Quest Magazine

By David Lieberman

In the months following the attacks on the Twin Towers, most Americans felt that something momentous had occurred in our country. Time proclaimed in October that we were experiencing an awakening in America. And we were. Accompanying the shock, grief, and anger was a profound sense of our vulnerability. Through that experience of vulnerability, many of us opened to a more vivid awareness of life around us, becoming more connected to each other and to the world. Even in traffic, people seemed kinder to each other. Across the country, our hearts went out to the victims of the attack as well as to those suffering in other parts of the world. We displayed more compassion for each other, and for others in the world, than we had shown in a long time.

Our actions expressed our new awakening. During the fall, our society's day-to-day focus shifted awayfrom the frenzy of spending and entertainment. People stayed closer to home, enjoying simpler pleasures. We became more serious, clearer about our priorities, more aware of our connection to those around us.

One year later, we are once again largely preoccupied with the million little details of getting by and getting ahead. Shopping and entertainment have rebounded. But does the change that we experienced so deeply live on inside us? Or have we turned back to our pre-9-11 way of life? Or is something more subtle and complicated going on?

Clearly, we've moved out of our post-9-11 idealistic phase. Yet we haven't shifted back to our old attitudes, either. Rather, many of us remain loyal to the picture of the world animated by compassion and connection that 9-11 brought us. But while we still accept and admire that vision, we aren't living it. Our sense of connectedness, now clearly out of sync with the helter-skelter atmosphere of our workaday surroundings, is turning into a warm sentiment that we resolutely honor without any longer asking it to be real.

Actually, we were also in this position of being neither exactly connected nor disconnected in the fall of 2001, though most of us didn't feel it that way at the time. Here's what happened.

When the Twin Towers were attacked, each of us felt personally vulnerable—sensitized to the precariousness of our own lives—just as we do in the face of any emergency: sickness, loss of a job, death of a loved one. Yet this once, we faced a threat jointly with everyone else in the country. It was because we shared this vulnerability that our country, and to some extent our world, became common ground. In that sudden, new orientation, the disconnectedness that we usually feel seemed to become annulled. We saw each other as we hadn't before.

However, in most areas of our lives, we each continued, even then, to go about our daily businessapart from the rest of society. The commonality we felt didn't actually go beyond the specific arena of tragedy and threat.

Still, it felt like it did. In retrospect, what we felt, beyond the sharing of a single calamity, was not actually a true commonality and connectedness. It was a moral imperative, a powerfully felt "ought to be," a promise (rather than an experience) of the world returned to its wholesome state. We had made contact with the spiritual template that gives the world its deepest meaning. But we did not fully live it. Today, we still sense that deep spiritual connectedness off in the distance, but it remains an unfulfilled dream rather than a common experience.

What would satisfy us most deeply and stably is a connectedness that resides naturally in daily life, rather than a connectedness that we're shocked into by some extraordinary event. Yet as we have moved through the past several decades, we have either mistakenly believed that we already have that connection (as we did in the fall of 2001) or we have forgotten that such a possibility exists (as we did in the me-first decades of the 1980s and 1990s). At no time, however, have we faced the situation squarely: we do not have the thing we most deeply want.

The spirit of connectedness we felt in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks was undeniably real. But to continue to honor that spirit as the regime of daily life drifts in again is not so easy. On the other hand, it is just as difficult to attempt to somehow put 9-11 behind us and return to our old lives of focused self-interest. What can we do?

We can recalibrate our way of seeing. The two conditions, an immediate disconnectedness in our surroundings and a deeper promise of connection, are both always present, one more obvious than the other at any given time. What we must do is learn to see the underside of truth, disconnectedness in times of connection, connectedness in times of disconnection. In our present circumstances, as the tumult of daily life is again coming to monopolize our senses, we need to cultivate the ability to perceive our deeper commonality right within our disconnected milieu.

Amid the whizzing of cars, the whir of the Internet, the rush to make a sale, and the calculated smiles all of us don in our workaday roles, the truth of our connectedness is everywhere, but it is easy to miss. That is because it is not something we can point to and name. Rather it's sensed. We notice it as we pull back from the self-seriousness of our daily maneuvering to simply see ourselves and each other posing—in our roles, moves, and strategic intentions—rather than being those poses.

Seeing in this way is the means to grasp how things ought to be, even amid the surface appearances.This is what is required to fully take in the double nature of our social reality, to register society's underlying promise, the promise glimpsed briefly through the tragedy of 9-11, as the workaday world's disconnectedness comes to dominate our awareness once again. It is a prescription for truly getting on with our lives.

David Lieberman lives in Minneapolis, where he writes essays and memoirs. He is currently completing a book that examines changes in American values since the 1950s.

By Neil Douglas-Klotz

"A good tree brings forth good fruit, an evil tree brings forth evil fruit"

(Matthew 7.17)

When or if Jesus spoke those words, he spoke them in a Middle Eastern language, Aramaic. In Aramaic and in all the Semitic languages, the word for "good" primarily means "ripe," and the word for "evil" primarily means "unripe." When heard with Aramaic ears, those words might sound more like this: "A ripe tree brings forth ripe fruit, an unripe tree brings forth unripe fruit."

That change makes a world of difference. The tree is not morally evil, but rather unripe: the right time and place are not ripe for it to bear. The saying is an example from nature. Rather than imposing an external standard of goodness, the lesson has to do with time and place, setting and circumstance, health and disease.

Three Hundred Years of Diversity

According to the most current research, early Christianity reflected tremendous diversity. While we may think of modern Christianity as divided into many branches of Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox varieties, there were many more groups in the early "Jesus movement" within the first two hundred years after Jesus' life. People held very diverse ideas about what Jesus said and did. We could call all these people Jewish Christians or Christian Jews, but neither term identifies a single orthodox group or family of groups in the first or second centuries. Hundreds of different versions of Jesus' words, hundreds of "Gospels," existed in the first three centuries after his death.

