The Liminal and sub-liminal (the power of myth)

All myths start with a question and the question is what is essential to life?

From earliest childhood I ve always wanted the answer. It’s a part of us all and the question is why? Why are we here, why do we live and died, why is the universe so vast and unknowable? The answers I received were repeated parrot fashion all the way through school and at home in an unthinking style and language, which I could not relate too myths and stories ,which bore no relation to my life created by and for people who lived thousands of years ago . In primary school I was told God made the universe and that was all there was to it. In secondary school I was given another point of view a more modern one that the world was created by this huge explosion, and creatures from time immemorial adapted and changed with it without meaning or purpose.

These two stories of our origins do not gel and worse still I was told I must choose one as my defining worldview, as the two camps where at war over the truth. However society has purpose, life has purpose but how to find it, it’s a mess, and capitol and status do not define us either so capitalism our default world system gives no answers what so ever so I must live in a vacuum or so I thought. The academic Joseph Campbell considered all myths and stories to be comparable to one another expressing universal themes and occurrences. Throughout his academic and literary career he developed the concept of the monomyth, the idea that a single coherent thread runs through all culture and mythology. A with mythology to guide thought we can make strands to guide us out of the labyrinth, into a new world, seen with new eyes.

At young teen I started training in the martial arts for self-defense but soon became interested in Eastern philosophy firstly of Japan but then developing an interest in both Chinese and Indian philosophy . I later learned that Bruce Lee was a philosophy student and I read the books that he read on Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism which are related in the way that the Abrahamic religions are related through geography and the common context of thought, compassion and at its heart rationalism. For Eastern philosophy for all its poetry and profundity which is beautiful is at its heart pragmatic. As a school leaver I went backpacking firstly around America and Canada and then to the Middle East and Australia. On my travels I was confronted with different cultures and different social memes and mores, I saw both tolerance and intolerance certainty and confusion and Chaos. In Israel I saw both great division but also signs of hope in Israeli and Arab cooperation within a Kibbutz I volunteered at the Haifa. In Australia I became interested in surfing and the cultures of Polynesia and the aboriginal people whose concept of the dreamtime has no parallel in Western culture. It is however referenced by Paul Davies in his book” the mind of God” when talking about non-linear concepts of time, an Outlook shared by the ancient Greeks saw the world is essential cyclic. The writer Olaf Stapledon saw parallels in the development of the individual and the self in the larger context as part of an evolving society; the societies in his books often meet with a crisis at a liminal level becoming aware of what its purpose is.

I returned home with no money with which to continue travelling which I've fallen in love with, being far better than the limited job opportunities presented to a working-class boy in Thatcher's Britain. My mother suggested travelling without moving, through reading travel books, I devoured Jack Kerouac, Bill Bryson and Jack London, and I learned much about the history of the world from these writers. I became intrigued with philosophy in general, and this brought me back to an interest in spirituality which I viewed with suspicion throughout my teenage years, being so divorced from the everyday experience. It seems to me the proposition put forward by J Krishnamurti held the most truth that “no school, institution or individual has a monopoly on the truth”

I found a couple of authors who really spoke to me, these being the pragmatic 20th-century philosophers Alan Watts, J Krishnamurti and Joseph Campbell. Alan Watts was an interpreter of Eastern thought for a western audience. Although he was born in Britain he spent a large part of his life lecturing delivering radio broadcasts and writing books and articles in the United States. He sadly passed away in 1973; however there is resurgence in interest in his writings and philosophy that has taken place on the Internet. Alan Watts’ main interest was in the parallels between Christianity and the religions of the East. He was particularly interested in Chinese Taoism and the practice of zazen from Japan. He was a practitioner of Zen methods and also practiced the Chinese martial art of Tai Chi in his later years.

He was also particularly interested, in how man could live a balanced life with nature. From time to time he would go retreat into the wilderness in order to meditate. I find this idea fascinating and it is at the root of both the disciplines of Tai Chi and yoga, to use the physical body, and the environment as a path inwards towards enlightenment. Although Alan Watts could be described as an intellectual he was very interested in how all individuals could come to terms with the cosmos and our place in it. He wasn't interested in extreme forms of religious practice, which he considered overemphasized difficulty at the expense of understanding. He was no antistatic and his practices could always be explored within a secular or even agnostic context.

