Approaching the Depths
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies that apprehend,
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt;
The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them into shapes, and gives the airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
--William Shakespeare,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene 1.
Approaching the Depths:
Classical Jungian, Post-Jungian Archetypal,
& Transgenerational Psychology
Iona Miller, 2017
Archetypes are the source of soul images.
Soul life itself is the activity of those images.
We are in the psyche, Anima Mundi, cosmic soul,
which mates with the Cosmic Animus, living spirit.
The presence of psychic body reveals who we are.
Soul is a medium with internal energy.
Psyche is all conscious and unconscious psychic processes.
"Psychology has been proposed from the outset to go beyond the scope of psychotherapeutic studies and clinical investigations to place itself in the culture of western imagination. It is a psychology that deliberately connects with the arts, culture and history of society, which also originate from the imagination." --James Hillman - Archetypal Psychology
"Hillman writes about his work: "The insistence has been on the vale of soul-making, staying in the valley of the shadow, turning even at times against the initiator of my own tradition. Jung, for his ascensionist prospects, his pronouncements from the mountain tops about the meaning of life, the worldviews, the generalized theories of typology, the Self and mandalas. I have tried to follow Jung the psychologist of the soul but not Jung the metaphysician of the spirit. And, for all its puer impetus and anima aroma, my work has been stringently dedicated to lowland tactics, to the discipline of image, of phenomena, of pathologizings, in the mode of critical skepticism."
--Griffin, David Ray, Ed. Archetypal Process: Self and Divine in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman. Northwestern UP: Evanston, 1989. Archetypal Process, 214
http://soulspelunker.com/2017/08/back-beyond-hillman-whitehead-part-1.html
"Dissolving an image means that you become that image.
Doing away with the concept of God means that you become that God.
This is so because if you dissolve an image it is always consciously, and then the libido invested in the image goes into the unconscious.
The stronger the image the more you are caught by it in the unconscious, so if you give up the hero in the conscious you are forced into the hero role by the unconscious." --Carl Jung, Analytical Psychology Seminar 1925, Pg. 95-97.
But neuroscientist Todd Murphy has a different hypothesis and wisely cautions against the hubris of identification with transpersonal archetypal roles. He could well be right, as hollow new age fallacies and false claims to personal and collective divinity have shown, blurring identities with false claims allegedly inspired by the gods, when it isn't deliberate fraud.
Such claims are often justified by the fundamental and amateur error of taking Jung's organic metaphorical model of the psyche and archetypes as literal and concrete -- a misinformed variation of new age fundamentalism. The literal must open to metaphor and symbol. Humanity seems to prefer remaining blind to its own foibles, escapism, scapegoating, delusions, and unconscious motivations. We persistently confuse objective and subjective features of reality, discouraging all truthful self-recognition. We try to make objective claims about the subjective domain.
https://books.google.com/books?id=h8vwknTmgRYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Fundamentalism and nostalgia cannot return us to a past that never existed. Misappropriations by untutored hacks reduce any ideas to a lowest common denominator, out of context with the wisdom of direct experience, mentors, and supervision. Idealism can blind us to the terror and dread of the shadow side of archetypes. Even the Great Mother isn't always so great, or nature so idyllic as recent catastrophes show.
We cannot relinquish our moral responsibility to the archetypes. Their characteristic good/bad polarity is an indeterminacy shaped by the lens of our perceptions. Further, predatory psychopaths do not fit the mold, but merely pretend to, delighting in the pain of others. It hardly matters if that person is a mercurial trickster, a Zeus political fascist and bigot, or saturnian warmonger if you are dead or damaged and will never be whole again. Once we stand between two worlds we are in danger of not belonging to either of them.
We humans are not archetypal energies and remain ego-bound; but an archetypal essence can be superimposed over a person to their detriment. Psychic energy floods the ego with inflation. Living in the archetypal realm is dangerous to the human condition and can lead to psychological possession, paranoia, or psychosis.
It can very well simply be another form of self-aggrandizement, self-delusion, distortion, and misunderstood inner authority. Ignorance of psychic dynamics can be exacerbated by a love of ideological and religious superstition. Only our finite hearts yearn for the infinite, but we must be satisfied with the finite -- a love of life as it is, living our own reality.
Hillman refined Jung's legacy to include the archetype of the "difference" therefore. "Differentiation gives the sense of the universe, the feeling of diversity, to differentiate itself and from others. [...] It is the sine qua non of any differentiated conscience."
Fetishizing Desire
No one can declare themselves a shaman; only the community can recognize and affirm that. We cannot appropriate the divinity of archetypal forces or roles for our own ends -- [branded "showmans" with arrogance, inflation, and grandiosity], covert or overt egoic exploitations, new age excess, narcissistic grandeur, and the dream of power through 'fast-food' spiritual consumerism.
They have little theory and virtually no practice. We cannot collapse the path to self-exploration with purchasing power, insistent assertions, or personality cults "putting butts in pricey seats". Such a reductive and circular approach is a parody of authentic realization of spirituality. Ironically, the genre remains either blind to or exploitive of its own unconscious motivations.
There is no instant Jungian formula from the classical, developmental, or archetypal schools for the genuine evolution of concerns and range of issues. Even though split-brain research has been superseded, we can say generally that a left-brain approach is more evolutionary and developmental; whereas, the right-brain approach is more poetic and visionary. Both are experiential and meld into highly differentiated understanding. We can partake of the psychophysical benefits of both approaches.
We might well recognize some transpersonal potential within us all, but it is not our individual achievement. Jung's focus remains the complexity of archetypal tendencies of the creative imagination and its implications, including notions of divinity.
Our retrieval of different strata of the psyche keeps us tied to the tensions and beliefs of the all-too-human outmoded collective past. Such tensions are archetypal processes not just expressions of unconscious fantasies. In the absence of outrageous metaphysical claims, myths are more pragmatically therapeutic than theoretically true. They can also be dangerous and polarizing or totalitarian. Personal responsibility is more important than political ideology and polarization.
https://books.google.com/books?id=5dZUM7ogtQYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
"Thought and mind are the root of fear."
