Interview between Edith Zundel (Die Zeit) and Kenn Wilber, north-american philosopher
EDITHZUNDEL: Our readers and I are particularly
interested in the interface between psychotherapy and religion.
KENWILBER:And by religion you mean what? Fundamentalism
Mysticism? Exoteric? Esoteric?
EZ: Well, that's a good place to start. In A Sociable God you give,I
believe, nine different definitions of religion,or nine different ways the
word religion is used.
KW: Yes, well, my point was that we really can't talk about science and religion or psychotherapy and religion or philosophy and religion until we decide just what it is we mean by the word religion. And for our purposes right now I think we must at least distinguish between what is known as exoteric religion and esoteric religion. Exoteric or "outer" religion is mythic religion, religion that is terribly concrete and literal, that really believes, for example, that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Christ was born from a virgin, that the world was created in six days, that manna once literally rained down from heaven, and so on.Exoteric religions the world over consist of those types of beliefs. The Hindus believe that the earth, since it needs to be supportecl, is sitting on an elephant which, since it needs to be supported, is sitting on a tortoise which in turn is sitting on a serpent. And to the question, "On what, then, is the serpent sitting?" the answer is given, "Let us now change the subject." Lao Tzu was nine hundred years old when he was born, Krishna made love to four thousand cow maidens, Brahma was born from a crack in a cosmic egg, and so on. That's exoteric religion,a series of belief-structures that attempt to explain the mysteries of the world in mythic terms rather than direct experiential or evidential terms.
EZ: So exoteric or outer religion is basically a matter of belief, not
evidence.
KW: Yes. If you believe all the myths, you are saved; if not, you go to
Hell-no discussion. Now you find that type of religion the world over-fundamentalism. I have no quarrel with that; it's just that that type of religion, exoteric religion, has litde to do with mystical religion or esoteric religion or experimental religion, which is the type of religion or spirituality that I'm most interested in.
EZ: Esoteric means what?
KW: Inner or hidden. The reason that esoteric or mystical religion is hidden is not that it is secret or anything, but that it is a matter of direct experience and personal awareness. Esoteric religion asks you to believe nothing on faith or obediently swallow any dogma. Rather, esoteric religion is a set of personal experiments that you eonduet scientifieally in the laboratory of your own awareness. Like all good science, it is based on direct experience, not mere belief or wish, and it is publicly seeked or validated by a peer group of those who have also performed the experiment. The experiment is meditation.
( IS THE WISDOM OF MEDITATION WORTH LESS THAN MORE EMPIRICAL WISDOM THAT CAN BE SUMMED UP IN A FORMULA? )
EZ: But meditation is private.
KW: Not really. Not any more so than, say, mathematics. There is no external proof, for example, that negative one squared equals one; there is no sensory or empirieal proof for that. That happens to be true, but it is proven to be true only by an internallogie. You ean't find negative one in the external world; you find it only in your mind. But that doesn't mean it isn't true, that doesn't mean it is only private knowledge that can't be publicly validated. That only means that its truth is validated by a community of trained mathematicians, by those who know how to internally run the logieal experiment that will decide whether it is true or not. Just so, meditative knowledge is internal knowledge, but knowledge that ean
be publicly validated by a eommunity of trained meditators, those who know the internal logic of the eontemplative experienee. We don't let anybody vote on the truth of the Pythagorean theorem; we let trained mathematicians vote on that truth. Likewise, meditative spirituality makes eertain claims-for example, that the inward sense of the self is, if you look at it closely,one with the feeling of the external world-but that is a truth to be seeked experimentally and experientally by you and
anybody else who eares to try the experiment. And after something like six thousand years of this experiment, we are perfectly justified in making certain conclusions, making certain spiritual theorems, as it were. And those spiritual theorems are the core of the perennial wisdom traditions.
EZ: But why is it called "hidden"?
KW: Because if you don't perform the experiment, then you don't know what's going on, you are not allowed to vote, just as if you don't learn mathematics you are not allowed to vote on the truth of the Pythagorean theorem. I mean, you ean form opinions about it, but mysticism is not interested in opinions but in knowledge. Esoteric religion or mysticism is hidden to the mind that won't perform the experiment; that's all it means.
EZ: But religions vary so much from each other.
