I want to start out by explaining quite carefully what I mean by mythology.
 The word is very largely used today to mean fantasy, or something that is definitely not
 fact.
 And it's used, therefore, in a pejorative or put-down sense, so that when you call something
 a mythology or a myth, it means you don't think much of it.
 But the word is used by philosophers and scholars in quite another sense, where to speak in
 the language of myth is to speak in images rather than to speak in what you might call
 plain language or the language of fact, descriptive language.
 You can sometimes say more things with images than you can say with concepts.
 As a matter of fact, images are really at the root of thinking.
 One of the basic ways in which we think is by analogy.
 We say a certain thing is, say, we think of the life of human beings might be compared
 to the seasons of the year.
 Now there are many important differences between a human life and the cycle of the seasons,
 but nevertheless, one talks about the winter of life or the spring of life, and so the
 image becomes something that is powerful in our thinking.
 Furthermore, when we try to think philosophically and think in abstract concepts about the nature
 of the universe, we often do some very weird things.
 You see, it's considered nowadays naive to think of God as an old gentleman with a long
 white beard who sits on a golden throne and is surrounded with winged angels.
 And we say now no sensible person could possibly believe that God is just like that.
 Therefore, if you get more sophisticated, you believe that God is, say, if you follow
 St. Thomas Aquinas, you think of God as necessary being.
 Or if you think with Buddhists, you think of God as the undifferentiated void or as
 the infinite essence.
 But actually, however rarified those concepts sound, they are just as anthropomorphic, that
 is to say, just as human and in the form of the human mind as the picture of God as the
 old gentleman with the white beard or Delord in green pastures wearing a top hat and smoking
 a cigar.
 Because all ideas about the world, whether they be religious, philosophical, or scientific,
 are translations of the physical world and of worlds beyond the physical into the terms
 and shapes of the human mind.
 So there is no such thing as a non-anthropomorphic idea.
 The advantage of Delord in talking about these things is that nobody takes it quite seriously,
 whereas the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum could be taken seriously.
 And that would be a great mistake, because you would think you understood what the ultimate
 reality is.
 So I'm going to use very largely naive mythological terms to discuss these matters.
 And if you are a devout Christian, you mustn't be offended by this, because you will naturally
 think that you have risen now to a more superior idea of these things than these very simple
 terms derived from the imagery of the Bible and of the medieval church.
 But I shall discuss Hinduism in the same way.
 And I'm going to begin with Hinduism to give you a sort of fundamental account of what
 it's all about.
 I imagine some of you were present at the lecture I gave in the university on religion
 and art.
 And I discussed the view of the world as drama.
 Now I want to go more thoroughly into this, because the Hindu view of the universe is
 fundamentally based on the idea of drama, that is to say, of an actor playing parts.
 The basic actor in this drama is called Brahma.
 And this word comes from the Sanskrit root "bra," which
 means to swell or expand.
 And the Hindu idea of Brahma, the supreme being, is linked with the idea of the self.
 In you, deep down, you feel that there is what you call "I."
 And this word, when you say "I am," that in Sanskrit is "aham," A-H-A-M.
 And everybody, when asked what his name is, replies, "I am I.
 I am I myself."
 And so there is the thought that in all life the self is the fundamental thing.
 It means the center.
 And so the Brahma is looked upon as the self and center of the whole universe.
 And the idea, fundamentally, is that there is only one self.
 And each one of us is that self, only it radiates like a sun or a star.
 And just as the sun has innumerable rays, or just as you can focus the whole sun through
 a magnifying glass and concentrate it on one point, or as an octopus has many tentacles,
 or as a sow has many tits.
 So in this way, Brahma is wearing all faces that exist, and they are all the masks of
 Brahma.
 Not only human faces, but animal faces, insect faces, vegetable faces, and mineral faces.
 Everything that there is, is the Supreme Self playing at being that.
 Because the fundamental process of reality is, according to the Hindu myth, hide and
 seek.
