Our own age, the fifth of the descending series, began in 522 b.c. and will last for twenty-one thousand years. No Jaina savior will be born during this time, and the eternal religion of the Jains will gradually disappear. It is a period of unmitigated and gradually intensifying evil. The tallest human beings are only seven cubits tall, and the longest life span no more than one hundred and twenty-five years. People have only sixteen ribs. They are selfish, unjust, violent, lustful, proud, and avaricious.
But in the sixth of the descending ages, the state of man and his world will be still more horrible. The longest life will be only twenty years; one cubit will be the greatest stature and eight ribs the meager allotment. The days will be hot, the nights cold, disease will be rampant and chastity nonexistent. Tempests will sweep over the earth, and toward the conclusion of the period these will increase. In the end all life, human and animal, and all the vegetable seeds, will be forced to seek shelter in the Ganges, in miserable caves, and in the sea.
The descending series will terminate and the “ascending” series (utsarpinī) begin, when the tempest and desolation will have reached the point of the unendurable. For seven days then it will rain, and seven different kinds of rain will fall; the soil will be refreshed, and the seeds will begin to grow. Out of their caves the horrible dwarf-creatures of the arid, bitter earth will venture; and very very gradually there will be perceptible a slight improvement in their morals, health, beauty, and stature; until presently they will be living in a world such as the one we know today. And then a savior will be born, named Padmānātha, to announce again the eternal religion of the Jains; the stature of mankind will approach again the superlative, the beauty of man will surpass the splendor of the sun. At last, the earth will sweeten and the waters turn to wine, the wish-fulfilling trees will yield their bounty of delights to a blissful population of perfectly wedded twins; and the happiness of this community again will be doubled, and the wheel, through ten millions of ten millions of one hundred millions of one hundred million periods of countless years, will approach the point of beginning the downward revolution, which again will lead to the extinction of the eternal religion and the gradually increasing noise of unwholesome merrymaking, warfare, and pestilential winds.[11]
This ever-revolving, twelve-spoked wheel of time of the Jains is a counterpart of the cycle of four ages of the Hindus: the first age a long period of perfect bliss, beauty, and perfection, lasting 4,800 divine years;* the second of somewhat lesser virtue, lasting 3,600 divine years; the third of equally intermingled virtue and vice, lasting 2,400 divine years; and the last, our own, of steadily increasing evil, lasting 1,200 divine years, or 432,000 years according to human calculation. But at the termination of the present period, instead of beginning again immediately to improve (as in the cycle described by the Jains), all is first to be annihilated in a cataclysm of fire and flood, and thereby reduced to the primordial state of the original, timeless ocean, to remain for a period equal to that of the whole length of the four ages. The world’s great ages then begin anew.
Figure 56. The Cosmic Woman of the Jains — Detail of Cosmic Wheel (gouache on cloth, India, eighteenth century a.d.)
A basic conception of Oriental philosophy is understood to be rendered in this picture-form. Whether the myth was originally an illustration of the philosophical formula, or the latter a distillation out of the myth, it is today impossible to say. Certainly the myth goes back to remote ages, but so too does philosophy. Who is to know what thoughts lay in the minds of the old sages who developed and treasured the myth and handed it on? Very often, during the analysis and penetration of the secrets of archaic symbol, one can only feel that our generally accepted notion of the history of philosophy is founded on a completely false assumption, namely that abstract and metaphysical thought begins where it first appears in our extant records.
The cosmogonic cycle is to be understood as the passage of universal consciousness from the deep sleep zone of the unmanifest, through dream, to the full day of waking; then back again through dream to the timeless dark. As in the actual experience of every living being, so in the grandiose figure of the living cosmos: in the abyss of sleep the energies are refreshed, in the work of the day they are exhausted; the life of the universe runs down and must be renewed.
The philosophical formula illustrated by the cosmogonic cycle is that of the circulation of consciousness through the three planes of being. The first plane is that of waking experience: cognitive of the hard, gross facts of an outer universe, illuminated by the light of the sun, and common to all. The second plane is that of dream experience: cognitive of the fluid, subtle forms of a private interior world, self-luminous and of one substance with the dreamer. The third plane is that of deep sleep: dreamless, profoundly blissful. In the first are encountered the instructive experiences of life; in the second these are digested, assimilated to the inner forces of the dreamer; while in the third all is enjoyed and known unconsciously, in the “space within the heart,” the room of the inner controller, the source and end of all.[12]
The cosmogonic cycle pulses forth into manifestation and back into nonmanifestation amidst a silence of the unknown. The Hindus represent this mystery in the holy syllable AUM. Here the sound A represents waking consciousness, U dream consciousness, M deep sleep. The silence surrounding the syllable is the unknown: it is called simply “The Fourth.”[13]* The syllable itself is God as creator-preserver-destroyer, but the silence is God Eternal, absolutely uninvolved in all the opening-and-closings of the round.
It is unseen, unrelated, inconceivable,
uninferable, unimaginable, indescribable.
It is the essence of the one self-cognition
common to all states of consciousness.
All phenomena cease in it.
