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The picture of Dasein falling toward death, grasping at straws with a desperate attitude of Care, is profound. Dasein's care drives it toward a kind of dynamic clinging through which Truth and Reality are revealed with the help of Identity and Ideation. Based upon this picture, we might characterize those of us trapped in the Western worldview as The Fallen.

A famous formula of the Valentian school thus epitomizes the content of gnosis: "What makes us free is the knowledge who we were, what we have become, where we were, wherein we have been thrown; where to we speed, where from we are redeemed; what is birth and what rebirth." A real exegesis of this programmatic formula would have to unfold the complete gnostic myth. Here I wish to make only a few observations.

First we note the dualistic grouping of the terms in antithetical pairs, and the eschatological tension between them, with its irreversible direction from past to future. We further observe that the terms throughout are concepts not of being but of happening, of movement. The knowledge of history, in which it is itself a critical event. Among these terms of motion, the one of having "been thrown" into something strikes our attention, because we have been made familiar with it in existentialist literature. We are reminded of Pascal's "Cast into the infinite immensity of spaces," of Heidegger's Geworfenheit, "having been thrown," which to him is a fundamental character of the Dasein, of the self-experience of existence. The term, as far as I can see, is originally gnostic. In Mandaean literature it is a standing phrase: life has been thrown into the world, light has been thrown into the world, light into darkness, the soul into the body. It expresses the original violence done in making me be what I am and what I am, the passivity of my choiceless emergence into an existing world which I did not make and whose law is not mine. But the image of the thrown also imparts a dynamic character to the whole of existence thus initiated. In our formula this is taken up by the image of speeding toward some end. Ejected into the world, life is a kind of trajectory projecting itself forward into the future.

This brings us to the final observation I wish to make apropos of the Valeentinian formula: that in its temporal terms it makes no provision for a PRESENT on whose content knowledge may dwell and, in beholding, stay the forward thrust. There is past and future, where we come from and where we speed to, and the present is only the moment of GNOSIS itself, the peripety [?] from the one to the other in a supreme crisis of the eschatological NOW. There is this to remark, however, in distinction to all modern parallels: in the gnostic formula it is understood that, though thrown into temporality, we had an origin in eternity, and so also have an aim in eternity. This palaces the inner cosmic nihilism of the Gnosis against a metaphysical background which is entirely absent from its modern counterpart.¹

In this way, Hans Jonas makes the case for the parallels between gnosticism and existentialism. The key point in common is fallenness of Western man. Robert Arens has picked up on this theme and expanded it as if it were a positive wisdom in his The New Gnosis². But Jonas is closer to the truth when he identifies both existentialism and gnosticism as types of nihilism. We may remark that gnosticism has many parallels with Mithrism and Manecheism and represents the heretical shadow of Catholicism -- Indo-European spiritual totalitarianism which is the heritage of the Western mind enforced by the Inquisition. Fallenness is the passive state of nihilism in which one's clinging to existence is seen to be doomed to failure and the end, in death, is seen as inevitable. Within this passive state of fallenness, dynamic clinging appears whose goal is to prolong the falling state as long as possible, in the meantime consuming as much as possible. The beer commercial says, "You only go round once in life, you have to grab for all the gusto you can get." This "grabbing for gusto" is the activity of dynamic clinging that transforms "Reality" into "Truth" by means of ideational processes.

In this chapter, we will take another look at the inner structure of Fallenness as represented in the deep ontomythology of the Western worldview. Passive nihilism intensifies into the active nihilism and finally into utter nihilism as we unfurl the layers of the riddles that hold the key to the inner essence of the Western worldview. Passive nihilism refers to the fundamental relation to the world which the great majority of us have. In that relation to the world, what we say and do are undercut by our own words and actions so that we lose meaning or value in our relation to the world. Through passive nihilism our project of producing meaning or value ends up by negating itself, usually unbeknownst to us. We turn worth into the worthless by some sort of self-contradiction. This is the other side of self-grounding transcendence, what Henry calls Heidegger's assumption of Ontological Monism. The self, which projects its own existence and thus stands on its own shoulders, actually ends up negating itself.

