Introduction

INTRODUCTION: NON-LOCAL CONSCIOUSNESS

This essay is a deep dive into the Dark Waters of the human unconscious embodied in the dual nature of Sobek, the sacred crocodile deity. This dark journey into a dangerous place is a necessary process. By repeatedly diving deep and then re-surfacing, we bring into the daylight world important experiential material focused around the very core of our being. Passage to the next world begins in total darkness, so we can come back to the light in rebirth, absorbed into wisdom -- holistic interconnectedness. There is only one reality and it is inherently conscious, a consciousness in the unconscious.

Nonlocal consciousness is not confined to specific points in space, including brains or bodies nor the present moment. It is an ordering principle that can inject information into disorganized or random systems. It can operate beyond mere awareness, unconsciously, drawing on individual and collective consciousness, as well as the world or environment. Tthe psychoid realm is an intensely felt psycho-physical level of consciousness beyond the collective unconscious. When psyche and matter intersect, we see glimpses of a unitary reality.

Coherence or resonance may be expressed as compassion, empathy, love, unity, oneness, and connectedness. Consciousness affects or informs human and nonhuman or inanimate forms alike. Psychoid meaning somehow essentially involves both psyche and matter. Psychoid functions are not capable of consciousnessso we have only indirect knowledge. Jung's concept of quasi-psychic or psychoid archetypes offers a profoundly interconnected vision of reality. 

When we stand in the mystery of creation and look up at the skies or over the waters, we sense that our knowledge is but a pale reflection. Yet, as a unique reflection of cosmos, of all that is, we already have all we seek, already are more than we can imagine. The darkness of unknowing is a plenum of information.  When we fully embrace the world each and every given moment, the unknown comes and stands beside us. Lightning illuminates our path. The way to keep a path alive is to walk on it.

When we empty ourselves of the contents of our consciousness, we find the mystery of our own incarnation, alive in awe and wonder, in the sacred waters of dreaming, without unnecessary mystification, tolerating ambiguity and the Unknown. We enter a wildness without maps which opens a wildness within - of our passions and creativity, and in our primal and loving relations with others. We are left to describe how the archaic form Sobek can be both material and transcendent, mortal and divine.

On the Timeless Banks of the Nile

So begins our sojourn through nonlocal Egypt. Somehow, though we don't know how, we are entangled with it already. Ancient Egypt is a realm of the soul, of the imagination, of the celestial sphere. Imaginal Egypt is the liminal repository of submerged memories. The old myths still play a fundamental role in our psychic life of spiritualized matter and materialized spirit. It is the basis of all magic, sympathetic response, synchronicity, invocation, visualization, correspondences. The translation comes through the process of kindling a response. 

What precedes the image of the empty archetype, is a movement of energy out of what J ung describes as the psychoid character of the collective unconscious. The psychoid archetype is used as core concept to explain the union of matter and spirit/mind which can manifest in a synchronicity. 

Transition to this ‘space’ can inflict dread of erasure, a blanking of mind, as well as joy of abundance, of freedom from encumbrance, of soul to be lived. Matter and mind are both objective and subjective complementarities, and at the psychoid level are reflective of each other. It is in the flow of these complementarities and achieving balance between these, that can create meaningful and purposeful lives. 

The psychoid is defined as a realm “beyond apprehension,” that “precedes conscious experience” (Jacobi, 1959). Aspects of the psyche beyond the “threshold” of our conscious perception are“psychoid” processes at work both in the “subconscious” as well as the “superconscious.”

Carus, 1846, distinguished  three levels of the unconscious: 1) absolute and unknowable, the second, a type of pre-conscious which influences our emotional life through the vital organs of the body. 2) Consciousness may affect this level of the unconscious which is why, Carus believed, a person’s face and body can reflect their personality. 3)  the repressed material – once conscious feelings, representations and perceptions that subsequently become unconscious. 

Neuro-Gnosis

Neurognosis has evolved over millions of years of hominid phylogenesis. Neurognosis is a technical term used in biogenetic structuralism to refer to the initial organization of the experiencing and cognizing brain. All neurophysiological models comprising an individual's cognized environment develop from these nascent models which exist as the initial, genetically determined neural structures.  

Neurognosis refers to the initial, inherited organization of neural models from which more developed models grow. The world of experience and knowledge, termed the cognized environment, develops from neurognostic structures in the brain. The concept of neurognosis describes the inherited structures and processes mediating the structural properties of consciousness. 

The course by which the nervous system comes to know about self and world is a well ordered one from beginning to end. The neural networks constituting our knowledge and experience have their developmental origin in initial neurognostic* structures that are present before, at, or just after birth. Our genes provide neurognostic structures and endogenous healing responses. 

Neurognostic structures are the initial structural and functional organization of neural networks for representing information, which provide the basis for behavior and mind. The neurognostic structures correspond somewhat to Carl Jung's archetypes -- to the essential unknowability of the archetypes-in-themselves, 

Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili (1992) characterize the archetypes in terms of neurognostic structures, the neurological foundations of our innate mechanisms for knowing the world. Cosmology is embedded within and organizes the particular culture's cosmic world view. The universal cosmology is expressed in mythical stories that penetrate to the neurognostic structures of the young brain. Neurognosis is potentiated for development and through the course of a lifetime

It refers to the initial, inherited organization of neural models from which more developed models grow -- the world of experience and knowledge. Neurognostic models account for the ways all humans are alike. Neurognostic structures are present in the pre- and perinatal nervous system, and because they are comprised of living cells, they function as soon as they grow and become interconnected (1991). (Laughlin l99l. l996: Laughlin and d'Aquili l974:83: Laughlin et al. l990:44—75). The term also applies to the genetically conditioned development of these structures. In other words, neurognosis refers to both the initial organization and function of neural models and their connections.

They are precursors of the psychoid unconscious, the collective unconscious and the personal unconscious. Unlike the strenuous efforts of the conscious mind, the psychoid uses little energy and thus does not ‘need rest’ like consciousness. It is the source of healing for the mind and body, and it is through the unconscious that we remain in connection with the rest of the world and other individuals. The psychoid archetype is the progressive synthesis of instinct and spirit. To Jung, instinct was the innate pattern of human behavior and spirit was the innate pattern of meaning ascribed to life events. 

