First: Some introductory proposals about the purpose of studying religious classics from the ancient word.
The approach we take to understanding ancient texts depends on how we understand the purpose of such study. I think we should approach them in a way that we might potentially profit from this study.
Many ancient texts that have come down to us invite a reader to view the world differently, to adopt a particular “worldview.”
My theory assumes a fundamental pluralism when it comes to world-views.
Everybody has a worldview, and there is no worldview that is the One True One.
But some are better than others.
I might possibly profit from an attempt to gain an in depth understanding of some particular worldview different from my own, because it might turn out that this one is better than my present one.
But this can only happen if, when reading some ancient text, I resist the natural tendency to view it from within my present worldview, implicitly assuming mine to be the correct one; in this case what I will notice is only the way it either fits well within my present worldview (in which case it is acceptable), or doesn’t fit well (in which case it is obviously wrong). I will not be open to learning anything new. I put myself in the best position to learn something new if I pay special attention to elements in the worldviews that I study that are most different from my present worldview, and attempt to temporarily “try on” this one.
There are two ways in which some particular worldview might be “better” than my present one:
(1) It might be ethically better, giving prominence to standards or ideals that (in Plato’s terms) are “more Good”, for me to try to live up to.
(2) It might be more suited to the unique traits that make up my particular personality. (E.g. today many people raised as Christians find some worldviews expressed in Asian religious classics more congenial to their own natural proclivities, while they can only experience the Christian worldview as something foreign, imposed from the outside.)
This approach to understanding ancient texts can be contrasted with a more usual approach. The more usual approach is to try to draw the text as quickly as possible into the worldview of the reader, to see how it appears when viewed within this worldview, and draw from it some immediately relevant message. This is “one-phase” interpretation. This was the traditional approach in communities which accorded great authority to some given religious classic.
I advocate instead a “two-phase” approach. In the first phase, we need to temporarily set aside our own taken-for-granted way of viewing the world, in order to temporarily imaginatively enter into a way of viewing the world likely to be foreign to us. This is just for the purpose of gaining a full understanding of what a given text meant to its original authors and audience, and need not involve in any way taking its message as authoritative or important as guidance for living our own life today.
A second phase involves weighing the merits of a given worldview as something I might internalize and take as a major basis on which to lead my life. For example, is it relevant to particular life-problems that I face, or to issues I regard as of important concern to me?
This second phase stands to be most potentially profitable if in the first phase I try to formulate a view of what the message of any given text might be at its most ideal best (the ideal “Platonic Form” of Buddhism, early Christianity, etc.) This again is to counter the tendency to unconsciously use our own present values worldview as a standard, which will tend to give us a negative view of anything that seems markedly different when seen in this way, resulting in caricatures of people whose views and values contrast with our own.
The reason for this separation into two phases is that what counts as good reasons to regard some given interpretation as a good representation of what a given text meant to its original ancient authors and audience, is very different from what counts as good reasons to regard an interpretation as something I myself should try to live my life by.
Worldview as evaluative context.
The most important aspect of a worldview is the way it serves as an evaluative context, serving as a context in which I see myself and evaluate myself; what in myself and my position in the world do I regard as a good basis for a sense of self-worth and meaning in life; what about myself and my position in the world do I feel to be a a basis for self-esteem or a source of embarrassment or humiliation?
Every normal person reaching adulthood who has been socialized into a particular social world begins from a position in which accepted social standards in this particular society have a very prominent place in their worldview as an evaluative context in which they see and evaluate their own lives. I use “social standards” as general term to include standards by which people in a given society evaluate their own lives and the lives of others, things that gain admiration and respect from each other, contrasted with things that are looked down upon and might be sources of embarrassment or humiliation. Since the general public cannot directly see into a person’s inner character, their internal virtues and vices, people tend to admire and respect others on the basis of things that are easily perceptible to the general public: good looks, wealth, status, influence, a mate and connections with family and a circle of friends, successful career, a relatively high material standard of living, and so on. These social marks of what it means to be “a successful person” are often not conscious, but are generally very powerful unconscious and implicit determinants of the way each individual sees him/herself and evaluates his/her life.
The power these standards have over each of us becomes most evident in cases where we feel them as imposed on us from outside, in which case they give rise to complaints about “social pressure,” seen as something very negative. “Alienation” happens in cases where felt emotional resistance to the power of social pressure becomes quite strong–although even in these cases effectively freeing oneself from its power is most often easier said than done.
Worldviews and Transcendence.
This is the context in which I think we should understand religious “transcendence.” That is, some religious worldviews give prominence to some “transcendent” element. To “transcend” means to “go beyond.” We should not understand transcendence primarily in a literal, spatial sense, as for example premodern Christian concepts of God as existing spatially “up in the heavens,” which we now regard as outer space to which we might travel in a space ship.
