Heroes save the World

Im Dein-Wille-geschehe-Modus tut man vieles, das man nicht mal selber wirklich verstehen oder erklären kann. Auch nicht soll. Darum kann man auch von keinem anderen erwarten es zu sehen. Keiner ist richtig oder falsch. Alles wird nur noch intuitiv wahrgenommen. Bewusst unbewusst ausgeführt. Der Impuls als einziger Anhaltspunkt und Taktgeber im dunklen Nebel der ILLUminaten-ILLUsionen. Im Kampf um die Seelen ist ihnen jedes Mittel recht. Umso heller das Licht desto mehr eregt man Aufmerksamkeit. Versuchen dich negative Kräfte vom Weg abzubringen. Benutzen jeden in deinem Umfeld um dich zu schwächen. An dich ranzukommen. Dich zu testen. Und wieder ist genau das Gegenteil vom Schein die Wahrheit. Die Erniedrigung eine Bestätigung. Überall wo zwanghaft versucht wird uns von etwas abzubringen oder übertrieben negativ darzustellen, sollte man genauer hinschauen. Dahinter verbergen sich meist die wichtigsten Schlüssel. Beide Seiten der Dualität vertreten ihre Extreme. Trennen die Welten immer deutlicher voneinander. Intensives und ungewöhnliches Verhalten ruft starke und irritierte Reaktionen hervor. Unsichere Situationen nähren grosse Ängste. Der steigende Druck, der bald keiner mehr aushalten kann. Jeder auf seine Weise verarbeitet. Weil im Herzen alle wissen und spüren, dass es ein Ende haben muss. Weil es sonst nur immer schlimmer werden würde. Und auch die letzten und stärksten bald aufgeben müssten. Nur ein Wunder kann und wird uns retten. Die globale Massenerleuchtung. Denn egal, ob heute oder morgen, dieses System wird und muss verschwinden. Es steht unserem Glück und unserer Freiheit im Weg. Und wenn wir irgendwas tun können, damit alle die Wahrheit erkennen und unsere gebündelten Liebeswellen diesen Prozess unterstützen und fördern helfen können, dann versuchen wir das. Alles, was in unserer Macht steht. Und darum auch dieses Festival in der Natur. Um das beste aus diesem Moment herauszuholen. Das Potenzial dieser Energien für die ganze Welt zu nutzen. Ob wahr oder nicht. Wir schaffen unsere eigene Realität. Wer das verstanden hat und bewusst anwendet, wird ein Teil der Matrix. Eine wirksame und starke Kraft, ein göttliches Werkzeug, das auf gewisse Bereiche des Lebens Einfluss nehmen kann und muss. Eine bestimmte Rolle zu spielen hat. Ob das nun der Allgemeinheit passt und verständlich ist oder nicht, muss völlig zweitrangig sein. Die Phänomene dieser Zeit haben mich auf dem Weg viel zu weit gebracht um ignoriert oder abgetan zu werden. Mich davon auszuschliessen. Ich habe sehr oft und intensiv erfahren wie mächtig und wahr es ist. Selbst am meisten davon profitiert. Ohne wäre ich in dieser kurzen Zeit niemals so weit gekommen. Und dazu muss man stehen können auch wenn der ganze Rest dagegen reden sollte. Sonst wäre man für diesen Weg nicht geeignet. Deswegen wird dies durch misstrauisches Hinterfragen und vernichtendes Verurteilen auch immer wieder aufs härteste geprüft. Die Gewissheit muss wasserfest sein. Das Vertrauen 200%. Nichts darf den Geist aus der Ruhe und Balance bringen lassen. Und so werden die nächsten Personen zu den grössten Prüfern. Den besten Lehrern und ich kann ihnen nur danken. Sie helfen mir damit am allermeisten. Spielen ihre Rolle um mich weiterzubringen.
