Figure 1. A solid cylinder and its shadows.
A transcendent truth is to our intellect like a solid cylinder is to its shadows. The same transcendent truth can, in principle, ‘appear’ to the intellect in different and apparently contradictory forms, like circle and rectangle. The symbolisms of different but valid religious myths are the shadows of transcendent truths. They are genuine, fair representations of those truths in just the same way that the circle and the rectangle are both genuine, fair representations of the cylinder. The fact that a given religious myth apparently contradicts another does not necessarily imply that one of them is invalid, for exactly the same reason that the shadow circle does not imply that the shadow rectangle is invalid.
When proposing that you emotionally take your chosen religious myth in as if it were the literal truth, I am attempting to honor the fact that the shadow circle—or the rectangle, as the case may be—is a valid and fair representation of the transcendent cylinder. In other words, it is really true. The shadow circle conveys valid insights about the cylinder, which are essential to inform our emotional lives. Cynically dismissing all religious myths is tantamount to closing one’s eyes to the shadows projected by truth. By doing so, one willingly ignores the genuine insights that shadows convey, an attitude somewhat akin to that of the clergy who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
However, if you intellectually take your religious myth to be the literal truth, you will be closing your eyes to the cylinder! You will be taking a shadow to be all there is to reality and dismissing that which is its source. This is as unfair to the transcendent truth as dismissing all religious myths; perhaps worse. In both cases, one is practicing voluntary blindness; closing one’s eyes to God, so to speak.
Moreover, if one grants validity only to the world of shadows, a logical implication is that shadows with different shapes cannot be concurrently true. Since the transcendent reality—the place where these differences are reconciled—is intellectually dismissed, the differences in shape must imply true contradictions. In the absence of the cylinder, if the circle is true then the rectangle must be false, and vice-versa. Here fundamentalism is born: ‘I know that my religious myth—my chosen shadow—is right so yours can only be wrong.’ When the Christian myth is honored by being emotionally taken in as if it were the literal truth, Christians live lives of meaning and transcendent significance, escaping the madness of a materialist society and coming closer to truth. When it is intellectually taken to be the literal truth, countless innocent people die burning at the stake or at the point of the crusader’s sword. Perhaps even worse, millions wither slowly in the meaninglessness that results from forced ‘conversions.’
Cynicism and fundamentalism are the two sides of one coin. Both practice voluntary blindness toward transcendent truth: one by refusing to acknowledge that shadows convey valid insights about it, and the other by taking a shadow to be the sole and complete truth. My proposal in the previous section is thus not meant as a nod to fundamentalism. Allow me to exhaust this important point.
Because of its very nature, there are no arbiters of mythical veracity other than intuition. The validity of a religious myth is not decidable by the intellect. We may each see a different but equally valid projection—or shadow—of a transcendent truth in the form of the myth that best resonates with our hearts. As such, it is hopeless to try to identify a fully objective, dispassionate criterion for judging which myths are valid. Fundamentalism is untenable because it depends on there being just such a fully objective standard of transcendent truth.
Does it mean that all religious myths are equally valid at a transcendent level? Of course not. A shadow in the form of a pentagon is always invalid as a projection of a solid cylinder, whichever way one illuminates it. As a matter of fact, a brief look at the metaphysical hysteria reigning at the fringes of society today shows that many of the cosmologies being promoted are internally inconsistent and lack the depth to resonate with our hearts. Moreover, as discussed earlier, the developed form of many traditional religious myths isn’t grounded on genuine intuition alone, but also on shallower human drives like greed and fear.
I am, thus, not saying that there is no way to evaluate the validity of a religious myth. We will always have our own sincere intuition—the sense of the heart—to do so. The difficulty, of course, lies in telling real intuition—emerging from the depths of the obfuscated mind—from shallow self-deception, like wish fulfillment and gullibility. Many fall victim to self-deception and, I’m afraid, there are no surefire recipes to avoid it. Ultimately, we are each responsible for the sincerity, attention and discernment with which we listen to the whispers of our obfuscated mind.
