Quest Magazine

By Jonathan Young

Once again, an installment of the Star Wars series has become a movie event of galactic proportions. As everyone must know, Episode One—The Phantom Menace is a flashback to thirty years before the original Star Wars. The spiritual underpinnings and mythic dimensions of the series have been widely recognized as a part of its appeal. Now that the commotion attending the opening of Episode One has settled down, it is a good time to reflect on the implications of the tale for those interested in the life of the soul.

Early in the film, a spacecraft speeds through the darkness between planets. Two Jedi Knights are on their way to help in a crisis. The call to adventure is similar in all the Star Wars movies because it matches experiences that are known to the audience. The events that cause us to develop strengths often begin as bad news. Something calls us to solve a problem or survive an ordeal, and through this difficult process we find that we are capable of more than we thought.

It is now familiar movie lore that George Lucas draws heavily on the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell in developing his series. As a result, the intergalactic sagas include mythic quests for initiation, so it is not difficult to read the episodes as wisdom tales. Key insights into the meaning of human experience are clearly present. If we look at the films through a symbolic lens, the life lessons are abundant.

The key characters in this film include nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker, a slave on an insignificant planet. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn is the commanding presence of the film. His youthful apprentice is Obi-Won Kenobi, not yet a full-fledged Jedi Knight. Queen Amidala is the resourceful teenaged ruler of the planet Naboo, which is under siege.

As before, the Force is a central element in the adventure and is what makes the Star Wars films more than well-done science fiction. This mysterious energy is the key to the transcendent magic of the stories. The Jedi describe the Force as an energy field that sustains all living things.

An individual may sense the Force as intuition or something spiritual, beyond individual skill or wisdom. Whether I say I trust my inner voice or use more traditional language, like trusting the Holy Spirit, I am listening for something beyond my own calculations. I am trying to tune in to a larger field of energy and knowledge. When a Jedi advises the hero to trust the Force, he is saying that we must not put all our trust in what we can know clearly. There are mysteries and powers that are larger than our knowing and seeing.

The Jedi are the high priests of the Force as well as the noble knights of their time. The Jedi began earlier as a theological and philosophical study group. Only after long consideration of the Force did they take up the idea of fighting for high principles and causes.

When we become attuned to values and energies beyond our immediate practical concerns, the effect on our lives may be enormous. Listening to the voice from deep within can change everything. Quiet pursuits like poetry and meditation can lead to daring action, once you find a calling or become aware of the needs of others. Allowing ourselves to be led by our deepest values can take us in surprising directions.

In Episode One—The Phantom Menace, the threat of war has grown out of economic issues, an eternal motive for conflict. Throughout history, trade issues with enormous financial implications have grown into deadly conflict. The story thus begins with a believable situation, since trade disputes and rumblings of war are frequently in our news. Starting in familiar circumstances lets the audience know that extraordinary things can happen in ordinary lives. Episode One opens with a blockade of Queen Amidala's planet and a threat of invasion.

The heroic man or woman in an initiatory adventure is an ordinary person. The event that launches a fictional quest is similar to what might happen to us, something that engages us with larger challenges. In our lives, it might be the death of a parent, a divorce, a devastating illness, or a financial disaster. Tragedy often sets a larger story into motion; it is a summons, a call to the quest.

When something devastating happens, we can either collapse and give up on life or we can rise to the challenge.

In the mythic moment, the individual's issues become enmeshed with larger problems. The Jedi get involved as Ambassadors to settle the trade dispute. Along the way, Jedi Master Qui-Gon discovers a gifted boy, Anakin Skywalker, on Tatooine, a dry planet far from the centers of power. The boy and his mother are slaves, owned by the Watto, a hard-edged junk dealer who trades in parts for spacecraft. Anakin pilots a "pod racer," a souped-up flying jalopy in a kind of demolition derby race. Though a little child, he is the only human ever to master the complex art of flying the swift machines.

When Anakin meets Queen Amidala, he learns that he is not the only one with challenges, a whole society is in danger—there are problems larger than his own. His personal circumstances and the larger cause become intertwined as he goes to the threshold of adventure. His connection with the Jedi teachers Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi represents contact with the higher self or inner master. The hero meets these key allies at the threshold moment, the jumping-off point beyond which there is no return.

