Like the Scarecrow and the Lion, the Tin Woodman also displays the quality which he believes himself to lack. And like them, he nevertheless desperately pursues it. But the reader is in a position to see that despite the fear that he is heartless, the Woodman has deep and subtle feeling. Upon meeting up with Dorothy after having become estranged from her, for example, it is said that he is 'so pleased that he weeps tears of joy'.

Dorothy herself, who throughout the entire tale keeps one goal upermost in her mind - the return to Kansas - discovers near the end of the story that all along she had the tool that could transport her home, the Silver Slippers that she won from the Wicked Witch immediately upon arriving in her dreamland fantasy-world. All she would have had to do is tap her heels three times ¹, and in a vorticular whorl ² that resembles the cyclone that cast her out of Kansas at the beginning of the tale, she'd be home. In the movie version, upon arriving back in Kansas, Dorothy recognizes in her relatives all of the characters who were her companions in the 'other' world, the world of Oz.

Even the Wizard, who we are likely to dismiss as nothing but smoke and mirrors after he has been exposed by Toto, actually possesses the wisdom to ceremonially 'confer' the qualities that the others come to him to get. Like the 'Simorgh' in the CONFERENCE OF BIRDS, we eventually discover that he is a reflection or projection of the divine wisdom that is innately inherent in the human being. Here we have a sweet irony indeed. The Wizard is a charlatan, but one who turns out to have real wisdom after-all!

The metaphor that is often used on the spiritual path to represent the enlightened 'Qualities' that in some form pre-exist the spiritual quest - as innate but obscured components of the individual's makeup - is the image of buried (or otherwise hidden) treasure. This is the precious jewel that is ENCLOSED within an ordinary wrapping (like the 'point' or bindu in the center of the mandala, or the well-known 'jewel in the lotus' image). This motif, as we saw, played a central part in the Shambhala legend associated with the 'Path of-Realization' Kalacakra teachings - where it appeared as the secret kingdom itself, with its hidden spiritual treasures (terma). And in the MAHAUTTARATANTRA SASTRA we saw nine versions of the same metaphor, and learned that these were associated with Nine Enlightened Qualities and Nine Obscurations.

In the third tale, 'The King and the Corpse', the hidden-jewel motif also plays a prominent role. The precise manner in which the motif is elaborated, at great length, will be of particular interest - as it is instructive in clarifying the PROCESS whereby the Qualities are finally revealed to the seeker. But first we must turn, however briefly, to the 'Conference of the Birds'.

Section Two - The Conference of the Birds

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In 'The Enneagram as Triple Mandala, Part II', we discussed in detail the epic Sufi poem, 'The Conference of the Birds'. We described how the tale integrated the three approaches to spiritual path (renunciation, transformation, and realization). At that point in our presentation what interested us most was the manner in which the story elaborated on the phase of the spiritual journey that follows the individual's insight into emptiness. The adventure of the birds leads similarly to a 'dissolution', but the story does not end there - the seekers are reborn in 'another realm', in which they achieve a new 'body'.

Since we described this aspect of the tale in our previous paper, it will not be necessary to repeat ourselves here. Let it suffice to mention that we are now in a position to identify this 'realm' as a psychological 'hyperspace', such as we described at length in The 'Self' as Hyperbody -
Nested Realities and the 'Fourth Dimension', and the new (spiritual) 'body' that is attained as a 'hyperobject' in that space.

The 'spiritual qualities' can then, of course, be considered aspects or attributes of such a 'body'. But these qualities will not be anything like the qualities of a mundane object. What is the ontological and epistemological status of 'qualities' of this sort? In what state do they exist? How do we know them? What can we say about the PSYCHOLOGICAL process in which they reveal themselves to us? We turn to the third tale for answers to these and related questions.

Section Three - The King and the Corpse

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As the reader will most likely not be familiar with this tale, a summary is in order.

