Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bakula, Joann S. "The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Tour." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

By Joann S. Bakula

THE BARDO THODROL, OR TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD, is the most famous and mysterious book of Tibet, widely known and often begun but seldom read all the way through. Like a high mountain peak, it is widely admired but hard to climb. The intention here is to make the heights more accessible. The Bardo Thodrol is one of the treasures or "termas" that Padmasambhava, the Indian teacher who introduced Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century, hid in caves and also in the minds of future disciples. In it he taught about three of the six bardos or states of samsara, the round of life and death. All six are transitional states, one leading naturally and inevitably to the next unless an occurrence of enlightenment intervenes.

Three of the six bardos are of states of life: the waking state, the sleep and dream state, and the meditative state (Karma-glin-pa 169). These three begin with birth and end with death. The three bardos addressed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, however, begin with death and end with rebirth. These three bardos of death are called the bardo of clear light or luminosity, the bardo of radiant truth or realizing Reality, and the bardo of becoming.

The most likely time for spontaneous enlightenment to occur, ending the process of transition from one bardo to another, is during the "natural liberation" of death. So Padmasambhava wrote this guidebook for the recently deceased, to be read aloud to them for forty-nine days. But it is meant to instruct the reader as well. Each part begins something like, "O you of privileged birth, make good use of your opportunity and turn your educated mental powers to achieve real freedom!" The text for the first bardo is read for three to four days, the second for two weeks, and the third for thirty-one days adding up to the forty-nine days that the book should be pondered upon and read by the living to the dead. The actual length of time a person spends in each bardo differs widely, it is said, depending upon the individual.

The experience of the first bardo, the chikhai bardo, immediately at death is described as Clear Light, experiencing the primordial state that has never been born and never dies. "The nature of everything is open, empty and naked like the sky. Luminous emptiness without center or circumference . . . dawns" (Sogyal 259). This state comes as a total and unexpected surprise to most people, who pass through its light in a swoon, unconscious that the clear light is their innermost essence and the Ground of their Being and contains nothing in it that could cause it to die. The Dalai Lama, in his book Dzogchen, writes about Clear Light, Ati Yoga (Adi in the Theosophical tradition, the first or divine plane), and the Great Perfection.

Cultivating openness to this state in a meditative practice makes it much more likely that, at the moment of extreme truth and ultimate opportunity, we will be able to see and recognize the light and to identify with it, realizing that we are That. The Tibetan Book of the Dead advises us to seize the moment by thinking, "I have arrived at the time of death, so now, by means of this death, I will adopt only the attitude of the enlightened state of mind, friendliness, and compassion, and attain perfect enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings as limitless as space" (Fremantle and Trungpa 84—5).

To prepare for this once-every-lifetime opportunity, it is wise constantly to remember and reinforce the idea that the essence of spirit is as vast and empty as the night sky without stars or galaxies; it is without limit or locality, without points of light. "But this state of mind is not just blank emptiness, it is unobstructed, sparkling, pure and vibrant . . . Immortal Light" (Fremantle and Trungpa 86—7). The dramatic and traumatic stripping bare of what we think we are—all the thoughts, emotions, interests, relationships, accomplishments, likes and dislikes—leaves us with our pure, naked essence. As the Buddha achieved enlightenment, it brought nearly total recall of the thousands of lifetimes he had lived and deaths he had experienced. The sky, day or night, is a great teacher of ultimate reality, a reality in which we are gestalted in life, in which the sun lives, a perfect representation of our own inner essence. "Space is an Entity," H. P. Blavatsky said, and this is experienced first hand at death, an equal-opportunity event.

This first bardo of the Ground has two phases. The first is called the dawning of the primary clear white light, the nature of Ground Reality, also called the Mother Luminosity or Mother Reality, seen at the moment of death. The second is the Secondary Luminosity, or the Child Luminosity, seen immediately after death, which Robert Thurman (130) describes as the "semblant clear light, transparency still filtered through conceptuality." The Dalai Lama (Varela 208) has said it is quite feasible that the bright light of the near-death experience is a facsimile of the clear light.

