Landing The Flight of the Gander

    Joseph Campbell is rightly credited as being the mythologist to popularize mythology for Western culture. Flying from his Roman Catholic upbringing to the 12^th and 13^th century fairytales and legends to the vast mythologies of Hinduism and the Far East, Campbell’s capabilities of gathering and assimilating myths of varying history and culture has changed the way academia, and even the general public, approach the very word “myth”, let alone those stories that are categorized as “myth”. Yet, the mythical undercurrents of Campbell’s comparative approach to mythology found in The Flight of the Gander guide and often blind his existential, universalistic, and modernist tendencies of mythologizing. Most notably, Campbell’s affinity with Eastern mythologies creates a mythic, which is to say quite real, wall between he and the myth of his youth: Roman Catholic Christianity.

            As I engage with Campbell’s representation of Christianity, I acknowledge that I am part of a long tradition of Christian apologists. While I make no apology for the psychical and physiological abuse that plagues Christian history, I unapologetically abhor the misrepresentation of Christianity that Campbell presents in The Flight of the Gander.  Rather than actually getting entangled with the primary myths found within Judeo-Christianity, Campbell only takes up issues—and these issues revolve around interpreters whose socio-historical contexts differ greatly from mid-20^th century America—that conveniently corroborate his polemic of repudiating Christianity.  That is to say, Campbell only presents examples from the Judeo-Christian tradition that are in obvious contradiction to modern science and Eastern ideation. It is troubling, as a student of mythology, to see a mythologist as reputable as Campbell not attempt to re-mythologize a mythos that is part of his mythical personhood.

            Fleeing his Christian upbringing like a prodigal son, Campbell refuses to re-vision the Christian mythos in light modern cultural shifts. I, like the older son who stayed behind to work for dad, watch as Campbell mocks his Christian background; though, unlike the brother in the Biblical prodigal son story, I long for my brother to return home. I share Campbell’s disdain for the ignorant arrogance that marks Christian history, however I refuse to surrender to the rise of science. Rather, in company with the likes of CG Jung, I choose to regroup, to re-mythologize how the Christian myth can function in light of philosophical and scientific shifts. Jung is certainly not above criticism (hence the new “Post-Jungian” movement), however his attempt of finding use for the Christian mythos is part of what it means to be culturally adapting. Campbell, while calling forth the need for symbolic interpretation (98, 185), only criticizes and mocks interpretations of the Christian mythos.

 Campbell notes that archaic societies believed their deities to be actual entities whose powers could be invoked (24). Campbell then goes on to argue that the symbolic expression found in myths is due to the cultural milieu that these myths were born in.  Therefore, so his logic goes, since our age is a product of the scientific revolution the cosmological and philosophical paradigms of mythology should be based on scientific “facts” rather that mythological expression (102, 152). Robert Segal notes in his contribution to Myth and Method that science has replaced the function of cosmological mythology (82), however the replacement of scientific cosmological structuring does not necessitate an expulsion of mythic expression; rather, it calls for a regrouping of how these myths function, how they can still speak of the cosmos and even of and to the psyche. As mythologists, it would do well to recall that the slippery dichotomies of “fact” and “fiction”, “literal” and “metaphorical”—even those that are posed as “scientific”—have been shown to be fuzzier than once conceived. To this breadown we are indebted to literary theory, deconstruction, quantum mechanics, string theory, and the newly hypothesized M-theory. Campbell’s insistence, then, that science be the authority of all that is “knowable” or “relatively unknown” (152) is left in a mythical-modernistic-past as our age is post-modern.

Postmodernism is marked by that buzzword coined and popularized by Jacques Derrida: differance. Campbell argues time and again for individualism, the buzzword of the 1940-1970’s so closely intertwined with existential philosophy. However, Campbell works under this idiosyncratic philosophy as though, if one were “true to themselves”, they would obviously leave the Christian fold. However, in light of differance and the sociological work of Slavoj Zizek, it is increasingly difficult to see where the individual ends and society begins, and vice versa. Each entity—be it human or literature or “object”—is uniquely different and this vast amount and degree of difference is what makes up the individual, society—the story of humanity.  Campbell’s unwillingness to engage with Christian myths, to cover its underlying currents, and re-construct himself from this foundation is part of the Christian tradition. Campbell never escapes Christianity, if only in that he reacts to it; if Christianity were obsolete for Campbell, this reaction would be superfluous. Therefore, it seems as though part of Campbell’s affinity with the East is not only a divorce from his childhood religion, but is in fact a refusal to admit to a mythical worldview that shaped him early in life. Jungians might call this the repression of one’s shadow.

The shadow of Campbell’s past is literalistic interpretations of the Christian mythos; however, Campbell does not explore how this shadow could be re-visioned in light of his contemporaneous cultural outlook. Campbell’s avoidance of engaging with the myths of Judeo-Christianity cheapens his exploitation of past interpretations. In fact, his insistence that mythical expressions are culturally determined is paradoxical to his bird’s-eye-view that denigrates those who have gone before him, those who had different cultural influences. The works of Marcus Borg, John Crossan, NT Wright, and Jean Luc-Marion—writings contemporary with and after Campbell—are presenting Christianity in its historical contexts, drawing conclusions that mock Campbell’s mocking of theologians’ interpreting the “vehicle” as the “tenor” (53). Of course, if Campbell was to consider historical contexts, he would have to put the Judeo-Christian myth—and interpreters—in appropriate historical contexts, and universalizing mythic characteristics is essentially ahistorical work.

