MYTHICAL LIVING
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Philo Stone, c1977
Jung has suggested that each individual life is based
on a particular myth, and that we ought each to
discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may
live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating
with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being
dragged along unwillingly.
These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of
certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what
they are living. But if the individual becomes
conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that
underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt
himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then
transmuted into the inner experience, and the true
individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge.
This is an important step in the quest for the Self.
--M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I&<
I. Philosophy
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In
science, paradigms are thought-models which direct
their holders to pose only certain questions and to
utilize only certain methods in search of answers.
This precisely parallels the effect of a given
archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes
in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain
things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit.
The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form
our conceptualization of reality function to shape the
very reality we hope to capture and understand. By
emphasizing particular relationships, or elements,
they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we
experience. This conceptualization of reality is
known as one's worldview. A person who embraces a
particular paradigm can create a reality from his
expectations, even without conscious intent to do so.
In our technological world, most paradigms stress a
routine or mechanical side of life. In order to
acquire experiential freedom from cultural
programming, one must have a model. A model is
required for realization.
Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic
economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive
metaphors, or models, for the realization of
liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is
inherent in the archetypal experience of myth. The
aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical.
In a religious society, myths tell the people who they
are and where they come from. To change the myth is
to become lost in the most profound ontological (1)
sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual
fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and
everything, especially himself, to find out the
universal order of things and to seek his place in it.
Mythological explanations arise when an individual or
race evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to
these questions. These answers formulate one's
worldview. With these questions, a universal seed
within man begins to germinate. Self-consciousness
begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The
finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite
awareness.
In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must
first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In
Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man
is contained in space and time. In fact, both are
contained in man. Both experiences, together,
illustrates psychic experience. The Creations, as a
psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm
of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human
limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple
recurrence. It is thus a continuous,
timeless-creation. All parts of the process are
inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is
inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega
principle.
As this universal seed starts to grow in an
individual, he is plunged from his preconscious,
womb-like security into a dazzling world of
intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox.
There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man
comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are
produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the
individuation, the subjective and objective spheres
merge into one.
II. Orientation
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in
four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it
wakens and maintains in the individual an experience
of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the
ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the
universe. Science now serves this mythological
function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation
and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they
provide models for the centering and harmonization of
the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols.
The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the
mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course,
unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not
"the truth."
For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious
provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the
cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return
to the source which goes a step further than
genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious
experience of archetypal processes. A model for
pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which
one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the
age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This
mythological motif is activated whenever cultural
values and mores do not provide an adequate model for
one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and
a person is thrown back on his own resources.
Valuable connections and new forms must be
re-established. During this period, symbols acquire
great personal value. For many, this period is seen
as an experience of rebirth or renewal. This heroic
stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades
into the background when one becomes familiarized with
the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and
participating in the imaginal realm, require
attention, effort, and creativity.
Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is
found in the common use of drugs in the
counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of
study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke
experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph
Campbell has likened the situation to one found in
Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god,
'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god
does and the person is blown to bits." The
personality suffers from an inability to relate,
meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide
ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in
order for us to obtain value from the contact,
consciousness must be able to come to understanding,
digestion, and assimilation of the experience.
Liberating experiences require a context of strong
ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful
assertion." It means that the ego has learned to
discriminate between itself and the archetypal
processes operating through and around it. It means,
also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and
cooperate with them.
A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep
waters, will quickly regress to the natural
standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with
the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may
bring back (which has both personal and collective
significance), is not given to him. He does not find
the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove
most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life.
He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire
to stay "high." There is a generation of
"world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some
mythical realm. However, their methods are either
haphazard, or ill-advised.
This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the
complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent.
When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex.
This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This
was not the case a century ago, when our cultural
model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies
somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of
tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to
apply oneself to the task. It requires
self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of
god.
When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets
out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that
he must first change himself. In this moment of
transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive,
ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained
in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are
contained within himself. The gods and man are
involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires
the other for realization.
When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming,
he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to
metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an
understanding that metaphysics is the science of the
content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly
involved with developing man's latent subconscious
powers, so he may develop greater access to the
imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by
definition, contains wider parameters for experience
and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive
method and model. With it, man may live his
individuality within the context of tradition.
There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form
of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a
holographic concept of reality. (2)
Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does
not merely stand in the place of or represent the
union of several elements, but rather it is identical
with the whole. If the part is the whole, then
whoever controls the part controls the whole. In
normal discourse, symbols represent their referents
and are separable from what they represent; in
metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are
their referents; they cannot be separated. The
elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate
symbol from experience so that symbols can be
manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be.
While we cannot experience precisely the same thing
ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent
two experiences as being roughly the same. (3)
The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised
mythological images have certain typical features. We
may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms
to their simplest expressions as a means of
recognizing them. Jung's list of salient
characteristics includes:
Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the
opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right
and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio
oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation
(circle, sphere); and finally the centering process
and a radial arrangement usually followed by some
quaternity system. The centering process is...the
never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development,
and is characterized as such by the fact that it
brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic
effect.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the
possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional
mystical exercises stress the importance of the
centering process. Fundamental in these meditations
is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions.
The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is
integrated via a form of imagery.
Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or
superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach
Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane
experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp
the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because
Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and
therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal
Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We
can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of
nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same
kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with
innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just
as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so
the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts
in disguise." He states further that these "soul
events are not parts of any system. They are
independent of the tandems in which they are placed,
inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the
imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically,
ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not
compensatory to anything else."
The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the
more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is
egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a
tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic
consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of
archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to
broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other
individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our
requirements for intellectual puzzlement and
explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions
in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation."
"Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every
phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is
capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype
of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently
that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce
from this that myth functions as a sort of
metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically
present themselves as impossible truths. They have
the ability to transform concrete particulars into
universals, and to present abstract universals as
concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking,
perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may
experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in
our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths,
since that is where they are. We may participate with
them by recognizing our concrete existence as
metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that:
"myths resist being interpreted into practical life.
They are not allegories of applied psychology,
solutions to personal problems. This is the old
moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic
fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do
next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the
consequences, as if this practical guidance were what
was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one
myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical
living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us
still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how
to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how.
They simply give the invisible background which starts
us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do
not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of
meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to
personify carries us into myth."
