Myths To Live By Part 2

To become -- in Jung's terms -- individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one's various life roles. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," and when at home, do not keep on the mask of the role you play in the Senate chamber. But this, finally, is not easy, since some of the masks cut deep. They include judgment and moral values. They include one's pride, ambition, and achievement. They include one's infatuations. It is a common thing to be overly impressed by and attached to masks, either some mask of one's own or the mana mana-masks of others. The work of individuation, however, demands that one should not be compulsively affected in this way. The aim of individuation requires that one should find and then learn to live out of one's own center, in control of one's for and against. And this cannot be achieved by enacting and responding to any general masquerade of fixed roles. For, as Jung has stated: "In the last a.n.a.lysis, every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can be called 'individuation.' All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of this alone makes sense of life."1 Which is precisely the opposite to the ideal enforced upon everyone -- even the greatest saints and sages -- in the great East, where the only thought is that one should become identified absolutely with the a.s.signed mask or role of one's social place, and then, when all a.s.signed tasks shall have been perfectly fulfilled, erase oneself absolutely, slipping (as one famous image has it) like a dewdrop into the sea. For there -- in contrast to the typically Western European idea of a destiny and character potential in each one of us, to be realized in our one lifetime as its "meaning" and "fulfillment" -- the focus of concern is not the person but (as in the modern communist tyrant states) the established social order: not the unique, creative individual -- who is regarded there as a menace -- but his subjugation through identification with some local social archetype, and his inward quelling, simultaneously, of every impulse to an individual life. Education is indoctrination, or, as described today, the brainwash. The Brahmin is to be a Brahmin; the shoemaker, a shoemaker; the warrior, a warrior; the wife, a wife: nothing other, nothing less, and nothing more.

Under such a dispensation the individual never comes to the knowledge of himself as anything but the more or less competent actor of a perfectly standard part. Whatever signs of a personality may have been promising in infancy will in a few brief years have disappeared, to be replaced by the features of a social archetype, a general standard mask, a mirage personality, or -- as I think we should say of such a one today -- a stuffed s.h.i.+rt. The ideal student in such a society is the one who accepts instruction without question and, blessed with the virtue of perfect faith in his authorized instructor, is avid to a.s.similate not only his codified information but also his mannerisms, criteria of judgment, and general image of the persona that the student is to become -- and when I say "become," that is what I mean; for there is to be nothing else remaining, no ego in our Western sense at all, with personal opinions, likes, dislikes, and unprecedented thoughts or aims.

It is interesting to remark that throughout the great Divine Comedy Divine Comedy of Dante, the visionary voyager through h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Heaven could recognize his deceased friends and talk to them of their lives. Likewise in the cla.s.sical afterworlds of the of Dante, the visionary voyager through h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Heaven could recognize his deceased friends and talk to them of their lives. Likewise in the cla.s.sical afterworlds of the Odyssey Odyssey and and Aeneid, Aeneid, Odysseus and Aeneas readily recognize and can talk with the shades of those recently dead. In the Orient, on the other hand, in the h.e.l.ls and Heavens of the Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, no such continuity of recognizable personal traits would have been found; for at death the mask of the earthly role is dropped and that of an afterlife a.s.sumed. The beings inhabiting the h.e.l.ls wear demonic shapes; those in the Heavens, G.o.dly. And when the reincarnating nonent.i.ty again returns to this earth, it will a.s.sume still another mask, with no conscious recollection of any past. For whereas in the European sphere -- whether in the cla.s.sical epics and tragedies, Dante's Odysseus and Aeneas readily recognize and can talk with the shades of those recently dead. In the Orient, on the other hand, in the h.e.l.ls and Heavens of the Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, no such continuity of recognizable personal traits would have been found; for at death the mask of the earthly role is dropped and that of an afterlife a.s.sumed. The beings inhabiting the h.e.l.ls wear demonic shapes; those in the Heavens, G.o.dly. And when the reincarnating nonent.i.ty again returns to this earth, it will a.s.sume still another mask, with no conscious recollection of any past. For whereas in the European sphere -- whether in the cla.s.sical epics and tragedies, Dante's Divine Comedy, Divine Comedy, or Jung's modern psychology of "individuation" -- the focus of concern is the individual, who is born but once, lives but once, and is distinct in his willing, his thinking, and his doing from every other; in the whole great Orient of India, Tibet, China, Korea, and j.a.pan the living ent.i.ty is understood to be an immaterial transmigrant that puts on bodies and puts them off. You are not your body. You are not your ego. You are to think of these as delusory. And this fundamental distinction between the Oriental and our usual European concepts of the individual touches in its implications every aspect of social and moral as well as psychological, cosmological, and metaphysical thought. "This objective universe," I read in a Sanskrit text, for example, "is absolutely unreal. So too is ego, the life span of which, as seen, is but a wink. . . Stop identifying yourself, therefore, with this lump of flesh, the gross body, and with ego, the subtle body, which are both imagined by the mind. . . Destroying this egoism, your enemy, with the mighty sword of Realization, enjoy freely and directly the bliss of your own true empire, which is the majesty of the Self that is the All in all." or Jung's modern psychology of "individuation" -- the focus of concern is the individual, who is born but once, lives but once, and is distinct in his willing, his thinking, and his doing from every other; in the whole great Orient of India, Tibet, China, Korea, and j.a.pan the living ent.i.ty is understood to be an immaterial transmigrant that puts on bodies and puts them off. You are not your body. You are not your ego. You are to think of these as delusory. And this fundamental distinction between the Oriental and our usual European concepts of the individual touches in its implications every aspect of social and moral as well as psychological, cosmological, and metaphysical thought. "This objective universe," I read in a Sanskrit text, for example, "is absolutely unreal. So too is ego, the life span of which, as seen, is but a wink. . . Stop identifying yourself, therefore, with this lump of flesh, the gross body, and with ego, the subtle body, which are both imagined by the mind. . . Destroying this egoism, your enemy, with the mighty sword of Realization, enjoy freely and directly the bliss of your own true empire, which is the majesty of the Self that is the All in all."2 The universe from which we are to strive thus for release is to be known as an ever-appearing-and-disappearing dreamlike delusion, rising and falling in recurrent cycles. When it is known as such and when one has learned to play one's part in it without any sense of ego, of desires, hopes, and fears, release from the everlasting rounds of meaningless reincarnations will have been attained. As the sun sets and rises when it should and as it should, the moon waxes and wanes, and animals act in the manners of their kind, so too must you and I behave in the manners proper to our birth. It is supposed that, as a consequence of behavior in earlier lives, we have been born just where we have appeared and nowhere else. No judging deity is required to a.s.sign one to this place or that. All is determined automatically by the spiritual weight (so to say) of the reincarnating monad. This and this alone is what determines the level of one's social entry, the rules of life that will be waiting for you, and all that you are to suffer and to enjoy.

