Hamlet

Johnson calls Hamlet the darkest chapter in his book. “Don Quixote,” he says, “with his roots deep in instinct and faith, is the man of courage who redeems anything that befalls him. In Hamlet, we find a man of tragedy, he who makes chaos and failure of everything he touches.”

The opposite of Don Quixote in nearly every respect, Johnson says Hamlet is the “most  profound example in all of literature of the divided man.”

To understand Hamlet, Johnson explains, is to gain insight into the emptiness and loneliness of modern existential life. As a three-dimensional man, Hamlet has neither roots in the instinctive world nor is his head yet in the heavens where he might gain enlightenment.

Modern man, in general, is at a point where he must heal the paradox of masculine and feminine,doing and being.

As Lao-tse said, “He who understand the masculine and keeps to the feminine shall become the whole world’s channel. Eternal virtue shall not part from him and he shall return to the state of an infant.”

Johnson says that Hamlet only touches this design state before making division and tragedy, rather than paradox and synthesis, of it. Because time and again, in refusing to act and make a choice, Hamlet loses the value of both.

Hamlet’s troubles begin with the murder of his father by his uncle who then marries Hamlet’s mother. The ghost of Hamlet’s father tells him to take revenge and thus begins the internal debate–to kill the uncle and take his rightful place as king or decide that enough blood has been shed and be at peace with what has happened.

Instead he does as Emily Dickinson put it,”wavered for us all.” Vacillation in one of the characteristics of the three-dimensional man.

“A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward,” Hamlet thinks. He can see that together the four parts make for wholeness, but only three parts function for him. He cannot listen to his internal wisdom.

“There is no peace in such a man,” Johnson says. “He knows too much to be simple, but not enough to be whole.”

Because Hamlet’s need to act and his abhorrence of violence are in conflict, he descends into depression and madness, and out of this comes the most famous soliloquy in literature:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh in heir to; ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–
To sleep–perchance to dream–ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

Johnson explains that this is the despair that causes conflict in every three-dimensional man–while he cannot live, he dare not die. He then begins to torture everyone around him, especially those who love him, and he makes life unbearable for himself.

As Tolstoy wrote, “He was suffering the anguish men suffer when they persist in undertaking a task impossible for them–not from inherent difficulties, but from its incompatibility with their own nature.”

When challenged about what he is doing, Hamlet cries, “Words, words, words.” It is the cry of the three-dimensional man who is so caught up in words he cannot act.

Literary critic R.H. Blyth describes it this way: “This ‘words, words, words’ has a deeply tragic meaning in the play. It is, in fact, the secret of Hamlet’s character, the cause of the tragedy. Hamlet is the Zen-less man, whose energy, like a mouse in a wheel, goes round and round inside him and issues, not in action, but in talking.”

As Johnson says, “It is a characteristic of complex man, caught between functioning by instinct and acting by enlightenment, that he often destroys everything feminine within his grasp. . . . All feminine elements wither in the face of the three-dimensional consciousness.”

Next Week: The Poisoned Rapier

Transformation

Tags

Consciousness, Enlightenment

On whom, then, my God, am I the onlooker? How many am I? Who is me? What then is this gap between myself and me?

~~Fernando Pessoa

A recent email informed me that one of my favorite authors, as far as self actualization is concerned, had an ebook available for only $1.99. How could I resist? So I downloaded Transformation by Robert A. Johnson because frankly, it sounded as fascinating as his other works.

According to Johnson, Transformation is “a study of the evolution of consciousness through its three main levels of development.” While the book is masculine in character, using fictional male characters as a way to examine this development, it is just as applicable to women. Because English pronouns are limited to either the masculine or the feminine, Johnson sticks with masculine to avoid confusion.

So, what are these three levels of consciousness? Johnson claims that man is born with a simple consciousness before progressing to a complex consciousness. Unfortunately, this is where most of us remain. Only the rare few can attain an enlightened consciousness.

As Johnson explains, “A Zen proverb states: ‘When I was young and free, the mountains were the mountains, the river was the river, the sky was the sky. Then I lost my way, and the mountains were no longer the mountains, the river was no longer the river, the sky was no longer the sky. Then I attained satori (enlightenment), and the mountains were again the mountains, the river was again the river, and the sky was again the sky.”

If you want to see if from a Biblical standpoint, we go from the simple perfection of the Garden of Eden through every imaginable chaos until we reach the heavenly Jerusalem.

“Man evolves from acting instinctively to putting his psychic energy under the control of his ego,” he says. “Then he must evolve further, to place his psychic energy under the control of the Self.”

In our complex state, in between simple and enlightened, we remain trapped by our nostalgia for the past and our anticipation of the future. When enlightened, we find happiness living in the moment.

“Complex consciousness is so highly prized in our society that no cost is thought too high to gain freedom, self-determination, and choice, the qualities of this level of consciousness,” Johnson says. “We are so jealous in championing complex consciousness that we will export its way of life to any other less-advanced country, free of charge!”

Because our society revels in complex consciousness, and because we essentially force it on our children, it is very difficult to move beyond it. And, unfortunately, impossible to move backwards to simple consciousness. Essentially, we’ve been expelled from the garden and there are cherubim with flaming swords to prevent us from returning. The only way is forward.

In this book, Johnson will use Don Quixote, Hamlet and Faust as examples of the progression from simple consciousness to enlightenment.

Next Week: Don Quixote, the Two-Dimensional Man.

 

Here We Go Again

I’m finally doing my penultimate round of hikes. Next month, I will finish them all off. But, today, I managed to complete three parks (because they had a limited number of trails). We started this morning, early (7:44 a.m.), at Booker T. Washington Park just outside of Chattanooga. It was both quiet and relatively cool (72º F) as we started the nearly 4-mile loop.