Krishnamurti suggests we create God. The mind creates God and then worships the idea. This is to create the image (out of fear and insecurity) and worship oneself and call it 'God'. We all notice a part of ourselves in the light and the shadows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYjYL448-yY
We may well from time to time embody seemingly divine moments, but it is not for us to say, and inflation is potentially dangerous to ourselves and society. It may be that psyche uses us as a prism. Myths raise personal disturbance to the level of general human meaning of the particular situation.
Our body image is a crucible embedded with identifications. Even the seat of the mind is material. Thoughts, feelings, and morals are also tiny electrical signals and chemical processes. Proprioception is the organismic self -- visceral or body knowledge. Signs, symbols, and guidance for the way ahead are embedded in our bodies and the natural world. We embody myths through our dreams, illusions, opinions, fears, and boundaries.
Physical and subtle bodily awareness express our suffering, limitations, and real potential through which we can listen to ourselves -- to the audible life stream -- in the silence of our soul. Suffering is not only personal but common to all of humanity. In the deep understanding of our insides we find faith, hope, love, and knowledge.
We need to find that which the soul lives by -- the real human nature. Who we are, who we believe we are, and who we believe in being don't necessarily coincide. We can strive against the unconscious pretensions of our roles, which, after all, remain only persona -- a social mask.
All Jungian concepts are "as if" metaphors, not reified "things" or even concepts the ego can capitalize on by misappropriating Jung's "shine". Jung's methods are not a dogma but a working hypothesis. They are intended for those working with the care of the psyche who actually know and understand their context and provisional character. He constantly revised his ideas through the end of his life. It remains an open depth approach to the psyche. Jung pioneered its extension into the social realm. Hillman saw it as a way of "seeing through" self, others, and culture.
The 'messiness' in real life complex applications makes Jung's frame more of a conceptual shorthand or guidelines, rather than rigid theory -- a way to circumnavigate or talk around such dynamics rather than defining them. Concepts are used as tools in all branches of science. But the inexperienced twist Jung's facts to suit their own preconceived theories and agendas.
"...archetypes aren't ways to see ourselves by identifying with gods and goddesses within, but instead, they're recognition templates that let us see others as heroic, wise, compassionate or as sacred beings. If archetypes exist, then their origin must lie in our evolutionary history, and they must have contributed to the survival of our species. When we see the best in others, especially after they do something that benefits our tribe or social group, we reward their actions, and motivate them to do the same thing again. Praising others re-affirms their value to their people, and helps to keep the tribe together. When we see others do good for us, and respond as though they had a divine moment while they were doing it, and praise them as we might praise a god or goddess, we amplify their motivation to go on acting for the good of their people. Seeing divinity in ourselves can create a dangerous attitude. Seeing the divine in others helps us survive. There are archetypes in the human psyche, but they're for seeing the divine in others, not ourselves." --Todd Murphy
"Nature is just what we do not know."
~ Carl Jung, E. Harding, Conversations with Jung, Page 17
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
~ Rumi
"...our lives are already significant before we even understand them, before we explain them. Or rather, our lives become significant when we recognize a model of imagination in the midst of chaos. Every chaos is an invention of imagination." --James Hillman
Self-awareness is a more awakened identity. Ultimately, it is grounded in primordial awareness of proto- or substrate consciousness [zero point]. But there are many milestones along that path toward fuller function and broader self-knowledge -- the quality of our being to create, attract, choose, and act consciously rather than fear, fight, or retreat into despair and hopelessness.
Our physical theories and narratives , rooted in philosophical notions about the interface of psyche and matter, also serve a symbolic function. If the unconscious is a magical powerhouse that speaks in symbols, our notion of the unconscious is also a symbol of the power of the primal field.
"The unconscious is the matrix of all metaphysical statements, of all mythology, of all philosophy, and of all expressions of life that are based on psychological premises." -C. G. Jung, CW 11, Psychology and Religion
"In our metaphysics we declare our fantasies about the physical and its transcendence. A metaphysical statement can be seen as a psychological fancy about the relationship between 'matter and spirit'. [...] The archetypal neuros is collective and affects all with the metaphysical affliction." --James Hillman, Senex and Puer
Traditionally, myths help us understand the world and our place in it. Myth is a means of self-discovery, like history and science -- contrasting with a pre-ordained or fundamentalist worldview. Even history remains an ideological subject in our culture, supporting narratives conceived by conflict victors and supported by academic institutions, right or wrong, for essentially 'political' reasons.
Unmediated experience is one way to find personal agency in our spiritual and mundane lives, Self-concept, the choices we make in life, and the paths we follow have their natural consequences. Agency in Nature subsumes our pretensions to "free will." Still, many influences of the environment remain profoundly non-conscious.
What experiences are considered worthwhile?
We are endlessly remaking or discovering ourselves and therefore always transforming -- neurologically, cognitively and emotionally. We make tacit assumptions about evolution, progress, collective consciousness, complexity, and why they matter. They permeate the environment, couched in religious, psychological, and new agey lingo from metaphors of "paradigm shift" and "awakening" to "ascending", and "transhumanism."
This radical change in consciousness mimics the spiritual ascent to the temple at the peak of the mountain of the philosophers. A discontinuous process, it involves leaps of faith -- transforming and rediscovering meaning. The transformative promise anticipates our desire to somehow become more than we are, but the existential fact is that higher levels of anxiety and depression automatically curtail ambition.
Depth psychology focuses primarily on the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. Hypnotic techniques use trance and dissociation. Hypnotherapy mediates and reframes psychosomatic memory, and the external world. Our normal mechanism for evaluating the environment is thereby changed by suggestion or processing old attitudes into new ones. Stimuli are re-evaluated.
Humanistic psychology centers on personhood, personal growth, empowerment, self-actualization and human potential. Jean Houston still teaches those methods:
- The power to expand time so you can do more in less time than ever before without adding stress to your life
- The power to experience “sustained fire” to keep you operating at your highest energy level throughout even the longest, most challenging days
- The power to partner with the energy of the Universe to more easily accomplish your goals and fulfill your dreams
- The power to expand and express your creativity without sacrificing your daily responsibilities
- The power to attract the money, people and resources you need to move your projects forward and achieve the level of success you’re striving for.
Transpersonal psychology focuses on ordinary and non-ordinary consciousness. Humanity seems to need ritual, magic, and bliss, as well as power and myth, celebration and religion. Imaginal psychology, a branch of depth psychology, urges us to move beyond the habituated monotheistic myth of self-domination by the abstract concepts of a rational heroic ego, self, or god.
