within us. As shown by us in the three cells to the left of Row 4 in our Spirituality Spectrum in Table 2 these are the three lowest levels of human “Reason”. 

While we present his concepts as levels of “Reason” it is important to bear in mind his efforts to use words that are commonly used by Western minds, but may mean much more. In the typical manner of Gurdjieff’s teaching his language is difficult and requires unusual effort for followers to understand it. It is for this reason we also present here the terminology of one of his students, P.D. Ouspensky. In row 5 of Table 2 we present Ouspensky’s complimentary, more simplified version of Gurdjieff’s thoughts. He published extensively about his experiences in groups led by Gurdjieff as well as extensive studies of later work with his own pupils. Ouspensky was more of a thinking type and as a result his writings are much more approachable by individuals in Western culture. In contrast to Gurdjieff’s deliberate cloaking of his thoughts in mystery, Ouspensky, refers to the separate independent functions as simply “centres”, thereby displaying them more as aspects of a single body. We show, starting at the left side of row 5, Ouspensky’s names for the first three, lower categories of our functionings. Yet with Gurdjieff’s obscure terminology and Ouspensky’s potential oversimplification, both clearly recognize our need to appreciate several levels of being and the striving for higher consciousness that we call the creative irrational and spirituality. 

While Ouspensky recognized the importance of Gurdjieff’s ideas he presented his own versions of them in his own style, a style that generally appeals more readily to modern Western readers (Row 5 in Table 2). For instance Ouspensky presents our three brains as independent “centres”. The more approachable concept of “centre” refers to our independent internal “functionings”. In our experience Ouspensky’s clarity provides an important introduction to the more challenging terms presented in detail by Gurdjieff but the overall work and effort of understanding these concepts, whether referred to as Reasons, centres or functionings, is critical to fully experiencing and appreciating our disjunctive day-to-day operations.

Returning to the question of us as “three-brained beings”, we continue our introduction with reference to long established esoteric studies of human functions by initiates from other non-western tradition. In their study of human development, both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky encountered individuals who concentrated their work on only one of their specific functionings or centers[9] & [10]. These ancient forms of study and self-work are known as:

1)    The Way of the Fakir focusing on the “body”[11];

2)    The Way of the Monk focusing on the “emotion” [12]; and,

3)     The Way of the Yogis focusing on the “mind” [13].

These three Ways or lifestyles for self-study require initiates to undergo extensive training and exercise in an effort to reach higher levels of states of spiritual existence and consciousness. These approaches generally require work isolated away from ordinary life. While monks, or at least the image of a stylized monk, are somewhat acceptable in the development of Western Christian thought, we are less familiar with the other “Ways”.

As an example of the Way of the Fakir, we mention Egypt's most famed fakir from the 1920s Tahra Bey[14] as reported by Paul Brunton[15]. Bey was trained and practiced as a fakir to accomplish seemingly impossible physical feats. According to Brunton, Bey subjected himself to scientific study while with great control and intention he deliberately put himself in death-like trance states. He was able to exist while his physical body displayed nothing of what we would consider signs of life. Of significance to our study, Bey is said to have had the ability to separate his physical body from his other centres, thus maintaining himself isolated from a heartbeat, breath and sensory reactions. As a result of this manipulation in his state, Bey was reported to have been physically rejuvenated upon regaining consciousness. While impossible for us to be sure, it seems to us that Bey’s experience, may have been similar to what took place in the 5,000-year old Ancient Egyptian pharaonic initiation rites suggested in the Pyramid Texts.

While the modern western world has many examples of the use of yoga for improving health and well-being, they are a mere shadow of what Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Brunton would have encountered in the early 20th Century in Central and East Asia. Yogi’s of that time and place were intent on following a lifestyle in search of higher levels of consciousness, quite different from the common modern day yoga practices associated with ordinary health and well-being. The real yoga self-study focused on their “Reason of Thinking”.

Building on the three independent Ways of the fakir, monk and yogi, Gurdjieff developed an approach where an individual works to develop simultaneously his/her three lower brains in our ordinary day-to-day lives. Thus Ouspensky’s teachings are often referred to as the Fourth Way[16]. So from Gurdjieff’s work we come to appreciate that he is talking about a nature that is based on three independent functions: “doing”, “feeling”, and “thinking”, that are relatively easy to identify in ourselves.  When we come to seriously study them we may also come to realize that while they may seem to act almost independently of each other, according to this prescription of “three-brained”, they must be identifiable as aspects of a being with at least the possible reality of a central unity.  It is the bringing of this supposedly unified set of functionings into a true unity of action that includes the proper operation of our other higher Reasons shown in Table 2that is the central theme of Gurdjieff’s whole teaching and the reason why we need to deal with it here. And while going beyond our lower three brain operation is not so simple, with persistent practice and attention, our own experience suggests that it is possible to find all three functions operating at once.

The Higher Reasons of Real Humans

Here we turn our focus to Gurdjieff’s grand allegory of human history and our present state that is found in Beelzebub’s Tales. It is nominally an allegorical journey of the central figure Beelzebub across the universe in a spaceship with his grandson. Throughout the tale we are provided with an expansive and distracting view of our world. Nothing is stated in simple terms. It deserves intensive study, but we can only summarize certain points here that pertain to the levels of human consciousness.  So far in this section we have focused on the three lower, elementary stages of consciousness on the left side of Table 2. These are or can be directly addressed through our self-study and with prolonged effort can result in a degree of “self-knowledge”.  Here we find that there are possibilities working towards those higher levels to which Gurdjieff gave the strange names used in line 4 of Table 2.

The story ends with Beelzebub receiving the greatest of honours and recognition, by beings with even higher understanding. Such a story cannot be omitted from our consideration of our higher levels of awareness and consciousness. In spite of Gurdjieff’s stated objectives of “burying the bone deeper”[17] there are definite insights that, with sufficient attention, the reader can penetrate to understand the various levels of Being and appreciate the difficulties encountered in the seeing of these levels within oneself.

In the allegory the final “transformation” in Beelzebub’s development of “level of being” is represented by the sprouting of forked horns on the top of his head. Gurdjieff describes a scene that occurs during Beelzebub’s final appearance on earth. The story tells of how a group of assembled observers witness the expression of Beelzebub’s levels of being through the growth of new prongs on his horns. His antlers keep growing new prongs up to and including a special fifth fork. This indicates that his being had indeed reached only one step below the level of what he called “The Sacred Anklad” or the “Reason of God” which, as shown in Table 2, is the step just before the highest level of “OUR ENDLESS CREATOR”. 

We present here one small section from Beelzebub’s Tales to explore his representation of the higher levels Being. We quote it as follows:

   “At first, while just the bare horns were being formed, only a concentrated quiet gravely prevailed among those assembled. But from the moment that forks began to appear upon the horns a tense interest and rapt attention began to be manifested among them. This latter state proceeded among them, because everybody was agitated by the wish to learn how many forks would make their appearance on Beelzebub’s head, since by their number the gradation of Reason to which he had attained according to the sacred measure of Reason would be defined.

“First one fork formed, then another, and then a third, and as each fork made its appearance a clearly perceptible thrill of joy and unconcealed satisfaction proceeded among all those present. As the fourth fork began to be formed on the horns, the tension among those assembled reached its height, since the formation of the fourth fork on the horns signified that the Reason of Beelzebub had already been perfected to the sacred Ternoonald and hence that there remained for Beelzebub only two gradations before attaining to the sacred Anklad.

   “When the whole of this unusual ceremony neared its end and before all those assembled had had time to recover their self-possession from their earlier joyful agitation, there suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the horns of Beelzebub quite independently a fifth fork of a special form known to them all.

   “Thereupon all without exception, even the venerable archangel himself, fell prostrate before Beelzebub, who had now risen to his feet and stood transfigured with a mystical appearance, owing to the truly majestic horns which had arisen on his head. All fell prostrate before Beelzebub because by the fifth fork on his horns it was indicated that He had attained the Reason of the sacred Podkolad, i.e., the last gradation before the Reason of the sacred Anklad.

   “The Reason of the sacred Anklad is the highest to which in general any being can attain, being the third in degree from the Absolute Reason of HIS ENDLESSNESS HIMSELF.”

In regards to the levels of individual development as portrayed by the growth of Beelzebub’s horns, beyond the three lower levels of Reason, Gurdjieff adds the several categories of Being as the steps through which humans may eventually proceed: “Reason of Astral Body” (Ternoonald), “Reason of Spiritual Body” (Podkolad), “Reason of God” (Anklad). The highest level he calls “Common Endless Creator, Our Endless Endlessness-all Quarters Maintainer” which we equate with the Egyptian Ra and which Plato presents as the Sun itself.

 It is through his description of prongs sprouting on the head of Beelzebub that we find a terminology that allows an equivalence to be drawn between his perception and those of others that we study in this book. These all too difficult to recognize “higher” levels presented allegorically in Gurdjieff’s book as growth of horns on the head of Beelzebub make it easy for the casual reader to laugh off this scene as a humorous, useless fiction. We argue that it is no more fanciful than the human-headed birds and sphinx of the Ancient Egyptians or chained observers in Plato’s cave. To speak about the more-than-physical, creative irrational world has always been a challenge.

Gurdjieff’s writing provides insights into how we may be able capitalize on what he calls our “Conscious Labours and Intentional Suffering” to enable us to recognize the potentially higher states that he suggests are true possibilities for us. He points out that such higher states require a deliberate balancing of the characteristics that are revealed in our ordinary lives so that with additional understanding of ourselves we can gradually learn to pass from these primitive natural levels of reactivity to the higher levels that appear only with conscious balanced efforts; revealed with phenomena that only appear when these lower stages act together.  

Coming as it does towards the end of the long tale of Beelzebub’s travels it is easy for the reader to fall “asleep” and get lost in the amusement of the image of horns growing on the head of a superior being. To Gurdjieff’s credit the “bone is indeed well buried” in these distracting images. Our purpose for inserting the line of Gurdjieff’s “Reasons” into Table 2 is to emphasize that this unusual image of sprouting horns may represent the most important guidance for us of what is in his book, and what we need to know. As we see in Table 2 his “Reasons” can be aligned with the major thoughts of other traditions. His lack of detail on the characteristics of these higher Reasons is also consistent with our ordinary understanding that they are very rarely realized but are ultimately personal and important in our recognition.

Are we, at this point in our study, being invited once again for some specific reason to seriously re-consider this assumed unity of being and the parts of which it is composed?  We are accustomed to the idea of there being three basic functions of our natures that he calls “bodies”: (our bodies, our emotions, and our minds), but there seems to be something more suggested here. We customarily consider that these three independent functions work together in a recognizable harmony of operation towards a particular purpose.  But one of the apparently main purposes of the life teachings of Gurdjieff was to encourage us to seriously question this supposed unity for ourselves. In examining this Table we therefore remind our readers that we need to take the question of this unity seriously.  We invite our readers to do the same, perhaps being better able to keep this qualification of our sometimes-erratic functioning in mind when we are specifically pointed in that direction.  How then are we to proceed?

By such methods Gurdjieff utilized many elements of every-day life to illustrate particular phenomena that are not otherwise familiar to us. As an example we point out that in this description he utilized quite specific esoteric influences on us that are not usual during our daily activities.  We regard his utilization of an almost automatic action of the three notes of the octave sequences in this way.  While the 3-note sequence may be familiar to singers, we need to appreciate how it may, without our intention, induce or help hold particular moods in us.   

            Over his lifetime Gurdjieff developed a method for awakening out of our daily sleep so as to ascend from it to a higher level of being alive to oneself, and through that to live a more real human life. In addition to the books that he prepared for publication, his pupils have since compiled others, including a volume entitled “Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff as Recollected by his Pupils[18]”.  Additional works have also appeared, one of particular note based on discussions led and reported by Madame Jean de Salzmann, who spent much of her life attending Gurdjieff’s activities. She published works of her own, based on his leadership, but after his death.  Notable among them is the collection of essays comprising a Book entitled, “The Reality of Being. The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff.”[19]

            While Gurdjieff deliberately chose the new and unfamiliar imagery to convey much of what he intended his readers to understand, it can be seen to be in keeping with other great traditions concerning our striving for a more complete existence in this world, our creative irrational.

—— Chapter 8:  20th Century Psychoanalysts: Different Paths and Different Insights ———

———————— Table of Contents ———————————

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia

[4] Churton, T. 2017. Deconstructing Gurdjieff Biography of a Spiritual Magician. Inner Traditions. Vermont.

[5] Gurdjieff, G.I.  1950.  Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson.  All and Everything Third Series.  Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson St., New York.

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Meetings-Remarkable-Men-G-Gurdjieff/dp/1578988934/

[7] https://www.amazon.com/Life-Real-Only-Then-When/dp/0140195858/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetings_with_Remarkable_Men

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Miraculous

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi

[14] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahra-Bey

[15] Brunton, P. 2007. A Search in Secret Egypt. Larson Publications. Burdett, New York.

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way

[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub%27s_Tales_to_His_Grandson

[18] Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World 1973.  Early talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis,, Berlin, London, Paris, New York and Chicago As Recollected by his Pupils.  With a Forward by Jeanne de Salzmann.  E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.  New York.

[19] de Salzman, J.  2010. The Reality of Being.  The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff.  Shambala

Chapter 6: The Greek Expression of the Creative Irrational

The Ancient Greeks followed the Ancient Egyptians in the final centuries of the Egyptian culture. Between 728 and 525 BCE the glory of Ancient Egypt was fading with the waves of invasions by the Nubians, Assyrians and Persians. It was during this period that the Ancient Greeks were learning at the feet of the remaining Egyptian teachers. Both early Greek philosophers ,Thales of Miletus[1] (circa 624 – c. 546 BCE) and Solon[2] (circa 638 – c. 558 BCE), journeyed to Egypt and met with Pharaohs, and were trained by priests.  Thales was considered by Aristotle as the first philosopher and the later was noted by Plato as the source of the tales of the sinking of Atlantis. It should not then surprise us to find a comparable spectrum of spirituality in the Greek tradition. 

Comparable to the Egyptians, the approaches of Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus provide us with a means for exploring the underlying human expression of our creative irrational and its striving towards spirituality at the highest levels.

Parmenides – As far as longing can reach

We begin with the lessons of the ancient Greek teacher Parmenides (circa 550 BCE) as presented by Kingsley[3]. His presentation helps us trace the possibilities for a new path to higher development.  In particular we note that Kingsley’s insights into the writings of Parmenides show a link from the practices of the Ancient Egyptians into what the Greeks saw as the attraction to the higher. 