“The world” that “transcendent” religious ideals transcend or “go beyond” consists in social standards, enforced by social pressure. “Worldly” people tie their self-esteem and sense of meaning in life to “worldly” standards, often described as “materialistic.” “Otherworldly” worldviews give a prominent place to something pictured as fundamentally different from and superior to “the world”, i.e. worldly social standards considered as an evaluative context for self-evaluation.
It is in this sense that early Buddhist Nirvana, for example, although it is completely internal to a person and doesn’t literally and spatially “exist” anywhere outside a person, is an otherworldly “transcendent” ideal. It is an ideal that “transcends” the social world in the sense that it requires freeing oneself from Attachment to all worldly standards–Attachment which is after all the only source of the power that social pressure has over us. Early Buddhist picture Nirvana also as the “highest” most “sublime” state of a person, higher than all worldly achievements, which makes it a “transcendent” ideal in the sense described above.
Transcendence in Classics from the Axial Age.
“Transcendence” in this sense I think is the main characteristic of movements that arose in different parts of the world in what Karl Jaspers called the “Axial” period of human history, beginning about 800 b.c. and extending (I think) to about 600 a.d. (when the Islamic Q’uran was written.) This is the period when most of the world’s classic “scriptures” were written, which became foundational for subsequent civilizations in Europe and Asia for two millennia: Early Daoist and Confucian writings in China; the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and early Buddhist writings in India; the Bible and the Q’ran in the Near East; writings of Plato in Greece.
What these classics have in common is that they all urge readers to adopt a particular two-tiered world-view. One is a this-worldly tier, consisting mainly of social standards, measured in more or less worldly terms (wealth, status, respect, power and influence, material comforts). These scriptures are severely critical of the human tendency to take these worldly social standards of success as a basis for self-evaluation. They propose instead a second tier, fundamentally different from and superior to this worldly tier, which it urges people to take as the more ultimate focus of their concern and commitments.
Why should people do this? For basically “ethical” reasons, in the broad sense of “ethics” which one philosopher proposed, which includes questions about “what is valuable… what is really important…the meaning of life…. what makes life worth living… the right way of living.” (L. Wittgenstein). This is also how we should understand and evaluate the transcendent otherworldly tier of axial-age worldviews: not by whether otherworldly elements making up this second tier truly and objectively “exist” or not, but in accord with their practical ethical function, whether taking this second tier as an evaluative context has the effect of raising one’s life to a higher ethical level, in the broad sense of “ethical” just described.
One thing axial age writings have in common is that they involve worldviews which suppose that there is something radically deficient about human normalcy, if we think of “normalcy” as the ordinary state of human beings in a given society. Cast in religious terms, people in their ordinary state are in need of “salvation.” Axial age religions are in this sense what sociologist Max Weber called “salvation religions.” We only have to generalize this notion of salvation to divorce it from Christian ideas tied to the idea that “salvation” has to come from a divine source outside human beings. Early Buddhism and Taoism clearly assume that there is something radically deficient about human normalcy, but salvation from this state is a completely do-it-yourself endeavor.
Understanding Mythical Elements in Axial Age Classics.
One great difficulty for us modern people in understanding certain aspects of axial age writings is that many of them accord a prominent place to “mythological” imagery. “Mythological” here refers to images of entities and events imagined as existing in some realm beyond the visible universe.
This definition is deliberately general. Consider for example Thomas Jefferson’s proclamation that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This evokes mythological imagery: a picture in which a supernatural being existing in an unseen realm, a creator God, not only created mankind, but in doing so decreed that they should have certain specific rights, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is pretty serious stuff, since this mythological imagery served as part of the justification for the American Revolution, on the grounds that the English were violating the “God-given rights” of Americans. Whenever Americans appeal to “God-given rights” they are invoking a piece of Jeffersonian mythology.
A False Perspective: Myth vs. Science.
The term “myth” has taken on negative connotations today. To call something a “myth” is equivalent to calling it “false, untrue.” One of the main reasons for this is the rise of modern science, so that the scientific view of the world, based only on empirically testable factual observations, has become our main point of comparison. Taking science in this sense as the norm for what counts as “true,” any imagery giving a prominent place to entities and events for which no scientific evidence exists, can only be seen as “false.”
This view of things has become more prominent today because of long and fierce battles that have been fought for centuries between science and religion. In this case, these battles were fought specifically with Christian religion, a religion most often also associated with authoritarian church organizations trying to impose on people a way of life which many people today find to be foreign and repressive. In this context, arguing that traditional Christian beliefs consist simply in “myths” that science has now shown to be false, have become one way of undermining the authority and power of repressive church organizations.
I have no wish to promote or defend any particular set of beliefs, any particular worldview or way of life, Christian or other. In this respect I speak from the emphatically and radically pluralist point of view described above. What I am concerned with here is the question about how to properly understand and reason about the writings of some ancient writers, specifically a number of different axial-age writings that give a prominent place to mythical imagery.
My basic point is this: One basic mistaken tendency prevalent today is to take modern science as our main point of comparison and contrast. We assume that science has given us one way of seeing the truth about the world. We mistakenly think that axial age myths should be seen as competitors with our modern scientific view of the world. Belief in science automatically means rejecting all axial age mythology out of hand as simply false.
