Transcription
All right, so, let's pick up our theme and add to it, take it a little bit further, maybe talk for a little longer now. So usually in these kind of circles, and also as they are informed by different kinds of contemporary psychotherapy, etc., there's a number of sort of typical stances or conceptions or relationships that one can -- or that are generally encouraged, either explicitly or more tacitly, in relation to the kind of images that come up and what we've been talking about.
One, and it came up a little bit, just mentioning this morning, one is just to ignore them. There's a kind of, "This is not of value on the spiritual path," and one just ignores them. "It's daydreaming." As I go, I'm going to go through a lot of options very quickly; they're all good, but what I want to do today is actually move in a less typical direction, lean in a way that's less typical in these circles and also in our culture. But it's all good. So we devalue them or ignore them because it's not helpful, or only kind of dwell a little bit and respect the nicer ones, the ones that maybe fit a Buddhist, nice Buddhist image, or Buddhadharma image. Might be the Buddha, or Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion. That can be very helpful. There's a sort of selectivity there, a bias there. Or, maybe a little more open, and say one lets them come and lets them go and is aware of them, lets them arise and pass.
Sometimes there's even a bit more openness. Do you know that poem by Thích Nhất Hạnh, "Please Call Me By My True Names"? [affirmative noises] Yeah? So there there's a sense of -- the poetic image is a sense of, "Look, all this is me. I am the snake that eats the frog. I am the frog that gets eaten by the snake. I am the pirate who commits this horrific crime. I am a victim of that horrific crime." There's a sense of opening to include, to see all that image. The movement there is not to judge, so that one recognizes, "Oh, this, too, I have in me. I can recognize it in myself so when I see it in the world I don't judge so much." So there's a movement towards non-judging, and also of expanding the self a little bit with that.
But there the relationship, the stance, is one of allowing and accepting, perhaps being touched a little bit by the interconnectedness of it all. Allowing and accepting, but not empowering. Not empowering those images. In that way of looking, not interested in giving them life and power so much. Or (and these overlap as I'm going through these possibilities) something comes up and we tend very quickly to think, "It's something from my past, from my history. It must be from my childhood, being this or that happened, or the way it was, and now it's created this result. It's coming to me as an image." That would be a very common way, a very common assumption. Or we tend to think, "Ah, it's a kind of compensatory image." So, for instance, I tend not to speak up very much, I tend not to assert myself, and so an image comes to me to kind of balance out what I'm lacking in my self-expression, in my personality. Its function is compensatory. That would be also a quite common assumption or way of relating to it.
Or -- these overlap -- we say, "This is part of me. What's coming up is part of me. This image is a part of me. It's a re-presentation, a representation, a re-presentation of what's actually a psychological quality or an aspect, a factor of mind." So it's now appearing in an image, but what it really is, it's my power, it's my strength, it's my love, it's my anger. So we don't really need the image; what it really is is a psychological factor. That would be another way of looking. And then my job, in that mode of conception, my job then is to integrate these different factors. Maybe I have a little crazy character there and I need to somehow integrate him or her or it, and somehow move towards a more balanced personality. So the telos, the goal, the movement, is towards this image, actually, fantasy, of balanced wholeness, integrated, very nice. That would also be quite a common way of tending to relate to them or conceive.
As I say, I want to lean in a different direction from all of that. Not to say any of that is wrong. In fact, and this is, I feel, very important, not to say any of this is right or wrong. People say, "What's the right way to relate to it? What's the wrong way? How should I? What's true about this and what's false?" And I would say, if one really explores, goes into this territory deeply, at a certain point that comes to sound like quite a naïve question. It's missing something about the whole field. At a certain point, you drop that whole question of right, wrong, true, false here. It dissolves. And what we have instead is recognizing there are different conceptions that one can adopt, and different ways of looking that one can adopt, and the question is, if I adopt this way of looking, what will unfold? What will it lead to? And if I adopt this other way of looking, what will that unfold, what will that lead to? Right, wrong, true, false, seem missing something essential, an essential realization, an essential insight.
So what ways of looking lead to what? We can apply that to everyday material perceptions, although let's not go there right now. What you realize is that no conceptual framework reveals an ultimate truth. And that applies to anything. No conceptual framework reveals an ultimate truth. And certainly, if we talk in the realm of images, no conceptual framework reveals an ultimate truth. It's a very deep insight being expressed there. And if I really, if I understand that or if I get an intuition of that, it casts the whole thing in a different light, and it opens up certain possibilities. None of these are ultimately true, and certainly not what I'm going to elaborate on as we go now. I'm not suggesting it's ultimately true in any way.
