Harry Potter and the Hero With a Thousand Faces

By John Algeo

Originally printed in the Winter 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Algeo, John. "Harry Potter and the Hero With a Thousand Faces." Quest  97. 1 (Fall 2009): 25-29.

Theosophical Society - John Algeo was a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia. He was a Theosophist and a Freemason He was the Vice President of the Theosophical Society Adyar. With the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007, the Harry Potter cycle is now complete, so we can look at the whole story of the Boy-Who-Lived. This cycle of seven stories is undoubtedly the major fantasy work of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million copies in the United States during the first twenty-four hours after its publication. Of the first six books, 325 million copies have been sold around the globe. The books have been translated into sixty-five languages, including Hindi, Icelandic, Latin, Vietnamese, and Welsh. In one month in 2007, all seven Harry Potter books were on the list of ten best-sellers.

The remarkable popularity of the Harry Potter stories cannot be explained as the result of merchandising. There has been merchandising aplenty, but it has followed the success of the books, not caused that success. Harry Potter's success has many causes: plot, characters, setting, and theme among them.

Plot is one cause of the books' popularity. J. K. Rowling is an excellent spinner of tales, who weaves an engrossing story. Her plots are suspenseful and surprising, as full of twists and puzzles as the hedge maze in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Readers find it hard to put down a Harry Potter book until they have reached its end. The stories are also highly detailed: we know what the characters look like and what they wear; when the students at Hogwarts School settle into a banquet in the Great Hall, we get a menu of what they eat. Such detail lends both reality and interest to the plot. In addition, the books are full of foreshadowings. Apparently minor or insignificant details that are introduced in one book become central cruxes in a later volume. For example, in book 1, Mr. Ollivander, the wandmaker, makes a seemingly casual remark when he is looking for the right wand for Harry: "The wand chooses the wizard." In book 7, the significance of that statement becomes the climactic moment in Harry's victory over Voldemort, when the Elder Wand leaves Voldemort's hand and chooses Harry as its rightful owner.

The characters of the stories are well-rounded and memorable. If readers of the Harry Potter books should ever encounter Molly Weasley on the street, they would recognize her immediately. And so they would also if they encountered Lucius Malfoy, though they might cross the street to avoid him. The characters are, on the whole, dynamic and evolving, not static. That is particularly true of the three principal students: Harry, Ron, and Hermione. They are eleven years old when the story starts and seventeen when it ends, and the reader has accompanied them through their developing teen years. Harry is a sweet little Cinderlad in the first book, and a self-confident, assertive leader in the last. Most of the characters are realistic, convincing, and multidimensional. Only Voldemort is mainly a two-dimensional figure of evil. But even with Voldemort, the reader learns what caused the distortion of his character, and in book 7, Harry's vision of the Evil Lord's naked, suffering fetus on the other side of death evokes a feeling of sympathetic regret for him. We can identify with or at least sympathize with many of the characters in the stories.

The setting of the books is inspired. Most fantasy has to be set in a world somehow removed from ours. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea novels are set on another planet somewhere else in the universe. J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth saga is set on our planet, but at a time of immense antiquity, when elves and orcs and hobbits roamed the globe and the Age of Man was still in the far future. C. S. Lewis's Narnia books are set on this planet and in our time, but in a different dimension that one can access only by going through a closet. Rowling's genius was to place her stories in our world and our time, here and now. She peopled our world with both ordinary muggles like most of us and also with another order of humanity: wizards. Muggles and wizards live side by side, although most muggles are not aware of the fact. Moreover, psychic mutations can produce a wizard child from muggle parents or, alas, a magicless squib from wizard parents. Harry Potter's world thus has an immediacy and reality that few fantasy novels can match. One never knows: that woman with the odd hat sitting on a park bench may be a witch, or the man with the peculiarly colored cloak passing on the other side of the street may be a wizard. The wizard world and the muggle world are the same place: here and now.

Beyond the appeal of plot, character, and setting, the chief and abiding attraction of the Harry Potter books is that they are archetypal. The books resonate with something deep inside us. They evoke a response from the collective unconscious. Harry Potter is a contemporary version of the Hero with a Thousand Faces. Harry Potter is us.