Parmenides[4] was an early philosopher teaching in the town of Velia in Southern Italy. He was apparently an early priest of the worship of Apollo. While only a small amount of his original works has survived, one of his major works, entitled “On Nature” has survived. In this writing he provides a metaphor for the journeys to the edge of existence, the edge of our creative irrational. The first of the three sections of “On Nature” describes the undertaking of an initially spiritual journey from Parmenides’ ordinary life to the edges of this world to learn the great mysteries of life. He issummoned by the “Daughters of the Sun”.  

We quote:

“In short, the Daughters of the Sun have come along to fetch him from the world of the living and take him right back to where they belong. This is no journey from confusion to clarity; from darkness into light. On the contrary, the journey Parmenides is describing is exactly the opposite. He is travelling straight into the ultimate night that no human being could possibly survive without divine protection. He is being taken to the heart of the underworld, the world of the dead.[5]”

So what does Parmenides, an early Ancient Greek with Phocaean heritage, have to contribute to our understanding of the purpose and drive behind the human creative irrational? What would make Parmenides succumb to this exceptional journey to the “edges of existence”? Kingsley portrays his motivation as originating from “longing”. To quote Kingsley again: 

“The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach.”[6]

Parmenides is being dragged along by the power of allegorical horses at breakneck speed. This longing is no ordinary longing.  It is not the rational individual ephemeral desires, appetites and wants of food, shelter and sex. His longing cannot be any stronger. It is almost as if this longing is insatiable; that it seems beyond reach. It is core to his Being. Although this longing is personal to Parmenides, it appears of exceptional and unusual scale to us all.

A little later Parmenides’ poem states: 

“For it is no hard fate that sent you travelling this road - so far away from the beaten track of humans - but Rightness, and Justice.” 

This introduces the necessary balance between the high-level internal longing on the part of Parmenides and the external influences of higher morals. Rightness and Justice have put him on this extraordinary journey. They are not personal. They are basic properties of the World that are beyond the ownership of any particular individual. So his journey is the result of both an exceptional personal longing and one that is combined with the more-than-merely personal higher forces at work in him.

            The creative irrational pull that draws him is a central theme of the poem. But there is another aspect of his journey that cannot be missed. After he arrives in the presence of the goddess she provides him with insights. But there is an additional requirement paced on him. He is directed to “carry it away”.  It is not sufficient that he receives the higher knowledge, but he is compelled to return to life with this knowledge.  It becomes evident that this journey of his is not a one-way street. It seems that the return is an integral part of the motivation for the journey. There is a need for this knowledge to be delivered by Parmenides back to those who have not, or cannot, make the journey. There is something beyond the individual that is being satisfied by the experience.

So in Kingsley’s treatment of Parmenides we see the key elements of our personal creative irrational that includes an extreme internal personal longing as well as an external, more-than-merely personal influence to continue our existence beyond the rational biological, physical requirements. 

The Classic Greek Metaphor of the Spirituality Spectrum: The Allegory of the Cave

The difficulties of simultaneously understanding different states within ourselves, ones that constitute our more usual situation, and others that are transformed states that we know only in special moments, comprise the main theme of “The Allegory of the Cave”, contained in Plato's writing called “The Republic[7]”. This classic allegory is an extended metaphor; a comparative image intended to convey a deeper level of understanding. 

The second line of Table 2 describes in our own wording the description of the various stages in development of a human being according to the famous portrayal by Plato of his concept of the development of an individual’s movement from darkness into the bright light of the sun, as it is described in his essay the “Allegory of the Cave”. Plato, the archetypal classical Greek philosopher, thinker and writer circa 400 BCE, continues to be highly revered in the modern Western World for his contribution to our present day worldview. One of Plato’s it greatest works deals with levels of human existence. This “Allegory of the Cave” makes no sense if thought of literally in a physical world. It points to the need to see the levels of Being that are required for living consciously. 

As we can see from the first two lines in Table 2 there are strong similarities between Plato’s description and that of the much earlier Ancient Egyptian. They both contain descriptions of both the rational biological and physical bodies and the more-than-merely personal levels of higher existence. In keeping with our definition of the creative irrational as being “beyond reason”, they are both dealing with the creative irrational using their preferred language and images.

Plato's mental construct in the Allegory begins with his presentation of the lowest level of human existence. He likens it to that of prisoners who from earliest childhood have been chained so that they can only look at the back of a long cave. They sit in a row and in only one position, unable to turn their heads; thus constrained to look only ahead of them at shadows cast on the back wall of the cave by the light of a fire burning behind them. They see only the shadow images, cast from what moves behind them, between them and the fire, images that appear to move along the wall. If someone carried implements behind them between them and the light, they would see only shadows of the carriers and the implements. And if sounds were heard, they would think that they came from the shadow images. These images would be the whole perceptual basis for their concept of what is real.

Plato then asks that we picture what would happen if one of the prisoners was freed and compelled to stand up and turn around to look at the light of the fire. He would suffer pain at gazing directly at it, and be so dazzled that he could scarcely discern the objects that had cast the shadows, and which made the sounds. 

The story continues:

"What do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?...

"...and if someone should drag him by force up the ascent ... into the light of the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful,...and when he came out into the light that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things that we call real?...

"There would be need of habituation, ... to be able to see the things higher up. At first he would most easily discern the shadows, ... later the things themselves, and from that he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself .... And so finally, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.[8]"

By using such relatable physical items such as “cave”, “shadows”, “fire” and “Sun”, the story presents the very abstract, intangible concepts in a spectrum of spirituality from the lower physical to the highest level of being. The Allegory captures not only the various levels of spirituality but also the key point that progress up the spectrum involves great effort and pain for the person striving for the higher levels. The allegory also points out that the climb from the back of the cave into full daylight might take a rather long time and a great deal of effort. The allegory refers specifically to the need for what it calls a period of habituation for acclimating ourselves to what is encountered on the climb. This is consistent with the many statements in the Pyramid Texts that urge the central figure to rise, to continue on, to do what is difficult for an ordinary person – such as fly. Both sets of text make no secret of the difficulty in reaching the higher levels of experience. The texts speaks of the fact that in one state it is very difficult to appreciate what might be encountered in the others; the very objects accessible to sight are seen entirely differently in the different situations, so differently that experience in one state is insufficient preparation for understanding what is seen in others. To reach a "higher" state from that which determines our present outlook clearly requires a considerable effort of understanding and tolerance, both towards ourselves and towards others with whom we may be related. 

The allegory states in several instances that movement from the dark to the light is both painful and dazzling, so much so that it is questionable if it could be undertaken voluntarily by ordinary man. Plato suggests that the act could be undertaken only under duress or being forced by some outside power, perhaps an event or condition that might lead us to recognize an inner sense of great need. 

It is even suggested that if the possibilities were introduced without this help from our circumstances, and if we were able to apprehend it under ordinary conditions we would rather kill the urge than obey it. This follows the situation of Parmenides being drawn by forces both internal and external. Such dramatic language is not easy to appreciate until one encounters the resistance in oneself, such as our resistance to a re-interpretation of symbols with which we have been raised or have lived with for a long time. 

But the allegory doesn’t stop with the scenario of the person appreciating the highest levels of existence as represented by the image of the Sun. Plato goes on to discuss what would happen to the same person brought down again into the cave among the former fellow prisoners. What had been experienced in the bright light of the full strength of the sun would now make it impossible for the person to see and identify the shadows as well those who remained in the cave. The person would be laughed at and counted as one who had lost their sight if the person tried to tell them about it, and they would all conclude that it was clearly not worth even to attempt such folly in an ascent. In fact, they would actively resist exposure to the new interpretations. As Plato puts it, "If it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?" What is more, the person’s situation, having returned to their former world of illusion would be worse, not better.

"Do you think it at all strange if a man returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and appears most ridiculous, if, while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself?

"A sensible man would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into the more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled his vision. And so he would deem the one happy in its experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it pleased him to laugh at it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at the expense of the soul that had come down from the light above....[9]"

One of the principal attractions of Plato’s work in the current context is that it uses images from an everyday level of experience to cast additional light on states that are removed but that can be recognized in our ordinary life. It thus provides important further perspective on what is needed to bridge the gap that separates our ordinary life from other levels of understanding. Plato states in the very beginning of this dialogue that in developing his ideas he is not intending to describe man's situation in the exterior world, so much as using the imagery of social and political situations to enlighten our understanding of what takes place within us (emphasis added), when we are able to pay attention. The imagery captures much of what we can discern about our confused, lack of understanding between the vastly different states within ourselves - see Row 2 in Table 2.

In keeping with the theme of the creative irrational being “beyond reason”, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents us with a description of human life that is far beyond food, shelter and procreation. He presents a model of human existence that includes higher levels, each requiring effort and habituation to appreciate as well as a necessary return from full experience to assist our fellow “prisoners”.  Perhaps because of the great difficulty of seeing how these infrequent, hence unfamiliar insights depend on us, many religions have implied that they arise outside of us, in a consciousness that exists independently of us. In such a case insights might only be activated in special conditions of need, such as we presented in Chapter 1 regarding the car accident or the encounter with the aged “Mi’kmaw” woman.  Perhaps it is possible from comparable states of prayer. We do not wish here to enter into a debate on the impartiality or reality of religious beliefs. However, if we treat all such statements as symbolic in the same sense that the allegory of the cave is told, we might be able to agree that images of external influences are speaking of externality in the sense that they are external to our exoteric sense of reality. For instance who or what would force the prisoner to break their shackles and turn to the burning bright light of the fire at the back of the cave?

But is the same true for our esoteric parts? Such interpretation is consistent with the theory that they arise through an innate commonality of our individual unconscious. We can at least conclude that we seem to harbour within us a knowledge of influences and functions that are properly the characteristics of another level of being. For our level, however, they are the "secrets" told to initiates.

What matters most at the moment is to recognize that because of the way new understanding arises and works in us, certain ancient, traditional stories can be seen to have been deliberately intended to use metaphor and allegory to appeal to personal experience as the primary means of conveying the meanings of questions of quality and value. In this way, our new understandings may often seem to be a rediscovery of what has long been known. The insights provided by the ancient stories can nevertheless be seen as in some way essential to the continued development of the sense of coherence and unity that we individually seek. They contain influences that do not appear under the ordinary processes of learning in a context of an orderly elaboration of knowledge of external things. The sense that there is a direction towards a higher level of values in civilization, a change in level that might also be likened to our wish for objectivity, seems to depend on the existence within us of this common capacity to use characteristics to discriminate between levels of comprehension. It appears as a mode of knowing that we learn about in special circumstances and that may be evoked in metaphor.

Whether we accept the later views of Philo who thought that only a select few humans can attain the higher levels of connection with the divine[10] or the view of Saint Paul that all may reach the kingdom of Heaven, there is certainly agreement of the existence of higher spiritual levels in the spirituality spectrum. 

So we are dealing with a sphere of human interest that is not well communicated by common language. Throughout the history of human activities we have had to resort to metaphor and allegory to try and address our higher interest. Of course the greatest difficulty is that the lesson may be taken literally – missing the whole point of the artistic creation. As might be expected from the Egyptian lineage of Plato’s ideas, it is relatively easy for us to draw equivalence between the various levels found in each of the two traditions (Table 2). Each culture presents their understanding in different ways. It may also be expected that the representation of levels found in the Classic Greek version seems more approachable. The symbolism of fire, shadow and the sun connects more easily with our modern sensitivities than human-headed birds, disembodied hearts on scales and crocodile-headed gods. Yet the insights are the same: there is more to us than we normally attend to. 

Intellectual Principle – Plotinus

Plotinus, circa 200 CE, was a Neo-Platonic philosopher writing about 800 years after Parmenides[11]. His major works entitled the “Enneads”[12] developed ideas of levels of existence that included the soul (Psuchē), the Intellectual Principle (Nous) and the highest level of the One (Monad).  The third line of Table 2 names the levels according to the Plotinus. While his philosophy is linked to Plato, he is likely to have been influenced by Philo and the early Christian authors[13].

Plotinus believed that, “Everything leads to the One”. The One is the indivisible “All” containing the foundation of everything.  Below the One he identified a number of levels of existence showing increasing differentiation as they occur lower in the scale. The key challenge of life according to Plotinus is to find within the highest existence, the Nous, that has been variously translated from Greek as the Intellectual Principle, Divine Mind, Logos or Order. Although Plotinus’ writings are not as widely recognized today as Plato’s, they have greatly influenced many of the Western World’s religions and Christianity in particular[14].

In light of our discussions regarding the different levels of phenomena in our daily existence, and the creative irrationality in seeing beyond our common experiences in our inner world, we can with effort still approach the terminology of Plato or of Plotinus. Thus, for example, perhaps without directly experiencing what the ancients called a Soul, or being able to identify exactly what was meant by Spirit, we are still in a position to recognize in these expressions hierarchies of phenomena in the inner world that do not differ in principle from levels in the hierarchy of phenomena described in exoteric models. In this way we can, for example, be prepared to appreciate the intent of Plotinus’ terminology. We can understand such terms to describe what he has detected as the levels or stages of ascent in inner spiritual transformation, rather than immediately dismissing them as either personal or “merely” metaphysical abstractions. By realizing the analogy with our own models of exoteric hierarchical structures, we can begin to contemplate the possibility of structures in the inner world that, while inaccessible to us in our ordinary conditions, are nevertheless phenomena that can be appreciated by us from their description by Plotinus.

In his presentation the Nous is the God within us that is simply a part of the indivisible, ever-present Monad. Plotinus speaks of the essential attraction of that part of us, the Nous, towards the all-present Monad.  In his words:

“Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it draws nearer and nearer to God and gains participation in Him; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This becomes, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God. Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then – but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.

“But how comes the soul not to keep that ground:

“Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of scission unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body.”[15]

This sounds very similar to the experience that Philo witnessed and reported.

Plotinus describes the Monad as a non-duality state that permeates everything. Its emanations establish all lower levels of existence. These ideas were developed a hundred years before Constantine formulated Christian beliefs of an omnipresent God[16]. Christianity later corrupted the concept of an all-present God into a concept of a separate, identifiable father figure that oversees everthing. In the Renaissance, 14th to 17th century CE, this “ever-present” God even became represented as an external old man sitting on a cloud surveying a physical world (Figure 28).

Figure 28. An image of the “Creation of Adam” painting by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City[17].

            While recognizing that the pictorial representation in Figure 28 is a piece of art created to convey complex higher level metaphysical thoughts to a general audience, we must also see that it unintentionally actually presents a vision of a separation into many parts – human from God, sky from earth, higher from lower. Quite a distraction from Plotinus’ urge to find the unity in our being that represents the Monad.