But I think science is the wrong point of comparison. This comparison makes the clearly anachronistic assumption that axial age myth-makers were engaged in something like the modern competition between science and religion (or that they were engaged in something like amateurish attempts to give explanations of natural events which science has now replaced.) Axial age myth-making was indeed an attempt to develop a radically new way of seeing the world. But they were clearly not doing so in competition with anything like fact-based experimental science.
My proposal is that, to understand them properly, we need to see axial age thinkers as proposing what I described above as an alternative “evaluative context,” in competition with conventional “worldly” social standards, as an evaluative context to use for purposes of self-evaluation. The function of myths was to serve as the second “upper” tier of a two-tiered worldview to use for purposes of self-evaluation.
In other words, mythological imagery present in many religious worldviews function the same way that transcendent Platonic virtue-ideals function in the Platonist worldview. Plato also thinks that is is a mistake to judge ourselves by imperfect “worldly” standards, standards belonging to the visible material/social world we see around us. We should try to formulate in our minds virtue-ideals that “transcend the world” in the perfection of their goodness. These world-transcending virtue-ideals thus serve as a “second tier” of the Platonist worldview, fundamentally different from and superior to the worldly “first-tier.” This two-tiered Platonist worldview has a fully rational basis, in the fact that Plato offers a “Socratic” reasoning method able to differentiate virtue ideals that are perfect in their goodness from those that do not. And one can understand this worldview and take it as a guide to living one’s life without associating it with any mythological imagery. But, after the modes of thinking of his time, he sometimes does present this second-tier of his worldview in mythical form, as when he says:
it is impossible that evils should be done away with … they cannot have their place among the gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this region. So we must try as quickly as possible to flee from here [enthende] to get over there [ekeise]. [Such] fleeing is becoming like God as far as is possible … God is in no way and in no manner unrighteous, but is most perfectly righteous, and nothing is more like Him than any one among us who becomes the most nearly perfect in rightness as is possible. (Theaetetus 176a-c)
This mythical imagery asks us to imagine two worlds, vaguely described as “over here” and “over there.” Evils will always be present in the world over here. But they are absent in another world existing over there, where there exist some gods, or a God, who is perfect in Righteousness. A good Platonist must try as quickly as possible to “flee” from this world over here, to travel to this other world “over there.” But this mythical image of fleeing from one world to another is immediately interpreted more concretely to mean forming one’s own character on the model of a perfect Platonic Form of the virtue of Rightness, thus “becoming as nearly perfect in Rightness as possible,” which is the same thing as becoming as God-like as possible.
This quote from Plato is one illustration of how common it was in the ancient world even for philosophers to invent myths useful for presenting certain aspects of their thought. This quote is also especially helpful in the present case because it explicitly first presents a mythical image of “fleeing from her to get over there” where the gods reside, but then immediately interprets this imagery to very concrete human practice of self-directed character formation on the model of a perfect Platonic virtue-Form. This is what we must try to do in other cases of religious mythology: Resist the temptation to take mythical elements out of their context connected with concrete human experiences and practices, and consider them independently and literally as claims about objective facts existing in some unseen parallel universe.
Some illustrations in Particular Cases
I want now to consider some more specific cases. This will involve giving very simplified interpretations explained in much more detail in essays under several headings in the main menu. I begin by a very detailed treatment of a specific case probably unfamiliar to most people today, origin mythology in a Chinese classic, the Daodejing.
The Daodejing
The Daodejing (Tao-te-ching), written down around 250 b.c., belongs to the earliest stage of a very diverse Chinese tradition called nowadays the “Daoist” (formerly “Taoist”) tradition. For convenience, and to distinguish the teachings of the Daodejing from the many and diverse later forms of Daoism, I call these teachings “Laoist”, after the legendary author Laozi (Lao-tzu). My proposals here are based on previous research in which I attempted a comprehensive treatment of all methodological problems involved in trying to recover the original meaning of the Daodejing (published in Tao and Method.)
Explaining Dao as “the origin of the world”
The Daodejing contains several origin myths, the most prominent picturing Dao as the origin of the world. Modern people, trained in “scientific” modes of thought, tend to take origin myths like this as literal accounts of the origin of the physical universe, competing with the accounts of modern astrophysicists. I propose the following as a better way of understanding Laoist origin myths.
Think of “the world” not as the physical universe but as the human social world, in the way people normally experience it. “The world” in Laoism is constituted mainly by what gets positive recognition and wields influence in society.
Yin and Yang.
The concepts of Yin and Yang form a helpful set of contrasts forming the overall context in which origin myths in the Daodejing need to be understood. At a later period in China, Yin and Yang became associated with an ideal in which these two contrasting concepts stand in equal balance with each other, a balance of yin and yang. But the view of the Daodejing is very different in this respect: Yin (associated with femininity) is always positive. Yang (associated with masculinity) is generally negative.