In the old Sanskrit law books, The Laws of Manu, The Inst.i.tutes of Vishnu, The Laws of Manu, The Inst.i.tutes of Vishnu, etc., detailed descriptions are given of the types of study proper to each caste, the kinds of food to eat, the kind of person to marry, when to pray, to bathe, in what direction to face when sneezing or when yawning, how to rinse the mouth after meals, and so on, etc., detailed descriptions are given of the types of study proper to each caste, the kinds of food to eat, the kind of person to marry, when to pray, to bathe, in what direction to face when sneezing or when yawning, how to rinse the mouth after meals, and so on, ad infinitum. ad infinitum. The a.s.signed punishments are appalling. And in the Far East also, where, although the Way or Order of Nature is described in terms that are not exactly the same as those of India, they amount to pretty much the same as far as the government of one's life is concerned. For there too there is a cosmic order made known through the social order to which it is one's duty, as well as in one's nature, to conform. And there again the so-called sumptuary laws will tell in exact detail precisely how each is to live: in what size room to sleep (according to one's social status) and on a mattress of what material, how long one's sleeves are to be and of what material one's shoes, how many cups of tea one must drink in the morning, and so on. Every detail of life is prescribed to an iota, and there is so much that one The a.s.signed punishments are appalling. And in the Far East also, where, although the Way or Order of Nature is described in terms that are not exactly the same as those of India, they amount to pretty much the same as far as the government of one's life is concerned. For there too there is a cosmic order made known through the social order to which it is one's duty, as well as in one's nature, to conform. And there again the so-called sumptuary laws will tell in exact detail precisely how each is to live: in what size room to sleep (according to one's social status) and on a mattress of what material, how long one's sleeves are to be and of what material one's shoes, how many cups of tea one must drink in the morning, and so on. Every detail of life is prescribed to an iota, and there is so much that one has has to do that there is no chance at all to pause and ask, "What would I to do that there is no chance at all to pause and ask, "What would I like like to do?" to do?"

In short, the principles of ego, free thought, free will, and self-responsibile action are in those societies abhorred and rejected as ant.i.thetical to all that is natural, good, and true; so that the ideal of individuation, which in Jung's view is the ideal of psychological health and of an adult life fulfilled, is in the Orient simply unknown. Let me quote just one example, a pa.s.sage from the Indian Laws of Manu, Laws of Manu, concerning the regulations for the whole life long of an orthodox Hindu wife: concerning the regulations for the whole life long of an orthodox Hindu wife:

Nothing is to be done, even in her own house, independently, by a girl, a young or even an aged woman. The female in childhood is to be subject to her father; in young womanhood, to her husband; and when her lord is dead, to her sons. A woman is never to be independent. She must not attempt to free herself from her father, husband, or sons. Leaving them, she would make both her own and her husband's families contemptible. She must always be cheerful, clever in the management of her household affairs, careful in cleaning her utensils, and economical in expenditure. She shall obey as long as he lives him to whom her father (or, with her father's permission, her brother) has given her; and when he is dead, she must never dishonor his memory. . . Even a husband of no virtue, without any good qualities at all, and pursuing his pleasures elsewhere, is to be wors.h.i.+ped unflaggingly as a G.o.d. . . In reward for such conduct, the female who controls her thoughts, speech, and actions, gains in this life highest renown and in the next a place beside her husband.3

The philosophies of India have been cla.s.sified by the native teachers in four categories, according to the ends of life that they serve, i.e., the four aims for which men strive in this world. The first is dharma, dharma, "duty, virtue," of which I have just spoken, and which, as we have seen, is defined for each by his place in the social order. The second and third are of nature and are the aims to which all living things are naturally impelled: success or achievement, self-aggrandizement, which is called in Sanskrit "duty, virtue," of which I have just spoken, and which, as we have seen, is defined for each by his place in the social order. The second and third are of nature and are the aims to which all living things are naturally impelled: success or achievement, self-aggrandizement, which is called in Sanskrit artha; artha; and sensual delight or pleasure, known as and sensual delight or pleasure, known as kama. kama. These latter two correspond to the aims of what Freud has called the id. They are expressions of the primary biological motives of the psyche, the simple "I want" of one's animal nature; whereas the principle of These latter two correspond to the aims of what Freud has called the id. They are expressions of the primary biological motives of the psyche, the simple "I want" of one's animal nature; whereas the principle of dharma, dharma, impressed on each by his society, corresponds to what Freud has called superego, the cultural "Thou shalt!" In the Indian society one's pleasures and successes are to be aimed for and achieved under the ceiling (so to say) of one's impressed on each by his society, corresponds to what Freud has called superego, the cultural "Thou shalt!" In the Indian society one's pleasures and successes are to be aimed for and achieved under the ceiling (so to say) of one's dharma: dharma: "Thou shalt!" supervising "I want!" And when mid-life has been attained, with all the duties of life fulfilled, one departs (if a male) to the forest, to some hermitage, to wipe out through yoga every last least trace of "I want!" and, with that, every echo also of "Thou shalt!" Whereupon the fourth goal, the fourth and final end of life, will have been attained, which is known as "Thou shalt!" supervising "I want!" And when mid-life has been attained, with all the duties of life fulfilled, one departs (if a male) to the forest, to some hermitage, to wipe out through yoga every last least trace of "I want!" and, with that, every echo also of "Thou shalt!" Whereupon the fourth goal, the fourth and final end of life, will have been attained, which is known as moksha, moksha, absolute "release" or "freedom": not "freedom," however, as we think of it in the West, the freedom of an individual to be what he wants to be, or to do what he wants to do. On the contrary, "freedom" in the sense of absolute "release" or "freedom": not "freedom," however, as we think of it in the West, the freedom of an individual to be what he wants to be, or to do what he wants to do. On the contrary, "freedom" in the sense of moksha moksha means freedom from every impulse to exist. means freedom from every impulse to exist.

