None of the great stories, myths, fairy tales, or sacred stories would get anywhere without the timeless and universal archetype that moves the lead character beyond whatever the status quo is, or whatever the new crisis happens to be.
Our own stories carry the same archetype, as well. We have our unique stories (like no one else’s), our group stories (like some others), and then we have our universal story (like all others) in which we share the same elements – motifs, archetypes, and patterns – that we all experience as members of the human race.
As Jung might say, archetypes are part of our vast store of unconscious ancestral knowledge about the profound relations between God, man, and cosmos. Whenever an archetype passes over into consciousness, it is felt as an illumination. This is because archetypes carry a healing function, keeping us truly alive in the vital, nourishing riverbed through which the water of life has flowed for centuries.
According to Vedanta philosophy, following the way of the world, or the way of tradition (i.e., believing in the letter of the scriptures), can block one from knowing reality. We have to be open to what is beyond us, to connecting with something greater than we are. Yet this is the way it has always been.
Enter one of the oldest archetypes, the call to adventure, or the quest to understand reality, a theme as old as story itself.
Perhaps hearing the Call is central to our nature as human beings. The motif of search frames classic mythology, fairy tales, and all of literature. Mythic heroes became heroes – and heroines – because they were the original seekers after truth. Though their adventures involved much drama and many overwhelming challenges, as they all must, Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Inanna, Icarus, Daphne, Jonah, Moses, King Arthur, Sleeping Beauty, Siddhartha, and countless others lived out a pattern that is not only understood as heroic but as sacred, too.
The archetype of the Call consists of a quest that always begins with a separation from the familiar (“from the way of the world”), which signals a “departure,” and is followed by the quests’ fulfillment in the closely related archetypes of “initiation”and “return,” the three-part pattern Joseph Campbell identified as the monomyth, or the adventure of the hero.
The meaning of this archetype is the unfolding of destiny; its appearance is the first sign that something of significance is about to happen. There is usually a herald of some kind signaling the coming of this archetype, as in the frog who retrieves the ball from the pond for the princess. This archetype not only marks the beginning of a transformational undertaking, it is, in mystic terms, “the awakening of the self.”
Evelyn Underhill characterizes “the mystic type” as the personality who refuses to be satisfied with someone else’s experience. Wherever this “urge for going” takes us, it turns out to be where we are meant to be going.
All who seek something beyond have one passion in common: pursuing a spiritual quest to find a “way out” or a “way back” to what will satisfy a craving for absolute truth. This is what gives deeper meaning to life, and leads not only to the awakening of the self, but also to a transcendental consciousness that usually involves a vision of the Divine as immanent in the world.
In the Baha’i Faith, Baha’u’llah, answering a query from a Sufi, explained this mystical quest in the familiar and timeless framework of the seven stages of the journey of the soul in The Seven Valleys. Beginning with The Valley of Search, as did the 12th century Persian Sufi Attar, he confirmed that the spiritual realities, or the inner verities, of all religions are the same.
The characteristics of this first valley, after taking “leave of self,” are patience and perseverance. Other prerequisites of this quest are to “cleanse the heart” and “turn away from [blind] imitation.”
What may be most comforting soon becomes evident, that guidance will be provided when most needed: “At every step, aid from the Invisible Realm” will be offered, and as the intensity of the search grows, nothing but union with “the object of [the] quest” is desired.
When the Call is answered, it signals the awakening of consciousness, leading to the fulfillment of a potentiality, like a seed growing into fruition.
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