            So what does Plotinus have to offer our search for the creative irrational in Greek philosopy? He specifically refers to our true nature as the soul or Intellectual-Principle that is a shared aspect of God. He makes an awkward analogy with the “love of a daughter for a noble father” who falls as a result of being lured by a mortal love. He says, “But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.”[18] We call this awkward because it still falls into depending on the duality of two separate and independent beings, father and daughter. Duality is a philosophical position that it is not easy for us to avoid. In the Western world we seem consumed by thoughts of good versus bad, you versus me, etc.

            Indeed Plotinus frequently espouses “love” as the driving force that underlies our desire for levels above the physical ordinary life. Elsewhere he expresses the shared components among God and ourselves as individuals.  He states:

“So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source.”[19]

And

“It looks towards its higher and has intellection; towards itself and orders, administers, governs its lower.”[20]

The sharing of the aspects of God in ourselves leads us to a sense of loss in our ordinary lives and a desire to get back into contact with the higher. According to Plotinus, it is a shared love of a singularity that motivates us. Our preparation for this reconnection requires us to become disassociated from the distractions of our ordinary lives. The reconnection requires quiet preparation and waiting as well as the occurrence of God showing himself like an “eye waits on the rising of the sun”[21].

            It is important to point out that Plotinus also recognizes our inability to stay connected with the higher.   He says:

   “Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentred; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.”[22]

And from a translation by Hadot, Plotinus states:

“Often I reawaken from my body to myself: I come to be outside other things, and inside myself. What an extraordinarily wonderful beauty I then see! It is then, above all, that I believe I belong to the greater portion. I then realize the best form of life; I become at one with the Divine, and I establish myself in it. Once I reach this supreme activity, I establish myself above every other spiritual entity. After this repose in the Divine, however, when I come back down from intuition into rational thought, then I wonder: How is it ever possible that I should come down now, and how was it ever possible that my soul has come to be within my body, even though she is the kind of being that she has just revealed herself to be, when she appeared as she is in herself, although she is still within my body?[23]”

The attitudes developed in contemplating such testimonials can help us understand the intent of searches into the phenomena of the inner world by allowing the creation within us of a sympathetic impulse towards the sincerity of the messages they have undertaken to convey to our generations. Plotinus recognizes the need to connect with the higher as well as the inevitable return to the ordinary.

            He makes the point that the two states, the higher and lower, are naturally occurring and can be realized according to their circumstances:

“Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.”

Critical to the distinction between Plotinian thought and the later Christian thought is the sense of who has access to the higher. In this quote the phrase “able to consort” strongly suggests that Plotinus saw a distinction between individuals who were prepared and able to access the higher and those who did not or could not access the higher. This is quite different from the modern Christian view espoused by Saint Paul that everyone who undergoes the process of baptism can expect access to the Kingdom of Heaven[24]. This distinction between those who expended significant effort and work and those who gain “entry” into heaven through a short, once in a lifetime ceremony certainly would have been seen and appreciated by Nietzsche.  

So to summarize, Plotinus saw in us a portion of the unified God that longed to extend beyond our physical body and return to a communion with the Higher. Individuals are required to see themselves, develop a calm, quiet waiting posture and be prepared for when the unity of God presents itself. The answer to the question of “why awaken?” found in Plotinus’ teaching is that we inevitably hold a share of the indivisible, ever-present Monad within us. With time, effort and patience, our work in our ordinary life opens up the possibility of seeing this part of the Monad in ourselves and calls us out of our limited, unsatisfactory lives to the higher. Returning to the quote that we have presented in the “Introduction” of this book, he spoke of the attraction of ourselves to the higher with these words: 

“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All”[25].

Consistency in the Creative Irrational of Greek Philosophy

The shared themes of Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus for a necessary departure and return to normal life are key. Parmenides was dragged away by “mares”, instructed by external powers and ordered to “carry it away”. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave what constitutes our awakening involves moving from the dark to stare into the sun before returning into the cave. He explicitly addresses the need and the challenges that a returnee faces upon descending back into the cave after acclimating to the bright light of the sun. The “Allegory of the Cave” doesn’t deal much with the reasons why a person would go through the pain and suffering of moving up and out of the cave to look directly at the bright sun. Following that difficult challenge, he doesn’t suggest a reason for a person’s actions in leaving the sun behind and returning into the depths of the cave in an attempt to unshackle those remaining in the shadows. But both the exit and the return seem essential parts of the process. Finally in our presentation Plotinus, in this same lineage of thought, refers to awe of experiencing Monad and the inability of the individual to maintain such a connection. One must inevitably return to “real” life. The distancing and return to normal life seems to be a part of a completing process in a full cycle of reaching for Being and then returning again to one’s usual existence.  Whereas there appears to be a deep-seated longing required for an individual to strive for higher consciousness, the return in our long-term personal development is also required by these philosophers as being obligatory.  The whole concept of such movements highlights the creative irrational of such great and influential thoughts in the development of Western culture.

Although we present this creative irrational as something intrinsically human, it is obvious that its strength varies greatly and its full potential is only ever realized in a very limited number of individuals. It is not clear from the Greek writings whether they were addressing something realized by a few select dedicated individuals or all humans. As reported by Plotinus, the difficult and fleeting ultimate goal of the creative irrational in connecting with the “ever present” occurs rarely and requires individual preparation and work to become open to the opportunities when they present themselves. Using a Christian phrase it is said that, “many are called but few are chosen.” Thus we do not present the creative irrational as a recipe for the attainment of higher consciousness, but as a potential work aid to help focus our attention on the internal more-than-personal movements within us.

            In summary, we appreciate from the points of view presented by Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus that they were struggling to provide insights into a process of individual development that while clearly irrational, is incredibly powerful in forming a human connection with the more-than-merely personal. All are obviously dealing with life beyond rational normal day-to-day existence towards the higher levels of existence and Being. All of them allude to a natural process of longing to be reunited with something that is more-than-merely-personal, something that is more than ordinary for most of us as individuals. Plotinus specifically points out that we are a part of something that is all encompassing in our world. The higher levels draw our interest in rejoining the higher. Parmenides made the point that there is great reward in experiencing the life at the edge of existence. But his view is that our initial encounters with the higher are unsustainable in our regular being. The creative irrational is a part of our existence; a longing for something that is beyond our ordinary lives, something more-than-merely personal in our consciousness.

———————— Chapter 7: A Modern Allegory of the Spirituality Spectrum: The Gurdjieff Work ————

————————- Table of Contents ——————————— 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon

[3] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness, California.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides

[5] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness California.

[6] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness California.

[7] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.

[8] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.

[9] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.

[10] Sandmel, S. 1979. Philo of Alexandra: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. New York.

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus

[12] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications.

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo

[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus

[15] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.9 (9-10)

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity

[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam

[18] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. VI.9.

[19] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.4.

[20] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.3.

[21] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. V.5.5.

[22] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.1.

[23] Hadot, P. 1993. Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision. M. Chase (trans.). Chicago. University of Chicago Press.

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle - Basic_message

[25] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. Page 2.

Chapter 5: The Egyptian Bodies of a Human

            For more specific information about our concepts of the creative irrational and spiritual we begin with Ancient Egypt. Its literature was created about 5,000 years before the present but must have been well developed previously to have been so completely and eloquently captured in the writings. What did these cultures attempt to capture in their early writings? What were they trying to represent? What could Egyptian higher knowledge be dealing with? What would be of most importance for them to capture in this newly established form of communication: writing? In their literature they wrote explicitly about the creative irrational experience of the different levels of human existence[1].  Amazingly we see them dealing with distinctions between our different bodies, a fact that is clearly represented in the earliest of human written literature in the Pyramid Texts!

            Before we get into the specifics of the Ancient Egyptian view of the bodies of a human, there are a number of continuing modern day misunderstandings about Ancient Egypt that need to be addressed to allow an appropriate appreciation of their writing. It is first of all to point out that there is a false perception that the culture was solely concerned with death and the dead. As in the modern Christian world with its tombs, graveyards and cemeteries, they definitely created structures associated with their treatment of the dead. But it is critical to recognize that the pyramids are not tombs. While a number of Egyptian pyramids contain sarcophagi, it is questionable whether these ever held the mummified bodies of humans, as all of the tombs did. Like Christian cathedrals, which may contain the tombs of saints and other significant individuals, we need to consider that pyramids likely had purposes other than simply to house a few dead bodies. 

            To this end it is important to recognize that of the 100s of pyramids build in Ancient Egypt only eleven contain the collection of verses known as the Pyramid Texts. These texts are an extensive collection of verses or recitations carved onto the stone walls, gables and ceilings of eleven of the some of these oldest great pyramids. They were built earlier than the well-known Giza Pyramids that start around 2,500 BCE[2] and were located further south in Saqqara, Egypt[3]. The texts that they contain form the first complete recorded literature in human history. But the fact that they are presented as a complete, single extensive theme indicates that the thoughts and concepts that they represent had long been in development  - over centuries -preceding the construction of the pyramids themselves. The hieroglyphics are beautifully carved and provide an extensive and detailed text. There is no question that they represent the result of an incredible effort of development and execution by the culture.

            There is a second misconception of the Pyramid Texts that stands in the way of fully appreciating the knowledge that they contain; it is represented in the impression left by some early would-be students that they are only a collection ofsuperstitious “spells” intended to help the “deceased” develop in the “afterlife”. This problem arose at the very beginning of their discovery. The early investigators of the culture began their studies under the impression that Ancient Egyptians were a “primitive” people. About the time of publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species concepts of social evolution and a belief in the continual improvement of human cultures was developing. Thus a 5,000 year-old culture would be considered as necessarily primitive compared to the “new” thinking of the 19th century. Moreover, these early explorers would have been Christian with all of the preconceptions of the sole authority of Christianity. Declaring the texts as magic was consistent with the approach of Christianity towards foreign cultures and allowed these “new” explorers to maintain their superior attitude[4]. While they actually did great things in exposing this new world of the lost Ancient Egyptian culture, they also did a great disservice to the subtle and complex higher understanding and impeded acceptance of what this incredible culture would be able to teach them. 

            One final challenge to appreciating the Pyramid Text lies in the actual translating and presenting of their messages to our modern day understanding. Without a doubt what is written is in a highly abbreviated and stylized form by a people with a potentially much different mind-set from our own.  To get an insight into such challenges, we present here an example of a recitation carved onto the inner surface of the Pyramid of Pharaoh Pepi I, 2332 – 2287 BCE:

“Someone has gone to be with his Ka;

Osiris has gone to be with his Ka;

Seth has gone to be with his Ka, 

Eyes-Forward has gone to be with his Ka;

Pepi has gone to be with his Ka.

Ho Pepi! You have gone away that you might live; you have not gone away that you might die.

You have gone away that you might become Akh at the fore of the Akhs, take control at the fore of the living, become Ba and be Ba, become esteemed and be esteemed.[5]

            In this one single recitation we encounter references to what are three incredibly important concepts related to the bodies of a human:  the Ka, the Ba and the Akh.   While many of our readers may have encountered these words we ask their patience in readdressing what may seem familiar. Like translations from any language, we find it takes some effort to fully understand them.  Can we discern what they might mean to a modern reader?

            But in spite of all of these challenges, there an undeniable advantage in exploring the concepts and knowledge of the Ancient Egyptians over the constructions of the hunter gatherers of Göbekli Tepe. We can actually see and read their written words. We present here in Figure 21 a photograph of an alternative, shortened version of this same recitation from another pyramid, the Pyramid of Pharaoh Unas, built circa 2,500 years BCE. In this instance the recitation is translated by Allen as:

“Someone has gone to his Ka;

Horus has gone with his Ka; Seth has gone with his Ka;

Thoth has gone with his Ka; the god has gone with his Ka;

Osiris has gone with his Ka; Eyes-Forward has gone with his Ka

You too have gone with your Ka.[6]”

Or as translated by Brind Morrow:

“Go go with his spirit (Ka)

Go wild dog with his spirit (Ka). Go Thoth.

Say this four times:

Consecrate the fire with his spirit (Ka)

Go holy falcon with his spirit (Ka)

Go Osiris with his spirit (Ka)

Before the eyes of the holy falcon of old

With his spirit[7].”                                        

Figure 21. Screen shot of Recitation 20 from the Pyramid of Unas dealing with his Ka[8].

            The purpose of showing the image of the text is in no way intended to expect the reader to translate the text for himself or herself.  Rather our intent is to show how different the Ancient Egyptian text is from modern day English, and thus to highlight both the challenges and advantages of working with such material. For present purposes, we only invite the reader to note in scanning the photo that it is possible to easily recognize a number of key hieroglyphs, such as the two upraised arms that represent the Egyptian concept for the Ka, that occurs repeatedly in this translated text.  The Pharaoh’s signature cartouche is also found a number of times in the encircled oval in the image. The hieroglyph for Seth with his squared-ears and upraised tail is also evident. But the question is how do these simple images get turned into the translations that we are presented with in English?

            While there have been many translations of the Pyramid Texts by various authors over the years[9], a recent publication by Brind Morrow[10] does a marvelous job at presenting and addressing a direct approach to the Pyramid Texts. She provides what she calls “a new poetic translation and interpretation” of the Pyramid Texts from the pyramid of the Pharaoh Unas[11]. Her work helps us to better understand and appreciate the impulses and broader values held and developed by our predecessors. Her careful poetic and mystic approach to the material exposes us to an incredible level of sophistication and clarity that requires patience and work from us before we are able to give them appropriate meaning in our language.

            In her book, “The Dawning World of the Mind”, Morrow presents us with what she calls the “poetic rediscovery’ of the impulses and influences that led to the writing of these ancient and well-known but not fully appreciated texts[12]. Her enquiry is usefully supported by many photographic reproductions of extracts of the hieroglyphs from the texts. Her publication shows remarkably clear, detailed pictures of the inscriptions from throughout the passageways, ceilings and sarcophagus chamber, which is itself a treasure for study.  Her approach to the texts, both in their layout, depending on their location in the pyramid, and in their shamanic tone is consistent with the interpretations provided previously by Naydler[13]. In Brind Morrow’s book we are presented with remarkable efforts of transcription and translation that strengthen our appreciation of the spirituality theme as opposed to the false funerary “spell” interpretations.  The clarity and complexity of her results guides us to a more genuine entrance into a multi-level of sophistication in interpretation.  It also reassures us that we are being guided to taste, even savour, a level of understanding that for the first time is being made available to us from these ancient texts. They are presented to us with a direct insight into how these “ancients” perceived our world. They present us with an exposure that can only excite our own, relatively feeble understanding of the potential for transcendence beyond any ordinary level of understanding.  Here is a direct demonstration of the many dimensions that have been re-found and made available to us through her seemingly newly discovered appreciation of what is often called the “beyond”. 

