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The Body of Myth: Mythology, Shamanic Trance, and the Sacred Geography of the Body

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In The Body of Myth, J. Nigro Sansonese compares Greek myths as well as those of the Judeo-Christian tradition with yogic trance practices. His conclusion: A myth is an esoteric description of a heightened proprioception," i.e., of what occurs within the human body, especially the human nervous system, during trance. The author shows how the human body is an atlas of mythic locale. For example, he locates Troy, Thebes, Ithaca, and Hades -- even the hill where Sisyphus struggled with the stone -- within specific areas of the body that serve as the objects of trance. In that light, myths provide a detailed map of the shamanic state of consciousness that is our natural heritage. In the concluding section, the author shows the extent to which the laws of physics share a common ground with myth in the framework of consciousness and physiology. The author noted in his introduction: "Science, we shall see, is ultimately a systematic description of the human organism. Myth properly interpreted, is the key to unlocking that description. A grand synthesis of science, consciousness, and myth - by means of yoga - is the goal of this book." Amazingly, he does it!

The author, a lecturer and practicing yogi, goes through the Old Testament, New Testament and Greek myth to build a convincing case that all myths are allegories for shamaic trance-inducing techniques. When the knowledge of these techniques was lost in western culture, the myths (like the Bible) became stories about how to behave well and keep "God" from punishing you.

The thesis of this book is that the "body of myth" is the physical body as perceived by yogis during yogic trance (samadhi). Proprioception (the "white noise" of the senses idling in the absence of external sensory input) on various anatomical regions, including the senses themselves or other bodily regions, gave rise to an esoteric body of description of interior states experienced during samadhi. These descriptions constitute the stuff of mythology. Thus, the Greek assault upon the very door of Troy represents proprioception on the skull's fissure located at the position of the third eye, the assault being the yogi's breath internally stimulating the fissure during pranayama. The work is interesting, extremely well-grounded in its familiarity with Greek mythology and Patanjali yoga, and is exemplary in its lived scholarship. Like Mircea Eliade, the author is no mere book-bound "scholar" but lives and breathes in these topics. Examples abound--but that is part of the problem. First, although all the myths discussed are capitalized (e.g., the ASSAULT ON TROY), there is nowhere a glossary summarizing these tales for the mythologically challenged. Second, like Darwin, the author argues geologically, adducing scores of examples, layer piled upon layer, that not so much convince as cause conformity from sheer pressure and the weight of example. The thesis would gain empirical support were it discovered that the ancient Greeks were familiar with yogic practices. But nothing like that is known (and is certainly unlikely prior to Alexander's 4th c. BCE Indian campaign). And the Eleusian Mysteries--the major Greek esoteric tradition--remain just that, mysteries. True, it is difficult to prove *any* thesis in *any* literary criticism, because ancient texts do not fully speak to the praxis (which was trasmitted experientially) and because texts, like the gods, are multivalent. Still, an interesting read....

THE SOLUTION TO THE WORLDWIDE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MYTHS OF RADICALLY DIFFERENT CULTURES APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN FOUND! The answer is both unexpected, yet in retrospect, entirely predictable. It follows from the commonality of the human body throughout the world. Note, that means the literal body, and not the mind, as the Freudians and Jungians suggest. Supposed commonalities among the human mind from culture to culture are vague and largely a matter of faith and dogma. Sansonese demonstrates that the details, as well as the larger narrative structure, can be convincingly related to states of the body, particularly the nervous system, during trance. An amazing discovery!

There is a certain swath of thinkers out there right now who are trying to piece together the very themes that this outstanding book addresses: the yogic mind, the spirit of trance, and the significance of sacred geometry in relation to the human energy field. This treasure serves all of us who have somehow embarked upon this particular (epic) journey. In these pivotal astrological times, we must re-visit the ancient mythical stories that unlock the secrets to our soul evolution as well as our place in contemporary history. This book offers many break through ideas and offers a solid context by which we can re-interpret the myths that matter and know ourselves better in the process. All of you mystically minded scientists, be prepared for a book that you will leave you wondering, "what took me so long to find this book?".

"The Body of Myth" proposes a thoroughly original theory for the origins of myth in prehistory. The basic idea is quite straightforward: myths are esoteric descriptions of "trance states." Because he needs a frame of reference within which to introduce the dynamics of trance, Sansonese turns to the work of Patanjali, an Indian yogi and adept of the second century BC , but he makes clear that his discussion of trance is not intended to apply primarily to Hindu mythology.

His main subjects are the myths of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. Patanjali's classic work, "The Yoga-Sutra," is adopted as a concise description of trance that, Sansonese claims, can be applied cross-culturally to any "bija" or "object [of contemplation]." Of course, because both the Greeks and the Hindus are definitely known, on philological grounds, to have been a single people (the Indo-Europeans) in the very long ago, it should not be a surprise if their religio-mythical beliefs share a common "deep structure."