Transgenerational psychology and Depth Genealogy include recent and deep ancestral knowledge of family identity and traditions, intergenerational epigenetics and family patterns. Also called intergenerational, and multigenerational,
Transgenerational theory is an approach which deals with the rules governing the communication of acquired practices, behaviors and beliefs between generations, historical data and trauma, functionality, and emotional pain (loss, wounding, grief, depression, despair, trauma, disease, etc.). The systemic approach values historical information, believes the past influences the present and future, and aims for more than symptom reduction.
Transgenerational passage incorporates bonding, the transmission of family roles and the spectrum of family-related traditions, family secrets and cultural changes, addiction, abuse, beliefs and behaviors. It suggests that enmeshment, unresolved emotional fusion, and limited or dysfunctional attachment to our nuclear families must be addressed if we hope to achieve a mature and unique personality.
Included are ethnic values, religious and national tradition and attitudes towards life, death and sexuality, unhelpful patterns of belief and behavior, generation gaps. Choice of occupation, educational aspirations, attitudes towards money and politics are also transmitted. Losses in the social field often precede psychophysical symptoms.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j..1979.00506.x/pdf
There is no rigorous scientific approach to the passage of family culture and tradition. Intergenerational family therapy acknowledges generational influences on family and individual behavior, such as emotional regulation attachment and forgiveness.
Our ancestral lines transmit positive and negative attitudes, beliefs, actions, and habits. Genealogy is a natural introduction to the process of self-exploration and intergenerational patterns and dynamics. Depth genealogy pursues those connections, ancient and modern.
This transgenerational theory is a minor step in the formulation of such an approach whose roots run deep. It includes origins, biological communication, beliefs, emotional reactivity, intelligence, and behaviors passed to succeeding generations. The Transgenerational perspective maintains that generational conflict can remain unresolved through out generations. This view does not imply causation of conflict, only that unresolved issues can continue to affect families throughout generations.
James Hillman noted the ego is also an image. It makes problems to solve them with will and intentionality, but that is an illusory perspective. Imaginal psychology prioritizes soul, poetics, and imagination as the primary elements and mode of experience. It includes somatic practices and perennial traditions.
Goodchild describes how imaginal psychology includes "mystical philosophy and alchemy; shamanic and indigenous wisdom; spiritual and visionary traditions; literary and poetic imagination; deep ecology; creative arts; authentic movement and dance; music; extraordinary experiences and consciousness studies. Engagement with these domains fosters self-awareness, responsiveness toward others, and care for the soul, enabling us to heal, to create, and to participate in re-imagining culture, no matter what our ‘work’ or ‘calling.’ "
Consciousness is not based on concepts of ego or self, though it has been identified as such. Archetypes generate the transformational images and the universal material of myth and drama, but they bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning. They provide archaic and timeless meaning. Some intelligence by-passes thought. We have to look at the whole not just the positive.
Hillman dubs ego a "myth of inflation", not the secret key to the development of consciousness, but a source of fallacies, defining its literal fantasies as reality. In A Blue Fire (pg. 34), he suggests, "placing in abeyance such metaphors as: choice and light, problem solving and reality testing, strengthening, developing, controlling, progressing." He condemns new age insistence on transformation - sloughing off the old self and interpretive schemes for an idealization that is essentially another self-delusion.
Jung felt that the task of individuation involved resisting collective forces and developing a critical response to them. Any collective movement which identifies with an archetypal process is, virtually by definition, not going to accord with Jungian taste, which is based on the ethics and aesthetics of individuation. Jung's attack on what he called "identification with the collective psyche" is conveniently and deliberately ignored by all those New Age therapists, consultants, advocates, and shamans who like to freely celebrate and even "worship" the contemporary version of constellated archetypal contents.
If the New Age appears Jungian it is not because it has used Jung, but because it draws its life from and incessantly parades a particularly strong archetypal current that maps this psycho-spiritual territory. The same subjective evaluations and claims have been made for esoterics such as astrology, depth psychology, and for the Standard Model in physics. People claim they use them because "they work." Archetypal correlations, a heightened level of communication between unconscious and conscious coordination, are radically participatory in nature, shaped by relevant circumstantial factors and human response. (Tacey)
http://www.planetdeb.net/spirit/contrast.htm
Carl Jung (CW 12, par. 32) cautioned that we must be alone to find out what it is that supports us when we can no longer support ourselves. Only this experience, he said, gives us an indestructible foundation. "Individuation and collectivity are a pair of opposites, two divergent destinies. They are related to one another by guilt." Frank Barron (1988) reminds us that "independence of judgement" requires critical and creative thinking, not the self-deception of conformity. To separate from the herd of indoctrination and conditioning.
Jung concludes, "we must be able to stand alone vis a vis the unconscious for better or worse." (Letters, Vol 1, p. 458-459) Jung also notes, "Individuation is just ordinary life and what you are made conscious of." (Letters, Vol. 1, pg. 442) It isn't rare, but it is a move toward self-actualization or self-realization.
The path from the oblivious to self-aware life is beset with obstacles. How do we know what a genuine transformative experience is? We transform ourselves by every act of self-knowing. Jung felt that self-realization was a natural process of transformation, orchestrated by the unconscious. The infinite depth of dynamic reality informs our worldview and personal sovereignty. Such is the journey of meaningful solitude into silence, ratified by the perennial wisdom.
Krishnamurti said, "To stand alone is to be uncorrupted, innocent, free of all tradition, of dogma, of opinion, of what another says, and so on. . . .What matters is to understand for oneself, not through the direction of others, the total content of consciousness, which is not conditioned, which is the result of society, of religion, of various impacts, impressions, memories -- to understand all of that conditioning and be free of it. But there is no "how" to be free. If you ask 'how' to be free, you are not listening."
Kahlil Gibran claimed, "Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms." Yogananda suggests that self-realization is "to know truth through yourself, and not through others." Ramana Maharshi says, "your own Self-Realization is the greatest service you can render the world."
The Dalai Lama says, "With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world." Rumi was poetic: "I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul." Hermann Hesse and others, such as Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman, echo this approach in their own writings.
Hermann Hesse felt that, "We must become so alone, so absolutely alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for in our innermost soul, we know ourselves to be one with all beings."
