The myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece describes the first steps on the spiritual journey, the encounter with the spiritual master and the tests until the first great spiritual experience.
To fully understand this web page, it is recommended to follow the progression given in the tab Greek myths interpretation. This progression follows the spiritual journey.
The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.
AN EXPERIENCE OF ILLUMINATION
OR
OF A PSYCHIC OPENING
Jason bringing the Golden Fleece to Pelias – Louvre Museum
An age of Truth, India’s Satya Yuga, or rather, an age of intuition,
preceded the history of our mental humanity. Judging by
the shreds of our traditions, our infancy in the world was struck with an illumination, as is sometimes our brief human infancy before reason tramples on our dreams, or as with the seeker of truth when at the start of his quest, for an instant the veil is rent in a dazzling light, as if to tell him, “Here is where you are going.” Then everything closes again, and we are left to the slow plodding of years or centuries, at the end of which we rediscover a child’s truth.
Satprem
(The Veda and Human Destiny)
If people in ancient times situated the myth of the Golden Fleece under Iapetus’ lineage and more specifically under Aeolus’ lineage it is because the crowning experience in that evolution comes more specifically from ascending the planes of consciousness rather than the path of purification and liberation of Oceanus’ lineage, though the psychic being can manifest itself in either way.
In other words it is an experience that arises more from a perfecting, purifying, and expanding of the mental-consciousness rather than from an act of purification and liberation of the vital being, though the two paths can never be completely dissociated.
As related by Apollonios of Rhodes (a disciple of Callimachus who was probably disowned by him) the myth of Jason and the Argonauts retraces the steps of the seeker from the very moment of his entry into the journey to the point of a major experience of spiritual descent of power and knowledge from the plane of the overmind. This descent first illuminates the mind and then descends toward the centers below, creating a psychic opening in the heart. The light first acts on the mind because descending force is received more rapidly by the higher mind although it is always the heart that recognises the divine essence first. That is why Hermes figures among the ascendants of Jason (it is a descent of the overmind) and why we can consider Cretheus’ lineage to belong to the plane of the higher mind.
To the best of our knowledge the first experience does not generally last beyond a few days or weeks: it only constitutes a temporary rupture of the veil of the mind.
It is due to this that Medea separates herself from Jason upon returning from the quest, destroying even the fruits of their union (she kills her children before returning to Colchis). In fact we see that only realisations are permanent, not experiences.
Yet it would be a mistake to reckon that the experience of illumination is a mandatory passage into the beginning of the journey or that it is the first to appear although it is the most widespread in a civilisation which gives prominence to the mind.
(At least this seems to be the case among men, women live other experiences more intensely. By way of illustration let us cite the contemplative seeker Bernadette Roberts who, in her outline of the different stages of the path stated that she had not lived through significant experiences of enlightenment during the “dark nights” and had experienced her growth in the mental light as a more continuous process. On the other hand the ‘nights’ which are for her as sudden as they are violent seem for men engaged in this contemplative path to be more extended and less easy to clearly be identified. It is as if in the contemplative experience which we associate here with the path of purification-liberation women experience more of a shock with the aim of connecting with the divine within matter by a total annihilation of the mind while in contrast men more often experience these long nights to reach the divine in the realm of the spirit.)
Many other seekers first experience a psychic opening or one of the other innumerable experiences that Sri Aurobindo writes copiously about in the Letters on Yoga.
Although the Elders of ancient times w