The popular image of a person who has purportedly achieved a non-standard state of mind, (“mystics,” in common parlance), runs from the fanciful and foolish to the grotesque and impossible. What goes unnoted is their radical similarity to mankind’s well-accepted picture of the down-to-earth, non-metaphysical Hero, (both historical and fictional): the Great Warrior, the Wise King; figures whose behavior stood them strikingly apart from the ordinary person.
In all cultures, from all eras, men’s images of the Secular-Hero are given characteristics which are the same as are natural for a person who has achieved a comprehension-of-life with which men are not naturally born.
The cellular activity that produces man’s consciousness everywhere has caused him to attribute certain traits to the Temporal-Hero, which instantly strike everyone everywhere as being unquestionably correct. They can be counted as numerous, but are consistently centered around a core few, several of which at random will herein be used as examples.
A Secular-Hero is never pictured as whining or complaining. From an ancient Greek warrior to a contemporary lead character in a sci-fi movie, no one even considers the possibility that the hero, in the midst of his adventures, will begin to whine about all of the betrayals and hardships he has been forced to suffer. It is literally inconceivable that the hero would make any comment.
If the Warrior-Hero is physically wounded he does not cry, nor even mention it.
This is not some misplaced, testosterone-driven, strictly male bravado. It is a cellular-sourced, archetypical reflection in all people’s minds of what a man with an expanded comprehension-of-life would be like:
“Suffering-in-silence” is not the point;
the understanding that suffering is an illusion – is.
J.