The Tale

Each day, for a period of ten years, a beggar ascetic appears in the audience chamber of the king. Silently giving him a simple gift of a piece of fruit, he then withdraws into the crowd. Each time this happens the trifling present is taken away by the king's servants and cast aside. Then, one day, after the beggar has made his offering and left, a rascal monkey who has escaped from the women's quarters in the inner palace jumps into the arms of the king and is playfully handed the piece of fruit given to him that day by the ascetic. When the animal bites into it, a jewel drops out and rolls across the floor.

Curious about the other pieces of fruit, the King investigates and discovers that they have all been carelessly tossed through a window into a locked chamber in his treasury. When he enters the room, he finds amidst a pile of rotten fruit ten years worth of priceless gems. The next day, when the beggar arrives with his offering, the king refuses to accept it until the man stops to talk with him. The visitor requests a private audience, in which he reveals to the king that he needs a hero who can assist him in a magic enterprise of great importance. This person must be a true hero, one with the powers of an exorcist, explains the ascetic, and invites him to come to the funeral ground on the evening of the next full moon.

On the appointed night, the king seeks out the beggar in this uncanny place filled with specters and demons. There he finds the holy man occupied in drawing a magic circle on the ground - a mandala. 'Here I am', says the king. 'What can I do for you?' He is told to fetch a corpse from the other side of the funeral grounds, where it is hanging in a tree. The king cuts down the corpse, which seems to moan when it hits the ground. Thinking the body must be alive, he begins to treat it more carefully. But a shrill voice, coming from the throat of the corpse, laughs at him, and the king realizes that the body is actually possessed by a ghost. 'What are you laughing at?' he demands. But by speaking he causes the corpse to fly back to the tree where it hangs in the same position as before.

Again the king cuts it down, and this time SILENTLY hoisting it over his shoulder, he begins to make his way back to the ascetic. 'Let me shorten your trip with a tale', the ghost offers. The king, apparently wary about speaking, lest he cause the corpse to once more magically fly back to the tree, remains silent. He is treated to a story which ends in a riddle that the ghost poses. 'If you cannot answer it', the ghost threatens, 'your head will explode'.

So the king finds a solution, which he describes in words to the ghost. But this, as might have been expected, causes the corpse to fly from the king's shoulder back to the tree, where it hangs once again. The king returns to the tree, cuts the corpse down, and begins his trek across the cemetery yet another time. But the same thing happens. Another tale, another riddle which the king solves, causing the corpse to fly back to the tree. This occurs a total of 25 times. The last time, however, the king cannot answer the riddle, as hard as he might try. But his head does not burst, at least not literally, and in fact his inability to come up with a solution is what prompts the ghost to quit the corpse, thereby permitting the king to successfully carry it back to the ascetic's magic circle.

But before he arrives at his destination the ghost reveals that the beggar is in fact a sorcerer, a necromancer who is preparing the mandala in order to achieve an evil end. The ascetic intends to bind the ghost to the corpse, place it in the center of the circle, and worship it as a deity. To achieve this goal he will have to sacrifice the king - which he will accomplish by getting him to enter the circle and bow, at which time his head will be chopped off.

The necromancer, having recieved the corpse from the king, washes and decorates it, puts it in the magic circle, and with powerful incantations summons the ghost to enter it. Having been warned of what is about to happen, and also having been given instructions by the ghost about precisely what he must do at this critical juncture if he is to avoid his demise, the king feigns ignorance when the ascetic commands him to enter the circle and worship the dead body with a bow. He asks the beggar to show him how he wishes this to be done. When the beggar enters the circle and bends over, the king cuts his head off, and offers it, along with the man's heart, up to the corpse. Then all of the spirits in the cemetery rejoice, since 'by this deed he had redeemed the supernatural powers from the threat of the necromancer, who had been on the very point of reducing them all to slavery and enchantment'. ³

'What the necromancer sought', the ghost now informs the king, 'was absolute power over souls and ghouls and over all the spiritual presences of the supernatural domain'. 'That power now shall be yours, O King, and when your life on earth is ended', says the ghost, 'dominion over the whole earth, will be given you'. He also offers the king the fulfillment of one wish. 'I have tormented you; I shall therefore now make atonement. What do you wish? Announce your desire and it shall be yours'. ⁴ In reply, the king simply asks that the 25 tales and the overall story of this night's adventures become known the whole world over and remain eternally famous.

