Sacred River Home Page: Modern Incarnation of Ancient Mystical Tradition

The imaginal

In his paradigm-shattering book, Re-Visioning Psychology Hillman mentions, ‘The term “imaginal” for the realm of images, which is also the realm of the soul, comes from Henry Corbin.’ Perhaps this passage from the same book gives us a taste of what he means with ‘the imaginal’: ‘Today we are so unconscious of these persons that we call their realm the unconscious. Once they were the people of the imagination, as the unconscious was once the imaginal realm of memoria. But now we cannot distinguish between fancy and fantasy, between imaginary, imaginative, and imaginal. And we struggle in vain with the conceptual semantics of allegory, metaphor, model, paradigm, and symbol. Wavering between delusion and prophecy, between visions and illusions, we cannot discriminate among the apparitions themselves. Although these aspects of the imaginal are defined in the textbooks of rhetoric and psychiatry, the definitions have not affected the tissue of experience in which these imaginal events remain webbed together. What was once better known by the Neoplatonists, Gnostics, Kabbalists, and by the alchemists – and perhaps too by the ordinary believer in his circle of imagery and calendar of saints – all of whom had intricate means of distinguishing the persons of the imaginal and discerning the spirits, is known to us no longer. Of course the Gods of mythology become “psychic factors” and of course the archetypes of psychology become mythological Gods.’

Literalisation

James Hillman says that ultimately there is only one ‘sin’, which he calls ‘literalisation’. There are many layers and meanings to this word. One is when we are open only to the literal meanings of events, ideas, myths or stories. Or their functional applications and implications. We fail to acknowledge how poetic language more precisely captures inner experience than scientific formulation can. Or how metaphor has the power ‘to transfer us’ from one experiential reality to another. Or even, denying that experience is real, when it cannot be ‘objectively verified’. We see literalisation reflected when someone equates the word ‘myth’ with ‘untrue’. Or when we are dependent on formulas for how to be, what to do and how to live. Literalness of mind smothers imagination. And cuts one off from the imaginal. Literalisation is mainly concerned with surface life and the concerns of ego. Achievement. Physical safety and security. Progress. So that the risks involved in opening to the depths of soul are felt to be ‘deluded’ or ‘naive’. Mark Gafni points to these same ideas when he says that the opposite of the holy is not evil. That the opposite of the holy is the superficial.^π

Source

From The Erotic and The Holy – The Kabbalistic Tantra of Hebrew Mysticism. Recording of a remarkable seven hour long lecture presented by Mark Gafni, which can be found here on the Audible website.

‘As above, so below’

This quote is from the Emerald Tablet, an original alchemical text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. He was the central figure of the hermetic tradition of Alchemy. And regarded as an enlightened being reincarnated several times, similar to the Dalai Lama. His earliest incarnation was said to be a contemporary of biblical Abraham. And his last incarnation, much of which he lived in Egypt during the oldest Egyptian dynasties, was long before the days of Moses. Even though the Emerald Tablet itself reflects his name as author, it was only written somewhere between 500 and 800 CE. Which was much later than his last incarnation. This is however, something we often see with so-called ‘holy texts’: the physical author attributes the authorship to ‘the spirit who really wrote the book’ via divine possession. ‘As above so below’ is an echo of that phrase from The Lord’s Prayer as taught by Jesus of Nazareth: ‘on earth, as it is in heaven’. Which perhaps reflects the hermetic idea of Prisca Theologia. It states that if we look carefully with an open mind, we will perceive a thread running through all religions. Which is ‘the true theology’. Archetypal Psychology would say that such ideas echoed in several religions point to what is meant by ‘archetypes’. ‎

Frivolousness

Here we follow Trungpa’s definition of frivolousness as found in his book, The Myth of Freedom: ‘Frivolousness refers to the extra and unnecessary mental and physical acts with which we keep ourselves busy in order not to see what actually is happening in a situation.’

The magic theatre

Herman Hesse used the image of ‘the magic theatre’ in his novel Steppenwolf. Published in 1927, the story is of a man, Harry Haller, who undergoes what consensus culture would call a ‘nervous breakdown’ or ‘mid-life crisis’. But which really was a spiritual passage, an initiation into ‘seeing’ existence fundamentally ‘from a different place’. Hesse’s image is used here with love and in homage to him as a great writer.

Nagual

The word nagual is pronounced ‘nahwil’ and comes from ancient Toltec culture. An ancient shamanic culture that flourished between 900 and 1168 CE. And whom the Aztecs regarded as their cultural predecessors. In his book on Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Carlos, Victor Sanchez helps us to get a sense of the nagual. ‘The nagual is that about which it is not possible to think. … No one knows anything about what lies beyond the borders of the island. The nagual would be all that space of unfathomable mystery surrounding it. Although the nagual cannot be understood or verbalized, it nevertheless can be witnessed and experienced. … Ultimately everything occurs in the nagual, which is all encompassing. … The nagual aspect of the world also has a corresponding expression in every human being. In the work of Castaneda, it is called awareness of the left side, awareness of the other self, [awareness of] the dreamed. Teachings for the left side … have the purpose of bringing the apprentice to directly witness the nagual in such a way as not to lose sanity.’

