[April 1979]. Cogitations

[Transcription of a tape recording.]

… under the domination of what I call the ‘vogue’, by which I mean something that is extremely powerful, not merely the passing fashion which happens to change from hour to hour, day to day, month to month. I mean something that persists and that is part and parcel of the permanent equipment of the human being. I think there is the same dominating force that dictates the form taken by thought itself, whether that thought be historical or musical – after all, the Lydian airs of the Greeks would not be particularly appealing to us, any more than the Art of Fugue would be appealing to the Greeks, or would even be understood by them. I think there are also vogues in religion. Freud talks about ‘the future of an illusion’ as if he thought that religion itself was an illusion; it may be, but I think it is a basic illusion [see p. 349 for Bion's annotation to his copy of The Future of an Illusion]. Any particular religion changes with the prevalent fashion, but the fundamental thing, religion itself, does not. It is a very powerful force, as can be seen by the evidence of what would appear to be a sign or symptom of the thought of a period dug up by the archaeologists who excavated the Death Pit at Ur. Apparently, when the ruling authority died, the court also died with him; they were all buried in the same pit and took the same dose of whatever drug was used before they were buried alive. That itself would seem to suggest that the religious force is a very powerful one, whether it is located in God, or the people, or the priesthood, or the court authorities. That can alter; perhaps a few thousand years hence the archaeologists may excavate signs of the state of mind that existed in Guyana in 1978 [over 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple, died on 18 November 1978 in a mass suicide ritual]. Of course, the recording now is so ephemeral – it is not in tablets of stone but on paper, and the bodies are removed