An Interpretation from a 'Path of Realization' Perspective

This dark tale traces four phases of development through which the enlightened Qualities that are inherent in the individual, yet obscured, must pass in order for them to be fully revealed and functional. These four phases are represented by four metaphors - 1) the metaphor of the jewel in the fruit, 2) the metaphor of the ghost in the corpse, 3) the metaphor of the necromancer in the magic circle, and 4) the metaphor of the tale as an object within your (the reader's) reality.

'Act One'

At the very beginning of the story, the introduction of the metaphor of the 'fruit containing a hidden jewel' announces the tale's psychological SETTING. The topic with which it will concern itself, we are being told, is the innate enlightened Qualities of the individual. Since the metaphor represents these Qualities as HIDDEN we might rightfully expect the tale to address this issue and explain either how they have become hidden or what their re-discovery may lead to. Our curiosity, like the king's, is piqued by the surprising revelation of these precious jewels WITHIN the ordinary pieces of 'fruit'.

Secretly embodied in the fruit the jewels remain hidden for 10 years, until the fortuitous appearance of the monkey, who comes 'from the women's quarters' (ie, is a manifestation of 'feminine' energies). The biting of the fruit is probably an intentional allusion to Eve's act of eating the apple. "Just as the terms 'body' and 'flesh' refer to COAGULATIO", says Edinger, in a different context, "so, that which nourishes the body - food and meal imagery - belongs to the same symbolism". 'Eating the forbidden fruit', he concludes, 'brought Adam and Eve into the painful world of spatio-temporal reality'. ⁵

But whereas in the 'Path of Renunciation' approach to the tale of Adam and Eve emphasis is placed on the fact that the act exiles the pair from paradise, in the same motif in this 'Path of Realization' tale, the sin of desire is basically a FORTUNATE mistake or misdeed - it REVEALS the precious nature that is at the core of the fruit.

In his analysis of the tale, Heinrich Zimmer asks, '... do we not, each of us, receive from the unknown beggar an apparently unimportant fruit, only to disregard it and cast it heedlessly aside? ... Do we try - to release from the pericarp of our everyday personality the brilliant jewel of our essential seed?' ⁶ Zimmer is quick to pick up on the meaning of this image, and his analysis of it is consistent with our understanding of it as the quintessential 'Path of Realization' metaphor. For according to Zimmer, in the gift that is offered to the king by the beggar there is a 'realization vouchsafed to the king', an appreciation ...

... of our own divine identity with the substance, the consciousness, and the bliss that we know as 'God'. This is the realization of the absolute nature of the Self. This is the discovery of the jewel at the core. (page 235)

Zimmer recognizes, of course, that at this stage in the story, although the gifts are in the possession of the king, and he now has inklings about their real value, their true nature has not yet been fully revealed to him. But, as if infected by the mischief of the monkey, the otherwise complacent king's curiosity is thereby aroused and this sets him onto the 'path of magic' which will eventually reveal the nature of these secrets to him.

Associated with the newfound curiosity of the king comes a 'lack of circumspection' on the king's part, which Zimmer explicitly identifies as a defect in his personality. Indeed it is the critical flaw that provides the impetus toward the second phase in the king's psychological journey.

This deficiency in circumspection was the fault in the coat of mail of [the king's] personality, through which the shaft of fate could drive into his inner existence. It was through this chink in his apparent perfection that he was to be laid open to the influence of life - laid open, acted upon, and, through the contact with an alien element, transformed. (page 217)

In a genuine 'Path of Realization' approach to personality studies, Zimmer links the the ultimate Qualities that the King is to achieve DIRECTLY to a personality DEFECT that he possesses! The defect is the door to realization!

'Act Two'

At this point in the story we experience a shift in scene, and with it the advent of a new metaphor. The image of decayed fruit amidst which jewels lay undiscovered in a locked upper vault of the treasury is replaced by the image of a rotting corpse in the cemetery tree, inhabited by a ghost.

