What is a symbol?
Symbols of a Transcendent Experience
Spiritual Evolution
In order to mine the richness from life that is the promise of every myth, we must be able to interpret mythological symbols reliably. Yet the all-important task of relating to our myths has become nearly impossible for the contemporary Westerner. Now that our thinking is purported to be more-evolved (more scientific, analytical, and rational) we have a hard time relating to the symbolic language that completely envelops ancient myths. This is one of the reasons the greatest modern philosophers have predicted the rise of a new myth in the West. As “Society is the sum total of humans in need of redemption,” as Jung once wrote,[1] every society—even one as “advanced” as ours—needs a relevant and living myth that its people can relate to and rely upon. The Twelve Steps, taken together and practiced as a way of life,[2] formulates just such a modern myth, repackaging the ancient and universal symbolism contained within all the world’s myths while also cloaked in the experiences of modern men and women, in language that is much closer to home. For this reason, the Twelve Step myth is far more relatable and as such is proving to be far more effectual at transforming lives—a fact many religions are aware of, which is why most of them have tried to adopt the steps themselves, in some form or another.
Symbols vs Allegories
The trouble we have in relating to our myths begins with our inability to correctly interpret the language used to relay them. Part of the problem is that most of us imagine we are already crystal-clear on what the highly symbolic religious terms represent. Take the words “God” and “self” for instance. These two concepts are so fundamental to our human experience that it is perfectly normal for us to assume that we already know what they mean. So while we might think our comprehension of religious concepts is already complete, what we are neglecting to see is that all religious terms, since they are symbolic, carry a much larger meaning than can be gleaned from a cursory glance. Even the word “symbol” is more complex than we might assume, and since symbols are the language of religion and mythology—and play an equally heavy role in Twelve Step spirituality—we’ll start by defining the word symbol and try to give a complete, though brief, description of what religious symbolism really is.
While we know intuitively that myth is presented to us in symbolic language, we might errantly suppose that they would be straightforward and direct representations of an idea. So we often assume that religious symbols can be interpreted the same way that we interpret basic allegories—as easily understood stories that really only work on two levels. There is the surface narration, then a slightly more abstract story beneath the surface meant to be didactic and convey a deeper meaning. For instance, Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare is an amusing story for children that imparts the message that slow and steady wins the race. It is relatively easy for us to parse the meaning of allegorical messages.
Symbols, not so much. According to Jung, “Symbols are images of contents which for the most part transcend consciousness… They are not allegories.”[3] Religious symbols are so complex that they actually “transcend consciousness.” In other words, the real meaning of mythological symbols lies beyond the grasp of even the sharpest human reasoning. (Comparatively, allegories are simple equations in logic whose meaning is meant to be clearly deduced.) Eric Neumann, a student of Jung and author of the book The History of Consciousness, tells us that mythical symbols don’t carry a predictable meaning the way we typically find with other symbols in our everyday lives—like a check-engine light or the items on a grocery list: “The [religious] symbol is therefore an analogy, more an equivalence than an equation, and therein lies its wealth of meanings, but also its elusiveness. Only the symbol group, compact of partly contradictory analogies, can make something unknown, and beyond the grasp of consciousness, more intelligible and more capable of becoming conscious.”[4] Neumann’s message is that our religious symbols present contradictory ideas which lie beyond our ability to fully comprehend or describe, yet it is their paradoxical nature that enables them to bring the transcendent message of redemption a little closer to conscious apprehension.
The Story of Myth
As symbolism is the language of mythology—including the myth of the Twelve Steps—learning to decode its messages is vital to unlocking the power of myth in our lives. While this is no easy task, even when the symbolism has been largely pared down as it has been in the Twelve Steps, a good start can be gained by recognizing that religious symbolism typically highlights a process or an experience, rather than actual personages or places, as we might assume. And as German philosopher and theologian Rudolph Otto writes, it is an experience that is impossible to describe:
This X of ours [i.e., the spiritual awakening] is not precisely this experience, but akin to this one and opposite to that other. Cannot you now realize for yourself what it is? In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind; as everything that comes “of the spirit” must be awakened.[5]
However, what Otto is really telling us is that mythological symbols are not meant to describe the heavenly throng at all, but are indeed the very thing that awakens the desire and the ability for us to change. So while mythological symbols may appear to be just descriptions of the spiritual experience, their main objective is really to evoke or awaken it from within. That idea is pretty wild considering that at its core the Twelve Steps is a set of “suggestions” that has the effect of bringing about a spiritual awakening. As such, it better conjures “this X of ours” than any other set of symbols available to us today. This is why we say that the Twelve Steps is an unparalleled, modern spiritual revelation—a living myth.