            Brind Morrow interprets the hieroglyphs from many different points of view. She explores various literary tools such as the alliteration, use of puns and onomatopoeia.  She gives us images with repeated interpretation and comparison of the results with those at various other locations in the pyramid. It all gradually builds for us an image of their hidden meanings. Comparisons and interpretations that were made necessary as she observed them in relation to what is observed in the sky, add a dimension to our understanding of the night sky that has shined above human heads since the beginning of time.  We are led initially to observe easily recognizable stars such as the important Sirius and the North Star as well as groups of stars Orion, Taurus. The scene includes the large “Milky Way” that glows in its broad band of bright and dimstars that stream across our nighttime view.  From that point of beginning it becomes possible to assemble a concept of how this “on earth” scene appears to viewers who can picture themselves at higher levels of existence in the night sky.  Only gradually are we led to understand something that while it appears to have been well-known, may actually be new to us - because of our failures to be able to see it in its wholeness - in such a full complexity. We can begin to be able to see it on the broader scale on which this whole back-drop must be understood; but it requires patience and study from us.  

            We come to appreciate these concepts only if we patiently watch and remember the sequences of the rising and setting of the complex constellations and the immense scales on which this apparently intimate scene can really be understood.  We may even come to appreciate how the early observers began to place their perceptions and ours in the context of how our own true natures can appear as the base from which the really vast scales of interpretation that are being identified and shown to us are revealing this whole set of virtually multi-dimensions of existence at one instant.  All this, that we only gradually become able to see, comes to us so unexpectedly from this marvelous Ancient Egyptian text from the beginning of the written word. It is as a virtual testimonial of our own present ignorance or at least unknowingness.  Here, in this most ancient of the texts presented within the depths of pyramids of a period as old as 2,500 BCE, more than four and a half thousand years before we are here to try to understand it. It is, to us, a highly original inscription of texts that appear almost miraculous in their meaning and their tone.  Only now are we coming to fully appreciate the vast time and space scales of the phenomena that the ancients had understood and apparently wrote about or illustrated in a fashion that allows our modern scholarship to open for our contemplation.  There can be no misunderstanding of the vastness of the scope on which this ancient writing is now made known to us and has become available to be understood by us through these discoveries. 

            As Brind Morrow found, these writings from Ancient Egypt, show us how lacking in imagination and vision other translators  have been, and how long it seems to have taken our society to learn of the need for the long time required to prepare ourselves before we can overcome the false superiority we have felt as we gradually come to understand how primitive were our own beginnings.  It gradually becomes possible for us to appreciate the near transformation of our own level of knowledge and understanding that is required to allow us to catch up to what we thought was known many years ago. 

            The sheer immensity of this task makes us begin to appreciate the role that poetry and vision can yet play as one begins to understand the importance of the title of her work “The Dawning Moon of the Mind”. Such a “dawning” alone permits us to come to a true unlocking of the Pyramid Texts, as true as we are likely to be able to appreciate, unless through her insight. We must find the unlocking of our own minds that has been necessary in order to allow us to enter the mind that in theory has been available for nearly 5,000 years but in fact has only now been opened to us on scales of perception that we rarely have been given the grace to comprehend.

            Let us look at one example of her insights. We believe that it highlights how her work can provide a fuller detailed description of the state of the Universe, and ourselves, from which this poetic, metaphoric, mystic perspective arises. In this process we turn to a word that Brind Morrow uses often in her treatment. We wish here to attend to the meaning of the word “tantric” that been generally misunderstood as originating in India, but is found in the worldview of the Ancient Egyptians. It is derived from two words of the Egyptian: “ta ntr, which has the meaning of “your land” or “sacred ground”[14]. This “land” is in fact the whole of the Nile delta from its source in the hills of the southern highlands of the Nubian region where we find the source of water and nourishment on which the whole of the Nile River and its Ancient Egyptian civilization depended. 

            The whole mystical story begins to unfold on the West Wall of the Entranceway into the Pyramid of Unas. It contains vivid descriptions of the physical world that are introduced as “primary forces in the night sky” in motion[15]. The rotation of the skies around the axis mundi terminating at the North Star marks time for humans. This turning of the sky is what Brind Morrow describes as “the unstoppable rising of the water” to the greening force of life rising on earth. The force of this water-flow is then conflated with the generative seed or semen, “the rising force that brings life”.  This sets the context for human existence in the stars and universe. There are many images of nature presented in the recitations. There are snakes, crocodiles, falcons, etc., etc..  Check Figure 21 above to see numerous birds represented in that recitation. But this is not a documentation of the nature and ecology of the Nile valley. It is not superstitious babble of ignorant people. After all they are contained within some of the grandest constructions ever made by humans. These selected images of nature require reflection and appreciation. As one example we may take the “crocodile”.  Definitely this species was well known to the Ancient Egyptians living in the environs of the Nile. But in the Texts it means much more than the animal species. It is representative of something more: something that is much more key to the full expression of life and human existence. Here the word for “crocodile” is introduced as the serpentine life force:  pure brilliant light, iabu in Ancient Egyptian, burning, shining light, the animating force of the energy of life. As Brind Morrow puts it, “this energy as it exists in the body is not only conjured but mapped.”  The crocodile shares visual traits of the curving snake. It shares the metaphysical traits of curled potential for quick striking energy. This is a masterful interpretation of the use of items in the natural world, the crocodile and serpents, to capture and express layers of understanding and experience that are available to humans. Such a methodology is key to appreciating the form and structure of the Texts.

            The text continues on the East Wall of the Entranceway. As it continues, the theme now turns the attention away from the outer body to the inner body.  The life force that can be seen in the sky above and in the water below is now to be found “within”. As Brind Morrow points out the language of this initial idea is clear and precise. Then it begins with a recitation dealing with the Generation of the Light Body:

                        Unas becomes the primary serpentine life force

                        That absorbs his seven serpents

                        That manifest as the seven yoked attributes of his seven vertebrae

                        Nine times three sanctified attributes obey these words

                        Unas comes back as he absorbs myrrh, he receives myrrh

                        He is blessed with myrrh, he is brought back with myrrh

                        Unas takes on your power sanctified attributes

                        As he turns he yokes your spiritual faculties.[16]

            She finds in the text recognizable instructions. They support our contention that this is ritual text. It performs a ritual purpose the mapping of energy of internal serpents, a mapping that recognizes the esoteric physics of tantra.  It employs the serpent metaphor an “esoteric” schemata of energy in the body arranged in seven primary chakra nerve centres. 

            This is, of course, a bare but striking example of the purposes of the Pyramid Texts that we are trying to understand as evidence for the creative irrational. It takes us into the realm of ritual prayers and spirituality that can lead us towards our aim of understanding the way towards our own purpose, better serving our own present aims of self-knowledge and self-understanding.  It leads us toward a new understanding that can hardly come to us without the intermediary of the talents of a modern poet linked so realistically yet imaginatively to the truly almost overwhelming visions recorded by the very first writers of literature.

            Brind Morrow’s transcriptions and translations present aspects of the Ancient Egyptian culture that broadens our understanding of their creative urges that includes that remarkable human phenomenon that we call a “sense of humor”.  Much needs to be appreciated about this early and ancient civilization before we can aspire to fully understand its level of sophistication. What do we understand as the elements that have led us beyond the level of necessity for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures towards what we find expressed in various activities that we group under the general terms “art and architecture”?  A study of these activities can lead us to appreciate the importance of the new directions that were experienced and are displayed by what we believe to be the creative need for a broader and new perception of this world that they help us articulate.

            These primary themes of the Pyramid Texts concern the various states of human existence. Texts a thousand years later, circa 1550 BCE, written on papyrus entitled “Book of Coming Forth by Day” or “Among the Stars at Dawn”[17], more often incorrectly referred to as “The Book of the Dead”, are quite derivative of the themes found in the much earlier Pyramids Texts. Together the Pyramid Texts and later texts present supporting concepts concerning the different states of human existence. As we have presented in the quote above, throughout the Pyramid Texts the person is often advised:

 “You have not gone away dead; you have gone away alive.[18]”

or as translated by Brind Morrow:

“O Unis you will not go on to die, You will go on to live.[19]”

            The outstanding feature that attracts our attention in Morrow’s book is what we term its capturing of the creative irrational. It is striking that the incredible building accomplishments of the Ancient Egyptians realized in their pyramids are tied to an esoteric text that deals with much more than the day-to-day concerns of the society.  Yes, they built storehouses for grain. Yes, they built palaces for living in. They even built temples and tombs, but without a doubt they saved their most impressive structures for their pyramids.  We need to recognize that they are, as are we, dependent on the higher beliefs that we must come toward if we are to appreciate the full breadth and depth of life to encompass beliefs beyond the necessities of biological existence that have directed us to this point. 

            We see this Pyramid Text as the first written expression of the creative irrational leading to the spiritual. We, and others, see the Pyramid Texts as recitations, closer in nature to the purpose of Christian prayer, to be used by an initiate or aspirant to assist in their own internal development of Being. We see them as dealing metaphorically with the Ancient Egyptian understanding of our personal development and striving during life. The Pyramid Texts present one of the clearest and most explicit representations of the different levels of being within ourselves. Without a doubt we are dealing with what Brind Morrow says is the “earliest historical religious system”. It is now time to see what this system says about the bodies of a human.

The Bodies of a Human

            Throughout their writings over the thousands of years of Ancient Egyptian culture, there are many references to the different facets of human existence. The texts identify these facets with specific forms or “bodies” of humans. The characteristics of these bodies are most often presented by way of descriptions of the events in which they are involved. That is, they are not so much presented as a succession of bodies that can be entered one after another by an aspirant, as they are internal perceptions of a set of qualities of feeling and sensations that need to be found and allowed to develop by the “being” and can only be passed through by the expenditure of appropriate effort. As one important example, in an often-used theme where the initiate or central figure addressed in the recitation takes on the form of the resurrected god Osiris, the aspirant undergoes extreme changes in state before approaching Osiris in the Duat[20]. This person then takes on a new name, “Osiris”. This is indicative of a new state of being "re-membered,” as was Osiris by Isis as she found and reassembled his scattered parts[21]. In our reading of the literature it is difficult to distinguish the aspirant from the god named Osiris. This may be a result of the translation challenges from a 5000-year-old language into modern day English or it may be a deliberate technique used in the original to assist the reader not to become overly concrete in their understanding of these complex and ephemeral concepts. Nevertheless the further transformations of this body constitutes a progressive realization of the nature of the various bodies through which the literature implies that the arising of eternal life is to be comprehended. This is one of the most remarkable examples of the creative irrational in the history of human worldview. 

            The studies of levels of existence began in what the Egyptians called “the Al Khemi”[22] or alchemy. In fact the word alchemy itself derives from the Egyptian word Kemit, which refers to the Black Earth, the farmable soil of the Valley of the Nile. The study of alchemy was said to have been taught to humankind by the Ancient Egyptian neter of wisdom Djeuti, better known by the name Thoth as he was called by the later Greeks. In time this same neter, Djeuti, began to be known by the Greeks as Hermes Trismagistus.  The terms body, soul and spirit as levels of being were commonly used in philosophy and religious studies in the form of the alchemical teachings that were especially well-known during the Middle Ages of Europe. Here we are more concerned with their origins of writing in The Pyramid Texts. As can be seen in the example shown in Figure 21 and in Brind Morrow[23], the words body, soul and spirit are never explicitly used in the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts. We adopt them here as a structure on which to illustrate our understanding of the tradition that can be seen in what has survived from them through the millennia down to our present day. 

            In fact the Ancient Egyptians recognized a higher resolution of the different human bodies that one can experience within oneself. We present them here as:

The Physical Body – the Khat and the Sahu

The Soul – the Abu, the Sekhem and the Ka

The Spirit – the Ba, Khaibit and Akh

Fully Realised Human - Ra. 

            It may be difficult for us to differentiate between the psychological and spiritual contexts. We examined the attributes of the bodies as a means of using this scale to elicit a clearer recognition of the subtle observations of differentiation that need to be available in us for use to describe development in our own experience – distinctions and development that are not to be found in any other species - hominin or otherwise.

 

 

The Physical Body – The Khat and The Sahu

            The Egyptians distinguished two bodies at the level of what we call the physical body: the Khat and the Sahu. The first of these, the Khat, is perhaps best translated simply as the physical or sometimes carnal body. It is the material body that is destined to decay. Special chemical techniques of embalming were developed to preserve it. Chapter 17 of the Book of Coming Forth by Day refers to this as "the filth". Clearly, this is a body that is recognizable to us as that body that requires food, air, rest, etc. It is relatively easy to recognize in our ordinary states. It is of considerable symbolic significance to us, however, that in Egypt it was not represented simply as a body to be disposed of. They recognized in its materiality an essential base from which all else could flow. This point was especially emphasized in the ceremony called the "opening of the mouth", that took place at the time the preserved mummy was deposited in the burial chamber. The ceremony was regarded as necessary to allow the being that occupied it to have “communication” with other levels of being. We would perhaps not be amiss to interpret it as a symbolic recognition that finer functions of the body, particularly those associated with breathing and the formation of words, as well as the finer sensitivities lower in the solar plexus and abdomen, are always important in relation to the potentially higher levels of being found in it. It is likely that this physical body is that which can be found for any and all biological species in the world.

            The Sahu, or second body, while also an aspect of the physical body, identifies that particular part of it that gives it the power of sustaining life. It is thus called the "body that germinateth." It has been emphasized by Schwaller de Lubicz[24] that germination is not only a power that permeates a seed and begins the process of creating a living organic being, but it continue to operate as the seedling grows. The creative power represented by the Sahu can be metaphorically expressed by the mystical Golden Ratio and displayed as the Greek letter, phi, (φ)[25]. The Sahu gives to body the qualities that distinguish their expression as a whole body from the actions of the ordinary chemical compounds of which it is composed. The chemicals are reducible to earthly elements, but the body contains this remarkable property of self-promulgation and growth that is not simply liable to stagnation and decay. The science of biology offers a similar concept in its recognition of a part of the physical body called the "germ plasm". It consists of the cells that give rise to the sex cells, that are also seen to pass in a line of continuity from generation to generation, combining with similar elements from other bodies to convey both information and the "germ of life" to the progeny on which the continuity of generations depends. 

            In retrospect, it seems strange that science does not even suggest that there is any question about an additional indefinable quality of life associated with this special nature of the germ-plasm. This unique part of our body clearly represents the special qualities of the "everlasting". In the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the body that has the qualities of a Sahu is even able to associate with other souls, and to "have converse" with the Sahus of the gods. It therefore has qualities of the living physical body that are more available to those with a previously developed sense of our basically personal, hence unique, sense of being. A rough analogy might be the information on being that is passed on through the transmission of our DNA to our offspring that can persist in our lineage forever after the death of our physical body. It doesn’t take a genetic engineer to appreciate comments like “She looks just like her Grandmother!” or “Oh she has her Dad’s eyes!” An individual’s contribution of ½ of the DNA that passes to their children’s genetic makeup could potentially be seen as the Sahu’s ability to “communicate” with like stages or “levels” of being in others. Modern day genetics research has made us keenly aware of the Sahu body with our developing capacity for genetic engineering and manipulation of the DNA in living organisms.