[8:21] But what that does, what that insight does, is it gives us permission, if you like, to experiment, to experiment in this realm and see what happens, see what does unfold if I look in this way, and how that's different from what unfolds and opens if I look in that way. So when I say experiment, I mean a meditative experiment, involving conception, and mindfulness, and paying attention, and seeing what happens, and feeling the resonances. So to repeat again -- I think I said it, I can't remember when this morning -- but the body, the sensitivity to the body and the emotions as they're expressed and reflected and manifest in the vibrations, etc., in the body, bodily and emotional sensitivity is absolutely crucial. Because then we differentiate between what we might call imaginal practice and daydreaming. Daydreaming, you're not here; there's no sensitivity, there's no presence, there's no mindfulness, there's no delicacy of attention that's sensitive to resonances, etc. So that's absolutely crucial, bodily and emotional sensitivity and mindfulness.
And if one practises that way and develops that, and engages in the experiment, you're going to see certain things. Certain things are going to become obvious and clear. One is that always the relationship with what I'm looking at -- in this case, an image -- always the relationship with it shapes and colours what happens. That's actually true for material perception, and it's true for dreams as well. So if you know, in a dream, in a nightmare, you're being chased by a monster, the very fear is pumping energy into that monster. It's making it big and scary and ... you see that? When the fear goes a little bit, it takes away the whole environment, and the oppression, and the intensity of the monster. Always, always, no matter what domain of perception we're talking about, the relationship with it is part of what builds, fabricates, shapes, and colours the object.
So this is very important. This is also partly why we need to really be sensitive to the resonances if we are working this way. What are the resonances of emotion, of pathos, of energy, of meaningfulness that's going on here and there? And I say meaningfulness, and that's different from "What does this mean?" Like I said earlier this morning, I'm leaning away from putting these in a box and saying, "Oh, it means this. It's my power. It's this whatever from my childhood, whatever it is." So meaningfulness is different. It's not quite so contained. But it has levels and dimensions of resonance to it. So in this experiment, if there's all that, and if also I try and not judge the nature of the image, not judge so much the nature of the image. So certainly, at times, there are very beautiful, peaceful, luminous images that seem there's a lot of love, and a lot of gentleness, and that can arise. But that's not necessarily better or worse or anything than an image that seems to have a lot of disturbance, or craziness, or suffering in it, or anger, or violence, or this or that, something strange in that way.
So if I can withhold that sort of immediate cognitive categorization, I might have this sense, some image -- even though it is strange and a bit pathological, and it does somehow involve suffering -- it somehow feels right. There's something about it that feels right, as I said this morning, and important. What's giving me that feeling? What's giving me that compass, that navigation? Again, it's the body. The body and the sensitivity to the body. And that's why, in this tradition, we and I very much try and emphasize the body awareness and the sensitivity to the field of the body, because it becomes quite a fine-tuned instrument where a lot can be reflected and you can really use as a navigation instrument.
So using what I call the subtle body, the space of the body, the body energy, to discern when one's on a helpful track. Because something happens -- either the body sense, the subtle body, the energy opens, or it energizes, or it harmonizes, or it calms, or it unifies or aligns. Even if the image is somehow grotesque and weird and I don't understand it, there's something about it that's right, and I can feel that through the body energy. So all that in the experimenting, and I'll see something more. I'll see that the very view or conception I have, the conceptual framework that I entertain at any point, it makes a difference. It makes differences. It can even determine what arises. So it matters what the conceptual framework is. And again, this is true of material perception and dreams and all of that. It matters what the conceptual framework is. It determines what arises.
You can see this in other areas. You can see it in emotions too. So, for example, having a conceptual framework that I store stuff from the past, perhaps wounds or memories or whatever, somehow I store it in the body, I store it psychically all these years, and then through meditation or this or that it can be released, stuff can come up, there can be catharsis. That's a conceptual framework that involves certain assumptions, etc. It's a theory, really. It's a hypothesis. But if one dares, and if one has enough skill in practice, you can see what happens. What happens when I adopt that hypothesis, and when I don't? And you can move between the two and see, wow, it makes a difference to what comes up. The very ideation of it causes that to happen. And this is an extremely complex area, and it's another subject, and one day years ago we did talk about all this here. But the important generality is that the conceptual framework is important and it determines what happens. It's true of emotions, and it's actually true in the imaginal realm as well.