However clearly it may be delineated, it is important to understand that the experience religious symbolism alludes to cannot be taught, it can only be evoked, due to the transcendent nature of that experience. This means that it lies beyond our ability to capture, control, or communicate. Otto’s understanding of how we connect to spirit through experience corelates perfectly with how Wilson expresses the culmination of the process in Step Twelve— “Having had a spiritual awakening, as the result of these steps.” Here Wilson underscores the mystery of the spiritual journey, what Otto calls “this X of ours,” by using somewhat vague language, not pinpointing directly what leads to this transformation, but only certain that it was a result of embarking on the Twelve Steps—each step integral in a highly symbolic process. Even the first step— “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable”—plays an essential role in the development of the spiritual awakening, and is a fundamental part of the mythological drama. For if our lives never completely unraveled, we would never seek a spiritual solution in the first place. Each of the Twelve Steps is a symbolic statement regarding the experience of “this X of ours.” Likewise, in the realm of the mythological or the religious, we are dealing with an experience that is not easy to grasp unless we have had it ourselves. This is equally true for each of the Twelve Steps as it is for any of the ancient myths. All present the process of spiritual transformation through the use of symbolic language, and all are meant to awaken the experience from a place deep within us.
“An Entire Psychic Change”
Bill Wilson was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and the author of the book with the same title (sometimes called the Big Book). We can see in his account of his journey into recovery from active alcoholism the makings of a transcendent, spiritual experience. His retelling of that dramatic “adventure,” as he called it, mirrors the way of myth, and, as with all spiritual endeavors, Wilson did not take it alone. When he was attempting to get sober, as he described in the chapter “Bill’s Story” in the Big Book, he was admitted four times into New York City’s Charles B. Town’s Hospital, a leading hospital for the treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction in the 1930’s. There he was put under the care of Doctor William Silkworth, who was the Director of Towne’s Hospital, and one of the world’s leading expert in the field of alcoholism, having himself treated over 40,000 alcoholics. Silkworth introduced Wilson to the idea that alcoholism is an illness, and Wilson later invited him to contribute to the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which Silkworth graciously did. Those pieces of writing, with minor commentary from Wilson, can be found in the preface of the Big Book and are titled the “Doctor’s Opinion.” Doctor Silkworth wrote, describing the state of the alcoholics trapped by the disease that “To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one.”[6] Silkworth knew that in order for alcoholics “of a certain type” to finally reach long-term sobriety they must literally transcend their former natural state. In order for this to take place, they must experience a process that he aptly called “an entire psychic change.”[7]
The nature of such a transformative experience is so hard for which to conjure words and so unique to each individual that it is understandable why Wilson and Otto would speak in generalities when trying to define it. For one who has not experienced it, the transformative experience is akin to trying to describe what it is like to visit Paris without ever having been there. I cannot adequately conjure language for what it is like to be in Paris if I have never been to Paris—obviously. However, once I have traveled there, I know exactly what it is like and can experience this each time I return in my mind. That being said, I still cannot accurately convey to my friend what it would be like for her to be there, no matter how clearly I may paint a picture with words for it, she will have to visit Paris to experience it firsthand for herself to really know. Understanding or describing “this X of ours,” or the “entire psychic change,” as Silkworth calls it, is similarly impossible.
Story Telling
As our minds evolved, there was also a need for our spiritual approach to life to evolve. So, when we read “what happened”[8] to some distant figure in mythology or religious history, we might do so dispassionately, as the symbols embedded in these stories seem too foreign from our experience to ignite something within us, as readers, that sets off a fundamental change in our attitudes and behaviors. By contrast, a speaker in a Twelve Step meeting may share a story about her experience, either during her “drinking career” or in sobriety, and the hearer, perhaps a new member of the group and himself struggling to get sober, may relate and have something “evoked, or awakened in the mind”; thus, something begins to stir within that allows the newcomer to find the willingness (and the ability) to change. The symbolism in religion and the mythological stories we learned about in humanities class were likewise designed to do the same—the difference is their audience lived in a different time and place and had a different way of perceiving the world. And though our need for redemption is just as pressing as any who have walked the earth before us, what worked for previous generations fails to connect with a modern audience. And just as the seemingly innocuous story of the speaker at a Twelve Step meeting set off a sea-change in another member’s being, the steps have come in service of the all-encompassing task of modern “redemption.” The steps are not just the instructions for those seeking sobriety, but a catalyst for individual spiritual transformation.