The remembered words and acts of Jesus were first passed on by word of mouth. As they were gradually put into writing, their diversity began to diminish. The process by which an oral transmission turns into a written one always involves selection, and the selection by each group of followers determines that group's stand on important issues. In addition, those who could not read were largely left out of the decision-making process.

With many written Gospels in existence, the diversity within early Christianity continued for three hundred years, until the Roman emperor Constantine, newly converted to one variety of the faith, realized that a stable empire could not be built upon hundreds of conflicting interpretations of who Jesus was. In 325 ce, he ordered a council of bishops and theologians to gather at Nicaea (in what is now Turkey) to settle once and for all who Jesus was and what he said and did. The theological portion of the debate centered on whether Jesus was human, divine, or some combination of both. There was reportedly a certain pressure on all who attended: If Constantine did not get the agreement of opinion he wanted, he might withdraw his support from Christianity altogether.

Given that pressure, various compromises were made. For instance, since the sun god was very popular in Roman culture, the council declared the Roman "sun" day to be the Christian sabbath. Likewise, the council adopted the traditional annual celebration of the birth of the sun, around the time of the winter solstice, for the celebration of Jesus' birthday. The council also adopted the traditional symbol of the sun, the cross of light, as the official emblem of Christianity. Before then, the cross rarely figured in any Christian art or tomb decoration. Nor did images of Jesus himself generally appear before that time because of the Jewish Christian wariness of idolatry.

On the theological side, the council composed the Nicene Creed—another compromise that a number of the council members did not fully support but to which they subscribed in order to please the emperor. The creed answered the question of whether Jesus was human or divine with obscure words, describing Jesus as "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father." The creed also established the doctrine of the "Trinity"—the belief that God is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, a large number of Christians at the time believed that God is one and indivisible, as the Jewish scriptures taught and as the name for God, "Alaha," (meaning "unity") clearly states in Jesus' own tongue, Aramaic.

More Hidden Gospels

In the past hundred years, scholars have searched for a "hidden Gospel" of a different kind. By examining various textual strands in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they have posited hypothetical sources that the writers of these books used. The best-known, called "Q" (for the German word Quelle, or source) consists essentially of the duplicate portions of Matthew and Luke that do not also appear in Mark. The hypothesis runs as follows: Many scholars consider Mark to be the earliest written of the four canonical Gospels. If the authors of Matthew and Luke were not aware of each other's work, then the portions of these two books that do not use Mark as a source but that overlap must have used another source, which is Q.

Like the Gospel of Thomas, Q is proposed as a collection of sayings, aphorisms, and parables with very few actual events recorded in it. Many scholars now consider these early textual strands to be the products of various evolving communities of the Jesus movement. It is important to recognize, however, that this entire theoretical structure is based upon the assumptions mentioned above and that the theorists do not all agree.

But there is yet another story of a "hidden Gospel" that is rarely told. At the time of the council of Nicaea, the Persian Empire controlled parts of what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. In this region, a group of early Christians had established themselves securely by the time the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in the late first century. The early Jewish Christians in Persian lands were largely Semitic people who spoke Aramaic. Since the Persians were enemies of the Romans, and since the Romans persecuted the Christians, the Persians decided to let these Christians practice their religion in peace. These early Christians built schools, libraries, and places of worship in the Persian Empire, with Persian support, while the Romans were persecuting Christians in Europe.

During the first four centuries of the Christian era, Aramaic-speaking Christians in the Near East had copies of early scriptures that they could study and contemplate in their homes openly and without fear of reprisal. In the earliest days, those scriptures included the Gospel of Thomas, which was probably compiled in Syria and reflects a view of Jesus as a wisdom figure rather than a savior.

The version of the canonical scriptures these Jewish Christians used originated around Edessa in what is now eastern Turkey and came to be known as the Peshitta—meaning "simple, straight, and true." The Peshitta included the basic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—but in a form of Aramaic close to the dialect that Jesus himself would have used.

Since they spoke and worshipped in the same language that Jesus (or Yeshua) spoke, these Aramaic Christians believed (as their descendants still do) that the Peshitta is a version of the original Aramaic words of Jesus and that they have stayed very close in spirit to his original message. Although some Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christian groups accepted the decisions of the council of Nicaea, most soon broke contact with the rest of both Roman and Eastern Orthodox Christianity over the increasingly complex creeds and the forceful attempts to impose a single theology on all Christians.

The Mind of Middle Eastern Spirituality

The mind of a Semitic language speaker divides and makes sense of reality differently from that of a Greek or Latin speaker.

The Western view divides cosmology, that is, the way we view our place in the universe, from psychology, the way we view our inner life. It considers neither to be the stuff of historical or scientific facts. The view of a Semitic language differs from the Western one by reflecting the notion that there is a single community that includes everything from planets to the voices of the subconscious.

Jesus was an Aramaic speaker, as were the vast majority of his listeners. An Aramaic report of Jesus' words allows us, at the very least, to witness the view of a very early group of Jewish Christians about what Jesus taught. But more than that, it also allows us to participate in the richness of the Aramaic mindset, with all the ambiguities and paradoxes present in its spirituality, that is, in its experience of the sacred.

In addition, if we consider Jesus' words in Aramaic, we can participate in an important Semitic language tradition—translation and interpretation as personal spiritual practices, rather than as academic pursuits. The practices themselves have many layers and nuances.

To begin with, a single word in Aramaic or Hebrew can often mean several seemingly different things. For instance, the root word shem (based on the two-letter root ShM) can mean "light, sound, name, atmosphere." If we consider the admonition of Jesus to pray "with or in my shem" (usually translated "in my name"), which meaning is intended? According to Middle Eastern tradition, in the words of sacred scripture or the words of a prophet, all possible meanings may be present.

In the Middle Eastern tradition of translation and interpretation, the words of a prophet or mystic—stories, prayers, and visionary statements—challenge listeners to understand those words according to their own life experience. This tradition proposes that we can only fix the meaning of a sacred text at a particular time and place in relation to our own life experience. Such translation-interpretation not only bridges languages but also connects that which can be said in language and that which remains a wordless experience. It is a "translation" between our outer and inner lives, as well as between our lives as individuals and as members of a community. As we look at the major themes in Yeshua's teaching, we need to remember that the search in which we engage is for our own souls, rather than for some so-called objective notion of who Jesus was.

