Kluwer Academic Publishers Book Template

The idea of the Savior necessarily implies the Judge—and a judge of the most implacable sort—because the Savior is a mythological representation ofthat which is ideal, and the ideal always stands in judgment over the actual. The archetypal image of the Savior, who represents perfection or completion, is therefore terrifying in precise proportion to personal distance from the ideal.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Proclivity to posit an ideal, implicitly or explicitly, to work toward its attainment, to become dissatisfied with its establishment, as new “matter” makes itself manifest, and to thereby re-enter the cycle—this constitutes the centrally defining pattern of human abstraction and behavior. The simplest and most basic day-to-day human activities, invariably goal-directed, are necessarily predicated upon conscious or tradition-bound acceptance of a value hierarchy, defining the desired future in positive contrast to the insufficient present. To live, from the human perspective, is to act in light of what is valued, what is desired, what should be—and to maintain sufficient ignorance, in a sense, to allow belief in such value to flourish. Collapse of faith in the value hierarchy—or, more dangerously, collapse of faith in the idea of such hierarchies—brings about severe depression, intrapsychic chaos and re-emergence of existential anxiety.