THE INVOLUNTARY CREATION:
A HINDU MYTH
In having the privilege of talking to you on a Hindu myth I feel myself confronted with the same question which presumably many of you may have put to yourselves in reading the title of this lecture—the question: Why should we go so far into a distant civilization, why should we delve, on our quest, into a strange tradition in order to understand ourselves, our own individual and collective situation amidst the present crisis of the world?
Hindu mythology has grown up in another soil; its harvest has ripened under another sky; the civilization which has been guided by its symbols and spiritual messages is aloof from our own and seemingly remote from the problems we have to face in our lives. Still, those among us who are doctors practicing analysis and many others who by being patients or students of Analytical Psychology are familiar with its basic notions, will not wonder why what evidently is remote from our own conscious tradition and spiritual heritage, might have to tell us something. They feel, though it is told in an unfamiliar language, it should have a bearing on our own life and might be put to use for the better understanding of our own problems.
Sigmund Freud, in coining the term Oedipus complex, did but hit on the vast and meaningful interrelation which prevails between the unconscious problems of modern man and the figures and features of the mythology of antiquity. It was the founder of Analytical Psychology proper, Dr. Jung at Zurich, who first brought home the wide and exact correlation existing between the figures and tales of mythology, on the one hand, and the features, dreams, and visions of the unconscious in man’s psyche, on the other hand.
On entering the studio of an analytical doctor working on Dr. Jung’s lines and inspecting his library, you will find on the shelves impressive groups of books which give you the idea that you are not with a medical man or a psychologist but with somebody deeply versed in ethnology and history of religions, in fact, with somebody who uses the vast tradition of creeds and superstitions, of religious art and symbolism, of folklore and social institutions of peoples bygone and far distant, as many tools for making sense of the complex expressions and features of the modern psyche. Ages and attitudes of man which are long bygone still survive in the deeper unconscious layers of our soul, just as bygone periods of the earth can be traced in its interior up to the present time. The vast forests which have disappeared from its surface before man entered the stage of evolution, still exist and play their part in men’s daily life; they have turned into the layers of coal indispensable for the modern way of living. The life-sap of a vegetation which vanished from the sphere of daylight before saurians and other giant monsters crept into being has transformed itself into subterranean oil-fields. Their active presence provides modern man with the indispensable means of everyday locomotion. Their hidden treasure wells up through fountains which play an intrinsic part in the technique of what is the actual life on the surface of the earth. The energy of life, ever present throughout the ages, has but changed its garb and role in the household of the organism of the earth. Likewise, the spiritual heritage of archaic man, though the rituals and mythology which once visibly guided his conscious life have vanished to a large extent from the surface of the tangible and conscious realm, has been superseded by the orders and features of modern life; yet it survives and remains ever present in the subterranean layers of the unconscious. It is the part of our being which links us up to a remote ancestry and which constitutes our involuntary kinship with archaic man and ancient civilizations and traditions. Among these, Hindu civilization and mythology rank foremost. That is why we may get answers from Hindu wisdom for problems which beset our own unconscious in times of trouble. What withered away on its surface still in its deeper layers; likewise does the human soul. Its bygone stages still are alive beneath the surface of its conscious attitude. They support it; they serve it; they join in and help in carrying on the process of life.
In dealing with symbols and myths from far off we really converse somehow with ourselves—with a part of ourself, however, which is unfamiliar to our conscious being, just as the interior of the earth remains unexplored by geology. The mythical tradition, how- ever, provides us with a sort of map for exploring and ascertaining unconscious contents of our own inner being, to which we feel but scantily related.
I would like to conclude these introductory remarks by telling you a short story which brings home in a lucid pictorial script what I have tried to convey to you in plain words. it is an Oriental story, occurring in various traditions. I hit on it in the Arabian Nights, but a far better version has been handed down by the Chassidic tradition of Jewish mysticism which flourished in Eastern Europe, in Lithuania, Poland, and Galicia during the eighteenth century. It discloses the full deep meaning of a rather curious encounter. It makes it clear why sometimes we should venture on a quest to distant spheres, in order to find what really we possess at home with ourselves, though we could not get hold of it.