Dao is Yin. The central origin myth in the Daodejing, pictures Yin/Dao has having existed in the beginning. It “gave birth” to the world we see around us. But as the world developed it also become separated from its source. The world here includes human beings in their ordinary state, characterized by an attraction to a way of being based on Yang ideals. Laoist think that this natural attraction to Yang is what has driven all of us away from our ideal “origin” in Yin Dao. So the origin myth here includes a picture of a human ideal which urges people to reverse this normal course of things, and “turn back” from a social world dominated by Yang to recover this ideal “original” state in which Yin/Dao is valued most highly.
To understand all this one has to understand that in the Daodejing, Dao also represents an ideal state of mind, the goal of long-term transformative self-cultivation for the ideal Daoist (the Laoist version of do-it-yourself- “salvation”). Cultivating this state of mind means ridding oneself of the bad effects that attraction to yang has on human beings. So on a practical level, the above myth of origin and return-to-origin operates as an interpretation of these efforts at internal transformation whose goal is to end up with a state of mind pervaded by characteristics that appear yin and negative from a conventional yang-dominated point of view.
To explain in more detail.
The conventional mentality in society is governed by the fact that people usually value most highly and give all their attention to what stands out, draws attention to itself, seems exciting and desirable, appears organized and sharply defined, whatever gives recognition, status, and prestige, exercises great influence, gives a person power to prevail over competitors. These all belong to the yang category.
This conventional mentality is dominated by direct competitive striving for these things, avoiding and distancing oneself from their yin opposites, a set of contrasts which can be described in further detail as follows:
Yang attraction toward what stands out in the foreground of awareness, which causes people to ignore what is taken-for-granted in the background (yin)
Yang attraction toward excitement leads to being discontent with ordinary (”boring”) life (yin)
Yang attraction to things that appear ”solid”/worthwhile because they receive recognition and admiration, causes rejection of those aspects of one’s being that generally appear empty/worthless, or embarrassing (yin).
Yang direct striving for high-status, leads people to flee from anything which would make them appear as someone of low status in society.
Yang direct striving for power in society, leads people to avoid things that make them appear soft and weak (yin)
Yang direct striving to appear organized, articulate, together, leads people to avoid things that make them appear disorganized, inarticulate, untogether (yin)
Yin as the basis (“origin”) of everything valuable.
Laoists picture an ideal state of things, which reverses all this, an ideal in which everything influential in the world would have its origin in what appears yin from the perspective of this ordinary yang-dominated mentality. That is, ”the world” (and success, power, and influence in the world) is not by nature bad. It is only when people forget this ideal yin basis or origin, and pay attention to yang separated from yin, that success, recognition, prestige, and power becomes “branches without roots.” Dao is yin, and “getting Dao” requires willingness to reverse course and embrace what appears yin.
As someone paraphrased: “Man runs to escape what he has forgotten.”
Understanding Myths of Dao as world-origin.
The above ideas determine the basic practical meaning of sayings that picture Dao as ”origin of the world.”
That is, saying that “Dao is the world’s origin” is not an attempt to describe objective facts about how the world actually came about (competing with the “big bang” theory or other scientific theories). It describes what actually (in Laoist eyes) should happen. What should count as the source (or “origin”) of admiration, success, power, and influence in the world) should have its origin/basis in Yin Dao.
A pattern in several passages about Dao as origin:
In this pattern:
– One element pictures the world as having its origin in Dao
– Another element pictures the world (human society) as developing in a direction going away from Dao.
– Another element suggests the problems caused by this direct striving for yang (“turning one’s back on yin, embracing yang”), and/or suggests the benefits of ”turning back” to yin/Dao, (becoming successful in the world, branches well-rooted, by restoring yin to its proper place as origin/basis of yang)
Here are some examples:
Chapter 42.
Dao [as world-origin] produced…. the thousands of things (the entire world).
Everyone turns their back on Yin and embraces Yang [moves away from the ideal “original” Yin/Dao, because it is feels too weak/soft/”feminine,” and embraces yang, connected with strength, status-competition, aggression]
What people look down upon: “orphaned,” “poor,” “destitute.” But kings use these in their titles [in order to present a self-effacing, humble (yin) appearance, King Chan might call himself “The Poor Orphan Chan”]
When people enlarge themselves they are reduced [yang boasting has the opposite of its intended effect]
When they reduce themselves they are enlarged [being self-effacing, (thus “turning back” to original yin-Dao which others turn their back on to “embrace Yang”) is attractive, and gains for a king more admiration, respect, and loyalty, thus exemplifying yang-shining “rooted in” yin-self-effacement, due to having “turned back to the Yin-“origin”]
[as a familiar proverb says]:
“A violent [yang] man will die an early death.” [One who lives by the sword will die by the sword. Yang violence will ultimately lead to defeat. Lasting and well-founded power/authority in the world cannot be achieved by force (yang), but needs to be rooted in Yin self-effacement]
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Chapter 25:
There was a chaotic something, yet lacking nothing
Born before Heaven and Earth
Alone.