Heroes come to their adventures with many motivations, so Anakin Skywalker is moving toward several goals simultaneously. He and his mother are slaves, a status that represents universal issues of personal freedom and dignity. The hero may be seeking a transcendent experience—looking for some undiscovered aspect of himself or herself. There may be a wound that requires healing. At some point, allies appear, and a guide with skills, secret lore, and wisdom necessary for the success of the journey.

There is a strong team effort in Episode One—The Phantom Menace. A solitary warrior does not accomplish the mission; the initiatory quest is never a solo journey. The adventure is always a collective effort, contrary to some immature fantasies of personal glory. Part of its lesson is to remember that we are not alone and that our skill or strength by itself will not solve problems. Guides, allies, and animals provide help at every turn; even the pratfall comic character Jar Jar Binks makes a crucial contribution. The seeker discovers that no single person can do the quest alone but that others provide assistance all the way there and back. These stories humble our arrogance.

The hero's mentors take many forms: an old teacher, a wise enchantress, a mysterious old magician, such as the strange creature Yoda. In Episode One we meet the council of the Jedi Masters, a high lodge of keepers of the wisdom, which is an ancient mythological motif. They oversee initiation into the mysteries.

Gaining that initiation is a challenging process for which the initiate must demonstrate good character. The rashness of youth must be tempered. The parallel in ordinary life may be as mundane as gaining the approval of a driving examiner to get a driver's license or as arduous as completing training to become a Marine. It might be as extensive as completing education to be ordained as a priest, certified as a teacher, or licensed as a professional. It may be election to high office.

Queen Amidala and the Jedi Knights are the central aristocratic figures. The central role nobility plays in all the Star Wars movies is worth reflection. It hints at the romance with aristocracy that has long been a part of American popular culture and is particularly a staple in science fiction and fantasy. The fascination with aristocracy goes beyond images of privilege or luxury. Aristocracy is etymologically and symbolically "the rule of the best," the best within us.

Psychologically we long for our own inner nobility. The qualities of character and purpose associated with archetypal aristocracy are often lacking in an overly egalitarian and endlessly practical age. The sense of duty and high character shown by aristocratic figures can inspire us to reach for our own inner nobility.

The story depicts how important it is to forge alliances with others. The characters in the story can also be seen as symbolizing various energies within ourselves. We each have many personalities, and these various aspects of ourselves have to learn to get along if we are to accomplish anything. Their competing interests tug and pull us in different directions—to be brave, or afraid, or loving are all features of a single individual's psychology. The story shows how to accomplish a working integration of an inner life. The tasks of learning to relate well with others and developing a well-balanced inner world are two sides of the same coin.

Initiatory adventures often include a confrontation between good and evil. The task we face is larger than we are, but in accomplishing it, we discover that we can survive ordeals we did not think we could endure. In the process, we discover how to work with our allies and to master the many conflicting elements within ourselves. Most important, we learn to trust the Force. We find how to stay in the flow of a wisdom that is larger than ourselves.

At some point, the individual's actions must become synchronized with universal forces, a synchronization that eases life's basic loneliness. You are enmeshed in a larger purpose. You are meant to be in a certain place and fill a particular role. You are being yourself, truly and entirely for the first time. You have energies that you never knew about before. Joseph Campbell described what happens if you follow your bliss, accept your calling. Doors will open where you did not know doors existed, help comes when you did not even know you needed help, and things that would have been impossible in the past become possible.

Because the Star Wars stories are set in the future on fictional planets, we are able to get beyond the naturalism of most movies. Joseph Campbell thought naturalism was the death of art. If the stories and characters are too realistic, it is more difficult to see the metaphors that carry the deeper messages of the story. But when a story takes place in outer space, the audience knows they are watching a work of the imagination. That is a key reason that the Star Wars series conveys wisdom to a degree that is unusual for a Hollywood movie.

Campbell believed that Lucas understood his books and rendered the key metaphors in contemporary terms. The central modern issue is whether we are going to let the machine control us, and Campbell's notion of the machine includes the corporate state. To be sure, one can gain a measure of power by becoming machine-like. Doing so is a temptation that is hard to resist, but to be fully human, we must not expend all of our energies as part of a larger machine. The alternative is to listen to the still small voice within.