When we look at the sayings and stories of Jesus, as the Gospel of Thomas and the early Q strands of Matthew and Luke do, rather than at the later, theological claims about his person and status, we come face to face with a native mystic of the Middle East. Even the Gospel of John (considered a more theologized work by many scholars) reveals many elements of a Jewish mystical background. Although there has been much speculation that Jesus may have received the essence of his teaching elsewhere, in India or Greece for example, nothing in his prophetic or mystical teaching requires a source outside the broader traditions of the Middle East. They include not only various Jewish traditions but also those of Egyptian wisdom and other folk traditions of the time.

Why Undertake the Hunt?

Does this approach really make a difference to anything more than our personal spiritual experience, as important as that may be? I believe it makes an enormous difference in the way we view both each other and our place in the natural world.

Yeshua lived in a world where the sacred and the natural were part of each other, not separated by a wide gulf. When Western Christianity made the choices it did fifteen hundred or so years ago, it not only created theological creeds that limited the support for individual spiritual experience, but it also weakened the links between humanity, nature, and the divine. The tendency to limit diversity in spiritual experience resulted in a limitation and control of the natural world in order to advance what we call civilization. Now many of us have begun to question just what sort of civilization it is that has brought us to the brink of ecological disaster.

From a Middle Eastern point of view, if the divine is truly "Unity," then the evolution of Western Christianity must have been for a particular purpose. That purpose includes the difficulties it has had contacting its original, earth-based, Middle Eastern roots and the tragic results of those difficulties. Until now, the "hidden Gospel" has lain buried deep within the Western psyche, perhaps waiting for just this moment to be discovered. As we unearth this real treasure, we may discover the missing link to our collective Western soul and find the solutions to the problems that confront us in the world today.

Neil Douglas-Klotz is head of the Sister/Brotherhood of the International Sufi Movement and for ten years taught on the graduate faculty of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality, founded by Matthew Fox. This article is extracted from his new book The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spirituality of the Aramaic Jesus (Quest Books, 1999).

Andrew Johnson

Reprint from Quest 88 (November-December 2000): 213-7.

What is the meaning of "true home"? . . . We talked about a wave. Does a wave have a home? When a wave looks deeply into herself, she will realize the presence of all the other waves. When we are mindful, fully living each moment of our daily lives, we may realize that everyone and everything around us is our home. . . . A wave looking deeply into herself will see that she is made up of all other waves and will no longer feel she is cut off from everything around her. [Thich Nhat Hanh 1999, 40-1]

Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home—home! And this is my room—and you're all here—and I'm not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all. And . . . oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home! [Dorothy Gale in the 1939movie The Wizard of Oz]

Spirituality, Truth, and Reality

Spirituality can be viewed two ways. First, in a secular sense, it can be seen as an accumulation of one's higher values, virtues, and ideals. It is the higher part of self, superego or superconsciousness. Second, spirituality can also be seen in a sacred sense as the part of one's self that is connected to the universe, one's divine essence, or the perfume within the clay jar.

Truth

The first thing to be said about The Wizard of Oz is that it is true,absolutely and completely, or as Munchkins would say, "Morally, ethically,spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely . . . true."

There is a difference, however, between truth and facts. Although facts may be true, they do not always lead to Truth. Indeed, there are many instances where a series of facts have led to the wrong truth simply because of which facts were attended to and which were ignored. Although Holy Books may not always contain facts, they contain symbols, metaphors, myths, and dreams, which are signs pointing to Truth. One of the shortcomings of humankind in this past millennium is that we have attended to the sign, but not to what it is pointing to. We declare the stop sign to be holy and good while proceeding right through the intersection without stopping. And then we wonder how a good and loving universe can allow car accidents to happen.

Reality

The Wizard of Oz is very real. If you look deep enough, you see that there is no difference between reality and fantasy, between this and that, here and there, the idea and the thing. All are variants of the same reality. All are waves; temporary forms of the same water.

Thich Nhat Hanh (1999), the Buddhist mystic, describes two levels of reality that exist simultaneously. Phenomenal reality is the reality of things seen: that which we are used to experiencing, the waves, bits of reality coming into temporary form. Noumenal reality is the reality inaccessible to logic or the normal senses. This is the water, the essence of all things, the ground of allbeing, God, Allah, Jehovah, WaTonka, Brahman, Oz.

Universal or Collective Unconscious

The Wizard of Oz is true on a noumenal level. It is filled with symbols and metaphors, all pointing to other things. Carl Jung and later Joseph Campbell described how certain symbols and motifs appear in mythology, fairytales, stories, and religions throughout the world. According to Jung, these symbols are an expression of the collective unconscious, a concept similar to the akashic records mentioned by ancient mystics. It is a psychic cyberspace, aplace where every thought, feeling, and action of humanity is recorded. Whether or not we are aware of it, we are all connected, we are all online.

It was from the collective unconscious, a bubbling cauldron of archetypal images, that the Wizard of Oz was birthed into existence in 1900 as a book and later reincarnated as a movie in 1939. The movie, released the same year as Gonewith the Wind, was the product of five different directors and a myriad of studio writers, continually assigned and reassigned. Thus the film did not comefrom any one person, but was truly a collective.

Movies are like dream states in which archetypal images appear, Hollywood itself being the land of dreams. A movie is like a group dream, a conscious decision to suspend reality, alter our consciousness, and let the images play out in front of us (Nathanson 1991).

Bits of the collective consciousness of its time crept into the movie. The Wicked Witch of the West is a dark, controlling presence who seeks to dominate and control very much like Hitler. The Guards at the Witch's castle (the Winkies) are dressed in Russian-like costumes. Their "Yo-ee-oh" chant, which uses the interval of the fifth and distinctively low pitches, is reminiscent of the ancient liturgical music favored by the Russian Orthodox church (Nathanson 1991). The flying monkeys have helmets that look very much like those of Japanese imperial warriors.