Still.
Standing along, unchanging.
Revolving, Endlessly.
It can be thought of as “Mother of the World.”
I do not know its name,
One can call it Dao.. The Great One.
“Great” means “going forth”
“Going forth” means “going far away”
“Going” far away means “turning back.” [words in quotes rhyme in Chinese]
[The world has its origin in a “great” Mother-Dao (yin). Whatever is great in the world has its basis (“origin”) in Yin/Dao. Unfortunately, as things develop, they try to “go away” from Dao, too Yin. But to have proper roots, we need to reverse this natural gravitation toward Yang, turn around and “turn back” to an ideal original state, Yin/Dao.]
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Chapter 40.
Turning back is Dao-movement [reversing yang tendencies is central to the Laoist ideal]
Being weak [yin] is Dao-practice
Being is born of Nothing [whatever has true “being,” of real solid worth in the world, is based on something that feels yin-weak/nothing]
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Two more sets of ideas are necessary for a full understanding of all this.
First, the Laoist love of paradox.
People tend to strive to “shine” in society by presenting themselves as having commonly admired qualities. But one characteristic of sayings in the Daodejing is a love of paradox. Direct striving for some desirable X will have the opposite effect. “One who shows off will not shine”–a boastful person will turn people off, having the opposite of the intended effect. So the Daodejing says “He does not show off, so he shines.” Having a self-effacing (yin) manner will gain more long lasting admiration.
Some passages push this love of paradox to an extreme as when it gives the following advice how to achieve the Laoist ideal, as in “Recognize what is admirable, but cultivate what is embarrassing” (ch. 28)
I think to understand many of these paradoxes, the key is to understand that “embarrassing” here does not represent a Laoist judgement, describing some personal qualities that Laoists themselves actually regard as good cause for embarrassment. “Embarrassing” here refers to personal qualities that are likely to feel embarrassing because this is the way society looks at them. They appear the opposite of what is generally admired in the social environment. (not being pretty or handsome; stuttering rather than speaking smoothly; being a wallflower; being poor; etc.)
A second idea: Organic Harmony.
Behind this I believe, is a second idea, the central Laoist ideal of organic harmony. Ultimately, the idea is that every person is a unique package consisting of bodily appearance, personal qualities, particular likes and dislikes, natural impulses, talents, and abilities. Like any living organism, elements of this package left to themselves have a natural tendency to reach a balanced and harmonious integration of all these elements. This is what I call “organic harmony,” a harmonious integration of each person’s unique package that is the result of natural organic development.
For Laoists, the main obstacle to achieving organic harmony is pressure to live up to social norms and ideals, to exhibit commonly admired characteristics and avoid looking foolish by exhibiting characteristics commonly looked down upon. This results in a kind of self-alienation, disowning and repressing aspects of one’s life or personality that are looked down on in one’s society, in the effort to try to create a public persona that will gain respect and admiration of others.
Laoists recognize that this has a very powerful influence on the way each of us sees ourselves. It is very hard not to see ourselves the way others see us, which is why sometimes qualities that come naturally to a given person and might become part of a harmonious integration, are felt by that person as “embarrassing.” This powerful pressure to live up to social norms and ideals foreign to our natural self is what makes achieving the Laoist ideal–a very high level of organic harmony–extremely difficult. Laoists do not want to shy away from this difficulty or play it down. “Recognize what is praiseworthy but cultivate what is embarrassing” is more difficult in practice than it might seem, because it is not at all easy to identify with and cultivate qualities in ourselves that are more likely to bring us ridicule than admiration and respect. But this is what is required to overcome self-alienation and achieve the full self-identification which is part of the Laoist ideal of organic harmony.
Treat Laoist Organic Harmony as a Platonic Virtue-Ideal.
In accord with my overall theory of religions, I advocate treating organic harmony as a kind of “virtue” or human excellence. Like any virtue-ideal, there are possible ways of conceiving of and defining this virtue that are highly admirable, and others that are not at all admirable. It is easy to think of ways in which the ideal of “natural” organic harmony or self-identification can be badly conceived, so as to result in ways of being and living one’s life that are obviously not admirable. Our natural tendency might be to take this negative view of organic harmony if we are presently committed to some other way of seeing the world that contrasts with this one.
But, as in the case of other axial-age writings, we stand to learn most from Laoist writings about organic harmony if we first temporarily set aside our own ideas and ideals, get out of our present box, to imagine what it is like to be in the Laoist box, and try to construct in our minds a Platonic ideal of organic harmony, what this particular ideal would be at its ideal best (shown by its ability to withstand all questioning-by-counterexample). This would make organic harmony a “transcendent” ideal, an ideal that “transcends the world” in the sense relevant here if we are to regard making progress toward organic harmony in its most excellent form as what finally matters in life
This also makes sense of Laoist mythology, as follows. In the Daodejing, Dao is a kind of personification of the state of organic harmony at its transcendent best (its Platonic Form). Achieving organic harmony can thus be described as “getting Dao,” or “having Dao.”
