The Uroboric Journey of Consciousness
"Now is the time of returning With our thought jewels polished and gleaming; Now is the test of the boomerang Tossed in the night of redeeming." ---Robert Hunter from the Grateful Dead's "The Eleven"

Paper by Derrick Garbell
©  December, 1975

Introduction:

The uroboros symbol seems to provide a unified, integral image that reflects and illumines the ongoing predicament of human existence. Among other things, it symbolizes the circuitous journey of the individual consciousness: the departure from and reintergration into the Cosmic Source. I wish to examine some concrete manifestations of the archetype as it appears in mythology, art and religious scripture. Since the symbol points towards the origination and destination of the human (as well as all) consciousness, a deeper appreciation of it should provide a construct useful in the attainment of self-knowledge and personality integration.
It is towards this goal of self-realization that I undertake this study; I intend to interpret and summarize my "outward" experiences with the uroboros archetype (i.e., as it manifests in esthetic works and religious texts), as well as my "inner" experiences with it. By inner experiences I mean certain dream and meditation experiences that have shaped my comprehension of what is the case with the universe.

The uroboros is a symbol of the principle of regeneration and return inherent in the universe. The diurnal and seasonal cycles are suggested by it. Just as our days and nights follow each other in a rhythmic circle, so the seasons give birth to each other in sequence, each period in turn relying on what has died before to make itself anew. The Hindus extend their perception of temporal circuity to an even vaster scale, holding that even history itself is cyclical. (1) They conceive the human collective experience as enduring a 24,000 year round corresponding to the equinoctial precession of the earth's axis. During this grand world cycle the collective consciousness of humanity as a whole undergoes two 12,000 year periods, one of increasing, then one of decreasing ability to perceive the mysteries of Spirit. These 12,000 year periods encompass the four ages or yugas: satya, treta, dwapara, and kali. The Greek ages of gold silver, bronze, and iron correspond. In the higher, more enlightened ages of this world cycle, civilization is highly advanced, marked by universal political and spiritual harmony.

In the darkest age, the world mind experiences general discord and confusion. These periods of relative ignorance and wisdom reflect the distance of our sun from the dual star around which it revolves. (2) Like any orbit, this grand solar cycle is elliptical: there is a point of closest approach of the sun to its dual (peak of enlightened age) and one of farthest approach (height of dark age). Thus the brightest point in the cycle is at the end of the highest age in the ascending 12,000 year cycle, which coincides with the beginning of the subsequent descending 12,000 year cycle.

The darkest point is at the end of the darkest age in the descending cycle, which coincides with the lowest point at the re-commencement of the ascending 12,000 year cycle.

Our solar system is said to have been in a descending period from 11,500 B.C. to around 500 A.D. During this time civilization was not advancing, but deteriorating. Perhaps Western history and myth bears witness to this in the Atlantan, Mayan, Incan, Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman civilizations, each being inferior to its antecedent, until we reach the ultimate nadir of decay at the fall of the Roman Empire.
Whether or not this theory of history corresponds to the actual structure of the universe, the important point here is that history is regarded as circular rather than linear. The ages give rise to each other in circuitous succession. While a linear view would envision a decline in culture as implying its inevitable end and extinguishment, a cyclical view sees the decay in the darker ages as engendering the birth of the higher in a process of ceaseless and rhythmic flourishing and decline.

On a personal level we can see the uroboric principle as it manifests in the way we are educated, that is, grow in awareness. Knowledge is not a mere accumulation of discreet facts; it is a dynamic and organic condition of the person where ideas take root, grow if properly nourished, and bear fruit which in turn produce seeds to continue the endless process of awareness expansion. The self-fecundating attribute of the uroboros symbol applies here. The crucial thread is that ideas are recycled, not merely hoarded. As Confucius said, "He who learns but does not think is lost." (3) True abundance should not be measured by income alone; wealth is mainly determined by the circulation it enjoys. Thus William Blake declares (4) :

The poor Man's Farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's Shore.
One mite wrung from the Labrer’s Hands
Shall buy & sell the Miser’s Lands.

By analogy, the intake of information and theory will be stagnating and constipating unless it is counterbalanced by practice and experience. For example, the deluge of ideas accumulated in the course of each day at the "ivory tower" is inert and useless if hoarded in a notebook or memory like tape-recorded information until an examination triggers the release of the regurgitative floodgate. The dammed waters become functional only if systematically recycled. A true harvest arises when the mind irrigates itself by conscious, intelligent assimilation of new idea-seeds as they take root. Contemplation along with practical application to test the experiential relevance of the idea being contemplated are both necessary to effect harmonious growth of understanding. Thus the "deluge of knowing" organically nourishes the "plant of understanding," rather than continually drowning it in a flood of rootless concepts. Thus arises the Zen concept of "returning to the original mind,” a process activated more by idea pruning and simplification than by mental stimulation.