To “dehistoricize” mythology is explicitly argued for in The Flight of the Gander (185). However, by insisting on the historical context of the myth’s presentation, one is then capable of understanding what gave shape to the myth’s structure, plot, subtleties, expressions, and teachings. Furthermore, by negating history, interpretation becomes a thoroughly idiosyncratic, mythical reading and it allows for present-existential desires/needs to supplant the existential context of the myth’s telling. Any hypothetical “original” message is, of course, fictional; however, reconstructing the myth’s socio-historical context enables the reader-now to better understand the message-then. Inattention to historical contexts taints Campbell’s presentation, and blinds him to his own socio-historical biases and this thematically follows with a blindness for the historical situations behind the Christian interpreters he so arrogantly (and paradoxically) denigrates.

   As an adherent to the Christian worldview, by noting that the Christ-myth informs me of who I am, where I am in the world-age, and how I am to function in that world-age, I acknowledge that this mythos makes up “me” as much as I contribute to the continuance of the myth. By adhering to this particular mythos, I acknowledge my participation in the Christian community; part of engaging in this community is to re-mythologize the Christian mythos in a way that is true to the myth’s central concepts and is simultaneously conducive with contemporary philosophical and psychological worldviews. That is, I agree with Campbell that the Christian authorities need questioned; however, they don’t need damned. To take an eye for an eye makes the world go blind, and Campbell exhibits this damning process by damning those Christian interpreters who have done their fair share of damning. The rise of individualism, which Campbell argues for (130-5), cannot replace the innate human need for initiation, integration, and engagement with a community—something that might be present in other writings but is absent in The Flight of the Gander. Campbell divorces himself from his past, though he participates with those he condemns by performing the same actions…a true paradoxical comedy.

Comparing the comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell to his own cultural matrix reveals a human shaped by his own cultural matrix: existential (i.e.—Nietzschean), modernistic, ahistorical, and universalistic. Campbell never takes the flight of the gander, though he does flee from his Christian past. In the dawn of a post-9/11 world, it is greatly needed to gander at religions; damning one religious worldview in favor of another—even if that religion be “science”—usually causes towers to crumble. Coalescing religions together mocks their diversity. Religions and their mythical stories unite, inspire, tell adherents who they are and where they are heading as individuals in a community. Universalizing this diversity as though it speaks of one cosmic myth undermines the identity myths create by adhering to them. It is this differing, this differance, that is to be dealt with if a myth is to be true to its followers, and its self. I follow Campbell to his logical conclusion: if science has replaced the cosmologies and philosophies of mythology, then postmodernism has replaced the likes of Campbell. And, this criticism will be replaced, too. The flight of the gander is not the flight of the individual, rather it is the social flight that has feet to land and wings to fly. The individual makes up the mass, and the mass is made up of individuals—all parts of a while gander where the differences harmoniously function in flight and in landing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Campbell, Joseph. The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension, Selected Essays 1944-1968. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2002.

 

Segal, Robert, A. “Does Myth Have a Future?” Myth and Method. Ed. Laurie L. Patton and Wendy Doniger. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1996.

Krishna’s Dharma: Deconstructing and Reconstructing, Arjuna and Us

Religious texts are volatile. The unpredictable and evocative energy within religious texts provokes believing interpreters to give up their lives for others, and at other times take the lives of others. The Bhagavad-Gita, a poetic interlude within the mythical epic the Mahabharata, is not immune to these diabolically opposed exegetical potentials. The Gita takes up many of the thematic conundrums found in the Mahabharata, but most notably the Gita illustrates the concept of dharma using god-like figures and figurative rhetoric. Sanskrit scholar Barbara Miller mentions in her translation of the Gita that dharma,  “stems from the root word drh, ‘to sustain.’ A concept of complex significance in Indian culture, its basic meaning is ‘that which sustains’”(158). Simple enough, right? The complex ambiguity of Krishna’s dharma within the Gita and how it challenged Arjuna within the Mahabharata’s context has been the source of exegetical debate since the Gita’s conception. Two millenniums later, spiritual, political, and academic interpretations of the Gita still bloom; dharma cannot be ignored as every person, every kingdom, must face the question: How is appropriate inter-action to take place?

Considered an ancient text, the Gita contains many teachings of Krishna that sound all too familiar with rhetoric of current politicians and religious leaders. Krishna’s call to “wage this war of sacred duty” (2.33) is, seemingly, similar to President Bush’s reaction to those behind the World Trade Center towers’ destruction: “Given the nature and reach of our enemies, we will win this conflict…by meeting a series of challenges with determination and will and purpose” (Lincoln 100). Why turn to this religious text within a socio-historical context such as ours when religion is accused of being the source of so much violence?  The answer is in Krishna’s re-visioning of dharma that is found in the Gita—a re-visioning that takes readers beyond the surface scenes within the Gita to reach a dharma that is for Arjuna then, and our present. Furthermore, exploring Krishna’s dharmic teachings for a world-age where adharma is rampant might enable suggestive re-visioning for today. It is to the Song of the Lord, and the Lord of Song, to which we, as a collective Arjuna, now turn.

Now is as Good as Then: Krishna Re-Appearing.

            Hinduism assumes that the cosmos is involved in a continuous cycle of creation and destruction (Gita 9.7), and Krishna’s dharma re-visioning is said to materialize when adharma settles in, when “chaos prevails”(4.7). These periods of adharma are known in the Hindu cosmology as Kaliyuga, which Heinrich Zimmer elucidates as follows: “Egoistic, devouring, blind and reckless elements now are triumphant and rule the day. Kali means the worst of anything; also, ‘strife, quarrel, dissension, war, battle’” (15). Krishna’s dharma is absolutely essential for this period, otherwise destruction and chaos would prevail (Gita 3.23-35). This fits within the larger context of the Mahabharata, as the Gita is situated immediately prior to the Pandavas and Kurus warring one another. That is, Krishna’s re-visioning of dharma is performed in that sacred scene of adharma, where wars over “sacred duty” take place (1.1).

