Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
This poem accurately describes the state of my spirit after the out-of-body experience. Total disillusionment of a tender heart. Awareness of life as a painted veil behind which just shadows lurk in the distance. And the truth – so fragile and so unconvincing.
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(Based on Carl Jung’s quote below):
Shelley warns: do not lift the painted veil. The out-of-body journey disregards the warning. The veil tears open involuntarily. Beneath: no hidden splendor, only the mimicry of life—colors idly spread, Fear and Hope masking a sightless chasm. The tender heart, seeking things to love, finds none approvable. Truth itself grows fragile, unconvincing.
Yet Jung, watching Prakrti dance Maya without pause, names the awful priority: it is not to end suffering, but to end blindness. The illusion is dissolved precisely because it causes pain—and pain is the price of seeing all aspects, even the destructive ones. Nature deems consciousness more important than happiness. Fate must be fulfilled, even when the game is gruesome and no interference is possible.
No consolation. No return ticket to the painted theater. Only the fragile splendor moving among shadows, now aware that the dance continues for the sake of sight itself.
Related Content From Carl Jung's Works
Now India has a very helpful idea in that respect.
Their idea of the great illusion, Maya, is not mere foolishness.
One might ask why the god should create the world when it is only his own illusion, but Maya has a purpose.
You see, matter is Prakrti, the female counterpart of the god, the goddess that plays up to Shiva, the blind creator that doesn’t know himself-or to Prajapati, another name of the creator.
In the Samkhya philosophy Prakrti dances Maya to the god, repeating the process of the great illusion innumerable times so that he can understand himself in all his infinite aspects.
Thus the veil of Maya is a sort of private theater in which the god can see all aspects of himself and so become conscious.
The only chance for the creator god to know himself is when Prakrti is performing for him.
And this is despite the fact that it is his illusion, that it is Maya and should be dissolved because illusion means suffering and suffering should be dispelled.
One might say, “Stop your illusion as soon as possible, your illusion will make you suffer.”
Prakrti nevertheless goes on dancing Maya because the point is, not that you should not suffer, but that you should not be blind, that you should see all aspects.
So the compensation is there, only it is on a much greater scale than we thought. If you have dreams that recommend the wrong way, the destructive way, it is that they have the purpose-like the dancing of Prakrti-of showing you all aspects, of giving you a full experience of your being, even the experience of your destructiveness.
It is a gruesome game: there are cases which are just tragic, and you cannot interfere.
Nature is awful, and I often ask myself, should one not interfere? But one cannot really, it is impossible, because fate must be fulfilled.
It is apparently more important to nature that one should have consciousness, understanding, than to avoid suffering.
Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Pages 1415–1416
Read More
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology by C.G. Jung (CW 7) – especially “The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious”: on confronting the shadow and the mana-personality after illusions shatter.
Aion by C.G. Jung (CW 9ii) – the Christ-symbol as pierced veil, but also the darkness of the Self revealed.
The Red Book (Liber Novus) by C.G. Jung – Jung’s own descent after piercing illusions: raw confrontation with the spirit of the depths, no cheap resolution.
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés – chapter “The Handless Maiden”: the cost of disillusionment for the feminine soul, the long underworld journey after the veil burns away.