Our core choices and values have to come from inside—then we have to realize them in the world. A mythic story shows that we must find our own footing as individuals, and also how we can return from separation to make a contribution. If the story showed only how to rebel against conventionality, it would leave us as hermits or lost souls. The greater challenge is to rejoin the community, but on new terms.

Knowing the other Star Wars films, we are aware that the boy, Anakin Skywalker, will someday become the evil Darth Vader. His future exemplifies another universal theme. The seeker has to face the dark side within. Every hero is also part villain, a fact that shows the limits of dualistic thinking by which one character is good and another evil. Resolution requires that warring factions within the individual pull together, with the light side of the Force dominant.

The mythic imagination is essentially a template that can be endlessly reworked. The Star Wars episodes are similar to each other, yet George Lucas is not making the same movie over and over again. He is aware that one must go through many initiatory cycles to master many lessons. In each cycle, the initiate is able to accomplish something new. Each effort is successful because it is in the service of a calling, and when we are motivated by higher causes, we can do amazing things. After each cycle, the seeker returns with significant new psychological integration. We must gain access to the attributes of both genders, find a way to be aligned with the forces of nature, develop connections with the best of allies, and share with others.

At the end of each initiatory adventure, there is a great celebration. The many characters present at these celebrations symbolize different stages of life and the various aspects of an individual who is growing more fully aware of the many energies within. The traveler comes back home with something to show for all the effort. This prize is a boon, elixir, or blessing. It can be new wisdom, a skill, or an insight of great value to the historical moment. The challenge then is to pass it around. The boon does not belong to the adventurer alone. It is for everyone.

The seeker returns to an honored place in the community. Ultimately, being true to oneself includes being useful to others. The sense of fulfillment, of identity and role, is extraordinary at that point. Such a life moves with amazing energy. The Force is then truly with us.

George Lucas on Star Wars

With Star Wars I consciously set about to re-create myths and the classic mythological motifs. I wanted to use those motifs to deal with issues that exist today....

The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed....

If people were really to sit down and honestly look at themselves and the consequences of their actions, they would try to live their lives a lot differently. One of the main themes in The Phantom Menace is of organisms having to realize they must live for their mutual advantage....

I'm telling an old myth in a new way. Each society takes that myth and retells it in a different way....The motif is the same. It's just that it gets localized....

I am dealing with core issues that were valid 3,000 years ago and are still valid today, even though they're not in fashion.

—from an interview with Bill Moyers in Time magazine,
April 26, 1999

Psychologist Jonathan Young, PhD, assisted Joseph Campbell and was founding curator of the Joseph Campbell Archives and Library. His recent book is SAGA: Best New Writings on Mythology. He now trains counselors internationally in the uses of mythic stories through the Center for Story and Symbol in Santa Barbara. Email: young@folkstory.com; Web site: folkstory.com

By Radha Burnier

Small children are often asked by parents, friends, or neighbors, "What do you want to become when you grow up?" The child of course does not know what the question implies. Once a child answered, "I want to be a king," and when he was told he could not become a king, he declared, "Then I want to be a Field Marshal." Those were the days of the war, when there was much news about Field Marshals and Generals. There are many such childish fancies— as wanting to be a pilot flying a jet plane.

These childish notions about becoming something are, of course, innocent. But as time passes, innocent minds get conditioned, sometimes through persuasion but often under pressure, into thinking seriously about what to become and how to achieve. Their future, they are told, would be a hopeless failure otherwise. Thus, the sensitive minds of the young are hardened, and ambition becomes a driving, if not a destructive, force in their lives— of surroundings and of finer feelings. Present-day lifestyle makes a virtue of "being somebody," or "becoming" something, and success is regarded as life's greatest purpose.

The drive to become somebody— distinguished politician, lawyer, or engineer— an obstacle to remaining whole, for specialization tends to condition and confine the mind in narrow tracks. Through repetitious, professional effort and training, habits are contracted: the teacher wants to explain everything (even the obvious), the auditor niggles, and the lawyer argues even when there is no case. The mold into which the mind is set does not permit spiritual qualities to blossom according to the innate and unique endowments of the individual.

