More Than Allegory
Page 5
Still, the human mind is not limited to the intellect. Where the intellect stops intuition picks up. We can sense truth even if we cannot articulate it in words or derive it from logical schemes. Unreliable as this sense may be, it is our only link to a broader reality.
The intellect resides in what depth-psychology calls the ‘ego,’ that part of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions that we are self-reflectively aware of. But underneath our self-reflective selves there is an unfathomably broader mental space that depth-psychology has come to call the ‘unconscious,’ the wellspring of intuition. As explained in an earlier work,48 the term is actually a misnomer: the ‘unconscious’ mind is merely an obfuscated part of consciousness. Terminology aside, however, what matters here is the existence of a broader, intuitive part of mind underlying the ego. From this point on, I will call it the ‘obfuscated mind.’
Today’s neuroscience has produced strong empirical evidence that, like the ego, the obfuscated mind can also acquire, process, store and retrieve information, exhibiting a surprisingly broad range of cognitive functions.49 Indeed, the presence of an obfuscated mind much broader and more powerful than the ego is an empirical fact that confronts every depth-psychologist, every day, in the therapy room. So the questions of real relevance here are not about whether the obfuscated mind exists, but: How does it operate? What can it know about nature that the intellect cannot? And how can we establish communication between the intellect and the obfuscated mind?
As a cognitive domain that transcends the intellect, the obfuscated mind does not operate according to linguistic constructs. In other words, it does not process information according to a logical, algorithm-like universal grammar. Instead, evidence from depth-psychology shows that the obfuscated mind operates symbolically.50 Unlike a sign—such as a word, acronym or label—which merely denotes something well defined and circumscribed, a symbol connotes a deeper, subtler, broader idea or intuition. In the words of Corbin, ‘a symbol is a primary phenomenon (Urphänomen), unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are.’51 As such, the symbolic obfuscated mind is less constrained in the way it organizes its cognitive processes than the linguistic intellect.
We can experience the amazing latitude of symbolic cognition when we dream: as expressions of the obfuscated mind, dreams unfold in a much broader space than that delineated by rationality and physics. They don’t ‘make sense’ in the way our rational thoughts do because they refuse to be bound by the constraints of logic, time and space normally enforced by grammatical rules. Scenes change suddenly and discontinuously; events don’t obey ordinary cause-and-effect relationships; contradictions and cognitive dissonance abound; etc. Yet, dreams have great power to reveal truth about our inner states, conveying their meaning through indirect, seemingly absurd but strongly evocative symbols. This, in fact, is the whole basis of dream analysis in depth-psychology.52
As argued carefully in an earlier work, I believe that the logical constraints of the human intellect are very useful but ultimately arbitrary.53 After all, one cannot logically argue for the absolute validity of logic without begging the question. The obfuscated mind, for not being restricted to such arbitrary constraints, can embody a much greater range of cognition than the intellect. Its symbolic character should be regarded, according to Carl Jung, as an ancient mode of thought that has been superseded—or rather, obfuscated—by the relatively recent acquisition of linguistic thinking.54 Clearly, our intellect—insofar as it enables deliberation, premeditation, evaluation of scenarios, planning, communication, etc.—offers immense practical survival advantages when compared to the earlier symbolic mode of thought. And evolution favors survival, not per se a broad cognizance of the underlying nature of reality. Hence, it isn’t at all surprising that the intellect has become so dominant in our species, pushing our symbolic mode of thought down to seeming unconsciousness.
Yet, the depth, breadth and flexibility of the ancient obfuscated mind may represent a huge and untapped potential in every human being; a resource anchored much closer to the primordial truths of nature—like the roots of the tree growing out of Karora’s divine head—than the later-evolved intellect. Modern life, with its relative comfort and security, is changing our priorities as a species. While practical needs like finding food and evading predators ruled the lives of our ancestors, modern humans are increasingly preoccupied with the bigger questions: Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is life? What are we supposed to do in it? What is the meaning of it all? The possibility that presents itself to us is that our neglected obfuscated mind—with its deeply rooted, unfathomably broader, but purely intuitive apprehension of reality—could offer us answers.55 Could it give us access to transcendent truths? Could we ease our modern anxieties and rediscover the meaning of life by tapping into this ancient umbilical-chord that keeps us connected to the ground of existence?
Truth can be intuited even when it cannot be articulated in language. Such intuition is rooted in our broader obfuscated mind, which can apprehend—in symbolic ways—aspects of reality beyond the grasp of our self-reflective thoughts and perceptions.
Transcending the intellect
I believe we can.
Many of the neuroses that plague the lives of modern humans—from anxiety to depression—are often fed, if not caused, by a confined, claustrophobic and ultimately unsubstantiated interpretation of consensus reality; that is, by a deprived myth derived from grammatical rules. The depressed person sees no meaning in life largely because the small box of her linguistic thinking limits her view of what life is. The anxious person fears self-destruction largely because her linguistic understanding of her own identity is confining.
