Pandora’s Box and Other Myths

It is striking how ancient myths link up with modern-day thought and religious ideas if you dig a little deeper.

For the ancient Greeks, Pandora and her box represented the first woman, part of a creationist myth, comparable to Eve in the creation myth of Abrahamic religions. Pandora could, today, represent liberated woman, seeking equality through work and in the family. Her disobedience in opening the forbidden box might be heralded as a courageous step towards fulfillment.

 My first introduction to philosophy at college in the early sixties was through the study of the ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates and Plato. I often wonder if Plato was right all along when he saw the material world as just clothing for the real world. The ancient Greeks, especially Platonism, advised people to look to the harmony of the universe, so that by venerating its grandeur they might forget their immediate afflictions.

The French have often led the way in philosophy. Descartes, in the seventeenth century, wrote “I think therefore I am.” We all know when we employ cognitive skills that we, as subjects, are doing so; but no one has been able to satisfactorily explain for me the phenomenon of conscious thought. Research into consciousness is ongoing.

Psychology has replaced, for me, the original emphasis on philosophy, as a way of understanding reality. William James was an early precursor of modern day psychologists. I’ve always been drawn to the ideas of Carl Jung, who utilized terms such as ‘archetypes‘, ‘projection‘ and the ‘shadow‘ to describe psychological phenomena that touch us all as humans.

 For a time I studied Buddhism in an attempt to find meaning in the universe, but soon learnt that the ideas of karma and reincarnation were just as beset by dogma as most religious ideas are. According to Gnostics, karma at best can only explain how the chain of suffering and imperfection works. It does not inform us in the first place why such a sorrowful and malign system should exist. However, as soon as one adopts a religious path,  freedom “goes out  the window” and one is bound to a way of thinking like a captive tied by ropes and cords. Gnosticism beckoned me for a long while, however.

[blockquote align=”none” author=”Wikipedia”]In the Gnostic view, there is a true, ultimate and transcendent God, who is beyond all created universes and who never created anything in the sense in which the word “create” is ordinarily understood. While this True God did not fashion or create anything, He (or, It) “emanated” or brought forth from within Himself the substance of all there is in all the worlds, visible and invisible. In a certain sense, it may therefore be true to say that all is God, for all consists of the substance of God. By the same token, it must also be recognized that many portions of the original divine essence have been projected so far from their source that they underwent unwholesome changes in the process. To worship the cosmos, or nature, or embodied creatures is thus tantamount to worshiping alienated and corrupt portions of the emanated divine essence. [/blockquote]

Is it preferable, therefore, to remain open to the ineffable? Some things can only be experienced, without their being fully understood. Words are “cluncky” and inadequate to transfer thoughts onto the page. And still we must try…

Without conscious thought, we would not be human. But with it comes the challenge of becoming stronger and less afraid as we advance through life. Without accepting challenges and the chance of pain, there can be no opportunity for developing courage and for achieving those goals of which we are capable. And perhaps of experiencing the ineffable.

Take fear, for example, fear. We all experience, at different stages in life, relative degrees and amounts of fear. Nightmares are probably the projected images of this ubiquitous human emotion trying to be “heard” and challenged by the psyche at night. Once looked at, and perhaps analyzed, these fear fragments are often exorcised for what they really are: parts of the imaginative psyche at work trying to sort out problems while we sleep.

As a writer, I prefer the mystical/mythical way of seeing reality. It is, of course, a question of balance. We are, after all, spiritual beings clothed in an animal or human body. Both sides of our being need to be addressed and considered in living our lives.

 I like the fact that, what was left in Pandora’s box, after all the negatives flew out, was hope. This suggests that optimism wins out in the end. Most religions support this viewpoint: positivity is far more powerful than negativity and brings us closer to and in line with what we acknowledge to be a spiritual approach to life.

 
Pandora and her Box

 What Do You “Gnow” about Gnosticism? (And Does it Matter?)
https://worldhistory.us/ancient-history/ancient-greece/philosophers-of-ancient-greece-socrates-plato-and-aristotle.php