Joseph Campbell, in his seminal 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, talks about the "monomyth" of the hero. Campbell borrowed that term from James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake, which is itself extraordinarily archetypal and even more extraordinarily difficult to read, but which has influenced our vocabulary. The word "quark" was taken from Joyce's book by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann as a term for subatomic particles. So mythologists, physicists, and fantasists are all indebted to James Joyce. Campbell characterizes Joyce's monomyth as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

The monomyth is important because it is an archetype of the interior experience all human beings have when they set out to investigate who they are, what is inside them, and the way to bring that knowledge into consciousness and practical application. The Harry Potter books are clearly one expression of the monomyth, as we can see from an annotation of Campbell's definition:

A hero [Harry Potter] ventures forth from the world of common day [the muggle world] into a region of supernatural wonder [the wizarding world]: fabulous forces [magic spells] are there encountered and a decisive victory is won [Harry defeats Voldemort]: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man [Harry is the "Chosen One," a living legend, and a leader].

The characters in the books are archetypes: Harry is the Orphan hero of all fairy tales; Albus Dumbledore is the Wise Old Man; Molly Weasley is the World Mother. The plot elements are also archetypal: in several of the books, Harry descends into the underworld of the basement caverns beneath Hogwarts School. The themes are archetypes as well: in both the first and last books, alchemy's search for everlasting life is a central element, typified by the Philosophers' Stone of book 1 (misnamed "Sorcerer's Stone" in American editions) and by the three Deathly Hallows of book 7, which make their possessor the "master of Death."

The whole cycle of seven books is highly structured in several ways. In each of the books, Harry has a quest: something he must find or do or achieve. In the last book the quest theme is made explicit:

[Hermione:] "If the Deathly Hallows really existed, and Dumbledore knew about them, knew that the person who possessed all three of them would be master of Death—Harry, why wouldn't he have told you? Why?" . . . [Harry:] "You've got to find out about them for yourself! It's a Quest!"

There is also a single, ultimate quest in the whole cycle. That quest is for Harry to find himself, to discover who and what he is. That is the ultimate quest in life for all of us. That is what Arjuna learns in the Bhagavad Gita in his dialog with Sri Krishna. It is the theme of every spiritual guidebook.

In the Chandogya Upanishad, a father sends his son, Svetaketu, off to be educated; the boy returns all puffed up with his learning, as only a young man can be. The father asks, "Tell me, Svetaketu, did your teachers teach you that, knowing which, it is not necessary to know anything else?" And the boy, puzzled at the question says, "No, father, I never heard of that. What is it?" The father tells the boy to go to a nearby tree, pluck one of its fruits and bring it back. When the boy does so, his father instructs him to cut the fruit open and asks what he sees inside it. The boy does and answers that he sees only a great many very small seeds. The father tells him to take one of the little seeds, cut it open, and say what he sees inside it. The boy does and replies that he sees nothing inside the seed. Then his father says, "Svetaketu, that 'nothing' which you cannot see caused that great tree to grow. It is everywhere; it is the essence of all things. Svetaketu, you are that!" The Sanskrit is a well-known mantra: Tat tvam asi, "That thou art." The point of the story is that the only thing necessary to know in life is our own inmost identity.

The quest for Self-discovery is Harry Potter's quest. It is the power decisively won in the region of supernatural wonder by the hero of the monomyth. At the end of book 7, Harry has achieved the quest of that volume and possesses all three of the Deathly Hallows—the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility—and thus has become the "master of Death." But a true master of death is one who knows the reality and the value of his own mortality. So Harry gives up the Resurrection Stone, which brings the dead back into this world, and the Elder Wand, which gives power and control over living people, and keeps only the Cloak of Invisibility. The cloak protects its owner from death until that owner recognizes that the time has come to die and voluntarily meets death, not as a victim, but as a free agent.

Each of the volume-specific quests in the Harry Potter cycle is one aspect of the great quest for mastery over the lower self and discovery of the higher Self. The whole cycle of quests has a remarkable mirroring structure, as indicated in the accompanying diagram. This structure gives an appeal to the series of which readers may not be consciously aware. Yet it serves to connect the separate books, not merely chronologically (1 through 7) but thematically in sets: 1 and 7, 2 and 6, 3 and 5, with 4 as the pivotal book. This is a structure that will be familiar to Theosophists as the pattern of globes in a chain of involution-evolution. It is also the pattern of the Seven Rays, which echo one another in the same way.

 

THE STRUCTURE OF THE HARRY POTTER CYCLE

1. Philosopher's Stone
Quest = Find the  Philosopher's
Stone, which gives immortality
and unlimited wealth, to prevent
its falling into Voldemort's hands.

.

LIFE & DEATH

 

7. Deathly Hallows
Quest = Find the three Deathly
Hallows, which "make the
possessor master of Death," so
as to end Voldemort's evil.

         

2. Chamber of Secrets
Quest = Identify the Heir of
Slytherin, slay the Basilisk he
set loose upon Hogwarts, and save Ginny from death.

 

 

IDENTITY

 

6. Half-Blood Prince
Quest = Identify the Half-Blood
Prince and seek the locket Horcrux
with a fragment of Voldemorr's
soul, for which Dumbledore dies.