Active nihilism, on the other hand, is related to cultural imperialism. It is the active destruction of the values or meanings of others. It is captured perfectly by Albert Memmi in the classic The Colonizer And The Colonized. Economic, political and cultural imperialism all accomplish the same ends: they destroy the meaning complexes of others and force them to accept the aggressors' meaning complexes or suffer destruction. The problem is that the Western nihilistic meaning complexes are inherently self-destructive, so the colonized are destroyed either way -- and thus placed in an existential double bind.

Utter nihilism is an intensification of active nihilism in which the goal is to destroy the victim. It is intensified anti-production in which some human equivalent of a black hole is created which once the victims are trapped in it, they cannot escape, and which leads to their destruction. An example is the drug anti-industry in which the whole goal is to addict people and destroy their lives. The people who engage in this type of anti-production are utterly nihilistic because they not only want to destroy human worth, but the bearer of the worth as well.

These three intensifications of nihilism correspond to fallenness, dynamic clinging, and the berserker experience in which dynamic clinging is intensified into a rage of anti-production signified by Achilles on the battlefield. The berserker experience says, "If I am going, I am going to take everyone else with me as well." It is the concept behind nuclear deterrence. Self-destruction is world destruction. Each of these are intensifications of fallenness, and it is necessary to explore the fundamental nature of fallenness in order to understand its intensifications.

In order to explore the inner structure of fallenness, we will revisit the magical tools of Perseus and corollate them with the metaphors for the female sexuality explicated by Page duBois in Sowing The Body. In that book, Page duBois explores the multiple metaphors for the female body used by the Greeks. She sees them as providing a spectrum of reification of the woman into an object which is inherently flawed. But underneath that metaphor of the flaw, Page duBois uncovers, by a wonderful archeology, a whole set of metaphors for woman unknown to us today. What is fascinating is that the set of metaphors she exposes have an isomorphic relation to the markers of the epistemic nodes signified by the magical implements of Perseus. These correspondences will be presented in a tableau as a series of riddles. The rest of the chapter will seek to make explicit how this series of riddles interrelate and thereby define the essence of the Western worldview.

The best way to begin is to look at the unfolding series, at first as a whole. It posits as primary the Sea or Chaos. Homer calls it the "unplowed sea." If you mark it it loses its marks. The wake of the boat disappears after it passes. This is the exact opposite of the tablet that holds its marks. The land is like the sea, only frozen. The waves become solid and are called hills. The motion of the waves are converted into the parthenogenesis that gives rise to all manner of creatures including the opposite of the earth which is the sky. Sky and sea blend at the horizon, but Earth and sky are distinct. Man is born from his mate in the Greek myth, as woman is born from her mate in the Semitic version. Either way, man from woman or woman from man, the arising of complementary opposites arise in symbiotic relation to each other as the fundamental distinction within the Chaos. These complementary opposites, once differentiated, fall into conflict. The gaze of the woman reifies the man. The man becomes reflective as he attains subjectivity at the mirror stage of childhood as Lacan calls this crucial stage of development. Man uses force against woman to control her as the "Other" or material from which his frozen form is derived. The woman becomes the place in which man works and is associated with the field and its furrows which remain once cut into this surface. The conflicting opposites become the basis of the structural system which has as its undercurrent a continuous outpouring of nihilistic opposites. This outpouring is the source of all emergent phenomena. The woman becomes the cornucopia, or Pandora's box, from which the flood of continuous innovation and artificial emergence flows forth. The inside spills out into the outside. The extremes of overly male (Yang Splendor) and overly female (Closed Yin) as Centaur and Amazon are created as the conflicting complementary opposites drive each other to extremes in search for safety. Finally, the structural system appears in the relation between Identity, Truth, Reality and Metaphor. The structural system is the instrument of domination which acts as a pen (phallus) to write on the frozen surface of the woman (the tablet). We have already seen how the Pen and Tablet are primal images which echo and reverberate with the lost image of the Well and the Tree. The conflict between opposites gives rise to extremes which then interlock to form a frozen system -- the formal structural system by which reality is concentrated into truth via ideation. This process when seen as a whole, is the basic steps by which the Western worldview is constructed. The flow of nihilism occurs as Pandora's box is unleashed. Active nihilism is revealed in the conflict of opposites -- the gaze of the woman as the site of production. Utter nihilism is related to the inner relation with death signified by the helmet of invisibility from Hades. In utter nihilism, there is self-destruction linked with the utter senseless destruction of the enemy which is not even worth dominating and keeping around as a slave. Beyond utter nihilism, there is only Chaos, engendered by the Third which is the over-turbulent system signified by Reality. Reality is the chaos and fog of war. In war, men dawn the helmet of invisibility, and their bones return to the earth like stones. The sword and cut wounds like furrows in the flesh of the enemy. In war, the Chaos of extremes spills out on everyone unleashing all manner of ills. But in that process, men write their glory, and their fate is written as they experience the Wyrd. The riddles hold the essence of war -- anti-production linked at every stage with production. The heart of the Western worldview is the will to war, and the will to survive it and dominate everything thereby. The man who walks out the other side of the storm of Chaos is the victor covered in glory. He is the Mithrist who has participated in the battle of good against evil and survived the trial by fire. His view of the world has triumphed, and those repeated triumphs have shaped the world in which we live today.