Booker T. Washington State Park on Lake Chickamauga. Zenrock by Frank.

The next stop was Hiwassee-Ocoee Rivers park, another of Tennessee’s linear parks, created for folks to enjoy rafting and kayaking on these rivers. But, this is a hiking book and the park boasted one trail–Gee Creek Falls Trail–rocky and somewhat difficult, but the reward was a tenth of a mile of beautiful cascades and falls.

Gee Creek Falls

 

I saw a dung beetle on the trail!

We ended the day at Fort Loudon State Park, the site of a British fort during the French-Indian Wars. The Cherokees and Brits got along during the war, but afterwards an unending series of retributions from both sides destroyed both the fort as well as the British who occupied it. Needless to say, a lot of Cherokee and their homes were demolished as well. Truly sad. The Meadow Loop/Lost Shoe Loop trails we hiked were quite lovely until we reached the meadow and realized that thunderstorms were flanking us from both the east and west. It was thundering ominously as I raced across the meadow trying to reach the shelter of the woods, and by the time we were hiking along the shores of Tellico Lake, the winds had whipped up the waves and a downpour seemed imminent.

Fort Loudon Meadow Loop–approaching storm by Frank.

But, we kept on hiking, resolved to a good soaking, and managed to return to the car, after a 4+ mile hike, dry and thankful. We were barely out of the park before the skies opened up and we were driving in blinding rain. But, we were dry. Lots of elevation gain and loss today, and I am bound to be feeling it tomorrow, but I will gladly sacrifice sore muscles for having avoided being struck by lightning and stuck in a downpour.

Okay, I had to photograph these despite the possible rain.

Breathe In, Breathe Out

 

Being an island unto myself,
Buddha is my mindfulness, shining near, shining far.
Dharma is my breathing, guarding body and mind.
I am free.
As an island unto myself,
Sangha is my five skandhas working in harmony.
Taking refuge in myself, coming back to myself,
I am free.
Breathing in, breathing out,
I am blooming as a flower,
I am fresh as the dew.
I am solid as a mountain,
I am firm as the Earth.
Breathing in, breathing out,
I am water reflecting what is real, what is true;
And I feel there is space deep inside me.
I am free.

A Tranquil Mind

A clear and tranquil mind results from cultivating friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion towards those who suffer, joy towards the virtuous, and impartiality towards wrong-doers.

~~Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras, 1.33

The Paradox of Opposites

I keep putting off writing this, but when my horoscope said recently, “Live with the paradox of knowing that everything is okay and not okay at the very same time,” it seemed very apropos.

It was one of my Zen Transformation cards that set me to pondering the paradox of opposites—the fact that where opposites are involved, there cannot be one without the other. That is, there is no darkness without light, good without evil, etc.

As Osho said, “Mind is a kind of prism—pass a ray of white light through it and immediately it is divided into seven colors. Pass anything through the mind and it becomes dual. Life and death are not life-and-death, the reality is lifedeath. It should be one word, not two; not even a hyphen in between. Lifedeath is one phenomenon. Lovehate is one phenomenon. Darknesslight is one phenomenon. Negativepositive is one phenomenon. But when you pass this one phenomenon through the mind, the one is divided immediately in two. Lifedeath becomes life and death–not only divided but death becomes antagonistic to life. They are enemies. Now you can go on trying to make these two meet, and they will never meet.”

Actually, I think they can meet, but they can never be more than acquaintances. We can introduce ourselves to death and come to terms with it as a fact of life. We will all die. When the sun sets at night, we know that it will rise again in the morning despite the fact the darkness seems unending at the time, and when the trees lose their leaves in the fall, we know that they will return with the spring.

When we work toward wholeness in the process of individuation, we must work with reconciling those opposites, the paradox within our selves.

Psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung states it this way in his book “Answer to Job”, written in 1952:

“The metaphysical process is known to the psychology of the unconscious as the individuation process. In so far as this process, as a rule, runs its course unconsciously as it has from time immemorial, it means no more than that the acorn becomes an oak, the calf a cow, and the child an adult. But if the individuation process is made conscious, consciousness must confront the unconscious and a balance between the opposites must be found. As this is not possible through logic, one is dependent on symbols which make the irrational union of opposites possible. They are produced spontaneously by the unconscious and are amplified by the conscious mind.

“The difference between the ‘natural’ individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and the consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. The filius solis et lunae is the symbol of the union of opposites as well as the catalyst of their union. It is the alpha and omega of the process, the mediator and intermedius. ‘It has a thousand names,’ say the alchemists, meaning the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal towards which it aims is nameless, ineffable.

“But empirically is can be established, with a sufficient degree of probability, that there is in the unconscious an archetype of wholeness which manifests itself spontaneously in dreams, etc., and a tendency, independent of the conscious will, to relate other archetypes to this centre. Consequently, it does not seem improbable that the archetype of wholeness occupies as such a central position which approximates it to the God-image. The similarity is further borne out by the peculiar fact that the archetype produces a symbolism which has always characterized and expressed the Deity.

“The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which, independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature.

“. . . it is well to remind ourselves of Saint Paul and his split consciousness: on one side he felt he was the apostle directly called and enlightened by God, and, on the other side, a sinful man who could not pluck out the ‘thorn in the flesh’ and rid himself of the Satanic angel who plagued him. That is to say, even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth as vast as the sky.”

I’ll leave this with a smidgen of a poem from the Gnostic Gospels that celebrates this paradox:

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

For I am knowledge and ignorance.

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

It is a lengthy poem, but you can read it in its (mostly) entirety here at Erik Andrulis’ blog: Anacephalaeosis