Und ja das klingt hier für manche sicher alles ziemlich verrückt und vielleicht bin ich es auch aus der Sicht anderer und das ist völlig in Ordnung so. Ein natürlicher Selbstschutz. Ich muss das auch loslassen. Sowas behindert mich nur. Darum sollen Menschen, die mit sowas nicht umgehen können auch nicht diesen Blog lesen oder mit mir länger oder enger Kontakt haben. Das würde zuviel Schaden anrichten. Und auch wenn man sich noch so sehr darum bemüht es allen recht zu machen und keinen zu verletzten oder zu verängstigen; manchmal lässt es sich leider nicht vermeiden. Am Ende zählt nur das kollektive Ziel und Wohl. Der göttliche Wille. Die Eliminierung des Leids und des Karmas. Die Wahrheit über das höchste Bewusstsein und seine multidimensionalen Welten. Das Licht der Welt. Die bedingungslose Liebe für alle Lebewesen. Die Weisheit und Grösse des kosmischen Herzens. Für den menschlichen Geist zu gigantisch, zu weit entfernt um jemals in seiner wahren Schönheit und Vollkommenheit erfassbar zu sein. Unsichtbar für das physische Auge. Das Alltagsbewusstsein hinter dem Schleier der Scheinrealität. Aber in der extremen Situtation, in der die Menschheit sich gerade befindet, ist es für niemanden leicht oder sicher, egal wie weit er ist. Man geht höchstens anders damit um. Aber keiner kann genau sagen oder vorhersehen, was geschehen oder wie es weitergehen wird. Wir können nur jeden Tag versuchen zu tun, was wir können um diesem Prozess eine möglichst positive Richtung oder Note zu geben. Bewusst zu sein und unserer Herzstimme zu folgen. Mit sich und Gott im Reinen zu sein. Den Geist zu kontrollieren und auf globale Visonen irdischer Erleuchtung und Befreiung zu richten. Im Äusseren gibt es keine Antwort oder Lösung. Keine Sicherheit und kein wahres Glück. Weil vergänglich und Illusion. Unser grösster Gegner. Das Paradies liegt in uns selbst. In unseren Herzen. Das Königreich sind wir. Der Tempel Gottes. Der heilige Gral. Das Gefäss für den heiligen Geist. Kinder des ewigen Lichts. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Aber mehr als genug um diese Welt mit links zu überwinden. Die unnötigen Grenzen zu sprengen. Über uns hinaus zu wachsen und würdige Vertreter der göttlichen Familie zu werden. Helden zu sein. Die Welt zu retten. Das kosmische Drama nachzuspielen. Auf verschiedensten Bühnen gleichzeitig. Zur Unterhaltung eines unbeschreiblichen Wesens, das unsere Vorstellungskraft massiv übersteigt und trotzdem zugänglich ist. Sucht und vertraut Gott. Das ist wohl der beste und einzige Rat, den man anderen geben kann. Jeder muss bzw. darf es selbst suchen, erfahren und erkennen. Das ist das grösste und schönste Geschenk, das der Schöpfer seinen Geschöpfen machen kann. Und leise wie der Schnee wächst in der Tiefe des Unterbewusstseins hinter den Kulissen der kollektiv-menschlich-seelischen Evolution der Lotus göttlicher Erleuchtung. Bereit zu blühen und die Welt mit seinem anziehenden Duft und berauschenden Nektar in höhere Sphären der Bewusstheit zu heben. Seine Flügel zu spannen und in die höchsten Himmel des Lichts aufzusteigen. Jeder ist ein potenzieller Held und Halbgott. Und jeder ist in diesem entscheidenden Moment der Menschheitsgeschichte aufgefordert einer zu sein oder zu werden um die Welt vor der Zerstörung durch das niedere Selbst zu retten. Vor einer ausser Kontrolle geratener Zivilisation, die alles Leben auf diesem Planeten zu vernichten droht. Jeder hat die Macht es zu verhindern und zu ändern. Gemeinsam ein globales Wunder bewusster Einheit und göttlicher Realität zu manifestieren, das alle multidimensionalen Völker unserer Galaxie in staunende Bewunderung und freudige Extase versetzen könnte. Wir sind nie allein. Und viel wertvoller und grösser als wir es uns je erträumt haben. Das Universum ist mit unendlicher Liebe erfüllt und immer an und auf unserer Seite. In und um uns. Als Ursprung und Inhalt allen Seins.

