Counseling in the Mythic Forest of Rold

In the mythic woods of Rold Forest, far away from the artificial Matrix Conspiracy of the modern world, I offer Philosophical Counseling to people who are in a process of awakening from The Matrix Conspiracy, and its underlying occult structure, The Godgame; people who can become members of the resistance, people who can become "Countermatrix Hackers", or "Countermatrix Agents". 

The Mandala of Kant and Longchenpa

I have suggested, that a human being seems to have two aspects: an energy-aspect and a consciousness-aspect. Seen from the energy-aspect lawfulness rules: your body is subject to the physical laws of nature (both classical laws and quantum laws); your psychic system is subject to the lawfulness of the energy fields and of the energy transformations: compensatory karma. The psychic system is what I refer to when I talk about thoughts and mind.

Seen from the consciousness-aspect, then a human being seems to be akin to the wholeness, to be transcendent in relation to these lawfulnesses (also the quantum laws). The wholeness is one and the same as reality. So, in my view consciousness, wholeness and reality is one and the same. Please give this a moment of reflection. Awareness seems to be a quality of the now, and therefore a quality of life itself: nature. Many ancient Indian scripts say that the Universe is in meditation, or rather: the Universe is one great meditation! When you are in the Now life, nature and universe expands. Awareness seems to have the qualities of openness and spaciousness. Unawareness closes these qualities. We can all experience this quite easily. Take a walk in the forest. Unawareness, or distractedness, cause that we don´t see the nature we are walking in. Awareness causes that we see it much more clearly. And by practicing meditation (awareness in now), you begin to connect with this open dimension of your being. In fact, it introduces you to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call Sûnyatâ (see my book Sûnyatâ Sutras). This spaciousness is also the source of love. Spaciousness is simply love. The openness and the spaciousness come from your heart, not you head. It is not neither mental nor material.

In other words: Matter (hereunder the body) and mind (hereunder thoughts, the unconscious, the psyche, subject, the content of consciousness) – are something else than consciousness itself.

If I should try to characterize this theory in traditional philosophy of mind, it would be a kind of double-aspect theory. The double-aspect theory is a type of mind-body monism. According to double-aspect theory, the mental and the material are different aspects or attributes of a unitary reality, which itself is neither mental nor material (so this is neither a materialist, nor an idealist, metaphysical theory, seen I the light of Western philosophy).

The unitary reality is the form of consciousness, an aspect which is completely neglected in traditional Western philosophy, but very commonly known in mysticism and Eastern philosophy.

In Western philosophy they have only contemplated the content of consciousness, and not the form (though Kant was very close to it with his concept of The Transcendental Apperception, the unity where the self and the world come together). They haven´t looked into the consciousness itself, as you do in meditation, but only followed its direction towards an object; what you call the intentionality of consciousness. In fact, they claim that consciousness always must have intentionality. But this is only what I refer to as the mind. Intentionality is the power of the mind to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs.

Immanuel Kant

Meditation stops the intentionality, and directs the mind into its source, namely consciousness itself, which is one and the same as reality and wholeness. You could also say that meditation changes the consciousness from being one-directional to being bidirectional. Bidirectional consciousness means that the consciousness both is directed towards its form and its content. It is being open to the form of consciousness, aware of both magnetic poles in the field of subject-object experience. I have also called this the wholeness of the observer and the observed.

In his book Bevidsthedens Flydende Lys [The Flowing Light of Consciousness, 2008] the Danish philosopher and spiritual teacher Jes Bertelsen says, then you actually can make a fascinating comparison between Kant and the Tibetan Dzogchen master Longchenpa, because where Kant´s philosophy stops with the transcendental apperception, Longchenpa´s philosophy begins. Where Kant´s philosophy goes in the direction of the content of consciousness, and describes the categories of experience, Longchenpa´s philosophy goes in the direction of the form of consciousness, and describes the categories of enlightenment. Kant doesn´t mention the enlightened state. Longchenpa doesn´t mention the content of consciousness. Tibetan Buddhism in fact has a name for Kant´s transcendental apperception; it is called Rigpa, the knowing of the original wakefulness that is personal experience. So Kant and Longchenpa have the same starting point: the transcendental apperception, but go in two different directions. Together they could form the complete philosophy of the bidirectional consciousness: a mandala of the cosmos.

