A New Brand Of Hero

Since my earliest youth I have held a keen fascination for the superhero in all his variant incarnations. From Hercules and Leonidas of Sparta to the Knights Templar and the Assassins of the eleventh century Crusades, I traced with ever growing enthusiasm the evolution of the superman. Japanese ninjas and the Toltec naguals of Carlos Castaneda unwittingly added to my growing cache of data while marvel comics colored in the more intricate details. Had I been alone is these musings I might have stifled them in order to avoid the stigma of nerdiness; but it turns out that I have shared these musings with an esteemed host of the likeminded. George Lucas brought forth the Jedi knighthood of Luke Skywalker and Master Yoda, while Frank Herbert crafted, for our reading pleasure, Paul Atreides, the budding Kwizatz Haderach of the "Dune" series. Now, before you attempt to raise the objection that these concepts are purely fictional and were in no way intended to enhance our evolutionary journey, allow me to direct your attention the work of L Ron Hubbard, science fiction author, and founder of the Church of Scientology. His musings went beyond mere entertainment and well into the worlds of religion, philosophy, psychology, ethics, and even health care. His superhero, the Clear, is the ideal man, free of all psychosis and neurosis; capable of total recall and fully 'at cause' over Matter, Energy, Space and Time. Prior to Hubbard there was of course Friedrich Nietszche, the 19th century German philosopher who posited the Ubermensch, which is alternately rendered to english as the Overman or the Superman. The Ubermensch was Nietszche's attempt to fill the void where God once stood as the lawgiver of mankind and the architect of the moral and ethical fabric of human society. He fashioned the Ubermensch as the next logical progression of human evolution, a powerful god-man who acts as the author and finisher of his own morality; driven by a fully developed Will to Power and standing in stark contrast to the slave mentality of a humanity that continues to require moral enforcement from some external authority or force. Not many years later Ayn Rand gave Nietszche's Ubermensch a face and a name and a place in 20th century America with the publication of "The Fountainhead". Her superman road the wave of American economic dominance with a personal moral code that held him in good stead through every situation and every challenge hurled at him by ultramodern society. Whether or not these claims of achievable superhuman facility are factual or mere puffery is quite irrelevant here. What is relevant is that there is a drive within us and within the collective consciousness of mankind to bring forth a god-man from among the masses of ordinary men.
Why a god-man, you ask? Why not continue along the long and well traveled road of human religion and the ruler ship of a God or group of gods "out there"? I cannot provide a reason that will be in any way satisfactory because the phenomenon is not born of reason, it is born of psychological and emotional necessity. The very knowledge that we all grow and change throughout life implies that we are growing and changing into 'something'. We know without a doubt that we are changing. What we don't know for certain is whether we are changing into something better, something worse, or just something else. So we say to ourselves "What shall I change into?" and with this question the superhero and the super villain are, of necessity, born.
Now superheroes and god-men come in all makes and models. They are as diverse as the humans that dream of them. Not all god-men are created to be worshipped. Some, indeed, are created to be damned. Christianity, for example, has fashioned a god-man solely for the purpose of leading a rebellion against the ruler ship of Jesus Christ, and has molded this Antichrist, as he is called, into the sum total of everything that Christ is not. Christ and Antichrist stand as supreme archetypes of the best and the worst that man is capable of being. This appears to be a general tendency in man, to find his center by observing his polarities... not that he is very often interested in staying near his center. The center for many of us serves as a bench mark so that we can demonstrate to ourselves and to others what pioneers and risk takers we are and how willing we are to 'push the envelope'. Because of this our superheroes tend to reflect our extremes and personify our loftiest and most decadent selves.
So what would happen if we did something just a bit differently? What if, instead of finding our center in order to identify our extremes; we simply found our center for the sake of founding ourselves into our center; and in this way evolving a new and unique model for what a superman might be fashioned from. The Taoist might find this approach quite familiar, and perhaps the Stoic as well, but the majority of us will find this to be quite distasteful..."Moderation? Who needs it? I want to live!" For most of us balance equals mediocrity. I can already see the wheels turning in the reader's mind as he or she fashions a sterile image of a dull lifeless person trudging through his dull and lifeless job, so he can take his paycheck home to his dull, lifeless, and colorless household consisting of a wife, 3 kids, and a dog named Lassy. How, you might be asking, can you possibly construct a god-man out of the stuff of moderation? To answer this question let us take a closer look at the very idea of transcendent centered-ness and its development. The best place to start is with the philosophy of Taoism.