The new image is reminiscent of one that we had occasion to discuss in our last paper in this series, on 'hyerbody'. According to Edinger, medieval alchemists

... had pictures of the mercurial serpent fixed to the cross or transfixed to a tree. The Manicheans universalized this image to the greatest extent in their doctrine of JESUS PATIBILIS, the suffering Jesus "who 'hangs from every tree', 'is served up bound in every dish', 'every day is born, suffers and dies', and is dispersed in all creation". (Edward Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche - Alchemical Symbolism in Psychotherapy),1985, Open Court Publishing, page 106)

So the king's task in this tale is not only like the task of Sysiphus, who is fated to push the stone back to the top of the mountain each time it has rolled down, or Prometheus, who on a daily basis has his liver restored after being eaten as punishment for his theft of fire. It also resembles this Manichean image of Christ, who is born daily and daily returns to the cross to which he is pinned. This theme, of spirit trapped within matter, plays a central role in the symbolism of the CRUCIFIXION, as we saw in our last paper.

Although, in this second phase of the unfolding of the tale of the KING AND CORPSE, spirit makes the body its home, its relationship with its host is still rather unnatural, uncanny. It is, in other words, a spirit which is experienced by the king as ALIEN. The necromancer in the tale is nothing less than a Hindu precursor to modern Europe's Dr. Frankenstein, who brings the dead back to life, but commits a sin/crime in doing so. There is 'resurrection' here, but alas, it is not a pretty sight.

The 'unconscious', represented by the ghost, finds its voice, yet remains alienated spirit at this point - not yet integrated into the king's personality. Such an integration is, in this second phase of the story, identified as the king's psychological goal.

'Act Three'

The third phase of the story begins when the king is rendered helplessly silent by the 25th riddle, and the scene abruptly shifts again - this time to the magic circle of the necromancer and the events that take place within it. In this phase of the story it is the necromancer's strategy for 'integrating' spirit that is explored in detail by the tale.

Who is this mysterious ascetic beggar? A shadow-figure, as it turns out - a veritable 'Trojan horse' who comes bearing gifts, but actually intends harm. (The 'trojan-horse' is, of course, a variant of the 'hidden jewel' metaphor, but with the 'jewel' represented as something evil or dangerous.)

A somewhat rude psychological shock is actually delivered in this part of the tale, designed to make the reader somewhat uncomfortable. For the king performs on the beggar the very act that he feared would would happen at the hands of the beggar. We are asked to accept the deed that we were led to assume would be repugnant, the quintessence of evil, if it were to be performed on the king. Does the king's knowledge of the necromancer's intent excuse this pre-emptive strike? Or is something else going on here?

When the king performs the act, it has consequences diametrically opposed to the evil ones the beggar had in mind, since the spirits are thereby LIBERATED, rather than enslaved, as the necromancer had intended. If we are to judge acts by their consequences, we must assume that the king's is a good one. The key to understanding this can be found in the fact that the necromancer represents not a real human being, but the king's 'shadow'. Only by incorporating - embodying the spirit and energies of the shadow - does the king (who represents the individual, the 'I') neutralize the threat the shadow figure poses, transmuting evil intent into positive effect.

Interestingly, it is a MANDALA that the necromancer intends to use in his attempt to magically entrap spirit. This should come as no surprise, given what we have previously said about the use of mandalas in drawing down spirits/energies into a situation. But where does the magician in the story go wrong? How does what he is intending to do differ from the SACRED use of mandala? It is all a matter of Ego, or absence thereof. The necromancer intends to enslave spirit - that is, to assert EGO-CONTROL over it. This attitude has been called 'spiritual materialism' in Buddhism, and is considered a signficant pitfall on the path of practitioners that practitioners must be warned about.

The 'shadow figure', the necromancer, is an entity that seems to incorporate the worst of two worlds. In the form of the necromancer, Egocentricity is combined with the sheer spiritual power of the Self. Only when this figure is SACRIFICED does the person (the king) escape the inflation (associated with Self) that permits egregious immoral acts (associated with Ego) to occur.