If we do not recognize the primary or secondary clear light of our own essential mind in the first bardo, we wander down to the second bardo, the chonyid bardo, which is less abstract. It is binary: one week of visions of wonderful, beneficent deities and a second week of the same deities in their wrathful form, each occurring in five groups or families of resplendent color. This is the central mandala of Buddhist meditation, arranged as five circles appearing at the center, east, south, west, and north of the heart. Visualization of the primary circle of the heart is helpful in understanding what follows.

The appearance of the deities, the Dhyani Buddhas, in their positive aspects in seven days, is especially interesting to students of The Secret Doctrine and the theory of the seven rays. H. P. Blavatsky writes that the "Dhyani-Buddhas, or Dhyan-Chohans" are the same as the "Elohim or Sons of God, the Planetary Spirits of all nations" (8) and the Archangels (23). These are correlated to the "septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers . . . the framers, shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe; . . . they inform and guide it; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and control evolution. . . . Generically, they are known as the Dhyan Chohans" (15—6). They refer to the Biblical seven "Days" of creation, the "Seven Creations" of the Puranas, and the seven stanzas of the Book of Dzyan, which describe the "seven great stages of the evolutionary process" (15). Each family brings its entourage of bodhisattvas, whom H. P. Blavatsky defines as "the human correspondents of the Dhyani-Buddhas." The Dhyani Buddhas and their bodhisattvas all appear in both male and female forms, with their wisdom teachings and their divine attributes. Blavatsky also writes, "Esoterically, however, the Dhyani-Buddhas are seven, of whom five only have . . . manifested, . . . two are to come in the Sixth and Seventh Root Races" (55).

Sogyal Rinpoche's book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and his tradition are indispensable for a deeper study of this bardo, also called the dharmata or "Intrinsic Radiance" and defined as "the intrinsic nature of everything, the essence of things as they are . . . the naked, unconditioned truth, the nature of reality, or the true nature of phenomenal existence" (274). The Rinpoche writes that this bardo can "simply flash by like a bolt of lightning; you will not even know what has occurred," unless you are prepared. If you are, then luminosity appears as a "flowing vibrant world of sound, light, and color" like a mirage; this is the "spontaneous display of Rigpa, the simple rays and colors then begin to integrate and coalesce into points or balls of light" that unfurl from the heart, called tickles or bindus. From these points of light come the visions of unity with divinity, joining your heart with theirs. Countless luminous spheres appear in their rays, which increase and then "roll up," as the deities all dissolve into you. Then comes the display of the four wisdom teachings in a show of carpets, balls, and canopies of colored lights. Every possibility is presented, from wisdom and liberation, to confusion and rebirth. "The entire vision then dissolves back into its original essence, like a tent collapsing once its ropes are cut" (276—8).

As an example of the language used in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the first day of grand visions dawns with "the light-ray of Blessed Vairochana's compassion" emanating from the center of the heart, the Central Realm, the original manifestation from which all else arose. "The whole of space will shine with a blue light . . . luminous, brilliant, very sharp and clear blue light of supreme wisdom. . . . take refuge in it" (Fremantle and Trungpa 96—7).

The fivefold aggregate of which a human is composed, the skandas (five heaps), also has its roots here. Each of the skandas is associated with the appearance of one of the Dhyani Buddha families and wisdom teachings, and each contains a "poison," resulting from identification with separated existence. These poisons cause a human to run away from, instead of toward, each archetypal divinity, running again and again into rebirth instead of liberation. The five wisdoms and the five poisons, or obstructing human qualities, combine to reveal the relationship between the spark of divinity and the human animal in all of its pristine and terrible beauty—from animal to living God, as Blavatsky said.

The seven days of the heart may be summarized (Fremantle and Trungpa 92—133) briefly as follows:

Day 1: Central Seed Realm, limitless wisdom, poison of limitless ignorance, skanda or aggregate of consciousness, blue.

Day 2: Eastern Realm of Complete Joy, mirror-like wisdom, poison of aggression and hatred, skanda of form, white.

Day 3: Southern Glorious Realm, wisdom of equality (equalizing wisdom), poison of pride, skanda of feeling, yellow.

Day 4: Western Blissful Realm, discriminating wisdom (knowing real from unreal), poison of desire or lust, skanda of perception, red.

Day 5: Northern Accumulated-actions Realm, action-accomplishing wisdom, poison of intense envy, skanda of concept, green.

