TAT Journal Issue 10
Contents
Europeans have mistaken the Aborigines for primitives. In fact, they built a mental rather than a physical civilization to survive in a cruelly barren land.
A journey to Chartres, where the Gothic builders wrote a mysterious book of stone and glass.
A thorough survey of Frankl's Logotherapy, which goes beyond behaviorism and points the way to a study of the human soul.
A dream of humanity's progress.
"I am a mirror that madness looks upon, and sees a hope surmounting foolishness..."
A clear explanation of the basic symbolism of the Tarot cards and how to learn their meanings.
Compare your own characteristics to the keywords for your sun sign.
Part 1 of a series of practical advice on getting your head on straight.
Turn off the T.V. and stretch yourself to sleep.
All about herbs to eat, drink, and rub for nutrition and healing.
The Psychological Society.
The Castrated Family.
The Aquarian Conspiracy.
Conscience - The Search for Truth.
Science has yet to probe the amazing effects of sound on physical objects and on human emotions.
TAT Journal is published by the TAT Foundation, a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation, that was established to provide a forum for philosophical and spiritual inquiry, based upon the principle that cooperation with fellow inquirers expedites one's own search. The TAT Foundation supports workshops, seminars, study groups and related services. The views and opinions expressed in the TAT Journal are not necessarily those of the editors or of the TAT Foundation. Address all correspondence, including manuscripts, to: TAT Journal, P.O. Box 236, Bellaire, Ohio 43906. Manuscripts will be returned only upon request and when accompanied by a stamped, addressed envelope.
Editor: Louis Khourey;
Contributing Editor: Mark Jaqua;
Advertising and Circulation: William Weimer;
Subscriptions: Doron Fried;
Production: Robert Cergol.
©1980 TAT Foundation. All rights reserved.
TAT FORUM
OMNIVORE OR HERBIVORE?
TAT Forum:
The gropings of Jonathon Miller to justify a vegetarian diet are filled with erroneous and distorted bits of scientific information, presented in such a way as to petrify the layman from eating anything but grains and nuts. His sensational approach to dietary problems is unfounded in fact and common sense.
He attempts to correlate man's anatomy and social behavior with those of herbivores. Man's teeth and intestines are intermediate in shape and size to the extremes of strict carnivores and strict herbivores. Man, like the pig, is an omnivore. His teeth are capable of both shearing motions for tearing flesh and grinding motions for physical digestion of plant food. Meat is relatively easily and quickly enzymatically digested in the stomach and small intestine. Plant food is more difficult to digest. Grinding in the mouth is essential to break down the cellulose wall of plant cells, which all vertebrates (including herbivores) are incapable of chemically digesting. Enzymatic degradation of plant food starts in the mouth and is completed within the small intestine.
The length and complexity of our digestive tract is intermediate to that of carnivores and herbivores. Man has a simple, sac-like stomach. Herbivores have huge stomachs, often with multiple compartments. The cow, for example, has a four-part stomach, each part with a specific digestive function. The intestine of herbivores is extremely long, approximately 30 times the length of the body. Furthermore, the surface area is increased from that of a straight tube by multiple foldings of the gut tissue by a factor or 600 times. Most importantly, herbivores have commensal populations of bacteria which feed on the cellulose fraction of their food. The by-products of bacterial degradation - fatty acids, amino acids, and vitamins - are then digested by the herbivore. Although the intestinal tract of humans has bacteria, none degrade cellulose.
Miller also attempts to correlate social behavior, emotions, and diet. He generalizes that herbivores are social animals and that carnivores are solitary. Studies of the social behavior of such diverse animal groups as baboons and wolves have shown important social interactions and group behavior in both herbivores and carnivores. Herbivorous baboons are highly aggressive and violent, being one of the few non-human animals that fight to the death among their own species.
The general consensus from the work of anthropologists and archaeologists indicates that the first human societies were formed as hunting groups. It was the co-operative effort among humans that enabled them to successfully hunt and kill swifter and larger animals for food. From these early hunting associations, more diverse and sophisticated cultural associations developed.
Miller continues to mislead the layman by pointing out supposed harms of meat-eating. Each point he makes is tainted with distortion. Meat is not difficult to digest. True, it requires an energy expenditure for digestion, but meat contains the amino acids necessary to replace naturally decaying cells. Amino acids provide the building blocks for replenishing the body's immune system, blood system, and skeletal system. Many plants contain amino acids, and these require the same metabolic expenditure as do meat amino acids. As is widely known, meat contains all the necessary amino acids, whereas plants contain only a portion of the necessary amino acids. This necessitates complex and time-consuming juggling of plant protein complementarily to achieve a nutritionally balanced protein fraction of the diet. Unfortunately, many vegetarians are either uninformed on this important aspect of nutrition or simply don't always "bother" with it.
Meat and dairy products are important sources of vitamins and trace minerals. Meat is a good source of vitamins B-1, B-6, B-12, and Biotin, and of the minerals phosphorous, sulfur, potassium, iron, zinc, copper, iodine, selenium, manganese, molybdenum, chromium, and cobalt. Dairy products and eggs are valuable sources of the vitamins choline, B-12, A and D, and of the minerals calcium, phosphorous, potassium, iodine, and cobalt. Only five vitamins and minerals are provided solely in plant food: folacin, vitamins C, E, and K, and magnesium.
The significance of saturated fats and cholesterol in initiating or potentiating cardiovascular disease is still uncertain. Current research in this field has not yet disclosed any definite relationships. The cholesterol scare of several years ago is now being questioned by many scientists who have done more specific and better controlled research in this health area. It is now speculated that animal fat is of two different types - high density lipoproteins and low density lipoproteins. The former are necessary in fat metabolism and hormine synthesis. The latter is the component now believed to be involved in disease processes.
The contaminants mentioned by Miller, arsenic and DDT, are as prevalent in plant food as in animal food. The healthy individual has specific proteins in the body, such as metallothionein, which are capable of isolating heavy metals, thus shielding the body from toxic side effects.
Miller's emotional depiction of slaughterhouse techniques and egg production does not alter the effectiveness of the body's metabolism of meat and eggs. Enzymatic degradation, or "putrefaction" as Miller prefers to call it, is an integral and essential mechanism of all living creatures, whether plant or animal, herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore. It is through these degradative processes that our bodies receive nourishment, grow, and reproduce. Decay is as much a part of our existence as growth.
I challenge Miller to substantiate his unfounded claims of meat causing cancer and of depleting the body of nutrients. I also question his sources of information on dietary sources of specific nutrients and on the metabolic mechanisms of the body.
Jonathon Miller's Response
Claudia Bowers claims that my "gropings" are erroneous, distorted, unsubstantiated and emotional. As is often true with people who react to others, the criticisms apply as well to the person who makes them.
The human being is much more than the body and intellectual mind. There are also the emotional and intuitional aspects of mind or "soul," and there is the spiritual dimension. The fragmenting approach of scientific rationalism wants to exclude that which it cannot control in its intellectual aggressiveness. It does not realize that it cannot and should not try to separate itself from the emotional and other aspects of human nature. The holistic approach attempts a fuller perspective.
The power of emotion is required to effect change in one's life. It is better that one be "up front" with emotion and aware of it so that it may be used for positive growth. The alternative of banishing it to the unconscious generates a condition of fear which is ready to erupt in anger and other negative emotions.
Other comments:
Claudia - you do have some good and interesting points. However, I don't think you controvert what I have written which is based on a good deal of research and consideration. I do appreciate your responding, and I am sorry if you were offended.
Abbreviated Bibliography for Vegetarianism Has Its Reasons:
Airola, Paavo. Are You Confused?
Aihara, Herman. Milk: A Myth of Civilization.
Allen, Hannah. Homemaker's Guide to Foods for Pleasure and Health and Handbook for Hygenic Living.
Ananda Marga. What's Wrong With Eating Meat.
John, Da Free. The Eating Gorilla Comes In Peace.
Klass, Jethro. Back to Eden.
Kulvinskas, Viktoras. Survival Into the 21st Century.
Miller, Jonathon David. Nutrition, Health and Harmony: A Handbook of Natural Health.
North American Vegetarian Society. Facts of Vegetarianism.
Shelton, Herbert M. Superior Nutrition.
Also: Vegetarian Times and Vegetarian World periodicals.
KUNDALINI POWER TAT Forum:
I wanted to tell you how much I liked the last issue. I will rarely read something cover to cover. I was especially interested in the article on kundalini. I practiced kundalini yoga for a while back in 1970. I became interested after my kundalini was raised accidentally while sitting around in a dorm room at the University of Arizona. It basically felt like a very high voltage stream of cold electric water rushing up my spine. During the experience I was also aware of a blockage of the energy flow in the area of my heart. Some of the energy did make it past the heart center to the third eye - which was immediately opened - allowing me to see with extraordinary clarity on the astral plane. Though fascinated and excited, I realized almost immediately that this was a force that could be extremely dangerous to me - since it offered all kinds of negative temptations in terms of power. I was able to repress the force fairly easily with an effort of will. In all the time I practiced kundalini yoga the experience never occurred again, though some of my chakras were opened in an isolated fashion.
The only other person I have ever met who has had this experience, also had it occur to him accidentally. It caused him to lose his mental balance almost immediately. While radiating intense charismatic power he went around proselytizing an insane theory which came to him in a flash at the moment the kundalini was raised. With him it lasted three days. When he "came down" he was perfectly normal and recalled everything with clarity.
Since those days of reckless experimentation I have basically decided that the higher centers have to be developed substantially before anything should be done with the basal or navel chakras.
The Magical World of the Australian Aborigines
By Mark Jaqua
"Why change our sacred myths for your sacred myths?"
-- Aborigine poet Kath Walker
The outback of the Australian desert is the most other-worldly terrain as can be found on this planet. For hundreds of thousands of square miles there is nothing but desolation in scorching heat. Early explorers - those who survived - told tales that could scarcely be believed. They were constantly plagued by mirages in their treks, sometimes two or three at a time. Trees or mountains would be suspended upside-down in midair before them. Some areas of the land looked like tremendous graveyards with row upon row of towering anthills. New species of wildlife were encountered everywhere. There were "ventriloquist doves" that with a slight movement of their throats could make a noise seeming to come across the plain. An ugly bird, later named the cracticus destructor, could imitate any sound it heard and would linger around the campsites learning new calls. There was the emu, which looks like a large feather-duster with legs, and the unusual kangaroo. The most unique creatures of all were the people that inhabited this stark land.
The Aborigines have a culture that is the most unusual of any known people. Today, unfortunately, they have been all but destroyed as a distinct society. Within a hundred years of the immigration of Europeans into Australia there were virtually no Aborigine tribes that were uncontaminated by the white man's ways. Occasionally today, a small band is discovered in the outback that follows its ancestral path but none of these are ignorant of the white man and his culture.