There was a Rabbi Eisik, son of Rabbi Jeckel, who lived in the Polish capital, Crakow. After years of affliction his faith remained unshaken. Once he had a dream enjoining him to proceed to Prague, the capital of Bohemia, in search of a hidden treasure under the main bridge leading to the castle of the kings of Bohemia. He was rather struck by this curious advice, and after the dream had recurred thrice, he girded his loins and set forth on his quest. At the bridge he found sentries watching it by day and night. So he did not venture to dig anywhere after the hidden treasure. But he returned every morning and loitered around the bridge until dusk. Eventually, the captain of the guards, struck by his assiduousness, asked him if he was in search of something or looking for somebody. Rabbi Eisik confidently told him the dream which had brought him hither from afar. The captain burst into laughter, and said, “ Really, you poor fellow, have you worn out your shoes in wandering hither on behalf of a dream? Who would rely on dreams? If I had trusted dreams, I might have made just such a pilgrimage as you have done. Let me tell you a dream I one had, which is exactly the counterpart of yours. I dreamed of a voice enjoining me to proceed to Crakow in search of a treasure hidden in the house of a Jewish man called Rabbi Eisek, son of Jeckel. It should buried in the dirty corner behind the stove. Eisik, son of Jeckel, indeed! Now fancy my going to Crakow and pulling down walls in every house of the Ghetto, where half of the men are called Eisik, and the other half have the name of Jeckel!” And he laughed again and again at this good joke. Rabbi Eisik eagerly listened to him, and then, having bowed deeply and thanked him, straightway went home, dug in the neglected corner of his house and found the treasure which put an end to his misery. Out of the money he erected a prayer house which bears his name to this day.
The meaning of this story is: The real treasure which might end our trials and misery, is not far away, is not to be sought in a distant region. This treasure lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home, that is, in our own being; it lies behind the stove, the life and warmth-giving center of the building of our existence, that is, in our heart of hearts, if only we could dig it up.
But a curious fact which we are told to face by this story remains: that we get the very meaning of our dreams which lead our quest to fulfillment only by setting forth to a distant region. Here the hero of the tale meets somebody who does not belong to his creed and his own people. The Bohemian captain does not believe in dreams. He has not much in common with the Rabbi from Poland—in fact, he is as remote from him as Hindu tradition is from our own way of living—this odd man tells the stranger from afar what ends his troubles and brings his quest to fulfillment. He does not mean to do so but does it quite inadvertently.
In the same way, Hindu mythology or other messages from afar are apt to impart to us the very meaning of our dreams and inner voices which send us forth on the quest. They point to some treasure of wisdom which our own soul possesses in its own home without knowing it; they guide us to inner experiences and realizations which we are longing for and which really are in store for us.
The myth I shall tell you is to be found in one of the later collections of Hindu religious tradition, in the “Kalika-purana” dealing with the great Mother-goddess of India and called after her popular name, “Kali,” that is, the “Dark Lady.”
It stands at the very opening of the big compendium which has been printed from older manuscripts at Bombay in 1892, but it has failed hitherto to attract the interest of Western scholars. This comprehensive manual of Hindu lore starts its teaching, as might be expected, with the creation of the world. This topic is to be traced in every manual of Hindu tradition called “Purana” which means: “Ancient stories and teachings handed down from immemorial times.” It is a topic floating down the stream of Indian wisdom on the surface of its many branches since the early times of Vedic singers and seers. To know about the origin of the world and how it happened in detail, will give the key to its very essence and to its whole story, until its old age and final dissolution. In the same way, many problems of adult life might find their explanation by happenings in one’s very childhood, nay, in the situation of one’s parents, in their happy harmony or their hidden discord.
The story of creation, though based on a common pattern in Hindu traditions, is told in very different ways conveying a number of various meanings. It explains the real meaning of the of it. It unveils the very secret of life, digging deep to the primeval source, the transcendental divine entity, from which the universe and mankind rose to temporary happenings and conflicts. The version which Kalika-purana offers is a rather striking one, nay, surprising, for anybody familiar with the usual trend the story takes elsewhere. Its meaning, scarcely ever explained yet unfolded in reiterated events, seems to bear some resemblance to the main aim of analytical psychology, namely: to bring into contact forces and spheres of our own being which are inclined to remain isolated from each other, and to help the process of life to go on instead of being crippled and frustrated in a lonely state by enforcing contacts at the cost of painful, surprising, and even humiliating experiences.
The tale starts with a familiar situation: Brahma, the demiurgic manifestation of the all-containing divine essence, is bringing forth the universe and its many beings by introspection into himself. Various contents of the crystal-pure visions he evolves in his prolonged yogic trance already have sprung into the sphere of time and space and are grouped around him: hosts of gods and the group of his ten mind-born sons, semi-divine priests and seers who will become, later on, the ancestors of the holy Brahmins. Besides there are ten doubles of himself, styled the “lords of the creatures,” who shall control the process of the world in ages to come.