Jung suggested a universal psychoid field, even more foundational than the unconscious. The building blocks of life are not devoid of psychoid responsiveness which goes all the way down to inorganic 'entities'. Every particle of reality is entangled and potentially responsive at the psychoid level. He linked it neurologically in Mysterium Coniunctionis: ‘deepest down of all, [is] the paradox of the sympathetic and parasympathetic psychoid  processes’ (Jung 1955-56, para. 279).

All of reality just is psychoid, psyche-like, or proto-psychic as an interactive ecology that is non-local and synchronistic. Jung's theory of synchronicity is based on the psychoid and archetypal patterning of events. Two or more simultaneous unrelated events have the same or similar meaning. Jung elevates the numinous character of an archetype to a 'psychoid factor that belongs to the invisible end of the psychic spectrum. Psychoid nature extends beyond neuronal-physiology into dynamical patterns of all matter and energy.

The psychoid archetype which was the progressive synthesis of instinct and spirit. To Jung, instinct was the innate pattern of human behavior and spirit was the innate pattern of meaning that was ascribed to life events. Transpersonal phenomena have a psychoid nature as hybrids of the twilight zone between consciousness and matter. Protean psychoid events transcend mechanistic models of consciousness. Their elusiveness is an inherent characteristic, a kind of transformative interface between psyche and matte. 

Synchronicity means the objective situation coincides with an unconscious image made directly conscious from a dream, idea, or premonition. Phenomena include synchronicities, spontaneous psychoid events that influence physical reality, and psychophysical anomalies, even siddhis, magic, and spontaneous physical healing. The “psychoid archetype” grounds the psyche in biology.

Psychoid Unconsciousness

Matter is subtly sentient, or psyche could not emerge at every level of material complexity. The psychoid processes that make up life, intentionality, and sentience belong to matter itself, down to molecules and atoms. Whitehead claimed the physical pole is the established past, while the mental pole is the living, choosing, feeling present. Giveness meets the concrescence of the moment. This is world of 'feeling',  or feeling responsiveness, not 'thinking.' The mental pole of the universe, its psychoid capacity, helps us feel the immediate past of the cosmos.

For Jung, 'psychoid' denoted a life-force in the world which is 'mind-like', that is, non-spatial, intensive and qualitative rather than spatial, extensive and quantitative. Jung's psychoid realm has three qualities: 1) The psychoid is level of the unconscious completely inaccessible to consciousness, because its real nature is transcendent; 2) It has a paradoxical liminal qualities neither wholly psychological or physiological; 3) It is expressed in the mind/body connection.

Psychoid responsiveness must go “all the way down” to the most inorganicseeming of entities. Anything less, and we make living processes an exception to universal physical principles. In our view, Jung's psychoid argument implies that everything that is, every particle of reality, is responsive in the psychoid sense.

This deeper layer of the unconscious underlies any archetypal image. It retains its character at all stages of development, though empirically it is capable of endless variations. Jung postulates archetype as a psychoid entity. The archetypes are psychoid, partaking of both a spiritual and physical nature as well as having a transcendent dimension. Naturally, this includes Sobek as the Egyptian prototype of the Primordial Man-God.

"Psyche is essentially conflict between blind instinct and will  (freedom of choice). Where instinct predominates, psychoid  processes set in which pertain to the sphere of the unconscious as elements incapable of consciousness. The psychoid process is not the unconscious as such, for this has a far greater extension."  ["On the Nature of the Psyche,"CW8, par. 380.]

This layer is not accessible in any way to consciousness but Jung felt it may play a part in, for example, synchronistic events. Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Embracing Jung's concept, Pauli believed that the archetype provided a link between physical events and the mind. https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/synchronicity.html

Jung claimed the psychoid layer undergirds the collective unconscious and all matter and thus functions as a mediator between the psychic and material planes, much like the image. Psychoid is more fundamental than matter and psyche and the basis of synchronicity. The psychoid layer is a realm where the boundaries of the physical and psychic realms dissolve so that a larger encompassing boundary becomes apparent. Jung regarded the psychoid archetype as proto-mental, non-psychic, and transcendent.

To Jung, the archetypes emerged from a lower unconscious realm universally subtending the psyche: "... the phenomenon of archetypal configurations - which are psychic events par excellence - may be founded upon a psychoid base, that is, upon an only partially psychic and possibly altogether different form of being. ...But in so far as the archetypes act upon me, they are real and actual to me, even though I do not know what their real nature is" (Jung 1963 384).

Part of our inherent environment is the psychoid realm of the archetype, the hidden, chthonic foundation of consciousness -- the dark, maternal, earthy ground of the unconscious psyche. Psyche and matter merge into synchronicity in this hidden foundation. The psychoid field imposes holistic function. Autonomous inner forces arouse compelling opportunities to enact archetypal behaviors. 

In a psychoid realm mind/matter meld subjective and objective into a unity, the vast non-human action of the universal forces. Psychoid phenomena manifest through the mingling of these modes. Synchronicity is the core of the world and human existence, a special case macroscopic expression of microcosmic entanglement, coherence, and superposition. It is a unique expression of the metaphor-forming process, manifesting as uniquely magical, uncanny or unnerving moments. 

Here mind/matter duality ceases, creating enchantment, uncanny synchronicities, time warps, psychic experience, revelation of the mind of matter, the Nature Mind. Archetypes guide our perceptions and behavior, usually without our awareness. The archetype manifests itself on the level of material substance, on the level of human psychology as well as on the level of physical pathology. 