Longchenpa

As in the creation Kant moves towards the manifestation of the world, and he analyses the categories of experiencing this world. Kant suggested, that space and time were forms of experience, not outer objective relations in themselves, but fundamental common human structures. In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Joseph Campbell says in Chapter 1 Cosmology and the Mythic Imagination:

It was a startling experience for me, as it must have been for many others watching the television broadcast of the Apollo spaceflight immediately before that of Armstrong´s landing on the moon, when Ground Control in Houston asked, “Who´s navigating now?” and the answer that came back was, “Newton!”

I was reminded of Immanuel Kant´s discussion of space in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, where he asks: “How is it that in this space, here, we can make judgments that we know with apodictic certainty will be valid in that space, there?”

The little module was beyond the moon. That was a part of space that no one had ever before visited. Yet the scientists in Houston knew exactly how much energy to eject from those jets, when turned in just what direction, to bring the module down from outer space to within a mile of a battleship waiting for it in Pacific Ocean.

Kant´s reply to the question was that the laws of space are known to the mind because they are of the mind. They are of a knowledge that is within us from birth. A knowledge a priori, which is only brought to recollection by apparently external circumstance. During the following flight, when Armstrong´s booted foot came down to leave its imprint on the surface of the moon, no one knew how deeply it might sink into lunar dust. That was to be knowledge a posteriori, knowledge from experience, knowledge after the event. But how to bring the module down, and how to get it up there, had been known from the beginning. Moreover, those later spacecraft that are now cruising far beyond the moon, in what is known as outer space! It is known exactly how to maneuver them, to bring messages back, to turn them around, even to correct their faults.

In other words, it then occurred to me that outer space is within inasmuch as the laws of space are within us; outer and inner space are the same.

[…]

There is a beautiful saying of Novalis: “The seat of the soul is there, where the outer and the inner worlds meet.” That is the wonderland of myth. From the outer world the senses carry images to the mind, which do not become myth, however, until there transformed by fusion with according insights, awakened as imagination from the inner world of the body. The Buddhists speak of Buddha Realms. These are planes and orders of consciousness that can be brought to mind through meditations on appropriate mythologized forms. Plato tells of universal ideas, the memory of which is lost at birth but through philosophy may be recalled. These correspond to Bastian´s “elementary ideas” and Jung´s “archetypes of the collective unconscious.”

[Here Campbell is wrong, since Jung´s archetypes are a psychological reduction of reality. The Buddha realms and Plato´s universal ideas are ontological realms, not psychological realms. Campbell is therefore himself in danger of ending in psychological reductionism. I will return to this].

In India, as noticed by Ananda K. Coomarasway, works of art representing indifferent objects, local personages and scenes, such as fill the walls and rooms of most of our museums, have been characterized as desi (“local, popular, provincial”) or as nâgara (“fashionable, worldly”) and are regarded as esthetically insignificant; whereas those representing deities or revered ancestors, such as might appear in temples or on domestic shrines, are perceived as tokens of an inward, spiritual “way” or “path,” termed mârga, which is a word derived from the vocabulary of the hunt, denoting tracks or trail of an animal, by following which the hunter comes to his quarry. Similarly, the images of deities, which are not local forms of “elementary ideas,” are footprint left, as it were, by local passages of the “Universal Self” (âtman), through contemplating which the worshiper attains “Self-rapture” (âtmânananda). A passage from Plotinus may be quoted to this point: “Not all who perceive with eyes the sensible products of art are affected alike by the same object, but if they know it for the outward portrayal of an archetype subsisting in intuition, their hearts are shaken and they recapture memory of that Original.”

[I have termed these tracks, trails and footprints as “The dreaming tracks and songlines in the artwork of Man and the Universe,” or as “the universal images in time.” They correspond to progressive karma. I have, with inspiration from Karen Blixen, termed the Original as “The Ancient”].

The unity of the self and the world, the place where the outer and the inner worlds meet, is the transcendental apperception, or Rigpa: the wholeness of the observer and the observed.

Now, if we should follow Longchenpa from the transcendental apperception, it would be in the opposite direction, in towards the Original, the categories of the unmanifested, the form of consciousness, or the enlightened mind. In the following I will follow Jes Bertelsen´s account of this.

The two main forms of practice in Dzogchen are Trekjö and Tögal. And they relate - according to Longchenpa - to the basic division between emptiness (stong pa) and appearance (snang ba). This duality goes a long way back in Indian Dzogchen and further into Indian Mahayana Buddhism. Famous is the distinction and its abolition in the Heart Sutra:

”Here, O Sariputra, form (rupam) is emptiness (Sûnyatâ) and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness, whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.”