Before proceeding to what happens in the last part of the story, after the threat that the necromancer represents has been dealt with, we need to stop and take a closer look at the meaning of the silence that the 25th riddle induces in the king. Let's look, indeed, at the various ways in which 'silence' is represented at different stages in the story. Then we will come back to the fourth and final chapter of the tale.

Silence

We are led by the scene that takes place in the cemetary to believe that there will be an inverse relationship between the king's vocalizations and his success in performing the task of retrieving the corpse from the tree. It is the ghost in the corpse, according to the logic of the tale, that must be allowed to speak. And when the king usurps this prerogative, the corpse flies, against the king's will, back to the tree, alienated from the king - ie, the king loses control over embodiment. The voice of the ghost is the voice of the unconscious, and to this the king must pay heed. In order to do that, his conscious thoughts must be voluntarily silenced.

This psychological truth is represented by the 'rule' imposed on the king in that part of the tale, the requirement that he remain mute. But the ghost, by demanding that the king answer his riddles, imposes on him a second, contradictory injuction - the king must also answer the riddle - and to do this he must SPEAK! Our hero is thus placed in a formal double-bind situation from which there is no apparent escape. He is 'damned if he does' (answer the riddle, causing the corpse to return to the tree) and 'damned if he doesn't' (in which case, he believes, his 'head will explode').

The silence that is imposed on the king's ego is the psychological condition that permits the ghost to pose a series of interesting riddles. These effectively put the king into further double-binds, for they have the form of paradoxes, and in paradoxes mutually exclusive alternatives are presented, neither of which are acceptable. In form, therefore, they resemble the bind that the ghost's general injuctions literally build into the STRUCTURE of the situation as a whole. Like one Chinese box within another, the double-binding riddles occur with the overall situation, which is itself a double-bind. Herein the fractal nature of the tale begins to reveal itself. A self-similarity is shown to exist between the 'part' (the riddles) and the 'whole' (the the king's situation with respect to the 'ghost').

When this kind of self-similarity occurs in a tale or a dream, it is a signal that something very profound is happening. And this is so in the tale presently under consideration. The king's reaction to the riddles is the defining moment in the tale. So we must take a closer look at what it means.

The 'explosion' that the king is made to fear does not, of course, PHYSICALLY happen. But we could say that the framework within which the king previously operated IS blown apart, ultimately, by the riddles. In the literature on the subject of the double-bind, positive binds (like zen koans, which catapult the subject out of the framework of the prevailing paradigm) are distinguished from negative ones (which simply have the effect of paralyzing or rendering on 'unconscious'). Consider, for instance, the 'unconditional regard' which Carl Rogers advises, in which you are 'affirmed if you do, and affirmed if you don't'. Or the therapeutic indirect suggestions that hypnotherapist Milton Erickson was so good at formulating ('Will you succeed in doing such-and-such now or later?'). Compare these to the situation of the woman whose husband gives her two dresses for her birthday and then asks, when she appears wearing one of them, 'What was wrong with the other one?'

We can think of the king in the second stage of the story, when he is being presented with the riddles, as someone in training on the spiritual path. What he is learning how to do, at this stage, is embrace paradox. That which he may once have experienced in terms of polarity, as conflict (the king's 'circumspection' versus his 'curiosity', for example), he is now learning to appreciate at a more profound level. And in doing this he is ultimately made to experience what is sometimes simply referred to as 'not knowing' in Buddhism.

When, as a result of the 25th riddle, the king can HOLD the contradiction that is at the core of a paradox in mind - without either being dumbfounded or feeling compelled to reach for a facile 'answer' that smooths the problem over - he increases his capacity to consciously appreciate the core 'mystery'. It is this that empowers him to enter the mandala. It is also at this point that he steps out of the limiting box that the tacitly imposed double-binding injunctions place on him, and becomes able to assert some control over CONTEXT (the semantic container, represented by the body of the corpse).

There is a similar motif in the Legend of the Holy Grail, in which the hero's success in finding the treasure and bringing it back depends on his ability to entertain an unanswerable question without being thrown into a dead faint - which is precisely what happens to him at the beginning of the legend when he fails to POSE the critical question. But like the king in this tale, by the end of the process, as a result of it, the hero becomes capable of 'remaining in the question'.