Although he became a prominent speaker in the 1960s he also was quite wary of the psychedelic revolution and although he was close friend of Aldous Huxley, he questioned chemical means of attaining insight considering meditation to be a much more useful practice. I have found this a great help in my personal life by the use of meditation has helped me recover from two family bereavements in the course of a year. Meditation has been described as the dive within, and is a method for stilling the chattering mind. In Western thought it is common to identify oneself with the ego the voice within ones head. As Descartes said” I think therefore I am” this creates the concept of dualism, separateness which is in fact scientifically untrue. Alan Watts was also very interested in current scientific developments and expresses his own views on quantum theory in the book “the taboo against knowing who you are”. Quantum entanglement was of particular interest as it confirmed his belief that the self and the entire cosmos are really one and the same thing.
Another figure whose works can readily be found on the Internet is Joseph Campbell. Similarly his writings and series of documentaries including “The hero with a thousand faces” and “the power of myth” are also available online. Joseph Campbell's work is often highly reflective of the same issues addressed in the work of Alan Watts. However where in Alan Watts’ work deals mainly with the religions of the East and their similarities with Christian and Judaic traditions, Joseph Campbell's work also considers other diverse cultures from around the world and primarily focuses on their mythic and storytelling traditions, Joseph Campbell also had a keen interest in the arts and was a huge influence on Hollywood filmmakers such as George Lucas to whom he was a personal mentor and too good friend the author Richard Adams who based his mythology in the book Watership Down on Campbell's central tenant in myth of the hero's journey.

Joseph Campbell was a great storyteller, and his work explores the reasons and motivations for storytelling both culturally and individually. I found” hero with a Thousand faces “a highly inspiring work; in fact I would go as far as to say is the best book I've ever read. I believe storytelling is how we make sense of the world, Campbell talked of the Monomyth the way all stories are essentially the same in that they are all explorations of the human condition and what it means to be alive.

Towards the end of his life he described his work in this way “it's main results has been confirmation of thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which is everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony religious themes announced, developed and amplified ,turnabout distorted, reasserted ,and today in a grand fortissimo all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge”1.

The mythology is expressed in different ways at different times and within different cultures. There is for instance there is clear divisions between the storytelling traditions of hunter gather cultures and those with a more agricultural base. Just as the basis of daily life shifts, so does our internal psychology in response to external circumstance. The daily and annual concerns of different peoples are reflected in their storytelling tradition and in turn our storytelling tradition reflects pressing matters within our own lives.

Carl Jung proposed the idea of the collective unconscious containing all the cultural ideas of the human race passed on throughout the ages this would clearly be a mythology of sorts, this and the works of James Frasier (author of the golden Bough) where a great influence on Campbell and his work can be seen as an extension of theirs. For it is only 19th-century onwards into the present that the mythologies of other more ancient cultures have been taken seriously through a series of anthropological studies, which has now established itself as a true science for the dissection of the commonality of our species in regards to culture and attitude.
James Campbell talked about living with a mythology but what does it mean to live with a mythology? It seemed to Campbell that there were two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. To either be a theist or an atheist, but what do those two terms mean? A theist believes in a theme be it monotheism (the belief in one God) or multiple deities (as in ancient Nordic and Greek culture) or even pantheism (the idea that consciousness permeates creation). An atheist believes in nothing that cannot be explained in purely rational and concrete terms (as such all creation must be defined by the scientific method).

There is a third position that of the agnostic which is an undefined position due to uncertainty, which could in some way be seen as sitting on the fence. It is not lack of faith that defines the agnostic but rather lack of identification with either point of view. An agnostic pantheist and sure would surely be viewed by radical atheists as the worst kind of fence sitter. It is however a perfectly valid modern stance and one that is indeed representative and reflective of ancient eastern thought in some ways.

Pantheism falls under the description of theism, (though many theists use the term as a vague insult, for not subscribing to a creator god) it does not however attribute creation to a deity. This is the standpoint of many ancient religions of the East including but not limited to Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, and is in some way alien to western concepts of religion. The views of the philosopher Spinoza are also essentially pantheist; Spinoza himself was a great influence on Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein expressed his philosophy this way “the religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism”.

The Gaia philosophy developed by James Lovelock could also be described as pantheist in form, describing how the planet functions in terms of living organism. This has made this scientific theory highly controversial and Lovelock would describe himself as an atheist rather than a pantheist. Although still viewed as a radical theory Lovelock's ideas have been embraced in the book the "commerce of ecology", and documentary film "an inconvenient truth".