"Thou shalt!" against "I want!" and then, "Extinction!" In our modern Occidental view, the situation represented by the first two in tension would be thought of as proper rather to a nursery school than to adulthood, whereas in the Orient that is the situation enforced throughout even adult life. There is no provision or allowance whatsoever for what in the West would be thought of as ego-maturation. And as a result -- to put it plainly and simply -- the Orient has never distinguished ego from id.

The word "I" (in Sanskrit, aham) aham) suggests to the Oriental philosopher only wis.h.i.+ng, wanting, desiring, fearing, and possessing, i.e., the impulses of what Freud has termed the id operating under pressure of the pleasure principle. Ego, on the other hand (again as Freud defines it), is that psychological faculty which relates us suggests to the Oriental philosopher only wis.h.i.+ng, wanting, desiring, fearing, and possessing, i.e., the impulses of what Freud has termed the id operating under pressure of the pleasure principle. Ego, on the other hand (again as Freud defines it), is that psychological faculty which relates us objectively objectively to external, empirical "reality": i.e., to the fact-world, here and now, and in its present possibilities, objectively observed, recognized, judged, and evaluated; and to ourselves, so likewise known and judged, within it. A considered act initiated by a knowledgeable, responsible ego is thus something very different from the action of an avaricious, untamed id; different, too, from performances governed by unquestioning obedience to a long-inherited code -- which can only be inappropriate to contemporary life or even to any unforeseen social or personal contingency. to external, empirical "reality": i.e., to the fact-world, here and now, and in its present possibilities, objectively observed, recognized, judged, and evaluated; and to ourselves, so likewise known and judged, within it. A considered act initiated by a knowledgeable, responsible ego is thus something very different from the action of an avaricious, untamed id; different, too, from performances governed by unquestioning obedience to a long-inherited code -- which can only be inappropriate to contemporary life or even to any unforeseen social or personal contingency.

The virtue of the Oriental is comparable, then, to that of the good soldier, obedient to orders, personally responsible not for his acts but only for their execution. And since all the laws to which he is adhering will have been handed down from an infinite past, there will be no one anywhere personally responsible for the things that he is doing. Nor, indeed, was there ever anyone personally responsible, since the laws were derived -- or at least are supposed to have been derived -- from the order of the universe itself. And since at the source of this universal order there is no personal G.o.d or willing being, but only an absolutely impersonal force or void, beyond thought, beyond being, antecedent to categories, there has finally never been anyone anywhere responsible for anything -- the G.o.ds themselves being merely functionaries of an ever-revolving kaleidoscope of illusory appearances and disappearances, world without end.

3.

Now when and how (it might be asked) did the historic turn occur from what I have just described as the Oriental to what we all know to be the Occidental view of the relations.h.i.+p of the individual to his universe? The earliest certain signs of such a turn appear in the Mesopotamian texts of about 2000 B.C., where a distinction is beginning to be made between the king as a mere human being and the G.o.d whom he is now to serve. He is no longer a G.o.d-king like the pharaoh of Egypt. He is called the "tenant farmer" of the G.o.d. The city of his reign is the G.o.d's earthly estate and himself the mere chief steward or man in charge. Furthermore, it was at that time that Mesopotamian myths began to appear of men created by G.o.ds to be their slaves. Men had become the mere servants; the G.o.ds, absolute masters. Man was no longer in any sense an incarnation of divine life, but of another nature entirely, an earthly, mortal nature. And the earth itself was now clay. Matter and spirit had begun to separate. I call this condition, "mythic dissociation," and find it to be characteristic mainly of the later religions of the Levant, of which the most important today are, of course, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Let me take, as an ill.u.s.tration of the effect on mythology of this disenchanting turn of mind, the example of the Deluge. According to many of the mythologies still flouris.h.i.+ng in the Orient, a world flood occurs inevitably at the termination of every aeon. In India the number of years of an aeon, known as a Day of Brahma, is reckoned as 4,320,000,000; after which there follows a Night of Brahma, when all lies dissolved in the cosmic sea for another 4,320,000,000 years, the sum total of years of an entire cosmic round thus being 8,640,000,000. In the Icelandic eddas it is told that in Valhall there are 540 doors and that through each of these there will go at the end of the world 800 battle-ready warriors to join combat with the anti-G.o.ds.4 But 800 times 540 is 432,000. So it seems that there is a common mythological background theme, here shared by pagan Europe with the ancient East. In fact, I note, with a glance at my watch, each hour with 60 minutes and each minute with 60 seconds, that in our present day of 24 hours there will be 86,400 seconds; and in the course of this day, night will automatically follow light, and, next morning, dawn follow darkness. There is no question of punishment or guilt implied in a mythology of cosmic days and nights of this kind. Everything is completely automatic and in the sweet nature of things. But 800 times 540 is 432,000. So it seems that there is a common mythological background theme, here shared by pagan Europe with the ancient East. In fact, I note, with a glance at my watch, each hour with 60 minutes and each minute with 60 seconds, that in our present day of 24 hours there will be 86,400 seconds; and in the course of this day, night will automatically follow light, and, next morning, dawn follow darkness. There is no question of punishment or guilt implied in a mythology of cosmic days and nights of this kind. Everything is completely automatic and in the sweet nature of things.

But now, to press on a few steps further: according to a learned Chaldean priest, Berossos, who rendered in the early third century B.C. an account of Babylonian mythology, there elapsed 432,000 years between the crowning of the first Sumerian king and the coining of the Deluge, and there reigned during this period ten very long-lived kings. Then we observed that in the Bible it is reckoned that between the creation of Adam and coming of Noah's Flood there elapsed 1656 years, during which there lived ten very long-lived patriarchs. And if I may trust the finding of a distinguished Jewish a.s.syriologist of the last century, Julius Oppert (1825-1906), the number of seven-day weeks in 1656 years is 86,400.5 Thus the early Mesopotamian model of mathematically ordered recurrent cycles of world manifestation and disappearance, with each round terminated by a deluge, can be recognized even in the Bible. However, as we all well know, the more popular and evident explanation of Noah's Flood given in this text is that it was sent by Yahweh as a punishment for men's sins -- which is a totally different concept, giving stress rather to free will than to the earlier, now hidden idea of a wholly impersonal cycle as innocent of guilt as the rounds of day and night or of the year.