In addition, it is conceivable that the comparative study of religion, as professionally done in academia, could help us recognize true religious myths by identifying the symbolic patterns typical of genuine intuitive insight.69 Through complementing our personal intuition with collective validation, this could ease the individual burden we now carry in navigating our religious life. However, as long as academia—plagued as it is by the deprived myth of materialism—insists on rejecting even the possibility of transcendence, the burden will remain on each of us individually.
Allowing one’s chosen religious myth to inform one’s emotional life as though it were literally true does not mean that one should take the myth, intellectually, to be the literal truth. Doing so plants the seed of fundamentalism.
Religious myth and language
Let us try to summarize and put in perspective some of what has been discussed so far. See Figure 2. The figure is divided vertically into outer (above) and inner (below) realms. Two concentric circles are shown. The inner circle represents our self-reflective intellect—operating according to language constructs—paired with the world of ordinary images and interactions, like lions, wildebeests, lions eating wildebeests, etc. The outer circle represents the obfuscated mind—operating according to symbols—paired with a world of transcendent meta-images. Unlike the images of consensus reality, these transcendent meta-images have no form: they are ineffable idea gestalts, not perceptual representations.
In the same way that only some of the conceivable interactions among ordinary images are empirically verifiable consensus facts, only a subset of all conceivable meta-images is actually true. These transcendent truths are recognized by the human mind as outer realities, as though captured by a sixth sense utterly incommensurable with the other five.
There are five different chains of dots in Figure 2, illustrating the basic categories of language constructs:
Chain 1-2: lies, ordinary fictions and factual errors. Here, an ordinary statement of language (1) denotes an ordinary image interaction (2) that is not a consensus fact. An example would be to say that ‘the Earth is flat,’ a simple factual error.
Chain 3-4-5: allegories. Here, an ordinary statement of language (3) denotes an ordinary image interaction (4) that is not, but does connote, a consensus fact (5). A famous example can be found in Shakespeare’s play As You Like It: ‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.’ Clearly, the world isn’t literally a stage and not everybody is an actor. But the world is indeed the space wherein we all express ourselves as living beings and fulfill our roles in life. Chain 6-7: literal truths. Here, an ordinary statement of language (6) denotes an ordinary image interaction that is a consensus fact (7). An example would be to say that ‘the Earth is a spheroid.’
Chain 8-9-10: transcendent fallacies or false religious myths. Here, a mythical statement of language (8) denotes an ordinary image interaction (9) that is not a consensus fact, but does connote a transcendent meta-image (10). This transcendent meta-image, however, is not a transcendent truth.
Chain 11-12-13-14: true religious myths. Here, an intuition emerging from the obfuscated mind (11) inspires the intellect to produce a mythical statement of language (12) denoting an ordinary image interaction (13). This ordinary image interaction is no
t a consensus fact but does connote a transcendent truth (14). Clearly, true religious myths aren’t allegories (chain 3-4-5).
Figure 2 lays out a succinct template that captures, in a nutshell, the most important notions discussed. It is worthwhile to contemplate it for a moment, so to try and see its broader implications. We will return to this template shortly.
Figure 2. Mind and world.
Is the universe itself a form of language?
We have seen that true religious myths point to transcendent truths through symbolic stories. None of these stories, when taken as a whole, corresponds to a consensus fact. They, therefore, are not literally true. See Figure 2 again. For this reason, we can call such mythical stories quasi-fictions.70
Now, notice that the basic images in these quasi-fictions—the building blocks of the stories—are, in themselves, consensus facts. It’s just their particular interactions that are not. For instance, the story of a tree growing up to the sky from Karora’s head is a quasi-fiction. It may evoke a transcendent truth but does not correspond to a consensus fact: no tree has ever grown from the head of a buried deity to reach the sky. But the basic images used in the quasi-fiction—the tree, the head, the sky—are themselves consensus facts: trees do exist; heads do exist; the sky does exist.