“Our deepest darknesses are pregnant with incredible life energy. Cultivating a living relationship with the mysteries of the psyche and psychoid depends on our ability to of into the darkness, dim the light of the ego, and attend to what appears.  We descend into the darkness voluntarily when we meditate or engage in any kind of spiritual practice, dream work, active imagination, shamanic journeying, creative endeavor, and so on.  We descend involuntarily through depression and crises, such as health problems, loss of love, loss of position, and so on. […] “both of these paths, the active one where we court the soul, and the one in which crisis pulls us into the psyche, can lead us to the source of transformation and renewal.” Monika Wikman, Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness

The psychoid field imposes holistic function. The psychoid level of archetypes is analogous to the heritable DNA biohologram. According to Jung, psyche is not different from matter at the psychoid or psychophysical ground level. The psychoid nature of archetypes extends beyond a neurophysiological basis into the general dynamical patterns of all matter and energy. 

Jung summarized his notion of a 'metaphysical substance': ‘Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable even that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing’(Jung 1947, para, 418).

Entangled Lives

Such phenomena are undeveloped and uncoordinated. It is an area of experience where bodily sensations are symbolic, sometimes represented through very primitive sensations, proto-symbols and psychosomatic metacommunications which are felt both inside us and also simultaneously around us in relationships. (Clark, 1996)

Our ancestors live on in our genetic material that embodies an unceasing stream or ocean of human ancestry -- our inherited possibilities. We discover them in our life pattern, dreams, beliefs, and symptoms. Jung associated the inherited ancestral material with the autonomic nervous system within a powerful, unconscious, dynamic, timeless totality. Jung asserted that the body’s ancestral, psychoid heritage reaches back to the most archaic lifeforms.

Our consciousness oscillates between form and formlessness. The gravitational field in empty space is zero; with QM it oscillates, due to the quantum fluctuations. Time and space help us perceive reality but they are also formidable obstacles to complete reality perception. 

Reality is flashing in and out of existence at Planck time – 1044 times per second, the smallest units of space (length) and time apparent in our universe. Our reality oscillates between form and the pure energy state of the field. Our awareness is constant so doesn’t flash in and out of existence. It informs the reappearance of the field when it makes its transition back to form at the quantum level.

The Egyptians lived in a radically different paradigm, a different reality. The idea of nonlocal consciousness is universal through time, culture, and geography. It is likely rooted in personal experiences. The non-physiological aspect of consciousness is called nonlocal consciousness, which manifests in the phenomena of quantum entanglement and an integral map of cosmos and consciousness. We are part of a matrix of life, but more fundamentally, space time itself arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. (Schwartz, A Reality Based on Consciousness)

Spiritual teachers from all traditions have spoken of reality as a limitless, transcendent and holistic consciousness, fundamental properties of our consciousness. Egypt reminds us that archaic man has a sense of being embedded within a great universe of life and in direct interactive relationship with this whole.

Enlightened individuals have been called by many names including avatars, mystics, sages, saints, gurus and shamans. The least we can say is that Pharaohs were in quantum entanglement with their sacred land and their unique people. The Priest-King and the land were one and that included the celestial realm. The astronomical vastness of space is undergirded by consciousness as are the gaps between our atoms.

By whatever name they have been called, all held a similar world view --living harmoniously in balance with nature and one’s fellow humans and recognizing the interconnectedness and interdependence of all creation. Resurrected pharaohs may have enjoyed such a state -- infinite consciousness beyond substance, a nonlocal phenomenon of a universal Being. One unites with the nondual, transphysical field, a a superposition of possibilities. He stood for the source field that connects us all --resonating collective consciousness.

Nonlocal mind erupts spontaneously, surprising, even shocking us.  The mind has ultra-dimensional qualities seemingly unlimited by physical constraints.  Psi phenomena concern organism-environment interactions in which it appears that information or influence has occurred that cannot be explained through current models of sensory-motor channels. 

Myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery. An archetype inevitably succumbs to metaphysical concretism, the tendency to view phenomena literally rather than metaphorically, too. The qualitative aspect it appears in clings to it, so that it cannot be described at all except in terms of its specific phenomenology.

Sobek represents the primordial or creator god coming, as the crocodile does, from the depths of the murky Nile. Sobek describes processes that occur both in the universe and in our unconscious human psyche. We can experience Sobek as a state of mind and psychic function. The Egyptians equated their concrete conception of the underworld with a psychic realm of mystery and death. They relied on concrete observation and intuitive thought. Sobek as Pharaoh is the Original Man.

It is the mostly unconscious instinctive human tie to symbolic fantasy and mythic emanations leading to literalisms and concretism, the attempt to turn the imaginal into events where there is little capacity for metaphor. Mythological motifs project themselves into situations and objects, including other persons. Everything unconscious about ourselves is projected.

Jung's concept of concretism, which is the opposite of differentiating abstraction, is also closely related to participation mystique. The mythical world is concrete because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth.  

Concretism is a participation mystique -- taking psychological events as actually, literally, concretely real. Concretism obscures the light and blocks the movement of fantasy. A pure spark of reflective life must be kept intact at all costs. Spontaneous insight ignites the capacity to imagine life and not only be driven by it. Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.

Embodying Sobek

"In reality a darkness altogether different from natural light broods over the land. It is the psychic primal night which is the same today as it has been for countless millions of years. The longing for light is the longing for consciousness." 

(Memories, Dreams, and Reflections by C.G. Jung). 

The primordial Dragon-Pharaoh, identified as Sobek, exists in the unconscious. Our task is to resurrect him through deep understanding. They are alive in the way we live, and are not elsewhere. The Hebrew word messiah ("anointed one") comes from the ancient Egyptian word MeSSeh, the king anointed with oil containing crocodile fat that is poured over his head during the coronation process. The ancient world of mystery was apprehended by the unconscious mind. The way of transcendence is self-discovery.

The tale of our genesis is our prima materia (cosmic egg, oroboros) and our ultima materia, the unknown and self- knowledge. Our reflection deepens beyond mere surface mirroring. To go deep into our own “dark waters” -- the unseen wavelike infinite spirit -- we must trust the unconscious mind, letting go of identity, thoughts, and concepts. 