         

3. Prisoner of Azkaban
Quest = Save Sirius from
Dementors with a Time-turn
and learn the Patronus Charm
connecting Harry to his father.

 

TIME

 

5. Order of the Phoenix
Quest = Try to save Sirius from
Voldemort and learn about the time
prophecy that connects Harry
and Voldemort in their fates.

         
   

TRANSFORMATION

   
         
   

4. Goblet of Fire
Quest = Win the contests of
Air & Fire, Water, and Earth
and defeat the newly reembodied
Voldemort in combat by wands.

   


Thematically, the Harry Potter cycle is different from most other fantasies in two significant ways: its treatment of good and evil and its ending. Most fantasies provide a stark contrast between good and evil. In Tolkien, Gandalf is good, and Saruman is evil. In Lewis's Narnia, Aslan is good, and the White Witch is evil. But the Harry Potter characters, other than Voldemort, are generally mixed—basically good or bad, but with streaks of both selfishness and unselfishness, as well as stupidity and wisdom, in their behavior. They are real people. Dumbledore is a good man, but he made a bad mistake in his younger days, and he made another in not telling Harry the full truth about Voldemort. Harry's father was a good man, but he was proud, arrogant, and cruel to Snape. Snape is cruel to Harry, who reminds him of Harry's father, but Snape was devoted to Harry's mother and is completely loyal to Dumbledore.

The central example of the mixture of good and bad is Harry himself. He is essentially well-intentioned and acts for the good of others, like a bodhisattva, but he is headstrong and shows bad judgment. Harry is also a horcrux, with a fragment of Voldemort's soul inside him. That is archetypal. All of us have a fragment of Voldemort within ourselves. Even the best of humans have human weaknesses. If we did not, we would not be in this world. Instead, like the Buddha, we would have passed beyond to the other shore. To live the life of a human being is to live imperfectly. The soul fragment of Voldemort inside Harry symbolizes the reality that each of us is a mixture, with an impulse to selfish action and exploitation of others. Only as we are aware of that fragment can we deal with it and work for its elimination, as Harry did.

The ending of the Harry Potter cycle is also unusual. Heroic fantasy generally has an apocalyptic ending. For example, Lord of the Rings ends with a cataclysmic upheaval in which evil is destroyed and goodness reestablished in the world. Although its hero, Frodo, does not for long get to enjoy the goodness he has brought back to the world, he goes on a bittersweet journey with the elves to the deathless lands of the West. Similarly, the Mahabharata culminates in the apocalyptic battle of Kurukshetra, which brings about the end of an age and initiates the Kali Yuga, the age of darkness. After the battle the five Pandava heroes rule happily for a while, but then go on to the heaven of Indra, where they are united and reconciled to the cousins against whom they had fought.

At the end of the last Harry Potter book, there is also a great battle between good and evil, and good wins because evil defeats itself. But in the epilogue, "Nineteen Years Later," life has seemingly returned to normal. People are just people, leading ordinary lives. There is no journey to the deathless West or to the heaven of Indra. There is only life going on as it usually does. That, the book says, is the way it should be: the final words of the book and of the whole cycle are "All was well." Harry Potter's world ends with neither a bang nor a whimper, but with an affirmation of the goodness of normal life.

A final return to normalcy is not a traditional fantasy or epic conclusion. But it is appropriate to the Harry Potter cycle. It is, indeed, a Zen ending. There is a story about the aspirant who said, "Before I studied Zen, mountains were just mountains and rivers were just rivers. As I studied Zen, mountains became far more than mountains and rivers became far more than rivers. When I had completed my study of Zen, mountains were just mountains and rivers were just rivers." That is, before Zen study, the aspirant saw only the surface of things. While he was striving for enlightenment, everything acquired a transcendent value, and the aspirant saw a symbolic connection between things. But once enlightenment came, the aspirant saw into the essential nature of things and understood everything for what it is, in and of itself. That is what Zen is about: satori, or seeing everything as it is. Or, as the mantra of the Gita says, Om tat sat, which has been translated as, "Well, that's the way it is!"

So the normalcy at the end of Harry Potter's quest is not the same normalcy as that before he began the quest. The end is a normalcy in which everything is in its proper place and life goes on as life should. Harry's young son is named Albus Severus, a combination of the names of Harry's beloved mentor, Albus Dumbledore, and his feared bête noire, Severus Snape. Both of those teachers were mixtures of the good and the bad. And both were essential guides for Harry on his quest, as he came to realize. Harry's final normalcy is a recognition of the way things are. And it is a realization that all is well.


