Indian history is steeped in mythology. Even modern politics has to deal with it at every step of national administration. But I’m talking about mythology at a personal level. Take Mahabharata and Ramayana for instance. Do you believe it is real? Something that has factually and historically happened in this land? Do you think it is just a fairy tale? Or do you find the metaphors in the epics real but the story itself to be a product of imagination?
A few months ago I’ve been to an event called Mahabharata Immersion by Ritambhara. It is a space for participants to explore the major archetypes of the epic within themselves and through that explore the troubling aspects within one self. I found the whole exercise profoundly affecting. It brought out many aspects within me that I’d been uncomfortable dealing with for a long time. I was forced to take a look at them. And I did, for a long time. So there, in that space, mythology is real and alive as a metaphor and as archetypes if we care to deal with them.
Then again, I’d also gone on a visit to Varanasi. And there I’ve seen another kind of tradition alive – one that not only believes mythologies to be factual events but also carries those myths forward. The people who burn bodies on the ghats believe themselves to be direct descendants of Harischandra. I also heard another friend recently tell me that the boatmen there also believe they are direct descendants of a particular boatman mentioned in Ramayana.
What this belief has done is lend a strong purpose and pride to the community of workers whose daily occupation is to burn the dead or to row people across Ganga. What would otherwise become a menial or even a distasteful occupation has now been fused with one’s own life purpose through this meaning making. In this context, these myths are real and factual by virtue of adherence.
I have amazing friends who reject the very idea of god and hence all mythologies associated with a conscious creation, the evolution of human consciousness as a consequence, and the consequent birth of moral societies. They are tales spun by the clever to subjugate the not-so-clever or the gullible. For them mythology is just a cultural curiosity at best.
In my household when I was growing up, they didn’t care much for Mahabharata or Ramayana but the moral codes in them were real and factual. Sin was a fact. So was virtue. Lord Venkateswara was real. So was Shiva, Parvati, Lakshmi, Hanuman, and Vinayaka. Their mythology was real and even historically accurate – for instance Tirupathi was the place where Lord Venkateswara really had turned to a statue.
As for myself, I fall into the category that wavers between all these spectrum of realities and fantasies. Some days mythologies are factual to me. Some days Gods are just rock carvings and their myths fairy tales. On some days they are so real and factual that I have conversations with them and take advice from them.
So it seems we each carry our personal myths that create a meaning and context for our lives. I’m also including here the belief that the whole creation is a product of chaos and is devoid of any so-called consciousness. These mythologies are very important to us. Some of us need mythologies that extend our connection with history through the centuries, some need mythologies that connect them with the land they live upon, some need mythologies that tell them they are right, some need mythologies that guide them through confusion, we all need mythologies to live. And they are all real and false at the same time. They are real because our lives are lived by those stories – either in accordance with them or through working against them. They are also false because disillusionment is as important as faith in our quest to find ourselves. When do they become real and when do they turn false is, I think, unique for each individual and the journeys they chart out for themselves.
So how can truth be real and false at the same time? It can be, right? We are discussing truth and reality from a human perspective and at that level belief is what creates our experiences and all experiences are real!
I realize that we try to keep our outer worlds factual and measurable – like how far is Varanasi from Hyderabad. What time is it right now? But our inner worlds, the realities by which we actually live are measured by faith or loss of it. Each of us live out our own mythologies that are real and factual. They are what make us humans. Perhaps none of us have ever really met except in the world of our myths and roles – except on very rare occasions. Perhaps this is what the meaning of parallel realities is really. Some of our mythologies have parallels with each other, some are diametrically opposite.
My life cannot move forward without my myths, and yet there is also a deep seated drive to go beyond all myths. I’m assuming that’s true for everyone in the world. So what is the myth that I carry and live? What is your mythology? What do we tell ourselves everyday to get going? What do we tell ourselves deep down that shapes our lives? Is my myth real or false? If we are all connected by storytelling, where do our stories connect? Why do collective myths also divide us?
On a confessional note, the most vital question that I’m struggling with right now is why do I worry when you don’t believe in my myth? Theoretically I shouldn’t but practically I am. Why?
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