But the translinguistic, transcendent truths of nature hold the promise to liberate us from these artificial confinements, for they surpass the boundaries of logic, time and space enforced by grammatical rules. They inoculate against existential despair. That the intellect can’t access these transcendent truths does not mean that our broader obfuscated mind can’t either. As a matter of fact, both the long history of religious epiphany56 and over a century of depth-psychology57 suggest strongly that it can; that the obfuscated mind can intuitively recognize transcendence, offering us our best chance of deliverance from the clutches of deprived myths.
Indeed, the evocative power and remarkable sophistication of so many traditional religious myths can only be attributed to their origin in the obfuscated mind, which intuits aspects of reality unreachable by the intellect. These myths weren’t thought through deliberately, but sensed. Their intricacies weren’t composed through steps of reasoning, but arose spontaneously from attempts to describe the underlying structure of reality, which their originators could intuitively apprehend. This explains how cultures with limited intellectual development could produce such astoundingly refined cosmologies. It also explains how these various cosmologies ended up being so mutually consistent: after all, we all share the same reality that the myths attempt to describe. In a nutshell, despite the radically different geographical, historical and cultural contexts of different traditional peoples, they were intuitively ‘looking at,’ and trying to describe, the same phenomenon. In arguing this, I am largely echoing Jung’s views, which were extensively substantiated in his own work and those of others after him.58
The conclusion here is inescapable: to restore meaning to our lives, we must develop a close relationship with the transcendent truths symbolically unveiled by the obfuscated mind in the form of religious myths. After all, ‘Every positive statement about ultimate things must be made in the suggestive form of myth,’ said Watts.59 He was right, because ‘Myth is a true story … a story about reality.’60 Of course, true religious myths are always symbolic, since they emerge from obfuscated regions of mind like our nightly dreams.61 But their symbolisms ‘are neither contrivances nor mere fables; they are not raw primitivisms either. They are hard-won intuitions of someth
ing before form,’62 as Richard Grossinger put it.
Establishing communication between the self-reflective intellect and our obfuscated mythical cognition can help us ease our modern anxieties and rediscover the meaning of life. By listening to what the obfuscated mind has to say, and then taking it seriously, we gain access to a broader, less claustrophobic apprehension of reality, life and human identity: an apprehension of transcendence. And although this transcendent view is not literally true, it is potentially truer than anything our intellects could possibly come up with. After all, as argued above, there is no literal articulation of the transcendent truths that offer the only way to escape existential despair. As such, the symbolic religious myths produced by the obfuscated mind aren’t merely roundabout ways to refer to something literal, but the only pointers we have to a form of salvation. They aren’t less precise and redundant alternatives to literal explanations, but the only fair way to capture and communicate the transcendent aspects of reality. When seen this way, religious myths take on the power of literal truth: in the absence of the latter, they become the most direct, explicit, declarative, accurate and precise utterance of the truth. If transcendent truths are to be uttered at all, they can only be uttered in the form of religious myths. Anything else would simply be false or vastly incomplete.
Many religious myths reflect a culture’s intuitive apprehension of transcendent aspects of reality. They aren’t merely roundabout ways to refer to something literal, but the most direct and accurate utterance of transcendent truths. A religious myth is symbolic—never literal—because it emerges from the obfuscated mind.
A daring proposal
All this said, there is a fact we must face. We may intellectually understand and accept the nuances of the three categories of truth discussed above—literal, allegorical and transcendent—but emotionally things are pretty binary: we either believe a religious myth or we don’t. And if we don’t, the myth loses all of its power. I thus propose that, if a religious myth resonates deeply with your inner intuitions and survives a reasonably critical assessment of its depth, then you should emotionally—though not intellectually—take it onboard as if it were literally true. The religious myth that resonates the strongest with your obfuscated mind should inform your emotional life—again, not your intellectual life—as if it were the literal truth, even though you’ll know rationally that it isn’t. I am thus advocating a deliberate, lucid split or dissociation between your emotional and intellectual attitudes. The way to achieve it is to remind yourself constantly that there is no better description of transcendent truths than the religious myth that resonates with your heart. Therefore, the logical way to go about life is, ironically, to buy into your heart-chosen myth with reasonable but not excessive intellectual oversight. The intellect is a valuable adviser but a lousy king.63
I make this proposal because I believe it to be more in accord with reality than the alternative. Since religious myths are the best representations of transcendent truths, dismissing them as mere fictions actually takes us farther away from what is really going on than taking them onboard as if they were literally true. This was Nietzsche’s mistake when he declared God to be dead.64 Overwhelmed by late nineteenth century rationalism, he rejected the religious myth of an anthropomorphic God, omniscient overseer of human life. But, with this reasonable rejection of the literal interpretation of a symbol, he denied all transcendent aspects of reality.65 Is this denial less false—or even less naïve—than the divine symbol taken literally?