The Tao

Tao is a Chinese word that means ‘road’ or ‘path’. But, from the time when writing was created in China around 1300 BCE, this word took on more spiritual meanings. Some of these texts have survived down to our time, like the I Ching. The spiritual meanings of the word are ultimately indefinable. These meanings include, ‘the way to follow that leads us beyond ourselves.’ Or, as ‘a path or discipline followed in order to facilitate self-transformation.’ Another meaning is ‘the way of Heaven’. Which involves a kind of ‘sacred river’ with its origin in what does not exist (or ‘non-being’). And yet flows through, and animates, all that exists. And which ultimately is the source of birth and death of all phenomena, including the Gods. It can also mean ‘the pathway existence follows as it unfolds right now.’ Or, that essence of being-and-nothingness which pre-existed the big bang. Which, as human beings we are able to align ourselves to, in such a way that our lives unfold through its flow. Which is the only truly satisfying life for the soul.

The primordial mirror

This is the term that Trungpa uses in his book Shambhala – the Sacred Path of the Warrior. He visualises it as ‘the unconditioned, original ground of nowness, which exists and existed before history began, before thinking began’. He says we can be in contact with it through ‘relaxing beyond our minds, letting go of the anxiety and concepts and depression that normally blind us’. That is, by relaxing and ‘resting continuously in nowness.’

The unconscious

Because ‘the unconscious’ is vast and inexhaustible, Jung himself says that any one description of it will be limited. Still, to provide one example: in his book On the Nature of the Psyche (par. 382) he says, ‘So defined, the unconscious depicts an extremely fluid state of affairs: everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted by my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious.’

All these names ...

Even though it is implied that these names point to the same place, it is important to acknowledge that their differences are not merely arbitrary. And, not any one of them is ‘right’ while the rest are somehow ‘wrong’. Each of the great minds who perceived the reality to which these names refer, deliberately chose a particular phrase to point to that reality. There are certain implications inherent to the names chosen. Each name is truly ‘a metaphor’ – a bridge that transfers us, opens us, to a different reality. If soul is as vast as Heraclitus implies, it means that however we imagine soul determines what we see. Therefore these names must all be looked at as equally ‘valid’, as ‘perspectives representing something real’. Or, that can bring us closer to the experience of soul. In fact, the more we are able to approach the vastness not only from one point of view, but hold close to several of these points of view, the closer we remain to the wonder and sense of mystery that really is a hallmark of soul.

The overworld

The overworld resembles what is called ‘Heaven’ in many traditions. It is the place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits and holy ancestors dwell. In Shamanism, the shaman’s soul leaves her body in a state of trance and she travels to either the underworld or the overworld. Usually for the purpose of healing others. In contrast to the underworld, the overworld is a place of brilliant light, ‘high up’, light as a feather, transcendent and spiritual. Many traditions posit this heavenly experience as the goal, including humanistic psychologies and new-age spiritual traditions. In contrast, the tradition that became modern depth psychology, including Neo-Platonism and alchemy, emphasises the necessity ‘to come back down.’ This tradition acknowledges the necessity for a phase of ‘cleaning up,’ which facilitates a profound connection to spiritual realms. But it states that any transformation that ends there is utterly incomplete. And importantly, that exclusively striving to transcend matter by residing in spirit, smothers the soul. In alchemy there are three further major stages that follow after having established a connection to spirit. These phases all involve being refined by the ‘the rub’ that comes from remaining deeply present to the spiritual realms, while being fully involved in the messiness of the world. Only then are we transformed so that our deepest and true nature naturally radiates out.

The underworld

In Greek Mythology, the underworld is called Hades, as is the god who reigns there. The underworld is the place where the souls of the dead go. In Shamanism, the shaman’s soul leaves her body in a state of trance and she travels to either the underworld or the overworld. Usually for the purpose of healing others. In contrast to the overworld, the underworld is dark, low, turbulent, difficult to navigate and emotionally ‘heavy’. It is said to be very difficult to travel to the underworld and impossible to return once there. In most traditions there is usually a very dangerous river one has to cross when entering it. So, the ability to return is one trait that distinguishes ‘a shaman’ from others. The tradition that became modern depth psychology, including neo-platonism and alchemy, believes dreams are closely related to the underworld. As is the so-called realm of memoria, that realm where one’s memories dwell and where imagination springs from. And significantly, that periodic travel to the underworld is essential as part of the path of transformation.