According to the 1966 Australian census there are some 80,000 half and full-blooded Aborigines living. When European immigration first began in the 1780's it was estimated there were 300,000 natives composing 500 tribes. By many of the invaders the Aborigines or "abos" were seen as subhuman and were hunted and killed like animals. The supposed "dispersal" of the natives was a euphemism for genocide for many years. Thousands were given poisoned food and a typical Saturday night adventure would be to go out and shoot "abos" for fun. The Aborigines also received smallpox and other diseases from the whites and their numbers rapidly declined. (Strangely, they were immune to syphilis which was imported by Europeans elsewhere.) Contact with whites curiously resulted in a large share of the Aborigine population becoming barren. In nearby Tasmania the entire population became infertile and extinct within a hundred years of the invasion by Europeans.
The native culture was at total odds with the Europeans. Neither could understand the other. Aborigine culture is very possibly as subtle and intellectually complex as our own but unfortunately the Europeans could only see the superficial Stone Age appearance. The Aborigines were neither competitive nor violent. Occasionally a group would attack a band of whites but usually this resulted in three or four charging the whites while the rest of the Aborigine men stood back and joked and laughed at their leaders being repelled! When treated kindly they were very friendly to the explorers, even to the point of offering them their untidy wives. The Aborigines dark skin turns white after death and upon seeing their first whites they were believed to be the dead arisen. Later the whites came to be called "unreal" since they definitely were unreal and unnatural to a stable culture that had existed in Australia for at least 16,000 years.
Aborigines constitute a unique physical type and have been classified as a distinct race - the Australoid. There are only four recognized races of people, the others being the Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid. The Aborigine's skin is copper-gray in color, his eyes are yellowish and red-veined and he has wavy hair.
When young, many of the children have blonde or red hair. Many have raised scars or keloids which indicate levels of initiation or just simple decoration in less austere tribes. D.H. Lawrence wrote that Aborigines had an incomprehensible depth in their eyes that reached "across gulfs of unbridged centuries."
The social grouping of the Aborigines is complex and suggests a comprehensive mind to develop such a system. Aldo Massola, in his book As They Were, has described their basic social organization in as simple a manner as possible:
"In actual practice, the members of most, not all of the Aboriginal tribes of south-eastern Australia were divided into two moieties (from French 'moietie' - half). These were generally named Eaglehawk and Crow. Each of these two moieties were divided into a number of phratries (from Greek 'phratria' - a clan). The names for the phratries or clans, as they were sometimes called were taken either from animals or from inanimate natural objects. Each of the phratries were further divided into totems (a North American Indian name for a similar relationship) named after animals, plants, heavenly bodies, or the elements.
"From time immemorial, the law was laid down that Eaglehawk people had to marry Crow, and vice versa, but in so doing they also married into different phratries and different totems. At the same time, they could not just marry into any of the other totems: it had to be of the right phratries."
The elders of the smallest groups or "totems" were the actual leaders. There was a great respect of old age in both men and women. It was believed that if a man survived the bewitchments of his enemies and the evil spirits for such a long time then he must have a great deal of power.
Among the different tribes there were nearly 700 different languages. A different speech was used for different aspects of tribal life. There was a special language for ceremonial rituals and initiations and as well even a "mother-in-law language" which women must use in the presence of their daughter's husband. Initially, perhaps, these languages all stemmed from a common tongue since there are similarities between the tribal dialects. Tribe A can understand and interpret tribe B, B interpret tribe C, and C tribe D, but tribe A cannot understand tribe D. To complicate matters far more is the taboo against mentioning a man's name after he had died. Since people are named after animals, insects and plants, this means that the name of these must be changed everytime their namesake dies! Some of these languages are very complex, numbering up to 40,000 words.
The Aborigines had no permanent dwellings but roamed over the land in groups of fifteen or so winning their living off the barren land. Most groups used no clothing and during the cold nights would sleep with dog front and back to keep warm or else build a small fire on each side of their body. In the morning they would roll in the dead ashes of the fires to get the last bit of warmth. Women would gather grass-seed, yams and insect grubs during the day while the men would hunt animals with boomerang and spear. Animals were cooked by building a fire in a hole in the ground. The animal was thrown in the hot coals of the fire and covered with ashes and sand. When the emu was cooked his head was kept above ground and when steam issued from his beak he was ready to be eaten.
In The Two Worlds of Jimmie Barker an Aborigine man recalls the remarkable powers of telepathy that existed among his people before being westernized by the British. As a small child in the early 1900's he would occasionally travel with the older men on hunting parties away from their mission settlement.
"White people find telepathy hard to explain but probably recognise that it exists. The gurungu of the Muruwari seems similar. Gura means string, and the literal meaning of gurungu is 'magic string.' This communication of thought was used and discussed frequently during my first years at the Mission. I still believe in it and expect other Aborigines of my age to have strong feelings about it. Men and women talked about getting news from others who were far away: it might be of an impending visitor, or of a death. This gurungu was the magic way in which a message could be sent to another camp. It might be sent to disturb a person who had done wrong, and might come in the form of a bird thought or dream. My first experience of it was when I was about eight years old and we were camping in the bush. On this occasion the old men said we must return immediately: a young child had died and the men were needed. These old people seemed to know when a friend or relative had arrived at home or if someone was ill or in trouble. It has happened so often it has been difficult to believe that it was coincidence. When we returned in this way some unusual event had always occurred. I am sure these messages were genuine.
"One night when we were camping there was an exceeding loud noise: it sounded as if a tree had crashed and fallen. There had been loud talk, and when this happened there was an eerie silence. In the morning the men walked round and round our camping area, gradually enlarging their circles. When they came back there was real concern, as no fallen tree could be seen. Within minutes we were on the move and returning to the Mission. When we arrived we learnt that a young child had died and there was great distress. This event remained in my mind for a long time. When an unusual or unexplained noise occurred like this the Muruwari called it Dinagunda, meaning "a visitor from afar." This also referred to an evil spirit which could appear in the form of a bird or animal: it might just be a solitary emu or kangaroo running across the plain. The indication that one of these was a Dinagunda was the bird or animal would stop and look at a person."
Totemism is almost impossible for us to understand through our modern concepts and beliefs. There was a prescribed mode of conduct for every aspect of life - even to the stance the man would take while urinating. These "rules" did not come from outside but were an inner directive strengthened from constant repetition. The totem system was a totally absorbing state of mind and way of living. The Aborigine was in constant rapport with the "Two Brothers" who made and created the world. The Two Brothers were simultaneously everywhere and in every time. By being in rapport with these transcending essences the Aborigine was able to perform feats we find incomprehensible.
"Dreamtime" was the ever-present state in which the Two Brothers created the world and into which the Aborigine must enter to become one with the Two Brothers. It is a sort of parallel universe to the "here and now" that he once again enters to eat his meals and speak to his fellows. To enter Dreamtime the Aborigine must be totally unambiguous and totally absorbed into the trance state. In The Crack In the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Pearce related the scene of an Aborigine absorbed in Dreamtime trance standing on one leg in the desert with flies crawling unnoticed across his open eyes. The complete reorganization of thought processes that is necessary for Dreamtime is first obtained through a terrifying series of initiations during adolescence.
At about seven years the boy was separated from his mother and the rest of his family and sent to live in the desert in a "bachelor's camp." After a short while he and other boys had their heads covered and were taken to a ceremonial site in the desert. For several days and nights he was not allowed to sleep. After days of no sleep the boy was informed that the ancestral spirits were in the bush and he was intentionally terrified by various noises. The bull-roarer, a specially carved stone swung on a string, was one of the instruments used to make unworldly noises. After several tormenting and sleepless days the boy is held to the ground and all hair except for the head is plucked from his body. Circumcision and subincision, cutting the penis to the urethra from end to end, then follow. If the boy utters a cry during this ritual he is either later killed or at best refused initiation. In some cases, each day the boy is covered with blood from the arm of his father. In other ceremonies one or two teeth are removed with a crude hammer and chisel.
These rites were so terrifying that the boy would literally become "mindless" under the strain and become totally open to an indoctrination and "reprogramming" into Dreamtime and the totem system. Since his former world-view was totally disorganized through shock and terror he was completely open to absorb a new view of the nature of the world. He was shown the secret symbols and sang the sacred songs that were the Aborigine's heritage from the spirits of Dreamtime. A new meaning was given to life and a new mental organization was achieved. These ceremonies were repeated several years in a row and at end the Aborigine adolescent achieved a rock-like stability in the alternative universe of Dreamtime.
Aborigine culture was permeated with what are to us very strange customs. Sometimes the bodies of great old men were mummified by fire and carried about for months by the tribe. It was done as an act of reverence and, as well, because it was believed these men had special powers. Other customs were even more gruesome. Sometimes an especially loved man would be eaten after his death by his relatives. This was not an act of true cannibalism but was looked upon as an act of devotion and reverence. By eating his body it was felt that the relatives became one with the man. This custom was not observed towards those that died of old age or sickness. Another shocking custom is related by Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt in "Funeral Ceremonies in Australia":
"When an individual of the Kurnai tribe died, the relatives rolled the corpse up in an opossum rug, enclosed it in a sheet of bark, and corded it tightly. A hut was built over it, and in this the bereaved and mourning relatives and friends collected. The corpse lay in the centre, and as many of the mourners as could manage to find room lay on the ground with their heads upon the ghastly pillow. There they lay lamenting their loss. They would cry, 'Why did you go?' 'Why did you leave us?' Now and then the grief would be intensified by the wife uttering an ear-piercing wail - 'Penning I turn!' (My spouse is dead); or the mother - 'Lit I turn!' (My child is dead). All the others would join in, using the proper term of relationship; and they would cut and gash themselves with sharp instruments, until their heads and bodies streamed with blood. This bitter wailing and weeping would continue all night; the less closely related persons and the friends alone rousing themselves to eat, until the following day. This would go on for two or three days, when the corpse would be unrolled for the survivors to look at and renew their grief. If by this time the hair had become loose, it would be carefully plucked off the whole body and preserved by the father, mother, or sisters in small bags of opossum skin. They then again rolled up the body, and it was not opened until it was so far decomposed that the survivors could anoint themselves with 'oil' which had exuded from it."
[Illustration: Men taking part in a sacred religious ritual. Great effort is put into these rituals and they involve a large share of the Aborigine's time. In addition they are kept completely secret from the women. If a woman should happen to see part of the rituals or the men's religious ground paintings or artwork - she is most frequently put to death. Modern Aborigines are much less secretive about their rites than their ancestors.]