Of Archetypes and Journeys

Dorothy's journey away from Kansas and back again represents a spiritual quest, an expedition to inner dimensions to face all aspects of the Self (Stewart, 1997). It is a move towards self-actualization, atonement or at-one-ment, whole-ness or holiness. It is a re-membering or becoming again one member with what we once were.

Dorothy is a prototypical hero very much like Jesus, the Buddha, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, or Arthur. Both Dorothy and Jesus (a) had questions regarding their parentage, (b) started out life as very common ordinary persons,(c) had to flee in the early part of their lives, (d) traveled a path with a clear beginning and unavoidable end, (e) battled evil in different forms, (f) found companions along the way to help with the journey, (g) had companions who were scattered in times of turbulence, (h) went through wilderness, forest, or desert, (i) found or possessed an inner power to help transcend their experiences, (j) eventually went home or returned to another dimension leaving sad companions behind, and (k) were not afraid to take a stand on moral issues or principles.

The First Lesson

As the story begins, we see Dorothy, a girl of twelve, running down a road. Her age is pertinent, as it is the end of childhood and the beginning of the transition to adulthood. In it two realms or ways of seeing meet: the dependent, intuitive childlike and the independent, logical adult.

Miss Gulch arrives at the farm. It appears that Toto, Dorothy's dog, has bitten her on the leg. She wants to take him to the sheriff to be destroyed. According to the law, Miss Gulch was right. One person's animal does not have the right to invade the space of another, much less bite that person on the leg. In accordance with the law, Miss Gulch had every right to seek restitution and demand that Toto be destroyed. But are right and wrong defined by the law?

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) has described six levels of moral reasoning: punishment, reward, social approval, law, social contract, and universal principle. Miss Gulch was operating at the level of right and wrong as determined by law. This is the level of the fundamentalist, the literalist, the insurance document. However, what is legal is sometimes not ethical or moral. Those who let laws, holy books, religious edicts, or religious figures determine right and wrong without questioning are abdicating their responsibility as human beings. For example, at one time, segregation and overt racial discrimination were legal. Thus it takes principled beings to challenge and shape the law.

Not being bad is not the same as being good. At first, Uncle Henry took amoral position:

Dorothy: "Destroyed? Toto? Oh, you can't . . . you mustn't . . .
Auntie Em — Uncle Henry — you won't let her . . . will you?"
Uncle Henry: "Uh . . . ah . . . course we won't . . . eh . . . will we Em."

However, when Miss Gulch threatens to bring a damage suit that will takeaway the farm, Uncle Henry suddenly has a moral revelation: "We can't go agin' the law, Dorothy." For Uncle Henry, right and wrong are determined by the possibility of punishment. So Uncle Henry, like a Skinnerian rat in a maze, seeks to avoid punishment in giving Toto to Miss Gulch.

Dorothy is the only person in this movie to take a stand based on moral principle regardless of the consequences. When Lion jumps out of the bushes and begins growling at Toto, in the face of what might have been great risk to herself, she slaps Lion on the nose and admonishes him for picking on poor little dogs. Here, Dorothy acts courageously from a moral stance: It is wrong for more powerful things to pick on weaker things. Again, at the final scene in the throne room of Oz, the group is met with flame, smoke, and a thundering voice in an attempt to scare them. Lion faints. Dorothy stands up to the great and powerful Oz and says: "Oh . . . oh! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Frightening him like that, when he came to you for help!" Again the moral decree: More powerful things should not frighten weaker things that are in need of help.

Cyclones

Cyclones represent those unpleasant events in our lives that move us to higher places. This reflects Dabrowski's (1964) theory of positive disintegration, which states that advanced development requires a breakdown of existing psychological structures in order to form higher, more evolved structures. Inner conflict, neurosis, guilt, depression, anxiety, adverse conditions, or unpleasant life events can, through assimilation, lead us to higher levels of moral or ethical behavior. Growth requires that old psychological or spiritual structures give way to new ones. New wine cannot be put in old wineskin. The disintegration process can result in inner tension as a sign of growth in a healthy individual.

Had Dorothy not been transported to Oz, she would never have attained the insight, growth, understanding, and realization of her power that she did. Miss Gulch would still be a presence in her life. Thus the cyclone, while unpleasant, is neither good nor bad; it is merely a byproduct of life outside the Edenic realm. Cyclones may be the loss of a job, life transitions, death of a loved one, or the dissolution of a relationship. They are the internal tension that brings us to a higher place.

Toto the Dog

Toto represents the inner, intuitive, instinctual, most animal-like part of us. Throughout the movie, Dorothy has conversations with Toto, or her inner intuitive self. The lesson here is to listen to the Toto within. In this movie, Toto was never wrong. When he barks at the scarecrow, Dorothy tries to ignore him: "Don't be silly, Toto. Scarecrows don't talk." But scarecrows do talk in Oz. Toto also barks at the little man behind the curtain. It is he who realizes the Wizard is a fraud. At the Gale Farm and again at the castle, the Witch tries to put Toto into a basket. What is shadow will try to block or contain the intuitive. In both cases, Toto jumps out of the basket and escapes. Our intuitive voice can be ignored, but not contained.

In the last scene, Toto chases after a cat, causing Dorothy to chase after him and hence miss her balloon ride. This is what leads to Dorothy's ultimate transformation, to the discovery of her inner powers. The balloon ride is representative of traditional religion, with a skinny-legged wizard promising a trip to the Divine. Toto was right to force Dorothy out of the balloon. Otherwise she might never have found her magic. This is a call for us to listen to our intuitions, our gut feelings, those momentary bits of imagination that appear seemingly out of nowhere.

The Window

The window is an opening between one dimension and the next, the air hole through which eternity breathes through to the temporal world. We too have a window, the place where the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious meet. It takes a journey to find this place.

In a startling bit of movie magic, Dorothy is actually hit on the head with a window as she begins the journey from Kansas to Oz. She pulls herself up from the bed and peers fearfully out of the window at the wreckage floating past: a chicken roost, a fence, a house, a buggy, a tree, a henhouse, a crowing rooster. This window represents the inner world, a dream state, personal unconscious, prophecy, and archetypal images.

