The Hero’s Journey

The picture above is a colored modification of the Flammarion Woodcut, an enigmatic woodcut by an unknown artist that first appeared in a work on meteorology by the French astronomer Camille Flammarion published in Paris in the year 1888. The woodcut depicts a person—I suggest a scientist of that time—peering through the Earth’s atmosphere as if it were a curtain so as to see the inner workings of the universe.

I have used the image because it makes me think of a mystic on the “hero’s journey” as described by the late Joseph Campbell. As Campbell told us, the mystic must make the effort and travel her own path because there is no wide road that she can walk down nor a boat to ferry her to the other shore. Rather the hero’s path is unique to each person. Indeed, Campbell used the metaphor of the hero creating her own path by slashing with a machete at the undergrowth in the dense forest. This is how the hero, shown in the woodcut, eventually breaks through the curtain of ignorance and gets to know the inner workings of reality, or as it were to touch directly the Ground of All Being and so know the mystic’s bliss.

If you wish YOU can be that very hero who realizes the mystical knowledge and then returns to help others; but it is possible only if you possess a very strong desire to know your TRUE-SELF. You must be wholly committed to questioning the very foundation of that which we normally call “reality”.

Would that I could but I can’t carry you on your path; however if you allow me I can point you in the right direction and thereby save you a lot of time and suffering by teaching you The Tao of the Big Bang. In accordance with traditional practice, I will help you without charge because my work has nothing to do with money, power, or prestige. My own teachers did not charge me but taught me out of love for the TRUE-SELF, and now I do the same.