Trektjö moves from the concrete formations of phenomena, thoughts and experiences, emotions and senses into the Original, into the source from which all concrete formations of phenomena, thoughts and experiences, feelings and senses come: the creative formless openness of the consciousness, the apperception's basic space.

Tögal relates to the appearances because Tögal is to see the apperception's spontaneous self-radiation without that the apperception forgets itself.

Another Dzogchen master, Tulku Urgyen, said: The Tögal visions are rig dang, the self-radiation of Rigpa. However, Tulku Urgyen continued, if there is no actual recognition of Rigpa, the visions are lung dang, manifestations of the karmic wind, pure dual fixation.

The message in Tögal is that consciousness can rest in recognition of its innermost essence. Tögal only works when the consciousness is in the Rigpa state. The visions are only Tögal visions when they are apperceptive: while the visions are happening, the observing consciousness rests in nondual apperception.

Tögal is to see with Rigpa, with apperception, to see with the nondual self-conscious consciousness beyond language.

Where Trektjö is the movement from the dual mind to the nondual wakefulness, Tögal is insight in the creation of the world. Tögal is an insight into how the world, language and mind every moment are spontaneously created by the enlightened unity-consciousness.

This process usually takes place automatical or hidden. Our dual mind does not perceive that the mind itself and the world-image are recreated and thus maintained every moment – seen from the perspective of the totally liberated unity-consciousness.

You can´t see this until you have discovered and stabilized the Rigpa-consciousness - claims Dzogchen. Every single moment's restoration of self-image and world-image can only be seen from the apperception's consciousness-dimension, the nondual wakefulness.

The Tögal visions begin by themselves when Rigpa is stabilized; that is: when the consciousness rests without effort and thought, wide awake in the unity of apperception. It seems to be a common experience that when consciousness, without a single distraction, rests in the recognition of the innermost consciousness somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes, then the apperception will begin to perceive the flowing light.

Most often the unfolding process begins with spots or particles of light in the dimension of apperception.

After the end of the state, when the dual mind and language want to describe these apperceptive light particles, the mind will locate them: in the heart, in the center line, in the pineal gland, in the focus point of consciousness, in the infinite blue sky. However, these Tögal points of light are embraced by the apperception. They are in the Rigpa dimension, and they are permeated by Rigpa. They are therefore only dual or analogue localizable. Our ordinary dual mind would - in connection with the registration, or just the description, of such a light particle - be tempted to explain, for example, a focus point of attention, a center of a symbolic circle, an energy whirl, a mandala or a cosmic point; that is: a point in a wholeness that gives access to the information of that wholeness. Or the mind would locate the event to a practice point, a point of Rigpa, a point of origination, or perhaps to the unity point of the apperception.

If the nondual consciousness-continuum does not distract from these flashes of light and bright particles, they will develop by themselves. First, they form strings or chains or pearls of light points. Longchenpa calls them Vajra chains (rdo rje lu gu rgyad).

The dual mind´s association series may be: association chains - thought chains - molecular chains - DNA strings - superstrings - the center line with its chakra spots - light beams - sun beams.

When the light points subsequently have been localized in the heart, in the center line or in the infinity of the consciousness, these chains of light will afterwards naturally be located in the center line or in the outer blue infinity.

When the localization is situated in the central channel, it appears crystal-clear. Longchenpa calls this situation the Kati-crystal channel (ka ti shel sbugs) and describes the crystal-light´s flowing apperceptive dynamics as follows:

"As crystal-light collected inside, stay in Dharmakaya, the basic space of origin."

The essential is the constant, relaxed stay in un-distracted Rigpa-continuity.

Distraction - language, comments, associations, experience-production, loss of apperceptive wakefulness into dual consciousness - transforms the situation qualitatively from nondual consciousness to the common dual mind, now filled with so-called spiritual experiences with their blend of imagination, healing, inspiration and what in today's language is called self-assertion: nutrition and air to the ego.

Here, the situation turns around and goes towards Kant, Campbell, and religious interpretations. There is nothing wrong in this, except that you lose the direction towards enlightenment. The danger is spiritual crises and misinterpretations, or blends of personal, collective and universal images. The latter is what happens, for example, in a psychedelic trip. I have described this in my booklet The Psychedelic Experience versus The Mystical Experience. This has especially to do with the reduction (mix) of ontological realms (universal and collective images) to psychological realms (personal images). We saw that Campbell, due to his inspiration from Jung, tended towards this.