“Turning back” to “get Dao” requires reversing natural human tendencies toward according most admiration and value to yang qualities. This means going against the world, to achieve an “otherworldly” ideal that “transcends the world” in the sense that it is fundamentally alien to the way the world usually works, and also in the sense that in Laoist eyes, it is vastly superior to the forces that usually rule the social world.
This is what is given mythological expression in Laoist mythological picture of world-origins, which depicts Dao as beyond the world and yet having given birth to the world, a superior original source of the world which the world has unfortunately degenerated from and become so distant from. Dao is an ideal origin which Laoist self-cultivation aims to recover by heroic efforts to counter the powerful and damaging effects of social pressure to prevent full self-identification. By setting these efforts in the context of a cosmic myth it presents turning back to world-transcending Dao as the momentous achievement it actually can be.
This interpretation of mythological elements in the Daodejing helps illustrate a particular approach that I think should be taken to mythological elements other axial age classics. My main point is that, to understand the meaning that Laoist origin-myths had for the original author(s) and audience, we have to understand how these myths were connected to specific kinds of experiences and practices: personal experience of organic harmony as something exceedingly wonderful in its most ideal form, certain long-term self-cultivation practices, freeing oneself from social influences damaging to organic harmony, and cultivating an ideal state of mind called Dao. Origin-myths involving Dao function as an interpretation of these experiences and practices, giving expression to the way Laoists perceived achieving the ideal goal of Laoist self-cultivation to be something of momentous “cosmic” importance. This perception was well-founded to the extent that the state of mind called Dao can be seen as representing the perfect otherworldly Platonic Form of the “virtue” of organic harmony.
We need to understand Laoist origin-myths as one part of this total package. Only then can we understand what motivated the obvious attraction these myths had for the original Laoist school-community. We need to have some idea of such motivation, otherwise making these myths an important part of the Laoist worldview can only appear to be a matter of ungrounded and incomprehensible “faith.”
All this is what is missed by the common habit of extracting mythological elements from ancient religions and treating them as “doctrines” whose meaning lies in their claim to represent literal truth about how the world began, which can be understood and evaluated entirely separately from their connection to experiences and practices to which they were originally connected.
As a comparison: This is something like a person studying the music of Beethoven who looks only at printed musical scores, without ever actually experiencing a performance of his music.
Some more brief illustrations in other cases.
I want next to give some further more brief illustrations of this general approach in the case of mythological elements found in several other axial age classics. Among other things, these examples show how common it was in the ancient world to create mythical imagery to represent the second-tier “transcendent” element of a particular worldview.
The Hindu Bhagavad Gita.
Mythical imagery in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita revolves around the figure of a world-transcending Supreme Being Brahman. Brahman is not a person, not a creator, and has no visible form, but those having advanced knowledge understand that all the visible human-like gods and goddesses of polytheistic Hindu religions of the time are in reality visible manifestations of the invisible Brahman, so that those worshiping these other divine beings are in truth (knowingly or unknowingly) worshiping Brahman.
Salvation in the Gita is pictured in mythological terms as merging into Brahman. All this needs to be understood in the context of its origin in a community of meditators . Certain experiences of intense meditative bliss were interpreted as union with one’s own Atman, one’s deeper Self, which is the same thing as merging with Brahman.
The whole complex of ideas connected with Brahman described above ultimately function as interpretations explaining giving transcendent meaning to the experience of meditative bliss. This was warranted insofar as this bliss was not just an occasional experience, but brought about a lasting internal transformation raising a person’s life to an ethically higher level of meaning.
Early Buddhist writings.
Early Buddhist teaching might seem at first unusual in the present context because of its lack of mythological imagery involving supernatural beings. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, in early Buddhist wirtings the experience of Nirvana is never pictured as union with any higher being.
Mythological imagery that occurs in early Buddhism has rather to do with reincarnation. In this picture, when someone dies who has not reached Nirvana by completely freeing themselves from Craving and Attachment, these two forces will act as magnets causing them to be born again into another world full of Suffering and Distress. This will keep happening until a person achieves the complete elimination of Craving and Attachment, which is the state of Nirvana.
In this overarching mythological picture, the present life people are living is pictured as just one episode in an overarching cycle of rebirth into suffering-filled worlds that has lasted thousands and thousands of years. The net effect of this mythological picture is to present achieving Nirvana not just a single occurrence in a person’s life, but as a very difficult, heroic, and rare “cosmic” achievement, freeing this person from a cycle of suffering-filled rebirths that everyone else is doomed to undergo, and that they themselves have been doomed to undergo in the course of thousands of past lives.
Plato.
