The Wild Gander

Joseph Campbell's The Flight of the Wild Gander

For there is, in fact, in quiet places, a great deal of deep spiritual quest and finding now in progress in the world, outside the sanctified social centers, beyond the purview and control: by ones and twos, there entering the forest at points which they themselves have chosen, where they see it to be most dark, and there is no beaten way or path (186). In Gottfried's poem: The Love Grotto in the dangerous forest represents the dimension of the depth experience. Holiness, the ideal, and intimations of eternity are focused in the cave, which is not a historical place but a shared psychological condition (177-178). And, in the Paleolithic cavern of Lascaux, there is a shaman depicted, lying in trance, wearing a bird mask and with the figure of a bird perched on a staff beside him (134). There are associations between the shamanistic trance and the flight of a bird (133). In fact, the Hindu master yogis, who in their trance states go beyond all the pales of thought, are known as "wild ganders" (134). It is the Wild Gander who passes from the sphere of waking consciousness, even beyond dream, to where all things shine of their own light, to the nonconditioned, nondual state "between two thoughts," where the subject-object polarity is completely transcended and the distinction even between life and death dissolved (135). "Man is condemned to be free," says Sartre (186). The place of emergence is the womb of the earth (130). It is in this quiet, internal place, a chosen place, from whence the Wild Gander flies.