            The appearance of “Krishna” is enigmatic and tricky in itself. “Krishna” is put in quotation marks because clarification of what is meant by this term is needed. It is asserted here, emphatically so, that “Krishna” is a personified archetypal force that is conceptualized in anthropomorphic imagery, referring to what Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj suggests as, “… the indwelling principle within you—the atman, which is given various names” (137). This “indwelling principle” is expanded in the Gita as the indwelling spirit exists within all of nature as it does in humanity: “Learned men see with an equal eye a scholarly and dignified priest, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and even an outcaste scavenger” (Gita 5.18, cf. 13.3, 15.13-15). That is, the world-soul (brahman) and human-soul (atman) are intricately intertwined in matters of dharma for, if dharma is to sustain, then the entire cosmos must function harmoniously in order for nature and humanity to sustain and be sustained. “All this around me, and my own existence—experience within and without—are the warp and woof of the subtle fabric”(Zimmer, 26). This “subtle fabric” appears—in image and teaching—in breath taking and, seemingly, odd fashion in the Gita and throughout history, in different countries, figures and names.

The oddity of such perennial materialization, however, is due to the nature of its context; that is, the peculiar dharma forcefully appears when adharma is rampant. Krishna is notorious in Hindu mythology for disrupting social norms and notoriously well loved for doing so. Discussing Hindu stories that involve the thievery of Krishna, John Hawley notes that, “Krishna doesn’t use force, but his skill in stealing away what people hold dear is unparalleled; and he doesn’t kill, but he manages to unburden people of their ordinary lives” (163). As Ruth Katz points out, Krishna’s character in the Gita is marked as, “…a playful trickster…Krishna’s trickery implies an open defiance of traditional morality…” (241). Arjuna’s dilemma, to defend dharma (1.37), is seen in his reticence to kill his fellow kinsmen (1.28-31). Deciphering dharma is tricky when adharma is rife, let alone when family is involved. It is only fitting that Krishna would be seen as a trickster in a period that is replete with disorder and evil; truth, peace, and acceptance are certainly antithetical to social norms in such periods. It is not surprising, then, to see that Krishna’s presence in the Gita functions as a shocking implosion of Arjuna’s presuppositions. It takes a persona such as Krishna—or Jesus, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, et cetera—to awaken dharma, reverse social adharma and re-verse perennial truths that lead to restoration (4.8).

Krishna’s reorienting of Arjuna’s disillusionment takes up more than just the convoluted confusion of whether to engage in war; according to the Gita, the fundamental purpose of dharma is, “To protect men of virtue and destroy men who do evil” (4.8). The enactment of dharma is the internal renunciation of all fruits from action (2.55, 2.71, 5.21) and the carrying out of one’s personal dharma (2.31, 2.33) for the sake of social and cosmic welfare (3.11-16). As Jacqueline Hirst says in her contribution to The Fruits of Our Desiring: “Order in human society is, from the beginning, grounded in cosmic order and taught as such” (52). Arjuna is told to give up his previously embraced notion of dharma and find solace in the dharmic re-presenter who appears in Kaliyuga periods (18.66).  For Arjuna, in the larger context of the Mahabharata, this meant seeing through his attachment for his kinsmen and performing actions that seemed all together adharmic. To see through such horrific scenes is never easily accepted, as Krishna must repeat himself time and again for Arjuna to renounce the attachments that are seemingly normative when performing actions (examples—2.15, 2.22, 2.48, 2.55).

Set in the mythical context of the Mahabharata, the Gita presents this dharmic dilemma in hyperbolic settings so as to portray the difficulty in ascertaining how to uphold dharma. The Gita should be seen, however, more like a springboard than a bed to snuggle into, for the Gita and its dharmic teachings should be understood as recontextualizing previously held dharmic perspectives. Dharma, then, is a fluid concept and allows its applicability to twist and turn given the context in which it is being ascertained. Krishna’s archetypal reappearances and re-visioning is summed up by Ruth Katz: “God, then, is seen as the protector of dharma even as he acts within the yuga structure, changing with the shifting environment” (231). Krishna then will appear quite differently than Krishna now, but there will be an aura of familiarity, which will be spelled out later.

Speed up two millenniums. Today, Western culture is inundated with so much “war” rhetoric—from the war on drugs to the war on terrorism—that Michael Hadley writes, “War, in short, is now a ‘way of being’” (190). Put simply, since 9/11 the West’s mythic perception is constructed by a notion that took place on September 11^th, 2001: we are at war—militarily, economically, ethnically, and religiously. The evening news is sated with vivid images of violence, chaos, and hatred—at home and abroad. All the news reports confirm Zimmer’s definition of Kaliyuga, the age of adharma, the age when, supposedly, Krishna’s revelatory dharma is suppose to manifest.

Krishna’s Re-Visioning

Dharma, according to the Gita’s Krishna, is the detachment approach to reality where individual, social, and international boundaries are transcended (3.7, 3.25, 4.10, 5.11). As stated above, Arjuna’s dharmic visioning was deconstructed and the restructured dharma is one where brahman and atman are intimately interconnected. Within this interconnectivity, though, the individual is not lost.  As Krishna is quoted in 3.35, “Your own duty done imperfectly is better than another man’s done well. It is better to die in one’s own duty; another man’s duty is perilous” (cf. 18.47). Thus, when Krishna admonishes Arjuna to “Look to [his] own duty” (2.31) and to “stand up and resolve to fight the battle!” (2.37), Krishna is upholding the warrior’s dharmic role while redefining Arjuna’s presumption of social dharma. Individual duty and social duty are not so cleanly dichotomized in such re-visioning. In fact, while non-attachment to consequences is Krishna’s advice, this does not infer an amoral or entirely relativistic ethic. Nicholas Sutton notes that, “…it is only right action that is to be executed without desire” and the continuance of this is, “…entirely to do with the welfare of this world” (329). Thus, non-attachment is explicitly concerned with nourishing this tangible world, verses a transcendental world, and the non-attached motive is to be enacted in behavior that has trans-personal consequences.