Now, if I have a conception of the Dharma as "the Dharma is really about meeting life," or "opening to life," or "being with what is," or "being with life," and I'm equating "what is" to "reality," to "life," it's this [knocks on something], and the job of the Dharma is to be there, be in the moment, and be open to it, and be present to it -- if that's my conception of the Dharma, then everything that we're talking about today is going to sound like completely nonsense and a waste of time. It's not -- it's moving in totally the other direction and moving away from that. So it could be that that's your conception. But that's not the Buddha's conception of the Dharma. That's not how he saw the Dharma, as some meeting life directly or something like that. You rarely get that kind of language; it's a more contemporary spin. The Buddha talked more about seeing the emptiness of things, seeing the unreality of things, and seeing that, understanding that emptiness, opens up a radical freedom. It's a different take.
So even how you hear some of the stuff we're talking about today will depend on the conceptual framework operating in the background. Having said all that, way too briefly, what if, with those insights, what if we say, okay, none of these are ultimately true; what if I then dare to entertain certain ideas? Careful with the language: entertain ideas. That word, 'idea,' is related to the Greek word, apparently, eidos. It's a related meaning. But in the Greek, in the original, it meant also 'how we see.' There was an insight that we see through ideas. The ideas, the conceptual frameworks -- we don't often realize this -- they determine what we see. They colour, shape, direct, build what we see. So what if we entertain a more unusual idea, a more unusual set of ideas, that these persons have -- we're leaning more towards giving them, granting them an autonomy, that they are somehow independent? Not that they're part of me so much. More than that, that they might want something from me. They might demand something from me. Entertaining this idea.
T. S. Eliot wrote an essay on poetry and poets, and he wrote of how one can be "oppressed by the burden which he must bring to birth." Someone or something wants something from me, and to a degree, it's a burden, it's a duty, as we were talking about earlier. Or, again, in my -- if I look at Jimi Hendrix or whatever, and I see, something wants to come through him. Now, it was interesting this morning, you guys laughed at me, but ... [laughter] Because it points to something. We're not talking about truths that reside in objects independently. And the Dharma goes beyond even that kind of assumption, even in the realm of material perception. What we're talking about is something comes alive between subject and object. There's a rapport, there's a resonance. Something is sparked, something is coloured. We're not talking about measurable, objective truths. It's gone deeper than that.
[19:07] But it seems to me, with how alive in my mythological relationship with Jimi Hendrix, if you like, is that there is something that's coming through him, was. Or that woman that I told you about earlier this morning, with her mother, and the sense of seeing it in a certain way that something of her beauty and her love and her generosity wants to come through. There's a demand there. So what if we entertain something like that? What if we entertain not the idea that I'm supposed to somehow integrate all this, to move towards wholeness and balance and the niceness of that? I don't want to tame these persons, these animals, these figures. Something leaning the other way. Rather, can they, do I dare, enliven them, empower them, give them their power, allow them more power?
There's a poem by Rilke. It's a long poem, so I can only read a little bit. He starts by talking -- he's describing he can see a storm coming, and then he switches tack after a few stanzas, and he says, "What we choose to fight is so tiny ..."[1]
[20:17 -- 20:55, poem]
"What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us." Then he says, "I mean the Angel." He goes on to talk about the angel in the Old Testament that wrestles with Jacob. "What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the Angel." The angel, daimon. Using the words in the same way. So flipping the relationship, changing the power dynamic, if you like.
So in all this, also, perhaps, what if we're not so much interested in reducing them? We could say, "This is the result of my past or whatever, this is coming up." But it doesn't always seem right. It doesn't always fit. What if we don't, dare not to reduce them, to equate them to, say, "This is a result of my past"? That sacred prostitute image, it didn't really fit for her to say it's from my past. And again, to someone who has been through all their family stuff and all that and therapy and everything, something else. Doesn't fit in that box. Can't reduce it that way. That voodoo guy that ate the heart doesn't come out of the past. "Oh, I'm angry at something that happened, so it's constellating as this." It doesn't -- neither of those, for examples, fit. It doesn't really make sense to say they're results of socio-economic factors. That wasn't the case in either of them. Nor were they compensations -- that person was a bit like this, so it's like, "Oh, we'll spin that to create a more balanced personality."
When we talk in terms of persons or angels or demons or whatever language we want to use, it's also different than, as I mentioned earlier, different than reducing them to being psychological factors, aspects that we can kind of build a complete structure, fill all my complete set of psychological qualities and tick all the boxes and have them all balance each other: I've got my strength and I've got my mettā, and I've got my capacity to be angry in a healthy da-da-da, and it all fits very nicely, whether you call it essential aspects or factors or qualities of mind. 'Persons' imply something bigger. 'Demons*,' '*angels' implies they have this autonomy, they're bigger, they're not boxable. So not reducing these, necessarily, to symbols or psychological concepts, or something that can be deciphered and finally arrived at: "This means this." W. H. Auden, the poet, said or wrote, "We are lived by powers we pretend to understand." We are lived by powers we pretend to understand. It's a different spin on things.