Und so erhalte auch ich meine himmlischen Zeichen und Hilfestellungen durch Menschen und Schriften, die trotz allem an mich glauben, den Weg bestätigen und mir genug Kraft und Mut geben weiter zu gehen. Ausdrücken und beschreiben, was ich im Ansatz zwar selbst erlebe aber schon lange nicht mehr in Worten verständlich und glaubwürdig vermitteln und erklären kann. Ich danke jedem, der zur Offenbarung der Wahrheit beiträgt und davon Gebrauch macht. Durch euch hat das Leben Sinn und Wert.

GOD IS ALL..we need..IS LOVE...


Pearls of Wisdom:

"THE TRUTHS contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised," writes Sigmund Freud, "that the mass of humanity cannot recognize them as truth."

"Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names."

One of the most remarkable developments that criss-cross the world, no matter how urbanized a people may become, no matter how far they are living from family, or how many generations away they are born from a tight-knit heritage group—people everywhere nonetheless will form and re-form "talking story" groups. There appears to be a strong drive in the psyche to be nourished and taught, but also to nourish and teach the psyches of as many others as possible, with the best and deepest stories that can be found.

The dreamer is a distinguished operatic artist, and, like all who have elected to follow, not the safely marked general highways of the day, but the adventure of the special, dimly audible call that comes to those whose ears are open within as well as without.

The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Then for seven days Gautama—now the Buddha, the Enlightened— sat motionless in bliss; for seven days he stood apart and regarded the spot on which he had received enlightenment; for seven days he paced between the place of the sitting and the place of the standing; for seven days he abode in a pavilion furnished by the gods and reviewed the whole doctrine of causality and release; for seven days he sat beneath the tree where the girl Sujata had brought him milk-rice in a golden bowl, and there meditated on the doctrine of the sweetness of Nirvana; he removed to another tree and a great storm raged for seven days, but the King of Serpents emerged from the roots and protected the Buddha with his expanded hood; finally, the Buddha sat for seven days beneath a fourth tree enjoying still the sweetness of liberation. Then he doubted whether his message could be communicated, and he thought to retain the wisdom for himself; but the god Brahma descended from the zenith to implore that he should become the teacher of gods and men. The Buddha was thus persuaded to proclaim the path.3a And he went back into the cities of men where he moved among the citizens of the world, bestowing the inestimable boon of the knowledge of the Way.

"For the One who has become many, remains the One undivided, but each part is all of Christ,"

"Among all those everyday things He appeared unexpectedly and became unutterably united and merged with me, and leaped over to me without anything in between, as fire to iron, as the light to glass. And He made me like fire and like light. And I became that which I saw before and beheld from afar. I do not know how to relate this miracle to you. . . . I am man by nature, and God by the grace of God."

The two—the hero and his ultimate god, the seeker and the found—are thus understood as the outside and inside of a single, self-mirrored mystery, which is identical with the mystery of the manifest world. The great deed of the supreme hero is to come to the knowledge of this unity in multiplicity and then to make it known.

With the personifications of his destiny to guide and aid him, the hero goes forward in his adventure until he comes to the "threshold guardian" at the entrance to the zone of magnified power. Such custodians bound the world in the four directions — also up and down—standing for the limits c the hero's present sphere, or life horizon. Beyond them is dark less, the unknown, and danger; just as beyond the parental watch is danger to the infant and beyond the protection of his society danger to the member of the tribe. The usual person is more than content, he is even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives him every reason to fear so much as the first step
into the unexplored.

The idea that the passage of the magical threshold is a transit into a sphere of rebirth is symbolized in the worldwide womb image of the belly of the whale. The hero, instead of conquering or conciliating the power of the threshold, is swallowed into the unknown, and would appear to have died.