This is an overview of the series of riddles as seen as a genetic system where each stage gives rise to the next. But starting with this overview, it behooves us to attempt to unfold the layers one at a time. But this can only be done if we first realize that there are different layers in the genetic unfolding of this worldview. The deepest layer is the Chaos or Sea. Then that Chaos splits to give rise to complementary opposites of Uranus (sky) and Gaia (earth). These opposites then conflict through reification and violent domination. That conflict leads to the production of nihilistic opposites which drives everything to extremes -- extremes which are ultimately identical with each other. This flood of nihilistic opposites provides the material of the tablet which then holds the impressions of the Pen. The ideational system turns the funnel of Truth-Identity-Reality into a pen which writes on the tablet of woman. Woman becomes the hyle, or content, formed by man's intentional morphe. This is the surface layer in which the Indo-European city points at the "Other" beyond the city. The pointing at the Other suggests subjective-objective opposition which is only possible if the self is fully developed. The self in this case is the Identity-Truth-Reality-Metaphor complex that identifies and covers over the flaw. The Other holds its impression -- it stays "Other." The fluidity of the relation between self and Other is completely suppressed. The intentional morphe is like pinions placed in the rockface by the cliff climbers. Because the pinions hold when driven into the rock, the fall of the climber is avoided. It does not take into account the fact that both rock and climber are falling through space in the orbit of the Earth. The Western worldview functions by successfully defining "others" and getting them to accept that definition. Whether the others are blacks, foreigners, women, children, the insane, the criminal, the ability to categorize and get the categorized to function within the limits of those imposed definitions is central to the ability of the Westerners to write history in their own terms. They define Reality, establish truths, declare identities, propose metaphors, and in that way actively proselytize their view of the world using powerful channels of communications media. The continual production of world definitions overwhelms all the other sources of definition by its mere volume if nothing else.

The problem of the Other is to avoid dominating by succumbing to the definition of the Indo-European worldview. This is a difficult problem. Since the Western communications channels are full of the images of the Other -- for instance, the image of the Arab which is blatantly recast with no attempt at humanization. The only way to respond is to produce counter propaganda which is expensive and almost never nearly as good or effective. Thus, the definitions of the other by the dominant culture stand uncontested and, in fact, become the self images of the others. Thus, all over the world it is known that terrorist attacks get news attention. Some feel that negative attention is better than none, so they commit such acts. So there is a vicious circle in which the media promotes an image, and others step up and take this image to heart and act on its basis, and then they get the "coverage" they desire and confirm the defining of Arab Terrorist. The definition of Other is an act of self definition. The outer layer of the Western worldview is continuously definite the other in order to define itself. By designating reality, it defines the limits and constraints on the discovery of truth. It sets up the correspondences and sets of identities that serve as the code for understanding the world. It determines what metaphors will be used to frame discourse concerning the self and the other. Page duBois shows how the ancient Greeks set up metaphors for women which were accepted in silence by the women themselves. She also shows how some modern feminists accept the current metaphor of "lack" as their own. The one who sets up metaphors accepted by everyone, even the other themselves, is the owner of the dominant worldview. This is the surface layer of the Western worldview which is imperialistically defining itself by defining others.