 That, or lost and found, that is the basis of all games.
 And it's true, isn't it, that when you start to play with a baby, and you take up a book
 and you hide your face behind it, and then you peek out at the baby, and then you peek
 out this way, the baby begins to giggle.
 Because a baby, being near to the origins of things, knows intuitively that hide and
 seek is the basis of it all.
 And children like to get on, they sit in a high chair, they have something on the tray,
 and make it gone.
 And then somebody picks it up and puts it back, and they make it gone again, you see.
 Now then, that's a very sensible arrangement.
 It is called, in Sanskrit, it is called lila.
 And that means sport, or play, but the play is hide and seek.
 Now let's go a little bit into the nature of hide and seek, because don't let me insult
 your intelligence by telling you some of the most elementary things that exist.
 Really everything is a question of appearing and disappearing.
 For example, if I sit next to a beautiful girl and I put my hand on her knee and leave
 it there, after a while she'll cease to notice it.
 But if I gently pat her on the knee, because now I'm there and now I'm not, it will be
 more noticeable.
 So all reality is a matter of coming and going.
 It is vibration, it is the waves of positive and negative electricity, it's up and down.
 And things like wood appear to be solid, because in much the same way that the blade of a fast
 moving electric fan appears to be solid.
 So the vast agitation that is going on in the electrical structure of solid things is
 a terrific agitation, which will not allow the agitation called my hand to go through
 it.
 Other kinds of agitation, like x-rays, are so constructed that they can get through.
 So everything is basically coming and going.
 For example, sound.
 If you listen to sound and slow the sound down, in the same way you can slow sound down
 in the same way as you can use a magnifying glass to look at the structure of something
 visible.
 And as when you look at the magnifying glass, you find that solid things are full of holes,
 so when you magnify sound, you find it's full of silences.
 Sound is sound hyphen silence.
 There is no such thing as pure sound, just as there is nothing as, no such thing as pure
 something.
 Something always goes together with nothing.
 Solids are always found in spaces, and no spaces are found except where there are solids.
 You might imagine there being a space without any solid in it, but you will never, never
 encounter one, because you will be there in the form of a solid to find out about it.
 You see, they go together, these things.
 The solid and the space, the positive and the negative, the here we are and here we
 aren't, go together in the same way as the back and front of a coin.
 And you can't have a coin that has a back and no front.
 The only thing that gets anywhere near that is a Mobius strip, which is a mathematical
 conceit in which the back and the front are the same.
 But that only shows in a more vivid way how backs and fronts go together.
 Now, so the whole thing is based on that, you see.
 Now once we've got this game, that there are two different things, but they're really the
 same, see.
 The Brahma is what is basic.
 But the Brahma manifests itself in what are called the Dvandva, and that means the pairs
 of opposites, duality.
 Dva, you see, is the Sanskrit word for two, which becomes duo in Latin and dual in English.
 Two is the basis.
 You can't go behind two, because one has an opposite.
 The opposite of one is none.
 Now what is in common between one and none?
 No one can say.
 You can't mention it.
 It's called Brahma, and it's sometimes called Om, O-M.
 But you can't really think of what is in common between black and white.
 There is obviously a conspiracy between black and white, because they're always found together.
 Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle.
 See, there's always an agreement underlying this difference.
 But that is what we call implicit.
 The difference is explicit.
 So the first step in what you might call the hide phase of the game of hide and seek is
 to lose sight of the implicit unity between black and white, between yes and no, between
 existence and non-existence.
 And that losing sight of the fundamental unity is called Maya.
 Maya, a word that means many things, but primarily it means creative power or magic, and also
 illusion.
 The illusion that the opposites are really separate from each other.
 And once you could think that they are really separated from each other, you can have a
 very thrilling game.
 The game is, oh dear, black might win.
 Or we must be quite sure that white wins.
 Now which one ought to win?
 Sometimes when you look at this, you would say, or this, the reality here is the writing.
