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March 04, 2005
The Shaman, The Monk, The Fool, and the Transhuman
The Archetype of the Shaman
Many years ago, I became increasingly fascinated with the archetype of the Shaman, the fearless explorer, the intrepid adventurer, testing the limits of body and mind in the quest for glimpses of the highest peaks and deepest jungles of the psychic landscape. Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and John Lilly became for me the heroes that set the standard for the essential and perennial human endeavor. I read of their experiences as those of an earlier age must have read of Lewis and Clark and Swen Hedin.
These men (all were men, odd that) became my heroes and my inspiration. I wanted to emulate them and in a small way I recapitulated some of their exploits, though never anything close to the experiences I read about so passionately. But I emulated them as best I could. The heroic nature of their adventures always inspired me, and does to this day. I wanted so much to be one of the fearless. One of those who could surf the big waves of the most extreme mental states, the Mavericks of the mind. To be one of those who could endure the most, soar to the highest heights and dive to the deepest depths. I always took more than those around me, more often, more combinations. I always wanted to be the alpha tripper.
I recall walking out of a Grateful Dead show one night (the Oakland Coliseum Earthquake benefit show 12/6/1989 to be precise) and walking behind a couple of veteran Deadheads who just blew me away. These guys were the real deal. When they walked by me I could see their eyes dilated like dinner plates. I could almost feel how far gone they were just being next to them. I could tell from their conversation that they were both veteran Deadheads, that this was what they did and who they were. I could tell from their demeanor, the way they moved, the look in their eyes and the expressions on their faces, that these guys were totally at home out in the billows where I was afraid to swim. They were Shamans, postmodern sadhus living on the fringes not just of society, but of reality.
I couldn’t get those guys out of my head for years. Whether they actually were who I thought they were doesn’t really matter, although chances are they weren’t. The thing was, to me they were archetypal, they represented a kind of ideal I had built for myself compared to which I was always lacking. My life was hopelessly mundane by comparison. I was struggling through school, recently married, working full time. I worried about spending too much money on concerts, I worried about getting home and to bed so I wouldn’t be too wiped out the next day, secretly hoping that the encore didn’t go on too long. I despaired at the prospect facing the reality of another work day, another school day, a cranky spouse, an irritating boss. All the burdens of householder consciousness lying like a blanket of fog between me and the Clear Light of the Void.
The Archetype of the Monk
At some point, I began to develop a different, I would say broader, perspective on the parable of surfing on the waves of the mind. The initial seed came from a very unlikely source. Having spent a truly inspirational night at the home of a friend, I was despairing the fading of the glow and my descent from the heavenly realms to the sub-ecstatic world. A long time acquaintance, then with a hundred dollar a day heroin habit that would soon reach several hundred a day and eventually claim his life, told me “you have to be able to deal with coming down.”
That line stuck with me. I came to understand this as a kind of quintessential heroic journey in and of itself. The art of the graceful fall from grace. The art of making a friend of despair, the openhearted resignation toward not being enough. The yoga of embracing loss, failure, not with hope or optimism, but with simple acceptance.
Presently, I realized that the essential skill of embracing planetside consciousness was not essentially psychedelic; what I had stumbled on was really a kind of deeply meaningful personal symbol for dukkha, for all the painful aspects of the entirety of life. I came to see the art of coming down as an embodiment of what in Buddhism was called “skillful means,” the art of living in a way that minimizes suffering to myself and others.
I constructed for myself another archetype, one that stood not so much in opposition to, but in contrast to, the Shaman: the archetype of the Monk. Where the Shaman has the skillful means to navigating the high energy realms, the Monk has the skillful means to navigate the planetside realms, the realms of dirty dishes, grocery shopping, parents, siblings, traffic, of life and eventual death. The Shaman is Prometheus, risking not just his life but his very soul, wresting fire from the Gods themselves and bringing to the village, only to suffer the agonies of having his liver eaten by vultures. The Monk is Sisyphus, struggling with the dreary toils of mundane existence, sighing as he turns to pace mindfully down the hill once more, perhaps taking in the view until the burden is shouldered once again.
Far too often, the Shaman scouts the same vistas again and again, but the work of personal transformation is never undertaken. The ecstacies glimpsed are never integrated, no lessons are learned, old patterns reassert themselves.
