I know what you mean, Andrew, about Jeffers' pantheism.
As we writers know, truth can only appear in and through fictions, through literary artifice and construction. As with the texts which support them, the great world religions are great poems, all composed on the same topic: life, its value and meaning. This, of course, is an esoteric view of religions, and as Schuon and others have argued, there is a transcendental unity among religions at the mystical level of understanding. It is only on the exoteric level of popular understanding, when the salvation of the individual ego is at stake, with all the accompanying terrors and violence associated with fear and personal survival come to the fore, and where one religion (which is believed as literally true) is opposed to the other patently false religions. All conflict between religions comes from the non-imaginative, literalist perspective.
And while I don't feel attached to any particular mystical doctrine, I do have a preferred direction. And I agree that Jeffers' pantheism is a less satisfying poem than others I know.
Have you read anything by Roberts Avens? Like Hillman and the other post-Jungians, he puts Imagination at the centre of all religious sensibility. Here are a few quotes from his book Imagination is Reality:
"I take the view that imagination is the common ground of both Eastern and Western spiritualities in their most diverse manifestations insofar as their professed aim is to transcend all duality." p 9.
"By transcendence I do not mean going beyond duality in the direction of oneness and unity nor any other sort of ‘wholeing’, but rather an awareness of the essential polycentricity of life - seeing ontological value in the absence of ‘eternal’ values and principles. For I am convinced that there is no other way of being human and free." p 9.
"Whether we see the world predominantly as nirvana or Samsara, as Brahman or as maya, depends on our perspective, that is to say, on the power of imagination. Spiritualism and materialism are twin brothers and are the greatest sins against the soul." p 10.
|