There is, in other words, a psychological question that both tales pose, and it is a critical one for the practitioner on the 'spiritual' path. When the logical rug is pulled out from beneath consciousness, must one become unconscious? Can one remain conscious, even when consciousness is in an objectless state? For instance, during deep sleep? This is precisely what one must learn to do in the kinds of sleep-meditation that are associated with lucid dreaming - maintain the thread of consciousness, even when passing THROUGH deep, objectless sleep.

What is being represented in both tales, in other words, is an appreciation for that kind of awareness that is without content, in which what is essentially ineffable is revealed. When authentically apprehended, from the inside out, that 'emptiness' ⁷ is experienced as something that cannot be contained in words. Words simply fail it.

Interestingly, the motif of 'silence' runs through all phases of THE KING AND THE CORPSE, in a way that parallels the development of the four metaphors -

1. In the beginning of the story, the beggar silently offers the gift of the fruit containing the previous gems to the king. This silence persists for 10 years. It is equivalent to ignorance. The king does not yet know that the fruit contains precious jewels.

2. During the recurrent action that comprises the main body of the story, the 'second act', the king is ordered to remain silent and allow the ghost to speak, lest the corpse fly back into the tree. This forced silence is equivalent, psychologically, to the taming of Ego, which in its immature stages believes itself to 'have all the answers'. Required of the king is a surrender, represented by voluntary silence, to the wisdom of the unconscious. The prize that is thereby gained is some facility with objectless awareness, some appreciation for the 'open-ended' nature of consciousness. The king has learned how to break free of the entrapment affected by 'frame'. And at this point the artificially imposed silence deepens into something more profound - an authentic silence that appreciates that which cannot be said.

3. And this is the point were the story enters its third phase, where the king gains entry into the mandala. Why is there need of a third phase? Isn't anything past this point of development superfluous? In the first phase of the story the king deals with symbols (the 'jewel in the fruit', for instance) more or less at the LITERAL level, as objects or object-substitutes. And in the second phase, his interest shifts to understanding symbols (the riddles) FIGURATIVELY as the ghost adroitly puts the king into the position of having to seek the MEANING of these intellectual gems that he presents. But it is only in the third phase that we come to an appreciation for how symbols can perform a TRASCENDENT function.

Lets go back to the story, picking it up at the point where the king returns with the corpse. The corpse has been freed from 'possession', according to the story, and the spirit has also been liberated. But now spirit is being made to re-enter the corpse. Why?

Because although the spiritual path demands that a practitioner gain facility with states of undifferentiated consciousness, these states are not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to EMBODY the mystery that is discovered. How is this to be achieved? By utilizing the 'magic circle', the mandalic 'container' that is capable of drawing spirit down into it, and containing it. Not in order merely to capture it, or assert control over it, but to provide it, via mandalic 'liminocentric' structuring, with a 'frame' capable of withstanding the tension of incommensurables!

The 25th riddle was, by the way, one that cuts straight to the core of what a paradox is. Essentially it is the tale of a man's son who marries the mother of the woman who marries his father. When each couple (son and mother, father and daughter) give birth to a male child, what is the relationship of the children to each other? To be one's uncle's uncle (or one's father's father, as is the reductio ad absurdem conclusion of other, similar riddles) offends our psychological need for cause to precede effect in a linear manner.

So the riddle directly points to the feature of paradox which, centuries later, philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell would identify as the culprit underlying all 'paradoxes' - the manner in which they are self-referential and thereby offend our 'logical' assumptions regarding how levels of contextual organization should be maintained. For example, the statement 'This sentence is false', evaluates its own truth-value in a self-referential manner, and therein the trouble lies, according to Russell.

Or, to use the terminology of Gregory Bateson's double-bind theory, the META-message contradicts the message - the behavior of the sentence at one level (its evaluation of itself as false) contradicts the assumption behind how it behaves at a lower level (the assumption that it is true).