Day 6: All five families together, with their wisdoms, aggregates and poisons, plus the gate guardians, such as Yamantaka, the Destroyer of Death, forty-two deities in all.

Day 7: Pure Realm of Space, dawning of the five families of the Adept Knowledge-holding Deities now moving to the throat center, with the lords and dakinis of the dance and many others, appearing as not quite peaceful, not quite horrific, leading to the first day of the dawning of the wrathful deities.

The second week of visions, those appearing in negative images, are described with severe and frightening adjectives. They appear not from the heart but from the brain. These deities are described frequently as "blood-drinking," a symbol of the thirst for life in samsara, the world of phenomena. Padmasambhava constantly reminds us that the Buddha Herukas (or wrathful forms) are the same energies we saw before, only in their negative states. This aspect of the enlightened families—giving a new meaning to the five families of Godfather fame—is well suited for overcoming all obstacles to bliss and enlightenment, whether ignorance, desire, obscurations, distortions, "veils," or any other thing opposing enlightenment. They are armed with "wisdom weapons" for defeating suffering, such as nooses, swords, and axes. There is, Samuel Johnson reminds us, nothing like a noose to concentrate the mind.

Evans-Wentz (133n) likens the wrathful figures to the "Dweller on the Threshold." One example will suffice: "Now on the eighth day the blood-drinking wrathful deities will appear. Recognize them without being distracted." The "Glorious Great Buddha-Heruka will emerge from within your own brain," the central part, "his nine eyes gaze into yours with a wrathful expression, his eyebrows are like flashes of lightning." He sends out "loud whistling noises. . . . his heads are crowned with dried skulls and the sun and the moon." His six hands hold a wheel, an axe, a sword, a bell, a ploughshare, and a skull-cup (Fremantle and Trungpa 140). After the two weeks of Buddhas and Buddha Herukas, the world of samsara is entered once again in the bardo of becoming.

The experience of death for most people means simply passing into a state of oblivion during the first two bardos, and awakening again when "sky and earth are separating" and all of our habitual tendencies are activated and reawakened. We are now in the full complexity of phenomena, and encounter a myriad of solid-seeming forms and events. The third bardo spans the time between the reawakening of self-awareness and entering the womb of the next life. It arises as a result of our failure to recognize the two previous bardos of reality as the essential nature of mind. This third and longest bardo is called the sipa bardo, the bardo of becoming and existence—the existence of a mental or bardo body and the inner existence of the mind. It is in this bardo that the difference in emphasis between the Tibetan teaching and the Theosophical teachings becomes most evident; the first discourages comfort anywhere as part of its enlightenment message, and the second emphasizes the continuity of usefulness, discipleship growth, and service.

The outstanding characteristic of the third bardo is that mind plays the predominant role; it once again has a body, a mental body, with much greater clarity than in life and unlimited mobility determined solely by past habitual tendencies. This stage is the opposite of dissolution. Here everything mental that had dissolved at death begins to reappear, such as the thought states of ignorance, desire, and anger. Memory of past karma is still fresh in mind, and a mental or bardo body emerges. This is your Brigette Bardot body, as it were.

"We meet and converse for fleeting moments with many other travelers in the bardo world, those who have died before us," Sogyal writes (289). We have extrasensory powers like ghosts, and are said to retain the gender and cultural identity of our previous life. What was thought and done before continues. We are advised to give up attachment to people and possessions, to abandon yearning for a body, not to give in to desire, anger, hostility, or fear, but to cultivate kindness and compassion. After all, the bardo body cannot be killed. No matter what frightening things occur, the mental body has no physical brain and cannot be slain. As in a dream, you can experience terror and fear, but they soon dissolve, and you are as you were, the dreamer and creator of your own world. "All of these are nothing more than our own deluded projections, by nature empty and unsubstantial," like the bardo body itself. "Emptiness cannot harm emptiness" (Sogyal 294).