The earliest extant examples of this second way of reading the Deluge legend appear in two Sumerian cuneiform texts of about 2000 to 1750 B.C. In these the name of the angry G.o.d is Enlil, and the man who builds the ark is the tenth king of the old Sumerian ziggurat-city of Kish. The period of the tablets is the same as that, already mentioned, of the designation of the ancient Mesopotamian kings as the "tenant farmers" of their deities, and the implications of the s.h.i.+ft of view are enormous. For, in the first place, a dimension of wonder has been lost to the universe. It is no longer itself divine, radiant of a mystery beyond thought, of which all the living G.o.ds and demons, no less than the plants, animals, and cities of mankind, are functioning parts. Divinity has been removed from earth to a supernatural sphere, from which the G.o.ds, who alone are radiant, control terrestrial events.

But on the other hand, along with -- and as a consequence of -- this loss of essential ident.i.ty with the organic divine being of a living universe, man has been given, or rather has won for himself, release to an existence of his own, endued with a certain freedom of will. And he has been set thereby in relations.h.i.+p to a deity, apart from himself, who also enjoys free will. The G.o.ds of the great Orient, as agents of the cycle, are hardly more than supervisors, personifying and administering the processes of a cycle that they neither put in motion nor control. But when, as now, we have a deity who, on the contrary, can decide on his own to send down a flood because the people he has made have become wicked, himself delivering laws, judging, and administering punishment, we are in a totally new situation. A radical s.h.i.+ft of consciousness has bathed the universe and everything in it in a new, more brilliant light -- like the light of a sun, blotting out the moon, the planets, and the other lights of the stars. And this new light, in the centuries then following, penetrated and transformed the whole world westward of Iran.

No longer were G.o.ds and men to be known as mere aspects of a single impersonal Being of beings beyond all names and forms. They were in nature distinct from each other, even opposed to each other, and with mankind subordinate. A personal G.o.d, furthermore, sits now behind the laws of the universe, not in front of them. Whereas in the older view, as we have seen, the G.o.d is simply a sort of cosmic bureaucrat, and the great natural laws of the universe govern all that he is and does and must do, we have now a G.o.d who himself determines what laws are to operate; who says, "Let such-and-such come to pa.s.s!" and it comes to pa.s.s. There is, accordingly, a stress here rather on personality and on whim than on irrefragable law. The G.o.d can change his mind, as he frequently does; and this tends to bring the Levantine spirit into apparently close approach to the native individualism of Europe. However, there is even here a distinction to be made.

For in the Levant the accent is on obedience, the obedience of man to the will of G.o.d, whimsical though it might be; the leading idea being that the G.o.d has rendered a revelation, which is registered in a book that men are to read and to revere, never to presume to criticize, but to accept and to obey. Those who do not know, or who would reject, this holy book are in exile from their maker. Many nations great and small, even continents, are in actuality thus G.o.dless. Indeed, the dominant idea in all the major religions stemming from this area -- Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- is that there is but one people on earth that has received the Word, one holy people of one tradition, and that its members, then, are the members of one historic body -- not such a natural, cosmic body as that of the earlier (and now Eastern) mythologies, but a supernaturally sanctified, altogether exceptional social body with its own often harshly unnatural laws. In the Levant, therefore, the essential hero is not the individual but the G.o.d-favored Chosen People or Church, of which the individual is no more than a partic.i.p.ating member. The Christian, for example, is blessed in that he is a baptized member of the Church. The Jew is to remember ever that he is in covenant with Yahweh, by virtue of the mystery of his birth from a Jewish mother. And at the end of the world, only those faithful to the Covenant -- or, in the Christian variant, those properly baptized who died in the "state of grace" -- will be resurrected in the presence of G.o.d, to partic.i.p.ate forever (as one happy version has it) in the everlasting paradisial meal of the meats of Leviathan, Behemoth, and the bird Ziz.

One striking sign of the profound difficulty experienced in Europe in a.s.similating this Levantine communal idea to the native Greek and Roman, Celtic and Germanic feeling for the value of the individual may be seen in the Roman Catholic doctrine of two judgments to be endured by the soul in the afterworld: the first, the "particular judgment," immediately after death, when each will be a.s.signed separately to his eternal reward or punishment; and the second, at the end of the world, the prodigious "general judgment," when all who will ever have lived and died on earth shall be a.s.sembled and in public judged, so that the Providence of G.o.d (which may in life have allowed the good to suffer and the wicked to seem to prosper) may in the end be shown to all men to have been eternally just.

4.

Let me now, therefore, in conclusion, recount three versions of a single ancient myth, as preserved separately in India, in the Near East, and in Greece, to ill.u.s.trate in an unforgettable way the contrast of the general Oriental and the two differing Occidental views of the character and highest virtue of the individual.

First the Indian myth, as preserved in a religious work, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, of about the eighth century B.C. of about the eighth century B.C.

This tells of a time before the beginning of time, when this universe was nothing but "the Self" in the form of a man. And that Self, as we read, "looked around and saw that there was nothing but itself, whereupon its first shout was, 'It is I!'; whence the concept 'I' arose." And when that Self had thus become aware of itself as an "I," an ego, it was afraid. But it reasoned, thinking, "Since there is no one here but myself, what is there to fear?" Whereupon the fear departed.

However, that Self, as we next are told, "still lacked delight and wished there were another." It swelled and, splitting in two, became male and female. The male embraced the female, and from that the human race arose. But she thought, "How can he unite with me, who am of his own substance? Let me hide!" She became a cow, he a bull and united with her, and from that cattle arose; she a mare, he a stallion . . . and so on, down to the ants. Then he realized, "I, actually, am Creation; for I have poured forth all this." Whence arose the concept "creation" (Sanskrit srishtih, srishtih, "what is poured forth"). "Anyone understanding this becomes, truly, himself a creator in this creation." "what is poured forth"). "Anyone understanding this becomes, truly, himself a creator in this creation."

So the Sanskrit version of our legend. Next the Levantine, of about the same date, as preserved in the second chapter of Genesis: that melancholy tale, namely, of our simple ancestor, Adam, who had been fas.h.i.+oned of dust by his maker to till and to keep a garden. But the man was lonely, and his maker, hoping to please him, formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. None of them gave delight. "And so the Lord," as we read, "caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs. . ." And the man, when he beheld the woman, said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." We all know what next occurred -- and here we all are, in this vale of tears.

