The Question of Being

Disciples of the Mysterium
(Martin Heidegger and the Question of Being)

Introduction

…his mind is not for rent, to any god or government – Neil Peart

Ancient sages believed that humanity had been cut off from the source and meaning of life. There is not a single ancient race or aboriginal culture that did not speak of a prehistoric age of gold, wise magi, dragon-slaying heroes, and high civilizations that eventually fell into oblivion due to moral declination and misuse of technological power. The elders and shaman make no bones about it. In their estimation man has fallen from a great height and lost his way morally and spiritually. The world's many myths and legends even go so far as to tell us why man became disconnected and unsane. They preserve information that speaks of terrible celestial and terrestrial cataclysms that devastated the Earth and shook the consciousness of human beings to its foundations.

A Mysterium is Born

…man does not possess creative powers, he is possessed by them – Carl Jung

In Latin, the term “great mystery” is translated “Mysterium Magnum.” And, as in the east, the western mystics and theologians regard the Mysterium in an abstract manner.

In other words, the great mystery cannot be seen sensually. It is not hiding among the trees, behind the clouds, or skulking in a cave somewhere, waiting to be trapped and put on display by some intrepid "Indiana Jones" type. In fact, depending upon which tradition a person comes from, the great Mysterium can be defined as god, spirit, essence, higher consciousness, nirvana, purpose or life meaning, physical excellence, intellectual supremacy, global peace, utopia, and so on. It apparently means different things to different people. Evidently, it is one idea in the heads of many.

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Then she added a prophecy in which she foretold the approaching end of the Divine Age and the beginning of a new one, in which the summers would be flowerless, the cows milk less and women shameless and men strengthless, in which there will be trees without fruit and seas without fish, when old men would give false judgments and legislators make unjust laws, when warriors would betray one another and men would be thieves and there would be no more virtue in the world .
- (Prophesy of Badb, War Queen of Ireland)

Then saw she wade in heavy streams, men – foul murderers and perjurers, and them who others wives seduce to sin, brothers slay brothers; sisters’ children shed each others’ blood. Hard is the world, sensual sin grows huge. These are the sword-ages, axe-ages, shields are cleft in twain, storm ages, murder-ages – till the world falls dead
– (The Norse Volupso, "The Wise-Woman’s Prophecy")

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If men were once connected to the truth, and in direct communion with the source of life, it is logical to ask how that state can again be reached and realized. Can it be reached via technology and science, or, as so many philosophers believed, by the exercise of human reason? We might question whether modern man is moving toward that communion and rapport or further away from it?

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