 Now, we have time only now for about two more elements or themes to consider, but they are quite important. The first of these is the ring, the great ring, the ring of power. Note that the story of the trilogy is a kind of quest in reverse, not a quest to find the treasure, like the grail, or to find the beautiful damsel, but it is a quest to get rid of something. I think that the Taoist would certainly sympathize with that, and certainly I know Jung would sympathize with it, because often the real remedy of our predicament, of our crisis, of our existential predicament is not grabbing yet something else, but rather getting rid of something. But we don't consider that very often, because we are an acquisitive lot, mentally as well as physically. So a great danger, horrible suffering, a face just to get rid of something. This something is an object that has the capacity to corrupt existence, to secure the rule of evil in the world. The verse about the ring reads, three rings for the elven kings under the sky, seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal men doomed to die, but one for the dark lord on his dark throne, one ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie. Something that gains ascendancy over everything, that all the various kinds of protagonist races have something of that sort, but they all can be brought under the malign rule of the evil power and made subservient to it. Much speculation has been expanded, you know, for a while I was so enamored at one time in the seventies of the Lord of the Rings that I bought every book of literary criticism, anything that pertained to it, but then it grew so much that I had neither the money nor the library shelf to house them all. But people have speculated what the ring could be, oh atomic power. Some kind of ideology. But in reality I think it is a mystery, it is the mystery of the workings of evil. And at this time in my life I would interpret it as the link that binds us to the powers of limitation, to what in Gnostic law we would call to the Archons. It is the wedding band of darkness, slipped on our finger by the will of the dark Lord who wants to rule us. One can't just slip it off. That's the problem with it. Even they got a guileless hobbits when they put it on, it does something to them. It corrupts everybody. And so the truly wise don't even want to have anything to do with it. They don't want to get close to it because it would corrupt them. Galadriel says when they offer it to her, would you set up a dark queen instead of the dark lord? If you give it to me eventually that is what would happen. I would start out with the best of intentions. I would try to help everybody. But with this in my possession, it would all get corrupted and I would just become a dark queen. So the thing to do is to get rid of it, to take it back to its source, to throw it into the primal fire of the archonic hell. Perhaps there are really two quests we are on. One is the quest which we were talking about here, I don't know, whenever six weeks ago or so, which is the finding of the pearl that we are to take back to heaven. But the other is trying to get rid of something, something that corrupts us and that corrupts the world. This is not without some precedent. Look for instance at certain statements in the Gospel of Thomas where the children take their clothing and take it off when the owner of the field comes and leave. What is something has to be left behind? Now this Sunday is the feast day of St. Francis. You may recall what St. Francis did when he was very young, when he just started his career. And his father was a cloth merchant of some standing in Assisi. And when Francis Francesco decided to leave his father's business and all of that and devote himself to higher things, his father was very put out. And he demonstrated with him and he said, look at you, you are even wearing the clothing of my business. And here Francis stood on the city square in Assisi and he said, oh yes. So he took off every stitch of clothing and stood naked in the street. Here, father, here is what is yours. And he walked away. So you have to get rid of something. You have to get rid of something that does not pertain to you and that would pull you into things that you don't want to be associated with. It's a great difficulty. So the victory over these things is certainly difficult. Yet the victory comes. Here is for instance the song which I always felt was a wonderful sort of short hymn of victory, which the people sing when the ring has been thrown into the fire and when the king is coming back. It's brought by the messengers, by the eagle, the news. It says, sing now ye people of the tower of honor, for the realm of sorrow is ended forever and the dark tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice ye people of the tower of the God, for your watch had not been in vain and the black gate is broken and your king had passed through and he is victorious. Sing and be glad all ye children of the west for your king shall come again and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life and the tree that was without shall be renewed and he shall plant it in the high places and the city shall be blessed. Sing all ye people. You know when I was reminded of this song of victory, I heard it in the air when the Berlin Wall fell. There are still times in this history when the dark tower is thrown down. No doubt the power that built it