John Algeo was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and has lived in Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, and Georgia. John joined the Theosophical Society at the age of sixteen and became president of the Florida Lodge (Miami) while still in his teens. He is a past president of the American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, and the Dictionary Society of North America. John retired in 1994 to accept the presidency of the Theosophical Society in America. He currently serves as international vice-president of the society, is revising his textbook, Origins and Development of the English Language for its sixth edition, and continues to lecture at academic and Theosophical meetings throughout the world.


The Marriage of Buddhism and Deep Ecology

By C. Jotin Khisty

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Khisty, C. Jotin. "The Marriage of Buddhism and Deep Ecology." Quest  97. 2 (Spring 2009): 64-69.

Theosophical Society - C. Jotin Khisty, Ph. D., is professor emeritus in the department of civil, architectural, and environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has published extensively in the areas of urban planning, transportation engineering, and systems science. Buddhism and deep ecologyIn 2005, people all across the world sat up in their seats to watch Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. They were stunned to see the environmental degradation and destruction that has occurred and the profound threat it poses to all life on the planet. Then, in October 2007, many of us jumped with joy when Gore and the U. N. Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. This recognition gave us hope of a way to work through our political, economic, and environmental systems in order to reverse the effects of decades of indifference and damage to our planet.

One of the paramount reasons for this degradation is not hard to find. The organizing principle of society for at least the last hundred years has been: What will make the economy grow larger and produce greater profit? But with a new consciousness on the horizon and a transformation of the human heart all around the world, it is very likely that for the next hundred years, the organizing principle may be: What will make the planet more sustainable? This has to be the new lens through which we look at the world. After all, the voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.

This article aims to explore the connections between two important disciplines: spiritual systems, particularly Buddhism, and deep ecology. Spiritual systems are more than a belief in a transcendental deity or a means to an afterlife. They are a way of understanding both the cosmos and our role in its preservation. In this way they are closely connected with ecology, which embraces a cultural awareness of kinship with and dependence on the natural environment for the continuity of all life.

Buddhism, one of the world's great spiritual systems, offers a well-developed philosophy of our connection with nature. Deep ecology is focused on the survival and self-renewal of all living beings. (It is so called in contrast to "shallow" ecology, which is essentially anthropocentric and technocratic.) Celebrating the marriage of spiritual systems and deep ecology fosters a moral and cultural awareness of the kinship of the natural environment and the continuity of life.

We hear of ecological disasters occurring around the world almost on a daily basis. Almost all of these crises are a result of human neglect, apathy, and greed. They range from resource depletion, species extinction, pollution growth, climate change, to population explosion and over consumption. As far back as 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists, consisting of over 100 Nobel laureates and 1600 other distinguished scientists from seventy countries, warned us of the deepening ecological crisis caused by human activities on this planet. They warned that a great change in the stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required if vast misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated (Uhl, 124).

Almost all such warnings have been ignored and ridiculed by our politicians. One prominent source of disinformation about global warning, for instance, has been the Bush-Cheney administration. It has silenced scientists working for the government about the extreme danger we are facing, and has appointed "skeptics" recommended by oil companies to government positions as our principal negotiators. The world has been thunderstruck by the arrogance and ignorance of such political leaders and their cronies (Gore, 264).

The reasons for this disconnection from nature, especially in the West, are not hard to detect. Spiritually and psychologically we live inside a bubble of the "self," as though we are "in here" and the rest of the world is "out there." According to Buddhist thought, this sense of separation manifests itself in the form of the Three Poisons—greed, ill will, and delusion. Examples of these poisons can be seen everywhere in the current ecological crisis. Greed rooted in untrammeled economic growth and consumerism is the secular religion of advanced industrial societies. Similarly, the military-industrial complex promotes ill will, fear, and terror, while propaganda and advertising systems are well known for deluding the public about everything under the sun. A fundamental question of our time is whether we can counter these forces by developing attitudes of respect, responsibility, and care for the natural world and so create a sustainable future.

From its origins in India about 500 years before the birth of Christ, Buddhism spread throughout Asia and is now exerting an ever-increasing influence on Western culture. We in the West are awakening to the fact that there is a more ancient science of mind than our own. The well-known philosopher Alan Watts pointed out that historically the Buddha (563-483 BCE) was the first great psychologist and psychotherapist. He not only recognized the meaning of existential anxiety or suffering that we all experience but offered ways of treating it. Many psychologists, psychiatrists, and scientists regard the discovery of Buddhist philosophy in the West today as a kind of second renaissance (Varela, 22).

