BOOK Spirituality Sinblanco

Mari Corb
TOWARDS A LAY SPIRITUALITY
Mari Corb
Biblioteca
Text: Mari Corb Cover: Calderuela (Soria, Spain). Llus Valls-Areny
Publisher: Verloc Barcelone - Spain Phone: +34 629 759 844 www.verloc.com Collection: Biblioteca CETR First edition: 2010 January
Desing: Verloc. Gabinete Creativo Editorial.
Available in e-book and digital libraries. More information in: www.verloc.com and www.cetr.net
Legal deposit: ISBN: 13-978-84-937737-0-0 Printing: Publidisa
Reproduction in whole or part of this work by any mechanical, including photocopying and computer processing, are strictly prohibited without the written permission of copyright holders and subject to the penalties provided by law.
CONTENTS
Foreword ........................................................................................................11 Introduction. The crossroads, a birds eye view ............................................15 PART ONE. CULTURAL MODELS OF THE HUMAN SURVIVAL CHAPTER I. Culture, a biological invention The fundamental condition of our species: being a cultural organism ........23 The movement from a binary structure of life to a ternary. The dual experience of reality ....................................................................................25 Our specific quality ......................................................................................27 The construction of a viable human nature..............................................28 CHAPTER II. Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies Method of analysing the structure of mythical systems................................31 The structure of the hunter/gatherer cultures ............................................33 The structure of the horticultural society cultures........................................41 In the Maya-quich mythology ..............................................42 In the Desana mythology ......................................................43 In the mythology of the Marind-anim ..................................44 In the Wemale myths and rites ..............................................46 In the Aztec mythology ..........................................................49 In the Inca mythology ............................................................54 In the Kanaka rituals..............................................................55 The structure of cultures in irrigation farming societies ..............................56 General considerations ..........................................................56 In Egyptian mythology ..........................................................62
In Mesopotamian mythology ................................................69 In the Maya-quich mythology, the Popol-Vuh......................90 The structure of mythology in the livestock farming cultures ....................104 In the mythology of Israel ..................................................107 In the mythology of Islam ..................................................108 In the Iranian mythology ....................................................109 In the Christian mythology ................................................113 General considerations on mythical epistemology ....................................114 The anthropological nucleus generating religions ....................................125 CHAPTER III. Towards innovation societies The slow generation of a model for the interpretation of reality, alternative to the myth and its epistemology ............................................129 The appearance of the first industrial societies and their consequences ..140 The appearance and introduction of the innovation societies ..................144 Static societies and dynamic societies ........................................................148 The end of the religions ............................................................................151 PART TWO. THE SPECIFIC HUMAN QUALITY AND ITS CULTIVATION CHAPTER IV. The impact of the new cultural structure on the traditional religious forms The discomfiture of the religious organisations ........................................161 Myths and symbols as systems of beliefs and their purely symbolic reading ........................................................................................165 Spirituality without beliefs; faith without beliefs ........................................167 The failure to meet between the spiritual traditions and the new societies is of epistemological root ............................................................172 The difference between beliefs and assumptions ......................................175 Symbols and myths are either: apophatic affirmations or metaphors about the Absolute ....................................................................................177 No substitutes for religion can be expected ................................................182 The nature of how we speak of the absolute dimension of reality ............184 The great masters of the spirit are uninterpretable....................................191 CHAPTER V. The double experience of the real The double experience of the real in religion ............................................193 The double experience of the real outside religion ....................................196
The explicit cultivation of our specific quality is a group and individual need ....................................................................................199 The notion of revelation in the new cultural circumstances ..................202 What the holy scriptures speak about ........................................................205 What the spiritual masters say ....................................................................209 What can the age-old religious traditions of humanity offer to the new industrial societies?....................................................................214 The subtle offer of traditions......................................................................217 The offer of the religious traditions as an offer of humility, nudity and love ..........................................................................................218 CHAPTER VI. Silent knowledge The path to which the traditions invite us is a path of subtlety ..................221 The way to spirituality is internal silence. Its fruit is silent knowledge........224 Silent knowledge is the root of unconditional love for all beings ................227 The symbols and myths speak to us of this reality, not of any other ..........228 The great ways to silence............................................................................229 The spiritual path is an enquiry and a free and joyful creation ................232 Silent knowledge does not subjugate or exclude doubt because it is not a formulation..................................................................................235 Silent knowledge is not apart from this world, but is submerged in it ........238 Truth without form from silent knowledge ................................................239 CHAPTER VII. The human quality and its cultivation Silence is the fundamental resource of our species ....................................243 The specifically human quality ..................................................................248 The group urgency of lay silence ..............................................................256 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................259 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................265 THE AUTOR ..........................................................................................271
FOREWORD
We stand at one of the great crossroads of history: in matters religious, axiological, economic, political, in the organisation of family life, in relationships between individuals and among social groups, in the relations between countries a transformation which leaves nothing untouched. We are facing one of the most profound mutations in human history, a mutation which is forcing us to be aware, individually and as a group, that we have to construct our systems and ways of life for ourselves; and this with no more resources than the quality of our axiological principles, the quality of our group and personal projects. Constructing while rapid and frequent changes pass through societies of continuous innovation. We already know that no one and nothing will rescue us from our incompetence and lack of quality. We are irremediably in our own hands, and no one and nothing can relieve us of this responsibility. To be able to guide our future we must investigate what is happening and, also, the consequences which arise in all the fields of our life from the economic, social, cultural and religious events which are taking place before our eyes. For the great majority, especially the more dynamic and younger levels, the traditional religions have collapsed; the great ideological movements, which for a century and a half moved European societies, have also lost their attraction and their force. What remain to us are the financial principles of the market and competitiveness which extend to all aspects of life; and we have also a desire for liberty and democracy which has to coexist with an economy which is subject to political organisations lacking credit and to incompetent leaders; we are left with a yearning for equity and justice but in the context of societies which are more and more polarised between rich and poor. The majority of the citizens in the new societies have ceased to be believers and have moved away from religious practices, rituals and consecration. Even lay beliefs, which sustained the liberal and socialist ideology, have lost their credibility. This axiological and religious dismantling is not the consequence of decadence in the new societies. The new industrial societies are no more decadent than the twentieth-century societies which preceded them. Philanthropic and non-governmental organisations multiply in all levels of 11
Towards a lay spirituality
society, especially among the young. Religions do not interest them, but an interest in spirituality is very widespread and is growing in a thousand ways. We have to study what is going on in our societies in order to calibrate what is happening to the language of the religious traditions of the past and all its age-old legacy. Which factors mean that what they say is incomprehensible and unacceptable to the majority. Many things are happening which have profound repercussions over religions and spiritual traditions. All of them require an adequate response. We cannot wait, sitting at one side of the current, hoping for the river to flow upwards. The waters which have flowed by will not return. I have spent many years reflecting on these things. My research, which has lasted nearly four decades, could seem daring and risky, because it is far from the normal ways of thinking, feeling and experiencing religious and spiritual questions. But, in fact, I am not a person who stands aside from these traditional forms, which I feel merit all respect and veneration: it is the whole central current of culture which has moved away, and the movement is not just a matter for elites, as in other eras of history. I simply collect, formulate and impose theoretical form on which has already, for some time, been out in the open. I am not, then, an innovator, I simply have my eyes and heart open to see and feel what is happening, without fear of the consequences; I am just a witness who reports what is seen. Nothing is gained by ignoring what is happening. On the contrary, much can be lost. In knowledge societies, with constant innovation, which continually change our ways of thinking and feeling, organising ourselves, acting and experiencing, we cannot remain trammelled by the beliefs and norms of the past. We must respond to circumstances which have never existed before. Consequently, we have to say and do things, although they have never been said or done before. It is not legitimate to ignore what people are living through, nor is it legitimate to turn the other way, as though nothing was happening, through fear of the consequences. It is not legitimate to evade responsibility for the future generations, through a poorly understood and fearful fidelity to the forms of the past. If fear paralyses our spirit, we cannot respond to the challenges facing us from the new lay, non-believer and global societies. And these are the legitimate heirs of all the wisdom of all the religious and spiritual traditions of humanity. We may not resign ourselves to having to assign the great spiritual traditions, conveyed by the old religions, to the shelves of history, as things of the past. The religions and spiritual traditions were the fount of wisdom from which our 12
Foreward
ancestors drank and where they founded their spirituality, and are their most precious legacy. If we are set on continuing to read, feel and experience this legacy in the same way as the societies which have already disappeared, we run the risk that all those riches will disappear, so that the legacy itself will disappear. Risks have to be taken, through respect and veneration for the legacy, for a love for truth and for love of the future generations, although with a danger of being mistaken. To be mistaken in this way would be an act of responsibility and love. However, spirituality is daring, the spiritual maestros tell us, and we have to trust in the breath of the Spirit. This Spirit will direct our efforts. This book is intended to be a compendium of the ideas which I have been setting out in books and articles, the fruit of my researches, over many years. My friends asked me to bring together all the steps I have taken in my studies in a single text. I found it an interesting idea and set to work to carry it out. These pages are the result of that work. I have tried to make the logical progress of my work clear, so that its unity and coherence can be better understood. On many occasions I transcribe entire paragraphs from earlier works. If I consider that what I wanted to say was well expressed, I do not rewrite it, but I do rewrite when it seems to me that something could be more complete or clear. The book seeks to offer, in an ordered way and as clearly as possible, the progress of my studies and their results, so that the readers can have a unified summary. I warmly invite anyone who wishes to go more deeply into any of the themes set out here to read the broader works and articles. This text sets out, in the most orderly way possible, how far I have come. While I have life, I will continue travelling.
13
INTRODUCTION
The fundamental condition of our species:
The crossroads, a birds eye view

Let us define, in broad strokes, the most outstanding lines of the transition which is taking place in order, then, to be able to go deeper, step by step and chapter by chapter, into each of them, their consequences, the open questions, the challenges facing us. In the developed countries we have passed from an age-old agrarian and authoritarian society to a mixed society, composed of a pre-industrial majority and an influential industrial minority and, recently, we have moved into another mixed society, composed this time by an industrial majority and an influential minority in what we could call a second great industrialisation, which has been given various names: the information society, the knowledge society, the innovation society. The first great industrialisation, which created the first mixed society, totally changed the pre-industrial homogeneous society. It was not easy for this first industrialisation to open a pathway in the age-old pre-industrial society. Combative ideologies had to be created to find a place in the old regime. Its implantation in various countries produced economic, social, political, religious and military conflicts. There were wars between countries, civil wars and colonial wars. In the nearly 200 years of existence of this type of mixed society, peace was only achieved after the Second World War. Peace was a distribution of functions: the new industrial society and its ideology would control science and technology, the economy and policy; the old pre-industrial society and religion would control the rest of the group dimensions. Christian democracy was the prototype of this agreement. Also within most individuals in this first mixed society there was the same division of functions. The second mixed society is only a few decades old. In it the remains of the pre-industrial society have disappeared almost completely; and the little which remains is yet to be extinguished. The central motor of this new mixed society is the dynamic of science and technology. Science and technology, which grow day by day, invading everything, are powerful and do nothing if not increase their power. No field of human activity escapes their power. They have invaded all forms of human communication and are invading all the corners of life. Nevertheless, this powerful science and technology duo has become modest. They no longer pretend to hold the key to truth, they are only there to serve. 15
They have learned, also, that they are incapable of supplying the axiological values which will govern the groups and rule over their own progress. The innovative and creative capacity of the new science and technology has led to a society of continuous innovation in goods and services. This is the heart of the new mixed society: the continuous creation of novelty. This is the centre of the economy and must be that of policy. This powerful current drags everything along with it. The innovations in transport and communications have leapt all the frontiers and created a vast global society. With computer developments, science and technology have become global; all types of communications are global; leisure is global; markets are global; the economy is global; distances between cultures have been abolished; all the great religious traditions, with their immense wealth, are present everywhere. Even criminal associations are global. There are now no frontiers or walls to hold back the onrush of the waters of globalisation. Nor are there moral or religious walls to offer a defence against the impetus of science and technology and their globalising power. One does not need to be a prophet to see that nothing will halt the accelerated and invasive march of science and technology and the globalisation which they create. The pre-industrial societies, with all their ways of thinking, feeling, organising and experience, will gradually disappear from the face of the earth. And it is better for us that this should be so, because the contrary would mean that humanity would be divided into two blocks: the increasingly rich and powerful societies and those others ever poorer and more marginalised. The emergence and installation of the first great industrialisation already meant serious difficulties for religion, which was able to resist them because it was upheld by a majority sector of the group. The internal divisions in people themselves were a support for religion. In the new mixed society, the pre-industrial remains have been swept out of the group and even from the minds of the majority of individuals. In this new situation, which is invading everywhere rapidly, religion is collapsing. This is no longer a crisis, but a real collapse. The great majority of the young do not want to know anything about religion. For them, religion is not a problem. They do not consider it or combat it, it is something belonging to times past and past generations. Something similar is happening to people of under 45 years. The professional and intellectual classes have also abandoned the churches en masse. Women, who were the stronghold of religion, are also deserting. Even the older generations are ceasing their practice of it. The churches are empty, the clergy are ancient and have lost their cultural and even religious prestige. 16
Introduction
This collapse is general in all the European religious traditions, it is not just a question of Catholics, the phenomenon also affects Protestants and Jews. Islam seems less weakened in Europe, because the problems of cultural identity and integration into European nations attenuate the crisis, but it is already beginning to feel it. And the axiological collapse does not affect only religions, and all that they mean, it also affects ideologies. The collapse of real socialism in the soviet countries is paradigmatic. After that collapse, the basis which had been the nucleus of the socialist project became indefensible: socialisation of the means of production. The ideals of European socialism, since then, no longer form a coherent ideological rationale and have been reduced to a handful of axiological principles of solidarity, justice, equity, the defence of the least favoured classes, the defence of the environment, liberty and democracy. The liberal ideology has found no better way out. Now it only retains some pragmatic principles of functioning, reinforced by the definitive crisis in real socialism: the market to govern financial relationships, democracy to govern social relationships, private property, individual initiative and competition as the motor of the economy and group living, and not much more. The full inheritance of the pre-industrial societies and the first mixed societies has come to nothing. In the new situation of accelerated change in all orders, the collapse of inherited axiological systems, the coexistence of all the diversity of cultures, the great transformations suffered on a short timescale, the dynamic of the new societies which live and prosper, continually creating new science and technology, new goods and services, have made us understand that all our ways of thinking, feeling, organising ourselves and living are our own construction; that nothing comes to us heaven-sent, nor even from the nature of things themselves. In these circumstances, it is already a fact, recognised or not, that our axiological world, the basis and foundation of all our remaining constructions, starts from a set of principles proposed by ourselves, an environment which has achieved a consensus, if not universal, certainly very generalised. These principles are human rights; projects are constructed from them at every level, from the most general in countries to the most particular in organisations and individuals. These principles and projects have no other guarantee than our own quality as individuals and as groups. We have to arrive at common principles, formulated in a way that respects the spirit of the various cultures and allows for diversity of projects, in accordance with the various cultures and without the despotism of some cultures over others. 17
Dynamic societies, known as the knowledge or information societies, do not impose any lifestyle, they can be lived with very diverse principles and very different projects. They arose and found their first development in western societies with a capitalist structure, but have now extended to other cultural fields. Today they are directed and governed by a competitive and capitalist system, but they can be adapted to other life projects. That all levels of human life, both group and individual, are our own construction, at our own risk, is not just the awareness of the elites; the whole of the population in the developed societies knows, explicitly or implicitly, that this is how things are. It can be said that it is a general feeling in our societies that all human questions, at all levels, are exclusively in our own hands. And these ideas and feelings are not the fruit of indoctrination by education or of the communication media, but a consequence, as I have indicated, of the accelerated changes which we have suffered, of our way of surviving in this planet and of globalisation. Accepting this, it seems reasonable to think that these facts will profoundly affect the ways in which spirituality was cultivated in the long pre-industrial society and the equilibriums arrived at, after so many confrontations and struggles, in the first mixed societies. It seems logical that if the ways of living, thinking, feeling, acting and organising change radically, also the way of conceiving and living spirituality will change. The transition from pre-industrial societies, in which the religions arose and developed, to the societies of innovation and change, is a radical change. It would be logical for this to become clear, also radically, in the way of representing and experiencing this dimension of human life which, for want of a better term, we call spirituality. Living and prospering since continuous innovation has had two large consequences. The first consequence is to generalise the new epistemology which says that all levels of our life are our own construction, the conceptual, the axiological and the organisational. Epistemology is not only a theoretical discipline; it is also a collective form of thinking and feeling. Both our conceptual models and our axiological models are always, in one way or another, directed to action, because they are constructed by living beings in need and, in short, are at the service of that need. The second consequence is our having to live while continually changing our interpretation and evaluation of reality, our ways of working, organising ourselves and living; therefore without anything settled in any of the dimensions of our life. 18
Introduction
We have to live, then, without beliefs, because beliefs fix the interpretation, evaluation, organisation and mode of life, although perhaps only in essential points. This dual consequence, unavoidable while living in fully industrialised societies, where the motor is continuous innovation in knowledge and technology, services and goods, is inimical to the survival of religion. We understand religion here as a set of sacred narrations, symbols, myths and rituals which generates and supports a system of beliefs, resulting in a project of group and individual life and which is, in turn, a system of representation and initiation into the absolute dimension of existence. This whole compilation is taken as having been revealed by God and is, therefore, untouchable and inalterable. One can live with the certainty and feeling that we have to do everything for ourselves, at our own risk, and also have religion. Some people do it. But it is a schizophrenic situation which in the medium term cannot last and even less can claim to become general. We are going to study the nature of the sacred narrations, myths and symbols and their transformations, in order to better understand what is happening with the religions, both in their majority collapse and in their fundamentalist revival. If we can understand what is happening, we shall understand better where we are going. That is to say, what would be the congruent form in which to cultivate spirituality in the new cultural circumstances. If we want to analyse the situation appropriately we cannot start from beliefs, either religious or lay. We must make a great effort not to take anything for granted. We have to take into account two types of data: 1. All the pre-industrial cultures had religion or something equivalent. Only when industrialisation began did the religions begin to have serious problems with groups. There had already been problems with the European intellectuals, but with the arrival of industrialisation these problems were no longer only for intellectuals, but appeared also at the level of large social groups, whether or not intellectual. With the generalisation of industrialisation and the arrival of the dynamic innovation societies, the religions collapsed. However, and in spite of this collapse, the spiritual search continues. It is a minority factor; the spiritual search has always been for the minority. 2. We humans have a double access to the real: an access to reality according to our needs, relative; and another type of access to the real, independently of our needs, absolute. This is a fact and we shall come 19
to its explanation. And it is a fact which is not something accidental, but is central, essential to our species. This absolute dimension of our access to the real is where religion was cultivated. It has to be able to be cultivated in other ways, otherwise the result would be that our species could only live properly in pre-industrial life conditions. The notion of spirituality, in the sense of a subtle dimension of existence, would point in that direction. What could be more subtle, for poor living animals such as ourselves, than the absolute dimension of reality? In our research we shall start from our particular condition as animals which live in groups and talk. We shall start from these facts and their implications, in order to try to understand the role of culture. Cultures are facts proper to this type of living beings. We shall try to understand also what happens in cultural changes. We will study the relationship between religions and cultures and the consequences arising from cultural changes and affecting the form of conceiving and living the absolute dimension of reality, the spiritual. Our reflections will not mean that the changes we are suffering and the type of society to which we have come to rest are the consequence of decadence. Anyone who starts from this supposition starts from a prior judgment, a prejudice. Whoever starts from a prejudice has no possibility of understanding. Whoever does not accept that, does not understand. Human beings of all cultures are made of the same material. All cultures are constructed by egocentric and predatory beings and for egocentric and predatory beings. In this sense, all cultures are equally remote and distanced from the demands of spirituality and the love which it implies. In the cultural situation in which we have come to rest, the fruit of centuries of progress, there is something inevitable: going on and flowing into a society of innovation and continuous change, without heteronomies, autonomous, without beliefs and global. And there is also something avoidable: the new societies are free to construct one type of society or another, a group project or another. With the scientific and technical means available to us we can construct many types of societies. Scientific-technical innovation and global societies do not necessarily have to be, in any way, neo-liberal in the exploitation of people and the environment. The new societies are also free to cultivate the human dimensions which in the past were cultivated by religions, or to leave them fallow, with the risks and loss which this would involve. What they will not be able to do, globally and in the medium term, is try to maintain religions alive outside the cultural, social and economic context in which they arose, which was developed over thousands of years. 20
CULTURAL MODELS OF THE HUMAN SURVIVAL
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
Culture, a biological invention
The fundamental condition of our species: being a cultural organism

For our species, culture is the essence of being alive. Culture differentiates us from other living beings, but also aligns us with them. It distances us from all the living species, but an analysis of the nature of culture demonstrates our humble condition as living organisms among all living organisms. All beings have a manner of determining their behaviour in relation to the environment. Our lineage is subject to this rigorous law. The manner of determining the relation with the environment for all living species, except our own, is genetic. For each species, its world and its behaviour in that world is genetically determined. Each species must know what is real for it and what is not, how to act at any moment and what must be avoided. And it must know this without possibility of doubt, with clarity and decision, because its life depends on that knowledge. In our species, the ultimate determination is formed by culture. Without culture we are not viable animals. Culture is the specifically human way of adapting ourselves to the environment. Culture has a biological function. Culture has to establish, definitely and unquestionably, what we must think and feel, how we must organise ourselves and act. It has to give us models of interpretation and evaluation of the world and of ourselves. It has to give us groups of motivations which effectively ensure our survival. Culture has to be a set of axiological structures, because these must structure a being in its environment; and the relationships of beings with their environments must always have a structure of stimuli and responses. The non-axiological elements of cultures have to be interpreted from the primary function of culture. All knowledge, including the most sophisticated scientific knowledge, is the knowledge of a being and is for living. Even the most disinterested act must be read as intrinsically part of an interested basis. For the biological function which culture must fulfil, it may be restricting. Culture has to determine, definitely and unquestionably, what our world is and how we must behave in it. And it has to do this with the same clarity and unquestionable decision as genetic determination does for the animals. If our 23
relationship with the environment were not precise and clear, our survival would be threatened. To be able to fulfil this function with clarity and without indecision, each culture has to exclude, radically, all possible alternatives. For each culture, every other form of culture is error, falsehood, evil. Only ones own culture is the true culture, the rest are barbaric. Only ones own culture is the pattern of truth, reality and value. Every other culture different to ones own has to be excluded, even before knowing it. The past is interpreted as a progressive march towards ones own culture; and the future as the enhancement of this own culture. Cultures act in this way not through rational or value criteria, they do it for functional necessity. This functional necessity implies an epistemology: culture dictates what reality is in all its forms. It is true that culture goes beyond the function of pure survival. This is a fact which has to be recognised and respected, without trying to devalue it. But even this irreducible fact has to be interpreted and fitted into the primary function of culture. We are living animals, although rather unusual, on this earth. We have not fallen from heaven. Keeping this idea in the front of the mind will free us from many deviations, fantasies and errors. Culture is an invention of life which accelerates adaptation to the environment. We could say that life has hit on a procedure which allows it to adapt rapidly to the alterations and modifications of the environment without altering its morphology, which would require millions of years, without altering the sexual condition or the symbiotic condition. It has created language as an instrument to achieve accommodation to the environment, while maintaining an immutable biological base. Language, or better, linguistic competence, is a biological invention, it is a form of sophistication in the communication system which allows culture to appear as an instrument providing a response to modifications in the environment or to create them, if necessary, without needing any morphological modification. Other animal species adapt to modifications of the environment by changing species, and they use millions of years to do it. In our species life has created a procedure which allows for rapid adaptation without changing species. To achieve this, our morphological condition, our sexual and symbiotic condition and our ability to speak are all left genetically determined. On the other hand, how we must live in the environment, use sexuality and care for offspring, how to organise the symbiosis, are left undetermined. But we are provided with the instrument, speech, which we must use to construct all that we need to be viable animals. 24
The pattern of reading and evaluation of reality for the great family of our relatives the animals is rigidly dual: the table of specific needs on the one hand and on the other the reading and evaluation of reality from the perspective of this table of needs. All this is fixed genetically, with a certain margin of learning in some species. Animals are imprisoned in this dual interpretation of reality: subject to needs / world correlated to this table of needs. They are imprisoned in this essential reading that life must make of reality; each species has a specific prison; and for all of them the locks are genetic. Animals cannot change their world, or their needs, without changing the species; and this is a task requiring millions of years. To achieve it they have to change their genetic programme and their morphology. In our species, life has found a more flexible and rapid solution: replacing the binary structure of the relationship with reality by a ternary structure. The ternary structure will be: subject to needs / language / world correlated to the needs. Speech is a sophistication of the communication system. We humans relate ourselves to the world by talking among ourselves. Communication among subjects in need becomes the intermediary between the being and its world. Through this intermediation of language we can distinguish between the meaning of realities for us, as beings, and what the things are in themselves. The consequence of this ternary structure is to produce a dual experience of reality: one connected with our needs, like the other animals; and the other not connected with our needs, not relating to them. Through this second access reality presents itself to us as independent of all relationship with us, as being there autonomously, as an absolute. The relative experience of reality appears to us as a stimulus for our action, a meaning for our life, a value for survival. The absolute experience of reality appears to us as a being and value without relation to our needs, as separate, ab-soluta from (freed from) all relationship with ourselves, as simply being there, itself. This absolute experience of reality is not a transcendental experience, as the experience of a reality beyond this world would be. It is the experience of this same world, to which we have access through our senses, our mind and our actions, but seen, understood and felt as existing and useful but fully independent of ourselves or any relation with us. 25
The movement from a binary structure of life to a ternary. The dual experience of reality
The features of our absolute experience of reality are: 1. Although absolute, it is realised by a living being, 2. its the consequence of an innovation of life: the ternary structure, 3. and with usefulness for life: not confined to a single reading of reality. We shall analyse this point in a moment. Now, this absolute experience of reality appears as a world with no frontiers into which one can penetrate more and more profoundly. The absolute experience of reality breaks the barriers which confine a living animal in the closed circle of its needs. Beyond these frontiers science, art and philosophy become possible, and an interest in realities which does not seek to take advantage of them. The absolute experience of reality opens the mind to another type of knowledge of reality and opens the sensitivity and the heart to a love for things and people which is not egocentric. Interest and love from a subject of needs are always egocentric because they always have the subject of needs as a reference point; interest and love from outside this frontier are not egocentric, they are free. The relative experience of reality supplies a relative, interested knowledge and feeling; the absolute experience of reality gives an absolute knowledge and feeling, untrammelled. How, in terms of language structure, is the dual experience of reality achieved? Language constructs a very ingenious artifice: it transfers the meanings that things have for our lives as beings in need from these same things to an acoustic support, that is, a phonetic structure. The value, the meaning of things for living beings all of them except humans is attached to those things; language separates this attached meaning from the things themselves to attach it to a phonetic structure. That is what words are: a phonetic structure, with a meaning the usefulness of these things for our survival starting from a cosmic reality and referring that same reality. Thus language, as an inter-subjective communication system, involves the circulation of acoustic signals, full of meaning, referring to things and people. The shortlist of three, then, will be, - subjects of need - the world of beings, things and people, - words loaded with the meanings of these things and people for us as living beings. With this artifice the things and people are separated from their meanings. Through this separation we can understand and feel that realities are not 26
identified with the meanings that they have for us; that the meanings which the realities have for us are one thing, and the realities themselves are another. We understand and feel, in contrast to the other animals, that things are not their meanings for us, that they are independent of these meanings which we give them, that they are absolute. Things which exist have meanings for us, as the beings in need which we are, but they are not those meanings. Given that they are not those meanings, they can have other meanings, if the conditions of our life change. And we understand that the realities have other meanings for the various animal species. Things which are enormously significant for us, are not so for them, and vice versa. Something similar can be said of the meanings of realities for different cultures. Thus the structure of language is the origin of our dual experience of reality. Language breaks the binary confinement into which life locked in each living species, since it provides an absolute experience of reality.
Our specific quality
Life, in we humans, has introduced a double modification, two aspects of the same biological invention: leaving our definitive nature indeterminate and introducing the faculty of speech. This double factor, these two aspects of the same phenomenon, becomes the basic characteristic of our species. Having a fixed nature means: - having fixed conditions as an actor in the environment, - having a fixed environment, both in reference to the objective boundary marks of the environment, and in reference to the stimulating value of these marks and in reference to the actions of those actors, - having fixed intra-specific and extra-specific relationships, group organisation, form of sexual relations and form of raising offspring. None of this is fixed for us. We only have fixed - our physiology, - our sexual condition, - our symbiotic condition - and our linguistic competence. The specific form of our speech, our sexuality, our group and family organisation, is not fixed, nor is that of the specific language which we speak. Consequently, our nature is not to have a fixed nature. Our nature is a nonnature. 27
Thus, our faculty of speech, and the dual experience of reality which it brings with it, which is mental, sentient and perceptive, makes it possible for us to make changes, which in the other animal species would be equivalent to a change of species. Creating cultures is to create viable human natures for determined conditions. Different cultures are different worlds and different actors; they are equivalent to different species. In the past we created the worlds of interpretation, evaluation and action which we needed in order to live in determined conditions of life. Those worlds worked for us for millennia and were immutable, because we had to live in pre-industrial societies, which existed by doing the same thing for long periods of time and which it was hazardous to alter. During the long pre-industrial era of humanity, we made several of these drastic changes, which we shall study later, but we were never aware that we ourselves were constructing them, because the constructions took place over enormous periods of time. And it was good that we were not aware of ourselves as being constructors, because otherwise these ways of life could not have functioned and been immutable and it was essential that we should live thus. How were these constructions made that gave us a nature viable in determined living conditions? The first cultural constructions by our species were pre-industrial and lasted for many thousands of years. 28
The construction of a viable human nature
We do not have a fixed nature because we have speech and because we have a dual experience of reality and of ourselves. Speech is an instrument with which we can complete our lack of genetic determination, depending on the circumstances; and the absolute experience of reality keeps us open at all times to possible modifications of our natural condition, when these become appropriate. Having a non-nature nature and having a dual experience of reality, which are two aspects of the same innovation of life, is our specific quality. It is what differentiates us from the other animal species. If we were to lose our dual experience of reality, we would also lose our nonnature nature and we would find ourselves reduced to the same status as the other animals. But on the other hand, our condition of having speech would awaken us, time and again, and would push us towards this dual condition as beings without a fixed nature and beings destined to a dual experience of reality.
We shall see this specifically through analysing the four great families of pre-industrial cultures: the hunter-gatherers, the horticulturalists, irrigation farmers and livestock raisers. Before starting on this task, I shall allow myself a preamble: human speech has two ways of functioning. The first form is what we could call constituent speech. This is the way of speaking which constructs the programme which concludes and completes the lack of genetic determination. Constituent speech is like a software programme which establishes the specific human nature for determined conditions of life. The second form of speech is that which would correspond to the everyday use of the programme, that is to say, the development of life and communication, within the constituent programme. Constituent speech will always have to be axiological, because it has to be programmed for a being in need in a given environment, and has to work in a way that stimulates the being to satisfy its needs and live. Thus constituent speech will have to construct: - a stimulating axiological environment, a world, - an actor motivated within this specific environment, - models of social relationships which ensure collaboration, symbiosis and procreation, - motivations for cohesion. Constituent speech must also supply a system of representation and cultivation of the absolute experience of reality. And, finally, it must ensure the permanence of the programming system over time. Constituent speech must tackle both dimensions of our experience of reality, for a double reason: first because both dimensions are there, and second because it is a way of keeping the culture flexible and open, suitable for possible modifications. Constituent speech, in the long pre-industrial stage of the history of humanity, up to the arrival of the industrial societies, used, as constituent speech, narrations loaded with axiological content. These narrations, the myths, were accompanied by ritual actions. A mythology was formed by a great collection of narrations, subdivided into smaller groups. Each of these groups had to programme an ambit for the group life and the individuals. Mythologies had to establish: - the interpretation of the environment, - motivations for acting in it, how to act in it: the various forms of work, 29
- the specific way of using sexuality and how to care for the offspring, - modes of social organisation and their motivation, - and finally, the ways of maintaining, imposing and updating the constituent language. Each mythology had its central rituals and symbols which were made patent and explicit in ritual actions. The regular reciting of the myths, the practice, also regular, of the rituals and the group importance of the symbols, were all for the purpose of implanting and maintaining alive, in the awareness of each and every member of a society, the collective programme which provided a viable nature for certain conditions of life. The narrations and rituals provided, at the same time, the means with which the group could represent and experience the absolute dimension of reality.
30
CHAPTER 2
Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies
Method of analysing the structure of mythical systems

To study the structure of mythical systems is to study the structure of the culture of pre-industrial societies. We start from the hypothesis that the culture of a group is equivalent to a programme which comprises a system of understanding and evaluation of reality, a system of action in the environment and a system of social relationship. Consequently, there must be a close relationship between the groups way of life and their cultural system. This hypothesis comes to us from data presented by ethnology, cultural anthropology, history and the history of religions: we find a constant parallel between the ways of life (work and social forms with which the necessities of life are obtained) and the corresponding cultures. Peoples living in the same way, e.g. by hunting and gathering, have very similar mythologies, wherever they may be in time and space. The same applies for peoples living on the basis of agriculture, irrigation farming and grazing. In the pre-industrial cultures the group patterns of understanding, evaluation and action are expressed in sacred narrations which we call mythologies. A correct semantic analysis of these narrations allows us to see that mythologies belonging to the same way of life have profound semantic structures which are identical, although the narrations may superficially be very different. There is a great superficial similarity, although with different characters and different stories about these characters, which after careful analysis shows that they have an identical structure at a deeper level. When the mode of life changes, e.g. from hunting/gathering to agriculture, or from agriculture to irrigation farming, the myths, symbols and rituals change in the same direction. Each differentiated form of pre-industrial life has its corresponding and constant type of mythology, symbols and ritual. Whenever the hunter/gatherer way of life is present, we find the hunter/ gatherer mythology, symbols and ritual, with the identical profound structure. The same can be said of the other modes of pre-industrial life. These facts suggest to us a strategy of research. The method must be to make a dual analysis, in parallel: a semantic analysis of the mythologies and an anthropological analysis of the working and social system of the relevant group. 31
When a human group abandons the pre-industrial way of life, the validity for it of myths, symbols and rituals diminishes. This has been able to be checked with industrialisation. These analyses will enable us to understand the relationship which exists between one specific form of pre-industrial living, for example, living from hunting and gathering, and its corresponding mythological system. If we could look carefully at this key relationship, we would see how the mythologies were constructed and how they changed. If we could find out how they were constructed and why they changed, we would see how the representations of the experience of the absolute dimension of reality were constructed, how their cultivation was promoted and why the systems of representation changed. This would be equivalent to knowing how religions were constructed and why they changed. Before going into the mythological analysis, I would like to clarify some methodological points. The semantic units, words, have a structure which can be analysed in smaller units, just as an atom can be analysed in particles. The narrations have a structure which can be analysed in terms of characters and functions. All the narrations forming a mythology consist of some central narrations and others which are peripheral. Each narration, in its turn, has a central core and peripheral sections. The same can be said of the sets of operational series with which people survives: there are central operational series, the central actions which bring survival, and peripheral operational series. In each of the operational series, there are central moments and peripheral moments. The narrations, myths, symbols and rituals have a superficial narrative structure and a profound structure. The analyses will enable us to understand that the central operation with which a human group survives becomes the central metaphor from which all the realities of life are ordered, interpreted and valued. The mysterious absolute experience of reality is conceived and expressed through this same central metaphor. The central metaphor is the model or paradigm from which all the narrative and ritual material is structured. From it, also, the groups actions in the environment and its organisation are ordered. Given our animal condition, it is logical that the structure of the central action, e.g. hunting, with which we manage to survive, becomes a pattern for the interpretation and evaluation of all that we consider reality and value. It is logical that when the central action with which we survive changes, e.g. passes from hunting to cultivation, the central metaphor or paradigm will change, all the mythology and rituals will change and, with them, the forms of 32
interpreting and valuing reality, organisation and experience will change and also the form of representing and experiencing the absolute dimension of reality. The central metaphor or paradigm is always axiological what is there that has more value than the operation which brings survival? From this paradigm loaded with value an axiological world will be constructed. When life begins to be dependent on industry, the central action will be scientific and technological, therefore abstract. It will not be able to work as a central metaphor and thus will break down the age-old procedure of constructing a group programme which was, at the same time, a religion. Consequently, the mythologies and religions will enter into crisis.
We shall understand all this better by using the methodology proposed in an analysis of the mythologies and rituals of the hunter/gatherer peoples. To survive individually and as a group, the hunter societies had to develop various series of operations. First, they had to go hunting. That was the centre of their economic life. The activities required for hunting are organised in a succession of moments of action, arranged among themselves to form a series. The actions needed for gathering form another series. Everything leading to the procreation and raising of offspring, on which the survival of the group depends, forms another series. As well as these series, leading directly to the survival of the individuals and the group, there is another series of actions directed to establishing in the group the cultural principles which give it coherence and maintain it in a specific way of life. This is the series of programming and reproduction of the mythological model. Therefore, the complex of actions which a human group must undertake in its environment to survive successfully can be broken down into a more or less broad set of perfectly differentiated series, each of which forms an organised whole. The assembly of all the series is also arranged as a whole, in which not all series have the same weight or the same importance for the survival of the group. In the hunter-gatherer society, the group basically lives on hunting and in a subsidiary way on gathering. Therefore, the hunting series will be the central series and the gathering series will be peripheral. The series corresponding to raising the offspring and maintenance and transmission 33
The structure of the hunter/gatherer cultures
of the cultural system will inevitably be influenced by the series providing for group survival in the environment. Let us go one step further in the analysis: not all moments of action in the body of a series are of the same importance. If we take the central series hunting, we can find in it the following moments: making the weapons, preparing the weapons before the hunt, psychological preparation of the hunters, tracking, killing the animal, hauling it, cutting it up, distribution, preparation by cooking, eating. Among all these moments of the hunting series, some are central and others are peripheral. The central ones are killing the animal and eating the meat; all the rest are peripheral. We see, then, that all the actions of the hunter/gatherers can be divided into differentiated series and organised among themselves as central and peripheral, and that each series, in turn, is organised into central and peripheral moments. Let us now study the structure of their culture, which is the structure of their mythology. The mythology is expressed in a set of narrations and rituals which can be broken down into various mythical complexes arranged by themes. Studying the hunter mythologies enables us to discover the following mythical complexes arranged by themes: - Narrations which tell of the hunt and its origin. - Narrations which tell of gathering and its origin. - Narrations which tell of the forebears and the origin of the methods and customs of the group. - Narrations which tell of the rituals and their origin. These narrations form the central body of the hunter/gatherer mythologies. There are also other narrations called etiological, which are used to explain the features of some animals, the topography of the terrain, etc. These etiological narrations would form a second peripheral circle. We shall not take them into account because they are not especially significant for our analysis. All the activities which are important for the survival of the group must appear in the mythological narrations, because they must all be constituted and programmed. The importance of the series of actions for survival indicates to us which of them is central and which are peripheral. If survival is preponderantly by hunting, then hunting is the central series. From the viewpoint of the mythical complexes we have to find a strategy to indicate to us which of these mythical complexes is central and which are peripheral. The central importance of hunting is already a first indication, but 34
we need another more intrinsic, from the same level as the mythological narrations. Two types of data can help us in this search: 1. The principal sacred figures will be expressed in what forms the supreme value of the system, because the sacred experience is always presented as something supreme and absolute. 2. The most solemn rituals will be connected with the central religious figures and the ones and the others will be expressed in the central axes of the system. Consequently, the central mythical complexes will be emphasised by the most important and solemn rituals and by the principal sacred figures. In the hunter/gatherer mythologies, the narrations emphasised by the rituals and by the principal sacred figures refer to hunting. Using this procedure, we can find out which is the central narration (central mythical complex) and which are the peripheral narrations (peripheral mythical complexes). Once we have found the central narration, we have to discover within it which is the central moment of the narration and which are the peripheral moments. The narration itself, without resorting to external criteria, will indicate to us the central moment. But, the two criteria adduced (central ritual and central sacred figures), which helped us to find the central narration, will also help us now to find the central moment of the narration. In summary, to understand the bases of the way of thinking, valuing and acting in a pre-industrial society we have to tease out which is the most important central moment of work occupation and relate it to the central moment of the most important mythological narration. Having identified the central operation we shall be able to relate it to the central core of the mythology, which will be a metaphorical representation of the central operation. The central operation will lead us to the central metaphor from which all the mythology, symbols and rituals of the hunter/gatherer cultures will be constructed. Given our animal condition, it is logical that the action which sustains us in our being and in life should become the metaphor, pattern, model, paradigm for the interpretation and evaluation of all that has being and life. Let us look at the result of our analysis of the hunter/gatherer society. The occupation on which life fundamentally depends for the hunter/gatherers is hunting. In the series of actions required in hunting, the central moment is killing the animal and eating the meat. 35
The mythological narrations which speak to us of hunting set the violently killed animal at the centre of the narration. And this dead animal, from which comes life, becomes the central metaphor of the interpretation of reality. The myth says that the dead animal provides being and life. The animal violently killed is the source of all that has being and life. The representation of the supreme reality, of the absolute dimension of our experience of reality, is an animal proto-victim. The supreme ritual is the representation and re-enactment of the first death of the sacred animal, which was the origin of everything and of all life. All the cosmic realities came from a primordial animal which was violently killed at the beginning of time. Its dismembered parts became the sky, the earth, the mountains, rivers, etc. On the other hand, the forebears are the source of physiological life, practical expertise, mythological knowledge and the customs which ensure the life of the group. For the group to subsist it must respect the customs of the forebears. Therefore, life comes also from the dead forebears (and every death is interpreted as a violent death). Also the supreme reality and the sacred, as forebear, as ancestor, as dead, are conceived from this mythical complex. It is logical that the two expressions described the dead animal is a source of life and the dead forebears are a source of life, should conjoin, because they are both modelled on the same metaphor. This conjunction is expressed mythically, telling that the spirits of the dead have animal forms and that the dead animals are ancestors. The dead, animal or human, is the source of life, is reality and is sacred. The human pair relationship from which children come, the future of the group, is also conceived from this same pattern, as a relationship of killing and being killed. In the sexual act the man kills and the woman dies, and from this death comes the new life. For this reason the woman is closer than the man to the ambit of the sacred, which is the ambit of the death which gives life. The narrations which tell of gathering conceive the earth as a goddess from which come the fruits which are gathered. And the myths tell that this goddess is a spirit, that is to say, she is dead, and also that she is related with the world of animals and they represent her as an animal. It can be checked, then, that the hunter culture is structured around the central action, kill and eat, used as a metaphor, death transformed into life. This pattern functions as a paradigm which structures all the understanding and evaluation of reality, all the group behaviour and organisation and the representation of absolute reality, the sacred. 36
The hunter mythological narrations varied from people to people, with different mythological characters, symbols and rituals, but the profound structure remained invariable, as did the system of life. This profound structure can be described as violent death is a source of life or, formulated in conceptual terms, the negative elements of life generate the positive elements of life. Thus the profound structure of a mythology and its superficial structure become clear. Let us see now how these principles and structures function in the central figure of the hunter/gatherer cultures, the shaman. Let us see how he is conceived, how he is represented, how he is chosen for this function, his role in the community, etc. All the mythological complexes of a mythology come together in him and make explicit that the centre of all the mythology is that from violent death proceeds being and life. The mythologies considered belong to the hunter peoples of Siberia and Central Asia, of large linguistic and ethnic variety, but nevertheless with great cultural uniformity. These peoples are mostly devoted to the hunting of land animals, marine mammals or fish and gathering. Some groups have herds of reindeer. They do not domesticate the animals, but only mark them, herd them together, divide them among the family groups, follow their migrations to the tundra in the summer and to the great forests in the winter. They use some of them as beasts of burden, after having castrated them. The reindeer are in a middle situation between the wild and the domesticated animal. We understand, then, that the owners of the reindeer herds have not had to develop special techniques for the raising, maintenance and care of their herds. Therefore they cannot be considered as true livestock raisers. These peoples are the Dolganes, the Yukagir, the Tchuktchis, the Samoyeds, the Lapps. And further south, the Ainos, the Ienissei, the Gilyak, the Itelmes, the Koryak, the Lamutes. The shaman has various functions in the hunter societies: he is doctor, oracle and psychopomp, he initiates the group into the sacred experience, consolidates the mythology in the group, establishes harmony between the sacred and the profane and, on occasions, acts as slaughterer. He exercises all these functions not by virtue of his hierarchical status, but exclusively because of his capacity for the ecstatic trance. His trance experience is what gives him status as a mediator between the sacred world, that of the spirits, and the profane. The first mythical complex which the shaman polarises around him is the hunting complex. Given that for hunter societies hunting is the principal source of subsistence, the corresponding mythical complex must be of capital importance. 37
The centre of this complex is the dead animal. The myths state that the shamans ancestor is an animal-ancestor. Animal-ancestor is equivalent to dead animal. The shamans possess various zoomorphic spirits. These spirit-animals again equivalent to dead animals assist the shaman during his shamanic sessions. Each shaman has a guiding spirit, a particular spirit, which always appears in the guise of a specific animal. This spirit is called the mother-animal because the vocation, life and death of the shaman depend on it. The shamans ceremonial dress represents an animal. The garment is like a mask which transforms the shaman into an animal. The shamans drum, which he always uses in the shamanic sessions, is considered to be a symbol of the animal with which the shaman goes into the world of the spirits, the sacred world. It embodies the mount he uses for his expeditions, the wild deer on which he travels. Yakuts and Buryats consider it to be the horse on which the shaman travels to the other world. The Mogol tribes call it the black deer on which the shaman rides. Beating his animal-drum violently or drumming for a long time, the shaman is able to achieve the degree of concentration and enter into the trance which transports him into the world of the dead. The shaman receives his power from an animal which is his animal-ancestor. The shamans vocation, power, life and death all come from the mother-animal which is his animal-ancestor, his alter-ego, the shamanic soul in zoomorphic form. The shaman achieves success in his shamanic work through animalassistants. These animal-assistants are zoomorphic spirits. The shaman, through his powers, in the trance, is transformed into a dead animal which is equivalent to being transformed into an ancestor. Transforming himself into an ancestor, an animal, is to enter into the sacred ambit, the absolute ambit. The dead, the ancestors, the spirits and the dead animals are all the same thing. From them come life, culture, health, and all good things. From them comes mans superhuman ability. The shaman is chosen for his mission by a spirit which is considered to be the soul of a dead shaman. This spirit chooses, orders and binds his successor to take up his vocation. Through the mediation of this spirit the shaman can see and hear as a shaman. The spirits group which assists the shaman is formed of the dead of his tribe. These auxiliary spirits are the counsellors and interpreters of the extrasensorial communications that the shaman receives. The beneficial influence of the shaman in the society depends on the mediation of these spirits. 38
Among all these spirits which assist the shaman, the spirit of the dead shaman on which the vocation and life of the shaman depend occupies a central place. It is he who obliges the other spirits to give the shaman their help. All the capacities possessed by the shaman come from the spirit that possesses him and from the other auxiliary spirits. When the shaman enters into his trance, he begins to behave, in gesture and sound, like the animal corresponding to the specific spirit which has possessed him. The second mythological complex related with the shaman is that of the tree. Each shaman has a shamanic tree, which grew with the shamans vocation and must be felled on his death. Among the Gold tribe, the first shaman received magic instruments from the tree of the earth, the shamanic tree. This shamanic tree has the same characteristics as the cosmic tree and is the cosmic tree. The cosmic tree is an axis mundi which communicates between the underworld, the world and the heavens above. The myths say that shamanism arose from the cosmic tree, and that each shaman receives his vocation and power from a specific tree, his shamanic tree, a replica of the cosmic tree. From it he receives all his instruments and on it depend his life and death. The shamanic tree plays a role equivalent to the mother-animal or particular spirit which is a dead shaman. In this tree lives the tree spirit, an elderly goddess with white hair and large breasts, who has the roots of the tree up to her waist and informs the shaman of his origin and his mission. She offers him milk from her breasts or takes water from her roots and gives it to him as an elixir. This goddess with breasts full of milk is a spirit. The cosmic tree is the tree of life and is associated with the goddess of life and fertility, which is a spirit and has zoomorphic representation. The third mythical complex around the shaman is that of the mountain. Each territory has a sacred mountain which, in general, is the place of residence of a shamanic ancestor. This mountain is, also, the placenta of the group descending from the shamanic ancestor who resides there. The mountain grotto is the placenta of the tribe and the normal place of residence of the animal. The mountain is the axis mundi, like the cosmic tree, and through it the levels can be ruptured, allowing communication with heaven and with the underworld. The summit penetrates into the upper world and the base is submerged in the subterranean world, which is the world of the dead. The shaman ascends the mountain or descends from it in his trance journeys and in 39
this way achieves the greatest of his powers: communication with the three cosmic zones and their knowledge. The mountain and the cave in it form the placenta of the tribe, the mother of the tribe. These different mythical complexes are equivalent because they are governed by the same pattern: death is the source of life. The dead are animals and animals are the dead; the spirits are dead and the dead are spirits. From the forebears they received life and culture, as they received subsistence from animals. All the culture transmitted by the forebears turns around animals. Having contact with the souls of the dead means transcending human nature and obtaining the status of a spirit, of a dead man. The shamanic ancestor, in choosing and guiding the new shaman, transforms him into a dead man, into a spirit, so that he leads him into what we could call a divine condition. The shaman sees and hears through the spirit of the ancestor which possesses him. He feels so united to it that he cannot see or act other than through it. Through his union with the spirit he acquires a superhuman condition. The religious transformation of the shaman is represented as a transformation into an animal, into being dead. For this reason, the presence of the spirits in the shamanic sessions is made patent through the shaman imitating the cries and behaviour of an animal. The shaman becomes a spirit-animal. The animal cries and behaviour demonstrate the presence of the sacred. In being transformed into an animal he becomes dead and acquires a sacred, divine nature. The shamans garb, which is equivalent to a mask, signifies the shamans sacred transformation, his transformation into animal, spirit, forebear. Through the shamans experience in his ecstatic trance, the group could enter into contact with the sacred and participate in it. The trance experiences of the shamans had enormous importance for the hunter peoples, because they saw that what for them was a mythological conception was a mystical experience for their shamans. Thus the shaman confirmed and warranted the peoples conceptions, and the greater were his para-psychological powers and extraordinary psychic capacities, the greater was the impact. For all these reasons the shaman was the great specialist in the sacred, the great master of the trance and transmitter of the shamanic mystique. He was the central personality in the social and religious life of the hunter peoples.1
1. For a more detailed explanation, consult my work: Anlisis epistemolgico de las configuraciones axiolgicas humanas. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1983, Salamanca. pp. 209-221.
40
The structure of the horticultural society cultures

We are going to try to analyse the type of culture corresponding to the beginning of cultivation, which is the transition from a parasitical economy to one which is partly productive. It corresponds to peoples who lived fundamentally on the cultivation of some tubers, maize in a horticultural regime, some fruit trees and some domestic animals, e.g. the pig or some types of chicken. In addition, they depended on hunting, fishing and gathering. The women were the cultivators and gatherers, the men were dedicated to hunting, fishing, singing, music, dancing with masks, sculpture and, above all, religion. The beginning of agriculture produced a concentration of groups of humans in the places most suited to cultivation. Cultivation allowed for a greater concentration of population because of the new source of food, which was followed by a certain homogenisation. The needs of the crop stimulated observation of the lunar cycles, astronomical and meteorological observations. It was essential to foresee the times at which the principal agricultural operations had to be carried out. These peoples studied the movements of the stars, the Pleiades, the solstices, the equinoxes, the passage of the sun at the zenith and the connections between the movements of the stars, the sun and the phases of the moon. The progress of the calendar and astronomic observation went in parallel with that of cultivation. I shall dwell on the study of this stage for its strategic importance. It reflects very clearly the venerable hunter paradigm: violent death is followed by life. This same pattern is maintained in the new stage, but with an extended application. The principle that life follows violent death will be applied now to the tubers which are cut up and buried so that they may produce fruit. It is extended to the corncobs, from which the grains have to be stripped and buried to give place to new plants. From there it will extend to the fruits of the trees and to all the fruits and plant products. The hunter model, constructed and verified since man became man, in its horticultural extension, will be prolonged for thousands of years more and will extend, now as fully agrarian cultures, to large percentages of population, until our own day. It is barely two decades since it entered into a definitive crisis in developed Europe. I shall set out some examples of the horticultural mythologies of peoples distanced in time and space, so that they could hardly have influenced each other. 41
In the Maya-quich mythology

The Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya-quichs, describes the various states of culture of human beings. In the second and third stages it speaks of the horticultural epoch. The mythology of the Popol-Vuh is rich and complex. I shall only summarise here one narration in which the profound structure of its mythology is particularly clear. The Ahp are divinities of a solar nature and they are seven. They correspond to the four solstice points, the four extreme positions of sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstice, plus the two points of sunrise and sunset at its passing by the zenith and the suns position at the centre of the zenith. The Popol-Vuh tells how the seven Ahp descended to the heart of the earth, where they were humanised. Falling to earth they became terrestrial gods and were associated with the earth divinity. The Ahp went to play ball game on the road from Xibalb, the underworld, and there they were heard by Hun-Cam and Gukup-Cam, beings of the inferno. The lords of the subterranean regions were disturbed by the noise made by the Ahp on the earth, and they challenged them to a ball game in their estates. This was a challenge to strong antagonists. The Xibalb could not bear that there could be anyone greater or more powerful than they. They sent four owls as messengers to the Ahp. When the owls arrived at the place of the game, they delivered to the Ahp the order from the Cam, the infernal lords, in the following terms: My lords say that you must go to the place where they live, to play with them; take with you your instruments for the game, the launchers, the gloves and the ball. The intention of the lords of Xibalb was to strip the Ahp of their elements of splendour, their divine attributes. Contrary to the orders of the Cam, the Ahp, before going to the Xibalb, removed their attributes of splendour. They piled them up and put them in a corner of their house, in order to keep them safe. Thus they protected themselves from the perfidious intentions of the Cam, who now could kill them but could not remove from them the attributes of their rank. They went down, guided by the owls of the Xibalb, though a very rough terrain. Then, near a river, they found the entrance to a grotto. They had arrived at the gates of the inferno, which separate the surface of the earth from the underground regions. After crossing the four rivers of the inferno, without anything happening, the travellers found themselves at a point where four roads crossed. They 42
thought they were lost because they did not know which road to take. One road was red, another white, another black and another yellow. The black road spoke, saying I am the road of the Lord. They took this road and it led them to the residence of the great chief of the Xibalb where they met their ruin. Since the Ahp had removed their solar attributes, they had lost their magic power and easily fell in the hands of the Xibalb. From the moment that they took off their attributes, they were beaten in advance. After a series of trials designed to bring out the character of the Ahp as agrarian divinities, they were decapitated and cut into pieces. The pieces were buried and their heads were hung from a tree. The pieces of flesh buried of the Ahp became tubers, and their heads hung on the tree into guacamoles. They were transformed into edible plants and tree fruits. The violent death of these victims, primitive, prestigious because they were solar divinities come to this world, was followed by the basic good of the horticultural culture.2
In the Desana mythology