Of the 80,000 Aborigines in present day Australia probably no more than a few thousand live in scattered groups following a similitude of the ways of their ancestors. In the 1960's Eugene Burdick happened upon a man, his lubra (wife) and two children. The man was six feet tall and incredibly skinny. The clan reeked of musk and had flies crawling across their bodies and even across the man's open eyes. Burdick asked them to perform a few "tricks" if they would. The young boys placed a dead rodent on a bush, gathered up a few stones and began pelting the rodent with pinpoint accuracy. Burdick asked for another "trick" and the man said he would miss the rodent with his boomerang. He hurled his boomerang and it skimmed the surface of the ground for a number of yards before shooting up into the air. It reached a few hundred feet away and seemingly hovered in mid-air only to come speeding back, missing the dead rat by an inch. The man stepped sideways and grasped the instrument out of flight. When asked for another feat the man trotted into the plain and came back in minutes with a dead kangaroo which he and his family tore apart and ate raw. The Aborigine bid Burdick farewell by crunching a bone between his bloody teeth.
The Aborigine could survive in a land where most westerners would die in a few days and yet he was without any clothing, shelter or instruments other than crude spears and the uncanny boomerang. They are a great anthropological mystery. It is uncertain where they came from or when, although it has been determined by excavations by D.J. Mulvaney that they have been on the continent at least 16,000 years. This would make them the longest surviving single culture in the world. It is peculiar that the Aborigines superficially only attained a primitive Stone Age culture while their religion and customs are so exceedingly and intellectually complex. It has been maintained by some, including Joseph Chilton Pearce and French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, that the Aborigines intentionally stayed at a Stone Age level of development. Perhaps the Aborigine's culture was a mental culture rather than a technological one. Their view of the world is as entirely complex as our own but it is also an entirely different kind of viewpoint. Materiality and possessions were eschewed because it encumbered their mental involvement in Dreamtime and made impossible all the uncanny abilities and mental plateaus they could achieve.
Thomas S. Kuhn coined the term "paradigm" in his book published in 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Briefly put, our paradigm is the composite of mental concepts according to which we believe the world operates. In it is defined what is possible and impossible. When we turn on the tap we believe water will come out and not oil and when we jump into the air we expect to come right back down and not go sailing off into space. The accepted scientific paradigm is of a more abstract nature which we don't normally think about in everyday life. This consists of the simplest mechanical laws to the most abstruse sub-atomic physics.
The Aborigine has a different paradigm than we do. To him it is possible to communicate telepathically with his fellows and to have knowledge of a kangaroo in the bush two miles distant. To him this is no sort of magic but something taken in stride within Dreamtime. An air conditioner would be quite a magical thing to the Aborigine because he has no possibility of such a thing in his paradigm. Everyday telepathy is quite magical to us because we have no place for such abilities in our paradigm.
The "way the world works" does not seem to be so much "out there" as "in here." Man's mind may have an effect on the environment to an equal degree as the environment has on man's mind. In The Crack in the Cosmic Egg Pearce postulates that thought is part of a continuum, the lower extreme of which is matter. Our most basic assumptions about the nature of the world are "converted" into or are matter.
If some of our most basic assumptions about the physical world such as that fire burns, prove to be arbitrary - then it could indicate that these basic assumptions are synthetic and do not represent an absolute physical reality "out there." The primitive fire-walker is an instance of supposed physical law being violated. In numerous places the world over primitives demonstrate the ability while in religious trance to walk barefoot over hot coals. This fact has been validated by many observers yet it is "impossible" since it violates our physical law. The Aborigine also performs feats that must be described as impossible according to our physical laws. Joseph Chilton Pearce relates an incident of this Dreamtime ability:
"To test their proverbial tracking skill, a single man traveled on foot for many miles over widely different terrain, sandy desert, marsh, rocky country, following no trail, leaving no detectable trail. The route was nevertheless followed unhesitatingly a year later by a cooperative aborigine. Their ability for ;ground reading' is famous, but here the contemporaneousness with the Two Brothers was called on. The Aborigine had to have an article of clothing from the man leaving the original trail. This he held while going into Dream-Time. The Two Brothers, of course, were contemporaneous with the original event itself. Having made his connections with the Two Brothers, the tracker connected with the event which was then contemporaneous with himself as well. He followed the trail rapidly, unerringly, and without pause, never giving any indication of looking for signs, should any have conceivably remained."
[Illustration: The old ways and the new. A full-blooded Aborigine woman and child living in the ways of their ancestors. The "keloids" or raised scars on the woman's shoulder are from an initiation rite. Women go through only one initiation rite during puberty while men may pass through any number and stages of initiation.]
[Illustration: The picture is of a modern half-blooded Aborigine woman working in a supermarket. While many Aborigines are unable or find it undesirable to integrate into modern society most have entered fields of mining, construction and livestock raising. The Aborigine men are especially noted for their skill in mechanics.]
The Aborigine is able to perform this feat because within his Dreamtime philosophy he has belief and an entire explanation of how it is possible and perfectly natural. This could be compared to our technological paradigm. Our air-conditioners work because we have belief and an entire explanation of how they work and that it is also "perfectly natural." What is believed and can be explained is physically possible. It could be that when we can explain theoretically and thus believe in an anti-gravity principle - we will discover anti-gravity. This is certainly no more an amazing thing than the development of nuclear energy which was stimulated by a simple three letter equation, E=mc2.
The Aborigine in Dreamtime trance lives in a different world from our own. This world is as alien as the utterly desolate terrain upon which he spent his last 16,000 years, unscathed by other polluting minds and allowed to create his own adventure. His story is over, however, and we are lucky to have caught its last chapter and to have gained an insight into the working of Mind itself.
The Cathedral of Wisdom -- A Journey To Chartres
By Louis Khourey
Fodor's Guide to France described the sight of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame at Chartres, when seen from miles away across the wheat fields of the farm district of La Beauce, thirty miles west of Paris. Sitting in my Paris hotel room, I thought it a tourist attraction that I would not want to miss, along with the glamor of the French capital and the opulence of Versailles. So as the SNCF train, crowded with commuters, came into the vicinity of Chartres, I peered at every possible angle out of the windows, hoping for a momentary glimpse of the view memorialized in every tourist guide to France. It was a pleasure denied me; at most places, tall trees lined the right-of-way and where the fields appeared open I saw nothing that did not remind me of the farms of northern Ohio.
Pushed out of the train and loaded with luggage, I persisted in looking for that first dramatic view of the cathedral considered to be the greatest example of Gothic architecture in the world. Nothing but platforms and smoke and baggage, grease and grayness. Through the station and into the parking lot that faces the town of Chartres, still nothing. At this point, practicality took over and the necessity of finding a hotel room to drop my luggage. The mandatory check of three hotels to find the best price had a satisfactory result, and the ritual collapse onto the bed followed.
Refreshed, I went out to see what I had come to see, what everyone comes to Chartres to see. Only two blocks up the street from the Hotel de l'Ouest I turned to the left and saw the famous twin spires high above the town's uniform, three-story construction. Another two blocks brought me face to face with those two giants, flanking the West - the "Royal" - Portal. And I knew immediately that I had not come here as a tourist but as a pilgrim, not just to look but to experience.
The doors were locked on the evening of my first visit, perhaps fortunately, for it gave me the chance to explore the exterior without feeling the need to see the inside. This church is the fifth that was built on this site, and the West front is the oldest part because it is the only remaining part of the fourth church that burned in 1194, less than fifty years after it was built.
After the fire that destroyed the Romanesque church, that of Bishop Fulbert, the entire community of Chartres - noble and common - joined in a single-minded effort to raise the most magnificent shrine that had yet stood on the ancient Druidic site, the cathedral of Notre-Dame that stands today. From the earliest Christian times, the site had been a shrine to the Blessed Virgin and the church of Fulbert was said to contain a relic, the tunic worn by Mary at the time of the Annunciation. The loss of such a wonderful object would have been a disaster to the town, and an apocryphal story has it that on the day after the fire, the relic was found unharmed and the town resolved to build an even greater shrine to the Virgin. The building was roofed in 1220 after a remarkably rapid construction to which many attribute its unique unity of design.
[Illustration: West Front. This wall, including the Royal Portal and the South Steeple (right) is all that remains of the Romanesque church that burned in 1194. The old spire, made all of stone without any timberwork, is widely praised for its combination of simplicity, beauty and strength. The North Steeple, over 111 meters high, was built between 1507 and 1513 by Jehan de Beauce in a flamboyant Gothic style. The large rose window above the three lancets was added during the reconstruction of the 13th century.]
The cathedral at Chartres is, above all, in honor of Mary, whose cult was at an apex in the twelfth century. But the symbolism carved into its stone and pieced into its windows is complex and subtle, reflecting a marriage of religion and philosophy that has long been broken, but whose brilliance can be viewed in this monument of the Middle Ages. Besides being a place of pilgrimage for the devout, Chartres was the center of a school of philosophy devoted to Plato and especially to his dialogue, the Timaeus, which deals with the generation by God of the physical universe in a mathematical and geometrical order. The Timaeus itself is, at once, scientific and mystical:
"What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state, but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is... Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out, and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible."
The carefully designed proportions which give the cathedral its harmonious and serene character have been linked by some to this Platonic preoccupation with the divine geometry. But the influences of secular philosophy are even more clearly written on the face of the building. Over a door of the Royal Portal are carved seven figures representing the seven liberal arts, including Ptolemy, Pythagoras (from whom Plato derived many of his ideas about number), Cicero, Euclid and Aristotle. Nearby are the signs of the Zodiac, which can also be seen on a beautiful window within. The minds that created this masterpiece for the glory of God and his Mother were not guided by orthodox tenets of Christianity, as we know it today. They understood the role that philosophy plays in developing the deepest religious experience.
This "esoteric" interpretation of the cathedral has been developed by Georges Charpentier in The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral (Avon Books, 1975). Charpentier seems to be reaching a bit far for an all-inclusive explanation in his stories of the Knights Templar and their return from the Crusades with the Ark of the Covenant for which they needed an appropriate home, but his book is full of fascinating observations about the unusual proportions in the cathedral. He maintains that in pre-Christian times the site was the center of Druidic rites because of certain telluric forces - energy from the earth - that had their focus there. The cathedral, he says, was designed to hold and resonate these forces, to aid the spiritual development of those who entered.
Charpentier's fantastic theories gained credence with me when I returned the morning after my arrival in Chartres. Few tourists had yet arrived when I went in through the West doors and looked down the nave to the choir beyond. The immense height and length, a huge enclosed space bathed in light filtered through windows of color that can be described as profound, put me in a different world. A tourist's state of mind is tinged with unreality and confusion, but this place dissolved the fog instantly, and drew me into a contemplation of the clarity and beauty that the mind of man is capable of conceiving and representing.