As it has been throughout history, the way in which myths are passed down is through storytelling. They are relayed in story-form, most often written, and sometimes told. Nowadays, they are shared in Twelve Step meetings around the world. These modern stories generally communicate the same thing the ancient ones did—what Wilson described as “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now.”[9] This is the story at the center of the Twelve Steps as well as all of ancient myth. One reason for the tremendous success of the Twelve Step groups is that the steps themselves are a sufficient replacement for the relics of earlier myths due to the fact that they convey the story of the spiritual awakening that, until now, was only communicated through the difficult, symbolical stories such as the fall of Adam and Eve or the atonement of Christ. The ancient myths require a high level of scholarly interpretation in order to become fully applicable to our modern lives, and for this reason, they have lost much of their effect—they are no longer “living myths.”
Individuation
By contrast, the drama of the Twelve Steps is the story of the individual’s quest for redemption, told in modern language. The Twelve Steps and the world’s religions are both designed to bring about the same thing—that which Bill Wilson called “spiritual awakening,” Doctor Silkworth called “psychic change,” and Carl Jung called “individuation.” And while the broad terminology that Wilson and Silkworth use is fairly straightforward, it might be helpful to unpack the term Jung coined for spiritual growth. Regarding individuation, he wrote: “It is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated… its goal [is] the development of the individual personality.” A person who is in the process of individuating is working to “differentiate themselves from the collective psychology,” meaning that genuine spiritual experience is usually reserved for those bold souls who dare to veer off the common path of modern culture, religious and otherwise. Furthermore, Jung says that: “Individuation is closely connected with the transcendent function, since this function creates individual lines of development which could never be reached by keeping to the path prescribed by collective norms.”[10] The transcendent function is “this X of ours,” or the spiritual experience that is awakened through mythical symbols. Furthermore, individuation is achieved outside of the collective norms of society in general. As Meister Eckhart wrote, “And still today one seldom finds that people come to great things without first they go somewhat astray.”[11] Paradoxically, the seeds of redemption are sown from one's own hard won efforts of going against the grain, so to speak, while the fruits of that redemption far exceed what could be accomplished by individual effort alone. Redemption is, therefore, transcendent of both our individual capacity to achieve, as well as our society’s ability to bestow.
From the outside—without the benefit of knowing what is occurring within the inner life of the person concerned—individuation might seem simply as if one has “grown-up,” become a “functioning adult,” and began “facing life on life’s terms,” as they say in the Twelve Step groups. However, we see from the writings of Wilson that individuation goes far beyond just “getting one’s shit together,” and is in reality a transcendent, religious experience.[12] Notice how lofty Wilson’s description of his “entire psychic change” in the Big Book: “We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed … We have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe.”[13] While Wilson’s effusive outpouring may seem exaggerated, it is indicative of a transformed psyche that has left behind the tethers of collective norms and embarked on a path which was previously barred. The individuation process, as it plays out in the Twelve Steps, far exceeds “not drinking and using drugs.” It has come to pass more than once that the town drunk became the town mayor, and the town wino, the town judge. One well-known AA speaker in the South became not only the warden of a prison he once inhabited as an inmate, but also eventually the head of the entire State Department, overseeing all the prisons in the state.[14] Similar examples as these abound throughout the fellowships.
What is Redemption?
And who doesn’t crave such a profound shift in their outlook on life? Who isn’t “driven by a hundred forms of fear” and would not give almost anything to live a life free of it? Very few are those who can honestly say they are completely satisfied with what they have become, with what life has presented them. What Wilson describes is indeed the kind of redemption that all of us seek, but which is not very common in the world today. Things came to pass in Wilson’s life that surpassed his own ability to comprehend or describe, and beyond what society could facilitate. He truly was “reborn,”[15] narrowly escaping destruction even after everyone, including himself, had given up hope. Wilson described the way he was living during the last days and weeks before his transformation thusly:
“But it was not [the last time I drank], for the frightful day came when I drank once more. The curve of my declining moral and bodily health fell off like a ski-jump. After a time I returned to the hospital. This was the finish, the curtain, it seemed to me. My weary and despairing wife was informed that it would all end with heart failure during delirium tremens, or I would develop a wet brain, perhaps within a year. She would soon have to give me over to the undertaker or the asylum.