Contrary to popular belief, Buddhism is in essence a philosophy and not a religion. Buddhist philosophy over the centuries has been very carefully thought out and documented by some of the best scholars and practitioners across the world. A starting point is the central tenet concerning the interconnectedness of all life—human beings, animals, plants, birds. Buddhist ethical teaching emphasizes that this interdependence comes with a moral component. For humans, that means maintaining a sense of universal responsibility in whatever we do.

The cornerstone of all Buddhist teachings is the Four Noble Truths. The first truth is that of suffering (or existential anxiety), starting with birth and continuing on through aging and then on to the inevitability of death. The second truth is the realization that human craving and greed are at the very root of our suffering. The third truth stresses that it is possible to eliminate craving, greed, and suffering by transforming the mind. The fourth truth is the Eightfold Path, the Buddhist formula of practices for cultivating this transformation, leading to the extinction of both craving and suffering (Rifkin, 101). Buddhists assert that mindful awareness of existential anxiety produces compassionate empathy for all forms of life.

Two other concepts form the bedrock of Buddhist thinking: impermanence and interdependence. All phenomena are impermanent, because everything is in transition. Interdependence refers to the fact that everything is a part of everything else.

The philosophical roots of the deep ecology movement can be found in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Roszak, Lewis Mumford, Rachel Carson, and others, going back to Baruch Spinoza and the Buddhist philosophers. But it was in 1972 that the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the term to distinguish it from "shallow" anthropocentric and technocratic ecology. Since then, Naess has spelled out a comprehensive platform describing the meaning and scope of deep ecology, as outlined in an eight-point summary:

1. The well-being of human and nonhuman life on earth have value in themselves.
2. The interdependence, richness, and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening.
5. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with substantial decrease of the human population. Moreover, the flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies will affect basic economic and technological structures.
7. Ideological change is required in order to emphasize quality of life rather than striving for an ever-higher standard of living.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation to help implement these changes (Naess, 68).

To imagine oneself as a separate ego, separate from everything else, locked up in a bag of skin, is a hallucination. Everything is indeed connected with everything else. Given the profound similarity of Buddhist thought to deep ecology, it is not difficult to realize that the "egocentricity" of an apparently isolated self needs to be replaced by "ecocentricity."

How can we harness this obvious interconnection between Buddhist thought and deep ecology in order to tackle the urgent problems that continue to threaten the sentient beings on this planet? As Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, wrote: "The only option for us is a change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience. It's not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, and new institutions. We must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on earth. Only by making such a fundamental shift will we be able to create new models of behavior and a new set of values for the planet" (Uhl, 307).

Like Havel, scores of philosophers, economists, and politicians have recognized that the advancing human crisis is result of the lack of deep spiritual roots, brought on to a great extent by the divorce of spiritual meaning and identity from life. But how can we wake up to face this human crisis?

Today there is already evidence of an emerging cultural shift as millions of people and their leaders are stirring, as if from a trance, to deal with these issues. Here are some possible avenues of approach:

  • Collective awakening. Spiritual awakening in an individual is sometimes called the "opening of the third eye." When this awareness occurs collectively, it can be called the "opening of the fourth eye." Evidence of this collective awakening started in the 1960s and has matured in subsequent years, dealing head-on with problems as diverse as postmodern anomie, free-market globalization, and global terrorism.
  • Building sustainable systems. The great challenge of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities—social, cultural, and physical. This goal is best attained in four steps: (1) introducing "ecoliteracy" in order to understand how ecosystems evolve for sustaining the web of life; (2) moving toward "ecodesign" by promoting organic farming, energy- and resource-efficient industries, nonmotorized transportation, and low-cost housing, and by reducing energy consumption; (3) thinking in terms of relationships, contexts, patterns, and processes for ecodesign; (4) striving for resource efficiency, service-flow economy, and energy conservation in order to reduce ecological degradation (Capra, 230-32). So far the records in these areas of nurturing have been deplorable.
  • Transforming the world economy. According to free-market capitalism, all values are monetary values determined by buyers of goods and services in a competitive market. The prime movers of this system are the transnational corporations (TNCs), whose economic powers frequently surpass that of many sovereign states. To grow, these TNCs must make enormous profits and consume the world's raw materials. TNCs and their advocate, the World Trade Organization (WTO), have been largely able to get what they want because of their influence in manipulating the global market for their own profit. Poor countries and the poorer sectors of the world are the worst victims of the WTO. Today, one-third of all economic activity worldwide is generated by only 200 corporations, which are linked to each other by strategic alliances. While the WTO was initially hailed by nations rich and poor as an organization that would produce huge economic benefits which would trickle down to everybody, it failed to live up to this promise, instead creating fatal consequences such as the breakdown of democracies, the rapid deterioration of the environment, and increasing poverty and alienation.