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I have known many who never seem to take anything of value from their nonordinary states other than temporary escape (not to be dismissed too lightly, admittedly). They return over and over to the well, but as the days pass, the memories fade and they are left as before, looking to the next trip for solace.
The Archetype of the Fool
As time passed I concluded that the Shaman opened doors but that the Monk walked through them. The Shaman left the earth, floated up into another dimension to view life from the above but after a few hours, it was the Monk who had to blaze the trail, making for the psychic landmarks the Shaman had spotted from the higher dimension. The work of the Shaman is terrifying, that the Monk, arduous. Where the core virtue of the Shaman is courage, the core virtue of the Monk is perseverance.
For those few with both courage and perserverence, a synthesis appears to be possible, but though many aspire to it, few realize it. This archetype finally coalesced for me when I began to study Tarot, revealing itself in the symbolism of the Fool. The Fool has a foot in each world. He maintains enough ego to negotiate the world of Maya, but the ego is his servant not his master. In contrast to the Monk, the Fool feels the burdens of the world lightly, fairly floating off the ground.
The true men of old
Knew no lust for life,
No dread of death.
Their entrance was without gladness,
Their exit, younger,
Without resistance.
Easy come, easy go.
They did not forget where from,
Nor ask where to,
Nor drive grimly forward
Fighting their way through life.
They took life as it came, gladly;
Took death as it came, without care;
And went away, yonder,
Yonder!
Minds free, thoughts gone
Brows clear, faces serene.
Where they cool? Only cool as autumn.
Where they hot? No hotter than spring.
All that came out of them
Came quiet, like the four seasons.
Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu
The archetype of the Fool contains the path of integration of the ecstatic states into our lives generally. The Fool represents the summit, spied from afar by the Shaman, hard won by the Monk. The Great Work, the path of transformation, of integration, is great, and it is also work.
Transhumanism and The Way Forward
The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, one of the most ancient and revered foundational documents of the Western Mystery schools, offers the following insight: as above, so below. Only recently did it dawn on me that this is an ancient realization that reality is fractal. What appears at one level, reappears on other levels. We are each a Mandelbrot set, embedded within a larger Mandelbrot called culture, in a Mandelbrot Gaia.
As a transcendental and fundamentally mysterious future looms, many of us feel its pull. The prospect of an escape from the mundane is exhilarating, the temptation to put aside the mundane and abandon ourselves to the rapture compelling. I see intimations of this in the explosion of end times thinking around us. The prospect of walking away from our mundane lives, no strings attached, is an appealing one. There is a sense of freedom in the abandonment of the past.
BLAINE FAULKNER: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...
I want to be abducted by aliens.
JOSE CHUNG: Why? Whatever for?
BLAINE FAULKNER: I hate this town. I hate... people. I just want
to be taken away to someplace where I... I don't have to worry
about finding a job.
X-files episode 3.20, Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' (the one with Charles Nelson Riley)
The prospect of a transhuman “forward escape” feels exhilarating. But the escapist element feels uncomfortably familiar. I suspect that in our impending transhuman condition, we are entering into a condition not unlike that of the Shaman: higher energy, more extreme, unpredictable, magickal. But I suspect that the wisdom of Hermes will still apply: as above, so below. Our transhuman future may be much more akin to our present situation than we care to realize - because we will be there, we take ourselves with us. Where we are, there also is dukkha. The work of the Monk must continue if our transhumanist future is to realize its promise. The transhuman singularity evokes the cliff that the Fool appears poised to walk right off. If we are to avoid a brilliant plunge into the abyss, our humanity must not be abandoned.
Well put Jason.
Thank you for the coherent ellucidation.
Nice.
Wonderfully coherent ellucidation, Jason.
Sincere thanks, i thoroughly enjoyed reading that. The article's title doesn't do justice,
but all in all provacative nonetheless.
Evan.
A nice formulation of archetypes for the modern west. But it's worth reminding anyone who needs reminding that the real shaman - the shaman in Siberia who calls himself such, and his equivalents in other tribal societies - does, of course, fully embody "the Monk", and more. The shaman is worth nothing if his visions and explorations don't concretely serve the community - that's his sine qua non.