reconstructs itself again and causes trouble in some fashion, but still there are victories in this life. Victories of freedom, victories of the good. But we need to reflect what ring of evil, what wedding band of darkness are we wearing that needs to be given back to the fire? Because we all do in our own way, something or the other, because the ring is handy up to a point. One of its great powers is invisibility. So let's say all these people who I know and you must know just as many, if not more, when they come to the door or when you meet them somewhere or so, how wonderful it would be just to slip on that ring and poof, they can't see you anymore, you're not there. Just remove yourself from it. I actually need a ring that would remove the telephone, but it does have its advantages, but there's a price to pay and perhaps you don't want to pay that price. So what is it? What kind of ring has the darkness slipped on your finger that you should take off and throw it into the fire? And last but not least, who stands the best chance of doing this work? Who is the ring bearer? It's not a great elf lord, not a great pneumatic, not a wise wizard, not even a heroic human being and they abound in the story. Certainly not a greedy earthbound dwarf, but it's a little fellow, a halfling, a hobbit. Littleness that can rise to greatness. Little people who smoke pipes, who enjoy their comforts, they love their food, but when the chips are down, as it were, when the call comes, they are willing to forego anything for a task that is truly important. What have these funny little people with their furry feet got that the other three kinds of beings don't have? What is it? Well, they are free for one thing, they are free of the obsessions and the preoccupations of most of the others. Their predilections and their interests are sort of natural. What comes to a person? Why not want to be a little bit comfortable? Why not want to eat a good meal? Why not want to have a nice, clean hobbit hole? All of these things, but they just like it for what it is, because these things are present in themselves. They don't have all kinds of mental projections and preoccupations with them. Their ego is not bound up with all of these things as it is with the others. They are free of the sickness of the mind that people have and that is why they can be heroic. That's why the ring bearer is a hobbit rather than any other. And I think we need to keep that in mind because our minds play these tricks on us. That there is always some kind of egotistical projection, some kind of weirdness that gets into our heads and that then frustrates our ability to rise to the heroic exigencies of life. It's a simplicity which has to be gained. You can't say, oh, the simple man, the simple woman, the simple natural person, that's the most wonderful. Well, what if you are not simple like that anymore? What are you going to do? You're going to hit yourself over the head with a hammer to destroy your brain or it's not going to work. So what you have to do is you have to kind of de-complicate your character. You have to get away from the malign convolutions and gyrations of the mind. And that's a lot more easily said than done. Look, just no matter how tired you are in the evening, you lie down to a well-deserved rest and the mind goes to work. What about this and what about that? And how about this and how about that? And why didn't I do that? And how could I do that? And it goes on and on and on and on. And you can't stop it. And it does this during the day, too. And then this is what makes you human. This weirdness, this silliness that goes on your cat or your dog or your iguana. They don't have these problems. When they are tired, they sleep like a Zen Buddhist. When they're hungry, they eat. But you don't. When you are hungry, you look into the latest health fact. What can I eat, if anything? You see. What can I drink, if anything? When you feel like saying something, you won't say it because you have to. Is it politically correct? What I'm going to say? Are all of these goons aren't going to punish me if I say this? Or for that matter, if I smoke a cigarette or a cigar or whatever the case may be, hobbits were partial to pipes, primarily. And they had their own wonderful tobacco that was referred to as pipe weed that they grew themselves. But again, it's that uncomplicated character, which is not held in trial really by the illusions of the mind. And I think only a hobbit could have written this poem, which is written by the old hobbit, Bill Bow, who is already in a sort of retirement in Elrond's house. And look at the wonderful attitude that is present here. I sit beside the fire and sink of all that I have seen of meadow flowers and butterflies and summers that have been, of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were. With morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair, I sit beside the fire and sink of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see. For still there are so many things that I have never seen. In every wood in every spring, there is a different green. I sit beside the fire and sink of people long ago and people who will see a world that I shall never know. But all the while I sit and sink of times that were before, I listen for returning feet and voices at the door. With the nostalgia, there is still always an immediate practicality of the good that is present at that particular time. So.