To Myth or not to Myth, that is the question

Notes on ‘To Myth or not to Myth, that is the question’.

TASK: Explore how the passages below represent experience of the ‘whole and the parts’, mythos and logos, myth and reality etc.

Ken Wilber says;
‘When Spirit is de-mythologized, it can be approached as Spirit, in its Absolute Suchness (tathata), and not as a cosmic Parent. p 214 The Simple Feeling of Being

I take this to be much the same as an appeal to de-anthropomorphise our ‘God-talk’.

Karen Armstrong gives us a compassionate, highly condensed, view of the way that myth has figured in human history and development in her; A Short History of Myth. Compare also;

1) Abraham Joshua Heschel (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8

‘The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.
Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:
we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.
Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other
As time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,
The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear
with the sense of the ineffable.’

2) Ni, Hua-Ching (1997), The Complete Works of Lao Tzu, Santa Monica, USA: Seven Star Communications – Tao The Ching (‘Chapter’ 1)

‘Tao, the subtle reality of the universe
cannot be described.
That which can be described in words
is merely a conception of the mind.
Although names and descriptions have been applied to it,
the subtle reality is beyond the description.

One may use the word ‘Nothingness”
to describe the Origin of the universe,
and “Beingness”
to describe the Mother of the myriad things,
but Nothingness and Beingness are merely conceptions.

From the perspective of Nothingness,
one may perceive the expansion of the universe.
From the perspective of Beingness,
one may distinguish individual things.
Both are for the conceptual convenience of the mind.

Although different concepts can be applied,
Nothingness and Beingness
and other conceptual activity of the mind
all come from, the same indescribable subtle Originalness
The Way is the unfoldment of such subtle reality.
Having reached the subtlety of the universe,
one may see the ultimate subtlety,
the Gate of All Wonders.’

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