Like the unity that exists as multiplicities, and the multiplicities that form unity (11.5-7, 13.30, 14.4, 18.20), the specificity of “non-attachment” and “right action” is ambiguously applicable. Thus, the Gita’s context makes Krishna’s admonition to fight understandable. To read this too literalistic, though, is to miss the point. The point is that dharmic re-visioning consists in disrupting the Kaliyuga disruption as a means of seeing clearly, of seeing through to the welfare of the world (12.4, 12.12). The Gita presents Arjuna seeking the council of Krishna as Arjuna questions how such a horrendous crime against honor in warring against family can be committed (1.34, 37). Arjuna’s difficulty is not only in killing his kinsmen, but this is coupled with the fact that to do so would be antithetical to his sense of dharma, the underlying order of the cosmos that is to be harmoniously engaged with. Hence, Krishna’s advice is ultimately directed towards the following: how to exist and engage with the order that sustains the cosmos—both on social and individual, macro and microcosmic levels. The vague applicability of dharma calls for constant conscious awareness of one’s historical context and how to behave in a dharmic manner, a manner that is fundamentally concerned with the sustenance of the world at large.

Krishna, Dharma, and…Us?

            To insert a concept like dharma in a postmodern, post-9/11 world—rife with chaos, pluralism, and violence—is capable by the very nature of Krishna’s visionary re-visioning found within the Gita. As Jacqueline Hirst notes, “[The Gita] may ask us…to go beyond our initial understandings of dharma, discarding or recontextualizing them as we go, to that which is truly dharmic” (55). What is dharmic has been repeatedly summarized with “sustaining the welfare of the world.” Considering the nuclear, environmental, ethnical, and biological threats facing the modern world, it would do well to offer some suggestive ways of recontextualizing dharma in our own Kaliyuga.

Literalistic readings of the Gita are, unfortunately, all too popular in recent and contemporary history. It is well known that the Gita was dear to Richard Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb. Mark Juergensmeyer notes that members of the Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP have defended several acts of violence by quoting from the Gita (95).  The Gita is far from being an exception in matters of violent religious interpretations. The rise of current religious violence is coupled with an intense upsurge of globalization, providing a contemporary scene where national and hemispherical boundaries are transcended daily.

The sustaining of one country ultimately depends on the sustenance of other countries in relation—economically, ecologically, politically, and in matters of human rights. Krishna’s restructuring of Arjuna’s concept of dharma is, for readers today, an international—indeed a cosmic—restructuring. Contemporarily, Arjuna is seen in each individual, and as a collective whole, as there is collective hope for a Krishna re-visioning that enables each country  to establish dharma nationally and internationally—those two so inherently entwined in our day. Problems arise, though, when the order that is sought is re-visioned in such a radical way that it implodes the anticipatory expectations clung to. While there are many examples of contemporary adharma in our Kaliyuga, a suggestive dharmic re-visioning towards the cacophonic relationship between the West and the Middle East will be focused on. This indicatory re-visioning will explore how the dharmic teachings in the Gita might provide insight for a world where the field of dharma is truly cosmic in scale. If such re-visioning does not take place, Agni might make an appearance in a nuclear way that would truly put an end to the chaos—once and for all.

As noted above, individual dharma is to function conjointly with cosmic dharma to “lead to freedom” (Gita 11.5) and is for “sustaining this entire world” (10.42). Unfortunately, since its imperialistic inception the West has characteristically been demonic: “[the West has said] I have gained this wish today, and I shall attain that one; this wealth is mine, and there will be more. I have killed the enemy, and I shall kill others too; I am the lord, I am the enjoyer, successful, strong, and happy.” (16.13-14). The West, specifically America, flourishes in its economical surplus and political might, all the while sustaining an adharmic identity that caricaturizes “divine traits that lead to freedom” (16.5). Focusing entirely on the interests of sustaining our national welfare, the United States has failed to harmonize its dharma with global dharma. Such national-centrism has resulted in a Kaliyuga that infiltrates in nearly every darkened corner of the world.

Since the Gulf War of 1991, the United States has sustained harsh sanctions on Iraq, “…which [have] caused widespread misery, including the deaths of over half a million Iraqi children, [and] were ‘worth the cost,’ as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously put it” (Loy 96). The following list, far from exhaustive, exhibits the overwhelming adharma enacted by the U.S. government:

            …in 1965, the United States sponsored or assisted a military coup

            in Indonesia that involved the deaths of over half a million people…

            in the year 2001 alone the United States refused to join 123 other nations

            in banning the use of production of antipersonnel bombs and mines…

            Bush declared the Kyoto global warming protocol “dead” and refused

            to participate in revising it, because that might harm the U.S. economy…

            the United States was the only nation to oppose the U.N. Agreement to

            Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms…In addition, the

            United States ha not ratified the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban

Treaty, signed by 164 nations but opposed by Bush (Loy105).

 

Given the unavoidable globalization that is in motion, the question is not whether or not the West should be internationally involved. The question is: what is the West’s dharmic role to enable international harmony where each country focuses on its own dharmic responsibility (Gita 3.35, 18.47) in such a way that will bring global peace (12.12)? In a country that promotes its motto as “liberty and justice for all”, violence has been the action taken in hopes of securing this nationalistic attachment. Two and a half centuries after America’s inauguration, two and a half centuries of working towards liberty and justice for all, the one thing that has been attained without failure has been violence—within and without national borders.