Campbell´s theory is exceedingly conservative and founded on a deep nostalgia: for him, the cure for modern problems is found by returning to earlier notions of spirituality and moral virtue. In promoting a “living mythology,” Campbell harkens back to a lost “golden age” from which we have fallen, but to which we can return with effort and guidance of a “sage.” It is a reductionism, a psychologism. And herewith there is the danger of ending in idealism, and the same psychologizing, emotionalizing and therapeutizing ideology of our society, which New Age and Self-help stand for.

As I showed above, I supply this with my own metaphysical double-aspect theory, and with this a philosophical principle, namely to examine, whether the karmic talk and experiences of the “experts” and their clients remove their energy-investments in the actual reality. If focus is displaced backwards, then the collective time has taken over and spiritual seen there therefore happens an escape. Such an escape is seen both in Freud, Jung, Rank, Grof, Janov, Campbell, rebirthing, regression. None of these people and theories can therefore be said to work spiritual. And if they use the karma idea in that way, it is no longer a spiritual help, it is a collective displacement of the focus backwards in time and therewith out of reality and into the unreality of the collective time.

But what if we continue along Longchenpa´s path? In the foregoing we have described  (with Jes Bertelsen as a guide) the development of the Tögal visions from one point to a chain or line of points. The next step is the spread of colours, as light, which breaks in a crystal, forming rainbow lights. Afterwards, when the dual mind takes over with language and division, this state is usually located in the heart, in the eyes or in the infinity of space. This spread of colour-shades expands to a general bright transparent quality of the apperception's space-like widen dimension as such.

When this last step has been reached, the spontaneous self-radiance of Rigpa unfolds in the Tögal visions: the enlightened apperceptive direct perception of Man, the world, the cosmos, as flowing unlimited light, transparency and rainbow light, permeated by the cohesion of compassion and love. 

Enlightenment has happened. 

Related books:

Bevidstheden Flydende lys [The Flowing Light of Consciousness, 2008], by Jes Bertelsen

Sûnyatâ Sutras, by Morten Tolboll

Krishnamurti´s Notebook -free download (Krishnamurti had daily experiences of the flowing light, which he called different names such as: presence, benediction, immensity, sacredness, or simply The Other or The Otherness. In his Notebook he, in an exceptional poetic way, described these experiences blended with descriptions of nature).

Related article:

Metaphysics. Ontology; Part 1: The Problem of Mind, from my online book Philosophical Counseling withTolkien (here I describe my concept of the metaphysical double-aspect theory).

Related booklets:

Atheist Fundamentalism (my notion of the double-aspect theory is described in the last part).

The Psychedelic Experience versus The Mystical Experience.

Related pop culture file:

Star Wars (here I explain my own space mythology seen in relation to Campbell´s monomyth and the Star Wars space mythology).

Related articles:

The Hero´s Journey (Campbell´s monomyth).

The Philosophy of Karen Blixen (her concept of the Ancient corresponds more or less to the Buddhist concept of the Original – and she seemed to radiate a very high degree of spiritual insight).

The Philosophy of Krishnamurti

On the Nature of Longing

In 1939, as Europe braced for the worst, J.R.R. Tolkien completed the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, emphasizing how terrible riders in black could terrorize even the peaceful oasis of Frodo´s beloved Shire. The Ringwraiths of Middle-earth added a touch of evil not present in Tolkien´s previous novel, The Hobbit. In The Fellowship, the Black Riders are messengers of a greater evil brewing in Mordor. However, within the parallel perils of Europe in the twentieth century and Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age, Tolkien elegantly writes of safe havens where even in the darkest times, songs of love are sung under starlit skies. Nestled in the perfumed mountains of Rivendell and the ancient forest of Lórien, many of the elves of old knows what to hold on to, and what to let go of.

It is not unexpected that Frodo should be healed (though never cured) and reunited with Gandalf and Bilbo at the house of Elrond in Rivendell. Readers of The Hobbit already are familiar with the charms of The Last Homely House, the westernmost outpost of the elves. “That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, ‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.” In Rivendell the Nine Riders of the enemy are turned back, Isildur´s sword is re-forged and given to Aragorn, and the Fellowship of men, dwarves, hobbits and elves is formed. Despite, or because of such hard work, there is joyous singing, day and night.