An abiding, concentrated scrutinization of the "things at hand" (5) is the way to further self-expansion. As self interacts with other (or, depending on one's epistemological orientation, as self generates other and observes the content of that process of perceptual creation), experiences occur. These experiences are the primal mud that will breed the Lotus of self-realization. Matter is imbued with Spirit or Tao or Atman-Brahman (depending on the religious tradition), and thus warrants our undivided attention if we are to profit from our experiential interaction with it:

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." (6)

St. Paul is referring here to the quality of "thusness" inherent in the manifest world, a quality which invites our loving attention so that we might see the subtle workings of Spirit beyond the manifest creation. It is the vocation of existence and the very process of enlightenment to re-attune our self with Spirit. The return to unobstructed communion with Spirit is the uroboric journey of the individual consciousness. Lao Tse speaks of the self's reharmonization with Tao in chapter sixteen of the Tao Te Ching as a return to the “source” (7) or “root” (8) wherein the individual ego has been replaced by the universal self who is "one with nature." (9)

I was becoming aware of the private circuitous journey my consciousness was undergoing by means of an extremely vivid dream I had in September, 1971. In this dream I was a fish swimming upstream, laboring against the current, but gradually making progress, I suddenly found myself on the bank of the river where I metamorphosed into a turtle. At this point I was a witness to the turtle image, whereas before I had simply been the fish. The dream recurred twice within six months and left me with a feeling of restlessness and upheaval.

I had previously encountered a repeated fish image in dreams, but in a different context: I was always fishing; when I would hook a fish the visceral feeling one has during the snaring and reeling in of the struggling animal was predominant. There was a peculiar joy mixed with apprehension (that I might lose the fish) that I experienced while the hooked fish tugged downward on the pole. I gradually came to equate this with the feeling during sexual intercourse where I underwent the identical sense of tenuous completeness. Waiting for a "bite" symbolized the anticipation and yearning involved in desiring sexual love. The images of hook in fish and penis hooking vagina seemed strikingly correspondent to me; not in an intellectual way, but in a powerfully visceral way in terms of the similar pelvic tension encountered during reeling in and during vaginal penetration. This fishing dream had occurred on the average of twice per month for several years. I noticed its occasion had frequently anticipated any intense desire I might have been currently undergoing, sexual or otherwise. I thus came to use it as a mirror reflecting my conscious or not-so-conscious motivations and tensions.

But I was baffled by the new dream version in which I had suddenly become the fish. As a fish, the feeling of determined struggle and resolute upstream focus was overpowering. I consciously equated it with the instinctive drive of the salmon; continuation of the salmon species rests crucially on the ability of the fish to complete the astonishing uphill return from the sea to its mountain lake spawning grounds. There they spawn and die, but a new generation of life is created. I felt inspired and upset by this incredible journey my dream depicted, but I was at a loss to consciously begin my own regenerative battle until I came to understand the image of the turtle.

As I was reading the Bhagavad-Gita I came upon the passage where the yogic process is compared to a tortoise retracting its feet from the world. (10) I was instantly convicted (11) that this was what the turtle symbolized in my existence. It was an image of my self (12) insofar as the maturation of my consciousness would entail the cultivation of the yogic ability to withdraw the identification of self from its monopolization by outer consciousness. The struggling fish as symbol of self came to represent the waking phase of my life, where unyielding concentration on and penetration into the sea of experience is the ideal; the fish metamorphosed into turtle represented the sitting-meditation phase of my life, where I would engage in techniques of concentration specifically aimed at the conscious withdrawal of the subtle energies from the motor, sensory, and organic nerves into the spinal region. (13)

Spurred by these two images I realized I was commencing my own suicide. Without destruction there is no creation, and the spiritual path of self-transformation is not exempt from this principle. "You have to break eggshells to make omelets,” said Karl Marx. The remainder of this exposition consists of my experientially rooted understanding of how one must die in order to be reborn and to regain his cosmic heritage of wholeness.

