Theos-Talk Archives (June 1994 Message tl00045)

This is by Brenda Tucker and is the last Part, Part 4, to a 1991
speech.


Can monsters be caused by internal forces?  Or do they only exist
without?  Is the outer monster caused, created and projected by
internal forces?

This is not a simplistic question.  There is no either/or answer
to this question.  This type of question is the reason why
physics has turned to chance as an influence in causation.
Probability is being discussed rather than laws.  The scientists
ask what can chance produce?

A monster is known as a life-threatening force.  It may produce
the death of the ego.  If there is a state of bliss beyond common
realization, so it necessarily follows that monsters exist in a
realm beyond our ordinary senses.  Nicety nice, saccharine-
coated, well-meant children's publications overlook this.   They
prefer to keep the monsters hidden and subsequently the monster
in every child becomes more deeply buried in the unconscious. By
not equipping the child with practice exercises, the child may be
rendered helpless in the face of his worst anxieties.  So we
should show children ways to overcome the monsters in life.

A monster is depicted as a life threatening force.  It is a very
real and important part of childhood.  A child should even know
himself as a monster of which he can then gain mastery.  Without
this, he remains helpless with his worst anxieties.  It is better
not to have the monster lie hidden in the unconscious.

The Senoi people of Malaysia, as researched by Patricia Garfield,
are reported to have no neurosis and psychosis existent among
them.  They are taught that they can only be hurt if they run.
They are also told that they can control the actions in dreams.
They must not flee, but must advance and confront any threatening
creatures.  They can ask spirits or friends for help.  They can
kill or befriend a monster, but in either case they learn
confronting and subduing, even to the point of requiring a
gift from the monster.  The gift is something that is then brought
into waking consciousness, a poem, story, song or dance, a design,
painting or some other beautiful thing, even something useful like
an invention or a solution to a problem.  The gift is something of
value by social consensus.

The Miss Muffet nursery rhyme is an example of the opposite
encounter in which Miss Muffet tries to flee.  As Miss Muffet
gets older, the very essence of spiderness lives within her for
she has reacted by running away.

When we recognize life as being like two sides of a single coin
containing longing or desire and fear or repulsion, (also life
and death) and when we recognize that we are being bound by
desire (or fear) and are only capable of seeing the outer form,
then we are on the road to learning the need for an insight,
something present only in eyes unclouded by longing or fear.
(See Verse 2, TAO TE CHING.)

In both forms of attachment, it is desire which prevents the
successful communion with God, and the successful use of
knowledge in dealing with our conflicts and rewards.  Desire only
exists in the duality of an object and subject.  Desire for
oneness is the highest and noblest human goal, and it is also the
source of our deepest frustration.  Any attempts at making known
the unknown are self-defeating.

If you present specific problems to the unconscious, and then
wait for the solution to return from the unconscious, you are
making use of both aspects of the self.

So do you want to learn about the divine fool or the wise man?
Even the Tao is characterized as less!  Verses 45 and 14.
Buddha, Socrates, and Christ were rebels and eccentrics.
Socrates realized he knew nothing, and gained through recognizing
his own ignorance (verse 71)

Verse 45

Great accomplishment seems imperfect,
Yet it does not outlive its usefulness.
Great fullness seems empty,
Yet it cannot be exhausted.

Great straightness seems twisted.
Great intelligence seems stupid.
Great eloquences seems awkward.

Movement overcomes cold.
Stillness overcomes heat.
Stillness and tranquillity set things in order in the universe.

Verse 14

Look it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable;
Therefore they are joined in one.

*From above it is not bright;
*From below it is not dark:
An unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
The form of the formless,
The image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it and there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the ancient Tao,
Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.

Verse 71

Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.

As Christ said, "Why callest thou me good?  There is none good
but one, that is God."  Each of these three wise men: Buddha,
Socrates, and Christ, taught selflessness and humility and so
does the TAO TE CHING, but they were not able to accomplish their
goals without renunciation.  Christ spent 40 days in the
wilderness, Buddha gave six years of life as an ascetic before he
sat down with an absolute determination to gain enlightenment or
never to rise again from the spot.  Mad men in nursery rhymes
have been condemned to foolishness - gone out to sea in a bowl,
let out of hell, caught fishes in other men's ditches.
Similarly, wise men of the Tao go unmurmuring to places men
despise, want the unwanted, and study what others neglect.  See
Verse 64 from Part 3, and Verse 8 below.

Verse 8

The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In business, be competent.
In action, watch the timing.

No fight: No blame.

It's the Knight of Faith who can catch the uncatchable, much like
Simple Simon fishing in a pail. Have you seen the Zen person
fishing in a gourd in a painting?  Are these really our clues on
how to grasp the ungraspable, trap the infinite in a finite
place?  Or are they a final tribute to sickness which inspires
the determination to persevere to the very end?

Rhymes act as a bridge from the I-Thou relationship to the I-it
relationship with the world.  It is a child's first formal
education into the structured, established, and regular
conventions.  A bridge between the unconscious or preconscious
state to the waking consciousness of an adult.  Rhymes seem to
refer collectively to an original, but lost, state of psychic
wholeness.  They may be of help in depicting a state's location
in the unconscious, or in describing a loss, and likewise helpful
in indicating the path to regaining what has been lost and
achieving the return to integration.