The world may seem strange to us as although we are a part of it, it will always seem vast and unknowable where but nillism never makes much sense pantheism seems to fit with scientific theory. .Einstein referred to god often in this writing, but it is quite clear he was speaking from a pantheist prospective “I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance -- but for us, not for God”2.

When the mythological symbols no longer fit with the times they become irrelevant and even archaic, and the traditional forms of worship seem to be going into decline at least in the U.K. Stories must be relevant in order to be assimilated into culture, however it is not realism for practicality alone which creates appeal. Describing a radio interview he once took part in, Joseph Campbell describes how the interviewer makes the opening gambit to describe myth as untrue; the interviewer states” a myth is a lie”. For Campbell mythology points to the heart of the matter in a poetic rather than literal sense, to look for broadly realism in mythology misses the point of the function of mythology which is to inform at a deeper more emotional level.

Mythology is not science it never seeks to describe the world in purely rational terms, rather it creates a landscape that the expression of ideas and emotions. Modern cinema has created a modern mythology in films such as Star Wars, the matrix and avatar. It is interesting that all these films created in our modern secular age touch upon deeply religious themes. Avatar is almost playful in this regard with the title seemed to have a double meaning. It seems to me avatar both refers to our modern computer avatar (our alter ego within cyberspace) and to the Hindu concept of avatarism the concept of the divine within humanity. In the matrix the main character neo is both every man and saviour a reality he struggles with throughout the series. Star Wars is both a galaxy spanning epic and family saga, even the name skywalker seems to refer back to ancient Egyptian myth.

Luke's father is a representation of death, Darth Vader the death father and Luke is tasked with returning balance to the world by restoring his father's humanity. Just as the sun vanquishes the night on rising each morning, so absolution is a recurring theme in ancient myth. As science is been accused of unweaving the rainbow, so mythology has been falsely accused of being mere fairytales or wishful thinking, I would suggest the psychology goes much deeper in that within mythology in order that we find our emotional resonance with the world. Indeed anthropomorphism allows us to identify not merely with other human cultures but with imaginatively with other creatures. Richard Adams the author of Watership Down was a close friend of Joseph Campbell's and it seems to be a natural human instinct to identify with the lives of animals. This is a fact that the cartoon industry and Walt Disney in particular have relied on for over 100 years.
Joseph Campbell's work is concerned with the historical viewpoint expressed in the theme of myth which stands time immemorial exploring themes, always current to humanity. One needn't be of religious inclination to be touched by storytelling in its myriad forms, variations and modes of transmission from fireside tales to blockbuster movies.

Today we are not immune to seismic shifts in our cultural lives; in fact technology seems to exacerbate the process. Not since Gutenberg’s printing press has to be such a sea change in the production and assimilation of ideas as has been heralded in by the invention of the Internet. The Internet has accelerated our culture to such an extent that it is barely recognizable from the culture 30 years before. I would argue film and television will soon be eclipsed by the Internet which has the advantage of being a non-passive medium. User created content has truly allowed Marshall McLuhan's proclamation of the medium being the message to come true. In the old days there was nothing but the mass media to create cultural trends, but today that is clearly no longer the case.

Mythology can also help one deal which life’s most troubling realities .The most immediate experience of bereavement is to be striped of one's rationality. To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is both deeply personal and universal, as the eternal mystery of death has to be confronted.Jk Rowling’s Harry Potter books tackle death head on and the dementors are symbolic of her own depression following her mother’s death. Mythology is then the story telling tradition of how we come to terms with the world in reality even if the means of doing so are fantastic in the telling.
Personally I write myths and poems to explore what it means to be alive, to explore both deep joy and despair, success and failure and the wonder at the heart of the world and also just to express myself. I find no comfort in my own skin in dead end jobs, at education which leads nowhere, at the government which lies and is useless, a direction less society where wealth is seen as the only thing with meaning. I must find something which is mine and only in writing and performing do I find this, but writing is deeper than some soap opera or episode of the x factor, people use to fill their time. It points the way to deeper things and gives a person hope ,to understand and be understood , to leave a mark when you are no longer here, to say I was , I thought ,I dreamed , I demanded, I was Silent , I raged, I loved. To leave a statement in a world of bank accounts, mortgages cancer and Debt, a real world which is not perfect, but must be described and understood.

1 (Primitive mythology the masks of god Joseph Campbell, Arkana)
2(Albert Einstein, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)