Dark Night of the Soul : Cirkus ~ 'Worship!' Cried the Clown

'Worship!' Cried the Clown

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Lizard
pg. 2 - Cirkus | pg. 3 - Megaphonium Fanfare
pg. 4 - 'Worship!' Cried the Clown | pg. 5 - Entry of the Chameleons
pg. 6 - Indoor Games | pg. 7 - Happy Family
pg. 8 - Lady of the Dancing Water

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"There is today a symbolic life in Jung's sense. We sacrifice two thirds of our available time to symbolic life without recognizing it as such.

Millions of people sit every evening for hours in front of their TV sets. They imagine they do so for pleasure but that is only a pretense hiding the objective state of affairs. The cult of TV is not due to a natural human need; man is not naturally oriented toward entertainment. Circa 1700 there were no newspapers, no cinema and the only books to be found in the average household were the Bible, hymnal and, occasionally an Almanac. These books were read over and over again --- sheer, endless monotony from our standpoint. Moreover there was no such thing as "free" time after the workday, but celebration-time (Feierabend, Holyday).

In Giegerich's scheme of things, the provenance of TV is not human. Behind this phenomenon there is an objective necessity; television does not serve our need to be entertained--- we serve television. In its objective being TV is show, show as theatrum mundi--- a mixture of world records, Westerns, Oscars, quizzes, summit conferences. It is the theatre of life in its heights and depths, in its spectacularity and banality. Man, the consumer, is used so as to replace the absolute God as the indifferent spectator with a God who is carnally represented in real life. There must be TV for the divina comedia to have real existence in the flesh. That television has nothing to do with the satisfaction of personal pleasure is betrayed by the fact that it often remains on when nobody is watching. The divine show must go on."

- Wolfgang Giegerich
on Technology and the Incarnation
by Robert Avens

"Because the brain's TV prime resource
Consists of images,
We may call the total brain activity
Image-ination.

All we have ever seen
Is and always will be
In the scopes of our brain's TV station.
All that humanity has ever seen
And will ever see
Is his own image-ination;
Some of it is faithfully reported new,
Some of it is invented fiction or make believe;

Some of it is doggedly retained "want to believe."

- R. Buckminster Fuller, Intuition

"Making bandsmen go clockwork,"

Like the clown at a circus, TV amuses, entertains and distracts. TV (Sensation/the material world) tempts us to disregard intuition, the source of creativity, and instead mimic one another. We, including artists and musicians, do this in the hopes of capitalising on a trend.

("High bender-trender it's all Indoor Games.")

"...real music does not exist, except on records or at rare concerts, usually written or established more than 30 years ago. The modern age of TV and communications has brought the world closer together, but has destroyed man's individuality and creative drive. Where is the spirit of adventure and creativity? I say there is none: there are just people running around looking for money.
To sell their musical ability musicians must sell their souls, put on paint, play the electric guitar, sing with a rough voice, take off their clothes, hit the drums as loud as they can, dance around and look like fools."

- Lecture: The Dark Age of Music
by Greg Waters
Composer

"See the slinky seal Cirkus policeman;
Bareback ladies have fish."

Another passage indicating that the narrator has transcended dualistic thinking. "Bareback ladies" (Lady Godiva) represent the breaking of taboos or laws. The policeman (the seal) relies on the law breaker, who possesses his food (fish), for sustenance.

"Dogen explains by saying that "cause and effect emerge clearly at the same time". Kasulis who wrote Zen Action/ Zen Person interprets this by saying that "each object or subject in a relationship needs the other to define itself because neither constitutes a relevant description in itself".

- Zen
by Jacqui Stewart

"Strongmen by his feet, plate-spinning statesman,
Acrobatically juggling --"

An early reference to the politician as "spin-doctor".

"Bids his tamers go quiet the tumblers
Lest the mirror stop turning . . ."

The illusion is starting to unravel as some of the members of the Cirkus (the tumblers) are unhappy. It is the "tamers" who are called to quiet the tumblers just as we are all tamed, or trained, to believe that everything we need is out there in the world. The spinning mirror is, of course, a reference to illusion. If the tumblers cannot be quieted, if they cannot be convinced to continue buying into the world, the danger is that they will seek to make "the mirror stop turning".

"The Goal of Yoga is to make the mind still. We may ask why should we need to do that.

Exactly the point. We are coming closer to the basic idea in the Perennial Philosophy of India.

Everything experienced is through our mind, and the mind is in an active state.

The classical example is an image given of a pond, rippled by the wind. The rippled pond reflects the
images that are broken images, which come and go, come and go and come and go.

In the first couple of verses in the Book of Genesis, we find the wind, the breath, the spirit of God blew
over the waters. That is the creation of the world. We start the excitement going.

What we do is we identify ourselves, with one of those broken images, one of the broken reflections
on the surface of the rippled pond. And so here I come and there I go. That links us to the Temporal
Flow of Time and Space, and that is what the Hindus call Maya.

The Effort is made to make the pond, to make the mind stand still, so that we may see the image in its
totality, not broken fragments of the parts, but one image.

Then only can we see what was broken and reflections of the parts, in its still perfection."

- Kundalini Yoga

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