            We see here an example of the advantages of conceptualization that are offered by the Egyptian texts. In our language we do not ordinarily distinguish this seemingly immortal germinating property of the Sahu as a separate property of "life", although it could legitimately be considered so, even in science. The limiting of our scientific concepts mainly to the material universe of "things," is thus made more evident through recognition of these fundamental and significant distinctions that our more usual habits of concept and language fail to make for us. The Egyptian view of levels of existence and Being begin to show something of the subtlety of attention that needs to be, and could be invoked, in relation to the real functions of our bodies that we so thoughtlessly take for granted.

The Soul – The Abu, the Sekhem and the Ka

            On the second level of existence that we shall call the soul, the Egyptians recognized three bodies: the Abu (the heart), the Sekhem (the image) and the Ka (often translated as the soul). They are perhaps to be thought of as psychical properties that relate to the physical properties of man. That is, they partake somewhat of the nature of the body while displaying additional special levels of sensitivity. They also have a certain independence from the physical body. What seems to us of particular value here is the further questions this raises about our usual assumption that what we perceive as properties of humankind are directly or entirely dependent solely on the material, physical body.

            The Abu in the ritual depictions of introduction to life in the “afterworld” is symbolized by the Egyptians as the physical heart of the body. It is treated by the texts as the seat of the power of life, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is the seat of the attitude of our being to that power. For example, the Egyptians held it to be the seat of the arising of "good and bad thoughts" in living humans. We tend to associate heart with the origin of many of the finest sensations that arise in the course of our lives. What, for example, do we make of the feelings of transport that may be aroused by exquisite music? What is the source in us of the movement of appreciation of fine works of other art forms? In fact, the states in which we are cognizant of these factors may also be close to what we call "Love", that every school child learns to associate with the drawing of the heart. These well-known phenomena of our experience have a certain ethereal quality about them - feelings of lightness or transcendence. 

            The Egyptians had a strong recognition of the need for a balance in all factors of our being. Thus the heart is also seen as the seat of negative emotions or "bad thoughts". The enlivening feelings of love for another can easily become heartbreak and hate at the end of a relationship. On occasion we still speak of having a “heavy heart”.  The two aspects of the Abu, light and heavy, are qualities that we understand in common, even while we exist as seemingly separate individuals. They are functions that are tied to and dependent on the individual body. 

            If these contrary attributes, good and bad, are to be located in the heart, perhaps we too can understand why it is that the Abu is identified as the organ that is "weighed" in judgment. The Egyptians captured this concept in their representation of the “Weighing of the Heart” ceremony that is so dramatically illustrated on tomb walls and funerary papyri (Figure 22). The image shows a scale with the Abu on one side and the feather of neter Maat on the other side. According to the prayers repeated in the texts, the heart must be found to be lighter than Maat's feather if the "dead" person is to be acceptable in the "life" represented as the kingdom of Osiris in the Duat. Otherwise the heavy heart is fed to the crocodile-headed neter Ammit, the "devourer of the Dead". While the heart of the person might be heavy or light depending on their existence, the lightness of Maat’s feather is a constant unchanging standard against which it will be compared. Maat, neter of Justice and Truth, is an obvious direct symbolization of "abstract" qualities of one’s higher aspirations. The development of its qualities is clearly seen as something that is the responsibility of the incarnate person. It is beyond concerns with one’s body chemistry. It thus represents a property that is in the body but not necessarily "of" it. 

Figure 22. The Weighing of the Heart in the lower center of the scene. The Abu is on the left scale and the feather of Maat is on the right. Anubis steadies the scale on the right and Djeuti stands to the right of the scale recording the weight. The crocodile faced neter Ammit sits patiently behind Djeuti in the hope of devouring a “heavy heart”. The Ba bird can be seen as the human headed bird just above the scale with the heart. (Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_of_Ani).

            It is important to remember that the scene of the Weighing of the Heart is a metaphor for ourselves. Each aspect of the image is full of meaning. Even the scale can be seen as a representation of our attention that is required to distinguish and weigh our moods against our knowledge of our higher aspirations.

            The second part of the psychic body, the Sekhem is more abstract, and is often translated as the "image." It seems to "personify" an essential view of character that may even appear in the statue of an individual, before as well as after death. This unusual idea may be recognizable by us in the correlation we often find to exist between the "appearance" of individuals, and what we call their "character" in ordinary life.

            The idea of the Sekhem seems to centre on aspects of our nature related to what we call “personality”, that are seen and recognized by others but are not the same as our view of ourselves. Similar questions arise in attempting to understand the relation of the characters in the ancient story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu[26]. By considering the “image” as a body we are reminded that self-knowledge requires that we need to learn to deal with a wholeness of our attributes. This is a conception that we find very difficult to have of ourselves, separate from our changeable moods. Yet we are sensitive to a corresponding more general level of existence by our experiences with our fellow human beings. Through glimpses of what is implied by the word "image", we may be able to recognize that our views of ourselves are almost always "partial".

            It is difficult to appreciate what further significance the Egyptians may have placed on this body, since the Sekhem seems at times to be a part that can leave the body and appear among the eternal aspects of man; that is, among the gods – that is on levels more-than-merely-personal. We recognize, again, an example of subtlety that pervades the texts and that needs to be appreciated if we are to believe that we understand the significance of the Egyptian literature for us. 

            The third of the qualities of the soul, the Ka, seems to hold out to us a curious blend of the literal and the abstract. It is represented in hieroglyphics as two arms with upraised forearms and hands (see Figure 21 above). Brind Morrow views the Ka as the “emanation body”[27]. The word has been recently translated as "spiritual essence," but is most often translated in scholarly works as the "soul," a term that raises questions about just what we mean by the word. A principal attribute of the Ka, evident throughout the texts, is its remarkable mobility and at least partial independence of the physical body. When paired with the twisted thread hieroglyph for “h”, Ka can be found in the word often translated as “magic”[28].  The Ka is represented as able to move about invisibly in the world, unrestrained by physical boundaries, such as walls or physical objects. In this sense our word, "ghost", invokes our associations more strongly than the term "soul". However, the Ka has subtle attributes that go beyond such simplistic ghostly designation.

            The Ka arises in the physical body or at least simultaneously with it, having been created separately but at the same time on the potter’s wheel of Khnum (Figure 23).  It apparently retains its essential separate "form" after death of the physical body. That is, it comprises a balance of all of the properties and sensitivities to be found in us. However, this state of the body does not simply exist, it requires maintenance. In Egyptian symbols, the Ka is dependent on a supply of the same "nourishment" as the living, physical body. That is not to say that the Egyptian beliefs are to be interpreted as a need of the Ka for chemical nourishment, although this has been the literal interpretation of the ritual inclusion of food and many other objects of everyday life in their tombs. The intention of such ceremonies seems to be symbolic recognition of the level of being that is our essential nature as an individual presence, and is dependent on the impressions or qualities that we are able to receive from our relationships to our environment, both external and internal.

Figure 23. Khnum seated on the right modeling the Pharaoh’s spirit on the potter’s wheel in the form of his Ka and Ba represented as two standing figures. The Ba is represented by the figure holding a bird in his hand. Both representations of the Pharaoh have hairstyles that are indicative of a young juvenile individual[29].

            The well-being of the Ka depends upon a nourishment that seems to take place through a form of self-awareness. That is, nourishment does not take place except when in the present moment we can have an impression of ourselves that we earlier called self-remembering. This is emphasized in the Egyptian symbolism by the idea that it is the Ka of the individual that meets the Ka of the god Osiris in the moments after the weighing of the heart. In this act, the “dead” person is also called Osiris and shares in his nature. Hence, in the literature of Ancient Egypt there are continual reminders that this aspect of existence depends on a special awareness of ourselves that is in accordance with the essential and special nature of the re-membered Osiris. There can be no confusion here between popular conceptions of a ghost-like continuance of a kind of ethereal personality, and the actuality of a sense of my own living presence, a life that exists in the rare moments when "I am", Being in the eternal NOW.

            Whereas the Ka appears to have a creation in a moment, it does seem to have a period of time external to the physical bodies where it is encouraged to move on, away from the physical body, up into the stars to join and be one with other surviving Kas. The Egyptians attributed special sensitive powers to the group of Kas that is referred to as “The Kas of the Ancestors.” They seem to be perceived in our world at the time in the morning just before the actual appearance in the sky of the disc of the sun. Similarly, this special place in the world of the neters, appears again at sunset, just after the disc has set, but the sky still shows the complexes of shades and colourations that characterize the brief appearance of this higher world in ours at this remarkable daily time of transition. It is through the moods or attitudes that can be felt to be engendered in us as individuals or as groups, that at these times we may be led to perceive particularly clearly the larger dimensions of being that can arise in our consciousness. This was especially known by the Ancient Egyptians who lived in a climate where, in particular seasons, weather conditions always allowed the sun to be observed arising above the horizon at morning.

The Spirit – The Ba, the Khaibit and the Akh

            At the third general level of man's possible existence, the Egyptians recognized two or perhaps three bodies that are completely independent of the physical body: the Ba, the Khaibit and the Akh. These bodies seem to be the only ones that can survive permanently beyond the death of the physical body, and come to exist in the realm of the gods/neters, while still having possible relationships with whatever else exists of the remnants of our natures. This is the basis on which we ventured the general name, "spirit".

            The best known and defined of the bodies at this level is called the Ba. Brind Morrow translates this as “soul”[30]. It has the mobility of the Ka, but is not restricted in the forms it takes, and is most often represented in the vignettes of the Book of Coming Forth by Day in the form of a small bird with a human head (Figure 22 and Figure 24). The Ba is distinctly different from the Ka in the fact that it is no longer dependent on nourishment from levels "below" it in the spiritual hierarchy. The Ba depends only on nourishment from the level of the neters and "eats" the same foods as nourishes the gods. With the Ba we encounter the first elements of human existence that can have eternal life, all the previously recognized forms being limited by mortality: that is, they exist in the lower dimensionality of ordinary time.

Figure 24. The Sacred Ba Bird, hovering over the Mummy of a dead Pharaoh (Papyrus of Ani, British Museum).

            In alchemical language a primary function of the soul is to form a bridge between body and spirit. The spirit is regarded as a phenomenon that "descended" from heaven into the life of us as individuals on earth. It seems appropriate to call the Ba the lowest representative of this spiritual level of being in us, simply from this apparent relationship to the Being. That is, the Ba partakes of our individual nature and yet transcends it. If we could call the part of us that transcends the purely personal and yet is most sensitive to the highest qualities of individual humankind, our specific “Consciousness”, perhaps we could say that the Ba in us represents an “Objective Conscience”. This places the idea of the creative irrational into the spiritual perspective. 

            There is another noun, Khaibit, used rarely in the Book of Coming Forth by Day, but which, when it appears, is used virtually as a synonym for the word Ba. According to Budge[31], it is used more commonly in the Pyramid Texts, although it is not separately identified by Allen[32]. On the walls of the Pyramid of Unas, it still appears as a body virtually inseparable from the Ba, or at least one that dwells very close to it. Some Egyptologists accord it separate status, and in translation, give it the name, "shadow," apparently in the belief that it has the same qualities as a "spirit" of that name mentioned in mystical Greek and Roman writings. The shadow has also found its way into modern psychology in the works of Jung. We have no basis here for clearly distinguishing it from the Ba, but at the least it appears as a go-between of the Ba and the higher body that is called the Khu , the Akhu, or simply the Akh. Perhaps the Ba casts a "shadow" when it appears in the spiritual light that pervades and emanates from the realm of the Akh.

            The final, truly eternal part of human existence is known as the Akh. It is first represented in the hieroglyphic carvings of the Pyramid Texts (Figure 25) and can be found throughout the later history of Egyptian writings (Figure 26). It is literally the "shining" or translucent one. It seems to lend itself more readily to the term "spirit", and is often translated as the "intelligence," in the sense that it is the "light" of an exalted state of independence and initiative in the universe of the bodies. The texts show this part as having its normal dwelling place in the “heaven” of the neters. The objective of the Akh of being human is to wend its way back into that central realm where it can dwell with the Akhs of the gods. This imagery is very similar to that of Philo and Plotinus that we present later in Chapter 11.

Figure 25. Akhs carved into the walls of the pyramid of Unas[33].

Figure 26. The Sacred Akh Bird, as represented by the Crested Ibis[34].

            In the Pyramid Text version on the Pyramid walls of the Pharaoh Teti, is written:

 "Horus has loved you and provided you;

Horus has painted his eye on you.

Horus has parted your eye, that you might see with it . . .

Horus has found you and has become Akh through you.

Horus has elevated the gods to you;

He has given them to you that they might brighten your face.

Horus has put you in front of the gods;

He has made you acquire all that is yours.[35]”

            Here we have an indirect reference to the battle between Horus and Seth. It deals with the reconstituted capacities following Osiris’ dismemberment and death. It is dealing with the spiritual level. The reference to the eye is thus a double reminder that in the place of dwelling of the Akh we are addressing the Teti's highest potential power as a whole, remembered being. If we can understand the Ba as an aspect of higher being corresponding to Objective Conscience, it would seem appropriate to name the Akh correspondingly as an “Objective Consciousness”.

            In summary of the extreme of the levels of human bodies there is a critical statement carved into the walls of the Pyramid of Unas:

 “Akh, to the sky! Corpse, to the earth![36]”

Or as Brind Morrow translates:

“The serpent goes to the sky. The centipede falcon under the shoe.[37]”

            There are natural venues for our bodies. While the Christian idea of “from dust to dust” is appropriate for our corpse, the Akh is appropriately assigned to the sky above.

 

The Great Sun God Ra

            The highest of all creative irrational conceptions of what might represent the full spiritual development of the potential of being alive is represented as the ultimate Egyptian God Ra (Figure 27). This represents the force that created everything. It is associated with the Sun, particularly at dawn and dusk. Ra knows many forms and can be seen sharing his nature with aspects of other gods when he takes the names Ra-Harakhty, Amon-Ra, Sebek-Ra, and Khnum-Ra. 

Figure 27. The Ancient Egyptian sun god in the form of Ra-Herakti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra.

            Ra is closely associated with the Pharaoh. In a recitation from Pyramid Texts from the Pyramid of Pepi II we see that the tradition captures in the writing is guiding the Pharaoh to become more than his highest level of Akh:

"This Pepi Neferkare has gone forth to the sky and Pepi Neferkare has found the Sun waiting to meet him.