KW: Exoteric religions vary tremendously from eaeh other; but esoteric religions the world over share many similarities. Mysticism or esotericism
is, in the broad sense of the word, scientific,as we have seen, and just as you don't have German chemistry versus American chemistry, you dont have Hindu mystical science versus Muslim mystical science.Rather, they are in fundamental agreement as to the nature of the soul, the nature of Spirit, and the nature of their supreme identity, among many other things. This is what scholars mean by "the transcendental unity of the world; religions" -they mean esoteric religions. Of course, their surface struc-tures vary tremendously, but their deep structures are often identical
reflecting the unanimity of the human spirit and its phenomenologically disclosed laws.
EZ: This is very important, then: I take it that you do not believe, as Joseph Campbell does, that mythic religions carry any valid spiritual knowledge.
KW: You are free to interpret exoteric religious myths any way you like. You are free, as Campbell does, to interpret myths as being allegories or metaphors for transcendental truths. Free, for example, to interpret the virgin birth as meaning that Christ operated spontaneously from his true Self, capital S. I happen to believe that. The problem is mythic believers do not believe that. They believe, as a test of their faith that Mary really was a biological virgin when she got pregnant. Mythic believers do not interpret their myths allegorically, they interpret them literally and concretely. Joseph Campbell violates the fabric of mythic beliefs in his very attempt to salvage them. He says to the mythic
believer, "I know what you really mean by that." But the problem is that is not what they mean by that. His approach is fundamentally misguided right at the start, in my opinion.
These types of myths are very common in the six- to eleven-year-old; they are produced naturally and easily by the level of mind that Piagetcalls concrete operational. Virtually all of the fundamentals of the world's great exoteric myths can be culled from the spontaneous production of today's seven-year-olds, as Campbell himself acknowledges.
But once the next structure of consciousness-called formal operational or rational-emerges, the mythic productions are abandoned by the child himself. He himself no longer believes them, unless he is in a society that rewards such beliefs. But by and large the rational and reflexive mind finds myths to be just that, myths. Once useful and necessary, but no longer sustainable. They do not carry the evidentiaLknowledge that they claim to carry, and thus, once they are actually or scientifically checked, they fall apart. The rational mind looks at, say, the virgin birth and just grins. This woman gets pregnant, goes to her husband and says,
"Look, I'm pregnant, but don't worry, I didn't sleep with another man.
The real father is not from this planet.»
EZ: [Laughing] But some followers of mythic religions do in fact interpret their myths allegorically or metaphorically.
KW: Yes,and they are the mystics. In other words, the mystics are the ones who give an esoteric or "hidden» meaning to the myths, and those meanings are discovered in the direct interior and contemplative experience of the soul, not in some outward belief system or symbol or myth.In other words, they aren't mythic believers at all, but contemplative phenomenologists, contemplative mystics, contemplative scientists. This is why historically, as Alfred North Whitehead pointed out, mysticism has always allied itself with science as against the Church, because both mysticismand science depend on direct consensual evidence. Newton was a great scientist; he was also a profound mystic, and there was was, is,no conflict there whatsoever. You cannot, on the other hand, be a great scientist anda great mythic believer at the same time. Moreover, they, the mystics, are the ones who agree that their religion is basically identical in essence to other mystaical religions, that "they call Him many who is really One.» Now you will not find a mythic believer, say a fundamentalist Protestant, saying thatBuddhism is also a way to perfect salvation. Mythic believers maintain that they have the only way, because they base their religion on outward myths, which are everywhere different, so they don't realize the inner unity hidden in the outer svmbols. The mystics do.
EZ: Yes, I see. So you do not agree with Carl Jung that myths carry archetypal and in that sense mystical or transcendental importance?
KW: Jung found that modern men and women can spontaneously produce virtually all of the main themes of the world's mythic religions;they do so in dreams, in active imagination, in free association, and so on. From this he deduced that the basic mythic forms, which he called archetypes, are common in all people, are inherited by all people, and are carried in what he called the collective unconscious. He then madethe claim that, and I quote, "mysticism is experience of the archetypes." In my opinion there are several problems with that view. One, it is definitely true that the mind, even the modern mind, can spontaneously produce mythic forms that are essentially similar to the forms found in mythic religions. As I said, the preformal stages of the mind's development,particularly preoperational and concrete operational thought, are myth-producing by their very nature. Since all modern men and women pass through those stages of development in childhood, of course all
men and women have spontaneous access to that type of mythic thought-producing
structure, especially in dreams, where primitive levels of the psyche can more easily surface.
