Hierophant and Neophyte

There comes a point in life when you realize that everything that's been given is not made to endure. The talents you were born with, the early loves, even your bodily wellness and strength - none of them have permanence. All of these things are contained in the word 'nature' - or 'Mother Nature' if you prefer - and sooner or later nature, the mother, will withdraw and perish. Symbolically, then, one is left creeping towards the tomb, questioning, questioning. Is there anything left for me? Do I have to wait until the end to find out why I was here? What was it for? The temptation, the overwhelming desire, is to prise open the lid a little bit and see what the body - already stretched out there - has to say. Is there anything that can raise it up? Because the raising has to happen now.

In the old days there was hierophant and neophyte. The hierophant, or officiating priest with his helpers, would put the neophyte, or prepared pupil, into a deathlike trance. He would be literally laid out there in the sarcophagus, dead to the outer world. And then the hierophant would lead him inwardly to an experience whereby the meaning of the cosmos was imprinted on him. And then, after three and a half days, he would be raised from the dead, a new man.

This ancient experience isn't open to us any more. We have to be hierophant and neophyte in our own self today. We have to cross the murmuring border between death and life on our own, often not knowing which is which. In a sense this means we have to push back the circumference of the known world and go beyond it. This is the great adventure of our time, our age of exploration, where freedom begins. But we have to accept the challenge of going beyond the physical. Science has mapped out - or is mapping out - every inch of the physical. The accepted wisdom is that the boundaries of this physical are the outer limits of existence. That death is the end. It takes a fling of courage to know that that is not true - the stubbornness of Columbus to go beyond the kings and queens who say 'no' until you find the one who says 'maybe'. And on the way there may be no sight of landfall, no creature to bring comfort.

So where does nature end? Does it end with the falling away of the 'given'? Or is there a limitless invisible to explore, in which nature becomes the very ship we set sail in? Questions, questions - with, thankfully, no fixed answer.

Landar

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