Myth of the Mad King

The myth takes various forms. Some of the better known variations on this theme are the story of Nebuchadnezzar leaving his palace to eat grass with the beasts, Plato's story of the prisoners in the cave, the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son and the related story of the wandering prince contained in the Gnostic allegory called the "Hymn to the Soul."

This old myth, in its essence, compares man to a king with a sumptuous palace at his command. But the king went mad and insisted on living in the cellar surrounded by rags and bones and other worthless objects which he called his possessions. If any of his ministers reproached him for this behavior and tried to remind him of the palace and its splendors, he indignantly replied that he had never left that place. Such was the nature of his illusions that he saw the wretched cellar as a palace and the rags and bones he had collected as precious jewels.

Today we can rephrase this old myth in terms more precise and in more accord with our new knowledge of human nature. We can say that man is a being with great powers at his disposal, which are his by virtue of his large brain and, more specifically, his huge cerebral cortex, an organ he has not yet learned how to use. Be­cause he does not know how to use this powerful machine it tends to operate in ways not beneficial to its possessor, to generate a host of illusions among which he wanders like a babe in the en­chanted wood, frightened and confused, a prey to terrors that he himself has created.

In psychological language the myth of the mad king means this: Man's ordinary state of consciousness is not the highest level of consciousness of which he is capable. In fact, it is so defective that the condition has been defined as little better than somnambulism. Man does not really know what he is doing or where he is going. He lives in dreams. He inhabits a world of delusions and, because of these delusions, makes dangers for himself and others. If this is accepted, then we ask the next questions: What can be done about it? Can man really awaken? What other states of consciousness are possible for him and what must he do to attain these states?

Robert S. De Ropp