“They did not need to tell me. I knew, and almost welcomed the idea. It was a devastating blow to my pride. I, who had thought so well of myself and my abilities, of my capacity to surmount obstacles, was cornered at last. Now I was to plunge into the dark, joining that endless procession of sots who had gone on before. I thought of my poor wife. There had been much happiness after all. What would I not give to make amends. But that was over now.
“No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.”[16]
Doctor Silkworth, who himself was not an alcoholic, was aware that something beyond his ability as a skilled physician was required to facilitate the change in an alcoholic the likes of Bill Wilson. When Wilson finally got sober and then went on to help many others do the same through the new religious method prescribed by the Twelve Steps, Silkworth had to concede that it was far more effective than medicine had ever been at treating the type of hopeless alcoholic like Bill Wilson. As a leading authority in the field of alcohol and drug addiction in the 1930’s, his contribution to the Big Book, including his commentary on the nature of the spiritual phenomenon needed to overcome alcoholism, is extremely important and valued as a major contribution to the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous:
“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol [Silkworth writes]. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
“On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.
“Men have cried out to me in sincere and despairing appeal: “Doctor, I cannot go on like this! I have everything to live for! I must stop, but I cannot! You must help me!’’ Faced with this problem, if a doctor is honest with himself, he must sometimes feel his own inadequacy. Although he gives all that is in him, it often is not enough. One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change. Though the aggregate of recoveries resulting from psychiatric effort is considerable, we physicians must admit we have made little impression upon the problem as a whole. Many types do not respond to the ordinary psychological approach.”[17]
Silkworth makes it clear that human means, including medicine and psychiatry, are not sufficient to solve “the real alcoholic’s” problem—that something which transcends human power is needed. Before the introduction of AA and the Twelve Steps, the help “beyond human power” was only sought through religious symbols as presented by the various religions of the day. And while all religions contain myths of transformation and the characters within them undergo what Silkworth referred to as "the psychic change," understanding and applying the lessons therein to modern issues like alcoholism and drug addiction has proven extremely difficult. However, through the Twelve Steps, Wilson clarified the process, and in doing so restored the vitality of those same symbols.
The Steps are the Story
The ancient stories that form our modern religions, like the Garden of Eden, the Universal Flood, or the crucifixion of Christ, to name only a few, are not merely renditions of historical events but reflections of spiritual happenings that exist in a world beyond time—the eternal, present moment. The themes and characters present in these stories, as well as within the Twelve Steps, are archetypal, meaning they reflect psychic patterns that exist throughout history and in every civilization, ancient or modern. When we relate to these archetypal symbols, we are seeing part of our own selves reflected. In this way, a mythical tale written centuries ago can move us in the same way that a modern poem might. Joseph Campbell, a prolific author of mythological and religious commentary, wrote about the phenomenon of time in myth and religion: “Eternity is neither future, nor past, but now. It is not of the nature of time at all, in fact, but a dimension, so to say, of now and forever, a dimension of the consciousness of being that is to be found and experienced within, upon which, when found, one may ride through time and through the whole length of one’s days.”[18] The ancient myths, like the Twelve Steps, are archetypal expressions of the mythological realm we all inhabit, illustrating the spiritual state of our being in every moment of our lives. In the case of the Twelve Steps, one is always working on at least one of the steps, even if merely stuck within the first. And while it is much harder to see ourselves in the ancient stories at times, and to relate to characters that inhabit a world so different from our own, learning to see our story within the Twelve Steps will show us that we are already living out the ancient myth as well—an idea most of us have never considered.