Brahma was delving anew with his inner vision into the lucid darkness of his innermost being, when lo! the most beautiful woman leaped out of his vision and stood before him. Radiant with youth, she looked like the glorious morning-dawn of creation. and luscious, slightly bent by the burden of her perfectly rounded breasts, with lotus-like dark eyes which looked around startled, questioning like the soft eyes of a doe in the wilderness. Finding herself amidst the amazed audience, she burst into pealing laughter.
All the godly beings stared at her in surprise. Brahma from his yogi-posture with crossed legs, suddenly rose and stood aghast. With his physical eyes staring at her and his spiritual glance searching inward into his innermost being, he asked—as also did his ten spiritual sons and the ten guardians of ages to come—“What will be her task in the further creation? And to whom shall she belong?” And in pondering over this riddle, all were filled with a secret longing for her and desire crept into them; when lo! another surprise: out of Brahma’s inner search for the truth, leaped another being and stood in front of him, a beautiful youth, strong and charming, carrying a flag emblazoned with a fish, and holding a bow made of flowers, and five arrows of flowers, in his hand.
When Brahma and the other celestial beings beheld him, they underwent a curious change: They realized suddenly that they had feelings and were overwhelmed with desire for the beautiful woman. This was the way the feelings entered creation in order to complete its contents. The charming newcomer was not shy at all; he looked at Brahma, bowed and asked: “What shall I do? Do advise me; what is my business? What shall be my name? Let me have my proper place and a wife, since you are the creator of all beings!”
For a moment Brahma stood silenced, surprised by his own creature; but he centered his mind, conquered his surprise, and spoke thus: “By your bow and arrows you will go bewildering men and women; in this way you will promote the continual creation of the living universe. No god, no demon, no being whatsoever in any element or celestial realm, may escape your arrows. Even I, and the all-pervading Vishnu, and Shiva, the rock-like immovable ascetic steeped in abstraction, are in your power. Unawares you shall enter the hearts of all beings; that is the way you shall go stimulating the ever renewed constant creation of the living world!”
Brahma is the divine pure consciousness of everything contain- ed in the universe, so he can but speak the truth, even if he points to himself as a possible victim of the God of Love. Though overwhelmed by desire for the divine women, charm incarnate, in his behavior he is mere spiritual light, not so much a semi-human being as resembling the Olympian gods of Homer who fear risks and take precautions. But also the God of Love, Kama, desire, is sheer force irradiating its powers and arrows unheeding about possible consequences. The God of Love rejoices at Brahma’s words. He makes himself invisible and showers his unfailing arrows into Brahma’s heart and into the hearts of all the other celestial beings around him. For he thought to himself: “The eternal activity which Brahma has assigned to me, I shall try at once. Here stands the highest being as my target and the other celestial ones; here stands the most beautiful women; they all shall be victims of my powerful arrows. Did not Brahma himself say so and yield his majesty, as well as Vishnu’s and Shiva’s, unto me? What do I care for minor beings!” So he spoke and pierced them all with his swift-going arrows which brought with them a sweet bewildering wind full of the scent of spring flowers.
A sudden change overcame all the celestial beings, their pure minds were clouded by passion and desire, and the beautiful woman showed on her face and limbs every sign of being overcome by sensual pleasure, hiding her eyes in shyness at being looked upon and casting flashing glances around. So it happened that all sorts of feelings—desire and shyness, pleasure and pride—came into the world with their appropriate expressions and gestures.
The whole assembly was under the spell of the God of Love, seething with madness of desire, Brahma seemed prone to rush towards the beautiful maid to get hold of her, when suddenly in another surprise Shiva, the lonely ascetic, drifted through the ethereal space and beholding the situation, burst out into roaring laughter. He laughed and laughed, exclaiming over and again mockingly, “Well done! Well done!” and put them all to shame, saying “Why, what is going on, Brahma? You have fallen in love with your own daughter? You know that is against the sacred laws you laid yourself! The universe is built upon constancy—how could you become so utterly estranged from your proper being? How could the God of Love, this fickle weakling, destitute of discernment, achieve this thing? Let him be cursed for this, enabling charming women to deprive men of their constancy and to send them adrift on the waves of desire!”
Brahma, on hearing his words, felt his mind splitting up into two parts: on the one side, his true character manifested itself again and beside it stood the person whom desire had overcome. Hot waves streamed down his limbs; he conquered the change he had undergone; he expelled desire but he could not destroy it; its substance came to the surface of his body as drops of perspiration. These drops became the spirits of the deceased ones, of the ancestors who died and who in the realm of the departed ones are still longing for the offerings of the living. The longing of the deceased ones for food is their request for maintenance in after-death life, so that they may not die a second time and fall out of the realm of the ancestors, and become deprived by want of food and worship, of the shadow-like semblance of life to which they cling. The meaning of their coming into existence out of the drops of perspiration, when Brahma crushes his desire, is that their desire—though the meanest and most humble expression of the universal longing for life, libido in its most reduced form—is still the same as the mighty force which sends lovers to each other and inspires lovemaking between gods and other creatures of the universe.