The Desana live in the equatorial forests of the River Vaups, in the Amazon region of Colombia. Their main area is the Papur basin, extending as far as the River Tiqui, in Brazil. From the Desana mythology I will speak only of what refers to the equivalence between killing and copulation. This equivalence is found in all the agricultures, although not always as explicitly as in the Desana culture. To kill the animals is like copulating with them, and to copulate with the woman is like killing her. Informants tell that the animals are like coquettish girls. For the animals to come to the hunter, he has to appear sexually attractive. To achieve this power of seduction, the hunters must have abstained from sex and, in consequence, go hunting in a state of latent excitement; they have to be physically pure, which they achieve by baths, vomiting and fasting. Their weapons must be ritually purified. They must perfume themselves with aromatic plants. They must decorate their faces with painting. They use
2. Recinos, Adrin: Popol Vuh. Las antiguas historias del Quich. 1952, F.C.E. (4th Ed. 8th printing) Mexico. P. 50. and Girard, Raphal: Le Popol Vuh. Histoire culturelle des Maya-Quich. 1974. Paris, Payot, P. 78
43
special amulets and special formulas for love. Every hunter must prepare himself for love, and with this attitude go hunting. If they did not abstain from sex for at least a day before the hunt, not just not copulating, but also avoiding erotic dreams, the animals would feel jealous and deceived. On the contrary, the hunter who has not had sexual relations can count on the sympathy of the animals. The aromatic plants used and the way of using them corresponds, in detail, to the magic practices of love which the men use to pay court to the women. The hunter carries his special paint with him during the day so that he can refresh or repair his decoration, when necessary. When the hunter gets a kill, he speaks to the animal, carefully observing its sexual organs and commenting on their size and shape. Every hunted animal becomes female. For the Desana, hunting is copulating. But the hunters, on their expeditions, have to be very careful, because the females of the animals will try to seduce them in dreams. If they are successful, then when the hunters go home, they will die. If killing and copulating are equivalent, we can see that the man-woman relationship will be seen as a hunt and that the hunter-hunted relationship will be parental. The animals are incarnations of men who have been condemned for their conduct to go to the hills where Wai-maxs, the master of the animals, lives. For this reason, killing animals is killing persons, says the informant. Fishermen act in the same way as the hunters. Wai-maxs pursues the women, especially pre-pubescent girls, and tries to find an opportunity to violate them. He also pursues anyone who dares to go alone through the forest or along the banks of the rivers. He sends them into a deep sleep and while they are asleep he can copulate with them. His victims do not realise what has happened and only believe that they have dreamt of having sexual relations, but a little later they die. In the part of the river where this has happened many fish appear. If the violation has taken place near a hill, more game appears all around.3
In the mythology of the Marind-anim
Let us see now some narrations from the Marind-anim, a people of the south coast of Irian, in the part of New Guinea which belongs to Indonesia.
3. Conf. Reichel-Dolmatoff, G.: Desana. Le symbolisme universel des indiens Tukano du Vaups. 1968. Paris, Gallimard.
44
The interesting point of the mythology of this region is the notion of Dema. Dema is not a god, he is a primitive personality, a proto-victim from whom, through his violent death, comes all the wealth of the culture. Dema is not a creator, although the wealth of the culture comes from him. He himself, transformed, is the wealth of the culture. From the violently killed Demas come the whole order of the world of humans: edible and useful plants, animals, the world of the dead, the heavenly bodies, the moon, mankind and the human order, all the riches of the culture. The Demas are present, not as lords of the cosmos, but as the cosmos itself. The humans do not pray to them as gods, but their religious attitude to them consists in continually re-enacting, through rites and myths, the creative event of the death of the Dema and the creation of all things from these deaths. Let us see a narration on some particular Dema. The Dema Geb was ugly and hairy because his whole body was covered with smallpox, so that no woman would love him. One day Geb was fishing and he saw some girls coming towards him, so he hid from them by burying himself in the sand, because he was ashamed of the ugliness of his body. The girls dug him up. People came from the village and with digging sticks and coconut openers they cleaned his body, scraping off all the dirt. At dusk the men dragged him to the forest, abused him sexually and smeared his whole body with sperm. With this his injuries were cured and his body appeared clean again. During the night when Geb was confined, a banana tree grew from his body and by the morning it already bore fruit. Geb, whom they always kept confined, was subjected to frequent abuse by the men of the village, until one night he lifted up the roof of the house and from there, using a branch of a yam, he rose up to heaven, where he still is today as the moon. This myth also illustrates the equivalence, underlined by the Desana, of copulating and killing. The Dema Jawi introduces the coconut palm and death. Dema Jawi was born from a great snake. Two girls took charge of the child. The boy Jawi grew up very handsome and was much loved by everyone. The Dema Aramemb heard about it and wanted to steal the boy. To do this he made some human simulacrums with the veins of jagua tree leaves and hung them with all kinds of ornaments, such as had never yet been seen on earth. The people of the village, full of wonder at these things they had never seen before, did not notice that Aramemb, meanwhile, had kidnapped Jawi. In Aramembs home, Jawi seduced his adoptive mother, Aramembs wife. Aramemb decided to kill him. He prepared Jawis death carefully. While he 45
was doing this he repented and went to find curative plants to bring Jawi back to life after he had killed him. While Aramemb was fetching the plants, Jawi died and was buried; and when Aramemb arrived and heard of this, he was full of fury and gave the curative plants to a snake. If he had given the medicine to Jawi in time, he would not have died and neither would humans have to die but, like the snake, would only have to change their skin. By night, while they intoned the gaga song, a coconut palm was born from Jawis head. At the same time as the first coconut palm appeared from Jawis head, but in another place, the first pig was created by the death of Dema Nazr. In these stories also violent death is linked with copulation.4
In the Wemale myths and rites

In the west of the island of Ceram, the largest of the Moluccas, which are between New Guinea and Celebes Island, live two human groups: the Alune and the Wemale. The myths we narrate now are from the Wemale. The myth speaks of female figures, three marriageable girls (mula). All three suffered the same fate and seem to be three forms of the same entity. Of Mula Satene nothing more is said than that she came from an unripe banana fruit. Of Mula Hainuwele, which means coconut palm, the myth speaks more extensively. When the nine families emigrated from Nunusaku, the mythical mountain where human beings first appeared, they stopped in various places in the west of Ceram and went to a sacred place called Tamene Siwa (place of sacred dances) in the forest between Ahiolo and Waraloin. Among the men there lived then one called Ameta (which means dark, black, night) who was unmarried and had no child. Ameta went hunting one day with his dog. In the forest the dog smelt a pig and chased it until he came to a pool. The pig jumped into the pool while the dog stayed on the bank. Soon the pig could not go on swimming and it drowned. Meanwhile Ameta arrived and fished out the drowned pig. In its mouth was a coconut. At that time, there were no coconuts on the earth. Ameta put the coconut on a shelf in his house and covered it with a Saronj Patola (a cloth decorated with figures of snakes). Ameta went to sleep and had
3. Conf. Jensen, Ad. E.: Mythos und Kult bei Naturvlkern. Religionswissenschaftliche Betrachtumgen. 1960 Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag. and Die gettete Gottheit: Weltbild einer frhen Kultur. 1974 Stuttgart. Kohlhammer.
46
a dream in which a man came towards him and said, The coconut which you have on the shelf covered with the Saronj, you must plant it in the earth because it is already germinating. In the morning Ameta took the coconut and planted it in the earth. Three days later the palm tree had already grown. Three days more and the palm tree flowered. Ameta climbed up it to cut the flowers with which he wanted to make a drink. While he was doing this he cut his finger and his blood fell onto the palm tree flowers. Three days later Ameta went back and saw that his blood had mixed with the sap of the palm leaves and that a human figure had emerged from it. The face was already formed. Three days more and the body was formed and another three days later a young girl had already emerged from the drops of blood. During the night, in dreams, he was approached again by the man from the first dream who said, take the Saronj Patola and wrap it carefully round the girl and take her from the coconut palm to your house. The next day in the morning Ameta went there and did what he had been told. He brought the little girl home and called her Hainuwele. Hainuwele grew quickly and after three days she had become marriageable (mula). But Hainuwele was not like other humans; when she defecated, her excrement took the form of precious objects such as Chinese plates and gongs. Her father, Ameta, became very rich. At that time a great dance, the Maro dance, took place on Tamene Siwa and lasted nine nights. The nine families all took part in the dance. When they danced they made a spiral of nine turns. The women sat in the centre of the spirals and gave the men betel nuts to chew, mixed with lime and wrapped in Sirih leaves. Hainuwele was in the centre, giving Sirih and Pinang to the dancers. At dawn the dance came to an end and everyone went to sleep. At the start of the second night, they all met in another place, because the Maro dance, which lasts nine nights, must be danced each night in a different place. Again Hainuwele was in the centre and gave out Sirih and Pinang. But when the dancers asked her for Sirih she gave them corals. The men found the corals very beautiful. Everyone, dancers and non-dancers, went to Hainuwele to ask her for Sirih and Pinang and they all received corals. Again the dance lasted until daybreak, when they all went to sleep. The next night they went to another place and Hainuwele was in the centre to distribute Sirih and Pinang. Everybody received one. The fourth night they received large and beautiful plates. On the fifth night Hainuwele gave them big forest knives. On the sixth she gave them copper boxes with Sirih. On the seventh, gold earrings. On the eighth, beautiful gongs. Thus, night by night, the value of Hainuweles gifts grew more and more. 47
The men found this rather troubling. They met to discuss it. They were very envious that Hainuwele should distribute such riches and they decided to kill her. On the ninth night of the great Maro dance, Hainuwele was again in the centre, as usual, to distribute Sirih. The men had made a great hole in the centre of the place. In the innermost circle of the spiral that night, the Lesiela family was dancing. During the slow movements of the spiral the dancers pushed the girl Hainuwele towards the hole and threw her into it. The loud voices of the Maro song drowned the girls cries. They shoved earth over her. The dancers stamped hard in the steps of the dance over the body of Hainuwele. At dawn the dance was finished and they all went home. When Hainuwele did not come home after the dance, her father, Ameta, understood that she had been killed. He took nine little branches of Uli (a bush used for divining) and made with them, in his house, the nine circles of the Maro dance. Then he knew that Hainuwele had been killed in the place of the dance. He took nine strips of coconut palm leaves and went with them to the place where the dance had been. He nailed the strips one after the other on the earth. With the ninth he came to the innermost circle which the Maro dancers had made in their dance. When he pulled out the nails they had hair and blood from Hainuweles head on them. He dug up the body and cut it into many pieces. He buried each of the pieces in the region around the dance place. He only kept unburied Hainuweles arms which he took to Mula Satene, the woman who, since the creation of men, had emerged from an unripe banana fruit and was the supreme lady of all men. Ameta fled away from the humans and Mula Satene was angry with them because they had killed Hainuwele. Satene built in a special place on Tamene Siwa a great door which was formed in a spiral of nine turns, just like the spiral which the dancers make in their dance. Mula Satene set herself on a large tree trunk at one side of the great door, holding in her hands Hainuweles two cut-off arms, one in each hand. Then she called all the men to the great door and said to them, I do not want to live among you any more because you have killed. Today I shall go away. Now you will have to pass through the door and come to me. He who passes through the door will remain a man, he who does not, will be something else. The men all tried to go through the spiral door, but not all managed to do it. Those who did not reach Mula Satene were transformed into animals and spirits. Thus were created pigs, deer, birds, fish and the many spirits who live in the earth. Of the men who did get to Mula Satene through the door, some came to the right and others to the left of the tree trunk. Satene struck these or those with one or the other of Hainuweles arms. Those who came to her on the left had to jump over five trunks of bamboo. From these men come the 48
Patalima, the fifth men. Those who came by the right had to jump over nine bamboo trunks. From these men come the Patasiwa, the ninth men. Satene then said to the men: Today I am going away and you will not see me again on earth. Only when you are dead will you see me again. Even then you will have to make a difficult journey before you come to me. Mula Satene disappeared from the earth and since then she has lived, like Situ in Salahna, on the mountain of the dead in the west of Ceram. Anyone who wants to go to her must first die. The road to Salahna passes by eight mountains in which live spirits such as Nitu. Since that time there have been, as well as men, spirits and animals on the earth. And since then men have been divided between Patasiwa and Patalima. A variant of the myth tells how Hainuweles father went from house to house with the pieces of her body, saying to the people, you have killed her, now you must eat her. Of the third girl, Mula Rabie, the myth tells that the sun-man, Tuwale, wanted her for his wife. As the girls clan opposed this idea, Tuwale stole her away and buried her among the roots of a tree. All the mens efforts to save the girl and dig her up were no good as she became buried more and more deeply. When she was buried up to the neck, she said to her mother, It was Tuwale who took me away. Kill a pig and have a feast because I am dying now. After three days, at dusk, look towards heaven. There I will appear to you all as the moon. And so the moon appeared and the feast of the dead was established. The relatives killed the pig and held a feast for three days. Then for the first time they saw the full moon in the east. The cults are a reproduction of the myths. In the west of Ceram two secret societies are in charge of these cults: the Kakihau and the Wapulane. Their ceremonies are initiations. These initiations are journeys to the world of the dead and a difficult step through the door which leads to Satene. The initiates must live with the dead in the dark part of the ritual house and in the forest. They must hold bloody ritual combats. Ritual head hunting used to be practised and although cannibalism is not recorded, it is suggested by the myth, you have killed her, now you must eat her.
In the Aztec mythology

Let us move now to another distant part of the planet. We will look at the Aztec myth of the creation of heaven and earth. 49
Some other gods said that the earth was created in this way: two gods, Quetzalcalt and Tezcatlipoca, came down from heaven to the goddess of the earth. This goddess was called Tealteutli, in other contexts she is identified with the moon goddess. Her joints were completely full of eyes and mouths, with which she bit like a wild beast. Before they came down there was already water, but no one knew who had created it, and the goddess walked on it. Seeing this, the gods said one to another: we have to make the land. And saying this they both became large snakes, which gripped the goddess, one by the right hand and left foot and the other by the left hand and right foot and they pulled so hard that she broke in half. From one half they made the earth, they took the other half up to heaven, and made all the remaining gods from it. To compensate the goddess of the earth for the damage that the gods had caused her, they came down from heaven to comfort her and ordered that all the fruits needed for the life of humans should come from her. Thus they made from her hair: trees, flowers and herbs; from her skin: small herbs and small flowers; from her eyes: fountains, wells and little caverns; from her mouth: rivers and large caverns; from her nose: mountain valleys; from her shoulders: mountains. At night she often cried because she wanted to eat the hearts of men, and she would not stop until she was given them, nor did she want to give any more fruits until she was satiated with human blood. Let us now look at the myth of the creation of human beings. Quetzalcalt made a journey to the region of dead, Mictlan, to search for the precious bones which he would use for the formation of men. The myth says: [...] the gods were summoned. They said: -who will live on the earth? because the foundations of heaven have been made and the foundations of the earth have been made. Who will live on the earth, oh gods? [] And then Quetzalcalt went to Mictlan, he went to Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihualt, (god and gods of the underworld) and then he said to them: 50
-I come in search of the precious bones, which you guard, I am coming to take them. And Mictlantecuhtli said to him: -What will you do with them, Quetzalcalt? -The gods are concerned for someone to live on the earth. Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the region of the dead, tried to stop Quetzalcalt from taking away the bones of past generations. But Quetzalcalt was helped by his nahual, the phantom, and by the worms and wild bees, and was able to take away the precious bones. The myth goes on: But then he arose he took the precious bones. The bones of men were together on one side, and those of women together on the other side, and he took them and made with them a bundle. And again Mictlantecuhtli said to his servants: -Gods, is it true that Quetzalcalt has taken the precious bones? Gods, go and make a hole. Then they went to do it, and Quetzalcalt fell into the hole, he tripped and was frightened by the quails. He fell dead and the precious bones were scattered there, which the quails bit and gnawed. Then Quetzalcalt was revived, he was upset and said to his nahual: -What shall I do, my nahual? -Since things have gone badly, be it as it may. He collected them, put them together, made a bundle with them, which he then took to Tamoachan. And as soon as he arrived, the being called Quilaztli, which is Cihuacatl, milled them 51
and put them in a precious receptacle. Quetzalcalt bled his member over it. And then the gods did penitence. And they said -Oh gods, they have been born those macehaules (men) (deserved by the penitence). Because for us the gods did penitence. The myth of the creation of maize is as follows: All the gods came down from heaven to a cave where a god called Piltzintcultli was sleeping with a goddess called Xochiqutzal. (The cave is in the mythical west, Tamoanchan. The paired gods are the young sun and the young moon). The goddess bore Tzentotl, the god of maize, whom she put under the earth. From his hair came cotton, from one of his eyes came a very good seed, from his other eye, another, from his nose another seed called chan, from his fingers came a fruit called camote, the sweet potato, from his nails came other kinds of large maize, and from the rest of his body came many other fruits, which the men gathered and sowed. For all this, this god was more loved than the other gods and was called beloved lord. I will now give an abbreviated account of the Aztec myth of the creation of the fifth sun and fifth moon, which shine on todays humanity. Before there was day in the world, the gods came together in that place which is called Teotihuacan. They said to each other, Who will take charge of lighting the world? Then the god called Tecuciztcatl (of the land of the marine basin) answered these words and said, I will take charge of lighting the world. Then the gods spoke again and they said, Who will be another? And they looked at each other and began to debate as to who would be the other, but none of them dared to offer himself for this job; they were all afraid and made excuses. One of the gods, who had not been considered and who was affected with buboes, did not speak but he heard what the other gods said; and the others spoke to him and said, You be the one who lights the world, Nanahuatzin, little 52
spotty one. And he willingly obeyed them and answered, with thanks I receive the orders you give me, let it be so. The myth goes on to tell how both gods prepared themselves, doing penance, to take on the task of throwing themselves into a fire and emerging from it transformed into a sun. They made the ritual offerings with branches of fir trees and balls of hay in which they had to put thorns from the maguey tree. The penance was to perforate their ears, arms and thighs with a bone dagger; then they put blood on the maguey thorns and put them into the balls of hay. Tecuciztcatl offered quetzal feathers instead of fir tree branches and golden balls with thorns made of precious stones. Instead of stabbing himself and offering his own blood, he simply presented his thorns made of coral. Nanahautzin, on the other hand, bled a lot and offered real fir tree branches and sharp maguey thorns. When the moment of sacrifice came, the two gods being ready to throw themselves into the fire, Tecuciztcatl was the first to try. But the arrogant god tried four times and every time he was afraid. In not burning to death, Tecuciztcatl lost the chance to become a sun. Then humble Nanahuatzin took his turn. All the gods gathered together in Teotihuacan watched the scene. Nanahuatzin closed his eyes and threw himself into the fire until he was consumed in it, and his destiny was to become the sun of the fifth age. Desperately Tecuciztcatl then threw himself into the fire, but he was too late and so his destiny was only to become the moon. After the sacrifice, the various gods who were there settled down to wait for the sunrise. Quetzalcalt and several others discovered it in the end to the east. It appeared resplendent, throwing rays from itself. A little later the moon appeared behind the sun, also in the east. To prevent the sun and moon from being together always, one of the gods took a rabbit and threw it at the moon, so that it would only shine at night. For the gods gathered together in Teotihuacan there still remained one last problem to be settled. Neither the sun nor the moon moved. Then the gods said, The sun is not moving how, in truth, shall we make the people live? For the sun to be strengthening by our means, let us sacrifice ourselves, let us all die. The gods freely accepted their death, sacrificing themselves, so that the sun would move and so make human life possible. With the sun finally moving, 53
days and nights began. Humans had deserved their life thanks to the gods self-sacrifice. For this reason, human beings had to call themselves henceforth macehuales, which means deserving.5
In the Inca mythology

Let us take a brief look at some of the Inca mythology. In the beginning there was no food for the man and woman whom Pachacamac had created. The man died of hunger and the woman was left alone the woman prayed to the Sun with many tears and sighs, saying to it, beloved creator, why did you bring me into the light of the world if it was to kill me with poverty and consume me with hunger?... The Sun heard her and felt sorry, consoled her and told her to go on digging roots; and, busy doing this, he infused her with his rays and she conceived a child which at the end of four days, with great pain, she bore, sure that her happiness would be great and food would be plentiful. But it turned out quite different from what she so much desired because the god Pachacamac, angry that she had given the Sun the adoration that was due to him and that she had borne her son as a slight to him, picked up the baby and killed him and cut him up. But Pachacamac, so that no one would complain again, and so that need would not oblige the supreme adoration to be given to anyone else but him, sowed the teeth of the dead child and so maize was born, the type of maize seed which is like teeth; he sowed the ribs and bones and thus the yuccas were born and those other fruits which are roots. From the flesh of the dead child came cucumbers, papayas and the other fruits and trees. Since then men have not known hunger or wept for need, and they owe their sustenance and abundance to Pachacamac. Since then the fertility of the earth has been such that there has never been hunger, to the point of posterity.6
5. Conf. Len Portilla, Miguel: Los antiguos mexicanos a travs de sus crnicas y cantares. 1961, Mexico, F.C.E.; and Krickeberg, Walter: Mitos y leyendas de los Aztecas, Incas, Mayas y Muiscas. 1971, Mexico, F.C.E.; and by the same author: Etnologa de Amrica. 1974, Mexico, F.C.E 6. Conf. Krickeberg, W.: Mitos y leyendas de los Aztecas, los Incas, Mayas y Muiscas. 1971, Mexico, F.C.E.
54
In the Kanaka rituals

To end this section I come to the sacramental respect with which the Kanakas in Melanesia treat the yam. When a Kanaka takes a yam in his hands he does it with the seriousness of taking up a sacred object. He bows over it, looks for the most solid part of the substance of the big tuber and puts his hand under the end which he calls the head, to support it well and prevent it from breaking under its own weight. Picking up a yam requires the gentleness and tenderness with which a woman takes up her child. The yam is something human; born in the earth, where the forebears were dissolved, it is the flesh of the ancestors. In the feast of the first fruits, yams are adorned as though they were people; they are given hats and decorated with shells and magic plants. They are eaten solemnly and in silence, because it would not be respectful to talk at the same time. The yams are transformed, in their turn, into the flesh of men, their virility and their strength. At weddings, at wakes, for contracts and when messengers are received, yams are eaten as the element which gives life to everything that is undertaken, as a seal and confirmation of the commitments. The old yam gives birth to the new; the new fortifies the flesh of the man; the mans virility strengthens the world. A mans death takes him into the earth with the old yams, his forebears. The mans cycle of existence is enclosed within the cycle of the yam.7 This mythologem is still to be found, that from violent death comes being and life, in legends of ritual sacrifice for the solid foundations of great architectural constructions. In nearly all European countries there are legends which tell of the sacrifice of maidens, buried in the foundations of castles and churches.8 The proto-victim, the Dema, through his violent death, is the origin of all things; although transformed, he is all things. The sacred nature of the source of reality pervades everything. Going through these mythological narrations, one can appreciate clearly what is the surface of the narration, its superficial structure, and what is the profound structure. The narrative structures differ greatly, as we have been able to see, but the profound structures are identical.
7.Conf. Leenhardt, Maurice: Do Kamo. La personne et le mythe dans le monde mlansien. 1974, Paris, Gallimard. 8. For a more detailed explanation of the agriculture mythologies, conf. M. Corb: Anlisis epistemolgico de las configuraciones axiolgicas humanas. Ed. Universidad de Salamanca, 1983. pp. 221-308.
55
Also the provenance of the profound structure of these mythologies becomes clear: the central action which the groups have to take in order to survive, kill violently to have existence and life, becomes the central metaphor from which the whole of life is ordered and the interpretation, evaluation of reality are constructed and religion is built up. It is of great importance, to understand our history and how our interpretation systems, life systems and religions were created, to be able to study the transition from the hunter model or paradigm to the primitive agrarian model. To be able to see how the central hunting metaphor, from violent death comes being and life, is transferred to the world of cultivation of plants. This transfer has remained valid almost until our own days. For these societies, as well as for the hunters, everything that has being and life comes from violent death. Copulation and violation are, for these cultures, equivalent to a violent death. Everything originated from an assassinated Dema, a proto-victim, from the death of a being of the illo tempore. Even the new Chinese goods, such as plates, gongs, jewels and knives which come to these peoples, are interpreted on the same pattern as the rest.
The structure of cultures in irrigation farming societies General considerations