    Consumerism is now recognized as the most successful religion of all time, winning more converts more quickly than any previous belief or value system in human history. Philosopher David Loy has pointed out that the strategies of the WTO and the World Bank have been exposed, with the result that there are regular riots whenever their meetings are held. These two organizations are clearly ill-suited for building a just, sustainable, and compassionate society that can nurture sufficiency, partnership, and respect for life and its values. Naturally, a new kind of civil society, organized to counterbalance globalization is gradually emerging, embodied in powerful nongovernmental organizations such as Oxfam and Greenpeace.

  • Transforming ethics. Activists devoted to peace and social justice acknowledge that there is a spirit of coerciveness that is present in all cultures, manifesting particularly in violence and crime. This coerciveness can be counteracted by several strategies.

Creative nonviolence in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Buddhist ethics is one well-documented possibility. Essentially this means that one does not struggle against the opponent but rather against the situation. Political and social adversaries are seen as potential partners rather than as enemies. Satyagraha, or nonviolent resistance, also pioneered by Gandhi, is one form of such creative nonviolence. The principle of ahimsa (harmlessness)—the refusal to kill any living beings—has also been put to use in stopping armed conflicts.

It is said that when people saw the Buddha soon after his enlightenment, they were so struck by the extraordinary peacefulness of his presence that they stopped to ask: "What are you? Are you a god, a magician, or a wizard?" Buddha's reply was stunning. He simply said: "I am awake." His answer became his title, for this is what the word buddha means in Sanskrit—one who is awakened. While the rest of the world was deep in "sleep," dreaming a dream known as the waking state of life, the Buddha shook off the slumber and woke up (Smith and Novak, 3-4).

Although the Buddha's wake-up call was issued a very long time ago and has since been repeated time and time again by almost every known spiritual system, it is unfortunate that a mistaken metaphysics has led us to an alienation between us and the earth and between us and other sentient beings. It is essential that we reestablish and restore an awareness of this interdependence. Naturally, such a transformation requires profound reeducation at every stage of our lives. Private foundations, nongovernmental organizations, businesses, academic institutions, and religious organizations have an equal stake in setting priorities in this endeavor. In this context the advice of the Dalai Lama is particularly poignant:

The Earth, our Mother, is telling us to behave. . . . If we develop good and considerate qualities within our own minds, our activities will naturally cease to threaten the continued survival of life on Earth. By protecting the natural environment and working to forever halt the degradation of our planet, we will also show respect for Earth's human descendants—our future generations—as well as for the natural right to life of all of Earth's living things. If we care for nature, it can be rich, bountiful, and inexhaustibly sustainable.

It is important that we forgive the destruction of the past and recognize that it was produced by ignorance. At the same time, we should reexamine, from an ethical perspective, what kind of world we have inherited, what we are responsible for, and what we will pass on to coming generations (Hunt-Badiner, v).


References

Capra, Frithjof. The Hidden Connection. New York: Doubleday, 2002.
Gore, Al. An Inconvenient Truth. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2006.
Hunt-Badiner, Allan, ed. Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology. Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax, 1990.
Jones, Ken. The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action. Boston: Wisdom, 2003.
Loy, David R. A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002.
Naess, Arne. "The Deep Ecology Movement." George Sessions, ed., Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century. Boston: Shambhala, 1986.
Rifkin, Ira, and David Little. Spiritual Perspectives on Globalization: Making Sense of Economic and Cultural Upheaval. Woodstock, Vt.: Skylight Paths, 2003.
Smith, Huston, and Philip Novak. Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
Tucker, Mary Evelyn, and John A. Grim. "Introduction: The Emerging Alliance of World Religions and Ecology." Daedalus, Fall 2001.
Uhl, Christopher. Developing Ecological Consciousness: Paths to a Sustainable World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.
Varela, Francisco, Evan T. Thomson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.
Watts, Alan. Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion. Boston: Tuttle, 1995.

C. Jotin Khisty, Ph. D., is professor emeritus in the department of civil, architectural, and environmental Engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has published extensively in the areas of urban planning, transportation engineering, and systems science.

 

Thinking Aloud: Blavatsky on Evolution

By Anna Lemkow

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Lemkow, Anna. "Humanity, Environment, and Spirit." Quest  97. 2 (Spring 2009): 72-73.