Desire and ambition have a role in the evolutionary plan. They activate the mind, which would otherwise stagnate. But the activation entails the loss of innocence; it is the human "fall." Animals are innocent, whatever they do, because they have no conscious desire to achieve or become. They are themselves and therefore have a special charm, as do infants and small children. When motivated by personal desire, the mind becomes sharp and clever; it grows but loses that quality which makes the innocent so lovable. With increasing sophistication, desire turns from mere craving for food and basic necessities to fame, power, possessions, and ultimately what it imagines to be spiritual progress.

To "grow as the flower grows," unconsciously, is for most people a meaningless ideal; but the time must come when the mind is not merely capable and clever, but has also developed a certain clarity and thoughtfulness regarding nonpersonal questions. It then sees that ambition fathers manifold evils; while it sharpens the mind, it also makes it selfish; it teaches a person to invent and plan, without conscience, to be energetic but not compassionate. With the increase of intellect, spirituality diminishes.

Is a reversal needed? Can human advancement proceed along new lines, in a new direction? Light on the Path, a profoundly paradoxical Theosophical text, says, "That power which the disciple shall covet is that which shall make him appear as nothing in the eyes of men." This indeed is the recovery of lost innocence. Once again we must become as little children, but not childish, which we already are; we must be as innocent lambs, but with the power to understand, to learn to grow as the flower grows, unconsciously, eager to open the soul to the infinitude of life.

It is disastrous in the present era to follow a philosophy of achievement. A peak has been reached in aggressive and destructive activities, and the responsibility is largely that of the supposedly educated and clever people, who are role models for the young. The "leadership" of the mentally competent and morally poor is at the base of many grave problems facing today's world.

What must we do? We must see that the human mind passes on to a new stage of dynamism without ambition, the door to which will open for all those who ponder and realize that the power to be nothing is the source of immense energy. Free of self-interest, the pure mind reaches depths of understanding and perceives new meanings. As H. P. Blavatsky says:

The appearance which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends on his power of cognition. To the untrained eye...a painting is at first an unmeaning confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly a face or a landscape.

Only the quiet mind without any restless longings is receptive to life's messages and knows what is truly good. It senses the beneficial presence of the one consciousness everywhere, unfolding faculties, revealing meanings, harmonizing relationships. Without achieving or becoming, by simply being, quietly surrendering to the All-consciousness, it receives and pours out beneficent energy.

A new human culture will arise when nothingness is the background philosophy of people's lives instead of compulsive becoming.

Radha Burnier, a Sanskrit scholar and in her youth an exponent of classical Indian dance, is the international President of the Theosophical Society. This article is reprinted from "On the Watch-Tower," The Theosophist, November 1998.

By Robert Ellwood

• To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color;
• To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science;
• To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity.

The Study of Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Science

The second object is really related to the first. If you can't get along with your brother, find out what he likes to study, what he's really interested in. It may be anything from auto mechanics to Mongolian dialects or accounting. It may be something you had never thought before that you might be interested in, and even now you are really interested in it for the sake of the brother more than of the topic itself. But if you really want to, you can find almost anything interesting, and in the process can find an interesting real human being in the shape of the brother or sister who is interested in that topic.

Think of comparative religion as such a possible interest that might have extraordinary application to the forging of brotherhood on a world scale. Consider the difficult relations of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, or of Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, or of Theosophy to all of them. I am convinced that if any of those partisans studied the religion of the other deeply enough, they would get beyond resentments over power and land, or the gross stereotypes that so often cloud religious discourse, to find in the other's faith something very interesting, whether or not they agreed with it intellectually, and would come to a new level of respect for the other religion.

In their fullness, as presented by the best thinkers, all religions have areas of depth and beauty that help one to see into profound depths of soul in those to whom they are important. This is part---a large part---of what is contributed by the Theosophical idea that each of the religions is an expression of the Ancient Wisdom in the vocabulary of a particular time and place and culture.

I have sometimes been distressed at the negative stereotypes of Protestants and Catholics, more than of Hindus and Buddhists, that some Theosophists seem to hold even today. I often do not recognize these stereotypes in the priests, nuns, ministers, and lay people I have known and worked with over many years of activity in the American religious world. I do not deny that one can find Protestants and Catholics who are dogmatic and conservative---stubborn might be a better word---but I do not find that mentality to be the whole picture at all.

