CHAPTER 38
My Mandala, My Mandate
“Each life has a natural built-in reason for being.
Purpose
is the creative spirit of life moving through you
from the inside out.
It is the deep mysterious dimension in each soul,
which carries
with it a profound sense of personal identity.”
THE KEYS OF JESHUA
—Glenda Green
I went to university to
study philosophy to find an answer to the question that compelled me to go on a quest for my true self, who am I? And in my
second year of studies I began to feel myself cast adrift in a sea of endless
philosophical speculation, and I feared drowning; that’s when my oracle came to
my assistance and serendipity introduced me to Gurdjieff’s teaching through
Ouspensky’s book In Search of the
Miraculous; that’s what engendered the miraculous experience of “my
mandala, my mandate,” which I echoed in a spiritual musing that I wrote
last year for my third volume of spiritual musings, The Armchair Guru:
The Hedgehog
Knows One Big Thing
Just for fun and out of intellectual curiosity, the
renowned Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay inspired by one line
attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus who died in 645 BC: “The fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Isaiah’s essay, published in book form as The Hedgehog and the Fox, is both
enlightening and entertaining; and
just for the fun of it also, I’d like to explore his application of the
hedgehog/fox metaphor to my own writing in today’s spiritual musing…
I hadn’t heard of Isaiah Berlin’s book The Hedgehog and the Fox until a month
or so ago when Colin Wilson (whose precocious book The Outsider influenced me in my youth) referred to it in his talk
with Jeffrey Mishlove on his program Thinking
Allowed, and I knew immediately what Colin Wilson meant when he said that
he belonged to the category of hedgehog writers, because that’s how I saw
myself also.
“I’ve
written the same book seventy times over,” said Colin Wilson; which put him
squarely in the hedgehog camp of writers, because according to Isaiah Berlin
hedgehog writers focus on one all-embracing idea for understanding life. They
possess “…a central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in
terms of which they understand, think and feel—a single, universal, organizing
principle.” And for Colin Wilson that one all-consuming central preoccupation
was, in Jeffery Mishlove’s words, “reconciling
this issue of the heights of consciousness and the depths of despair.”
Berlin
made no huge claims for his hedgehog/fox metaphor, calling it a “starting-point
for genuine investigation,” with the added benefit of being an “enjoyable
intellectual game” by which one could classify writers and thinkers into either
camp, as he did by placing Plato, Dante, Pascal, Proust, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche,
Ibsen, and many other classical writers into the hedgehog camp; and Aristotle,
Shakespeare, Montaigne, Goethe, and Joyce among others in the fox camp of
writers and thinkers, but focusing his attention mainly upon Tolstoy.
According
to Berlin’s application of the metaphor, fox writers pursue many ends, often
unrelated, “seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experience and
objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously,
seeking to fit into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging,
all-embracing…unitary vision.”
In
short, Berlin defined a hedgehog writer as someone who relates everything to a
single vision, an organizing principle that seems to cover all of history, or a
single dynamic of polar opposites like Colin Wilson’s lifelong study of the
depths and heights of human consciousness; and a fox writer, on the other hand
pursues many ideas, not necessarily related, and often contradictory, like the
great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
Two
camps, two types of writers; and according to this hedgehog/fox classification,
I’m definitely a hedgehog writer because I have pursued one central idea my
whole life; an unrelenting idée fixe
which can be summed up by the simple question, who am I?
This
became my organizing principle, and everything I did in my life was colored by
my efforts to find the answer to this haunting question. I didn’t talk about it
openly, because that would have been a foolish thing to do, unless one was
Shirley MacLaine who confessed in her memoir I’m Over all That, “no matter where I went I was always looking for
myself” and always brought it up in interviews to expand the paradigm of
conventional wisdom; but whether one talks about it or not, everyone will one
day ask, who am I?
There
were many things in my life that I longed for, and many avenues that I wanted
to explore; but because of my hedgehog preoccupation, I focused my attention on
what I felt would help me answer my haunting question. So, I was fox-like by
inclination, because of my many interests; but I was a hedgehog by inner
imperative, because I had to find my
true self.
This
caused me considerable anxiety, because I couldn’t have it both ways; until I
made a commitment one day and vowed to find my true self or die trying. And the
more I focused on my idée fixe, the more laser-like attention I brought to my quest;
which confirmed Isaiah Berlin’s hedgehog/fox metaphor, because the hedgehog
writer would be better disposed to a deeper insight into his preoccupying
single interest than the fox writer who has many interests, because the
hedgehog writer is by instinct a centripetal
thinker (tending to move toward a center), and the fox writer is a centrifugal thinker (tending to move
away from a center); but whether hedgehog or fox, both types play out life’s
drama of becoming who they are according to their own nature, thereby fulfilling
their essential purpose in life.