Patanjali's work, in this view, represents a highly technical elaboration of much more "primitive" shamanic trance practices and an investigation, through yoga, of the techniques of focusing awareness that continued for at least a millennium after the Indo-European peoples separated. The Greek tradition has left us no such intensive, systematic scrutiny of trance, yet the common shamanic origins survive in myth. In Sansonese's view, the bija is the human body experienced principally, but not exclusively, as awareness is focused on breathing, particularly on the experience of the effects of breathing on the skull and even within the brain itself. The breath is described as a sort of "blindman's cane" with which the shaman/yogi stimulates various organs of the body and nervous system to "feel" (Sansonese uses the term "proprioceive") his way into the organism, searching for the source of the divine presence within. Many such attempts, when rendered esoterically, become myths: A MYTH IS AN ESOTERIC DESCRIPTION OF A HEIGHTENED PROPRIOCEPTION. The clarity and comprehensiveness of this definition is "a Columbian discovery," to quote Georg Feuerstein, critically acclaimed translator of Patanjali's "Yoga-Sutra."

Different cultures used different narrative ingredients. The warlike Indo-Europeans resorted often to the tale of a siege of a sacred city (Troy and Thebes, both of which are "seven-gated" and, in Sansonese's hermeneutics, esoteric descriptions of the seven openings of perception in the medial band of the human skull), the perilous search for the Holy Grail, the struggle of Sisyphus, an onomatopoësis for the sound of respiration in the nose, to raise the stone and be released from Hell, and so on. The Hebraic tradition was somewhat more irenic: the skull is described as an "Ark," in which the sacred objects (the Showbread, the Torah, etc.) are kept hidden from profane eyes. Descended from this tradition, is the tale of the Christ and his Crucifixion at the "Place of the Skull." Cross-cultural similarities are eerie. Though Sansonese does not point this out in his extended discussion of Sisyphus, who describes the slowing rise and fall of the breath as the shaman approaches trance, there is a startling parallel with Jesus (whose name is also sibilant, especially in Hebrew: "Yehoshua"), who falls three times on his way to the summit of Golgotha, and who is taken down from the Cross (the space between the eyes) by Joseph [of Arimathea], another highly sibilant name in Hebrew. Symbolism plays very little part here. As Sansonese repeats several times: "Myths are DESCRIPTIONS," attempts at putting into words ACTUAL EXPERIENCES, not abstract theology or psychology. This book is certainly the best book on mythology of the past quarter century because it takes the argument in an entirely new direction.

Sansonese explores the idea that the ancient myths were not mere stories, but rather coded teachings on shamanic trance. This is not a how-to book on shamanic trance; readers seeking such a book should look elsewhere.

The good: The book itself is of beautiful quality--one of the nicest paperbacks I've held in my hands in a long time. The paper in particular is amazing, heavy and smooth. The author has a nice style of writing, scholarly and yet clear and brisk. His arguments are logical and progress well throughout the book.

The bad: Not all of the author's brilliant observations are as brilliant as he seems to think they are. For example, he begins by telling us that--gasp!--the Zen koans weren't just wacky little metaphysical riddles but were, like the myths, coded teachings. He informs us that "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" refers to the ears and, by extension, to the internal sounds one hears during meditation. Well, fine, but it seems to have escaped him that the heart has several valves that "clap" open and shut like little solitary hands and which create the internal sounds--the heartbeat, the rush of the blood through the veins--that one hears. There were many such questionable bits in the book. I also found the book far too long, unnecessarily so.

The ugly: I was especially annoyed by something that is described by Dr. Andrew Weil as "medical hexing," namely the tendency of patients who are told by some authority figure such as a doctor that there is no hope for recovery to curl up and die--sort of the reverse of the placebo response. The author comes from a background of decades of raja yoga and he insists that shamanic trance, and the breakthrough into enlightenment, are not only horribly physically painful but also require a lifetime of instruction from a qualified teacher. That is his POV, not the only POV, and rather than letting yourself be hexed into believing that the pursuit of enlightenment has to be that awful I suggest buying some books on Dzogchen Buddhism. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not knocking yoga in any way. What I'm saying is that if you want to suffer and spend decades studying a discipline, do it because you want to and not because someone made you think it had to be so.

The good review: I recommend this book highly for scholars. The author is rigorous and scientific, and he takes shamanic trance out of the realm of mumbo-jumbo and places it firmly in science.

The bad review: General readers should probably start elsewhere.

The beautiful: The cover art is fascinating. At first glance we see a man in a trance. On further study we see that the folds of the man's robes are in fact flocks of birds clinging to sheer cliffs above the sea. The artist, Jim Harter, deserved more recognition than just his name in tiny print at the bottom of the back cover.

A brilliant piece of work - closely argued, coherent, occasionally inaccurate but nevertheless staggeringly insightful. Sansonese brings together biology, physics and literary criticism with the theory and pratice of meditation to create a most enigmatic reading of Homer, one which by extension can be used to open up the whole world of myth to a rather more far-reaching understanding. In essence what he suggests is that ancient Indo-European myth is a kind of encoded description of the intensely acute perceptions and maniplulations of internal bodily processes that take place during deep meditative concentration of the type achieved during in such practices as raja yoga etc... far-out yes, but see how he argues it himself - it is done persuasivley I assure you...

I recommend Jeremy Narby's "The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge" as a sort of appendix to Sansonesse. I notice may people are disatisfied with the quality of argument in Narby. Sansonese's work undoubteldy provides the necessary basis with which to ground Narby's hypothesesis - despite it's general loopiness of course...