 That is what is significant.
 And yet there are many patterns that one can have when you're undecided in your mind as
 to what is the figure and what is the background.
 It could be a black design on a white sheet, or it could be a white design on a black sheet.
 And the universe is very much like that.
 Space or the background of things isn't nothing.
 But people tend to be deceived about this.
 If I draw that, most people when asked what I have drawn will say that I have drawn a
 circle or a disk or a ball.
 Very few people will ever suggest that I've drawn a hole in a wall.
 Because people think inside first rather than thinking out here.
 But actually the two sides go together.
 You can't have what's in here unless you have what's out there.
 So all artists, all architects, all people concerned with the organization of space think
 quite as much about the background behind things and containing things as they do about
 the things so contained.
 It's all significant and it's all important.
 But the game is, let's pretend that this doesn't exist.
 So that's the pretending, "Oh, black might win," or "Oh, white might win."
 And so you see that is the foundation of all the great games that human beings play, of
 checkers, of chess, and of the simple children's games of hide and seek.
 And it's, of course, you see, the tradition of chess that white gets the first move because
 black is the side of the devil.
 So all complications and all possibilities of life lie in this game of black and white.
 You can put it in another way.
 In the beginning of the game, when the two pairs are divided, that is to dismember, to
 cut, to separate.
 In the end of the game, when everything comes together, they are remembered.
 To dismember is to hide or to lose.
 To dismember is to seek and to find.
 To remember is to seek and to find.
 And so the Hindu mythology is this, that the Brahma plays this game through periods of
 time called a Kalpa, and every Kalpa is 4,320,000 years long.
 And for a Kalpa, he forgets who he is and manifests himself, or pretends he acts the
 part of, as the great actor of all of us.
 And then for another Kalpa, he wakes up, remembers who he is, and is at peace.
 So the period in which he manifests the worlds is called a Manvantara, and the period in
 which he withdraws the game is called the Pralaya.
 And these go on and on and on forever and ever and ever.
 And the whole thing is that it never becomes boring, because the forgetting period makes
 you forget everything that's happened before, so that each time, for example, a baby comes
 to birth, a baby is, although inheriting genes from the most distant past, the baby always
 confronts the world anew and is astonished and surprised at everything.
 But as you get old, you get heavy with memories.
 You get like a book that people have written on and written on and written on, as if I
 was to go on writing on this, and eventually the whole thing would become black, and then
 I'd have to take out a white chalk and start doing it that way.
 Well, that would be like the change, you see, between life and death.
 Now in popular Hinduism, it is believed that each one of us contains not only the Supreme
 Self, the one ultimate reality, the Brahma, who looks out from all eyes and hears through
 all ears, but there's also an individualized self.
 And this self reincarnates from life to life in a sort of progressive way, or a regressive
 way, according to your karma, the Sanskrit word which means "your doing."
 Karma from the root "kri," "to do."
 And so there is a time, then, you see, in which we become involved and get more and
 more tied up in the toils of the world, more and more subject to desire and to passions
 and to getting ourselves hopelessly out on the limb.
 Then there follows a later time when the individual is supposed to withdraw and gradually evolve
 until he becomes a completely enlightened man, what is called a mukti.
 A mukti is a liberated person who has attained the state called moksha, or liberation, where
 he has found himself.
 He knows who he is.
 He knows that he, deep down in himself, and that you, deep down in yourselves, are all
 the one central self, and that this whole apparent differentiation of the one from the
 other is an immense and glorious illusion.
 Now you see, I said at the beginning that this is a dramatic idea.
 In drama, we have a convention of the proscenium arch and the stage, and we have a convention
 of on-scene and off-scene.
 There is the curtain or backdrop in front of which the actors appear, and behind that
 there's a dressing room called the green room.
 And in the green room, they put on and take off their masks.
 And in Latin, the word for the masks worn by the players in classical drama was persona.