Theosophical Society - Anna F. Lemkow was born in Saratov, Russia, the city where HPB received her childhood education. Raised in western Canada, Anna moved to New York when she began work for the United Nations in the field of economic and social development. A long-time Theosophist and speaker at the Parliament of World Religions in 1993, Anna still resides in New York. This article is adapted from her book, The Wholeness Principle: Dynamics of Unity within Science, Religion, and Society (Quest Books, 1990).Perennial philosophy is an open-ended wisdom whose meaning is expanding through the course of time and which requires continuing reformulation in terms consonant with the growth of knowledge. I believe that H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine represents one such reformulation. It is, among other things, a monumental treatise on cosmic evolution or, more accurately, on a cyclic process that includes both involution and evolution.

Blavatsky saw evolution as the universal process by which all things are produced, undergo change, grow, and develop. To suggest its nature, she used a few familiar illustrations. When a seed, a minute particle hardly distinguishable from any other kind of seed, is planted, it eventuates, through stages of development, in a fully grown tree or plant with flowers and fruit unique to its kind. Again, a fertilized ovum in the womb passes through many embryonic stages until a fully formed human infant is produced, and the infant in turn develops into an adult. This, too, is a kind of evolution—a human being has evolved from a germ.

Analogously, preceding the materialization of a building such as a great cathedral, there must be a conception in the architect's mind, followed by plans, followed by the actualization of the building from those plans. Thus an edifice has "evolved" from an idea. Or it may be defined as the coming into visibility of what was invisible, or the bringing into activity of something that was until then only a latent possibility.

The point is, whatever evolves must have some antecedent existence, whether mental or physical. The seed, according to Blavatsky, has within it an ideal design or plan (as Plato would have agreed), though each of its embodiments in nature is idiosyncratic and unique, since no tree or plant or leaf is identical to any other.

One might say that Blavatsky integrated the idea of evolution with the venerable idea of the universal hierarchy of being. Thus stated, the hierarchical principle is no longer rigid; it has become the working principle of a dynamic process involving all levels of being, "a progressive development toward a higher life." In her emphasis on process, Blavatsky foreshadowed the present shift in science from static or structure-oriented to process-oriented thinking.

Blavatsky delineates a journey in consciousness, encompassing a hierarchy of levels of being of which terrestrial evolution is a small but integral part. This journey begins with the involutionary arc of world formation, in which the emphasis is upon the geological development of material substances, followed by the evolutionary arc, wherein all beings, all life forms are coparticipants, first developing individuality and a sense of self through proliferation of species, then gradually, through conscious experience, realizing their unity and oneness with the source of being, which is divine and ineffable.

More generally, Blavatsky challenged the orthodoxies of both the science and theology of her day. Her assertions (such as her view of the dynamic nature of matter) seemed implausible and even preposterous at the time, but many of them have since been vindicated by science. A case in point is her conception of evolution. An essentially similar view is now advanced by other exponents of the perennial philosophy without crediting her as their source. (She herself always insisted that she was only reiterating the most ancient—and perennial—teaching.) More to the point, ideas similar to hers have recently emerged among scientists at the cutting edge of evolutionary theory.

Blavatsky applauded Darwin's contribution as far as it went. But she rejected the idea that evolution consists of a slow, mechanical accumulation through the ages of small increments of advantage. She saw it, on the contrary, as an unfolding in progressive stages of inner or inherent potentialities that exist within the process itself. Furthermore, it was for her a dual process: the involution of a diffused and generalized consciousness into separate, specialized material forms, thereby developing the structure of the world with all its chemical and physical complexity, followed by the evolution of conscious life through the development of self-aware, self-determined, and finally self-transcendent forms. The two processes worked synchronously, every step in the evolution of responsive forms being likewise a step in the acquisition of knowledge, leading finally to conscious freedom, or spiritualization.

Furthermore, Blavatsky proposed that there are three separate but interwoven streams of evolution: the spiritual, the intellectual, and the physical, each with its own rules or inner laws. All three streams are represented in the constitution of man, the microcosm of the macrocosm (nature itself), and it is this which makes us the complex beings we are (Secret Doctrine, I, 181).

To my knowledge, Blavatsky was the first writer to regard matter not as dead, passive, and inert, but as living, dynamic, and energetic, and to speak of a cosmic evolutionary process that amalgamates the traditional hierarchical order and the scientific theory of evolution.

A number of recent thinkers have propounded views like those of Blavatsky. They include the Hindu sage Sri Aurobindo; the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who in the 1920s pioneered the philosophy of process; and the philosopher, statesman, and scientist Jan Christian Smuts, whose book Holism and Evolution was published in 1926. Still later came the paleontologist, mystic, and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose controversial writings are still anathema to many scientists, although he is proving to be one of the most influential minds of our age.

In retrospect, as far as evolutionary theory is concerned, Blavatsky introduced several new ideas, including the concepts that evolution proceeds on three different levels, each with its own rules and modus operandi, and that evolution is a cosmic process to which the development of mind is critical. Among scientists, these ideas emerged only very recently.