An intense life review occurs. Experiences are relived. Minute details long lost to memory are reviewed and places where life events occurred are revisited (Sogyal 290). Then a judgment takes place. "Your good conscience, a white guardian angel, acts as your defense counsel . . . while your bad conscience, a black demon, submits the case for the prosecution. The "Lord of Death," who presides, then consults the mirror of karma and makes his judgment. . . . Ultimately all judgment takes place within our own mind. We are the judge and the judged" (Sogyal 292). Sogyal quotes Raymond Moody and Kenneth Ring, two pioneers in near-death studies, in regard to this process. "The "ife-review" seems to suggest that, after death, we can experience all the suffering for which we were both directly and indirectly responsible" (Sogyal 291). Near-death experiencers have reported that the ultimate question in that state is "Can we forgive ourselves?" The review process requires that we experience the effects on others of our every thought, word, and deed.

As the time for rebirth gets closer, craving for a material body increases. Addiction to past cravings reappears. Because the mental body has the presence of the five elements in it, it can hunger for food and pleasure, and goes where these are present. Once again there is longing for a physical body and the search for an opportunity to be reborn. The future life gradually begins to have more influence than the past life.

At this point, instructions for closing the entrance to the womb are given. "Think resistance," we are advised. "At this time projections of men and women making love will appear. When you see them do not enter between them, but remember, and meditate on the man and woman as the guru and his consort." Another method is turning away "passion and aggression." "If you are going to be born as a male, you will experience yourself as a male, and feel violent aggression toward the father and jealousy and desire for the mother. If you are going to be born as a female the opposite occurs. This will cause you to enter the path leading to the womb, and you will experience self-existing bliss in the midst of the meeting of sperm and ovum" (Fremantle and Trungpa 201—2). This similarity to the fate of King Oedipus is one of several correspondences with classical Greek thought.

What follows is anathema to most Westerners: "You will open your eyes, and you have turned into a puppy," an example of the Buddhist belief in the lokas, or six types of existence possible at this point: a god, a demigod, a human, an animal, a hungry ghost, or a hell-being. The widespread belief in such transmigration among Hinduists and Buddhists is not shared by most Westerners today, who, following the Theosophical tradition, combine the theory of karma and rebirth with evolution as their worldview.

If the instructions for closing the entrance to the womb were tried with no success, then the time has come to accept birth, to "choose a human womb," on one of four continents, in only one of which the dharma flourishes. The Tibetan Book of the Dead concludes by advising us to "read the book aloud oneself and contemplate it," for it is a "profound instruction which liberates by being seen and heard and read."Carl Jung (in Evans-Wentz) suggests that we should read it in reverse order, which is how we return in consciousness to our source.

References

Joann S. Bakula is the author of Esoteric Psychology: A Model for the Development of Human Consciousness and many articles. She teaches philosophy and the Tibetan Book of the Dead at Southern Oregon University and transpersonal psychology for the on-line graduate program of Greenwich University.

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Bland, Betty. "The Game of Life." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):82- 83.

viewpoint

By Betty Bland, National President

UNCERTAINTY IS ONE OF THE GREATEST OBSTACLES with which we human beings have to contend. Indeed, as I write this, war is raging in Iraq, with no certainty of out come and with pain on every side. Such imminent danger increases the difficulty of dealing with the unpredictable. So perhaps it is useful to explore how we might cope with uncertainty.

For those who enjoy sports contests and even for those who enjoy playing games of various sorts, part of the enjoyment is the edge of not knowing who will win. The contest keeps us fascinated just like a good mystery story in which we try to out guess the creative genius of the author. In these cases we consider the excitement pleasurable because the stakes are not so high although some sports fans seem to lose sight of that fact.

But if the outcome of the game affects us personally, then our anxiety level rises.This is one of the reasons that Tiger Woods has become such a folk hero. When his income and his reputation are riding on a single golf swing, he can often achieve a meditative calmness that allows him to perform to perfection. And even at those times when he is off his game, he still seems to maintain a degree of coolness envied by most golfers. He has a certain assurance, as if he realizes that indeed it is only a game.

The stakes grow even higher when our own safety is at risk, or the safety of loved ones,or of our country, or even our way of life. And yet, if we believe the Theosophical ideas of karma and the Divine Plan, then all of life is a kind of game, as our inner essence (or higher self) wends its way on the pilgrim journey of return to our source.