If one dares to play with this, entertain this idea, then it's possible that something different opens in us, we are open to something different. The self-sense, as I mentioned earlier this morning, can get undermined, the solidity of self. Something is undermined in the usual self-sense. It's opened in a different way, and the self is not so prioritized in this cast of characters. It's not so much the central figure, the most important figure, the controller, the coordinator, the top dog. It's not so much the one with the reality, the solidity, and everything else is less than. Do I dare play with that?
So playing a little bit myself over the last few years and with students, to me, it feels like there's been a journey here, some maturation; I don't even know if that's ... it sounds like a value judgment. There's been a change. Make a distinction here. Some of you may be familiar with, say, something like shamanic journeying, where there's the -- enter into the imagination, and you feel like you're moving through a landscape, perhaps, and encountering different areas and different beings in that landscape and engaging with them in different ways. Or certain types of active imagination, what's called. But let's distinguish between what we might call a narrative image and a poetic image or an iconic image. So when you move through a landscape in time, over distance, there's something that's unfolding in time. It's a narrative image. There's a story there. A poetic image just sort of stays there. So it doesn't go anywhere. Like an image in a poem, it's just there. It has an atemporal quality to it. Iconic images, they don't go anywhere; they're just there, for contemplation, for resonance with.
Because one of the dangers in -- potential dangers -- in, say, the more shamanic journeying, is that the person who journeys gets reinforced. The ego on its journey gets reinforced. And this is some -- [we] want to move in a way that actually crumbles that or opens it up in a different way. So going on a journey and slaying the dragon, cutting through the forest thicket, climbing the castle walls, finding the sleeping princess, kissing her, she wakes, we get married and live happily ever after -- it's a narrative image that moves towards a happy resolution. What if we don't go so much that way, and there's more, you know -- that wanderer I was telling you about on the outskirts of town, wandering, wandering in the desert, he's always wandering; he never gets anywhere. He might have this or that meeting. He never reaches any place of lasting rest or something. Or that soldier, always battling or preparing for battle or resting for the next battle. Always, always. There's not a narrative resolution there.
There's something eternal, if you like, if we use the word carefully; atemporal. And then there's a different relationship possible of actually coming close to these images and kind of just staying with an image, rather than going anywhere with it. Stewing with it, letting it stew you, letting the image and you stew, close, like in a hermetically sealed vessel, resonating. Different. Or, if there is a narrative, it's all the parts of the narrative together, all together -- the journeying, the woundedness, the heroic deeds, the healing, the love, whatever. They're all somehow, all these elements are held instantaneously, contemporaneously. So spinning this in a different way, because there's this chance of something different opening up here. Not literalizing or concretizing these persons, these images. And not reducing them to symbols (although one might, and we could). Not reducing them to my personal history of the past, something that happened to me, a result of my childhood or whatever (although one could, and there's a place for that).
And if I don't do all that, it's like they have -- they're of infinite depth. I can never quite get to the bottom of them. I can never quite fit them in a box, decipher them, say "It's that. I've finished understanding this now." There's an infinitely deep mystery to them. And I would say there's a chance then that we move beyond the purely human into something more, if we use a certain word, religious. It's beyond me and gone to something bigger than me. So Henry Corbin was a, in certain circles, very famous scholar of Islamic mysticism and Sufism. He said, "Not your individuation, not your individuation that matters -- the angel's individuation."[2] So what if we said that's not -- the whole relationship with them is not even about me and my growth? There's some boldness and daring here. I let go of the whole structure of assumption and movement about me and my growth, and getting better, and integrating whatever it is. Let that go. We say, what if this is not about that? It's the angel, the demon's individuation, growth, whatever, that's important, not mine. Or not your individuation that is your task, but the angel's individuation, that is your task. So in working meditatively, the question becomes not, "What can I get from this? What's it going to give me? What nice factor of mind or energy or whatever," but rather, "What do you want? What do you want? What is it that you want?" There's a different relationship with it.
