Jean Houston - Myth, Consciousness, and Psychic Research

Jean Houston

This chapter explores the crisis of consciousness and its historical analogies and suggests that the mythic persona emerging from the crisis points toward a new image of man and a new possibility for humanity. It is additionally argued that the crisis of consciousness being experienced in our time holds both threat and promise for the future of mankind. The collapse of institutions, beliefs, and values systems imperils the motivations of men precisely at a time when countless problems of unparalleled urgency have to be dealt with. Yet the very collapse of old certainties has brought down the circumscribed boundaries of consciousness. Man is left without sheltering walls, but there are also new openings to see through, dramatic possibilities for growth, and new ways of being. Our time can be seen as uniquely favorable to the actualization of many latent and powerful human potentials and psychic capacities. Neither religion nor science, dogmatic theology nor dogmatic rationalism, any longer has the strength to impose arbitrary limits on reality and consciousness. Out of this uniquely free situation has already arisen the human-potentials movement and the great strides being made in psychic research, and there is emerging a new science of consciousness, which in itself promises a revolution in the current scientific paradigm.

In the beginning was the myth. The myth: that undefinable something that never was but is always happeningthe coded DNA of the human psyche, calling us to citizenship in a universe and a reality larger than our aspiration and richer and more complex than all our dreams. Be it the myth of Gilgamesh or that of the Grail, of the many god-men who have died only to rise again, or even of the divine comedy of Don Quixote de la Mancha, the myth is always the stimulus, the alarm clock, the lure of becoming. It quickens the heart to its potential and prepares the ground for societys transformation.

It follows then that to discern the emerging new forms of culture and consciousness, one should look to the myths and symbolic images that have begun to flower in the cultural mindscape of the past few years. What are these new archetypes that fascinate, these new myths that bypass ordinary critical consciousness and call to the deeps that lie within? What are the images of the more, or the less, than human that rise unbeckoned in modern mans dreams or waking fantasies? What or who makes the hair stand up on the head, the toes curl, and the breath come quicker? Think about it.

In ancient Greece on the occasion of the great dramatic festivals, the cosmic probings and lofty yearnings of the mythic tragedies were more often than not preceded by Dionysian satyr plays, grotesque and ribald revels, the pop myths and lowlife liturgies dealing out images of vulgarized sex and rascally violence. These lesser and more profane myths served to prepare the heart by degrees for the powerful and soul-charging tragic myths to come.

The same may be true today. A look into present-day consciousness reveals a veritable cornucopia of satyrs, Dionysiacs, grotesquesthe whole peculiar crew that waits on the lesser mysteries. Some of their names? Dracula, Frankensteins monster, the Mummy, the Blob, Unidenti fied Flying Objects, the Starship Enterprise, the chariots of the gods, Atlantis rising, California falling into the sea, the year 2000, LSD, DDT, FBI, NBC, the astrologers, witches, covens, and soothsayers coming at you from out of the national woodwork, the Loud family, the Partridge family, the entire city of Los Angeles. On the next wave there come those musicians whose music serves not to amuse but to mythologize. The Beatles were among the first and probably the best, and after them the Deluge: the Grateful Dead, Guess Who, Black Sabbath, Three Dog Nightmany sporting primeval bearded faces and costumes fit for shamans. Lately, and right on schedule too, the Androgyne appears, still a creature of indeterminate sex, but this time electrified and amplified, a shrieking, frenetic, acoustical terror, gifted with some strange Dionysian alchemy to evoke the freak in all hearers, turning ballads into orgies and concerts into celebrations of