The High Price of Desire, Cont.

The Carbuncles come through for him and as he counts his money he renews his passport and gets vaccinated. A few more bets and he will be able to live like royalty. After all, has he not been indirectly singled out by God?

How he trembles when, a week later, instead of a sure winner, he receives the following note:

Dear Sammy,

I've just gotten some bad news from my doctor. He tells me I need my large colon operated on or else I'll die in a few months. As you know, God is my life and because I serve Him, I am vowed to earthly poverty. So, I don't have the twenty thousand dollars the surgery and recovery will cost. I want to live if only to be able to continue helping you. So, if you have the spare cash and want to pay for my operation, fine. Send a cashier's check to me at the enclosed post office box address. But if you can't afford to help me, don't worry. I will die happy knowing that in some small way I was finally able to help you.

(signed) Someone Who Has Always Cared

Who would fail to provide that cashier's check? Who would doubt that this benefactor possessed supernatural power? Was not the evidence held in hand and deposited in secret safe deposit box? Mr. Doe can hardly be blamed for rushing to the aid of his Golden Goose.

How could he know that his benefactor was a clever conman who came to his city, availed himself of the Chamber of Commerce's VIP (Very Important Persons) list, the membership lists of various professional groups, the society pages, the classified phone directory, and so on, and developed a list of five thousand 'marks'. He then told twenty- five hundred of them that Smith would win the prizefight. The other twenty-five hundred were told that Jones would win. When Smith won he discarded the latter group and divided the former into two groups. He then told twelve hundred and fifty that the Weasels would win and the other twelve hundred fifty that the Leopards would win. By the time that the Carbuncles or the Diamondbacks won, there were six hundred twenty-five fanatical "believers" willing and able to send him thousands of dollars.

Nobody can see the future. We casually accept this, but we can't truly believe it until we have sacrificed our archetypal Superman and given him a proper hero's funeral. Failing this, we don't know when or if he will ever rise up and project himself upon Someone Who Cares.

Transitions from one level of hero to another are usually distressing. A toddler, properly functioning in the Trickster level, believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. When he is older and enters school, his slightly older peers mock him for such childish beliefs. He is hurt, embarrassed and confused. Can it be true that his heroes don't even exist? Oh, he has been deceived! It was Mommy who filled the Easter basket. It was Daddy in the red suit. He sulks until someone asks him whether he would rather be Superman or Spiderman. Wow! Happily, he makes and defends his choice. He considers and accepts as true the inter-planetary battles he sees on television. For him Klingons and Clark Kent really do exist. He marvels at the supernatural. He believes in ghosts and magic and yet feels safe amongst the fabulous for he can clutch his rabbit's foot or draw a circle on the floor to keep evil spirits at bay. Before long his beliefs will again be subjected to peer review; and if it is discovered that he accepts as factual the existence of winged men or Martian war veterans, he faces ridicule and calumny. Cursing his stupidity, he again labors in pain and confusion until that blessed day when he is saved by the likes of Tupac Shakur or Johnny Unitas. Feeling the beat of rap or rock and roll or knowing a good forward pass when he sees one gains him re-admittance to the human race. His heroes are at last human; but he will do what he can to deify them.

The Human Hero projection will show itself in devotion to a teacher, entertainer, athlete, politician, and so on, devotion that is often fanatical. The projecting person's heart flutters as his Guru or Roshi or presidential candidate or Hall of Fame quarterback or Nobel Laureate enters the room. A devotee will stand in the rain for hours to hear his 'Diva' sing or watch his favorite guitarist perform. A star centerfielder retires and grown men weep as he makes his farewell address. (Was there such a crowd at Calvary?)

For a final illustration of the price we pay for failing to free ourselves from the need to bond with other people, let's look at Jesse Doe, a forty-four year old engineer, who's a divorced father of two.

Since his ex-wife and kids live in another state, Jesse keeps his own little apart- ment; and between the rent, the car and the child support payments, his existence hovers around the poverty level.

He's more than bitter. Daily he says to himself, "Here I am, my life two-thirds over. I've worked for years and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. My kids plays softball with the stranger who's living in my house, sleeping with my woman, eating at my table. And I sit here alone in this dump watching television." As the months pass, his discontent deepens.

