I think a lot about the ending to The Dark Knight with the Two Boats and The Prisoner’s Dilemma —
Everyone on “Ordinary People” boat wants to murder all the “Bad People” in order to survive and one guy on the boatful of Convicts (with No Fear and The Killer Instinct, acting effectively AS Batman) is willing to kill himself and everyone else on his boat in order to Save the “Ordinary People”, and it’s The Cons (and not the fearful prison guards) who are ALL 100% behind him — because, like The Samurai, the convict understands that he is already DEAD.
“The question is, exactly what does the father represent? You could say, well, there’s the father that you have: a human being, a Man among Men.
But then there’s the Father as such, and that’s The Spirit of The Father.
Insofar as you have a father, you have both at the same time: you have the personal father, a Man among other Men—just like anyone other’s father—but insofar as that man is YOUR father, that means that he’s something DIFFERENT than just another person.
What he is, is the incarnation of the Spirit of The Father. To disrespect that carelessly…
Noah makes a mistake, right? He produces wine and gets himself drunk. You might say, well, if he’s sprawled out there for everyone to see, it’s hardly Ham’s fault, if he stumbles across him. But the book is laying out a danger. The danger is that, well, maybe you catch your father at his most vulnerable moment, and if you’re disrespectful, then you transgress against the Spirit of The Father.
And if you transgress against The SPIRIT of the Father and lose respect for The Spirit of The Father, then that is likely to transform you into a SLAVE.”
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.1.4.html
“ That’s a very interesting idea. I think it’s particularly germane to our current cultural situation. I think that we’re constantly pushed to see the nakedness of our Father, so to speak, because of the intense criticism that’s directed towards our culture—the patriarchal culture. We’re constantly exposing its weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and, let’s say, its nakedness. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, but the purpose of criticism is to separate the wheat from the chaff: it’s not to burn everything to the ground. It’s to say, well, we’re going to carefully look at this; we’re going to carefully differentiate; we’re going to keep what’s good, and we’re going to move away from what’s bad.
The criticism isn’t to identify everything that’s bad: it’s to separate what’s good from what’s bad, so that you can retain what’s good and move towards it. To be careless of that is deadly. You’re inhabited by the spirit of the Father, right? Insofar as you’re a cultural construction, which, of course, is something that the postmodern neo-Marxists are absolutely emphatic about: you’re a cultural construction. Insofar as you’re a cultural construction, then you’re inhabited by the spirit of the Father. To be disrespectful towards that means to undermine the very structure that makes up a good portion of what you are, insofar as you’re a socialized, cultural entity. If you pull the foundation out from underneath that, what do you have left? You can hardly manage on your own. It’s just not possible. You’re a cultural creation. “
“ But, high up in the steeple! There the foul blast roars and whistles! High up in the steeple, where it is free to come and go through many an airy arch and loophole, and to twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and dust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, and never loose their hold upon their thread-spun castles in the air, or climb up sailor-like in quick alarm, or drop upon the ground and ply a score of nimble legs to save one life! High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town and far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of. ”
The level of Pure Wisdom is also the level of mantra (besides meaning “wisdom,” vidyā is also the feminine word for “mantra”).
The wisdom spoken of here is not any type of intellectual knowledge but rather the various phases of Śiva-Śakti’s self-awareness expressed in the form of the seventy million mantras—all the mantras that have ever existed or will ever exist.
For the Tantrik tradition, mantras are actually conscious beings, analogous to angels in the Western religions.
Someone who attains liberation on the level of tattva #5 becomes a mantra-being.
We know that this doctrine, that mantras are conscious, was taken seriously because the texts tell us that if a guru grants initiation into the Tantra to someone who subsequently falls from the path, then that guru must perform a special ritual to apologize to the mantras for putting them to work needlessly.
It is absolutely crucial to understand that in this tradition a mantra, its deity, and its goal are all one and the same.
Thus, for example, Lakṣmī’s mantraOṂ ŚRĪṂ MAHĀLAKṢMYAI NAMAḤ is the Goddess Lakṣmī in sound form; it is her sonic body.
Nor is her mantra something separate from the goal for which it is repeated, i.e., to cultivate abundance, for it is the very vibration of abundance (and, as well, the other qualities of Śrī:elegance, charm, grace, beauty, prosperity, and auspiciousness).
So, all the various “deities” of Indian spirituality exist on the level of the Śuddha-vidyā tattva as phases of Śiva-Śakti’s awareness, the many facets, if you will, of the One jewel.
Further, there are countless mantra-beings on the Śuddha-vidyā level that do not correspond to known Indian deities; perhaps we can suppose that the deities of all spiritual traditions exist on this level, insofar as they can be understood as having sonic forms.
One who reaches liberation on this level sees the entire universe as a diverse array of energies, but with a single essence.
She sees no static matter, experiencing everything as interacting patterns of vibration.
The wonder of that which she sees takes precedence over her I-sense, though there is unity between them: “I am this!” (idam evāham).
The divine Power that corresponds to this level is kriyā-śakti, the Power of Action.
This is so because the primary characteristic of mantras is that they are agents of transformative change, i.e., of action.