A certain Sufi teaching story tells of a lawyer who vainly attempts to coerce and deceive the "President of the World" in order to gain a portion of his philanthropically distributed bounty. First he tries to legalistically argue his claim to the charity. When this fails, he disguises himself, assuming roles in various other categories of people as they are each considered as potential recipients of the President's kindness. He repeatedly fails in these impersonations, even when masquerading as a corpse. The President then tells him that the gift comes only after "death" and not before: "Man must die before he dies," and this is "not possible without help.” (14)

How can a man "die" before he dies? In the Gospel of John (15), Jesus speaks a metaphor that illustrates the regenerative principle inherent in the death process:

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and diet it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

Death,then, is the radical transformation the personality undergoes in the process of self-realization. Man estranged from his nature, man severed from divine communion, dies in the course of self-reintegration; this re-attunement with God is a process of constant self-watch. One must vigilantly observe and guide his moods so that they do not hinder perfect attentiveness to the things at hand. When we abidingly confront all situations with purely undivided attention, we experience "life eternal," for we are "face to face" (16) with God in the manifested creation. We can then realize that we are "the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” (17) The Way because we act in cooperative accord with the divine will as it is instantly, intuitively evident in each unique situation; the Truth, because we manifest principle unobstructedly, that is, we mirror in miniature the permanent, fundamental structures of the universe; the Life, because our entire consciousness dwells within the eternal present.

To re-cap: the self is dysfunctional insofar as it confronts existence with a dispersed focus of attention. This self "dies" when supplanted by the perfectly functioning self which single-mindedly is "one" (18) with the Father. "Oneness" is not merger with God; it is equivalent to living in harmony with one's nature, and thereby in constant grace.

When Christ tells Nicodemus he must be "born of water and of the Spirit," (19) he refers to this marvelous process of self-crucifixion and resurrection. As Nicoll suggests, "water" is here an image of Truth. (20) Man must actualize his identity in accord with his ever-evolving inner knowledge of the essential laws or principles generating the cosmos. Presently at odds with truth, he can attain to re-birth by pure concentration on Spirit. Spirit pervades all: it "bloweth where it listeth. " (21) By even minded receptiveness to the outer events of existence one is open to the full educational import discernible in the human and cosmic dramas. Divine purpose is miraculously symbolized in every feature of the phenomenal world, and one is enriched by exercising vigilant intuitive reception to the things at hand.
For example, Spirit teaches at a social level. In the friction of interpersonal contact one can see mirrors and measures of his own behavior; he can discern his weaknesses and virtues; he can profit from others' instructions and experiences; and he can contribute to the communal upliftment. In short, Spirit is immanent in all the activities entailed in "loving one's neighbor as one's self." The primacy of this commandment as the verbal embodiment of a fundamental cosmic principle can be seen in the emphasis Christ gave it when he declared "on these two commandments hang all the law and prophets." (22)

The first commandment is to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength and with all thy mind. (22) While Spirit can be confronted through the senses (which perceive its manifested aspects) and the intellect (which, if calm and concentrated, can order the fragmentary sense data into an integral whole), it can also be contacted more directly through the inner "eye" of intuition.
As Jesus said: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." (23) This organ of spiritual perception, normally a dormant portion of the brain (due to the monopolization of life-energy by the sensual nerves and the calculating regions of the brain), can be stimulated by concentration at the point between the eyebrows: "And they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads." (24) Thus St. John, the gospel writer and mystic of Patmos, experienced the same frame of consciousness, the same identity (“name") as did Christ. (25) By riveting the attention at this Christ Consciousness center, the life-energy withdraws from the muscles, organs, and senses into the spine. Here it ascends, pulled by the magnetic force of concentration, in the true resurrection of self into the dormant brain centers, bringing about various degrees of awakening. Thus Christ told Nicodemus that Moses actualized rebirth in water and Spirit by "lifting up the serpent (or coiled spinal energy) in the wilderness." (26) This is another uroboric image: the spinal current, which descended from the heavenly centers, makes a return to the source of its emanation and original diffusion into the physical apparatus (where, in most humans, it is now imprisoned and monopolized).

