Ch 1 The Birth Of Brahman

Interpreting Oriental Myth
The primary point of oriental wisdom is that we are not in exile - god is within you.
*Orient vs Occident
*High Culture developed in Mesopotamia Aprox. 8000 b.c.
*3500 b.c. writing. mathematics and controlled astronomical observation ( able to predict the path of the major orbiting bodies)
*Idea of an impersonal power controlling the universe took shape.
*Mythology of a people = grandiose poetic image referring to principles that are mysterious and ineffable (4 primary principles).
*1open the mind of everyone in the society to the mysterious dimension that cannot be analyzed - only experienced.
*2

Introduction - Humbling Of Indra

• Due to growing scientific skepticism in the West (literalism), myths and their ability to move us have fallen into disvavor and are now sen as falsehoods.
  
  
  
  • Yet dreams, according to Freud, Jung and Adler, are a form of personal mythologization.
  
  


• Can we recover a more mystical realization of the miracle of life?


• Mythologies are not invented, they are found
  
  
  
  • What does this mean?
    (collective unconscious or essential shared experience)
  
  


• Sublime - The individual (the ego sense) diminishes "out of sight" in the face of prodigiious space or energy - Space is sublime - Apollo.


• The sublime shows us that you are a manifestation of the eternal. The sublime wakes us up to this truth. Indra's humbling is an example of myth used to relay this truth.