This is from James Hillman. He's talking about this, this shift in perspective or possibility of it: to regard the image as highly intentional and necessary -- I'm going to paraphrase -- as presenting a claim, moral, erotic, intellectual, aesthetic, and demanding a response. It is an affecting presence. It affects the heart. Seems, this image seems to bear an instinctive direction for a destiny. Such images mean well for us, back us up, and urge us on, understand us more deeply than we understand ourselves, expand our sensuousness and spirit, and love us. He goes on to say, "This message-bearing experience of the image and the feeling of blessing that an image can bring recalls the Neoplatonic sense of images as daimons and angels," which means 'message-bearers.'[3] Some of this was woven into contemporary Western philosophy in a way that's gotten lost over the years, actually.
[31:31] So not viewing it as me or part of me. Rather, what does it -- it wants something of me and from me. It influences me. It exerts power on me. It has needs. This person, this image, this demon, this angel, has needs. It perceives in a certain way. It has certain ideas, eidos -- that's the way, the ideas through which one perceives. It has a certain aesthetic style. They have different aesthetic styles and different styles of morality and values. That flying dragon I was telling you about, or the solider, the endless, eternal soldier, or the wanderer who's always wandering, can seem as if the image is mirroring my life or mirroring my emotion, but is it maybe the other way around as well? My life and my emotion in the present is mirroring, echoing, resonating with the image, the person that wants to come through. Flipped. What if, again, do I dare, to entertain this idea and relationship that maybe it's my job to serve, to serve this that wants to come through? That the psyche is bigger than the human? Not the psyche in the human, but the human in the psyche.
This is James Hillman again, and I'm paraphrasing: if you entertain this kind of idea, this eidos, then our essentially differing human individuality is really not human at all, but more the gift of an inhuman daimon who demands human service. It is not my individuation, but the daimon's (that's echoing Corbin), not my fate that matters to the gods, but how I care for the psychic persons entrusted to my stewardship during my life. It is not life that matters, but soul, and how life is used to care for the soul.[4] Completely different way of relating to existence. So for me, there is something religious; we're moving into a religious, if it's the right word, sensibility -- bigger than typical humanist assumptions that we are so used to entertaining. We take for granted the perspective of humanism. I feel, playing with this, entertaining this -- and when I say 'play' and 'entertain,' it's like kids; they can, if you watch them, they play, it's a game, but they enter something very seriously, and enough that it can give rise to all kinds of seriousness and fullness and aliveness. If one does -- and there's a balance there -- I feel sometimes, I feel that what's going to be, what's going to feel most deeply important at the end of my life is have I done my duty to these that want to come through, these that are knocking and calling me and asking something of me? On my deathbed, that's going to be the most important thing. Have I done my duty? Have I served them?
It's not me and my life that's important, my comfort, my happiness, my blah blah blah blah blah. Something else. It's that that wants to come through, that one can serve. Something is opened. That's more important. And it's not that that's separate from life, because that comes through life, it permeates life. Images are permeating, pervaded, everywhere, as I was saying earlier. So if we play with these ideas, and if you dare to entertain, you start wondering about a lot of things. For example, desire. I mean, the Buddhist framework, typical Buddhist framework, says, "Oh, desire is for maximizing the pleasant, maximizing pleasant sensation, and minimizing unpleasant sensation. That comes from self-interest. So there is a self which wants to maximize pleasure and minimize unpleasant." Now, that's a very helpful way of looking at things. It's a helpful framework, and you can take that a long way. But it's a simplification. I just wonder, is it really the fullness of what's going on?
Or is it sometimes that desire comes from the angel, comes from the demon? Not even mine. It wants something. So this woman who has listened to so much Dharma and blah blah blah, and yet, can't seem to stop the partying and the this and that, that I was telling you earlier, is it really that she can't handle her emotions, and it's kind of avoidance behaviour? Maybe in some cases, or to an extent. Or is something else coming through? Some other god, if you like, is calling her, is moving her. Maybe Dionysus, the god of ecstasy, craziness, fragmentation. It's a different ... Is it really that she's just seeking to maximize pleasure and avoid the unpleasant emotions that she can't handle?
All right. So, as I said, leaning towards what's not very common in the way that we typically think. And that's quite far out, what I'm describing, or what I'm suggesting as a possible way of looking at all this. And you might feel a little bit uncomfortable and say, "This sounds dangerous to me, what you're suggesting. It sounds a little on the edge of, perhaps, nuts." [laughter] So let's say a few things as kind of caveats or being a little careful. One is, and I'll repeat this, we're not talking about belief. We're not talking about something to believe, some objective truth that you can prove in a scientific experiment or something. We're talking about something -- we're talking about a mythical, entertaining a mythical sensibility. We're talking about a way of looking, entertaining a way of looking, an idea, that leads and opens up in a certain direction, or opens up certain things.