The Gita provides a disarming portrait of dharma. Recall that dharma essentially means “that which sustains” (Miller 158). In the wake of our Kaliyuga, the destruction of the cosmos has never been more perceivable and there are no lacking options that can be taken to actualize this. Violence has proven, it would seem, to be ineffective in creating global dharma. Hence, what if what the Mahabharata calls the highest dharma, that of ahimsa (non-violence), were attempted? What if the re-contextualizing of dharma in our age was to retract from our nationalistic attachments and seek a global dharma where countries work together for peace, compassion, and sustenance for all creatures (Gita, 12.4, 12.12-13)? Contemporarily, re-visioning dharma would call for a global paradigm shift, one where nuclear, military, and imperialistic weapons of mass destruction implode on themselves along with the present adharmic vision that poses itself as dharmic.

Concluding…for now.

In the Mahabharata Arjuna follows Krishna’s advice and the Pandavas defeat the Kurus. However, the Gita is ambiguous as to who or what Arjuna is to fight. This ambiguity is heightened considering Krishna’s teachings of how brahman and atman are so intricately intertwined, thus one should treat all creatures equally (4.35, 5.7, 6.29-32, 13.28). Who then is Arjuna to fight? “Great Warrior, kill the enemy menacing you in the form of desire!” (3.43). Arjuna then, and Arjuna now, is to fight against desires of attachment. The attachment of the West to attain nationalistic ideals while ignoring international needs is analogous to the short-sided disillusionment of Arjuna that Krishna deconstructs. To promote non-violence in an age of extreme violence would certainly be tricky, but the warning signs seen on every 6 o’clock evening news report suggest that such trickery is imperative if our world is to be sustained.

The entire scenario is left to interpretation, and the Gita, like any ancient extant text, has its fair share of interpretations. The current international situation will have future historians performing their own interpretations of how dharma was incorporated, and sadly often ignored in our Kaliyuga. A re-appearance of Krishna is most certainly needed, but are we willing to embody Krishna today? This exploration opened with a question, implying a need for an answer. The answer just might lay in the questioning – by breaking the bonds of present attachments, the West can enable questioning to happen, which will open up opportunities to view things anew. This question must first be addressed: Is the West willing to actually question their current sense of dharma? May the evening news’ one day report, like that of Sanjaya, that there was rejoicing, for dharma was actualized in an adharmic age. May history say, on a global scale, that for a time, “fortune, victory, abundance, and morality [did] exist” (18.78).

 

 Works Cited

 

Hadley, Michael. “The Ascension of Mars and the Salvation of the Modern World.” The Twenty-first Century Confronts Its Gods: Globalization, Technology, and War. Ed. David J. Hawking. Albany: State University of New York, 2004. 189-208.

Hawley, John Stratton. “The Thief in Krishna.” The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition. Ed. Margaret H. Case. Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press, 2007. 162-171.

Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious

Violence. Los Angeles and London: University of California, 2000.

Katz, Ruth. Arjuna in the Mahabharata: Where Krishna Is, There Is Victory.

Columbia, SC: South Carolina UP, 1989.

Lincoln, Bruce. Holy Terror: Thinking About Religion After September 11.

Chicago and London: University of Chicago, 2003.

Loy, David R. “The West Against the Rest? A Buddhist Response to The Clash of Civilizations. The Twenty-first Century Confronts Its Gods: Globalization, Technology, and War. Ed. David J. Hawking. Albany: State University of New York, 2004. 95-110.

Hirst, Jacqueline. “Upholding the World: Dharma in the Bhagavadgita.” The Fruits of Our Desiring: An Enquiry into the Ethics of the Bhagavadgita For Our Times. Ed. Julius Lipner. Calgary: Bayeux Arts, 1997. 48-63.

Maharaj, Sri Nisargadatta. The Nectar of Immortality: Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj’s Discourses on the Etnernal. Ed. Robert Powell. San Diego: Blue Dove Press, 1996.

Miller, Barbara Stoller, trans. The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of

War. New York: Bantam Dell, rpt. 2004.

Sutton, Nicholas. Religious Doctrines in the Mahabharata. Delhi: Motilal

Banarsidass, 2000.

  Zimmer, Heinrich. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Ed. Joseph

Campbell. Princeton: Princeton UP, rpt. 1974.

The Absence of an Archetype: Looking Beyond Oedipus and Jesus

The mythology of the West is as celestial and infinite as there are celestial bodies in the infinite cosmos. To elevate one over the other is a judgmental endeavor, for with selection comes a simultaneous omission. Regardless of this, it can safely be asserted that within the mythologies of the West two notably stand out (though not necessarily above): the myths of Oedipus of Thebes and Jesus of Nazareth. These two figures are by and large two of the most widely discussed figures—mythically and historically—throughout Western history, and they will occupy our time once again. Fusing these two characters’ stories together will provide insight to how the infanticide and patricide within Oedipus’ and Jesus’ stories are imagistic portrayals of how archetypal forces can never been fully signified through the re-presenting symbol embodying archetypal energy. That is, this interpretative exploration will unveil how the West’s fascination of the symbolic characters in these foundational myths have left us longing for more, longing for an Antigone to bury the literalistic-short-sighted-mentality that has long governed the Western mind.

             Criticisms of Oedipus and Jesus are commonplace in the depth-psychology movement, yet a critical look at the paralleling features of infanticide and patricide and the redeeming qualities within this murderous scheme has yet to be exercised. The vast chasm of time and culture that separates these myths is joined not through an interpretative bridge, but by starting from each side of the gorge and journeying to each myth’s depth. When one reaches this depth, it becomes obvious that there is a brook that runs through the quarry, and it is in the brook we must trod; these stories can guide us to life-nourishing water for the soul, if we so choose to baptize ourselves in its depths.

            Marked differences exist between the nature of these stories. Information regarding the socio-historical context of Oedipus’ scene is overly lacking, while there is several extant documents and a mass of historical work done on the context of Jesus’ story. Oedipus is mostly looked to as a mythical figure, while Jesus is looked to as both historical and mythical, depending on one’s predispositions. Oedipus’ parents are explicitly noted as being biological (Roche, 69-70), while Jesus’ biological background is hidden behind a mythical birth narrative (Matt. 1.18-5). These discontinuities, and many more, exist and deserve attention, though not specifically ours; to do so would mislead the direction being taken here. These two myths of the West collide and coincide in a similar archetypal fashion that must be taken seriously if we are to take our myths seriously.