This involuntary process helps creation to another step: the series of beings which form its totality is completed by another kind of creature lacking and unthought of hitherto, i.e., the host of ancestor spirits which is at least as large and as real as the host of the living, really constituting, as the expression goes, “the great majority.”
Brahma, though he has overcome his incestuous desire for the women he has involuntarily created, whom Shiva styles his daughter, is still full of wrath at being rebuked by the divine ascetic and yogi, for his uncontrolled behavior. He revenges himself on the God of Love by cursing him because he inspired him to fall in love with his own daughter. The God of Love, however, feels himself innocent—after all, he has only obeyed his innate nature as Brahma described it to him. The God of Love, so runs the curse, shall be burned to ashes by a glance of Shiva’s third eye, the one in the middle of his forehead, the very moment he attempts by means of his arrows to disturb the mental calm of the Great God himself. And that is what actually happens at a critical moment in a later age of the world, and what keeps the universe going through fierce battles among gods and demons. But after having cursed the God of Love, Brahms regrets his rashness and makes friends with him; he realizes that the god-inspiring desire and longing have only been in conformity with his innate function. So by surprises and involuntary acts creation goes on.
According to this myth, creation is not a definite achievement completed in a certain length of time—say, seven days—bringing the universe into existence, but a continual process lasting throughout the existence of the universe, in fact, fashioning and pushing it ahead every moment afresh, just as the human body is built up in part anew every day, every night. The universe continues and endures by a process of constant creation which asks for planning, advice, and expediency. But it moves on by sudden events, surprising happenings, even accidents—that is the way it forges ahead. All is constantly going wrong, but that is just the way it moves on. The universe in its unfolding steps from crisis to crisis, and that is just the form in which the world and its divine forces carry on.
To look upon the world process as a continual crisis is an out- look on the general conditions of life that would have appeared a bit pessimistic and one-sided to the preceding generation, but it is almost forced upon our minds in looking into the present state of affairs. We might say with Hamlet, “This was sometimes a paradox but now the time gives it proof.” The Hindu myth, however, has no pessimistic flavor; it states the uninterrupted series of critical and painful situations rather as a matter of course, as the normal thing underlying the general striving for order and security and for the delusive conception of possibly lasting safety. In its way, the myth is even optimistic. Brahma in his all-comprehending knowledge cannot but be aware of the risk he is undergoing in telling the God of Love the secret of his tremendous power overwhelming every creature, but he is sincere and outspoken. He cannot help it; that is his very being. He is true to himself, since he is truth and transcendental reality incarnate, and if unexpectedly he is driven to yield to temptation and shame, just as unexpectedly something will come to his rescue. There is some secret safety even in the disorderly way in which things occur; some hidden power creating surprising balances which save the car of destiny from being overturned or smashed. In all the trouble which the divine forces undergo in creating the world and maintaining it in ever-renewed creation, they remain true to their essential nature, and that is why they cannot be utterly duped by the startling, puzzling, and breathtaking course of events. Relying on their own wits, being fair losers when the time comes, they trust that the unexpected which is setting them at a loss, will also come to their rescue and put its weight on the other scale to counterbalance what seems to be overwhelming and blocking every issue.
But, of course, they will have to submit to the most arduous tasks; they will have to experience the most sterling realizations about themselves; they will have to undergo the sacrifice of their cherished personalities, their conscious beings, to which they cling as everybody does. They have to accept tasks unfamiliar to them, even those which seem to them to be at variance with their character. Brahm has to realize that he is not at all what he imagines himself to be: pure spiritual force of vision and all-pervading wisdom, of divine universal insight as clear as crystal; the power out of which he shapes the world and which emerges out of himself is just the opposite: it is blind and dazzling charm of sex, that enticing libido incarnate garb of beautiful womanhood. He has to realize his utter surrender to the blind force which propagates life and mocks the pure spirit steeped in divine meditation. But he accepts this unforeseen part of his being which rises out of his own depths; he pardons the God of Love, who complains about the curse he has put upon him; he even promises—since he cannot cancel the regretted curse—that the God of Love shall be restored to life again after having suffered the effect of the curse. He even stoops to ask the God of Love for his service in making Shiva fall in love; for he realizes that as long as this third member of the highest Trinity is not provided with a divine consort, as Brahma and Vishnu are, the process of the world will be hampered, being quite incomplete.