The ultimate adventure, when all the barriers and ogres have been overcome, is commonly represented as a mystical marriage of the triumphant hero-soul with the Queen Goddess of the World. This is the crisis at the nadir, the zenith, or at the uttermost edge of the earth, at the central point of the cosmos, in the tabernacle of the temple, or within the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart.

The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.

The mystical marriage with the queen goddess of the world represents the hero's total mastery of life; for the woman is life, the hero its knower and master. And the testings of the hero, which were preliminary to his ultimate experience and deed, were symbolical of those crises of realization by means of which his consciousness came to be amplified and made capable of enduring the full possession of the mother-destroyer, his inevitable bride. With that he knows that he and the father are one: he is in the father's place. Thus phrased, in extremest terms, the problem may sound remote from the affairs of normal human creatures. Nevertheless, every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness. Wars and temper tantrums are the makeshifts of ignorance; regrets are illuminations come too late. The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero's passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls.

The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands —and the two are atoned.

"The Lord Looking Down in Pity,' so called because he regards with compassion all sentient creatures suffering the evils of existence."

To him goes the millionfoldrepeated prayer of the prayer wheels and temple gongs of Tibet: Om mani padme hum, "The jewel is in the lotus." To him go perhaps more prayers per minute than to any single divinity known to man; for when, during his final life on earth as a human being, he shattered for himself the bounds of the last threshold (which moment opened to him the timelessness of the void beyond the frustrating mirage-enigmas of the named and bounded cosmos), he paused: he made a vow that before entering the void he would bring all creatures without exception to enlightenment; and since then he has permeated the whole texture of existence with the divine grace of his assisting presence, so that the least prayer addressed to him, throughout the vast spiritual empire of the Buddha, is graciously heard. Under differing forms he traverses the ten thousand worlds, and appears in the hour of need and prayer. He reveals himself in human form with two arms, in superhuman forms with four arms, or with six, or twelve, or a thousand, and he holds in one of his left hands the lotus of the world. Like the Buddha himself, this godlike being is a pattern of the divine state to which the human hero attains who has gone beyond the last terrors of ignorance. "When the envelopment of consciousness has been annihilated, then he becomes free of all fear, beyond the reach of change.'1"' This is the release potential within us all, and which anyone can attain—through herohood; for, as we read: "All things are Buddha-things' or again (and this is the other way of making the same statement): "All beings are without self."
The world is filled and illumined by, but does not hold, the Bodhisattva ("he whose being is enlightenment"); rather, it is he who holds the world, the lotus. Pain and pleasure do not enclose him, he encloses them—and with profound repose. And since he is what all of us may be, his presence, his image, the mere naming of him, helps. "He wears a garland of eight thousand rays, in which is seen fully reflected a state of perfect beauty. The color of his body is purple gold. His palms have the mixed color of five hundred lotuses, while each finger tip has eightyfour thousand signet-marks, and each mark eighty-four thousand colors; each color has eighty-four thousand rays which are soft and mild and shine over all things that exist. With these jewel hands he draws and embraces all beings. The halo surrounding his head is studded with five hundred Buddhas, miraculously transformed, each attended by five hundred Bodhisattvas, who are attended, in turn, by numberless gods. And when he puts his feet down to the ground, the flowers of diamonds and jewels that are scattered cover even-thing in all directions. The color of his face is gold. While in his towering crown of gems stands a Buddha, two hundred and fifty miles high."

The first wonder to be noted here is the androgynous character of the Bodhisattva: masculine Avalokiteshvara, feminine Kwan Yin. Male-female gods are not uncommon in the world of myth. They emerge always with a certain mystery; for they conduct the mind beyond objective experience into a symbolic realm where duality is left behind.

The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children.

The bounded, shackled centers of consciousness, myriadfold, on every plane of existence (not only in this present universe, limited by the Milky Way, but beyond, into the reaches of space), galaxy beyond galaxy, world beyond world of universes, coming into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life, and like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by the multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle of itself—lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory: these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet inexhaustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is the essence of Emptiness: "The Lord Looking Down in Pity."