Drala

Trungpa uses the Tibetan word drala in his book Shambhala – the Sacred Path of the Warrior. Which, he says, is a magical quality we start to experience when we have penetrated deeply into the vastness of existence. About this, he says: ‘By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. … In Tibetan, this magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called drala.’ He goes on to explain that the literal meaning of the word means, ‘above the enemy’ or ‘beyond the enemy’. Which seem to suggest that our awareness opens to this magical quality only when we have gone past polarising everything we encounter as either ‘for me’ or ‘against me.’

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Further reading

See the articles The unfathomable vastness of being, The discipline of the path, Spiritual path and soul-making, Consensus reality and the nature of love, and Living by the sword.

Source

See ‘Six in the third place’ of ‘Difficulty at the beginning’ in I Ching or Book of Changes by Richard Wilhelm. (A transcript can be found here.)

Psyche of psychology

Psyche of course, is the Greek word for soul. But it is also the name of a very beautiful maiden who falls utterly in love with Eros, Lord Love himself. Then innocently provokes him into abandoning her. Which sets in motion a long and intricate journey of specific tasks she needs to fulfill before they are reunited.

Synchronicity

Carl Jung called these meaningful coincidences, ‘synchronicity’. Jung researched them in depth and found that rather than being ‘irrational,’ they just belong to a different kind of logic. And that the ‘rationality’ underlying Chinese culture, for example, has long conformed more to the kind of logic underlying the principle of synchronicity. This same ‘logic’ underlies shamanic cultures and the awareness of shamans. And it underlies all practices of divination.

We see something of that same logic in Chinese writing, which is not made up of meaningless two-dimensional lines like our western writing. But rather consists of three-dimensional pictures that are metaphors for what they describe.

To see a little more on synchronicity, see the article A brief view on divination and the page on Astrology.

Further reading

For more on the theme of opening one’s ability to ‘see’, see the article, ‘Seeing’ the world.

Further reading

For more on this theme, see the article, Spiritual path and soul-making.

Source

Thank you, Lenny Kravitz!

The letter of the law

Even during something as literal-minded as formal studies of Law, one encounters the principle that we always have to consider what ‘the spirit’ of a particular law is. And whether a literal interpretation of that law satisfies the spirit of that law. And if not, to rather honour the spirit of the law than the literal interpretation.

Source

This is quoting Richard Wilhelm, from Book II of his I Ching or Book of Changes.

Source

This quote is from Tao Te Ching Chapter 1.

Source

This quote is by Carl G. Jung, from On the Psychology of the Unconscious.

Further reading

For more on this theme, see the article Consensus reality and the nature of love.

Eros is required for love

This statement flows from our tradition’s trust in the patterns of existence as reflected in the drama and stories of classical mythology. This is not simple-minded blind trust, though. If we read these stories with openness and receptivity we are touched by something that reaches down to the depths of our being and leaves us with a profound sense of understanding that cannot be explained literally.

That moment of so ‘being touched’ is the moment of arrival in mytho-poetic awareness. And, like Daphne forever receding from Apollo’s reach, as long as we try to prove or substantiate our understanding, that awareness eludes us. Scientific-mindedness is incompatible with Soul. The meaning resides in the drama, in the story, in the personalities, in the characters and their personality-characteristics, in their natures, and in the inevitable complications and entanglements that derive from their interactions.

So, looking at Classical Greek Mythology, we know that the word eros derives from that powerful daimon or god, Eros and that the story of Eros is the story of his relationship with the beautiful maiden Psyche. Soul and love belong together and unless they are united, our world, both inner and outer, remain dis-eased.

Source

‘Love stirs fear. At the deepest level of fear eros appears. … Fear seems an inherent necessity to the eros experience; where it is absent, one might well doubt the full validity of the loving.’ – James Hillman, from The Myth of Analysis.

See also the quote at the start of Opening to fear as our teacher.

Further reading

To get a sense of what is meant with following one’s destiny, see the articles ‘Seeing’ the world and Spiritual path and soul-making.

Ecological crisis: soul's revolt

Could soul possibly have provided a more poignant ‘symptom’ than the current ecological ‘cancer’ of our world, as a symbol of her revolt against the prevalence of the illness of scientific-mindedness? A root-fantasy of scientific-mindedness is control over nature. Nature spinning out of control is similar to the very phenomenon that largely gave rise to modern psychotherapy, i.e. hysteria – that condition by which so many women were afflicted during the boom time of the industrial age. Interestingly, hysteria derives from the Greek word for uterus, hystera.

Memoria

The word memory really refers to ‘the realm of Memoria,’ after which it was named. Memoria is really simply another name for the Imaginal,^π that realm from where images and dreams visit us in our symptoms and our sleeping. Smelling is said to be the sense by which we open up to ‘seeing’ our images more clearly.

Further reading

For more on this theme, see the article, The unfathomable vastness of being.

