The multiplicity of the gods correspondeth to the multiplicity of man.
C. G. JUNG
Ecstasy. It was once considered a favor of the gods, a divine gift that could lift mortals out of ordinary reality and into a higher world. The transformative fire of ecstasy would burn away the barriers between ourselves and our souls, bestowing on us a greater understanding of our relation to ourselves and to the universe.
It is the great tragedy of contemporary Western society that we have virtually lost the ability to experience the transformative power of ecstasy and joy. This loss affects every aspect of our lives. We seek ecstasy everywhere, and for a moment we may think we have found it. But, on a very deep level, we remain unfulfilled.
Our materialistic society teaches us that the only reality is the one we can hold onto, the only thing of value what we can “take to the bank.” Our spirits need nourishment as much as ever. But, having excluded the inner experience of divine ecstasy from our lives, we can look only for its physical equivalent. And no matter how hard we look, or how many low-grade ecstatic experiences we accumulate, we crave more.
This craving has led to the most characteristic symptom of our time: addictive behavior. So many of our lives are touched by addiction—if not our own, then that of a relative, a friend, a celebrity. Do you recognize any of these? The successful young entrepreneurs who think they need cocaine to give them the competitive edge; the supermoms who can’t get through the day without a tranquilizer; the harried managers who need two or three drinks every night after work to unwind; the young children who try street drugs because they are already touched by our society’s bankruptcy of feeling; the college students who go to parties solely to get drunk or stoned; the dangerously fast drivers who are addicted to the thrill of speed; the insider traders who make illegal deals on the stock market because they are addicted to the kick of making money; the perpetual singles who go from lover to lover, addicted to the first glow of romantic love.
Addiction is the negative side of spiritual seeking. We are looking for an exultation of the spirit; but instead of fulfillment we get a short-lived physical thrill that can never satisfy the chronic, gnawing emptiness with which we are beset.
To fill this emptiness, we need to reconnect with the capacity for ecstasy that lies dormant within us. Our first step must be to try to understand the nature of ecstasy.
One can often use myth to elucidate psychological processes, as I have done elsewhere. For example, my book entitled He explored masculine psychology through the legend of Parsifal and the Grail; We explored romantic love through the story of Tristan and Iseult. This book explores the nature of ecstasy through the myth of Dionysus.
In ancient Greece Dionysus was the god of wine and ecstasy. The myth of Dionysus, and the rise and fall of his cult, offer perhaps the best elucidation of our loss of the ecstatic experience.
Part I of this book explores the meaning of the Dionysian archetype of ecstasy and what its loss has meant for us. Part II suggests avenues we can explore to reclaim and express the true joy that is ours by birthright.
Archetypes: Blueprints of Human Behavior
The world of the ancient Greeks was formed and determined by their gods. In the larger-than-life actions of the gods and goddesses they saw the dramas of daily life. Today the gods of Olympus seem to have little relevance. Our world is on a more human scale, molded by psychological forces. For us, Olympus is simply a mountain.
But the fact that we no longer have the Olympic realm in which to seek the gods does not mean that the gods have ceased to exist. The forces they represent express themselves in the way that is most understandable to us: psychologically, as modes of behavior.
It is as psychologist Carl Jung once said: We do not believe in the reality of Olympus, so the ancient Greek gods live on for us today as symptoms. We no longer have the thunderbolts of Zeus, we have headaches. We no longer have the arrows of Eros, we have angina pains. We no longer have the divine ecstasy of Dionysus, we have addictive behavior. Even though we no longer recognize the gods, we experience their powerful forces.
Jung called the forces behind these symptoms archetypes—literally, “first patterns”—blueprints of the basic human drives and qualities that we all share. We tend to think of ourselves as unique individuals, and to a great extent we are. But we also contain within our deepest selves a plurality of these drives and behaviors, which we express in our own ways.
We see the expression of archetypes every day. For example, we may say that a particular woman is a “real earth mother” because she is nurturing, caring, and down to earth. Or we may say that an overly macho, aggressive man “thinks he’s Rambo.” These archetypes work well for us as descriptions of behavior. We understand immediately what they mean.
Jung considered the Greek gods to be perfect archetypes because their images were distinct and predictable. They never went against type. For example, Zeus, the chief god of Olympus, was forever falling in love. His wife, Hera, the goddess of marriage, was always jealous, always vengeful, always spiteful. It would be completely out of character for her to forgive Zeus or one of his lovers. Instead Hera always plans, plots, and executes heartless revenge. She is the archetype of the jealous wife.