Below the surface of self-other mutual definition -- the propaganda war -- there is another level within the city itself. At this level just beneath the surface of the city -- within the walls of the city itself -- there is a completely different process at work. The continual drive to define the Other and thereby negatively the self, is supported by a more primary process within the city. This more primary process is the outpouring of nihilistic opposites which supports and makes visible the minimal system of Truth-Reality-Identity-Metaphor. That minimal system is made visible and kept in visibility by the outpouring of nihilistic oppositions which has been called artificial emergence. Nihilistic opposites are artificially extreme opposites which ultimately are identical. They are symbolized by the Yang Splendor of Dionysus and the Closed Yin of Athena. They are marked by the energy of the homosexual epistemic nodes. The outpouring of the feminine energy that gives rise to the sacred twins underlies the pointing male energy which defines itself by holding at bay the Other. The feminine cornucopia pours forth the nihilistic twins -- the Other within the city.

This can be taken back to the twins which come out of the sea to rescue the kidnapped female which appear out of the sea or jar. The twins are sons/husbands/brothers. In the case of the Iliad, it is husband and brother who come to rescue Helen at Troy. This fundamental upsurge of produced nihilistic opposites lies below as an underpinning to the minimal system of Metaphor-Truth-Reality-Identity which points at the Other. The separation from the Other is underpinned by the outpouring of nihilistic opposites. Both movements are separations. One is distancing and pointing, whereas the other is production of contradictions or reified and unnaturally separated opposites rather than complementary opposites. So the male energy of pointing is balanced off against a more basic female energy of grasping though the work of production of nihilistic opposites which is what keeps the minimal system in visibility. If that production stops, we would expect the minimal system to disappear. Grasping holds within the hands just as the cornucopia holds the contents of Pandora's box. The opposite of grasping is the escape from grasp -- the overflowing which cannot be contained. Nihilistic opposites flow from the cornucopia, or Pandora's jar, because they cannot be contained. This uncontainability is a more basic mode than the separation of defining the Other through pointing. The Other escapes from the self to become alienated and fully separated. The cornucopia, or Pandora's box, represents the escape from the self which is turned into the alien. The escape from the self -- the production of nihilistic opposites -- underlies the pointing of intentionality toward the hyle. It recognizes that what is now defined as Other was once part of ones self. When the self begins, it originally contains all. In the process of self definition, much of the world escapes from the self to finally be reified as Other. This, beneath the pointing of pure intentionality informing hyle, is the escape of the not-yet-other from the self. In the Indo-European case, the not-yet-other is defined as nihilistic opposites which ultimately cancel each other because of the application of the principles of identity. Nihilistic opposites look different, but are ultimately indistinguishable and collapse into each other. They are artificial opposites that are ultimately identical. The constant flow of nihilistic opposites which serves as the backdrop for the minimal system is a means of grasping the world that underlies our reified pointing to it as Other. Other must be defined as Otherness -- it must be pushed out and held at bay. Once pushed out and held at bay, it can then be grasped. The grasping of the Other is the opposite of the pushing out and holding it apart. This must be based on artificially reified nihilistic opposites because real opposites roll over into each other continuously. Only by creating artificial opposites which are really identical, is it possible to prevent this from occurring -- but the prevention only holds it at bay for some time. Eventually, instead of rolling over into its opposite, the identity of the artificial nihilistic opposites is discovered, and they cancel, leaving nothing. The outflow or nihilistic opposites from the cornucopia, or Pandora's box, masks the fact that nothing is really changing. "The more it changes the more it stays the same" is not an empty statement in this context. The opposite of grasping is unleashing. Holding on too long is balanced by forced escape or unleashing of the nihilistic opposites which are the monsters of our bad dreams which underlay our pretense of rationality. The monsters of the ID disturb the dreams of reason. By creating the overly intense light of reason by default, we create as its opposite the overly dark, darkness on darkness, bad dreams of unreason. These extremes balance each other.

