VIII. Myth, Religion, and the Intent of the Sacred


I will end this work on shamanic cognition and sacred science with some musings on universal themes that I believe have sprung from humankind's experience of The Great Power, and the truths they contain. Like all truths recorded for us in myth or story, you don't need to take my word or anyone's word for it; The Great Power and the vast reaches of the unseen world can be apprehended directly in shamanic cognition.

I have mentioned several times before that The Great Power, though difficult to understand or "pin down" in any manner, is a reality that includes the quality of intent. It is not just a power-reality that "sits there" randomly spitting out various forms and combinations of force; all things emerge in the mystery of The Universe of Intent.

The Great Power is clearly infinite; that is the best that anyone can say regarding its nature. Though The Great Power is our sacred and infinite source, The fact that we ordinarily perceive ourselves as finite beings sets up a conflict which is one of the roots of the mental struggle of mankind in any era.

Carlos Castaneda writes:

"The end result which shamans... sought for their disciples was a realization which, by its simplicity, is so difficult to attain: that we are indeed beings that are going to die. Therefore, the real struggle of man is not strife with his fellow men, but with infinity, and this is not even a struggle; it is, in essence, an acquiescence. We must voluntarily acquiesce to infinity. In the description of sorcerers, our lives originate in infinity, and they end up wherever they originated: infinity."


This statement echoes the sentiments of a darker figure from Christian religious history: the first great Christian philosopher Augustine. In one of his praises for his God, he says:

"We are made for you, dear God, and our hearts are restless till we rest in you."


I have pointed out the clear and easy to recognize origin of the Christian conception of "God" in the reality of The Great Power. If you read my description of The Great Power's participation in all life, including its role as source and sustainer of all things, beings, and phenomenon at this moment, you will see an affinity with the Bible verse that describes the human relationship to "God" in this way:

"For in Him we live, move and have our being".


Indo-European tribes who dwelled all over Europe and Asia in the era before Christianity had their own conceptions and similar ideas. But what is most important about the Indo European people is their belief in the cyclical creation and destruction of the universe itself, an idea which is found in nearly every religion extant today in some form.

While monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam tend to see this universe-cycle as a single and unique event which never existed before and will never exist again except in a perfected form after the "end", the Indo-Europeans of the past believed that the universe itself had existed, been destroyed, and then regenerated countless times before, and would be again, eternally. It was Fate that this cosmic cycle should occur and repeat, and nothing could stop it.

Similar ideas were found in the cradle of modern western science and philosophy, ancient Greece. Empedocles (in common with a pattern believed in some form by all Indo European Greeks) thought that the universe was cycling in this manner, and that the twin powers of love and strife created and then destroyed each universe-cycle. Love first attracted all things, all elements and all souls together into a great mixture from which the cosmos would form, and then strife gradually took over, slowly tearing all things apart, purifying things until things were back in their original pure state, and the cosmos-cycle was over.

Brahman among the Hindus likewise sends forth creation and draws it back into itself at the end of a cosmic era; in some places, it is the Mahadevi or Great Goddess who takes the role of the source and end of all cosmic eras, especially in her form of Kali.

This idea is common enough, and I believe that it gives us a clue as to the relationship between all things that have arisen, the universe of our perceptions, and the mystery of The Great Power, which cannot be considered in isolation from the universe.

The Great Power has intent. It intends to "send forth" or "give rise" to all phenomenon, all powers whether animate or inanimate, and at some point, it intends to "call back" to itself all things. In the interim, The Great Power is aware of itself through and as all things.

I call this "outgoing" universal intention in which all things find their perpetual generation the "Day of Time", and I refer to the "calling back" intention on the part of the Universe itself for all its parts the "Night of Power".

There is a subtle point that has to be made here- the "calling back" is not a physical "call", nor are things "drawn back" to the Great Power as though they were being sucked towards a distant black hole. The Great Power is everywhere; it not a "thing" apart from creation to which all parts of creation have to aspire or travel. The "call back" which the intent of The Great Power makes to all living and aware beings is a call from coarse consciousness or normal cognition towards the awakening of subtle consciousness or non-ordinary cognition.

It is clear to me, as to many others, that the Great Power is engaged in a timeless work. It intends for living beings to be born and for their minds to stabilize on the ordinary level of coarse consciousness and cognition. Then, gradually, it intends for all beings to achieve a level of subtle awareness, a breakthrough of shamanic cognition, by which they are consciously aware of The Great Power, and capable of experiencing the ultimate truth of their sacred purpose. What is that purpose? To complete the great circle of awareness, the great cycle of creation, by consciously recognizing that the universe is becoming fully aware of itself through us.

Instead of living on behalf of just ourselves, we then live on behalf of all things, on behalf of the Great Power, and we bear all our pains and celebrate all our triumphs not just as ourselves, but also on behalf of it and as it.

This is a central theme to "living in a sacred manner", and the subtle awareness of the deepest energetic reality of all things brings us to the doorstep of a condition which is beyond organic life and ordinary cognition.

This brings us to the final and most important point of this section: the reality of pain and suffering.

The Great Power is not "loving and nice" in the way most people would hope that it was. In fact, it is just as beyond that sort of "pick and choose" terminology as it is any other notion we try to shackle it with. It is sacred, "wakan" as the Sioux would say, and so are all things sprung from it, which is everything.