But now, please notice! In this second version of the shared legend it was not the G.o.d who was split in two, but his created servant. The G.o.d did not become male and female and then pour himself forth to become all this. He remained apart and of a different substance. We have thus one tale in two totally different versions. And their implications relevant to the ideals and disciplines of the religious life are, accordingly, different too. In the Orient the guiding ideal is that each should realize that he himself and all others are of the one substance of that universal Being of beings which is, in fact, the same Self in all. Hence the typical aim of an Oriental religion is that one should experience and realize in life one's ident.i.ty ident.i.ty with that Being; whereas in the West, following our Bible, the ideal is, rather, to become engaged in a with that Being; whereas in the West, following our Bible, the ideal is, rather, to become engaged in a relations.h.i.+p relations.h.i.+p with that absolutely other Person who is one's Maker, apart and "out there," in no sense one's innermost Self. with that absolutely other Person who is one's Maker, apart and "out there," in no sense one's innermost Self.

So let me now proceed to the Greek version of the legend, which is to be of still another teaching. It appears -- you will recall -- in Plato's dialogue The Symposium, The Symposium, where it is attributed to Aristophanes; and in keeping with the lighthearted mood of the great spirits of Plato's company, it was there offered rather as a metaphor of the mystery of love than as an account to be taken seriously of the actual origin of mankind. where it is attributed to Aristophanes; and in keeping with the lighthearted mood of the great spirits of Plato's company, it was there offered rather as a metaphor of the mystery of love than as an account to be taken seriously of the actual origin of mankind.

The fantasy begins with the race of man already in existence, or rather with three distinct human races: one entirely male, whose place of residence was the sun; one female, here on earth; and a third, of males and females joined, whose dwelling, of course, was the moon. And they were all as large as two human beings of today. They had each four hands and feet, sides and backs forming a circle, one head with two faces, and the rest to correspond. And the G.o.ds being fearful of their strength, Zeus and Apollo cut them in two, "like apples halved for pickling, or as you might divide an egg with a hair." But those divided parts, each desiring the other, came together and embraced, and would have perished of hunger had the G.o.ds not set them far apart -- the lesson here to be learned being that "human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love [according to its three kinds]. . . And if we are friends of G.o.d and reconciled to him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world"; whereas, "if we are not obedient to the G.o.ds there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in ba.s.so-relievo."

As in the Biblical version, so here, the being split in two is not the ultimate divinity. We are again securely in the Occident, where G.o.d and man are set apart, and the problem, once again, is of relations.h.i.+p. However, the Greek G.o.ds were not, like Yahweh, the creators creators of the human race. They had themselves come into being, like men, from the bosom of the G.o.ddess Earth, and were rather man's elder and stronger brothers than his makers. Moreover, according to this typically Greek, poetically humorous version of the archaic tales, the G.o.ds, before splitting them in two, had been afraid of the first men, so terrible had been their might and so great were the thoughts of their hearts. They had once even dared to attack the G.o.ds, scaling heaven, and the pantheon had then been thrown for a time into confusion; for if with their thunderbolts the G.o.ds had annihilated man, that would have been the end of sacrifice, and they would themselves have expired from lack of wors.h.i.+p. Hence, they settled upon the splitting idea, and might yet carry it further. of the human race. They had themselves come into being, like men, from the bosom of the G.o.ddess Earth, and were rather man's elder and stronger brothers than his makers. Moreover, according to this typically Greek, poetically humorous version of the archaic tales, the G.o.ds, before splitting them in two, had been afraid of the first men, so terrible had been their might and so great were the thoughts of their hearts. They had once even dared to attack the G.o.ds, scaling heaven, and the pantheon had then been thrown for a time into confusion; for if with their thunderbolts the G.o.ds had annihilated man, that would have been the end of sacrifice, and they would themselves have expired from lack of wors.h.i.+p. Hence, they settled upon the splitting idea, and might yet carry it further.

The Greeks, that is to say, are on man's side, both in sympathy and in loyalty; the Hebrews, on the contrary, on G.o.d's. Never would we have heard from a Greek such words as those of the sorely beaten "blameless and upright" Job, addressed to the G.o.d who had "destroyed him without cause" and who then came at him in the whirlwind, boasting of his power.

"Behold," pleaded Job, "I am of small account. . . I know that thou canst do all things. . . I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

Repent! Repent for what?

In contrast, the great contemporary Greek playwright Aeschylus, of about the same fifth-century date as the anonymous author of the Book of Job, puts into the mouth of his Prometheus -- who was also being tormented by a G.o.d that could "draw Leviathan out with a fishhook, play with him as with a bird, and fill his skin with harpoons" -- the following stunning words: "He is a monster. . . I care less than nothing for Zeus. Let him do as he likes."

And so say we all today in our hearts, though our tongues may have been taught to babble with Job.

V.

The Confron

tation of East and West in Religion [1970].

