The New Mythology of John Cowper Powys

to see that he refused to make belief or mere opinions, the basis for a life philosophy. Thus the individual is denied the spurious security which such beliefs, whether orthodox or heretical, ideal or materialist, would provide. In fact Powys recognises that most of the security with which we like to surround ourselves is basically false since we cannot ultimately depend on anything but our inner consciousness. To those who find it difficult to bear the problems of insecurity in life his advice is: ‘In the destructive element immerse’, let them imagine the worst possible things happening to them. For he says, ‘when you imagine the worst, you create a world that is hostile to you; but when you force yourself to enjoy ... defying it, you have got things pretty well under control. The truth is if you don’t enjoy fighting, you've got to learn to enjoy fighting; for whatever else it is, and whatever else it isn’t, life is a battle from first to last.’4® In any case since our imagination has for the most part created the world in which we live we are always able, if events break it up, to set about creating another and in the end we have to accept the likelihood of ultimate annihilation.

But what then when one has abandoned all these props? What has this reduced ego got left? ‘Absolutely nothing except the undiluted power of observing, recording, and remembering the impressions presented to it.’*° ‘Our ego,’ says Powys, ‘is an indiscriminate cosmos-enjoyer. It embraces and ravishes and savours any sort of universe. In the matter of universes it doesn’t pick and choose or bother whether the shapes and colours it beholds are what our experts call ‘objective’, or ‘subjective’, ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’. It’s enough for our humiliated self, for our purged, winnowed, stripped, and reduced-to-pure-perception self, if it can embrace, swallow and enjoy.’

It does not matter whether our sensations are pleasant or unpleasant ones, we should, Powys says, be able to enjoy even the dread of horrible insecurity as we would enjoy a cup of tea, or a glass of beer! But of course the greatest enjoyment is in the sensation of the world around us in our daily life, and particularly the world of nature. Such an enjoyment enabled Sam Dekker in the story I told in the beginning, to transcend his sufferings and to realise that joy is a deeper experience than pain.

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