My first inclination was to just stand where I entered at the head of the nave and look, not merely with my eyes but as an effort of my whole being to absorb the meaning of this place. Many must be equally disappointed by their inability to fathom the message of Chartres in one, intense moment and, like me, move on to study the one hundred seventy-six windows with their different stories, their multitude of symbols.
The iconography of Chartres is everywhere noble and beautiful, never morbid. Most notable for a Catholic church, as Charpentier points out, is that the crucifixion is nowhere depicted, either in stone or glass. Christ is shown either in his heavenly glory or as the serene child on the lap of Mary. The saints and the prophets do not remonstrate, but communicate an inner peace.
[Illustration: St. John the Baptist. The figures carved on the North Portal are the prophets who foretold and prepared for Christ, including John the Baptist who is depicted as emaciated from fasting and clothed with camel's hair. The South Portal shows Christ surrounded by his Apostles and other teachers of the early church.]
[Illustration: The Royal Portal. The doorway of the West Front is so named for the statues of the kings and queens, presumably the Judaean ancestors of Christ. Their elongated figures and serene faces suggest a joyful transcendence of the body in favor of a heavenly peace.]
The glory of the cathedral is not in the parts, though all seem perfect, but in the whole. The American author and historian, Henry Adams, was enthralled by it from his visits in the 1880's, and wrote in Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres:
"Like all great churches, that are not mere storehouses of theology, Chartres expressed, besides whatever else it meant, an emotion, the deepest man ever felt - the struggle of his own littleness to grasp the infinite. You may, if you like, figure in it a mathematic formula of infinity - the broken arch, our finite idea of space; the spire, pointing with its converging lines, to Unity beyond space; the sleepless, restless thrust of the vaults, telling the unsatisfied, incomplete, overstrained effort of man to rival the energy, intelligence, and purpose of God."
That inchoate emotion brought me back to the cathedral when I returned a rental car to Chartres after six days touring the Loire valley and Brittany, and it seemed stronger than the first time I stood before the Royal Portal. Now I had a full day to take two guided tours, explore the crypt with structures that date back to Gallo-Roman times, and look - at the deeply colored windows with innumerable stories, at the awesome reach of the vault, at the dramatic sculpture that covers every inch of the doorways, at the transcendent thrust of the two towers.
It seemed as if I could not consume enough of the spiritual food that Chartres offers to the visitor, despite my greedy explorations of every corner. I had been somehow transported from modern Europe to the Middle Ages of Louis IX and Blanche of Castille, from the secular world to a land of faith, and I wanted to stay longer, to learn what I could from this Bible in stone and glass. But my historical, esthetic and religious reverie was not deep enough to extinguish the memory of excursion fares and exchange rates, and I returned to Paris knowing that there was a truth in Chartres that I had failed to glean, and that I might never again visit a place with such a power to transform the ordinary mind and to lead it into a search for the divine.
[Illustration: The Nave. Looking back from the transept toward the West, one sees the great rose window surmounting the three lancets. If you turned left or right from this position, you would see rose windows shining into the South and North transepts, each above five lancet windows. The West rose is over 15 meters in diameter.]
[Illustration: The Labyrinth. Now partially concealed by chairs in the center of the nave is this circular pattern, almost 13 meters in diameter. Mazes of identical design are found in other Gothic cathedrals, through which pilgrims would follow the only path to the center. According to Charpentier, a walk into the labyrinth would not only be symbolic of one's spiritual aspiration, but would move one through a magnetic field and lead to "an opening of the intuition to natural laws and harmonies."]
Viktor Frankl and the Psychology of Meaning
By John Kent
A new syndrome of mental illness is being found in psychology today. As many problems that confront the physician are mental rather than physical ones, psychotherapists are becoming more frequently confronted by their patients with essentially human, philosophical, and spiritual problems than simply neurotic symptoms. They are asked to solve problems concerning the questions of: what is life?, what is suffering? and, why am I here? - rather than emotional and interpersonal conflicts alone.
Logotherapy is a form of existential analysis developed by Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist - enriched by his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II - that includes much of the content of previous psychotherapies, but also goes beyond them into an area seldom touched in psychology: meaning, purpose, and values in life. Logos, in its most basic original definition, is that of its Biblical usage as "the Word" or "idea" of God that initiated the Creation. Frankl also expands the definition of the term to include "meaning" and "spirit" as well. The Logos is in Man, and finding this will make him free.
Psychology has often considered the spiritual distress of a man who is looking for a meaning to his existence to be a pathological symptom, and that the answers he succeeds in finding are mere self-delusions. Such a search is often traced by psychologists back to unconscious roots and sources: that meanings and values are nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations, and sublimations, that morality is just a product of the super-ego, that God is just a projection of a father-image, and religion itself is just a neurotic obsession - thus regarding it in pathological, instinctual terms and missing the point of the authentic phenomenon. Closed-system concepts of homeostatic tension - reduction or pleasure - principle motivation are no longer adequate to explain the workings of a man's soul. "The will to meaning is more than an irreducible need; it is man's primary concern," was Maslow's belief. It must not be explained away as a psychodynamic "nothing but." Other drives, such as for power, pleasure, vanity, or security are all false; they hide it and distort it; they are compensations for one's emptiness of meaning. But this yearning is the core of our humanness. Frankl's critics are correct in claiming that such values and striving are really defense mechanism, reaction formations, conditioning, super-egos, etc., to the extent that this is probably true for many people. But they overlook that when true, this is aberrant and the genuine phenomenon must not be ignored.
The frustration of this will is the root of all mental illness, and psychological reductionism only serves to perpetuate it, thus contributing to the mass neurotic triad: depression, addiction, and violence. If meaning and values are denied by psychologists, reasons and motives are replaced by pan-deterministic conditioning processes - man becomes a robot, a sleepwalker, a sophisticated rat, and through the aid of psychotherapy can at best become a socially efficient, emotionally well-adjusted, and harmless one. The very existence of spiritual angst is proof that the myth of "normalcy," the traditional goal of therapy, is not enough, as one could still be empty and aimless, vainly seeking for satisfaction in a sane but spiritually bankrupt environment. Attaining such normalcy by coaxing unconscious drives into social respectability is not sufficient, nor even necessarily desirable. Freedom from psychodynamic disorders is only part of the process of moving toward true health, which is that of being conscious of and fulfilling meaning. What moves a man is not a cause, but a reason. What is the difference? "If you cut onions, you weep. Your tears have a cause, but you have no reason to weep," is how Frankl explained it. It is not Eros, but Logos that is repressed. But once repressed, even the existence itself of meaning is no longer perceived as possible. The psychology of religion becomes the psychology as religion in that psychology is sometimes worshiped and made an explanation for everything. Religion is not considered by Logotherapy to be just another impersonal psychological force or a function of some other process that drives one on, but is a personal choice. Religion does not "affect" a man - he chooses to be religious. Religion is existential or not at all.
Some consider truth and value to be mere extensions of the relative human self, but this is to deny that one can transcend himself to find the true reality beyond. A meaning to one's existence is not invented by a man himself but rather detected. Logotherapy uses this search for meaning as a way of maintaining or recovering one's mental health; this goal is held before one's eyes as an impetus to climb out of one's pathological pit. At present, when so many people are becoming psychological hypochondriacs always looking for childhood traumas, rejections, repressed sexuality, and conflicts between different drives or between the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego, they find strength in the message that their feeling of meaninglessness is not a symptom of sickness but proof of their humanness: only Man can feel the lack of meaning because only Man is aware of meaning.
Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy, especially the tension involved in a man's struggling for a goal worthy of him, or for a game worth playing with all his soul, as De Ropp put it in his The Master Game. In a similar sense, suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon. Rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration. One's search for a meaning to his existence, or even his doubt of it, is not in every case derived from, nor results in, any disease. Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair over the worthwhileness of life is a spiritual distress - and one of integrity if one forsakes the Garden of Earthly Delights and related vanity of vanities because of this yearning - but by no means a spiritual disease. In fact, religion is not a form of diseased neurosis; neurosis is the result of diseased religiousness. "When the Angel in us is repressed, He turns into a Demon."
The Special People - What Makes Them Special?
Abraham Maslow had studied an assortment of whom he believed to be genuinely self-actualized people to find out what their qualities were that distinguished them from being merely "normal" or "okay," as current psychology jargon calls it. He found these individuals - artists, philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and the like - to be somehow more "alive." These were the aspects he found of this special quality:
A Zen Buddhist text described a sage in these same "inner-directed" terms: "He walks always by himself, goes about always by himself. Every perfect one saunters along one and the same passage of Nirvana; his tone is classical, his spirit is transparent, his airs are naturally elevated, his features are rather gaunt, his bones are firm, he pays no attention to others."
Fundamental Principles
However, while acknowledging that Man is not totally rational, Logotherapy does not go to the extreme of psychoanalysis in claiming that the core of a man is instinctual and irrational. It rather says that his core is intuitively linked with the Divine. The view of Man called pan-determinism is considered false in that it denies his ability to take a stand toward any conditions whatsoever. Man is ultimately self-determining. He does not only exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. He has the freedom to change at every instant. "What one is, he has become through that cause which he has made his own." - Karl Jaspers. While he is, of course, influenced a great deal by instinctual, environmental, psychological, and societal factors, his very humanness - "the defiant power of the human spirit" - is in his freedom to accept or reject and transcend these factors that direct him.
But the emphasis is not on freedom from conditions but freedom to take a stand toward the conditions; not just freedom from something negative but freedom to move toward something positive. Existential analysis cannot directly analyze the ultimate nature of a man's existence, as the genuine inner un-divided self cannot truly reflect back upon itself, as that would still imply duality; it can only be experienced as the final state of being. This final observer, as the eye, cannot directly see itself - Logotherapy can only be an analysis of the attitude of the self toward its existence. As such, it is applicable not only to existential crises, for people who are looking for spiritual answers. It applies on the more primary levels too in terms of the attitude one assumes toward a non-spiritual problem - such as adverse living conditions or personal grief; of arriving at a mature philosophical perspective on it. Frankl gave the example of the old man who grieved at the death of his aging wife and saw no purpose in it. Frankl asked him how his wife would have felt if the husband had died first and left her alone. He replied, "She would have deeply grieved." Frankl suggested that perhaps the purpose of her dying now and leaving him alone was to spare her the later grief of having to endure his death instead; thus the man's suffering was now seen to have a purpose and he could carry his burden with dignity, courage, and gratitude, for the sake of his wife.