One never would have thought, when I was a student back in the twenties, that in the seventies there would be intelligent people still wis.h.i.+ng to hear and think about religion. We were all perfectly sure in those days that the world was through with religion. Science and reason were now in command. The World War had been won (the First, First, that is to say), and the earth made safe for the rational reign of democracy. Aldous Huxley in his first phase, of that is to say), and the earth made safe for the rational reign of democracy. Aldous Huxley in his first phase, of Point Counter Point, Point Counter Point, was our literary hero; Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and other reasonable authors of that kind. But then, in the midst of all that optimism about reason, democracy, socialism, and the like, there appeared a work that was disturbing: Oswald Spengler's was our literary hero; Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and other reasonable authors of that kind. But then, in the midst of all that optimism about reason, democracy, socialism, and the like, there appeared a work that was disturbing: Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. The Decline of the West. Other writings of uncertain import were also appearing in those happy years, from unexpected quarters: Thomas Mann's Other writings of uncertain import were also appearing in those happy years, from unexpected quarters: Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, The Magic Mountain, James Joyce's James Joyce's Ulysses, Ulysses, Marcel Proust's Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Remembrance of Things Past, and T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." In a literary sense, those were very great years indeed. But what certain of its authors seemed to be telling us was that with all our rational triumphs and progressive political achievements, illuminating the dark quarters of the earth and so on, there was nevertheless something beginning to disintegrate at the heart of our Occidental civilization itself. And of all these warnings and p.r.o.nouncements, that of Spengler was the most disquieting. For it was based on the concept of an organic pattern in the life course of a civilization, a morphology of history: the idea that every culture has its period of youth, its period of culmination, its years then of beginning to totter with age and of striving to hold itself together by means of rational planning, projects, and organization, only finally to terminate in decrepitude, petrifaction, what Spengler called "fellaheenism," and no more life. Moreover, in this view of Spengler's, we were at present on the point of pa.s.sing from what he called the period of Culture to Civilization, which is to say, from our periods of youthful, spontaneous, and wonderful creativity to those of uncertainty and anxiety, contrived programs, and the beginning of the end. When he sought for a.n.a.logies in the cla.s.sical world, our moment today corresponded, he found, to that of the late second century B.C., the time of the Carthaginian Wars, the decline of the culture-world of Greece into h.e.l.lenism, and the rise of the military state of Rome, Caesarism, and what he termed the Second Religiousness, politics based on providing bread and circuses to the megalopolitan ma.s.ses, and a general trend to violence and brutality in the arts and pastimes of the people. and T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." In a literary sense, those were very great years indeed. But what certain of its authors seemed to be telling us was that with all our rational triumphs and progressive political achievements, illuminating the dark quarters of the earth and so on, there was nevertheless something beginning to disintegrate at the heart of our Occidental civilization itself. And of all these warnings and p.r.o.nouncements, that of Spengler was the most disquieting. For it was based on the concept of an organic pattern in the life course of a civilization, a morphology of history: the idea that every culture has its period of youth, its period of culmination, its years then of beginning to totter with age and of striving to hold itself together by means of rational planning, projects, and organization, only finally to terminate in decrepitude, petrifaction, what Spengler called "fellaheenism," and no more life. Moreover, in this view of Spengler's, we were at present on the point of pa.s.sing from what he called the period of Culture to Civilization, which is to say, from our periods of youthful, spontaneous, and wonderful creativity to those of uncertainty and anxiety, contrived programs, and the beginning of the end. When he sought for a.n.a.logies in the cla.s.sical world, our moment today corresponded, he found, to that of the late second century B.C., the time of the Carthaginian Wars, the decline of the culture-world of Greece into h.e.l.lenism, and the rise of the military state of Rome, Caesarism, and what he termed the Second Religiousness, politics based on providing bread and circuses to the megalopolitan ma.s.ses, and a general trend to violence and brutality in the arts and pastimes of the people.

Well, I can tell you, it has been for me something of a life experience to have watched the not so gradual coming into fulfillment in this world of every bit of what Spengler promised. I can remember how we used to sit around and discuss this looming prospect, trying to imagine how it might be beaten back, and trying to guess what the positive positive features might be of this period of crisis and transition. Spengler had declared that in periods like ours, of the pa.s.sage from Culture to Civilization, there is a dropping off and away of the Culture forms: and indeed, in my own teaching I am today encountering more and more students who profess to find the whole history of our Western culture "irrelevant." That is the brush-off term they use. The "kids" (as they like to call themselves) seem to lack the energy to encompa.s.s it all and press on. One notes, or at least at times suspects, a kind of failure of heart, a loss of nerve. But then, one can also regard their situation from another point of view and consider the concatenation of new problems now to be faced, new facts and influences to be absorbed. One might then conclude that their energies are perhaps being directed to an expanding present and problematical future and, in line with Spengler's concept, recognize that in this period Western man is not only dropping the culture forms of the past but also shaping the civilization forms that are to build and support a mighty multicultural future. features might be of this period of crisis and transition. Spengler had declared that in periods like ours, of the pa.s.sage from Culture to Civilization, there is a dropping off and away of the Culture forms: and indeed, in my own teaching I am today encountering more and more students who profess to find the whole history of our Western culture "irrelevant." That is the brush-off term they use. The "kids" (as they like to call themselves) seem to lack the energy to encompa.s.s it all and press on. One notes, or at least at times suspects, a kind of failure of heart, a loss of nerve. But then, one can also regard their situation from another point of view and consider the concatenation of new problems now to be faced, new facts and influences to be absorbed. One might then conclude that their energies are perhaps being directed to an expanding present and problematical future and, in line with Spengler's concept, recognize that in this period Western man is not only dropping the culture forms of the past but also shaping the civilization forms that are to build and support a mighty multicultural future.

I am reminded here of that very strange prophetic work of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats, A Vision, A Vision, which he composed mainly during the twenty years from 1917 to 1936, and wherein he has recognized certain affinities of his own intuitions with those of Spengler's morphological view. Yeats there represents our present moment as the last phase of a great Christian cycle or "gyre" of two thousand years: "And I notice," he writes, "that when the limit is approached or past, when the moment of surrender is reached, when the new gyre begins to stir, I am filled with excitement." which he composed mainly during the twenty years from 1917 to 1936, and wherein he has recognized certain affinities of his own intuitions with those of Spengler's morphological view. Yeats there represents our present moment as the last phase of a great Christian cycle or "gyre" of two thousand years: "And I notice," he writes, "that when the limit is approached or past, when the moment of surrender is reached, when the new gyre begins to stir, I am filled with excitement."1 On which theme he wrote and published already in 1921 a most awesome, fate-inspired poem: On which theme he wrote and published already in 1921 a most awesome, fate-inspired poem:

THE SECOND COMING.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of pa.s.sionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?2