Will it make you happy? Well, yeah, some of this will; there will be a lot of happiness. But not always. That soldier, it's not particularly happy. That wanderer, it's not particularly -- I mean, it's got a kind of, but not really. Will it make you free? Will it lead to freedom? Yeah, at a radical level, deeper probably than even the conception of freedom that you might be entertaining. There's a whole other level of freedom available here, we hadn't even realized that it was available. But even then, it's not so simple.
You guys okay? Getting tired? It's okay to say a bit more? [affirmative noises] There's a radical freedom available here, but it's not that simple. Because if I say there is this duty, or there is this burden, or I feel like there's this beautiful duty and this serving, that's not quite 100 per cent free, is it? I'm still -- I've got this duty. So yes, happiness, sort of, sometimes. Not others. Yes, a certain kind of freedom at a very deep level, but not in the total way that we might have imagined.
Maybe introduce a word that's really gone out of style: soulfulness. What might this bring is a dimension of feeling and awareness into the existence we might call soulful. There's something about the resonances, the meaningfulnesses, the depth, the richness, the beauty, the different kinds of beauty that one can feel there. And there's a possibility that one senses one's life and one's death in very different ways, very different ways.
Some styles of practice, it's almost like they can become a bit one-dimensional. There's the possibility of opening up other dimensions, a sensibility to other dimensions of existence. Maybe a better word than 'happiness' is 'fulfilment.' Something feels right, because something is knocking on my door and pulling me and pushing me, and something is fulfilled through following that. Socrates apparently said -- this is from Norman Brown -- he says our greatest blessings, says Socrates in the Phaedrus, come to us by way of madness -- provided, he adds, that the madness comes from the god. Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness.[5] Some people, maybe even some people listening today, and I know some people here, from experience, actually feel -- if you use a certain language -- a calling in this direction, to explore in this way, to entertain this kind of ideation. There's, if you like, to use a certain language, a soul-necessity. It feels necessary to go in this way. Maybe not at the exclusion of others, but this feels important. Now, I can use that word, 'soul,' without ever meaning an entity or some solid thing or anything like that. I use it more as a way of looking. There's a way of looking that unfolds soulfulness, that unfolds this resonance and meaningfulness and depth and kinds of beauty and other perspectives on existence.
So soul, if you like, is a way of looking. And I can use that word just as I use the word, we use the word, 'self.' We know it's empty, but we can use that and it's helpful. Or we can use the inner critic idea. We know it's not real, but it's helpful as a concept. Or the words angel, demon -- again, know they're empty, but they can be really helpful. I can talk and see in those terms, and that unfolds something that might not unfold or open from another perspective, another way of looking.
[42:31] Okay, so that was caution or caveat number one, is really we're not talking about belief here. We're talking mythically about entertaining, entertaining ideas. Second thing, and again, you might feel, "Well, what about ethics here, you know? If you've got some crazy person in there, or very violent, won't you act out? Isn't there a danger of acting these crazy things out? What about suicide bombers? Don't they have thinking this kind of way and that sort of thing?" Again, I repeat what I said this morning: knowing image as image. Knowing image as image. But adding to that, and again, what I said this morning, is that images exist for us even when we don't realize. So when I say 'know image as image,' I particularly mean be aware of images that we don't even recognize are images. When people declare holy war on other people, and those other people declare a holy war back on those other people, are they not all completely entranced by certain mythology and images? "A war against evil," blah blah blah. It's an image, it's a mythos that they're failing to see is exactly that -- it's a mythos, it's an image. Not knowing image as image -- that's where the danger comes, not in the image of a warrior or even in the image of holy war. The danger is in the literalism and the blindness to seeing image as image. As I said, when I do see image as image, then it empowers these things and also disempowers them. It empowers them helpfully; disempowers what's unhelpful or dangerously unconscious there.
So sometimes working in this way, one might feel that something is being asked that needs expression in the world. I need to say something, I need to communicate or manifest something in a certain way. Could be vocally, could be artistically, could be in the style of the way I do something. Something needs to manifest. Other times, nothing needs to manifest on a material level, but I need to honour something. I need to listen and feel the beauty of something. So there's also that question. What needs acting and what doesn't need acting? What just needs honouring? Needs feeling into the different beauties that are offered there, the soulfulness there?
Again, talking about cautions. You know, sometimes people talk to me using this language, and I feel uncomfortable because something is -- it's almost like they're taking it too literally and taking the self in the middle of it all too -- they believe too much in themselves. A person says, "This healing chieftain appeared to me and he blessed me with the power to heal other beings," and blah blah blah, "and there was this imaginal ritual," and then they feel themselves, like they're taking it way too literally, and it all sounds so stiff and a little bit pompous. There's too much self there. And it makes other people nervous. [laughter] You start talking about this and people, "Yeah, great ..." [laughter] It's too much self, too much solidity, too much literalism, and too much concretization.