It is peace, it is bliss, it is nonduality.[14]
Myth remains, necessarily, within the cycle, but represents this cycle as surrounded and permeated by the silence. Myth is the revelation of a plenum of silence within and around every atom of existence. Myth is a directing of the mind and heart, by means of profoundly informed figurations, to that ultimate mystery which fills and surrounds all existences. Even in the most comical and apparently frivolous of its moments, mythology is directing the mind to this unmanifest which is just beyond the eye.
“The Aged of the Aged, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form and yet has no form,” we read in a kabbalistic text of the medieval Hebrews. “He has a form whereby the universe is preserved, and yet has no form, because he cannot be comprehended.”[15] This Aged of the Aged is represented as a face in profile: always in profile, because the hidden side can never be known. This is called “The Great Face,” Makroprosopos; from the strands of its white beard the entire world proceeds.
That beard, the truth of all truths, proceedeth from the place of the ears, and descendeth around the mouth of the Holy One; and descendeth and ascendeth, covering the cheeks which are called the places of copious fragrance; it is white with ornament: and it descendeth in the equilibrium of balanced power, and furnisheth a covering even unto the midst of the breast. That is the beard of adornment, true and perfect, from which flow down thirteen fountains, scattering the most precious balm of splendor. This is disposed in thirteen forms....And certain dispositions are found in the universe, according to those thirteen dispositions which depend from that venerable beard, and they are opened out into the thirteen gates of mercies.[16]
Figure 57. The Makroprosopos (engraving, Germany, a.d. 1684)
The text in which we learn of the Makroprosopos and the Mikroprosopos, the Zohar (zōhar, “light, splendor”), is a collection of esoteric Hebrew writing given to the world about 1305 by a learned Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon. It was claimed that the material had been drawn from secret originals, going back to the teachings of Simeon ben Yohai, a rabbi of Galilee in the second century a.d. Threatened with death by the Romans, Simeon had hidden for twelve years in a cave; ten centuries later his writings had bee
n found there, and these were the sources of the books of the Zohar.
Simeon’s teachings were supposed to have been drawn from the hokmah nistarah or hidden wisdom of Moses, i.e., a body of esoteric lore first studied by Moses in Egypt, the land of his birth, then pondered by him during his forty years in the wilderness (where he received special instruction from an angel), and finally incorporated cryptically in the first four books of the Pentateuch, from which it can be extracted by a proper understanding and manipulation of the mystical number-values of the Hebrew alphabet. This lore and the techniques for rediscovering and utilizing it constitute the Kabbala.
It is said that the teachings of the Kabbala (qabbālāh, “received or traditional lore”) were first entrusted by God himself to a special group of angels in Paradise. After Man had been expelled from the Garden, some of these angels communicated the lessons to Adam, thinking to help him back to felicity thereby. From Adam the teaching passed to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham. Abraham let some of it slip from him while he was in Egypt, and that is why this sublime wisdom can now be found in reduced form in the myths and philosophies of the gentiles. Moses first studied it with the priests of Egypt, but the tradition was refreshed in him by the special instructions of his angels.
The white beard of Makroprosopos descends over another head, “The Little Face,” Mikroprosopos, represented full face and with a beard of black. And whereas the eye of The Great Face is without lid and never shuts, the eyes of The Little Face open and close in a slow rhythm of universal destiny. This is the opening and closing of the cosmogonic round. The Little Face is named “GOD,” the Great Face “I AM.”
Makroprosopos is the Uncreated Uncreating and Mikroprosopos the Uncreated Creating: respectively, the silence and the syllable AUM, the unmanifest and the presence immanent in the cosmogonic round.
3. Out of the Void — Space
Saint Thomas Aquinas declares: “The name of being wise is reserved to him alone whose consideration is about the end of the universe, which end is also the beginning of the universe.”[17] The basic principle of all mythology is this of the beginning in the end. Creation myths are pervaded with a sense of the doom that is continually recalling all created shapes to the imperishable out of which they first emerged. The forms go forth powerfully, but inevitably reach their apogee, break, and return. Mythology, in this sense, is tragic in its view. But in the sense that it places our true being not in the forms that shatter but in the imperishable out of which they again immediately bubble forth, mythology is eminently untragical.[18] Indeed, wherever the mythological mood prevails, tragedy is impossible. A quality rather of dream prevails. True being, meanwhile, is not in the shapes but in the dreamer.
As in dream, the images range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate. These images are to be regarded as no more than shadows from the unfathomable reach beyond, where the eye goeth not, speech goeth not, nor the mind, nor even piety. Like the trivialities of dream, those of myth are big with meaning.