Munchkins and Glinda

Munchkins, by their childlike appearance and mannerisms, represent the spiritual ideal, which is the child state. Children forgive easily, are quick to love, and are content to live in the moment. The Munchkins also live in communion with Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Glinda is a figure not represented in the other dimension—Kansas—thus she can be said to be truly other-dimensional. She is a being of light, a spirit or celestial power who appears both in physical form in Munchkinland and in nonphysical form in the poppy field. Poppies represent spiritual sleep. Glinda was a force to help wake Dorothy from that sleep.

Shadow Witch

The Wicked Witch represents our Shadow side, the dark or unconscious part of the personality that the conscious ego tries to ignore. The Shadow is Mr.Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll.

At the castle, Dorothy throws water on the witch. The water represents consciousness. When Jesus walked on water, he was above consciousness. Self-actualization or at-one-ment is not a matter of destroying the shadow. All humans have shadows. Individuation is a matter of facing the shadow and coming to grips with it. Thus Dorothy confronts the Witch, who melts. Dorothy assimilates the power of the Witch in the form of the guards, the flying monkeys, and the broomstick.

The Path and the Wizard

The Yellow Brick Road represents our Spiritual Path. The whole problem in the movie is that Dorothy followed it looking for the Wizard of Oz, instead of for Oz. Oz is the transcendent power, Love and Light. The Wizard represents those humans who sip the nectar of their own illusion and become drunk with greed, power, and control. These are the religious charlatans who claim to speak for God, while they are building theme parks. They are all little men and women standing behind curtains.

The Point of the Movie

Dorothy asks Glinda, the Good Witch, "Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?",
"You don't need to be helped any longer," A smiling Glinda answers.
"You've always had the power to go back to Kansas."
"I have?"
"Then why didn't you tell her before?" Scarecrow demands.
"Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself."
The Tin Man leans forward and asks, "What have you learned, Dorothy?"
"Well, I . . . I think that is . . . that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry
and Auntie Em . . . and that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire
again, I won't look any further than my own backyard; because if it isn't
here, I never really lost it to begin with."

This is what Dorothy learned:

1. We have the power. We have Ruby Red slippers to transport us to Kansas, to bring about the Edenic state, or to create our heart's desire.

2. Witches and cyclones, while bad, can be a means for spiritual growth.

3. We must learn for ourselves. Truth is not given so much as it is realized. Look within. You do not have to go off in search of a mystic or seek truth from a variety of exotic religions. Truth is found in your own back yard.

4. Reality is very simple. We create our own reality. We tend to make it more complicated than it need be. The simple universal fact is that, if we believe it to be so, it is.

5. There's no place like home. The kingdom of heaven is not a place; but a condition.

6.  

   ---

    

   References
   
   Dabrowski, Kazimierz. 1964. Positive Disintegration. Boston: Little,Brown.
   Kohlberg, Lawrence. 1984. The Psychology of Moral Development. New York: Harper and Row.
   Nathanson, Paul. 1991. Over the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz as a Secular Myth of America. Albany: State University of NewYork Press.
   Nhat Hanh, Thich. 1999. Going Home: Jesus and Buddha asBrothers. New York: Riverhead Books.
   Stewart, Jesse. 1997. Secrets of the Yellow Brick Road: A Map for the Modern Spiritual Journey. Hygiene, CO:Sunshine Press.
   
   

   Andrew Johnson, a former second-grade teacher, is codirector of theCenter for Talent Development at Minnesota State University. He can be reached at thinkingskills@aol.com

The Wizard of Oz: The Perilous Journey
By John Algeo

Reprint from Quest 6.2 (1993 Summer): 48-55 and American Theosophist 74 (1986): 291-7.

Undoubtedly the best known and most loved of all modern fairy tales is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Although it was first published in 1900, the story is most widely known today through the Judy Garland movie of 1939. There are few Americans who have not seen the movie at least once, and there are many who have seen it repeatedly. Through that film,the story has entered so deeply into our national popular lore that almost every week there are allusions to it in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, the film has spread knowledge of Baum's fairy tale over much of the world.

The Wizard of Oz is the archetypical American fairy tale, but like all fairy tales, it appeals to a wide audience--people of all ages and from many cultural backgrounds. It has an optimism and a fascination with gimmicks that are American, but it also deals with the truths of the human heart that are eternal and have no boundaries. An American fairy tale is exactly what Frank Baum set out to write--a story that would be a modern fairytale for American children--but he was more successful than he could have imagined.

Although The Wizard is an extraordinarily popular story, both in America and abroad, few people know that its author, L.Frank Baum, was a member of the Theosophical Society and wrote about Theosophy in a newspaper he edited for some sixteen months in Aberdeen, South Dakota. And fewer yet have recognized that his great American fairy tale is also aTheosophical allegory.

The plot of The Wizard, for anyone who has not seen it recently, is briefly this: Dorothy lives with her Aunt Em and her UncleHenry on a farm in Kansas. One day a cyclone comes; while her aunt hurries to the cyclone cellar for protection, Dorothy looks for her little dog, Toto, who has hidden under a bed. Consequently, Dorothy and Toto are picked up in the house by the cyclone and carried into another world--the Land of Oz.

In Oz, Dorothy's house is plopped down in the easternmost part of the land, right on top of the wicked Witch of the East,thus killing her and freeing the Munchkin inhabitants of that land, whom she had enslaved. Dorothy, understandably upset by all these strange events, wants only to get home to Kansas. She is advised to consult the Wizard who lives in the Emerald City in the center of the Land of Oz. She is also advised to wear the silver shoes (which the movie transformed into ruby slippers) that belonged to the wicked Witch, because everybody knows they are magic, though nobody knows just what they do.