Meaning is not a Rorschach Test
While meaning is considered to be unique to each person at each moment of his life, it is a serious mistake to consider meaning as being purely arbitrary. One must find not merely a relative, subjective meaning, but find objective values instead. As extreme examples of the dangerous errors that are possible in this pursuit, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Howard Hughes all had a dynamic sense of meaning and purpose to their lives, with no nagging doubts about the meaning of it all. But obviously that alone was not enough, as all were insane and out of touch with reality and their own higher selves. Values must be of self-transcending substance if one is to be genuinely sane and healthy. Meaning must be subjective, in a sense, yet nonetheless objectively found; it cannot be given, and must not be invented. James Crumbaugh considered that the will to meaning "can be comprehended in terms of the Gestalt psychologist's laws of perceptual organization" and he "relates it to perception - the will to perceive, to read meaning into the environment, to interpret and organize stimulous elements into meaningful wholes." The Logotherapist presents life to the client not as a Rorschach ink-blot test but rather as an Embedded Figures test (as in testing for color blindness) - the meaning is already there; we must find it.
This also brings to mind one aspect of Carl Rogers' phenomenological philosophy of therapy: that what is important is the client's subjective point-of-view of his world around him and guiding him to a state of well-being within his own Weltanschauung - even if his perception is false. As just pointed out, this attitude, while of understandable ethical value in terms of promoting therapeutic change, is not sufficient. To be "well" within one's own - perhaps false - concept of reality is a dangerous tangent, maybe even worse than being consciously unwell, in that one may think he is already healthy and comfortable and then stop growing toward health, as the suffering would no longer motivate him to keep looking for anything better. To be really sane means to find true reality, and concurrently, one's true Self; only thus can one distinguish this true Self from one's perceived, artificially created ego.
To avoid the negative aspects of his humanness, Man must accept his responsibleness in the three ways in which meaning may be discovered:
The first way is obvious - the necessary value judgment and accompanying responsibility are up to each man. The second way is love - it is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. In a relationship, the other person is not used as an object, but is encountered and his humanness is recognized; then if one can become fully aware of the unique essence of another person: that is love. By accepting Frankl's "tragic triad" - unavoidable suffering, inerasable guilt, and death - with dignity, is to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning; for what matters above all is what attitude we choose to take toward unalterable fate - this is our final freedom. Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds a meaning on some higher level. Logotherapy cannot stop suffering but it can stop despair - which is suffering in which the sufferer sees no meaning - by showing him the meaningful attitude he can assume if he so chooses, thereby showing his profound and unconditional faith in his convictions.
"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
-- Nietzsche.
Noos and the Unconscious God
Logotherapy emphasizes the dimension in Man called noos - his spirit, his soul, the "I" in the I-Thou relationship. It is this very human dimension that makes a man different from an animal. But noos is not something Man has; he is noos. It is his innermost core, his personal self, his spiritual fingerprint. Man is trapped in the dimension of his body, driven in the dimension of his psyche, manipulated by his environment; but in the dimension of his noos he is free. Here he not merely exists, but actually influences his existence; here he is not driven, but is the driver. In his noetic dimension Man decides what kind of a person he is and, more importantly, what kind of a person he is going to become. It is to this dimension of freedom Man must turn in his existential despair and to this the Logotherapist must direct the patient's attention.
Perhaps the most essential belief inherent in Logotherapy, the one on which its entire theory of change is based, is that Man has not only a repressed Libido but also a repressed "Religio." Frankl believes that deep inside everyone, even if not conceived of strictly in theological terms, is an "unconscious God," which when contacted provides the impetus to move toward health. This inner core is the source of all value, meaning, and identity. Because of this fundamental principle, Logotherapy, while usually categorized as one of the Third Force of Humanistic / Existential psychology, can in fact be considered to be instead a "Fourth Force," related to the general area of pastoral counseling. Simply stated, Logotherapy's job is to make this unconscious God conscious, because in truth it is this "God" that heals the man's distress, not the therapist. The psychological techniques are used only to get the man to the point of awareness, self-responsibility, and intuition where this God can then help him to heal himself. The power and freedom inherent in his noos is latent and inert until he awakens to it in himself. Related to this is Maslow's assumption that "this inner nature, this active will toward health, is not strong, overpowering, and unmistakable as are the instincts of animals. It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit, cultural pressure and wrong attitudes toward it. Even though weak, it rarely disappears in the normal person - perhaps not even in the sick person. Even though denied, it persists underground forever pressing for actualization."
One of Frankl's favorite maxims is "Be the master of your will and the servant of your conscience." One's conscience is self-transcendent; it is the link to one's spiritual unconscious. This can be recognized by understanding the nature and meaning of responsibility. Man is responsible for himself but not to himself. Responsibility means "the ability to respond" - but to what? To the unconscious God within which the individual can contact if he seeks it, and it is the Logotherapist's job to help him seek it, culminating with a relationship between the immanent "I" and the transcendent "Thou." Man thus finds his unique meaning gestalts dormant in his life through the interpretation of his conscience; his conscience is what leads him to this Thou. The Logotherapist merely serves to wake up the individual's conscience. When this unconscious religiosity is awakened, it is childlike in the truest sense of the word: pure and faithful. But there is a further step. The Logotherapist not only seeks with the client to make conscious contact with this inner guide; this guide must then be followed "unconsciously"; meaning regaining the spontaneous, innocent faith in one's own true nature, rather than living in a forced, deliberate, unnatural manner from cognitive over-regulation which would stifle all creativeness. But now, by being in contact with this guide, one is free and no longer manipulated by unconscious neurotic forces. However, there is still room within this faith in oneself for healthy doubt of anything that may be false or misleading.
Despite the Logotherapist's emphasis on spiritual matters, he is not a preacher - the therapist does not force an image of God onto the client, but only clears the way of neurotic obstacles and blindness for their spontaneous meeting. However, as responsibility means being responsible to answering the question of how to interpret one's life, Logotherapy leaves it up to the client whether he chooses a theistic or atheistic philosophy within which to live. Essentially, what the Logotherapist does is lead the client up a flight of stairs to a plateau of relative health and freedom where he opens the door to another dimension at the top of the stairs for the client, but does not push him through it. That is each man's choice for himself and it can be no other way. It is important to note here that Logotherapy does not consider religion and meaning as just another psychotherapeutic tool to promote mental health: the "unconscious God" is not to be summoned and embraced for His utilitarian value on our level, but for spiritual salvation, if the client wishes to consider it that way.
The Existential Vacuum and Noogenic Neurosis
What many people complain of today is the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves. They are caught in the "existential vacuum," the collective neurosis of the modern age, the deep unfulfilled need that cannot be satisfied by a busy schedule, sensual pleasures, egotistical joys, the acquisition of power and possessions, or even the fanatic running away into mindless irresponsibility. Frankl coined the term "abyss experience" to describe this feeling of utter futility, as opposed to Maslow's concept of "peak experiences" at the other extreme. Man no longer has animal instincts to tell him what he has to do, no traditions to tell him what he ought to do, he will soon not even know what he wants to do; more and more he will be governed by what others want him to do. This existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in Man's boredom of the spirit, guilt from knowing that in his freedom he could choose differently than he does, and anxiety because the burden of his freedom is great. All this goes along with the insecurity accompanying the growing realization that despite - and also because of - our growing knowledge concerning the mind, consciousness, mankind, life, the universe, and the exposing of false gods, we are in search, not in possession, of Truth. This "collective neurosis" has four main symptoms on a social scale:
Logotherapy has coined the term "noogenic neurosis" in contrast to psychogenic neurosis. The former have their origin in the noos - Greek for "mind." But sometimes neurotic symptomology invades an existential vacuum wherein it continues to flourish. So, Logotherapy is needed in psychogenic cases also. In order to be fully effective, every form of therapy, no matter how restricted in its intent and methods, must also be Logotherapy. It was once said about Freud, as compared to a therapist of the Third Force of psychology, that he "goes down deeper, stays down longer, and comes up dirtier." (Yet it is curious that Freud went "deeper" into a man's sickness than any other therapist, but his direction of depth never touched a man's soul.) Frankl was right in claiming that what is needed in response to this depth-psychology is "height-psychology"; the dirt is still to be investigated, but to a different end. In this way, Logotherapy incorporates the aims of traditional psychotherapy and supplements them; it is not meant to be a substitutive panacea. As the cure for existential anxiety is knowing the meaning of one's own life and the task of existential analysis is to lead men to consciousness of their responsibility to decide on this, therapy and education in general must be training toward the ability to decide. The de-neuroticizing of humanity requires the re-humanizing of psychology.
Frankl is the answer to the current behavioral, deterministic, cynical, nihilistic, atheistic, reductionistic, hedonistic, narcissistic pseudo-science which modern psychology is. The Second Force (Behaviorism) inherited one of the First Force's (Freudian) main errors: "Unfortunately, the reductive philosophy is the most widely acclaimed part of psychoanalytic thought. It harmonizes so excellently with a typical petit bourgeois mediocrity, which is associated with contempt for everything spiritual." With his explanation of "dimensional ontology," Frankl is one of the few psychologists who acknowledge that there are higher levels in man, beyond the primitive animal or conditioned robot levels, and by extension, that there can be different levels of men according to the level on which they primarily exist. However, to be realistic about it, studying and working with the noetic dimension in Man is applicable only to those who are consciously in touch with it in themselves and who wish to develop on that level. To those who are unaware of this dimension in themselves, the lower psychological principles apply. These processes function in the spiritual man too - he isn't cut off from his roots - but he uses them to a higher purpose, rather than as ends in themselves to perpetuate the process of Nature. Frankl is right in condemning pan-deterministic behaviorism, not because it isn't true in many people, but because it doesn't have to be true.
The Movement Toward Meaning
Logotherapy does not claim to have found answers to the many crucial questions which modern man faces, nor is it the only school of therapy trying to find answers. It moves in a definite direction, however - away from adjustment and toward individual responsibility. It emphasizes mental health rather than mental disease, total man rather than psyche only, man's freedom rather than his limitations, values that beckon rather than drives that push, and the challenges of the future rather than the traumas of the past.
Logotherapy is absolutely ontological in its approach to mental health: one's very being must become the true state of health it is seeking and not merely be externally shaped into simulating it, however effectively this can be done; and any part of the person outside of his noos, his spiritual essence, even the innermost part of his psyche, is outside of his true being. Because of this, Logotherapy is critical of the behavioristic philosophy of therapy which, while "curing" the client of his presenting problem to an extent, may result in iatrogenic neurosis - one that is caused by the doctor - by taking away his awareness of himself as a free and responsible, self-transcending being.
Logotherapy helps to illuminate the way forward, step by step; and not for mankind as a whole, but for the individual. It tells him that he cannot change his past, but that he is not its slave either; and that he can change his present and influence his future. It tells him that he has limitations but also great freedom within these, and that the use of this freedom can make the difference between a full and an empty life; that, if not used responsibly, freedom will turn into meaningless arbitrariness. It tells him he has choices to make, at every moment, and that he must make them in the face of constant uncertainty; that he can never wait until all the answers are in. It tells him that each person is alone, yet participates in a reality that far transcends him and his understanding; that success in life does not depend on the obvious; and that individual life is geared to ultimate meaning. It tells him that he can never grasp the reality of the Ultimate in his present state, whatever name is given to it, but that everything depends on how he responds to its demands on him, as he is able to perceive them.