So what the king ultimately accepts, in the form of this riddle, is a structural principle whereby the storyline can be organized in such a way that contexts are nested in a non-linear heirarchical manner that wraps back around on itself - ie, 'liminocentric organization'. In the next paper in this series, Picking Ourselves Up By Our Bootstraps - Non-linear Nesting Orders in Myth and Ritual we shall see how Indian storytellers made a fine ART of structuring their storylines in liminocentric fashion. We shall also see, by looking at some contemporary 'theories of trope' (figures of speech) in modern anthropology, that it is the key ingredient that makes myth and ritual a psychologically effective tool for effecting transcendence and creativity.

Here, however, all we need do is recognize that the king acquiesces to such a principle, and begin to become aware of how this infuses his subsequent consciousness, and his 'post-mandalic' actions. It is indeed what permits the story, psychologically speaking, to take the surprising turn that it does in its final moments, in 'Act Four', when the king steps out of the context of the storyline, directly into our lives.

'Act Four'

The slaying of the necromancer (the shadow) permits the king, whose personality is thus now organized not around Ego, but Self (or 'Egolessness'), to reclaim the powers that were inherently his but had become alienated and projected onto the Shadow, the necromancer. The supernatural powers are thus 'redeemed'. And spirit is 'set free' when, via the double-bind training that he has undergone, the king recognizes that spirit need not be fixated in one and only one 'frame', one paradigm. The king thus achieves 'dominion over earth', and is granted 'whatever he wishes', which, it is promised, will be a wish that is LITERALLY fulfilled.

But in his newfound wisdom he wishes only that the tale of this night be remembered in the kingdom.

So from the king's act, which is non-self-serving (ie, egoless), there precipitates an object (this tale, and the 25 sub-tales that are embedded in it) that transcends the framework presupposed by the original storyline. For we are told that they are meant for US, the readers, who exist in a reality that is MORE real than the (imaginary) kingdom in which the actions originally occur!

Accordingly, the third 'type of meaning' that we discussed in an earlier paper comes into existence in this final phase of

The Wizard of Oz, as rendered by W.W.Denslow, who illustrated the original (1900) edition. Compare this figure to Dali's CRUCIFIXION (above). To each supplicant Oz appeared differently. Dorothy saw this enormous head hovering above a throne which 'sparkled with gems, as did everything else'. The throne sat on a circular stage in a circular room lit from the roof by a 'great light as bright as the sun'. On the same throne the Scarecrow saw a lovely lady, the Tin Woodsman a most terrible beast, and the Lion a ball of fire. And it was Toto who tipped the screen behind which hid the all-too-human old man with a bald head and wrinkled face. Frank Baum was a contemporary of Gurdjieff's.

the drama. In addition to the LITERAL and FIGURATIVE meanings, what has been called by others 'transcendent' or 'metaphysical' meaning makes its first appearance. This is the kind of meaning that occurs when, unexpectedly, the sky falls like a big blue studio prop, and behind it is revealed the Wizard of Oz, who happens to look alot like Gurdjieff. At this stage, we get a sudden glimpse of a more fully dimensioned reality, in comparison to which our normal world appears to be mere shadow-existence, the two-dimensional play of light on the walls of Plato's cave.

Dreaming Ourselves into Existence

When we are asleep and come to realize that we are dreaming, our dream turns by definition into what is called a 'lucid dream'. In the earlier part of this century an Englishman named Oliver Fox described his experience of lucid dreams in the following way -

The solution flashed upon me: though this glorious summer morning seemed as real as real could be, I was DREAMING! With the realization of this fact, the quality of the dream changed in a manner very difficult to convey to one who has not had this experience... Never had I felt so absolutely well, so clear-brained, so divinely powerful, so inexpressibly FREE! The sensation was quite exquisite beyond words; but it lasted for only a few moments, and I awoke.

Anyone who has had the experience of becoming fully lucid in a dream knows what Fox is talking about. She will have some sense of the thrill of becoming aware of a wider reality in which the dream-reality is nested, and also of the difficulty of describing that feeling.

