Another language, less poetic but perhaps easier, is available. Dr. Jung speaks of the life process as being the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality from the ego to the Self. He sees this as the life work of a man and the center of meaning for all human endeavor. When Parsifal learns that he is no longer the center of the universe—not even his own little kingdom—he is free of his alienation and the Grail is no longer barred from him. Though he may come and go from the Grail castle during the rest of his life, now he will never be alien to it again.
Even more astonishing, the wounded Fisher King rises, healed, in triumph and joy. The miracle has happened, and the legend of his healing has been accomplished. In Wagner’s opera, Parsifal, the wounded Fisher King rises at this moment and sings a wondrous song of triumph and power and strength. It is the culmination of the whole tale!
Now who is the Grail King whom we have not heard mentioned before? He is the true king of the realm and he lives in the center of the Grail castle. He lives only on the Host and the Wine of the Grail. He is a thinly disguised figure of God, the earthly representation of the Divine, or in Jungian terms, the Self. It is humbling to learn that we hear of this inner center only when we are ready for it and when we have done our duty of formulating a coherent question.
The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.
This same motif appears in a contemporary myth, The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien; the power must be taken from those who would exploit it. In the Grail myth the source of power is given to the representative of God. In Tolkien’s myth the ring of power is taken from evil hands that would use its power to destroy the world and is put back into the ground from which it came. Earlier myths often spoke of the discovery of power and its emergence from the earth into human hands. Recent myths speak of returning the source of power to the earth or into the Hands of God before we destroy ourselves with it.
One detail in the story is worth special observation: Parsifal need only ask the question; he does not have to answer it. When one is discouraged and certain he will never have the intelligence to find the answer to insoluble riddles, he can remember that although it is the duty of the ego to ask a well-formulated question, he is not required to answer it. To ask well is virtually to answer.
Rejoicing bursts forth in the Grail castle; the Grail is brought forth, it gives its food to everyone, including the now-healed Fisher King, and there is perfect peace, joy, and well-being.
Such a dilemma! If you ask the Grail to give you happiness, that demand precludes happiness. But if you serve the Grail and the Grail King properly, you will find that what happens and happiness are the same thing. A play on words becomes the definition of enlightenment.
An identical theme is found in very different language in the “Ten Oxherding Pictures” from Zen Buddhism. This is a series of ten pictures prescribed for an artist to portray the steps toward enlightenment. In the first the young hero searches for the ox—his inner nature; in the second he sees the footprints of the ox; in the third he sees the ox. The series proceeds to the ninth picture in which the hero tames the ox, forges a peaceful relationship with it, and sits quietly surveying the scene. The question rises at this point—Behold the streams flowing, whither nobody knows; and the flowers vividly red—for whom are they? Author Mokusen Miyuki reflects that these words could be translated literally into “The stream flows on its own accord, and the flower is red on its own accord.” The Chinese term tsu, “of its own accord,” is used as a compound, tsu-jan, in Taoist thought. It can mean “naturalness,” an occurring of the creative spontaneity of nature, within and without. In other words, tsu-jan, can be taken psychologically as the living reality of self-realization or the creative urge of the Self manifesting itself in nature.
The series of pictures culminates in the tenth when the hero, now perfectly at peace, walks unnoticed through the village streets. There is nothing extraordinary about him now except that all the trees burst into blossom as he passes by.
This questioning of the meaning of the stream or the redness of the rose from such a different source as Zen Buddhism enhances our understanding of this quest.
A Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to America more than a century ago and made some astute observations about the American way. He said that we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution: the pursuit of happiness. One can not pursue happiness; if he does he obscures it. If he will proceed with the human task of life, the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality to something greater outside itself, happiness will be the outcome.
In this year of our Lord we are just beginning to ask the Grail question: do we have the right to cut down the trees, impoverish the soil, and kill all the pelicans? The answer is beginning to come clear; the first lisping syllables of the question are audible. If we can hear this old tale of an innocent fool blundering into the Grail castle for the first time and earning his way there a second time, we can find some sage advice for our own modern way.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Bolen, Jean Shinoda. Gods in Everyman. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969.
—————. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Random House, Inc., 1961.
Jung, Emma, and Von Franz, Marie-Louise. The Grail Legend. A C. G. Jung Foundation Book. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.
Kelsey, Morton T. Encounter with God. Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1972.
Sanford, John A. The Man Who Wrestled with God. Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1981.
Sanford, John A., and Lough, George. What Men Are Like. Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1981.
Whitmont, Edward, C. The Symbolic Quest. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.
About the Author
Robert A. Johnson is a noted lecturer and Jungian analyst in private practice in San Diego, California. He is the author of She: Understanding Feminine Psychology and We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love. He has studied at the Jung Institute in Switzerland and at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India.
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BOOKS BY ROBERT A. JOHNSON
He: Understanding Masculine Psychology Revised Edition
She: Understanding Feminine Psychology Revised Edition
We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love
Inner Work: Using Dreams & Active Imagination for Personal Growth
Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy
Copyright
HE, REVISED EDITION. Copyright © 1989 by Robert A. Johnson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195761-1
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1See Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1986), for a further elaboration of this principle.
2Mood, strictly speaking, should be confined to describing a man’s experience since the parallel phenomenon in a woman is sufficiently different to require a different term. But no term exists for this and we have no adequate language to describe this parallel experience in a woman’s life. In this context a woman’s parallel to male moods is being delivered over to her inner masculine side and thus subject to a sharpness, a puncturing, a challenging, a needling quality which is a type of poor quality masculinity. This is similar to a man’s mood, which is a type of poor quality femininity. For a more adequate discussion of the subject see Robert A. Johnson, She: Understanding Feminine Psychology, Revised Edition (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1989).
3See Robert A. Johnson, We; Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, inc., 1983), for further discussion of this subject.
4How badly we flounder for terminology to express these things. Where is our word for queendom?
5Here is a correct place for the interior woman in a man’s psychology; it is she who is mediator for him to the numinous values of the inner world.
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