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I recall a lecture by Joseph
Campbell in the late '60s. He was telling a story of North American shamanic
initiation. Rasmussen, who was exploring the northern part of the North
American continent, had conversations with a number of old shamans. One of
them told the story of his own initiation as a young boy. He said that he was
taken by an older shaman out on a sled over ice, and placed in a small igloo
just big enough for him to sit in. He was crouched on a skin, he was left
there for thirty days with just a little water and meat brought in
occasionally during that period. He said, "I died a number of times
during those thirty days, but I learned and found what can be found and
learned only in the silence, away from the multitude, in the depths. I heard
the voice of nature itself speak to me, and it spoke with the voice of a
gentle motherly solicitude and affection. Or it sounded sometimes like
children's voices, or sometimes like falling snow, and what it said was, 'Do
not be afraid of the universe'." This discovery, Campbell goes on, became
a point of internal, absolute security for the initiate, and made possible his
return to his community with a wisdom and assurance that was unmatched by
everyone there, so that he could help others from that inner place....
...This encounter provides a rite of passage for youths who thus discover
their deeper purpose, their meaning, because they are able in that great
encounter with death and rebirth to engage and experience, directly in their
bodies, in their souls, the powerful archetypal forces that permeate life and
nature and every human being, and they thereby come into direct knowledge of
the great mysteries of death and rebirth. From that place, they can re-engage
life with a new knowledge; they can bring back to the community an enriched
understanding...
The reason our culture does not provide such an initiation, however, is not
just that it has somehow simply forgotten, or somehow foolishly abandoned, its
traditional wisdom, and myopically asserted a mechanistic material world with
no deeper spiritual purpose or significance. I think the reason that our
culture does not provide such an initiation is that it is itself immersed
in such an initiation, of the most epochal and profound kind.
The entire path of Western civilization has taken humankind and the planet
on a trajectory of initiation, into the state of complete alienation, into an
encounter with mortality on a global scale-first with the nuclear crisis,
followed by the ecological crisis-an encounter with mortality that is no
longer personal but rather transpersonal, collective, planetary; into a state
of radical fragmentation, into the "wasteland," into that crisis of
existential meaning and purpose that has informed so many of the most
sensitive individuals of the twentieth century. It is a collective dark night
of the soul, a deep separation from the community of being.
I believe the West-humankind-has entered into the most critical stages of
the death-rebirth mystery. We are undergoing this rite of passage with
virtually no guidance from wise elders because the wise elders are themselves
caught up in this same crisis. This initiation is so epochal, so global, so
unprecedented, and so all-encompassing, it is bigger than all of us. We are
all entering into something new, and we cannot really know where it's headed.
But
we can draw on the great sources of insight that come from the shamanic
and mystical epiphanies and writings of those individuals who have gone
through a death-rebirth initiation. We can draw from our own psychospiritual
journeys, which allow us to get a sense for that great truth that Goethe
understood: "Until you know this deep secret, 'Die and be reborn,' you
will be a stranger on this dark Earth." This is the dark Earth that the
modern mind has in some sense constructed for itself. Yet in another sense, I
believe that we find ourselves thrown into this dark estrangement because
larger forces are at work...
I'd like to suggest that we seem to be moving toward the possibility of a
new world view, as a result of going through a global death-rebirth
initiation. I think we can now begin to recognize that this disenchanted
universe we find ourselves in is a transition to a much deeper realization. It
is a birth canal to a new heaven and a new Earth...
We
need to move beyond the very narrow empiricism and rationalism that were
characteristic of the Enlightenment and still dominate mainstream science
today. We need to draw on-to use a single encompassing term-the wider
epistemologies of the heart. We need ways of knowing that integrate the
imagination, the intuition, the aesthetic sensibility, the revelatory or
epiphanic capacity, the capacity for kinesthetic knowing, the capacity for
loving. We need a deeply developed sense of empathy if we are to overcome the
subject-object barrier. We need to be able to enter into that which we seek to
know, and not keep it ultimately distanced as an object. We need, to use
Barbara McClintock's phrase, a feeling for the organism...
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Emerald
(Point
Reyes)
© 1995-2002 Randy Wang |
One
other thing I believe is crucial for this movement from here to there was
expressed by the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz. He said that "the
examination of conscience, and the remorse that accompanies it, which is a
legacy of Christianity, has been, and is, the single most powerful remedy
against the ills of our civilization." I think that it will take a
fundamental moment of remorse-and this is absolutely essential to the
death-rebirth experience-a long moment of remorse, a sustained weeping and
grief. It will be a grief of the masculine for the feminine; of men for women;
of adults for what has happened to children; of the West for what has happened
to every other part of the world; of Judeo-Christianity for pagans and
indigenous peoples; of Christians for Jews; of whites for people of color; of
the wealthy for the poor; of human beings for animals and all other forms of
life. It will take a fundamental metanoia, a self-overcoming, a radical
sacrifice to make this transition. Sometimes when we speak about the emergence
of a new paradigm and a new world view, we focus on the intellectual
dimensions of this shift; I am as interested in those as the next person. But
I don't think we can minimize the crucial importance of the moral dimension
for this great transformation to take place.
Not Without Grace
And in the end, it will also require grace. We can do everything we can
do, engage the issues with our holistic scientific knowledge, with our
jnana yoga, with our karma yoga, with our imagination, and our love-but
the bottom line is that grace has to play a role in this.
Probably the most beautiful song by the Grateful Dead was "In
the Attics of My Life." The song is like a polyphonic Renaissance
chorale, from their album American Beauty. It's a gorgeous song,
with Jerry Garcia's music and Robert Hunter's profound lyrics. The
singers are addressing the divine: "When I had no wings to fly, You
flew to me.... When I had no strings to play, You played for me."
It's the recognition that when the self has been totally emptied in the
moment of death, in the ego death, in the dark night of the soul,
something else happens. That's when the divine can come through, and
finally it's not Other. It's within, it's us. It's who we are.
To
read this article in its entirety go to the link on this page:
http://www.noetic.org/ions/archivelistingOld.asp
To
go to a printable copy of this excerpt click here
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