Jesse Doe has a barber who is a born-again Christian. Snip, snip, snip... "Brother, until you've let Jesus into your heart, you're condemned to misery. Come with me to a Revival meeting. You won't regret it." Snip, snip...

"No," says Jesse. And he means it. He dreads getting his hair cut because of the evangelical pitch that comes with the snipping.

Then, one night, as Jesse sits before his flickering tube, the barber knocks at his door with a proposition he can't refuse. "The world's greatest preacher is speaking in a tent just outside town. Come with me and I swear the moment you say you want to leave, we'll leave without a word. Not only that but I promise you that I will never bring up religion to you again. Never."

A future filled with peaceful haircuts - and all for the price of taking a quick ride with the barber. Jesse relents.

They pull up at the busy tent. Brilliant light streams from the entrance. A band plays and even in the parking lot Jesse receives the tactile benefits of a sound wave mas- sage. The music, hauntingly familiar, evokes recollections of childhood innocence and simpler times... before the world turned rotten, before he knew the burden of responsibility and the high price of a fickle heart.

There in the convivial sights and sounds, someone pats his shoulder and calls him Brother. A kindly old lady extends a tray of cookies towards him and calls him Sonny. People are friendly. And the smells of cinnamon buns and coffee fill the air. And the music! Soon, Jesse is singing and clapping his hands and stompin' his feet to the rhythm of hymns he hasn't heard in decades.

And then the lights dim and a spotlight shines on a fellow in a white suit who comes to the podium with The Book in his hand, a fellow who speaks in seductive cadences, who lets his voice curl sensually around buzzwords while his tongue licks new meaning from old and tired cliches, who gyrates and stretches, who points and pounds. Jesse is enthralled, and it doesn't even surprise him that when the preacher asks for dedicated souls to raise their hands and shout Halleluiah, he complies without hesitation.

He joins his barber's church and enters what seems to him to be a new life, a pure and love filled life. He easily differentiates friend from foe, good from evil, truth from lie. He will finally know who his enemies are, the ones who were responsible for his failures. He will identify Satan and his minions: the women who create lust; the wicked comrades who entrapped him with lures of alcohol; the merchants, employers and politicians whose greed cannot be sated. And the particular will extend to the general in a frenzy of sampling.

For as surely as we look eastward to see the rising sun, his enemy will soon become some other religion or sect, some other nationality or race, some other economic class or politically active group.. one that has conveniently been identified for him by his new church. Religious leaders need to identify a powerful group enemy because they need to avoid internecine strife. They need to prevent their parishioners from casting their Shadows upon each other; and the most efficient way to avert this organizational catastrophe is to direct everyone's individual shadow outside the congregation, to cast them collectively upon some "menacing" alien group. Common hatred is the glue that holds congregations together.

Jesse Doe will beam and greet his fellow church members with unabashed affection. Excited by the release of his long pent-up gods and eager to worship them, he will testify to the power of God Almighty at every opportunity and never will he suspect that his conversion, while obviously religious, is far from spiritual or that the changes he is experiencing, while being dramatic, are neither deep nor permanent.

Would Jesse's fate have been different if he had gone to a Zendo instead of a church? Not at all. It cannot be said often enough: Heaven and hell exist and they exist here and now and in our minds. Unless we've been decapitated, we bring our heaven or our hell with us wherever we go. Who dares to enter a synagogue, a mosque, a cathedral or a temple with the intention of gratifying his ego, that patron of hell? Only a wretched fool would enter a holy place in order to be seen and admired, as part of some hellish Six Worlds' strategy to gain status for himself. People who join Zen groups often join for the same reasons that they join any club. The harm is minimized according as they admit they are not there for spiritual reasons.

So Jesse was a changed man; but the archetypal projections which instigated the changes were designed for a young, maturing person. Jesse's person was as overripe as it was underfinanced. He had projected the archetype of the Good Friend onto his fellow church members when he was far beyond the need for large gene pools or the safety of the buddy system and the herd; he had projected the archetype of the Hero onto the preacher, when he was in need of a Savior not a social director or moral coach; and, of course, instead of accepting responsibility for his own failures, he had cast past and future blame upon his newly identified and adopted Shadow antagonists. (Should he have become sexually attracted to a church "sister" he would have found himself confronted by an archetypal full-court press.) His new attachments will not make him happy; they will only present him with more obstacles to overcome, more severed ties, more disappointments.

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