Academic prissiness about the term "shaman" often goes overboard, but I'm sure we'd agree here that we wouldn't want people still mapping these worlds to start thinking that aboriginal shamans are wild-eyed impractical head-cases! :-)
Posted by: Gyrus at March 4, 2005 04:47 AMActually, I wonder if the terms here should be "The Scout, The Shaman, The Fool and the Transhuman"?
Posted by: Gyrus at March 4, 2005 05:04 AMThe point regarding the genuine or traditional shaman is well taken. The work of these actual shamans consists in putting these exalted states to very practical use, e.g. to heal the sick, and in that respect not at all like the starry eyed psychonauts I revere. That approach, in my mind, evokes the archetype of the magician, or sorcerer, but that is perhaps for another post.
Also worth noting is the fact that the high profile psychonauts mentioned did, to varying degrees, integrate their psychedelic experiences. I didn't mention Richard Alpert/Ram Dass, who illustrates this arc perfectly.
Jason
Posted by: MrNeutron at March 4, 2005 08:17 AMOne of those who could surf the big waves of the most extreme mental states, the Mavericks of the mind.
Hehe, excellent pun.
Posted by: lvx23 at March 4, 2005 09:45 AMThanks, Mavericks was yesterday, too, so that worked out nicely.
Posted by: MrNeutron at March 4, 2005 05:35 PMJason,
I can't begin to tell you how synchronistic this piece is. I was also at a Grateful dead concert at Shoreline except it was in Oct, 1988. I was living in Cupertino at the time. While I was there I met a guy from Tibet, who had escaped there in 1967, making his way by foot all the way over the Himalayas to Katmandu. While there he met a tripped out hippie from America who was living in India the past couple of years. They then spent the next couple of years wandering India together as Sidhus (holy men)... all the time learning english. They left for Europe and he travelled there for a couple of more years. In 1971, he was able to get into the United States. He and his hippie friend along with several others moved to San Francisco. He stayed in the city until 1981, and became a US Citizen. He then moved to Saratoga and was part of some commune up in the mountains there for a couple of years, learning all about computers. He ended up getting a job at Apple computer around 1983. He then moved to Los Gatos around 1985, and then three years later he is at this Grateful dead concert where he sees this young guy with playing with his tibetan bells. He offer this kid some acid, and they start tripping together.
That kid was me.
Posted by: Paul at March 4, 2005 10:36 PMI wanted to add a thought or two about the 'fall from grace' as it were from the heavenly gates of nirvana
Starting around the age of 23, this became the most painful and dominating themes of my life. In the course of about two years I went from successful college student, to homeless bum on the street, paranoid out of his wits, and basically insane with pain and despair. I even went 5 days without eating (no money or willpower to get any) when it hit me what I had to do. I bottomed out, something shifted, a clear light, a godssend. A poem, I did not really write, rather translated. Here it is:
"Zephyrs coils perplexed by the standards of man
Silvery tongues of a storms furthest wind
Carrying not, but the songs of childrens crys
Of the bliss that life can be."
I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it was beautiful to me.
Soon after I began the long hard road of learning to become grounded. It took me years, first with the help of Christopher Hyatt's Energized Meditation, then several years of my own improvements to this system, which I combined with other excerised, especially yoga. Then I discoverd Vivation which totally brought into grounded bliss.
I no longer see planetary consciousness as a fall from grace, but as an embodiment of the highest spirit which this universe contains.
As above, so below.
Wonderful article Jason. :)
Posted by: Paul at March 4, 2005 11:30 PMphew.
one question: do you happen to have a wife (or a female partner)? because my girl would like to know what your girl (if there is one) thinks about all of this. especially what kind of archetype she plays in this (your?) story.
our problem is that I myself seem to follow this same path you have - quite brilliantly - exposed above, but up to now we have found no mention anywhere of the corresponding ways the feminine aspect/pole of the unity could/should follow. it's fun for me to read such things on this forum, because I get feedback that I'm on the right path, but at the same time she envies me for that, as she could not find similar pointers for herself.
the only method we found that seems to work is that I - as the masculine, active part of the equation - try to make my "shape", the boundaries of my self as sharp and well-defined as possible, and then she can "feel out" the places, holes and valleys in me where she can "pour" into, thereby finding her own boundaries, so we come together as two pieces of a puzzle.
but in this play, I am active, she is passive. is this enough, or shall she do something, follow a path on her own? how do we get to King and Queen? (you know, it would be fun to just walk on Sundays in the park with our children, as actual embodiments of universal archetypes :-)
so, do you have any tips, ideas, pointers to books or articles which cover this same territory but from the POV of women?
thanks for writing this,
Balazs Ruzsa (cellux)
from Hungary
btw, for me, it was the Ozric Tentacles (a psychedelic band from the UK), instead of the Grateful Dead. there is a member of the Ozrics called Jumping Jon or John, the flutist, who for me embodies the archetype of the Fool completely.