Whenever we find ourselves in trying circumstances, we can realize that we have been presented with an opportunity. We are being tested and trained to strengthen our resolve and to focus solely on our spiritual essence our one true Self. In her small book Practical Occultism, Madam Blavatsky wrote:

The "God" in us—that is to say, the Spirit of Love and Truth, Justice and Wisdom, Goodness and Power—should be our only true and permanent Love, our only reliance in everything, our only Faith, which, standing firm as a rock, can for ever be trusted;our only Hope, which will never fail us if all other things perish.

For most of us, this spiritual essence may seem impossible to reach, but it is attainable and worth all the effort it takes. To seek it, we have to begin where we are. All life is our classroom; our friends and enemies alike are our teachers; books and fellow student pilgrims support our study. Seeking this inner knowing with an open heart will bring us into contact with the mentors we need.

Perhaps a good beginning, in addition to daily meditation, would be to try regularly to remember who we truly are. When we are so reminded, we can better play the game of life and walk with certainty in the face of uncertainty. A helpful practice is to use bells assignals to recall us to our origins and reason for being. Whenever a bell sounds a distant chime, a clock, or even an inner ringing, repeat quietly the saying from the Buddhist contemplative tradition: "Listen, listen, listen to the wondrous sound of the bell. It calls me back to my one true Self."

Whatever troubles axe in the outer world, within that Self in each of us is a calm assurance. Whenever we access that center of certainty, endurance, and peace, we make it more available to both ourselves and others. May we all find that peace and may it abide in all beings. Shanti.

The View from Adyar

By Radha Burnier

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Burnier, Radha. "Maturity of the Mind." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

There is a world of difference between a mind which is mature and one which is not. In the fragment entitled "The Seven Portals" in The Voice of the Silence, the following words occur:

Thy Soul has to become as the ripe
mango fruit: as soft and sweet as its
bright golden pulp for others' woes, as
hard as that fruit's stone for thine own
throes and sorrows

The ripening takes place slowly through the experience of many incarnations, or quickly at a certain stage by discovering in what maturity consists.

From the spiritual point of view, maturity is not ability of a worldly kind. Just as the fully ripe mango has no raw portion in it, the mature mind is free of every element of rawness. The word "raw" means, among other things, "untrained." A raw recruit is, for example, an untrained person. The word also means "unhealed," "sore" or "inflamed," as is a wounded area which has not been restored to health. These words help to understand the state of immaturity.

Thoughts and emotions constantly well up in the mind, many or most of them being disorderly reactions to people and circumstances. These reactions are symptoms of the subconscious condition. The insecurity of to people is displayed in numerous ways: Emotions which are easily inflamed, sensitivity to the opinions of others, vainglorious thought, and so on. People who appear strong may in fact be hardening themselves, because they are uncertain and feel the need to protect themselves. Wanting to become hard, strong or clever is a symptom of hidden weakness.

Among the seven virtues described as the keys to "The Seven Portals" in The Voice of the Silence is of others, 'patience sweet, that nought can ruffle.' In the absence of egoism, there is nothing to be offended or disturbed. The mind is like a light which burns steadily, unaffected by outer conditions.

Steadiness, and a real sense of peace, and freedom from wants and fears, are all characteristic of maturity. The true happiness described by Plotinus is also that state of maturity. He says:

The sign that this state has been achieved is that the man seeks nothing else. Once the man is adept, the means of happiness, the way to good, are within, for nothing is good that lies outside him. Anything he desires further than this, he seeks as a necessity, and not for himself but for a subordinate, for the body bound to him, to which since it has life he must minister the needs of life, not needs, however, to the true man.

One who grows in maturity is not quick to offer opinions and come to conclusions. His mind is perceptive and intelligent, but the intelligence itself makes him pause and wait. He does not take it for granted that his opinions are of value and therefore there is obstinacy, assertiveness or pride in him. The first sign of maturity is to recognize one's own limitations, and be humble and simple.

Radha Burnier, President of the international Theosophical Society, is also international head of the Theosophical Order of Service and the author of several books, including Human Regeneration. This column was adapted from The Theosophist 117 (December 1995): 85-86

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: O. Howell, Alice. "In the Beginning Was a Verb." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

By Alice O. Howell

Panta rhea—everything flows.
—Heraclitus

Jungian archetypes have been the subject of a growing confusion over the years. For some the archetype is a primordial image, for others it is a god or a character in a fairy tale, and so forth. All such views are true on different levels, and thus arguments about them represent a dilemma of layers.