But we need a lot of sensitivity here. So what's discerning between what is a movement of ego, or you know this word, papañca? Do you know this word? The ego-proliferation, the vortex, the spinning of craziness that we get into sometimes. What's all that, and what is the calling of, let's say, of the demon, or, to use John Keats, the poet, his phrase: what is soulmaking as something different from ego and papañca? Sometimes it's not so easy to tell the difference. So again, back to the body, the sensitivity, the emotional resonances. Papañca and ego tends to stay pretty petty. It feels petty. It feels cheap. It tends to loop, just loop in small circles, around and around, whereas the other stuff, we feel the body, it tends to open something. Even if it looks weird as an image, it tends to open up the body, the heart. There's an alignment, there's an energization, expansion, as I was saying before.
The delicacy of attention, discrimination, sensitivity. Sometimes right in the middle of what we call papañca, that kind of craziness that feels so much like ego, there's something, let's say, holy, that wants to come through, and we're not -- it's partly staying stuck in a small loop because I'm not seeing the holiness in it. That's what's keeping it stuck in the small loop, and it stays as papañca, and it needs a different relationship, and then it can open up. But I sometimes wonder whether this whole question is like -- especially in these circles, and also modern culture, we tend very easily to label something in ourself or in another when we say, "Ah, that's ego. That's ego." Very easily, "That's ego." What does it mean? What does it mean?
So, Hendrix again ... He wrote these letters when he was young, and he was just still learning his trade. And he went out on the road with different bands, and he was gone from home for months and months touring. And he would write back cards -- I forget to who ... to his brother or his father, I can't remember, or a friend. And a lot of them would sound very boasting. "I played the blues like you've never heard, man. I'm getting so good. You won't believe." That sounds like ego. Is it? Or did you see that film, did anyone see that film, Senna, the film about the racing driver? I was completely uninterested in Formula One -- I'm still not that interested in it, but. [laughter] I went to see this film. Something -- it's very easy, it's like, why does this guy want to be number one, world champion? It's just ego. Drive a fast car, get the babes, da-da-da, etc. It's like, it's so easy to fit that in the box of just immature ego and the competition and everything. Is it really? Is that all it is? Or is something else coming through? And does that other thing have a kind of beauty to it, a kind of necessity, a kind of divinity, even?
Or you see someone and they're dressed a certain way, this way or that, "Oh, they're just looking for attention. Or they just want sexual attention." It's very easy, "Yeah, that's just ego." Is that really -- I mean, in some cases, maybe, or maybe it's a proportion. But is that all of what's going on? Or is something else wanting to manifest, wanting to come through? Some other god or goddess, if we use that language?
You see this everywhere. In Buddhist history, it's rich with so much polemic and invective and -- is that the right word? Yeah, and argument between ... So Chandrakīrti was an extremely important teacher in the Mahāyāna, and he writes in his commentaries on this teacher that was a little earlier called Bhāvaviveka, and he's just, I mean, to use colloquial language, he's slagging him off endlessly in these texts. It's just, "He's making one mistake after another. He's a nincompoop," whatever the Sanskrit for 'nincompoop' is. [laughter] It's all over the place, these teachers saying, "These fools don't know what they're talking about. Only I know. You're lucky that I'm around as a teacher." You know, broadcasting this in texts that then get reprinted. You think, what's going on? Picasso in an interview, they asked him about Matisse and he goes, "Ugh, Matisse. It's just a splash of red on the canvas." You think, "What a nasty man. It's all ego."
Tibetan and Indian polemics in the Buddhist tradition, there's so much polemic there. Even the Buddha, you may know this story, very shortly after his enlightenment, the first person he met said, "Wow, you look amazing. Who's your teacher?" And he said, "Having fully known on my own" -- [laughter] -- "to whom should I point as my teacher? I have no teacher. One like me cannot be found. In the world with its devas, even with its angels, I have no counterpart. I am an arahant." One translation of that is a defeater of all: "I have defeated all." "I am the unexcelled teacher." And this guy just says, "Yeah ... sure." [laughter] And goes on his way. You say, "Well, can't be ego if it's the Buddha." Or, "Maybe it is; maybe awakening's all a load of rubbish." Or is there -- are we just looking at the whole thing in the wrong way?