The Fool is the one who keeps the world going around, and still, he has in a sense no substance. On trips I had this understanding several times, that the Fool is the link of the chain, the element which somehow connects things and worlds together. Possibly he is located at the non-existing, invisible point where Light and Dark, 1 and 0 meet each other. And he can do this alone, and he can do this because he is not attracted to any role, any personality whatsoever.
To be an active element in this world, to help it going around, you have to believe in the character which you happen to play, you have to believe in the existence of your world and you have to take for granted certain "absolutes". Without this faith, all of this would just fall apart. So to create a world, God first implants a "delusion-device" into each of us, because if we are not deluded, then the world could not exist. We could say, that the world is in a sense built on delusion.
When you begin to walk on the way of the Shaman, you get out of this play and you realize that "things are not what they seem to be". Then it becomes unbearable to cope with "ordinary reality", because you get to know this duality of the void vs. the created world, the 0 and the 1.
Then comes the Monk, the karma-burner who via hope and perseverence works through the world and learns how to cope, and later how to handle, and later how to master it (but then it's already a Mage, which I see as an advanced version of the Monk).
The basic problem with the Monk is that he takes life too seriously. Because the Shaman has glimpsed the endless vistas of possibilities, and the Monk experienced how important it is to get up every time and continue the work, and he sees this job as the most important thing in life, he cannot let himself try ways of thinking that would jeopardize the holy mission he takes as the most important thing in his life (whatever form that may take).
The Fool, on the other hand is capable of doing terrible things, at least from the monk's point of view. The Fool, with an elegant dance-step, can destroy millenia of work accumulated by millions of monks during the evolution of the world. Therefore - again from the monk's point of view - the Fool is a VERY dangerous character, somebody who we should not let close to the steering wheel (that's how I understand the last paragraph of you post, Jason - that the Fool is the one who when the Monk and the Shaman have finally driven the vehicle right up to the cliff where they could be triumphant, comes around as a "clueless" child and just by some irrational drive pushes the vehicle over so that work of thousands of years is destroyed in an instant)
However, I cannot help feeling a certain humor in this situation. I tend to think that behind this act of the Fool there is tremendous wisdom hidden. I already referred to this thing in a previous post of mine in "Immortality in 20 years", when I related to the importance of recognizing that "change is the only constant thing".
actually, the Fool knows (this is his job), that if either the Shaman or the Monk manages to conserve the "perfection" they achieved, then it will ultimately lead to the complete destruction of everything. this is because the Fool is the only one who knows about the basic illusory nature of the world. Both the Shaman and the Monk are deluded in a sense (this is required because otherwise they couldn't play out the story properly), but the Fool is built-in as a kind of safety mechanism, which doesn't let the illusion take over the world. (Sidenote: if you know what the Pythagorean comma is, well, I see that as the manifestation of the Fool principle in music theory.)
For me the interesting question is this: I know that I am the Fool. But I don't dare to go over the cliff (yet?), because I am a Monk and a Shaman (and possibly all the other characters) at the same time, and I don't want to kill them or the thing they are fighting for. I sense that by going over the cliff, I would fulfill my destiny and become whole, enlightened, realized my One True Self as the Fool. But what is it worth if this means that the others lose everything?
Strange dilemma.
Cellux,
Two things. We now have a womens voice at Future Hi. Her name is Jessica, and I'm sure she would be happy to talk with you about a womens POV on all of this. You might consider reposting your comment verbatim under her new post A Prayer.
Secondly, I LOVE Ozric Tentacles... they are my favorite band. We were talking about them over on the forums here.