Plato has a reason-based theory of Platonic virtue-Forms, which transcend the world in the perfection of their goodness. They are rationally known to be perfect by their ability to withstand all Socratic questioning by counterexample. Grasping these perfect Forms requires developing the ability to think in abstractions, since nothing belonging to the concrete world visible to the senses is perfect in its goodness. Grasping perfect virtue-Forms has a practical purpose for the ideal Platonist philosopher: He should take them as paradigmatic models on which to mold his character.
This is the experiential and practical context in which we should understand the following bit of mythological imagery in Plato’s Theatetus:
Theodorus: If, Socrates, you could persuade all men of the truth of what you say as you do me, there would be peace and fewer evils among mankind.
Socrates: It is impossible that evils should be done away with… they cannot have their place among the Gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this region. So we must try as quickly as possible to flee from here [enthende] to get over there [ekeise]. [Such] fleeing is becoming like God as far as is possible…
God is in no way and in no manner unrighteous, but is most perfectly righteous, and nothing is more like Him than any one among us who becomes the most nearly perfect in rightness as is possible.
The mythical imagery here depends on a contrast between (1) an incurably imperfect world “over here,” in which “evils can never be done away with,” and (2) a perfectly righteous realm “over there” inhabited by a perfectly righteous God. This serves as a framework for another image, and ideal in which a person is imagined as “fleeing” from the present realm “over here,” to travel to the other realm “over there.”
But Plato immediately connects this to the concrete practice of cultivating virtue: What does “fleeing” the earthly realm actually mean here? It means ceasing to evaluate oneself in terms of always-imperfect worldly standards, and engaging in self-directed character formation guided by an an ideal perfect Platonic Form of Rightness, and by this means becoming as nearly perfect in rightness as possible, which can also be interpreted in mythical terms as “becoming like God.”
Here again, Plato interprets the mythical imagery he has created by connecting it to concrete practice. We clearly mistake his meaning if we extract from this passage a literal belief in a supernatural God who is perfect in goodness, and consider this as a standalone theological “doctrine” which Plato believed in, and assume that we can understand what this imagery meant to him without understanding it in connection with the practice of cultivating virtue which is a central element in this passage.
Ancient Gnostic writings.
Many Gnostic writings are heavy on mythological imagery and narratives, but often contain very little in the way of direct allusions to experiences and practices which I think we need in order to fully understand what these myths meant to their original authors and audiences. This leaves us trying to work backward from the content of the myths to make some educated guesses about these issues. In another essay I proposed some ideas along these lines, in which the point gnostic myths are trying to make can be seen as an imagistic presentation of a rather extreme version of some themes in Plato. Here is a summary, based on mythological elements in The Nature of the Rulers.
“The Rulers” in this case are mythical personifications of what we could describe in modern terms as the great power that “social pressure” has to determine a person’s sense of self or “identity.” The ordinary, normal state of mankind is one in which social pressure has great emotional power in this respect, but this is so taken-for-granted that most people take no conscious thought about it, unless they come to feel social pressure as something negative, in which case they feel “alienated.” Gnostic myths are attractive to alienated individuals.
Gnostic myths are a very overt presentation of what I called above a “two-tiered” worldview. The upper tier is a “heavenly” world conceived of as completely separate from a lower tier, the visible world we see around us, ruled by a Supreme Being totally different from the inferior Judeo-Christian God who created this world and attempts to hold us captive in it. Most people are “asleep,” just seeing themselves the way this inferior God wants them to see themselves. The purpose of Gnostic myth is to “wake them up,” and realize their true identity as individuals belonging to this other heavenly world.
This resembles Plato’s two-tiered worldview, if we think of the evil “rulers of the world” keeping people captive as a personification of what in Plato’s view is concrete-mindedness, letting their mentality be dominated by perceptions of the world “over here,” visible to the senses, preventing people from making a mental ascent to the realm of perfect abstract virtue-Forms existing “over there.”
What Plato has, missing in The Nature of the Rulers, consists in a more detailed view of what it means to awaken to one’s “heavenly” identity. In Plato this is linked to cultivation of specific virtue, taking heavenly Platonic virtue-Forms as models to model their character on. In The Nature of the Rulers, a heavenly identity can be contrasted with a worldly self image, but otherwise it is seems to be given no more positive content.
The Pauline-Christian Savior Myth.
To represent mainstream Christianity, I treat here an interpretation of the savior-myth presented in the first eight chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
The central elements of this myth:
In their ordinary normal state, people are “not right,” falling fall short of the rightness they should have. But they are incapable of achieving this required state of rightness by their own conscious efforts. The central question is then: How can I be made-(truly)-right? In more traditional language, how can I be “just-ified,” rendered just/right?
Jesus Christ was a divine being sent from a God-in-heaven to save people from their otherwise inescapable state of not-rightness, by bringing them to a state of just-ification or true rightness.
The concrete historical events of crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are interpreted mythically as the key saving event, bringing people the just-ification they could not achieve by their own efforts. Jesus “died for our sins [our un-justified state], and rose for our just-ification.”
