It Must Be Made

Hillman's The Dream and the Underworld: “The experience of the underworld is overwhelming and must be made. This style of the underworld experience is overwhelming, it comes as a violation, dragging one out of life and into the Kingdom that the Orphic hymn to Pluto describes as 'void of day.'”

I think we just don't get it. Even if we make a study of it—death, our own—with a strong intention to prepare. As Heraclitus said in the previous post. It's not what we expect, because almost everything we do here (in life), by inclination, training, and genetics, is not done there (in death or dreams). It's a different system, a different sense of I...

I had a dream last night. These days I don't remember very much of them. But I do remember this: that I didn't really have a grasp on who or where or what I was. The question didn't arise; I was just wandering around anxious, looking for something I'll never find. I never, in the dream, asked myself: am I dreaming? Why are things so foggy? I didn't have a full rich sense of self that I do during the day. I was just a shadow. And I didn't have the notion that I was just a shadow. I didn't know what was going on.

I think it's because as all the ancients said, over and over: the soul is (mostly) asleep during life. And what we think and feel with during our lives is not available in the dreams or the afterlife/underworld. It's not just 'void of day' - it's void of everything we normally think of as us and ours. We can do something about this, one hopes. It's all about building a soul, building someone who is still there in the place that is 'void of day.'