"Form is emptiness, emptiness indeed is form. Emptiness is not different from form, form is not different from emptiness. What is form, that is emptiness; what is emptiness, that is form. And the same applies to perception, name, conception, and knowledge." Having surpassed the delusions of his formerly self-assertive, self-defensive, self-concerned ego, he knows without and within the same repose. What he beholds without is the visual aspect of the magnitudinous, thought-transcending emptiness on which his own experiences of ego, form, perceptions, speech, conceptions, and knowledge ride. And he is filled with compassion for the self-terrorized beings who live in fright of their own nightmare. He rises, returns to them, and dwells with them as an egoless center, through whom the principle of emptiness is made manifest in its own simplicity. And this is his great "compassionate act"; for by it the truth is revealed that in the understanding of one in whom the Threefold Fire of Desire, Hostility, and Delusion is dead, this world is Nirvana. "Gift waves" go out from such a one for the liberation of us all. "This our worldly life is an activity of Nirvana itself, not the slightest distinction exists between them."

The gods and goddesses then are to be understood as embodiments and custodians of the elixir of Imperishable Being but not themselves the Ultimate in its primary state. What the hero seeks through his intercourse with them is therefore not finally themselves, but their grace, i.e., the power of their sustaining substance. This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go.

All things are in process, rising and returning. Plants come to blossom, but only to return to the root. Returning to the root is like seeking tranquility. Seeking tranquility is like moving toward destiny. To move toward destiny is like eternity. To know eternity is enlightenment, and not to recognize eternity brings disorder and evil.

The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form—all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.

This is the highest and ultimate crucifixion, not only of the hero, but of his god as well. Here the Son and the Father alike are annihilated —as personality-masks over the unnamed. For just as the figments of a dream derive from the life energy of one dreamer, representing only fluid splittings and complications of that single force, so do all the forms of all the worlds, whether terrestrial or divine, reflect the universal force of a single inscrutable mystery: the power that constructs the atom and controls the orbits of the stars.

WHEN the hero-quest has been accomplished, through penetration to the source, or through the grace of some male or female, human or animal, personification, the adventurer still must return with his life-transmuting trophy. The full round, the norm of the monomyth, requires that the hero shall now begin the labor of bringing the runes of wisdom, the Golden Fleece, or his sleeping princess, back into the kingdom of humanity, where the boon may redound to the renewing of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds. But the responsibility has been frequently refused. Even the Buddha, after his triumph, doubted whether the message of realization could be communicated, and saints are reported to have passed away while in the supernal ecstasy. Numerous indeed are the heroes fabled to have taken up residence forever in the blessed isle of the unaging Goddess of Immortal Being.

If the hero in his triumph wins the blessing of the goddess or the god and is then explicitly commissioned to return to the world with some elixir for the restoration of society, the final stage of his adventure is supported by all the powers of his supernatural patron. On the other hand, if the trophy has been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons, then the last stage of the mythological round becames a lively, often comical, pursuit. This flight may be complicated by marvels of magical obstruction and evasion.

They show in the final sttagcs of the adventure the continued operation of the supernatural assisting force that has been attending the elect through the w/hole course of his ordeal. His consciousness having succumbed, Ithe unconscious nevertheless supplies its own balances, and he is born back into the world from which he came. Instead of holding to and saving his ego, as in the pattern of the magic flight, he Hoses it, and yet, through grace, it is returned. This brings us to the final crisis of the round, to which the whole miraculous excursion has been but a prelude—that, namely, of the paradoxical, supremely difficult threshold-crossing of the hero's return from the mystic realm iinto the land of common day. Whether rescued from without, driven from within, or gently carried along by the guiding divinities, he has yet to re-enter with his boon the long-forgotten atniiosphere where men who are fractions imagine themselves to be complete. He has yet to
confront society with his ego-shatteriing, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to comprehend.