            The stories begin on their own side of the gaping gap: in Oedipus the King Apollo prophecies Oedipus killing his father Laius (Roche 24); in John’s gospel YHWH sent his only son, Jesus, to die for the sins of humanity (John 3.16). Oedipus is predicted to kill his father, while Jesus is brought into the world to be killed by his “father”. The forecast for these two figures seems opposite, however they share the storm of infanticide. That each story has infanticide and patricide demands that attention be given to this parent-child relationship and what that divine relationship infers. Before jumping that far, though, it needs to be asked: Why is it that each story has a son as the paradigmatic character and not the parent? What does the need for a son suggest?

The need for a son: the absence of a father

            Oedipus and Jesus enter their given stories with an identity of being sons. Oedipus is most often viewed only as the son of Laius. This seems understandable considering that most of the interpretative work has focused on the infanticide/patricide events that take place between Oedipus and Laius. However, there is reason to believe that Oedipus’ social status as tyrranos would create a new socio-political identity that involved a divine father-son relationship. Early in the Oedipus play, Oedipus is regarded as the one who is “the leader of men and consummate atoner to the powers above” (Roche 24). That is, while Oedipus is not necessarily equal with the gods, he nevertheless knows, unlike any other human, how to use the powers of the gods. This less-than-godlike stature is questioned later in the play when the chorus questions Oedipus’ origination: “Who was your mother child? Which of the dryads, Perennially young, did Pan of the mountains have? Or was it Apollo haunting high Savannas?” (66).  In his Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father, Pietro Pucci suggests that, “…Oedipus is not simply favored by the gods but their son; now his solution of the Sphinx’s riddle becomes easy to explain. He descends from Apollo” (130). Oedipus’ social identity derives not only from his biological father Laius, but as one who comes from and represents Apollo. Jesus shares this dual identity in that his is one that is identified as the son of Joseph  (Matt. 1.16) and YHWH (John 3.16). 

            This is not surprising. In the ancient world those who were recognized as king, whether that kingship be official (Oedipus) or subversive (Jesus), were often socially recognized as a son of god, an agent by who god would work through to exercise his reign on earth; a tangible, imaginary as it is, combination of heaven on earth. It is common knowledge in classical studies that Octavius Augustus was not only emperor, but was in fact believed to be Zeus’ agent to bring peace (Crossan, God and Empire 107-8, 147-48). H. J. Rose comments that the Hellenistic period was, “…a time when the deifying of kings was a commonplace, often hardly more than a piece of formal loyalty” (383). The theology of the ancient world was seen not only in their stories and writings, but in how society practiced their imperial-theology. It is suggested, then, that given the suggestive statements mentioned above in each story it is highly likely that these leaders of nation, city, or revolutionary band of renegades were interpreted as embodied representatives by which the god of their nation, city, or group would act through. Put in depth-psychological terms, this given person was acknowledged as truly living out an archetypal force that was socially acknowledged as paradigmatic, authoritative, and, as will be shown later, unfortunately worshiped.

            Hence, according to the stories as they are preserved in their textual form, Apollo and YHWH designate particular males in the earthly scene as a son, and it is the son that represents the father. To offer a representation of one’s self suggests that the actual figure is absent, or at least perceived to be so, hence the son functions as the offered symbol. The historical scene for Sophocles’ Oedipus and Christianity’s Jesus are analogous, and these scenes unveil a similar need for a symbol, a son, to re-present a way of being in the world that provided a paradigm specifically pertinent for those historical moments. Before venturing into the paradigmatic nature of each character, it is beneficial here to recap the historical situation in which these stories were presented.

 

Oedipus and Jesus in Context

            To speak of the historical matrix of Oedipus is futile, for there is little to no extant evidence supporting the historical figure of Oedipus, much less the socio-historical milieu. Sophocles, then, is the beginning point for understanding the context behind Oedipus, for it is Sophocles’ who is telling this story in a particular way that will speak to a particular audience in a specific historical time. Sophocles’ play of Oedipus was offered to Greece shortly after the plague of 430BCE. The effects of this plague were not only agricultural and social devastation, but psychologically as well. As Christine Downing notes, the plague, coupled with the social and political disruptions, created “a period of transition, turmoil, and war” (284). Athens was a city-state of confusion; social structures were being deconstructed and human understanding regarding man’s rational responsibilities and the intervention of divine activity were deeply interrogated. The character Oedipus, then, served as a signifier in the absence of Apollo, the absence of a father, and, “…when the figure of the father is felt to be absent, unable to present itself with his law…then the society is endangered; then confusion and chaos ensue” (Pucci, 4). The father Apollo being absent, seen in Athenian disruption, signifies for the need to send a symbol (Oedipus) to re-present Apollo.

            The social scenes of Jesus’ entry are similar to what we find in 5^th century BCE Athens. John Crossan presents example after example of Jewish revolution and riotousness during the 1^st century BCE and CE in Crossan’s The Historical Jesus: the Life of a Mediterranean Jew (168-206). Rome exercised its fierce imperialistic power over Judean territory and this presented the Jewish nation with social, political, and theological frustration. If Israel was the nation of YHWH, and YHWH was the one true God, how was it that Jews were enslaved once again as if they were in Egypt? And now it was in their own country?! The lack of political rule by Jewish religious leaders immediately gave way to existential and social insecurity in matters of finding favor with YHWH. With this background in mind, Jesus should be viewed, like Oedipus, as a symbol embodying an archetypal force (YHWH) to signify how one was to restore the presence of the father in a time when the presence of YHWH was altogether questioned. In both cases the embodying agent offers blessings and a new mode of existence, not only through their lives, but in and through their deaths.