The elves of Rivendell are famous for their singing. In the Christian story of creation, the New Testament tells us that in the beginning, there was the Word. In Tolkien´s spin, we are told that in the beginning, there was the Song. Before writing The Hobbit, Tolkien laid out the origins of Middle-earth and how the happy elves found a home there. Though The Silmarillion was first published in 1977, four years after Tolkien´s death, it contains the history behind Middle-earth that Tolkien had been working on for much of his adult life. As it begins, the creator of the world, Ilúvatar, made the Ainur, or Holy Ones, and gave them the power of song. The voices of the Ainur, like innumerable choirs and musical instruments,

Began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went into the Void, and it was not void.

Both elves and men (Quendi and Atani) were created as important players of the world´s symphony. But though the race of men will do great things, Ilúvatar proclaims, it is the elves who “shall be the fairests of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world.”

Tolkien´s Rivendell and Lórien are places you long for. Every kind of longing contains a glimpse of a longing after the universal vision and song of the Universe. Every longing is a thought. Your thoughts are words and images, which work in the river of time, which also is called Heraklit´s River.

As the Indian philosophy claims, then this stream not only contains your personal history, it also contains a collective and universal history – together a history, which consists of images. These images are form-formations of energy, creative up-tensions, a kind of matter, though on a highly abstract plane. These images exist in other words in the actual movement of the matter, and therefore not only in your mental activity, but also outside you in nature.  So, your thinking rises from an endless deep of images, which flow in the actual movement of nature.

The Indian philosophy claims, that the movement of time in itself is a negationpower. Time is one great negation of the Now´s unmoved being, which is the unmanifested, the actual source: the Good, the True and the Beautiful (God, Brahman, Ilúvatar). The negationpower is in that way the power behind the world´s manifestation. This manifestation, the Indian philosophy claims, has arised on the background of a mighty universal vision, which originates from past universes. In this way, the future arises, and an outgoing creative movement; a movement, which can be compared with what they within science call The Big Bang. In the outgoing movement, the great vision becomes, because of the negationpower, shattered in many images, which now become a kind of memories about the great vision. In this way, the past arises, and a longing back towards the origin, the unmanifested. And then a destructive backmovement is created.

In that way, the movement of time consists of two universal movements, which we could call the outgoing movement and the backmovement. Future and past, creation and destruction. These two movements are reflected throughout the universe in a multiplicity of different lifecycles; they are Samsara´s wheel of up-cycles which are followed by down-cycles and vice versa (for example life and death, success and fiasco, joy and sorrow) – all this which lie behind the law of karma and rebirth. This universe is for example considered to be a reincarnation of a past universe, the same way as a human being is considered to be a reincarnation of a past existence.

So the images in the movement of time is shattered reflections of the great vision of the universe, and are background for the manifestation of the holy scriptures of India, the Vedas, which are claimed to have been ”heard” by wise men (the so-called Seers) in the dawn of time, and by word of mouth delivered over oceans of time. They are shadows, dreams, masks, mirrors, fables, fairy-tales, fictions, music and songs. The Vedas therefore both include the most sublime and difficult available philosophy, as for example in the Upanishads, and good folktales as Ramayana and Mahabharata (with the famous Bhagavadgita), which with its clear ethical messages is told in village temples, to the children as bedtime stories, and which is inspiration for great poets as Rabindranath Tagore.

But the thinking´s past (memories, knowledge, traumatic bindings) and future (plans, projects, ambitions) can easily become a never-ending self-circling activity. All sovereign and self-forgetful life-expressions (which are flowering in Rivendell and Lórien) are coming from the Now, while the circling life-expressions are coming from time.  Guild-feelings, regret, anger, complaints, gloom, bitterness and all forms of lack of forgiveness, are created by too much past and too little presence in the Now. Discomfort, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are created by too much future and too little presence in the Now.

Tolkien´s Middle-earth, you could say, is in the same way filled with many dangers, and after the newly-formed Fellowship leaves the comforts of Rivendell, the participants are beset by snowstorms high atop Caradhras, and orcs within the Mines of Moria. Before they escape the Mines, the members of the Fellowship suffer their greatest loss, as their guardian wizard and mentor Gandalf falls into darkness at the bridge of Khazad-dûm. But just when all seems lost for the weary band of travellers, they reach Lórien, a magical forest where elves live and sing in the treetops. Like Rivendell, Lórien is a place for spirits to rise. It is the safe haven of the Now.