The two worlds, the divine and the human, can be pictured only as distinct from each other—different as life and death, as day and night. The hero adventures out of the land we know into darkness; there he accomplishes his adventure, or again is simplylost to us, imprisoned, or in danger; and his return is described as a coming back out of that yonder zone. Nevertheless—and here is a great key to the understanding of myth and symbol — the two kingdoms are actually one. The realm of the gods is a forgotten dimension of the world we know. And the exploration of that dimension, either willingly or unwillingly, is the whole sense of the deed of the hero. The values and distinctions that in normal life seem important disappear with the terrifying assimilation of the self into what formerly was only otherness. As in the stories of the cannibal ogresses, the fearfulness of this loss of personal individuation can be the whole burden of the transcendental experience for unqualified souls. But the hero-soul goes boldly in —and discovers the hags converted into goddesses and the dragons into the watchdogs of the gods.

The idea of the insulating horse, to keep the hero out of immediate touch with the earth and yet permit him to promenade among the peoples of the world, is a vivid example of a basic precaution taken generally by the carriers of supernormal power.

The disciple has been blessed with a vision transcending the scope of normal human destiny, and amounting to a glimpse of the essential nature of the cosmos. Not his personal fate, but the fate of mankind, of life as a whole, the atom and all the solar systems, has been opened to him; and this in terms befitting his human understanding, that is to say, in terms of an anthropomorphic vision: the Cosmic Man.

"Sometimes a fool, sometimes a sage, sometimes possessed of regal splendor; sometimes wandering, sometimes as motionless as a python, sometimes wearing a benignant expression; sometimes honored, sometimes insulted, sometimes unknown—thus lives the man of realisation, ever happy with supreme bliss. Just as an actor is always a man, whether he puts on the costume of his role or lays it aside, so is the perfect knower of the Imperishable always the Imperishable, and nothing else."

The battlefield is symbolic of the field of life, where every creature lives on the death of another. A realization of the inevitable guilt of life may so sicken the heart that, like Hamlet or like Arjuna, one may refuse to go on with it. On the other hand, like most of the rest of us, one may invent a false, finally unjustified, image of oneself as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but justified in one's inevitable sinning because one represents the good. Such self-righteousness leads to a misunderstanding, not only of oneself but of the nature of both man and the cosmos. The goal of the myth is to dispel the need for such life ignorance by effecting a reconciliation of the individual consciousness with the universal will. And this is effected through a realization of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time to the imperishable life that lives and dies in all.

As the consciousness of the individual rests on a sea of night into which it descends in slumber and out of which it mysteriously wakes, so, in the imagery of myth, the universe is precipitated out of, and reposes upon, a timelessness back into which it again dissolves. And as the mental and physical health of the individual depends on an orderly flow of vital forces into the field of waking day from the unconscious dark, so again in myth, the continuance of the cosmic order is assured only by a controlled flow of power from the source. The gods are symbolic personifications of the laws governing this flow. The gods come into existence with the dawn of the world and dissolve with the twilight. They are not eternal in the sense that the night is eternal. Only from the shorter span of human existence does the round of a cosmogonic eon seem to endure. The cosmogonic cycle is normally represented as repeating itself, world without end. During each great round, lesser dissolutions are commonly included, as the cycle of sleep and waking revolves throughout a lifetime. According to an Aztec version, each of the four elements—water, earth, air, and fire—terminates a period of the world: the eon of the waters ended in deluge, that of the earth with an earthquake, that of air with a wind, and the present eon will be destroyed by flame."

The world of human life is now the problem. Guided by the practical judgment of the kings and the instruction of the priests of the dice of divine revelation, the field of consciousness so contracts that the grand lines of the human comedy are lost in a welter of cross-purposes. Men's perspectives become flat, comprehending only the light-reflecting, tangible surfaces of existence. The vista into depth closes over. The significant form of the human agony is lost to view. Society lapses into mistake and disaster. The Little Ego has usurped the judgment seat of the Self.

The child of destiny has to face a long period of obscurity. This is a time of extreme danger, impediment, or disgrace. He is thrown inward to his own depths or outward to the unknown; either way, what he touches is a darkness unexplored.