"Your being has two sides...one visible, the other invisible. With open eyes you behold objective creation, and yourself in it. With closed eyes you see nothing, a dark void; yet your consciousness, even when dissociated from form, is still keenly aware and operative. If in deep meditation you penetrate the darkness behind closed eyes, you behold the Light from which all creation emerges. By deeper samadhi, your experience transcends even the manifested Light and enters the All-Blissful Consciousness -- beyond all form, yet infinitely more real, tangible and joyous than any sensory or supersensory perception." --Yogananda
Philosophical Approach
Ontology is the philosophical investigation of existence, or being. It may be directed towards the concept of being, asking what ‘being’ means, or what it is for something to exist and/or what exists?’, or ‘what general sorts of thing are there?’ It is common to speak of a philosopher’s ontology, meaning the kinds of thing they take to exist, or the ontology of a theory, meaning the things that would have to exist for that theory to be true. All seekers have these basic assumptions about reality based on their experience and worldview.
Epistemology describes how we know what we know and what it is subjectively like, metaphorically. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. There is a vast array of views about those topics, but one virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief, but not mere true belief. Our own personal epistemological metaphors are how we describe our subjective experiences to ourselves. They condition our experience, but they can be morphed in therapy, through trauma, by propaganda and enculturation.
Metaphysics is a broad area of philosophy marked out by two types of inquiry. The first aims to be the most general investigation possible into the nature of reality: are there principles applying to everything that is real, to all that is? We can abstract from the particular nature of existing things what distinguishes them from each other, and what can we know about them simply because they exist?
The second type of inquiry seeks to uncover what is ultimately real, frequently offering answers in sharp contrast to our everyday experience of the world. Understood in terms of these two questions, metaphysics is very closely related to ontology, which is usually taken to involve both ‘what is existence (being)?’ and ‘what (fundamentally distinct) types of thing exist?’
Even the philosopher with a low opinion of the prospects for traditional and "woo woo" metaphysics can believe that there is a general framework which we in fact use for thinking about reality, and can undertake to describe and explore it. We can inquire into our most general patterns of thought, and the nature of things themselves only indirectly, if at all. Perhaps it does imply that there is a small but fairly stable core of human thought for it to investigate, but this collides with Postmodern thought which rejects meta-narratives.
We tend to think with awareness of our thoughts. We analyze and logically assess our thoughts. We decide if the thought/idea/belief is right, true, and correct, for us, or not. We either give it subconscious access or we reject it, in effect bounce it out. When subconscious access is allowed, we amplify it in our imagination. We locate memories to justify, validate, and defend it. We feel it. We do it. Our emotions drive our behaviors because we tend to behave the way we feel.
When we waken from one of these philosophical dreams into another, we find the crumbling 'truths' were simulations or simulacra all along. What felt authentic, even sacred, at the time is revealed as a sham. A change of heart correlates with the revisioning. The belief's charge of divinity came from the believer's attribution, not its inherent qualities. It is now revealed as a projection. We tend to 'worship' the dynamics of our understanding, divinize the presumed truth of a numinosum -- ontologically, historically, and personally.
We have scientific explanations for most of the phenomena that were considered divine powers until a few decades ago. Pre-scientific explanations usually included magic or divine intervention. We've plumbed the galaxies and universe back to the beginning of time, cracked the codes of life, and the workings of the brain. But we can't explain ourselves, much less how we are frequently duped by our subjective experience - or our interpretations of that experience.
Our environment is no longer more mysterious than the unsolved Mystery inside ourselves. We've consumed subject after subject in science and metaphysics in a feeding frenzy. But, we still haven't plumbed the depths of our own consciousness, which is riddled with paradoxes and weird properties. Our sense of Self imposes a sense of unity on our morphing essence, but science can't find this core self in our hardwiring. The "I's have it" and try to make sense of what the other "I's" are doing.
Consciousness eludes both scientists and the common person, but we remain sure we exist, even though physics has shown that the basis of all existence is quite ephemeral. The world of objects has disappeared in the waves of a quantum magic wand. So-called Reality is not at all solid, emerging from the primordial Nothingness beyond the mystic veil of biological and inorganic corporeality.
Nothing Matters. Nothing has been the same since science convinced us we DO live in a vacuum (fluctuation). It is right here within the zone of our bodies. The ideological equivalent was the diversified relativity of Postmodernism, a bleak vision which can be summed up as the philosophical, intellectual and aesthetic equivalent of "Been There; Done That".
“And the soul's vice is ignorance. For that the soul who hath no knowledge of the things that are, or knowledge of their nature, or of Good, is blinded by the body's passions and tossed about. This wretched soul, not knowing what she is, becomes the slave of bodies of strange form in sorry plight, bearing the body as a load; not as the ruler, but the ruled. This Ignorance] is the soul's vice. But on the other hand the virtue of the soul is Gnosis. For he who knows, he good and pious is, and still while on the earth divine." - Corpus Hermeticum
PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE
Undifferentiated & Enmeshed in the Collective
Projection & Identification
People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… if more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique. ~Carl Jung, Visions, para 1184.
Mystical Fusion
We all have instinctual experience of the deepest parts of our ancestral life when we were all enmeshed in undifferentiated collective unconsciousness prior to the emergence of seemingly individual self. This mystical fusion is somewhat akin to an oceanic experience of the world. We always retain this level, which conditions our attitudes, behaviors, and projections or fantasy images of our experience of others, including the Others which abide within us.
In primitive societies there are no individuals, only collective relationship. Collective attitudes, psychological conformity, still creates an undertow of undifferentiated thinking. It hinders evaluation of differing views because projection is the only way of thinking and feeling, identification or oneness with the object. Projection and identification with unconscious psychic contents are the dynamic aspects of participation mystique. Early mental life is animated by projection. Jung's therapeutic goal was dissolving participation mystique.
Such projections include signs and messages from within about ourselves and others, living or dead, and symbolic or mythological notions. They appear spontaneously from our unconscious and accompany all experience and perception of objects. The mind likes to fill in what is as yet unknown with a story or idea of what is going on, ranging from practical and wise, to utter nonsense.
One current buzzword for rapport is 'resonance', which rather than being a phenomena lifted from science (field coherence), is more the fuzzy feeling that someone else is in rapport with you or harmonizes and presumptively agrees with your thinking and worldview.