The transition from hunting and agriculture societies to agrarian-authoritarian societies was one of the most traumatic moments in the history of our species. The peoples who had to control great masses of water, great rivers, in order to be able to cultivate, had to construct colossal labour, social, political and religious structures, which meant an enormous transformation of the relationships of men with nature and among themselves. In the thousands and thousands of years which preceded the appearance of this type of culture, there had never been changes so radical or drastic, in all the fields of human life. Irrigation farming intensified cultivation and multiplied production, but required large rivers to be controlled in rising and in flood. They had to fight against a scarcity and against an excess of water. This required large numbers of men to work in collaboration, with coordination, division of tasks, etc. They had to control the waters, prepare the cultivation, take care of the growth and protect the crops and harvests. 56
In Mesopotamia, occasional floods damaged the plains, densely populated and cultivated. In Upper Egypt, the Nile, when it rises very high, reaches a metre above the level of the inhabited area; in Middle Egypt, two metres and in the Delta, up to three metres and a half. Irrigation channels and protections against flooding had to be constructed and cleaned regularly. Getting everybody to cooperate in the same task involved a planned integration, all the more so the greater were the objectives and the human teams. The personnel needed for each job had to be planned, where to find this personnel, the quotas of collaboration demandable, selection and the criterion for it. The selection had to be notified and the work forces mobilised. The personnel had to be deployed in adequate numbers for each task. The work had to be disciplined, auxiliary works organised, such as the supply of materials, straw, firewood, timber, stones, earth. The supply of food and drink had to be organised and transport and distribution. In short, it needed a complex organisation. Also accumulated experience was needed, the capacity to forecast and calculate. Specialised personnel were needed to take charge of initiating, undertaking and preserving the great hydraulic works. And these specialists had to have the necessary knowledge and power of coercion. All this required forces capable of exercising coercion and defending the constructions and harvests against enemies. This concluded in the conjunction of power, knowledge and the capacity of coercion. It all required a complex bureaucracy. Networks of communication needed to be set up and maintained between the power centre and the subordinate centres, for the transmission of orders, transfer of officials and despatches, movement of troops, etc. Effective control of power is impossible without very detailed control of communications; and rapid communications, through a system of staging posts and relays. The monopoly of power and social control meant the monopoly of rapid communication. It required a huge planned and sustained effort to maintain these complex imperial systems. The monopoly of social control and of the coordination of efforts and organisation was, also and necessarily, military control over the mass of the population in order to coordinate action in times of war. The state could not carry out all these enterprises without adequate income. The agrarian state had a monopoly over the treasury, the power to force everyone to contribute through forced labour in public fields, in kind or in cash. All this required an extensive bureaucracy which exercised the monopoly of control and social leadership, because no craftsmen, merchants or landholders 57
had any power of organisation. The authority of the irrigation farming society did not allow conspicuous rivals to be bureaucratically organised. The bureaucracy was monopolistic. The authority imposed the laws unilaterally and had liberty to change the rules at any time. The authority gave the laws and was the only judge Against the central power there were no independent units of power capable of controlling that power. There was a monopoly of propaganda. Autonomous centres which might criticise the power were not tolerated. There was absolute monopoly of coercion. In such a society, obedience was the condition for cultivation; obedience was the basis itself of the social organisation. Everything was rigidly structured hierarchically, even the family. The power was not able to accept autonomous religious centres, so that priests were an important part of the bureaucracy. The priestly bodies were integrated into the state administration. The pharaoh or monarch was the sole political, bureaucratic, military and religious authority. The concentric power system did not tolerate independent sources of power, but absorbed them all, including religion. There was no organisational force which did not belong to the state, and no predominant religion other than that of the state. For this reason the state did not accept private property which could become an autonomous centre of power and of autonomous organisation. By means of confiscation, laws on inheritance and other procedures the state regularly diluted the accumulation of property. Rural property ownership lasted while the bureaucratic post lasted. The craftsmen served the authority and large scale trade was state business. Neither craftsmen nor traders could organise themselves in a way that was politically active. The constructional power of this type of society was applied, besides the hydraulic constructions (channels, aqueducts, tanks, dams and irrigation dykes), to protective installations (drainage channels and dykes for flood control), to navigation channels, walls and other defensive works, roads, capitals and palaces, tombs, temples, etc. In a society as highly hierarchical as this, every social relationship, even within the family, was a relationship of degrees of power. The central virtue of this society was obedience, submission. The central occupation in the irrigation farming societies, on which depended the cultivation and, therefore, life, was working together under an authority. The mandate/obedience relationship was the basic action on which depended the being and life of the people and of each individual. 58
The condition for the life of the people and of each individual was submission to the mandate. This central action, submission, on which depended primarily the being and life, became the central metaphor which ordered all levels of understanding, evaluation, organisation and action in the life of men in these societies. From this pattern of understanding, for being and life to exist there was no need to pass through death. Life and prosperity were the presence of power; first of all from the divine mandate and then, following or forming an indissoluble unit with the divine mandate, the mandate of political authority. The mandate, both the divine and that of the monarch, was not a moral force, but a physical presence of power which had to be obeyed. The divine mandate gave existence and life; the human mandate was interpreted from the same pattern. Receiving the mandate from a superior was to receive power and capacity, not merely moral or juridical but physical, for action. Accepting an order was to accept a participation in being; not receiving it was to be locked out from being and life. The vehicles of authority were the vehicles of transmission of life. In this interpretation of the mandate/obedience relationship, the traditional idea of sin fits in as an ontological opposition to the divinity and life. The mandate was a species of ontological virtus of power, an emanation of that virtus. To obey was to receive that power and to receive life with it; it was the transformation from not-being to being, from no-life to life. Anyone who did not obey engendered death in himself. Those who obeyed had a relationship with the power of being of the supreme god and the authority. The plenitude of social power was the plenitude of being. The summit of power was the seat of ontological plenitude. The highest authority was the highest being. The plenitude of being, therefore, was conceived as majesty. All being was obedience, every living creatures position was that of servitude. The qualitative and ontological interpretation of the mandate/obedience relationship meant that the seat of the social authority was also the seat of the plenitude of being. The authoritarian places became hierophantic places. All these conceptions are logical, seen from the perspective of the central action which becomes the central metaphor. For these societies, the mandate-obedience relationship was the first and fundamental condition for the possibility of cultivation and, therefore, for life. Obedience to the mandate was being and life for the people. The conversion of this experience into a metaphor leads to interpreting that all that has being and life is obedience, having the virtus which power transmits to it. If all being is the reception of a mandate, the entire cosmos is a hierarchical structure. Every being is a point in the cosmic hierarchy and every being is the bearer of a divine order. Beings are the expression of the divine will. 59
The mandate/obedience relationship was a qualitative and ontological relationship. The strictly hierarchical organisation of society, at all its levels, was not only an effective organisation but a vehicle for the transmission of the power of being, from the source to the outer ends. For this reason the power tended to embrace everything and leave nothing outside its control. The mandate/obedience relationship, taken as an ontological transmission, is equivalent to the emission/reception relationship. This is a schema containing fewer configurations and will be useful to us in understanding the various mythological ways of representing this relationship. Clearly, this authoritarian conception invaded totally any man/ woman relationship and the relationships of parents with their children and even the relationships between siblings. Everything in their lives had to be hierarchical: work was submission to those who commanded, morality was submission to what was established by the authority, truth was the acceptance of what was revealed. Creation will be conceived as the emission of a divine mandate and as reception of this mandate. It will be an emission/reception relationship which will be represented either as a divine order, let it be, or as an emanation, or a birth, or a craft work, etc. From this authoritarian conception, death is separate from the supreme authority. If the seat of authority is the source of life, whoever simply commands, whoever possesses majesty with no mixture of submission, has no death. The seat of all emission, the non-receiver, cannot die, is immortal. Only those who are subject to obedience, to reception, can die. Thus the gods are immortal and the supreme political authority, in one way or another, tends to become immortal, at least as a function. The immortality of the gods depends, then, on the emission/reception schema, which comes from working conditions. It is true that there are hierarchies among the gods and that, therefore, there are emitters and receivers, but even so, taken as a group, they are the lords. Therefore, insofar as the divine is taken as the seat of authority, as the source of all and the origin of every mandate, it is set apart from death, it is made immortal. Death is either a decision of the gods, the authority, or is the absence of reception of the divine mandate, the interruption of emission of the virtus which comes from the supreme majesty. From the cycles of the heavenly bodies they can deduce the rising of the rivers, when it is time to sow the seed, harvest, etc. The heavens issue orders, their cycles and processes are laws. From this two things are concluded: the importance of observation of the heavens in order to submit to the orders and 60
the essential relationship of the heavenly bodies and the heavens with the supreme divine and social authority. For these societies, the perfect life is a fully obedient life. The entire cosmos is an authoritarian structure. The ontology is an ontology of majesty. What we have seen so far is the first central metaphor, the first pattern or paradigm of interpretation, evaluation, organisation, action and way of living and conceiving the sacred dimension of life: the authority and submission to that authority is the source of being and of life. But the hierarchical organisation of this type of society was in order to be able to cultivate. The great majority of the society lived by cultivating the earth. For people who lived from cultivation farmers and the whole of society because all of them, directly or indirectly, lived from cultivation the central experience of their lives, the central action, was to sow and then await the harvest, burying the grains so that they would be fruitful. The central action and the central experience was the same as that of the hunters and the horticulturalists that from death comes life. From the death of nature in winter, life arises in the spring. From the death of the sun on the horizon and its passage through the body of the earth (as they thought), comes the new day. From the floods comes the earths fertility. The stars regularly die on the horizon to be reborn. The moon dies and is reborn regularly. The human being has life because his forebears died; and will be reborn to a new life after because is buried. Even the gods pass, in one way or another, as we shall see, through death. All the agrarian divinities pass through death and are reborn. The moral dimension must accept pain and death. Religious initiation also requires a symbolic and ritual passage through death. Death is seen as a qualitatively negative step, but necessary; and for this reason it is accepted with resignation and hope, because this step through death is followed by abundant life. Consequently, the old model of death is followed by life was still valid in the agrarian-authoritarian societies. This action, also central, generates a second central metaphor which will be the pattern of interpretation, evaluation, way of life and, also, the way of conceiving, representing and experiencing the absolute dimension of our experience of reality. How will these two models be structured among themselves? They have to be so in order to form a single complex paradigm, because the society which they programme is one. If they do not join together, society will split into two blocks: the authority, the bureaucrats, the priests and the army on one side, and the cultivators on the other. This split would make the authority useless and the cultivation impossible. 61
To verify how this complex model is articulated, we need a strategy which we have already mentioned and used: we will analyse the semantic structure of the figures of the supreme gods and their relationship with the central rituals. The articulation of the two central metaphors into one unit, a single complex pattern, is most ingenious. The myths say that the Supreme God is the Supreme Lord. This Supreme Lord has an associate (the forms of association varied). This Associated Divinity will descend to the earth through obedience, and there will die. It will pass through the tomb (the underworld) and will rise from the dead. The reborn will be seated to the right of the Supreme Lord. This configuration says: from the perspective of the first pattern of interpretation, that of mandate/obedience, death is sterile, as we have seen, only the divine mandate is the source of being and life. For the second pattern of interpretation, death is followed by life to continue valid, required the Lord to make death fruitful by an order. The mandate will be that a God descends to the earth, through obedience, and dies. His death by obedience will make the death fruitful. This new fertility of death will be demonstrated with the resurrection of the God. The resurrected God will be raised to the right of the Supreme Lord. This figuration indicates that the second pattern is as important as the first for the survival of the human group. Both patterns are raised to the highest level of majesty. These mythological figurations are the most frequent in the agrarianauthoritarian societies, but the validity of the two paradigms and their coordination into one unit, and the affirmation that the two models are equally indispensable, can be said with other configurations, as we shall see. Nevertheless, in spite of these differences, the profound structures are identical.
In Egyptian mythology
Let us now see what the mythologies of the great agrarian-authoritarian societies say. Let us begin in Egypt. We shall begin with the mythology referring to the creation, because from this we can understand the Egyptian conception of reality; the reality considered as supreme and the realities considered as of a lower order. The Egyptian myth of creation exists in various versions very diverse among themselves. There are various figurations and one same profound structure. We begin with the most conspicuous myth: the document of the Memphis theology. 62
This document comes from the 25th dynasty, under the pharaoh Sabaka. The pharaoh had this document, which belonged to a much older era, sculpted in stone. It is a text which goes back to the first Egyptian dynasties, to the time when the capital was moved to Memphis, the city of the god Ptah, approximately in the times of the pharaoh Djoser, who headed the third dynasty, around 2,650 BC. The text declares that everything which exists has its origin in the conceptions of the Ptahs heart. Things were created on their names being pronounced by the tongue of Ptah. By the gods authoritative word, the gods came into existence, one after another, and through them Ptah developed the visible and invisible universe, all living creatures, the arts, justice, etc. The entire cosmos was established by order of the god. Ptah was the mouth which named all things. He gave life to the just and death to the transgressors. He established the cities and the cult places. He did everything with his mandate. The mandates from the god are the being of things. And things exist because they were named. One text says that it was Ptah who formed, with his word, gods, men and animals, that he made all the lands, fertile plains and oceans. Another text says that Ptah made everything that exists. In all that exists is the virtus of his word. A few kilometres from Memphis was Heliopolis, the traditional religious capital of Egypt, home of the sun-god Ra. The myth of creation by means of procreation appears in the Heliopolis tradition and was already included in the texts of the pyramids, which date mostly from the fifth dynasty, although it seems to be earlier than the Memphis theology. In the beginning there existed nothing except Nun, the primordial water. From Nun there arose the sun-god Atum. Atum was raised up on the primordial hill which emerged from the water. The text says that Atum pleasured himself in Heliopolis. He took his phallus in his hand and worked his pleasure. He begat two siblings: Shu and Tefnut. He sneezed and Shu was formed, he spat and Tefnut was formed. Shu is the god of the air and Tefnut, his consort, is the goddess of humidity. From this couple, Shu and Tefnut, air and humidity, the earth and sky were born: Geb and Nut. The earth-god Geb and the heaven-goddess Nut begat Osiris and his consort Isis, and Seth and his consort Nephthys. Horus is the son of Osiris. Osiris died through the opposition of Seth, as we shall see later, and by decision of his father Geb. Osiris is the dead king as Horus is the living king. Horus is a sun god, and the supreme figure of authority, but through the genealogy of Horus, who comes from Geb and Osiris, it is affirmed that the root of authority is in the earth. 63
According to this figuration of creation, emission/reception is represented not by a mandate but by procreation, by the gods saliva or his sneeze or his semen. The fact that there are two versions, the Memphis and the Heliopolis, in a great proximity of time and space and with almost identical working conditions, confirms our hypothesis of the equivalence of mandate/obedience and a formulation less strong in figuration, emission/reception. Ptah and Atum arose from the chaos of the waters and the primordial hill, which is a way of expressing that they arose from themselves, they engendered themselves, and also that they arose from death. We shall see this later. Men are created in the image of god, says one text. In the creation of man also there is a double mythology. The Memphis theology says that humanity was created by the heart and tongue of Ptah. Also that the god Knum, the potter, created man on the potters wheel. Knum gave shape to man and to all that exists. In this case again we have the schema of emission/reception, but with two different figurations. Now let us look at the conception of the supreme authority, the pharaoh, because he is the figure of the conception of the supreme divine authority. The pharaoh was the god who brought the fertility produced by the waters, he ensured good harvests, he controlled the waters which gave the land fertility. One text says that the Nile was in his service, that it was he who opened its caverns to give life to Egypt. The text says, If you were to say to your father the Nile, father of the gods: stop the water flowing from the mountains, the river would obey your command. The pharaoh governed the waters of the Nile and all nature. All the forces of nature which were related with the prosperity of Egypt were governed by the pharaoh. He was the lord of the gentle breezes which came from the Mediterranean and made Egypt habitable; he controlled the moon and the stars; made the months, days and hours pass in regular succession; he ruled the seasons and the abundance of the waters. The pharaoh was responsible for the wellbeing of the people, and this not only because, through prudent policy, he maintained order in his kingdom and ensured and increased the natural wealth, but also because, possessing a divine character, he was expected to ensure the normality and benevolence of the cosmic powers. He was responsible for maintaining order, even cosmic order. He was the Ka (vital force) of his subjects and all that lived. He was the shepherd of his people, who led them and defended them, punished those who deviated and helped the weak. 64
It was the pharaoh who carried out all the works of the state. He who built the temples and cities; who won the battles; who formulated the laws and enforced them; who collected the tributes; who paid for the tombs of his nobles. Although the pharaoh may not have been aware of it, everything that was done in Egypt was his work. Everything that lived and acted was through the virtus of the pharaoh. He was the lord of destiny and created fortune. He was the guide and protector of the deceased. Mortals could follow him after death and there find life. During life the pharaoh was the one who maintained the hearts of his subjects in life; dead, he directed them through death to a more blessed beyond. Let us look at the mythology around the pharaoh. The Memphis theology speaks of the conflict between Osiris and Seth which ended in the establishment of order, in both the cosmos and the state. The conflict between Osiris and Seth ended in the death of Osiris. Geb acted as arbitrator, being the father of Osiris, the dead god, and god of the earth. Thus Horus became the living king who succeeded the dead king Osiris. The reigning pharaoh is Horus and every dead pharaoh is Osiris. Horus and Osiris are inseparable. The power of the throne creates a fusion of the dead kings power and that of his successor. The living king is the intermediary between man and nature and his power continues to benefit his people even after death. Horus is the great god, the lord of the heavens, the sun which navigates through the heavens, but he is also the son of Osiris, son of Geb, both of them chthonic gods. Thus the cosmic and social order proceeds from two sources: from the judgment of Geb, from the death of Osiris, the dead king, and from the supreme celestial lord and the supreme social authority. According to the ancient empire the pharaoh was, at the same time, both god and man, and only through his death did he become purely a god. This dual nature was formed by the divinity of the royal charge and the humanity of each of the bearers of this charge. The coronation ceremony gave the chosen one this new existence and new nature. The social authority was a supreme authority; that is to say, it ordered and did not obey, it was purely an issuer. The supreme authority had the supreme ontological competence. This character united the pharaoh with the source of being, the divine. It is logical that the social authority and the divine manifestation should be conjoined. In virtue of the conjunction of the characters of supreme social authority and supreme divine authority, the pharaohs characters would be those which 65
clothed the divine and, in turn, the characters of the divine (plenitude, ontological source, sacredness) invested the social authority. Let us now look at the other dimension of the agrarian-authoritarian societies. The authoritarian organisation was for the purpose of making cultivation possible. The great majority of the population worked on cultivation. We shall concentrate on studying the mythology of Osiris, the key figure in Egyptian mythology. The texts on the walls of Luxor describe the suns journey through the underworld, the world of death. On this underground journey, the sun is represented with the head of a ram, to signify that it had died, but that it preserved the power to be reborn. In the journey, the sun passed through the domain of Sakaris, a desert. Sakaris is the god of death, not of the dead, as is Osiris. For the Egyptians, all the stars and constellations passed through the kingdom of death in their cycles and they were all reborn, with the exception of the circumpolar stars and constellations which circle the North Star, which neither passed through death nor were reborn. The Egyptians called these stars those that know not the fall. These stars were the symbol of the dead who conquer death and reach eternal life, the place of all those fortunate who would never more know death. The whole of creation was subject to the cycles and to death, with the exception of the supreme god, curiously connected with chaos and the primordial waters. Death forms part of the order of creation and even of the order of the gods. The earth, like death, contains potential life. The earth-god Geb seems to embody the same potentialities as Ptah. The Egyptian texts do not tell the myth of Osiris in detail. The most complete narration comes from Plutarch. The other texts contain no more than allusions to the myth. These allusions are found in hymns, in the texts of the pyramids, in the book of the dead, in rituals, etc. A summary of the myth of Osiris could be the following: Geb and Nut had four children: two boys, Osiris and Seth, and two girls, Isis and Nephthys. Isis was the wife of Osiris and Nephthys the wife of Seth. Osiris governed the world as a good monarch. But Seth quarrelled with Osiris and contrived to kill him. He deceived him so that he could shut him into a sarcophagus and he threw it into the Nile. The Nile carried the sarcophagus down to the sea and from there to Byblos. Isis searched for the Osiriss body until she found the sarcophagus embedded in the trunk of a huge tree in Byblos. With Nephthys she 66
uttered lamentations. Due to this chanting and the care of the two sisters and Anubis, Osiris awoke to life. Isis conceived her son Horus by Osiris. Seth seized Osiris again, killed him and divided him into fourteen pieces. Isis collected the pieces and buried them as she found them. This is the reason why there are so many sanctuaries in Egypt dedicated to Osiris. Isis took her son Horus secretly to the region of the delta to protect him from being attacked by Seth. When Horus had grown, he called Seth to the presence of the gods. There they held a trial in which Toth acted in defence of Osiris and Horus. Geb acted as judge and condemned Seth, granting the kingdom to Horus as successor to Osiris. Osiris never came back to earth, but became the lord of the underworld and supreme judge of the dead. Osiris is a very complex figure. He has cosmic features. He is the son of Geb, the earth, and of Nut, heaven. As the son of the earth-god, he is related with the cycles of life and death. As the son of the heaven-goddess, he is related with the disjunction of death. Osiris is a god of plants. As the son of the earth and of heaven he is destined to death, but his death is a transfiguration. It is the life which regularly springs from the earth and is renewed without ceasing. He is the god of death and resurrection. Osiris is not a divinity of the earth, he is a god of the manifestations of life which come from the earth. Everything which comes from the earth can be considered as a manifestation of Osiris, whether stars, vegetation or waters. He is a tree spirit. His worshippers were prohibited from damaging fruit trees. Various tree cults were related with Osiris. Osiris was called Neper, the grain. Osiris reappears, say the texts, every time the grain sprouts. Osiris is manifested in the grain when the seeds, passing through death, are reborn to life from the entrails of the earth. The growth of the grain symbolises the resurrection of the god. All the phases of cultivation of grain were related with Osiris. The grain was sown as though burying the god. The ears of grain which sprouted symbolised the resurrection of the god. In the season of harvest, cutting the ears or milling the grain was a new death of the God. The waters of the Nile in its annual rising, which returned vitality to the dry, bare fields, were interpreted as sprouting from the earth. These waters carrying soil were a testimony to his power and identical to him. The floods were identified with the liquids which welled from the body of Osiris in decomposition. The fertilising and life-giving power of the Nile 67
waters was identified in the myth with the theme of the Osiriss drowned body floating on the waters. Everything which grows from the earth grows from Osiris and is his manifestation. The regular reappearance of the stars from the bosom of the earth suggests resurrection. Osiris is the lord of the circuits of the stars which pass through the underworld. The plant processes, the waters and their rising, the stars and their courses, all have the same meaning and identity and all are hierophanies of Osiris. Osiris is a dead king who penetrates into the earth for the benefit of men. He vanquishes death and his victory is a promise of life for all. Every dead sovereign is identified with Osiris and he who in life led his people, in death guides them to life. From the Middle Empire on, all the dead are identified with Osiris, conqueror of death. Osiris is called king not because he is a monarch, but because he manifests the fertility of death. Osiris is a dead king who, resurrected, does not return to his previous existence to occupy the throne again. He is resurrected to a further life. He is a dead king, the leader of those who have set with the sun, the dead. He is the guide and protector of the deceased and their prototype, because he has achieved eternal life by passing through death. Mortals can follow him to the beyond and there find life. The ambit of death is conceived as a kingdom, and he who makes death fertile is considered a king. Death as fertile is a source of reality, and every source of reality is thought of, inevitably, as an authority. Thus Osiris is king, authority, insofar as he is fertile death. Osiris is sovereign in the underworld, he is the equivalent of Ra in the heavens but, however, he is differentiated from the creator and is not seen as the equal of the great gods. Ra is the indisputable sovereign and Osiris is only admitted to share his throne. One text says: when Ra appears every day and reaches the underworld to govern that country, just as the other regions, then you, Osiris, also sit there with him. Together you are called the united souls. Osiris, jointly with Horus, forms the Egyptian conception of authority in embracing two generations: the dead king and the living king. This is a way, in addition to placing Osiris close to Ras throne, of conjoining the two schemas of interpretation of reality: that of emission/reception and that of life/death. The supreme living authority is connected with the god of death, that is to say, the highest issuer is connected with death as fertile. With this stratagem the 68
two principal sources of reality are conjoined: fertile death and majesty, whose mandates give reality to all who receive them. The Egyptians gave various figurative forms to the same profound structures. Horus, the living king, has Osiris as his Ka (vital principle); or, in other words, power is the fruit of fertile death. Osiris, for his part, needs to be sustained by Horus; that is to say, death is made fertile by the support of authority. Death is fertile through an issue of authority, and the authority is such through the fertility of death. We face a complex way of conjoining the two paradigms generated by the working structure of the irrigation farming society. However, globally, the schema mandate/obedience prevails over the schema death/life. Without an authoritarian system there is no cultivation. The irrigation farming societies cannot survive without the authority. It is essential first to organise the authority so that, with irrigation, there can be cultivation. Ra is superior to Osiris, although Ra sits Osiris to his right.9
We shall now look, briefly, at the central axes of Mesopotamian mythology. In analysing the mythology and ontological conceptions of the Mesopotamian cultures, we will follow the lines we have traced in our brief study of Egypt. These being irrigation farming societies we suppose that we can apply to them the lines of analysis appropriate to the working and social style of these societies. We will begin, as in the case of Egypt, by studying the creation myths. We shall see that the myths tell of creation by various ways, as emanation, as procreation, as creation by word, as an artisanal creation and, finally, in a new form: creation as the outcome of a struggle. For the creator god it was sufficient to establish a plan, utter a word and pronounce a name, for the thing foreseen and planned to acquire its own existence. This form of conceiving creation is the result of an observation: a king on the earth could carry out almost anything he had a mind to, through a decree, an order, a single word passing his lips.
9. Conf. Otto, Eberhard: Der Weg des Pharaonenreiches. 1966, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer; Bleeker, J.; Widengren, G.: Historia religionum. Manual de historia de las religiones, I Religiones del pasado. 1966, Madrid, Ed. Cristiandad; Frankfort, H. Wilson, J. A. Jacobsen, T.: El pensamiento prefilosfico. I. Egipto y Mesopotamia. 1967, Mexico, F.C.E.; James, E. O.: Mythes et rites dans le Proche-Orient Ancien. 1960, Paris. Payot; Berthelot, R.: La pense de lAsie et lastrologie. 1972, Paris, Payot; Frazer, J. G.: La rama dorada. 1969, Mexico, F.C.E.; Pritchard, J. B. (compiled by) La sabidura del antiguo Oriente. 1966, Barcelona Ed. Garriga; Schmkel, H.: Das Land Sumer. 1962, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer; Contenau, G.: Le dluge Babylonien. Ishtar aux Enfers. La tour de Babel. 1952, Paris, Payot.
In Mesopotamian mythology
69
For the Mesopotamian sages nothing existed until it had a name. What had no name did not exist. In speaking of the state before the creation, the myth says: When in the highest heaven nothing had been named, and when the earth below had no name when no name had been named To designate a thing they used the expression: everything that has a name. Knowledge of the name of a thing and pronouncing it conferred reality on the thing and power over it. These ideas are expressed in the myth Enki and the universal order. The myth describes the god acting as a governor. When the text is legible, we see Enki decreeing the destinies of the country of Sumer and the city of Ur. Enki makes a journey of inspection through the greater part of the territory. Enki halts in all the countries and blesses them. His words fill the countries with good things. He organises the masses of water, fills the Tigris and the Euphrates with clear waters and orders the god Enbilulu to look after them. He fills the waters with fish and reedbeds and entrusts them to a divinity called the son of Kesh. He regulates the waters of the sea and makes Siras responsible for it. He calls forth the winds which bring the rain and make agriculture possible and entrusts them to Ishkur. Then he deals with the plough and the yoke. He makes the fields produce grain, beans and legumes. From the country he goes to the cities. He deals with ploughs and the moulding of bricks. He appoints the brick-god Kabta to take care of the brick-makers. He constructs foundations, raises walls and names Mushdama as master mason. Then he fills the plains with wild life and puts Sumugan in charge. Finally, he builds stables and sheepfolds for the domestic animals and delivers them to the shepherd-god Dumuzi (Tammuz). He creates all this with the word. His mandates, his blessings and his determinations of destiny are effective, they do as he says. The myth clearly follows the mandate/obedience schema. Let us now study the myth of Enki and Ninhursaga; in this myth, creation is by procreation. According to the myth there is a country called Dilmun, a pure country of the living where there is no illness or death; a country where the raven does not croak, nor the lion kills, the wolf does not seize the lamb, nor the wild dog carries off the kid, pests which eat the grain are unknown, there are no illnesses, no ageing, no lamenting or grief. This island was assigned to Enki, the god of water, and to Ninhursaga, the great goddess of the Sumerians. Enki had provided fresh water for the island 70
on a suggestion by Ninhursaga. Enki courted Ninhursaga. At first she resisted but then she gave in to his desires. From this relation between earth and water a daughter was born, the goddess Ninsar, who is the personification of plants. Enki left Ninhursaga before Ninsar was born. As the plants press together on the banks of the water, so Ninsar met Enki. Enki courted her and had amorous relations with her. But Enki also abandoned Ninsar. The goddess of the plants gave birth to a daughter, the personification of the plant fibres with which cloth is woven. From Enkis relations with the goddess of plant fibres, the goddess of dyes was born. From Enkis relations with the goddess of dyes, the goddess of spinning and fabrics was born, called Uttu. As all these goddesses were abandoned by Enki, Ninhursaga advised Uttu to insist that Enki marry her and to give him cucumbers and apples before having relations with him. Enki took away these gifts required, made Uttu drunk and possessed her. When the text resumes, Ninhursaga has had eight plants killed without having yet determined what will be their nature and qualities. Enki, curious to know them, has them collected by his messenger Isimud and eats them all, one after the other. Ninhursaga loses her temper and curses Enki. Next Ninhursaga, to avoid being moved by pity and withdrawing her curse on Enki, leaves the gods and disappears. Enki begins to decline: eight parts of his body are attacked by illnesses. While Enki is slowly dying the gods, overwhelmed and in mourning, are seated in the dust not knowing what to do. A new personality now enters: it is offered to Enlil, god of the air and king of the Sumerian gods, to bring Ninhursaga in exchange for a reward. Enlil accepts and Ninhursaga returns to the gods. Enki is very ill. Ninhursaga makes him sit beside her and asks him which parts of his body are making him suffer. Enki lists them and Ninhursaga creates eight divinities to cure the eight illnesses. The myth speaks of the earthly paradise being ended by a conflict between gods, of the origin of nature and culture, of illnesses and their remedies, always as the fruit of successive births or of orders by the gods. The great Mesopotamian myth of creation, with small modifications of personalities in the various cultures which succeed one another in the area, is the Enuma Elis, which means When above, the words with which the myth begins. It is written in Akkad and, it seems, comes from the middle of the second millennium BC. The central personality is the god Marduk, god of Babylonia, the political centre in Mesopotamia at that time. When Assyria became the dominant power, Marduk was replaced by Assur. This was not the first substitution; the Babylonian version was preceded by another, much older, in which the central personality was Enlil, god of Nippur. It is impossible to know how far back the original Sumerian myth goes, but it seems to go back to the third millennium. 71
The Enuma Elis was recited during the New Year ceremonies, at the start of spring. We will briefly speak of the gods who take part in the myth. The myth begins by describing a watery chaos: When still there was no talk of a heaven above and still no name was thought for a firm land below; when only the primordial Apsu [the abyss], the begetter, and Mummu and Tiamat, who was mother to all of them, mixed their waters in one; when no pools had been formed and no island could be found; when no god had emerged, nor had received a name, nor had his destiny determined, that was when the gods were formed in her womb [Tiamats]. Apsu is fresh water. Mummu seems to be the clouds and mist. Tiamat is the sea. These three kinds of waters were mixed in an undefined mass. From this watery chaos Lahmu and Lahamu were born, they are the mud and slime. Lahmu and Lahamu in their turn begat Aushar and Kishar, two aspects of the horizon. Aushar and Kishar begat Anu, the god of heaven. Anu, without a partner, begat Nudimut, another name for Enki, the god of fresh water and the earth. For the Sumerians, in the beginning there was only the primordial ocean. In this original sea the heaven and the earth had been born. Anu is the supreme god. His mandate is the founding of heaven and earth. The myth of exaltation and Inanna say of him: Oh father of the gods! Your mandate is the foundation of heaven and earth. What god can scorn you? Sovereign of the gods, whose word prevails in the ordered assembly of the great gods [...] To the mandates from your sacred mouth the Igigi pay all attention with fear of you the Anunnaki move just as the reeds swept by the storm, all the gods bend to your orders. 72
Anu was the supreme lord of the pantheon, in spite of the fact that from as early as 2500 BC this role had been taken by Enlil. Anus partner was Ki, the earth, Antu for the Semites. With time Ki was replaced by Inanna. The second great power was Enlil, son of Anu and Ki. It was he who separated heaven and earth because he was the god of the air and the atmosphere. He was the Storm Lord, the Lord of the gusting wind. He occupied the first place in the myth and in the cult. He was called father of the gods, king of heaven and earth, king of all the countries. It was he who chose the name of the king and gave him his sceptre. On him depended the prosperity of the people and victory over their enemies. The hymn of Enlil says: Without Enlil the great mountain, no city would be built, no establishment founded. No stable would be built, no sheepfold made. No king would be praised, nor even one great priest be born. Neither mah priest nor great priestess could be chosen by the oracle. The workers would have neither inspector nor foreman. The rivers, their rising waters would not overflow their banks. The fish of the sea would not spawn in the reed beds. The birds of the sky would not build their nests on the broad earth. In the sky the wandering clouds would not give us rain. The plants and herbs, the glory of the countryside, could not grow. In the field and meadow the rich cereals would not seed. The trees planted in the mountain forests would not bear fruit. In Enlil resided the force, it was he who executed the verdicts of the gods. It was he who led the gods to war. If Anu was the authority, Enlil was the force of coercion into the will of the gods. He destroyed humanity with a flood. Enki is the third great Sumerian divinity. His name means lord of all that is below. His dominions are the waters which are found all around and under the earth and which spring over it through the river sources. He is the god of water and of wisdom. He is fertile in resources. He is the lord of agriculture and of artisans. He is a benevolent god. He saved humanity from the flood, advising Zinsudra, the Mesopotamian Noah, to build an ark. He cures illnesses, forgives sins and keeps the demons away. But he is also the god of spells. He, for envy of Enlil, caused the end of paradise. After this brief run-through of the main characters in the Enuma Elis myth, let us return to the narration. 73
The divinities which have emerged from chaos now come into conflict with him. The divine companions all met together and came up noisily from everywhere, disturbing Tiamat, upsetting the bowels of Tiamat, dancing on her breast, where heaven is established. Apsu could not control their clamour and Tiamat kept silent, but she hated their actions and she did not like their manners [] Then Apsu, who begat the great gods, called his servant Mummu, saying to him: Mummu, my servant, delight of my heart let us go to Tiamat. They went, and seated before Tiamat they asked her for advice about the gods, their firstborn. Apsu began to speak saying to pure Tiamat: Their customs seem detestable to me. I cannot rest by day, nor sleep by night. I shall end their customs, yes, I shall destroy them so that peace can reign and we can sleep. The gods heard this and were dismayed and silent. Only Enki (Ea) remained imperturbable. Ea, who knows all things, knew his plan. He formed, yes, established against it the configuration of the universe. And he cleverly made his sacred all powerful enchantment. Pronouncing it he threw it over the water [Apsu] spilling over it a tranquil dream, to make it sleep deeply. Then Enki took the crown away from Apsu, killed him, and set up his dwelling on top of him. Then he imprisoned Mummu. Up to here we have the origin of the gods by procreation from chaos. The gods emerge one after the other, by procreation. The parents are pairs of gods, except in the case of Nudimut who came uniquely from Anu. We already saw 74
in Egypt that procreation is equivalent to creation by mandate. In Mesopotamia also, it works in the same way. In the conflict of cosmos against chaos, the cosmos prevails, thanks to the enchantment (powerful word) by Ea (Enki) over Apsu. Apsu, by order of Ea, was immersed in immobility. Apsu is fresh water. Ea, that is, the earth, establishes his dwelling on the waters of the abyss. In Eas dwelling, on top of Apsu, Marduk was born. In versions before the Babylonian, it was Enlil who was born, the lord of the gusty wind. While Marduk was growing up, the conflict with chaos broke out again. Tiamat decided to offer battle to the gods. The army of chaos was organised. At the head of this terrible army Tiamat put her second husband, Kingu. She conferred on him the authority and the tables of destiny, the supreme power over the universe. Ea again became aware of what was going on. He told the gods. They decided that it should be Ea, for the second time, who should confront the forces of chaos with his powerful word. But on this occasion Eas powerful spells could not subdue Kingu and his forces, as had happened with Apsu and Mummu. In view of Eas failure, the gods went to the supreme Anu, whose word was even more powerful. But not even the word of Anu could calm the chaos. Finally the gods turned to Marduk, Eas son, whose strength is great. Marduk accepted, but made conditions. He asked to be made king of the pantheon. If you make me your defender, conquering Tiamat and saving you, I want you to meet and proclaim my supreme destiny. The assembly granted Marduk the power of a king, so that the supreme authority and the power of coercion were combined in him. The gods were pleased and did him homage: Marduk is king. They put the royal insignias on him and armed him for the battle. The arms with which they invested Marduk were those of the lord of the storm, Enlil. Marduk made the storms rise: the Ill wind, the Whirlwind, the Hurricane, the Quadruple and the Septuple winds, the Cyclone and the Matchless wind. He called up the tempestuous flood, his powerful weapon, and his chariot of the irresistible and terrifying storm. In addition to these weapons, Marduk bore upon his lips an enchantment, that is, a powerful order. Kingu and his army fell victim to panic and fled when Marduk came close. Only Tiamat faced Marduk. Marduk unfolded his net and enveloped Tiamat in it. Then Tiamat opened her jaws to swallow him, but Marduk sent his winds 75
to keep Tiamats mouth open. Then Marduk threw an arrow at her heart and killed her. Marduk captured the rest of Tiamats forces, including Kingu, from whom he seized the tables of destiny, stamped them with his seal and held them to his breast. Then he stamped on Tiamats body, broke her head with his mace and scattered her blood. Then the Lord paused to consider her body, in order to dismember the monster and do clever things. He split it in two like a shellfish. Half of it he raised above to be the firmament. He set the plan and arranged sentinels, ordering them to prevent the waters from escaping. Half of Tiamat, the waters of the sea, remained on the earth and the other half became the heaven, where Marduk established his dwelling. Marduk then devoted himself to establishing the constellations and stars, and to fixing the calendar. Here there is a gap in the text; when it resumes we find Marduk occupied in creating man. I shall knot arteries and join bones together in his being. I shall create Lullu, whose name shall be man. I shall form Lullu, the man. I shall charge him with the work of the gods so that they can live in liberty. Kingu, who was responsible for Tiamats uprising, was condemned and executed. They bound him and brought him before Ea. On being condemned, they opened his arteries. And from his blood they formed humanity. Ea, then, put man to work and freed the gods from toil. In the complex myth of the Enuma Elis we believe that we always find, although with very diverse configurations, the same schema of ontological conception. We have seen a god who comes from Anu without a partner, Nudimut. We have the case of the children of pairs of gods. To all these cases we can apply the ontological emission/ontological reception schema. Ea conquers Apsu and founds the earth with his enchantment, an authoritarian word, which is also an ontological emission. 76
Marduk has to fight violently, body to body, against chaos. Why does the mythical form of the fight appear? What meaning has it? The battle between chaos and cosmos is the representation and affirmation of an axiological system through the conflict between what is valuable and what is not. This is a very frequent form of setting value systems. But also, through the fight, an important aspect of authority is thematised and explained: its coercive power. This coercive power, like the authoritarian word, is an emission and a reception. The coercive power is only manifested when there is opposition to authority. In the case of the myth, there is the uprising of chaos against the cosmos. The mythical configuration of the battle also presents another advantage: it makes it possible to assimilate to the authoritarian schema another, much older, schema of mythical forms: what we called, in our study of the horticulturalists, the proto-victim pattern. According to this schema the death of a primordial being, before the creation, gave origin to all things. Here it will be the death of the primordial being Tiamat, before the creation and at the hands of the gods, which will give origin to all things. It will not be simply death, of itself fertile, as in the case of the hunters and horticulturalists, which gives being to things, but also the gods who will create things from the body of the victim. This extreme submission, even to death and by coercion, makes death fertile, but only by decision of the gods. We see here that the mandate/obedience, as ontological emission and reception, gives being and takes it away; and it does this as the authoritative word or as coercion. From their profound structure, the authoritative word and coercion are equivalent. Finally, creation also appears in the Enuma Elisa as the execution of an artisanal work. This operation can also be interpreted from the same schema. There are other important myths on the creation of man, in them the figure of artisanal creation preponderates. Let us look at the myth of Enki and Ninmah, the sublime lady (another name for Ninhursaga). The myth says that in the days of the beginning of the world the gods had to work in order to live. All the gods had to use the sickle, the pickaxe and other agricultural tools; they had to dig channels, do the watering, etc. The gods hated it. While this was going on, Enki, the wisest of the gods, was sleeping deeply without waking. The gods complained to him about their situation, through the mediation of Nammu, the mother who gave life to heaven and earth, mother of the gods of the sea. Nammu took the complaints and tears of all the 77
gods to Enki and asked him to create servants for them, so that they could take over the work. Enki listened to Nammu and ordered her to prepare to give birth to the clay which was found covering Apsu, from which he would form man. This clay came from the deep waters just as a child comes from the entrails of its mother. The text deteriorates and when it is readable again, Enki is giving a feast in honour of Nammu and Ninmah. At the feast the gods challenge each other to find a destiny for the abnormal humans which each of them will model out of the clay. They create six different types of abnormal individuals. The text is illegible where it describes the first four. When it can be read again it describes the two remaining abnormal beings: the woman who cannot give birth and the man without a male organ. Ninmah destined the woman who could not give birth to the gynoecium and the man without a male organ to precede the king. Now it was Enkis turn to form a being, which he called my day is remote. It was a very old man, whose eyes were ill, whose hands and legs trembled and who suffered many illnesses. He was weak in body and in spirit. Ninmah could do nothing useful with this being and cursed Enki. This myth tells the creation of man in general and the creation of abnormal beings, which still can be useful to society and can subsist and, finally, it tells of the creation of illnesses and ageing, which are irremediable bad things. According to the myth the men came from clay. The gods formed man from this clay so that he could take on his shoulders the work which, from here on, the gods would not have to do. Men are created, then, to serve the gods. That the myths of creation of man are interpretable with the mandate/obedience schema, in its most abstract form of emission/reception, is confirmed by the fact that in all the myths it is stated precisely that man was created to serve the gods. We have seen that physical abnormalities, illnesses and ageing were introduced by the gods. Now we shall see how it was also these gods who made men mortal, depriving them of eternal life. The myth of Adapa tells how he, son of Ea, had been created as a model for men. He was wise and similar to the gods, but he had not been granted immortality. Adapa was a fisherman. One day he was fishing in the Persian Gulf when, suddenly, a gust of wind capsized his boat. Adapa was furious and swore at the wind and broke one of its wings. This prevented the wind from blowing for a week. Anu found out about this violation of the order of the universe and made Adapa appear before his throne to be judged for this misdemeanour. Before he went up to heaven, Ea advised Adapa about what he must do. He 78
must dress himself in mourning to arouse the piety of Rammuz and Gizzida, guardians of the bridges of heaven. They would then intercede for him with Anu. Ea told him not to eat or drink anything that was offered to him in heaven because to do so would cause his death. Anu showed himself inclined to pardon him and offered him the bread and water of life to make him similar to the gods. Adapa, following the advice given him by Ea, refused these gifts. Anu sent him to earth again, where he would be subject to death, as he had not accepted the gift of immortal life. Thus Adapa lost eternal life, not because he had broken the winds wing, but through having obeyed Ea, his father. Death could have been avoided, but this was not the will of the gods. For the Mesopotamians the universe is a state where stones, stars, winds, waters, etc., are citizens. The cosmos was like a state which comprised whatever existed, from men, animals, inanimate things and natural phenomena to notions such as justice, rectitude, and even the form of a circle. The criterion of differentiation was the magnitude of its power. If the canon of ontological interpretation is the mandate/obedience schema, then all the various beings are diverse degrees of power and the relationships of beings are relationships between various degrees of power or, which is the same, of submission. If every being is a reception of the divine mandate, the virtus which accompanies the divine mandate, then every being manifests the will of the gods; every being is a presence of the life of the gods. The virtuous life was the obedient life. A hymn describes the future golden age which will be characterised by obedience: Days when man will not be rude to others. The son will venerate his father. Days when respect will shine in the earth, the humble will honour the great, and the younger brother will respect the older, and the greatest will teach the smallest and he will be subject to his decisions. The life of man is a chain of obedience: obedience to the family, the governors, the gods. Humanity, as we have seen, was created to serve. Who obeys receives and receiving equals being. Who obeys has the doors which lead to being open. Who does not obey, closes these doors. The divine protection, health, long life, leading position, children and wealth, all that is value for the Mesopotamians, is achieved by respecting and receiving the mandate. 79
The gods met every new year on the occasion of the New Year feast to determine the destiny. To each man, on his birth, the gods assigned a measure of good and ill fortune which determined the whole course of his life and the events which would take place during it. The will of the gods is not revealed once and for all, but has to be established in each case. The decisions of the gods are not linked to any type of obligation with respect to their creatures. They decree life and destruction, paying no attention to the merits or sins of men. The gods are issuers, not receivers, so they are not subject to any other force. All reality other than the divine is a reception of divine emission, by the authoritarian word which puts into effect what it says. To sin is to transgress the order of the cosmos, not accept the order of the gods. Who does not accept the mandate of the gods does not receive their ontological emission and is separated from being. That is why the punishment of sin is death. Let us now look at the concept of royalty in Mesopotamia. The poem of the creation describes the prototype of the sovereign in the royalty of Marduk. He was chosen to lead the battle against Tiamat. This choice brought with it the grant of absolute powers to the chosen. If I must be your champion, conquer Tiamat and save you, then meet together and proclaim my supreme power, seat yourselves with joy in assembly in Ubshuukkina ensure that, like you, I may determine destiny with the word from my mouth so that nothing I decide can be changed and the order that I give cannot come back to me, nor be changed. The text conceives two forms of government, one is the assembly of the gods, and the other, royalty. The Mesopotamian king is a man chosen for effective and rapid action, as in the case of Marduk in the crisis of the gods. The birth of royalty is the result of a decision by the assembly of the gods. Royalty, in Mesopotamia, is not of human origin, but is brought to society by the gods. The king is a mortal invested by the gods with a superhuman position. The gods choose him and the gods can depose him, and set another in his place. For the Egyptians the pharaoh is a god. For the Mesopotamians the king is a mortal invested with divine properties. Royalty descends from heaven. In the 80
Sumerian poem of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah, we read, after having evoked the creation: When royalty had descended from heaven, when the sublime tiara and the royal throne had descended from heaven [] Every monarch considers that his election to the throne is a divine election. The legend of the birth of Garga, king of Akkad, presents him as the son of a priestess, abandoned to the waters in a basket and collected and brought up by a gardener, without royal ancestry. But in Mesopotamia there is no important relationship between the dead king and his successor. The Mesopotamian king organises the funerary rites of his predecessor as a simple act of piety. In Egypt royalty is connected with the two capital schemas which rule over the irrigation farming society; in Mesopotamia, it seems that human royalty is only related with the mandate/obedience schema. The sovereign continues to be a man even after his coronation, although a man with a divine post. His power does not extend, as in Egypt, to nature. Nature belongs to the gods. The king is only a servant to the gods and his action over nature is reduced to endeavouring to preserve the divine favour. The function of the kings was to interpret the will of the gods, represent the people before the gods and administer the kingdom. The Mesopotamian kings had to seek out the will of the gods, and they did this in various ways: through oracles, dreams, signs, the movements of the constellations and the planets, changes of weather, animal behaviour, extraordinary events such as eclipses, earthquakes, epidemics, etc. These extraordinary events revealed the divine intentions. If the beings, in assembly, are the presence of the divine will, the observation of nature is the search for the divine will. The king was responsible to god for the acts of his subjects and it was he who interceded with the gods for the people. He had the post of highest priest. The daily rite was the kings responsibility, although he delegated it to the priests who acted as his representatives. In the New Year feasts the king celebrated the ceremony of the hierogamy; acting as the goddesss husband. In this ceremony the king was raised to the category of a god, but he remained a servant. The kings frequently called the gods father or mother, and were considered as sons of god, but it was always in a figurative sense, not literally, as in Egypt. In Mesopotamia, royalty, although indispensable, formed no part of the essential order of creation. The creator is not the first king, as in Egypt. 81
Monarchy was not a natural system through which the cosmic and social forces acted, it was not integrated into the cosmology. It was a social institution and recognised other forms of government as being possible. The divine aspect of royalty, which descended from heaven, consisted in being the seat of divine mandates; the king is the sacrament of divinity, the image of the gods, their representative and mediator. The divine will, which humans must respect, comes through the king, because what he orders is the will of the gods. The king is as a god for his subjects. We have studied the mythical and ontological aspects which are governed by the pattern of mandate/obedience. We are now going to turn our attention to another of the great schemas underlying the irrigation farming societies, that of death/life. To do this we shall examine the mythical fertility and fecundity figures in the Mesopotamian pantheons. The prototype of the divinity of fertility is Dumuzi or Tammuz, who was very widely recognised and existed with various versions and names. Hardly anything is known of the life of Tammuz, but there are several versions of his death. According to one version his death is attributed to demons living in the underworld who snatched him from his mother and held him captive in the underworld. Another tradition has him drowned, like Osiris. Other times it is Enlil himself who is accused of killing him because of his love for Ishtar. Others make him die at the hands of a king. However the most current tradition has him die while out hunting, attacked by a wild boar. Because of his death, they chanted lamentations while searching for him. A hymn describes his mothers grief in this search. His mother is called the sorrowful Mother. While Tammuz remained in the underworld, everything on the earth perished. When the god returned to life, everything returned to life with him. The symbols or emblems associated with Tammuz prove that he was a divinity of fertility. His symbols were the grain, the ear of wheat and the tree, a conifer or a date palm. Tammuz was taken up to the heavens after his death, as were other divinities of fertility. He was associated with the constellation of Orion. To connect a fertility divinity with the heavenly bodies was to represent his category as divine. To find the myth of Tammuz we have to go to the regions to the west of Babylonia, because in Sumer and Akkad it was already an ancient cult and had been replaced by others. In Byblos Tammuz is called Adonis; in Sidon he has a cult under the name of Eshmun; in Tyre he is called Melgart. His cult extended through the north of Hellenistic Egypt, Cyprus and Greece. If Dumuzi or Tammuz returns to life it is through the intervention of the gods and, specifically, Inanna or Ishtar. After death he continues his life 82
through the aid of the gods, if not, death would remain infertile. For the hunter and horticulturalist communities death was fertile in itself. For the irrigation farmers death does not have independent fecundity, its fecundity depends on the will of the gods. That death should be infertile of itself is expressed in the concept of the place of the dead, the underworld as a place of shadows, dust and brackish water. The underworld is the kingdom of thirst and dust. We will set out at length the myth of Inannas descent to the underworld, for its beauty and because it is illustrative in all points. It says: From the great height, she turned her thoughts to the great abyss. From the great height, the goddess turned her thoughts to the great abyss. My lady left the heaven, left the earth. To the underworld she descended. She left the nobility, left her sovereignty, to the underworld she descended. The seven divine laws, she held them; she joined all the divine laws together and took them in her hand; she placed all the laws on her foot. The sugurra, the crown of the plain, she put onto her head; she fixed the curls of hair on her forehead; the rod and line for measuring lapis lazuli, she held them tightly in her hand; she tied the little stones of lapis lazuli around her neck; she fixed the twin nunuz-stones on her bosom; she put the golden ring onto her hand; she fixed the breastplate come man come to her breast. With the pala-garment of nobility she covered her body. The oil let him come, let him come she applied on her eyes. Inanna went down towards the underworld. Her vizier, Ninsubur, went walking by her side. The divine Inanna said to Ninsubur: Oh you, you are my constant support, my vizier of good words my knight of true words, I am going down to the nether world. When I have arrived at the Underworld, 83
raise for me a lamentation such as is made over the ruins; in the meeting room of the gods, play a roll on the drum for me; go round the mansion of the gods in search of me. Lower your eyes for me, lower your mouth for me, [...] Wrap yourself like a beggar for me, in a single garment. And towards the Ekur, the abode of Enlil, direct your steps alone. When you enter the Ekur, the abode of Enlil cry to Enlil: Oh Father Enlil, do not allow your daughter to be condemned to death in the underworld. Do not let your good metal to be covered with dust in the underworld. Do not allow your good lapis lazuli to be cut into lapidary stones Do not allow your boxwood to be sawn into carpenters wood. Do not let the virgin Inanna be condemned to the underworld. If Enlil does not give you his support in this enterprise go to Ur. In Ur, on entering the temple of the country The Ekisnugal, Nannas mansion, cry to Nanna: Father Nanna, do not allow your daughter [...] If Nanna does not give you his support in this enterprise, go to Eridu. In Eridu, on entering Enkis mansion, Cry to Enki: Father Enki, do not allow your daughter [...] Father Enki, lord of all wisdom, who knows the food of life who knows the elixir of life will surely send me back to life. Inanna turned her steps, then, towards the underworld, and to her messenger, Ninsubur, she said: Go, Ninsubur, and do not forget the orders I have given you. 84
When Inanna had arrived at the palace, in the mountain of lapis lazuli, at the door of the underworld, she held herself bravely. Before the palace of the underworld, she spoke bravely: Open the house, guardian, open the house! Open the house, Neti, open the house, I am coming in alone! Neti, chief guardian of the underworld, answered the divine Inanna: Who are you, please? -I am the queen of heaven, the place where the sun rises. -If you are the queen of heaven, the place where the sun rises, Why, please tell me, come you to the country where you go and will not return? By the route from where the traveller never returns, why has your heart led you here? The divine Inanna answered him: -My older sister, Ereskigal, because her husband, lord Gugalanna, has died, to attend at the funerary honours. Let it be so! Neti, chief guardian of the underworld answered the divine Inanna: -Wait, Inanna, let me first talk to my queen, to my queen Ereskigal, let me talk to her, let me tell her. Neti, chief guardian of the underworld, went into the house of his queen Ereskigal and said to her: -Oh my queen, it is a virgin who just like a god [...] The seven divine laws Then Ereskigal gnawed her thigh and became furious, and said to Neti, chief guardian of the underworld: -Come here, Neti, chief guardian of the underworld, and what I order you do not forget to do it. From the seven doors of the underworld take off the bolts, from Ganzir, the only palace there is here, 85
face of the underworld, open the doors. And when Inana enters very bent and humbly, you shall bring her to me naked. Neti, chief guardian of the underworld, attended to the orders of his queen. From the seven doors of the underworld he took off the bolts. From Ganzir, the only palace there below, face of the underworld, he opened the doors. To the divine Inanna he said: -Come Inanna, enter! And when she entered, the sugurra, crown of the plain, was taken off her head. -What is this? She said. -Keep silence, Inanna, the laws of the underworld are perfect. Oh Inanna, do not disdain the rites of the underworld! When she passed through the second door, the rod and cord for measuring lapis lazuli were removed from her [...] When she passed through the third door the little stones of lapis lazuli were taken from her neck. [...] When she passed through the fourth door, the twin nunuz-stones were taken from her bosom [...] When she passed through the fifth door, the gold ring was taken from her hand. [...] When she passed through the sixth door the breastplate come, man, come was removed from her breast. [...] When she passed through the seventh door, the pala-garment of nobility was removed from her body. [...] Bent down and humiliated, she was brought naked before Ereskigal. The divine Ereskigal took her place on the throne. The Anunnakis, the seven judges pronounced their judgment before her. 86
She fixed her gaze on Inanna, a gaze of death, she pronounced one word against her, a word of anger, she emitted a cry against her, a scream of condemnation. The weak woman was transformed into a cadaver, and the cadaver was hung upon a nail. When three days and three nights had passed, her vizier Ninsubur, her vizier of favourable words, her knight of true words, raised for her a lamentation, such as is made over the ruins, went roving in search of the mansion of the gods. [...] And went to Ekur, abode of Enlil, alone he went. When he entered the Ekur, the abode of Enlil, he cried before Enlil: -Oh Father Enlil, do not allow your daughter [...] As father Enlil did not give him support in this enterprise Ninsubur took himself to Ur. In Ur, on entering the temple of the country, the Ekisnungal, Nannas mansion, he cried before Nanna: -Father Nanna, do not allow your daughter [...] As Father Nanna did not give him his support in this enterprise, Ninsubur went to Eridu. In Eridu, on entering Enkis mansion, he cried before Enki: -Oh Father Enki, do not allow your daughter Father Enki responded to Ninsubur: -What has happened to Inanna? I am anxious. What has happened to the queen of all the countries? I am anxious. What has happened to the sacred slave of heaven? I am anxious. He then drew clay from his fingernail and with it he made the kurgarru. He drew clay from a fingernail painted red and with it he modelled the kalaturru. To the kurgarru he delivered the food of life; to the kalaturru he gave the elixir of life. 87
Father Enki said to the kalaturru and the kurgarru: -The infernal divinities will offer you the water of the river; do not accept it. Also they will offer you the grain from the fields; do not accept it. But say to Ereskigal: -Give us the cadaver hanging from the nail. So one of you, then, rub it with the food of life and the other with the elixir of life. Then Inanna will arise. [...] The infernal divinities offered them the river water, but they did not accept it. They also offered them the grain from the fields, but neither did they accept it. -Give us the cadaver hanging from a nail, they said to Ereskigal. And the divine Ereskigal responded to the kalaturru and the kurgarru: -This cadaver is your queen -This cadaver, although it is that of our queen, give it to us, they said to her. They gave them the cadaver hung from the nail. One rubbed it with the food of life, the other with the elixir of life, and Inanna stood up. [...] The myth of Inannas descent into the underworld has the same structure, in terms of the underlying schemas, as the myth of Dumuzi or Tammuz. And the same can be said of the Akkad version of Ishtars descent into the underworld. The death to which the goddess goes by her own will, the reason is not clear, is a doubly terrible death in being death and the death of a goddess. As the goddess passes through the doors of the underworld, she is being despoiled of the attributes of her sovereignty, until she is left naked and humiliated before Ereskigal, then to die and be hung from a nail. She could not be freed from death except by the aid of the gods, who with their power can bring her back to life. The death/life schema is clearly subject to that of mandate/obedience. Death does not give way to life unless by decision of the gods. Of itself death is not fertile, as in the case of the 88
hunter and horticultural cultures; it is only fertile because this is what the gods decide. Only the death of a god returns fertility to death; and this by decision of the gods who resurrect her. After her death and resurrection, Inanna is exalted in the heavens. A Sumerian hymn says of Inanna: My father Anu has given me the heaven, has given me the earth: I am the lady of heaven. Who, even though a god, will compare to me? He has placed heaven like a crown on my head; the earth as sandals for my feet; he has thrown over my shoulders the resplendent mantle of the gods; he has put in my hands the radiant sceptre; the gods are like startled birds, but I am sovereign. Inanna becomes the sovereign wife of Anu, she will now be called Antu. Anu says to her: Come up to the royal mansion, sit down in the heights. The question we have to ask is the following: What is the meaning of elevating Inanna to the heavens as sovereign of the gods, and her exaltation until becoming Anus wife and coregent? We believe that the two figurations, Anu and Antu (Inanna) represent the two axial schemas of the irrigation farmer societies. That the goddess of fertility sits on the supreme throne next to Anu, a figure in the authoritarian schema, we believe has a profound meaning: it gives us the mythical, axiological and ontological key to the Mesopotamian conception of reality. The two principles of interpretation of reality, the two structured moulds of the conception of reality are proclaimed as reigning equally. The death/life pattern, in spite of being subject to that of emission/reception, is the generator of axiological conceptions and formations and, therefore, it is perfectly congruent and just that Inanna should be seated beside the throne of Anu. But, as in Egypt, the death/life pattern of interpretation also influences the other great pattern of interpretation. The great celestial gods also pass through death, in one way or another. Enki passed through it because he was cursed by Ninhursaga. The terrestrial king of Babylonia has to humble himself before the priests in the New Year ritual in order to renew his authority. The heavenly bodies, which are associated with the gods and represent, like them, the mandate/obedience schema, also pass through the underworld in their cycles. So the Mesopotamians believed. We have to say that the death/life schema, although dominated by that of mandate/obedience, is the source of reality and life, although this quality as source, to be so, has to be passed through authority. 89
Death is fertile by decision of the gods, but the gods authority itself depends on their passage through death.10
In the Maya-quich mythology, the Popol-Vuh
Now we will turn our analysis to a totally different cultural field. We will study some of the features of the sacred book of the Maya-quich, the Popol-Vuh. We will try to analyse the mythical features of the fourth age of the Popol-Vuh, that is to say, the part of the Popol-Vuh corresponding to the age when they had clearly passed from horticulture to agriculture.
We shall explain briefly the working conditions of cultivation. It is precisely in cultivation that this society is clearly differentiated from the agriculturalist societies which we have studied so far. Apart from this, all the other working aspects fundamentally coincide with those we have called: irrigation farmer societies. The cultivation of maize did not vary in over three thousand years in the land of the ancient Maya. Fundamentally it consists in felling the forest trees, burning them together with the undergrowth, sowing the grain and changing the cultivation places ever few years. This system of cultivation in a tropical, humid region, densely populated with trees, is known by the Aztec name as milpa cultivation, meaning the maize field. The first step in the agricultural work is choosing a parcel of land for the cultivation of maize: where to put the milpa. The maize farmer works alone and spends at least a day finding the right place for his parcel. The higher the trees and the thicker the forest growth, the richer is the land. Other important factors also come into play when choosing the land, the proximity of water and distance from the village. Having chosen the field it is divided into squares of twenty metres each side and the corners are marked with piles of stones. Then the felling of the trees begins. The maize grower begins felling trees until the early hours of the evening. It takes fifty to sixty days to cut down the forest for a field of the normal size. First the bushes and undergrowth are cut and then the higher trees. The forest is usually cut during the rainy season, because this makes it easier. The pile of
10. Conf. Kramer, S. M.: La historia empieza en Sumer. 1974, Barcelona, Ed. Ayma; Contenau, G.; Le dluge Babylonien. Ishtar aux Enfers. La tour de Babel. 1952, Paris, Payot; James, E. O.: Mythes et rites dans le Proche-Orient Ancien. 1960, Paris, Peyot; Frankfort, H. y H. A., Wilson, J. A., Jacobsen, T: El pensamiento prefilosfico. I. Egipto y Mesopotamia. 1967, Mexico, F.C.E.; Shmkel, H.: Das Land Sumer. 1962, Stuttgard, Kohlhameer.; Bleeker, T. J.; Widengren, G.: Historia religionum. Manual de historia de las religiones. I. Religiones del pasado. 1973, Madrid. Ed. Cristiandad; Pritchard. J. B. (compiler) La sabidura del antiguo Oriente. 1966, Barcelona. Ed. Garriga.; Dhorme, E.; Dussaud, R.: Les religions de Babylonie et dAssyrie. 1949, Paris. PUF.
90
cut wood is burnt in March or April, after the heat of February and March has dried it out completely. The field is set on fire on a windy day, so that it will burn completely. In the age of the Maya civilization the land clearing was done on the day indicated by the priests according to their astronomical observations. Sowing the maize began immediately after the first rains, somewhere between April and July. When the maize is mature, the canes are bent over. This is done to prevent the rain from penetrating into the corncobs and causing mildew. A month later, around November, the maize harvest begins. It may go on until April, because they gather the crop as they need it. The cobs are stored in a granary made of posts and roofed with palm leaves, the cobs being stored whole. Threshing is done by hand or by putting the corncobs into a hammock and beating it hard. This makes the grains fall to the floor through the mesh of the hammock. This work is done at night. In not having to control a great river to be able to cultivate, we cannot be sure about the basis of the authoritarian organisation. There were certainly defences, and a need for observation of the heavens by specialists, the priests, so as to know when to clear the land and when to sow, etc. Although we do not know exactly the rationale of the authoritarian organisation, the fact is that this was a society with a very rigorous hierarchy. The high priests, as well as their purely religious attributions and the celebration of feasts and ceremonies, determined the feast days and the ill-fated days, practised divination and were wise astronomers and mathematicians. They were also advisers and counsellors to the state. In the earlier cultural stage, the horticulture stage, the Popol-Vuh says that the men did not work: Hunbatz and Hunchun were great musicians and singers they became very wise. They were, at the same time, flautists, singers, painters, carvers; they knew how to do everything. Now in the agrarian age, Hunahp was the first to cultivate the land. From this time Hunahp ordered his mother and his grandmother to bring the midday meal to the milpa and they answered humbly: very well. With the first farming personalities, the women ceased to cultivate and withdrew to the home. We will begin our analysis by studying the creation of the cosmos. To study the creation of man we shall first need to stop and consider the myth of the descent to the underworld. When we studied the horticulturalist stage of the Popol-Vuh, we spoke of the seven figures in which divinity is manifested. We said that these figures are 91
the four extreme solar positions at the solstices, called Tzakol, Bitol, Alom and Cajalom; the two extreme positions of the suns passage by the zenith which separate the dry season from the rainy season, called Tepeu and Gucumatz and, finally, the sun in its central position. Tepeu and Gucumatz mean the start of the rainy season and, therefore, of life and fertility. They are the union of heaven and earth. Gucumatz means the same as Quetzalcalt, bird-snake; Tepeu means lord. When they act as creators, the gods are called Gucumatz as a generic name, although Gucumatz is the name of one member of the group of seven. The Heart of Heaven is called Hunracn, he of the single foot, because with a part split off from himself he formed the earth. The Heart of Heaven manifests himself in rays, lightning flashes and thunder; and so the Popol-Vuh says that the Heart of Heaven is three: Caculh Hunracn, Chipi-Caculh and Raxa-Caculh. Following this run-through of the mythological figures, let us go on to the narration: This is the story of how everything was in suspense, everything was calm, in silence; everything was still, quiet, and the whole extension of heaven was empty. This is the first story, the first discourse. Nothing yet had a name, not an animal, nor a bird, fish, crab, tree, stone, cave, ravine, grass or forest; only heaven existed. The face of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the heaven in all its breadth. Nothing came together to make a noise, nothing moved, nothing stirred, nor was there noise in heaven. There was nothing which was standing; only the peaceful water, the quiet sea, alone and tranquil. There was nothing which had existence. There was only immobility and silence in the darkness of the night. Only the Creator, the Maker, Tepeu, Gucumatz, the Progenitors, were in the water surrounded with light. They were hidden under green and blue feathers; this is why they were called Gucumatz. They were great sages, great thinkers in their nature. In this way there was heaven and also the Heart of Heaven, which is the name of God. Thus they told. Here, then, the word arrived, Tepeu and Gucumatz came together in the darkness, in the night; and Tepeu and Gucumatz spoke together. They talked, then, consulting together and meditating; they came to an agreement by joining their words and thoughts. Then it became clear, while they were meditating, that when the dawn 92
broke man must appear. Then, they arranged the creation and growth of the trees and climbing plants and the birth of life, and the creation of man. It was ordered thus, in the shadows and in the night, by the Heart of Heaven, who is called Hunracn. The first is called Caculh Hunracn. The second is Chipi-Caculh. The third is Raxa-Caculh. These three are the Heart of Heaven. Then Tepeu and Gucumatz came together; then they conferred over life and light; how they would arrange for light and the dawn, who it would be who would produce food and sustenance. -Let it be so! Let the empty become full! Let this water withdraw and leave the space, that the earth may arise and be firm! Thus they said, let there be light, with dawn in the heaven and on the earth! There will be no glory and greatness in our creation and formation until the human creature exists, until man is made. Thus they said. Then the earth was created by them. This was in truth how they made the creation of the earth: Earth! they said, and on the instant it was made. Like mist, like cloud and like a cloud of dust was the creation, when the mountains arose from the water; and instantly the mountains grew. Only by a miracle, only by magic art were the mountains and valleys made; and instantly the cypress groves and pine groves sprouted together on the surface. And thus Gucumatz was filled with happiness, saying: -Good has been your coming, Heart of Heaven; you Hunracn and you Chipi-Caculh, Raxa-Caculh. -Our work, our creation, will be finished, they answered. First they made the earth, the mountains and the valleys. The flows of water divided, the streams flowing freely among the hills and the waters were separated when the high mountains appeared. Thus was the earth created when it was made by the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of the Earth, for so they are called, those who first fertilised it, when the heaven was in suspense and the earth was submerged in the water. In this way the work was completed, when they carried it out after thinking and meditating on its happy termination. For the Maya-quich, water and heaven are one and the same thing. The Maya-quich have a monotheistic conception which conjoins plurality with unity. The creation is a creation by word by the Heart of Heaven, which is also the Heart of the Earth. 93
The creation, like all the creations in the Popol-Vuh, takes place at night, just as seeds germinate in the night in the bowels of the earth. The creation text continues: Then they made the little mountain animals, the guardians of all the forests, the genies of the mountain, the deer, the birds, the lions, the tigers, the serpents and snakes, the vipers, the guardians of the climbing plants. And the Progenitors said: -Will there be only silence and immobility under the trees and climbing plants? There should be someone hereafter to guard them. They said this as they meditated and talked. Then, immediately, the deer and the birds were created. Next they arranged their dwellings. -You, the deer, will sleep in the lowlands by the rivers and in the ravines; here you will be among the thickets, among the grass; in the forest you will multiply, you will go on four feet and support yourselves. And as they said it, so it was done. Then they appointed also the dwellings for the little birds and the big birds: -You, the birds, will live on the trees and in the climbing plants, there you will make your nests, there you will multiply, there you will flap your wings in the branches of the trees and in the climbing plants. Thus they spoke to the deer and the birds so that they should do what they must do and all of them took up their dwellings and their nests. In this way the Progenitors gave the animals of the earth their habitations. And the creation of all the quadrupeds and birds being finished, the Creator, the Maker and the Progenitors said to the animals: -Speak, screech, chirrup, call, each of you speak according to your species, according to the variety of each one. Thus they spoke to the deers, the birds, lions, tigers and snakes. Every being is the divine word, divine ontological emission. All existence is an authoritarian reception. Every reception is a submission. Every submission is a divine manifestation. The divine word becomes an entity. We are, therefore, looking at an authoritarian ontology. The creation of man takes place by successive steps. The first formation of man was imperfect and, therefore, destroyed; that is to say, the created men were turned into animals as a punishment for not having known to call on their creator. Successive creations will be destroyed in the same way. The human beings created will be turned into animals higher up the zoological scale, until the gods succeed in making a perfect human being, capable of calling on the creator. 94
These successive creations represent the successive cultural stages until arriving at the true man, he of the fully agricultural culture. We shall concern ourselves only with the fourth creation, that of the true man, but, to do this, we must first explain the descent to the underworld of Hunahp and Ixbalanqu. Hunahp and Ixbalanqu were sons of the seven Ahp and Ixquic, the moon divinity, daughter of a lord of the Xibalb, called Cuchumaquic. Ixquic conceived Hunahp and Ixbalanqu on receiving in her hands the saliva which spurted from the heads of the Ahp hung on a tree, killed by the Xibalb. When Hunahp and Ixbalanqu defeated Hunbatz and Hunchun and captured the insignia of their parents, the Ahp, symbols of their sacred condition, they were invited by the Xibalb to descend to the underworld. The text says: Very happily they went to the patio to play ball; they were playing alone for a long time and they cleaned the patio where their parents played. And hearing them the lords of the Xibalb said: -Who is playing again above our heads and disturbing us with the noise they make? Perhaps Hun-Hunahp and Vucup-Hunahp (Hun-Hunahp is equivalent to a Hunahp, and Vucub-Hunahp equivalent to seven Hunahp; the series of seven is named by the first and the last) did not die, they who wanted to appear grand before us? Go and call them at once! Thus said Hun-Cam and Vucub-Cam and all the lords. And sending them to call, they said to their messengers: -Go and tell them when you get there, that they should come, the Lords have said; we want to play pelota with them here; within seven days, we want to play; thus said the Lords, tell them this when you arrive. This was the order they gave to the messengers. And they went then by the boys wide road, which led directly to their house; in this way the messengers came directly to their grandmother. She was eating when the messengers from the Xibalb arrived. -They should come, with safety, say the Lords, said the messengers from the Xibalb. -Within seven days they expect them, they said to Ixmucan. -Very well messengers, they will come, answered the old lady; and the messengers went back. Then the heart of the old lady was filled with anguish. -Who shall I send to go and call my grandsons? Was it not just like this 95
that the messengers from the Xibalb came last time, when they came to carry off their parents? said the grandmother, going alone and sadly into her house. They left then, each carrying his blowpipe, and they went down in the direction of the Xibalb. They went down the steps quickly, passing through various rivers and ravines. They passed among some birds and these birds were called Molay. They also passed by a river of pus and by a river of blood where they ought to have been destroyed, as the Xibalb thought, but they did not touch them with their feet, but crossed them on their blowpipes. They left there and arrived at a place where four roads crossed. They knew very well which were the roads of the Xibalb [] With the experience they had inherited from their parents they avoided perishing on the hot stones and in the dark chamber. They won the ball game, they cut the flowers in the gardens of the Xibalb as the Lords asked them, with the help of leafcutter ants. They overcame the trial of the House of Knifes. They were able to keep warm and not perish in the House of Cold; the animals of the House of Tigers left them untouched; they did not burn in the House of Fire. They passed all these trials and thus they conquered the Xibalb. Then they put them in the House of Bats. There was nothing in this house but bats; the house of Camazotz, a big animal, whose killing instruments were like a sharp horn and those who came into his presence perished instantly. They were in there, but they slept inside their blowpipes and were not bitten by those who were in the house. However, one of them had to yield to another Camazotz which came from heaven and for whom he had to appear. The bats were bunched together and in council all night long and fluttering. Quilitz, Quilitz, they said; and they said this all night long. They stopped a little, however, and now the bats did not move and they were stuck to the point of one of the blowpipes. Then Ixbalanqu said to Hunahp: -Is the dawn coming? have a look. -Perhaps it is, I will look and see, he answered. And as he wanted very much to see outside the opening of the blowpipe and wanted to see if the dawn was coming, his head was instantly cut off by Camazotz, and Hunahps body was decapitated. [] Then they hung the head over the ball game by express order of 96
Hun-Cam and Vucup-Cam, and all those of the Xibalb rejoiced at what had happened to the head of Hunahp. The vampire, as a bird of prey, is a nahual, disguise or messenger of the celestial god. The Maya-quich establish a difference between the celestial bird and the celestial vampire. The first symbolises the divine essence which descends from heaven to the earth; the vampire intervenes in the processes of germination of seeds. In contrast to the celestial bird which remains above the earth, the vampire descends to the underworld. This symbol of the celestial god corresponds to a natural reality: the vampire penetrates into the caverns of the earth, where birds may not enter. It will be noted that the twins passed all the trials to which they were subjected by the lords of the Xibalb, and that if Hunahp died, it was not at the hands of the Cam, but at the hands of the celestial god who sacrificed him. Hunahps death is a decision of the celestial god; that is to say, it is his work, because the decision of the Supreme Lord is always carried out. It comes out clearly that the death/life schema is related with that of mandate/obedience. Death is a decision of the god. The fecundity of death is a divine decision. It is the will of the Supreme lord and the death of a god that make death fertile. The ontology of the death/life pattern is taken up by the ontology of majesty. And the Popol-Vuh concludes: Thus were the Lords of the Xibalb conquered by Hunahp and Ixbalanqu. Great works they did, but they did not die, in spite of all that was done to them. Hunahps death and return to life represents the mystery of the grain, the seed which dies deep in the earth and is transformed into a plant which will feed humanity; it represents the mystery of the sun, which dies and descends into the body of the earth to be reborn in the east; it represents the mystery of all death which disintegrates in the earth to be transformed into a new being; the mystery of the divine decision which makes all death fertile; or in other words, it represents the mystery of the transformation of all death into life through the intervention of the celestial god. The twins will have to suffer the process of death and resurrection for a second time. Knowing the proximity of their death, Hunahp and Ixbalanqu give advice to Xul and Pacam, two sages and prophets, so that they can suggest to those of the Xibalb what should be done with their bodies. You will be asked by the Lords of the Xibalb about our death, which they are agreeing and arranging because we did not die, nor have they been able to conquer us, nor have we perished in their torments, nor did 97
the animals attack us. We have a premonition in our hearts that they will use the bonfire to cause our death. All those of the Xibalb have met, but the truth is that we shall not die. These are their instructions: And when for the third time they say to you: -Would it be right for us to throw their bones into the river? If they should say this to you, you must say - thus they should die; then you should grind their bones on the stone, as maize is ground; each one should be ground separately; then throw them into the river, there where the source springs, so that they may go everywhere through the hills, small and large. Then those of the Xibalb made a great bonfire, a kind of kiln, and they filled it with thick branches. Then the messengers arrived who had to accompany them; the messengers from Hun-Cam and Vucub-Cam. -Let them come! Go and find the boys, go there so that they know we are going to burn them. The Lords said this, Oh poor boys! exclaimed the messengers. -Very well, they answered, and rapidly taking the road, arrived together at the bonfire. There they wanted to oblige them to be amused with them. -Lets take our girl and each fly four times over the bonfire, boys!, HunCam said to them. -Do not try to cheat us, they answered. Perhaps we do not know of our death, oh Lords, and that this is what awaits us here? And together, face to face, they stretched out their arms, they leant towards the ground and threw themselves into the bonfire and so they both died together. Those of the Xibalb then ground their bones and threw them into the river. The second death, this time of both twins, is a parallel to the burning of the fields, from which the falling rain makes the maize sprout. It is a second mode, in accordance with the steps involved in the cultivation of the milpa, of representing the schema of fertility transforming death. We shall see that their passage through fire and water transforms the twins into the supreme authority. The maize plant takes five days to sprout its first leaves after sowing. But the remains of Hunahp and Ixbalanqu, they did not go far, but settling at that spot at the bottom of the water, they were converted into 98
beautiful boys. And when again they appeared, they had in truth the same faces. On the fifth day they reappeared and were seen in the water by the people. They both had the appearance of men-fish, when the Xibalb saw them after searching for them all along the river. Fire and water, like the body of the earth, are the path to transformation. From there on we find the transit through fire and water constituted into ritual. Fire and water purify everything, say the Chortis, descendents of the Mayas. When a child is born it is immediately bathed in the virgin waters of the river; taken, if possible, from the source, the place where the cinders of the twins were thrown. Water has the magic property of favouring the development of the human being, as it favours that of the plant, immunising it from all malign influence, as it immunises the seed. The sacred bath puts the newborn under the protection of the gods, enabling it to enter into the community. These are the causes and the mythical order of the baptismal rite, which has been practised since then. Also the Chortis still give their dead a ritual bath, to clean them of their faults. The water is divine semen, it is blood and divine substance. The fish represents these divinities during their stay in the underworld, according to the Chortis theologians. Hunahp and Ixbalanqu, after being resurrected, did many miracles. They burned houses and restored them to their former state. They tore each other up and were reborn. They appeared disguised before those of the Xibalb and did these miracles before them. The twins miracles were, all of them, symbols of the principle of death and resurrection. Those of the Xibalb wished them to do their marvels with them. They asked the twins to kill them and raise them from the dead again. Do the same with us! Sacrifice us! they said. Tear us apart one by one! said Hun-Cam and Vucub-Cam to Hunahp and Ixbalanqu. -Very well, and then we will resurrect you. And so they first sacrificed the one who was their chief and lord, called Hun-Cam, king of the Xibalb. And with Hun-Cam dead they subdued Vucub-Cam. And they did not raise them from the dead. These texts make clear that there are two types of death, one which is fertile and is transformed into life, and another sterile which remains finally dead. Then the twins reveal themselves as those who have reduced the empire of the Cam to impotence. Through confrontation they establish the system 99
of the agricultural life, and what had functioned until then as a regime of values, now becomes the antivalue. We are looking at a normal way of fixing a system of values. The gods of other times become the demons of the fourth age. The virtues of yesterday are the vices of today. The gods of the past can no longer fulfil the function of directing human conduct. Only the marginal sectors of society will be faithful to them, not the enlightened and the civilised. With their death and resurrection, the twins save and redeem men from the empire of the forces of evil. They return justice to its place, compensating for the death of the Ahp. Dying, they conquer death because they make it fertile. Thus was their farewell when they had conquered all those of the Xibalb. Then they arose in the midst of light and were instantly lifted to heaven. One was for the sun and the other the moon. Then the vault of the heavens and the face of the earth were lit. And they live in heaven. The twins are not actually the sun and the moon. The sun and moon are symbols of them, are places where there appears, in a tangible and sensitive way, the divinity which is supposed to be present in them. The ascension is the sublimation of Hunahp and Ixbalanqu by the god of heaven, who crowns them with his power for ever. Hunahp is not a victim who is transformed into the good things of the culture, as would happen in the hunter and horticulturalist mythology. Hunahp comes from heaven, dies, acquires majesty and returns again to heaven. All good things in the culture come from him, but because he is a lord, on descending, with his death, he gains for all humans all the good things and life temporal and eternal, and so acquires a new majesty over the cosmos. A majesty acquired through his death. The transformation of the death of humans into life is fruit and participation of the Lord Hunahps victory over death, by the will of the god of heaven. Let us now study the creation of man. We continue, in this way, the order given by the Popol-Vuh and its internal logic. Here is, then, the beginning of when they decided to make man and when they looked for what must enter into the flesh of man. And the Progenitors, the Creators, the Makers, who are called Tepeu and Gucumatz, said: 100
-The time of dawn has come, when the work will be finished and there appear those who shall sustain and nourish us, the enlightened children, the civilised vassals; let humanity appear upon the earth. They met together, arrived and held council in the darkness of the night; then they searched and discussed and here reflected and thought. In this way their decisions came out clearly in the light and they found and discovered what had to enter into the flesh of man. Little was lacking for the sun, the moon and the stars to appear over the Creators and Makers. All the acts of creation, whether of the world of plants or of the human species took place in the darkness of the night, before the dawn. For this reason both the agrarian rite and coitus will be celebrated at night, as repetitions, representations of the primitive act of creation. Even artistic creation must take place in the obscurity of the forest. All creation, like the germination of the seed, happens in the dark. The gods meet, discuss and decide unanimously in the darkness of the night. The creation of man on which they decide is the creation of the man of the Maya-quich culture, of the farmer culture, as opposed to the imperfect men of earlier cultural stages. From Paxil, from Cayal, so called, came the yellow corncobs and the white corncobs. These are the names of the animals which brought the food: Yac (wild cat), Uti (coyote), Guel (parrot), and Hoh (raven). These four animals brought news of the yellow corncobs and the white corncobs; they told them to go to Paxil and showed them the road to Paxil. And thus they found food, and this was what entered into the flesh of the man created, made from it; this was his blood, from it they made the blood of man. Thus maize entered into (the formation of man) through the work of the Progenitors. And in this way they were filled with joy, because they had discovered a beautiful earth, full of delights, abundant in yellow corncobs and white corncobs, and abundant also in pataxte and cocoa and in innumerable sapotes, pineapple, jacotes, yams, matasanos and honey. An abundance of delicious foods was found in that village called Paxil and Cayal. There was food of all kinds, foods small and large, small plants and big plants. The animals showed the way. And then by milling the yellow corncobs and the white corncobs, Ixmucan made nine drinks and 101
from this food came strength and fatness, and with it they created the muscles and the vigour of man. This was done by the Progenitors, Tepeu and Gucumatz, as they were called. Then they entered into discussion about the creation and making of our first mother and father. From yellow maize and white maize they made their flesh; from the ground maize flour they made the mans arms and legs. Only maize flour went into the flesh of our parents, the four men who were created. The work of the god is manifested in maize; from maize comes the divine life to men, because maize is the food which makes culture possible, this is why maize is the flesh of the human being. Maize is the cultural plant par excellence. Hunahp is the god of maize, the maize-god. Men, made of maize, are consubstantial with the god. The divine spirit descends to the earth and is the fertility of plants, just as Hunahp descended from heaven to conquer death. Man is also called the son of God, the enlightened son of the divine spirit which resides in the sun. These men created were wise, they knew everything and they examined everything, the four corners of the earth and the four points of the vault of heaven. This excessive wisdom alarmed the gods. The gods then asked: -What shall we do with them now? Let their sight only reach what is close, so that they can see only a little of the face of the earth! What they say is not good. Perhaps they are not simple creatures and our puppets? Do they also have to be gods? -Let us restrict their desires a bit, since what we see is not good. By chance they have to be the equal of us, their makers, who can embrace great distances, who know and see everything? And the myth concludes: Then the Heart of Heaven threw a mist over their eyes, which misted over as when you breathe on the surface of a mirror. Their eyes were veiled and they could only see what was close to them, only this was clear to them. Thus their wisdom was destroyed and all the knowledge of the four men of origin and beginning of the Quich race. Thus our grandparents and our parents were created and made by the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of the Earth. 102
The first four men were created in the image and similarity of god, to the point that they had to retouch the creation in order to maintain the distances. The text goes on to say that they saw and understood everything, the far and the near, the large and the small, the clear and the hidden, just as god himself. The first thing the men created do is to give thanks and praise to god. This will be an obligation of all the men and will be perpetuated in the cult. We see gods condition of majesty and mans condition of service, of obedience, with respect to his creator. The myth is a totally explicit form of expressing the ontology of majesty which governs the Maya-quich culture. Again here human beings are created to serve god. Also in this case we can verify our supposition that in every agricultural culture with a social authority which is established and strong, god is the lord, and to be his creature is equivalent to submission. The text says that the first four men were not born from women, nor were they begotten by the creator, but they were created by a miracle, a work of enchantment. This is a way of speaking in the Popol-Vuh, when the meaning is that they were created by the authoritarian word. And we see that thus the cosmos was created. Lastly, we see the creation of woman: Then there were also their wives and their women were made. God himself made them carefully and so, during the dream, truly beautiful, their wives arrived beside Balam-Quitz, Balam-Acab, Mahucutah and Icqui-Balam, the first four men. This creation of woman, in the second place, explains the subordinate role of the woman with respect to the man. The authoritarian principle even invades the ambit of parental relationships. It remains for us to study the relationship between the mandate/obedience and death/life schemas. In the first place, we have seen that Hunahp and Ixbalanqu are agrarian and solar divinities. They are divinities of maize, through their nature as agrarian gods and because maize is the primordial cultivation, and they are sons of the Ahp, the solar divinities. They are sons obedient to the god of heaven. In their death they are the manifestation of the Heart of Heaven and by their death they are sublimated, raised to majesty and crowned with the power of heaven. In this mythology it is not, as in the others which we have studied, the god of heaven who resurrects them; they return to life through their own power. Through this power, dying, they make death fertile. But the twins, because they pass through death, are elevated, ascend to the heavens and are crowned with power. 103
We think it unnecessary, for our purposes, to study in what aspect those who are already lords receive the power, not what it is that adds power to power. We do not think that this interested the mythical mentality. What does seem to be in accordance with this mythical mentality is that death becomes fertile through obedience, that is to say, an ontological emission makes it fertile and conquers its sterility; and that the fecundity of death is ontological fecundity, or in other words, death is the source of being and power. Thus, then, the two schemas or patterns of interpretation are intimately related. In turn, the death/life pattern gives a rationale for the power, divinity and sublimation of the twins and, with them, the destiny of man and his deification. Hunahp defends humanity against the forces of evil and death and annihilates them with his magic power. As god of maize, he gives himself in food for his worshippers, sacrificing himself for his people. The Chortis call him the Redeemer Son.11 Hunahp and Ixbalanqu reveal the culture and the rules of conduct, they are manifest to the god of heaven. For men they achieve immortality and the divine life. They establish the cult. They raise work to dignity and a religious category. They teach men that their destiny is the divine life and immortality and power is to serve and praise god.12
The structure of mythology in the livestock farming cultures
We could say that every system of values is dualist towards the exterior. Every system of values, without exception, when confronting any other system of values and indeed all of them, excludes them in one way or another. But in addition to this dualism towards the exterior, which is typical of all systems of values, there are cultural pictures with an internal dualism, within the structure of the system itself. The cultural systems we have examined so far (hunter/gatherers, horticulture and irrigation farmers) are not structurally dualist. In those cultures, the
11. Conf. Morley, S G.; La civilizacin Maya. 1972, Mexico, F.C.E.; Recinos, A.: Popol Vuh: las antiguas historias del Quich. 1973. Mexico. F.C.E. 4th ed.; Girard, Raphal: Le Popol Vuh. Histoire culturelle des Maya-Quich. 1972. Paris, Payot. 12. For a more detailed analysis of the authoritarian agrarian mythologies, consult my work: Anlisis epistemolgico de las configuraciones axiolgicas humanas. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. 1983, pp. 309-425
104
negative facts of life, which the mythology counts as elements of death, are not set against the positive facts of life. For all the cultures we have studied, the negative part of life, adequately absorbed, is transformed into positive, just as the death of the animal is followed by life, and the grains buried in the earth (and, for them, dead) are followed by life. Hunters, horticulturists and farmers synthesise life and death into one dual unity. Life passes through death to return to life, and thus successively, in an unending cycle, which is the eternal return. The definitive elimination of the negative in life cannot be contemplated, because through this the positive would also be eliminated; just as eliminating the death of the grains cannot be contemplated, if one wants to have a harvest. Death is fertile because it engenders life; there is no life without death. Now we shall study a type of culture in which life and death confront each other with no possible synthesis. This type of culture is that of the livestock farming peoples. We describe as livestock farming peoples those who basically live on livestock and only secondarily on agriculture, trade, etc. We shall set out first the formality of their mythological system and then check it through specific mythologies. In a preponderantly livestock farming society, death and life do not form a cyclical reality. The fundamental occupation of livestock farmers is to keep their herds alive and protected against scarcity, illness and predators, whether the latter are animal or human. For livestock farmers, death is not, as for the agricultural farmers, a source of life. They do not live from killing their animals, but rather from their milk and its derivatives. They exchange their animals for other essential products. They only slaughter their animals on special or cult occasions. Death is set against life. Livestock farming people have to face the negative elements of existence with resolution. Everything which is positive and fosters the lives of the human group and the animals has to be encouraged. Anything which threatens the lives of the group and its animals is combated. We see, then, that for working reasons the livestock farmers experience reality as a confrontation of life against death. The central action of their occupation, which is a fight against death, becomes the central metaphor from which the livestock farmers can understand, value and organise the totality of reality. The confrontation between life and death is a fight. This is represented, mythologized, by saying that there are two forces, two divinities, in the fight: the Principle of Good, the good God, against the Principle of Evil, the bad God or devil. The most frequent version shows the confrontation of God against the devil. 105
The livestock farming societies are structured in family groups or clans which, for military or working needs, form alliances with other clans. The alliance between clans takes the form of a pact based on a code of behaviour, accepted by all, in which they undertake to do good for each other, promoting in works, words and thoughts what will redound to the benefit of all, avoiding what could damage the group interest. This pact is also a military alliance. The alliance is not only a pact among men; it is, above all, an alliance with the Supreme Principle of Good, with God. The group necessarily has to opt for the Principle of Good and Life and form an alliance with it in order to escape from the clutches of the Principle of Evil and Death. The group code of behaviour, the basis of alliances between tribes and with God, is received from the good God. The alliance with the good God brings with it the duty of fighting against his irreconcilable enemy, the Principle of Evil, whether God or devil. According to this pattern of understanding, everything that may threaten the tribes which have made the alliance and their herds proceeds from the devil and must be combated. For the same reason, peoples which are enemies of the allied tribes, through the fact of being their enemies, are allied with the devil and must be combated with a war which transcends the human level and which, therefore, will be called holy. The allied tribes are the Chosen People, through their pact with God, and as a result they are called on to prevail over and dominate all the remaining peoples, which are allied with the devil. They have to imagine, and they have it revealed as thus, that the Principle of Good and its allies will win in its fight against the Principle of Evil and its allies. The victory of the Principle of Good over the Principle of Evil is a victory which transcends humanity, although it takes place in human history, and will have to be the work of an Envoy or Prophet sent by the Principle of Good. He will head the definitive combat and win the final victory. The war of the Chosen People against the other peoples is lived as the centre of the Great Struggle, which is a divine struggle. Human wars are the field where the Principle of Good fights against the Principle of Evil. In this fight, the Chosen People are the instrument, the executor of the Principle of Good. This dualist mode of conceiving reality and history is not cyclical as it is for the agrarians; it is a linear ascendant process. Human history is a sacred history because it is the history of Gods confrontation against the devil. The story has an ascending line punctuated by the successive victories of the Principle of Good against the Principle of Evil. The end of the story will be the final defeat of Evil and Death. Therefore a moment will come at the end of 106
the story when there will be no more evil and no more death. Then the Principle of Evil, defeated, must restore all the dead, who will be resurrected. We find this dualist mythology, fully developed, in livestock farming peoples. It happens in livestock farming societies which have developed a citizen culture, such as the case of ancient Iran, and in other fields in which the citizen culture is fully developed, such as Islam. Islam, although it originated in a livestock context, was born and developed in the cities. Later, in medieval cities, we shall see the features of the dualist mythology brought out again. Finally, with the first industrial revolution, we see the dualist structure appear clearly once more, but transmuted into a lay conception, as a socialist and liberal ideology.
In the mythology of Israel
We will take a brief look at the mythology of Israel, as being already well known. The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the twelve tribes, are the People Chosen by Yahweh from among all the peoples of the world. He makes an Alliance with them and delivers to them the text of the alliance, the Torah, the law. Moses is the prophet who delivers the law to the people. Through this alliance, the enemies of Israel are the enemies of God; and the enemies of God are the enemies of Israel. Israels history is the story of its fight against its own infidelity to the alliance and the story of its fight against the enemies of God. Israel will overcome all its enemies thanks to the Messiah who is to come. Israels final victory will be Gods final victory. The enemy of God and the Chosen People is the devil, who tempted the first parents and will try, throughout history, to alienate Israel from the pact and draw it into idolatry, thus leading it to perdition. Consequently, Israels victory over its enemies is Gods victory over the devil, evil and death. Through being the Chosen People, executor of the work of God, Israels history is a sacred history, a history of salvation. Israels wars, when it keeps the pact, are holy wars, they are Gods wars. The story of the Chosen People is the story of the Principle of Good confronting the Principle of Evil. The final victory will be for God and, therefore, also for Israel. These are the central lines of Israels mythology. In spite of its clearly dual mythology, Israel lived a great part of its history in the agrarian situation, surrounded by agrarian societies. Although formed by 107
the twelve tribes, and to Gods reluctance, they had kings and an authoritarian system of organisation, principally for military reasons. The texts of the creation, taken from the Mesopotamian tradition, and in other places from Scripture, contain elements of the ontology of majesty which we have already studied: creation by the word, God is the Lord, etc. But neither the agrarian influences and temptations, nor the ontology of majesty, can disfigure the clearly livestock farming mythology. God is the Lord, but also the God of the Alliance with the twelve tribes, the God of the pact. The features of the Israelite mythology are so clearly connected with livestock farming that we need go no further in this line.
In the mythology of Islam
In the case of Islam, the Chosen People are not a group of tribes, more or less homogeneous, but the people who receive the message from the Prophet. Those who believe in Mohammed are the Chosen People. With them Allah, God, makes a pact and alliance. The Koran is the text of this alliance, communicated to the people through the Prophet Mohammed. The envoy, the Prophet, receives the revelation of the Koran, the book of the pact, and cautions all the people to submit to this pact and receive the revelation. The enemies of the Prophets community, which form the Umma, are the enemies of God. And the enemies of God are enemies of the chosen community. The great task of the community of the pact is, primarily and principally, to fight against infidelity itself, which is the great fight, and, secondarily, to fight against the enemies of the people of the pact and of God, the infidels. The infidels are enemies of God and allies of the devil. The faithful will conquer in this fight, which transcends humanity, through a definitive divine aid: the sacred Koran. The devil is the great enemy, pushing them into infidelity and promoting the fight against the believers. The Chosen People, those who believe in the Prophets message, are the executors of Gods work. Their history is a sacred story because it is the story of fidelity fighting against infidelity. The final victory will come to God and the community of believers. Then the devil and its allies will be conquered. The victory over the Principle of Evil, Satan, is a victory over lies, evil and death. Then death will have to return all its prisoners, who will be resurrected. 108
In the Iranian mythology
The wars of the community of believers are, therefore, holy wars. Also in Islam there are elements of the ontology of majesty. Allah is the Lord of the worlds; creation also is a creation by the word; the word of Allah does what it says. But neither in the case of Islam do the elements of authoritarian ontology disfigure the central lines of the livestock mythology. Let us look briefly at the mythology of the Iranian religion. Between the fifth and fourth millennium BC, in the great level plains covered with grass, which extended from the Baltic to the Aral Sea, we find the Indo-European tribes. They were devoted to hunting and gathering but, above all, the raising of cattle and sheep. From their herds they obtained all they needed for their subsistence: leather, wool, food, milk products. Towards the third millennium BC, the Aryans began to move out of their territories and, in successive waves, invaded the countries to the west, south and southeast. Progressively they occupied the whole of Europe, and were later called Greeks, Latins, Celts, Germans and Slavs. Other groups occupied Iran and India. These expansions took place very slowly, at dates very widespread. The expansion gradually caused differentiations among the groups. The nomadic shepherds gradually became sedentary. The first Iranians were livestock farmers. Western scholars have noted that the prophet Zoroaster said on various occasions: in my country they live by oxen. He also proclaimed himself the defender of the ox, prohibiting the sacrifice of oxen. During Zoroasters time the mythology which continued governing society was still that typical of the shepherd forebears, although cultivation and settlements and cities were being developed. Zoroaster did not seek to create a new religion but to revitalise the old traditions and bring them up to date. In fact he gave the Iranians the appropriate mythology for the building of the great empires which were created, starting with Cyrus the Great (546 BC, shortly after the death of the Prophet). Scholars suppose that the Prophet was born in the tablelands which link the current Iran and Afghanistan. He was, then, an eastern Iranian. The Pahlavi tradition, seven or eight centuries after the death of the Prophet, puts his birth in the area of present-day Teheran. Born into a family of men dedicated to the liturgy, he was educated for the priesthood. His date of birth is calculated as around 600 BC. His teachings were mainly addressed to the sedentary shepherds. 109
Zoroaster withdrew to meditate and had a vision: he saw a battlefield on which there were two opposing armies, in which he recognised the forces of Good and Evil; the just wore white and brandished weapons of light, while their adversaries were fighting with the armaments of doubt and lies. The just gained the victory and the Prophet understood that this world is, in fact, the field of battle between Good and Evil, and that each one of us has the obligation to enlist under one or the other standard. The result of the fight is salvation or condemnation. In this fight between Good and Evil, the sword has to be used if the circumstances so require. The final victory of the forces of Good will usher in a new golden age, during which the entire universe will be converted into divine light. Zoroaster is the Prophet chosen as Gods envoy, to reveal the word of God. This is attested by the Yasna, the sacred hymns (49,8; 9,49). After his death, his followers made him a Redeemer. The ideas regarding the creation of the world correspond to a hunter/gatherer mythology. The Pahlavi literature tells of the pregnancy of the supreme God, saying: [] he created the entire world (as a macro-being). And when he had created it, he carried it within his body. And it grew without ceasing and did not cease to improve, then he created all things, one after another, from his body. And first he created heaven from his head [] And he created the earth from his feet [] And he created water from his tears [] And he created plants from his hair [] And he created fire from his thought. This creation by God was formed, like an embryo, inside the body of God and there it developed, then was born. Man was created in the same way, remaining for 3,000 years in the body of the divinity.13 The supreme divinity is Ahura Mazd, which means Wise Lord, he is good and holy. He is surrounded by a group of divinities which could be better called archangels or aspects of the supreme divinity. They are Vohu Manah, Asa, Xsazra, rmati, Hauvatt, and Amerett. These names mean: Good Thought, Just Order, Kingdom, Moderation, Health and Immortality. This
13.. Cfr. G. Widengren: Les religions de lIran. Payot, Paris. 1968. p. 25.
110
group of divinities is called the Amesa Spentas or Archangels. There are also other secondary divinities which represent aspects of this group of divinities or archangels. Ahura Mazd is the father of the twins, Spenta Mainyu, the good spirit, and Ahra Mainyu, the evil spirit. It could be said that Ahura Mazd is an almighty god who carries the contradiction of Good and Evil within himself, although being above this contradiction. These two spirits are the souls of the two opposing bands, that of Good and that of Evil. Zoroaster combines a monotheistic tendency with strict dualism. In the Gths, the revelation received by the Prophet, composed of the Yasna or hymns, Ahra Mainyu is never at the same height as Ahura Mazd. The text which describes the hostility of the twins is Y. 30, 3-5, which says: True, the two Spirits from the beginning, who in a deep dream were known as twins, are, by thought, word and action, the best and the bad. Between these two, those who see clearly have chosen good, those who do not see clearly, no. And when the two spirits met, they created the first life, and non-life, so that in the end the bad existence is for the enemies of faith, but the best thoughts are for the just. Of these two spirits, the enemy of faith has chosen to do evil, but the Holy Spirit, clothed from the purest heavens, to do good, and also those who, with truthful actions. seek freely to please Ahura Mazd. 14 Thus these two spirits are those responsible for Life and Non-Life. Behind these two adversaries all men are aligned in two armed forces, the clear-sighted and the blinded. In all these ideas on Good and Evil, Zoroaster starts from a common Indo-European basic foundation.
14. Quoted in G. Widengren: Les religions de lIran. Payot, Paris. 1968, p. 96.
111
The Zoroastrian creed confesses to Ahura Mazd and the Amesa Spenta. It formally renounces the spirits of evil and their followers. Zoroaster is the prophet of the revelation, the mediator and model. The faithful promise to do good and not evil, both for the livestock and the faithful. They undertake to think well, speak well and act well. They undertake to pray four times a day, in the style of the hymns of the Gths. The evolution of Zoroastrianism made Zoroaster into the mediator of the divine revelation, the master, the redeemer, a superhuman being, even going so far as to speculate on his pre-existence. At the end of the times will come Saoshyant, the Living. A narration of his miraculous birth had soon been developed. Saoshyant came from the seed of Zoroaster, collected in a lake, Lake Kasoya. One day a virgin bathed in the lake and conceived Saoshyant. Saoshyant means Order, Truth incarnate. He is the incarnation of Asa, Order, Truth, one of the Amesa Spenta. He will restore order and happiness to the world. This is the final victory of Good over Evil, which will be followed by the resurrection and the final judgment. Todays Parsees broadly possess the feeling of being the people chosen by God, although they prefer to refer to themselves as the little group of the just whom the Wise Lord keeps to represent humanity on the day of the Renovation, the day of the arrival of the final redeemer. This feeling is one that pertained to Zoroaster, who in the Gths insists on the fact of having been chosen by the Wise Lord to group his faithful together and form the tiny residue of the saved, apart from the rest of humanity destined to destruction. This little group, this sacred elite, would be protected by the immortal saints and guided by the Holy Spirit (Spenta Mainyu). This group is different from the rest of humanity, because it is loved by Ahura Mazd, and different from the rest of the humans, who are disfigured by the Spirit of Evil.15 . As can be seen, the Zoroastrian Iranian mythology portrays the transition from a hunter/gatherer society and nomadic livestock farming to sedentary livestock farming, to the Achaemenid and Sassanid empires. In the mythology the three types of features can be clearly seen: features of the proto-victim, the clear dualism of livestock farming, with all its formal development, and indications of an authoritarian mythology.
15.. Cfr. J. Varenne: Zoroastro. Edaf. Madrid. 1976; J. Dicjesme-Guillemin: La religion de lIran ancien. PUF. Paris 1962; G. Widengren: Les religions de lIran. Payot, Paris, 1968.
112
The case of the Christian religion is very particular, although in another sense from the Zoroastrian religion. The Christian religion conjoins the three axes of the mythological construction or, in other words, the three central metaphors of arrangement, interpretation and evaluation of reality: the authoritarian pattern or paradigm, the agricultural and the dual. It is logical, in the historical and cultural circumstances surrounding the birth of Christianity, for these three axes of interpretation to be conjoined. Christianity was born in the cities of the Hellenist monarchies, conquered by the Roman Empire, and within the tradition of Israel. God creates by the word. He sends his Son to be incarnate on earth, so that with his death through obedience he can make death fertile. Jesus, the Christ, dies, in fact, condemned by the religious authorities of his people and executed by the Romans. God, his father, resurrects him and, resurrected, he ascends to heaven and sits on the right hand of the Father, the Supreme Lord. The Christian mythology is, then, articulated by the paradigms or central metaphors of mandate/obedience and death/life, and follows, step by step, the mythological developments which generate these schemas, just like the other agrarian-authoritarian societies that we have studied. But it is also structured by the paradigm in which life confronts death. The Principle of Good is opposed, in human history, by the Principle of Evil, the devil. Men must enlist in one or the other army. This results in human history being a sacred story, a story of salvation. God chooses a people, Israel in the Old Testament, and the community of Jesus followers, in the New Testament, to be the executor of Gods designs among humanity in this fight of titans. But in this fight of Good against Evil, which transcends humanity, the Chosen People, which means the people of the Alliance, the old Alliance in the case of Israel, and the new Alliance in the case of Jesus community, need divine support to win this fight, disproportionate to their forces. Gods Envoy, the Redeemer, will be the Son of God incarnate. He, dying, conquers evil, lies and death, conquers the devil, and rescues humanity from the power of evil. Thanks to this Messiah, the victory of God against the devil, in human history, is assured. Conquering death, he rescues all those whom death has sequestrated. In the last days they will rise from the dead, then a universal judgment will reward or punish men, according to which army they have chosen to serve, Gods army or that of the devil. It is quite clear that here we are looking at a construction from the pattern life which confronts death, with the logical developments of this pattern of 113
In the Christian mythology
interpretation and evaluation which we have already analysed in the livestock farming societies. The particular feature of the Christian religion is that it conjoins these three patterns of interpretation into one complex. The supreme divinity, the Absolute Lord, who is the Father of Jesus, the Christ, is also the Principle of Good. The Son of God, who descends to earth to die, by obedience, and with his death to make death fertile, is also the Messiah, the Envoy who will intervene in the fight against the demon. With his death, which as we have already seen makes death fertile, he conquers the devil and rescues humanity from its power. He is the Envoy who, by dying, conquers evil and carries off all the prisoners, the sinners and the dead, to save them and raise them from the dead on the last day. He who sits on the right hand of God is also the Saviour and Redeemer, the conqueror of the devil, who rescues the dead from the clutches of death. It can be seen clearly that the three paradigms, or central metaphors, are assembled into a single pattern or paradigm of complex construction. Its complexity is new, the elements which comprise this complexity are not, they were already age-old when they came into the composition of the profound structure of the Christian religion. Consequently, from the viewpoint of the lines of its construction, the Christian religion is a religion like the others; it is a mythology structured by the same patterns of construction as structured the religions which preceded it and which were contemporary with or subsequent to it.
These brief analyses we have seen show, firstly, that the same patterns, paradigms or central metaphors which serve to construct a coherent system of interpretation and evaluation of reality and thus to direct action and organisation, are also the procedure used to represent, conceive and give form to the sense of the absolute dimension of our experience of reality. Depending on which was the central metaphor, in accordance with the central operation which provided survival in the environment, so was defined the figuration of that absolute dimension of the real. This is coherent with our animal condition. For the hunter/gatherers there was a Proto-victim, an Ancestor or Spirit. The horticulturalists continued these figurations with a small extension: the Proto-victim, as well as being an Ancestor and a Spirit, was also incarnate 114
General considerations on mythical epistemology
in the tubers, corncobs or grains which were the life of the peoples. For the irrigation farmers, there was the Absolute Lord and agrarian divinity who died, and with his death gave life and resurrection. This agrarian divinity also has the category of Lord. For the livestock farmers, it is the Principle of Good, the God of the Alliance, he who reveals how to behave in the fight against evil, he who sends a Prophet to ensure that victory is for the side of Good. The mythical analyses above show clearly that they do not describe reality, that they do not attempt to describe reality as it is, but what they seek to do is to interpret and evaluate reality, both in the dimension which has to do with the needs of living human beings, and in that which has to do with the absolute reality, and they seek to do this in such a way that the human groups can live in the environment. The myths and symbols do not attempt to describe reality as it is, but how it has to be seen and felt in certain determined living conditions and, from that point, to act on it, if it is wished to survive in these conditions, whether as hunter/gatherer, or as horticulturalist, etc. The myths model reality in accordance with determined forms of survival in the environment; they configure, define and objectively describe it according to a system designed to satisfy the needs. In view of the clear relationship between the central action of each pre-industrial culture and the central metaphor and the recorded presence of this relationship in various cultures, in spite of distances in time and space; in view of the considerable superficial diversity in the mythical systems of figuration and representation, how can we go on pretending that the myths describe the realities of this world and those of the other, as they are? It becomes evident that the myths and sacred narrations are only systems of figuration of reality, of modelling, in accordance with certain needs; they are systems of representation and objective description which direct action and make it effective, so that the groups can survive in those specific conditions of life. Myths are constructions from models. The models are the central metaphors. These central metaphors function as patterns or paradigms of interpretation, evaluation and action. Myths, in this, are no different from sciences. Sciences are also constructions of reality from models. The difference between the systems of modelling reality through the myths and the systems of modelling reality through the sciences rests in that the mythical models or paradigms are axiologically loaded and those of the sciences are abstract; all axiological load having been extracted from them, as far as is possible. The science models are structures of elements which abstract from everything the factor referring to the relationship of stimulus and response in terms of the 115
needs of a living being, and the mythical models are structures of elements which make priorities of those factors of stimulus and response with respect to the needs of a living being. Therefore both the sciences and the mythologies are constructions of reality, primarily with practical intentions. This primary and fundamental character of myths and sciences can be understood, because both the one and the others are constructions by living beings and for living. There is no doubt that this primary aim is transcended, as is all in the human task, by another dimension, which is also present and which now has nothing to do with satisfying needs. Both the myths and the sciences are open to the absolute dimension of reality, because this is our special condition, generated by our ability to speak; and both the myths and the sciences are linguistic processes. There is another vital difference between the capacity of the mythical modelling and the modelling of the sciences. Myths, in being axiological structures, can be a vehicle for expression of the absolute dimension of reality, which is a mental and axiological experience. The sciences, in being abstract structures, are incapable of being vehicles for expression of the absolute dimension of reality, because that is an axiological experience. This second affirmation does not contradict the first, which says that in both the mythological constructions and the scientific constructions there appears the absolute dimension of reality. In the case of the myths the appearance of the absolute dimension is intrinsic to their construction and inseparable from it. In the case of the sciences this is not so, the appearance of the absolute dimension of reality is extrinsic to the construction, because it is an abstract construction and one which may or may not happen. Although the absolute experience may be extrinsic to the scientific construction, it will always be presented, in one form or another, at one moment or another, because in being a linguistic construction, it will give rise to what every linguistic construction makes possible: a double experience of the real. It could be said that, with the myth, nothing further was required, because the myth itself gave access, modelled and cultivated the double dimension of reality, which is our specific quality. When the myth disappears in its function as modeller of the culture of the peoples, the double function which the myths fulfilled will have to be carried out by other different structures. The sciences and technology will model reality according to our needs, going much further than our needs, but the cultivation of the absolute dimension of reality, essential to be able to maintain our specific quality as humans, will have to be done by other means, which we shall study later. The modelling of reality which took place from the central metaphor and which constituted the mythical body, was equivalent to a programming of 116
thought and feeling, of the organisation and action of a human group for life in specific conditions, always pre-industrial. Myths were then, primarily, systems for the programming of communities. These mythological programmes constructed the cultures, which were the way of completing what was lacking in our genetic programming to make us viable animals. These systems of mythical programming impose, inevitably, an epistemology, that is to say, an interpretation of reality, of what is said of reality. If the function of the myth is to programme the community, complete its genetic indeterminacy, until forming a viable cultural living unit, it is logical that this function should impose an epistemology: things are what the myths say they are. What the myths say of the realities is what the realities are. And this is valid both for the realities which are according to our needs and for the absolute reality. If the myths did not create the idea that the realities are as they proclaim, they would be useless instruments for programming the actions of living beings with needs. The epistemology which the myths impose is: what the myths say is the nature itself of the realities. And this epistemological supposition is warranted by the belief that myths are revelations from the sacred forebears and the gods. We could say that the epistemological guarantee is absolute and inviolable. The belief in divine revelation is both cause and effect of the epistemology imposed by the myths, in completion of the genetic programming. If it were not believed that the myths describe reality as it is, both sacred and profane, they would not be adequate to order and motivate the interpretation, evaluation and action in an unquestionable and effective form; they would not be suitable for completing the genetic indeterminacy. It has to be taken as a matter of course, as something true, with divine guarantee and unquestionable, that the affirmations in the myths refer to real entities. We have to state that the mythologies and epistemologies involved, generated and maintained static societies, that is to say, societies which existed during long spaces of time, which could last for thousands or tens of thousands of years, fundamentally always in the same way. But also, turning the affirmation round, static societies require and demand the epistemology which the myths impose. Thus, then, the mythologies generate and maintain static societies and the static societies, to be possible, require the myths and their epistemology. What we call religions are constructed from the central metaphors of the pre-industrial societies; and the religions are linked to the myths which, at the same time and as a unity, configure the dimension of reality relating to our 117
needs, and the dimension of absolute reality. The religions fit, then, into the suppositions of mythical epistemology. What is affirmed about the absolute reality, in each of the mythologies and, therefore, in each of the religions, is what the absolute reality is, although then it is mitigated by saying that it is so, but only analogously. It has to be noted, clearly, that without the mythical epistemology religions are not possible. The experience of the absolute dimension of reality will always be possible, because this belongs to our specific quality, but not in the mythical and epistemological framework of religions. When myths cease to be the group programming system, as occurs in industrial societies, this type of epistemology ceases to be valid. The sciences criticise and invalidate the mythical epistemology and are, in turn, the factors which make possible the technology which produces the industrial societies. These same sciences and technology lead to the dynamic societies of knowledge and innovation. In them, mythical epistemology is impossible and, therefore, neither will religions be possible. When mythologies are no longer a group programme, because we have entered into fully industrialised societies and the societies of knowledge, religion collapses. Religion requires the validity of the myths as programming systems and of their epistemology. Without the validity of the myths, religions lose their cultural and social humus; and without the mythical epistemology, the myths, symbols and sacred narrations become purely symbolic systems. To be able to analyse with clarity the myths and the mythical epistemology involved in them, we have to stand outside their function of structuring the mind, structuring the feeling, the organisation and action and outside their function in the figuration of the absolute dimension of reality. From within the myth and its epistemology, these analyses are impossible. If mythology and the epistemology involved are not abandoned, what the mythology says of the culture is what the reality is, in this world and in the other. Then, with respect to the other mythologies and the other religions, no more than two postures are possible: 1. Only ones own myths and ones own religion are true, and the others are false; this is the exclusive attitude. 2. All other mythologies and religions are only partially true from the position of my own full truth, or they are approximations to this my truth; this is the inclusive attitude. However, all inclusiveness is mitigated exclusiveness. The mythical epistemology allows no other posture. We have to be aware of this. From outside the mythology, the corresponding religion and mythical epistemology, the function of the myths, symbols and sacred narrations can be 118
clearly understood; both their primary function programming communities for certain conditions in pre-industrial life and their derived function to represent and cultivate the absolute dimension of reality. Only outside the mythologies and their epistemology can their nature as constructs be clearly understood, and the dependence of these constructs on the specific ways of living. Also only when not subject to the myths can the nature of the epistemology which they impose be understood, and the essential nature of this epistemology for the myth to fulfil its function as unquestionable programmer and as the foundation and guarantee of static societies. From a point of complete liberty from myths and their epistemology it can be clearly seen and understood how they model reality and the value of reality, how they determine action and organisation, in such a way as to make possible a specific form of living. It can be seen as evident that the intention of the myths is not to describe how reality is, whether that which is relative to our needs or that which is absolute. This is not what the myths are for, although the epistemology which they impose for their validity as group programming systems may say the opposite. It can be understood that the myths and their epistemology are the basis, the foundation and the guarantee of functioning of the static societies. In conditions of life no longer pre-industrial or static, but fully industrial and typical of the societies of innovation and change, myths have to be abandoned, with the epistemology which they impose and the religions which they sustain, otherwise the new societies would be hampered. Another question which becomes evident is that the religions, without the mythical epistemology, are not possible and become merely complex symbolic systems for speaking of the absolute dimension of reality and of trans-cultural human wisdom. In the myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals, two levels can be distinguished: the superficial level formed of the personalities and narrations and the profound level formed by the deeper structures. The superficial level is that of figurations of forebears, primitive beings, gods, events, deeds and sayings and narrations referring to these figurations and the institution of rituals with which a cultural order and a form of religion are established. The profound level comprises the structures which generate these figurations, deeds, sayings, narrations and rituals. These profound structures are of two types. First there are those we called central metaphors which function as a pattern or paradigm from which all reality is modelled or ordered. The second 119
type of profound structure is formed by the formal developments of these central metaphors or paradigms. These structures are subconscious for the individuals and groups. The peoples are only aware of the superficial structures, they adhere to these and consider them as having been revealed. It is at this level that the mythical epistemology works. What the narrations tell is believed, and the personalities in them, the events which they tell, are a true description of reality. They are not aware that the myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals are a human construction with a very precise purpose: primarily to construct a viable human nature for certain conditions of survival, and concomitantly to express and cultivate the absolute experience of reality. They are not aware that what they accept as the legacy and revelation of the forebears and the gods is a construction by past generations. In general, these constructions have been made over such long spaces of time, thousands of years, that they escape human awareness. This group ignorance is functional. What is seen as the untouchable legacy and as a divine revelation cannot be known to be a construct. If this were so, the mythical epistemology, which takes the personalities and narrations of the myths as real and existing, could not function. If the mythical epistemology cannot function, the role of the myths, which is to complete the genetic indeterminacy of our species and construct a viable nature, would be impossible. Without the mythical epistemology, also, the human groups of the pre-industrial societies would lack stability, which would seriously endanger the groups survival. We have seen that for the hunter/gatherers the central metaphor, which functions as a pattern or paradigm for the interpretation, evaluation, organisation of reality and society, is the central action with which the groups survive: from violent death comes life. This is the most profound structural level. The formal development of this profound structural level is very simple and does not generate special constant formations, as we shall see in subsequent mythical cultures. Everything which has being and life comes from violent death. Consequently, everything is interpreted from this simple pattern: the hunt, the gathering, the reproduction of people and animals, the sacred, the road to the sacred, etc. What would come closer to the developments of constant formations in all the hunter-gatherer cultures would be notions such as proto-victim, sacred forebears, spirit, primitive beings from the beginning of time, death is the region of the sacred, the spiritual road is to enter into contact with the sacred kingdom of death, of the spirits. 120
Something similar could be said of the horticulturalists. They have the same central metaphor, which extends also to the tubers, corncobs and grains, and which also functions as a general paradigm. As constant mythical formations in all the horticulturalist cultures, resulting from development of the application of the paradigm or central metaphor, there would be the same as those of the hunters, with some alterations. The proto-victim is, all at the same time, human, animal and plant, therefore the central mythical figures will be presented as primitive animals which give life, as the forebears from which all good things come and as the tubers, corncobs or grains which provide life for men. In the authoritarian-agrarian societies there is a clearer differentiation between the patterns or paradigms and the logical development of these patterns. We saw what the central metaphors were: all that has being and life comes from a mandate, or a relationship of mandate/obedience, and all that has being and life comes from a fertile death, or a relationship of death/life. These two central metaphors are coordinated to form a single pattern of interpretation which subordinates the death/life pattern to that of mandate/obedience. If death is fertile it is by the will and action of the supreme gods. Let us now examine the logic of the development of these patterns in the agrarian-authoritarian societies. These logical developments of the functions of these paradigms of interpretation and evaluation give constant figures, which will be present in all mythologies of this type. There is always a Supreme Lord who sends a divinity of his rank to the world of men so that, through obedience, he may die and in dying make death fertile. The divine victim will always be resurrected and raised to the supreme rank, being seated on the right hand of the throne of the Supreme Lord. These developments are structural developments. The specific mythologies will produce different figurations and forms at these levels of constant structures, but the structures will always be present in the agrarian-authoritarian cultures, in one form or another. These reflections bring out that neither the central metaphors or central paradigms from which the different mythologies are constructed, nor the developments of these structures, are descriptions of reality. Mythological and symbolic formations such as the Supreme Lord, the divinity sent to die to make death fruitful, the fertility of death through the mandate and the death of the divinity come to this world, the resurrection and raising to heaven to be seated at the right hand of the power of the Supreme Lord, are 121
not descriptions of reality. They do not say what reality is, but how it must be seen by those who want to live from irrigation farming or in an agrarian-authoritarian society. The same can be said of the other central metaphors and their equivalent formal developments in the various pre-industrial cultures with mythicalsymbolic programming. All these figures, decisions and divine happenings belong to the order of programming structures; borrowing from computer terminology we could say that they are elements of software, not descriptions of reality. All these figures and narrations, like the rites with which they are remembered and celebrated, are constructs the primary purpose of which is to construct a human nature viable in specific conditions of survival. They do not describe real entities or real events. Nevertheless, in spite of their being constructs, and as elements of software, they are sacred figures and narrations for the peoples among whom they are valid, because they carry, express, initiate and cultivate the absolute dimension of reality. They are powerful expressions of this absolute dimension, they make its presence effective and in achieving this, their condition as constructs is no obstacle. For those who are subject to these programming systems, the fact of their being constructs remains concealed. This ignorance makes the functioning of the mythical epistemology possible, taking them as real and existing. Due to this ignorance, which sustains the mythical epistemology, the programmes can be programmes and construct viable pre-industrial natures. Every religious event and personality of importance, every master of the spirit, will have to be interpreted, necessarily and invariably, from these central metaphors and their formal developments. The master appearing in these types of cultures will have to go, in the minds of the peoples of these cultures, through all the steps imposed by the logic of the mythical development. This is true both for purely mythical personalities, such as Ishtar, Inanna, Dionysus, Osiris, and for personalities with a historical base, such as Jesus, Mohammed, Zoroaster. The myths and symbols necessarily function in the pre-industrial societies; nothing and no one can escape their interpretative, evaluating and organising function. They are similar to a computer programme. Everything that the computer can process and operate must be from the programme. Nothing can be processed and saved which does not come from the programme. Jesus Jewish disciples interpreted him from the programme they had in their minds and their communities; his Hellenic disciples interpreted him as they did because they had to read him and experience him from the agrarian122
authoritarian mythology typical of the Hellenistic monarchies, and the Roman empire was another Hellenistic monarchy. The myths, narrations, symbols and rituals of the pre-industrial societies had to be believed as they were presented on their superficial level. This was so because their nature as constructs was unknown and, on the other hand, they were taken as having been revealed. It is at this superficial level that the mythical epistemology is applied. For this reason there could be, and there were, tough confrontations between various agrarian-authoritarian mythologies diverse in their superficial levels but identical in their profound structural levels. It was these profound structures which were imprinted in the minds and feelings of people and groups; it was these profound structures, the central metaphor and the formal developments of the central metaphor, which were responsible for the group programming, which modelled reality and gave it the force of stimulus, which directed action and organisation. In relation to their programming strength, the superficial structure was only dressing. However, it was on this dressing, which carried the profound structures within it, that the mythical epistemology worked. The central metaphor, its formal developments and the superficial narrative dressing, told how things and people had to be seen, evaluated and dealt with, in order to live adequately in a specific way; they also told how the Absolute had to be represented and experienced in certain specific living conditions. If the experience of the Absolute had not been modelled by the mythological structures, and interpreted from the mythical epistemology, the group programme would have been destroyed. Again in the case of the livestock farming societies there is a clear distinction between what is the pattern or paradigm and what are the formal developments of this paradigm. We saw that the central metaphor of the livestock farming societies was death and life are in constant confrontation. This is the paradigm, the basic profound structure. The formal developments of this paradigm tell us that there is a confrontation between two divine or superhuman principles: the Principle of Good or God and the Principle of Evil or the devil. This confrontation of giants takes place at the level of human history. In human history they confront each other in a war without quarter. Human history is the story of this confrontation and is, then, a sacred story. It is an on-going story, because it is the story of the Principle of Goods successive victories against the Principle of Evil. The story will end with the final victory of the Principle of Good over the Principle of Evil. 123
Although the great battle takes place on the small level of human history, God will have to intervene to slant the battle in his favour. He will do it by sending an Emissary, a Messiah, a Prophet, with a book of revelation, which will supply the effective aid and strategy needed to conquer evil. Moses brought his book of revelation, Zoroaster his, Jesus his and Mohammed his. The people who make a pact with the Principle of Good are the Chosen People. They will be the executors of the actions of God. Through this alliance the enemies of the people are the enemies of God. The wars against his enemies are holy wars. The final victory will be the victory of this people of the Alliance. These constant features in the livestock farming mythologies form the profound structural level which must be fulfilled by all of them, with different dressings of personalities and narrations. And neither do these characters describe reality. They are programming structures, central elements of the software of the livestock farming mythologies. They are constructs to make a lifestyle viable, living by herds of animals. They do not describe this world, nor do they describe the other; they model this world and the other in order to adapt it to the minds and feelings of the livestock farming peoples. They set the reality surrounding the life of the livestock farming peoples and their experience of the absolute dimension of the real, so that it may be adapted to the manner of living by livestock farming. Above all, they set the mind and feelings of these peoples in such a way that they can have a world and a society and a religion suited to their livestock farming way of life. Also here, the religious personalities which are presented will have to be read and lived from these structures and their developments. And these religious personalities, which are interpreted from these paradigms, will have to go through all the steps of the developments of the central paradigm and its formal developments. This had to happen with Moses, Zoroaster, Mohammed and with Jesus in the first non-Hellenic Christian communities and also in the Hellenic, but by then entering into combination, as we have seen, with the interpretation patterns of the agrarian-authoritarian monarchies. What was said in the myths, symbols and sacred narrations structured the individuals and the societies. They understood it as a revelation from the forebears or the gods and therefore it was sacrosanct. But mythical epistemology also believed it was seeing a description of reality itself, both in what had to do with the reality in which the group lived, and in the absolute aspect of reality. With these procedures all possible change and alternative was blocked out. Everything that the myths and sacred narrations said was believed unconditionally. The divine revelation demanded submission and belief. Assent to the divine word had to be total and inalterable. 124
This was the foundation of pre-industrial societies and the lock against all possible change. Thus the myth and the mythical epistemology which always accompanied it, and the notion of revelation all demanded submission and belief. Belief was inseparable from the myth and was the explanation of the radically untouchable nature of what the myth said. The belief which accompanied the myth had no religious purpose; its intention was practical: to supply individual and group programming, adapted to a mode of life, and to fix it, blocking out all possible change and all possible alternative. These beliefs are cultural phenomena directly linked to group programming systems, typical of pre-industrial societies, which are all static. The beliefs have to do directly with the software of the programming systems and with the mythical epistemology of these types of societies and only indirectly with the religious dimension of life. Although the nature of the belief may not be religious, it totally conditioned the part of life which we have called the religious dimension of existence. In societies founded on beliefs, the religious group dimension could not be presented outside these beliefs. It would be inconceivable that the absolute dimension of existence should not be presented in the general conditions of the group programming typical of the static pre-industrial societies; and it would have been risky for the software and the life of the communities which had to block change and alternatives, because they had to live by doing the same as their forebears.
The anthropological nucleus generating religions
We can now determine what is the anthropological nucleus which generates religions. The following were the generators of the religions of the past: 1. Our condition as having the faculty of speech. 2. The double experience of the real generated by our faculty of speech. -one experience of the real relative to our needs -and an experience of the absolute real, in itself. 3. The pre-industrial conditions of life. 4. Group programming through myths, symbols and rituals. 125
