No line can be drawn between what don Juan was, what he taught, and what his Way of Knowledge was. But he was not the end product; he considered himself impersonally in respect to his path. Similarly, only by making himself the focus of attention could Jesus reorganize the concept-percept structure of his followers and Open them to the crack. Function and man appear synonymous because the function can only be pointed toward by being the function. There is no being except in a mode of being.
In Chapter VI, I mentioned the psychology professor walking the fire by holding the fakir's hand. Without the fakir as trigger, without seeing him actually walk, it is difficult to see how the professor could have been so seized. But the fakir was neither the reason for the phenomenon nor the bearer of magic. The restructuring ability was innately within the professor all along, a part of the very mechanism of his being.
Leonard Feinberg came away from Ceylon convinced that somehow the god Kataragama was an operative and real force within the accepted fourteen-mile radius of his temple. The dramatic events of the ceremonies were capped by peculiarly synchronous after-effects that disturbed Feinberg's western point of view as much as the fire-walking. The tough-minded scholar and the classical Christian react to this sort of thing with equal scorn, appropriate to their beliefs esthetics. The scholar's contempt will be that a fortuitous congruence of events should be interpreted superstitiously, which means outside the acceptances of the scholar's own path. The Christian's scorn will be that an efficacious god could be a viable fact within a twenty-eight mile circle. Both scholar and Christian are functioning in identical ways, just under different metaphor, and both are evading the mechanics of being.
Carlos never resolved his half-suspicion, half-conviction, that the god Mescalito was somehow synonymous with the peyote plant itself; that the unique quality of Mescalito was within the properties of the hallucinogen in some independent way. He knew the hallucinogen of itself led nowhere. Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescalin, the synthetic of peyote, bore not the faintest resemblance to Carlo's experience. Carlos recognized the handiwork of don Juan; but Mescalito's person and total experience were not dismissible as just hallucination.
Those with ears to hear would understand. Jesus spoke of his Kingdom as like a leavening, the kind the housewife puts in her flour to give life to the inert ingredients. Only a tiny bit of leavening is needed to work and raise large quantities of flour. Beware, though, Jesus warned, of the leavening of the Pharisee, the world of legalistic split-thinking and rationale; and beware the leavening of Herod, the world of power battening on the brother's blood, the final demonic, the forces of death. Beware because all leavenings work, all raise the flour, and equally well. Leavening is ontological, neutral, impersonal, natural. Jesus said that his Father judges not. God is the function of leavening, not the capacity for choosing types of leavening. Judgment is given to the Son. Man chooses, God responds automatically. That is the way the process works. Don Juan said there was an infinite number of paths, and that we should choose our paths with care.
It is not just fortuitous that the metaphors Jesus used to describe both the way to and the resulting state of his Kingdom show remarkable similarity to Hilgard's outline for hypnotic transfer. Reality-adjusted thinking was Jesus' point of departure. He did not break with logic or "law," the reasoning functions of mind. He spoke of perfecting logic in order to go beyond it. His child-metaphors have meaning only against an adult background. The first demand he makes is that the ego-centered, reality-thinking personality must be surrendered. Unless you hate your life you cannot follow where he goes -- not just because ambiguity would result from trying to hold two orientations at once; more, unless you are willing to give up your world view structured from infancy, those concepts directing your percepts cannot be restructured.
An indeterminately-wide capacity for resynthesis is incorporated in the structure of our minds. This capacity is blocked, though, by the very system of logic which must be developed to structure the mind to the point where resynthesis is then possible. Paralleling Piaget and Hilgard makes this clear. No resynthesis is possible to us until an initial synthesis gives a ground on which to stand.
It is not just fortuitous that somewhere around age twelve logical development begins to firm up, and that this is the age of the archaic transformation rites. Neither is it fortuitous that this is the age when our educational system breaks down most seriously, (try teaching in a junior high school!) or that mythological overlay gave this as the setting for Jesus' first manifestations of seizure, and so on.
The materials of the common domain, the clearing in the forest eons in process, must be the materials for synthesis, for there are no other materials. If a kingdom of heaven is desired, it must be synthesized from the available stuff. The world is no trivial illusion blocking a pure soul's vision of heavenly vistas. The world is the matrix from which all things must operate. To be realized, made real, is to be born into the world. In order to be in the world, one's world view must shape according to the shape of that world. The logical process of structuring the mind into a modified relation with the world of man may be arbitrary, but it brings about the only reality available. Any restructuring is then equally arbitrary, a matter of choice and commitment, but it is a restructuring.
There are many forms of trance-thinking, and every system or discipline incorporates some aspect of it. Sometimes this state is only a temporary lowering of the threshold of the logical mind to incorporate a new experience not available to logic. Recall Hans Selye's observation that every great scientific postulate-illumination had happened to the scientist in a hypnagogic state. With don Juan, the new states created were entered into for adventure, becoming as valid as the ordinary reality, little by little firming up into tangible structures, each building on the other. Don Juan's process imitated the way by which The Creation itself is brought about. The flaw in his system, and the probable reason for its obsolescence, was the ego-isolation within the construct. It gave only a private world.