Dorothy and Toto set out on a Yellow Brick Road for the Emerald City. On the way she meets three companions, each of whom joins herin the hope that the Wizard of Oz will be able to give him what he lacks. The first is a Scarecrow, whose head is stuffed with straw and who wants some brains so he can think. The second is a Tin Woodman, who was once an ordinary being of flesh in love with a beautiful Munchkin maiden. Unfortunately,however, he was under a spell cast by the wicked Witch, so he kept chopping off parts of himself and being repaired by a tinsmith until he became the first fully bionic man, with a completely mechanical body. In the process, he lost his heart and thus is no longer able to love the Munchkin maiden; now he wants a heart so he can love again. The third companion is a Cowardly Lion, who ought to be King of the Forest but who is afraid of everything; he wants courage and the will to act.

After many adventures, Dorothy and her three companions reach the Emerald City, where they each gain an audience with theWizard. The Wizard says that he will grant their requests, provided they first do something to prove themselves worthy. They must go to the westernmost part of Oz and there kill the wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy and her companions are not very keen on doing that, but since there seems to be no alternative,they set out for the western land. After many adventures, they succeed in their quest when Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the witch, which dissolves her.Wicked witches, like naughty children, cannot stand water.

When the four companions return to the Emerald City to claim their rewards from the Wizard, he puts them off for a long while. Finally,the Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz confesses that he is really a humbug. He was a balloonist in Nebraska who worked for a circus, going up in his balloon to attract a crowd for the performance. One day a strong wind blew him all the way to Oz and dropped him in the middle of the land. When he fell from the sky,the inhabitants thought he must be a very great wizard indeed, so they accepted him as their ruler, and he led them in building the Emerald City, where he could hide without his humbuggery being discovered by the Witches of the land,of whom he was very much afraid.

Although he is a humbug, the Wizard says he will do what he can to keep his promises to the four companions. He fills theScarecrow's head with a mixture of bran and pins and needles, so that he willhave brand-new brains that are sharp as a pin. He puts inside the Tin Woodman'schest a heart made of stuffed silk, guaranteed not to break. And he gives theCowardly Lion a little green bottle filled with courage (Dutch courage,presumably), from which the Lion is to drink whenever he feels the need.

To help Dorothy get home, the Wizard builds a hot-air balloon to try to sail with her back the way he came. But just as he andDorothy are ready to cast off, Toto runs into the crowd and gets lost. AsDorothy hurries to find her dog, the ropes holding the balloon break, and away it sails with the Wizard, who cannot control it. Thus Dorothy is still strandedin Oz.

The inhabitants of the Emerald City suggest thatDorothy should seek the aid of Glinda, the good Witch of the South. So Dorothy and her companions set out on a third journey. After many more adventures, they reach the court of Glinda the Good, who tells Dorothy that she has all along had the power to go back to Kansas whenever she wants to. The magic silver shoes she is wearing will carry her to any place in the world with three short steps. Dorothy need only say where she wants to go, click her heels thrice, and she will be there. Dorothy now bids good-bye to her friends, says she wants togo home to Kansas, and in three steps, she is there. And so the story ends.

The Wizard of Oz has all the essentials of a true fairy tale. It is set in a perilous, enchanted land, where the humanprotagonist is engaged in a quest. The protagonist, an ordinary person like you or me, faces great dangers, trials, and difficulties, but is helped by some extraordinary and magical friends. After many perilous adventures, the protagonist returns home, having fulfilled the quest. The Wizard of Oz is also a remarkably Theosophical fairy tale. It is indeed a Theosophical allegory.

Consider first the two lands of Oz and Kansas. They are the setting of the story and provide its chief theme: Dorothy is questing in Oz, with the aim of returning to Kansas. The two countries are obviously of cardinal importance to the story and its meaning. Kansas is depicted as a gray, colorless, flat, featureless landscape, and so it is sometimes thought to represent the ordinary, dull world of reality. Oz, on the other hand, is vibrant with color and adventure and interesting people and things, so it is thought to represent the world of the imagination and of fantasy.

Such an interpretation, however, does not comfortably fit the overall plot of the story. Although Dorothy enjoys Oz, while sometimes being a little frightened by it, all she wants to do from the time she first arrives there until the silver shoes carry her away is to get back home to Kansas. Oz is a nice place to visit, but Dorothy wants to live in Kansas. In the story, Kansas, not Oz, is the desirable place to be.

We can see two important things about the Land of Oz if we look at a map of the country, such as one of those published by the International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc. (an organization of people who like the Oz books and who share their enthusiasm with one another). One of the things to note is that Oz has a central green area, the Emerald City, surrounded by four regions, each with a different symbolic color (blue, yellow, red, and purple), within the overall shape of a four-sided figure. The land is bounded on all four sides by an impassable desert, a "ring-pass-not," that isolates Oz from all other lands. These ingredients of the topography of Oz--the impassable barrier, the four-sidedness, the symbolic colors, the circle, and the center--are also the ingredients of a mandala.

Oz is a mandala. Mandalas represent the human psyche and the world of samsara--the manifold, beautiful, enticing, but also frightening world of differentiation and becoming. And that is what Oz is. Oz is samsara, the seductive world of earthly beauty, which draws the soul to it. You and I live in Oz. It is this world, this various, dappled world, this magical world of divided beauty.

Kansas, on the other hand, is that world from which we have come before we find ourselves in the perilous land of the separate self. Kansas is that world where there is no differentiation--but only Oneness: no color, which is diversity, not even any black and white, which are opposites, but only the unity of gray; no various hills and valleys, but only the uniform smoothness of the Great Plains; no water, which is the cause and symbol of life and growth, but only the dryness of a world of unchanging reality. Kansas is the permanent world of Oneness from which we have all come and to which we are destined to return. It is our source and our goal. Kansas is devachan or nirvana. Like Dorothy, we have but one purpose in this world of Oz, this samsara of changing appearance, and that is to get home to Kansas, the nirvana of permanent Truth.

In using Kansas to stand for perfection, Baum was undoubtedly having a little fun. The reputation of Kansas, in Baum's day or ours, does not live up to what we expect of devachan or nirvana. Baum himself undoubtedly was ambivalent about the Great Plains, including the Dakotas, where he lived for a while, and Kansas, the archetypically American state, the true heartland of America. Baum makes much of the flat, gray, dry appearance of Kansas in the first chapter of The Wizard. It is not an attractive place. However, each of those negative features can also be thought of in a positive way--especially as characteristics of nirvana.