Life is Asking You
But what if, after all this theorizing, the desperate client turns to the Logotherapist and bluntly asks, "What is the meaning of life? What is it all about? Why am I here?" - what does he answer? In dealing with these questions, the Logotherapist does not try to supply him with a meaning for life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment, as this changes and evolves. Logotherapy does not emphasize finding an abstract meaning for all of life. Everyone has his own specific mission or assignment to carry out, a destiny that demands fulfillment, if one can but recognize it in oneself. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
In this process of inquiry, Man should not just ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is being asked. Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life. To life he can only respond by being responsible. One's personal existential commitment to the search for Truth is itself the answer to the question of life's meaning. The sum total of his whole life is his prayer for salvation. Thus Logotherapy sees in responsibility the very essence of human existence. Logotherapy tries to make the client fully aware of his own responsibility; therefore it must leave to him the option for what, to what, or to whom he understands himself to be responsible. That is why a Logotherapist is least tempted of all therapists to impose value judgments on the client, for he would never permit the client to pass on to the doctor the responsibility of judging. Logotherapy is neither teaching nor preaching. It is as far removed from logical reasoning as it is from moral exhortation. His role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of meaning and values becomes conscious and visible to him. Logotherapy does not need to impose any judgments nor direction on the client, for actually, Truth imposes itself and needs no intervention on its behalf.
Logotherapy, or "medical ministry" as Frankl calls it, differs from most other forms of psychotherapy in that the others aim at restoring one's capacity to work, to enjoy life, and to be happy with oneself, while Logotherapy includes all these, yet goes even further by having the client regain his capacity to suffer, if need be. This form of therapy also differs from religious counseling in that its task is not to save the soul, as in religion, but to keep the soul healthy; and the soul is healthy as long as it remains true to its humanhood, meaning: conscious and responsible, and moving sincerely toward fulfilling its destiny. The individual can them decide for himself what form this movement is to take. One may wonder, however, how Truth in life could be found without one then being "religious," even if not conceived as such.
Self Commitment and Paradoxical Intention
In working on the noetic level, the Logotherapist does not tell the person what the Truth concerning his life is, but rather draws this inspiration or goal out of him, thus moving him toward a higher level of health, pulling him rather then pushing him. The removal of psychological problems is thus only a part of the over-all process toward self-transcendence and is not held up as the ideal for its own sake. The aim of the Logotherapist is to re-orient the client in his attitude toward life itself. Only when the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up can the focus of striving be shifted from the psychic conflicts crippling him to the confrontation of the selfless goal of finding the meaning of his life instead. The truly neurotic individual does try to escape the awareness of his life task, and to bring him to full consciousness of it contributes much to overcoming his neurosis. The pivotal curative factor is self-commitment.
It is believed that mental disorders are expressions of this fundamental philosophical ignorance and that they are self-perpetuating entities. As soon as a person stops fighting with his neurotic obsession - not by giving in to it, but by applying Frankl's technique of "paradoxical intention" and seeing beyond himself - the vicious cycle is cut, the symptom diminishes and atrophies, and one's energy is freed to work on his life-goal. This philosophy of therapeutic change is best contained in the ancient Chinese "finger-trap" toy: the tube woven in such a way that when one places a finger into the opening on each end, it traps him. The more he struggles, the more tightly he is caught. But when he stops struggling and loosens up, he becomes free of the trap by artfully slipping out of it. It may not be too pretentious to claim that the essence of much of psychotherpay as well as religious teachings is contained in this toy, if one really understands its meaning.
Logotherapy can guide the mentally ill client to the point of normalcy or adequacy, yet still stimulate in him the awareness of the true higher goal, and instill in him the hunger to continue onward, if that hasn't already been a motivating force in his seeking of therapy. Also, by relentlessly emphasizing the importance of meaning in life, he reinforces the person's capability to be an efficient, whole, sincere, and determined seeker on his own, using all of life as a form of therapy, and everyone he encounters as a partner in mutual growth. By awakening the unconscious God within the center of his being, his intuition is cleansed, which then directs him toward the right way in which to go.
The Wisdom of the Heart
In dealing with the problem of noological distress, Logotherapy appeals to what Frankl calls one's "pre-reflective ontological self-understanding" or "the wisdom of the heart" in finding meaning. This is a blend of
The main technique used throughout this entire process is interpretation. Frankl was originally trained as a psychiatrist in Vienna before developing his system of Logotherapy, so he is no stranger to Freudian thought and techniques. However, this is not an interpreting of the client's material by reducing it into the mundane psychodynamic components of his instinctual unconscious, but rather identifying the latent universal search for meaning and values hidden within these psychodynamics and the glimpse seen through them - when worked through - of his spiritual unconscious. Every man looks for some form of truth in his life, even though this desire is usually misunderstood by him, the nature of the aim misconceived, and the effort made to realize it inadequate. The function of Logotherapy is to facilitate this process by touching the man's noos and bringing it to self-awareness.
Searching and Becoming
Frankl believed that the finest maxim for any kind of psychotherapy was given by Goethe: "If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they were what they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming." Love helps the beloved become as the lover sees him.
Logotherapy simply states: Man is searching; but it can never decide for him if he is searching for a God he has invented, for a God he has discovered, for a God he cannot find, or for himself. This is the task of the Logotherapist: to illuminate, to let meaning "shine forth."
Toward a Psychology of Being and the Peak Experience
Man needs more than an intellectual understanding of the relationship between the human and the Divine - he needs an actual experience of transcendence. Such a mystical, or "peak" experience, gives one an intuitive understanding of the nature of reality, of one's true identity, one's relation to or within reality, and the values and meanings inherent in it. Although Frankl didn't specifically teach how to have such an experience - as they cannot be deliberately willed: they are spontaneous and subjectively seem to "happen" to the person, as an act of Grace - Logotherapy does work to lead one in that direction. In other words: if such an enlightenment is an accident, then one must strive to become accident-prone.
If the statement, "The fully human person in certain moments perceives the unity of the cosmos, fuses with it, and rests in it, completely satisfied for the moment in his yearning for oneness" is considered a highly amplified version of, "This is a fully human person," then with his work, Frankl has indicated the direction toward true health; toward a psychology of Being. The stale, hollow, sober ordinariness of normal, mundane reality by which life has become desecrated, and which is usually considered to be an indication of proud adult maturity, ends. Such a mystical experience can provide a man with an element of ecstacy, a feeling of the mystery of existence, of participation in the whole, a glimpse of assurance, a fleeting awareness of a plan of which he is a part, a meaning. It can give a man the courage to "say YES to life in spite of everything."
What is the Void Saying?
Frankl quotes a stimulating statement by Freud: "The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick." I have often wondered if this striving for answers to life is a sign of special health or is actually a sign of sickness. I believe it is both. It is a sickness in the sense that we are in the state of being fallen from Grace, from our original state of innocence, unity, and clear intuition with the higher realms. It is a sign of health in the sense that, in our blind and lost condition, some realize the predicament they are in and feel the urge calling them to return home, and they follow it. The search actually should not be necessary because we are already home; but it is necessary because we don't really know it. The ones who assume they are already there and so don't think there is anything to look for may be the ones who are really sick.
The atheistic existentialists claim there is no meaning to this drama; that it is all empty and absurd. Until we know for certain, we must accept that this may be true even though we would prefer to believe that it isn't. Actually, it may well be true in a sense, on a certain level of understanding, and may reflect genuine integrity and insight, as far as they can see. I believe they sense the ever-presence of the Void, but greatly misinterpret its meaning, perceiving only one extreme of the paradox, with the common man of the world perceiving only the opposite extreme. We don't know definitely what the truth is in any case; we must find out for certain for ourselves. We do have one clue to remember along the way: many existentialists were stuck in their heads, blinded by their own intellectual egos. Frankl reminds us that "Logos is deeper than logic."
Modern psychology mirrors and simultaneously promotes the chronic American zeitgeist of materialism, conditioning, hedonism, homogeneity, and externalization of essences. "In the country of the mindless, the blind man is king." I believe psychology began its modern era with Freud, reached its shameful nadir with Skinner, and is fulfilled with Frankl; to go beyond him means to enter another dimension.
Tension and Resolution
Frankl is right about the tension aroused by the "demand quality" of life: demanding that a man find his true meaning and orientation to life. It is this tension that leads to its resolution. Premature peace of mind while one is still separated from the truth is dangerous. He is right in identifying this tension as being between "what he is and should become, existence and essence, being and meaning:" or in other terms, the tension of the process toward the state of detached-involvement, until the process is completed. But Frankl is short of the whole truth in one way, although as far as he went, he is brilliantly right. Although, as he said, homeostasis is an inadequate ideal, unending tension, pursuit, change, drama, fulfilling meaningful tasks, etc., is not quite true either; closer to it, but not exactly right. The problem, basically, that he did not see is that we are all still stuck in duality, and no complete answer to life can be had until this duality is transcended. Yes, tension is necessary while we are still stuck and working to free ourselves, but he wasn't aware that there is a state beyond even this healthy tension between a man and what is outside of him; that this quest can ever find what it seeks; that it can ever attain what it is reaching for beyond the duality that hides the answer from us. Tension does not have to be a never-ending, an "ineradicable" process, like a carrot in front of a donkey's head, dangling from a stick tied to his back - just to keep him moving on. We may be programmed by nature to fulfill this process on the physical, emotional, and even mental levels, but our essence can escape this wheel and be free. An over-emphasis on involvement in the meaningful drama of life may turn out to be a wasteful tangent beyond a certain point of understanding.
Duality and the Paradox
The paradoxes created by the state of duality cause confusion with the terms: subjective and objective. I believe that the fundamental source of error in Frankl's entire teaching - one which does not render false what he teaches up to a certain level, but does limit its overall validity by falling short of the whole truth and denying there is anything beyond where he leaves off - is expressed in his assumption about "the insurmountable finitude of being human." This is not true. Neither is the gap between what is and what should be unbridgeable, nor does the subject-object dichotomy have to exist. There is a state in which being / subjectivity / existence and meaning / objectivity / essence are identical. Many of the principle philosophical concepts upon which he bases his whole orientation are half right and half wrong because of his seeing from the point of view of duality, without realizing how it is only a partial truth - and thus partially misleadingly false too. Much of his emphasis is the opposition to the dangerous modern trend toward the "objectification of existence" and "subjectification of Logos," and this is justly so. But his error is that the inverse he advocates is also - while in a sense closer to the truth than is the position he condemns - false, due to his operating from the mistaken either-or duality. The truth must be a synthesis and transcendence of them both.