With Jesus the same function is used, but only as a shared venture. Creating only 'interventions' in the common domain, one remained in the world, the "larger body of man" was kept intact. His "interventions in the ontological constitution of the universe" were on two levels. The first was when the logical process broke down, as in conflicting personal relations, or when logical choice had created insoluble problems, and the crack was opened as a way down and out. This was "forgiveness." No problem was "solved" as such, in some brilliant logical analysis. Rather, the situation was simply restructured, giving a clean slate, a new possibility for synthesis. The procedure could be repeated infinitely, there was no heavenly hierarchy of value judgment determining its granting. The only criterion was that the materials had to be surrendered for the resynthesis. Since no logical prestructuring was possible, it was an unknown venture each time, a kind of "little death" as Blake called it.
The second category of intervention was in the ordinary cause-effect mechanisms of reality. Without fire burning, charcoal-broiled steaks are not possible, nor the joy of the hearth. There are times of ultimate concern, though, when a way down and out from this universal mechanism is needed. When the ordinary mechanics break or lead to destructive results, disease, disaster, and so on, the crack is needed to restructure events. Since the ordinary mechanics are infinitely contingent, accident is inevitable. But the crack opens to that mode of thinking itself infinitely contingent, and capable of infinite synthesis. The way down and out is an instantaneous restructuring of some isolated, specific point of relation, a carrying of the non-ordinary to the ordinary, and an equally instantaneous establishment of the ordinary mechanics. Hypnotic anaesthesia is a minor case in point. Blood circulation and nerve response are vital mechanisms -- else the whole house of cards tumbles down -- but in certain instances can be suspended as needed.
The end goal of don Juan's way was adventure. The end goal of Jesus' way was solving problems of individual and society in the shared ad
venture of group life. Interventions are made only to correct, alleviate, fill out the inevitable shortcomings of a system limiting an infinite openness to specific actualities. The crack in the egg was utilized only for the good of the egg, never for self. But since the self is also the egg at some point, the self was taken care of peripherally and automatically by caring for the egg. "Man, if you know what you are doing," (when you use the crack) "you are blest."
It would have been a neat system. It could have achieved the unity of man in the only practical way -- attainment of desire for every man. It would have been rather a universal mutual-back scratch, through which all our itches, beyond personal reach, could be tended. It would have been a massive power for , rather than our current demonic and fragmenting power against.
Cracks in the egg cannot be built into a cosmic egg. They can only come about when the embryonic form expands and needs room beyond its genesis. The crack is found by the time-tested technique found in all systems, of necessity, the only one that works: a repeating of the initial process of world view formation. A surrender is made as a "child" to a father-figure who gives sureness and confidence that one can give over his life, his conceptual frame-work, to the image and receive it back enlarged.
In all education, 'metanoia,' or change of concept, there is some form of duplication of this world view structuring. Those whose initial experiences, of entry into fantasy and return to reality with their parents, were rewarding may have an edge here. Perhaps we can see why education fails so sadly; why there are at best mostly technicians and too few physicists; why "hardness of heart" may be built in from infancy.
It is not fortuitous that Jesus used the father-figure as his symbol for transference, neither is it just an echo of Old Testament archaisms -- which it very soundly is, in spite of Harvey Cox, and for good reason. Nor is it at all just coincidence that Jesus used the child-metaphor for the subject making the transference.
The symbol of transference determines the nature of the resulting hierarchy of mind. Sadly, I will never know don Juan and so can never experience his Path of breathless wonder. When Jesus said "no man comes to the Father but through me" he was simply stating this very case. His Father is a very specialized and carefully-delineated symbol of transference, designed to give that "loosing on earth" that we want "loosed in heaven."
Both the systems of don Juan and Jesus were end products of ancient cultural drifts. Don Juan's was so completely developed that no innovations were possible within it. Don Juan was the remnant of an ancient, though disappearing culture. Jesus was the culmination of a long-building synthesis, incorporating his own culture and even beyond. "Before Abraham was, I am," indicates an "inflation of the psyche" seized by an archetypal imagery long in building. He was the Eureka! illumination of a long process of synthesis brought to fruition through extremes of cultural crisis. He was the focal point of a passionate quest centuries in building, and the translator of the answer into the common domain.
In our day we tend to dismiss suggestions of "unconscious," cultural forces, since we deny properties of mind other than those of an electrochemical, biological nature. This notion makes it difficult for us to understand culture in general. Only recently have anthropologists broken from this narrow and pedantic error. An unconscious exchange is apparent between Carlos and don Juan, and the suggestive force of that exchange went far beyond the person of don Juan. This contributed to Carlos' perplexity about the reality of Mescalito. Recall Cohen's observation that under LSD the Freudian patient immediately reflected and thus verified the analyst's assumptions. An indeterminably ancient set of archetypal assumptions and "sets of expectancy" underlay don Juan's Way of Knowledge. As with Jesus, Carlos sowed a wind -- and reaped a whirlwind.