The "Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu" (Pronounced Dow duh Jing of Lowd Zuh), is part of the Taoist spiritual canon and is the consummate text of transcendent centered-ness. In this beautiful and poetic gem, comprised of 81 short chapters, the superhero is known simply as "the Sage". He is likened to water for, just like water, he nourishes and sustains all that he encounters; he naturally seeks the lowest point for he sees that competition and glory seeking are foolish, impractical and ultimately unsustainable. And, like water, he relentlessly follows his chosen path; sweeping away obstacles that he cannot otherwise traverse. All the earth supports and nourishes the Sage for he is one with all that is and he offers no resistance against which to hammer. He follows the Tao (The Way) as if born to it and in this way he grows and prospers and lives a full and contented life. Not so boring after all, huh? Unfortunately for the Sage, his way leaves the modern western 21st century mind in a vague stupor. With cryptic statements such as 'The way that can be traveled is not the true way" or "The name that can be named is not the true name." or such concepts as Wu Wei, "the way of effortless effort"... need I say more?
So here we have a hero's way that only the hero knows because nobody can manage to split the veil of eastern mysticism that separates him from them. So it almost appears that short of going off to learn Mandarin Chinese at Hong Kong University, then sitting at the feet of some guru who asks us nonsensical questions and then sends us off to a Bod-hi tree to sit and make some sense of it and then return with the answer only to be told, to our chagrin, that all of our efforts to make sense of it is senseless because there truly is no sense to make sense of...and round and round we go...we are, for this reason, not likely to achieve what Lao Tsu was postulating 2200 years ago. Unless, of course, we were to discover another preacher of transcendent centered-ness who lived in that same era, but who spoke to a much more western audience. The individual to which I am referring is Epictetus the stoic. (Pronounced Ep Ik Tee Tus)
Now Epictetus, unlike the mysterious Lao Tsu, descended from a long line of distinguished Greek and Roman stoic philosophers; most notably Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Seneca, and, of course, Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of the Roman Empire. The reason I point this out is to emphasise the distinction that a great deal of philosophy, science, logic, and even mathematics had made its way into the stoic training regimen, which resulted, of course, in a heightened sense of order and clarity through which the philosophy that they taught was taught. Which is why Epictetus is just the man for the job of preaching transcendent centered-ness to and for our nit picky, by the numbers, p and q minding, western styled thinkers. For the truth is that Lao Tsu and Epictetus were teaching the exact same lessons; just to a very different set of students!
Epictetus once said, "Do not ask things to happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go smoothly." In this sense, the Stoic Epictetus demonstrates a clear kinship with the Taoist, Lao-Tsu, because he urges the philosopher to allow nature to flow as it does, and by extension, the Will of others to flow as they will. It is in this way that the philosopher finds himself free to experience nature's beauty without feeling the compulsion to shape, enhance or alter the course. To Epictetus, there is only one clay useful for shaping, and that clay is the Power to Will.
The Power to Will holds a significant place in the thought of the slave-born philosopher, Epictetus. Having been born into chains, Epictetus possessed a singular affinity for the value of free will, having only recently, by way of extreme effort, secured his own liberty. He highlights this point when he says, "Whatever rules you have set up for yourself, abide by them as so many laws and as if it would be impiety for you to transgress them. And pay no heed to what anyone says of you, for this, in the end, is no concern of yours."
Now it is one thing to make a firm resolution to abide by the rules that we have set up for ourselves; it is quite another to determine what those rules might be and whether we would even benefit from the ones we have chosen.
Before we can determine what rules will serve us best in our pursuit of what Nietszche once referred to as, "The hero that is inside each one of us..." we must understand the structure of the Will that is involved in the establishment of those rules. At this point, I call your attention to the work of the 20th century-pioneer of the Mental Science Movement, Dr. Frank Channing Haddock and his crowning literary achievement, "The Power of Will." In this amazing text, Haddock leads the reader on a well-plotted journey towards what he termed, "The Symmetrical Existence.," where, as he worded it:
The body and the senses are better understood and controlled.
