The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [453]
3. Death and resurrection: the immortal Self
The final mythic episode in the story is that which centres on the last week of Jesus's earthly life. He travels up to Jerusalem, the holy city which is the symbolic centre of the Jewish world. And what we then see unfolding is a perfect example of the archetypal five-stage cycle of Tragedy. The Anticipation Stage has been his preparation for this supreme moment. We see the Dream Stage when, as he enters the city on a donkey, he is welcomed by wildly cheering crowds. The Frustration Stage reaches its height in the air of foreboding which hangs over the Last Supper, and when, in the garden of Gethesamane, he must inwardly face up to the horror of what lies ahead. The forces of opposition are constellating against him. The Nightmare Stage begins with his betrayal by Judas and his arrest by the High Priest's armed guards. It continues with his one-sided trial for blasphemy, his subjection to physical torture and his interrogation by the decent but weak Roman governor Pontius Pilate, with the mob outside howling for his blood. The Destruction Stage begins when he is led out of the city to be crucified by Roman soldiers between two common criminals and, after three hours of agony, he meets his death.
What is so striking is that this appears to be such a complete inversion of what the pattern of Tragedy is about. The purpose of the tragic archetype is to show what happens when human beings become so possessed by the darkness of the ego that in the end they bring about their own destruction, so that unity can be restored and light triumph over darkness. Yet Jesus, as portrayed in the story, is wholly ego-free. The darkness in the story is all outside him.Thus his death on the cross seems to be a total victory for darkness. But herein, of course, lies the point. Although the dark power may have managed to kill him in his earthly outward state, this is not his true identity, which lies in the fact that he is so completely at one with the Self: that totality which is eternal and which cannot be destroyed. Accordingly, when the third day comes, he reappears, bathed in that soft light of eternity which characterises all his appearances after the resurrection. He has overcome death because in reality he has always been part of that which cannot die. And he is then taken up into heaven to merge with the One.16
Thus ends the most famous of all those myths, found in many parts of the world, telling of the god who dies and is reborn. In the Egyptian version, the great god Osiris had been put to death by the dark part of himself, his brother Set, but then brought to life again. It was his son Horns who had completed the story, by avenging his father and thus overcoming the cause of death. In the Greek version it was Dionysus, also the `son of god, who had been put to death and then been brought back to life by his father, representing the boundless power of life which cannot be destroyed.
In archetypal terms, the myth of Jesus shows how, in acting out the pattern of Tragedy, he acted out the pattern of how all human beings imprisoned in egoconsciousness must die. Yet it also shows how, if only they can make contact with the selfless part of themselves which lies beyond ego-consciousness, that state of `sin' which only came into the world with the `Fall' and mankind's emergence from unconscious unity with nature, they can be reunited with that state of One-ness which cannot die because it is eternal. In the words of St Paul used in the Christian burial service, `as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive'. In this respect, acting out his own statement that `greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends', Jesus's death also represents that other great recurring feature in the religions of the world,