The first two factors are unalterable, because they are present in any cultural condition that can be conceived. Factors 3 and 4 are only present in pre-industrial conditions of life, but not in industrial conditions of life. In the myths, symbols and rituals, which are the procedure of interpretation and evaluation of the pre-industrial societies and are its programming system, we find the double human level of meaning and experience of the real: that of the primary meaning or experience, ordered for our survival and that of the second or absolute meaning or experience of the real, which the myth reveals and expresses in its central points. Therefore, we can conclude that whatever is the nucleus which constitutes our specificity as living beings, this is the nucleus which generates religions, when living in pre-industrial conditions with a mythical-symbolic programming system. This nucleus generating religions is not religious and has no religious explanation, it is simply an anthropological nucleus generating forms. In itself it has no sacred nature. This explains why all pre-industrial societies have been, unfailingly, religious. With the replacement of the pre-industrial culture by the industrial, the pre-industrial conditions of life disappear and with them the group programming system with its myths, symbols and rituals. Logically, the religious form of presenting the representation and experience of the absolute dimension of the real would have to disappear. For nearly two hundred years we have lived, in the European west, in mixed societies, both pre-industrial and industrial. The mixture not only divided society into two blocks but also, very frequently, divided the psychology of individuals into two blocks: that of science, politics and economics, on the one hand, and that of morality, family, religion and, to a large extent, social organisation, on the other. The pre-industrial part of this mixed society, on both social and personal levels, supported the mythical programming and mythical expression of the absolute experience of reality. For this reason, the religions lost ground in the industrialised societies, and the greater was the industrialisation the more ground was lost, but they did not collapse, because they had support from the pre-industrial parts of these same societies. The generalisation of industry bars this situation. Society is now articulated not around the pre-industrial central action but around the scientific-technical and economic tasks. This scientific-technical action cannot generate the central metaphor from which to construct the interpretation and evaluation of reality, because its semantic is abstract; neither can it be the vehicle of expression and cultivation of the absolute dimension of the real, for the same reason. 126
In fully industrialised societies, third and fourth generators have disappeared, that is to say, the pre-industrial conditions of life and the group programming through myths, symbols and rituals. The religions have lost their support. In fully industrialised societies the religions have lost their footing and collapsed. Religions are no longer generated. With this we find ourselves in the situation that, in fully industrialised societies, where the remains of the pre-industrial life have disappeared, we are left without the traditional means by which to experience and express the absolute dimension of our lives, a factor which is intrinsic to our species. In the new cultural circumstances, what form will the anthropological nucleus, which in the past generated the religions and which is the centre of our specific quality, now take? Clearly it will not appear, as in the past, in mythical narrations, group programming. We shall end up by reconstituting entirely, without myths and symbols and without religions, what was granted to us by the religions. We shall have to learn to understand, experience and cultivate the absolute dimension of our existence and our experience of the real, but without religious forms. The anthropological nucleus which in the past, in pre-industrial conditions of life, generated the religions, will have to find adequate forms of cultivation, but no longer religious. These non-religious forms of our specific nucleus, will have, without doubt, repercussions on our cultural formations, our political and social formations, but without any intention of imposition, rather as a possibility or even necessity for cultivation of a centrally human dimension. The explicitly and exclusively human quality, which is the experience of the absolute dimension of reality, and which is our specific anthropological nucleus, will be lived and expressed freely and autonomously with respect to the group programming systems. The experience of the absolute dimension of reality will be thought and experienced outside mythical epistemology, which takes as real and existing what it says, as a purely symbolic system which notes and expresses what cannot be objectified nor limited nor represented. It will be thought and experienced without beliefs, without submission, without untouchable sacred forms, without hierarchies, without intermediaries. This quality of certainty and firmness, not linked to forms although said with forms, which is the axiological notice and appreciation of the absolute dimension of the real, will not be able to take religious forms, nor will it be religion. It can use the religious forms of the past to express itself and to work, provided that this use is completely free of beliefs and mythical epistemologies. 127
All the wealth of wisdom of the religious past of humanity will be able to be used, and its use would be appropriate, but exclusively as symbolic forms, to ascertain what is beyond all form, all systems of interpretation and evaluation: the absolute dimension of the real. The immense wealth of the past can be and should be used, but as a guide and in order to be free of any submission to forms. What in the past was lived in religions as beliefs and, therefore, as submission to forms, will now be a task of research. The great religious traditions of humanity are inexhaustible treasures of expressions of this other dimension of reality, fit to help us in our research; and they are, also, great assemblies of procedures and methods for facilitating the silencing of our condition of need, which is the creator of forms and representations, in order to access clearly to That which is, shown in the centre itself of our nature without nature, in our anthropological nucleus. We shall go more deeply into this in subsequent chapters, after analysing the structure typical of the innovation societies, the process of transition which has led to them, their development and what characterises them.
128
CHAPTER III
Towards innovation societies
The slow generation of a model for the interpretation of reality, alternative to the myth and its epistemology
Until now we have studied societies with a dominant occupation, that is to say, societies in which obtaining the necessities for survival was achieved, fundamentally, through a preponderant type of occupation, e.g. hunting, livestock farming, agriculture. In these societies there were other types of occupation in addition to the dominant, but these other types of work had only a subsidiary place, since what was needed for living was basically obtained by the dominant working occupation. From this dominant occupation emerged the central metaphor. The other subsidiary occupations were gathering for the hunters; fishing, hunting and craftsmanship for the irrigation farmers; agriculture and hunting and trade for the livestock farmers. In the societies in which there is a dominant working occupation, the social structure is generated from this occupation. The hunter societies were organised in little family groups, because the hunting parties did not need more; men and women divided the work, the men hunted, the women gathered. Livestock farming needs various family groups to join together to care for the herds and organise defence. The irrigation farming societies needed a strict hierarchical and bureaucratic organisation, broader than that of family groups or pacts between clans, to make cultivation and defence possible. We have seen that, in the hunter societies, the dominant working occupation generates, by itself alone, a mythical model, without the social structure playing any role in the formation of this model. The livestock farming societies have a rather more complex social structure; in them, the social structure has no influence in the formation of the mythical model (confrontation of life and death), but it does influence its development, for example, in the appearance of the notion of alliance, the chosen people and the Envoy, the Messiah. The irrigation farming societies are those which have the most complex social structure. The social structure is an instrument which makes cultivation possible, consequently, the cultural model will be generated by the dominant working occupation, cultivation, and by the social structuring, the authoritarian organisation. 129
Consequently, in societies where there is a dominant working occupation, this occupation generates the mythical model and the social structuring. When the dominant occupation is accompanied by a complex social organisation, then both factors intervene in shaping the mythical model of interpretation and evaluation of reality and in the formal development of application of the model. The non-dominant, or subsidiary, working occupations are interpreted from the model which emerges from the dominant occupation, from the central metaphor which is generated. In the hunter societies, gathering is interpreted from hunting; in the irrigation farming societies, craftsmanship, trade, hunting and fishing, will be interpreted form the authoritarian agricultural model. What happens when there is no dominant working operation in a society? How will the cultural pattern, the central metaphor be generated? When there is no dominant occupation in a society, the social group lives from more than one occupation in equilibrium of counterbalance, without any one imposing over the others in terms of providing the means for survival. In this case, none of the occupations generates a social structure which is imposed on the whole of the group. Given that the diversified working structure is not capable of generating a new social structure which can be imposed on the group, the social structure of the previous working stage is carried forward. This was the case of the Greek polis; there was no labour structure with a dominant occupation, therefore, the social structure of the parental base was carried forward in the form of clans, typical of livestock farming. Something similar occurred with the medieval city: an agrarian-authoritarian social structure was carried forward. The mixed society of the first industrialisation presented similar characteristics: in it the authoritarian features of the preceding age persisted. In societies without a dominant working occupation, the axiological model emerges from the combination of working occupations, plus the social structure carried forward. The combination is different in each case. In societies of this type, changes occur, more or less important, in the social structuring carried forward. The Greek polis, although organised on a parental basis of clans, is not a society simply articulated in kinship groups: the demos is not a kinship structure, although it feigns to be so; the medieval city, although a hierarchical society, is not an absolute monarchy; the liberal society of the first industrial revolution, although in many aspects also a hierarchical society, has a profoundly modified particular authoritarianism. We have set out these points in order to approach more closely the case of the Greek polis, in which a model of interpretation of reality began to be generated which was an alternative to the mythical model. 130
The Greek polis is a society without a dominant working occupation. It embraced rainfall agriculture and livestock farming, but neither the one nor the other had sufficient importance to require special institutions which had axiological and political consequences, as was the case of the eastern agrarian empires or the large livestock farming societies. Craftsmanship also had importance among the Greeks, but the artisans did not control the polis. The workshops were of very average size; in most cases, they were situated in a room or in the patio of the artisans home. An artisans business would employ no more than ten men. The specialisation of each of the artisans was minimal, so that a carpenter, normally, could make all the carpentry objects. The division of work extended, at the most, to some four or five craftsmen, who would exchange among themselves the various moments of production. In consequence, the organisation of the artisanal work did not require special structures which could have consequences in the system of group representation and evaluation. Trade was important in the polis, but this was in the marketplace or around the temples and was frequently handled by the producers themselves. Maritime trade had more volume, but was generally in the hands of a group of cosmopolitan traders, distanced from the native citizens. Nor did the merchants control the polis. The same can be said of the liberal professions, such as doctors, teachers, artists, etc. In the polis, no working occupation was such that through need of organisation it could subordinate the others. The occupations of the citizens were relatively abundant, diversified and proportioned with regard to their political and economic weight. Both agricultural and craft techniques remained fairly rudimentary and not superior to their environment, although the quality of the goods could be excellent, and there were no special organisational needs which could have political and ideological consequences. The social organisation of the polis was not based on working factors, it was supported by associations of a family relationship type, clans, fraternities, tribes. This organisation in families and families of families ensured cohesion, without being supported by working or authoritarian structures. The status of citizen depended exclusively on belonging to one of the citys founder clans. The polis, then, was, from the labour and organisational viewpoint, a novelty in its cultural environment. The groups founding the polis now lived from an assembly of balanced activities, among which there was no dominant activity. They retained the same type of organisation as when they had been nomadic livestock farmers, although, as we have said, with some important modifications. 131
We shall not try to analyse or describe the cultural system of the polis in full, we shall only try to see how a model for interpreting reality was generated in it, through its particular working and social structure, which from the start was presented as an alternative to the myth. It will take about two thousand years to displace the myth as a system of group interpretation and evaluation, and as a system of programming for human groups. The alternative model which appeared in the polis involved an important turn in humanitys ways of thinking and feeling, a turn which is still at the base of all our systems of life. We are now going to track the generation of this model alternative to the myth, how it led to the origins of philosophy and science, and how its consequences ended up by displacing the myth from its interpretative and programming functions. Long before the birth of the Greek polis craftsmanship was already fully developed, you only have to think of the craftsmanship of the eastern agrarian empires; but this craftsmanship was a secondary occupation in the bodies of the hunter, livestock farming and authoritarian agriculture societies and, therefore, was always controlled by the dominant working occupation which imposed the model of interpretation of all realities, also of craftsmanship itself. The central occupation of the societies before the polis generated the central metaphor which worked as a paradigm of interpretation of all reality, including craftsmanship. Thus, craftsmanship could never have the role of the central metaphor of interpretation. In the particular cultural circumstances of the polis, the conditions existed for artisanal work to take up a role similar to a central occupation, although in reality it was not so; the conditions existed for it to be transformed into a central metaphor and, in consequence, into the pattern or model of interpretation of reality. This was the great invention of the Greek polis. Let us look briefly at the features of artisanal work and the influence which this work had on the formation of the model of interpretation of reality which originated in the polis. The instruments used by the craftsman are inert, they have no independence with respect to their user, they depend totally on his know-how. They are supplements to and extensions of the craftsmans capacity of action. In the craftsmans hands, they refine and extend his operational field. To become an artisan, to learn the craft, the individual must learn to develop a series of sequential actions, in a succession and proportion such that they result in the production of a certain type of object. In the actions and series of actions provoked by the stimuli which are intrinsic to our nature as living beings, we do not need to concern ourselves with the schema of these successive actions, or the proportion between them. All this 132
follows from the fact itself of existing. Only when the human subject has to learn this series of actions which makes him an artisan and has to learn the proportion and measure between them, then he must explicitly take care to see that the sequence of actions is correct. The artisan will be the person who has assimilated all these schemas of operations and, on assimilating them, has acquired an operational second nature, which he did not have through the mere fact of being a man or citizen. These characters of artisanal apprenticeship induce conceptions of what is the subject and what is the environment. Once the artisan is in possession of his know-how, he produces objects by imposing form on matter. The subject imposes a form, which the matter receives. What the artisan imposes on the matter with his action is a reality which the matter did not have. This conception which the artisan has of his work, resulting from the structure of his task itself, creates a hierarchy between the subject and the matter: the subject gives the matter a being which it previously did not have, issues the being which the matter receives. We recall that the authoritarian conception of reality was based on the schema of emission/reception. Whoever issues the mandate issues with it an ontological reality which is received by he who obeys. In the artisanal concept we find the same fundamental idea. The subject, also, interprets himself as the opposite to the matter which he works, as the no-matter, because his ability to impose a determined form on the matter is not material and is opposed to it. There is, then, a hierarchy between the subject and the matter, which is expressed in the contrast of matter/spirit. From artisanal work there emerges a conception which sets the human subject in contrast to the environment, as the issuer to the receiver. The craftsman interprets himself as a lord of nature, and represents God as the Supreme Artisan and lord of nature. Artisanal work also accentuates individualism. The artisans know-how is the quality of each specific individual; both his system of working and his system of apprenticeship emphasise the craftsmans individual features, independent with respect to his group. On assimilating the know-how which makes him an artisan, he does not assimilate something which, at the same time, integrates him into a specific group; on the contrary, his ability makes him independent of the society in which he lives. This can distance him from the mythical and value system of the specific society in which he lives. For the cultures which preceded the polis, the individual and the social role formed an indivisible package. Being an individual and being integrated into a 133
social group, in an occupation and in the values of that group, were one and the same thing. The Greek artisan, in becoming such, defines himself now not in relation to his social integration but in relation to his operational capacity, his ability. He understands himself as a structured operational principle, as a nature independent of his function and social integration. With the artisans of the polis arose the notion of human nature understood as an operational principle according to reason, that is to say, according to proportion and measure. The individual is no longer defined as a nucleus of social relationships, but as a nature independent of his social connections. There arises an autarchic conception of the human subject, which means that, in some way, society is relegated to a second plane. The consequences of this artisanal attitude with respect to society will come much later, in the liberal societies. And the most important factor in generating a new model of interpretation of reality, an alternative to the myth, is the following: the way of artisanal working leads to the thought that notice is given about an object, about a reality, it is explained and is understood when we know how it is made, when we know what we may call its constructability. This is no longer the perspective of the myths. Myths, when they understand and explain objects and realities, understand and explain what value these objects have for a specific society, not how they are constructed or what connection they have. The new model which emerges in the polis with the artisans, explains not the value of the objects but how they are constructed, what their connections are. The artisanal metaphor is an operational model which tries to explain the world as the result of a series of operations carried out by a divine supersubject or by material elements. This perspective will give place to the birth of philosophy and science, as forms of knowledge alternative to mythical knowledge. For the myths something is known when its value, its meaning, is known. For this new focus something is known when it can be indicated how it is made. This change in the ways of thinking, from central metaphors to operational models, meant a turn of enormous importance in the history of humanity, the consequences of which we are still experiencing. To interpret the world as feasible, as feasibility, means submitting the interpretation of reality to the evolution of human instruments. The world as made, as feasible, is always conceived according to human ways of doing things, although the action is attributed to a divine subject or to the forces of nature. Thus it is logical that for a long time the world was seen in human terms and, basically, as anthropocentric. 134
The evolution of the instruments which man employs will bring with it an evolution in the ways of interpreting reality, although always under the same perspective: reality seen from the correlation of its feasibility. With time the instruments and sciences will become sophisticated, will be seen mathematically until becoming distanced from the anthropocentric perspective, but the perspective will be maintained in the direction set by the artisanal metaphor of the polis. The craftsmans occupation, in the varied and balanced works of the polis, is freed from submission to the pattern of interpretation and evaluation of a dominant occupation. In being free the possibility opens for it to function as a central metaphor of interpretation. But this is only a possibility. Why does artisanal work develop this possibility of serving as a model of interpretation of reality? Why, although free, does it not remain in the shadow? What follows is only an attempt at an explanation. The artisanal model gathered importance in the polis, supported on the structure of Greek society. The polis, organised in groups of clans, made it possible for artisanal work to develop its potentialities as a model of interpretation of reality and as a model for the organisation of social action. The particular structure of Greek society (structure of families and families of families, real or feigned, as in the case of the demos to which a common ancestor was attributed), used the schema of artisanal work to organise itself, order its actions in the world and explain the world. The artisanal model is what best fits the social functioning in the complexity of the polis. How do you co-ordinate the interests of the various working groups in a society integrated in terms of family relationships? Well, in a way similar to the way that families act and artisans act: by proposing ends which co-ordinate the interests of each one of the groups, according to their proportion and measure. How is authority established in a society in which everyone belongs to the same family? By taking everyones opinion into account. The need to co-ordinate the interests of the various working groups demanded that everyones opinion had to be taken into account. Only by taking into account the opinions of all could political questions be raised in due proportion and measure. Democracy was born, although in truth it was not, but rather everything went on with democracy in the same way as it had in the clans and tribes before the foundation of the polis, but now with a greater degree of complexity and sophistication. The artisans mode of acting was the most suitable for organising all the correlations of economic and political action in Greek society, because it was 135
capable of co-ordinating the economic and political interests of the group according to proportion and measure, harmonising the wills of the various groups according to their respective weight. This same artisanal model will be used by philosophy and the sciences to explain the world, the human being and society. These explanations by the sciences and philosophy will be presented as alternatives to those of the mythologies. The mythical narrations speak of the value of realities; the philosophical and scientific explanations speak of the correlations which constitute the realities; when philosophy speaks of value, it justifies it from the correlations of realities which it believes it understands. Thus, the conjunction of a diversified working structure, balanced and with no dominant occupation, with social structures organised in family clans, made it possible for artisanal way of acting to become a model for the interpretation of reality. This model, over time and slowly, will tend to become preponderant, first in the interpretation of knowledge and later in the organisation of the whole of society.1 Let us take an example of the use of the artisanal metaphor, the artisanal model of interpretation of reality, principally in order to understand clearly what it means, rather than as verification of the affirmation, which would take up too many pages. There are several clear examples in pre-Socratic philosophy, but we shall take the case of Aristotle, for its clarity. In Aristotle we see clearly the process which leads to transforming the artisanal metaphor into a conceptual model applicable from one field to another. The construction of an artisanal object means: the artist or artisan who makes it, the matter with which it is constructed or on which it is constructed, a prior form, in the mind of the artisan, according to which the object is constructed and a purpose for which it is constructed. Around this schema Aristotle creates his theory of causality in its quadruple aspect: efficient cause, material cause, formal cause and final cause. Also supported by this artistic-artisanal schema he establishes his pairs of concepts, again taken from the operational artisanal schema: potentiality and actuality or, which is the same, the possibility of realisation and the actual realisation. An architect has the possibility, the potentiality to make a building. Matter has the possibility of receiving a determined form. The construction of the building or statue from marble will be the actuality.
1 For a more detailed study of this theme, Cf. my work: Anlisis epistemolgico de las configuraciones axiolgicas humanas. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, 1983, pp. 429-461. The text on the Greek polis and the artisans is largely taken from my work: Religin sin religin. PPC, Madrid, 1996, pp. 29-38.
136
This conceptual apparatus, taken from and elaborated on artistic and artisanal work, Aristotle transfers to the process of development of the organic. In procreation the man is the formal principle, while the woman is the material principle. Like procreation, the development of an organism is also conceived on the technomorph model, as the progressive imposition of form on matter or the step from potentiality to actuality. Uniquely, in the case of living beings, the imposition of form does not come from the exterior, as in the case of the arts, but from the interior, from within. And this internal and necessary development of the organism is the attainment of an end. He also applies his model to the cosmos as a whole. Nature acts according to ends, like an artist, creating order and looking after the balance of forces. He compares nature with a good administrator (oiconomos agazos) and the universe with a country estate in which each element must fulfil a function and follow some set prescriptions. Also in the universe as a whole there is an efficient cause, a formal cause, a material cause and a final cause. The same conceptual apparatus is used for the interpretation of the soul. The living being is a compound of matter, the body, and form, the soul. The soul is the dynamic and formal principle. The body reaches a specific degree of perfection through the action of the soul which imposes form on it. Also the process of knowledge, both sensitive or perceptive knowledge and rational knowledge, is interpreted with the categories of matter and form, actuality and potentiality. The soul has the potentiality of perception which is made actual by the form of sensitive objects, thus the potentiality of intellective knowledge is made actual by a formal mental principle. The intellect, as passive, is similar to a tabula rasa. Aristotle distinguishes between a passive and potential intellect and an active intellect (nous paceticos, nous poieticos). The passive intellect cannot be activated by a formal sensitive principle (phantasmata); it can only be activated by a formal principle which is, at least, of the same height. This will be the agent intellect. As the artist works the material, so the agent intellect prepares the phantasma to release it from its sensitive materials and lift it to the category of mental content. He even seems to apply the schema of matter and form to logic. The subject, determined by the predicate, takes the role of matter. The subject is determined by the predicate as matter is by form, so that judgment is a compound of matter and form. The schema which Aristotle uses supposes an interpretation of the world, not only structured and homogenised, but also hierarchical: the form and the act are hierarchically superior to the matter or the potential. What for Aristotle is less 137
valuable and less perfect, is treated as matter; what is more valuable and perfect, as form. Thus, the soul is superior to the body, man is superior to woman. Aristotle uses the pair of concepts of matter and form to try to understand God. He says that every mundane being is, by its nature, always contingent, mixed with potentiality; it needs, therefore, for its realisation, something before itself. And this something before, also mundane, needs, in its turn, another before, and this another, and so successively, until reaching, so as not to be left hanging in the air, a being which is by itself, which is pure actuality, without any mixture of potentiality. God is, then, pure actuality, pure act. He is pure form. If God is actuality and pure self-existence, then an incorporeal quality corresponds to him, given that whatever is corporeal involves materiality, potentiality, and we have said that God is pure form. Equally the note of non-spatiality will correspond to him, given that space and body are mutually conditioning. He will also be immutable and eternal, given that pure form and pure act do not allow for growth or alteration, and if they have no development, then neither is there time, given that this is the measure of change. God as absolute cannot think except in the absolute, that is to say, cannot think other than in himself. To turn to any other thing of less value would be to bow towards the imperfect, something unworthy of God. All science, even the most sophisticated, is the construction of living beings; and is constructed primarily in order to live, to act more effectively. But in the sciences and in philosophy, as in all human matters of importance, there appear aspects of our absolute experience of the real. The absolute experience of the real is a free experience, interested in the real, not thinking of ones own advantage. We must never forget the general nature of all human knowledge as the knowledge of a living being with needs, useful in order to live. This radical and fundamental fact does not negate the more disinterested and finer aspects of our knowledge, if we take into account the double experience of the real which is our specific quality. Both myths and sciences operate with models which function as metaphors, as patterns or paradigms of interpretation of the real. Both myths and sciences are constructions of reality, modelled by a living being. The mythical models or paradigms are metaphors composed of axiological elements, because these metaphors are taken from the central actions with which the peoples survive in the environment; there is nothing more valuable, to a living animal, than that from which it lives. The scientific models or paradigms are like metaphors, but are composed of abstract elements, that is to say, without an axiological load. 138
The myths are constructs for the purpose of constructing and ordering the meaning of realities in order to be able to direct action and life. The sciences are constructs for the purpose of defining and objectifying reality in order to be able to operate in it with more effectiveness and thus live. Both types of constructions model and organise reality in order to be able to act in it and live. In the mythical construction, which is an axiological construction, the absolute dimension of the real is always present and is in the heart of the constructed system. In scientific constructions, which are abstract constructions, the absolute dimension of the real, which is axiological, is frequently present, not within it but rather on its periphery. Neither of the two types of constructions describes reality as it is. The mythical construction describes how reality has to be seen in specific living conditions in order to be able to act appropriately and live. The scientific construction says what it can objectify, that is to say, define, conceptualise, represent of the real, which allows us to orientate ourselves and act better and more effectively in reality. The myth, when it functions as a group programming system, imposes the mythical epistemology which sustains that what it says is how reality is in itself, both in the functional dimension, and in the absolute dimension. The sciences, when they disputed with the myths, in opposition to the claim which generated the mythical epistemology, adopted, in fact, that same epistemology in claiming that what the sciences say, not the myths, is how reality is. In the new cultural situation in which we find ourselves, in fully industrialised societies with the strong stamp of the societies of knowledge, there is no more dispute with the myth because it no longer has strength, we have moved away from these claims of the myths and sciences and we are aware that they are all our constructions; and our constructions of knowledge never forget their primary function, survival. The cognitive and axiological capacities of our species are capacities primarily orientated towards effective survival in the environment. The fact that our ability of speech opens us to the experience of the absolute dimension of existence, does not alter in any way the primary function of our cognitive and axiological capacities. From the Greek polis, philosophy and the sciences gradually developed, in little centres of philosophers and scientists. Meanwhile, the rest of society continued living with pre-industrial procedures, programmed by myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals. The sciences had very little impact on life in the groups. The technological applications of the sciences, were at first merely recreational in the large 139
Hellenistic cities and later produced some applications, especially in navigation and in war. Humanity remained in this situation for around two thousand years. There came a moment in the progressive development of science and technology when the forms of acting and moving in the environment could be seriously altered. Only when these applications produced a noticeable impact on life in the societies did the great mutation which we have called industrialisation take place. The impact of science and technology in the life of the groups displaced the myth, because it displaced the central action which generated the central metaphor in pre-industrial societies, from which the myth gained validity and by which it was sustained. For the industrialised groups, the programme, the project of life proposed by the myth, turned out to be inadequate. They had to look to philosophy to construct substitutes for the myth. These substitutes for the myth were ideologies. Ideology was born from dispute with the myth. The myth sought to offer an interpretation and evaluation of the untouchable reality, a project of organisation and action, a project of life, together with a religion, which claimed to describe the nature of things and which spoke of divine revelation. Ideology sought to offer, supported by philosophy and the science of its time, an interpretation and evaluation of reality which claimed to describe the nature itself of things. It sustained that it was a foundation, solid and not imagined like the myth, from which to propose modes of organisation and action, no longer with a guarantee by the gods, but guaranteed by the being itself of things. The one offers a revelation and the other offers an unveiling, a discovery. The one and the other, in their opposition, as the semiotic laws order, confront each other on a common axis: a mythical epistemology of reality.
The appearance of the first industrial societies and their consequences
The first industrialisation started from small social groups within the pre-industrial societies. These minority groups were, for a long time, contained within the broader agrarian-authoritarian and mythological social contexts. With industrialisation, what had been artisanal work passed into the hands of engineers. Machines now produce what had previously been made by the artisans. Little by little the artisans were replaced by machines designed by the engineers. Now, these machines produced by engineers did not alter or destroy the schema of interpretation of reality which the artisans possessed. The new 140
machines were much more efficient in producing objects, but they still required immediate human control. They were still extensions of the human mode of action. Consequently, the engineers did not change the artisans interpretation of the human subject in terms of ability, mind, reason, non-matter; nor did they alter their relationships with the nature of command and majesty. Individualism and the autarchic interpretation of the individual also continued to be accentuated. They interpret man as dispensing with the factors of social relationships and explain society from the individual standpoint: society is a social pact among individuals. This interpretation of society is the first ideological innovation of importance in the industrial society. The second change of importance by the engineers with respect to the artisans mental model was application of the Newtonian scientific model to society, in order to justify and co-ordinate the free initiative of individuals in the economic order, in free market competition and in the political field. Just as there is a pre-established order in the movement of the heavenly bodies, so there is a pre-established order in society which determines that when each individual seeks his own interest, it redounds to the benefit of all. The regulator of this order is market supply and demand. Through the market, each individual, seeking his own interest, will meet the demands and needs of others; and the demand will stimulate the supply. Politics will also be governed by the same market law: the political offer of the parties will tend to satisfy the demands of society. But the liberal society of the first industrialisation was not a society with a dominant working occupation. Society, as a whole, did not fundamentally live from industry. Some nuclei of population lived from industry in the big cities, but the rest lived from agriculture, in circumstances fairly similar to those of the old regime, but which were altering little by little. These facts have social and ideological consequences. Industrialisation, where it is introduced, partially alters the earlier cultural structure, but leaves the old structures surviving in broad sectors of society, which therefore sustain the agrarian-authoritarian form in many aspects. In the lack of a dominant working occupation, many elements of the earlier cultural and social structure are carried forward. However, the appearance of industrial societies meant the first great mutation of the human group programming systems. The narrations of forebears and gods, which had supplied the group project of life, were replaced by philosophical theories which founded what had to become a programme for group living. 141
When these philosophical theories acted as group programmers they were called ideologies. The step from a pre-industrial to an industrial society always involved a simultaneous step from a system of group programming by myths to a system of group programming by ideologies. This is an evident fact, the importance of which has not been sufficiently considered. But the system of liberal values of the first industrialisation was sheltered by the old agrarian-authoritarian system. Science, economics and politics were governed by ideological principles, but the rest of life remained under the norms of the old system of values. This balance between the new and the old was always difficult and unstable, because the old system was strongly resistant to giving ground and because the continuous advances of industrialisation always upset the fragile balance achieved. In spite of the agreements between these two forms of life, between two different types of human projects, achieved after two world wars, industry tended, more and more clearly, to become a dominant working occupation. The remains of the agrarian-authoritarian culture, warranted by religion, retreated in the same measure as industrialisation became generalised and imposed itself in all the ambits of life, including agriculture and livestock farming. Cultivation and livestock farming were no longer handled in the traditional way, typical of the agrarian societies, but according to scientific, technical and business patterns. With this industrialisation of farming activities, the mentality of its operators came closer to the mentality of men in industry. As industrialisation invaded all ambits of life, including the agricultural work, the agricultural-authoritarian mythology and religion, which was contemporary with it, were losing ground and their social base. As a result, the values which the liberal ideology had preserved from the earlier cultural tradition went into crisis. The more society is industrialised, the more resistant it is to authoritarian formulas, and the crisis affects particularly the traditional conception of the family, relationships between the sexes, religion, etc. In Western Europe the agrarian-authoritarian and religious culture is disappearing from its last redoubts. Of the traditional, age-old ways of thinking, feeling and experiencing of our forebears, there now only remain a few traces to be extinguished. And, we repeat, the liberal culture is losing the shelter and the agrarian-authoritarian and religious credit on which it had lived. For nearly 200 years there have been mixed societies, composed of an industrial minority, ever growing and located in the central nucleus of the society, and a great pre-industrial majority on the periphery. These two blocks of society had a dual constitutional discourse: the mythical-symbolic, typical of the pre-industrial societies, sustained by the churches and religious institutions, 142
and the ideological, advocated by the industrial sectors, their philosophical sponsors and scientists, political parties and trade unions. This dual discourse was juxtaposed or articulated with more or less conflict or harmony but, in any case, the two types of discourse coexisted, sharing the fields of influence. The industrial nucleus in the cities was controlled by the ideologies; the periphery and the country were controlled by mythology and religion. And by activities: the sciences, the economy and politics were in the hands of ideology, while religion, with all that it implied in terms of the God-given group project, morals, family organisation and, to a great degree, group organisation, was controlled by mythology. In these two social blocks of the first mixed societies, the agrarian-authoritarian sectors had religious beliefs and the industrial sectors had lay beliefs. Both social groups were groups of believers, although their beliefs were in contrast. And both groups were believers because, as we have already noted, their articulation was opposed but on one and the same axis: the mythical epistemological interpretation. Because what sustains the premise that things are as the mythologies say and describe them or as the sciences say and describe them is what we call mythical epistemology. The group with religious beliefs had sacred rituals, the group with lay beliefs had not. These two social blocks were in very tough opposition in all the countries until well into the 20th century. The confrontations were not only cultural, economic and political, they were also military. There were great social conflicts, civil wars, wars between countries, colonial wars, etc. After a host of colonial and civil wars and after two world wars, a pact was reached between the two sectors of European societies. But the pact was always unstable because of continuous growth in the industrial sector. The confrontation has still not been resolved entirely in some countries, among them our own. The extension of science, technology and industry in their application to all levels of human life, not only for work, but also at the levels of communication and leisure, has completely swept away the pre-industrial forms of work and living. Industrialisation has become generalised in society; there still remain some pre-industrial redoubts in the developed societies, but without economic or organisational or political impact. With this, the mythical-symbolic and religious systems of group programming and projects for life have lost the humus which nourished them. Now there is no central occupation, which worked as a central metaphor and was the pattern or paradigm of interpretation, evaluation, organisation and action of the group. Still these survive, but languidly, like 143
plants without nourishment, as offers of values and projects of life directed to persons and groups which no longer exist. Therefore we believe that, from what we have seen so far, it can reasonably be asserted that the mythical-symbolic systems of creating group projects and programming, and their religious systems of beliefs, are soon to disappear in the developed societies, if not in the short term, then in the medium term. Also, from what we have seen so far, without counting on the implementation of the second great industrial revolution introduced by the societies of knowledge, we believe that the ideologies too have entered into a serious crisis because, with the disappearance of the remains of the pre-industrial societies, their cover and their point of connection will also disappear and, which is more serious, the support and reason for survival of what we have called mythical epistemology will disappear. We now know clearly that the realities are not as the mythologies say they are, nor as the ideologies say they are, nor even the sciences. What these linguistic constructions say are only models, of one kind or another, in order that living beings can manage in the immensity which surrounds us and be able to survive. Even when the religions speak of the absolute dimension of our existence, it is only an annotation, an allusion, an expression which can never claim to describe exactly how is this dimension of our existence.
The appearance and introduction of the innovation societies
The generalisation of industrialisation in the developed societies has been accompanied by an event which totally alters the cultural, economic, social, political and religious situation: the appearance of the societies of knowledge, innovation societies and continuous change, which generates a second great wave of industrialisation. A new system of production of goods and services is being introduced. A system of production of goods is giving way to a system of production of knowledge from which goods will follow. It is understood that what is really economically advantageous and profitable is the production of new knowledge and technology, from which new goods and services can be produced. During the pre-industrial and industrial phases of humanity, the wealth of nations depended on the land, work, trade, capital, industry and arms. In the future, the wealth of nations will depend on knowledge, intelligence, information. The wealth of the future lies in knowledge; and computer systems are its central technology. 144
The social groups which live from the creation of knowledge are called societies of knowledge, not because they have greater wisdom than the societies which preceded them, but because the procedure for creating all types of goods is the creation of knowledge in science and technology. These societies are already a fact, are already implanted in the bodies of fully industrialised societies. Thus we have given birth to a new mixed society, this time composed of an industrial majority and a minority, very influential, in the society of knowledge. Societies which live from the creation of knowledge are forced to produce novelty, innovation, in four orders: scientific innovation, technological innovation, organisational innovation and axiological innovation. The creation of scientific knowledge and the creation of new technology cannot be separated because they depend on each other. It is not possible to produce new science without new technology, and new technology is born from new science. Research and achievements in the one field depend on research and achievements in the other. Scientific and technological innovation involves transformations, innovations in working. Innovation in working means transforming the working organisation. If the working organisation is transformed, labour relationships are transformed and, therefore, society is transformed. If we have to admit that the transformation of organisations and societies is happening, we have to pay attention to the problems of their communication relationships and motivations and, therefore, we find ourselves faced by the need for axiological innovations, inseparable from changes in the group purposes. Until the coming of the societies of knowledge, we had believed, whether with religious beliefs or with lay beliefs, that science and technology could change, but that the rest of the group parameters were immovable. Since the appearance of the societies of knowledge, we have had to understand that there has to be innovation in all these fields, that everything is mobile, everything moves, and that we ourselves are the creators of this movement. We are faced with the appearance, consolidation and expansion of a new type of society: the society of knowledge, that is to say, a society which lives, develops and prospers by continuously creating and consuming a subtle asset: knowledge. These societies, by their own nature and proposal, are formed by groups which find themselves forced to learn continuously, because they are compelled to create innovations, to adapt themselves to new problems, new perspectives, new solutions in all fields. They are societies which have to learn continuously and have to learn quickly. 145
Living from creating and consuming knowledge is equivalent to living from creating and consuming change in all the orders and, therefore, is equivalent to living supported by the certainties that the groups themselves create. The creative and innovative capacity of business teams is already the principal factor in competitiveness and success. The financial success of regions and countries, or their failure, rests on the capacity of their business groups to create knowledge and innovation. Let us look at some of the features of the societies of knowledge. In order to achieve creative teams, composed of specialists in various types of knowledge and technology (knowledge which is exclusive because it is only possessed by each of the specialists), an easy and rich flow of information has to be achieved among them. Those who possess exclusive knowledge cannot be forced to collaborate with other specialists in a common task, so that they give the best of themselves. The maximum creative return cannot be achieved by compelling them to put all their knowledge, all the information which they possess and all their innovative capacity within reach of the other specialists and, through them, within reach of business and society. If authentic communication, without reservation, is not able to be created among the various team specialists, the collaboration and the necessary flow of information between them will not function with the intensity, liberty and plenitude required for them to become a truly creative team. Without interpersonal communication, free of reservations and mistrust, there will not be adequate collaboration in the business of innovation. For this communication to occur, which cannot be imposed or forced, it is essential to create motivations, images for the future in the short, medium and long term, which can be shared to the point that stimulates the work to full performance. Thus, innovative organisations are organisations which are continually induced to create new knowledge, new interpretations of reality; new technology, which involves new ways of working and collaborating. This means that new ways of organising must be created along with the scientific and technological changes in order to make them possible. The new organisations also demand novelty in the communication systems and, therefore, in the motivations, values and purposes of the individuals and the groups. What is happening in the financial organisations of innovation, will happen, in one way or another, in the short or medium term, in the whole of society, because innovation is becoming the factor responsible for the economic welfare of the peoples. 146
When societies did not eat from the creation of knowledge, they could consider knowledge as something gratuitous, a child of pure curiosity, a spiritual activity. The innovation societies have brought knowledge down to earth. We are also obliged to recognise that our knowledge is our own construction. We could say that truth, scientific truth, is the construction of the scientist, as beauty is the construction of the artist. But neither the one nor the other is an arbitrary construction. A truth thus constructed does not subject the individual but leaves him free, although recognising his operational and objective value. We have come to an idea of truth which is not subject to any formulation, but which is free of them all, because it urges new creations, new transformations of our interpretation of reality. For the societies which preceded those of knowledge, truth was either what God had revealed or what science had unveiled, discovered. Against this notion of truth there was no alternative to acceptance and submission. For the men and women of the second industrial revolution, truth cannot be bound to a fixation of any kind, cannot be bound to any submission. This brings us to a transformation of the idea of certainty. Individuals and groups will no longer live from certainties received either from God or from the nature itself of things, or from science. Individuals will have to live from the certainties, the convictions and the motivations which, in one way or another, they themselves construct. Ones own certainties one makes for oneself, and one is conscious of it. We have, then to connect certainty with freedom; the certainty which is created does not subjugate, but maintains liberty. The certainties of revelation and the certainties of discovery are succeeded by the certainties of creation. The innovation societies are free societies, creators of diversity. Homogeneity is born from submission; creation on all levels leads to diversity. The societies of innovation are societies of diverse group projects, they are societies of diversity, of plurality. This situation and an understanding of the sciences, the certainties, the values, the ways of life in the societies of knowledge, lead us to a clear awareness that the development of science and technology, and their innate consequences, are not unequivocally positive phenomena because they bring us continually closer to the nature itself of things. Our creations, which are always simplifications of all this immensity which surrounds us, have no intrinsic guarantee of leading us to a safe haven. We have no guarantee that comes to us from outside, from God or from nature. The progress of our knowledge and, above all, our technology, has no more guarantee than ourselves, our own quality as individuals and groups. 147
We have also had to understand, during the growth of the societies of knowledge, that science is incapable of telling us how we have to live; it does not supply us with a project for life. As individuals and social groups, we cannot receive our projects for living from anywhere or from anyone, from anything extrinsic to ourselves. As individuals and as groups, we have to construct our projects of life for ourselves, freely and at our own risk and, through the power of our science and technology, at the risk of all life on the planet. The societies of knowledge, or societies of the second industrial revolution, or information societies, are societies which must propose their own axiological postulates, from which they will construct their own projects for life. Science supplies the information and technology with which to produce the postulates for group living and projects which give a specific and determined form to what is postulated.
Static societies and dynamic societies
After this general background, it will be understood that what we call static societies are those which existed, and still exist in many places today, by always doing the same thing. The present and the future repeat the patterns of the past, without great changes. All the pre-industrial societies were basically static, although within them many things changed throughout the ages. We call them static, in spite of the changes taking place in them, because they existed for very long periods of time, even for millennia, basically in the same way. This happened with the hunter/gatherer societies, the horticulturalists, the livestock farming societies and the authoritarian agricultural societies. The first industrial societies lived and prospered due to the goods they made with their machines. Although, in less than 200 years, they transformed their knowledge and machines with great rapidity, they did not qualify for an interpretation as dynamic societies, for two principal reasons: first, because they did not live from creating innovations and, second, because they lived within the context of the broader pre-industrial societies with static programmes. These two reasons meant that the static ancestral habits of interpretation were imposed both from within and from outside. What we call dynamic societies are the societies of knowledge, because they are societies which live by continuously creating scientific and technological knowledge and, through this, new goods and services. In the societies of knowledge everything moves. 148
It seems clear that, in the short and medium term, companies dedicated to the mass-production of goods will continue to exist, in the manner of companies of the first industrial revolution and that, consequently, we shall live, for a more or less long time, in mixed societies. But although there will still exist a majority of organisations typical of the first industrialisation, they will be contextualised, and already are, by the innovation businesses. With these transformations of society, caused by the influence of the generalisation of industrialisation and the birth and implantation of societies of knowledge, the ways of thinking and feeling have changed so much in so little time, that what had been the system of beliefs, precepts and group values, shared by societies for thousands of years and with religious prestige, has lost its credibility and attraction. These beliefs and values have become incapable of cohering and motivating the individuals and groups in the new industrial societies. The gods have abandoned the new mixed societies to their fate. The utopias and proposals of real socialism have been refuted by the facts. The communist systems have imploded, globally and suddenly. The discredit is total and irreversible. For the social democrats, their images of the future and the solidity of their theoretical bases have collapsed. Although the ideals of real democracy, justice and equity continue to be valid, even more so than in other ages, we no longer know what image of the future, what specific proposal to use to shape them. We no longer know what design of society to propose to achieve these values, because socialisation of the means of production has shown itself to be inoperative. Although, apparently, socialism has had the worst of it in the crisis and although, also apparently, capitalism seems to have won, it is not really so. The specific proposals of socialism have gone down, but capitalism has not won. The new dynamic society is demonstrating that both capitalism and socialism belong to outdated modes of living and that, as ideologies, they are insufficient and incapable of programming the new groups. What has been found to be effective in the capitalist system, as against its adversaries in real socialism, and what has ensured that the capitalist countries did not implode like the socialists, is in the form of three factors: political democracy, the market financial system and private initiative. But these three things, more than proposals, ends and images of the future, are methods for an appropriate construction: democracy is a method for constructing projects, more than a project in itself; private initiative and the market are equally financial methods of action, appropriate ways of managing the economy. But none of the three procedures or methods really gives projects for the future, or 149
purposes, or sufficient motivations to animate social groups and make them cohesive. The growth of our science and technology has been of such calibre that already, from now on, for good or for bad, nothing can function on this planet without us. In fact, whether we recognise it or not, we have become the managers of life on the planet. The destiny of the entire planet, the life existing on it and our own fate, are in our hands. And precisely when this happens, we discover that the religions, as systems of group programming, disregarding the purely spiritual value which they may have, have left us orphaned, because they speak from pre-industrial and static societies to pre-industrial and static societies, which now, in the developed countries, do not exist. We have lost forever the guidance of the gods. We have also recently discovered that the sciences are no guide. Science does not tell us how we have to live, or how to construct our projects or direct our destiny which is, in turn, the destiny of all that lives on the earth. We have lost all the absolute systems of reference: the sacred, the natural and the scientific, and precisely when we have just understood that we hold in our hands the destiny of the globe. We have no further criterion or guide than our own wisdom, if we have it, our own quality as individuals and, above all, as groups. In these societies there is a total absence of truths, certainties and values which have an external guarantee to the individuals and groups themselves. Also, there is a total absence of projects for life and systems of motivation from outside. Nothing comes from anywhere: not from heaven, nor from nature, nor from history, nor do the sciences supply it. The radical nature of this situation impels us to recognise a new and fundamental need, concomitant to the development and growth of the societies of the new industrial revolution: the need of quality for people and groups. Only our own quality will be the guide for all our scientific, technological and organisational creations; only quality will be the guide for the creation of projects and programmes for life. On this quality will depend the progress of our societies. On this quality will depend which science and technology we will construct and what we will do with them. On this quality will depend the direction of the dynamism of our societies. On this quality will depend, in short, our survival and the survival of life on the planet. The generalisation of industrialisation, the disappearance of the remains of the specifically agrarian-authoritarian pre-industrial lifestyle, and the birth and implantation of the societies of knowledge in the developed countries, are already facts, which lead to consequences of all kinds, especially with respect to the ways of thinking and feeling, being organised and acting. We have tried to track these consequences. 150
We do not seek to make a prediction for the future. Many uses can be made of the society of knowledge and very different ways of life can be constructed with it. We only seek to understand its internal logic and dynamics. We are particularly interested in knowing what impact the societies of knowledge have, in whatever version they may be formed, on the traditional religions and the great religious traditions of humanity. We are interested in understanding the nature of the new industrial societies, knowing how to behave with them and how to cultivate the absolute dimension of our experience of reality in the new cultural conditions.
The end of the religions
Several religious traditions frequently use an image, now age-old, to convey the particular nature of spiritual facts. This image, now classic, is that of the wine and the cup. The image says that all our human world, in each age and in each culture, is like a cup into which the wine of the absolute experience of reality is poured. Our way of thinking, feeling and living realities, our ways of conceiving and expressing things, our forms of behaviour, organisation and work, all these things, which are constructed by ourselves, are the cup in which we receive, hold and can drink the sacred wine. We drink it from this cup and give it to others to drink. If each form of culture is a cup, then in various cultures, there are various cups. There are as many ways of presenting spiritual facts as there are cultures. The wine always comes in a cup; it cannot be received, or drunk, or given to others except in a cup. But the wine is not the cup. Wine has no form, it always takes the form of the cup. Every form is the form of the cup, not the wine. Whoever adheres to form for the love of wine, does not understand the existence of the wine and confuses the cup with the wine. To be initiated into spiritual facts is to learn to discern between the wine and the cup, to appreciate the subtlety of the aroma and flavour of the wine, which is always taken from a cup, but is not any of the cups into which it has been poured. It is always the same wine, although the cups can be very different. When cultures endure for millennia, when also they are programmed to be static and to lock out change and alternatives, there is a serious danger of fusing the cup and the wine into what is claimed to be an indissoluble unit. The culture and the group programme in static societies which lock out change are imposed with greater conviction and force, and their claims of exclusivity are more credible when clothed in sacredness. 151
Religion is wine in a cup which is claimed to be sacrosanct. When the wine is confused with the programme of a static society, which is always a fixed programme, locking out change and alternatives, religion has to be imposed to everyone, it has to be homogeneous for everyone and obligatory. Religion is presented as a system of revealed beliefs. This will be the way of subjecting the thought, feeling and behaviour of the individuals and the groups. The spiritual facts which are expressed in fixation programmes have to be imposed as submission. The wine therefore, remains indissolubly linked to certain cultural forms, excluding any other. Religion is, then, the form of living the experience of the absolute dimension of reality under the dominion and control of group programmes in the pre-industrial societies, which are all static. The dynamic societies, which lack the system of fixing and exclusion, will tend to distance themselves from this notion and will have to learn to distinguish clearly the wine from the cup. The initiation into the experience of the absolute dimension of living will have to be dissociated from submission to fixed systems of beliefs, values and behaviour, and will have to be imparted in fluid contexts of innovation and free research. If we call the initiation and cultivation of the absolute dimension of reality spirituality, we shall have to conclude that, in the dynamic societies, spirituality becomes impossible if there is no clear differentiation between the cup which is our exclusive responsibility and the wine. The religious initiation will consist in learning to refine the faculties until we are able to recognise the fineness of the wine. Only when we learn to taste the wine, shall we know that it is not the cup, although it only comes in the cups which our hands have made. When the masters and religious traditions are read from the situation of the dynamic societies, we can understand, clearly, that their teaching is of a fascinating simplicity: we have a double access to reality, one according to our needs, and the other absolute. When need is silenced, with the consequences that it constructs, a new and unexpected knowledge and feeling becomes accessible from this silence. Then we can know and feel, as impartial witnesses to this immensity, that there are worlds upon worlds in reality; then a new and unconditional interest in everything is born, which enjoys everything and is reconciled with everything. The invitation from these traditions and the masters of these traditions, to live this dimension of reality, is not an invitation to submit oneself and believe, but an invitation to verify for oneself. In consequence, the importance factor in the religions of the past is in where they lead us, not in the ways of thinking and feeling with which they 152
lead us; because the forms of thinking and feeling with which they lead us change as the cultures change. The central point of the religious traditions is not the conceptions, the value systems in which they are expressed, the mythical systems of representation, because all this depends on relative factors; the fundamental point is that other which does not depend on relative factors, although it is only accessible and can only be expressed using relative means. The myths, symbols, beliefs and all the systems of representation are like a ladder leading up to the ambit of that other. When that other ambit has been reached, the ladder is left behind, although it will be needed again when another is to be initiated. The cultural circumstances of the developed societies force us to put the accent on the processes of transformation and refinement of the powers of individuals and groups and not on indoctrination. For all these reasons we believe that, in the developed societies, the religions, as they were conceived in the West for nearly 2000 years, have come to their end or are on the way to extinction. On the other hand, and paradoxically, we have, simultaneously with the terminal decline of these classical religions, a strong resurgence of interest in the spiritual, or using terms less linked to the anthropology of the past, an interest in the profound and absolute dimension of existence; a dimension which is very absent from our day-to-day life. The age of the religions, as they were lived in the West, is on the way to its end or, at least, on the way to being left on the margins of the march of culture. In the majority of developed countries it is already on the margins. But what is dying is not the possibility of living the absolute experience of reality, the spiritual experience, but a cultural, venerable and age-old way of doing it. Religions are the pre-industrial sacred forms, expressed in mythical-symbolic programmes, which are programmes of static societies and articulated as tables of beliefs, systems of dominion, control, submission and the exclusion of alternatives. To the degree that the religions, born and developed in the pre-industrial age, demand from the new societies, in order to access the spiritual experience, submission to the interpretation of realities, the evaluations, the morality and the systems of life taught by the myths, which are programmes for static societies, to that degree the religions will be carried forward towards the same condemnation and falsification as the myths; they will pass into history just as the living systems of the pre-industrial societies have passed. 153
We have to abandon, then, the old, hallowed manner of living the spiritual experience typical of the pre-industrial societies, static, provincial and patriarchal; that is to say, the true manner of the mythological religions, of beliefs and, therefore, of dominion, submission, control and exclusion. The cultural structure on which the religions were sustained is exhausted, dead, and must therefore be abandoned, because it prejudices the cultural conditions of the new industrial societies. This new way of living spirituality we cannot call religion, because the word suggests fixation, dominion, submission, control of thought and of feeling, control of morality, of the ways of life, of beliefs. Religion dictates exclusiveness and exclusion; it dictates hierarchical organisation of ideological control in the hands of a group. The spiritual dimension is not an explanation of the mysteries of existence, nor an explanation of life and death, nor a solution to the metaphysical problems of existence. It solves nothing, it only creates people capable of creating explanations and solving problems. Spirituality is not a system of beliefs; it cannot, then, control anything. And not only does it not control anything, but it shatters any system of control into pieces, because it makes contact with reality in such a way that it diminishes the importance of any form of thinking, feeling and living. Spirituality is not a set of forms which monopolise truth and the good path; spirituality is freedom from all form and all moulds. Because it is free from any mould, it can use any of them and can give rise to creating what suits, when it suits. Spiritual experience is the immediate experience of a presence, not of a formulation; it is the presence of the absolute reality, of that which is, which is why it is free from any formula. Spiritual experience is total freedom, it is the end of any submission. The true power of spirituality comes from its profundity; from the compact and sound nature of the experience which it gives; from silent knowing and evaluating; from the complete freedom which, from this experience, is achieved in thought, in sensitivity, in action, in the projects of life. The power of spirituality is not born from its organisations, or from its elites, or from its beliefs; it is born in the heart of its own radical nakedness. Spirituality has nothing to propose other than all-embracing freedom, from its total nakedness. Thus the spiritual experience, which is the experience of the absolute dimension of existence, stops without any truth to hold onto, without any goodness, without power, without fixed morals, without formulated certainties, without security, without defences, empty, naked and homeless. 154
But it supplies a truth which is a compact, immediate and silent presence. It supplies the power to be freed from all submission, including and above all, submission to oneself. Everything is born from within and is supported on ones own internal nature and autonomy, but the base of its own total autonomy, initiative, creativity and radical freedom is the experience, in oneself, of the great dimension of existence. The religions have an intrinsic relationship with the pre-industrial static societies. This is an important record. As a general rule, where these types of societies occur, there is religion, and where they disappear, religion goes into crisis and tends to disappear. For this reason, religions are also intrinsically linked to heteronomy. The group programme of the static societies is revealed and, therefore, heteronomous. It is said to come from a source outside the human being. This source is the foundation of the interpretations and evaluations of the real, of the norms of life, the fundamental laws, the organisations, both social and in the family. The religions are founded on heteronomy and they sustain cultures and societies supported on heteronomy. With the recession and practical disappearance of the pre-industrial modes of life in Europe, heteronomy also recedes, simultaneously, giving way to autonomy. Men in the developed scientific-technical societies construct their knowledge, their ways of life, their systems of group cohesion, their laws and their organisations. They construct them and are aware of it. In religion, they tend not to affiliate themselves to anything, except to being a searcher. The heteronomies, as the foundations of society, have almost completely disappeared. When the whole of society is introduced into innovation and continuous change through the continuous creation of science and technology, with the transformations that this fact brings with it in working methods, in organisations, in the systems of group cohesion and evaluation, the untouchable aspect of the group project is broken down and beliefs, as articulators of society, have to be abandoned and, with them, heteronomy. When groups no longer receive their interpretation of reality from the sacred forebears and the gods, because they themselves create it with their sciences in continuous transformation and change; no longer receive their ways of working and being organised because they create these themselves, continuously, in step with the rapid and constant changes in technology; then neither do they receive their projects of life, nor their tables of values, nor their systems of behaviour and cohesion, because they have to construct and change them continuously at the rhythm of the transformations in their knowledge, their techniques, their ways of working and of organisation. 155
The industrial societies which have to live, directly or indirectly, from innovation and change, are forced to renounce beliefs and religions, because the one and the others are inseparable from heteronomies. This renunciation is not a free option for the groups and individuals, but rather the end of a now irreversible and inevitable process. This must be taken into account very explicitly when speaking of the crisis of religions. There is no pre-industrial society without static programming; and there is no static programming without divine revelation; there is no revelation without heteronomy; and there is no heteronomy without beliefs and submissions. Religion, therefore, is a way of living the profound dimension of human existence, which is its specific quality and nucleus, in the conditions imposed and typical of pre-industrial societies which are always static, in a cultural context of beliefs and heteronomies. If things are so, then religion is a thing of the past, as are heteronomy, mythicalsymbolic programming and beliefs. Religion would be heading for its disappearance in the developed industrial societies, although, in fact, it may survive for a long time. That the religions of a significant cultural order may disappear and be left on the margins does not mean that spirituality disappears. The consequence, in the new developed societies, is that the dimension of profundity, which is the nucleus generating religions, will have to be experienced and reconstituted outside religions. Following this line, religion would not be a natural aptitude of human beings, or a transcendental category of human experience, but only a form, typical of a certain type of culture, of presenting, developing and experiencing what is the specific and peculiar nucleus of our human condition, which is the double experience of reality. The anthropological nucleus, which has sustained and cultivated religion for millennia, is destined to be perpetuated, but outside heteronomies, beliefs, immobile pre-industrial societies and religions. When religion reduces, autonomy expands. When autonomy expands, religion reduces. In western Europe it can be affirmed that the conquest by autonomy is almost complete. The human project of life, in all its aspects, is now no longer acceptance and submission to an order established by God and transmitted by the forebears, it is a purely human construction, a self-institution. The societies construct their ways of being organised, their laws, their knowledge, their postulates and axiological projects and build their own history. The growth of humanitys self-construction of its own destiny, and the group awareness generated by this fact, leads to retrocession in the role and place of religion. 156
This loss of role and foundation foretells the inevitable disappearance of religion in developed societies. This is not a more or less fleeting crisis, it is the definitive loss of the basis which sustained the religious institutions: the pre-industrial societies, programmed by means of myths, symbols and rituals, and the definitive loss of their function, the heteronomous foundations of group and individual life in the static societies. The religions, with their heteronomy, their beliefs, no longer structure the minds, the senses, the actions, the organisations, the morals, the politics of the new groups. All these orders have become independent, since there is now no religious structuring of society. The static societies, to make themselves untouchable, needed the heteronomy. Heteronomy is conceived mythically as a revelation. The revelation implies belief, the submission of the mind, sense and action. When the truth is linked by imposition to some forms and formulas and not to others, these forms and formulas are sacred, because they are the untouchable place of truth. When truths are forms and formulations which have to be submitted to, there are certain words and texts which are sacred and have to be believed, and others which are not and do not have to be believed. Then the ground is prepared for there to be sacred times and places, sacred persons, sacred organisations, etc. Where there are beliefs there is sacredness, where the beliefs disappear, so does the sacredness. Where the sacred exists there is hierarchy. What is sacred, as the location of truth, the manifestation of the Absolute, is hierarchically superior to whatever is not. This hierarchy uses beliefs as against any other formulation, sacred places and times in preference to other spaces and times, sacred individuals before other people, sacred organisations in relation to other organisations. The sacredness creates, supports and implies the hierarchy. Where there is no hierarchy (which is not the same as command), there ceases to be sacredness. In democracy there is nothing sacred except in the margins. In the sciences there is nothing sacred. In the self-constructed group projects there is nothing sacred. Not even human rights are sacred, because they are mere human postulates. All the group programmes of the pre-industrial societies were lived as heteronomies, although, in fact, they are human constructions which were formed over thousands of years. When there is awareness that they are our construction, they cannot be sacred. Autonomy excludes the sacred. When there are no beliefs imposed, nothing is sacred. This is the situation in the new societies. Dimensions of human existence which refer to freely accessible 157
facets of human existence, such as beauty or spirituality, which have no fixed place for their manifestation, can appear at any time and place, in any person, any organisation and any appropriate form. That other, which in the past was made patent in the sacred, we now have to learn to recognise as free of all form; we have to understand that it may appear in any shape. Using the language from the past, we could say that everything can be sacred, because nothing is sacred. The sacred can be a time, a space, forms, writings, certain people, organisations in which the tangible (the functional dimension of our living) is joined to the supreme intangible (the absolute dimension of our living); where the perspective of the living being with needs is united with the absolute perspective; the mundane with the divine. The sacred, in summary, covers places in our specific world through which the light of the Absolute enters. These places can be fixed and immobile as in the static societies, or mobile and not fixed as in the dynamic societies. In the new industrial societies there are now no sacred places, times, people or organisations, forms or writings, because there are no longer heteronomies, beliefs and hierarchies. Now nothing is sacred except in the metaphorical sense, as an expression that it is inadvisable to alter something. And we say inadvisable rather than untouchable, because in the new societies nothing is untouchable.
158
THE SPECIFIC HUMAN QUALITY AND ITS CULTIVATION
PART TWO
CHAPTER IV
The impact of the new cultural structure on the traditional religious forms
The discomfiture of the religious organisations
We have come out of the age of sacredness. Even those who say they are believers are moving into this situation. This does not mean that there are no particular orders which are considered more lasting than others which are more mobile. But even those most lasting are cups constructed by ourselves; if they are more long-lasting it is exclusively because they taste of wine. The leaders of the western religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) continue thinking and feeling that in their fundamental features, if not in all, the myths, symbols and sacred narrations continue with the same functions as in the past. The belief continues that what the symbols, myths and narrations express corresponds to real entities and facts. It is believed that they state and proclaim existing realities and facts which actually happened. They do not begin to understand that the proper aim and function of the myths, symbols and sacred narrations of each people was neither religious, nor philosophical nor moral. Their function was programming; it was to provide human beings with a specific viable nature because, without the programming completed by the myths, humans would have been biologically non-viable. The myths were equivalent to systems of beliefs, and were formulated thus. Now, in societies founded on beliefs, the group spiritual dimension could not be presented outside these beliefs. There would have been a risk, for the programming system typical of the static societies and for the life of these groups which had to lock out change and alternative, that spirituality would be presented free of beliefs. The religious leaders do not understand that, for the new industrial societies, the old myths, symbols, narrations and rituals, just as the oral and written traditions which carried them, have no longer any value as patterns for interpreting reality, or evaluating it, nor in organising the personal or group life, or as patterns of action or morality. These social functions of the myths died; but the expressive and significant force of these formations did not die. If the attitude which makes the symbols and myths into sacred and untouchable paradigms of group living, affirmation of entities and description of events is abandoned, and if they are read and lived as examples and expressions of the spiritual life, they still live. 161
In this new life for the myths and symbols, which is the essence and force of their immemorial being, these linguistic formations only suggest and direct towards the Absolute which is beyond all possible expression with human words. They speak of what cannot be said; they point to what surpasses all our criteria of reality; they point to a path which is a no-path. In these linguistic formations the unconceivable reality is present, as beauty is present in poetry. In these formations certainty without form has weight; discernment is taught; the heart and mind are silenced; the doors open to trust, acceptance, delivery and peace. In the new cultural conditions, the myths, symbols and sacred narrations are only signposts on the path; signs which we must leave behind as we go forward; they are lights which shine in the night and call us to go on; they are the presence of the spirit; they are speech with forms of the No-form; they are a revelation of the break-up of reality; they show the nothing of everything that we take as real; they are the testimony and presence of what is beyond our notions of subjects and objects; they are the presence of what is in all form because it is empty of any form. To be able to feel and experience the force of symbols, myths and sacred narrations in the new situation, they have to be cut free from the assertion that they speak of real entities and events which happened; we have to cut away the claim that they interpret and evaluate reality as it really is; we have to remove from them the claim that they are paradigms and canons of action and organisation; in short, we have to strip them of the claim that they establish sacred ways of life sent down from heaven. The myths are untouchable and perennial when they are seen as a speech from the Absolute, the No-form, from what is beyond our capacities of conception; when they speak of the path to travel; of the spirit with which this path must be walked; of the obstacles and deviations which we may find; of the grace and the light which comes from above. They are neither untouchable nor perennial, but transitory and for a great part of humanity now dead, when they seek to impose modes of interpretation, evaluation, action and organisation; when they proclaim themselves as divine patterns of the modes of human life. The leaders of the traditional religions, especially the western religions, insist on maintaining the pre-industrial epistemological status of myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals and, coherently with this attitude, intend that they continue fulfilling the functions which they exercised in the past. This is equivalent to trying to maintain the validity of software belonging to the pre-industrial societies, static, patriarchal, agrarian and authoritarian, in 162
The impact of the new cultural structure
societies which live from developing science and technology in the service of the creation of goods and services; in societies which live from continuous innovation in all ambits of life and which must, therefore, exclude any fixity in the interpretation, evaluation, ways of working and being organised, in the modes of group evaluation and cohesion. Only the less developed elements, more marginal to the progress of the new industrial societies, can respond to the assertions of the religious leaders. The social elements more integrated into the dynamic have no other option than to reject this claim. If they were not to do so, they would make themselves unfit for the new types of societies. In Western Europe the churches have fought and are fighting boldly to maintain the programming function of myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals and to maintain their pre-industrial epistemological status. They have been forced to give ground in many aspects, but they have entrenched themselves, holding the ambits of morality and religion for the myths and symbols. But belief has its logic, that if it can hold the head of the bridge, with time it will be able to recover all the lost ground. To believe the message of the holy scriptures and the doctrines which are supported by them, although only in what refers to the moral and to religion, means accepting the central nucleus of their system of interpretation, evaluation and action. Whoever accepts something thus far, logically will have to accept it all. For this reason, the churches seem to be giving ground under pressure, but they recover it as soon as they can. This attitude of the churches, logical from viewpoint of their beliefs, creates suspicion and mistrust in people. Men and women in the new societies have to reject belief in all its ambits, also and especially in the ambits of morality and religion; and they must do this because, to be integrated into the new society, they have to abandon the patterns which were constructed by the life and programming systems of the static pre-industrial societies. When the venerable narrations and scriptures are read and heard, without seeking in them any of the functions which they exercised in the past (because we have more effective substitutes), and they are read and heard without aspiring to belief (because in a society of continuous change one cannot believe), it becomes clear that the scriptures have been dislodged from the ambit in which they competed with science and group projects of life towards the area of specialised language forms, such as those used to express poetry, beauty, wisdom or the profound dimensions of existence; dimensions, all of them, which speak to humans, but not now of what has to do with systems of survival as beings with needs. 163
The holy scriptures fall more on the side of poetry than on the side of science and group projects. They say nothing to be believed, they only express, orientate and invite to this dimension which we continue to call religious, although it no longer has the structure of religion. As in poetic language there is nothing to believe and a great deal to notice and verify, so in the mythological narrations, the symbols and sacred scriptures of all the peoples, there is nothing to believe but plenty to notice and verify. Just as in the case of poetry there is no confrontation between poets, in the new circumstances we find no confrontation between the various holy scriptures and traditions. The contents of the traditions do not oppose or contradict each other, only the beliefs oppose or contradict each other. The myths and symbols are not exclusive among themselves; what creates exclusion is the reading made of them as things to believe. All the myths and symbols, all the traditions and holy scriptures of all the cultures and all the peoples are here as an invitation and a multifaceted incitement, not to believe but to take note, research and verify. They do not claim to solve problems, neither of life nor of death; nor do they seek to subjugate; they only seek to offer a human possibility, the best, the greatest, the most subtle, most unexpected of possibilities for a poor living being: a dimension which, for its own profundity, transcends need. In the pre-industrial societies belief was indissolubly linked to spirituality. If this union is maintained, as the authorities of the churches and of other religious traditions aspire, the people of the industrial innovation societies will have to reject the entire package. For spirituality to be viable in the new societies, it has to be separated from all belief and all submission. Submission to the spirit, which is discernment, is not submission to forms or to formulas, therefore it is compatible with the new societies. The incompatibility is only with the submission imposed by beliefs. To link spirituality to any type of belief is an obstacle, and a definitive obstacle. No obstacle is presented by linking spirituality to faith, if we strip the faith of beliefs and we understand faith as trust, opening of spirit, devotion, discernment, grace. We will talk about this later. In the new societies the religions are of no interest, but the masters of the Way who talked and taught from the heart of the religions certainly are. For cultural reasons, the great masters of spirituality in the past could only speak from religions or in controversy with them. The executives of the great religious traditions do not seem to understand that Western European and other developed societies of the 21st century, which are obliged to reject the religions, can and must learn from the spiritual masters and the great masters of the religious traditions of the past, keeping 164
themselves free with respect to their systems of beliefs, behaviour and rituals. In the new circumstances, we can and must learn from all the great masters and all the great schools of wisdom of the traditions, without having to be, thereby, believers, religious persons. We have to learn to be disciples of all the great masters of the spirit, without reverting to religion, remaining lay men and women and without beliefs. It is time to discern and take care not to abandon with the religions all the wealth and wisdom which was produced in them. We have to learn to discern so that we can leave aside those which are the masters of beliefs. We have to learn to discern among those who, in the great religious traditions, are masters of the spirit and those who are masters of beliefs, of orthodoxies. In the body of the second mixed societies (fully industrialised societies + societies of knowledge) we can no longer be religious people nor do we wish it, but we do want to follow the Way of wisdom, the path of silent knowledge, which is the path of subtlety. We wish to learn from the great historical masters of the spirit, wherever we find them and in whatever cultural conditions we find them. We must be able to learn from the great masters of the traditions, without this discipleship necessarily leading us into religion.
Let us look a little more closely at the relations existing between mythical group programming systems, systems of beliefs and spirituality. We have seen that myths and symbols are the systems of programming in pre-industrial and pre-scientific societies. They programme static societies, societies which lived, for very long periods of time, always doing fundamentally the same thing. To programme static societies meant programming for no change, excluding change. This type of programming is not possible, as we have seen, if there is no belief that things, including the Absolute itself, are as the myths and symbols say they are. The programming procedure with which all possible change of any importance is locked out is the affirmation that the project of life proposed by the myths and their description and evaluation of reality, both the functional and the absolute reality, is untouchable and sacred because it comes directly from the sacred forebears and from God. He determined and made things so, and thus they are imposed. 165
Myths and symbols as systems of beliefs and their purely symbolic reading
In accordance with the functions which the myths have to fulfil while they are valid as programming systems, they cannot be taken as mere symbols, mere expressive narrations, simple metaphors of the real. This can only happen when the myths and symbols have ceased to be the system of group programming. To be able to interpret and experience the myths and symbols as pure symbols and simple metaphors, it is not enough for one particular mythical-symbolic system to perish, or be replaced by another. In this case, again, the system which is abandoned cannot be interpreted as purely symbolic, but simply as erroneous. To be able to access a purely symbolic reading of the myths and symbols they have to have been replaced by other programming systems, no longer mythical-symbolic. To be able to read and experience the myths and symbols as purely symbolic is not a question of replacing some beliefs with others, but of having to be distanced from all systems of beliefs. This is what is happening to us in present-day European societies. The pre-industrial societies had the fixed idea in mind and feeling that things and the Absolute were as the myths and sacred narrations said they were, with no possible doubt or deviation. And everything was as the myths and symbols said, because it was believed that the gods and sacred forebears had established and revealed them thus. The myths had to be believed so that they could fulfil their programming function. Belief, then, is not a spiritual demand but a programming demand. The mind, the feeling and action must be submitted to the belief. Belief is intrinsically related with power. The power of beliefs reaches much further than any other power, because it is capable of penetrating where no other power can go: into the conscience. Those who wished to control conscience in the pre-industrial societies had to control beliefs. This was done by religion. For this reason the power of the religions, as systems of beliefs, was unlimited, because it penetrated right into the inner self of conscience. The managers of the religions, who are the managers of the power of beliefs, the pontiffs, the princes of the churches, have controlled the greatest power on earth. The secular princes, the powerful, have always had to reckon on this power and serve it or ally themselves with it, but never, ever, have they been able to have real power without the backing of religious power. Nevertheless, religions ties with power go against the real nucleus of teaching of the religious masters. In the times of static societies, these ties were explicable and, if necessary, even almost inevitable; but today, when we have already 166
finished with the pre-industrial societies and we have the strong beginning of the great transformation involved in the societies of innovation, we have to distance ourselves as clearly as possible, as soon as possible and very radically, from these age-old ties. While the religious traditions are supported on systems of beliefs, there is no theology of liberation which could break the ties linking belief with power. Also, the exclusive and excluding logic of beliefs (all are said to be divine revelation) leads peoples whose beliefs differ to have to combat one another or be ignored as profoundly as possible, because the beliefs of the one threaten the sacredness and inviolability of the beliefs of the others. This is an inevitable consequence of the structure intrinsic to beliefs. This dynamic of beliefs is not born of spirituality, but from the function that the myths have to fulfil. Moreover, this dynamic is contrary to liberty, love, peace and the transcendence of form which spirituality teaches.
Spirituality without beliefs; faith without beliefs
In a society of innovation and continuous change (changes in science, in technology, in forms of working and organisations, in group cohesion systems and purposes), subject to globalisation (with a diversity of coexisting religious traditions), the spiritual path cannot depend on beliefs. The proposal of the religious traditions for the new dynamic societies cannot depend on tying up the interpretation and evaluation of reality, at any level, nor on tying up the modes of acting, being organised and living, to fixed and unalterable forms. The new societies can, on the other hand, accept an offer of quality and reality made by the masters of spirit and by the great religious texts, capable of stimulating free adhesion, not to formulas or fixed modes of life, but to a quality which is a state of thought and feeling and generates certainty without, thereby, being subject to revealed forms of thought and life. In these cultural circumstances the internal path, the spiritual way, cannot depend on beliefs. Whatever the religious traditions may offer, if they wrap it up in beliefs, it cannot be accepted. To be able to reflect on this theme clearly, we have to distinguish between two notions which in the West have become mixed and united: the notions of belief and faith. In the conditions of life in the pre-industrial societies the notions of belief and faith were indissolubly united; in the new cultural conditions they have to be clearly differentiated. 167
John of the Cross says in the Ascent of Mount Carmel: These three virtues (theological), as we have said, all cause emptiness in the faculties: faith, in the understanding, causes an emptiness and darkness with respect to understanding; hope, in the memory, causes emptiness of all possessions; and charity causes emptiness in the will and detachment from all affection and from rejoicing in all that is not God. 1 And then he says: []faith is the substance of things hoped for; and, although the understanding may be firmly and certainly consenting to them, they are not things that are revealed to the understanding [] 2 Faith is a fact of knowledge, but it is a gift, it is information which is neither conceptual nor symbolic but, as Master Eckhart says, from essence to essence. It is a beam of light, which for our habits of knowledge, is dark. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite calls it a ray of darkness. Speaking of visions, revelations, sayings, gentle scent, flavour or spiritual delight, etc., John of the Cross says: Of these, likewise, as we said of the other imaginary corporeal apprehensions, it is well that we should here disencumber the understanding, leading and directing it by means of them into the spiritual night of faith, to the Divine and substantial union of God [] 3 For, after some manner, this dark and loving knowledge, which is faith, serves as a means to Divine union in this life, even as, in the next life, the light of glory serves as an intermediary to the clear vision of God. 4 Faith is knowledge, information, neither conceptual nor symbolic; it is knowledge empty of representation, from essence to essence. It is dark information which generates certainty. Certainty which is dark because it does not accord with the patterns of our daily knowledge in which information and certainty are always linked to representation. In faith information and certainty are present, but not representation. The information is powerful and generates an unshakable certainty, but empty. For this reason the expression from essence to essence is correct.
1 St. John of the Cross: Ascent of Mount Carmel, 2, 6, 2. 2 Ibid. 2, 6, 2. 3 Ibid. 2, 23, 4. 4 Ibid. 2, 24, 4.
168
Faith is information on the absolute dimension of the real, of God, of That, whatever it may be called. Although it comes to us in a formulation, it is not the formulation which engenders the certainty but the touch, in John of the Crosss expression, which is not of any particular thing, because it comes from God himself. This touch penetrates into the substance of the soul and tastes of divine essence and eternal life. It renews and cleans the spirit, because it distances it from the source of all impurity, egocentricity. It directly affects the mind but has an effect in the feelings. It is intimate, but strengthens. Although it is from essence to essence, it affects the senses of living beings such as ourselves. The sages say that this is information, dark and true, which is worth more than a thousand forms of knowledge and feeling. It is not the achievement of any merit or of any strategy or human method. One knows that one is in contact with the truth, although it may be a truth different from other truths linked to forms. For this reason it is like a ray of dark light, because it is light and it is dark. And the darkness does not come from being opposed to reason but from being truth, sure and without form, although it may ride forms on its journey from mouth to ear. Belief, on the other hand, is unconditional adherence to forms and formulations which are considered as revealed by God himself. This absolute prestige makes them sacrosanct. Belief is not in itself any religious fact. Beliefs belong to the apparatus of group programming in the societies which lived from always doing fundamentally the same thing, like all the pre-industrial societies, and which, consequently, had to exclude and lock out change. There is a basic principle of the evolution of cultures: the facts, experiences and religious initiations are always translated into the tables and systems of programming and culture in force in the groups. There can be no other possibility. From this principle it can be deduced, and the data verify it, that in the static societies, which for long spaces of time, lasting millennia, lived from doing fundamentally the same thing, and which had to lock out change, spirituality could only be presented in forms tied to beliefs. This is why faith and belief had to be linked together for so long a time. When societies have to live from innovation and continuous change, this association is no longer viable. In the new cultural circumstances, social groups have to live from change, therefore they cannot be founded on beliefs, which are untouchable; they have to be supported only on postulates and projects constructed by themselves. 169
The great traditions cannot offer these societies tables of beliefs but will have to offer another type of reality, which will consist in our faculties having another form of access to a reality different from the one we find in our daily lives. To offer the human faculties another type of access to reality means inviting a process of transformation and refinement of these very faculties, to adapt them to a new form of knowledge, feeling, perception and action. The type of process to which the religious traditions invite us is very similar to what we have to do to achieve an understanding and experience of music, poetry, painting and the fine arts in general. The process to which the religious traditions invite us is like a path. What is this path, then, according to the teachings? It consists of moving on from reading, considering and dealing with reality from the perspective of need typical of a living being, to reading, considering and dealing with it from the silencing of need. This silence contains that which is, not what the living being with needs has to see. The path which is proposed by tradition, the Way, is a process of silencing the interpretations, evaluations and uses of reality made by need. The silencing leads to the status of a lucid and disinterested witness. The silencing of the need and the acquisition of the status of witness is equivalent to moving from a dual vision and feeling of reality to one which is not dual. Need requires a reading to be made of reality which divides it into two great blocks: the subject with needs (as every living being is) which has to be recognised as a nucleus of wants and an independent actor, and a field (the world of the living being) which comprises the rest of the realities, where the wants will be supplied. This duality subject with needs / field where they are met, is constructed by the living being to be able to live. The spiritual masters say that this is not what there is, but what every living subject, human being or any other animal species, needs to see. Whoever can silence the need, silences the duality. Whoever silences the duality, permits his faculties to access a reality which is not-two, where there are no subjects with needs, no predators, no objects to prey on. There are no hunters, nor any hunting ground. The transition from one state of knowledge and feeling to another is the Way, the path, the itinerary of silence, the great transformation, the path to unity. In the pre-industrial societies, which were static, and in the societies of the first industrial revolution, which were mixed (pre-industrial in the majority and industrial in smaller circles in the cities) and which, in spite of their movement, 170
continued to be interpreted as static and articulated on beliefs, whether religious or lay, the Way was articulated from beliefs. It could not be any other form, otherwise society would have been attacked by the teachings of the Masters. In the new cultural situation, in the societies of knowledge and innovation and continuous change, the path will have to be travelled without beliefs. There is a second powerful reason which contributes to making the indissoluble union of spiritual living and beliefs, of faith and beliefs, non-viable in the new societies. This powerful and inevitable reason is the globalisation of society, which is also a religious globalisation. In a society in which there is a confluence of all the great religious traditions of humanity, the spiritual path cannot depend on an exclusive and excluding binding to beliefs, forms and structures, although this union may have lasted for thousands of years. If some beliefs and forms are the Way, the others are not. Then, either they are pure error which was sustained in the past or they are simply a partial approximation to the true Way, which is still sustained in most of the religious fields. If, for each great tradition, the other traditions are in error or are only an approximation to the plenitude of their truth, however grand and meritorious this approximation may be, there will remain three possibilities: to attack them and try, with good or bad manners, to make them disappear from the face of the earth, or convert them to the full truth, ones own, or ignore them. Today it is the third choice that is taken. Each tradition can think: what can the other traditions give us which we do not already have? If they are listened to and studied, in an inter-religious dialogue, it will only be for condescendence, charity and, in short, to lead them to the total truth that each tradition claims to have. A religious posture of this kind is incompatible with a global society, because it creates enmities, disdain and condescendence from the height of ones own truth in relation with the truths of others. Religion thus understood is the declared or covert enemy of peaceful globalisation. In a global society, the religious traditions cannot generate confrontations, missed opportunities, mutual scorn. If religions, in order to make their offer to societies, have to go this way, then better they should cease to exist. This conflictive attitude is generated by beliefs, the union and confusion between faith and beliefs, the inseparable fusion between the touch of the Absolute and beliefs in relation with the Absolute and this touch.
171
The failure to meet between the spiritual traditions and the new societies has a dual epistemological root. When we use the term epistemological we are not referring to the science which speaks of the theory of knowledge; we are referring to the ways which human groups have of conceiving in their lives knowledge and the relation which there is between the words we use to express and create this knowledge and the knowledge itself. The generalised opinion, the idea that the people have of science is that science describes the nature itself of things. It is true that this description is still imperfect, that we still have far to go in this knowledge on things, but science is getting closer. From the conviction that science describes to us the nature of things, we expect that science can tell us how to treat them properly. And believing that science and technology extend to all ambits of life, it is supposed that science will be the instrument to solve all our problems and supply us with a correct human life. This is an idea of science, an epistemology of science of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is an epistemology which functioned as an ideology of the rough confrontation of science with the old regimes and religions. Unfortunately, this ideological use of science is still maintained in the people, in not a few fields of those practitioners of science and technology, and even in not a few university circles. In many circles a mitigated scientism continues to be sustained. In the societies of real socialism, the societies of the communist regime of the past, a massive use was made of this ideology of science. In capitalist societies and, especially in the neoliberal, this ideological use of science is continuing. It encourages the idea that scientific and technological developments will solve all our problems. In the neo-liberal societies, science and technology are at the service of capital and the market. And it is capital and the market which encourage this idea, of a mythical structure, of science and technology. But science never describes reality as it it, but constructs models to be able to operate in it. Science transmits information on reality, information which can serve to act on it. There is, with all this, a dimension of scientific work which is gratuitous, which is done for the pure love of knowledge. This form of doing science is 172
The failure to meet between the spiritual traditions and the new societies is of epistemological root
dedicated to reality, without a double interest; in acting thus, science does not exceed its limitations, but the scientists can find themselves facing the mystery of reality itself. Science is always a conceptual system, a system of representation. Each system of representation is kept distant from reality. The re-presentation is never the reality, i only re-presents it; it is always distant from it. Thus it supplies no immediate and direct information on reality, it always offers a schema of it, a design of the real. And the design of the real, is not the real. Also, science cannot solve all human problems because the most serious problems that we humans have are axiological, because they are political, social, moral, and science, by its own nature, is inapt for dealing exhaustively with these problems. Science is a linguistic construction in which it has been attempted to eliminate, as far as possible, the semantic axiological elements. It is, then, methodologically sterile with respect to the axiological. It can supply information on axiological questions, but not construct axiologies, or propose values effectively. We humans are living beings, and as all living beings, we have an axiological relationship with the environment and our fellow men. No scientific system, however sophisticated, can distance us from this our condition. In consequence, the human axiological problems have to be resolved with a type of language from which the evaluation elements have not been eliminated. It has to be a type of language which can handle values. In consequence, societies, however scientific and technological they may be, will need to construct value systems, to live and to manage the science and technology adequately. Science cannot supply these value systems, but we have to construct axiological postulates from which we can construct projects of group life to which will be subordinated the scientific and technological developments. It has still not been understood the central programming function of the myths, symbols, sacred narrations and rituals, nor even their purely symbolic function, more related with poetry than with science. It is ignored completely that the myths, symbols and narrations of the religious traditions, although now they cannot exercise any programming function, can continue their purely symbolic function, speaking of the absolute dimension of our experience of the real, speaking of a certain dimension of our existence of which science cannot speak. Against these attitudes, the religions have also claimed to describe the nature of reality. They pretend to knowledge of what is human nature, what is the nature of society, of social and family organisation, to knowledge of what human behaviour must be. 173
This claimed knowledge is expresed with axiological language, with sacred narrations, with myths, symbols, doctrines, rituals. And they claim that their myths, symbols and narrations describe the nature itself of what is. They had this claim long before science existed. Against this claim science fights, to make itself a place, and in doing so, falls into the same error. Also the religious languages were systems of representation, and therefore distant from reality itself, just as the conceptual systems of science. Both the religions and science, from their epistemologies, which in the past were intrinsically related, had, and still have in majority circles, the claim of saying what is reality. Both the one and the others are believers. It is time to abandon all beliefs. Science does not say what is reality, it models it in order to operate in it. The myths, symbols and sacred narrations do not say what is reality, they also model it in order to operate in it. They say how it has to be seen in order to live in a determined pre-industrial way. Sciences and myths model the realities in relation to action; they are differentiated in that science constructs its abstract models and the myths construct their axiological models. The religious leaders, especially the western, whether Christian, Islamic or Jewish, continue maintaining an epistemology of the symbolic and mythical worlds unsustainable in the new cultural circumstances. They ignore the nature of constructs of these formations. They ignore the primary claim of the myths in relation to the modes of preindustrial living. They ignore the primary claim of these constitutional languages: to programme the groups in a form adapted for a form of life. They ignore that the claim of myths, symbols and rituals is, first of all, to implant in the preindustrial and static groups patterns of interpretation, evaluation, organisation and action which must be sacrosanct. To comply with this function it is affirmed that they were revealed. The religious traditions refuse to revise the epistemology of these linguistic formations and seek to maintain what was valid in preindustrial societies, which we have called mythical epistemology. This antiquated epistemology is reflected in the reading which is made of the holy scriptures, in the approach to the rituals and group and private prayers, in the organisation, in the claim that these myths, symbols and rituals are still valid in their function as programmers of the great fields of group and private life and, of course, reflected in the conception of the great religious symbols such as God, the other life, the resurrection, Son of God, Virgin and mother, salvation, redemption, chosen people, revelation, prophecy, etc. 174
The religions continue determined to transmit the great message of the old and venerable traditions, in preindustrial cultural models, linked to beliefs, to mental, moral and ritual subordination, linked to sacredness, hierarchies, patriarchs, with an interpretation treating as an object symbols, myths and sacred narrations. This form of interpreting and experiencing the great contents of wisdom of the traditions, expressed in symbols, myths and narrations, becomes and insuperable obstacle for the majority of men and women in the developed industrialised societies and of knowledge. This obstacle is practically insuperable because it contradicts and opposes what is the new type of societies and the new way of programming the groups through postulates and projects, constructed by ourselves, and put into practice with the help of science and technology, also constructed by ourselves. We find ourselves in a situation of confrontation which is rooted in a bad epistemology. Nor have the religious traditions adapted themselves to the new cultural conditions, because they remain anchored in preindustrial attitudes and perspectives and are, therefore, frightened and aggressive, nor have the new industrial societies adapted themselves fully to the new circumstances in reference to the interpretation of science and, especially, in reference to the language of the religious traditions. They remain anchored in attitudes and perspectives typical of the first industrialisation. Their attitude is scornful and indifferent. Will the religious traditions be capable of making this transformation in time? At present there is no sign. The data push us much more towards pessimism. For their part, will the new industrial societies be capable of placing science and technology in their place and understanding this other form of speaking of the real which are the myths, symbols and sacred narrations? Neither in this can we feel great optimism. The worst of the matter is that the obstinacy of the managers of the religious traditions, reinforces the obstinacy of the culture of the new industrial societies. And vice versa. The collapse of the religions makes the religious leaders more sanctimonious, entrenched and aggressive; and this hardening and entrenchment toughens, in its turn, the attitude of the leaders and managers of the culture of the new societies.
The difference between beliefs and assumptions
The words and discourses of daily life have a practical direction and aim. In order to fulfil this practical function it must be assumed that the design, 175
representation and objectivization of reality proposed by the words are operative. The words of our daily life require the assumption that what they conceive and say corresponds to reality to the point of being a correct guide for action. In those societies in which living in the same way lasted for millennia, this assumption became belief. Why was it necessary to transform a simple assumption into belief ? Because if one simply assumes what is said of reality, one would be ready to change one assumption for another, whenever it might suit. This mental and practical attitude is not appropriate to societies which must never alter their assumptions, or their ways of living. In the new cultural conditions neither the spiritual language, nor the myths and religious symbols have to be accompanied by beliefs. Because, in our situation, whoever believes what the myths and symbols say, supposing that what they enunciate exists as they enunciate it, is lost in the vacuum of constructions from the past. The static societies, in order to exist, have to convert the assumptions into beliefs. Whoever believes that things are as the authorised discourses say, excludes, with the strength of such belief, all possible alteration of the assumptions which are the flesh of beliefs. Whoever works only with assumptions, on the other hand, recognises that reality is not how it is designed by words; therefore such a person is prepared to change the assumptions when necessary. The assumptions are, always and by their nature, provisional and mobile. Beliefs, on the other hand, are neither provisional nor mobile. Consequently, the static societies are societies of beliefs, while dynamic societies can only be societies of assumptions. The static societies made the myths and symbols into a support for the beliefs. This is not the proper and immutable nature of symbols and myths; this is the static and pre-industrial version of symbols and myths. A version neither pre-industrial nor static would use the symbols and myths only as instruments of research with the mind, the heart and the senses, from a non-utilitarian perspective. For the pre-industrial societies, the sacred narrations, myths and symbols are descriptions of reality; they are descriptions of facts and personalities. For the industrial societies, the sacred narrations, myths and symbols are only metaphors which point to reality in order to research it, not to operate in it. This reading of myths and symbols, neither pre-industrial nor static, would have to be shown as clearly divorced from all types of beliefs. To be able to use myths and symbols in industrial, dynamic societies, it does not have to be 176
believed that there exist such things and events as those of which these narrations and symbols tell; it has to be assumed only that the symbols and myths are a guide for enquiry into what surrounds us, in the sense in which they speak to us. When the symbols and myths are believed, their narrations and designs are taken as realities. Whoever acts this way is trapped in the beliefs, is trapped in designs and constructions, which are only metaphors and simplifications; whoever acts this way disfigures what should only be an instrument and a bridge. The error is to take what is a human design, in determined cultural conditions, now expired, for reality.
Myths and symbols signify reality. And they signify it by believing that when they speak of the realities of this world they describe their true being. Starting from this supposition, they refer metaphorically to the absolute dimension of the real. For them, metaphors express a certain degree of analogy between the meaning and what the meaning refers to. Scholars call it the analogy of being. Because they believed that words described the essence of the realities of this world to which they referred this was the supposition of mythical epistemology, they believed that they could refer to the Absolute by analogy. When it was believed that the myths, sacred narrations and symbols described their meaning, the analogy with the being was an authentic expression, a description of the Absolute Being, although analogous. Now it is known that the symbols and myths do not describe reality, but only model it to measure for the needs of a group of living beings, in specific conditions of survival, it can be understood that they can only point to the Absolute as metaphors, but only in meaning, not describing, not even by analogy. When the myths and symbols speak of the Absolute, as metaphors, they really do point to it. And this is because the Absolute reveals itself through specific semantic contents which are central to the life of the group. Some of these contents central to the culture are like the stained glass windows in the churches, which give form and colour to light and, with these forms and colours, bring it into the shadowy interior of the church. The forms and colours of the stained glass make the light present, but they do not describe either its nature or its form, not even by analogy. 177
Symbols and myths: apophatic affirmations or metaphors about the Absolute
When we come away from the context of mythical ontology, we understand that symbols and myths do not have the power to describe the non-dual Absolute, they cannot describe, even by analogy, what is beyond the categories of subject and object, being and not being and, therefore, is empty of all possible categorisation. The symbols, myths and sacred narrations only truly point to the Absolute if we let ourselves be guided by them and we leave them behind; if we pass through to the other side of the stained glass window. The symbols and myths lead us by a path of light, intelligible to our human condition, which ends by introducing us into the bottomless abyss of shadowy light, light without any form or colour. We know that the apophatic affirmations do not teach anything positive with respect to the Absolute, they only tell us what the Absolute is not. It seems as though myths and symbols do make positive affirmations of God, of the Absolute. These are affirmations which, although only by analogy, say how the essence of being appears from the absolute dimension of reality. For one stretch of the path of meditation and research it can appear to be so, but in the end this is not sure, because the myths and symbols, to signify the Absolute truly, have to finish by transcending themselves totally, and transcending themselves totally is equivalent to cancelling themselves out, negating all that they have been teaching. Let us take an example: God is infinite intelligence, infinitely knowledgeable. With this affirmation it is sustained that God is not inert as matter is, and not intelligent as the animals are, but is intelligent, in the same way as we human subjects are, but in a totally different form, because our intelligence is limited and his is infinite. He is then intelligent and knowledgeable only in an analogous way. This would be the traditional attitude. But a correct comprehension of this affirmation will lead us to understand that God is not a subject, because subjects are packages of needs facing a field of objects. God is not, then, a subject with intelligence. God is not a subject who knows things outside himself, nor does he make of himself an object of knowledge. All this would be to introduce duality into Him, and the duality of subjects and objects only pertains to living beings with needs. God is not in duality, where there are subjects and objects and where one can speak of knowing or not knowing. God is non-duality. Therefore, the affirmation which we are studying, after distancing God from the form of being of inert matter or from the non-intelligent form of life, ends up by understanding that God is not, strictly speaking, an intelligent subject. The affirmation God is a being of infinite intelligence is not a conceptual 178
affirmation, it is a symbolic affirmation, a pointer, which ends up by cancelling itself out. Let us now consider another affirmation: the Vedanta affirmation5 that the Absolute is Sat-Chit-Ananda, that is to say, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. This statement, in comparison with the earlier one, distances us from the notion of an intelligent subject and invites us to delve into a representation which sustains that the Absolute is light and a light which is being, in an absolute non-duality. Here we have moved away from the figure of an intelligent individuality in a dual reality, to enter into a figure without individuality and in non-duality. It could seem that there is no more path to travel, but that is not so. SatChit-Ananda also is a symbolic expression, not conceptual, which transcends itself. To say that it is existence still situates the Absolute in the ambit of the duality of that which is opposite that which is not. The same can be said of the affirmation that it is Consciousness. We would still be in the ambit of duality, consciousness opposite non-consciousness. Also, does it make sense to use the word consciousness when there is no subject which is conscious of anything? The Absolute is not a subject of need, nor is there anything or anyone opposite the Absolute. Consequently, this affirmation also ends up by submerging itself in the great abyss empty of all possible categorisation. This manner of being of the symbols which tell of the Absolute, which is to present themselves as a positive affirmation on the first stretch of the path, to become submerged in the luminous shadows in later stretches, was perfectly well known to all the great mystics of history. When the myths and symbols functioned as systems of group programming, we have seen and established that they had to be taken as true descriptions of the reality to which they alluded, because they had to direct the individual and group actions effectively. This was a pragmatic use of symbols and myths, with the purpose of defining what they referred to in order to direct action and survival. They aspired to describe what they defined. It had to be believed, so that they could fulfil their programming function, that what they said was the true essence of being of the real. The myths and symbols, when they had the role of group programmers, and of groups which had to exclude change, had to be experienced as systems of beliefs, and thus had a clear and unequivocal defining function, deictic. Without this clear function, without the firm belief that the terms used
5 One of the six systems of Hindu thought (darsanas), which embrace a broad diversity of currents. The affirmations which we set out are those of the advaita vedanta, no dual or adual.
179
referred to specific realities, the myths and symbols would not have been capable of programming the actions. Now that myths and symbols are no longer group programmers, nor, consequently, systems of beliefs, but purely expressive symbolic systems, their defining function could seem, at first, clear, but as understanding of their form of meaning advances, their defining aspiration becomes lost in an abyss empty of entities which we could consider as subjects or objects. The symbols and myths, in the cultural circumstances in which we move, in which they no longer programme anything, point towards the Absolute, but their defining strength is not precise or clear. What it affirms is non-knowledge knowledge and the defining is a non-defining defining. The symbols and myths which we have inherited from the past are no longer programmes for anything or anyone; no longer systems of beliefs which have to be accepted. For this reason, they have lost the power to present themselves to the groups as guaranteed descriptions of reality capable of giving sense and direction to action and life. They have lost their clear function of defining the realities of this world, they have lost the capacity to generate in our awareness the conviction that they refer to something specific in the world relative to our needs. They are no longer useful to organise the daily life and action of the groups. So now they show themselves as being symbols, metaphors which speak of subtle aspects of this world, which speak, above all, of the absolute dimension of reality; but now they are only symbols, metaphors which seem to say a lot, but which in reality are submerged in the most complete silence. The symbols of the past are now only metaphors. The myths and sacred narrations of the past are now simply metaphor-narrations. If we strip away from the myths and symbols their programming function and the beliefs which that function demands and the mythical epistemology involved, their purely symbolic, purely metaphoric nature immediately becomes clear. If the myths, symbols and sacred narrations are understood thus, it is impossible to submit oneself to them. One does not submit oneself to metaphors, one understands them and lives them. Also, those metaphors which speak of the Absolute, as we have seen, signify that they must sink in silence, because they transcend themselves. When the symbols and myths are only metaphors, it becomes impossible for some symbolic systems to be excluded by others. No metaphor, well understood, can be affirmed as unique and exclude the others. The only thing the metaphors aspire to is to be understood, not to impose themselves 180
or sustain that they are the only way of expressing what they refer to by means of figures. The great symbolic and mythical systems, which played a programming role for millennia, have created traditions in the ways of representing and referring to the absolute dimension of reality. For our forebears, these traditions were exclusive and excluding systems of beliefs. For us these traditions are only styles of representation, styles of referring to the absolute in images; they are only well established ways of representing what cannot be represented, and firmly rooted ways of saying metaphorically what cannot be said. One can follow a mythical-symbolic tradition, but one cannot submit oneself to it and never to the exclusion of all the others. There would be no logic or sense in excluding all the other mythical-symbolic traditions. What sense would there be in one system symbolically and metaphorically representing the Absolute excluding another or others, knowing that all of them are only forms of representing what is beyond the possibility of any image? If all the mythical and symbolic systems of referring to the Absolute end up by sinking into an abyss which is beyond any form that we can give it, what foundation can we find for claiming to exclude the one or the others? If all the mythical-symbolic systems, well understood, finish up by being apophatic, what is the point of excluding the one or the others? The great religions, which are great symbolic systems, are similar to great poems. They are the greatest human constructions capable of transcending the limits of need. They are immense creations by the human spirit in order to speak of the absolute dimension of our experience of reality. For thousands of years these creations have lifted the human spirit far beyond the perspectives of a poor living animal. In these great poems, the great men who constructed them were not trying to escape from reality, but rather to penetrate deeply into it, so deeply that it became necessary to distil the human essence again and again, to bring it to its greatest concentration and greatest subtlety. In them, as poems, human beings loved reality so much that they disappeared in it, in an indiscernible unity, vibrant and lucid. In creating and recreating their attempt at an approximation to the Absolute, the great masters of the spirit unveiled it, they received the revelation of an ineffable unity with a single presence, absolutely convincing, empty, total, exclusive. Their creation was knowledge and revelation. Whoever ardently wished to know was recognised and submerged in the unity. Many followed the path of the great, recreating again the creations that they had made, in order to submerge themselves in the indescribable unity, as they had. 181
In the new cultural conditions, the myths and religious symbols, the poems of the great masters, no longer serve to support anything, or to exorcise anything, they are released from the social functions which fixed them. Now they can be seen for what they are, just symbols, metaphors, expressions of the Absolute, instruments of passion, of love, research and knowledge. The capacity to dream reality needs to be recovered, with all its force, as in poems, to know and love it, as the old masters of the spirit did. Only this fantasy, now free, can supply us with the respect, the love, veneration and recognition for everything that exists and lives on this planet and for ourselves, because the myths and symbols no longer have any programming load, they solve nothing, support nothing, legitimate nothing. All these functions have been taken over by science, technology, the axiological postulates and group projects which we ourselves construct. The great religious poems, the great constructions of the spiritual masters, return to being free and available for use; but they are discredited by the use which is made of them. Their credit needs to be restored to them, but now only as free fantasies, not as mandatory programmes or beliefs.
In the future there will be no substitute for religion to fulfil the functions that were its purpose, because pre-industrial societies will not return to the places from where they have already disappeared and because the mythical epistemology has ceased to be viable. Religion was a project for individual and group living; a system for interpreting the world, humanity and life; a system for evaluation; for family and social organisation; a system of morality; a untouchable system of beliefs, divine revelation; a solution for life and death; giving sense to human life. As well as all these functions, it was a system for initiation into and expression of the spiritual experience. It could fulfil the first package of functions because they were the programming system for pre-industrial and static societies. In this, they were systems of beliefs to which the minds and hearts of individuals and groups had to submit themselves, because they were a divine precept and revelation. When religion becomes impossible as a system of group programming and system of beliefs, it loses the capacity to exercise any of these functions, which then depend on purely human decision and construction. It was always thus, but we did not know it; now we know it clearly. Today we must learn to live knowing that all aspects of our destiny are exclusively 182
No substitutes for religion can be expected
in our own hands; knowing that only we ourselves can construct the projects and direction of our lives, our ways of living and the world in which we want to live. It has to be accepted that, in the future, there will be no substitute for religion, because nothing and nobody will supply us with anything constructed. It has to be accepted that, from the great religious traditions of the past, we only have their capacity of expression and initiation into the spiritual experience. To understand this new situation, we must learn that spirituality is no solution to anything, not in life, nor in death. That spirituality builds nothing, not even the constructor, because spirituality is only a subtle quality. True spirituality is completely empty of forms and of all types of constructions and determinations, because it is only a spirit for construction, it is only a subtle elan of love and interest which will revitalise all our cultural constructions. It will not be the religious traditions but our own projects which will give orientation and sense to our lives. We have to solve everything for ourselves, with our science, our technology, our axiological postulates and our projects. Only our personal and group quality, our capacity to discern what is appropriate and suitable to each situation, can be our guide; there is no other. The religious traditions do not offer solutions for anything. If we were to find in the religions of the past some solution to our problems, already prepared, we would have to be seriously suspicious of that solution. In the certainty that we would be insisting on keeping alive something which had long ago died, without remedy. Not even the ways of life of the traditional societies were constructed on the sacred dimension of existence; they were constructed on living conditions typical of static, pre-scientific, pre-technological, agrarian, authoritarian and patriarchal societies. The traditional societies were as they were, thought as they thought, felt as they felt and acted as they acted, not because they were religious and believer societies, but because they were static and agrarian-authoritarian. The societies of the past, from which we have received the religious traditions, believed what they believed because they needed to be suitably adapted to certain environments and modes of life, not because they were religious or spiritual. The myths and symbols, when they were valid as programming systems, imposed an interpretation and evaluation of reality and a representation of the Absolute. Both impositions had consequences in the organisation of human groups in general, and religious groups in particular. The symbols and myths imposed a specific form of organisation and made it sacred. When they cease to be valid, they do not impose an interpretation of reality, nor do they impose a representation of the Absolute. For this reason, they cease to impose a type of organisation and cease to make it sacred. 183
The myths and symbols, understood, sensed and experienced as pure symbols, as pure metaphors which allude to realities and point to the Absolute, lose all their ties with any imposed system of organisation, at a social, family and religious level. How are they going to impose anything, if what they do for us, the members of the new industrial societies, is no longer to interpret our daily reality, nor even claim to interpret the absolute dimension of our living, but merely to act as pointers, alluding to that dimension of the real which is radical and totally inconceivable? In the new cultural situation, we are free to organise our group and family life as we think fit, and we are equally free to organise our religious groups so as to be suitable for our journey towards the fields of silence, unconditional love and freedom. We have had to learn (we are still learning) that, in reality, we never had projects for life sent down from heaven, or received from God or sanctioned by Him, or supplied by the nature of things. And we have had to learn this hard truth through pain, shock and no little fear and, also, through need, because in the new circumstances things could not continue being as our forebears believed. Our perplexity and our fear are so great that they still prevent us from recognising what has become culturally and collectively evident. In our times, we have been forced to understand that neither religion, nor the spirituality to which we may aspire in our cultural circumstances, is any solution to anything. On the other hand, spirituality leads us to another dimension of existence: it guides us to the Absolute dimension, it leads us to extend our being, to refine our discernment and feeling, to pacify and calm our inner selves; it leads us to tenderness, to an unconditional interest in everything and everyone, to love and peace. All this is no solution for anything, but it is a fertile source of valid solutions. Spirituality is not a solution for anything, because it is only a spirit which makes of us a new being. Neither the religious traditions of the past nor spirituality give us constructions, they only give a new spirit to the constructors.
The nature of how we speak of the absolute dimension of reality
Can anything be said about the Absolute? The term Absolute is itself inadequate. This term only says that what is is ab-solute of all possible 184
relationship; that it is free, detached, apart from any relationship. More than asserting, it denies. We could say that no term which tries to refer to That which is can aspire to describe its manner of being, that it can only be a pointer to stimulate an intuition which can transcend the concept or image. In using any term to refer to It, we make It into a reference, and it is not a reference, because it is not opposite anything or anyone, it is not an object or a subject for anyone. It is not an object, nor is it a subject; it has no individuality, because what cannot be objectified cannot be said to be individuality. It is not being, nor is it non-being, because to predicate being or non-being only makes sense with individualities, things with limits, things that can be objectified. One of the more abstract affirmations in referring to the Absolute is one we have already discussed from the Hindu Advaita Vedanta school, which says of It that it is Sat-Chit-Ananda, that is, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. These expressions, in spite of their conceptual appearance, are more symbols than concepts, because they do not attempt to describe the Absolute but only point to it, although in such a way as to transcend those same notions which are the pointers. The Absolute, strictly speaking, neither is nor is not, because neither existence nor non-existence can be applied to It, because it has no limits, cannot be objectified. Neither can it be said of It that it is Consciousness, because it is not a subject or individuality with consciousness of anything. Neither is it a subject able to have or not have Bliss. However, having voiced these corrections, it can be said with sense that it exists, that it is in the manner of consciousness and that it is sufficient unto itself and therefore is bliss. It is a Presence, but of no one and nothing; an empty presence. Does it make sense to speak of an empty presence? This is a presence of which the mind and feeling can be aware, but which is absolutely unable to be categorised. To speak of a presence which cannot be categorised is to speak in a manner that the term Presence must transcend itself. It is an empty presence because it is present everywhere and nowhere. It is not the presence of something or someone from among the somethings and someones. But every presence of something or someone is its presence because nothing is other with respect to the Absolute, nor is the Absolute other with respect to anything. Thus, this empty presence is a presence which is patent in everything, without any of the presences in which it is manifest encircling it and making it into presence in the manner of the presence of subjects and objects. 185
The Absolute is the radical Empty. But Empty is an apophatic expression which says that every affirmation on the Absolute is false and all denial is true. But even a term as radical as this, in order to make any sense, must transcend itself, because the Absolute is not anything which is empty of anything. What the term Empty points to, as though it were a reference, is full, but of nothing and no one that can be categorised or represented. The notion does not speak of absence; it is not the absence of anything or anyone, it is empty of all linguistic possibility, of all possible conceptualisation and representation, of all image. It is the radical non-image. The Absolute is what is beyond all the duality which the living being generates in his reading of reality from need; in this sense it is the Non-two. But to affirm non-duality is not to affirm unity. In reality it is neither non-two nor one, neither plural nor singular, because it has nothing to do with individualisations and objectifications, which are the basis of our speaking of unity, duality and plurality. In spite of being a radically inconceivable abyss of emptiness, it can be symbolised, because in the presence of everything, It is reality, subtle for my mind as a living being with needs (for this subtlety the hunter-gatherers called it Spirit). Thus, all reality has capacity to refer to It, to make it present and patent. All reality says it and points to It, for whoever is able to understand; saying, while it points to It, really what expresses it and makes it present, that It is not as it is indicated, as it is expressed and as it is made present. This it is the being of the symbol in its purely expressive function. For our individual and group life, the more central some determined things and determined persons are, the greater is their meaningful force in relation with the Absolute, as we have been able to establish through the mythical analyses. Thus, what in a certain culture has an unconditional meaning for our survival as individuals and as a species, has an unconditioned force of meaning, but also doing so symbolically: points in a direction and invites transcendence of the term with which it points, an incitement to abandon it and go on beyond it. One could be inclined to use the Advaita Vedanta expressions (ExistenceConsciousness-Bliss) more frequently than other expressions or than Buddhist expressions, because the Advaita affirmations are symbol-concepts distanced from theist formulations, but open to possible theist symbols. Theist symbols, taken as pure symbols, are not part of any group programming system, nor of any system of beliefs; they are simply symbols at the service of the internal process. When in this internal process (which is not strictly speaking a process but only an awakening), the lucidity of the mind and, above all, the feeling of the 186
heart cannot drag the feet away from the land of the ego, from the consciousness of being someone come to this world (although knowing the unreality of this basis), then the Absolute is seen and felt as outside oneself, as apart from the reality which the ego attributes to itself. In this situation of thinking and feeling with respect to the ego, the Absolute is seen and sensed as other than the ego, as an other Absolute, Absolute Mind, Source, Lord of all; that is to say, it is seen and felt as God. Nevertheless, to the extent that one knows that, in depth, one is nobody, one knows, simultaneously, that God is only a figuration produced in the state in which there are, at the same level, a glimpse of the Absolute and the incapacity of escaping from the ignorance of believing oneself as someone come to this world. Seeing things thus, every internal process (which is a process only from the perspective that ones own being still has not awakened) has moments in which theism flourishes, not by reason of beliefs or systems of interpretation and group programming, but through the dynamism itself of the internal process. This is a theism without God, a lucid theism from the mechanisms of internal projection, when one tries to escape from the prison of the ego. Even in traditions such as Buddhism, there are these moments of the internal process, in which Buddha takes a role similar to that of the gods in the Vedanta or theist traditions, when theism has escaped from beliefs and clearly shows its function in the Way. However, one may remain in theism all ones life, if the symbol of God is used as a pure symbol which is used and is transcended. We are not trying to grade the symbols, to say that some symbols, such as Empty, Sat-Chit-Ananda, are superior to others such as God. No authentic symbol is superior or inferior to any other. The Absolute is silent information, silent knowledge. That is to say, knowledge which is information and clear and unshakable certainty, but which is non-knowledge, because in it no one knows anything. This knowledge is also called dark light, because it is knowledge full of light in which there is no subject which knows, nor any object known. It is knowledge empty of the subject/object duality. It is a ray of darkness light, not because it has darkness in itself, but because it is dark for our categories, because it is knowledge in the body of non-duality. It is true knowledge which is a cloud of no knowledge. A super-essential knowledge, as Pseudo Dionysius said. This no-knowledge knowledge in the body of no-duality is light and fire, because in it the duality of knowing and feeling merges into a unity of light and heat, of lucidity and shock. 187
In this information the subject object duality merges, the duality of knowing and feeling merges and the duality formed by knowing and feeling-perception merges. Also the body and spirit duality merges. The body is knowing and feeling, perception is knowledge and shock, feeling is knowledge, knowledge is feeling, perception and corporeal nature. For all these features the Absolute is peace and bliss. With It, all fears, threats, expectations, shortcomings, are ended, because the duality ego-world, ego-Absolute no longer exists. Thus the Absolute is not a state of mind and feeling, or an achievement, or anything for anyone. It is that which is, but Empty, it is absolute silence of all possible speaking and all possible categorisation, beyond unity and duality, beyond homogeneity and diversity. A weight of unshakable and silent certainty. Eloquent dumbness. This is the teaching found in common in the traditions and religious masters. An important question arises in a globalised society: this teaching in the various religious traditions and the teachings of the different religious masters, is it diverse teaching or a teaching in common? In the teaching of the great traditions and the great religious masters of the history of humanity, two levels have to be distinguished: that of formulations and expressions and that to which the formulation and expressions lead. The discourse of the great masters and great holy scriptures of history, of the narrations, symbols and expressions of the different mythical and symbolic systems of religions is diverse, extremely diverse. This discourse is found in very different cultures which live and are structured and expressed with very different patterns and cultural and axiological paradigms. The perspectives from which they speak are so diverse that at times their affirmations are opposed, if not contradictory. But they all point to the same: what transcends all our needs and possibilities of saying. The inconceivable That will be named in various ways: Great Spirit, Ancestor, God, Lord, Father, Absolute, Empty, Brahman, That, Tao, Mind, ExistenceConsciousness-Bliss, etc., but always with an insistence, in one form or another, that it is not bound by words but transcends them. It could be said that the expressive codes are diverse, but what the different codes say always points to the same thing: something which is not the codes, which transcends them completely. The ways of speaking of these different cultural and religious codes, all point towards what transcends them. All the masters and scriptures coincide in that we can have access to That Absolute, when all our forms of objectifying, representing, imagining, having 188
expectations and desiring have been totally silenced. When this internal silence is achieved, in a state of alert, the revelation may occur of this other dimension of the real which transcends all our conceptions and measurements of what is. Most of the great masters lived in the long pre-industrial state of human history. In those times, societies were structured and programmed on beliefs. The masters, inevitably, had to express themselves and live with those cultural tables of beliefs. Therefore, when they spoke of what transcends all our possibilities of saying, they did it by starting from these group beliefs and without distancing themselves much from them. Therefore, they created a saying of the Absolute which was structured from the tables of the fundamental group beliefs which formed the group programmes of the peoples among whom the masters appeared, without being able to contradict them in their central axes, although they could in their deficiencies or poor functioning. Thus, in the teachings of the masters and the great holy scriptures, there are two levels: that of the cultural parameters and beliefs, which are relative and mortal, and that of those which aimed at That Other which cannot be named, is without possible image, but which is not other than anything. On the first level, the masters and traditions differ. On the second level, they flow together. In the new societies, which are global and in which all humanitys great religious traditions flow together, the practice of spirituality will not be either syncretic or homogeneous. When poets and musicians learn to write poetry and music, they study all the masters from the past and learn from them, although they cannot repeat either their music or their poetry, because if they were to repeat the works of the great ones who preceded us, the result would not be music or poetry. Neither can they create a work by taking elements here and there from some authors and from some other authors. The works which they construct can have many influences, but they cannot be syncretic. The same thing happens with the internal road in the global societies of knowledge. The spiritual road turns out to be a profoundly personal and individual road. Nevertheless, the road is found in communication with others. First of all, in communication with the Masters and then, secondly, in communication with others who are making the same attempt. One does not walk alone; but although groups may form they will not be homogeneous, because they cannot be founded on beliefs which give them homogeneity. The groups and individuals will break up into diversity. There will be schools and families, but no homogeneity. 189
The various traditions will no longer oppose each other, they will complement one another. Each will make a gift of itself, with no exclusivity and no exclusions. Some will come closer to others without syncretism, because each form has its own symbolic and expressive logic, which cannot be mixed with others. All the traditions offer their riches and they all flow together, but they are different and to mix them syncretically would have as little sense as mixing Mozart with Wagner or Bach. All the traditions offer the road to Wisdom, the road to the Absolute which transcends and frees from submission to any form, although it may be said in many different forms. Does this mean that the different masters, the different holy scriptures and the different religious traditions, do not point to diverse aspects of That Absolute? No. There is diversity in the symbolisation and in the pointing and there is, as a result, diversity in the access. But all this wealth and diversity ends up sinking into the bottomless abyss. Various religious traditions use the image of the diamond, the pearl of great price, to symbolise That Other which is to be revealed. The diamond has many faces, and the different faces have different sparkle, light and colours. It all depends from which side you look at it. However, from wherever you look at the diamond, whatever colour you may see, what you actually see is the diamond, which is these sparkles and colours and none of them, because it transcends them. In the ages when the traditions were lived, expressed and symbolised from cultural patterns that involved beliefs, the teachings of the masters were differentiated according to these patterns and beliefs. Then, the teachings of the masters were diverse, because they could not separate themselves from the group programmes and beliefs without endangering the mythical-symbolic paradigms which programmed the groups and, by doing so, putting at risk the actual survival of the human groups. The masters and the traditions proposed spiritual teachings, flowing through the different beliefs; they proposed the opening and delivery to the Absolute from different faith-beliefs. Because they were different, and in them, indissolubly, the expression of the Absolute was united with belief, they were also mutually exclusive. In societies such as those of innovation and knowledge, which now are not supported and structured on beliefs, but only on self-constructed postulates and projects, the beliefs in which the masters expressed themselves cease to have a power of imposition and show their pure symbolic force. Thus, now, we can clearly distinguish the dual level from which the traditions and the masters spoke and symbolised, and we can understand that they spoke 190
of the same diamond, from different faces. From different cultural patterns and manners of saying; they spoke of what cannot be said, of what can only be aimed at, of what transcends all the possibilities of human language, of what transcends the whole of human capacity to imagine and conceive. We can understand that their differences are basically circumstantial, supplementary and that there is no opposition, fundamentally, between them. It is reasonable, then, to say, as we have done frequently, the masters say, passing over their differences, which are concerned not with the depth to which they try to point, but with the cultural perspectives and timescales from which they speak and indicate.
All the great masters of the spirit in human history are uninterpretable. When the myths and symbols speak of Jesus the Son of God, or of Mohammed the last of the Prophets, or of Buddha the Enlightened, they do not describe the way of being of these great personalities but only allude to and represent them, from the categories of their culture, the unnameable dimension which appears in them. The great religious figures of humanity -are like openings through which no form penetrates into form; -are like great stained glass windows through which the light of the Absolute penetrates; -the patent presence of the Absolute; -are like the great black holes of the cosmos, where all that we take as reality is lost; -are like luminaries which dazzle us with the light of the Absolute itself. The great religious figures of history sink into an unnameable abyss, and they draw us to this same abyss. Being humans and remaining as such, the abyss swallowed them, they are enveloped in the thick fog of the unconceivable. If this is so, our talk about the great masters is only figurative, on the basis of symbols and narrations which are like metaphors. We cannot pretend to have formulas with which to describe their own manner of being. What we say of them is only a form of expressing that those individuals were covered by the luminous mist of the unknowable. If this is the manner of being of our speaking when we refer to them, with formulas enshrined by their use through the ages, we are saying nothing which does not have to sink into the most complete silence of knowledge without 191
The great masters of the spirit are uninterpretable
words. Nor are we saying anything which has the power to set them in opposition among themselves; nor for one to exclude the others. When facing Buddha, the Prophet Mohammed or Jesus of Nazareth, Moses or the great Indian Rishis, we have to silence all our attempts to interpret them. We can and must speak of them and refer to them, but only with symbols and metaphors which respect the luminous darkness which envelops them, without their ceasing to be human beings.
192
CHAPTER 5
The double experience of the real
The double experience of the real in religion