Another example should make my point clearer. The Pueblo—a native people of North America—believe they are the offspring of Father Sun. According to their religious myth, the Pueblo’s rituals are essential to help their father cross the sky every day. Were they to stop performing their sacred rituals, the Pueblo believe the sun would stop rising in ten years and darkness would befall the world.66 Notice that, if we allow this myth to penetrate our minds deeply enough, it is possible to intuitively sense surprising wisdom in it. Indeed, traditionally the sun has symbolized the lucid, self-reflective human intellect. ‘How naturally we imagine our own capacity to know and to create, as the bright sun of consciousness,’67 says The Book of Symbols. Depth-psychologists also consider the sun to be a symbol of the ego or intelligence, as opposed to instinct.68 As such, a life lived with the attention and deliberateness with which one performs a sacred ritual ensures that the sun of self-reflective awareness continues to rise and illuminate the world every day. This is, in a very limited sense, what the Pueblo’s religious myth seems to hint at. And isn’t it a fact that only through the human capacity for self-reflection can nature become aware of itself? Isn’t it a fact that, without the light of our lucidity, nature would remain shrouded in the darkness of instinct? The religious myth brings the transcendent aspects of these facts forcefully into the daily world of the Pueblo, making it alive and relevant in a way that our detached, conceptual explanations could never do. Indeed, at the very moment that I attempted to explain the Pueblo’s myth conceptually, by rationally interpreting its symbolism, I killed something crucial about it; I killed its immediacy and aliveness. ‘Oh, that’s what this myth means! It’s just an allegory of self-reflection after all.’ And kaboom! In one fell swoop, the transcendent truth suggested by the myth is lost from sight. Can you sense what I mean? Only when emotionally taken in as though it were the literal truth, and therefore dispensing with further elucidations and conceptual interpretations, does the religious myth allow the Pueblo to feel their true role in the natural order of things. Wouldn’t they find themselves farther removed from the truth if they dismissed their myth and believed instead that their lives served no purpose?
Because an intellectual inaccuracy is unavoidable whether we emotionally take the symbolism of religious myths literally or dismiss them, the lesser inaccuracy is the logical way to go. Transcendent truths cannot be grasped directly and explicitly, so rejecting religious myths for the sake of a non-existing literal alternative is simply irrational. The dilemma here isn’t comfortable, but we must bite this bullet. If we don’t, we will be condemning ourselves to being forever insulated from a deeper reality and, therefore, effectively living out our emotional lives according to falsehoods and artificial constraints. How smart is that?
For you to be able to embrace my proposal, you will need your intellect to grant itself rational permission to step out of the way and make space for your wiser obfuscated mind to co-direct your relationship with reality. My attempt so far in this book has been to help you grant yourself this permission, allowing religious myths to color your emotional life without excessive intellectual judgment. I want to help you emotionally believe your chosen religious myth as fully as you believe any literal truth; and as fully as the Pueblo believe that they help the sun rise every day. This, in fact, is what it means to have faith. Faith is the sincere emotional openness to the transcendent truths connoted by a story, beyond the superficial, literal appearances of the story’s denotations. And, as argued above, it is the absence of faith that is irrational.
Yet, I know that the symbolic images used in traditional religious myths defy our rationality too drastically, making it impossible for us to take them in as if they were the literal truth. How could any person in contemporary Western civilization take seriously the idea that animals and human beings sprouted literally from the navel and armpits of Karora? How could any one of you, dear readers, take seriously the notion that the trees of the Amazon jungle grew literally from Nainema’s spit?
Plausibility is key for the images used in any religious myth. And plausibility changes with the zeitgeist and the views of a culture. For the Uitoto, the idea of trees growing out of divine saliva is entirely plausible. For our culture, obviously it isn’t. Plausibility is important because it allows the intellect to relax in the possibility of truth. Anything implausible automatically triggers rational defenses, preventing the religious myth from penetrating past the intellect so to reach the deeper, emotional min
d.
For my proposal above to be realistically applicable to a broader segment of society, we need modern formulations of religious myths; formulations that use plausible contemporary images, more amenable to intellectual tolerance, given what we think to know today about nature and its mysteries. The images of traditional myths were appropriate for cultures without the scientific understanding of the world that we possess today. We need new images, new representations consistent with our contemporary knowledge and intellectual ethos. This is what I will attempt to achieve in Part III of this book. For now, though, a word of caution is in order.
Emotionally, we either believe a religious myth or we don’t. If we don’t, the myth loses the power to bring transcendence into daily life. I thus propose that, if a religious myth resonates deeply with your intuitions, you should emotionally—though not intellectually—take it onboard as if it were literally true.
The danger of fundamentalism
My proposal is that you allow your chosen religious myth to inform your emotional life as though it were literally true. However, I am not suggesting that you intellectually take it to be the literal truth. Doing so is tantamount to denying transcendence altogether, since it implicitly assumes that the corresponding truths can be accurately, unambiguously and completely captured in a language-based narrative. Moreover, taking a religious myth to be the literal truth at an intellectual level plants the seed of fundamentalism. This has been the source of unimaginable suffering and destruction throughout history. Let us elaborate on it with an analogy.
If you illuminate a solid cylinder from its top, it will project a shadow in the shape of a circle. If you illuminate the exact same cylinder from its side, its shadow will look like a rectangle. See Figure 1. Both the circle and the rectangle are equally valid projections of the cylinder, conveying true information about it. The fact that the rectangle is completely different from the circle—an apparent contradiction in the flat world of shadows—implies no conflict in the world of the solid cylinder. In 3D, the differences between 2D shadows are easily reconciled.