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.”
“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.
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