We have seen that the specific distinction in our lineage is our ability as speakers and the great consequence derived from it: our double experience of the real. Thanks to this double experience of the real we are capable of adapting and changing our way of life when necessary. We are able to change our understanding and evaluation of reality and of ourselves when the circumstances so require. Thus we find, clearly or obscurely, that all our understanding-evaluation of reality is relative; this also means that we know, clearly or obscurely, that all our conceptions and representations of the real are not definitive. We know, at the same time, that all our mental and axiological information on reality, in its absolute value, is impossible for us to formulate and empty of form. None of our formulations and representations reaches the absolute, because formulations and representations are only to do with what is relative to us and the absolute is not. We have seen how this double experience of reality was lived and represented in the past. The old religions undertook this task. They tied the two experiences together as being source and outflow. Absolute reality is the source and relative reality is the outflow. And they represented these two experiences as God and creatures, at the same time correcting the separation, by saying that creatures have no existence in themselves. This form of representing the relationship of the double experience of the real was adapted to those types of societies which were programmed for no change. According to this religious conception, God and/or the sacred forebears created all things and all beings. And they created them according to the readings made of them in terms of the needs of specific societies and their group programmes. God and/or the sacred forebears revealed and bequeathed the individual and group project of life which functions as a group programme with everything that this involves in interpretations and evaluations of reality, of modes of action and organisation, of modes of life in general. This creation and revelation does not despoil things of their relative and derived nature, but rather gives the reason for it, and thus makes them 193
sacrosanct. God made it so, God revealed and established it so and no one, then, can alter it. The articulation which the religions establish between the two experiences is no more than a representation and a form of relating the absolute with the relative; what is, with what has no being in itself. The absolute is connected with the relative, while affirming, at the same time, the absolutes total and complete independence of all relationship. The religions have to leave in the penumbra the contradiction involved in speaking of relationships with the absolute. And they act thus because the absolute experience of reality happens within the relative itself and because the experience and its expression have to flow out to be lived and expressed in the relative programme; they will have to do it, then, in a way which does not destroy the relative by devaluing it completely, but gives it unconditional value, to some degree and for its origin, without ceasing to be relative, because God created it thus and imposed it thus. The absolute experience of the real does not happen outside the experience of the relative. When the absolute is shown in the body of the relative there is a double counterpoised effect: the relative is devalued and made sacred, as a liturgical vessel is made sacred. It is proclaimed as without value and is proclaimed as sacrosanct. A programme for no change, to exclude doubts and possible alternatives, has to be affirmed roundly and untouchably. This untouchability is provided by the idea of creation and the idea of revelation. These two basic representations sanctify the vessel into which the absolute experience of the real is poured. In sanctifying the group programme and the project, it is made sacrosanct by the impregnation of the absolute experience. The untouchability of these forms comes from the sacred wine of the absolute experience which they contain and from the proclamation of the inseparable union of these forms of experience: the relative experience of reality and the absolute experience of the same reality. In the religions God establishes this indissoluble union through creation and revelation. The indissoluble union of the beliefs in the culture of an epoch, with the experience of the absolute dimension of reality, is what religions are. If faith is what we call the experience of the absolute, and belief, the elements and formulations of the programme of a static pre-industrial society, we find that the inseparable union of faith and beliefs is the soul of the religions. Each differentiated type of culture will have its own particular union of faith and beliefs and, therefore, its own particular religion. Here we have the root of religion: the double experience of reality which derives from our condition as living beings which speak; and here also we see 194
The double experience of the real
how the religions are generated in an attempt to represent the relationship of these two types of experiences of reality, so that these two experiences can be lived and cultivated in the heart of a mythical-symbolic group project, typical of cultures which have to be programmed to lock out change. In pre-industrial societies the absolute experience of reality could not be lived or collectively represented in any other way. If the absolute experience of the real had not been related in some way with the experience of the real relative to ourselves, giving this relationship an absolute value, it would have been impossible for the group programme to be imposed on the community and individuals unconditionally. Where could they have found the unconditional quality that was needed to lock out change and not run risks? But again, the experience of the absolute real without form, because it is beyond all form, relativizes all experience of reality with form and devalues the interpretation and evaluation which the programme tries to impose. This relativization must remain, in one way or another, in spite of the untouchability quality proclaimed by creation and revelation, otherwise we should be tied for ever into a fixed mode of life and would lose our specific advantage. The interpretation of the religions allows a relationship between the two experiences of the real which are proper to our species, so as to make possible the cultural programme of a society which must exclude changes; and it does this by converting its beliefs into sacrosanct vessels which contain the absolute. The way of achieving it is to link faith to belief; in other words, to link the absolute experience of the real with the experience of the real according to our needs. This union creates the roots of religious and cultural confrontations and, in turn, inevitably leaves the door open to doubt, because the fragility of the vessels is transmitted to the wine. On linking the fragility of the modes of life of some human groups to the absolute, this fragility is involuntarily transmitted to the absolute. When, for an individual or group, a culture of this type loses the untouchable prestige of its forms of life, there remain only two options for the individual or group: either to create another way of life and another religion, or to move away from all cultivation of the absolute dimension of the experience of the real. But in spite of these serious disadvantages, the religions made possible the explicit cultivation of the two dimensions of our experience of the real. They constructed and reinforced our first functional experience of the real and they thematised and gave form to the cultivation of the absolute and gratuitous experience of the real. It was an incredibly skilful and fruitful solution, although not without its disadvantages, which was able to endure for hundreds of thousands of years. 195
But that is all it was, an intelligent and practical solution, not the nature itself of things.
The time has come for us to learn to live our specific quality in non-religious ways. In dynamic societies which live from innovation and change, the religious solution is not viable. These societies cannot immobilise the modes of life and make them sacred, making them into a divine creation and revelation. It cannot be supposed that things, as we see them in a specific mode of life, were a divine creation; nor can it be supposed that the ways of interpreting and evaluating reality, the forms of action and organisation, were a divine revelation, because we know, quite clearly, that all this is our own construction. We know, and must unavoidably accept, that it is a construction which has to be changed frequently, to match the pace of our scientific and technological creations. Therefore, the double experience of the real must be lived through modes of life which continually change, which we also know to be our own creation in all their aspects. This means that we shall have to learn to live and cultivate the absolute dimension of reality without any religion, without submission, as a form of research. We would dare to say that this is the most serious innovation to which we are subject in the societies of knowledge. Nevertheless, it is of supreme importance that we should understand that living without religion does not mean, in any way, rejecting or forgetting the great wisdom which has been accumulated, in relation with the double experience of the real, in the great religious traditions of humanity. In the ancient and venerable religious traditions the absolute experience of reality is expressed, clearly and explicitly, although in forms no longer valid for ourselves. Also expressed in them is how to cultivate this absolute experience of the real, how to avoid errors in attempting its cultivation, how to discriminate what is an absolute experience of the real from what is not. All this wisdom is valid for us, as valid as experience of the beauty which our forebears created, and their teachings on how to reach this beauty are valid, how to cultivate it and how to differentiate it from what is not beautiful. All this is of great use to us, independently of our ways of thinking, feeling, being organised, acting and experiencing being totally different from those of our forebears. 196
The double experience of the real outside religion
The age-old traditions of human wisdom are here, and they are, whether we like it or not, in the religious traditions of humanity. And humanity must learn to use them, though this use and learning does not mean that we need to become religious or believing persons. We shall have to keep ourselves outside being religious, while learning from the religions, just as we learn music, painting, poetry, etc., from our forebears without doing it as they did it, without thinking, feeling and living as they lived. In a word, without bringing together into one indissoluble unit our forms of thinking, valuing and doing, based on forms of satisfying our needs, with the absolute experience of the real. This is the situation: without the second experience, the absolute experience of reality, which is our specific quality, there is no humanity and we come much closer to the animal condition. We have to thematically cultivate this aspect of our experience of the real in order to maintain our human quality. And we have to learn to do it without fixed forms, therefore without religion. But this inescapable fact does not prevent the religions of the past, which are no longer valid for us (not because they are not in themselves precious, in spite of the disadvantages which they bring with them, but because times have changed and they are no longer possible for us), from continuing to be immense repositories of wisdom in which the second dimension of our experience of reality is expressed for us. In them we are told how to cultivate this dimension, how to discern it, how to avoid the deviations and aberrations which can lead to a poorly directed attempt at cultivation. And we shall have to learn to do this without any religion. But this wisdom of humanity, accumulated over nearly three millennia, is accumulated in religious forms of life, that is, the forms in which our forebears in the pre-industrial societies had to think, feel, act, be organised and live, programmed to live by doing always fundamentally the same thing, excluding significant changes and alternatives from their system of life. We shall have to learn to use the religions without being religious, to take lessons from the beliefs, without becoming believers. Human life, without the explicit cultivation of this absolute dimension of knowledge and feeling, would lack freedom. Need is submission. A life exclusively governed by need and desires would be a life of submission. A reality only known and felt from need is always the same: limited, closed, lacking in depth, monotonous and repetitive. But the more serious factor is that anyone who does not cultivate their capacity to know and feel, independently of their need, does not achieve that specifically human quality the double experience of reality. 197
This is the serious consequence: in the new cultural circumstances, we are unavoidably led into an experience of the absolute dimension of reality without religions. In the past, the religions, however much or little, well or badly, cultivated the absolute experience of reality in societies. They were the principal factor in the cultivation of the specific human quality. In this way the individuals and groups could maintain the double experience of the real explicitly and could encourage it. The religions, since man has existed and until the industrial life became generalised, have been the principal factor in humanity, although not the only one, because they cultivated the experience or glimpse of the absolute experience of reality. With the collapse of the pre-industrial societies, the religions also went into decline. We have already seen that where there is no genre of experience of the absolute dimension of reality, although it may be obscure and only glimpsed, there is no human condition, because what is specific to our species, what differentiates us from the other animals, is this double experience of reality. Even with the complete disappearance of religions in the developed industrial societies, the qualities of humanity will not totally disappear while cultivation of the sciences and arts goes on, because the exercise and expression of these always means, to one degree or another, an experience or glimpse of the absolute, not relative, dimension of reality. This experience of the real, which is never identified or exhausted by scientific formulations or artistic expression, is always there, as a horizon towards which one can travel and which will never be reached. But, is the experience of the absolute implicit in the cultivation of science and the arts enough to prevent human culture from becoming totally predatory? It seems not; among other reasons because the practice of science and the arts, which activates the absolute assumption involved in their cultivation, will never reach the great majority of men and women, not even in the developed societies. The societies of knowledge live from creating science and technology and, through these, creating new services and goods; but not even in these societies do all their members cultivate the kind of scientific work which activates the absolute assumption, which almost always remains implicit. It does not seem, then, that just the absolute assumption, involved in the practice of science and the arts, is enough to save all the individuals and all the groups in the new societies from falling into a culture of simple predation. Consequently, it has to be concluded that an explicit form of cultivation of the absolute experience of the real has to be arrived at, and that it cannot travel by the religious forms of the past. 198
This explicit cultivation is essential for the good functioning of human society, and especially for the good functioning of dynamic societies of knowledge. The dynamic societies of change offer no stable place in which to stand, because both the interpretations of reality and their evaluations, such as the ways of working and organisation, and the cohesion and motivation systems, are in continual movement. The stability of individuals and groups has to be based in a place not subject to continually transmuting forms, has to be based on the immutable firmness of our absolute experience of the real. In past societies the stability of individuals and groups could rest upon forms which were known as untouchable, because they were created and revealed by God. The point of support for the social and mental stability of individuals and groups had a divine guarantee. Now we know that we have no external guarantee to support us, that all the forms with which we live are our own creation. And we know and can verify every day that new forms have to go on being created, at our own risk and whenever appropriate, in order to keep up with the accelerated rhythm of our scientific and technological innovations in goods and services. Also, the experience of the specifically human dimension, which is the absolute experience of reality, also offers the opportunity for free research and knowledge, disinterested, from this dimension. This is the only stable point of support remaining to us, and it is sufficient because it distances us from forms and an interest in them. This distance from forms is a capacity to silence them. Being distanced from and silencing the forms in which we live is the essential condition for creating new forms. This disinterested cultivation of the absolute dimension of reality is a necessity for the societies of innovation and change and is our most beautiful prospect. Through this experience our humanity will realise and transcend itself.
The explicit cultivation of our specific quality is a group and individual need
What are the consequences of explicit cultivation of this quality in the life of individuals and of peoples? Without the mental and sentient experience of the absolute aspect of reality, there is no true interest and love for things and people. The mental and sentient interest which arises exclusively from need and desire is self-interest, not interest in people and things. It is similar to the lions interest in zebras, impalas or buffaloes. It is an interest of depredation, not an interest for things and people themselves. 199
Without the interest for things themselves which is an interest free of the consideration of self-benefit there can be neither great science nor great art. Nor is there the quality of humanity, because humanity is precisely this capacity of knowing and feeling things and people in themselves. Humanity is the capacity to get on well, vibrate and coexist with other beings. The knowledge and feeling of reality, in its absolute nature, brings detachment from the knowledge and feeling governed by need. It allows this knowledge to be seen as relative in its function: that it is the circumstance and vehicle of depredation. It allows the understanding that this interested vision of reality is not a vision and feeling of reality itself, but of my own interest in it. The absolute experience of the real drains the relative experience of its reality. This de-realising is followed by detachment of the mind and feeling; and detachment of the mind and feeling is followed by freedom. Without the freedom brought by detachment, there is no capacity for true love. True love is the love that is interested in and loves people and things, not self through people and things. Without this detachment and freedom there is no quality in group life. Without detachment and freedom group life becomes a competition between predators or a competition between bands of predators; a fight between wolves or between bands of wolves. Without true love the child of detachment and freedom there is no quality in group life. Without this interest and the true love of some for others, there cannot be peace and social cohesion. Covenants and agreements between predators are precarious and fragile. The true cohesion of a group depends on a certain degree of cultivated experience of the absolute dimension of reality. This experience is the basis and support of detachment and freedom. Without detachment and freedom there cannot be mutual interest and love. Mutual interest and love are the solid basis for cohesion. If the others are my prey, or an environment for depredation for my own benefit, or are members of my band of predators in conflict with other bands, then the group cohesion is superficial, because any conflict of interest could turn it into a fight between wolves. The group cohesion which is derived from the specific human quality, the absolute experience of reality, does not depend on the submission of group members to the same fixed beliefs, nor does it depend on the fact that all the members of society have the same system of beliefs when interpreting, evaluating and acting in the environment; it does depend, on the other hand, on explicit, socially aware and expressed knowledge of reality in its absolute aspect. 200
The explicit cultivation of our specific quality
Detachment, to a greater or lesser degree, is followed by freedom and freedom is followed by the possibility of being truly interested in and loving others for themselves. The group cohesion which is supported on freedom, mutual interest and love is profound and solid. Culture, without the cultivation of the experience of the absolute and its sequel the detachment which leads to freedom and an interest for people and things is a culture of pure depredation of persons and of nature. A culture of pure depredation runs the risk of destroying itself. The egoism of depredation lacks interest and love, unless for oneself. And disinterest and indifference are destructive. In contrast, a culture founded on the explicit and cultivated experience of the absolute is illuminated by detachment. Detachment brings freedom from egocentricity because it shows, first, the unreality of objects and subjects and, secondly, the beyond of the subjects and the objects, the non-two, that which is. This knowledge and feeling of the non-two which everything is, leads to an unconditional interest in each and every one of the forms in which this unique non-two is presented. An unconditional interest is the same as unconditional love. To encourage through culture the explicit knowledge and cultivation of the specific human quality, which is the absolute experience of reality, is to encourage and base the interest of people and groups in everything. And this interest is veneration, respect and love. And where there is veneration, respect and love, there is equity and justice. There is no system of laws which can impose the distancing which is required to make possible the existence of an interest for people and things. If the depredation and egocentricity subsist as the primary criteria of a culture, all laws, however just and equitable they may be, will vanish away, will be ineffective. Cultivation of the experience of the non-two of reality is the cultivation of a spirit of morality. The interest and unconditional love for everything, things and people, brought by this absolute experience, always finds the way to act correctly, with justice, equity and benevolence, whether or not the social laws are just. If this spirit of morality is lacking, because there is a lack of the knowledge that engenders detachment, which in turn breaks down the egocentricity and opens the doors to interest and love, there will be no equity or justice, not even with equitable and just laws.
201
The notion of revelation in the new cultural circumstances
What remains of the notion of revelation in the new cultural context? The notion of revelation, as an unveiling of the nature of the real, especially in its absolute dimension, and unveiling with a divine guarantee; as a revelation of its own mode of being; as delivery of an individual and group project of life, of divine provenance; as a description of what a worthy life must be, according to the nature of reality itself and the will of the gods; as a revelation of what human nature is in itself, of the nature of the organisation of society and morality; as an unveiling of the way of life demanded by things themselves and by the will of the gods; all this only makes sense in the context of mythical-symbolic group programming and in the context of the faith-belief typical of the static pre-industrial societies.
The revelation only makes sense in the context of faith-belief. If we separate the faith from the belief, the revelation no longer describes an event as meant by the myth, but points to an event which it is known cannot be described. When revelation is only a symbol, outside this faith-belief, there is nothing to believe. There is only something to understand, to verify. Revelation, as a symbol, describes nothing, it is only a guide to the frontier of words and it opens the doors which lead to the other side of the frontier, the side of the unsayable, the indescribable, the region of silence where no mould in words entraps anything, but which is there and makes its presence clearly felt, although with a dark clarity, because it is a clarity without defined borders, impossible to objectify. Does it make sense to continue using the term revelation? Yes, but not as a revelation of truths, of formulas which describe the nature of the Absolute, although only analogously, which teach, on behalf of God, the ways of interpreting and evaluating reality, the ways of acting, being organised and living. There can be revelation, and there is, but of the truth which is said in forms and which has no form. 202
The explicit cultivation of our specific quality
There can be revelation as the revelation of a presence and absolute certainty which, being expressed in forms, is always free of all form and transcends all form. There is revelation of a truth which is a presence and certainty not linked to forms, although it uses them. There is revelation of the spirit of love, not of forms of acting and being organised. There is revelation of what cannot be interpreted or objectified; of what is not individual or general; of what makes everything valuable, although what is revealed has no defined value; of what generates love for all without being an object of love. There is revelation of what is being and consciousness, without being any kind of subject or objectified reality. The holy scriptures and the great spiritual texts are documents full of power. To understand them and for this power to act in us, they have to be read from the silence of the mind and heart. The Hindu tradition says that the human mind and heart are like a tree in which two monkeys keep on leaping from branch to branch, screeching, called desire and fear. Silence is when these two monkeys are quiet and stop screeching. The silence of the mind and heart does not mean lethargy, but mental lucidity and sensitive acuity. Buddha compares this state of spirit with the quietude, clarity and transparency of the waters of a lake in the high mountains. One tries to be quiet, not to go to sleep, but to know and feel with profundity and intensity, now no longer from the clamour of need. When the urgent cries of need are quieted, one can see in the clear waters; one can fly high free of burdens. When true silence begins, investigation begins, because the silence of which we speak is a cognitive attitude, an attitude of perceptive and enquiring intensity. Silence and attention are the key. One is silent, remaining in a state of alert, so as not to obstruct reception of the revelation. We have said that the great spiritual texts of humanity are like poems, immense constructions with words, narrations and symbols which, like the winged horse Pegasus, carry us into the celestial realm. The words of the great spiritual texts, heard from silence, grip us from our hearts to launch us into the heights, there where there is nothing but quietude, peace, light and silence. The words of the holy scriptures and great texts speak to us so that we become silent. They tell stories and meanings so that we can go through them fully, right to the end, until they are finished; when we have exhausted 203
them completely, with mind and heart, with all our flesh and feelings, then they launch us, as though from a ramp, beyond them, into the trackless infinity. When we listen to them with attention, we can use them, as a blind man uses his stick, to tap along our way and notice things which escape our perception and feeling; we use them as crutches for an invalid, like a childs walker; we use them to walk where no path is marked. Then, this blind mans stick, these crutches and walkers, take on life and pull us, illuminate us, shake us up, drag us along. If we let them act as they must act, if we let them unchain in us the dynamism which they contain, then they launch us into the world of the unknown. A world which is unknown because it is a world of knowledge, feelings and perceptions without words, without interpretations, free, in form but without form. If we do not let the holy scriptures and the great texts act in us, if, instead of hearing them in silence, we ask them, demand from them explanations, clarifications, promises of life, solutions, programmes for living, moral standards, etc., then they respond, but they leave us tied to the ground with their affirmations; then they give what is asked of them, but at the cost of stopping and tying down the mind, heart and eyes; and what is more serious, at the cost of stopping everything and subjugating everything. When our need, inconsistency and fear seek solutions in the great texts, they speak, but they kill the dynamism. Like the sacred monsters, guardians of the trees of knowledge and of life, they prevent the profaners from taking the step to silence and to revelation. The holy scriptures, the great texts, can only be listened to in silence, holding down in chains the demands of our fears, our innumerable needs of explanations, solutions and meaning. Whoever approaches these great sacred buildings without having silenced their needs and fears, the guardians of the doors bar the road to them for ever and kill in them the spirit of search, to make them not into men of silence but people subject to words, people of beliefs. To silence oneself is to begin to walk with the mind, heart and eyes, beyond the shores of words and explanations; beyond the urgency of what is useful and what is not. To be silent is to search and feel, first in words and forms, then without words or forms; to go further and further in knowing and feeling, but here, in all this, as it is, as it comes, in itself as it is; to go by a path always unforeseeable; to go further and further through the certainties which are no longer certain of anything specific; 204
The notion of revelation
to go by the path of light which is no longer a form, but more and more light in all forms; to advance in the feeling that is no longer recognising what I need but what is there because it is there, not asking anything of it, simply benefiting that it is as it is and that it is there; to advance in feeling and perceiving the presence that is of everything and nothing, a convincing and empty presence. The insistence on knowledge and passion from silence are the cup prepared by the spirit and the flesh in order to receive the sacred wine of the unveiling and revelation.
The great religious texts, the holy scriptures, are testimonies to the immense researches of the great masters of the spirit. They are a testament to their ventures in research. They are the legacy of their lives of passionate and unconditional search. The great texts express the achievements of the masters, what was given to them through the heart of their efforts, what came to their hands while they struggled hard to see and to feel. They are monuments which testify to the superhuman ventures of the minds and hearts of some men. As well as being an expression of the searches made by the great ones who preceded us they are, for us, the incitement to the search. They are, then, the achievement of a path and an invitation to a path. They are a result and a gift. They are also instruments which are offered to us so that we may use them in our own research. The great texts, if we read them from silence, move us and submerge us in the same feeling, understanding and vision as the great ones had. Through this shared emotion we can find access to the flavour of truth and we can, thus, verify the reality of which they speak to us. The great texts submerge us in the experiences of the masters and great religious geniuses; thus submerged, our senses, minds and flesh gain information of the reality and life of which the texts speak. The texts move us with the emotions of those who have already travelled the path. This emotion becomes ours and allows us some degree of vision and understanding. We live their experience as though it were our own, and to some degree it is, because through their influence we can rediscover their experience in our own flesh. But, in reality, what we share, due to the texts, does not have true roots in us, and therefore can be dissipated rapidly. For the experience to have roots in 205
What the holy scriptures speak about
us, we must ourselves travel the same path as the masters did. Nevertheless, this borrowed experience is, for us, potent information which becomes motivation and an effective attraction. As poets open us to the beauty of the cosmos for a few moments, so the great spiritual texts draw back the veil for us from the presence of the Absolute, for a few moments. Whoever likes the flavour of this dimension of existence will be marked forever; many, starting from here, will take to the path. The holy scriptures teach the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the mind to understand and the flesh to feel the strong and gentle force of all that there is, when seen from the perspective of the silence of need. The great texts, moving us down to our roots, tell us in all our being where we have to go, in what direction is what we have to seek and find. Also they tell us how to take the path. They teach how to silence the constructor of our daily life and how to learn to be vigilant, intensely, from the heart of the silence of the constructor. They teach how to walk in silence through this life, with eyes, mind and body vigilant and with total passion for all that surrounds us. A quiet, potent passion, disinterested and unconditional. They teach that only vigilant silence leads to passion and that only passion leads to vision and understanding. The holy scriptures speak of what is outside all measurement, of what is beyond anything that our words can say. They try to escape from the iron laws of our language. They seek to overcome the distance which separates us from things so that we can experience their complete immediacy. Consequently, the scriptures speak of what is beyond the possibility and structure of our language. They speak of what contradicts the possibility and function of our linguistic and representative apparatus. The texts speak with words of what is beyond the frontier of words. With words they invite silence, to leap over the impassable barrier. Language is an instrument of need and constructs a dual world. The great texts speak from the heart of this dual structure, to incite us to leap to a feeling and understanding in which this biased and dual producing mechanism no longer functions. They speak through forcing the structure and function of our language in order to lead us to an experience of unity and freedom. The spiritual texts become an incitement and they guide us in walking where no path is marked, because there is nothing with which or on which to mark it. The texts are a guide for walkers who have to make the path as they walk. The texts are practical guides which only speak when one works hard. If one walks by the way to which they call, they are eloquent travelling companions on the path; if one does not walk, they are mute and inert. Even when we listen while walking, we have to understand by intuition, from what they say, what is 206
beyond all possibility of saying. On hearing them speak, we have to leave what they say behind us, to turn our faces and bodies totally towards the immediacy of the presence of what surrounds us. Hearing them we must go to reality, to be able to feel it with the holy words now diluted and quiet. The great words can only be understood correctly if one keeps completely free of them. What is it that we must keep free of the words? Our mind, perception and feeling. We have to hear the venerable words with the heart free of what they say and how they say it. If these potent words were to produce any submission, in any of the levels of our being, they would destroy in us the possibility of walking where they point. The great texts do not broaden our daily world for us with knowledge sent down from on high, nor do they order our life, nor structure or interpret it with wisdom descended from heaven, because what they seek is to take us out from the exclusive perspectives of our daily view and lead us to silence; what they seek to silence, relativize and dilute is, precisely, our construction from need. What sense would it have, then, to broaden, reinforce, legitimise and make absolute, with the warranty of consecration, this extended daily world of ours? When the great texts, the holy scriptures speak, they do not speak of another world, they speak of this world, only this one; but of some unexpected dimensions of it, from perspectives which carry us beyond our domesticating constructions; dimensions which result immense to us from the insignificant measure of our smallness. So disproportionate, new and distinct, do we find this world which the great texts uncover for us, that we can call it another world with some propriety, without in reality its being so. The scriptures teach us to listen. Strictly speaking it is not they that speak, they only teach how to listen; what speaks is reality. Which reality? This one, the only one we living beings have before our eyes, before our flesh and mind. The message of the scriptures and the message of all that surrounds us is the same because there is only one message, that which comes to us from all that surrounds us, just as it comes. There are no two books, one of the scriptures and the other of the cosmos. There is only one book, that of the cosmos; the other book is only pedagogy. The scriptures do not speak only to the mind, they speak to all our senses, to our flesh, to the deepest levels, to move it and invigorate it to be able to love and know. All the holy scriptures are inexhaustible treasuries of variety and richness. But all the immense profundities of all the writings of all the traditions of humanity, with their vast variety and richness, are no more than poor images, pathetic metaphors; clamours from the insignificance of our smallness to call 207
us to awaken; to point to the dawn; to invite us to walk; in order to anticipate the flavour of truth; to prefigure the complete yes of reconciliation with everyone and of peace. The scriptures are like birds singing in the dawn chorus. When the day begins, all the songs cease. The announcements are over; the immediacy of light has come. Then all must dissolve in the splendour. The scriptures do not invite us to the understanding of truths and formulated and made doctrines; they do not invite to a submission to truths, but to free and unending research; a path with no possible stopping place. And it must be walked while searching with our eyes and ears, with our feeling and our mind. All our faculties must go continually from novelty to novelty, from perplexity to perplexity, from passion to passion, walking by a limitless ocean. All the holy scriptures teach that we live in the magic of the construction made from our need. And they also teach that such construction is the world of our daily life, as is the world of our religious life. Peace, enjoyment, truth and bliss are beyond all our constructions, profane or sacred. With the conflict between the two styles of construction, that of the daily life and that of religion, we can slip between the one and the other and free ourselves from all construction. However, that something beyond all construction is right here; so that we have to go on using the constructions of our daily world and the constructions of our religious world, but being free of the one and the others. We can use them when it suits and as it suits; change them when it suits; and always without any submission, with total freedom. Until one understands that all the holy scriptures, from whatever tradition, say fundamentally the same thing, seek the same and fulfil with the same task, nothing has been understood, not of the scriptures nor of the path. From all the above it can be deduced easily that the holy scriptures do not offer a project of human life sent down from heaven. They do not propose to us an immutable project of individual and group life, valid for ever and with a divine guarantee. They do not offer any of this because what they seek is to give access to a vision, feeling and knowledge that is born when all the that is silent, when all our constructions and projects are silenced. Also, if the holy scriptures were to offer a project of life, they would be irretrievably dead because they would impose modes of life on us, ways of understanding and feeling, and would submit us to patterns of life already dead; they would subject us to dead beliefs and to dead systems of control and 208
power. The worlds in which the scriptures were expressed are dead. No one can say, reasonably, that what is now dead flesh or the dust of history can live and give life. Therefore, in the fully industrialised societies, the scriptures offer no project of life, no solution to our problems; they cannot impose anything to believe, anything which exempts us from the free and responsible creation of our scientific systems of interpreting reality, anything which exempts us from the free and responsible creation of our technological systems of life, or from the invention of our organisations and systems of communication, or from the design of our systems of values and projects of life. The sacred texts are not even the solution to the enigmas of existence and human destiny. The scriptures open us to incredible perspectives from which all our enigmas and problems can be shifted and located in dimensions which lead to reconciliation, to peace, to the great yes and joy. The holy scriptures seek only this and nothing less than this. The holy scriptures lead us to understand and feel that all the problems and enigmas of the little drop of water which we are, are moved and relocated when the little drop of water knows how to be the ocean. But the enigmas and fear dissolve, and peace and joy are established only when we have been able to move our feeling and understanding from our mind and our flesh beyond the duality implanted by need. The enigmas of our destiny do not dissolve, nor does the fear disappear, nor are we filled with joy or peace, when we replace the arduous and subtle work of the silencing process and knowledge by a simple submission to beliefs.
What the spiritual masters say
The religious masters are the explorers of the other world. After wandering through the heights and depths of the world beyond our frontiers, the masters return to us with a disconcerting message: that other world, which is beyond all our limits, is the original world; and that original world is this same world that we have here. The masters give us useful advice and indications to help us also to penetrate, ourselves, beyond the frontiers. They speak to us of what we need to take the path, of how to prepare ourselves, what we need to take with us, in what state of animus we have to walk. Also they speak to us of the deviations which may lead us astray, the short cuts we must not take. Of the path itself they say little. The religious masters are the poorest men on earth. They possess nothing; they have nowhere to lay their head. They have nothing because they 209
desire absolutely nothing. And they do not desire anything because they have understood that there is no water which can satisfy thirst unless it is the water which comes from their own source. Only the source which springs from within can satisfy thirst; outside sources do not give living water. Thus there is nothing to achieve. The masters are those who have understood that when one collects treasures from outside, everything turns to dust in the hands, to nothing. There is only one true treasure, and this comes out from within. And the treasure is in the ruins, the ruins of the ego. The religious masters have taught that in everything around us there is nothing to relieve hunger and thirst. The more one devours, from that external source, the less satisfied one is and the greater is the thirst. The masters teach that there is another way of living, not frantically devouring everything that falls into our hands; that we can live as witnesses astonished by the marvels of the mystery of what exists, without bothering about what we eat, what we drink and how we satisfy ourselves; because the true food of life and the satisfaction that calms our flesh and our spirit cannot come from anything which we find outside, but must come from what springs peacefully and constantly from within. The masters are guides on the path. But it would be an error to think that they made the path, opened it, smoothed it, signposted it and left it ready for others to travel, simply stepping in the footprints that they left. If we were to believe this of the masters, they would not be our guides, but they would lead us astray for ever; and the blame would not be theirs, but ours, for not having succeeded in understanding them. The masters are guides on the path because they are masters of free creation. The true religious path is a work of research similar to that undertaken by an artist. As the artist creates with his works each bit of the path on which he treads to keep moving forward, so the religious man must continually create the ground on which he places his feet. But this ground which he creates, step by step, which is his path, is only broad enough for his own foot; no one else can ever tread, for a second time, in that place. The path beyond the frontiers is similar to the wake in the sea; the ways disappear and are irrecoverable once the masters have passed by them. The masters teach that one must construct ones own way and construct it from within. When one enrols all ones being in the venture of investigation which is the spiritual path, one hears the internal guide from the heart of that state of intense alert, effort and passion. Only the internal guide can lead. Only when one is capable of hearing the internal guide can one understand and see outside the clear signals. 210
The internal guide is a guide to freedom, never a guide to subjection. The masters are safe guides not because they are powerful lords to whom one has to submit, but because they are masters of the search and free creation. The masters are like poets, masters of creation. Only through their free creation, they have cups in their hands from which the taste of the good wine can be savoured. When we are capable of savouring the taste of the wine which is in their cups, our eyes are freed from the veil which prevents us from crossing the frontier and discovering, step by step, the mystery of the worlds. The masters give shape to what is shapeless; they give flesh to the subtlety and spirit; they make the unfathomable mysteries of the profundities flourish in their eyes and words. This is why we are dependent on the creations that they made. As artists through their creations unveil the beauty of the world to our eyes, so the masters of the spirit, through their creations, reveal to us spirit and sacredness. No artist can create his works if his mind and sensitivity are subjugated. Nor can there be truly spiritual men if their minds and flesh are subjugated. The masters teach that the path of totalitarian and passionate enquiry, which is the path of the divine profundities, is not the way of prescriptions, beliefs, rites and ceremonies. They teach that the true path does not move away from the places that people frequent. The wise do not separate themselves from the human flock, but they travel by the same paths as the others. The wise construct the radical novelty of their itinerary, walking the same ways as the others; they go with the others, but their attitude of mind and flesh is different. The religious masters are masters of profanity in feeling. One cannot feel profoundly unless one is entirely free. For this reason they have to be, also, masters of complete freedom. The masters cannot submit or teach submission, because then they would be unable to teach profundity in feeling. If the masters were to teach belief, they would be teaching submission. Submitting to beliefs means subjugating the sensitivity. If we transform the spiritual masters from being masters of profound feeling into masters and reasons for submission, we put them at the service of legitimising the power of those who say they are their continuity and representatives, and with this transformation we make their followers into narrow beings who must fix their sensitivity within immovable margins. The way of submission and fixing can convert the religious masters and their followers into one of the most serious causes of the hardening of the human heart. And where there is a hardened heart, wisdom is absent; the spirit of God takes flight and goes away from those hard hearts. 211
The life and works of the masters are revelation; but it is the personas of the masters which are the revelation, the path and the truth. The great teaching of all the masters of the spirit, and of each of them, is not a fixed path, laid out once and for all and correctly signposted. The masters reveal a path which is a no-path, because where they walk no route can be marked. There are no paths marked in the infinite ocean, nor can signposts be fixed there. The paths which the masters make disappear as they pass; all that remains is the greatness of their work, and their work is a revelation, and this work which is a revelation, is their own persona. The persona of the master is truth, the only valid truth; seeing them one knows the flavour of truth. They are the path; seeing them one has the most valid information and direction for walking. They are the light and life of God. To drink the water of life you have to drink from their cup. The masters persona itself is the cup. No master can offer another path or another revelation than his own persona. The poets speak of the beauty of the cosmos in their poems. The poem is the poets creation. Painters reveal to us the beauty of what surrounds us through their pictures. The picture is the painters creation. The masters of the spirit reveal to us the truth of what exists, through their personas. His own persona is the masters creation. The masters are as a handful of salt which evidences the existence of the salt mine; they are as a drop of water which makes patent the nature of the ocean. They are also the ocean which evidences to us our own nature as a drop of water; and they are the salt mine which makes unequivocally clear our fundamental status as a handful of salt. The masters have transmuted their nature into gold. They have made their flesh translucent to the point that their flesh is now the light of the sun. Bringing the light and warmth of God into the depth of human shadows, the masters are Gods compassion for humanity. When one succeeds in seeing the light which shines in the masters lamp, all beings become transformed into lamps which shine with the same light as we recognised in the revelation of the masters persona. When we bring our torch close to the fire which burns in the masters heart, the whole cosmos lights up at once with the same fire; then, a single fire consumes everything. Whoever manages to see the masters correctly, sees in them the breathtaking profundities of the mystery of reality; whoever sees them, sees the truth of the Absolute, sees the tenderness and compassion of God; who sees them, sees God. The revelation of the masters adds nothing to the essence of the human being. They show, from outside, what the human being is and has to recognise from within. 212
The great mass of water has the same nature as the little drop of water. The great mass of water only makes unequivocally clear the water that one is already. The master, from outside, opens the book which exists inside, where the guide is written. The masters unveil from outside the dimensions of within. From them we recognise, first outside, what we need to come to see within. To know the master is to know oneself; and whoever knows himself knows his Lord. The great Islamic mystic Rumi says that, from the masters, we know that we are like Mary when she carried Jesus in her womb. The master outside teaches that the master is inside, like Jesus in Marys womb. The masters speak of this theme with coarseness. One has to be right in finding the real master. Seeking the master we can lose ourselves in a world empty of reality. We shall fall into this empty world if we seek him in the historical memory, in the imaginary world of paradise, or in a world of mental representations, beliefs and images charged with feelings. The real master has to be sought in the heart of our own nature. Where, otherwise, could the real Buddha have existed, asks Hui-Neng, if not in your own nature? Where is the Spirit of Jesus if not in ourselves? There is where we have to seek the master and the guide. The masters speak from memory and guide from within. The masters go beyond the duality constructed by desire. Achieving unity, they transmute their nature from copper to gold; they transform themselves into God himself. When copper is transformed into gold, it is no longer called copper. Rumi puts these words into the mouths of the masters and prophets. Oh ignoramus! Can you say that I still belong to the human species? The masters, revealing to us what really exists, when they have lifted the veil of duality, introduce us to the One and incorporate us into the One. John the Evangelist says that whoever recognises and loves Truth, the Master, recognises and loves God, the one, and makes himself one with the one. Through their revelation the masters save us, because they redeem us and rescue us from the implacable fire of desire and the deception which duality constructs, to lead us beyond all that is born and dies. The masters tell us of the divine life. And the divine life is: knowledge of what is beyond desire and duality and, therefore, beyond all that is born and dies. This is divine life from the One. This is the source of which Jesus speaks: a source which is born in oneself and leaps towards the eternal life. This internal source is the only foundation of unchangeable certainty and the joy which removes all fear. 213
The masters are here to teach us the direct immediacy of things. For us to achieve this aspiration, the masters impel us to free ourselves from perspectives constructed by needs, they impel us to liberate ourselves from ourselves and our interests, and they invite us to free ourselves from all beliefs, doctrines and masters. They guide us from behind, so as not to impede the immediacy of our turning to things. The masters guide us from behind, as a father guides his child. The masters bring us into contact with the Absolute, but they are persons of a determined time and culture. They also are mistaken in some things. All the great ones were mistaken in some things. But these mistakes, typical of human beings, do not reduce their greatness in any way. It is clear that everything we have seen in talking about the Absolute, what the scriptures and the great texts teach, and the role of the masters, all have great consequences for the organisation of religious groups. We have seen that systems of organisation were deduced from the myths, sacred narrations, symbols and rituals, when they were interpreted from mythical epistemology as a consequence of being the group programming system in pre-industrial static societies. When the myths and symbols are only metaphors, pure symbols, when we recognise that no saying about the Absolute describes it and that the scriptures and the masters do not teach doctrines but the Inconceivable, then no system of organisation which comes from God can be deduced from these myths and symbols. We are free with respect to organisation. Group organisation, at whatever level, whether social, family or for religious groups, is only our own responsibility.
What can the age-old religious traditions of humanity offer to the new industrial societies?
In the developed West, the societies which lived from doing always the same thing have ended; those societies which had fixed and unalterable systems of interpretation of reality, with sacrosanct tables of group purposes and values, with immutable systems of organising work, the family, society, authority. The societies which had age-old projects of life, fixed and indisputable, have ended; those societies in which it was believed that it was known, once and for all, how we had to think, feel, be organised and live. The static pre-industrial society, agrarian, authoritarian, patriarchal, fixed, unalterable, of control and submission, is finished, for ever and completely. And with this the religious form appropriate to this type of society has ended. 214
From the pre-industrial societies which preceded us, we received religion, which took the form of tables of fixed and unalterable beliefs, revealed by God, from which were derived the ways of behaving and living, values, aims, ways of organising the family and society. All these things were involved in the religion and were obligatory for everyone; no one could change them or pose alternatives to them. When religion becomes beliefs and behaviour which must necessarily extend to all members of society, religion requires the use of rigid systems of control and power. Without power it is not possible to extend the beliefs to everyone; without power it is not possible to exercise effective control in order to maintain the exclusivity of what is correct and lock out change. Thus, in the static societies, religion became a system of beliefs to which all had to submit, and which was under the control of the power. Whoever controlled the religion had to have power or had to be allied with power. That society came to an end and inevitably its end carried with it the form of religion which was suited to it. In the new societies everything is moving, nothing can remain fixed, because everything has to be able to move, if it needs to. The societies of the second great industrial revolution know that they can freely construct their own destiny, because they know that they live from the continuous creation of their own movement in the interpretation and evaluation of reality, in modes of working and organisation, in modes of life and action, in their values and aims. How will such a society be able to assimilate a religion understood as submission to beliefs, values, modes of life, fixed and untouchable modes of family and social organisation? How, in such a society, can a religion be assimilated which is conceived as submission to beliefs and as submission to the power which controls those beliefs? These religious forms are as dead as the societies which lived them. If, in the new societies, spirituality cannot adopt the venerable and age-old forms to which we were accustomed, what can the old religious traditions offer to the new society? Are the great traditions in their pre-industrial forms played out? What the venerable traditions offer has to be made fully and easily compatible with the structure of societies which live from science, technology and movement at all levels. Consequently, spirituality cannot be linked to a fixed and untouchable system of interpretation of reality. Nothing remains outside the continually renewed and transformed interpretations of the sciences. 215
Spirituality cannot be linked to fixed and untouchable systems of group aims and values. In a society of continuous technological innovation, changes in the ways of living continuously transform the ways of feeling and the projects of life, the possibilities inherent to human life. Spirituality cannot be indissolubly linked to a particular type of family and social organisation, because the new technology continually changes the organisation of work and communication and, with it, the organisation of society and of the family. Neither can it be indissolubly linked to a type of life, a project of life and morality, because when the ways of living change, due to technology, the projects of life have to change, what is considered a good and adequate life is altered and, therefore, the moral conceptions also change. What until now we have called religion is either reality now, here and now, or is beliefs and precepts. Our society is not interested, nor can it be interested, in either beliefs or precepts. And it is not interested not precisely because it is a decadent and perverse society the societies which accepted the beliefs and precepts were no less perverse but because such things cannot be accepted. The new societies are extremely pragmatic, because they are forced to be so. The great transformations have caused a crisis in all the earlier systems of reference: values, traditions, ideologies. Now only the realities can be a guide; only results which are achieved by trial and error can be a guide. The new societies are not interested in beliefs because they cannot believe. Beliefs are connected with fixed systems of interpretations, evaluations and ways of life. The new societies cannot be fixed, they have to keep moving at all their levels, because they are forced to live from continuous innovation, and continuous innovation is constant change. Whoever offers beliefs will not be taken seriously; cannot be taken seriously. The men and women of the new societies know that they have to construct their own wisdom, their own technology and, therefore, all their ways of life. They have to construct all of it. They know that no one can give them anything ready prepared. This experience and this conviction mean that they cannot take seriously the aspiration of those who say that they have received everything already solved, from heaven. And they cannot take it seriously because, also, the project of life which is offered by those who say they have received it from heaven is not compatible with the new scientific, industrial and mobile lifestyle, which it is now impossible to abandon. Consequently, what the religious traditions of the past offer to the new societies must be reality, not beliefs; reality in this life, because if it is not in this world and in this life, it will be beliefs and not reality. 216
What can the age-old religious traditions
The religious traditions have to offer the possibility of access to more dimensions, to another dimension of this reality. Another dimension which is another way of seeing, feeling and knowing everything that is here. This is an access different from all that surrounds us and from ourselves. In a way it is similar to the way in which poetry and music offer us access to a reality other than that which science, technology and daily life give us. The religious traditions are expressed in narrative forms, mythical and symbolic, which are no longer an obligatory programme, fixed and unalterable. What these traditions offer to current societies is subtle, because what these ancient forms say has to be understood, not confusing the moon with the finger that points to it. If one can learn to distinguish between the form and what points to the form, the offer of the old traditions will be compatible with the new ways of living, being organised, interpreting and evaluating. This is not how the religion was lived during the long ages of the pre-industrial societies, or during the short time for which the first industrial revolution lasted. During all that space of time, the religious were the believers and the irreligious the unbelievers.
For the new societies, the old religious traditions no longer speak of religion, nor of beliefs. Neither do they speak of projects of life coming from the gods; nor reveal to us formulated truths. They speak to us of a dimension of our knowing and feeling which is proper and exclusive to our species and is a free dimension for our living; which is absolute. They speak to us of our specific quality: the double experience of reality. They speak to us of that quality of our knowing and feeling which makes all the objects and subjects of our knowledge show the immensity of their background. That background which is their only reality. They speak to us of the quality of free and absolute knowledge. That knowledge which is a profound resonance without limits, which means that he who knows does not feel threatened by anything, but, on the contrary, feels anchored in the absolute reality. Knowledge which means that he who knows loses all mistrust and opens unreservedly to the delivery of That oneness which is clearly spoken in this free and absolute information. This special quality of knowing and feeling destroys egoism and opens to an unconditional love for all. 217
The subtle offer of traditions
This special quality of knowing and feeling which is neither new knowledge nor new feeling, but a clear resonance of the absolute leads to peace and equanimity, because in breaking down the egos confines of itself, it eliminates the source of all desire and all fear. This quality of knowing and feeling means that all knowledge and all feeling of subjective and objective delimitations, of forms and dualities, become knowledge and feeling of the limitless, the formless, the non-dual. Thus duality and non-duality are made one; form and no-form are made one; objective and subjective delimitations and what is limitless, empty of objectivity and subjectivity are made one. This unity is the root of peace, it is firmness in the midst of movement all around and of itself, felicity in the midst of birth and death. This is the only legacy of the great religious traditions of the past. When the people of the new societies approach the old traditions, they are impelled to take them in their radical nudity, remaining free of all the mythological forms, rites and beliefs in which the orthodoxies and customs of the past were expressed and lived through. The offer of the religious traditions to the new industrial societies is an offer full of profundity, subtlety, simplicity, humility and poverty.
The offer of the religious traditions as an offer of humility, nudity and love
The religious traditions of the past do not offer or propose anything for the new industrial societies to believe. They speak only by suggesting, inviting to verification, as do poems. What they say they offer only as instigation to research, as instruments for research. They impose no obligation, nothing that has to be done. They only affirm: look where you tread. They demand no ritual to be fulfilled. They affirm that what counts is only individual and groups gestures of admiration, a respect and interest for everything. They impose no organisation. They only postulate mutual communication and service, as the only articulating and unifying axis for groups which seek spirituality. They claim no exclusiveness. They are only symbolic systems which point to what is beyond all possibilities of being said. No symbolic system describes that to which it alludes and, consequently, does not oppose any other symbolic system. They flee from all consecration and absoluteness. One learns from the great 218
The subtle offer of traditions
texts of the masters, they are not consecrated. The consecration of the texts and master tends to replace learning with submission and veneration. All the great texts and the masters speak of the need to go beyond the frontiers of silence. How can the texts or masters be made absolute without staying this side of the frontier of silence? What can be made absolute about their message of silence? The spiritual masters do not impose or submit to any gods. The gods are only useful symbols for free enquiry. Whoever submits to a symbol closes for himself the step to which the symbol refers, and that to which the symbol refers is only understood from silence. The spiritual masters have nothing to preach, no doctrine or path. All that they preach is the blue sky, the mountains and valleys. The masters speak from outside to awaken the internal guide. The internal guide alone is free; for this reason, only from the internal guide can a true interest in the realities and true love awaken. The masters and the great texts induce initiative, creativity, self-direction. Until initiative, self-direction and creativity are awakened in oneself, interest and love have not been born. Inertia, routine and a reactionary attitude are the children of egocentricity in thought and feeling. While submission remains, love has not entirely awakened. The masters teach us not to claim any power for itself. They are the masters of nudity and silence, what would they do with power, what could they use it for? The aspiration of the masters is only an offering, an offer, what they offer is their own creation, themselves, giving themselves as food. They alone are the path. The path does not exist outside their gift. The masters are a gift and are food because they are the masters of love; they are not lords, what use would they have for majesty? The masters aspire to no speciality, specificity, difference or exclusivity. The novelty of what they all preach is always the old, venerable message of forever. If what they teach is that the individual is an uninhabited place, that there is no one at home and no house to come home to, where would the speciality, specificity and exclusivity of a master or a tradition be found? If the task which all the traditions propose is only recognition, what purpose is served by the struggle for the specific factor which distinguishes one tradition from another? In their spiritual message, the masters state nothing against anyone. The task which they present is to recognise that outside the One, there is no one. The only legitimate thing on the path is an unconditional interest, love, service without a return, veneration for all, just as it is; what would they protest against? Only against evil and hypocrisy. 219
What do all this humility, poverty, nudity and emptiness aspire to? To make possible the direct immediacy of knowing and feeling. And immediacy in feeling is love. To make possible the complete and total departure of the whole being towards things themselves. To make possible the birth of total listening, an unconditional interest for all reality. To make possible the full acceptance of all reality, as it is, without putting conditions on its acceptance. Simplicity, humility, poverty, complete emptiness are the way for us to distance ourselves from the centralisation of thought and feeling, in order to be able to focus all the powers of our senses, all the light of our mind and body, all the emotional capacity of our bodies, on the endless marvel and mystery of the presence of reality, around us and in us. Nevertheless, the nudity and emptiness which the religious traditions preach are only the vestibule of listening, the vestibule of understanding, passion and vision. To pass through the vestibule is to be right. To be right, which is the complete gift, there is only one way: to try again and again, without weakening, to study before and after each attempt how it was done by those who achieved it, the masters. They will not give us the formula for our attempt, but they will correct it, direct it. All that has to be done, according to the proposal of the religious traditions, is to interest oneself with all ones mind, heart and body in reality, this, what there is, as it is. One must be interested in reality to the point that life becomes an enquiry. An enquiry which is direct, without duplicity, with no other interest than reality itself. The interest which leads to such a search is unconditional love. Total interest and unconditional love are two facets of the same fact. This alone is what the religious traditions propose. This alone is spirituality. All the means and all the methods available for use in any tradition depend on this and have to be subordinated exclusively to it. Anything which stands apart from this task must be abandoned firmly and decisively, whether it is profane or if it is clad in venerable sacredness. Perhaps in other ages religion could point to this absolute simplicity and nudity, clad in the vestments of beliefs, of power, of sacredness, of exclusivity. In our times, this simple nudity has to be shown as it is, humble and empty, because it is silent and loving. Here is its truth, its offering, its legitimacy and its great gift. Only silent and empty humility can be loving and, thus, knowing. 220
CHAPTER 6
Silent knowledge
The path to which the traditions invite us is a path of subtlety