It is the resonance with creation that we are seeking -- the congruence, rapport, and ritual that promotes self-healing. Non-verbal patterning informs subjective perceptions and behavioral outcomes, including intimate self-disclosure. It is the basis of empathy.
The old notion of good and bad 'vibrations' is now dubbed 'resonance.' There is no need to mystify rapport, which is the artifact of our mirror neurons that viscerally bind us to our caregivers unconsciously in infancy and produce empathy in children and adults. Resonance is anything but a 'new' paradigm. It isn't even a new metaphor. But it has been used to sell books and workshops because it grabs for the mystique of state of the art science. Why? It triggers our longing to belong.
Facile promises of group transformation more likely work by stimulating endorphins, such as dopamine and oxytocin, which are mistaken for group consciousness, when it is an endogenous drug experience. Sure, there is an effect, but it is touted as some sort evolutionary step, and it is one -- backward to a more primal condition. Emotional 'resonance' gets conflated with buzzwords from quantum physics, but ones that are often 20-30 years out of date in physics, but still presented as the gold standard of energy medicine.
If it actually 'worked' we would all be living our wildest dreams, rather than the normally banal to randomly catastrophic events of daily life. The teachers of such themes have merely captured the attention of others through their unconscious and its amorphous notions about reality, a sort of misconstrued dreaming out loud. It confounds the personal and collective unconscious. For those actively engaged in trance phenomena it becomes a conditioned response.
It is an almost entirely emotional response from our lowest common denominator. Feeling types are most susceptible to such entreaties due to predisposition and 'inferior thinking' in the Jungian sense. They lack a certain critical thinking about experience, and willfully suspend disbelief, as if life were a novel or movie. Dissociative and dysregulated personalities are also more prone to such trances people live. Their own interpretations serve to reassure them in some irrational way.
We don't need to revere, mystify it, nor scientize it. In many ways it is the old trance state, in new clothes, dressed up as mediumship and other common trance phenomena, which appear that way because the person remains profoundly unaware how the unconscious works. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong about compassion, understanding, respect, appreciation and rapport; greater cooperation, creative resonance or mutual prehension – an immediate, nonreflexive perception.
Rapport is also used for manipulation. Charismatic individuals can create rapport with others to influence them. On a higher arc, medical intuition and therapeutic rapport are real forces in the healing process. Real rapport is established with context and depth allowed to emerge and differentiate into consciously perceived images.
So, it is confused in a sort of superstitious way, and maybe called supernatural, or called not supernatural in an attempt to normalize it. This 'secret' bootstraps on the tired notion that everything in the universe is light, information, and resonance.
But what is the quality and content of the informational message? This is its most primitive form, the psychological connection of identification. In empathy, rapport, and relationship, objects or people are seen as imaginal extensions of oneself and one's internal qualities. Similar personality traits align in rapport and return with greater amplification.
Either way, it is the product of a dissociation -- a dissociative way of knowing, where ego steps aside while the unconscious performs its 'magic.' It is an identification with another or the collective. Astrology, while perhaps useful and fun is one technology for 'channeling' such imaginal material.
The intriguing lover and the magician use the same techniques to manipulate images, concealed and revealed in symbols. Likewise the artist, who creates from unconscious memories, autonomous complexes, and participation mystique.
We tend to see ourselves in one another. We can unconsciously assimilate a model or role another provides. Both are a loss of self. This psychological connection is identification (empathy, rapport, relationship) with objects or people, seen as imaginal extensions of oneself. Internal qualities are required for real love.
Identification is an unconscious fantasy where split off aspects of self are attributed to an external object, or, we identify with the impulses being projected onto us. We subsume it. The need to withdraw projections is generally signaled by frustrated expectations in relationships, accompanied by strong affect.
The autonomous creative complex arises from the collective unconscious. Imagination is the main gateway of all magical processes. Only embodied consciousness can align personal deeds with the divine.
Participation mystique, or mystical participation, refers to the instinctive human tie to symbolic fantasy emanations. This symbolic life precedes or accompanies all mental and intellectual differentiation. The concept is closely tied to that of projection because these contents, which are often mythological motifs, project themselves into situations and objects, including other persons, as readily as we project color into the objects we perceive.
Jung defines participation mystique as one of his basic definitions in Psychological Types, crediting it to Lucien Lévy-Bruhl.
PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE is a term derived from Lévy-Bruhl. It denotes a peculiar kind of psychological connection with objects, and consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity. (Jung, [1921] 1971: paragraph 781).
Jung used the term throughout his writings after Lévy-Brühl's work was published in 1912. Jung referred to it consistently with the French terminology rather than using the English "mystical participation" until Man and His Symbols was published after his death.
The further we go back into history, the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And if we go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual. Instead of individuality we find only collective relationship or what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 12).
Jung's concept of concretism, which is the opposite of differentiating abstraction, is also closely related to participation mystique.
I am reminded of another mental case who was neither a poet nor anything very outstanding, just a naturally quiet and rather sentimental youth. He had fallen in love with a girl and, as so often happens, had failed to ascertain whether his love was requited. His primitive participation mystique took it for granted that his agitations were plainly the agitations of the other, which on the lower levels of human psychology is naturally very often the case. Thus he built up a sentimental love-fantasy which precipitately collapsed when he discovered that the girl would have none of him (Jung, 1966: par. 231).
This is what the distinguished French ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Brühl called a "mystical participation" (Jung et al., 1964:24).
However, Lévy-Brühl actually recanted his theory.
He later retracted this term under pressure of adverse criticism, but I believe that his critics were wrong. It is a well-known psychological fact that an individual may have an unconscious identity with some other person or object (Jung et al., 1964:24).
In Mysterium Coniunctionis (Jung, [1955] 1970:250 note 662), Jung had gone into more detail to defend his own theory in light of the recantation.
Elsewhere in Mysterium Coniunctionis Jung summarily dismisses the objections raised by ethnologists, attributing their objections to lack of knowledge of the unconscious.
Lévy-Bruhl's view has recently been disputed by ethnologists, not because this phenomenon does not occur among primitives, but because they have not understood it. Like so many other specialists, these critics prefer to know nothing of the psychology of the unconscious. (Jung, [1955] 1970:488 note 106). --Wikipedia
References
- Jung, C.G. ([1921] 1971). Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01813-8.