The basic forms and patterns of human behavior do not change, they merely put on the clothes and mores of a particular time and place. For example, in the West we often express the psychological archetypes through our movie idols—Marilyn Monroe as the goddess of love, Venus or Aphrodite; John Wayne as the god of war, Aries or Mars. We can try to repress these archetypes, to drive them underground; but sooner or later they will reemerge. They may come back in an unfamiliar form, but they will be driven by the same archetypal energy.
Myth and the Collective Unconscious
Many modern people equate myth and untruth. As one man I know put it, “Myths and legends are the same thing, aren’t they? Except that legends have a grain of truth—there really was a Johnny Appleseed—and myths are completely untrue.” A great many people in our society agree with this thinking. For them, myths are stories that belong to dead cultures, “primitive” peoples, or children, and have no bearing on modern adult lives. They are sadly mistaken.
In fact, as we shall see, myths have everything to do with our lives because myths are populated by archetypes. When we read myth as Jung did, we can see clearly how our basic human drives interact. Myth then becomes a rich source of insight into our psychological motivations.
For many people myths have the quality of dreams. Both are filled with fantastic events and images, and both communicate deep psychological truths. Dreams use symbols to send messages from the unconscious self to the conscious self. In the same way a myth is a message from a deeper layer of our psyche, which we share with our whole culture. This Jung called the collective unconscious. When we understand a dream we contact a hidden portion of ourselves. When we contact the inner meaning of a myth we touch all humanity, because each of us shares in the rich images of the collective unconscious.
It might help you to think of the collective unconscious as a great sea from which we have all been born. In this sea live the feelings, ideas, abilities, behaviors, faults, and virtues that we identify as ourselves; and out of this sea each individual conscious self, each ego, each “I” is born. Even when we feel most isolated from others, it is important to remember that our common psychological home remains the same. The collective unconscious is the source of our spiritual and psychological nourishment, the material of which our inner lives are made. Of this Jung said,
For indeed our consciousness does not create itself—it wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition. It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the unconscious.*
Through the drama of myth and its archetypal actors we can share in the wisdom of the collective unconscious, which has been preserved for us through the centuries.
Communicating with Our Unconscious
When a myth transcends mere storytelling and truly comes alive for us, we experience deep psychological understanding. By learning to identify these archetypes and understand them as processes at work within ourselves, we can make real personal change. When we begin to understand myths on this deep level we open up communication between our conscious and unconscious selves, gaining important insights and enriching our lives.
How do these two very different selves communicate? Jung once observed that the ego has the same relationship to the collective unconscious as a cork does to the ocean on which it floats, with one important exception: The ego has consciousness. It can make a dialogue with the unconscious. In this dialogue we can begin to make a step on the journey toward wholeness.
If we intend to rejoin our unconscious and conscious selves, we must accord them equal respect. We do not need to “kill” our egos, or repress the energy of the archetypal forces. We simply need to try to understand the archetypes, and then to touch and express them in our own unique way.
According to Jung the ego has a great and important task: to help integrate the conscious and unconscious realms into a unity. It is not the fate of the ego to drown in the sea of the unconscious; neither is the ego destined to drain the sea, as if it were a bathtub, and rule over all. When we give equal honor to waking reality and mythic reality, we can truly begin to understand and know ourselves.
Living in the Mythic World
It is no easy task for the contemporary Westerner to accept the validity of the mythic world. We are so accustomed to thinking of myths as fantasy that we often denigrate people to whom myth was and is an integral part of life. We tend to think of such people as ignorant and childlike, with no understanding of the physical universe.
The relegation of myth and fairy tale to childhood is a recent phenomenon. Before the twentieth century, myths and fairy tales were the repository of the wisdom of a whole culture. The people in such societies had a profound understanding and respect for the psychological forces symbolized by these tales, and that understanding enabled them to experience a living spiritual dimension in everyday life.
For the ancient Greeks the gods were real. A Greek who saw a thunderbolt was reminded of Zeus, and so reminded of another, simultaneous system of reality. In contrast, when we see a thunderbolt we see a weather pattern and are probably reminded to watch the six o’clock news for the weather report!
This vision affects all aspects of life. Tribal people who experience drought will first think to appeal to the forces of nature by praying to the god of rain, who probably lives in the clouds. We, on the other hand, might fly a small plane into the sky, seed the clouds, and cause the rain ourselves. The tribal people will exert all the power they can muster to effect change on an unconscious level. A modern people will completely bypass the unconscious, because for them it is not “real.” As a result we tend to make changes that are expedient but not necessarily prudent. Because we consider only our immediate needs, and not the needs of the whole system, we have no idea what unconscious forces we are setting into motion and what the long-term consequences of our actions will be.
To remedy this error, we must bring myth back into the realm of subjects suitable for adult consideration. We must learn to accord the inner world described in myth the same respect we give the outer world described by science. When we can understand and accept myth as a living picture of our inner world, we will be on our way to effecting real change.