Bill Wilson’s experience when he drafted the Twelve Steps highlights many aspects of the realm of “living mythology.” The Twelve Steps were, at least to some degree, a function of Wilson’s own experience. As it was stripped from the trappings of organized religion, Bill’s journey into the “realm of the spirit,” as he expressed it in the Big Book and in the Twelve Steps, became an archetypal symbol for millions of people to successfully base their own lives upon. Furthermore, when he introduced this set of symbols to the world, he had no idea of the profound impact it would have due to the broad adoption by generations to come. While there is no direct evidence of how the steps came about other than Wilson’s own account told at various times much later in his life, William Schaberg, a modern AA scholar and historian, sheds light on this process in his historical study of how the book Alcoholics Anonymous came about, Writing the Big Book, The Creation of A.A. There Schaberg provides us with a composite rendering of Wilson’s own description of his experience of writing the steps, compiled from many of Bill’s AA talks, many of which were recorded.[19] A few of Schaberg’s passages show the nature of the revelation of the Twelve Steps. Quoting Wilson’s own words, he pieces together the moment the steps emerged from the “collective unconscious”[20] as follows:
“With a speed that was astonishing, considering my jangled emotions, I completed the first draft in perhaps half an hour. The words kept right on coming. When I reached a stopping point, I numbered the new steps and saw they added up to twelve. Somehow this number seemed significant. Without any special rhyme or reason I connected them with the twelve apostles. I had started with the idea that we needed to broaden and deepen the basic concepts of the program by making them more explicit, but that was the only idea I had when I began to write. The most amazing thing about this experience was that I didn’t seem to be thinking at all as I wrote. The words just flowed out of me and I’ve come to believe that the Steps must have been inspired—because I wasn’t in the least bit inspired myself while I was writing them. I have no idea why I wrote the Steps down in that particular order or why they were worded as they were. For reasons unknown to me, my new formulation not only mentioned God several times throughout, but I had moved Him right up to the very beginning of the Steps. Whatever, I didn’t pay much attention to that at the time. I actually thought it all sounded pretty good.”[21]
The creation story of the Twelve Steps demonstrates the universal nature of all mythological symbols, as they grow out of our common human experience. Schaberg demonstrates that Wilson used his own experience as the formula for writing the Twelve Steps, which then became a current, living myth: “Bill sat down and began to figure out the various phases of his own recovery. Setting them down on paper, he found there were twelve separate and distinct steps,” Schaberg writes.[22] He concludes that “the Twelve Steps were based on almost exclusively [Wilson’s] own experience.”[23] This fact alone is what makes the steps archetypal and highly symbolic by nature—Wilson’s own spiritual experience became a beacon for millions to successfully follow.
Wilson’s experience thus mirrors the description that Rudolph Otto gave in 1917 when he wrote, “This ‘X’ of ours cannot be taught, it can only be awakened in the mind.” It is the same engagement with the mystical about which Jung spent his lifetime writing. And today, whenever a person successfully practices the Twelve Steps, they are destined to encounter those same universal symbols that have always been the guiding lights for humankind’s redemption. The fact that Bill Wilson created a framework that millions of others could intimately relate to illustrates how he was tapping into the collective unconscious when he wrote them, serving as further proof of our connectedness within the eternal dimension of myth. It also demonstrates that all myths, both ancient and modern, have as their purpose to bring about “an entire psychic change” for their adherents, as they all proceed forth from the collective unconscious. Thus, the Twelve Steps may be properly regarded as the new myth that was foreseen by so many philosophers and academics through the ages, restoring the chance for each of us to genuinely reconnect to our religious symbols.
Notes:
[1] 10:536
[2] Insert AA quote. Note that the Twelve Steps are understood as b a collective unit and therefore are herein referred to it as a singular reference.
[3] 5:77
[4] Eric Neumann, The History of Consciousness, page 8.
[5] Rudolph Otto, The Idea of The Holy; cited in Campbell, Oriental Mythology, page 8.
[6] AA xxviii
[7] AA xxix
[8] AA 59. When Wilson introduced the Steps, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, which we will cover in detail in Chapter xx below, he used the phrase “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now,” as a template for how story telling is done in Alcoholics Anonymous. This tradition has carried forward since then, and has become the standard of how to share one’s “experience, strength, and hope” in AA.
[9] AA 59
[10] 6:757,59
[11] Taken from 6:414-415
[12] In the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, Wilson added an appendix called which he used to clarify the nature of the psychic change. Its called “Appendix 2, Spiritual Experience” and has been included in each printing of the book since. Part of it reads: “Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes, or religious experiences, must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals. Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous.”
[13] AA 25. See also________. Will add others later.
[14] Can find source
[15] See AA page 63. Compare Jung 9i:199-258.
[16] AA _____
[17] AA xxviii-xxix, Italics mine.
[18] Thou Art That page ??
[19] See Schaberg 440.
[20] Explain
[21] Schaberg 442-443, Italics Mine.
[22] Schaberg 445
[23] Schaberg 457