Further reading

As an example of how the true nature of existence naturally inspires fear, see the article on Fundamental uncertainty.

Further reading

This is simply an application of the discipline of the path.

'Almost everyone ...'

This claim, that almost everyone in the world today suffers from identification with mind, is not original. Of course, once one has experienced meditative awareness it becomes evident that most people do suffer from it. Including usually, we ourselves. Still, credit for pointing this out goes to Eckhart Tolle, who did so in his book The Power of Now.

'Flirt'

The word ‘flirt’ is used here with reference to Arnold Mindell, to the way he uses the word in his book, The Quantum Mind and Healing, where he is essentially talking about echoes.

'Work'?

The use of the word ‘work’ here and elsewhere is in homage to Alchemy as a fundamental language through which the lineage underlying the ideas on this website was transmitted from ancient times to the present. The alchemical work was referred to as the Opus Contra Naturam, ‘the work against nature’. This phrase represents both the entire body of activities in which this art involves one and the essence of the work.

In our culture, the word ‘work’ has become associated with heroic activity, but it goes without saying that the spirit of Alchemy is anything but heroic. This equation of work with heroics reveals more about the culture of our world today than it does about the true nature of work. We get a glimpse of an alternative attitude to work when we consider that the word opus has often been used for works of art, e.g. movements in classical music was often called opuses, and an artist’s body of work is sometimes referred to as their opus. To put it succinctly, the alchemical opus is really the art of psychological transformation as symbolised by the transformation of base metals into gold.

Source

As discussed in his books Shambhala – the Sacred Path of the Warrior, and Smile at Fear – Awakening the True Heart of Bravery.

The art of restraint

‘Where the moods of his own heart are concerned, he should never ignore the possibility of inhibition, for this is the basis of human freedom.’ – From Third Yang of the hexagram of Influence in the I Ching or Book of Changes, by Richard Wilhelm (as translated by Cary F. Baynes).

We often feel restraint to be repression and dismiss the need for it outright on that basis. But such moves simply reveal that we relate to existence mechanically, which is a hallmark of ‘being identified with mind,’ that illness Eckhart Tolle points out, is the primary obstruction preventing one from living ‘in direct experience of being’. James Hillman overtly says that sometimes repression is necessary, pointing out that everything has a place in the realm of soul, even murderers and psychopaths.

Restraint shapes. The word yoke is derived from the same Sanskrit root as the word yoga, which points to two core meanings of these words: ‘to subjugate, discipline or control’, and yet at the same time, ‘to unite, to join, to connect’. By restraining something, we open into unity with something else ‘beyond us’. The word religion, similarly derives from the Latin religare, to tie, to fasten, to bind.

Restraint leads to a build-up of energy, which is the foundation of that fundamental theme in alchemy, i.e. to learn to contain these energies in such a manner that they are transformed into something beautiful and powerful. We restrain our usual compulsions through artful pause, a moment of receiving, so creating an opening through which a whole new way of life may slip in. In this context, see the discipline of the path.

Under construction

Watch this space! New page coming soon.

Further reading

While the idea of destiny is not yet overtly explored in these pages, there are a further hints as to its meaning in the article ‘Spiritual path and soul-making.

Further reading

To get a sense of what is involved in transformations that bring about embodied change, see the article ‘Seeing’ the world.

Sacrifice

The word sacrifice derives from combining the original Latin words sacer, ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ and facere ‘to do’ or ‘to make’. ‘To make sacred.’ Interestingly, the word sacred also carries etymological traces of ‘binding,’ ‘restricting,’ ‘protecting,’ ‘being separated out,’ ‘being contained,’ as well as of ‘being inside,’ ‘to inhere,’ ‘indwelling,’ ‘interior’.

The sanctum sanctorum, that is, ‘the holiest of holies,’ was the ‘innermost,’ the most sacred area in the Temple of Jerusalem, where the ark of the covenant was kept until the destruction of the temple, where only the High Priest of Israel was allowed to enter, and only once a year. It is significant then that mystical Judaism tells us that this holiest of holy contained erotic symbolism at its core, that the ark itself is an erotic symbol. And ‘erotic’ is not only the ‘sexual’. In short, what this means is that there is no holiness without eros.^π

A Separate Reality

In homage to Carlos Castaneda, borrowing the title of the second of his twelve books, A Separate Reality.

Fear of God

The word panic derives from the name of the god Pan, who was closely related to the rawness and volatility of nature that overwhelms mere mortals with its power. Pan was regarded as ‘the great god’ during an epoch when humanity lived much closer to nature. The appropriate feeling towards Pan was fear, just as it was towards God of the Torah or the Old Testament. For example, Proverbs 31:31 says, ‘The woman to be admired and praised is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God’. These ideas all point to the ‘validity’ of fear as a ‘path’ of remaining close to divinity.