Posted by: Paul at March 5, 2005 10:50 AMi walked,in the snow,higher than high.out and a away across the fields i looked....as the wolf,and growled inside at the chill,still night.my mind had no words anymore.just sight and focus.i walked,knee deep in the cold snow,the stars hard points of glittering diamond against the jet black sky above my head.breath upon breath moved through me and moved me on.
just a moment in time,frozen in as a memory for a lifetime....of knowing the wolf`s mind...in a burst.
shaman?fool?
consciousness?
without a doubt.
the mind,once blown,refuses to go back in the box.
thank god.
Cellux -
Your insights are excellent and thought provoking, thanks for your comments. In reading your post, I think my symbolism may have been bit too obscure in some respects. I certainly don’t see the Fool as dangerous; when I note in the last paragraph that the Fool appears to by walking off the cliff, my intent was to suggest the specific image of the Tarot trump where the Fool is depicted doing just that. However, as A.E. White describes it: “The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him . . .” The pending eschaton, singularity, transhumanism, call it what you will, I see symbolized in that edge, and only the Fool can approach it without fear and with the required lightness of spirit. For those still weighed down by life, gravity will take its toll. Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
Another analogy might be to suggest that the singularity going to hit the world like five grams of mushrooms, and we better start getting our collective set and setting in order because if we go off in the frame of mind we are now in, things are going to be ugly. I will note that the farther I press these categories, the more apparent it becomes that they don’t bear close scrutiny, all of these metaphors start to disintegrate if pressed to far.
As far as your opening questions, I am married, my wife and I have been together for 19 years married for 16. She is not archetypal, she’s my wife. :) On the broader issue of the feminine archetypes, I am trying to put together an article summarizing my speculations on some of these issues which I will hopefully post later this week.
“The edge which opens on the depth has no terror; it is as if angels were waiting to uphold him . . .”
when I got to this point, I always had to identify with the dying Christ on the cross. that was the only thing that helped me out of the "no exit" crisis. that's how I could get from the old world to the new world, from the last moment of my old life to the first moment of the new one. Christ vehicle. :-)
and always when I decide to let it go, this unspeakable grandioze thing comes forth from behind and all around and I can see it with the Fool's eyes, and all I can say is "oops". :-) strange are the emotions at this point: the old world's me is filled with fear, he's trembling, but the Fool inside is laughing and is filled with joy, for Him it doesn't matter at all because He understands. he is the key for the gate and now the gate opens up again (I remember! I remember again! huh, what a world :-). goa trance center-extasy VAJRASATTVA OM
then the whole universe turns inside-out: it's not "me" who is holding the world together anymore by its firm grip on the illusion, but the world itself, with all its intervowen powers and energetic Nazca-lines operating throughout the kitchen is holding me, as if on palms of lotus hands: see kid, now you are free to go for a while, Here We Are, taking care of your world instead of you. (Good God, what a relief.) And it works... Fuck, it works. I can see it. I cannot understand it, I cannot fathom how is it possible, but I see how it sizzles and burns and turns and changes all around inside me as my body is being operated upon by gentle and very precise elemental beings, who through my acceptance can prepare this vehicle of theirs (oh God, how good it feels that I am finally good for something :-) for the next round, build in the necessary karma cores, future experiences, roles, whatever they want (please give me as much as I can take!) while I'm just smiling with this childish smile on my face, being truly happy and grateful (a grateful dead :-), because I again understand what it means to be a soldier of God and what is the Good News that we should bring to humanity and why am I still keeping it all together and fighting and going on and doing the shit work every fucking day of my life. because it's worth it.
(huh.)
(Astral Projection: Liquid Sun)
the shaman didn`t have the words we do.he wasn`t trapped in meaning.for him it was experience.
the theological meaning of the word awe is to be overwhelmed.to be in the presence of divinity.it is humerous to hear people use the word awesome casually,regarding a car or a hockey game,when really the term means to have your entire ontology ripped to shreds in a nanosecond.in estuary english(slang)the term is gobsmacked.
to go from a semantic tunnel to being projected forward at light speed into pure perception is terifying for some.to hear terence mckenna laugh at the memory of the terror puts a smile on my face every time.
i know that i wouldn`t be as effective in my work as a therapist without the experience of going outside of the barrier of words.
it is difficult to describe the process of the implicate shifting to the explicate wihout sounding mad,if you use a materialistic ear.the physicists are discovering that.
day tripper,yeah.................