There was another German culture-historian also writing in those days, Leo Frobenius, who, like Spengler and like Yeats, conceived of culture and civilization in morphological terms as a kind of organic, unfolding process of irreversible inevitability. He was, however, an Africanist and anthropologist, and so included in his purview not only the higher civilizations but also the primitive, his leading concept being of three distinct great stages in the total total development of the culture history of mankind. The first was of the primitive food-foragers, hunters and planting villagers, non-literate, greatly various, and of a time span extending from the first emergence of our species on this earth to (in some quarters) the very present. The second, commencing ca. 3500 B.C., was of the "monumental cultures," literate and complex -- first of Mesopotamia and Egypt, then Greece and Rome, India, China and j.a.pan, Middle and South America, the Magian-Arabic Levant, and Gothic-to-modern Europe. And now finally comes stage three, of this greatly promising, dawning global age, which Frobenius looked upon as probably the final phase of mankind's total culture history, but to last, possibly, for many tens of thousands of years. That is to say, what both Spengler and Yeats were interpreting as the end of the Western culture cycle Frobenius saw in a very much larger prospect as the opening of a new age of boundless horizons. And indeed, this present season of the coming together of all the formerly separate culture worlds may well mark not only the end of the hegemony of the West but also the beginning of an age of mankind, united and supported by the great Western gifts of science and the machine -- without which no such age as our own could ever have come to pa.s.s. development of the culture history of mankind. The first was of the primitive food-foragers, hunters and planting villagers, non-literate, greatly various, and of a time span extending from the first emergence of our species on this earth to (in some quarters) the very present. The second, commencing ca. 3500 B.C., was of the "monumental cultures," literate and complex -- first of Mesopotamia and Egypt, then Greece and Rome, India, China and j.a.pan, Middle and South America, the Magian-Arabic Levant, and Gothic-to-modern Europe. And now finally comes stage three, of this greatly promising, dawning global age, which Frobenius looked upon as probably the final phase of mankind's total culture history, but to last, possibly, for many tens of thousands of years. That is to say, what both Spengler and Yeats were interpreting as the end of the Western culture cycle Frobenius saw in a very much larger prospect as the opening of a new age of boundless horizons. And indeed, this present season of the coming together of all the formerly separate culture worlds may well mark not only the end of the hegemony of the West but also the beginning of an age of mankind, united and supported by the great Western gifts of science and the machine -- without which no such age as our own could ever have come to pa.s.s.

However, the darker vision of Spengler foresees only desolation here too. For science and the machine are in his view expressions of the mentality of Western man, which are being taken over by non-Western peoples only as a means by which to undo and destroy the West. And when this killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs will have been accomplished, there will be no further development either of science or of industry, but a loss of competence and even of interest in both, with a resultant decline in technology and return of the various peoples to their local styles; the present great age of Europe and its promise for the world then but a broken dream. In contrast, Frobenius, like Nietzsche before him, saw the present as an epoch of irreversible advance in the one life course of the entire human race, here pa.s.sing from its youthful, locally bounded stages of cultural growths to a new and general future of as yet unforeseen creative insights and realizations. But I must confess that while in my own thinking it is to the later view that I incline, I cannot quite get the other, of Spengler, out of my mind. . .

In any case, what we all today surely recognize is that we are entering -- one way or another -- a new age, requiring a new wisdom: such a wisdom, furthermore, as belongs rather to experienced old age than to poetically fantasizing youth, and which every one of us, whether young or old, has now somehow to a.s.similate. Moreover, when we turn our thoughts to religion, the first and most obvious fact is that every one of the great traditions is today in profound disorder. What have been taught as their basic truths seem no longer to hold.

Yet there is a great religious fervor and ferment evident among not only young people but old and middle-aged as well. The fervor, however, is in a mystical direction, and the teachers who seem to be saying most to many are those who have come to us from a world that was formerly regarded as having been left altogether behind in the great press forward of modern civilization, representing only archaic, outlived manners of thinking. We have gurus galore from India; ros.h.i.+s from j.a.pan; lamas from Tibet. And Chinese oracle books are outselling our own philosophers.

They are not, however, outselling our best psychologists. And this, finally, is not surprising; for the ultimate secret of the appeal of the Orient is that its disciplines are inward-pointing, mystical, and psychological.

I find an illuminating a.n.a.logy to our present religious situation in that of the North American Indian tribes, when, toward the close of the nineteenth century, in the 1870s and 1880s, the buffalo were disappearing. That was the time, not yet a century past, when the railroad lines were being laid across the plains and buffalo scouts were going out to kill off the herds and make way for the new world of the Iron Horse and a population of wheat-planting settlers moved westward from the Mississippi. A second aim of the buffalo slaughter was to deprive the buffalo-hunting Indians of their food supply, so that finally they would have to submit to life on the reservations. And it was subsequently to these (for them devastating) developments that a new religion of inward visionary experiences became suddenly fas.h.i.+onable throughout the Indian West.

For, as with all primitive hunting peoples, so had it been with these plains tribes. The relations.h.i.+p of the human to the animal community that supplied its food had been the central, pivotal concern of the religiously maintained social order. Hence, with the buffalo gone, the binding symbol was gone. Within the span of a decade the religion had become archaic; and it was then that the peyote cult, the mescal cult, came pouring up from Mexico, onto and across the plains, as a psychological rescue. Many accounts have been published of the experiences of partic.i.p.ants: how they would gather in special lodges to pray, to chant, and to eat peyote b.u.t.tons, each then experiencing visions, finding within themselves what had been lost from their society, namely an imagery of holiness, giving depth, psychological security, and apparent meaning to their lives.

Now the first and most important effect of a living mythological symbol is to waken and give guidance to the energies of life. It is an energy-releasing and -directing sign, which not only "turns you on," as they say today, but turns you on in a certain direction, making you function a certain way -- which will be one conducive to your partic.i.p.ation in the life and purposes of a functioning social group. However, when the symbols provided by the social group no longer work, and the symbols that do work are no longer of the group, the individual cracks away, becomes dissociated and disoriented, and we are confronted with what can only be named a pathology of the symbol.

A distinguished professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Dr. John W. Perry, has characterized the living mythological symbol as an "affect image." It is an image that hits one where it counts. It is not addressed first to the brain, to be there interpreted and appreciated. On the contrary, if that is where it has to be read, the symbol is already dead. An "affect image" talks directly to the feeling system and immediately elicits a response, after which the brain may come along with its interesting comments. There is some kind of throb of resonance within, responding to the image shown without, like the answer of a musical string to another equally tuned. And so it is that when the vital symbols of any given social group evoke in all its members responses of this kind, a sort of magical accord unites them as one spirtual organism, functioning through members who, though separate in s.p.a.ce, are yet one in being and belief.