Infanticide: signifier’s death wish on its on sign

James Hillman suggests in he and Kerenyi’s Oedipus Variations that infanticide “is a mythic manner of imagining literalism” (125). Hillman takes this notion and applies it to Laius and Oedipus’ relationship; however, why would Apollo prophesy patricide when this would in turn cause Laius to react as he did? Why would YHWH send his one and only son in to the world (and, recall that this divine conception nearly caused Joseph to leave the Mary) only to kill him? Hillman’s proposed notion can be extended beyond his particular application, as the death wish on the child stems not only from a biological father (as in the case of Laius), but also a metaphysical father. That is, it is in its nature for the archetypal energy to make itself known, and it resorts to iconic imagery (a son) to signify its nature. The archetype is seen through the symbol, but the archetypal force refuses to be literalized; therefore, the symbolizing character must certainly literally die, less the energy the character embodies be misconstrued as actually belonging to the characters themselves. It is proposed here that the West’s foundational myths are communicating this, in subversive and divine ways.

In each story, the archetypal force is certainly experienced through the iconic son, as Oedipus and Jesus both acquire hero-like status amongst their contemporaries.  The townspeople of Thebes look to Oedipus, “leader of men and consummate atoner to the powers above” (Roche 24), to bring healing to their famished lands. Likewise, “The news about [Jesus] spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to him all who were ill… and he healed them. Large crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan” (Matt. 4.24-25). Things seem to be moving along nicely. Each figure establishes himself as a worthy leader and does what he can to bring healing to those who seek. However, modern interpreters prove that modern seekers do not often find what they often seek in either figure—a true inversion of Jesus’ “seek and you will find” (Matt. 7.7).

Oedipus and Jesus were both paradigmatic characters that were to be symbols of an archetypal signifier, they were not to be taken literally. Both were to represent, to re-present, the image of their given god, yet in each case their supposed re-presentation is literalized as the representation and the iconic nature of the son is lost. Followers of Oedipus and Jesus make an idol out of an icon and consequently miss the archetypal presentation potentially held within the characters. Hillman suggests that it is the Apollonic archetype itself that causes the literalism of Oedipus and his followers. It is being argued here, on the other hand, that it is the followers that literalize the symbols, not that literalism is inherently involved in the archetypal energy within the West’s foundational mythic figures.

Patricide: Use the force, not the image.

Sophocles never says what happens to Thebes; interpreters are left only to their own conjecture. What is known is that Oedipus died in solitude, giving his blessings to Athens (Roche 151, 159) and not Thebes, and Jesus died publicly prior to God’s Kingdom being established in the way Jesus’ disciples presumed (Acts 1.7). The cure does not come because the prescription is not in the figure; rather, the healing comes through the death of literalizing the symbol and allowing the archetypal force to re-present itself time and again. Here is where the archetypal patricide takes place, both with Jesus and Oedipus: the son, still ever so innocently, kills the father as the father is no longer seen through the figure of the son. Who, however, is the murderer?

Each myth stops at this depth: the figure. As Hillman points out, the followers of Oedipus, depth-psychologists, have been Oedipal through and through since Sigmund Freud identified himself as Oedipus (130-136).  Similarly, subsequent followers of Jesus claim that, “It is not I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2.20).  The two foundational myths of the West merge in this depth—here the canyons are joined: a collection of myth-followers who stop at the foot of the brook where only their reflection off the rippling waters of the brook is seen. The reflecting figure is believed to be the figure to be seen, and interpreters miss that this figure is being reflected through an effervescent movement of water: there is something to be experienced—much like the original audiences—through the embodying eikon. What most interpreters have found, though, is a reflection, and one made of vagueness—the quality of any symbol—because of the ripples.

The redeeming deaths of Oedipus and Jesus (see below) have functioned as patricidal deaths, for in the death of the son, who is redeemed through that death, the archetypal force is then killed. Depth-psychology’s murder of Apollonic thinking and Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of (the Judeo-Christian) God are not mere statements: they are invitations to pick up where these corpses lay. The merging of the Oedipus and Jesus tales at the foot of a brook suggests a safe place, stopping where fluidity begins, gazing only at a reflected image instead of breaking that image with the insertion of ourselves within the stream, where you never step into the same water twice. Apollo nor YHWH are at fault here; the fault lies in idolatry, in literalizing the figurine presented with archetypal force to be the archetype itself.

            Apollo and YHWH are the archetypal gods most often associated with literalism, rationalism, a my-way-or-the-highway mentality (example, Apollonic: Hillman, 119). Literalism cannot reign supreme if ambivalence, metaphor, and polysemy are allowed. When these two archetypes, though, are seen in relation to the containers in which they are signified by, the problem becomes more with the interpretation of the symbol than it does with the signifier. The patricide which is involved in these stories involves a literalizing of the son, of not seeing through the image of the son. The redemption of Jesus’ death is not false to life, as Hillman suggests in Re-Visioning Psychology (98-99), for it was through death that new life was acquired. That is, new life, a new mode of being came vis-à-vis his death. Oedipus, now aware of how he had carried out Apollo’s oracle, was willing to endure Apollo’s death wish and in doing so was able to bless Athens.

