Many see the myth as a relic of a bygone era, as a primitive and superstitious attempt to explain the world and our place in that is no longer needed in our rational and scientific age. In this video, relying on Bernardo Kastrup’s book More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth and Belief, we explore why such a belief is misguided. For whether we realize it or not, all of us experience life through the lens of a myth. The choice we face, as we will examine, is not between myth or no myth, but between myths that create a meaningful and fulfilling life and those that generate suffering and despair.
“The images of myth must be the unnoticed omnipresent daemonic guardians under whose protection the young soul grows up, and whose symbols help man interpret his life and his struggles.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
To understand the role of myth, we need to distinguish between two realms of our subjective experience, an outer and inner realm, or as Kastrup writes:
“We can roughly divide the chain of subjective experiences we call life into two realms: an outer realm of perceptions and an inner realm of emotions and thoughts.”
Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief
Kastrup uses the term consensus reality to refer to all the events and objects that trigger the sensory perceptions of the outer realm. Whether it be a ray of light, the laughter of another person, the smell of cinnamon, a flying bird, or any of the other innumerable things that can register as sense perceptions, all these things make up consensus reality. Consensus reality, in and of itself, is a domain of pure forms and devoid of meaning, or as Kastrup explains:
“It’s not sad or happy, pointless or purposeful, boring or exciting. In and by itself, consensus reality doesn’t express any conclusion, emotional or intellectual.”
Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief
But our experience of consensus reality feels meaningful as the events and objects of it evoke emotions and lead to trains of thought. For example, a smiling baby produces happiness; the roar of thunder stirs foreboding; and a striking sunset kindles awe. Our perceptions of the pure forms of consensus reality generate meaningful thoughts and emotions because we interpret them through what Kastrup calls an innate code. This code translates the content of our perceptions into inner experiences, or as Kastrup explains:
“. . .our mind needs a code to translate consensus images into thoughts and feelings. Without it, there would be no bridge or commerce between outer and inner realms. The inputs of this translation code are the images and interactions of consensus reality, as perceived by our five senses. Its outputs are the corresponding thoughts and feelings evoked within. Now, because our self-reflective mind operates according to linguistic patterns, the translation code takes the form of a mental narrative we tell ourselves; a story that implies particular correspondences between outer images and inner feelings and ideas. The translation code is thus a myth.”
Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief
A myth, in other words, is a narrative that shapes how we experience the world. Through the lens of myth, we project significance onto the pure forms of consensus reality, and in the process thoughts and feelings are evoked and our stream of subjective experience is created, or as Joan Didion put it:
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live. … We interpret what we see … We live entirely … by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
Joan Didion, The White Album: Essays