The first phase of the cosmogonic cycle describes the breaking of formlessness into form, as in the following creation chant of the Maoris of New Zealand:
Te Kore (The Void)
Te Kore-tua-tahi (The First Void)
Te Kore-tua-rua (The Second Void)
Te Kore-nui (The Vast Void)
Te Kore-roa (The Far-Extending Void)
Te Kore-para (The Sere Void)
Te Kore-whiwhia (The Unpossessing Void)
Te Kore-rawea (The Delightful Void)
Te Kore-te-tamaua (The Void Fast Bound)
Te Po (The Night)
Te Po-teki (The Hanging Night)
Te Po-terea (The Drifting Night)
Te Po-whawha (The Moaning Night)
Hine-make-moe (The Daughter of Troubled Sleep)
Te Ata (The Dawn)
Te Au-tu-roa (The Abiding Day)
Te Ao-marama (The Bright Day)
Whai-tua (Space)
In space were evolved two existences without shape:
Maku (Moisture [a male])
Mahora-nui-a-rangi (Great Expanse of Heaven [a female])
From these sprang:
Rangi-potiki (The Heavens [a male])
Papa (Earth [a female])
Rangi-potiki and Papa were the parents of the gods.[19]
From the void beyond all voids unfold the world-sustaining emanations, plantlike, mysterious. The tenth of the above series is night; the eighteenth, space or ether, the frame of the visible world; the nineteenth is the male-female polarity; the twentieth is the universe we see. Such a series suggests the depth beyond depth of the mystery of being. The levels correspond to the profundities sounded by the hero in his world-fathoming adventure; they number the spiritual strata known to the mind introverted in meditation. They represent the bottomlessness of the dark night of the soul.*
The Hebrew Kabbala represents the process of creation as a series of emanations (Hebrew: sephiroth) out of the I AM of The Great Face. The first is the head itself, in profile, and from this proceed “nine splendid lights.” The emanations are represented also as the branches of a cosmic tree, which is upside down, rooted in “the inscrutable height.” The world that we see is the reverse image of that tree.
According to the Indian Samkhya philosophers of the eighth century b.c., the void condenses into the element ether or space. From this air is precipitated. From air comes fire, from fire water, and from water the element earth. With each element evolves a sense-function capable of perceiving it: hearing, touch, sight, taste, and smell respectively.[20]
An amusing Chinese myth personifies these emanating elements as five venerable sages, who come stepping out of a ball of chaos, suspended in the void:
Before heaven and earth had become separated from each other, everything was a great ball of mist, called chaos. At that time, the spirits of the five elements took shape, and then developed into five ancients. The first was called the Yellow Ancient, and he was the master of earth. The second was called the Red Ancient, and he was the master of fire. The third was called the Dark Ancient, and he was the master of water. The fourth was called the Wood Prince, and he was the master of wood. The fifth was called the Metal Mother, and she was the mistress of metals.*
Now each of these five ancients set in motion the primordial spirit from which he had proceeded, so that water and earth sank downward; the heavens soared aloft and the earth became fast in the depths. Then the water gathered into rivers and lakes, and the mountains and plains appeared. The heavens cleared and the earth divided; then there were sun, moon, and all the stars, sand, clouds, rain, and dew. The Yellow Ancient gave play to the purest power of the earth, and to this were added the operations of fire and water. Then there sprang into being the grasses and trees, birds and animals, and the generations of the snakes and insects, and fishes and turtles. The Wood Prince and the Metal Mother brought light and darkness together and thereby created the human race, as man and woman. Thus gradually appeared the world....[21]
Figure 58. Tangaroaā, Producing Gods and Men (carved wood, Rurutu Island, early eighteenth century a.d.)
4. Within Space — Life
The first effect of the cosmogonic emanations is the framing of the world stage of space; the second is the production of life within the frame: life polarized for self-reproduction under the dual form of the male and female. It is possible to represent the entire process in sexual terms, as a pregnancy and birth. This idea is superbly rendered in another metaphysical genealogy of the Maoris:
From the conception the increase,
From the increase the thought,
From the thought the remembrance,
From the remembrance the consciousnes
s,
From the consciousness the desire.
The word became fruitful;
It dwelt with the feeble glimmering;
It brought forth night:
The great night, the long night,
The lowest night, the loftiest night,
The thick night, to be felt,
The night to be touched,
The night not to be seen,
The night ending in death.
From the nothing the begetting,
From the nothing the increase,
From the nothing the abundance,
The power of increasing,
The living breath.
It dwelt with the empty space, and produced
the atmosphere which is above us.
The atmosphere which floats above the earth,
The great firmament above us,
dwelt with the early dawn,
And the moon sprang forth;
The atmosphere above us,
dwelt with the glowing sky,
And thence proceeded the sun;
Moon and sun were thrown up above,
as the chief eyes of heaven:
Then the Heavens became light:
the early dawn, the early day,
The mid-day: the blaze of day from the sky.
The sky above dwelt with Hawaiki,
and produced land.[22]
Figure 59. Tuamotuan Creation Chart — Below: The Cosmic Egg. Above: The People Appear, and Shape the Universe (Tuamotua, nineteenth century a.d.)
About the middle of the nineteenth century, Paiore, a high chieftain of the Polynesian island of Anaa, drew a picture of the beginnings of creation. The first detail of this illustration was a little circle containing two elements, Te Tumu, “The Foundation” (a male), and Te Papa, “The Stratum Rock” (a female).[23]
The Hero with a Thousand Faces Page 29