Probably some of the negative images of Protestants and Catholics, including Jesuits, held by Theosophists stem ultimately from the writings in the last century of Helena Blavatsky. But we need to remember that she was writing for Victorians who had their own issues and mindset. Whatever necessary role those strictures may have had in the nineteenth century, we must recall that twentieth-century religion is different, after the ecumenical movement and the immense changes in Roman Catholicism after Vatican II and in the wake of liberal theologians from Scheiermacher to Tillich. We need to develop empathy for religion in our own time and our own society, with its various characters and styles.

In other cases, negative stereotypes derive from unfortunate personal encounters with destructive examples of a religion. Early experiences with bad religion often resemble the difficult family situations discussed in connection with brotherhood. If one is truly going to turn the bitterness to something positive, a process as arduous as resolving sibling anger may be required. But it is important for the sake of one's own spiritual growth in love and understanding to work the difficulty through by endeavoring, whether or not one agree with the religion, to find good contemporary exemplars of it and to seek the virtue of empathetic love toward those to whom it is important. Few religions are all bad for everyone whose lives they touch.

Then let us think about the study of comparative philosophy and science. Is there such a thing as comparative science? Comparative religion and philosophy, yes---it is clear that philosophy and religion are not the same in India and Greece, Japan and Chicago. But science? There are those who would say that science, both its methods and its findings, must be the same everywhere, for it can find only one kind of truth through repeatable experiments conducted anywhere in the world.

Not being a scientist, I cannot speak to this very much. But although I am sure that the speed of light and the double helix are the same in every human culture, science may still have its cultural differences. For science is in fact a culture as well as methods and findings, that is, a language and a set of attitudes. Although the culture of scientists in India and Indiana certainly is more similar than the culture of religious professionals in the two places, say of Brahmins and Methodist ministers, scientists cannot be wholly extracted from their surroundings. For them, culture may not be so much a determinant of the results and methodologies used, as of the questions asked. Scientists may use the same methods everywhere to attack a problem, but how do they decide which problem to attack in the first place?

This cultural context of science is suggested in a remarkable passage in The Secret Doctrine (1: 326-7):

For every thinker there will be a "thus far shalt thou go and no farther," mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as unmistakably as there is for the progress of any nation or race in its cycle by the law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain unable to soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers, and even freethinkers, are but the outcome and the natural products of their respective environments and periods. The ideals of both are only the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its collectivity, has attained. Hence, as already remarked, the highest flights of modern (Western) metaphysics have fallen far short of the truth. Much of current agnostic speculation on the existence of the "First Cause" is little better than veiled materialism---the terminology alone being different.

Have you ever wondered why some possible scientific problems seem to attract considerable attention, not to mention funding, in some countries, while others are virtually ignored? Why is it that scientists in India appear to take psychical research much more seriously than most do here, and are especially good at astrophysics? Why is most of the world's medical research done, and extravagantly funded, in the US, whereas the fundamental research in nuclear physics was done mostly in western Europe?

Why, for that matter, did modern science and technology arise in renaissance Europe and not, say, in China or the Islamic world, though they seemed also to have been on the brink of that breakthrough at the same time? I suspect that in all these issues culture, and ultimately religious, attitudes were at play. Science rightly prides itself on its universality, and certainly compared to the often dismal record of religion and politics in regard to race and nationalism, science has much of which to be proud. Yet in subtle ways science too can be culturally conditioned, especially in the questions asked, the problems selected for research.

Yet cultures can often be better understood by the questions they ask than by the answers they give. Here we need to let our empathetic imagination range freely. What questions about the universe would a bright, scientific-minded Hindu of today, or of two thousand years ago, most likely ask? An Australian aboriginal? A medieval European? A student in a modern American university?

In thoughts like these, the way to comprehend what the second object may mean by comparative science can best be grasped. Here is where the Theosophical understanding of the ancient wisdom as embedded in the world's different sciences, as well as in philosophies and religions, can be useful. For it is through the questions people ask that they will break through to wisdom on a deeper level.

Theosophy can help by pushing science to be question-oriented on deeper and deeper levels. For the Ancient Wisdom too is ultimately about asking the right questions, not just getting the right answers. Religion, Helena Blavatsky said in Isis Unveiled, is ultimately the realization of God and immortal soul. All the evidence, both exoteric and esoteric, is that our ultimate ancestors knew that what those realities meant can be only experienced, not put into formulaic words. Answers too are important, but every answer opens a new question, and the process goes on and on. It is common questions, not divisive answers, that bring humankind together into universal brotherhood. By being deep-question oriented about science, as well as about philosophy and religion, Theosophy can start to become a nucleus of human brotherhood.