Of course, this presupposes that life has an essential
purpose; but it was because of my hedgehog conviction that I managed to answer
the question who am I? which granted me an insight into life’s essential
purpose of realizing our true self, as I expounded upon in my most intimate
memoir The Pearl of Great Price that
tells the story of how I found the greatest treasure in the world, my true self.
But this is a
personal realization, and I don’t expect the world to see it; because, as
Gurdjieff used to say, “There is only self-initiation into the mysteries of
life,” and the only way to confirm that our purpose in life is to become our
true self would be to initiate oneself into the sacred mystery of life`s
purpose. This is what the ancient alchemists meant when they said, “Man must complete what nature has left unfinished.”
I’m glad I was born to be a hedgehog writer, then; because
it disposed me to devote my life to finding my true self and write about my
journey, and as many regrets as I may have for not satisfying the longings of
my many interests (I would have loved to become a Jungian analyst specializing
in past-life regression therapy), I’ve accomplished what I came into this world
to do; and I couldn’t have asked for more.
———
I went to university then because I was
driven by an inner imperative that I had no control over. I could have gone any
which way, to be sure; but I vowed to find my true self or die trying, and I felt
impelled to study philosophy for an answer to my haunting question.
But by the middle
of my second year of studies I began to have an uneasy feeling that philosophy
was not the path for me, and panic began to set in. That’s when for no apparent reason I asked a fellow
student who was going home to Toronto for Christmas to bring me back a book of his own choosing from his favorite
little book store, and he brought me Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous that cracked open the door to the secret way that was to change my life
forever; but why did I ask him to bring me a book of his own choosing? What kind of strange request was this?
Upon reflection
these many years later, I can see there was always a kind of reckless abandon
about me, which was both adventurous and foolish; and in my request of my
fellow student, I abandoned to this adventurous/foolish spirit in me, which no
doubt was the inspiration for my “letting go and letting God” experiment that
became the premise of my novel The Golden
Seed many years later; but as attracted as I was to Gurdjieff’s teaching of
“work one oneself” that Ouspensky had introduced me to, I could not quite “get”
it.
Gurdjieff
fascinated me, mystified me, provoked me, and terrified me all at the same
time; but I had the strongest feeling that his teaching (made even more alluring by him also calling it “the way of the sly
man”) was what I had gone to university for, and it got under my skin;
that’s when panic really set in, and I didn’t know what to do.
Should I continue
my philosophy studies and get a degree, or leave and find another path? What
the hell was I to do? I had no idea whatsoever, and terror possessed me. And that’s
when it happened, the miracle of my mandala experience…
There’s an old Zen
Buddhist saying: “Before enlightenment,
chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Professor
Jordan Peterson, whose own obsession to find
an answer for “the general social and political
insanity and evil of the world” also made him a hedgehog writer, brought his Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief
as far as the logic of his inquisitive mind could take him; not quite to the enlightened
stage of passing through the eye of the needle, but to thematic resolution in
his book’s Conclusion: The Divinity of
Interest, with a quotation from his guiding light C. G. Jung, which explains
why he was called by the oracle of life to become a prophet and reformer with the
message of his global bestseller 12 Rules
for Life: An Antidote to Chaos:
“The central ideas
of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy, which, in accordance with
psychological laws, simply had to grow up at a time when the classical
religions had become obsolete. It was founded on the perception of symbols
thrown up by the unconscious individuation process which always sets in when
the collective dominants of human life fall into decay. At
such a time there is bound to be a considerable number of individuals who are
possessed by archetypes of a numinous nature that force their way to the surface
in order to form new dominants.
“This state of
possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the
possessed identify themselves with the archetypal contents of their
unconscious, and, because they do not realize that the role which is being
thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they
exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and
reformers” (Maps of Meaning: The
Architecture of Belief, Jordan B. Peterson, p. 456, bold italics mine).
Professor Jordan Peterson
became possessed by the archetypal imperative of his own “crucifix symbol” that manifested to him in his prophetic cathedral
dream one night while working on his book Maps
of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, which mandated him to resolve
his dilemma by placing him in the center of Being; and that’s exactly what
happened to me when the unconscious process of
individuation thrust upon me an archetypal symbol in the “squaring of the
circle” mandala that I consciously experienced
one night in the darkness of my bedroom in the house that three male friends
and I rented in my second year at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
The mandala symbol
that the unconscious process of individuation manifested before my eyes possessed
me with all the daemonic imperative of
the archetypal hero whose sole purpose was to unite the opposites of my dual
nature, and as Carl Jung said, I had no idea of the role that was being thrust
upon me (neither did Jordan Peterson, who was called by his own unconscious imperative
to answer his own haunting question); and although I did not know it then, my
unconscious had just made up my mind for me:
I was “destined” by the symbolic imperative my own unconscious need for
wholeness and completeness to drop out of university and forge a new path for
myself with Gurdjieff’s teaching, which is why I came to call this miraculous
experience “my mandala, my mandate.”