The path of spirituality is the path of subtlety because it is the way to refinement of knowing and feeling. We humans are beings who need to prey on the environment to keep ourselves alive. As the predators we are, we have to kill and destroy to live. The world in which we live and feel is our hunting ground. We are forced, irremediably, to conceive and feel the world which surrounds us and ourselves as the hunting ground of a hunter. Our cultural processes have made the hunting ground and the hunters actions much more sophisticated, but in fact have not transformed our condition by the least little bit, nor can they, nor should they do so. This is our condition and our destiny: to live from our prey, subsisting by killing and destroying. There is nothing wrong or unworthy about this in itself. We are, furthermore, cultural predators. We use our cultural creations to capture our prey more efficiently. This is the basis on which necessarily we must stand. To deny it or argue against it would be to deny our condition and fall into the vacuum of unreality. However, according to the testimony of all the religious traditions and all the masters, this our condition as predators in knowing, perceiving and feeling is not our only possibility. We have another possibility, truly incredible for a predator: we have the capacity to perceive, know and feel all that surrounds us, and ourselves, in another way which is no longer typical of a group of hunters in a hunting ground; we have the possibility of knowing and feeling from the most complete freedom, seeking nothing. Although it seems incredible to us, the masters testify to it universally: we can be moved to the last fibre of our being and, moved, know what surrounds us and know ourselves, without this emotion and knowledge bringing us any benefit, without attempting to achieve anything. We can know and feel as purely disinterested witnesses. In addition to our basic condition, fundamental and inescapable, as predators in a hunting ground, we can also be vibrant light in the face of all these marvels which surround us; we can be heat which is transformed into light in the face of the splendour which surrounds us. 221
When a living being in need, structured to live by killing and preying, learns to know and feel thus, its knowledge and feeling become refined and ethereal. When a living being learns in this way to know and feel with such freedom and disinterest, we can say that it has become spiritualised, that it has become as difficult to grasp as air. . For a living being with needs, anything which has no direct or indirect relationship with those needs is as though it did not exist. Everything that is beyond the parameters of reality and value which are constructed from need is elusive, subtle, as though it did not exist. When a human being learns to know and feel freely, he becomes able to know and feel things that are nothing to his need, that have nothing to do with his world of reality. The world which structures our perception, which articulates our knowledge and feeling, is like a great circle in which the centre is a nucleus of needs, the ego. Everything is structured in relation to this centre. Our I is like a house in the centre of the circle. In our daily life we only leave the house to go hunting, and when we do go out we expect to come back with booty on our shoulder. Our world is exclusively a hunting ground, and every outing into this world, with perception, knowledge and feeling, is a hunt. This is the meaning of our life: going from home to the hunting ground and returning from the hunting ground to home. What the religious traditions and the spiritual masters offer is totally outside this spontaneous form of life. Their offer is for us something inconceivable, extremely disconcerting and new. They propose that we should learn to know, feel and perceive without the reference point of the needs of the ego. They propose to us the possibility of non-egoistic knowing and feeling. This means that we must disarticulate our construction of the world and, therefore, our egoistic construction of knowing and feeling. Then, whoever looks at the world is no longer a centre of needs, but merely an impartial witness. This is refinement; this is spiritualization. When one looks, understands and feels what there is without taking needs into account, there is no one in the centre of the circle, because the I is only an articulated nucleus of needs. Given that there is no one in the centre of the circle, neither is there a circle. Nothing is structured, around nothing. This is perception of the absolute dimension of the real. For a poor living animal with needs, there is nothing more incomprehensible or more subtle than this. Given that no one is a centre of need, there is no hunting ground and no hunter. The world is an infinite enigma which speaks to itself without any hunter telling it what it has to say. 222
The path to which the traditions
The world is not a circle with a centre, it does not have this egocentric structure, it is a boundless ocean with no reference points. When someone, not a ego with needs, goes out into the world to perceive, feel and know, nothing is to the measure of anyone, everything is disconcertingly free and there are no references to anything. When one goes out in this way, it is not to go hunting, because the hunt no longer exists, nor can anyone return home loaded with booty, because there is no hunter, no booty, no home to return to. When he who looks does not look from a basis of needs, the duality formed between the ego nucleus of needs and the world hunting ground breaks down. Since the duality is broken down, everything becomes non-two. What there is then is knowledge and feeling, but no one knows or feels. Nothing specific is known or felt. This is an authentic knowledge and an authentic feeling and love, in which it is impossible to say I, you, this, mine or ours. In the spiritual experience, the animal which we are knows, feels and perceives, really and without doubts; and what it perceives and knows, according to its criteria of reality, is nothing. The masters say that what is known and felt from this point is an absence, the absence of everything that is reality to the animal. But the flesh knows and feels this absence truly, and not as a nothing, but as a presence. It could be said that the mystery of what there is testifies to and is moved by the mystery of what there is; and it becomes patent, at the same time, that the witness is this mystery. The transformation to which the spiritual traditions invite us is the step from predator to disinterested and vibrant witness; from predator to lover. Anyone who manages to know and feel without submitting to the perspective of need, without submitting to the egos structure of desires, acquires free knowledge and feeling, because it is only need that subjects knowledge and feeling. To know and feel freely, the body is no obstacle, because all of it is a receiver, a sensor. Our whole body is an eye. We are like cherubs, with eyes all over our being. Our body is also a sensor. All our flesh can be emotionally moved, all of it can be turned into heart, into love. Thus our body has to be transformed into light and heat; all of it has to be emotional lucidity. This is what the spiritual masters say when they speak of our body as a body of light and fire. This is what they call refining our being, spiritualising it. Our body is not just the flesh of a living being with needs; it is also a pure receiver, a fine disinterested sensor and a witness capable of being moved to its 223
innermost feelings by what there is, not only so that it may be useful to us, but simply because it is there, because it exists, for its unending novelty and for the marvels with which it speaks to us. Our flesh is not opaque. We are luminous beings because our body itself is subtlety. And the masters say that this condition of being vibrant and disinterested witnesses is our real nature. To achieve making all our being, all our flesh, into disinterested eyes and heart, light and fire, subtlety, spirituality, is not subjecting us to a disproportionate overload for our humble condition as animals but, on the contrary, the masters say that this is our proper condition.
The way to spirituality is internal silence. Its fruit is silent knowledge
The path towards refinement, towards spiritualization, is the path of silence. Silence from what? From all the constructions that our need projects onto what there is. The silencing of all our objectifying, representations and figurations; silencing all our desires; silencing the continuous movement which desire prints on our thought and feeling: looking back memories and forward projects. Internal silence removes the screening which our need projects onto that which is. Removing the screen silences the dual world of subjects and objects which we impose on reality from our condition as living beings. Whoever silences the objectivization removes the veil which covers the real and, as a result, silences the subject. Whoever silences the subject, with its desires, memories and projects, silences the world of objects. Whoever silences the reading of subjects and objects finds this non-two which is everything. When this happens, it is understood that the witness and the non-two are not two. This is silent knowledge and feeling. From the new cultural conditions, all the traditions are only paths to silence, paths to silent knowledge. The notion of silent knowledge is a key notion in understanding the religious traditions of the past in their diversity and their unity; in understanding the mystique of all the traditions; and in managing the religious legacy of the past in a cultural situation, inevitable and with no way back, in which there are no myths, symbols, beliefs, religions, or sacred rituals to programme the groups. 224
The path to which the traditions
Let us try to make this notion of silent knowledge a bit clearer. How was it characterised in the great religious traditions of the past? For the tradition which starts from Jesus, it is the knowledge that comes from dying in oneself , in a perfect state of alert. Is there any internal silence greater than that of one who has died? The same idea is expressed in the tradition of the prophet Mohammed, when he states that it is necessary to die before dying. When one approaches the realities, dead, although still alive, then one can know reality as it is. To approach, dead but alive, is to approach silently, is to approach with the subject free of desires, memories or projects. We already know that whoever silences the subject simultaneously silences the objectivizations, the objects. The Buddhist tradition leads, through understanding the radical impermanence of everything and of concentration, to knowledge of the constructor of all our reality: desire, the constructor. From there it leads to mental and sentient knowledge of the radical emptiness of everything. Emptiness of what? Of all our constructions, objectivizations, representations and categories. When one knows the emptiness of everything, one knows the Void of That which there is and that it is totally empty of all duality of objects and subjects. The Hindu tradition explicitly uses the various types of yoga to silence the subject and all its constructions, until leading it to the knowledge of That which is or Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Existence-Light. The BeingConsciousness of the Hindu tradition is free of any qualification, therefore equivalent to the Void of the Buddhist tradition. All these cases speak of a knowledge which the Christian mystics called knowledge no-knowledge, super-essential knowledge, knowing from essence to essence, dark light, knowledge which is not-knowing. Why do they use such enigmatic expressions? Because it is about silent knowledge, that is to say, knowledge in which all objectivization has been completely silenced: what is known is not an object; and all subjectivity has been silenced: he who knows is not a subject. Silent knowledge, which is simultaneously and without possible dissociation, knowing and feeling, emotion; light and heat; is true knowledge and true feeling; but what is known is nothing, because for a living animal what is not an object related with its needs is nothing, empty; and he who knows is no one, because what he knows is not a subject of need in an environment of objects. Silent knowledge is knowing and feeling where nothing is known and no one knows, because it is knowledge of non-duality from non-duality, of unity without fissures from unity without fissures. 225
This is the reason why silent knowledge is ineffable. No method or reasoning can lead to it, because every method and all reasoning move, always and necessarily, in the ambit of the duality in which there are subjects and objects. This knowing and feeling, which is also perception, cannot be achieved through the efforts of any subject, nor its merits, nor is it the end of any process, because every effort, all merit and every process warrant their point of departure which is the subject and, therefore, they obstruct silent knowledge. Silent knowledge is only a gift, a real and true gift, but it is a gift of nothing and a gift from no one to no one, because when it arrives, what arrives has no possible qualification and because its arrival shows the absolute emptiness of the subject. Silent knowledge is absolute presence, the presence of absolute reality, although it is not the presence of anything or anyone. For this reason silent knowledge is like a ray of darkness in which the darkness does not come from obscurity but from the intensity and profundity of light. The only thing that the religious traditions offer to the new industrial societies of innovation and continuous change is silent knowledge, the possibility of escaping from identification with the dual structure of reality where there are plurality, space and time, birth and death to achieve the understanding of that which is as being That non-dual, which I am also, where there is no plurality, space, time, birth or death, but only unity. When that which is has been understood, the unreality of the reading of the real made by the subject with needs is also understood and the emptiness of the world of subjects and objects which it constructs. This is the first step: knowing the unreality of the construction which is felt and is lived for what it is. The second step, which is simultaneous, is knowing that subjects and objects, individualities and diversity, are only unreal and empty if I mistake them for reality, but full and real if I see them as they are, non-others of the Unique; they are the non-two itself in the manifestation of its infinite richness. All these are forms of the No-form, glimmers of the Absolute, its presence. Everything is, and nothing is born or dies, because everything is that which is, what it is, the Being-Consciousness, the Unique, the Void. There is no other with respect to that which is. Everything which there is and exists, is none other than the non-two. God, the Absolute, that which is is none other than nothing. Thus everything, because it is empty, has an absolute value. This is the 226
The way to spirituality is internal silence
sacredness in which everything is sacred because nothing is sacred. Or vice versa: because nothing is sacred, everything is sacred.
Silent knowledge is the only true root of unconditional love for all beings; silent knowledge and feeling is the only root of love for everything. Where there is no silent knowledge, there is subject, and where there is subject there is, inevitably, egocentricity. If there is subject there is a reading from need and desire and, therefore, there are objects, there is an understanding and evaluation of everything from egocentricity. And where there is egocentricity there is no true love, because, in one form or another, the ego comes first, although it may be in a very subtle way. The most that can be expected from the ego is an effort to be interested for others and to achieve loving, but this is still not love. There is only true love and interest when one is dead before dying, when oneself has fully died in oneself. The conclusion is that only the path to silent knowledge and feeling is the path to love and to unconditional service to others and to the earth. While we remain in duality, we remain in our condition as predators. The masters ask: how can a predator seek to organise the world before having silenced its own condition as a predator? In the twentieth century we have had terrible experiences of individuals and groups of individuals who tried to organise the world without having tried to silence their condition as predators. The path of silence cannot, then, be accused of the way of self-absorption and disinterest for others and for the earth. The path of internal silence is the only path to love, the rest is confusion and goodwill. The way of internal silence and unity, which is the path of unconditional interest for everything and the path of love, is the great offer of the religious traditions to the new lay industrial societies, without beliefs and without religions. When this offer is made to them clearly and without ambiguities, they will be able to accept it. If the offer is made mixed with beliefs, sacred rituals and religions, they will not be able to accept it, however urgently they need it. A lay spirituality, without beliefs, coming from all the great religious traditions in the history of humanity, is the true and really effective path of service to others and is the best service that can be given to them. 227
Silent knowledge is the root of unconditional love for all beings
The myths and symbols of the religious traditions must not lead us into another world, but restore us fully to this one. The myths and symbols of the traditions must lead us to reality, and we have no other reality at hand but that which surrounds us. The myths, like the symbols and doctrines which are constructed from them, must lead us to this reality, guiding to it all our senses, all the attention of our minds and all the interest and delivery of our hearts; getting us to pour out all our being and all our faculties to the earth, to the heavens, to the mountains, the animals and plants, the people. The myths and symbols only point. One takes them seriously and is taught by them when allowing oneself to be guided in the direction to which they point. But the myths and symbols guide correctly when we leave them behind us. A bridge is a bridge when one passes over it and forgets it. God is a useful symbol when he leads us fully and totally to this reality of here; when we allow ourselves to be guided by him where he points and then we forget about entities such as God. To be able to forget the symbols and myths, after using them, to be able to leave them behind so as not to be dominated by them, one cannot believe them; though they must be taken absolutely seriously, so seriously as to allow oneself to be guided entirely by them in order to verify whatever it is that they are pointing to. The symbols and the myths must restore us to the things themselves, directly, to all of them without exclusion, all of them, just as they are. If the religious myths and symbols can be used in a way which would seem to form another basis for our knowing, feeling, loving and living, not the basis offered by the earth, the heavens, the animals and plants and people, they would become instruments of perversion, because they would lead us to take as real what is only a signpost to us for the path. The spiritual discourse which separates us from knowledge and love of the realities which surround us is one of the worst human perversions, because, as well as building our humanity on unreality, it engenders a contempt for what really exists and, with this, engenders a hardness of heart. When the myths and symbols of the old religions restore us to things themselves, when they manage to restore us to a totalitarian and disinterested interest for them, to a love and care for everything, then we understand their message, then the teachings of the scriptures and the masters resound powerfully and sweetly. 228
The symbols and myths speak to us of this reality, not of any other
The symbols and myths speak to us
To understand what truly comes in all the reality which surrounds us and in ourselves, it has to be respected. To respect it is to accept it and take it as it comes. If what is in the cosmos or in oneself is rejected or disfigured, how can we understand the true message of reality? Consequently, the myths and symbols of the religious traditions must not be used to support imaginary constructions to make the roughness of the truth which comes in things more digestible. What the myths and symbols formulate must not be used to mitigate the strength with which reality is presented but rather, leaving it as it is, direct our enquiry into it. If, for example, the religious traditions say that there is no death or that there is eternal life, these affirmations must not be taken as descriptions of reality, they must not be used to imagine that one can fly from ones totally mortal condition, but to enquire into what is said in our undeniable mortal condition. And what is said we have to be able to read in death itself, without believing that death, in reality, does not exist. Whatever else, non-death or eternal life has to be a melody which we must be able to hear in the song of death itself, as it is, without being able to soften either its voice or its song. Real, true knowledge, the authentic silent, spiritual knowledge, only comes when one does not shun reality as it is, with imagination supported on beliefs. This is the great task which leads to knowledge: not avoiding reality as it is present and as it comes, but respecting it, welcoming it, loving it. What really comes and is said here, does not come and is not said in our imaginary beliefs. What comes and is said here, comes only in the strong spiritual sustenance, substantial and not always smooth or sweet, of the reality of everything and of oneself. This is the sustenance which has to be eaten, if the taste of wisdom is to be known; this is where the myths and symbols of the great religious traditions of the past direct us. This tough reality must be eaten without diluting its strong taste with beliefs.
The great ways to silence
The great ways to silence are the methods of silencing; methods which do not involve a relationship from cause to effect with complete silencing; they are methods which in fact are only attempts. But the masters say that only in the heart of the attempt is the gift of complete silence produced. 229
The methods which I am going to categorise, only briefly, are those proposed by the religious traditions. All, in one form or another, are found in all of them, although not set out with the same clarity and rigor and not used with the same intensity. Some traditions insist on some more than on others, and the combinations they make of them are different. Neither can these silencing methods be separated clearly, one from another, above all in practice. The exposition is itself methodical, therefore artificial, because it indicates clear frontiers where there are none; but it is useful because it allows the points of insistence of some procedures and others to be understood more clearly. The different silencing procedures are distinguished from each other by the faculty from which one works to produce the silencing. One can work from the mind, from feeling and from action. One can work from these different faculties in more than one way. The Hindu tradition is the one which theorises the matter best and the one which explains it most fully. Let us begin with the methods of working from the mind. The power of reason and the capacity of mental intuition can be used to understand that what we take for real is only our own construction; that what is truly there is not the dual construction of subjects and objects which is constructed from our need; that the that which is is not this construction; that the that which is is completely empty of this whole construction of subjects and objects. The mind, starting from the dual structure, can reason until leading to the frontier itself of this construction and can, with the lucidity and insistence of reasoning, thrust on towards the intuition of the non-dual nature of reality. This is using the power of reason, not in order to construct an interpretation of reality, but to arrive at showing clearly that the real is beyond all our interpretations and, especially, beyond that of categorization into subjects and objects. We have to come to understand clearly that what there is and we are is not the division into subjects and objects that all living beings need to see, that what is there is the negation of this nuclear construction. The minddeconstructs what the mind constructs. Those who have most cultivated this way are the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but it is not absent from the other traditions. It is about changing our understanding of what we take as real, because whoever changes the understanding, changes the feeling, changes the perception and changes the action. Another silencing procedure, also mental, is concentration. Again, in one form or another, all the traditions cultivated it. 230
Concentration on an object, whether physical or mental, enables the subject to be silenced. There has to be concentration on an object, to the point that in the mind and in the feeling there is nothing more than this object. When this happens, the object moves out of the category of object and puts reality itself into the front of the mind and feeling, outside the dual categorization of subjects and objects. The repetition of this exercise leads to the establishment of an understanding of reality and of oneself, empty of mental constructions, non-dual. Another great procedure is internal silencing, now not through the mind but through action. All the traditions have practised this method. The ego is always biased in action. The procedure consists in acting without seeking the fruits of the action, acting for the good of others. Acting without seeking anything for the self, not even the satisfaction of a good action. Whoever acts gratuitously must silence his desire. Whoever silences desire silences his interpretation and evaluation of reality from his condition as a subject with needs in a world. Whoever silences the subject silences the world which the subject constructs. Thus gratuitous action silences thought and feeling, because it silences the egocentricity. This is not mere social or philanthropic action, it is a form of action which is a method of silencing for the achievement of silent knowledge. This point is central. The third great method is silencing by devotion. This method is work from feeling. It is much practised by theist religious traditions, but even non-theists also practised it. Delivering the heart and mind to the love and service of a divinity, which is a figuration of the Absolute, is capable of leading to the forgetting and silencing of personal interests and desires, in order to become polarised totally on the divine figure. The God also functions as an object of concentration. This is an easy and powerful method, when the divine representations and mythical-symbolic forms are taken for real, when one has a mythical epistemology; in societies without beliefs and without religions it is more complicated, but still possible. Let us look at it. The absolute dimension of reality is Being and is Consciousness, although this is not strictly speaking a subject, because it is not a structure of needs and desires nor has it a world of correlated objects. Nevertheless, it is Being and it is Light, Consciousness. This absolute dimension of the real is Being and is inthe mode of Consciousness, although not properly consciousness, because consciousness supposes duality and that which is is not dual. 231
This is not a belief but an affirmation by the masters that one must understand and verify. When one feels identified with ones own ego as a structure of needs, fears and desires, which are memories and projects, one sees, for oneself, the Absolute as outside oneself, as other in contrast to the ego itself. Then one can pray and deliver oneself to the divine figuration, knowing at the same time that it is a figuration which the ego itself constructs. It is known that the Absolute transcends all figuration and it is known, also, that this figuration has foundation, because it is a figuration of BeingConsciousness which is not other than me but that, while I am confined within my own ignorance, I feel it as other. Thus the divine figuration, to which I pray and to which I deliver myself with devotion, is not the child of myth and belief, but has its foundation in my own situation and experience, it has foundation in my own progress towards silence. Devotion is, then, possible and practicable in a lay society, with no religion and no beliefs. But for this to be possible the distancing of the beliefs must be complete, otherwise it would sound to the spirit like a return to religion and beliefs. It is important to understand this the lay possibility of devotion as a method of silencing in order not to lose the immense richness of spiritual wisdom in the theist religious traditions and, above all, in order not to lock out moments of ones own internal progress through lay beliefs.
The spiritual path is an enquiry and a free and joyful creation
The Way of the spirit has to be thought of not as submission to mandates and advice, not as total submission to a divinity or a passage through death, but rather as a search, an enquiry, a creation which continues and renews the enquiries and creations of our forebears. It will not be so much submission to a tradition, with its system of symbols, myths and beliefs, as a connection with a chain of masters of searching by the way of silence; the continuation of a chain of authentic creations in order to escape from the circumstances which imprison individuals in an egocentric and predatory vision of the real. No one escapes from this prison through the effectiveness of a method or through obedience to precepts and standards. Each prisoner has to create his own way to free himself from his particular prison. And every prisoner who is freed is a contribution to the general freedom. 232
Neither can spirituality be thought and experienced as a difficult journey through negatives in order to arrive at the light. When the musician, painter or poet works and struggles to arrive at beauty and be able to express it, they do not live it as a death, as passing through negatives, rather they live it as a fight and a search for freedom and vision. The efforts made to achieve freedom and vision are not steps of death, but steps of knowledge and feeling, of relief and joy. Thus the path of creation is not a path of suffering and death but of vision and joy, and this although it demands effort. The spiritual path, in our cultural conditions, would have to be conceived and experienced as lifting a load from off our backs; as giving up submission; as releasing oneself from the beliefs which grip us; as steps to lightness and freedom; as suppression of obstacles to knowledge and the feeling of reality; as liberation from submission to needs and fears; as the path of joyous enquiry, every day more free and more lucid; as escaping from the tyranny of self-centred love in order to keep the mind and heart free to love everything. A path of submission and passion is incomprehensible to our contemporaries; a path of enquiry, knowledge, freedom and joy, certainly can be assimilated. Spirituality for the innovation societies will have to be presented and experienced with no heteronomy, but, on the contrary, from the heart of total autonomy. The internal path is a search, a creation and a gift. How are these terms: search, creation and gift, which seem to be contradictory, to be understood? How can there be an autonomous process and a gift? In this also there is a similarity between the internal path, which is a search and enquiry for Truth, and the path of art, which is a search and enquiry for beauty. Art is a search and an autonomous enquiry, concluding in a creation which is, at the same time, a gift. The spiritual path is also a search and an autonomous enquiry, concluding in a creation which is a complete gift. Both in the case of art and in that of spirituality, it seems that we move in the essence of a process of enquiry and search which comes within the relationship of cause and effect: the result of the search is in relation to the quality of the search. It is conceived as a search although it involves a rather strange relationship of cause and effect, because it must be guided by discernment, and discernment escapes from the cause and effect relationship. But the end of the process, which is a finding and an authentically autonomous creation, is not the child of the relationship of cause and effect, 233
but a pure and complete gift. The same steps of enquiry and search can be followed without achieving the finding or concluding in a creation-gift. Spirituality is an autonomous creation, but it is not an invention. What is created autonomously, because it is given a form, is irremediably imposed. This also happens in art and even in human knowledge. How can such opposed categories as autonomous creation and not invention, which is inevitably imposed, live together? Spirituality, like art, gives form, expresses, makes what has no form present; but this absence of form, in being made present in a form, shapes it and transcends it. In the form created, in the autonomous enquiry, what has no form arrives and is imposed, altering and shaping the form with its presence. Spirituality is the process which leads to a way out from the relationship of subject of need in an environment of objects capable of satisfying that need. The process which leads to a way out from this relationship of need is an authentic search, an enquiry, and concludes in a creation which is an understanding and expression of the being of the real which, in itself, is beyond the relationship of a living being with its environment. The search happens in the ambit of the relationship of need, because it starts from a subject with need, which in attempting to seek something objectifies that something. The enquiry moves in what, in structure, is a vicious circle: one tries to get away from the relationship of subject in environment, but the search necessarily starts from a subject with need and inside the circle of need. The subject, through the mere fact of searching, converts what is sought into an object. It is in the heart of this search, with no apparent way out, that the gift can happen, when one finds oneself outside the relationship. Whoever finds himself outside this relationship and says so with words or with his life, produces an authentic creation, because within the heart of the relationship of need he gives form to what is neither a subject nor an object. The being of reality, which is neither subject nor object, prevails with its truth and on doing so, shapes the expression and life of he who has found and received the gift. Only a process of personal and autonomous enquiry can produce what is, at the same time, an authentic creation and a complete gift. This is the nature of the spiritual task, both in our own age subsequent to mythologies, beliefs and religions, and as it was in the age of myths, beliefs and religions. In the age of religions and beliefs this spiritual way of being was already known, which is why there was a fear of true spirituality and of the mystics. They tried, by all possible means, to confine them in the framework of orthodox beliefs and religions. It was not always easy to keep something free 234
The spiritual path is an enquiry
of all form within the narrow margins of a sacrosanct system of representation and of life. When it was not possible at all, the mystic was marginalised, pursued and might even be killed. We can conclude by stating that the internal path, the spiritual path, is possible without submission to myths, symbols, beliefs, sacred rituals and religions. The spiritual life and mysticism are, then, possible in a completely lay society with no beliefs. Laicism has a meaning which is contrary to and damages spirituality, because it denies any dimension which is not proper to the living being with needs; but laicity not only does not oppose spirituality, but even encourages it. Paradoxically, the members of societies of knowledge, those who have to live from the continuous production of scientific and technological knowledge, are ignorant of silent knowledge; they do not take it into account, they do not see it as knowledge. This happens through an epistemology still not adapted to the new situation and through the intrinsic difficulty of silent knowledge. This is the difficulty today in starting the process which leads to silent knowledge: admitting the possibility itself of a form of knowledge which is very peculiar, because it is a knowledge in the heart of non-duality, and admitting the possibility of refining the flesh until making it as cognitive as the spirit and making the mind and body feel and be moved as not having needs but purely as witness.
Silent knowledge does not subjugate or exclude doubt because it is not a formulation
From what has been said it can be understood that silent knowledge is the unshakeable foundation of freedom. Silent knowledge is not submission to any truth, not even one which came down from heaven; nor is it submission to an authority, not even that of God. In silent knowledge no truth subjugates, nor any God, because the certainty it engenders is the certainty of nothing. It is the certainty of nothing because everything certifies me and in everything I move in the true, thus nothing subjugates me. Silent knowledge provides the strong flavour of truth. And the flavour of truth is not the flavour of something, it is the profound flavour of everything; thus, its flavour does not subject me to anything, because nothing has the exclusivity of this flavour. 235
With silent knowledge there is certainty in everything; and because there is certainty in everything, in everything there is detachment and freedom. Then, everything is a presence, nothing is inert. Given that the truth which supplies silent knowledge is a flavour in everything, there is nothing to abandon and nothing to desire. This is the root of freedom. One has oneself the same flavour as everything. There is nobody home because in reality I am a witness without a home. And the witness and that non-dual are not two. The illusion of need induces us to think that there is someone at home; but here, in me, really there is nobody; and to think that there is someone, which is tantamount to believing that there is someone, is a support for egoism and for the submissions which block knowledge. Everything has the same flavour. For this reason I know that there is nobody in my home and also for this reason I understand that neither is there anything to look for. What should we look for when everything tastes the same? What should we seek and where, if there is nothing, anywhere, which has exclusivity of this flavour? The search for silent knowledge does not oppose doubt. Only belief opposes doubt. What the masters and the traditions teach does not have to be believed, it has to be put to proof, verified. The traditions and the spiritual masters are not believed, as one does not believe a poet, painter or scientist. One has oneself to verify what they say, as one has to verify what the poets, painters and scientists say. What has to be learned from traditions and spiritual masters is not the formulations which they achieved and with which they expressed themselves. What one has to learn from them is how to travel the path, in order to verify for oneself the truth and reality of what they say. To follow the path to which the masters point is not to believe but to doubt while doubts remain, until exhausting them one after the other and, when they are exhausted, having to assent with total conviction to what the masters affirm. The path of spirituality really begins when all possibilities of doubt have been dissolved. While doubts remain about the reality of the path which is to be travelled and about the truth of the masters affirmations, one cannot walk effectively. From this perspective, to doubt until extinguishing the possibility of doubt completely is a necessary first requirement for taking the spiritual path. Trusting in the master and the traditions does not exclude doubt. Whoever trusts in the master and in the traditions does not set doubts aside, he accepts them and deals with them until they are purged, until they are extinguished. Faith 236
Silent knowledge does not subjugate
in the master and in the traditions is what moves us to put their affirmations to proof until we are compelled to accept them with no remaining doubts. To make the doubt the capital enemy of the spiritual path is to convert spirituality into a question of beliefs. But the masters themselves speak of a kind of doubt which really is an enemy of the path, what is it? The doubt which blocks is the one which supports the notion that the masters are either deluded dreamers or false manipulators of consciousness; it is the doubt which sustains that the religious traditions are illusions from start to finish. This doubt prevents us from taking seriously what the masters and traditions say. The doubt which blocks is the doubt which makes the affirmations of the masters into complete absurdities. The foundation of this type of doubt is the belief that here there is no more reality than that which our ordinary and pragmatic life sees and appreciates, that there is no other reality than that which our need is able to compute, directly or indirectly. The conviction that there is no more than this which I with needs can read, the conviction which dismisses anybody which says otherwise, becomes an attitude which blocks all possibility of the path. A similar attitude would also block the path to poetry, to music and even to science. However, tradition says that the masters and the sacred texts must be believed. But believing them means, exclusively, taking them seriously. Taking them seriously is not the same as believing them in the sense of accepting their affirmations and submitting oneself to them. Taking them seriously is putting their affirmations to proof. Putting them to proof is not equivalent to mistrusting them, on the contrary, it is to follow their guidance. We need to understand this clearly: to believe in the masters and the texts, in the sense of trusting them, devoting oneself to them, is to check their affirmations for oneself. The truth which the great religious traditions and the masters of the spirit proclaim is a silent truth, not a formulation. What is understood in silence and moves us, which is what we can testify to, is truth, not the truth of a formulation but of a presence. Silent knowledge is knowledge of this here itself , from the silence of the constructor, that is to say, from the silence of what need constructs. It is not, then, knowledge which can be objectified, but knowledge of a pure presence. It is the immediate knowledge of a presence. Silent truth is not a knowledge about the structure of that there, nor is it recondite knowledge. Silent truth is the understanding of that there immediately, without the intermediation of any representation. 237
As beauty is the direct contemplation of that there, in a similar way silent truth is the direct understanding of that here. The truth of which the traditions tell is an understanding, which is a certainty, which is generated from a presence. Silent truth is a presence which is made patent in that there, with nothing added, nor anything recondite in its heart, nor anything over the top of that there. This presence settles into our spirit and our flesh in such a way that we are forced to attest to it. The truth from silence comes there, in everything, as it is presented, and it behaves in a manner similar to the way that beauty comes there in everything, as it is presented.
If what claims to be truth, the silent truth, the spiritual truth, is separated from everything here, or claims to replace it by a formulation, a belief or a god, it is not truth. And to weigh up the force of this affirmation we have to take into account that everything surrounding us and what we are, is not an ideal world, is not a world without poverty, evil and death, it is our world as we have constructed it. In this world, as it is, when we perceive it from silence, we find calm and peace. If anyone says they have this truth and does not passionately love all this here, this our world and all that surrounds us, people, animals and things, he lies and does not speak the truth. The holy scriptures, the truths of faith-belief, the gods and spirits, the other life, etc., are all manners of speaking which scholars used, in pre-industrial cultural conditions, to lead us to the truth of all this here. And the truth of these wise men is not a recondite knowledge of reality, nor knowledge sent down from heaven and preserved in sacred caskets, nor esoteric knowledge, but knowledge which refers to this here itself, where we live and we are. If the scriptures, the religions, the gods and beliefs separate us from the truth which is present in this here, as it is, they are not truth but are separating us from the truth. Here, the presence-truth, which is truth from the silence of the constructions and objectifying of the ego (not the formulation-truth of beliefs) moves us and causes us a total interest, an interest which is love for all this here, the only place in which truth is revealed. 238
Silent knowledge is not apart from this world, but is submerged in it
Silent knowledge does not subjugate
That is, here, the great truth. That is, here, the great satisfaction. That is, here, reconciliation with everything and peace. But the great reconciliation is neither conformity nor resignation, because it is love, interest, passion. Only this full reconciliation is really active and capable of transforming where it is needed. A pretended truth which does not in practice become total firmness, where this firmness is not equivalent to being tied to forms or formulas, is not truth. The certainty which accompanies truth is not a formula, it is free and completely tolerant. A pretended spiritual truth which does not passionately approach assent, respect and veneration, an unconditional interest for all this here, as it is, is not truth. This assent, respect, veneration and unconditional interest must extend to all the religious forms in the tradition of humanity. All are true, because they all point appropriately to the same; and all are false, because none of them is a description of the reality which is. The full assent and love, the total reconciliation with what is here, as it is, which leads to knowledge of the silent truth, is not equivalent to tolerating all that is evil; on the contrary, the reconciliation, peace and love for everything which is here form a totalitarian interest, love without conditions which becomes a passion for improving, repairing, healing, correcting all that goes wrong. The action of transformation and reform which springs from this experience excludes all aggression, all rejection, all violence, all contempt, all lack of love. Spirituality understood, as a process towards silence and from silence, opens to the understanding of what can be a truth which is not a formulation; opens to a knowledge which is not a description of structures, but makes itself present in order to perceive, feel and know; opening an understanding which is assent, emotion and firmness; and is firmness not by the unmovable prestige of sacred forms, but because the presence of a truth which is not a formulation generates freedom from all form.
Truth without form from silent knowledge
Spiritual truth, which is the truth from silence, is like light, it can only be seen in what it illuminates; it has no form of its own, it takes the form of whatever reflects it. Everything reflects this light. The more profound this truth appears, the more tenuous and translucent it seems. The more intense is the light of this truth, the more subtle and incomprehensible it is. This results in a strange path, for poor living animals. The more subtle is the truth and the less it has its own form, the more weight of certainty it 239
generates. The more evident is the truth, the less it subjugates. Therefore, the more one grows in the knowledge of this truth, the freer one is. This means that knowing and feeling truth is knowing and feeling freedom. The more patent and revealed is the truth, the more incomprehensible and indefinable it is. The more incomprehensible it is, the more formless it is. The less form it has of its own, the more firm and unmovable it is. The firmer it is, the less it subjugates. The witness of the undeniable evidence of the light is capable of recognising it without identifying it with any of the objects on which it is reflected, with which it is freed from all form and all colour. Thus it is understood that light is not this form or that, this colour or that, because it is reflected in all forms and all colours. One learns to recognise the clarity, evidence and subtlety of light without being subjected even to the form and colour in which one learned to recognise it. Light is light because it illuminates, because it is subtle, cannot be grasped, is ethereal and without form of its own; thus the silent truth illuminates because it is subtle, cannot be grasped, is ethereal and without form of its own. Truth, like light, illuminates everything and is not subject to anything, because it has no form of its own. This is its strength. Through this strength it makes everything evident and unquestionably clear. The path which the great religious traditions and the masters propose, which is the path we have called spiritual for its subtlety, is learning to understand and feel that walking towards complete truth is walking towards total incomprehensibility, towards unshakeable conviction, towards freedom without limits. To travel this disconcerting path calls for love to the point of passion, a spirit of enquiry and courage, much courage. Silent truth is reconciliation with everything, acceptance and freedom. And the path to this truth, which is a subtle presence and constant in everything, is the path to reconciliation and acceptance of everything, until leading all to unity. Truth which condemns, is not truth. Truth only liberates. Truth which subjugates, is not truth. Truth only unfastens the chains. Truth which excludes, is not truth. Truth only unites. 240
Truth which raises itself up, is not truth. Truth only serves. Truth which is ignorant of the truth of others, is not truth. Truth is only recognition. Truth which does not look into the eyes of other truths, is not truth. Truth is only receiving without fear. Truth which engenders hardness, is not truth. Truth is only friendliness and tenderness. Truth which separates, is not truth. Truth only unifies. Truth which is tied to formulas, however simple they may be, is not truth. Truth alone is free of forms. If truth is tied to formulas, it must condemn, exclude, disunite, it has to raise itself up, take other truths as false. That is not the truth which resides in forms but which is not tied to them. For all this, in the new global societies, spirituality cannot pass through beliefs which proclaim themselves as exclusive possessors of the truth and which, thereby, exclude every other truth. All the paths of the spirit must be taken as being as valid and respectable as ones own. Each spiritual tradition may use its expressions, formulations, signs and rituals, with humility, without setting them above those of other traditions. Each one of the traditions can be fully true without, thereby, having to believe itself to be the only and exclusive truth. Only that which is a formulation-truth, a belief-truth can have claims to be the unique and exclusive truth. We have to avoid, with the same determination and love with which the truth is followed, aggression against other traditions, not only physical, but also 241
mental or from the heart; shunning all contempt, all attempts to bring them back to where we are, as one shuns error. We must never discredit other traditions, and with all the more reason we must shun all attempt to silence them or make them disappear; with the same determination we have to reject the temptation to put them lower than our own tradition; and it will be necessary, also, to stand apart from the worst of the temptations: the temptation to ignore other traditions. To ignore them is offence and scorn.
242
CHAPTER 7
The human quality and its cultivation