Pepi Neferkare will sit on (his) shoulders, and he will not set Pepi Neferkare down, knowing that Pepi Neferkare is his eldest son.

This Pepi Neferkare is elder to every god: Pepi Neferkare is in fact more Akh than the Akhs, Pepi Neferkare is more skilled than the skilled; this Pepi Neferkare is more lasting than the lasting.[38]"

            It is obvious that the initiate Pharaoh is reaching a level beyond the Akh.  The initiate is becoming the peak of the Egyptian concept of Being - Ra.

            In the Pyramid Texts of Unas the initiate Pharaoh becomes so powerful that he feeds on the other gods:

“Unas is the sky’s bull, with terrorizing in his heart, who lives on the evolution of every god, who eats their bowels when they have come from the Isle of Flame with their belly filled with magic.[39]”

or as Brind Morrow translates it:

 “Unas becomes the bull of Heaven.

His heart throbs as he lives in the form of every star

Feeding in their pastures as they come,

Their insides filled with spiritual power

From the encircling fire of the horizon.[40]”

            The key role of the Pharaohs in their lifetime was to develop themselves, on behalf of their subjects, to be able to join with the Ra in the heavens upon their death on earth, thence to reflect back to the aid of those seeking to rise from the lower levels. We see Ra in these Ancient Egyptian writings as the realization of the whole of life’s experience of “Being”. The struggle to find the level of Ra in us is the goal of our real existence in life.  The extensive instructions carved into the surfaces of the oldest of the pyramids as the Pyramid Texts guiding the initiate through the challenges of the Duat to reach his position in Ra points to how vital it was that the work and journey be successfully carried out. We see this as the oldest representation of what we develop here as our spiritual – the Being of Ra.

The Creative Irrational In The Bodies of a Human

            The observation that the Ancient Egyptians were concerned about the subtleties of human existence in their writing 5000 years ago is striking. They clearly lay out their perception of the levels of humans beyond the merely physical body. At this, the beginning of human culture, the Pyramid Texts do not deal with procuring more food or producing more babies or being better prepared to resist storms. They reflect a worldview that is much beyond that associated with the simple burials that have been seen with other hominins such as Neanderthals. One measure of the importance to the Ancient Egyptians of the knowledge captured in the Pyramid Texts is the amount of effort, both planning and execution, that went into creating the first pyramids with their highly refined carvings. Their creation is evidence of the exceptionally high value the culture placed on capturing and preserving these ideas. The ideas recorded inside the pyramids were essential to the Ancient Egyptian culture for the thousands of years that the culture persisted. The urgings in the Pyramid Texts for the initiate to reach higher levels of being can be seen as representing the all-important aspects of the spiritual in human existence. What they took such great pains to express was truly the result of the creative irrational. 

            Understanding that we are composed of more than one type of body is a challenge. But we can learn to experience various levels of existence, awareness or Being. These levels range from the lower levels, where we begin to pay attention to our ordinary states of consciousness that some traditions refer to as “waking sleep” in our everyday body, mind and emotions. We see them portrayed in the Ancient Egyptian writing where they recognized that there are different levels of perception in life that were seen as differences in the qualities of what can be opened to us. Critically they were dealing with esoteric aspects of human life where we now recognize that we especially require that we attend to this ability to give rise to and maintain a sense of ourselves. Knowledge of both the struggle and what it is we seek is instrumental in assisting us to return to the question of what is essential to our human nature: something we need to identify in relation to what can be seen about our Being. Their teachings help us recognize our own needs for a considerable knowledge of our developmental level.  In these Ancient Egyptian works we are offered models through which can personally explore our own possibilities. 

———————————- Chapter 6 The Greek Expression of the Creative Irrational ———————————



———————- Table of Contents ——————————

[1] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness – Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions. Vermont.

[2] Naydler, J. 2004.  Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt. Inner Traditions.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_pyramids

[4] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness – Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions. Vermont.

[5] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. Page 108.

[6] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. Page 19.

[7] Brind Morrow, S. 2015. The Dawning Moon of the Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York. P. 165

[8] http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/Sarcnorth2RH.htm

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts

[10] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  289 pp.

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Unas

[12] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind:  Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. Farrar Straus and Giroux. New York, 239 pp.

[13] Naydler, J. 2005. Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts. Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vt.

[14] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  P. 53.

[15] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York. 

[16] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  p. 98.

[17] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York. 

[18] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. p. 31.

[19] Brind Morrow, S. 2015. The Dawning Moon of the Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York. p. 145.

[20] The early translators translated the Egyptian letters “ntr” into the more familiar word “gods”. Throughout this book we stick to the original word Egyptian word “neter” except the higher deities of Ra, Atum, Osiris and Horus.

[21] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions. 

[22] VandenBroeck, A. 1987. Al-Kemi, Hermetic, Occult, Political and Private aspects of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz. Inner Traditions/Lindesfarne Press, distributed by Harper and Rowe, Inc.

[23] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind:  Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. Farrar Straus and Giroux. New York, 239 pp.

[24] Schwaller de Lubicz, R.A. 1998.  The Temple of Man: Apet of the South at Luxor. (Two Volumes) Inner Traditions International, Rochester, Vermont.  1048 pp.

[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi

[26] Dickie, L.M. and P. R. Boudreau. 2015.  Awakening Higher Consciousness:  Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer.  Inner Traditions.  Rochester. Vermont. 

[27] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind:  Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. Farrar Straus and Giroux. New York, p. 38.

[28] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions. Vermont.

[29] http://www.secretoftheankh.com/?p=157

[30] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind:  Unlocking the Pyramid Texts. Farrar Straus and Giroux. New York, p. 27.

  [31] Budge, E.A.W. 1967. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. (The Papyrus of Ani)  Dover Publications Inc. New York. 

[32] Allen, J.P. 2000. Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs.  Cambridge University Press, London and New York.  

[33] http://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/images/AnteeastGH.jpg

[34] http://www.egyptianmyths.net/akh.htm

[35] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. Page 80.

[36] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. p. 57.

[37] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  p. 134.

[38]Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. p. 273.

[39] Allen, J.P. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Society of Biblical Literature. Atlanta. p.101

[40] Brind Morrow, S.  2015.  The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  p. 125.

Chapter 4: The Spirituality Spectrum

            For hundreds of thousands of years modern humans lived, reproduced, evolved and distinguished themselves from the other hominin species. They interbred with Neanderthals, Denisovan and likely other hominins. Like other hominins they created art and buried their dead. As we saw in the last chapter, only Homo sapiens began pursuing creative irrational activities, most notably the creation of megalithic structures, circa 12,000 BCE. The early megalithic constructions most likely were attempts to capture impulses higher than those arising from hunger or fear. The ubiquitous alignments of their stone structures with celestial markers, whether sunrise, sunset, the Milky Way and or star clusters strongly suggest their connections with the more-than-merely personal aspects of their lives. They were definitely working to receive and transmit the creative irrational in their lives.

            It was not for another 7,000 years after the beginning of the Göbekli Tepe constructions that humans developed a new method of expressing themselves. The cultures of the Sumerians and Egyptians circa 3,000 BCE establish writing. An expression that we take for granted in our modern day societies providing the societies with further opportunity to express their higher complex thoughts. As a result, the writing that we have found provides much greater insights into their motivations and worldviews. Indeed while these two advanced cultures produced megalithic architecture and art it is through writing that they were able to provide metaphor and allegory to address the more-than-merely personal aspects of life. As our discussion moves from the pre-literate period of human development to a time when human consciousness was recorded in words, phrases and literature we find evidence of more than day-to-day concerns. We can recognize a continuing development of interest in the higher, creative irrational, leading toward spiritual, aspects of human existence.Although time and culture separate us from the scribes there is a shared commonality that allows us to still appreciate and learn from their efforts[1].

            Between the two extremes of human existence from purely physical to that of our highest spiritual expressions there are various levels of existence available to humans. We capture this range of existence in what we see as the “spirituality spectrum”. It is an effort to connect our most mundane, ordinary, day-to-day existence, associated primarily with our rational animal sides, with the highest spiritual expression. The spirituality spectrum as presented in Table 2attempts to capture our rational aspects in the left-hand side while the highest levels of human existence are on the right-hand side. 

Table 2. Spirituality Spectrum showing a comparison of a selection of classifications of the levels of human consciousness relating to the irrational and spiritual.

            We begin the Table with the oldest description of the various levels of human existence. It comes from the Ancient Egyptians initially in the Pyramid Texts circa 2,500 BCE and elsewhere in their literature and art. They first captured this range of human existence in their presentation of the various “human bodies”. Our interpretation of the Ancient Egyptian bodies is presented in the first row of Table 2 from its purely physical body form on the left, through to the existence in Ra on the right. The following rows in the Table represents a “rough” mapping of the various stages of Being as conceived of by cultures and individuals onto the structure provided by the Ancient Egyptians. We find very similar representations in a selection of later traditions from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century teacher Gurdjieff and the psychologist Jung. This presents a gross summary of the results from the many approaches followed throughout the history of human culture. In the remainder of this book we explore all of these interpretations of the human condition in more detail. The reader needs to be aware that there can be no exact equivalence drawn among the different traditions – some traditions that extend over millennia.  Over such a period human consciousness and individual Being are likely to have been experienced in so many different personal ways as to defy simple classification. Yet, we need to recognize that humans have been examining and attempting to express such thoughts since the very beginning of modern human societies. As we see it, these are just different formulations of a worldview that is ultimately irrational and strongly linked to the spiritual aspects of humanity. As a result, these few examples help us to recognize expressions of the creative irrational in many traditions that have evolved over the past 5,000 years.

————————— Chapter 5: The Egyptian Bodies of a Human ——————————

———————- Table of Contents ———————-

[1] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions, Vt.

[2] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications

[3] http://www.gurdjieff.justwizard.com/all&ever.html & http://ae.gurdjieff.org.gr/chapters/en50/chapter47.htm

[4] http://gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com/tag/body-kesdjan/

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_(Fourth_Way)

Chapter 3: Pre-historic/Pre-Literate Human Irrationality

            Modern day humans, Homo sapiens, are a result of the biological evolution that has been underway since the beginning of life on earth. They/we are the last surviving hominin species of many that have evolved over the history of the planet. Early hominins existed for millions of years as hunter-gatherers – small groups of individuals who harvested from their surrounding environment, and likely made infrequent kills of other animals. They moved amongst a number of locations as the resources in the local area became depleted. It is important to recognize that such life styles are still successful, as they are known to persist on the globe even today (Figure 10) [1]. It is unclear how well these present-day cultures compare with hominins of millions of years ago, nor exactly how we began the evolutionary process that distinguishes us from other primates, but it is important to note that present day hunter gatherers, as well as our distant hominin relatives, are much more like ourselves than the other animals on the globe.

Figure 10. Members of the present day Pirahã people of Amazonian Brazil one of the many existing hunter-gatherer cultures that continue to exist in the world today[2].

            There are millions of years of history between the time of the split between the great apes and the resulting hominins. The greater part of this time predates any kind of literature that would help us to understand the success and failures of hominins over time. In this chapter we look for evidence of the creative irrational in the pre-literate cultures. We need to look at activities and behaviours such as working with fire and the start of megalithic constructions that need to be seen as reflecting characteristics that express the creative irrational and possibly a sense of the spiritual.

Why the Need for the Creative Irrational in the Human Success Story?

            In this book we are asking the question “Are humans the only irrational species?  Is this unique characteristic the key to our success and dominance in the world?” We are interested in this essential creative irrational that can be attributed uniquely to modern Homo sapiens. It is in this sense of “beyond reason” that we find the critical piece of the human development puzzle that distinguishes us from all other organisms.

            To be clear: it is not a question of whether or not modern humans express irrationality, but is our level of irrationality the key to the success of our species? With irrationality as the purview solely of Homo sapiens, is it that which sets us apart from all other species – including the other hominins? In particular, we can see that the positive, creative irrational has been expressed throughout the history of humankind from the first effective control of fire to the building of the first megalithic structures on to modern day quantum physics. This creative irrational can be seen in the initiation of many, if not all, of the more concrete accomplishments of modern humans.  Such outbursts of the irrational may help explain our success over time. For us to see a trait as essential in human development, we must be able to trace it back to the beginning of our separation from other species. 

            Many theories have been proposed for the development and “success” in terms of survival and multiplication of the modern human. One author suggests it was the ability of hairless modern humans to run down prey on the savannas of Africa that was primary[3]. Some authors suggest that modern humans evolved bigger brains that facilitated communication and abstract thought[4], although since it is now recognized that Homo neanderthalensis had a slightly larger average brain size than modern humans, that seems hardly enough by itself [5]. It is still unclear how and why the hairless, slight-of-build, modern humans bred with and out-survived several of our more physically robust cousin species such as Homo neaderthalensis (Neanderthals) and Homo sapiens subspecies Denisovan (Denisovan) through the end of the last Ice Age to become the dominant species on the planet[6]. 

            As discussed in the last chapter, all biological species need to address their needs for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Everything from single-celled bacteria up to and including human beings need to provide for these immediate living requirements. As early as 2 million years ago, like many other animals, we find a number of early hominins[7] that worked stones into tools that made their lives easier. This was the case with Homo habilis[8]. A later hominin species, Homo erectus certainly used both very practical stone tools and fire to enhance their procurement and use of food. There is even some evidence for their creation of rudimentary art[9]. They persisted for over a million years to as recently as 70,000 years ago[10]. In comparison to the relatively short 300,000-years of existence for modern humans, Homo erectus certainly qualifies as successful[11]. Yet they too became extinct. 

            We now know that not only did modern humans coexist on the planet with several other closely related hominin species such as Neanderthals, Denisovans and possibly others, but they also interbred with these other hominins. So what characteristics did Homo sapiens express beyond those of its close relatives that allowed them to survive while other species became extinct? Could the creative irrational have been essential to getting humans through the many hardships of living endured through the warm and colder cycling of the last 100 million years and eventually to have led them to inhabit all of the World’s ecosystems except Antarctica?

            A milestone in the development of Homo sapiens has been found in the archeological research in South Africa where 100,000 years ago a population of humans occupied an area on the southeast coast[12]. Food from the coastal ocean was plentiful and their environment was far from the warm and cold cycles of ice ages in the more extreme northern latitudes. They certainly were not living  “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” as suggested as an aside by Hobbs[13] in 1651. Even at this early stage of human cultural evolution the residents of this South African site were readily meeting their requirements for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures that would have allowed for a diversion of attention to “non-essentials”. In addition to the rational activities represented in the creation and use of tools, the site contains artifacts that undeniably represent art, reflecting the early importance of the irrational. Shells with holes made in them for stringing and the use of ochre as decoration of individuals at the site go beyond what might reasonably be thought of as being purely for food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Here we see an early example of the importance of the irrational in human development; the beginning of the all-important creativity shown by individuals “thinking outside of the box”.

