Immortal

I. IMMORTALITY SYMBOLS

Human beings need to struggle with, repress and maybe even express our death anxiety. When we sublimate and transcend our death anxiety we create cultural expressions that the interdisciplinary cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker (1924-1927) called "immortality symbols."

II. ARTIST AND HERO

Following Becker's analysis, "terror of death" is the pivotal point and spindle around which we weave a fabric of symbols that will outlast our physical finitude. The artist takes that question of human symbolic immortality challenged by anguish of being connected to a limited decaying animal-body that will die. The artist resolves this literal dilemma by creating an "immortal" work. The artist is a hero who "thinks outside the box" or to use Becker's phrase is "over people's heads."

Many of our mainstream religious and contemporary commercial mythologies feature characters who have triumphed over death. We are dealing with such a story here.

In this hero story, Khidr the Green Man belongs to the elect of the elect servants of God. Like Enoch, Elijah and Jesus he is considered an immortal. And his name which means "The Green" illuminates that motif that he is the immortal rejeuvenating green man.


III. DEATH AND IMMORTALITY

Khidr, the main character is presented to us as an immortal which makes us face our death. Khidr then deepens the encounter with death by making Moses witness people being subjected to danger, killing and the a hidden burial ground. A war, more violence evoking mortality, also lingers in the background of the story. Justice as an abstract theme takes a back seat in the tradition of Islamic commentary because the story primarily projects questions about mortality, death, immortality and what it means to live where the two seas of life and death meet.

The framework of resolution of death and life in the afterlife is set on death.

This is our shared human pattern. We do, make and disseminate symbolic realities in story, cinema, theater or literature. These works of art represent our gesture or "pitch" or an existential act to outlast material mortality and physical finitude. The pattern of denial-of-death and projection of symbolic immortality sometimes fueled with heroic projection (at best) is pervasive.


IV. DEATH MOTIFS IN KHIDR'S STORY

How does knowing that the question and challenge of death and symbolic immortality inform an analysis of the story of an immortal prophet who kills a child puts boat-riding people in physical danger, and finally leads Khidr to a buried hidden treasure treasure, a remnant of a funery rite and a transmission of an inheritance beyond physical contact. The transmission of the treasure not only plunges the reader into the question of mortality but also comments on non-historical non-physical trans-personal ruhaniat transmission. The buried treasure as anbother trace of the burial of the saintly man who ownbed the treasure and buried it so his sons could grow old and strong enought ot extract it from the earth involves powerfully evocative symbols of survival of death and survival after death. The buried treasure is another immortality symbol.

Next the book (Qur'an) in which the story is transmitted is itself an immortality symbol and the religion of Islam as a whole is an immortalIty ideology.


V. RUZBIHAN

Ruzbihan was a charismatic powerful ecstatic Sufi (1128-1209) buried in Shiraz. His grave has been a major pilgrimage site for centuries and was restored in 1958 and 1872. It is possible that Hafiz (d. 1329) may have studied in the ribat that Ruzbihan founded in 1165.

Ruzbihan measures knowledge by personal experience, talks about God as passionate love and makes Beauty (as in a Platonic archetype) the name of God. Ruzbihan uses the term "beauty" to describe the destination of one's personal ascension.