The Purpose of Mythology

The purpose of mythology is to make you realize that your ego is keeping you from your destiny.

Maybe we shouldn’t say “your” ego because that emphasizes the sense of separateness that the ego function engenders. The definition of ego is the belief, or rather, the sense that you are separate from the outside world, from nature.

So, its purpose is to break that lock and allow the “waters” of the universe to flow back through you, and the breath (the Tchi) of the universe to once again fill your lungs. Just as your physical body would die without water and air, so your “subtle” body (what we in the West may call ‘Soul’) will die without the ‘divine’ water and air. Because, though, it is wrapped in a story that may be historical untrue, rationally untrue, it contains within it the kernel or seed of a transcendent truth. It’s this very transcendence, the “womb of creation” as Deepak calls it, that’s made, and continues to make, everything we know. It’s desire is to come up through you and “marry” these two worlds, that of the internal and that of the external.

Your ego stands exactly in this middle ground between this external infinity (which our telescopes show us) and this internal infinity (which our microscopes show us), and also this transcendent infinity, which our heart shows us. There’s a trinity for you. A trinity that wants to be “Re-Ligio” or relinked, which are the Latin words that our English word Religion, synonymous with Mythology, actually comes from.

So think about this. Religion actually means to “re-link.” It’s the re-linking of eternity with immanence.

“There’s something that wants to be known, a presence.” 

See, that something, which is real and transcendent, can’t be known when an Ego function serves as a sort of ringed fortress, blocking it out.

So the purpose of the mythology, religion, is to break that Ego sphere, and allow the transcendental to pour forth, both up from within, like a hidden spring, and down from without, like a great waterfall or rain.