The waves we are actually concerned with is wave-particle duality as an oscillation. We concentrate our mind, making it smooth and empty, so our wavelike spirit can taste the flowing waves. All true creativity springs from the unknown, from a deep wellspring of flowing forth. Creativity involves a sense of discovery and epiphany, of realization as well as shaping of media. 

“Emergence” is the process by which order appears spontaneously within a system. This perilous adventure is a dangerous descent into the dark world of the unconscious -- a major life transition. We may find ourselves inundated with emotional flooding. We are descending to a more primordial level of self-awareness, a slower brainwave. At this deeper sensory level, images appear that appear solid, or ugly sensations and colors, or perhaps odors or sounds, monsters or evil creatures of cold and dark. These are energies that keep us in bounds, and trapped in our habits.

We inhale and exhale smoothly, so our body becomes majestic and serene. We want to plunge deep into our reflections on human experience. We may find ourselves immersed in despair and meaninglessness. Recognizing the moment, we realize that 'oh, this is the moment' and we go deep down into something and it gets scary; then we come out of it and can go back down into it later. 

Ego cannot separate itself from the powers and abilities of the subconscious and its indistinguishable metaphors. Metaphors are manifolds of multiple meanings. This is the underlying and initial experience of our explicit and unique confrontation with the unconscious. The soul dives into the depths for its own sake. This part of life isn't certain or comfortable. To submit this material to the process means to apply conscious effort to the task, and find our own experiential spirituality. 

Prima Materia represents the crossroads or crisis preceding a spiritual awakening (intellectual doubts, metaphysical problems). Its object of this darkness of the soul is the restoration of the whole person, who emerges transformed and complete. 

We're simply trying to sort something out. Thus, prima materia, raw uncooked emotion, is the seed of the process, which takes place in the natural mind; it is the seed of enlightenment. We need to recognize the difference between information and experience. We need to inform our sense of reality from the basis of experience not information.

We don't have to interpret our images, or make symbols out of them, but form a living relationship with them, with that mighty stream of consciousness we can poetically liken to the Nile or even the celestial river of the Milky Way. Our therapeutic method is more magical than rational, more a process of discovery, or an initiation.

Natural Magic

In Egypt magic was part of nature. Magic is a technology of natural philosophy. Universal principles reflect natural laws. The knowledge of the secrets of nature was central to magic, a field with an ambiguous relationship to natural philosophy. Natural magic was an ideology as much as it was a natural philosophy. Alchemy is a natural magic. Egyptian thinking was concrete, rooted in immediate, tangible experience.

Prima materia, or first matter, is the ubiquitous starting material required for the alchemical magnum opus and the creation of the philosopher's stone, self-realization. It is the primitive formless base of all matter similar to chaos, the quintessence, or aether. Some called it an inner spark, others chaos, some blood, but ultimately it's the spark inside of us, own own inner light that guides us to our true purpose. 

If a natural philosopher wanted to describe and understand nature, a practitioner of magic wanted to investigate it and its occult properties in order to work with natural forces. Hermetic philosophers, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, focused on the means by which the truth of nature and being could be revealed by observing and examining the symmetries between man, the world, and the universe.

We can make a more spiritual and more soulful world if we appreciate the power of ordinary things to affect our emotions and sense of meaning. Through magic, we bring the heart into play and become directly able to see the most ordinary aspects of daily life as sacred. This raw material includes our symptoms, problems, wild undulating melancholy, and terrible inclinations which form the basis of transformation. 

The raw material has to be cooked, to take some time to become part of our heart and soul. But it doesn't all have to be cooked. There are things we work on many times but are never finished. The elemental nature is the four-fold nature of the prima materia is expressed by the four functions which correspond with the alchemical elements: intuition (fire), thinking (air), feeling (water), and sensation (earth).

We can only watch patiently and let things happen. This promotes healing through the imagination and reconnection with primordial source. The soul vanishes into the shape of things. It is a form of meditation, like the alchemical meditatio, in which psyche "matters." Through imaginal consciousness we affirm our ground. A spirituality of our own increases our security, peace, inner guidance and connects us to natural magic. 

Every temple in Egypt and Greece was a veritable storehouse of natural magic. Feeling nature as an opening for spirituality. Thomas Moore suggests, "By bringing together seemingly divergent practices of science and magic, and applying them to leading edge subject matter, we can uncover a more expansive and evolutionary truth.

The idea of man as microcosm, representing in all his parts the earth or the universe, is a remnant of an original psychic identity, which reflected a twilight state of consciousness, according to Jung. This primordial man has taken many forms throughout history, including that of the Sobek dragon/crocodile as Pharaoh, who was the living god, converted to a cult on his transformation to the netherworld..

By meditation, the alchemists explicitly mean an inner dialogue, a living relationship to the answering voice of the “Other' within us, the unconscious. The unconscious potential state leads to a manifest one -- the hidden image of unconscious imagination. The modality of unconscious states is sensory imagining. It is a way of sorting things out. Unconscious imagining is going on in perception, generally.

In all temples, Pharaoh was the officiating high priest. Pharaoh, as an anointed dragon/crocodile, can be understood as an archetypal idea of the "Perfect Man." A being accomplishing the ultimate spiritualization is a Self-realized human being. The word "sovereign" was written with the hieroglyph of a crocodile that protected the Pharaoh from dark magic. Sobek is a beast who never sleeps, a beast whose eyes are seen in the mirror of knowledge. 

We will discuss the aspects of Nature, our nature, and our cosmos represented by the Neter, the divine name and principle of Sobek. The Ancient Egyptian ceremonial order is a gigantic effort to symbolize the process by which Pharaoh (Self-realization) exists and endures. When studied as such, these various rituals are archetypal ideas in action and universal.

In a Jungian approach, the Egyptian deities are archetypal ideas. The whole of  Egyptian religion is the manifestation of various systems of archetypal ideas (Ennead or "companies of gods"). Myths and theological systems reveal psychic phenomena, i.e. collective & subjective (Ancient Egyptian) perceptions of objective natural events, rather than observation of facts. It hints at an unseen presence, a numen unconditioned by human expectations. It lives of itself.

