The Childhood of King Lear

The Once and Future King

I'm creating a totally fabricated account with this piece. Certainly Shakespeare made no mention of the King's childhood. But I'm doing it for a good reason. Lear as a character in a story portrays in true transparency the utter consternation of one man … against what he always believed is immutably true of life and nature. The part was made famous … by Lord Lawrence Olivier … and it left an indelible mark on me … as to the defining experience of shock and consternation … in relation to belief.

 

As a prince born into a royal household … he was no doubt … the apple of his own eye … which is an expression engaged to convey … the fullness of life's purpose … a self sufficiency … and the role of the generic individual in society … to whom everyone else relates. But he does not relate to others. Its like saying one apple is exactly the same as all apples. But what would the apple itself say … if it could think and talk?

 

If all men looked exactly the same … how would that describe our disposition as an individual? We encounter the suggestion that … the future specie is featureless … resembling reports that we encounter about Aliens. That would raise a completely new sensation we bring to our social engagements as man. We will do it … without cognition of a fundamental difference in what we are as human. Thereafter we simply relate to the exchange … we share about one person who is a cowboy in Texas … and another … who is a hair-dresser in Chelsea.

 

The experience refers to the exact same identity of the physical form … but containing differences in the subtle experiences of life … with respect to forms in the environment … scents … sounds … and perhaps the weather. But obviously our lives in the world … refer to the differences of the individual features of form … but stays connected on the subtle experiences of work … home … and individual roles. There's a difference to our experiences … between the two suggested phenomenon.

 

There's no doubt that individual natures need to express an individual identity that's unique and special to itself. Its like fingerprints. And yet we seek something common to assure us of our comfort and security. And where we encounter the phenomenon of differentiated individuals … like our experiences today … we rely precariously on the unlikely and uncooperative sensation of the subtle … that's quite infinite in experience … to assure us of our unity.

 

In the phenomenon of exact likeness  in physical form … we create a far greater involvement in the subtle … and organize ourselves by its very nuances … innuendos … cues and hints. It makes for an active intellect … flexible responses … and a basis of exchange … that's founded on activity … not anything else. The possibility of differences in perception … belief … or understanding of situations is minimized … and leaves one person feeling truly that he is really like everybody else.

 

The Indics created the suggestion previously of the ' Paramatma ' idea … that conveyed the sense of one man as world or universe. This was the greater soul … in which all other souls resided. It helped with the cognition of undifferentiated form … and for a while conveyed a stability in the experiences of the subtle in society. However in time … that became simply too strange to deal with … and produced a human personality who was in that way naïve and innocent … as we saw it.

 

King Lear's childhood … is expected to have provided the same experience of the one man as world or universe. The notion is quite implicit in the idea of royalty. And its possible that when it came to denial in his family relations … what he experienced was the break-up of a perception he had devoted himself to as an individual. And that perception is that of the undifferentiated individual … as against the differentiated subtle senses.

 

In breaking up … Lear would have encountered an experience in which the subtle sensations … broke away from each other … as if to say … some parts of them … belong to the eldest … some to the second daughter and some was about the third. In much the same way … we experience the varna … or racial profiles of the world … as separate … from a common identification with the whole.

 

In homogeneous societies such as Japan … Russia … Scandinavia and parts of Western nations … the attitude of the undifferentiated individual is strong … and forms a close bonding in relations. That is the practice of the ' Paramatma ' or higher soul. But in mixed cultures … an individual can find his way back to the undifferentiated one … by healing the shock … in his childhood experience … minus the royalty.

 

We encounter the expression sometimes that … ' What one mind can think so can another ' … in the cognitive understanding of the undifferentiated oneness … and the way it applies itself to the vast scope of the subtle senses. Its the place where we find our common humanity … and the discovery of the work … undertaken by each individual in the world … in the subtle differences of our being. But that is on the other side … of the coin … from our positions today in time and space … and the peculiar nature of identity … that's boldly spelled out by our ID cards.

 

Our family relations are another quintessential suggestion of undifferentiated oneness. We are all the product of the same father … and for a while I think we experience a sense that we look alike. What have we done with the experience … is something we sometimes bring to review in our thoughts. But as a reflection of our experience of the world family … our families … bring to us an uncanny common purpose of life … waiting for our seasons of acceptance about the one.

 

Women indicate a curious suggestion of their experiences with the undifferentiated individual. A mother raising a daughter … transfers much in the way of expertise in the subtle … that's leaps and bounds … beyond what a man is trained in. But I suspect … if a man approached a woman to understand her personality in the subtle … she's going to respond with … ' Its easier to do it than speak of it.' And that would explain why the man grows his beard … and fusses obsessionally with it. We do need to bring it to our cognitive understanding.