But the almighty God of Love fails. He cannot shake the perfect meditation of the highest god-yogi steeped in the pure essence of his transcendental Self. Puzzled and surprised, he is bound to leave him, just as the tempter withdraws eventually from the Buddha after enticing and threatening him with the charm of life and the horror of death. (This famous incident of the Buddhist legend is evidently formed along the pattern of this rather unknown Hindu myth.) So the God of Love has to resign himself and to acknowledge that he is not what he fancied himself to be: the all-powerful demon of life.
The same thing, however, applies to Shiva and to the divine woman who arose out of Brahma’s unconscious depth as the incarnation of his creative force. She is really the highest Goddess, the universal Mother from immemorial times, existing beyond creation, stepping into it to keep it going through mishaps and adventures. Brahma, once in love with her himself but now again entirely self-controlled, implores her to become the consort of Shiva, she being the only women who can match his supreme divine strength, dammed up and controlled by ascetic practice. She yields to his demand and condescends to be born as the daughter of one of those secondary ten governors of the world-ages, whom Brahma evolved out of himself as his minor doubles. It is a condescension of the highest divine principle, akin to what St. Paul says in his pastoral letter to the Philippians about Jesus, “who, being in the form of God, thought it no robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men, and being fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
Shiva displays the same gesture of humbling himself. He casts away his most cherished and innate attitude of the divine ascetic, merged by meditation into the crystal-like void of his inner calm; he agrees to become married to the mother force of creation incarnate, complying with the solemn request of Brahma and Vishnu, in order to render the highest trinity of Hinduism complete in unions of male gods with their manifest female forces. He becomes as ardent a lover and husband as he had been previously a solitary ascetic.
But again the course of the world fails. Shiva’s father-in-law offends his daughter in not inviting her and her husband to a most solemn sacrificial feast in which all other gods and all creatures of the universe join. So, incensed by this insult, deeply wounded in her love and pride, she willfully withdraws from her body and vanishes.
Shiva, of yore the unshaken ascetic, passionless and composed, now becomes the most unconsolable widower. He carries the dead body of his beloved on his shoulder through the world, shedding hot tears of despair and wrath. They burn through the earth and go down to the very depth of the netherworld where they constitute the blazing river bordering the realm of the dead, “Vaitarani,” the river “not to be crossed.”
Such seems to be the meaning of the myth: that none of the Celestial Ones is allowed to remain what he thinks himself to be, and what most he would like to go on with eternally without change.
Brahma must lose his self-composure vis-à-vis the woman whom he must recognize as the embodiment of his own creative force; he must make friends with the God of Love, another unknown part of his own creative depth who has put him to shame; and Shiva, the great ascetic, must resign his favorite attitude of being unconcerned with the world process, only to experience by this sacrifice the utter sorrow of being bereft of the supreme female force of the world, the only consort fit for him.
That is how creation continues itself through self-surrender of the divine actors to roles unfamiliar to them but urged upon them by ever new and surprising situations. It is just the same as if a conscientious objector should take to conscription in order to preserve peace and the order of life and the values he cherishes. Nobody is allowed to remain what he is and to have his own way. He has to cooperate in constant new improvisations, and that is how the precarious way of the universe fares on.
And everybody is bound to realize that the other one who at first sight seems to be disturbing the normal course of events, for instance, the divine woman and the startling action of the God of Love, proves to be the indispensable implement of the course which the universe is taking. For without the woman Shiva would be without consort and the forces of the universe would lack equilibrium; and without the God of Love the heavenly couple could not be united. What seems bewildering and upsetting at first sight, proves to be a beneficent and necessary factor in the course of events. This is just the experience everyone has when he enters the inner process of the psyche, which leads him to realize the fullness of his hidden self and which may constitute an approach to fulfillment.
In concluding, let me quote a saying of Nietzsche which may impart the meaning and the use of dealing with myth as I have tried to do. Nietzsche says:
It is not true that there is some hidden thought or idea at the bottom of the myth, as some in a period of civilization which has become artificial have put it, but the myth itself is a kind or style of thinking. It imparts an idee of the universe, but it does it in the sequence of events, actions, and sufferings.
This is the reason, I should say why we may look into it as into a mirror or fountain full of hints and prophecies, telling us what we are and how we should behave amidst the bewildering sequence of surprising events and happenings which are our common lot. At least, this is the way in which Hindu people have always looked upon the actions and sufferings of their gods and listened to their stories.
NOTES
This paper was read at a meeting of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York City, November 15, 1940.
Spring: Contributions to Jungian Thought (1941): 1–10
© Copyright 1941 The Analytical Psychology Club of New York, Inc.