Anna F. Lemkow was born in Saratov, Russia, the city where HPB received her childhood education. Raised in western Canada, Anna moved to New York when she began work for the United Nations in the field of economic and social development. A long-time Theosophist and speaker at the Parliament of World Religions in 1993, Anna still resides in New York. This article is adapted from her book, The Wholeness Principle: Dynamics of Unity within Science, Religion, and Society (Quest Books, 1990).


From the Executive Editor - Spring 2009

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Spring 2009." Quest 97. 2 (Spring 2009): 44.

Theosophical Society - Richard Smoley is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and a frequent lecturer for the Theosophical SocietyDid you realize that the earth as we know it did not exist a million years ago? This may sound incredible, but I can prove it to you simply and irrefutably.

I'm not saying that the world did not physically exist a million years ago. But as you no doubt recognize, the world is an inscrutable combination of what is "out there" in some absolute sense and the way our minds are set up to process our experience of this world. To take an example, consider rainbows. The particles of light and water vapor that combine to form rainbows exist, shall we say, objectively. But the colors and shape of the rainbow are due to our own visual apparatus.

The same is true of colors as a whole. There is an enormous bandwidth of vibrations, only a small fraction of which we perceive as the color spectrum. Thanks to science, we have been able to push these boundaries a bit, to the extent of knowing that there are infrared and ultraviolet colors. We also know that other species, such as bees, can see different ranges of color than we can. But to perceive color as we do requires a human nervous system. (Here's a brain twister: try to visualize a color that you have never seen before.)

When we imagine the world as it was a million years ago, what we are really imagining is the world the way it would have been if there had been creatures like us to perceive it. But there were no such creatures—at least not according to science. There were no humans with minds like ours, to see the colors we see, or to organize their experience in the way we do. Therefore the earth as we know it did not exist. Something existed—but not the earth we know, not because there was no earth, but because there was no "we."

This argument, which I owe to Saving the Appearances, a book by the British philosopher Owen Barfield published in 1957, yields some striking insights. It may cast light on Theosophical concepts of earlier Rounds and Root Races. Scientists dismiss the notion of races of Lemurians and Atlanteans and so on because, they say, the fossil record indicates no such thing. (What the fossil record does indicate is more ambiguous than you might expect. If you're interested in this question, look into Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael L. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson).

But that still leaves us wondering what these ancient records refer to. H. P. Blavatsky says, for example, that the primordial First Root Race was "nonphysical"; it had no physical form and existed only amorphously on the astral plane. She described it as a race of "pudding bags" (Collected Writings, 12:701).

What if the esoteric accounts of such races—amorphous, androgynous, and so on—are recalling the subjective experience of life in these forms, when the boundaries between self and other were more permeable? These ancient accounts would then be referring, not to these creatures as they might look in a textbook of paleontology, but to the way it would feel to be one of them. While this suggestion does not dispose of differences between science and Theosophy in a single shot, I believe it is a fruitful avenue of approach.

In any event, the earth we know is a product of human consciousness. Today when we speak of "endangering the earth" or "saving the earth," we are really talking about saving the earth as a human construct (and as a human resource). The earth as a thing in itself is mysterious and perhaps ultimately unknowable. To all appearances it long preceded our race and will long outlast us. Thus the current urge to sentimentalize and "Save" it may be misguided.

In no way am I saying that environmental concerns are to be taken lightly. Clearly they need to be taken far more seriously than they have been. But I believe that when we view the earth as a personification, say, of a wounded mother, we are projecting our own wounds upon it. As Stephan A. Hoeller suggests in this issue, there is a tendency among many to elevate Gaia to the place vacated by the Judeo-Christian deity. No doubt the Judeo-Christian God, as conventionally imagined, is too small a vessel to accommodate the sublimity of the Absolute. But I think the hypostatized earth will prove just as inadequate.

The Bible often condemns the sin of idolatry: making images of wood and metal and bowing down to them as if they were gods. Today we are more sophisticated; we no longer mistake the physical representation of a thing for the thing itself. But we have not advanced quite as far in the realm of ideas. Whereas people in the past confused their gods with the works of their hands, we often confuse ours with the works of our minds.

This is a time when we are facing hard truths and seeing dear illusions shattered. It is true that we cannot defile our own nests without paying the penalty. At the same time we must avoid the trap of believing that we can only stir ourselves to action by setting up a new idol to replace the old ones. Do we really need to construct a myth of a wounded Gaia to persuade ourselves to clean up our own filth? I suspect not. To do so is to step back at a time when we most urgently need to move forward.

Richard Smoley
Executive Editor


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