So pointing and grasping are opposite movements that need each other in order to produce the artificial space of separation as a third thing within the realm of opposites. The artificial third thing is pointed at as Other on one level, but on a more basic level, it is based on grasping and the inevitable escape from grasp. And so the Other is discovered to be identical with the self, and that the nihilistic opposites from which it is born are ultimately identical to each other. So the whole motion of outpouring and separation is only the underside of the Identity of Pointing at the Other by which the self defines itself. Thus, riddles one and two are complementary opposites by which the Other outside of society and the Other within society are defined. These riddles are ruled by the modalities of pointing and grasping which are complementary opposites themselves. In this way, we see domination as related to hysteria.

We now peal back another layer and see a new metaphor come into view. In this case, it is the male scythe cutting the female furrow. This harsh metaphor, in which the male organ becomes hard as steel to become a plow, is obviously a reification which distorts both the male and female self image. The woman, as plowed field, becomes passive during the act of sowing but later bears fruit. In the pen-tablet, the woman was barren, a mere receptacle. Here the woman is passive in relation to the violence of the male. The image is dialectically related to the next image which is that of killing the Gorgon.

Just as Pointing and Grasping are complementary opposites, so too are Bearing and Encompassing. Here we see complementary opposites in conflict. The man is too hard -- his phallus becoming like a scythe or plow, and the woman with the gaze that turns to stone. This reification through conflict between man and woman is ancient and modern. The powerless woman destroys the overpowerful man with her withering gaze. The man resorts to brute force to enforce his domination. Opposites in conflict rather than in harmony. Husband and wife estranged in their relationship. This is the root situation out of which Oedipus, the child of estrangement, grows.

There is the horizon of bearing in which the woman bears the domination of the male. The woman bears the child of that domination. But beneath that is the encompassing horizon in which the male child sees the gaze of the dominated woman at her husband. The child carries out the look of death by killing the father and becomes Oedipus. All the concentration in Freud's mythotherapy is on the child within the double bind. But for that child to act out the Oedipal complex, the field of estrangement must already be present. The mother encompasses the male child, making him part of herself to act out her revenge boiling up from her impotence as "defective man." She turns all others to stone except her chosen one who she teaches how to turn others to stone -- or reify. The son who is allowed to master the magic of turning to stone, kills the father and then becomes the dominant father of the next generation. By learning to turn others to stone, he becomes hardened himself, and thus capable of using force against his own wife and offspring. Thus, the double binds of complementary opposites in conflict are self perpetuating.

Beneath the conflict of complementary opposites is their fundamental complementarity. Man arises out of woman -- or woman arises out of man, as Eve from Adam. The arising of male from female or female from male is the basis for all the distorted relations between men and women. Here the man dawns the helmet of invisibility which is what people take on when they die. Man dies and disappears into the woman who has given rise to him parthenogenetically. At this level, there is the primal split between male and female which comes into existence and breaks up continuity of woman alone as the Sea. Earth (Gaia) arises from the Sea and make it clear the difference between earth and sky which was not apparent before. This is the horizon of differentiation -- the first bifurcation -- the point before the arising of the third thing. Here the difference between encompassing and encompassed vanishes. Aphrodite arises from the Sea to step out on land. She arises from the severed member of Uranus. Gaia arises from the sea by spliting off her male counterpart. Her male counterpart engages in tantric sexual practices which prolongs copulation. This stifles the parthenogenetic process. The woman who is oppressed by this conspires with her son to overthrow the father. He is castrated, and his phallus falls into the Sea, giving rise to the second emergent phenomenon -- Aphrodite -- the Desired. Prolonged sexual practice abruptly cut off produces desire. Both the prolonging of sexual practice and its abrupt cut off are abnormal. Desire arises out of this abnormality. Desire arises from the Sea. The primal unity of the male and the female is transformed by the practice of prolonging and cutting off. The phallus, cut off, falls into the Sea and enters the state of formlessness -- severed form impregnates formlessness, giving rise to an intensification of form -- the desired object. The transformation of the formlessness of the sea into intensified form desired is the result of the sexual tantrism which attempted to prolong the sexual act but not bring it to culmination in ejaculation. Such sexual practices are a distortion of natural functioning, which are equivalent to castration, because they do not produce offspring. They heighten frustration by not allowing release to occur. This causes the object of desire to be given the allure of unobtainability. This same logic functions in the Manacheistic relation to god and the Cathar and Troubadour relation to the unobtainable. It is all based on a fundamental perversity and distortion of human sexual relations. Man becomes invisible by his obsession with the desired object. He disappears into the object of obsession. Thus, at this very root -- at the point of breaking of the primordial unity into the first bifurcation -- there is an unnatural act which prolongs and cuts off in order to enhance desire and create obsessions. This fundamental perversion of sexual relations is the source of Indo-European tantrism and is also the root of the conflict between complementary opposites which unfolds in the other layers of increased difference and reification.