The criticism he makes of the humanistic-existential ideal of self-actualization is astute. He gives the analogy of the boomerang: that when cast away, it only returns to the thrower if it misses its target. In other words, one comes back to focusing on the ego-self only when the will to meaning is unfulfilled. This is the story of modern Western civilization. His criticism of the current ego-centered utilitarian attitude toward the world as being only the passive object to one's subjective, self-expression or an instrument for our gratification is also apt, although perhaps true in some form on another level. But Frankl should have distinguished between focusing on the ego-self in a narcissistic-subjective way (as he criticizes) and that of going through the false ego-self to find the true Self behind it all; behind all duality.
This is the "other" to which he always points. This is the transcendental point where subjective and objective become the same. The former process is self-actualization; the latter is Self-Realization in the true meaning of the term. The ego needs to reach out not to the world for salvation but to his own real Self, and this is not the ego. Meaning must be lived from the inside-out, not the outside-in. "Becoming who we are" means discovering one's essential nature, and not just developing the potentialities of the self-created, or hereditary, or conditioned personality in reacting against the world in a productive manner. This is what the Delphic Oracle meant by "Know Thyself, and All the Gods and the Universe Shall Be Known to You as Well." It is relevant here to make the distinction between psychotherapy being for the utilitarian value of living life efficiently, and that of psychological health being the clearing the way of obstacles to allow for the growth toward spiritual truth, the glimpse of our true nature behind even the healthy ego. This is a significant difference to remember.
The Meaning of the Search For Meaning
My main parting of ways with Frankl is that I believe he misunderstood the true nature of the search for meaning. I consider the essence of this search to actually be the desire for unity with Reality and not only for a personally meaningful life. In all this talk of searching for meaning, Frankl may have made one fundamental error based upon his dualistic presumptions: that there does, in fact, exist an individual entity called a man, encountering an objective world other to himself, and that in their relationship, if properly perceived, some meaning is to be found. This line of philosophical enquiry may well be founded upon an erroneous presumption to begin with, thereby invalidating the intent of the entire process, however sincere. Perhaps no such division actually exists, the perception of that condition being the monumental, tragic illusion of our race, and thus the problem itself being false. If this thought is kept in mind, then one must have the integrity and honesty to acknowledge the possibility that life has no true meaning as we would conceive such a thing, that all relative meanings found or created are illusions, or illusions within an illusion, and that no fulfillment for the ego - for which it longs - is ever really possible, as it is itself a false condition. Self-transcendence is not from the ego to some meaning in the external relative world which demands processing and promises a false fulfillment (as Frankl thought), but rather to the higher reality somehow beyond this entire scenario from which all meaning, values, fulfillment, content, process, relationships, understanding, and identity derive. It may be that the question of meaning is answered ultimately only by one's getting to the state where the question of meaning becomes meaningless, and life, or God, is seen as the question and answer in itself. This is not nihilism: that being is meaningless. It is neither meaningful nor meaningless; it just IS. God only knows why. Meaning requires relationships between others, between figure/ground, or subject/object, and in unity there are no relationships.
This is similar to where, at one point, Frankl says that the meaning of life in general is not important, that it would be like asking in a chess game "what is the best move?", where there is no best move but only a series of separate, individual moves comprising the whole. He concludes that "Logos is deeper than logic." While I agree with this conclusion (who would have the intellectual conceit to deny it?!), I believe he was wrong in denying the value of - not one's asking what the best move is, but - wondering about the point of playing the game itself. In this, he would have been more accurate to substitute "is-ness" for "meaning"; in which case, the search becomes valid, although one is looking for a somewhat different answer than one thinks. Relevant here is the Gestalt psychology notion that meaning is a function of the figure/ground relationship and that that which is called "meaning" can be experienced - and not known - only through the re-uniting of the figure/ground split; duality healed. The paradox in this is that when this is done, the relative meaning which was the individual's goal now ceases to exist, as the Self is no longer strictly relative, and all that remains is the SEEING. The gestalt of all the small relative meanings times being equal the big absolute "meaning," if it could be referred to as such. To the previously quoted line of "Know Thyself..." may then be suffixed "... and the meaning of it all too."
The key is to be fully conscious, to have, what Frankl calls, a basic trust in (or commitment) to being, or that Tillich calls "the courage to be." Frankl emphasizes that in this existential decision of "how" to live one's life lies the answer to its question of "why?" He did seem to doubt, however, that one could ever actually find the truth of existence, and not just a never-ending process of relative meanings, when he quoted the old saying that the finite can never comprehend the infinite. True, but the finite can become less finite, and maybe eventually break through the boundary of finite ignorance to infinity.
Meaninglessness and Meaningfulness
It is difficult to accurately evaluate the validity of Frankl's teaching because of its paradoxical nature: it is true on the level upon which it is presented and yet to go beyond it renders it false. Frankl defined the aim of Logotherapy to be "to make one aware of what he really longs for in the depth of his self." The urge for a personally meaningful life is a high-level - although erroneous - distortion of the fundamental universal impulse toward finding the Truth and is another form of holding on, however sincere and noble. The desire and need is really for one's essence to be firmly rooted in the Ultimate Ground. All mental illness is the failure to perceive this reality correctly and to respond to it appropriately, and correcting this must be the aim of all therapy. This pursuit may be the only legitimate meaning in life. The awareness of this call and the resultant search is the initial step of the non-spiritual man in dealing with the personal psychological obstacles that marks his entering the religous path. If the search for relative meaning stimulates one to look in the right direction, passing through the paradoxical phase of "being in the world but not of the world" (forsaking one's personal claim in all lower meanings while still fulfilling one's duty to them), and keeps going, one might arrive at the true problem and true answer beyond the original apparent problem of meaning; if one goes far enough and follows the inquiry out to the end. With this understanding it is seen that, by stressing even a mature ego-fulfillment, Frankl was really wrong, and yet the process of inquiry concerning perceived meaning in life that he has advocated is actually a necessary intermediate phase of the larger process, and so it is true too. One must have a strong ego and be well-centered in it first before being able to transcend it; the vigorous pursuit of meaning is the best way to develop it and helps one to "know thyself"; and the nature and object of the pursuit itself can serve to continue to motivate one's movements toward the true goal, which may only later be recognized. At that point, the previous relative meanings are seen as having been empty, although functional, half-truths, as steps leading up to what one has really sought all along. Then even these must be given up to really "know thyself. "
Thus, Frankl's teaching could be a dangerously misleading tangent if a person who is hungry for meaning is led toward believing in, and contentedly clinging to, lower meanings in life that are in fact false. One may then fail to recognize how meaningless life really is - on our present ignorant level - and not look for what may be considered the "ultimate meaningfulness" behind the whole relative scenario; in other words: the point of playing the chess game. The existential void inside and outside may well be trying to tell us something. The original feeling of emptiness and futility may have been right all along in its message. One's confronting this void may be more truthful and beneficial in the long run than settling for a lower level of the illusion instead; even an apparently "meaningful" one. Frankl's critics who have claimed that the values and reasons that many people come up with in the guise of a "philosophy of life" are illegitimate, self-deceptive, and not freely and consciously chosen by the individual are thus in a roundabout and inadvertent way correct, although not exactly as they thought. This cynical, materialistic, atheistic psychological community also senses a certain absurdity about modern life, but they are coming from a different viewpoint philosophically than those people who feel this emptiness but believe there is some meaning to be found if they only knew how to find it. The former assume there can be no meaning and so do not try to find it; the latter assume there is but look for it in the wrong place. Neither has understood what the existential void really means and demands of one in response.
The Final Koan
It is difficult to correctly assess the overall validity of Frankl's teaching because the nature of the problem, the search for the answer, and the answer itself are all really koans - like the logically insoluble questions of Zen. Logos is deeper than logic, but one must not merely obey Logos - one must become Logos. The final realization demands a change in the being of the one doing the seeking and is not the direct linear outcome of the process itself on that same level. One must not hold fast to the process but, by slyly working through it - as one would in escaping from a life-size "finger-trap" toy - fulfill it as far as it goes. One must outgrow even the earlier attained state of health and become free of those values - and egos too. Frankl's teaching is one half of the paradox in the koan and must be understood and worked with as such for it to be of benefit to the Wanderer.
Frankl has the answer to relative, duality-bound life; he has taken us beyond atheistic, behavioral psychology. The next step past him - the other half of the paradox - is the intense attention upon the last question: Who am I? He is wise in stating that the final statement one can make about the truth of life is not "I must" or "I can" (or even "I ought" - still in duality!) but only "I Am that I Am."
We are fallen. We are not just looking for meaning; we are looking for ourselves, for the Truth within us, for our true home. Ideally, as Freud's earlier quote inadvertently implied, one does not need to look for meaning, as meaning is a function of being. You do not need to look for an answer, for you are the answer. But who are you?
Bibliography
Fabrey, Joseph. The Pursuit of Meaning: Logotherapy Applied to Life.
Frankl, Viktor. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy.
Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy
The Unconscious God.
The Unheard Cry for Meaning.
The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy.
The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy.
The Convocation
The shimmering hues of pink and violet are slowly fading upon the horizon. Darkness is approaching, though the twilight is upon us. I turn my gaze upwards into the heavens. My eyes wander at first, and then pick out stars in the deepening, widening silence that is unfolding. First one and then another, their twinkling beckons with promise and anticipation. Only the murmur of voices near to me gradually eases my hypnotic gaze.
On the hillside, all around me, I can sense them, and see the gathering groups to this open-air convention. All are delegates, I suppose, to this scientific convention, to this evaluation of humanity's progress. My two companions and I are, perhaps, delegates of sorts here, if one is to call us anything. The oldest of us three is now beginning to speak to others who have come from nearby. I listen in total agreement, and know his knowing, though his name or face escapes me now.
"Science has its limitations," he begins. "For all science is based on rational thought, and thoughts derived from the earth, and its ideas that are nurtured and grown. These are exclusive and temporal, and based on occurrences and their things."
I nod to myself, in complete agreement, for I am beyond doubt.
"How can one strive with science to pierce the mysteries of the universe, the meaning of all life, with such tools of substance that can never discern?"
Those gathered around us murmur with discontent, for they have brought with them philosophies and theories that are the culmination of a lifetime of work. They say that the convention must follow scientific lines, and several of these delegates depart down the hill. The youngest of us three has ignored this gathering and is looking off into the valley below, now covered in darkness except for the lighted amphitheatre to which many delegates are proceeding. He is pondering our exclusion, I sense. Yet all is as it is, so no anger or remorse is within him, or me.