This is especially so for the ante-rational mind and the Egyptian deities, who, together with the hidden, fused, and precreational Atum, are born, rise, go under and are reborn. For Jung, experience of a supernatural being originated in a projection, a reflection of aspects "of the unconscious," or psychological realities from within.  It is out of this primordial fusion state ("ground-unconscious") that the separate self emerges. Unborn consciousness slumbers in the primordial -- an undifferentiated fusion of ego and soul.

Atum, Amun, or Ra is often referred to as the first deity that sprung from Nun and Neith. This primordial god of Heliopolis swims as a serpent in the sea of Nun before the creation and at the end of time. This sea is more of a plenum, plasma, or undifferentiated fusion of the prime material. Non-differentiation  is oceanic consciousness.  The "oceanic feeling" refers to the sensation of being one with the universe. Two other self-engendered gods existed,  less popular perhaps due to their destructive qualities -- the violent twin brothers Sobek and Apep. 

Atum is essentially a fugue-state, primordial fusion. A dissociative disorder, the fugue state is an altered state of consciousness in which a person may move about purposely and even speak, but is not fully aware. A fugue state is usually a type of complex partial seizure. The French word "fugue" means "running away" or "flights of fancy". 

A reversible amnesia, those in the fugue state are unaware that they've lost their identity and memory. This experience does not include necessarily, but may include empirically, states of fusion  (massive projective identification, participation mystique) as part of observable experience -- a recapitulation of the infant.

There is a certain part of us that is not conscious and from which a depth of innate self-generated wisdom arises. Naturally, reptiles are among the oldest creatures on our planet. People have believed in reptile guides and protectors since ancient times. They have been used as animal totems in many cultures throughout history. The crocodile/dragon is foremost among them. An unconscious substructure  lies beyond the reach of conscious perception..... the feeling of oneness (or fusion/merger/union) with one's entire surroundings. 

Because he had no Graeco-Roman correspondence, the cult of the god Sobek in the Faiyum kept its indigenous character. Hieratic texts from AD 135, of the ‘Glorification of Sobek’, suggest the Fayum lake as the epicenter of creation by the god Sobek. In processions of major festivals like the Soucheia each year.

The god was carried on a bier by pastophoroi, accompanied by priests in full regalia, with incense, flowers, and hymns. The flowers reveal a “sacred botany,” a sensuous reality and specific content, symbolizing the flowering of the imagination as rooted living forms. All the ritual forms are psychosensual triggers, ways of keeping company with heavenly beings, indicating a blossoming of psychic relationship.

Sobek relates to awakening our senses and raising our level of awareness, like the water of the Nile.  Originally, a water god, Sobek is the Nile itself, whose annual flood was a Mystery in ancient times. As such, he was the lifeblood of ancient Egypt. The degree of approaching floods was predicted by how high above the high-water mark females laid their eggs. Pleasing Sobek meant that the river would continue to bless the land and its people. This is not a mundane but a mythic crocodile, identified with and embodied in every ferocious Pharaoh. We will discuss powerful initiations once practiced in the name of Sobek.

Fierce and voracious, the terrifying predator Sobek was both feared and revered from archaic Egypt, through the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, through the Graeco-Roman period. The crocodile cult supposedly began with the Pharaoh Menes, the legendary unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt. The crocodile/dragon embodies the raw psychic energy of the unconscious and relates to a number of human concerns -- death, rebirth, healing, immortality, knowledge, wisdom, and wealth. The Egyptians sowed the seeds of regeneration in themselves.

Instinctive Psyche

Sobek can be correlated with certain physical structures and body processes, derived from our primal instincts and archaic functioning. The earliest brain to develop was the reptilian brain, responsible for survival instincts. The behaviors of the reptilian brain are largely unconscious and automatic, and highly resistant to change. The true decision-maker is the Reptilian Brain, the subconscious mind The cerebellum receives and coordinates information from the sensory systems, the spinal cord, and other parts of the brain.

The reptilian brain is reliable but tends to be somewhat rigid and compulsive. The base of the brain contains the cerebellum, and it directly connects to the spinal cord (or brainstem). A withdrawal of the thinking mind from the senses involves going into a deep cerebellar state of trance. This brain layer does not learn very well from experience but is inclined to repeat instinctual habits. The cerebellum can be obsessive. The Brain Stem evolved over 500 million years ago; the Cerebellum evolved approximately 400 million years ago. 

The 'sea' of the hindbrain is the 4th ventricle. The fourth ventricle is one of the four connected fluid-filled cavities within the human brain. These cavities, known collectively as the ventricular system, consist of the left and right lateral ventricles, the third ventricle, and the fourth ventricle. The main function of this ventricle is to protect the human brain from trauma (via a cushioning effect).

The reptile brain can be divided into 3 sections: the forebrain (olfactory nerve and bulb, cerebrum, pineal complex, pituitary), the midbrain (optic tectum), and hindbrain (cerebellum, pons, choroid plexus, medulla). The forebrain includes both the telencephalon and diencephalon and is a neural center for smell, taste, and . Protoreptilian formation includes the brainstem and the cerebellum, as well as some of the oldest, from an evolutionary perspective, subcortical nuclei, including the corpus striata complex (also called the basal ganglia).

The reptilian brain, the oldest of the three, controls the body's vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance. Our reptilian brain includes the main structures found in a reptile's brain: the brainstem and the cerebellum. It is fundamentally physical survival and maintenance—or homeostasis—of the body. It controls movement, breathing, circulation, hunger and reproduction. It is concerned with territory, social dominance, and questions of “fight or flight." Instincts are the natural impulses of the unconscious. The cerebellum regulates and coordinates movement, posture and balance.

The archetype may be experienced as a physiological dynamism and may enter consciousness as an image, showing that psyche and body are different aspects of the archetype. Psychic functions change into the instincts and physiological processes. The instinctive psyche, the body is considered a sensor, an informational network, a messenger with myriad communication systems -- cardiovascular, respiratory, skeletal, autonomic, as well as emotive and intuitive. (Clarissa Pinkola Estes). 

