[60] in groups which believe in OTHER kinds of myths, for instance in the ultimacy^a of science, or of the nation, or of family relations. Wherever a myth develops and wherever somebody lives safely and certainly in a myth^b, there is resistance against an attempt in these people themselves, and from outside, to make the mythological or symbolic character, conscious. And often such resistance against making the mythological^c character of the myth conscious, is reported by authoritarian systems, religious or political. These systems, both religious and political (and in our time especially political) want to give safety to the people under their control, and at the same time, unchallenged power^d to those who exercise the control. For this, I recommend you to re-read once this very well known piece of great literature, namely Dostoievsky^e's Brothers Karamazov--but not the whole novel, although this also is worthwhile to read, all the time--but the famous symbolic story of the Great Inquisitor and his arguing with Jesus about the safety of the people, and his absolutely TRUE attack on Jesus, that Jesus, by His demand of spiritual freedom, takes the people out of the safety in which the Church of the Inquisitor keeps them. This is one of the greatest symbols itself of the meaning of UNbroken symbolism, and should be understood by everybody who resists the attempt to make symbols conscious. The way in which the resistance against demythologization expresses itself is literalism^f. The symbols and myths are understood in their immediate meaning. The MATERIAL of the myths, taken from nature and history, is used in its natural and proper sense. The character of the symbol to point beyond itself to something else, is disregarded. For instance, Creation is taken as a magic act which has happened once upon a time, either 5000 years [ago] or, as the Pope has now declared, five billion years-- but once upon a time. The Fall of Adam is localized in the land of the two streams, Tigris and Euphrates, and attributed to a human individual. The Virgin Birth of the Messiah is understood in biological terms; Resurrection and Ascension as physical events which, in principle could have been photographed; the Second Coming of the Christ as telluric, or cosmic, catastrophic. The presupposition of such literalism is the idea that God^g is a being, subject to the categories to which all beings are subjected--time^h and spaceⁱ; and He is acting, dwelling, Himself, on a special space, affecting the course of events and abeing [sic.] affected by them, like any other being in the universe. This leads to my fundamental criticism of literalism: