The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (26 page)

There was no free directing of the path itself, however. Personal
responsibility was for a surrender to the peculiar qualities of the
path. A cultural hierarchy of values helped give the guidelines for
action. A continually-renewed commitment was necessary, though, for the
only known goal was the process of movement along the path itself. The
path was an open structure forming only as one moved along it. The
"obligatory acts" in Jesus' system were much more dependent on the
context of the moment than were don Juan's.
Death was a contingency in both systems. In Jesus' system death was the
ultimate demonic, accepted and assumed as an unavoidable property of the
split mind but not of the integrated one. The demonic was controlled by
denying absoluteness to those aspects of life over which the demonic has
power. The soul never "sinning," never granting allegiance to the products
of a system, and allying only with the function of systems-building itself,
would never die. Only when concern for the path was greater than concern
for self could the self achieve security.
In don Juan the capacity for exertion of extraordinary energy had to be
effective, quite literally, for survival. Non-survival had to be accepted,
however, as the mark of profound belief. No goal could be entertained by
mind except the goal of the path itself. And this path was its own end.
Don Juan had no prospect of survival. Death was the final victor.
With Jesus, agreement, if only among two or three, could establish a
non-ordinary reality by consensus within the group. This kind of autistic
bridge between people is found in don Juan, who brought about non-ordinary
events shared, unhappily, by Carlos in non-hallucinogenic ways. It was,
in fact, this conscious restructuring by don Juan of ordinary events,
right out in the light of day, that finally defeated Carlos by their
sheer horror.
Fear had to be accepted, faced, admitted, and then gone beyond. Until one
recognized the reason for fear he was not fully aware of the qualitative
distinction between his new Way and the world's Way. The follower was
then still double-minded and divided in intent. The real onslaught
of fear arose at recognition that the events of ordinary reality were
arbitrary. Langer's fear of "collapse into chaos should our ideation
fail" is strong. We are a built-in function of delineation, defining,
delimiting, constructing by ordinary consensus a tight little island in
a sea of apparent randomness. This is genetically, psychologically, and
inherently, the strongest motivation we have, the skeleton of our minds,
egos, ways of being. To threaten it is worse than death. The crack in
the egg is no small threat.
Don Juan exerted all his dramatic abilities and knowledge to maneuver
Carlos into just the position where his
certainty
that the reality
of everyday life is implicitly "real"
would
be undermined. Only the
complete collapse of that certainty could remove the last barrier to
accepting the existence of separate but equal realities, those realities
of "special consensus." The component elements of ordinary reality could
be denied and thus open to restructuring. Carlos sensed in this that
there was then no guarantee that he could "provide himself indefinitely
with consensus," and this abyss of apparent chaos drove him back into
the broad stream.
The break with ordinary consensus is thus profoundly serious. This is
what Jesus meant when he said that we must give up our life to find
greater life, and that while the animals had a definite place, the
Son of Man had none. Such cures for psychic ills are strong medicine,
no matter how sick the patient.
Jesus could exert great sway in an event of the moment, but was frustrated
that the import of his maneuvers faded from his followers' awareness. His
followers centered their faith in his personality, while his constant aim
was to center their faith in the function of faith itself. His problem was
similar to that of transference in psychoanalysis. As a transference-agent
he could catch his followers up in the restructuring of an event, but they
could not see the transference function as itself the crack in the egg.
They made the common error of idolatry -- making Jesus into the source
of magic. And it was the function of reality formation toward which
Jesus pointed, toward which he tried to be "transparent."
No line can be drawn between what don Juan was, what he taught, and what
his Way of Knowledge was. But
he
was not the end product; he considered
himself impersonally in respect to his path. Similarly, only by making
himself the focus of attention could Jesus reorganize the concept-percept
structure of his followers and Open them to the crack. Function and man
appear synonymous because the function can only be pointed toward by
being the function. There is no being except in a mode of being.
In Chapter VI, I mentioned the psychology professor walking the fire by
holding the fakir's hand. Without the fakir as trigger, without seeing
him actually walk, it is difficult to see how the professor could have
been so seized. But the fakir was neither the reason for the phenomenon
nor the bearer of magic. The restructuring ability was innately within
the professor all along, a part of the very mechanism of his being.
Leonard Feinberg came away from Ceylon convinced that somehow the
god Kataragama was an operative and real force within the accepted
fourteen-mile radius of his temple. The dramatic events of the ceremonies
were capped by peculiarly synchronous after-effects that disturbed
Feinberg's western point of view as much as the fire-walking. The
tough-minded scholar and the classical Christian react to this sort
of thing with equal scorn, appropriate to their beliefs esthetics. The
scholar's contempt will be that a fortuitous congruence of events should
be interpreted superstitiously, which means outside the acceptances of the
scholar's own path. The Christian's scorn will be that an efficacious god
could be a viable fact within a twenty-eight mile circle. Both scholar
and Christian are functioning in identical ways, just under different
metaphor, and both are evading the mechanics of being.
Carlos never resolved his half-suspicion, half-conviction, that the
god Mescalito was somehow synonymous with the peyote plant itself;
that the unique quality of Mescalito was within the properties of the
hallucinogen in some independent way. He knew the hallucinogen of itself
led nowhere. Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescalin, the synthetic of
peyote, bore not the faintest resemblance to Carlo's experience. Carlos
recognized the handiwork of don Juan; but Mescalito's person and total
experience were not dismissible as just hallucination.
Those with ears to hear would understand. Jesus spoke of his
Kingdom
as like a leavening, the kind the housewife puts in her flour to
give life to the inert ingredients. Only a tiny bit of leavening is
needed to work and raise large quantities of flour. Beware, though,
Jesus warned, of the leavening of the Pharisee, the world of legalistic
split-thinking and rationale; and beware the leavening of Herod, the
world of power battening on the brother's blood, the final demonic,
the forces of death. Beware because
all
leavenings work, all raise the
flour, and equally well. Leavening is ontological, neutral, impersonal,
natural. Jesus said that his
Father
judges not. God is the function
of leavening, not the capacity for choosing types of leavening. Judgment
is given to the
Son
. Man chooses, God responds automatically. That is
the way the process works. Don Juan said there was an infinite number
of paths, and that we should choose our paths with care.
It is not just fortuitous that the metaphors Jesus used to describe
both the way to and the resulting state of his
Kingdom
show remarkable
similarity to Hilgard's outline for hypnotic transfer. Reality-adjusted
thinking was Jesus' point of departure. He did not break with logic or
"law," the reasoning functions of mind. He spoke of perfecting logic in
order to go beyond it. His child-metaphors have meaning only against an
adult background. The first demand he makes is that the ego-centered,
reality-thinking personality must be surrendered. Unless you hate your
life you cannot follow where he goes -- not just because ambiguity would
result from trying to hold two orientations at once; more, unless you
are willing to give up your world view structured from infancy, those
concepts directing your percepts cannot be restructured.
An indeterminately-wide capacity for resynthesis is incorporated in the
structure of our minds. This capacity is blocked, though, by the very
system of logic which
must
be developed to structure the mind to the
point where resynthesis is then possible. Paralleling Piaget and Hilgard
makes this clear. No resynthesis is possible to us until an initial
synthesis gives a ground on which to stand.
It is not just fortuitous that somewhere around age twelve logical
development begins to firm up, and that this is the age of the archaic
transformation rites. Neither is it fortuitous that this is the age
when our educational system breaks down most seriously, (try teaching
in a junior high school!) or that mythological overlay gave this as the
setting for Jesus' first manifestations of seizure, and so on.
The materials of the common domain, the clearing in the forest eons in
process, must be the materials for synthesis, for there are no other
materials. If a kingdom of heaven is desired, it must be synthesized from
the available stuff. The world is no trivial illusion blocking a pure
soul's vision of heavenly vistas. The world is the matrix from which all
things must operate. To be realized, made real, is to be born into the
world. In order to be in the world, one's world view must shape according
to the shape of that world. The logical process of structuring the mind
into a modified relation with the world of man may be arbitrary, but it
brings about the only reality available. Any restructuring is then equally
arbitrary, a matter of choice and commitment, but it is a restructuring.
There are many forms of trance-thinking, and every system or discipline
incorporates some aspect of it. Sometimes this state is only a temporary
lowering of the threshold of the logical mind to incorporate a new
experience not available to logic. Recall Hans Selye's observation that
every great scientific postulate-illumination had
happened
to the
scientist in a hypnagogic state. With don Juan, the new states created
were entered into for adventure, becoming as valid as the ordinary
reality, little by little firming up into tangible structures, each
building on the other. Don Juan's process imitated the way by which
The Creation itself is brought about. The flaw in his system, and the
probable reason for its obsolescence, was the ego-isolation within the
construct. It gave only a private world.
With Jesus the same function is used, but only as a shared venture.
Creating only 'interventions' in the common domain, one remained
in
the world, the "larger body of man" was kept intact. His "interventions
in the ontological constitution of the universe" were on two levels. The
first was when the logical process broke down, as in conflicting personal
relations, or when logical choice had created insoluble problems, and the
crack was opened as a way down and out. This was "forgiveness." No problem
was "solved" as such, in some brilliant logical analysis. Rather, the
situation was simply restructured, giving a clean slate, a new possibility
for synthesis. The procedure could be repeated infinitely, there was
no heavenly hierarchy of value judgment determining its granting. The
only criterion was that the materials had to be surrendered
for
the
resynthesis. Since no logical prestructuring was possible, it was an
unknown venture each time, a kind of "little death" as Blake called it.
The second category of intervention was in the ordinary cause-effect
mechanisms of reality. Without fire burning, charcoal-broiled steaks
are not possible, nor the joy of the hearth. There are times of ultimate
concern, though, when a way down and out from this universal mechanism
is needed. When the ordinary mechanics break or lead to destructive
results, disease, disaster, and so on, the crack is needed to restructure
events. Since the ordinary mechanics are infinitely contingent, accident
is inevitable. But the crack opens to that mode of thinking itself
infinitely contingent, and capable of infinite synthesis. The way down
and out is an instantaneous restructuring of some isolated, specific
point of relation, a carrying of the non-ordinary to the ordinary, and an
equally instantaneous establishment of the ordinary mechanics. Hypnotic
anaesthesia is a minor case in point. Blood circulation and nerve
response are vital mechanisms -- else the whole house of cards tumbles
down -- but in certain instances can be suspended as needed.
The end goal of don Juan's way was adventure. The end goal of Jesus' way
was solving problems of individual and society in the shared adventure
of group life. Interventions are made only to correct, alleviate, fill
out the inevitable shortcomings of a system limiting an infinite openness
to specific actualities. The crack in the egg was utilized only for the
good of the egg, never for self. But since the self is also the egg at
some point, the self was taken care of peripherally and automatically
by caring for the egg. "Man, if you know what you are doing," (when you
use the crack) "you are blest."
It would have been a neat system. It could have achieved the unity of
man in the only practical way -- attainment of desire for every man. It
would have been rather a universal mutual-back scratch, through which all
our itches, beyond personal reach, could be tended. It would have been
a massive
power for
, rather than our current demonic and fragmenting
power against.
Cracks in the egg cannot be built into a cosmic egg. They can only
come about when the embryonic form expands and needs room beyond its
genesis. The crack is found by the time-tested technique found in
all systems, of necessity, the only one that works: a repeating of
the initial process of world view formation. A surrender is made as a
"child" to a father-figure who gives sureness and confidence that one
can give over his life, his conceptual frame-work, to the image and
receive it back enlarged.