- Jung, C.G. (1966). Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, Collected Works, Volume 7, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01782-4.
- Jung, C.G. ([1955] 1970). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected Works, Volume 14, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01816-2.
- Jung, C.G., et al. (1964). Man and His Symbols, New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-05221-9.
- Lévy-Bruhl, L. ([1912] 1926). How Natives Think, Translated by Lilian A. Clare, London, 1926.
Participation mystique A term derived from anthropology and the study of primitive psychology, denoting a mystical connection, or identity, between subject and object. (See also archaic, identification and projection.) [Participation mystique] consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity. . . . Among civilized peoples it usually occurs between persons, seldom between a person and a thing. In the first case it is a transference relationship . . . . In the second case there is a similar influence on the part of the thing, or else an identification with a thing or the idea of a thing.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 781.]
[Identity] is a characteristic of the primitive mentality and the real foundation of participation mystique, which is nothing but a relic of the original non-differentiation of subject and object, and hence of the primordial unconscious state. It is also a characteristic of the mental state of early infancy, and, finally, of the unconscious of the civilized adult.[Ibid., par. 741.]
Participation mystique. A term derived from anthropology and the study of primitive psychology, denoting a mystical connection, or identity, between subject and object. (See also archaic, identification and projection.)
[Participation mystique] consists in the fact that the subject cannot clearly distinguish himself from the object but is bound to it by a direct relationship which amounts to partial identity. . . . Among civilized peoples it usually occurs between persons, seldom between a person and a thing. In the first case it is a transference relationship . . . . In the second case there is a similar influence on the part of the thing, or else an identification with a thing or the idea of a thing.[Definitions," CW 6, par. 781.]
[Identity] is a characteristic of the primitive mentality and the real foundation of participation mystique, which is nothing but a relic of the original non-differentiation of subject and object, and hence of the primordial unconscious state. It is also a characteristic of the mental state of early infancy, and, finally, of the unconscious of the civilized adult.[Ibid., par. 741.]
Symbiosis. A psychological state where contents of one's personal unconscious are experienced in another person. (See also projection and soul-image.)
Symbiosis manifests in unconscious interpersonal bonds, easily established and difficult to break. Jung gave an example in terms of introversion and extraversion. Where one of these attitudes is dominant, the other, being unconscious, is automatically projected.
Either type has a predilection to marry its opposite, each being unconsciously complementary to the other. . . . The one takes care of reflection and the other sees to the initiative and practical action. When the two types marry, they may effect an ideal union. So long as they are fully occupied with their adaptation to the manifold external needs of life they fit together admirably.["The Problem of the Attitude-Type," CW 7, par. 80.]
Problems in such relationships typically surface only later in life, accompanied by strong affect.
When the man has made enough money, or if a fine legacy should drop from the skies and external necessity no longer presses, then they have time to occupy themselves with one another. Hitherto they stood back to back and defended themselves against necessity. But now they turn face to face and look for understanding-only to discover that they have never understood one another. Each speaks a different language. Then the conflict between the two types begins. This struggle is envenomed, brutal, full of mutual depreciation, even when conducted quietly and in the greatest intimacy. For the value of the one is the negation of value for the other.[Ibid.]
The ending of a symbiotic relationship often precipitates an outbreak of neurosis, stimulated by an inner need to assimilate those aspects of oneself that were projected onto the partner.
Projection:
An automatic process whereby contents of one’s own unconscious are perceived to be in others. (See also archaic, identification and participation mystique.)
Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be. . . . All the contents of our unconscious are constantly being projected into our surroundings, and it is only by recognizing certain properties of the objects as projections or imagos that we are able to distinguish them from the real properties of the objects. . . . Cum grano salis, we always see our own unavowed mistakes in our opponent. Excellent examples of this are to be found in all personal quarrels. Unless we are possessed of an unusual degree of self-awareness we shall never see through our projections but must always succumb to them, because the mind in its natural state presupposes the existence of such projections. It is the natural and given thing for unconscious contents to be projected.["General Aspects of Dream Psychology," ibid., par. 507.]
Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content into an object; it is the opposite of introjection. Accordingly, it is a process of dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful, incompatible contents by projecting them.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 783.]
Projection is not a conscious process. One meets with projections, one does not make them.
The general psychological reason for projection is always an activated unconscious that seeks expression.["The Tavistock Lectures," CW 18, par. 352.]
It is possible to project certain characteristics onto another person who does not possess them at all, but the one being projected upon may unconsciously encourage it.
It frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection, and even lures it out. This is generally the case when the object himself (or herself) is not conscious of the quality in question: in that way it works directly upon the unconscious of the projicient. For all projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject.["General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW 8, par. 519.]
Through projection one can create a series of imaginary relationships that often have little or nothing to do with the outside world.
The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable.["The Shadow," CW 9ii, par. 17.]
Projection also has positive effects. In everyday life it facilitates interpersonal relations. In addition, when we assume that some quality or characteristic is present in another, and then, through experience, find that this is not so, we can learn something about ourselves. This involves withdrawing or dissolving projections.
So long as the libido can use these projections as agreeable and convenient bridges to the world, they will alleviate life in a positive way. But as soon as the libido wants to strike out on another path, and for this purpose begins running back along the previous bridges of projection, they will work as the greatest hindrances it is possible to imagine, for they effectively prevent any real detachment from the former object.["General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW 8, par. 507.]
The need to withdraw projections is generally signaled by frustrated expectations in relationships, accompanied by strong affect. But Jung believed that until there is an obvious discordance between what we imagine to be true and the reality we are presented with, there is no need to speak of projections, let alone withdraw them.
Projection . . . is properly so called only when the need to dissolve the identity with the object has already arisen. This need arises when the identity becomes a disturbing factor, i.e., when the absence of the projected content is a hindrance to adaptation and its withdrawal into the subject has become desirable. From this moment the previous partial identity acquires the character of projection. The term projection therefore signifies a state of identity that has become noticeable.["Definitions," CW 6, par. 783.]
Jung distinguished between passive projection and active projection. Passive projection is completely automatic and unintentional, like falling in love. The less we know about another person, the easier it is to passively project unconscious aspects of ourselves onto them.
Active projection is better known as empathy-we feel ourselves into the other’s shoes. Empathy that extends to the point where we lose our own standpoint becomes identification.