Sobek is real, not just a symbol. Still, Jung mourns the loss of direct meaning: "Thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree means a man’s life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom, and no mountain still harbors a great demon. Neither do things speak to him nor can he speak to things, like stones, springs, plants, and animals....His immediate communication with nature is gone for ever, and the emotional energy it generated has sunk into the unconscious."

Jung wrote in “The Function of the Unconscious” that "The unconscious processes that compensate the conscious ego contain all those elements that are necessary for the self-regulation of the psyche as a whole. On the personal level, these are the not consciously recognized personal motives which appear in dreams, or the meanings of daily situations which we have overlooked, or conclusions we have failed to draw, or affects we have not permitted, or criticisms we have spared ourselves."

The depth and quality of our contact with the sacred and numinous forces of existence depends on how well our symbols and practices fit the time, for each time requires new means of access. Dogmas and beliefs wear out, but the need for transcendent contact remains. He helped update it by reimagining the gods as archetypes: resplendent potentials that recur again and again.

Our orientation sees beyond false distinctions between The depth and quality of our contact with the sacred and numinous forces of existence depends on how well our symbols and practices fit the time, for each time requires new means of access. Dogmas and beliefs wear out, but the need for transcendent contact remains. He helped update it by reimagining the gods as archetypes: resplendent potentials that recur again and again., healing the mind/body split. 

Sobek's net rescued the gut instincts (lover, lungs, intestine, stomach) of Horus from dissolution in oblivion: "He also rescued the four mummiform sons of Horus (Imsety the human headed protector of the liver, Hapy the baboon headed protector of the lungs, Duamutef the jackal headed protector of the stomach and Qebehsenuef the falcon headed protector of the intestines) by gathering them in a net when they rose from the waters in a lotus bloom."

Jung himself said, he would have no objection to regarding the psyche as a quality of matter and matter as a concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that the psyche was understood to be the collective unconscious. (von Franz, Psyche & Matter, p. 40) Ppsyche and matter share a common transcendent essence. 

The gods might be reborn: not as distant deities or contendingpotentates above or behind the things and elements of life, but within them as their awakened spirit, essence or soul. We can re-vision ways in which the psyche matters. Unconscious psyche and matter are not separate. They interface in numerous connections.

Physical reality becomes psychic, and psyche becomes real--it "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and outer world are both real and in fact One World. Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. Images are the subtle net that unites symbols. 

The substance of the insubstantial is what makes psyche matter. And it is an intrinsic part of alchemical method. Ancient philosophers proclaimed the world soul, a pure ethereal spirit, is diffused throughout all nature. The notion of soul is imaginative possibility in relation to the archai or root metaphors. “Consciousness does not create itself—it wells up from unknown depths. At the most fundamental levels psyche and matter are the same't psyche and soma are indissoluably welded.

Paleocortex

The hippocampus is the principal part of the archicortex, related to mood and emotion. Our archaic brain, the paleocortex is very thin, primitive cortex with few clearly defined layers. The paleocortex, the basal surface of the brain, is the part of the cerebral cortex that is evolutionarily older than the neocortex and composed especially of olfactory cortex. It includes the hippocampus, limbic system, and encodes declarative memory and spatial functions. 

Paleocortex synchronizes mnemonic representations of past experience with new sensory data, energized by limbic excitation. Perception of pattern recognition and representations of memory become separated. Memory consolidation is in the primitive archicortex and paleocortex on the medial surface of the brain, the limbic lobe. They integrate paleocortex with homeostatic and motivational circuits. 

The limbic core organizes motivational and mnemonic processes. A memory aid (mnemonic) helps to retain meaning for a long time in our memory. Paleocortex prioritizes the sense of smell. Originally the older parts of the forebrain, the archicortex and paleocortex, were specifically related to the sense of smell. Smell is a trigger for memory. Brain anatomy may explain why some smells conjure vivid memories and emotions. 

Scent Memory

Odor memory is involuntary memory. The olfactory bulb has direct connections to two brain areas that are strongly implicated in emotion and memory: the amygdala and hippocampus. Implicit memories of stimuli do not require conscious recollection of the initial encounter of the stimulus. In regards to olfactory memory, deliberate recollection of an odor experience is not necessary in order for implicit memories of odors to form in the brain. 

Odors evoke emotional experiences. A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence our moods. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the "emotional brain," smell can call up memories and powerful responses. “Odor-evoked autobiographical memory” brings a flood of lost memories.

The amygdala receives multimodal sensory input that may trigger fear. Input from the hippocampus is related to mnemonic (remembered) aspects of emotional experience. Input from the associational cortex is related to subjective cognitive aspects of emotional experience. It then orchestrates emotional responses through its hypothalamic (limbic) and autonomic connections.

A mnemonic theory of odor perception suggests odorants bring certain things to mind as a basic property of odor perception,. Odor quality depends on the implicit memories that an odorant elicits. Odor quality as well as our ability to discriminate odors is affected by experience. The olfactory system is stimulated chemically on inhalation, and/or chemically by volatile chemicals in the mouth during eating or drinking. 

This is basic crocodile and primitive human behavior, watching, sniffing, and devouring. Chemical stimuli transform into neuronal activity. Mnemonic coding extends to visual space. Mnemonic functions allow the flexible coding and retrieval of all forms of relationships among objects and events. Myrrh is Sibek's cult incense. He holds the epithets 'He who rejoices in the incense' and 'Lord of myrrh'.

Sobek Oil
1 part myrrh
1 part sandalwood
a few drops of lotus
1 part frankincense

Slow Wave Sleep: NREM

Dreams are consequential. They change us at the most fundamental psychophysical level. The evanescent, prophetic and diagnostic nature of dreams has been heralded since the dawn of history. We can also link Sobek to a more unconscious dreaming in non-REM sleep, that is more disjointed, can move backward in some sequences. Sub-cortical activation results in dreaming during the NREM stage during the morning hours. Unlike REM sleep, there is usually little or no eye movement during these stages. 