Again: it is the particular interactions between the basic images of a religious myth—the tree sprouting from a head and reaching the sky—that do not correspond to consensus facts. The basic images themselves—the tree, the head, the sky—do.
Clearly, the basic images of consensus reality provide the building blocks not only for compound consensus facts, but also for religious myths that evoke transcendent truths. The building blocks of facts and religious myths are the same. This may sound like a casual and insignificant point, but it suggests an astounding possibility: Could the ordinary events of life themselves be pointing to transcendent truths? Could nature be connoting something fundamentally beyond or behind what it seems to denote?
It is curious enough that, in the context of religious myths, the images of consensus reality can be so effective in evoking transcendent meta-images. The entire field of mythology attests to this amazing fact and a quick look at a symbol dictionary will make it abundantly clear.71 But it doesn’t stop there: our nightly dreams, incredibly insightful as psychology has found them to be,72 are also built from consensus images borrowed from our waking lives. Even the mere fact that we sleep and dream—believing the dream to be real while we are in it—seems suspiciously like a hint about the transcendent nature of existence, if you remember our earlier discussion about the cosmogonic cycle. Moreover, we can effectively use ordinary images to convey our deepest transcendent intuitions. Case in point: in my earlier book Why Materialism Is Baloney I used the images of whirlpools, quicksilver, dreams, obfuscated stars in the noon sky, mutually-facing mirrors, and so on, to convey subtle metaphysical views. I found these images to be unreasonably suitable for such purpose. Why is consensus reality filled with images so appropriate for making sense of itself on a metaphysical level? Similarly, spiritual teachers and gurus have always made liberal use of consensus images to communicate their insights: onions to represent the nature of the ego (‘you peel its layers looking for its core and, at the end, nothing is left’), waves in the ocean to represent the underlying unity of nature (‘we are no more separate from the rest of nature than a wave is separate from the ocean’), etc.
The proven effectiveness of the images of consensus reality in evoking transcendent meta-images is non-trivial. In principle, there should be no reason for nature to be like that. The fact that it is is cumbersome to make sense of, unless consensus reality itself were attempting to evoke something transcendent; unless it were trying to say something deeper about itself through symbolism. ‘Holy art Thou, O God … of whom All-nature hath been made an image.… Holy art thou, transcending all pre-eminence … unutterable, unspeakable,’ sings the Hermetic myth.73 Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, a twentieth century Indian sage, was less-than-cryptic about this idea: ‘When you see the world you see God. There is no seeing God apart from the world. Beyond the world to see God is to be God,’ he stated.74 Nisargadatta’s words echoed the teachings of Hindu saint Ramakrishna about a century earlier.75
Figure 3 maps these ideas onto the previous template. As suggested by the figure, consensus reality may be a form of symbolic language attempting to point at something else. This ‘something else’ may be trying to reach out to us by appealing to our interpretative capacities. It may be posing the question: ‘Here is consensus reality, the best representation of myself that I can produce. Can you figure out what it really means?’ The question isn’t necessarily rhetorical or redundant, for the ‘something else’ may not know the answer. In fact, we may be the means through which it hopes to solve the riddle. We may be nature’s best shot at coming up with the answer. We may be the ones responsible for helping the sun of self-reflective awareness to rise and illuminate this conundrum. For all we know, there is no other game in town. As the Pueblo myth so powerfully illustrates, the human responsibility in the dance of life may go far beyond our intellect’s wildest guesses. If we fail to observe our rituals with sincerity and attention, the sun may no longer rise and darkness may befall the world forever. ‘Contemplator of God’s works did man become; he marveled and did strive to know their Author,’ continues the Hermetic myth.76
Figure 3. Consensus reality as a symbolic language pointing to transcendent truths.