The great obstacle in understanding the essence of an archetype is that we have to use words to define what is essentially a direct experience. We cannot even mention a verb without turning it into a noun! To say "swimming is delightful" is to turn the gerund into the subject of the sentence, that is, into a noun; similarly, in "to swim is delightful," the infinitive to swim is the subject of the sentence, a verb having become a noun. All our hows turn into linguistic whats. A mercurial trickster stops the flow of the action as though action were frames in a reel of film. So to write of archetypes is at best a challenge.

"In the beginning was a verb" is simply a paraphrase of the words of John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." The word verb means "word." This is so obvious, it takes a simpleton like myself to get the joke. If we say that God is a verb, we are on the right track to understanding the essence of an archetype because the essential nature of archetypes is a process, a verb. And postulating energy (God), for lack of a better word, as the Primal Verb, then the archetypes become the various modalities inherent in both the invisible and the visible worlds. Jung refers in one of his letters (to Dr. H., August 30, 1951) to the essentially transcendental nature of the archetype as an "arranger" of psychic forms inside and outside the psyche (in theoretical physics the archetype corresponds to the model of a radioactive atom, with the difference that the atom consists of quantitative, and the archetype of qualitative, i.e. meaningful, relationships . . .).

To use a much simpler but similar process, imagine energy as the sugar in a cosmic pastry-baker's frosting sack with different templates for making stars, swirls, spirals, and so on. The substance is the same but the forms differ. Jung also uses a far more effective example tracing how an archetype, as an invisible modulator of energy, becomes visible (letter to Pastor Max Frischkenecht, February 8, 1946):

In order to clarify this somewhat difficult concept, I would like to take a parallel from mineralogy, the so-called crystal lattice. This lattice represents the axial system of the crystal. In the mother liquor it is invisible, as though not present, and yet it is present since first the ions aggregate round the (ideal) axial points of intersection, and then the molecules. There is only one crystal lattice for millions of crystals of the same chemical composition. No individual crystal can speak of its lattice, since the lattice is the identical precondition for all of them (none of which concretizes it perfectly!). It is everywhere the same and eternal.

To help resolve the dilemma of layers, we can refocus from the transcendental and eternal aspect of the archetype, which Jung wrote of in the passages just quoted, to the next layer, that of the "primordial image," which is still an abstraction. We must assume that prehistoric humanity observed these archetypal expressions in nature and, deeming them to be universal, considered them pine: light, darkness; expansion, contraction; penetration, reception, and so on—and, in order to speak of them, gave them names of gods and goddesses. So the second layer of perception of an archetype would lie in its personification, to wit, the Greek deities Chaos, Erebus, Hemera, Zeus, Kronos, Ares, and the rest. There can be no argument against this because, though the gods and goddesses in different cultures bear a variety of names in different languages, the associated process of each has remained a constant throughout history. Jung also writes:

Archetypes are forms of different aspects expressing the creative psychic background. They are and always have been numinous and therefore "pine." In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them as aspects of the Creator.

The next layer is the external projection and concretization of these personifications in statues and temples with rituals and taboos. Rules and regulations develop into religious institutions with a priesthood, and alas eventually the true nature of the archetype is in danger of being lost until, with the changing of the ages, the husk of one religion is destroyed and a new expression arises with the same archetypal components. You cannot kill an archetype! If we could only grasp this, we might be able to stop killing each other in the name of religion. And it is the perception of these archetypes that could form a common denominator for mutual tolerance. This also may explain the efficacy of certain shamanic, nomadic, or mystical practices because they tap directly into the primordial layer of archetypes, thereby avoiding reification in institutions.

Yet another layer is the hiding of archetypes as symbols in myths, fairy tales, plays, books, movies, and even down to the comic strips we enjoy every day. And it pays to remember that each process has both a positive and negative expression. Internally, our most cruel critic can be transformed into the Wise Old Man because they represent the same process. The sweet young ingenue is the positive aspect of the bitch; the good mother, of the witch; and the mortal hero, of the villain.