            It was fifty thousand years after the encampments in South Africa flourished that one branch of modern humans is known to have co-habited with Neanderthals in Western Europe. They interbred with the Neanderthals who had survived there for 600,000 years until as recently as 24,000 years ago. There is also evidence of interbreeding among Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovan in South Asia[14]. Yet despite the evidence for occupation by all three species across much of the Eurasian land mass, in a relatively short time period following the end of the last glacial maximum, all other hominin species became extinct and only Homo sapiens remained. We are left with the question of “Why?” How and why did modern humans outlast robust and successful Neanderthals and Denisovan and why have they since become the dominant species on Earth? We see that several other hominin species have expressed their creativity by use of tools and displayed other talents that promoted their access to food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. But humans somehow have become unique and different through their evolution.

            When do we first see the creative irrational in hominins? The movement to follow our irrational impulses in art, architecture and all other aspects of the creative, including the spiritual, may be more than just a hidden side of humans that needs to be tolerated. Maybe it is essential to our ongoing success. It is critical that we consider it in our present and future possibilities both individually and also as a species on Earth. Of particular interest here is our wish to undertake a critical review of the role of the irrational in the success of humans and what it might mean for understanding and evaluating spirituality in our modern day society.

 

Background

            There are a number of activities and behaviours that distinguish us from other animals and other primates. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, rational use of simple tools is widespread in many, if not all, animals so this doesn’t separate “us” from “them”. Certainly our evolutionary tree does contain close cousins who excelled at the development of highly refined tools[15]. The early hominin species Homo habilis is so named to reflect its development and use of stone flakes as tools that they could then use to cut up animals for food and skins[16].  Hominin creation and use of tools certainly helped to promote their success over those species that had limited tool use.  But there are other developments in hominin development that surely contributed more to their long-term success than did simple tool use.

            In this chapter we look at some of the characteristic behaviours that must have developed very early in our cultural evolution, behaviours that can be viewed as being more important than those that we appreciated in relation to the many rational behaviours exhibited by other animals.  We presented some of them in the last chapter. Although language can be seen as both a rational and irrational activity in hominins, the lack of any hard evidence for the initial timing of its use and its effects on the success of hominins makes it impossible to include it here in our discussion of the essential irrational in human development. It certainly must have had an important impact, but there is little hard evidence that we are able to consider here. We do have suggestions of behaviours that provide us with evidence of a growing need for expression of the irrational in human behaviour that includes their need to deal with fire, as well as for their creation of art and ultimately the building of megalithic structures.

Containing Fire – the Initial Irrational?

             Fire – that which can cook our food and burn our flesh. Fire in nature is certainly common and often becomes dangerous to life and limb. Forest fires in the temperate zones or grass fires in equatorial zones can almost eliminate most forms of biological life, although in most cases some species always survive. Over time through regeneration and/or immigration the ecosystems recover. Some species of trees now even require fire to perpetuate themselves.  But to most animals, including hominins, fire is mostly to be feared and may result in death when it is uncontrolled. How did early hominins make the leap from fearing fire like all other animals, to taking advantage of its ability to cook food to improve its taste and nutritional value?

            First, it is important to note that as in the situation with tools, there is no strict distinction between the reaction of hominins and other animals. Our close cousins the chimpanzees have been observed to benefit from the effects of fire in the wild. They have been observed to follow fire started naturally in the wild, and benefit from eating any toasted animals that remain once the fire has moved on and the ground has cooled down. But they will not approach it directly while it is burning[17]. Although they do not seem to approach fire carelessly, they don’t seem to be afraid or stressed about it.  They are able to predict and respond to the progress of the fire[18]. But very importantly, they have never been observed to start fires.

            Bonobos have come even closer to the use of fire - once they have been guided by their human trainers. In captivity they have been coached to use matches to ignite a fire. One Bonobo, named Kanzi, has been videoed setting up a campfire, starting it burning, then roasting a marshmallow[19]. While this is an impressive task, the examples given required a lot of support from humans – in conceiving the task, imagining, understanding and producing matches as well as instructing Kanzi on how to put it all together. Without a doubt such complicated tasks are not observed in the wild. Thus they certainly can follow the directions of modern humans to in some way replicate our irrational creativity, but as a species they have not made the use of fire a natural key of their survival strategies.

            Moving closer to the Homo sapiens spp., there is evidence that other hominins made use of fire. Neanderthals apparently used fire, but it is unclear as to whether they ever actually initiated fire or if they just made opportunistic use of it as it occurred in nature[20]. Certainly their use of it is evidence that they didn’t fear fire and, at times benefited from its actions. 

            But Homo sapiens is the only species known to irrationally approach, create and contain fire. Is it the systematic use of fire as an aspect of their activities that conferred such an important advantage on them[21]?  They did this at many different scales of their activities, from individual use in intimate and personalized settings such as campfires, to the social use of large fires set at particular times in the open savannah to encourage new and more vigorous subsequent growth of the grasses in the fields on which they did much of their hunting and where they later must have herded these creatures. Once they had control of fire, they were enabled to vastly expand the range of their social interactions to promote their joint activities, not all of which were strictly required for immediate use.  They also anticipated future needs in the ingenuity they displayed in their means of moving and storage of the means for fire-building throughout their range of travel.  It eventually led them towards the creation of special places is which ritual fires might be built, apparently in aid of rituals associated with their spiritual practises.

Blombos Cave and Pinnacle Point Discoveries – South Africa’s contribution

            The Blombos Cave[22] and Pinnacle Point[23] sites in South Africa were used by humans around 100,000 years ago. They display a major advancement in the lives of hominins as the initiation of truly Homo sapiens development. At these sites there is extensive evidence of far-reaching “leisure” activities including the creation of art in the form of special shell assemblies and the use of ochre for personal decoration. Archaeological evidence has shown that these people had access to abundant food sources allowing them to indulge in leisure activities in their local coastal environment. There are numerous modern day tribes on the west coast of Canada such as the Haida and Coast Salish whose continued existence is based on the abundant resources of their coastal ocean environments[24]. They are only one small sample of the many “traditional” peoples that survive today[25]

            To return to the South African situation, these people had no problem finding adequate food so there was no need to migrate out of the area. It has been speculated that this luxury of resources played a significant role in their ability to shift some of their attention away from the rationale of food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures toward the irrational. One example of their creative processes is found in their use of fire to create silcrete for hunting arrow heads[26]. Although others of their groups were creating hunting points from flaking and flint knapping of naturally-formed materials found in their environment, in this case the early humans discovered, developed and implemented a complex multistep process to turn naturally occurring materials of surface sand, gravel and dissolved silica into a material usable for flaking into points. This level of use of fire for tool creation is far beyond that seen in other primates and hominins. With evidence for a slow and rational development of an advanced pyrotechnology, we see in this development the first significant presence of the creative irrational in humans.

            A second less tangible use of fire in the early South African cultures involves the potential impact of fire control on their social and communication skills. For example, spending time around a stable and controlled campfire would lend itself to communicating and developing their language skills. While there is ample evidence for their development of art in the two sites, and it follows that they had adequate luxury to use language, it is impossible to know to what extent their use of language could have diverged from interactions concerning these essential rational needs, such as “a predator is near”, to holding conversations that would be more than “beyond reason” involving subjects of the past and the future. There is much to be spoken about that is additional to the rational activities of procuring food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Thus one can imagine that ancient South African humans would have discussed topics in addition to those in keeping with present day discussions of the weather, the food, etc. The presence of personal adornments made from shells may have elicited comments such as “nice, pretty thing you have there.” There is no way of knowing when they might have reached broader topics, such as those concerning life, death and the spiritual, but these additional subjects are important enough to have soon demanded their share of a wider human attention, much of which was devoted to these further abstract questions about their lives. 

Cave Paintings in the Dark

            In our initial exploration of the creative irrational in the behaviour of hominins we consider briefly the many incredible paintings found in the dark depths of caves. The earliest examples are found in Indonesia. There we have found the outlines of hands made using mouth-sprayed paint (Figure 11). These may simply be expressions of self-awareness stating “I am here”. But this dates from 35,000 to 40,000 years before present when Southeast Asia was occupied by all three hominin species Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalis and Homo denisovan[27]. It is unreasonable to think that this effort would not offer significant aid for the marking of one’s territory. It is even more likely that the work, found in such an inaccessible location, would not only have required control of fire for lighting, but must surely represent a group effort at recognizing and marking their existence in a manner beyond that required for survival, a sure sign of the creative irrational.

Figure 11. Cave of Pettakere, Bantimurung district (Kecamatan), South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Hand stencils estimated to be made between 35,000-40,000 BCE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting#/media/File:Hands_in_Pettakere_Cave_DYK_crop.jpg).

             A little later in time and ten thousand miles away from the initial Indonesian work are the extensive naturalistic paintings deep in the caves of Chauvet, France[28] and at Altamira, Spain[29]. Both of these earliest European sites of hominin creations have handprints painted on the walls of deep caves, incredibly similar to those seen in Indonesia (Figure 12). But the artwork goes far beyond simple handprints. Here there are black lines that outlined or more broadly filled-in, smudged drawings that date to a period 33,500 to 37,000 years before present (Figure 13 and 14) accompanied by more complex sketches along many stretches of the caves[30].

Figure 12. Handprint from Chauvet Cave (http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/hands/index.php).

Figure 13. Animal paintings from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.com).

 

Figure 14. Early black pictures from Chauvet Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave - /media/File:Paintings_from_the_Chauvet_cave_(museum_replica).jpg).

            A later period of European occupation, from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago, produced extensive paintings of other animals in many caves in Southern France, Spain and Portugal. There are many sites including Pech-Merle[31] and Cougnac[32], France. Again these caves contain handprints on their walls (Figure 15). This is just at the end of the last glacial maximum around 26,500 years before present when temperatures were as low as they had been in this period and were just starting to warm up to present day levels. It was a time of great change for the hominins. Homo denisovan had died out and the Neanderthals were reaching the end of their survival. Although the exact dates of the Neanderthal extinction continue to be actively researched, by 18,000 BCE Neanderthals had died out in their last refuge in the coastal areas near Gibraltar just south of Spain and Portugal - and only modern Homo sapiens remained. The cave paintings from around this time, such as at Rouffignac[33] and Lascaux, date to around 17,000 BCE (Figure 16). They continued to express handprints as well as the more filled-in paintings. If we take the starting date for this activity to be in the Indonesian caves, handprint painting had been expressed for over 20,000 years. This longevity of a cultural activity appears to have occurred over wide-spread areas throughout the time span of the occupation by the three major hominin groups. 

Figure 15. Handprint from Pech-Merle cave in France circa 25,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pech_Merle).

Figure 16. Complex paintings from Lascaux Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux).

            In addition to the cave paintings, humans were producing abstract carvings of stone throughout the period[34]. Carved “Venus figurines” have been found over a wide geographic area from France in the west to Russia in the east. But the creations were generally small pieces, such as the finely carved Venus of Brassempouy (Figure 17). It is only 3.6 cm high. This particular example is dated to the same time period and found in the same geographic area as the site of the Pech-Merle cave paintings. Definitely these hominins were expressing the creative irrational in many forms.

Figure 17. Venus of Brassempouy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Brassempouy).

          What do all these ancient artistic expressions indicate about hominins? Only hominins are known to create such works. The creations are all located in areas that are difficult to reach. They all require working with fire for light. They don’t seem to be immediately related to the direct concerns of the day. Some authors have considered the paintings to be shamanic[35].  The objective may have been to help hunters by enhancing their chances of success or actually may have been representative of the expression of higher levels of awareness and of a sense of spirituality. But that in itself is irrational according to present day thought. Certainly the cultures that created these incredible pieces had to have the necessary luxury of time for the creators to divert effort from food to art. This work would have to have been seen and valued by the others in the communities, some of whom would be required to feed and house the “artists”. It is important to note that the simple creation of handprints using paint persisted from 38,000 BCE down to at least 5,000 BCE. They are found on all continents[36]. Could they have been considered sufficiently valuable to be supported for the making of these illustrations in spite of the fact that not all members of the culture would get to experience – or fully understand them? They are enduring evidence for the cultural importance of the creative irrational. With more information and insights into these peoples we might be able to confirm them as evidence for an awareness of a need for the spiritual in their lives.

            The key question about the cave paintings is how they relate to the rational or irrational of hominins. For the most part they would have been created with great difficulty for non-immediate benefit. If they were created by shamans in connection with some benefits to hunter gatherer’s success at procuring food, then they can be seen in the same light as creating a more efficient spear point. But the time and effort required for cave painting could also have been seen as deliberately diverted from the practical efforts required for tool creation. Moreover, their presence implies sufficient cultural support to enable the creators to realize their dreams, images, visions, or whatever. As such this is an example of the early creative irrational in hominins. It is an activity that does not necessarily translate into immediately rewarded activity. Yet it must have been sufficiently valued by the culture to feed, house and shelter the artists.  The extent of their production over such large geographic and temporal scales couldn’t have been produced by isolated secretive individuals. It must have been a societal endeavour.

Göbekli Tepe Humans’ First Megalithic Constructions

             There is much archaeological evidence of the creative irrational beginning from 35,000 until 13,000 years ago. But it is around 12,500 years ago that we see a major shift in the creative expression of humans as displayed at the Göbekli Tepe site in Eastern Turkey. Here the creative irrational takes on a totally new scale of construction. Its purpose can’t be confirmed, but it was not a site of human long-term settlement. While some remnants of human skulls have been found there, it was not a site of the interment of the dead as has been seen for tens of thousands of years by both humans and Neanderthals[37]. Here we see, for the first time, large-scale stone manipulation and carving that some authors have claimed to be of spiritual origin, or at least as representative of cult objects. The site was first appreciated and described by Professor Klaus Schmidt an archaeologist from Germany[38].  While others had previously encountered the site, it was left unexplored until it caught Schmidt’s attention. In the following two decades he led a group of researchers in uncovering an extensive site with many unique megaliths carefully and precisely positioned in up to 30 separate circles of large stones. The site is now becoming more widely known through the writings of Collins[39] and Hancock[40] who have described it in some detail. The structures are immense. There are 30 roughly circular enclosures of dressed stones some of which are up to 6 metres/20 feet in height. There are many aspects of this amazing site in addition to its size, its careful alignment and the fact that it was created at a time when only hunter-gatherers were thought to be living in small isolated groups around the world.  We focus here on only three features that relate specifically to the fact of the site being illustrative of the creative irrational in this culture: 1) its location is distant from water sources so it could not have served as a place of dwelling, 2) the precision and beauty of the stone carvings is exceptional indicating a more than casual occupation and 3) its deliberate decommissioning and burial was carefully undertaken and designed to completely erase any easy evidence of its existence without actually destroying it.