The projection of the personal shadow generally falls on persons of the same sex. On a collective level, it gives rise to war, scapegoating and confrontations between political parties. Projection that takes place in the context of a therapeutic relationship is called transference or countertransference, depending on whether the analysand or the analyst is the one projecting.
In terms of the contrasexual complexes, anima and animus, projection is both a common cause of animosity and a singular source of vitality.
When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love.["The Syzygy: Anima and Animus," CW 9ii, par. 30.]
Certainly the split in human nature can be seen in terms of the life and death instinct, but I would not agree that this would be "inorganic from the standpoint of psychology," for to do so would imply that no psychology at all exists in the womb or in the symbolic return to Paradise. The desire for death is often symbolic for a death of ego consciousness to return to soul consciousness, which may strengthen the conscious attitude. There is no desire for life that does not include a desire for death, for we die even as we live.
If we equate the life instinct with ego consciousness and the death instinct with the unconsciousness, the split that Samuels describes can be seen as the splitting of the opposites out of their original unity and a regression as an attempt to restore that unity. Soul consciousness is the reconciling third consciousness that stands in the middle and is connected to both. Soul consciousness is the life and death instincts that are still undifferentiated and exist as one instinct. Thus, it is identical to the function of intuition, and the reason intuition is the primal instinct. Soul is the archetype, intuition is the instinct.
The "preconceived state" that Samuels suggests is "inorganic from a psychological view" is nothing of the kind, because psychological experience would exist in the primal experience of being in the womb in the form of the intuitive function. If the instinct contains the archetype, the soul would also exist in the infant's psyche and could be called psychological. Thus, the origin of the soul would be at conception, when the basic instinct of intuitive matter responds to matter and life begins. To be inorganic would imply that there is no organizational process in the experience of the soul complex, in or out of the womb.
The return to the mother might be a return to the participation mystique of infancy, but not the exact experience of the infant in utero. In this case, the mother's state of psychological being might induce "hell" rather than "heaven," for a state of despair might be shared with the infant. The flow of the ego to soul and back to ego is a natural and essential part of the child's life, not unlike what Fordham describes as integration and deintegration. It is not returning to the soul that creates havoc in the adult or the child, but the inability to arrive there safely and return safely. One way back to soul is through love and another is through fear, which is a perception that "oneness" is missing. In the first reintegration, the mother returns the child to unity by an act of love, by meeting the child's ego demands. If needs are not met on a regular basis, the original unity cannot be experienced in the world, which appears to be essential if relationship is to be a positive experience. The result is a state of limbo for the ego, which fears moving in either direction. This is pathology: Whether in an adult or an infant, the experience is the same. Both long for an experience of the original unity and seek it first in a relationship that will match the inner archetype. Ego is then reinforced by the experience, and consciousness is expanded.
http://sulcus.berkeley.edu/flm/SH/MDL/GAL/galdischapts/galdis.intro#TOC
Identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow, but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one’s own mind in that state.
It does work a change in you, but the change does not last.
On the contrary, you must have continual recourse to mass intoxication in order to consolidate the experience and your belief in it.
But as soon as you are removed from the crowd, you are a different person again and unable to reproduce the previous state of mind.
The mass is swayed by participation mystique, which is nothing other than unconscious identity. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, par 226.
http://books.google.com/books?id=PvmXAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
http://www.processpsychology.com/new-articles2/Jung.pdf
Jung's metaphysics
Common sense self-awareness is about our strength and weakness, abilities and preferences and their implications, and how we impact others. Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) claimed, "Humanity's task is to become responsible for its own actions, conscious of the oneness of everybody with its soul."
For example, former astrophysicist, Giuliana Conforto has applied Bruno's ancient Art of Memory to recall human origins. Thus, we “see” within and communicate with the “only Force, which links and gives life to infinite worlds” that Bruno and other sages praise. She proposes an anthropic and astronomical revolution, centered on each being’s direct communication with this Force that actually is universal Life.
Like any Great Work, Jung suggests that the opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part for more coherent organization, but in the second and third parts moral strength requires a predominant role. Marie-Louis von Franz noted, "Jung's idea was that the goal of evolution on this planet seems to be to create more consciousness."
Consciousness is described as the root of matter, including our own matter. Whether we call it the boundless reality of God, or the pre-spacetime vacuum that gives rise to matter, this Mystery is the quintessence of impenetrable darkness that contains the spark of life.
Ervin Laszlo proposed that the quantum vacuum, the field from which the universe is born, is conscious with all the information from the Big Bang to now. Laszlo says the universe as conscious life emerges from the quantum vacuum.
If we are linked to all people who have ever lived, we can access them through the primordial field, assuming the past has never gone away, and informs the present. We can access extraordinary abilities that are completely natural, including plumbing our own depths experientially.
We can find inspiration in culture-heroes, but ultimately must make our own way through the 'dark forest', like the Grail Knights. Krishnamurti said, "I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect." (The Dissolution of the Order of the Star, 1929). As Einstein remarked, "I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me."
As Baudelaire suggests, symbolism and 'correspondences' help us "Extract the eternal from the ephemeral." Generic symbolic languages such as esoterics, alchemy, and Qabalah help us articulate the phenomenology of inner experience. They help us wake up and grow up.
Our deeply human experience of awe spans from “awful” to the “awesome” and all ambiguous spaces between. including technology, storytelling, the narrative arc, and the evolutionary, even empathetic value of having our minds blown by direct experience of expansive knowledge or gnosis. We can all grasp these ideas conceptually, but experience makes them real. "We are the stuff that dreams are made on."
Fundamental Awareness
Absolute space is the absence of matter, or fundamental, irreducible primordial energy
but matter is entirely dependent upon nonmaterial primordial energy, the force of resistance to the Higgs field, and cannot exist in the absence of primordial energy, or vacuum flux. This is the fundamental uncreated, unconditioned primordial foundation of nonmaterial and material physical reality just-as-it-is, described by both mystics and scientists.
Science claims, Physicists can't interpret the Higgs boson itself as giving anything mass, but by interacting with other particles, they can argue that the Higgs field gives resistance to the particles' motion, which gives them mass.