            The symbol is most true when it is recognized as something not quite graspable. In each story, Oedipus and Jesus are adored by their followers for both embody archetypal forces that bring healing; however, the banal nature of these re-presenters could not be overlooked. Apollo and YHWH proved the humanity of their archetypal representations by causing all-too-human events to occur: Oedipus with his self-inflicted torture and Jesus with his Roman-inflicted torture. When the Chorus questioned the reasoning behind Oedipus’ self-blinding Oedipus replied, “Friends, it was Apollo, Spirit of Apollo: He made this fruit of evil fructify” (Roche, 75). In the Garden of Gethsemane, while pondering on events soon to come, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will but as You will” (Matt. 26.39)—it is well known what came from that prayer. It is in this suffering, this utter despair, where Oedipus and Jesus seem most human. As sons of god, Oedipus and Jesus were to be that: sons, metaphorical re-presentations of the archetypal force in a grief-stricken Athens and socially disruptive Judea. The problem of literalizing the re-presentation of an archetypal force is summed up, with tongue-in-cheek, by John Crossan: “…remember, if Jesus is at the right hand of God, then God is to the left of Jesus” (Stewart, 26). These men were images, eikons, for these settings, and considering the rife chaos, exploitation, and violent disruptions of today, they might be equally needed as they were for their original audiences.

Concluding, but Never Making a Final Conclusion

            Depth-psychology has argued since its beginning that it is in the underworld, in dreams, in the psyche’s depths where we are to find the forces which guide, forewarn, condemn, uplift, and bring meaning to life. The Oedipus and Jesus tales are the two primary stories that form the Western psyche and, since the Western soul is dehydrated, these stories have received the blunt of criticisms for leaving their followers malnourished. As it has been argued here, the problem might lay more in the unwillingness to dive into the brook these myths bring one to rather than the myths themselves. The mythical patricide is committed not by Oedipus and Jesus, but by the interpreting followers of these myths who use the infant to destroy the father; followers see only the symbol instead of looking through the symbol and becoming a symbol themselves. The death of each figure is a journey in to the underworld; the blessings of Athens and the resurrection of Jesus are not a reemergence to the day world, they are not repatriating to a mode of literalism. Rather, these two figures invite their followers to die themselves, to delve into the underworld as a means of entering a new mode of existence: an existence where the archetypal force can crucify or humiliate you and through that bring healing to others.

The above interpretation is, of course, a mythical reading, which suggests that it re-mythologizes these myths. Then again, is this not what a myth must do? These stories invite us to journey to the depths of the West’s canyon, and the brook that runs through these stories can nourish the soul, if we choose to get our feet a little wet and muddy.

Works Cited

Crossan, John Dominic. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean

Peasant. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.

—. God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. New York:

HarperCollins, 2007.

Downing, Christine. “Another Oedipus.” An Oedipus—The Untold Story: A Ghostly Mythodrama In One Act. Ed. Armando Nascimento Rosa. New Orleans: Spring Journal Books, 2006. 280-305.

Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

The New American Standard Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Pucci, Pietro. Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father: Oedipus Tyrannus in

Modern Criticism and Philosophy. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1992 

            Rose, H. J. “The Evidence of Divine Kings in Greece.” The Myth and Ritual Theory. Ed. Segal, Robert. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 381-387.

            Sophocles. The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles. Roche, Paul, trans. New York: New

American Library, 1958.

 

Stewart, Robert, ed. The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T.

Wright in Dialogue. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006.

Thanks-Giving: there’s a reason that word is an amalgamation of two.

It’s a bit odd that we still celebrate, as a nation, Thanksgiving. We all know, or at least I think we do, that the stories of the pilgrims and Indians are imaginative stories…like Alice in Wonderland, or Robin Hood. And, I actively identify with and participate in a culture that is post-evangelical-Christian, yet here I am all packed and ready to go visit my parents and siblings. I’m not really sure why I’m doing it, other than the socio-familial obligations that weigh so heavy they are more painful than the over-stuffed feeling that is inherently involved in Thanksgiving dinners. Or any Indian-buffet, for that matter.

The critic within wants to deconstruct Thanksgiving and its overt Christian overtones.
The critic wants to mention that with all this “giving thanks for what we have” there is the day that follows, which is the day of more sales at your local, national, and international department stores, than any day of the year.
The critic wants to ask, “how can you say how thankful you are for what you have when soon after this meal you’ll think of what you don’t have?”.
The critic wants to scoff at how Christians all participate in the same rituals—Turkey, potatoes, rolls, pumpkin-pecan-sweet potato pies, apple cider—and yet somehow their ritual is more acceptable than “those pagans” doing the same.
It’s all gluttony. All of it. Even the “giving thanks” part…a day set aside to overstuff our optimism while suppressing the ungrateful bitches that reside within so that, at least for one day, we can appear to be thankful.
And, of course, appearance is where it’s at. (don’t forget to throw up, all you skinny folks, so you can appear to join in the gluttony without losing the skinny).

This has all went through Carl (the name attached to “My brain”—I’m trying to re-train Carl so that so much isn’t “mine”).

Then again, it is a ritual. There is some religion going on, even if it’s not recognized as a religious rite. And, it is a collective ritual enacted by hundreds of millions throughout our country—those at Wal-Mart or your 24/7 customer service centers being the exceptions. The critic is who tends to be more influential on Carl, but I’m proactively stopping it this time. Not because Thanksgiving is anything special to me, not that I will eat turkey or go shopping Friday or even care what others are thankful for. None of this means anything to me, but it means something to others, and that seems to be what this is more about.

Setting aside a time to look back and realize all that is Gift—all that is bound up with existence that can’t be earned or accrued. Like a girl choosing to love you…we all know, guys, you can’t do anything to get a girl to love you. Maybe fuck you, maybe even like you, but for a girl to love you…she has to give that. Admittedly, this existence has been supported and sustained by more Gift than anything ever acquired by my efforts. Countless friends, parents who have been more supportive than any girl, employers, random strangers, a timing belt that seems to never break…yea, there is lots for me to reflect on and let a grin come through after such reflections. But that’s not the point.

The point seems, Mr. Critic, to be that what matters to you doesn’t matter during this holiday. Critique all you want—they really are valid critiques that should be examined; but until you can love what you tend to critique, then it’s most likely that you won’t cross anyone’s mind when they do their own reflecting.