The mind has become a new kingdom, surveyed and given government.
And a deathless interest in such and further important discoveries appears.
Haddock goes on to describe the Symmetrical Existence as,"...in a true sense, independent of environment. It cannot be destroyed, nor prevented by surroundings, provided its Will holds good. A good Will adjusts to environment, and thus thrives on difficulty. A good Will makes environment, and thus unfolds triumph. A good Will, at last resort, forsakes old for new environment and thus strengthens itself by a rational persistence. Civilization attests to all the above propositions. Every truly successful man is an epitome of the civilization of his own time. The secret of the Will's power over self, over heredity and environment lies in the fact that it is active, that it is intelligent, that it is individual, that it is a law unto itself and thus subject to law, and that, therefore, it is free."
Haddock launches his journey toward the Symmetrical Existence by establishing the primary steps connected with the act of willing:
Presentation in mind of something that may be done.
Presentation in mind of motives or reasons relating to what may be done.
The rise in mind of sufficient reason.
Putting forth in mind a volition corresponding to sufficient reason.
It is clear from these statements that Haddock was stressing the importance of utilising every aspect of the Will to strengthen and refine every other aspect of the Will. In this way the individual can lock himself into a cycle of perpetual growth and refinement.
It is largely upon this edifice of a self perpetuating Power to Will that Haddock establishes his Symmetrical Existence. For it is only the thoroughly trained Will that can hope to usher in the dream of a balanced and wholesome society that has obsessed the minds of the moral Utopians throughout the ages.
It is this very need to attain and preserve such an existence that necessitates a new breed of man. A being of discipline, possessing the Will to Power, who understands the exceeding value of balance and equanimity and who wields this knowledge to such a degree as to far exceed the loftiest dream of Taoist and Stoic alike. The being which I have termed the Equiphant ( pronounced ek wi font from Equus = congruence or equality and Phainein= to show)
As in ancient Greece where the Hierophant was a priest who was charged with the task of bringing the worshipers into contact with what was deemed holy, the Equiphant of 21st century is committed to bringing the seeker back into balance; who serves as an example of tranquil equanimity amidst a world of extremism, gross excess, and rampant emotionalism. The Equiphant has, as his defining characteristic a deep love and devotion for the Centre. He possesses both the affinity of the Taoist for things as they are and the very Stoic penchant for things as we view them. In this way he is able to allow things in his life to flow freely along because he is fully aware that the only thing in this world he ever has to change in order to alter his circumstances to his benefit is his point of view!
Having this knowledge as the basis for his understanding of this world the Equiphant cultivates a fertile mind that is ideal for the sowing of Sufficient Reason in order to reap the harvest of Haddock's Symmetrical Existence; an ideal state which I prefer to call the Equipath; for it is indeed a path! And this path, being a good and noble path, leads to a good and noble place. Not some nebulous nothingness dreamed up by ecstatics and quietists, but to the Centre; that great and noble place that is always the perfect place regardless of where you find it. I call it perfect because no conflict can exist there because the only conflict that can exist lies in the mind of the conflicted. Put that conflicted mind back into balance and you get a state of tranquility, a return to sound reason and to the distinct absence of conceptual extremes. You get the Equiphant, traveling ever so serenely along the Equipath.
Now, nobody is claiming that it is a easy thing to become this Equiphant. It isn't. Just as Nietszche's Ubermensch remains far beyond our present hope of attainment. However, the path to the Equiphant is far simpler and more clearly navigated than the path to the Ubermensch, which appears to be more of an evolutionary journey than a personal one. The truth is that any one of us can be the Equiphant at any given moment if, in that moment, we manage to free ourselves of the resistance to what is, the desire for what isn't, and the compulsion to conform our actions to the expectations of someone other than ourselves. These things alone will result in the serenity, clarity, and efficacy that comes from walking the Equipath.
The Equiphant is truly unique in humanity's ongoing quest for the god-man, not for the extremeness of his character, but rather for his distinct lack of extremes; not for the dominance of his will, but for the self directed focus of his will; and finally, not for his superhuman capacities but for his capacity to excel at being human.