The proven effectiveness of the images of consensus reality in evoking transcendent ideas is non-trivial. It is as though consensus reality were a symbolic language connoting something beyond or behind itself, which may be trying to reach out to us.
Chapter 4
Myth and no-myth
Earlier, I’ve said that it is nearly impossible to live life without a myth, for an on-going effort at interpreting consensus reality is part-and-parcel of the human condition. Yet, throughout much of history, there have been spiritual traditions whose aim has been precisely that: to reach an interpretation-free state of awareness; a state of pure observation, without commentary. Among these traditions one can count Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen and certain Western variations. Collectively, these traditions today are usually lumped under the term ‘nondualism.’ I will call them the traditions of no-myth, so to emphasize their contrast with what we have been discussing thus far. In the West, the traditions of no-myth roughly correspond to what has been called the ‘via negativa’—theologies of negation that attempt to characterize transcendence by stating what it is not—as opposed to the ‘via positiva’ of mythology.77
There is an obvious justification for no-myth traditions that is entirely consistent with—and, in fact, emerges naturally from—everything we have discussed earlier: because transcendent truths cannot be rationalized in words, no religious myth can be literally true. As such, all religious myths are literally false. It is easy to see how this realization could have led entire spiritual traditions to a complete rejection of the intellect and all myths. Clearly, the motivation behind such rejection does not contradict the non-literal truth of religious myths that we have been exploring in this book. Nonetheless, it is also clear that the outright exclusion of all myths implies, on the face of it, a clear conflict with the role and value of mythology. This ambiguous interplay between myth and no-myth traditions is prone to misinterpretation, requiring the more in-depth analysis that is the purpose of this chapter. Before we proceed, however, some brief clarifications are necessary.
First, it would be simplistic and false to conclude that the traditions of no-myth are exclusive to the East or that mythical traditions are exclusive to the West. Many Christian mystics—like Dionysius the Areopagite, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Suso, Jan van Ruysbroeck, etc.—echo no-myth approaches, whilst many Eastern religions—Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism, etc.—are rich in myths.
Second, what follows isn’t inte
nded as a thorough or scholarly review of the ways in which the traditions of myth and no-myth can help one achieve transcendent insight. It also isn’t intended as a complete review of the subtle complementarities between myth and no-myth approaches. My intention here is to briefly suggest the intertwining roles of myth and no-myth, as well as their potential pitfalls, in the search for the transcendent truths of nature. This book—a book about religious myths—would be omissive without it. Moreover, this chapter is heavily colored by my own personal experiences, as you will soon notice. This isn’t the most scholarly way to approach the subject, but it is certainly sincere, genuine and vivid.
The traditions of no-myth
A passage by Adyashanti describes well the interpretation-free state of awareness that no-myth traditions seek to achieve:
The mind compulsively interprets what it is aware of (the object) in a mechanical and distorted way. It begins to draw conclusions and make assumptions according to past conditioning.… In true meditation, the emphasis is on being awareness; not on being aware of objects, but on resting as primordial awareness itself.… An attitude of open receptivity, free of any goal or anticipation, will facilitate the presence of silence and stillness.78
Versluis’ characterization of the via negativa echoes this: it ‘is not concerned with the symbolism and meaning of nature so much as with the sheer transcendence of gnosis.’79
Notice how this seems antithetical to religious mythology. Instead of seeking to interpret the images and interactions of consensus reality (the ‘objects’ or ‘symbols’) to derive meaning and emotional significance from them, the emphasis is on relinquishing all effort of interpretation. Instead of seeking to achieve the goal of cracking the riddle of creation, the emphasis is on abandoning all goals. Instead of actively engaging with the cognitive activity of the obfuscated mind to understand its insights, the emphasis is on silence and stillness. So, do the traditions of no-myth fundamentally contradict the importance and value of religious myths? No, but this is probably the most delicate and easily misconstrued point of this book. So take a deep breath and bear with me.
More Than Allegory Page 6