To Investigate Unexplained Laws and the Powers Latent in Humanity

After the earlier discussion, not much remains to be said about this object. The latent powers are, in short, those connected to the tides of involution and evolution. Often they are thought to have to do with psychic abilities---clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis, and the like---and so they may in part. Those abilities were especially prominent, we are told, in the Lemurian and Atlantian root races, when they were developed by wizards working on the dark side of the force to the point of black magic. These powers have wisely been put into relative abeyance for most people in this fifth root race, where our calling is above all to realize the full potential of matter---hence the emphasis on science and technology. In the sixth root race, no doubt the psychic will be rediscovered on a higher level and used in the service of wisdom and compassion rather than of power. It is well for a few people to explore those abilities in this present root race to keep the knowledge of them alive and to lay the groundwork for that next evolutionary step, provided that those who do so also know how to protect themselves from the dark entities and ideas that always seem drawn to psychic forces, for evil seems to comprehend how easily psychic forces can be bent to undesirable use.

For most of us, however, the most important latent powers are those of our ordinary mind and spirit raised to a higher degree---intelligence turning to wisdom and feeling to charity and compassion. This is what will most help evolution, for it is only this kind of discrimination that will give us the wisdom to see what is holding us back, namely our karmic chains of unfinished business, and what will cut us free of those chains, namely love for all beings, visible and invisible, sufficient to burn those iron links away into nothingness.

The unexplained and little-known law is the law of love, that an act of pure egoless love is free of karma and can even disentangle karma from the past. The latent power is the power we all have to create through meditation an egoless state of consciousness in which, once the blinders of our attachments have been dropped, we can see everything just as it is and find the inner strength to act on that vision. That is the power of the egoless unfallen monad, which is our deepest and truest nature. Although our present life is its ray, the monad has itself never dropped beneath the clouds. In its light, may we all help to form a nucleus of human brotherhood, to study a right comparative religion, philosophy, and science, and to discover our latent powers.

Robert Ellwood, Professor Emeritus of the University of Southern California, is a well-known Theosophical author and speaker. This article is based on a talk given at the 1998 convention of the Theosophical Society in America.

By John Algeo, National President

Termites are an odd bunch. Humans don't normally have much truck with them, or at least don't want much. But those insects are oddly interesting.

The termites of Africa and Australia build huge towers that give the landscape the appearance of another planet. But the termites build their towers only under special circumstances—when they act together.

A termite going about its business alone accomplishes very little. It digs up a little pile of dirt, barely enough to notice. But if another termite happens along and gets interested, it starts to help. And then another comes, and yet another. And soon there is a nucleus of termites, all working together to turn a miserable little pile of dirt into an engineering feat—an immense structure with tunnels and passages, hidden chambers and spanning arches. Compared to the size of the builders, these high-rising skyscrapers are the biggest buildings on this planet.

Yet if you look at a single termite going its separate way, you would never imagine the power and skill that a collective nucleus of the creatures can express. Individually, they can do almost nothing, but when they get together, they can build mountains, if not move them. Together they have abilities that the individual lacks.

But there is something else that is odd about termites, and marvelous. The termite band has no architect directing the building. All the termites just get together, respond to one another by waving antennae and scurrying past. It looks like chaos and confusion. Each just doing what is natural for it and responding to the others in the nucleus, they raise a structure that may last for years or even for centuries. With no plans to consult and no architect to direct, they build a perfect tower.

What the individual termites do is messy, undirected, apparently pointless. But what comes out of their collective effort is order, direction, and intention. As Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers extrapolate from the termites' behavior in their book A Simpler Way (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1996, p. 68):

Life seeks order, but it uses messes to get there. Organizing occurs locally. Groups link up with other groups. From such small collectives, a larger system emerges. Many parallel activities, many trials and errors, are occurring everywhere in the system. Individuals determine their behavior from what they see going on around them. The result is a system so well-coordinated that it's hard to believe someone, somewhere, is not directing the activity from on high. It took entomologists a long time to realize that there were no termite construction bosses.

Termites are an odd bunch. But then, if they could see us humans get together, they might think we are too.