All of the anthropocentric factors listed above can be seen as human projections of therefore define contents of the human psyche, and this insight is one of the great contributions thatJung has offered us because "it takes one to know one," and within ourselves we resonate with the awesome archetypal flow of the mystery we know as the cosmos (a word meaning beauty). Thus the archetypal process unites our inner and outer worlds, providing an opportunity for the ego to make the process conscious and meaningful. This uniting also accounts for synchronicities and may explain why astrology works. When the processes unite, there is a flashing glimpse of the unus mundus—the "One World."

Agrippa von Nettesheim, the alchemist, wrote, Virtutes pinae in res diffusae—"Divine powers are hidden in things." This reflects the insight that not a single object, either manifest in nature or manufactured by human hands, can exist without concealing archetypal processes. Thus it can be truly said that we can also find the sacred in the commonplace and so, by uncovering or discovering it, we can begin to appreciate the wondrous differentiation of the primal energy at the source of all manifestation. Nader Ardalan and Lelah Bhaktiar, writing in The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture, express this beautifully from a Sufi viewpoint:

Symbols themselves are theophanies of the absolute in the relative. . . . The central postulate of the Way is that there is a hidden meaning in all things. Every thing has an outer as well as an inner meaning. Every external form is complemented by an inner reality which is its hidden eternal essence.

Another alchemist, Petrus Bonus ("good stone") wrote that to discover the Philosopher's Stone meant "looking with the eyes and seeing with the heart," which would mean viewing the world with a loving eye. When we do this, we begin to learn how to enter the unus mundus—the one world that is the dwelling of the Self or our Divine Guest. As outer and inner become one, life can become both more meaningful and sacramental. As Jesus says in the Gospel according to Thomas, "Heaven is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it." Or as someone has observed, "There is another world, and it's hidden in this one!" Alchemy has an extensive list of processes designated by high-sounding Latin verbs. But those processes are applied over and over unconsciously by any cook in any kitchen! Try Sublimatio Souffle or Scrambled eggs Coagulatio!

The key lies in our ability to think symbolically. The Greek verb symbolein means "to throw together" or "to unite." The symbol unites an outer and visible thing or event with an inner and spiritual meaning. (The antonym diabolein means "to separate" and is the origin of diabolos or devil! But that's another story.)

Taking God as a verb, the process we most clearly associate with this central mystery surely is creating. All myths universally start with some form of creation. So, out of darkness and chaos emerge light, life, and warmth. The "primordial image" is an abstraction that is pine. The next step is naming an unmanifest God of gods, next a manifest god or goddess. Keep in mind, these are still abstractions of verbs! The primal processes require a father (yang) god and a mother (yin) goddess, because only the process of mothering can give form to life, and the word matter comes from mater "mother."

The source of life and light in our solar system is the sun. The planets with their moons orbit the sun. So symbolically, for early mankind the Sun was a symbol of God, the Creator, and the gods and goddesses were reflections or attributes of that primal source of Spirit. A modern five-year-old little girl, Tamar, said, "I close my eyes when I talk to God because God is like a great big sun (Ruth Seligman and Jonathan Mark, When Will the Lord Be Two?). That is the way an Egyptian would have addressed the god Ra three thousand years ago.

From the sun as an archetypal expression of the creative force, we pass to yet another layer—the number of religions using solar light or fire as symbols in their rituals and building their temples or churches to provide a sacred space or temenos to honor the Source. Fire is the element that multiplies; it can be shared over and over without losing its light.

Similarly, one seed when grown produces hundreds more. One work of art becomes as many as there are people to see it, because no two people react to it exactly the same. One lecture becomes a hundred lectures, if a hundred people are present. It is not what is said but what is heard; not what is written but what is read. So subtly we can observe the archetypal how of "creating" moving through all the whats.

Turning inward within the psyche, we find that every esoteric branch of every exoteric religion postulates an inner Light (Atman or Christ Within), which Jung termed the Self (as opposed to the ego). This Self is the center point of the symbolic circle or mandala of the psyche. Thus the same symbol,    is used in astronomy for the sun and in metallurgy for gold. The ego (who we think we are) is symbolically at the circumference, mediating between outer and inner realities and circumambulating the centerpoint of the Self (who we really are).