Now let us ask: What about the symbolism of the Bible? Based on the Old Sumerian astronomical observations of five to six thousand years ago and an anthropology no longer credible, it is hardly fit today to turn anybody on. In fact, the famous conflict of science and religion has actually nothing to do with religion, but is simply of two sciences: that of 4000 B.C. and that of A.D. 2000. And is it not ironic that our great Western civilization, which has opened to the minds of all mankind the infinite wonders of a universe of untold billions of galaxies and untold billions of years, should have been saddled in its infancy with a religion squeezed into the tightest little cosmological image known to any people on earth? The ancient Mayan calendar with its recurrent aeons of 64,000,000 years would have been far more easily justified; or the Hindu with its kalpas kalpas of 4,320,000,000. Moreover, in those far more grandiose systems the ultimate divine power is neither male nor female but transcendent of all categories; not a male personage "put there," but a power immanent in all things: that is to say, not so alien to the imagery of modern science that it could not have been put to acceptable use. of 4,320,000,000. Moreover, in those far more grandiose systems the ultimate divine power is neither male nor female but transcendent of all categories; not a male personage "put there," but a power immanent in all things: that is to say, not so alien to the imagery of modern science that it could not have been put to acceptable use.

The Biblical image of the universe simply won't do any more; neither will the Biblical notion of a race of G.o.d, which all others are meant to serve (Isaiah 49: 22-23; 61:5-6; etc.); nor again, the idea of a code of laws delivered from on high and to be valid for all time. The social problems of the world today are not those of a corner of the old Levant, sixth century B.C. Societies are not static; nor can the laws of one serve another. The problems of our world are not even touched by those stone-cut Ten Commandments that we carry about as luggage and which, in fact, were disregarded in the blessed text itself, one chapter after they were announced (Exodus 21:12-17, following 20:13). The modern Western concept of a legal code is not of a list of una.s.sailable divine edicts but of a rationally contrived, evolving compilation of statutes, shaped by fallible human beings in council, to realize rationally recognized social (and therefore temporal) aims. We understand that our laws are not divinely ordained; and we know also that no laws of any people on earth ever were. Thus we know -- whether we dare to say so or not -- that our clergies have no more right to claim una.s.sailable authority for their moral law than for their science. And even, finally, in their intimate role of giving spiritual advice, the clergy have now been overtaken by the scientific psychiatrists -- and indeed to such a degree that many clergymen are themselves turning to psychologists to be taught how best to serve their pastoral function. The magic of their own traditional symbols works no longer to heal but only to confuse.

In short, then: just as the buffalo suddenly disappeared from the North American plains, leaving the Indians deprived not only of a central mythic symbol but also of the very manner of life that the symbol once had served, so likewise in our own beautiful world, not only have our public religious symbols lost their claim to authority and pa.s.sed away, but the ways of life they once supported have also disappeared; and as the Indians then turned inward, so do many in our own baffled world -- and frequently with Oriental, not Occidental, guidance in this potentially very dangerous, often ill-advised interior adventure, questing within for the affect images that our secularized social order with its incongruously archaic religious inst.i.tutions can no longer render.

Let me recount three personal anecdotes to illuminate the background and suggest some of the problems of this confrontation of East and West in religion.

First: back in the middle fifties, when Dr. Martin Buber was in New York lecturing, I had the privilege of being among a number invited to hear him in a series of talks held in a small, very special chamber at Columbia. And there this eloquent little man -- for he was, indeed, remarkably small, endowed, however, with a powerful presence, graced with that mysterious force known nowadays as "charisma" -- held forth for some five or six weekly sessions with extraordinary eloquence. In fact, in that English was not his first but his second language, his fluency and easy eloquence were astonis.h.i.+ng. As the talks went on, however, I gradually came to realize, about the middle of talk number three, that there was one word the doctor was using that I was failing to understand. His lectures were on the history of the holy people of the Old Testament, with references also to more recent times; and the word that I was failing to understand was "G.o.d." Sometimes it seemed to refer to an imagined personal creator of this magnitudinous universe which the sciences have revealed to us. Sometimes it was clearly a reference simply to the Yahweh of the Old Testament, in one or another of his stages of evolution. Then again, it seemed to be somebody with whom Dr. Buber himself had been in frequent conversation. In the midst of one lecture, for example, he broke suddenly off and, standing for a moment bemused, shook his head and quietly said to us, "It pains me to speak of G.o.d in the third person." When I reported this to Dr. Gershom Scholem (now also of Tel Aviv), he laughed and answered quizzically, "Sometimes he does does go too far!" go too far!"

So with this mercurial word slipping this way and that, I cautiously raised my hand. The lecturer paused and considerately asked, "What is it?"

"Dr. Buber," I said, "there is one word being used here this evening that I do not understand."

"What is that word?"

"G.o.d," I answered.

His eyes widened and the bearded face came a little forward. "You do not know what the word 'G.o.d' means!"

"I don't know what you you mean by 'G.o.d,'" I said. "You have been telling us this evening that G.o.d today has hidden his face and no longer shows himself to man. Yet I have just returned from India [and I had indeed been there, the year before], where I found that people are experiencing G.o.d all the time." mean by 'G.o.d,'" I said. "You have been telling us this evening that G.o.d today has hidden his face and no longer shows himself to man. Yet I have just returned from India [and I had indeed been there, the year before], where I found that people are experiencing G.o.d all the time."

He drew suddenly back, lifting both hands, palms upward. "Do you mean," he said, "to compare. . ." But the M.C., Dr. Jacob Taubes, cut quickly in: "No, "No, Doctor!" (We all knew what had been almost said, and I was just waiting to hear what the next would be.) "Mr. Campbell," said Dr. Taubes, "only asked to know what Doctor!" (We all knew what had been almost said, and I was just waiting to hear what the next would be.) "Mr. Campbell," said Dr. Taubes, "only asked to know what you you mean by 'G.o.d.' " mean by 'G.o.d.' "

The master quickly rea.s.sembled his thoughts, then said to me in the manner of one dismissing an irrelevancy, "Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way."

Which was an answer perhaps good enough from Dr. Buber's point of view, but from another standpoint altogether inappropriate, since the people of the Orient are not in exile from their G.o.d. The ultimate divine mystery is there found immanent within each. It is not "out there" somewhere. It is within you. And no one has ever been cut off. The only difficulty is, however, that some folk simply don't know how to look within. The fault is no one's, if not one's own. Nor is the problem one of an original Fall of the "first man," many thousand years ago, and of exile and atonement. The problem is psychological. And it can can be solved. be solved.

That, then, is the first of my three personal anecdotes.

The second is of an event that occurred some three years after the first, when a young Hindu gentleman came to see me, and a very pious young man he proved to be: a wors.h.i.+per of Vishnu, employed as a clerk or secretary of one of the India