At its heart there is a fundamental transgression of opposites which causes the Western worldview to distort "the given" in a fundamental way. This distortion unfolds into its various layers of complementary meta-levels. At each stage, reificaiton, estrangement and domination increase to produce the alienation and anomie we experience in the world today. The Western worldview has deep roots, and we have attempted to go as deeply as possible to explore these roots. That exploration has led us to the brink of the sea -- the undifferentiated unploughed sea. From this point, we leave behind the Western worldview to venture into the Sea itself, as perhaps our ancestors went into the Sea as a step on their road of evolution -- if we are to believe Elaine Morgan in her Descent Of Woman. So too, we must go back into the Sea to attempt to go beyond our own diseased worldview in order to attempt to comprehend other views of the world which do not distort it in perverse ways as our current world dominating worldview does with ever increasing terror and destruction of this earth and her peoples.

As we seek to explore deeper and deeper to discover the meaning of this pattern of riddles, it becomes clear that there is a connection between the epochs of emergence associated with the reigns of Uranus, Kronos, Zeus and Promethian man and the pattern of the riddles. In fact, the six riddles break up into three sets, each associated with a reign of one of the gods. The reign of Uranus is associated with the riddle of the sea and the riddle of the helmet of invisibility and man arising parthenogenetically form the earth. Here Uranus himself is the emergent event. His arising makes the dichotomy between heaven and earth apparent. In his reign, men were not distinguished from animals. Moving on to the reign of Kronos, we have the riddle of the Scythe plowing the field or furrow, and the riddle of the gaze of the Gorgon bouncing off the reflective shield. Here the emergent event was the arising of Aphrodite, or the Great Goddess. Man became separated from animals but followed the laws of the earth and remained in harmony through the initiation with the Goddess. The dichotomy that became visible was that between man and woman, with woman remaining associated with the earth and men becoming isolated and alienated, longing for reunification through Desire. Moving on yet again to the reign of Zeus, he is associated with the riddle of woman as jar giving out the confluence of twins and the riddle of the pen writing on the tablet. Here the emergent event was the falling comet at Delphi by which the jinn established communication with human beings. The opposites, which became distinguished, was between the visible and invisible. This period is associated with the great long-lived civilizations of Indus, Egypt and Mesopotamia in which the gods owned the humans and dictated the laws. This finally ended with the advent of the metaphysical era and the emergence of the idealized laws.

This progression of epochs, along with their associated emergent events, gives us an underlying organization for the series of riddles. But more importantly it helps us understand why the Indo-European initiation rite is structured the way it is. Essentially, the rite takes the initiate back through the layers of the unfolding worldview. It takes him back through each layer or epoch by allowing him to experience the crucial events or turning points of the genesis of the Western worldview. So the initiate tames the Wild horses which makes him relive the identification with animals in the reign of Uranus. The initiate experiences sexual initiation with the object of desire, and experiences the allure of Aphrodite under the reign of Kronos. The initiate revives the magical tools and letters which are the key to the invisible realm, and so experiences the essence of the reign of Zeus. Each element associated with the initiation has its root in the genesis of the Indo-European worldview that has gone through several profound transformations. The initiate is taken back through these transformations so he can understand the worldview completely. This possibility was cut off as the metaphysical age constructed the Uni-verse out to the remains of the pluriverse that existed in the mythopoietic era.