Dreams occur during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, while ponto-geniculo-occipital (PGO) waves in the waking stage (NREM) initiate hallucinations. PGO waves are spiky waves that herald the onset of REM sleep. PGO waves help regulate hypnogogic and hypnopompic imagery, vivid dreamlike audio, visual and tactile sensations. Waking dreams (hallucinations / visions) can discharge PGO "residues" even in the absence of REM sleep. 

Such visions can resemble classic leitmotifs of death/rebirth, ego-death, and near death experiences (NDEs). Stages include: 1) subjective feeling of being dead; 2) peace and well-being; 3) disembodiment; 4) visions of material objects and events, 5) tunnel or dark zone; 6) evaluation of past life; 7) light; 8) access to a transcendental world, entering in light; 9) encounter with other beings; 10) return to life (Sabom 1982). Sabom, M. B. (1982). Recollections of Death: A medical investigation. Harper and Row, New York.

Dreaming is rare during NREM sleep, and muscles are not paralyzed as in REM sleep, so it can also lead to enacting dreams. The major synchronized EEG waves of nonREM (NREM) sleep states 2-4 are delta waves, spindle oscillation, and slow sleep oscillation.

The content of SWS dreams tends to be disconnected, less vivid, and less memorable than those that occur during REM sleep. This is also the stage during which parasomnias most commonly occur. examples of parasomnias are somnambulism (sleep walking), somniloquy (sleep talking), sleep eating, nightmares or night terrors, sleep paralysis, and sexsomnia (or "sleep sex"). 

In parasomnia, inappropriate instinctual behaviors like hunger, sex, and aggression can arise out of context, sometimes with great fury. The person may look awake, but they are not; they are acting from the dream content -- even to the point of murder. There is a parasympathetic dominance during NREM om slow wave sleep. 

Unihemispheric Sleep; Sleep Vigiilance

The meaning of his name, Sebek, Sobki, Suchos, Sobeq, Soknopais, is “He Who Watches.” That eye is fixed on eternity not temporal life. The fearsome reptiles sleep with one eye open. Crocodiles can deploy “unilateral eye closure” while dozing to keep a close eye on potential threats or prey. They don't sleep like we do but keep an eye on things. They evolved unihemispheric sleep,. One half of the brain stays awake while the other shuts down. This allows animals to keep one eye open to monitor events around them. 

When humans sleep in an unfamiliar place, the left cortical hemisphere is more vigilant and responds stronger and faster than the right one. Evolutionarily, this reaction makes a great deal of sense. It is important that a sentinel—here the left cortical default-mode network—monitors the unknown environment for threatening events while we sleep.

For humans, most of the night is spent in NREM, with the most restorative deep sleep and its associated SWA, taking up 20 to 25 percent of a full night's slumber. Slow-wave activity is homeostatically regulated—that is, the longer somebody stays awake, the deeper and more frequent slow waves occur the following night.

Sleep is for the brain not the body. SciAm reports that animals are not the only creatures who can be literally half asleep. Research shows we experience this, too. (Christof Koch on September 1, 2017). Unihemispheric Slow-wave Sleep is sleep with one half of the brain while the other half remains alert. Initiates practice this state as dream yoga, in which they develop a certain lucidity. Part of the left hemisphere, in essence, is not sleeping as deeply as the right one during the first night.
The left hemisphere is more vigilant in an unfamiliar environment.

Lesku said colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany had discovered this behavior in adult Nile crocodiles, suggesting that "this is a crocodilian trait not specific to one species."  An ambush predator can be immobile yet still looking out for prey. If an animal passed on the bank of a river, the crocodile could fully wake up and attack it.

Jung called the vast sea the collective unconscious, out of which arises the sun of the spirit, Sobek-Re. Deep meaning arises from the realization of the self, which is metaphorically described as the emergence or embodiment of light. It is more of a force of nature or aspect of consciousness than a divine principle -- nature's ferocity. All Neters were aspects of Nature. The earliest gods are the controlling forces of the material world.

The original evolutionary impulse is the mystic grandfather of all existence. Sobek is the root of the Egyptian Creation Myth.  It speaks to us from the remote depths of the unknown, before the birth of human consciousness.  It represents an aspect of the universe which appeared before space and time. Zero is pure unmanifest potential, even prior to the original impulse. Its psychic equivalent is superconsciousness, primordial awareness.

In ancient Egypt what is symbolic is actual and organic, energetic structure with an integral function in the ever-flowing, ever-changing pattern of the meaning of life itself. Sobek means engaging spiritually with the unconscious. The netherworld gate, the Ancestral Gateway to the Stars, is the entry into a world that we cannot control but controls us. We have no control over the collective psyche, the dynamic totality of all conscious and unconscious psychic processes. It is a self-organizing process with its own structure and flow of self-presenting forms.

Human life is all symbols, visible signs of invisible reality, intuitive ideas that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way. Symbols wield the power of pattern recognition and association. 'Archetypal' means fundamental  intrapsychic organizing principles. The deepest levels of psychological structure, holographic embedding and resonant fields, are common to the human psyche in general. Information results and arises from innate structure.

We can begin our own exploration with instinctual survival mechanisms and unconscious regulation of our physical body. Unconscious physical functions are housed in our cerebellum, hypothalamus, brain stem., and autonomic (involuntary or unconscious) nervous system. Jung concentrates on the image within the collective unconscious that  dominates when there are no other rational thoughts.

The Field is the only reality. Thus, we can equate the crocodile/dragon with primordial awareness, but also with the inner effective power of matter, immanence or the subtle body -- vacuum potential -- the internal aspects of matter and mankind -- the energy body or psychophysical self. 

The Egyptian archetype is that of the snake which destroys life and has to be defeated before life is reborn -  in other words the Prime Material, the alchemical prima materia. The dragon as universe symbolizes the wholeness of relationships. As Above; So Below.

The depth perspective is foundational. If imagination is suppressed or unavailable, it erupts as excessive emotion not contained within its image. Imaginal imagery is revealed in dreams, visions, and divination. It often contains opposing figures, sensory images, mostly in the form of visual images. 