IF nursery rhymes are for early childhood, the TAO TE CHING is
right for our midlife, an initiatory experience founded in
consciousness and reaching toward the unknown.  Midlife is the
time of life when desire for action and the desire for
intellectual and physical powers have passed their peak and are
starting to weaken. (Verse 41.)  Great powers come late, great
music is soft sound.

Verse 41

The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and
   again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.

Hence it is said:
The bright path seems dim;
Going forward seems like retreat;
The easy way seems hard;
The highest Virtue seems empty;
Great purity seems sullied;
A wealth of Virtue seems inadequate;
The strength of Virtue seems frail;
Real Virtue seems unreal;
The perfect square has no corners;
Great talents ripen late;
The highest notes are hard to hear;
The greatest form has no shape.
The Tao is hidden and without name.
The Tao alone nourishes and brings everything to fulfillment.


In order for the world to achieve unity, the East must maturely
face the west and vice versa.  An integration of the two
traditions is first taking place at a microcosmic level,
individually in the lives of people in both worlds.  Krishnamurti
sees this transformation as the only lasting revolution.  If
inner transformation involving psychic integration can be
accomplished, the individual avoids the difficulty of temporary
symptomatic learned solutions.

TAO TE CHING and nursery rhymes are directed toward the psychic
wholeness of the individual.  They are a coming together of Yin
and Yang, God and man, adult and child.  Verse 54.

Verse 54

What is firmly established cannot be uprooted.
What is firmly grasped cannot slip away.
It will be honored from generation to generation.

Cultivate Virtue in your self,
And Virtue will be real.
Cultivate it in the family,
And Virtue will abound.
Cultivate it in the village,
And Virtue will grow.
Cultivate it in the nation,
And Virtue will be abundant.
Cultivate it in the universe,
And Virtue will be everywhere.

Therefore look at the body as body;
Look at the family as family;
Look at the village as village;
Look at the nation as nation;
Look at the universe as universe.

How do I know the universe is like this?
By looking!

This cryptic, paradoxical language in the world's religious
teachings lure us beyond the sensible world into the sea of the
unconscious where dwells the Tao.  To get there, we are forced to
let go of the safe, familiar haven we know and plunge headlong
into the abyss, the wilderness.  We there encounter adventures
and horrors unimagined before we meet the Tao.  Paradoxically,
the end of the search must be our own extinction, death is
required before the secret may be found.  See Verse 16.  Christ
instructs us to "be perfect, even as God is perfect for he maketh
his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjust."

Verse 16

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches
their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.


Our swimming lessons before we enter the sea of the unconscious
are found in mystical literature of many cultures.  So perhaps a
good piece of advice is "Not one and not two."

The character (written form) of the Tao (in its original form) is
a "head" signifying the beginning.  The second type of character
used is a symbol for "going," also viewed as a "track."
Underneath the characters is the presence of a sense of "standing
still." (This symbol is omitted in the later way of writing.)

A track, though fixed itself, leads from the beginning directly
to the goal.    Tao, though motionless, is a means for all
movement and gives to movement its laws to follow.

Jung describes the Tao as to go consciously, the conscious way.
(These are two distinct characters.)  The ancient sages knew how
to bridge the gap between consciousness and life because they
cultivated both.

In Confucianism, Tao is interpreted as the "right Way", the way
of heaven and the way of man.

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, too, portrays the body activated
by two psychic structures: anima and animus.  In this sense they
both become evident at death: Anima is described as an energy
that is linked with body processes, sinks to earth and decays.
Animus, the higher soul, rises in the air, still active and then
evaporates in ethereal space or flows back into the common
reservoir of life.

The solar plexus is the anima abdomen, while animus dwells in the
eyes.

The downward flowing life-process, the anima, and our passions
will force animus into its service.  To this extent then, the
intellect directs itself outward and both anima and animus leak
away.  The result is that life consumes itself.  However there is
a creation of new beings in which life is seen to continue.  The
original being externalizes itself and is made by things into a
thing itself.  Death results.  On the other hand, if the ego
strives upward in spite of a process of externalization, the
energy of anima-animus can be maintained (due to sacrifices).
However, without this aspiration, involution is still progressing
until death, and when this unaspiring life enters a new womb, it
begins life as a devil.  There is a new life fed and created by
the previous imaginings of thingness.

If a person can set going the backward-flowing energies, anima is
mastered by animus, and the liberation of the intellect from
eternal things occurs.  This results in illusion having no
energy.  The ego remains alive after death as the energy has not
been wasted on the outer world.  These people have created within
the monad a life-centre independent of the body.  This ego is
like a god.  And even though invisible, it can survive as long as
the inner rotation of the center continues.  It can even
influence men after death, inspiring them to great thoughts and
noble deeds.  The limitation is that these beings continue with
their personal lives and are subject to space and time.

Immortal life is found through the Golden Flower alone.  Here
there is an inner detachment from all entanglement with things.
At this stage the ego is transposed.  He is no longer limited to
the monad.  He penetrates the magic circle of duality of all
phenomena and returns to the undivided One, the Tao.  In Taoism,
traces of the individual remain as the Golden Flower.  In
Buddhism, this state of return is connected with a complete
extinction of the ego.

This closes the Book of Consciousness and Life, the HUI MING
CHING.