But there's nothing mystical about that. Archetypes, according to Jung, are basic mythic forms devoid of content; pure mysticism is formless awareness. There's no point of contact.
(WHAT IS A MYSTIC ARCHETYPE ANYWAY?)
Second there is Jung's whole use of the word "archetype/' a notion he borrowed from the great mysticst such as Plato and Augustine. But the way Jung uses the term is not the way those mystics use the term, nor in fact the way mystics the world over use that concept. For the mystics-Shankarat Platon, Augustinus, Eckhartt, Garab Dorje and so on-archetypes are the first subtle forms that appear as the world manifests out of formless and unmanifest Spirit. They are the patterns upon which all other patterns of manifestation are based. From the Greek arche typon original pattern. Subtlet transcendental forms that are the first forms of manifestationt whether that manifestation is physical biological mental whatever. And in most forms of mysticismt these archetypes are nothing but radiant patterns or points of lightt audible illuminationst brilliantly colored shapes and luminositiest rainbows of light and sound and vibration-out of whicht in manifestation, the material world condensest so to speak.
(THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JUNGS ARCHETYPE AND THE MYSTICAL ONE)
But Jung uses the term as certain basic mythic structures that are collective to human experience, like the trickster, the shadowt the Wise Old Man, the egot the persona, the Great Mother the animat the animus and so on. These are not so much transcendental as they are existential.They are simply facets of experience that are common to the everyday human condition. I agree that those mythic forms are collectively inherited in the psyche. And I agree entirely with Jung that it is very important to come to terms with those mythic "archetypes". If, for example, I am having psychological trouble with my mother, if I have a so-called mother complext it is important to realize that much ofthat emotional charge comes not just from my individual mother but from the Great Mother, a powerful image in my collective unconscious that is in essence the distillation of mothers everywhere. That is, the psyche comes with the image of the Great Mother embedded in it just as
the psyche comes already equipped with the rudimentary forms of language and of perception and of various instinctual patterns. If the Great Mother image is activatedt I am not dealing with just my individual mother, but with thousands of years of the human experience with mothering in generalt so the Great Mother image carries acharge and has an impact far beyond what anything my own mother could possibly do on her own. Coming to terms with the Great Mother, through a study
of the world's mythst is a good way to deal with that mythic form, to
make it conscious and thus differentiate from it. I agree entirely with Jung on that matter. But those mythic forms have nothing to do with mysticism, with genuine transcendental awareness. Let me explain it more simply. Jung's major mistake, in my opinion, was to confuse collective with transpersonal (or mystical). Just because my mind inherits certain collective forms does not mean those forms are
mystical or transpersonal. We all collectivelyinherit ten toes, for example, but if I experience my toes I am not having a mystical experience! Jung's "archetypes" have little to do with genuinely transcendental, mystical, transpersonal awareness; rather, they are collectively inherited forms that distill some of the very basic, everyday, existential encounters of the human condition-life, death, birth, mother, father, shadow, ego, and so on. Nothing mystical about it. Collective ,yes; transpersonal, no. There are collective prepersonal, collective personal, and collective transpersonal elements; and Jung does not differentiate these with anything near the clarity that they demand, and this skews his entire understanding
of the spiritual process, in my opinion. So I agree with Jung that it is very important to come to terms with the forms in both the personal and the collective mythic unconscious; but neither one of those has much to do with real mysticism, which is first, finding the light beyond form, then, finding the formless beyond the
light.
EZ: But coming across archetypal material in the psyche can be a very powerful, sometimes overwhelming experience.
KW: Yes, because they are collective; their power is way beyond the individual; they have the power of a million years of evolution behind them. But collective is not necessarily transpersonal. The power of the "real archetypes," the transpersonal archetypes, comes directly from being the first forms of timeless Spirit; the power of the Jungian archetype comes from being the oldest forms in temporal history. As even Jung realized, it is necessary to move away from the archetypes, to differentiate from them, to be free of their power. This process
he called individuation. And again, I agree entirely with him on that issue. One must differentiate from the Jungian archetype. But one must move toward the real archetypes, the transpersonal archetypes, ultimately to have one's identity shift entirely to that transpersonal form. Big difference. One of the few Jungian archetypes that is genuinely transpersonal is the Self, but even his discussion of that is weakened, in my opinion, by failing to sufficiently emphasize its ultimately
nondual character.
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