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 "brh," 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...


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