When something akin to lucid dreaming occurs in the WAKING state, it is sometimes called 'enlightenment'. It is as if, despite the fact that one is already awake, one becomes even MORE awake, more lucid than usual. This is precisely why lucid dreaming is used as a meditation practice in preparation for enlightenment in the Tibetan tradition. In this sense, what we call the normal 'waking state' is actually much more like a dream than we realize. And when we learn to awaken to the fact that we are dreaming in the sleep state, we acquire the skill to do something similar in our ordinary lives. We begin to learn how to open into an order of existence that has greater degrees of dimensionality than we had previously thought possible.

When this happens we feel as if something new comes into being, but it is actually a 'thing' that has always existed in the super-reality that extends beyond the normal 'waking state'. As Jung puts it -

It is a half physical, half metaphysical product, a psychological symbol expressing something created by man and yet supra-ordinate to him. This paradox can only be something like the symbol of the SELF, which likewise can be brought forth, ie made conscious, by human effort but is at the same time by definition a pre-existent totality that includes the conscious and unconscious. ' (Mysterium Coniunctionis, page 454)

This so-called 'spiritual body' is what we have elsewhere described as the 'superflous ninth'. We might say it is ELICITED rather than 'created'. By elicit we mean 'drawn out' or 'educed', made to emerge - conjured into existence, as it were. Not in THIS world, exactly, but in a more fully dimensioned existence that INCLUDES this one. Some might say that 'soul' is born.

And this 'birth' is inextricably wound up with the liminocentric structuring of the reality that we come to realize at this stage of the spiritual path. Whereas we might presume, at the beginning of the tale, that the king is a character in an imaginal space, a fairy tale, in phase four of the drama our reality is turned inside out -as we are asked to entertain the possibility that the king is a real being, the author of the present tale, and we his intended audience. The tale, at the last minute, takes seriously its own self-referential quality. And not only does the king, the character within the presumed 'virtual' reality, take on an existence all his own, we become the virtual objects in HIS imagination. This can only happen in a storyline that is organized like a mandala - in such a way that the innermost, 'secret' level of reality, wraps back on itself, making the 'figurative' or 'symbolic' in some sense MORE real ⁸ than the literal!

In this kind of world, objects can literally be imagined into existence - but only through an act of magic in which reality becomes a figment of imagination. ['Fig-ment', 'fig-ure' (of speech), and 'figurative'#160;-- have the same stem (fig, from 'fingere') - which means to shape (see feign)]. Here we discover that the 'jewel at the core' of us is actually the GREATER reality in which we participate#160;- the 'god' that is the reality of higher dimensionality than the being that we are.

I 'mean' this sentence. But I am 'meant' by a higher reality. Something like that kind of shift seems to take place, a figure-ground reversal in our ontology, as some point on the spiritual path. Normally, I use a word and intend a referent. But at this new level, it is almost as if the word means itself into existence, flowing directly, effortlessly, and 'superfluously' from the referent, which exists as 'hyperbody', at a higher level of description.

This kind of relationship, in which the 'word' fails to capture the reality, and is mistaken as the object itself, is hinted at by various tongue-in-cheek references, scattered throughout spiritual literature. It occurs, for instance, in the zen literature that deals with a specific level of 'koan' practice, for instance. Wwe witnessed a good example of it in a recent movie in which the young protagonist, unabashedly proclaims that 'the rolls royce is the cadillac of cars'. It constitutes a 'figure of speech' which should have a name all its own#160;- one in which a lesser object is ironically used to explain the qualities of a greater object, or stand for it.

This is like the trope called 'metonymy' (in which the attribute of a thing is taken for the thing itself), and also seems to have elements of 'synecdoche', another trope (in which the 'part' is taken for the 'whole'). But it also more than that; it is a relationship that seems to pre-exist these figures of speech, and to call it by their names would be to describe what is greater by referring to what is lesser. And this would be rather ironic, as in explaining the figure of speech we would need to revert to using it!!!

At this level of analysis one is always on the brink of becoming involved, it seems, in some kind of self-referential paradox. But that's okay, because as we shall see in the next paper, Picking Ourselves Up By Our Bootstraps - Non-linear Nesting Orders in Myth and Ritual, this kind of paradoxical structure is the fundamental and indispensible source of creativity in all forms of human endeavor.