I was mandated
by the archetypal hero’s spirit to unite the opposites of my dual nature,
but I had no cognitive awareness of my own dual nature until I began “working”
on myself with Gurdjieff’s teaching, which I did not “get” yet; and that’s the
irony of the hero’s journey—they do not know the way until they find the way.
And that was my quandary.
I began to sense
that philosophy was not the path for me, and my creative unconscious confirmed this
with the spontaneous manifestation of the “squaring of the circle” mandala that
appeared before my eyes that memorable night when out of sheer frustration with
Gurdjieff’s teaching I angrily threw Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous down on my desk and sat back in my
chair and pouted in deep despair.
Try as I may, I
just did not “get” the gist of Gurdjieff’s teaching despite how much it “spoke”
to me, and it “spoke” to me so loud and clear that it got under my skin—another
immortal wound that set my soul on fire
with a pathological wonder that possessed me to read everything that I could get
on Gurdjieff and his teaching when I finally summoned the courage to drop out
of university in the second semester of my third year and forge a path for
myself in the wooded forest of my life with his transformative system of “work”
on oneself with conscious effort and intentional suffering, which awakened me
to the simple truth that to find the way one has to live it…
So, there I was
then, in my second year of studies when the omniscient
guiding principle of life came to my assistance to set me free from a path
that had served its purpose in my serendipitous discovery of the secret way in Gurdjieff’s teaching, and
it was only a matter of time before I made the conscious decision to walk away
from university.
Philosophy was
pulling me out into a sea of endless mentation that I feared would not promise
me an answer to my haunting question, and my creative unconscious offered me
the solution to my problem of resolving my dual nature in the symbolic squaring
of the circle, which was the only way I would ever answer the question that had
called me to university in the first place, who am I?
I
shut off the lights in my bedroom and flopped my body onto the bed and put my
hands behind my head and stared into the darkness wallowing in my despair. I
was so mad I did not know whether to scream or cry. I stared and stared, thinking
and despairing; and the more I thought about my dilemma, the more I despaired. Philosophy
was not giving me the answer, and Gurdjieff’s teaching puzzled me; I saw no
light whatsoever, and I despaired.
And then it
happened: A tiny dot of blue light
appeared before my eyes at the foot of my bed, just above eye level, and it rested
there suspended in mid-air long enough for me to rub my eyes to see if it was
real. I shut my eyes and opened them again, and it was still there; and then
the tiny dot of blue light began to expand and grow into the shape of circle until
it was about three feet in diameter, and it sat in mid-air like a donut of shimmering
blue light. Dumbfounded, I just stared; and then a tiny dot of yellow light
appeared within and at the top of the circumference of the blue circle, and it
also expanded and grew, forming a perfectly straight line of bright yellow
light within the circumference, and then it stopped, made a ninety degree turn,
and formed another straight line, stopped again and made another ninety-degree
turn and formed another straight line, and another, joining with itself to form
a perfect square of bright yellow light within the circumference of shimmering blue
light—which, though I did not know it then, was a symbolic squaring of the circle. Nonplussed, I
just stared at the circle of bright blue light with a square of bright yellow
light within its circumference; and then, just as miraculously as it had appeared,
it disappeared, and my bedroom was in darkness again…
It took many years
to make sense of this miraculous experience, and had I not been called to read and
study C. G. Jung and his Gnostic-inspired psychology of individuation, I would
never have come to understand the meaning of my mandala experience; but I had
to “work” on myself long and hard day and night to resolve the opposites of my
dual nature—what Jesus called making the
two into one—before the puzzle of my life finally fell into place for me.
To square the circle,
one has to do the impossible, and the task that I had set for myself in my
quest for my true self was not possible within the paradigm of my philosophy
studies; but I did not know this cognitively. I sensed that philosophy wasn’t
the path for me, but I didn’t know what to do about it, and deep anxiety
possessed me. Please God, tell me what to
do, I pleaded silently.
Then divine serendipity
kicked in with Ouspensky’s book In Search
of the Miraculous, and the door to the secret
way cracked open for me; but I had to drop out of university to forge my
own path in life by “working” on myself with Gurdjieff’s teaching, and my
despair of not knowing what to do forced my unconscious to resolve my problem
by manifesting the symbol of “squaring the circle” of blue and yellow light
before my eyes, the mandala of the “impossible” quest for my true self—hence, “my mandala,
my mandate,” the unconscious
imperative of my individual way.
When the mandala
symbolizing my successful quest for my true self literally manifested before my eyes that night, I didn’t know
what it meant; but after I did the
impossible and “worked” my way through the eye of the needle and gave “birth”
to my true self, I understood that I had unconsciously mandated myself to find
my true self (I did, after all, vow to
find my true self or die trying), hence the symbolic squaring of the circle
that my unconscious manifested in my bedroom when I did not know what to do to
find my true self; and in my enlightened perspective today, I’m right back to where
I started, “chopping wood and carrying water...”
