Myth… a public dream….. just embrace it.
Myths are ancient audio visual tools for mass communication, they have been an integral part of humanity for thousands of year. As Joseph Campbell who is widely accepted as an authority on myth writes….
“myth is a public dream, dream is a private myth”.
So as our subconscious self drives our dreams, society’s collective subconscious drives its myths. Our language, culture, beliefs, the cloths we wear, the foods we eat, the artifacts we create, the things we do to keep amused, all leave a mark on our conscious as well as subconscious minds. All these elements eventually become somehow intertwined with our myths. This is well reflected in various creation myths around the world, for example,
Biblical traditions suggest that GOD created man (Adam) from his body or clay (the word ‘Adamah’ means clay or earth in ancient hebrew) and then somehow created woman (Eve) from Adam’s ribs (the word ‘eve’ means life in hebrew), both were expelled from heavens to populate earth as they ate the fruit from tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Hopi people of arizona suggest that their creator ‘Taiowa’, delegated the creation powers to another creator called ‘Sotuknang’ who created a spider woman, and gave her the power to create life.
People of iceland believe that drips of water from melting ice formed the shape of a man and some more dripps formed a cow, little more drips formed cow’s teat to nurse the newly born.
So all our myths are crafted from local materials, customs and thoughts that pervade local minds. Myths have a intimate relationship with Gods. People not only worship their local Gods, their Gods often look and behave like them, they wear similar kinds of clothes and operate in their local settings.
For example, Greek Gods had their powers and influence over seas and waterways, Egyptian Gods ruled over the Nile, Hindu Gods unleashed their immense power in himalayan mountains. The rainforest people don’t have a concept of a sky god as they could hardly see the sky, their gods are local trees, animals, rocks and bushes. The united god or one god concept originated in the plains where people could appreciate and connect with one big projection screen, where gods choreographed their present past and future while they lived underneath the massive dome. Whenever their gage penetrated the sky they found other heavenly bodies beyond the smog and accepted them part of their divine repertoire.
And if you read between the lines you will find striking similarities between myths from different cultures, the myths are always centred around common themes concerns humanity. The symbols, imagery and rendering may vary but they all seem to tell the same story.
For example the cover photo for this article is depicting Matsya, a mythical creature protecting seven sages at the time of great deluge, does it give us a glimpse of Noah’s’ arch. How could the cultures that were thousands of years apart have striking similarities in their myths. What a great story of rescue it is. To me it reflects the contrast in the the very foundations that these cultures are built on.
One myth shows the rescue of all the flora and fauna that supports life whereas the other one shows the rescue of collective wisdom (sages are a symbol of collective wisdom) to support life. Both trying to achieve the same objective but have different approaches. Does it say something about materialistic western thought in contrast to eastern spiritual approach to life.
If that is true then what happened to the present day cultures, why one is stuck in their ancient past while other one is moving with the times. Is it because the people misunderstood the myth or may be they did not engage with it in the right way, or may be they could not interpret the symbolism. May be sages became symbol of God and worshiping was enough for the ones who engaged with the myth, the ones who did not engage at all spent all their energy busting the myth.
Rituals are an enactment of the myths, a kind of an ancient pleasure technology that our ancestors choreographed and mastered over thousands of years, an elaborate orchestrations of emotional routines to trigger pain and pleasure in a quest to fill the appetite of their desire.
Just like the way our dreams provide insight into our subconscious, myths can be used to understand the collective subconscious of masses. Dismissing a dream is like throwing away valuable analytic information after a night’s worth of processing in the subconscious. As I touched in one of my previous post, Lucid dreaming is a technique to engage with our subconscious and can be used to generate an insight into our psyche.
Lucid dreaming provides access to a new creative design space, space to redesign ourselves, redesign in a flexible environment where boundaries are relaxed, our mental models are not in the way of creativity, our concepts are not entangled in rigid imagery, emotions are still alive and active, where new combinations can be tried and explored in a safe environment.
But how do we engage with our collective subconscious ?
I think in order to do so we have to somehow engage with our myths. Engage with myths in a lucid way, lucidity is all about developing a clear insight and being in control. I understand many modern traditions dismiss it outright, it is considered as something spooky and mystical. The key is to be in the driver’s seat, be it a public dream or a private dream. Don’t let the dreams control you, you control the dreams.
I think myths and rituals can provide an important insight into humanity, just like language and culture, they are our portals to understand the humanity. There is a lot of emphasis on myth busting, I think engaging with myth and understanding it is more important than outright busting.
Even if we bust them, myths just don’t go away, especially from the minds that have been engrossed in them for generations. Minds of ‘homo sapien’ are like sponges they are naturally attracted to myths, you can take people away from myths but you can’t take myths away from people.
If private dreams are the bedrock of individual creativity, myth as a public dream provides us with a unique perspective into social mind, engagement with myth opens up new opportunities to mend our relationships with the past and build a better and productive future for all the people dreaming the public dream.
So when you come across a myth engage with it before you attempt to bust it.
Originally published at scriptgrandeur.wordpress.com on May 31, 2015.