 The Latin word per means through, sona, sound, that through which the sound comes, because
 the mask had a megaphone-shaped mouth, which would throw the sound in an open-air theatre.
 So dramatis personae, the list of the players in front of a play, means the list of masks
 that are going to be worn.
 And insofar as we now talk about the real self in any human being as the person, are
 you a real person?
 We have inverted the meaning of the word, and we have made the mask word mean the real
 player underneath.
 That shows how deeply involved we are in the illusion.
 Because you see, the whole point of a play, the skill of the actor, is to persuade the
 audience, despite the fact that the audience knows it's at the play, is to have them sitting
 on the edge of their chairs, or weeping, or in terror because they think it's real.
 And so, of course, the Hindu idea is that the greatest of all players, the master player
 behind the whole shebang, who's putting on the big act called existence, is so good an
 actor that he takes himself in.
 He is at once the actor and the audience, and he is enchanted by his playing.
 So the word maya, illusion, also means to be enchanted.
 You know what to be enchanted is?
 Is to be listening to a chant and to be completely involved in it.
 Or he is amazed.
 What is to be amazed?
 It is to be caught in a maze.
 Or spellbound.
 How do you get spellbound?
 What do you spell?
 You spell words.
 And so by the ideas we have about the world, and through our belief in the reality of different
 things and events, we get completely carried away and altogether forget who we are.
 There is a story about a great sage, Narada, who came to Vishnu.
 Vishnu is one of the aspects of the godhead, Brahma.
 Brahma is usually the word given to the creator aspect, Vishnu to the preserving aspect, and
 Shiva to the destructive aspect.
 But when the Narada came to Vishnu and said, "What is the secret of your maya?"
 Vishnu took him and threw him into a pool.
 And the moment he fell under the pool, he was born as a princess in a very great family
 and went through all the experiences of childhood and being a little girl, finally married to
 a prince from another kingdom, and she went to live with him in his kingdom.
 And they were in tremendous prosperity and palaces and peacocks and all that kind of
 thing.
 Then suddenly there was a war, and their kingdom was attacked and utterly destroyed, and the
 prince himself was killed in battle.
 And so he was cremated, and she as a dutiful wife was about to throw herself weeping on
 the funeral pyre and burn herself in an act of sati or self-sacrifice, when suddenly Narada
 awoke to find himself being pulled out of the pool by his hair, and Vishnu said, "For
 whom were you weeping?"
 So that idea of the whole world being a magical illusion, but done so skillfully, by whom?
 By you, basically.
 Not you, the empirical ego.
 Not you, who is just a kind of focus of conscious attention with memories that are strung together
 into what you call my everyday self.
 But the you that is responsible for growing your hair, for coloring your eyes, for arranging
 the shape of your bones, the deeply responsible you is what is responsible for all this.
 So then this in sum, then, is this Hindu dramatic idea of the cosmos as an endless hide-and-seek
 game.
 Now you see it, now you don't.
 And so it's saying to everybody, really, of course you worry, and you're afraid of disease
 and death and pain and all that sort of thing, of course.
 But it's all an illusion, there's nothing to be afraid of.
 And you think, well, but my goodness, supposing when I die there just won't be anything.
 Be like going to sleep and never waking up.
 Isn't that awful?
 I mean, that's just terrible.
 Nothing forever.
 It doesn't matter.
 When you go into that period called death or forgetting, that's just so that you won't
 remember.
 Because if you did always remember, it'd be a bore.
 But you are wiser than you know, because you arrange to forget.
 You arrange to die and keep going in and out of the light.
 But underneath, at the basis of all this, between black and white, between life and
 death, is something unmentionable.
 That's really you.
 That's the secret.
 And you don't give the show away, see.
 All of you are now privy to a secret, you're initiates, you see.
 You know this little thing, but you may not have experienced it.
 You know about it.
 But you mustn't give the show away.
 Don't run out in the street suddenly and say to everybody, "I'm God," see, because they
 won't understand you.


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