The implications of this statement are profound and disturbing to most- if the tree is sacred or wakan, and the bird is, and the river, and the coyote, and if living in a sacred manner means protecting the sacred hoop of life, protecting those we love, helping others to live well, that's fine. But what about the oil spill? What about the forest fire? What about the apartment fire that kills ten people? What about the nuclear waste-dump? What about the poaching and forced extinction of animal species? What about those who hurt others, and make their lives miserable? Are these things "sacred" or wakan, as well? Surely they must be just as rooted in The Great Power as any other thing!

The answer is yes. Those negative, undesirable things are also sacred, also sprung from the Great Power. As the Sioux shamans said, good and evil powers are both wakan. This doesn't mean that evil things, people, or events are desirable, or that we should tolerate them around our families or within our societies. What it means is far more subtle and profound- it means that even bad things have a sacred purpose, and are part of the intent of The Great Power.

Carlos Castaneda writes:

"Another issue related to intent, but transposed to the level of universal intending, was, for the shamans of ancient Mexico, the energetic fact that we are continually pushed and pulled and tested by the universe itself. It was for them an energetic fact that the universe in general is predatorial to the maximum, but not predatorial in the sense in which we understand the term: the act of plundering or stealing, or injuring or exploiting others for one's own gain. For the shamans of ancient Mexico, the predatory condition of the universe meant that the intending of the universe is to be continually testing awareness. They saw that the universe creates zillions of organic beings and zillions of inorganic beings. By exerting pressure on all of them, the universe forces them to enhance their awareness, and in this fashion, the universe attempts to become aware of itself. In the cognitive world of shamans, therefore, awareness is the final issue."


And awareness is, indeed, the final issue, and the growth and completion of awareness is our sacred purpose. Fate tests us; "Fate is the cradle that rocks the infant spirit" as a very wise man once said. The spirits or inorganic beings known to ancient cultures as "Gods" are themselves subject to Fate, but unlike most of us, many of them have completed the task of awareness, and become truly wise, truly able to guide mortals to the same universal goal. This is why people dealing with the revival of ancient tribal religions born in polytheistic times have a duty to work centrally with the Gods and Goddesses of those cultures.

Those spirits, among all spirits, were known by the people of ancient times to have both large amounts of power and wisdom, and in most cases a special relationship of patronage or reciprocal relationship to mankind. In other shamanic cultures, as well as in most polytheistic cultures, many types of spirit appear to the vision of the shaman to help them achieve new reaches of wisdom and power. The common belief in "animal helpers" fall into this same category of "helping" and "guarding" spirits.

In a very direct manner, we have managed, with these lines of thinking, to suggest a powerful means by which we can see an element of meaning alongside the suffering we must experience, and the suffering we must watch other undergo. One can rightly say that "bad things happen so that we will be forced to ask deep questions about our life; suffering occurs so that we will seek within, seek deeper awareness, for the answer to our existence."

When a person lives in harmony with The Great Power, when that person surrenders their egocentric grasping and petty ego-wars to it, and learns to live in a sacred manner in the great sweep of its "universal intending", they are already able to live in a peace that they never felt before. But more than this, they are just one step from opening themselves to the subtle world that The Great Power also creates, and then finally to experiencing the most pure reality of its power and its intimate relationship with themselves and with all things. Sacred purpose is fully realized, and a great harmony enters into that person's being, and it extends into their sphere of life, to those around them.

Shamans in most animistic societies existed and worked to keep their people in harmony with reality itself, with nature and power. The shaman did this not only by helping people to understand their sacred purpose, and helping people to live in a sacred manner, but through their own deep realizations- for a master of the unseen world, a master of shamanic cognition, brings marvelous fortune and peace to those around him by virtue of his or her own balance. It is as if The Great Power itself does not "test" those who have achieved enough insight into subtle awareness or sacred purpose; in some way, we can see in this a distant root of the ancient belief that "if you are living correctly, bad things won't happen to you."

Of course, "living correctly" doesn't mean "following the rules of this or that society or this or that religion", no matter how much people want to think that. "Living correctly" in this sense means living in a sacred manner. It means living in harmony with The Great Power, and therefore all of reality. It means letting your entire being become a channel through which The Great Power flows freely. It means restoring your awareness back to its subtle clarity, and freeing it from the shackles of material-centered delusion and greed that so easily entrap it- but a note of caution has to be made here. "Material" things, physical things, the surface-level perceptions of phenomenon we have, are not "evil" nor things we should shun; such a dangerous dualism denies that even the material world and our ordinary cognition are sacred things.

I will end here with an account (from Jung) of a mystic from old China, a Tao-master, who demonstrates well how the shaman (or any person who lives in harmony with reality) can truly "heal" others, and even "heal" damage to the environment and drive away disharmony by virtue of his own "rightness" in the scheme of things.

"I will cite the story, told me by the late Richard Wilhelm, of the rain-maker of Kiao-chau. There was a great drought where Wilhelm lived; for months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese burned joss-sticks and shot off guns to frighten away the demons of the drought, but with no result. Finally the Chinese said, "we will fetch the rain-maker." And from another province, a dried up old man appeared. The only thing he asked was for a quiet little house somewhere, and there he locked himself in for three days. On the fourth day the clouds gathered and there was a great snow-storm at the time of year when no snow was expected, an unusual amount, and the town was so full of rumors about the wonderful rain-maker that Wilhelm went to ask the man how he did it. In true European fashion he said: "they call you the rain-maker, will you tell me how you made the snow?" And the little Chinese man said: "I did not make the snow, I am not responsible." "But what have you done these three days?" "Oh, I can explain that. I come from another country where things are in order. Here, they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country. So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao, and then naturally the rain came."






Return to the Contents




All text is Copyright © 2007 by Robin Artisson