We now assume some particles face more resistance in the Higgs field so gain more mass while some feel less resistance and end up with lesser mass. For light particles such as electrons and neutrinos, traveling through the Higgs field is like running down the street. Heavier particles, such as the electron's larger cousins, muon and tau, experience more resistance, as though they were running in a swimming pool full of water. When an otherwise massless particle travelling at the speed of light interacts with the Higgs field, it is slowed down. The field 'drags' on it, as though the particle were moving through molasses. In other words, the energy of the interaction is manifested as a resistance to acceleration.
The Higgs field is an energy field that is thought to exist everywhere in the universe. The field is accompanied by a fundamental particle called the Higgs boson, dubbed the God Particle, which the field uses to continuously interact with other particles. We can also speak of it in terms of experience of the deepest human awareness.
The self-arising Ground of Being, as the esoteric core or center, underlies all varieties of spiritual experience. The deepest unconscious is unthought and unthinkable. Because of the obscuration of the light, the very ground of being is felt as death or deprivation and annihilation. This Emptiness is both the groundless ground and goal of evolution. Naked awareness is the goal of all transformative spiritual practices.
Awareness is recognized in natural self-revealing Presence as the original ground of being. Radiant awareness is primordial as the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused -- the absolute, the now; the primordial isness of reality; the original void; the ground of creation. Awareness is clarity funneled through the imaginary and symbolic grid of meaning into the structured world.
Urgrund precedes being and God. Non-dual Presence is universal Presence that saturates our being. All our experiences are the manifestation of self-existing awareness, the self manifestation of the transcendental primordial ground. Uncreated, unconditioned pure consciousness is egoless and possesses no self-awareness.
All experience is of Being manifesting. The primordial vision of being includes instinctual-intuitive-perception-awareness characteristics with a ground of being that is metaphysical and based on sensing, feeling, seeing, and being real, and not just believing, thinking, knowing, and having ideas.
Soul Field
The soul is the 'friend' or the heart of the beloved that gives us generosity, moderateness, and eloquence -- the opening heart, experiential understanding. The emotion we have when we are open and motivated to explore the unknown is a positive emotion -- openness to ideas and creativity, the aspiration for a better life.
It doesn't take seeing a therapist to see yourself. Many more people have used Jungian and post-Jungian models of the psyche with good results for their own self-understanding than ever went to therapy. A self-taught grasp of the categories, concepts, and dynamics can be applied to oneself, producing realizations. It certainly doesn't need to be overly intellectual at all, and can involve such traditional activities as journals, expressive arts, dialogue and dream work.
Focus means noticing intuition more often, rather than ignoring or missing the psychic dimension of activity. Emotionally engaged intuitive understanding allows us to relate to one another as people. We can only do it if we innately know who we are, and why we are here. Self-awareness is connection to inner instinct, the inner voice -- the truest expression of ourselves as human beings. Are we fully here, or are we distracted?
Metaphor is important because if we can't say what a thing is "like," we are held in its thrall unable to incorporate it as an experience. In other words, when you are 'in it', you can't 'see it'. As well as a mirror the soul has also been likened to symbolic metaphors of a journey or quest, a stream of consciousness, a vast ocean of energy, and a deep cave of eternity containing the treasure of all mankind.
Self-knowledge and awareness helps us navigate our way through our suffering. Psyche or soul is a root metaphor of the self-deepening reflective process, reflexive mirroring with its infinite re-valuing and re-visioning. In imagery self-reflectivity is expressed as repetition: recurrent references, intrinsic circularity, reflexive epistemology.
The mirror motif suggests the emergence of self-awareness and self-consciousness -- being aware of being aware of being. Soul's reflective perspective is a reflexive, self-reflecting, or feedback-based model of self-consciousness.
"Emergent phenomena in our brains — for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will —are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself is determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing "resonance" between different levels... The self comes into being the moment it has the power to reflect itself. (Hofstadter 1980 p. 709)”
Jung distinguishes between the small self and the archetypal Self, as a guide of the spirit. He considers the later the core of individuation and spirituality. However, by attributing it godlike manifestations of awe and numinosity, he does not imply an ontological entity at large in the universe. He insists we can only relate, whether 'God' exists or not, to a god-image or god-complex and its phenomenology of the psyche.
The soul has many personalities and we are one of them. Hillman diverges from Jung by adopting a multi-centered approach to natural and 'divine' phenomena. In either model, this personified relationship is at the core of our self-exploration, whether we 'believe' in God or not. We don't need to have a crippled childhood or post-traumatic stress to be disturbed in today's post-postmodern world.
Most of us experience nightmares, anguish, fear of death and life. We question the whole socio-political landscape, undeserved inequalities, and our responsibilities to our fellow beings. Personal and collective evil may suppress our actions or create obsessions and the paralysis of fight/flight/freeze. Society is rethinking old assumptions and roles.
Evil is about the absolute nature of reality. Such evil that plagues us leads toward seeking gradual recovery of self through a new birth in consciousness. Even our own self-awareness and affective knowledge can emerge from traumatic realizations, beyond self-deception.
Tragedy must be distinguished from evil. Our human existence is a confrontation between the finite and infinitude, forming the existential conditions of life. We are always overwhelmed by the infinite, so we suffer from our limitations, including mortality. It's central to the nature of our being, and we deal with it everyday.
There is no existence without limitation. Trauma is part of our DNA. It's a constant tragic reality that we remain vulnerable. Tragedy reveals our vulnerability but isn't evil as a condition of human existence. How are we to understand a story like this?
In his book on evil John A. Sanford suggests, "For the most part, it is only when people encounter evil in some form-as pain, loss of meaning, or something that appears to be threatening or destructive to them-that they begin to find their way to consciousness. And only when people are tested in the fire of life, so that what is weak within them is purged away and only the strong elements remain, does individuation take place. This purging can only take place in the context of a certain amount of suffering and struggle. Paradoxically, without a power in life that seems to oppose wholeness, the achievement of wholeness would be impossible. From the point of view of psychology, then, evil is a necessity of individuation is to occur." (Evil. The shadow side of reality. 1981)
As Hermann Hesse says in Demian, "My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
Ancient wisdom and modern science agree that consciousness is not something we “have” but the fundamental nature of both ourselves and the entire Universe. Psyche and matter are synonymous, unifying the nature of reality. We have to look at the world through a limited frame of reference we can comprehend at any given moment. There is no real life or spirituality without archetypal experiences.
https://books.google.com/books?id=BR3uFXbDWsgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