Part of Baum's joke is that things are never what they seem. Dorothy seems to be a simple and harmless little girl, but it is she who kills the wicked witches of both East and West. The Scarecrow seems to lack brains, but he has all the ideas in the company. The Tin Woodman seems to lack a heart, but he is so full of sentiment that he is always weeping. The Cowardly Lion seems to be a coward, but he takes brave action whenever it is called for. The Wizard seems to be great and powerful, but he is actually a humbug. Oz seems to be a glorious and delightful land and Kansas to be dry, gray, and dull--but Oz is a world of illusion and Kansas is really home. Things are not what they seem, in Oz or Kansas.

If we look at the map of Oz again, we can discover a second important thing about it. The outline of the Land of Oz is that of a rectangle. The Land of Oz is the same shape as the State of Kansas. Oz is Kansas. The two places in the fairy tale are finally the same, just as nirvana and samsara are the same reality, only viewed differently. Dorothy can go home so easily, with just three short steps, because in reality she has nowhere to go. She is already home, and needs only to realize that fact in order to make the homecoming real.

Other aspects of the story are also symbolic. Dorothy's name (a variant of Dorothea, a reversal of Theodora) means "gift of God." As that name suggests, Dorothy is the soul sent from God, out of the nirvana of Kansas into the samsara of Oz, here to find her way back again to the undifferentiated unity from which she comes.

Waiting in Kansas are Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, who represent the primordial feminine and masculine forces, which H. P. Blavatsky called Mulaprakriti and the Unmanifested Logos. Baum's wife was named Maud, and his mother-in-law (a strong woman and powerful influence in his life) was named Matilda; the initial of their names is also the first letter of mother. Thus M, the initial and Auntie Em's name, suggests the archetypal feminine. By similar associations, Henry (which means "ruler of the home") suggests the archetypal masculine.

Dorothy is brought from Kansas to Oz by a cyclone. A cyclone is a great circular wind, a gyre. The Greek word from which cyclone comes means a circle or the coil of a serpent. The cyclone is the cycle of necessity, the round of birth and death, which catches us up and brings us into life, that is, to Oz.

Dorothy is caught in the cyclone because she is distracted by her little dog, Toto. Toto expresses the archetype of the mischievous beast. That archetype represents the animal nature in all of us; and when we are led astray by it, when we follow it heedlessly, we are caught up by the passionate winds of the cycle of necessity and blown away to the world of samsara. Toto is the little beast in each of us, our special pet from whom we are loath to part; and attachment to our mischievous animal nature brings us into birth.

In Oz, Dorothy acquires three companions, in order(and the order is important): the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the CowardlyLion. These companions think they lack and thus have the need to develop(respectively) intelligence, love, and courage or the will to act. Dorothy's three companions are clearly thinking, feeling, and doing; manas, kama, and sthula sharira; the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. And she acquired them in that order, from "highest" to "lowest," just as we do when we come into incarnation.

A statement published by Annie Besant, but perhaps written by H. P. Blavatsky, describes the three aspects of our personality as they must be developed to respond to the perils of life: "There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount." Dauntless courage is what the Lion must develop. Spotless purity is what the Tin Woodman must achieve (he is constantly being polished in the story, to clean away the rust that he is subject to). Strong intellect is what the Scarecrow wants above all.

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman also debate which is more important to have: brains or a heart. And their debate is reminiscent of that section in H. P. Blavatsky's Voice of the Silence called "The Two Paths," in which the intellectual Doctrine of the Eye is compared with the compassionate Doctrine of the Heart. The Scarecrow and Tin Woodman's debate is left unresolved, with the implication that both are good but that, as Dorothy decided, it doesn't matter so much which is more important if only one gets back to Kansas-nirvana. Attaining the goal is all-important. The means for doing so is not.

Dorothy's quest in Oz is to find her way home, back to Kansas, back to nirvana. But it has three phases. First, the journey from the East, where she lands in Oz, to the Emerald City in the center of the land; second, from the center to the West to slay the wicked Witch, with a return again to the center; and third, from the center to the South to consult Glinda the Good, from whom Dorothy learns the way home. The route that Dorothy follows has the shape of a big T, its three points defining an inverted triangle, the triangle of matter. What do its three phases suggest?

In the first phase, Dorothy follows the Yellow Brick Road to find the Wonderful Wizard at the center of Oz. The Yellow Brick Road strongly suggests the Path, the mystic way, that leads to enlightenment. Its yellow is the yellow of gold--the metal that does not corrode or rust, the perfect metal. As Dorothy and her companions follow the Road, they are faced with many perilous adventures (most of which were omitted from the movie). The Besant-Blavatsky statement mentioned earlier begins:

"There is a Road, steep and thorny, beset with perils of every kind, but yet a Road, and it leads to the very heart of the universe." The Yellow Brick Road is that Road, and the Emerald City, to which it leads, is the heart of the universe of Oz.

At the end of the Road are the Emerald City and the Wizard. Emerald or green is the color of harmony, of balance; it is midway in the color spectrum; it is the color of the fourth or harmonizing ray. The aim of following the Path is to establish that harmony. The aim is also to find the Teacher, the Guru, who can show us the way home. The Wizard represents, among other things, that Teacher.

In the second phase of the quest, Dorothy is sent to the West, to slay consciously the wicked Witch who rules there, just as she unconsciously slew the wicked Witch of the East when she landed in Oz. East and west are points of the compass with well-established symbolic meanings. East is the place of sunrise; it betokens the beginnings of things; it is birth. West is the place of sunset; it betokens the ending of things; it is death. In Irish myth and other mythologies from all over the world, the land of the West is the country of the dead. The wicked Witches of East and West represent, respectively, the desire for birth and the fear of death that accompany our coming into and passing out of this life.