The conclusion of the childhood cycle is the return or recognition of the hero, when, after the long period of obscurity, his true character is revealed. This event may precipitate a considerable crisis; for it amounts to an emergence of powers hitherto excluded from human life. Earlier patterns break to fragments or dissolve; disaster greets the eye. Yet after a moment of apparent havoc, the creative value of the new factor comes to view, and the world takes shape again in unsuspected glory. This theme of crucifixion-resurrection can be illustrated either on the body of the hero himself, or in his effects upon his world.

The world period of the hero in human form begins only when villages and cities have expanded over the land. Many monsters remaining from primeval times still lurk in the outlying regions, and through malice or desperation these set themselves against the human community. They have to be cleared away. Furthermore, tyrants of human breed, usurping to themselves the goods of their neighbors, arise, and are the cause of widespread misery. These have to be suppressed. The elementary deeds of the hero are those of the clearing of the field.

The supreme hero, however, is not the one who merely continues the dynamics of the cosmogonic round, but he who reopens the eye —so that through all the comings and goings, delights and agonies of the world panorama, the One Presence will be seen again. This requires a deeper wisdom than the other, and results in a pattern not of action but of significant representation. The symbol of the first is the virtuous sword, of the second, the scepter of dominion, or the book of the law. The characteristic adventure of the first is the winning of the bride— the bride is life. The adventure of the second is the going to the father—the father is the invisible unknown.

The tree has now become the cross: the White Youth sucking milk has become the Crucified swallowing gall. Corruption crawls where before was the blossom of spring. Yet beyond this threshold of the cross—for the cross is a way (the sun door), not an end—is beatitude in God.

THE mighty hero of extraordinary powers —able to lift Mount Govardhan on a finger, and to fill himself with the terrible glory of the universe—is each of us: not the physical self visible in the mirror, but the king within.

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. . . . But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

The whole society becomes visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like anonymous cells from a living body; but the sustaining, timeless form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this superindividual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported, and magnified. His role, however unimpressive, is seen to be intrinsic to the beautiful festival-image of man—the image, potential yet necessarily inhibited, within himsetf.
Social duties continue the lesson of the festival into normal, everyday existence, and the individual is validated still. Conversely, indifference, revolt—or exile—break the vitalizing connectives. From the standpoint of the social unit, the broken-off individual is simply nothing—waste. Whereas the man or woman who can honestly say that he or she has lived the role—whether that of priest, harlot, queen, or slave—is something in the full sense of the verb to be.
Rites of initiation and installation, then, teach the lesson of the essential oneness of the individual and the group; seasonal festivals open a larger horizon. As the individual is an organ of society, so is the tribe or city—so is humanity entire—only a phase of the mighty organism of the cosmos.
It has been customary to describe the seasonal festivals of socalled native peoples as efforts to control nature. This is a misrepresentation. There is much of the will to control in every act of man, and particularly in those magical ceremonies that are thought to bring rain clouds, cure sickness, or stay the flood; nevertheless, the dominant motive in all truly religious (as opposed to black-magical) ceremonial is that of submission to the inevitables of destiny —and in the seasonal festivals this motive is particularly apparent. No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites all prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold.

This is the stage of Narcissus looking into the pool, of the Buddha sitting contemplative under the tree, but it is not the ultimate goal; it is a requisite step, but not the end. The aim is not to see, but to realize that one is, that essence; then one is free to wander as that essence in the world. Furthermore: the world too is of that essence. The essence of oneself and the essence of the world: these two are one. Hence separateness, withdrawal, is no longer necessary. Wherever the hero may wander, whatever he may do, he is ever in the presence of his own essence—for he has the perfected eye to see. There is no separateness. Thus, just as the way of social participation may lead in the end to a realization of the All in the individual, so that of exile brings the hero to the Self in all.

Not the animal world, not the plant world, not the miracle of the spheres, but man himself is now the crucial mystery. Man is that alien presence with whom the forces of egoism must come to terms, through whom the ego is to be crucified and resurrected, and in whose image society is to be reformed.

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. "Live," Nietzsche says, "as though the day were here." It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal —carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.