James Hillman called images 'concrete particularizations.' If symbols belong to one god or another "where better to find the gods than in the things, places and animals that they inhabit, and how better to participate in them than through their concrete natural presentations." We cannot acces the mind of nature without accesing the natural mind (Blue Fire).

Oneiric means "of or pertaining to dreams; resembling a dream, dreamlike." The oneiric language is a natural activity of the soul, the compressed associations of the multidimensional symbolism of dreams and oracles. Expressiveness is the fundamental principle of creativity. It is the same creative impulse as healing.

Our exploration will range from the fearsome sharp-teeth of mortality to transcendent aspects of Sobek, from the material to the transpersonal, the elemental to the celestial, from the blindness of darkness to the vision of the seer and initiate. They believed to be reborn in the sky meant having to manifest the sky on earth. If we are unconscious or unaware of our own spiritual nature, we are disconnected from our own life force, personified nature, and personified instinct. Feeling always binds us to the reality and meaning of symbolic contents.

The hypothalamic region of the limbic system is the most primitive and important part of the brain. The hypothalamus serves the body tissues by attempting to maintain internal homeostasis and by providing for the immediate discharge of tensions. This is the realm of deep drives -- breath, thirst, hunger, satisfaction, pleasure, pain, hate, anger.

The sympathetic nervous system (E) prepares the body for intense physical activity through the fight/flight response. The parasympathetic nervous system (T) has an opposite effect that relaxes the body and inhibits or slows many high energy functions.

Our body is the root of Sobek as paradoxical  'Rager' and 'Healer.' Normally, the E-system activates during arousal or in situations of apprehension or danger, while the T-system manifests when danger or anxiety are minimal.  We can use a mnemonic to help us remember: the E-system is energized, exalted, or enflammed; while the T-system is tranquil, transformative, and transcendent.

The sympathetic nervous system activates ergotropic arousal; while ttrophotropic relaxation is mediated by the parasympathetic nervous system. The Ergotropic System excites physiological activation and general excitation. Stimulation of the E-system leads us into our external environment, and is associated with warming. Conversely, stimulation of the T-system leads us into the internal environment, and is associated with cooling. 

The Trophotropic System relates to physiological mechanisms of recuperation, protective mechanisms, unloading, restitution, normalization, and healing. Both systems are mediated through a balancing process (ma'at) which takes place in the hypothalamus, so that an “ET” balance is present in “normal” situations. The interplay of both processes keeps our organism in homeostasis. Hence, 'Rager' and 'Healer.' (Miller, https://ionamiller.weebly.com/emotional-alchemy.html )

"The natural world demands a response that rises from the wild unconscious depths of the human soul." (Berry, 1999) Our wildness is the autonomous body interacting with the unconscious depths of mind, with constant environmental contact. Our psychic inheritance is an endowment rooted in the rhythms of nature.

Carl Jung described a conscious connection with the unconscious “animal within" as a tremendous “overwhelming experience… an utterly different thing from our consciousness.” Accessing our unconscious through dreams links us to the “original primordial being" of the deep historical past. This demands the dramatic severity of looking “into the eyes of the animal.” We remain attached to nature through this chthonic part of the psyche, where the earth and cosmos feel most tangible, most immediate.

We will explore the archetypal dragon bloodline from a few novel perspectives, including devotion, initiation, and direct experience. All the Pharaohs were called Sobek 'Dragons'. They became synonymous with immortality because the celestial dragon was exempt from the cycle of time, since the dragon lineage did not die but was preserved in the noble bloodline. 

There are many ways we can engage with Sobek and our unconscious disconnection from primordial nature. We are an image-based culture. We can try to arouse Sobek's instinctual creative potential. Nature is the unconscious—raw primordial life. The unconscious holds the power to destroy, but also the impulse to transform and preserve. Unconscious processes are not literally unconscious. They are just background noise until and unless they cohere into awareness. Our approach is more poetic and metaphorical, than psychological.

We are the embodiment of the living genetic matter of our ancestors, their enlivened atoms. Their living matter is entombed within us, preserved secretly within our DNA, better than any mummy. Genealogy is our ritual, and spiritual rebirth is its telos. It is literally a way of self-realization. This is our foundation. 

The oldest mythic dragon stories deal with an amniotic creation from the primal oceanic chaos which is a great dragon. We explore a world where order (ma’at) or meaning is created without a designer out of an intricate dynamic system of universal forces, reflected in Egyptian sacred science. Sobek lurks un-confronted in the hidden depths of our unconscious. But, do we just plunge forward in our doomed quest to master insurmountable forces that will finally annihilate us?

Mythic consciousness and its practice, ritual life, require a telos to create the dynamics of consciousness in imaginal life. This urge propels the soul. Telos is our destiny or innate potential for becoming. It is embodied in life-force and magical potency. You cannot understand Egypt unless you understand magic and transformation. 

Wholeness is the goal of self-realization, including where we come from and who we really are. But we cannot know the end at the beginning because possibilities necessarily arise along the way. Between destiny, destination and necessity, the crocodile suddenly arises, explosively surging from the deep waters.

For myself, such an exploration is an experiential voyage back in time on the wings of my ancestors showing a direct family connection to the god and his patron dynasties and priests. Herodotus (2, 142) reports that the Egyptian priests accounted for a human line of ancestors of 341 generations. 

Herodotus calculates 11,340 years as the calendrical equivalent of these 341 generations The priests showed Herodotus a great temple with colossal wooden statues commemorating 345 men who served as chief priests during the 341 generations of kings. Each statue was a son succeeding his father.

It is one thing for history to tell us there was a Sobek cult in Memphis, and another to find that one particular ancestor priest there who served Sobek, rather than Ptah, like his own priestly family before and after him. It puts a ‘face’ on those linking us back in remembrance and sets us wondering, 'why did he do that?'. What called to him? Perhaps  he was a natural seer. Ptah was the local god of Memphis, but because of the importance of the city of Memphis as a religious capital, Ptah became an important national god. So we find the god Sobek at Memphis in the Ptah Temple.