The oldest of us continues speaking: "Take, for instance, the strange abilities available to man."
I cannot see his face, but already know the direction of his thoughts. No words are needed to ask what follows.
"We can know by direct mind," he begins, "know the thoughts and the minds of others."
His words rivet in unison across consciousness like a flash, as I speak them to myself, though I hear his voice. He, I and the younger are thinking now as one.
"Man has the ability to think as one, to feel as one, to be as one."
I turn my head towards the darkness and close my eyes, to increase and sharpen this feeling, to fathom this oneness without impending thoughts or words to distract. Therein the clarity increases, and our rapport pervades uninterrupted.
"Man can directly apprehend, and needs no logic, no tools."
I am charged now with anticipation as I feel a revelation is unfolding.
"For we are as a living human computer, being as one, probing the unknowing, becoming one with the secrets of all that is or shall be."
Thoughts leave my awareness in the oneness of our presence. No word rolls from my lips, no shadow of myself is necessary. I am an open vehicle to transcendence. I am the vessel of the way. All else of me is meaningless.
"Our uniqueness is that we are a living, electromagnetic power of mind. Only this can equal the energy that holds the veil before our eyes. Only this can pierce the mysteries and become what is beyond."
The older is now silent, the gathering has diminished. Visions flash before us of faces of previous pioneers of twos and threes. Their faces and minds are locked in our eternal oneness, in the revelation of our destiny, beyond the confines of the world around us as it is. My presence is before me, but I experience only our oneness into which I am dissolved.
THE MIRROR
By Richard Rose
Who is it that speaks to you?
Who is it that listens to me?
If all is God. . .
Can we pretend to be the soliloquy of God?
Can we pretend for a moment that we are all particles of God,
Enjoying his divinity?
A bird in the tree sings, saying,
I am here now, I am here now,
O the glory of being here now...
O the glory of being here...
O the glory of Being...
O the glory of...
O the glory of meeting a predator...
And he meets a worm, which like manna
Is a delicacy, a divine aspect,
A gift of God's own body in particle form.
And he eats the worm joyously...
God victorious and God experiencing destruction... God sadistic and God
masochistic...
God organic and God as fertilizer...
Changing
Ever changing
As decaying bird-food, as fertilizer,
Revitalizing less organic soil,
Creating a cradle for millions of microscopic organisms.
All singing the praises of life,
With songs of exultation, anger, despair, and fear.
All singing about orchestral soil,
And echoing the desire of God to experience all.
Do we not hear the voice of God
Howling with funereal sullenness,
Through the forest in the winter...
Roaring in cascading rivers,
Piercing his own sensitivities in lightning and ocean gale,
Feeling cosmic pain in the explosion of planets,
In the quaking of planets...
Or in the divine breath of a hurricane?
Are we not more fortunate than those
Who are "being there then,"
Caught and frozen in a winter wilderness...
Swept over the falls of a treacherous river...
Swallowed by an earthquake,
Or incinerated by lightning...
Or flung to their death by the winds?
Should we rejoice that God
Through tiny human nerves
Experiences all forms of horror and pain,
Despair and fear?
But the God within all, in all now...
Witnesses that not all freeze,
Not all are drowned or torn to pieces...
He witnesses this only through human nerves,
In and through his audience of millions,
Through his millions of eyes, ears, and noses
That watch others die, butchered a million different ways,
That watch others suffer
That watch others hope and lose hope
That witness instilled courage change...
To instilled despair and terror.
Can we imagine the glories of a God
So self-watching, so identified with us, --
Who are so identified with this pointless game?
Unless we visualize God as infinitely introspective
That watches the eater and the eaten
The beater and the beaten,
Watches the millions uneaten observing
The ones being eaten,Watches the millions unbeaten,
Observing the ones being beaten, --There seems to be no point to this drama.
And now he watches another group of observers,
Less numerous than the simple observers,
Those who watch the watchers,Those who study madness and record madness in a way
that pretends to be orderly and sane,
Who study observers
And have millions of reactions
Singing the praises of God by a thousand different names,
While they train themselves to act as rescuers,
Digging out God's victims,
From hurricane, earthquake, or typhoon,
From freezing, burning, or drowning,
From terror and desire and fear,
From thinking about origins and destiny,
From the anguish of loving, --
Doing God's work and believing,
That God likes observers acting concerned,
Acting as though God as the victim needs rescuing,
That God as insanity needs explanation...
That God as the destroyer needs apology,
Or needs humans taking on God's sins...
By acts of pious asceticism.
For God now breaks into many parts,
Observers watching observers,
And observers of observers of observers,
But which of these billions is really here now...
Which of these particles, among God's infinite number of particles,
Is watching God???
Is he alive to all who watch death and life,
Is he alive to God...
Who rejoices in seeing God particularized?
Or is he alive who is not among the myriad observers,
The myriad eyes that sleep or remain less asleep?
Is he alive who hears through millions of ears,
Of greater or lesser dependability,
Or is he alive. . . . . .
That turns his back on madness,
On rejoicing and despair,
On pleasure and pain,
On Gods and God-particles,
And who looks on nothingness with apathy and indifference,
Who laughs at the thunderings of Hell
And the shrill insanity of Heaven,
Who feels with feelinglessness,
As only God can feel...
But who turns once more back to his fellow man
Saying
I have become a mirror,
Look beyond my beauty,
Look beyond my ugliness,
Look beyond my wordlessness,
My inarticulateness, My fractured mentality,For I have been back there freezing and exploding, burning and drowning,
I am that which gathers other particles,
Saying,
Let us be mirrors.
I am not a mirror of moaning and misery,
I am not a mirror of praying and pleading,
I am a mirror of the process called seeming,
I mirror the seeming...
Watching the watching of seeming and dreaming.
The puppets of the Absolute have broken their strings,
Have formed agreements to dream dreams,
Have agreed to pretend to create other puppets,
And have agreed upon madness together,
Until madness has become to them as reality,
While unconsciously they hunger for
The comfort of the guiding hands of their puppeteer.
I am a mirror that madness looks upon,
And sees a hope surmounting foolishness,
I am a mirror that reflects no madness
And seeing nothing but a seeming of madness.
I am a mirror that looks not to reflect love
For I perceive no love but a seeming of love,
And I see no justice, divine or human,
But a seeming of justice.
I am a mirror that was not made and remade to
Reflect only seeming...
I am a mirror also of myself,
Watching myself, watching myself, watching myself ad infinitum.
I am a mirror alive and aware
Aware of being aware of being aware of being aware...
Ad infinitum...
Untimed and unspecialized,
Dreamless forever,
Not dreaming of life or dreaming of death,
Not dreaming of Gods or demigods.
I am a mirror with my back to humanity,
Vainly lighting a direction,
For puppets to pick up threads and contact,
Strings to the Absolute.
I am a mirror facing the Absolute,
There is nothing to face, until we turn our backs
Upon the void... Upon projections...
Upon particularization, Upon seeming...
Until we realize we are not turning away
From a void or from confusion or meaninglessness,
Until we realize that we do not realize...
Except that the Absolute has a mirror
Which it turns upon itself,
Saying
I have had enough of my adventure,Into endless possibilities of my self...
TWO AUTOS
Two autos were talking in the shed
With comments emerging from the head,
The black sedan had learned of God
For God revived him now and then,
And healed him of a knocking rod,
And kept him from the evil men.
The yellow coupe was something more,
Psychology was his affair,
He learned that 'neath the motor's roar,
Conditioned nerves were there.
His left headlight worked from a lobe,
Within the right side of his battery,
And hanging in a plastic globe,
Synaptic points were thinking laterally.
With thinking came decisions on the road,
And God now smiled for He could sleep,
While traveling with a heavy load
Of nectar from the keggy deep.
Synaptic shorts occurred that flamed and blew
Out both the Potted and his Pots,
The coupe was torn apart and never knew
If God had really known his thoughts.
By Richard Rose
WHY THE TAROT WORKS
by Robert Cergol
A Basis for Studying the Cards
Much has been written about the ancient pack of cards known as the Tarot. The vast majority of the books available on the subject deal exclusively with the history of the cards or with the meanings of the symbols contained in the cards. It is rare to find any books which explain how the Tarot functions - the basis for the ability of the cards to reveal the fortunes of people and at the same time to give insights into the nature of a specific personality. A basic understanding of how the Tarot functions is the best foundation for learning to read the cards. Without such understanding the learning of the various symbols can become a difficult task in rote memorization without furnishing the understanding to relate the symbols into a meaningful interpretation. The study of the Tarot should be approached systematically. After outlining a brief basis for the functioning of the cards I will give a simple, yet effective, method by which to learn the symbolism of the Tarot.
The Tarot is an alphabet of symbols. The symbols themselves depict events, the individual and the cosmos. They also depict the physical world, the individual mind and the universal mind. The nature of the symbols themselves, i.e. their universality, and the near infinitude of possible combinations is what makes the Tarot adaptable for divination. The intuition of the person reading the cards coupled with his skill in holding a multitude of symbolic meanings in his head and relating them is what enables the cards in a spread to render relevant meaning. There is also a third factor which causes the cards to be dealt in an arrangement specific to the person shuffling and to his query. Of this more will be said later.
The symbolic alphabet of the Tarot can be divided into four major categories. The major arcana or trump cards represent profound philosophical truths and deal with spiritual ideals. They also represent archetypes on a psychological or mental level. The four suits of the minor arcana, or pip cards or pips, correspond to the four elements, i.e. wands/fire, cups/water, swords/air and pentacles/earth. These are impersonal forces of creation. The numerology of the cards depicts the progression or evolution of these forces. The court cards, King, Queen, Knight and Page, provide a bridge between the major and minor arcanas. These cards in the four suits inject a psychological or personal aspect into the impersonal forces of the four suits. Thus the connecting point of the minor with the major arcana is the mental aspect or psyche. The impersonal forces, with a personal element superimposed, take on a psychological aspect and thus relate to the universal archetypes of the trump cards.
The spread is the special arrangement the cards are dealt in when doing a reading. The spread is the structure which allows these various symbols to be interrelated for interpretation to an individual. There are various spreads and it is conceivable that new spreads can be invented, provided there is a consistent conceptual basis for the spread. This allows the symbols to stand in relationship in an intelligible fashion. The most widely used spread is that of the ancient celtic cross (pronounced keltic). The design of this spread provides great flexibility for interpreting the cards. Without the spread, the Tarot pack taken as a whole is a complete symbolical representation of God, man and the universe; or the Universal Mind, the individual mind and the physical world.
The Tarot can be viewed and interpreted on two levels. Phenomenal and noumenal, the world plane and the mind plane, the tangible and the intangible, objective and subjective, physical and psychological. The use of the cards in a spread for readings has two levels likewise: divination and/or