Silence is the fundamental resource of our species
In the new industrial and knowledge societies, an interest in understanding the function and practice of silence has grown substantially; not only in relation to the internal path but also in relation to peoples correct functioning in their private or group lives. We shall see that the capacity of distancing oneself from situations and ones own interests and the capacity of silencing are in the essence itself of our structure as cultural beings. We saw in the first part of this treatise that the biological invention of speech created a form of mediation, that of language, in our access to reality. What for other beings was the meaning of objects the value of objects in relation to their table of needs was attached to physical realities. Speech, in humans, shifts this meaning of objects from the physical support to the acoustic support. The acoustic support is the signifier and the axiological load of the realities is the meaning. The package of signifier and meaning, the word, refers to the realities to which the meaning points. Thus, we humans relate to the environment by speaking among ourselves. There are, then, two moments in the structure of our relationship with reality: one governed by need and desire, and the other from the distancing of need and desire, that is to say, from the silence of need and desire. The capacity of distancing ourselves from our needs on returning to the realities and, therefore, silencing our desires and fears and silencing our interpretations and evaluations, is and results in being an intrinsic moment of our structure as speaking beings, cultural beings. The Upanishads explicitly recognised this double effect of meaning and expressed it in a figure, very memorable since that time:
Two birds, inseparable friends and with the same name, sitting in the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit. The other looks on without eating. 1
1. Mundakya Upanishad III, 1; Svetasvara Upanishad IV, 2, 23.
243
The tree symbolises the individuality of each human being; the two birds, the two possible types of consciousness in our species: the one involved in needs and desires, and the other which is distanced, silent and only a witness. This is our structure as cultural beings. If the distance between the meaning of reality and reality itself did not exist, as it does not for animals, it would not be possible for us to change our ways of life, nor would cultural mutations be possible for us. We would be as fixed as the other animals. It requires, then, one degree or another of experience of a distancing from the immediacy of needs and desires, the silencing of needs and desires, for the survival of the human species as a cultural species. Due to this capacity of silencing, and due to experience not related to realities, cultural changes are possible, including radical changes, and the sciences, philosophy, art and spirituality can exist. If we were fixed in an interpretation and evaluation of reality, like the animals, we would be as fixed and captive as they are. It is the experience of the absolute dimension of reality, which is a consequence of the distancing and silencing of need and is concomitant with the use of language, which enables us to make changes, including radically, when circumstances require it. That is our specific attribute as cultural beings. From this human structure it can be deduced that a certain cultivation of the dimension of distance and silence is necessary for culture to function properly and for the capacity and possibility of responding adequately to changes in circumstances to exist in individuals and groups. This capacity of distancing and silencing of the interpretation and evaluation created by need opens up an ambit of freedom and a peculiar quality in the relationship with realities, which is clearly and exclusively human. If the experience of distance and silence does not occur properly, freedom, flexibility and human quality are damaged: with the result that the advantage of our species is lost and we come closer to the condition of the other animals. Even the daily actions, governed by need and desire, are different when done trapped in a relationship with no way out or when done with a door always at ones back to distance oneself and even to exit mentally and sentiently from the iron circle of need and the circumstances which surround it. The experience of the dimension not relating to reality is equivalent to the experience of the silence of interpretation and desire. Any cultural stage requires this experience and its cultivation. But when societies moved little, the cultivation of flexibility and capacity for change was not so urgently needed. The societies of knowledge and innovation require a special cultivation of this dimension, because they require a flexibility and aptitude for change similar to that needed for basic scientific research. These 244
The human quality
societies need the capacity of distancing, even including from the very foundations and central patterns of our mental constructions and ways of being. Only the silence and distance which lead to the experience of the absolute dimension of reality can provide a similar flexibility. The new societies and the individuals in these new societies have to direct and manage themselves, without the help of a level of certainties supported on untouchable forms, because the individuals in the societies of innovation cannot repeat the past but have to live in societies in which everything moves; they will have, then, to find support in an ambit of themselves and of reality which is not bound to forms and which transcends them. Only thus can things be changed when required. It is necessary to realise that the interpretations and evaluations of realities are not of the things themselves, but of the understanding we have of them when we look at them from need. In the societies of knowledge there is a special requirement for this distancing and silencing, which is the clearly human attribute, and which allows us to conduct ourselves without standing on fixed forms but with a dimension of reality and life which is free, because it can change the forms when it needs to. This attribute must be cultivated with special intensity. We could say that importance has to be given to the cultivation of lay silence and distance, with a pragmatic intention. All great human quality has always been linked to the capacity of being distanced from specific forms. There is no great art without freedom from forms and the freedom to rupture them when it suits. Nor is there great science without the capacity of being distanced from the patterns and paradigms in current use for science and without the capacity to create other new ones when required. The same has to be said, and with more reason, of the spiritual quality. The scholar is he who is capable of distancing himself from forms, without this weakening his certainty, on the contrary, the freedom from forms increases his certainty. The basic resource of the species in adapting itself to changes of circumstances is radical silence. We have said that the use of language brings the capacity of being distanced from stimuli and silencing them and, therefore, the capacity of distance from the system itself of needs and interpretations, evaluations and of ways of life generated by the needs, to be satisfied in certain ways. This capacity is, for its structure, the possibility of radical silencing. This possibility and this capacity is the essential resource of the human species. With this resource we can make minor changes in the systems for survival and also major changes which are equivalent to changes of species in animals. 245
The capacity of distance and radical silence opened by the invention of speech is our species fundamental instrument in adapting itself to circumstances, altering the environment, if appropriate, and creating new forms of culture. This basic resource is the root of the success of our species. We could formulate the following principle: the capacity of radical silencing of real and urgent needs is the instrument which our species uses to satisfy, with greater efficiency than the remaining species, real and urgent needs in situations of change. The animals cannot silence themselves, for this reason they are prisoners in their relationship with the environment. In human beings, life discovered that capacity of silencing need, and all that this brings with it, is a potent instrument for rapid and profound adaptation. The efficiency of the invention rests on the capacity of silencing being total, radical. If it were not radical, total, it would bring with it fundamental structures from the past and, in this case, the flexibility would be very limited, so that changes equivalent to mutations of species, radical cultural changes, would not be able to be made. In the societies of the past this basic human resource was widely used, but without being aware of it, because it was used infrequently and because, in general, the changes were slow. In the societies of knowledge this resource has to be thematised and used explicitly. In the new societies of innovation and change we have to learn to cultivate lay silence, both individually and as groups. Without this capacity such a type of society would become enormously difficult. And it must be remembered that the aim of the invention of speech and its consequences, the aim of this basic resource, is not spiritual, it is an aim of efficiency for a living being. To grow humanly and psychologically one has to be capable of distancing oneself from the satisfaction of immediate desires and silence them. Without the distancing and silencing of immediate desires those things which belong to a higher level of evolution cannot be recognised as good. We could formulate the following principle: the step through distancing and silencing is the law of growth in the quality of individuals and groups. Also to be efficient in the achieving of ends one has to distance oneself and silence the immediate satisfaction of desires, although it may only be for a short space of time. Every adult has to become a practical reasoner in order to be able to recognise that there can be reasons for acting which are not dictated by the most immediate needs. He will be able to do it if the immediate needs do not dominate him. They will dominate him if he cannot distance himself from them, silencing them. 246
The human quality
Without silence one cannot be a practical and independent reasoner, capable of evaluating the reasons for acting. Also cooperation with others always means a postponement of satisfactions and desires, their silencing. In the new societies, which cannot repeat the past, the distancing and silencing is also required in order to design possible futures. A self-reliant individual, practical and rational, will be capable of imagining various possible futures and choosing between them. Whoever lacks the distance which is provided by silence will not be able to design and evaluate alternative futures, because he will not be capable of separating himself from the immediacy of need and desire. In consequence, silence, including radical silence, is in the centre of our anthropological structure. This resource, which is in the centre of our structure as beings, is the great central invention of life for a rapid response to changes of environment. But although the aim of this resource may be biological, if it is permissible to speak of aims in the progress of life, it also opens unsuspected dimensions for a living being: the dimensions of the great spaces of freedom such as spirituality, beauty, the knowledge which is astonished by existence, disinterested love for people and things. This resource opens a great gate which transcends the predatory outlook typical of all living beings. This gate is a second possibility for the use of all our faculties: the use which can be made from silence. And the spaces which silence opens are worth cultivating for themselves, without any utilitarian aim; and this is what humanity has done throughout its history. Thus, the basic resource of our species, the capacity of distancing and silence, has two possibilities: one pragmatic, as a basic instrument for survival, adaptation, change, growth and collaboration; and another without a functional purpose, but which opens wide paths and dimensions of reality which are valid in themselves. When the societies were structured on beliefs, because they had to fix their patterns of life as untouchable in order to lock out change and possible alternatives, religions also had to be experienced from beliefs. In that long stage, silence was kept in the shade, because silence tends to liberate from beliefs, although it can use them. In the societies of beliefs people were confined in and subject to an untouchable order of mind, feeling, action and organisation. Silent men are free, although they submit. This was dangerous for cultures which had to be submitted to unchangeable patterns. 247
The societies which preceded us, authoritarian, patriarchal, static, exclusivist and excluding, gave priority to beliefs and, for this reason, avoided silence as much as they could, although they were not totally untrue to the traditions of the great religious masters. From this common rule only the religious escaped, those whom in the West we called mystics; but they had to pay a high price for their freedom: either they remained silent, or they suffered marginalisation or even persecution and death. On the contrary, the societies of knowledge need to discover silence. In the new societies the silence will tend to be lay, because it cannot be supported on bodies of beliefs, or sacred rituals, or religions. Lay silence will be a potent instrument for innovation, for the stability and balance of those who find that they are obliged to live with continuous change in all levels of their existence. And, also, it will permit the lay societies without beliefs to cultivate and experience the great dimensions which silence opens, those which in the past were controlled by what are called religions and of which the traditions and spiritual masters of all times speak. These dimensions are profound dimensions, dimensions of human quality, the fruit of this attitude of knowledge and of mental and sentient involvement in the reality which is silence.
The specifically human quality
What do the human quality and its cultivation consist of ? The human quality is not something which arises spontaneously. And it does not arise spontaneously because we are cultural beings who have to construct our own viability as beings. Procedures are needed in order to create it and cultivate it. But, what do we understand by human quality? Maturity in attitudes and evaluations. Balance in judgments and actions. Sensitivity in understanding the attitudes and feelings of others and responding appropriately. Capacity of sympathy, of sharing the feeling of another, and compassion. Capacity to understand others, with the mind and the heart. Capacity of communication, which is more than a capacity for transmitting information, because it includes accepting the diversity of evaluations and attitudes. 248
The human quality
Capacity to take charge of situations, not only mentally, but affectionately and sensitively. Capacity to prospect into future situations, mentally and sensitively. Capacity to evaluate persons and situations and to transmit these evaluations to others. Capacity to generate projects for motivation in specific situations. Capacity to adapt to changing situations. The human quality is, then, mental lucidity, orientation in criteria, sentient warmth and good judgment in weighing up people, situations, the projects needed in these situations. In the past, in the pre-industrial societies and the societies of the first industrialisation, which were mixed societies, the present was decided and, through it, the future, on the support of the past. The anchor point for the criteria, norms, principles and traditions was provided by the religious beliefs, ideological convictions or a mixture of both. The fundamental characteristic of these two types of societies was that, in them, the present was decided from the past, because these were societies which were static they lived from doing always fundamentally the same or they were interpreted as being static, although in reality they were not. In these societies, the present and the future sought to repeat the past in its essential points. This was the only way of ensuring the survival of a system of life which had been verified as effective for group survival, and was also the only way of locking out change, because being changes in a verified model, they could be dangerous. In these societies, the human quality was defined by the criteria of the past and, therefore, supported on semantic contents well defined by the beliefs which sustained and fixed the societies. The beliefs could be religious, ideological or a combination of both. When the societies of knowledge appear, living from innovation and change, this criterion of quality is and has to be locked out. If economic success and, therefore, the wellbeing of society depends on the innovation of goods and services, and, therefore, on the continuous creation of new knowledge, new technology, new forms of working and being organised and new forms of cohesion and motivation, the present cannot be defined from the past, because the past cannot be nor should be repeated. If it were, it would block or obstruct the generalised change required in the societies of knowledge. If the present cannot be decided by resting on the past, how will it be supported? For decisions on the present there is no other possibility than to 249
stand on axiological postulates which will be the basis for construction of projects for the future. But if we have to decide the present from a project for the future, which cannot be a repetition of the past, this project will have to be constructed beforehand. The project which has to be constructed has to be of quality, if we want the present and the whole of societys progress also to be of quality. To construct a project of quality, which cannot repeat what we considered to be quality in the past, we will first have to construct individuals of quality. Here, then, comes the question: how are individuals of quality constructed, capable of formulating axiological postulates and designing skilled projects for the future, when we have no criteria of quality? We have no criteria of quality available because the past is not useful and the future is still to be designed. We have to face the problem of the construction of a human quality which, in contrast to how it has been built hitherto, cannot be supported on religious or lay beliefs, or in contents, of whatever type they may be, already constructed and inherited from the past. Said briefly: a human quality has to be able to be constructed which is not founded on any type of contents, which is empty of contents, because from it the future projects will have to be constructed. A quality empty of contents has to be able to be generated, because it needs to be fixed in some specific contents. Is this possible? The interpretation of reality given by science is not sufficient for an animal to live, because the sciences are not capable of programming the stimulation or cohesion of a group of living beings. It is essential to understand clearly the point of this question, because it is easy to fall into the error of thinking that science is enough for everything. Let us try to characterise, briefly, a human quality which is empty of contents, therefore, lay and not belonging to any ideology or religion. The human quality, wherever it is present, will have to have three types of fundamental features. These essential fundamental features are attitudes and aptitudes, not contents or criteria. First feature: having an interest for reality; a mental and sentient interest, the more intense and passionate, the better. The interest asks for wide-awake attention, in a state of alert. Both interest and alert need to be sharp and continuous, the more the better. Second feature: acquiring the capacity of distancing from the realities in which I am interested; a distancing which is detached, uninvolved. And this at the same time as being profoundly interested in reality, in a total state of alert. This distancing and detachment bring about a non-identification with oneself and 250
the situation in which one may be. Through the distance, the detachment and the non-identification, the ego and its fears and desires can be forgotten and silenced. The distance, detachment and non-identification are cultivated, not through indifference to the reality being considered and to which one returns with all the capacity of ones faculties, but precisely because this reality is of profound interest. Without distance, detachment and non-identification with the situation and oneself, one cannot do justice to the reality which is presented. The items in this second feature of quality are the children of love and a passion for truth and reality, that is to say, they are the children of mental and sentient interest in the real. Third feature: the capacity of total internal silence. One has to be able to silence entirely the habitual interpretations, the habitual evaluations of reality; achieving a total halt to the habitual forms of acting and putting aside, in parenthesis, all the rules, in fact untouched, of living. Only this complete silencing of the patterns of reading, evaluation, action and life can allow the clean, frank and disinterested approach of oneself, through pure interest for reality. Only by separating my mind and feeling from all these patterns which model reality from me, do I give it the possibility of showing me another face, showing itself as it is. The result of the sum of these three features is an attitude of total and complete interest for reality, in an acute state of alert, with distance, detachment and complete internal silencing, in order thus to block the interferences which can impede access to reality itself, without my projections over it. These three types of features, which define the human quality, are inseparable. Lacking one of them, whichever it may be, the quality will not be there. This package of features, internally articulated, we shall call the human quality, or lay method of silencing. The human quality and the silencing, wherever they may appear, will have to have these features, with their internal coherence. Where these features occur, whether in the cultivation of the sciences, in art, in human or spiritual axiological attitudes, the quality will be there. Where they are not there, there will be no quality. Said in other words: where we find ourselves obliged to recognise human quality, in whatever ambit, these features will be clearly recognisable. If they are not, we can bet that there is no quality, although it may appear that there is. The acquisition of the inseparable assembly of the three characters (interest, distancing and silencing, which we will call IDS, to make it clear and short) is the basic and fundamental achievement of human quality. 251
It is not only the indispensable condition for the acquisition of the human quality, nor a simple method, although it will work as a method; this attitude and aptitude is the quality itself , without requiring any ulterior determination to be able to be considered as a human quality. If IDS were not the complete human quality in itself it could not be the base on which to stand for the creation of axiological postulates and future projects. The more profound and radical the interest for realities, the greater will be the distance from personal attachments and interests in considering things, persons and situations, and the more complete will be the silence of all previous interpretation, evaluation and habits of action with respect to the realities on which the attention and the alert are focused, the greater will be the human quality which is possessed and the greater the quality from which this attitude is constructed. Although the three characters combined, IDS, is complete human quality in itself, both for our human condition and for our belonging to the societies of knowledge, this root-attribute never closes in on itself, it is always projected into constructions of forms and projects. We saw already that the human attribute which is achieved with radical silencing is the basic resource of the human species. Thanks to it, we are able to construct a nature adapted to each new situation. If this basic resource, with which the human species constructs its own destiny, were not in itself an attribute, we would lose direction and, also, the cultural flexibility of our species would be limited. The only insuperable frontiers that life has set for our species are our sexual form of reproduction, our symbiotic manner of survival, our physiological base and the fundamental instrument by which we construct the cultural nature which fits each new situation: speech. This alone is inflexible, the rest is pure flexibility. IDS supplies the fundamental attribute which will guide and distinguish all the creations of the projects which will design our destiny. No solution to our problems comes to us as a gift, and this is so through our condition as cultural beings. Our condition as humans does not provide us with basic and fundamental axiological tables on which to move all our constructions. Therefore, the human quality is an attitude which is more similar to a method than to an assembly of contents. It is an empty attitude, an empty method. This method is general and applicable to all fields of human life. It can be applied with pragmatic aims or with gratuitous aims, or better, without any purpose at all, through pure interest and love for reality. The yields from this attitude or method are always great, both in their usefulness for the better survival of the species and in their usefulness in 252
helping us to penetrate, explore and experience the enigma, the richness and profundity of the immensity of reality which surrounds us and which we ourselves are. The features of the human quality are, in reality, the general features of silence. When we speak of silence, we are not talking of an attitude of simple pacification, tranquillisation, and even less of lethargy; we are speaking of an attitude of knowledge and of mental and sentient involvement in reality. This is the meaning given to the silence and silencing in all the religious traditions of humanity. Thus, the characteristics of human quality are the same as those of the silencing. We can, then, speak of the general law of human quality or the general law of silence. All that is human and of quality passes through IDS. The sciences use the interest/alert, the distance/detachment and the complete silencing of ordinary attitudes and interpretations of reality for involvement in the knowledge of reality at a level apart from the normal. What procedures do the sciences use to create this silencing and this necessary human quality? In the cultivation of science the learning of silence is achieved through learning to use scientific methods. When these scientific methods are learned, one learns to be acutely interested by reality, to be distanced from normal involvement and to silence the patterns of interpretation and evaluation which are normal or were already achieved in previous stages of science. From the quality thus attained and from this silencing, postulates, hypotheses and new scientific theories can be constructed, which will lead to another level of knowledge. Whenever there is scientific creation, there has been great interest, detachment and silencing. The same happens when there is scientific knowledge. If there is no notable degree of silence and quality, there will not have been any scientific creation or even an experience of what scientific knowledge is. Therefore, the affirmation that science and its creations are children of a very specialised type of lay silence is correct. While scientific method is used, this type of lay silence is practised and, with it, access to a type of knowledge of another level. Prolonged and profound dedication to science can provide a high degree of human quality. Since silence depends on the use of the scientific methods, the scientist can have the quality which gives silence while practising science, and distance himself from it when he returns to daily life. Only a few great scientists come to dedicate their lives entirely to the practice of science and, thus, achieve impregnating all their time with silence and quality. 253
Art also uses IDS to access the beauty of the real. It uses the interest, distance and silencing to involve itself in reality at another level, that of beauty. This other level consists in coming to see and feel the splendour of all that surrounds us as new, as though it were the first time that one saw and felt it. The normal way to learn this new approximation to the splendour of reality is through initiation into the techniques and procedures of the arts. Due to this learning a distancing from the feeling and normal understanding of reality can be achieved, giving access to beauty. From silence it is made possible to create forms and styles to express and demonstrate clearly this other level of reality. Thus art, like science, is born from a profound interest for reality, which demands the exercise of distancing and silencing in order to achieve a high degree of involvement in the understanding and feeling of what is there. While one submerges oneself in artistic work silence comes and its consequence: the quality of the other access to reality. The silence and quality of the artistic creator and of he who contemplates the creation, which is a guided way of recreating what the artist constructs, depend on immersion in artistic procedures. It can happen that silence and quality are achieved while submerged in art and that this silence and quality are lost when returning to daily life. Only some great creators dedicate all their time to art, to the point that their entire life passes in silence and quality. Whenever there is artistic creation, there has been silence and quality. Whenever there has been a serious experience of beauty, there has also had to be silence and quality. Human axiological quality is ethical quality, it is a capacity for social and political commitment and, above all, a capacity for feeling and appreciating intimately the reality which surrounds us. It is, then, a personal ethic, a commitment to the group and a richness of sensitivity with things and persons. To achieve this axiological quality, in any of its manifestations, also requires the interest and alertness, distancing and detachment and internal silence. Here also the distancing, detachment and silence are demanded by the interest which leads to a greater degree of involvement with reality. This other level of involvement is less egoistic, less primary, freer, more benevolent, more creative than the spontaneous, normal level. The procedure for achieving this other level of involvement with reality, in the times of static and pseudo-static societies, was dependent on religious or ideological indoctrination and the coherent action which this indoctrination demanded. 254
The religious or lay beliefs were used for distancing from the habitual and self-centred interpretation and evaluation of reality and to lead to a different order of action, of greater quality, which was a guide to another feeling of reality. This procedure of silencing the habitual perspective, in order to achieve a greater degree of feeling and involvement, depended on the beliefs. Now, the methods of axiological silencing will have to be achieved without the support of beliefs. In the ambit of ethics, social involvement and a greater sensitivity for things and people, there is a greater constancy in the silence and quality than is found in the normal practice of science and art. Up till now we have not come upon the problem of having to articulate procedures and methods for acquiring silence and axiological quality without the support of contents, without the help of indoctrination and beliefs. We have to be able to articulate a procedure which allows us to interest ourselves profoundly in reality, distancing ourselves from it and detaching ourselves from the possible advantages or disadvantages of our relationship with it, from the profound silencing of all our normal frameworks of thought, feeling and action, and this to achieve the new order of involvement with reality which brings the axiological quality. The citizens of the new societies without beliefs will need to learn to cultivate the three general attitudes of the quality we have called lay silence. Whoever learns to practise lay silence will acquire the axiological quality which will make him competent to create the postulates and projects which must govern societies which, in the decisions of the present, cannot repeat the past. These postulates and projects will govern our scientific and technological creations and what we seek to do with our lives and the entire life of the planet. Whoever practises lay silence until achieving the axiological quality will reach a higher level of ethics, social and political commitment and human sensitivity. When the scientist works on science, he is in silence; when he stops working on science, he leaves the silence and the quality which comes with it. When the artist creates or is imbued with beauty, he is in silence; when he returns to daily life, he leaves the silence. In the new cultural circumstances, the doors of silence are opened from reason, not from beliefs. Those who are engaged in opening the ways of silence from beliefs, close them. Our societies cannot live from beliefs because they fix everything to a past which cannot and must not be repeated. The innovation societies have to live not from beliefs, but from postulates and future projects. We have to learn to practise silence straightforwardly, without the support of beliefs. Whoever does this learns to achieve the axiological quality and is transformed in that quality. 255
The group urgency of lay silence
The hitherto unknown factor of the new situation is that we have to learn techniques of silence for the appropriate management of societies, these new dynamic societies of innovation. These lay techniques of silencing, techniques which will be unable to rest on any type of beliefs, will have to be distilled from wherever they are found. Only the great religious traditions of humanity devised these techniques. The procedures will need to be drawn from the traditions, emphasising their independence of beliefs and of belonging to religious organisations. In fact, the formulation of the general law of quality, which is the general law of silencing, has been drawn from a study of the silencing procedures of the religious traditions of humanity. I must insist, societies which cannot repeat a verified and guaranteed past, which have to decide the present by making quality projects for the future, have to find procedures for acquiring the quality which will enable them to create a desirable and worthy project for the group future. The learning of techniques of silencing will have to be a subject of study for all human beings in the future, especially those who hope to be leaders in the new society. This silence will be a totally lay silence, as it will be independent of any table of beliefs and any type of religious belonging. The cultivation of quality and silence can have two clearly differentiated aims. It can be aimed at practical performance or can be used to penetrate profoundly into the absolute experience of reality. In the new societies, everyone will have to learn to practise silence and cultivate quality, for reasons of survival, for scientific, technological, organisational efficiency, for ethical and axiological reasons; to be capable of creating innovation, of whatever kind; to adapt easily to new situations; to achieve stability and mental balance; to be capable of constructing and giving assent to postulates and projects of quality. For the cultivation of quality and silence with pragmatic ends, it will be sufficient to practise IDS using procedures which are proposed by the sciences, the arts or drawn from the great religious traditions of humanity. But it will have to be done explicitly, without being carried away by the immediacies of a life ruled by desires and fears. To penetrate into the absolute experience of reality IDS must also be used, but with greater refinement and dedication. To do this requires the study and practice of the various procedures and methods proposed by the traditions and spiritual masters of humanity. 256
The group urgency of lay silence
There is no defined frontier between these two uses of IDS, one can pass from one level to the other with relative facility. In these new circumstances both cultivations are lay and cannot rest upon religions, strictly speaking, nor on beliefs or belonging, although they do inherit the wealth of the humanitys traditions of wisdom in relation to all that refers to the quality and silencing. Quality and silencing are two facets of the same reality. Our inheritance, which must be deeply appreciated, is the immense legacy of all the traditions of wisdom and silence of humanity. From them we can learn how to initiate ourselves into this wisdom which is quality and silence, how to grow in it, how to use it in order to have an adequate life on this earth and how to use it to penetrate, as deeply as possible, into that other absolute dimension of reality which opens with our specific quality and the possibilities of silencing which are characteristic of it.
257
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
We have ended up with a radical crisis of religions. In some places this appears more extreme and in others it has a more mitigated form. But it is no longer a case of symptoms of crisis, in many places there is a real collapse. We have ended up in this situation not through group evil, nor through the effect of a great degradation in customs. We are no worse or more perverse now than our forebears, who had religion without crisis. If the crisis in religion were due to degradation in customs, the problem would be less and, also, it would be a comfort to those who love the old religious traditions, their forms, their rituals, their organisations. To attribute the crisis in religions to the degradation of culture is a worthy manner of evading the serious problem which has come upon us. If our actions are more damaging than those of the generations which preceded us, both for humanity and for the animals, plants and the entire planet, it is no so much because of our greater evil as due to the power of our science and technology. Our forebears, if they did not do the damage which we ourselves are doing, it was because their technological means were inferior, not because they themselves were better. Our forebears were as little wise as we are, and we are of as little quality and wisdom as they. They were pitiless predators, as we ourselves are, except that our instruments of depredation are much more powerful. We have not ended up where we are, with respect to the religions, through our evil, but through the evolution of our culture. The evolution of our culture in the last 500 years has led us little by little to where we are. We have not sought to lead culture to this point, it has been the logic of the culture which, step by step and implacably, has brought us to where we are. It has been the evolution of our knowledge and our technology which have changed our lives slowly, but without pause, until leading us into the societies of innovation and change. It is this knowledge and the forms of life which it brings with it, which distances us from the systems of group programming through sacred narrations, myths, symbols and rituals and distances us from life systems articulated on group beliefs and, also, distances us from religion. It is already for centuries that we have been walking, knowing or not knowing, in the direction to where we are. We are where we are, and there is no remedy for it, nor is it possible to go back. It is useless then to yearn for what we have lost. We have lost it and we have to be aware that we shall never 261
recover it. And it is reasonable to think that those regions and places which still have not lost the religions, irremediably will lose them, unless we have the enormous misfortune of creating a permanent split between the developed countries and those which are fighting for development. Nor has it been our spiritual and human refinement which has led us here. In this we are like our forebears, neither more refined than they nor wiser. We have grown in scientific and technological knowledge, but in human quality and spirituality we are like our forebears. We cannot seek the cause of our situation there. The cause of our situation has been the general evolution of culture and its consequences. In this evolution, we may lament the collapse of the old, venerable religions, with their beauty, their grandness and their miseries, as one laments the death of a father or mother; but there is nothing to be done and it must be accepted. We must take up the noblest part of their inheritance and keep going forward. As the old agrarian myths say, life has to pass through death. The great crisis of the religions is enlightening a new life, as a mother does who dies in childbirth. Where we have ended up with the collapse of the religions is in fact a great gift to humanity. It is not a calamity, although for many it may seem to be and may actually be so, but for humanity it is a great asset. We have ended up, as the last stretch of a long path which will go on forward, with a spirituality without ambiguities, because now it does not have to programme the groups, free, not subject to fixed tables of beliefs, without exclusive and excluding orthodoxies; we have ended up with a creative spirituality, heir to the wealth and diverse spiritual tradition of all humanity. The cultivation of spirituality, in these new conditions, will not be easy, because what is not subjected to enshrined and accredited patterns is difficult, through our long inheritance governed by enshrined patterns. What must be governed by quality, with no more criteria than the quality itself, is arduous, subtle and difficult, for the poor living beings that we are. We have had the habit of seeking and finding in religion firm protection for this life and for the other. The new form of cultivation of spirituality leaves us without any protection. Spirituality does not claim to offer protections, but to eliminate them. We must ourselves construct the protections for our daily life, with our own means and with the quality which, as persons and groups, we have attained. Thus it emerges that the new way of cultivation of spirituality is an inestimable gift and a need, given the new cultural conditions, so needful of quality. 262
Conclusion
In the pre-industrial societies quality and spirituality were expressed in the mythical and symbolic programme which structured thought, feeling, organisation and action for the people. This, in the West, we called religion. It was expressed in those programmes and, in doing so, guaranteed them, made them solid because they were sacred, and their sacred nature fixed them, made them resistant to change and possible alternatives. Our situation is different; for us, quality and spirituality will have to be the humus from which to nurture and grow the axiological postulates which will govern our lives and the group projects which will lead all our scientific and technological creations. Speaking in the old and venerable mythological manner of our forebears, we could say that we must give thanks to God for our situation.
263
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
It would be very difficult to offer a bibliographical compilation able to show all the sources of this long itinerary of study and reflection. Therefore, because this writing tries to be a compendium of ideas already explained in my previous works, what I offer is a list of these writings. The main works include extended bibliographies. Anlisis epistemolgico de las configuraciones axiolgicas humanas. La necesaria relatividad cultural de los sistemas de valores humanos: mitologas, ideologas, ontologas y formaciones religiosas. Salamanca. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. 1983. La religi que ve. La gran transformaci de la religi en la societat cientfico-tcnica. Barcelona. Editorial Claret. 1991. Indagacions sobre el futur. Barcelona. Centre catal de prospectiva. 1991. Proyectar la sociedad, reconvertir la religin. Los nuevos ciudadanos. Barcelona, Herder. 1992. Conocer desde el silencio. Salamanca. Sal Terrae. 1992. La persona y el grupo en un contexto dinmico de innovacin. En: Recio, E. M. y Lozano, J. M. (eds.): Persona y empresa. Libertad responsable o sujecin a las normas. Prlogo Duran Farell, P. Barcelona. Editorial Hispano Europea. 1994. Pgs. 99-141. Viento de libertad. Lectura del Evangelio desde una sociedad sin creencias. Barcelona. Hogar del Libro. 1994. Religin sin religin. Madrid. PPC. 1996. Els trets duna religiositat viable en les noves condicins culturals de les societats industrials. En: AA. DD. Religions de la terra i sacralitat del pobre. Aportaci al dileg interreligis. Barcelona. Editorial Claret. 1997. Pgs. 63-107. 267
El cam interior. Mes enll de les formes religioses. Barcelona. Helios. 1998. Formacin de equipos para la creacin de conocimiento y la innovacin. En: Gell, A. M (Coord.): Homo faber, homo sapiens. La gestin del capital intelectual. Barcelona. Ediciones del Bronce. 1999. Pgs. 111- 125. El camino interior ms all de las formas religiosas. Barcelona, Ediciones del Bronce. 2001. La innovacin axiolgica y su aprendizaje. En: Gell, A. M. y Vila, M. (coord.) El arte de innovar en la empresa. Barcelona. Ediciones del Bronce. 2001. Pgs. 133-171. La idea de Du en les societats de la tecnociencia. En: Ars brevis. Anuari de la ctedra Ramn Llull, Blanquerna, 2002. Pgs. 255-269. Obstculos al cultivo de la espiritualidad en las sociedades europeas del siglo XXI. En: VV. AA. Obstculos a la espiritualidad en las sociedades europeas del siglo XXI. Primer Encuentro en Can Bordoi. 30 agosto-4 septiembre, 2004. Pgs. 135-171. Hiptesis interpretativa de la crisis de las religiones. En: Crisis de la religin en Europa: Nuevo lugar teolgico? Alternativas, ao 12, n 29, enero-junio, 2005. Managua. Editorial Lascasiana. Pgs. 51-75. La espiritualidad en una sociedad laica, sin sacralidades ni creencias. En: VV. AA. Sociedades de conocimiento: Crisis de la religin y retos a la teologa. (Seminario de telogos y telogas 4-6 de abril del 2005). Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. Escuela ecumnica de ciencias de la religin. Pgs. 13-39. El ncleo antropolgico generador de religiones y la cualidad especfica humana. En: VV. AA. Qu pueden ofrecer las tradiciones religiosas a las sociedades del siglo XXI? Segundo Encuentro en Can Bordoi, 28 de junio- 2 de julio 2005. CETR Editorial. Pgs. 117-157. Carta a Dios, el gua de nuestro caminar. En: VV. AA. 50 cartas a Dios. Madrid. PPC. 2006. Pgs. 51-54. Crisis de las grandes religiones y resurgimiento de la espiritualidad. En: AA. 268
Bibliography
DD. Amb tota franquesa. Ressonncies dels Encontres a Can Bordoi. 26 de novembre, 2005, 11 de Febrer de 1006, 1 dAbril 2006. CETR Editorial. Pgs. 109-160. Mtodos de silenciamiento. CETR Editorial 2006. Los mitos y los smbolos en las nuevas circunstancias culturales. En: Corb, M. (coord.): Lectura simblica de los textos sagrados. Tercer Encuentro en Can Bordoi, 6-10 de junio 2006. CETR Editorial. Pgs. 39-79. Ms all de los lmites: meditaciones sobre la Unidad. Mallorca. Bubok, 2009. In colaboration: Corb, M.; Comas, C.: Mite i fe cristiana. En: AA. VV. Teologa i vida. Barcelona. Editorial Claret. 1984. Pgs. 51-76. Corb. M.; Castieira, A.; Ribera, R.: Valors per a una nova societat. En: Idees. Revista de temes contemporanis, n 6, abril-juny 2000. Pgs. 45-53. Corb, M. i Ribera, R.: Inters, distanciament, silenciament. En: Idees. Revista de temes contemporanis. n 13 Gener-Mar. 2002. Pgs. 109-123.
269
THE AUTHOR
Dr. Mari Corb (born in 1932, Spain) is an epistemologist, Ph. D. in philosophy and theologian. He has been professor of Social Sciences in ESADE (Business Admnistration & Law University in Barcelona). Since 1999, Corb is head of the Center of Religious Traditions Studies of Barcelona (further information: www.cetr.net). As a researcher, he has studied the ideological and religious consequences of the transformations generated in new global societies.
Among his published works we highlight: Religin sin religin. (PPC. 1996), Proyectar la sociedad, reconvertir la religin (Herder, 1992), El camino interior ms all de las formas religiosas (del Bronce, 2001), and Hacia una espiritualidad laica (Herder, 2007), now available in english (Verloc 2010).
271
e are facing one of the most profound mutations in human history, a mutation which is forcing us to be aware that we have to construct our systems and ways of life for ourselves. Constructing while rapid and frequent changes pass through societies of continuous innovation. To attribute the crisis in religions to the degradation of culture is a worthy manner of evading the serious problem which has come upon us. To be able to guide our future we must investigate what is happening and, also, the consequences which arise in all the fields of our life from the economic, social, cultural and religious events which are taking place before our eyes. We have to study what is going on in our societies in order to calibrate what is happening to the language of the religious traditions of the past and all its age-old legacy. The cause of our situation has been the general evolution of culture and its consequences. In this evolution we must take up the noblest part of their inheritance and keep going forward. Where we have ended up is in fact a great gift to humanity. It is not a calamity, although for many it may seem to be and may actually be so, but for humanity it is a great asset. We have ended up, as the last stretch of a long path which will go on forward, with a spirituality without ambiguities, because now it does not have to programme the groups, free, not subject to fixed tables of beliefs, without exclusive and excluding orthodoxies; we have ended up with a creative spirituality, heir to the wealth and diverse spiritual tradition of all humanity. Thus it emerges that the new way of cultivation of spirituality is an inestimable gift and a need, given the new cultural conditions, so needful of quality.
ISBN
9 788493 773700