At each stage of the initiation, as the initiate experienced a deeper epoch of the unfolding of the Western worldview, the initiate would confront the different dual riddles that are expressed at each stage. Our exploration started with the image of the Well and the Tree which was shown to be analogous to the image of the Pen and the Tablet. In that image, man is active, and woman passively receives. In the opposite image, the woman is active and gives rise to the outpouring of opposites. The woman keeps safe in her jar the goods provided by the man. She pours out the good things, or sometimes the evil things, depending on what she has been given. This outpouring can be seen as the production of nihilistic opposites, such as the opposition between Athena and Dionysus. The two riddles are the duals of each other, showing how men and women relate in the reign of Zeus. It is an alienated picture of the tatoo artist inscribing the bodies of women on the outside and the women producing flood, like the menstrual flow, from the inside. From the flood arises twins who are extreme opposite caricatures. The woman, as jar, reminds us of the Well in which the sediments of time are laid down. Women are seen totally in terms of the control of their fertility and as passive objects. We can see this in Zeus' many affairs and infidelity. Spreading his wild oats, he writes on many women and goddesses, giving rise to a great fecundity. This fecundity creates many differences which explains the differentiation of the universe. In the reign of Zeus, the fecundity of women is used by his illegal inscription of their bodies.

At the next level, the initiate experiences the sexual initiation and enters the stage when Aphrodite ruled. Here the riddles are different. They are the scythe furrowing the field and the Gorgon's gaze reflecting off the shield which, unreflected, turns to stone. It is clear that there is still violence in these images. The man's phallus is not like a plow. To associate it with the ever hard plow, and the vagina with a wound is to exaggerate. However, here the violence is not to the external surface of the woman's body, but is directly associated with the sexual act. The violence returned by the woman is in her gaze. Her gaze turns the man to stone. It makes him hard, frozen and unmoving. This is interesting because the phallus, as plowshare, is hardened as well. This makes us aware that the violence at this layer is circular. The woman turns the man to stone, and the man wounds the woman. The phallus and the eyes are equated -- both reifiy in their nature. They reinforce each other and cause a positive spiral of mutual alienation. This occurs at the level of the production of desire which is the province of Aphrodite during the reign of Kronos. The woman is identified with the earth, and the man with stones in the earth. Stones are hard like the plowshares.

Finally, there is the stage in which man disappears back into the earth just as Uranus appeared from the earth. Man dawns the helmet of invisibility and fades away in front of the flowering of the earth. Here man and woman kind of disappear into nature, and the earth itself falls into the undifferentiated mass of the sea. This is the reign of Uranus in which there is only nature -- no difference between nature and culture. The riddles here are clear -- man disappears into woman and they both disappear into the sea. The only violence of this level is that of reapsorption into the primordial whole (hun tun). But absorption is itself a kind of violence, especially to the alienated ego clinging to existence. It is in many ways more terrifying than the circular violence of the double bind or the forthright domination of the first level.

What is thought provoking is that this series of stages tracks well with Chung's four stages of harmony.

TABLE 45
Interpenetration	URANUS	Sea Parthenogenesis	Absorption
Mutual Dependence	KRONOS	Stony Gaze - Plowing field	Circular Violence
Interaction	ZEUS	Pen and Tablet Jar Oven Cornucopia	Domination
Logical Consistency	PROMETHEUS' CHILDREN	No Riddles	Excluded Middle

So one way to view the stages of regression toward the root of the Western worldview is as a search for harmony. Unfortunately, that search has been tainted by violence which appears at every level. Violence is deeply embedded in the Western worldview and cannot be escaped. However, this is clearly the legacy of clinging and craving engendered by the attempt to use harmony in order to better grasp the world instead of letting go it all together.

This journey we have taken has gone deep into who we are in order to discover the root causes of the destruction reeked on ourselves and everyone else. Only by going deep into ourselves is it possible to go beyond ourselves to discover other ways of seeing things which are less destructive. Unless we understand ourselves, we cannot understand others and their ways of looking at the suchness which are free from our own bias. So our journey ends as a new one begins. By delving into ourselves deeply, we have discovered a way out from within ourselves. We need to exploit this door within that leads outward in order to transform the Western worldview from within. This is the only way out. From within ourselves we can begin the transformation which will turn the Western worldview into something else which is less destructive. But this can only be done by understanding ourselves -- not by leaping onto other worldviews without prior attempts of deep self understanding. We make possible a fundamental and deep long-lasting change instead of superficial changes which amount to our running away from ourselves. We must admit to who we are, accept it no matter how awful, and understand ourselves, then transform ourselves from within by embracing emptiness.