ABRAXAS Although life is an affair of light and shadows, we never accept it as such. We are always reaching toward the light on the high peaks. From childhood, through early religious and academic [indoctrination], we are given values which correspond only to an ideal world. The shadowy side of Life is ignored, and Western Christianity provides us with nothing with which we can be used to interpret it. Thus the young men of the West are unable to deal with the mixture of Light & Shadow of which life really consists; they have no way of linking the facts of existence to their preconceived notions of absolutes. The links connecting life with universal symbols are therefore broken, and disintegration sets in. In the orient, especially in India, the situation is very different. There, an ancient civilization based on nature accepts a cosmos of multi-faceted Gods; and thus the Easterner can realize the simultaneous existence of light and shadow and of good and evil. Absolutes do not exist, and if God is thus disarmed, so is the devil. But the price of suchan understanding is a direct tribute to nature itself. Consequently the Hindu finds himself less individualized than the westerner; he is little more than a part of nature, one element in the collective soul. The question which the Western Christian now has to face is whether, without losing his individuality, he can accept the existence of light and shadow and of God and the devil. to do so, he will have to disover the God who was the Christian before the personalized Christ, and who can continue in a viable form after him. Such a deity would be the Christ of Atlantis, who once existed publicly, and who still continues to exist- even though submerged under the deep waters of our present civilization. Such agod would also be Abraxasm who is God and the devil at the same time. ~ Herman Hesse
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 08:12:43 +0000