Some time ago I saw a spooky movie about voices coming through the white noise on a television set. It kept repeating a threat of death to this one family, while strange shadows followed them in the night. Finally, when the man was crossing a bridge during a heavy rain, it collapsed. I cannot remember the details now, but the man - and I think a woman - were saved because of his readiness for the disaster. It was a disjointed and terrifying movie, one that left the viewer with a sense of irrational dread.
It was only recently when I discovered that it loosely followed a real-life episode in central Pennsylvania. For months, "mothman" was seen by many people flying in the night sky, a large moth-like creature with a human head whose sightings often presaged death and disaster. The bridge collapse that followed the sightings had been real. No one has ever been able to explain any of it.
I have had dreams like that, one very recently. Dark, ominous, they are filled with a mindless dread, such that something bad is going to happen - or at the very least, that some unknown evil is present that colors everything. These are the types of dreams that often linger into the day, casting everything in shadow. The affects are unpleasant, but more than that, worrisome, bringing up a terrible question: is there evil in the world? Does it stalk us?
This sense seems an aberration in today's modern world, but such was the norm for most cultures, and still is for many. In the colonial New World, we had the witch trials, which were not primarily anti-women or political, as some sociologists have suggested. Rather, they were manifestations of the dread with which people often lived. Witchcraft from both sexes is still feared in much of Latin America and Africa today, but we of the progressive countries live out our dread more casually through such movies as this Mothman that I mentioned. Evil, however we dismiss it, still exists for some reason in our deepest thoughts. Even in the modern world, beneath our bright and shiny rational exteriors, this dread has not gone away. And many of us fear, without saying it, that it still might be played out: with, say, our children snatched by psycho-killers, or with ourselves - perhaps in our own deaths, which is at the very heart of darkness.
Experts on death have long known that we have purposefully pushed death out of the normal arena and into the hospital and elderly care homes, not just to save us from often unpleasant clean-up chores, but because it is so...distasteful, a horror that will ultimately defeat all of us regardless of high-tech or secular beliefs. Having no way out, we simply dismiss it or hide it as best we can, but it is always there. Perhaps it is not the only evil lurking, but it is the one that we cannot deny, and can never claim to conquer.
It - the darkness of death - is powerful stuff and in the end cannot be soothed by blissful New Age accounts of welcoming friends and relatives at the end of the tunnel. This may be ultimately true, but first we have to reach the tunnel and travel its awesome dimension. In traditional mythologies, it is not an easy trip - souls are often snatched by supernatural crows that eat it like old meat, or are thrown into an eternal hell of flame or a depressing gloom where the soul fades like fog. In the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead, most souls are captured again by demons of desire that spit them out back into a world of suffering, where each soul must suffer (that is, in this life) for its impurities. Traditionally, few make the promised land, whatever that is. In fact, this belief is so predominant globally that it might be called a human archetype - one that might represent a truth beyond our feeble mortal grasp.
It is this that "true religions" must respond to, and their response cannot be all rosy and bright. Whether its visions are ultimately true or not, the global human mind - in the unconscious for most of us in the west - is well aware of the travails of death. Here, we make horror movies about it, or see UFO's or mothmen floating above us emanating preternatural dread. Any response to this must be serious, and with that, must be exacting. It is why true religions present such difficult paths - because, to avoid the worst outcomes, at least as far as our inner minds know, there must be heroic efforts on our part. To put forth anything else would lie to the realities as far as our greater minds give us to understand.
With this, we can understand the strong move away from religion today; not only is religion tough stuff, but the very reason it is tough is terrifying. Thus we can hide death in the comfort of lives that are often long, thanks to good nutrition and modern medicine, and we can go about doing as we please without the impediments of theological strictures. But the facts of life are stubborn things, and the unconscious is not fooled. Fear and anxiety still encroach. At some point, any honest person must confront the reality and realize, at the very least, that simply living a normal life is not enough. What to do then is the burning question, and for each of us, the real quest. FK
It was only recently when I discovered that it loosely followed a real-life episode in central Pennsylvania. For months, "mothman" was seen by many people flying in the night sky, a large moth-like creature with a human head whose sightings often presaged death and disaster. The bridge collapse that followed the sightings had been real. No one has ever been able to explain any of it.
I have had dreams like that, one very recently. Dark, ominous, they are filled with a mindless dread, such that something bad is going to happen - or at the very least, that some unknown evil is present that colors everything. These are the types of dreams that often linger into the day, casting everything in shadow. The affects are unpleasant, but more than that, worrisome, bringing up a terrible question: is there evil in the world? Does it stalk us?
This sense seems an aberration in today's modern world, but such was the norm for most cultures, and still is for many. In the colonial New World, we had the witch trials, which were not primarily anti-women or political, as some sociologists have suggested. Rather, they were manifestations of the dread with which people often lived. Witchcraft from both sexes is still feared in much of Latin America and Africa today, but we of the progressive countries live out our dread more casually through such movies as this Mothman that I mentioned. Evil, however we dismiss it, still exists for some reason in our deepest thoughts. Even in the modern world, beneath our bright and shiny rational exteriors, this dread has not gone away. And many of us fear, without saying it, that it still might be played out: with, say, our children snatched by psycho-killers, or with ourselves - perhaps in our own deaths, which is at the very heart of darkness.
Experts on death have long known that we have purposefully pushed death out of the normal arena and into the hospital and elderly care homes, not just to save us from often unpleasant clean-up chores, but because it is so...distasteful, a horror that will ultimately defeat all of us regardless of high-tech or secular beliefs. Having no way out, we simply dismiss it or hide it as best we can, but it is always there. Perhaps it is not the only evil lurking, but it is the one that we cannot deny, and can never claim to conquer.
It - the darkness of death - is powerful stuff and in the end cannot be soothed by blissful New Age accounts of welcoming friends and relatives at the end of the tunnel. This may be ultimately true, but first we have to reach the tunnel and travel its awesome dimension. In traditional mythologies, it is not an easy trip - souls are often snatched by supernatural crows that eat it like old meat, or are thrown into an eternal hell of flame or a depressing gloom where the soul fades like fog. In the famous Tibetan Book of the Dead, most souls are captured again by demons of desire that spit them out back into a world of suffering, where each soul must suffer (that is, in this life) for its impurities. Traditionally, few make the promised land, whatever that is. In fact, this belief is so predominant globally that it might be called a human archetype - one that might represent a truth beyond our feeble mortal grasp.
It is this that "true religions" must respond to, and their response cannot be all rosy and bright. Whether its visions are ultimately true or not, the global human mind - in the unconscious for most of us in the west - is well aware of the travails of death. Here, we make horror movies about it, or see UFO's or mothmen floating above us emanating preternatural dread. Any response to this must be serious, and with that, must be exacting. It is why true religions present such difficult paths - because, to avoid the worst outcomes, at least as far as our inner minds know, there must be heroic efforts on our part. To put forth anything else would lie to the realities as far as our greater minds give us to understand.
With this, we can understand the strong move away from religion today; not only is religion tough stuff, but the very reason it is tough is terrifying. Thus we can hide death in the comfort of lives that are often long, thanks to good nutrition and modern medicine, and we can go about doing as we please without the impediments of theological strictures. But the facts of life are stubborn things, and the unconscious is not fooled. Fear and anxiety still encroach. At some point, any honest person must confront the reality and realize, at the very least, that simply living a normal life is not enough. What to do then is the burning question, and for each of us, the real quest. FK
RSS Feed