Tolkien, like many existentialist philosophers before him, believes that meaningful happiness does not come from ignoring the dangers but from facing the pain and still affirming life. As we read Tolkien´s famous essay on the author of “Beowulf,” we get the distinct impression that Tolkien might be speaking of himself. He discusses the artistic impulse, “looking back into the pit, by a man learned in old tales who was struggling as it were, to get a general view of them all, perceiving their common tragedy of inevitable ruin, and yet feeling this more poetically because he himself removed from the direct pressure of its despair.”

Living through two world wars, Tolkien himself had seen his share of despair and ruin. The Lord of the Rings was written during the years 1936-1949, among the darkest years in England´s history.

Galadriel has a darker side to her as well. Galadriel had tried to make Lórien “a refuge and an island of peace and beauty, a memorial of ancient days,” but she was now “filled with regret and misgiving, knowing that the golden dream was hastening to a grey awakening.” What has so filled the strong and seemingly ageless Lady of the Wood so with regret?

Perhaps the cause of Galadriel´s growing unhappiness is that she remembers too much. She never really forgets the curse hanging over her from ages long gone. Though Frodo and Sam see only settled bliss, Galadriel feels the burden of being a stranger in a strange land. She can never be fully happy in Lórien, because she can never entirely let go of the past. Tolkien judges this clinging to the past to be an “error,” a futile attempt to “embalm time.” Holding on to perfection in an imperfect world is an ultimately tragic attempt by the elves to “have their cake without eating it.” As long as Galadriel harbors an irrational desire to turn back the clock, her songs are mournful and slow. Her curse reminds about Karen Blixen´s fate.

The mythologist Joseph Campbell´s theory of the monomyth (The Hero´s Journey) is in the same way exceedingly conservative and founded on a deep nostalgia: for him, the cure for modern problems is found by returning to earlier notions of spirituality and moral virtue. In promoting a “living mythology,” Campbell harkens back to a lost “golden age” from which we have fallen, but to which we can return with effort and guidance of a “sage.” This might have to do with the inspiration from Jung. It is a reductionism, a psychologism. And herewith there is the danger of ending in idealism, and the same psychologizing, emotionalizing and therapeutizing ideology of our society, which New Age and Self-help stand for.

I have therefore supplied this with my own metaphysical naturalism, and with this a philosophical principle, namely to examine, whether the karmic talk and experiences of the experts and clients remove their energy-investments in the actual reality. If focus is displaced backwards, then the collective time has taken over and spiritual seen there therefore happens an escape. Such an escape is seen both in Freud, Jung, Rank, Grof, Janov, rebirthing, regression. None of these people and theories can therefore be said to work spiritual. And if they use the karma idea in that way, it is no longer a spiritual help, it is a collective displacement of the focus backwards in time and therewith out of reality and into the unreality of the collective time.

The genuine karmic structures do not lie in the collective time, but in the universal time, which works in synchronism with the Now. If the karma idea is used spiritual seen correctly, then the focus, instead of being projected out in something afar (past lives, a guru, birth, the future), will be present in something very near, namely only in the most intensive experiences of this actual life, and after that: in this actual Now with its possibility of realizing your innermost. It is your awareness in the now that will find the progressive karma, and this awareness you can of course only practice yourself.

The progressive karma is our inner light. And that is also the bright side of Galadriel, her rational and wise side. Tolkien teaches us to trust that inner light and be strong enough to leave old problems behind. When Frodo freely offers Galadriel the One Ring to rule them all, the very Ring that Galadriel has coveted throughout the ages, she refuses, knowing full well that with the refusal comes her own demise. Though the Lady of the Wood has stayed too long, she can still find happiness by remembering who she is, while walking away from the pronouncements of her past. “’I pass the test,’ she exclaims. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel’”.

More than any other character in the tale, with the possible exception of Tom Bombadil, Lady Galadriel is imbued with the existentialist´s affirmation. As Frodo leaves the friendly borders of Lórien, she presents him with the symbolic light: The Phial of Galadriel. It was a crystal phial filled with water from her fountain which held the light of Eärendil's star - the light of the Two Trees as preserved in a Silmaril: a "star-glass." 

“It will shine still brighter when night is about you,” she promises. “May it be a light to you in dark places.”

And perhaps that is all that is meant by Tolkien´s imaginary elves. The elves find happiness when they trust in themselves. This self-confidence helps them sing throughout the darkest night, and leave the shores when the music ends. May their world be a light to us in our own dark places.

Related pop culture files:

The Hobbit

The Lord of the Rings

Related articles

The Hero´s Journey

The Philosophy of Karen Blixen