Dorothy's quest is for salvation, liberation, enlightenment, freedom from birth and death. And during this mythic fairy tale, she achieves it. The story is, as it were, of her last incarnation; she is one of those who return no more. When she lands in Oz, she crushes the wicked Witch of the East, thus overcoming the desire for further birth. That is an unconscious feat because it is not the result of her actions in this life, which is just beginning, but rather is the fruit of past accomplishments. That this is her last life is due to her karma from earlier, unremembered lives. The crushing of the wicked Witch of the East is therefore unconscious on Dorothy's part.

During the second phase of her quest, however, she must consciously meet and slay the other wicked Witch, that of the West, who represents the fear of death. The gaining of nirvana and the transcendence of the personal self is a kind of death, the death of separateness. To achieve our quest, we must destroy the fear of death, we must slay the wicked Witch of the West. And so Dorothy does. She liquidates the Witch; she dissolves the fear of dissolution; she washes away the last stains of separateness.

We can overcome death and illusion only in the world of death and illusion. We must pass through the valley of the shadow of death to come to the land of eternal light. So Dorothy must go to the uttermost West, encounter the wicked Witch of death, and overcome her with water, the symbol of life.

What shall we make, however, of Dorothy's return to the Emerald City after she has conquered her fear of death, when she discovers that the Wizard, the Teacher, the Guru, is after all a humbug? This is perhaps the most Theosophical of all details in the fairy story. The Wizard is a humbug because all teachers we find outside ourselves are humbugs. One of the cardinal messages of Theosophy is that we can rely on no one to save us but ourselves. As The Voice of the Silence says, "Prepare thyself, for thou wilt have to travel on alone. The Teacher can but point the way." Each student must walk the way alone. Reliance on a teacher, on a guru, must inevitably end in disappointment. All teachers are humbugs, save one--the Teacher Within.

In a sense, the picture of the Wizard, ensconced in his throne room in the Emerald City, where he tries desperately to disguise his humbuggery, is a satire on all authority and particularly on religious authority. When visitors come to the Emerald City, they are required to put on a pair of green glasses, so everything appears green to them. The green glasses are like the dogmas that religious wizards insist their followers adopt so their ecclesiastical cities will look green and vital.

The joke is that the Emerald City really is made of emeralds; it really is green, quite naturally. Religion really is what it says it is--a place of treasures and marvels--but the humbug wizards who have got themselves put in charge of it--the priests and ministers--have no faith in the natural value of their city, so they require the unnecessary and artificial spectacles. They think that emeralds need the assistance of green glasses. In another sense, the guru is a humbug only because we make one of him. We insist that he tell us what to do. We want him to save us. When we ask the teacher to do for us that which only we can do for ourselves, we have made a humbug out of him. Finally, the teacher-wizard must sail off in his balloon, powered by all the hot air he and we have forced into it. And then we are left by ourselves to find our own way.

So Dorothy sets out on the third phase of her quest.This time she travels to the land of the South to seek the counsel of Glinda, the good Witch. To travel south is to travel deep within ourselves. The Mississippi River, that Father of Waters, like most rivers in the United States, flows southward. To travel south is to travel in the natural direction towards the ocean of unity. Glinda represents the intuition within each of us--the glint of the light of Truth, the only true source of guidance. What Glinda tells Dorothy is that she has always had the power to go back to Kansas; Dorothy needs no guru, for she is her own guide. She need only rely upon herself, upon her own feet, clad in the silver shoes that are her contact with the earth of Oz, which is also the earth of Kansas. For Oz is Kansas; samsara is nirvana.

If there is a "moral" to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this is it: we must rely on ourselves, for we alone have the power to save ourselves. That moral is made throughout the book also with regard to Dorothy's three companions. The Scarecrow thinks he needs brains; but whenever the four companions find themselves at an impasse, it is the Scarecrow who comes up with the clever plan to help them. The Tin Woodman thinks he needs a heart; but he is the one who is constantly worried that he may step upon a bug and harm it and who is ever in danger of rusting from his own tears because he feels such compassion for others that he freely weeps. The Cowardly Lion thinks he needs courage; but he is the one who acts bravely to save the company whenever they are threatened by danger. Dorothy's companions, like Dorothy herself, have within themselves the qualities they are seeking. We each have everything we need; we lack only the intuition of Glinda the Good to tell us so.

The Wizard of Oz came to Baum as a kind of inspiration. Baum was a remarkably motherly man. He looked after his children--all boys--in their sicknesses and accidents; he comforted them in their sorrows. He told them bedtime stories. Baum's stories became so famous that neighboring children would come to the Baum house every day to hear the evening tale. One evening a story came to Baum that he recognized as having great potential; so after the children were put to bed, he jotted down the essentials of the story on such scrap paper as he had at hand. The result was the outline of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In later years, when asked how he had written the book, Baum said:

It was pure inspiration.... It came to me right out of the blue. I think that sometimes the Great Author has a message to get across and He has to use the instrument at hand. I happened to be that medium, and I believe the magic key was given me to open the doors to sympathy and understanding, joy, peace and happiness.¹

Baum certainly did not set out to write an allegory, but he was inspired to write a story that, like all good fairy tales, has depths of meaning of which the writer himself would have been only dimly aware. Baum's membership in the Theosophical Society and his background and beliefs were such as to fit him for the writing of a fairy tale filled with the Ancient Wisdom, as is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

H. P. Blavatsky once wrote that the ancient Theosophists were called analogists because of their custom of interpreting all scriptures and sacred symbols as metaphors for an inner reality. It is precisely in this way that fairy tales, traditional ones and modern ones alike, are of value. Fairy tales are analogs of Truth. When we have "comprehended their hidden meaning" (as HPB said), we have seen into ourselves and recognized our own powers and potentials. We have learned that upon our feet are silver shoes that can carry us home whenever we will use them. For home is here, Kansas is Oz, heaven is all about us, waiting only for us to recognize it. That is the Ancient Wisdom in all fairy tales.

Note

1. Cited by Michael Patrick Hearn, ed., The Annotated Wizard of Oz (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1973), 73.