A cultural hierarchy, represented as the Two Brothers, directed the contents of the aboriginal Dream-Time. No syntheses outside the cultural set of expectancies ever resulted; there was no antisocial behaviour. A cultural hierarchy directed the Balinese in their seizures. The material for the restructurings had been automatically absorbed as part of the overall cultural conditioning. A strict protocol controlled the content of the seizures. The trance state never led to antisocial behaviour.
A cultural synthesis was the "hierarchy" in Jesus' metanoia. His "father-symbol" was the sum total of the human venture. As Bruner said, life creates myth and finally imitates it. Jesus, seized by the catalytic synthesis of the long quest, translated the answer in flesh and blood, giving a concrete symbol of the new cultural synthesis. He set up the expectancies for new possibility and gave the pattern for the best representation we could make of life for the best mirroring response. He used dramatic restructurings of ordinary reality as examples of the possibilities -- whenever he could find a person willing to suspend an ordinary world view and enter into a subset with him. He used these restructurings as don Juan did with Carlos, to try to show the arbitrary character of ordinary reality, and the equality of other possibilities. He emphasized a decorum and respect for the world, while yet giving a criterion for deciding when you should "hate" this world and break with its statistics and employ the nonstatistical openness.
Don Juan was contemptuous of those who would try hallucinogens without the proper disciplines. In the same way, the logical processes of mind, the disciplines, "law or judgment" in the terms of his day, were never evaded by Jesus. Unless your "righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees and lawyers," you would never get through to the crack in the egg. Dissolution of ordinary consciousness, or isolation in non-ordinary states, plays no part in Jesus' system since the entire concentration of "obligatory acts" is on one's fellow man. This kept the follower in the world, while hopefully not of the world.
A new hierarchy of concept, such as don Juan's or Jesus', organizes the new kind of reality event, but only on the spot, so to speak, out of the materials given from the ordinary context of reality. There is small probability of finding out what the new reality is like first and then deciding to try a switch of allegiance. The forest shapes according to the light of the clearing. In scheming out the possibility of an "after life," Jesus realized there could be no such thing a priori to his actions. He would have to go and "prepare a place" in that "house of many mansions," the open possibility of synthesis.
The systems of don Juan, Jesus, and other cracks in the egg produce unique events not available to the noncommitted person. Fire-walking can be observed by others, but the walking itself is another matter. With don Juan, becoming the process was the only way to discover what it was about. The same holds for Jesus. The rewards of the system could not be displayed to a non-believer to convince him that the plunge was worth the risk. A person had to enter into the creation of the state in order to share in it. That is why healing stood a good chance of being a bridge over the gap in Jesus' time. There were simply not many rivals. And that is why healing stands far less chance of bridging the gap today. Agreement between two or three on what is being done is the key. Agreement is freedom from ambiguity. Double-mindedness fragments.
Ignored to this day by Christian orthodoxy is that Jesus was helpless to create non-ordinary events unless his hearers surrendered their hierarchy of mind to him, at least for the moment and at least in regard to the problem at hand. Jesus could trigger a "special consensus" about reality, and so change events, among those who had nothing to lose, those country dwellers and city poor, those crippled and diseased without hope, those whose world was terrible enough to make the risk of suspension of ordinary criteria, with its overtones of a "collapse into chaos," the lesser of evils. Things were different indeed with the clever intellectuals, the people in power, the "doctors of law." "Hardness of heart" is as much indicative of success within an established system as it is some sort of moral failure. No one abandons a game which he is winning. Jesus pities the rich young ruler unable to grasp the new reality because he could not let go of the old.
The empty category can be filled, but it must first be created. Long centuries of sacrifice by
hook-swinging took place in India before broken by that believer seized by the notion that he really was the temporary incarnation of the god, as the priests had represented for centuries. Once that notion had been realized, dramatically concretized and made real, no bodily harm ever came again to the "victim." The mythos leads the logos.
Don Juan had entered a firmly-established path through a long and hard apprenticeship to his own benefactor. No such system was handed Jesus. His illumination was probably symbolic, of necessity, as was Kekule's hypnagogic imagery giving rise to the benzene ring hypothesis, for instance. The genius of the man was called into play to translate the experience into reality. A high degree of improvisation and innovation is found in Jesus' sayings and actions. Hugh Schonfield brilliantly portrayed this venture in his Passover Plot, though in another work I have contended with him on several points.
The common materials of common reality had to be Jesus' materials for translation since the common world was his focus of concern and since there was no other material. The Greek-Stoic perversion of Jesus' imagery has projected his magnificent display of courage and genius onto an "out there" Olympus. To translate the imagery of his Eureka! into a communicable form, however, Jesus had to be that imagery, act it out, give it flesh-and-blood reality, fill the empty category with the only material available, himself, knowing that the average man can grasp concepts only as a concrete, workable image is given him.
The Crack in the Cosmic Egg Page 20