Accordingly, in myths and fairy tales, the figure of central authority is the king; in a tribe,the chief; in a democracy, the president; in a business, the boss. Fairy tales involving a throne usurped by a wrongful ruler to the detriment of the land describe the fairly common problem of our placing on the throne our ego instead of our Divine Guest. In a family, the father expresses that archetype. Fathers give life; mothers give the form life takes. Now, as we enter a new eon, the central archetype may be heading for the hierogamos or "sacred wedding." We are heading toward "the Woman clothed with the Sun" of Revelations. Anyone reading and reacting to this politically has fallen into the trap of literalism and forgotten the fundamental verbs. Only a fertilized egg yields a new life. It still takes two to tango in the manifest world.

In science, we learn that every atom has a "sun." Thus everything in nature, from animal through vegetable to mineral, is an expression of the primal verb of creating. When we read that man is made in the image of God, we can rethink that statement in terms of our sharing the ability to co-create (which is a process), rather than taking it literally and projecting an anthropomorphic god. To think symbolically is a key to wisdom because it allows us to see the same process moving at different levels, like octaves in music.

An amusing example: what common object makes one out of two going up (symbolos) and two out of one going down (diabolos)? The answer is a zipper! We can recognize the same process in the caduceus of Hermes (Mercury), the personification of communicating, or in the ida and pingala of the chakra system, or in the switcherooing process of our optic nerves, or in our DNA and RNA. When Hermes connects, he is the psychopomp; and when he disconnects or confuses, we call him the Trickster. These are positive and negative aspects of the same process.

A joyful approach to life is playing "Sophia's Game." Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, originally the term for the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and described as the personification ofWisdom in the Old Testament, is a delightful archetype:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
          Before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,
          Ere ever the earth was. . . .
When he established the heavens, I was there . . .
When he marked out the foundations of the earth
          I was by him, as a master workman
And I was daily his delight,
          Rejoicing always before him,
          Rejoicing in his habitable earth;
And my delight was with the sons of men.

Proverbs (8:22-31)

Sophia is co-creator of the manifest world, but language, the Trickster, obscured her when Greek Hagia Sophia was translated into Latin as Spiritus Sanctus, which term requires a masculine pronoun. Thus the Christian triune Godhead became all male to the historic detriment of women and nature in Western civilization.

Sophia is also an archetype who takes refuge in fairy tales. Another term for the Holy Ghost is the Paraclete—Greek for "Comforter." It is not difficult to spot her presence at this level as theFairy Godmother, whose benevolent process is mediating between the invisible and visible worlds with practical and helpful advice. Thus Sophia is the process within each of us that we call intuition. Her motto is ego coniungo—"I unite." And, as we will be hearing more and more about her, we need to remember this: Sophia is non-threatening.

Take a cup. What do cups do? They contain, fill and empty, so the hidden process is receptive, yin,womblike, feminine. Symbolically, it usually appears as a cauldron in myths, but these days Sophia's process is honored on the Sabbath as a chalice or the Judaic Sabbath cup. All three are vehicles for rebirth and renewal. Raised another level, Sophia's cup becomes the central problem of a great western myth, the Holy Grail. The problem: it's lost! What have we lost? The feminine approach to wisdom. A philosopher is a lover (philo) of Sophia. When this archetype is raised to its highest expression, we reach the Mother Goddess, who even in prehistoric times was fashioned in clay holding the moon (the Venus of Willendorf, about 25,000 BC) or covered with engraved birds and beasts—an early personification of the process of giving form to life. A child announced that Mother Nature is God's wife!

This way of symbolic thinking is not taught, yet it is hinted at in the Emerald Tablet of HermesTrismegistus: "As above, so below." We need only add, "As within, so without."

In the end we will discover the verb—panta rhea.

Alice O. Howell is a Jungian and an astrologer, whose books include The Dove in the Stone:Finding the Sacred in the Commonplace, Jungian Synchronicity in Astrological Signs and Ages, Stars,Cycles, and Psyche: Psychological Aspects of Astrology, The Web in the Sea: Jung, Sophia, and theGeometry of the Soul (all Quest Books), and her most recent, a delightful fantasy, The Beejum Book, reviewed in the November-December 2002 Quest.