There's a beautiful myth from ancient Egypt, Horus, the myth of Horus, if you know. He was born from his mother, Isis, and she realizes as he's being born, "Ah, this is a falcon coming now." She said, "Make way, it's a falcon." He shoots out and the first thing he does is fly. He flies a greater distance, he flies way out of the solar system, and he says, "I've gone further than all of the gods of old. No god compares. I'm unique in my flight." Then there's a, for me, a very touching myth that follows. There's something in the archetype of that. Looks like ego. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's something even beautiful in what we quickly label ego in all these different examples.
[51:49] So again, are we oversimplifying this whole question of self? "It's either ego or it's compassion." As if there's nothing else. Is the whole notion of ego and self oversimplified? And when we talk about repression, I can repress stuff from my past, but maybe I can also repress, if you like, an angel or a demon that might be coming up. That might be repressed too.
Okay. So maybe -- I'm not sure. I want to end now. But I'm not sure if this kind of way I'm leaning -- and again, it's only one possibility -- but if this kind of way that I've emphasized today, because it's unusual, and because I find it more interesting, if that needs a certain depth of freedom already to even go near; if you need to have let go of a lot of the more 'ugh' stuff. Maybe. Maybe that's the case. But not always. So this is going to be different with different individuals. But some people, as I said, will be called to this way of looking and these kind of ideas, even before they have any deep freedom and let go of a lot of stuff. There's something necessary, and it's part of their way of working out a freedom. So it's different. It's different.
But I would say that there's a real possibility that this way of engaging actually brings freedom, a radical freedom, as I said earlier. A freedom even at a level that we wouldn't even have realized existed as a level of freedom, a whole different kind of freedom is possible out of this. A whole different kind. A whole other level of freedom. Part, one part of that freedom, one small part, is because we have, as I said, images are everywhere, and we have, whether we realize it or not, we have images and fantasies of what awakening is and what it looks like. We have images and fantasies operating in us, given to us by the culture of what freedom is and looks like. And then they have their power, and if something that I'm doing doesn't fit, it feels like it's not okay. Do you understand what I'm saying? We limit the range of what is holy or beautiful or divine or awakened or whatever it is. It's kind of given to us by images; it's informed by images.
But there are also other kinds of holiness, other kinds of divinity. There are, to use a certain language, there are other gods and other archetypes. Not only the kind of Christian archetype of divinity or holy, or only the Buddhist archetype of holiness and freedom and divinity -- sober, equanimous, calm, chaste. It's a Buddhist image. It's a Buddhist spin on what awakening looks like. It's one of the main Buddhist spins.
That word, daimon, or daemon, historically in the West, what happened was that there were lots of those. There were lots of gods, and lots of daimons, daimones, and then the Christian revolution happened, and a monotheistic culture took birth, and everything that didn't fit into that God became -- all the other daimons became demons, devils, and got equated, lumped with Satan, darkness, evil. Do you see what I mean? Yeah? There was a shrinking of the range. So, for example, Aphrodite's temples became labelled Satanic worship temples. It was all lumped together. Failure to see the beauty, the divinity, in something else. So that happened in Christianity. Does it not go on also in Buddhadharma? Is it not the same, that something has shrunk?
So, as I said, there's lot of loose ends and questions and implications here if one really goes into it. One of the things I want to say, as well, is that if you get into this, you start to realize, as I've said several times today, our world, our lives, are alive with images anyway, with imagination and fantasy. It imbues our existence, especially where we have a sense of meaningfulness and resonance. That's when image is alive for us, myth is very alive for us. Wherever there's a sense of meaningfulness, being moved, or resonant with something, image and fantasy are alive. Can I wake up to that? Can I see that and start exploring it? Do I dare, admitting that and seeing what does it mean, what's its implication? Entertaining that eidos, as I said. There's a possibility, if one does, there's a possibility that it opens up to, as I said, a whole other level of freedom, and a whole other way of conceiving and sensing existence. A very different sense of existence possible.
Okay. Shall we have a quiet minute together?
Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Man Watching," News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, tr. Robert Bly (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2015), 112--3. Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20170809190749/http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/2015/06/05/rainer-maria-rilke-the-man-watching/, accessed 2 Nov. 2020. ↩︎
Similar statements are attributed to Corbin in James Hillman, Mythical Figures: Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman, Vol. 6.1 (Thompson, CT: Spring Publications, 2007), 196, and in James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy -- And the World's Getting Worse (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 62. ↩︎
James Hillman, Archetypal Psychology (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 1997), 14. ↩︎
James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 175. ↩︎
Norman O. Brown, Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 1--2. ↩︎