BOOK Spirituality Sinblanco

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

BOOK Spirituality Sinblanco

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Mari Corb

TOWARDS A LAY SPIRITUALITY

TOWARDS A LAY SPIRITUALITY

TOWARDS A LAY SPIRITUALITY

Text: Mari Corb Cover: Calderuela (Soria, Spain). Llus Valls-Areny

Desing: Verloc. Gabinete Creativo Editorial.

Legal deposit: ISBN: 13-978-84-937737-0-0 Printing: Publidisa

Towards a lay spirituality

The fundamental condition of our species:

The crossroads, a birds eye view

Towards a lay spirituality

Towards a lay spirituality

Towards a lay spirituality

The fundamental condition of our species:

CULTURAL MODELS OF THE HUMAN SURVIVAL

The fundamental condition of our species:

Culture, a biological invention

The fundamental condition of our species: being a cultural organism

Towards a lay spirituality

Culture, a biological invention

Towards a lay spirituality

Culture, a biological invention

Our specific quality

Towards a lay spirituality

The construction of a viable human nature

Culture, a biological invention

Towards a lay spirituality

The fundamental condition of our species:

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Method of analysing the structure of mythical systems

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

The structure of the hunter/gatherer cultures

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

The structure of the horticultural society cultures

Towards a lay spirituality

In the Maya-quich mythology

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

In the Desana mythology

Towards a lay spirituality

In the mythology of the Marind-anim

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

In the Wemale myths and rites

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

In the Aztec mythology

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

Towards a lay spirituality

In the Inca mythology

Cultural structure in pre-industrial societies

In the Kanaka rituals

Towards a lay spirituality