Generations of Christians have felt under an obligation to believe as an article of faith that they have been saved by Jesus the divine Son of God. But how did this belief begin? What motivated the first believers to believe this myth? What experiences was it connected to, and when the original believers took this myth as central to their worldview, what practical impact did it have on their lives? These are questions we need to try to answer in order to understand the meaning that Paul’s savior-myth had for these original believers. Here is a summary of my educated guesses, based on indirect hints given in Chapters 6-8 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans.
Everything here turns on a contrast between two kinds of experiences.
On one side lies Paul’s own previous experience as a dedicated member of the Pharisaic tradition of law-oriented Judaism. Here true rightness consists in following particular legalistic prescriptions. As Paul describes it retrospectively, he tried to do this by applying “human efforts,” i.e. conscious will-power.
Contrasted with this is the powerful experience of being emotionally carried away by what Paul thought of as Spirit-possession. But what we have to imagine here is being carried away more specifically by a powerful, emotion-driven passion for rightness. Although this is a passion for rightness, it is otherwise “irrational,” or non-rational, felt as a force driving a person from within, but outside and beyond that person’s conscious control. This was interpreted mythically as “God’s Holy Spirit” a divine force sent by God into a person.
Being carried away by a powerful emotional passion for rightness, became Paul’s standard for what true “rightness” consists in, true “just-ification.” Looked at retrospectively in light of this standard, Paul saw his previous Pharisaic efforts to achieve true rightness by conscious will-power as always falling short of this wholehearted emotion-driven passion for rightness. I think this can be described as half-hearted, “dutiful but reluctant,” efforts at keeping laws external to oneself. As Paul puts it, the great efforts he put into law-keeping always left part of him always resisting. To this extent, it lacked the emotion-driven wholeheartedness he associated with being carried away beyond conscious control by a Holy “Spirit.” Looking back at his Pharisaic existence from this perspective, his best efforts fell far short of this standard of true rightness. This is the reason for his idea that in their ordinary (un-spirited) state, people are “not-right,” and cannot bring themselves to a state of true rightness by their own efforts.
Pharisaic Jews will not be open to the saving experience of being carried away by spirit-possession so long as they continue to rely on their own rationally controlled efforts at law-keeping. They must disown or “kill” this whole way of being, as a condition for being open to the saving force of spirit-possession coming upon them beyond their conscious rational control.
In Paul’s imagination, this “killing” is the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion–interpreted in mythical terms as God’s condemnation of merely human efforts at law-keeping, which Jesus followers must participate in by “killing” the part of themselves wanting to rely on their own consciously controlled efforts at law-keeping. But in Paul’s mythology, Jesus’ resurrection is an essential part of the divinely-driven salvation-event. Jesus “died for our sins and rose for our just-ification.” If Jesus-followers disown and “kill” their previous rationally controlled efforts at law-keeping, Spirit-possession will bring them to “a new life in the Spirit,” participating in Jesus resurrection, which is the true kind of just-ification.
The practical point of all this is to represent the ethical transcendence of certain kinds of experiences of spirit-possession in early Christian communities. This is warranted insofar as these were not occasional events in a life left otherwise unchanged, but had a lasting transformative effect, leading to life informed by the virtue of an emotion-driven passion for rightness, in its most ideal Platonic Form.
I offer the spirituality of Dag Hammarskjold as perhaps the closest thing we have in the modern world of a worldview making clear the connection between some mythological imagery (e.g. wanting to be “an instrument of God”), and many experiential and practical aspects of Hammarskjold’s life. See further explanations in Paul, Hammarskjold, and Life in the Spirit
An Advantage in Studying Early Classics.
The religious classics commented on above are the closest we can get to the origins of various traditions represented. One big advantage is that mythological elements in these writings are connected to particular experiences and practices, a connection that I think is absolutely essential if we are to understand what these myths meant to members of their original communities of origin.
In the case of many traditions, at a later time, a primary concern emerged to develop clear criteria defining orthodoxy and heresy, clear publicly verifiable criteria for deciding who is and who is not a member in good standing of particular communities, who can and who cannot claim to stand in the tradition which took some particular religious classic as a founding “”scripture.” In this context the original connection of mythological elements with concrete human experiences and practices was lost, and mythological imagery became a set of doctrines, belief in which came to be regarded as obligatory criteria for membership in a given community.
It is unfortunate that this tendency has been exacerbated by the habit of modern academics to also take a basically doctrinal approach, assuming that doctrines defining orthodox belief are the essential element in any given religion. This unfortunate tendency has also been furthered in the case of introductory survey textbooks, which need relatively brief and simple summaries describing “What Buddhists believe,” “What Christians believe,” and so on.
It is in this context also that the original “ethical” function of mythological elements in axial age writings was lost, their connection with a particular kind of subjective transformation and a life-orientation based on ethically transcendent ideals. Mere intellectual belief in Hindu, Daoist, or Christian doctrine might be connected to any number of different basic attitudes and human interactions, some virtuous and some conspicuously lacking in virtue.
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