We need a mildly schizophrenic relationship to myth.

We are almost fated to have an unhealthy relationship with myth, says Bernardo.

"Before the Enlightenment, the distinction between literal and symbolic truth simply did not exist. The myth reached directly into the emotional and intuitive layers of the psyche — which is precisely where it was designed to land."

Today, we expect everything to be literal, and taken literally, religious myth leads to fundamentalism or is ignored.

If ignored, we are impoverished. But if taken merely as metaphor, the stories lose their transformative power.

Instead, we need a 'mildly schizophrenic relationship' with myth: Knowing it isn't true whilst feeling as if it were.

"These things never happened, but they always are." - Sallust

"Rationally, you cannot interpret it literally. Otherwise, you flatten it. You just smash it. And it becomes silly for the reasons you just described. What about the people who lived before Jesus was born? Were they saved?

You know, you get into this sort of space that makes the whole thing look absolutely silly. So you cannot take it literally from an intellectual perspective.

But from an emotional perspective, you have to take it in as though it were literally true... Because otherwise, it loses its emotional purchase on you. It doesn't have a grip on you anymore. You exile it, you kick it upstairs to a higher floor of spiritual abstraction that doesn't really help you evolve or relate to the myth at all.

The demand that a healthy relationship with mythology places on us is to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

And this is what excruciatingly difficult, because almost invariably we tend to go one way or the other."

Christ the archetype precedes the man

The key is to recognise that not everything can be conveyed with analytic language. Something our culture has forgotten. Whilst metacognition can formulate the questions, the answers may come in symbols and stories. They may awaken a knowing far deeper than language can touch at the roots of existence.

“Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots” - Rumi

"So if you look at the Christ archetype, the Messiah archetype, the Saviour archetype: The archetype itself has no form. It's empty. It's a pattern that predates, pre-exists, every instance of that pattern.

So an archetype always is. But it never was."

In other words, any concrete instance of the archetype is not the archetype itself.

"This is what Sallust is reminding us of: Christ always is, but never was... Even if there was a man that went by that name, Christ as the archetype preceded that man.

Is this sacrilegious, what I just said?

No, this is 101 theology. If Christ is a member of the Trinity, he precedes the existence of Yeshua from Nazareth.

Listen to what I'm about to say with your heart. If you're a Christian, don't judge me too severely. To me, it is 100% irrelevant if there was a Yeshua of Nazareth running around 2026 years ago... I think it was Rilke who said, that, the life of Christ is not something that happened in the past. It's something that is unfolding every day in our lives.

He was alert. Rilke paid attention to things, there's no doubt about that.

What the mythology tells you, what it conveys to you, is a concrete embodiment of a template. A way of being in the world, a way of relating to nature, to oneself, to others. To whatever aspect of reality is transcended to us from the particular state of mind we take on right now, which we call life."

Of all the books he has written, Bernardo is most in love with 'More than Allegory'. He is reminded to reread it by friends when his thinking becomes to linear, returning to a more spacious and open mindset that this session evoked.

We also discussed:

• The most influential philosopher of all time
• How the point of life is to ask the right questions
• Individuation as the path to embody myth
• Could soul and separation the ultimate myth and archetype?

Next week, Nour takes the helm for a session on explanation, computation and reality, starting 1hr later than our normal time.

See you then!

Amir

P.S. Dinner for One - an injoke for our German members :)

Recording

0:15:45 More Than Allegory Overview — why myth is more than metaphor
0:25:40 Peter MacLean: the logical contradictions of literal interpretation
0:28:00 The greatest dilemma of mythology: literal vs. non-literal
0:36:00 Christianity's spread — intellectual imbalance, not intellectual stunting
0:42:00 Sallust: "That which always is, but never was"
0:52:00 Nikola: moving myth from intellect to instinct — individuation & life as teacher
1:09:00 Julia Luke: More Than Allegory as Bernardo's own individuation
1:17:00 Nietzsche's "God is dead" as Negredo
1:30:00 Ciarán: dissociation as the most fundamental archetype
1:39:00 Life complexes & reincarnation under analytic idealism
1:54:00 Rita: revelation, the diversity of myths, and the limits of language