            The first irrational feature of the site is its distance from water sources. This is one of the primary reasons that Schmidt considered the site as a “temple” rather than any kind of human settlement[41]. Typically hunter-gatherer groups would establish themselves close to water sources to meet their daily needs. Göbekli Tepe is situated on the top of a hill about 10 km from known water sources. Its construction would have required a large workforce and there is evidence for the consumption of large amounts of food during what seems to have been communal feasts. There are numerous animal bones at the site; they appear to be associated with short-term intense feasting events. The coming together of such large numbers of individuals would have required the transport of both food and water some distances. While the reason for the situation of the site so far from water sources can’t be confirmed, but it is highly unlikely that these builders would have chosen it for its ease of occupation. It must have been selected for other irrational reasons that would have supported the diversion of extensive expenditure of time and energy away from the tasks of procuring food or shelter and devoted to other important purposes.

            The second aspect of the site that is associated with the creative irrational is the many highly-refined images carved or embossed on the stones as depicted in Figure 18 and Figure 19. The skill of the constructors at creating such exceptionally fine images on such hard stone surfaces is most unusual for this early time period. Many of the large megalithic stone T-pillars at the site are carved to represent highly stylized human forms. In addition many of the stones have images embossed on their surfaces. Many of the images are simply embossed onto the surfaces of the structure such as the fox in Figure 18. Some of the images are presented in an incredibly detailed 3-D embossed form on the stones (Figure 19). Keeping in mind that only a fraction of the site has been excavated, there is certainly the expectation that many more such creations will be found in the future. Throughout the site the standing structures provide representations of many organisms including snakes, scorpions, or other larger animals such as mastodons and aurochs. There are numerous birds, some of which are well known, but there are also some that are quite unknown.  Among the animals, foxes are especially common. So much so that it has been suggested that the erecters of the whole construction may have been a cult that venerated foxes as especially important animals[42].

Figure 18. Embossed image of a fox on one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/articles/Go_Tep_launch.htm).

 

Figure 19. Embossed image of a panther at the base of one of the T-pillars at Göbekli Tepe (https://www.ancient-code.com/15-mind-boggling-images-of-gobekli-tepe/).

            In addition to producing exquisitely detailed representations on the stone surfaces a most marvellous stone totem has also been found on the site (Figure 20). This piece is about 2 metres high and was embedded in one of the walls of the constructions. The totem is made up of a number of images stacked one on top of another. The top image of the totem is an animal, possibly a bear. Just underneath are arms and hands that are notably human in form. Thus we see their mixing of animal and human forms in a non-naturalist manner, perhaps a little like the totem poles of present day traditional structures in western Canada. Appearing to be held in its arms, is another “person” with a face and arms reaching down. Reaching up from the bottom, on the sides of the totem are snakes wriggling up the sides, as portrayed elsewhere at Göbekli Tepe. This is a fantastic creation. It contains aspects of animal and human forms arranged in a vertical fashion. It is typical of later mythical themes where individuals, likely shamans, take on animal forms for experiencings in other worlds. The possible representation of a mythical birth in the lower image is certainly consistent with such experiences. Of importance here is that this is certainly not simply a rational, naturalist representation of the world of the hunter-gatherers. What were they trying to represent by the mixture of the animal and human forms? Why would often-feared snakes be placed in such an intimate representation with the human image? The size of this totem gives weight to the argument that it was not the result of an idle time-filling activity on the part of the creator/creators. It must represent something of great importance to the society – something beyond food, shelter and procreation.

Figure 20. Various aspects of the stone-carved totem found at the Göbekli Tepe site. (https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/the-gobekli-tepe-totem-pole/).

            The third and last amazing aspect of the site that we will deal with here is it’s decommissioning when great effort was expended to stop the further use of the site by burying it in rubble. It needs to be appreciated that while these structures required a very considerable effort at composition and arrangement in their creation and execution, they were eventually deliberately hidden. For reasons of which we have no idea at all, thousands of years after construction began, the structures were covered with mounds of debris around 8,000 BCE.  This could have been carried out by representatives of the builders or by some later group of people. But it is notable that they did not destroy the site, which would have been relatively easy. Instead they invested significant additional effort and resources in hiding it essentially protecting it from its natural degradation over time. 

            The reason for this remarkable ending of the period of their construction and use is totally unknown!  We have no reason at all for why this was done.  Only that it was obviously an operation of closing an elaborate structure that was agreed among them.  There is no evidence of any prior negative attitude to it; simply it appears that someone or group in charge must have decreed an ending and that then the whole structure was closed to view. This closure was done with an eye to totally clogging up all access to the structure or even of knowledge of its former use and appearance.  Its modern-day discovery was an event that seems to have been quite without prior knowledge of anything being there earlier.  Its closure presents us with a mystery of immeasurable proportions.  We have no explanation for why it was closed and why its former presence should have been so carefully obscured. Such a sense of time and purpose by hunter-gatherers is curious. Their appreciation that the site no longer fulfilled its role and should be terminated reflects an irrational, non-present-moment sense of life. The obscuring rather than burial or destruction suggests a connection with future time. 

            While the reason for creation of the complex and all of its incredible structures is still not known, we see it as a significant pre-literate expression of the human creative irrational. Their motivation to the erection of such great monumental detailed structures is plain evidence of what was considered to be worth their veneration.  That is a much more than casual interest in complex arrangements of objects was displayed. This is quite apart from those essential interests and concerns with food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Here we are shown significant attention directed to objects that played a much more than incidental role of distraction or free-time play. They appear instead to display an intense, directed interest in values that required considerable efforts in both the planning and displaying stages of their activities. This unmistakably important site clearly indicated the presence of questions beyond those representing and dealing with their or our current lives. In them we are presented with an appearance of something that was of foremost significance to them; one that expressed a strong wish for some kind of continuity that could only be captured through manipulating massive stones, hence a sense of the “higher” meaning in their lives.  These remarkable structures seem to mark a distinctive importance given to symbolic representations of the subjects towards which humankind of the time was directing their efforts. Their efforts amounted to a devotion of attentions and actions to a whole new and broader approach to life. 

            How can we see for ourselves the full extent of the creative irrational in these great works at Göbekli Tepe? It was created 12,000 years before present when ancient humans were living in small isolated hunter-gatherer bands. Many believe that they were scraping out a hard life from the limited local resources. The site’s creation using highly skilled techniques of rock quarrying and carving over an extended period of time in an area without evidence of either agriculture or water, suggests a high degree of organization and coordination. 

             One final significance of this site is its impact on how we look at other accomplishments of early humans. Until its discovery much of human accomplishments up until that time were dismissed as the result of random chance of a few isolated individuals. It is only in recent years that modern humans have begun to appreciate the capacities for thought and cooperative action by early human. Göbekli Tepe construction and decommissioning required cooperation, planning and long-range intentions that cannot be denied. With this prominent example of human skills recorded in stone, it allows a re-examination of other accomplishments. Such organizational coordination and creative thought is now being appreciated to have played a role in the accomplishments of Homo floresiensis in sailing to the Island of Flores in Indonesia about 60,000 BCE[43].  That early sailing trip might be viewed as a rational action to find improved living conditions or irrational as a trip of pure discovery. A second example of early coordination can be found in what is now also becoming evident in the populating of North America. By 15,000 BCE humans were migrating by sailing down along the now submerged west coast[44].  The accomplishments of great deeds by early humans through cooperation and planning are just now being fully explored.

Humans’ first city of Jericho

            At around the same time as Göbekli Tepe was constructed, humans were also occupying an area not far away near the springs in Jericho. They lived here in small semi-permanent settlements before the initiation of agriculture. The site is marked by the presence of volcanically produced obsidian glass that is not native to the area. Several sources for obsidian have been located at a distance in northerly Anatoly area and elsewhere.  Its presence in the Levant suggests that humans, who were still hunter-gatherers, were mining and moving their products over large distances throughout the region[45].

            Eleven thousand years ago the early settlements near Jericho were made up of small circular homes. This is the time when the climate was warming up from the last glacial maximum. As temperatures rose and stabilized, the residents of Jericho were taking on a permanent lifestyle. By 10,000 years before the present the site had the massive stonewalls 3.6 m high and 1.8 m wide at the base. Inside the large enclosure was a tower 3.6 m high that is reported as being for ceremonial purposes[46]. In some ways the construction of such a massive tower for unknown, and likely irrational, purposes had some similarities to what has been found at Göbekli Tepe.

            At the Jericho site, 9,000 to 8,000 years before the present, civilization was pursuing a curious and mysterious practice of “last rites” in the treatment of dead bodies. In a number of cases, although the bodies had been placed in the grave, the skulls were removed, covered with plaster and shells and kept in their living spaces.[47]. Through this device of removal and enhancement, the head of the deceased would apparently have been kept closer to human activity and in a more life-like state. For what reason the burial was modified is totally unclear, although it is likely that the altered skull effigy could have been regarded as a memorial to any expression of the former revered person. It is obvious that the culture took this remembrance very seriously. Hence the effigies illustrate to us the earliest evidence of the alteration of human remains in practices that we might understand as reaching toward a spiritual order. We regard it as indicating another appearance of the irrational impulse, but this one signifying the possibility of a quite new conception of transcendence beyond ordinary life. Perhaps their actions were a recognition of a perception of the arising within oneself of another sense of one’s own individuality? 

Summary of Pre-literate insights into the Creative Irrational

            It is evident that humans lived on this earth for hundreds of thousands of years working out the basic necessities of meeting rationally their life requirements. They started out using tools much like many other animals use. Eventually their skills at tool development, production and use, reached levels still not seen in other primates. Evidence that humans overcame their fear of fire, and began creating and controlling fire, is still being sought and discussed. While fire appears in close association with human occupation for possibly a million years, it is not until much more recently, around 125,000 years ago that we see consistent and conclusive evidence of its use[48].

            There is evidence that hominins buried their dead least 100,000 years ago. As Philip Lieberman suggests, it is apparent that burial of deceased bodies may signify a "concern for the dead that transcends daily life.[49]" This most certainly fits our definition of the creative irrational that extends beyond the rational. Coincidentally, this is about the time that the human occupants in South Africa were using decorative red ochre, carving shells and manufacturing silcrete arrowheads. 

            It is not until Göbekli Tepe that we find humans exercising their creative and organizational skills to construct truly inspiring places. Their work was not an isolated event. It appears to have started a lineage that continued in places like Jericho and Çatal Höyük[50]. While there is no literature from this time, it is evident that humans were behaving and expending effort in ways not seen among other animals. More and more of their efforts appear to have been placed on what we often call the non-essential. While this may be the result of an expanding luxury of time and resources, it is striking that so much attention was going to the irrational, thence quite likely spiritual aspects of life. It is impossible for us to say whether the megalithic structures at Göbekli Tepe would have been created without the irrational. One can scarcely imagine all of the work and organization of such a site going only to increase their food intake, but it doesn’t appear to have been so. There is also the possibility that it was built to predict alignment with the stars and predict the changing of the seasons, but it is way “out of scale” for such a simple task in a time when the hunter-gatherers would have many other natural indicators of the changing seasons and weather. Some authors have proposed that the site offers a record of a major world disaster and a warning of future catastrophes[51]. We leave it to the reader to decide which would be more amazing in the consciousness of early hunter-gatherers: On one hand would be the recording of major climate changes or, on the other hand, realizing that there is more to life than simple food, shelter, procreation and immediate pleasures. Our ancient ancestors seem to have had the capacity for awareness of both.

            But while the irrational may be relatively easy to see in humans, we are more interested in that special expression of the irrational that is tied to the spiritual nature of humans. The consistent expression of the spiritual in all of the world’s cultures over the full time-period of our cultural evolution may be tied to the underlying irrational functioning. But in modern day over-rationalized Western societies both are inadequately appreciated. By recognizing the importance and connection between the irrationality and the spiritual in humans, we raise questions about the possible implications for our future.  These are questions that we shall need to consider more fully in what follows. 

—————————— Chapter 4 - The Spirituality Spectrum ———————-

————————— Table of Contents ———————

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/books/a-new-book-and-film-about-rare-amazonian-language.html

[3] McDougal, Christopher. 2009. Born to Run, A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. Alfred A. Knopf.

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal

[6] Harari, Y.N. 2016.  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.  McClelland and Stewart. 450 pp.

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominini

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

[9] http://johnhawks.net/weblog/archaeology/lower/trinil-shell-engraving-2014.html

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus

[11]http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils-found-morocco

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(book)

[14] Fenton, B. 2017. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution. Ancient News Publishing.  http://brucefenton.info/into-africa-theory/

[15] http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-we-became-human.html

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

[17] http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/congo-a-group-of-chimpanzees-seem-to-have-mastered-fire/

[18] https://www.livescience.com/5946-chimps-master-step-controlling-fire.html

[19] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQcN7lHSD5Y

[20] http://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/

[21] https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/

[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blombos_Cave

[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch

[25] Diamond, J. 2012. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? Viking Adult.

[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silcrete

[27] Fenton, B. 2017. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution. Ancient News Publishing.  http://brucefenton.info/into-africa-theory/

[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave

[29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_Altamira

[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave

[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pech_Merle

[32] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grottes_de_Cougnac

[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouffignac_Cave

[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurines

[35] Hancock, G. 2006. Supernatural - Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. Disinformation Books.

[36] http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/prehistoric/hand-stencils-rock-art.htm - oldest

[37] http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/6/e1700564.full

[38] Schmidt, K. 2015. Premier temple (Le): Göbekli Tepe. CNRS.

[39] Collins, A. 2014.  Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods: The Temple of the Watchers and The Discovery of Eden.  Inner Traditions Bear and Co.

[40] Hancock, G. 2017. Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation. Hodder & Stoughton.

[41] https://tepetelegrams.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/who-built-gobekli-tepe/

[42] Collins, A. 2014.  Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods: The Temple of the Watchers and The Discovery of Eden.  Inner Traditions Bear and Co.

[43]  Fenton, B.R. The Forgotten Exodus: The Into Africa Theory of Human Evolution (Kindle Location 864). Ancient News Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[44] http://www.ibtimes.com/did-americas-first-immigrants-travel-land-or-sea-scientists-weigh-2610237

[45] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian

[46] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho

[47] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastered_human_skulls

[48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans

[49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial

[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatalhöyük

[51] Hancock, G. 2017. Magicians of the Gods -The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilisation. Hodder & Stoughton.