I want to offer my take on these troubled times from a longer view, and to do that we need to hop aboard the wayback machine to the beginning of the ‘Axial’ age, several thousand years ago. It’s called the Axial age because it was a blossoming of our human understanding in so many ways.
I want to track two of the intertwined historical threads that have come down to us. I say intertwined because they are woven together, so to speak. I’ll mention the ‘Perennial Philosophy’ thread first, and then its problematic companion, the Senex, or wounded tyrant archetype.
So what is the perennial philosophy? I’ll let Aldous Huxley answer that. I like his take. He had boiled it down to four principles that are the ground of the philosophy as handed down through every spiritual tradition. They are: (comments in () are mine, and I’ve condensed the four for the sake of word count).
- All That Is, is a manifestation of the Divine Ground. (Notice that he avoided personifying the Ground).
- Realizing the Divine Ground by direct intuition (experience?) beyond reason is possible for all human beings (since that is in our nature). This immediate knowledge unites the knower with that which is known.
- We possess a double nature, a bodily ego (sense of personal self), and an eternal Self (the large S self transcends yet includes the ego self) …the spark of Divinity within the Soul.
- Our life on Earth has only one end and purpose: to identify the ego self with his (her) eternal Self, and so to come to unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.
Simple enough (just kidding). Here are some examples of the founders of the philosophy:
Let’s start in China with Lao Tzu and Taoism: “That which can be named is not the eternal Tao (Ground), yet everything named flows from it.”
Next, from India, we have the Yogas: union with that Ground through a rich history of understanding and realization. Of course we can’t forget the Buddha and his lessons on compassion and relationship. (He too refused to Anthropomorphize the Ground). And, of course, down came Jesus: the sacred and sacrificial nature of the Heart: Eros. (This is the short list, I’ve left out the Greeks for example)
You’ll notice that the Senex is nowhere to be found in the philosophy directly, He only appears when it becomes necessary to burn realizers of the divine ground at the stake. He opposes youth and regeneration. The Philosophy and its Mystics are not on his party list. Let’s take a closer look at this character.
The tyrant is crippled because he represents the eternal opponent of youth and regeneration as I said, so he is also in opposition to the feminine (Eros). This guy is old, grouchy, and demanding. He is a rigid character. Often he is one of the gods, but that’s not necessary. Historically we can trace the Senex archetype back to ancient Babylon, where we find the Senex God Marduk killing Tiamet, the mother Goddess. The crippled tyrant has been a constant theme in the arts, of course. Where would Shakespeare have been without the guy?
And now, obviously, the Senex is everywhere alive and well and throwing a fit, because at some level he knows his time is up and he has to change. He’s old and lonely and without Eros, so it’s a bitter end for everyone on the planet if he has his way in the world just now. He’s been haunting the human psyche for millennia and intends to fight to the bitter end – the bitter end being, for us, our own demise. The old man has no sense of “the breath of life.” Power and control are his domain. The philosophy eludes and threatens him.
This time in human history is the time of the “tell.” The cards are turning over and the pot is huge. What history will we perceive it possible to construct in the face of our pending ecological and biospheric collapse and of our many other issues? It must be one of recovery, and it is Eros and the perennial philosophy that must be recovered, and revitalized for modern times, so that we may find our true home in the Divine Ground here on Earth at last, and recover the Heart of the matter. The tyrant will be happy there too. There will be golf courses where the rules don’t count. He can hang out there with his cronies, arguing over who won.
Chip Schoefter writes from Dolores, Colo.