This mystical process of communing with God as the Holy Spirit is the act of returning to the source of all creation. Lao Tse calls this the return "to the state of simplicity," to the "uncarved block." (27) The "Word," "Omen/Amen," "Om/Aum," the "mother of the ten thousand things," "Prakriti," are all equivalent symbolizations of this subtlest of vibrations that begat all the manifest universe, linking it to the realm of Spirit. At first, Spirit can be perceived in the depths of introspective silence more easily than in the array of extrospected phenomena. To attune to the great Mother vibration, an unwavering focus of attention is necessary to penetrate all grosser levels of manifestation; and it is easier to focus on a single, unified, and fundamental vibration, than on a multiplicity of its derivative vibrations, This is why St. Paul de-emphasizes a legalistic approach to redemption, a lesson applicable to the lawyer in the Sufi story: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit," (28) If one can "hate his life in this world," if he can "die daily" (29) from his sense-generated prospect of the world, he can more easily plunge his consciousness into the ubiquitously present vibration of Spirit because distracting derivative vibrations do not dilute his attention focus. Thus Krisna in the Gita described the mystical process in terms of a tortoise retracting its feet from the world. As life-energy accumulates in the spine, one "hears” the Word at varying rates of vibration ranging from the hums corresponding to the lower spinal centers, the bell heard at the heart center, to the "voice like the noise of many waters" (30) heard when unwavering focus is surrendered to the spiritual eye. This is the baptism of the Holy Spirit which brings "all things to... remembrance." (31) What is gradually remembered is the now eclipsed connection we eternally have to the source of our being. What is regained is the unobstructed flow of grace that obtains when the conduit of divine communion is reopened by our loving attention on God: we "take the water of life freely." (32)

But mystical communion does not make a life whole. Contact with Spirit in meditation must be rhythmically alternated with contact with material reality, that is, Spirit in manifestation, to achieve the balance befitting our nature. This is the supreme vocation of existence: to constantly tune into omnipresent Spirit by engaging in all phases of life with perfect attention. In this sense meditation/concentration does not lead to, that is, is the vehicle carrying one to enlightenment; meditation/concentration is enlightenment.

©Derrick Garbell, 1975 & 2001

  MC Escher

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Yukteswar, Swami Sri. The Holy Science (Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1972), P.x ff.

(2) Said to be the star Alcyon

(3) Analects 2:15 (Chan trans., p.24).

(4) Blake, William. "Auguries of Innocence," English Romantic
Writers, ed. David Perkins (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967) p.113

(5) Analects 19:6 (Chan trans., p.48). Great Learning (Chan trans., p.86): "The extension of knowledge consists in the investigation of things."; also cf Matthew 24:42

(6) Romans 1:20.

(7) Tao Te Ching ch.16 (Gia-Fu Feng trans.)

(8) Tao Te Ching ch.16 (Chan trans., p.147)

(9) Chan, p.148

(10) Bhagavad-Gita, II:58

(11) This conviction was profound. I did not believe, I knew because I sensed a deep inner reconciliation of a previously tormenting enigma.

(12) Carl Jung testifies to the occurrence of the tortoise as an archetypal symbol of the self. Cf. his Aion (New Yorks Bollingen Foundation Inc., 1959), p.226

(13) The "motor" nerves carry (consciously or reflexively) impulses to the muscles. Perfect asana providing body stillness to liberate these energies for other purposes is necessary. The "sensory” nerves carry impulses to the visual, olfactory,
auditory, gustatory, and tactile regions of the body. Willed introversion is necessary to learn the methods of consciously
severing the consciousness from these sense "telephones." In sleep we unconsciously and passively put our stimulus telephones offthe hook.
The "organic" nerves autonomically regulate the organs; the pulsing heart and lungs monopolize a considerable degree of
subtle life-force. In deep meditation, the yogi's tissues become so recharged due to the redistribution of vital force
that they gradually cease to decay and no longer need material nourishment. They achieve a state of suspended animation, and
have no need of oxygen input or carbon dioxide output. Thus the heart does not need to circulate venous and arterial blood, nor
do the lungs need to respire and oxygenate the blood,

(14) Idries Shah "The Generous Man," from The Way of the Sufi (New York: E.P.Dutton, 10/70), pp.197-8.

(15) John 12:24-25

(16) The "facing God" motif is in numerous biblical passages, e.g. Genesis 32:30, Exodus 33:11, Deuteronomy 34:10, ICor13:12

(17) John 14:6.

(18) In the sense of John 17; e.g. 17:23, "that they may be made perfect in one."

(19) John 3:5.

(20) Nicoll, Maurice. The New Man (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), p.9

(21) John 3:8

(22) Matthew 22:40; Luke 10:27

(23) Matthew 6:22

(24) Rev 22:4; "Name" refers to a state of consciousness, or to the identity of: the Buddha nature, Cosmic Consciousness, the universal mind or Atman-Brahman, etc.

(25) For Jung, Christ was a symbol of the universal Self. Cf. Aion. p.36 ff. in the sense of St. Paul’s “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.” Gal 2:20

(26) John 3:14; the kundalini

(27) Tao Te Ching, ch.28

(28) Titus 3:5

(29) ICor l5:31

(30) Ezekial 43:2; Rev 1:15, l9:6

(31) John 14:26

(32) Rev.22:17