DIALOGUE
"Somewhere above the physically ideal society there must be the heavenly temple, there must be the archetypal world breaking through into manifestation, but this breakthrough cannot come until man himself attains to a condition of vision as symbolized in the story of the Revelation. Vision means a series of releases, nature asserting itself, not cataclysmically in the last analysis, but in the way things grow—by breaking through the pod of the seed and coming forth into manifestation.
The material world is here for a purpose. It is here in order that we may learn. It is here also in order that, by the proper use of consciousness, we shall be able to transform the so-called physical elements of nature around us. We are here to redeem the nature of which we are a part... Until then we are apprentices in this world, learning every day something that will help us sometime to be just in our own time." -Manly P. Hall
Excerpted from, "St. John's Vision of the Holy City: Mystical Symbolism of New Jerusalem" from a lecture given December 16, 1973.
Whether it’s in the form of a novel or a film. Stories have the power to transport us.
To let us experience other people’s lives.
To help us put our problems into perspective.
And one of the easiest ways to tell a story is using the anecdote, or the My Friend John format.
It doesn’t have to be John.
It could be any name, male or female, depending on the subject and the situation.
You’re simply telling a story about a friend of yours. To follow what you’re saying, the subject has to play along. To get involved.
To relive the experience with you. And if that experience involves going into a trance, and slowing down the breathing, your subject will find it difficult to resist.
Meaning you’ll get them into a trance without even trying.
Naturally, you won’t be able to use the My Friend John (or Frank, or Barbara) technique over and over on the same subject.
Instead, you can branch out into other forms of storytelling called hypnotic lectures.
These can be either direct or indirect:
The material world is here for a purpose. It is here in order that we may learn. It is here also in order that, by the proper use of consciousness, we shall be able to transform the so-called physical elements of nature around us. We are here to redeem the nature of which we are a part... Until then we are apprentices in this world, learning every day something that will help us sometime to be just in our own time." -Manly P. Hall
Excerpted from, "St. John's Vision of the Holy City: Mystical Symbolism of New Jerusalem" from a lecture given December 16, 1973.
Whether it’s in the form of a novel or a film. Stories have the power to transport us.
To let us experience other people’s lives.
To help us put our problems into perspective.
And one of the easiest ways to tell a story is using the anecdote, or the My Friend John format.
It doesn’t have to be John.
It could be any name, male or female, depending on the subject and the situation.
You’re simply telling a story about a friend of yours. To follow what you’re saying, the subject has to play along. To get involved.
To relive the experience with you. And if that experience involves going into a trance, and slowing down the breathing, your subject will find it difficult to resist.
Meaning you’ll get them into a trance without even trying.
Naturally, you won’t be able to use the My Friend John (or Frank, or Barbara) technique over and over on the same subject.
Instead, you can branch out into other forms of storytelling called hypnotic lectures.
These can be either direct or indirect:
- Direct – This involves telling stories that allow people to have an experience. Stories about figures from history or literature. Stories that already have a natural trance theme embedded in them. Like the story of Mesmer, or the Oracle of Delphi, or Milton Erickson. Or the Thousand and One Nights, where Scheherazade stalls her own execution by telling gripping stories that end with a cliffhanger. The only way for her executioner to hear the rest of the story is to spare her life, and so each night Scheherazade finishes one tale and starts another, always leaving her audience wanting more.
- Indirect – This involves distancing yourself from the story entirely. You tell it as if it’s a story you read about, or saw on TV, or found in a report, or watched in a film. Because it’s not “your” story but someone else’s, it absolves you of any responsibility. This is particularly useful if your audience is skeptical in any way, either about hypnosis or about the subject you’re presenting.
Benjamin A Vierling
LINKING BACK
CALLING THE ANCIENT ONES
...who are the dead and what does it mean to answer them?
What matters is not what you say, but what they say back.
All we have ever heard lies dormant in our unconscious till something provokes it and it walks out autonomously. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.
Writing Our Memories, Riting Our Myth, Righting Our Lives
“The details of a life are themselves to be opened out so we can feel the archetypes playing under them.” —Joseph Campbell
Each of us is an amalgam of: a life lived, a life remembered, and a life storied. In this trinity, memory mingles with myth in a way that the ancient Greeks called mimesis, or “imitation,” which is at the heart of our myth-making impulse, transforming the past into memory. Writing is an intimate and forceful mode of remembering what we have not sufficiently shaped into a coherent form. --Dennis Slattery
“The endless challenges faced daily in this culture could be traced back to a disturbing relationship with ancestors. This in turn, could be a reflection of the rather dysfunctional relationship forced upon people by the circumstances of modernity. How do we repair, heal, and honor the undying tie with our forbears? How can this reflect on our relationship with this world and with each other in family and in community? These are some of the questions. We can engage our ancestors, the good and the bad, the appealing and the less than appealing in an attempt to clear whatever dirty laundry has been the unfinished homework that together we must do. We can learn of their wishes and share ours with them. Together with them we can ritualize our mutual concerns in an initiative that heals our world and theirs.” ~Malidoma Patrice Somé~
We Share the Breath of Our Ancestors
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create.
The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create.
It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.
The unconscious for me is a definite vis-a-vis with which one has to come to terms.
I have written a little book about this.
I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself.
It is the unconscious region of the psyche. When I speak of psyche I do not pretend to know what it is either, and how far this concept extends.
For this concept is simply beyond all possibility of cognition.
It is a mere convention for giving some kind of name to the unknown which appears to us psychic. This psychic factor, as experience shows, is something very different from our consciousness. C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 195-197]
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 261.
I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 380.
CALLING THE ANCIENT ONES
...who are the dead and what does it mean to answer them?
What matters is not what you say, but what they say back.
All we have ever heard lies dormant in our unconscious till something provokes it and it walks out autonomously. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
This process of active imagination is the making conscious of the material which lies on the threshold of consciousness. Consciousness is an effort and you have to sleep in order to recuperate from the task. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lectures, Volume II, Page 12.
Writing Our Memories, Riting Our Myth, Righting Our Lives
“The details of a life are themselves to be opened out so we can feel the archetypes playing under them.” —Joseph Campbell
Each of us is an amalgam of: a life lived, a life remembered, and a life storied. In this trinity, memory mingles with myth in a way that the ancient Greeks called mimesis, or “imitation,” which is at the heart of our myth-making impulse, transforming the past into memory. Writing is an intimate and forceful mode of remembering what we have not sufficiently shaped into a coherent form. --Dennis Slattery
“The endless challenges faced daily in this culture could be traced back to a disturbing relationship with ancestors. This in turn, could be a reflection of the rather dysfunctional relationship forced upon people by the circumstances of modernity. How do we repair, heal, and honor the undying tie with our forbears? How can this reflect on our relationship with this world and with each other in family and in community? These are some of the questions. We can engage our ancestors, the good and the bad, the appealing and the less than appealing in an attempt to clear whatever dirty laundry has been the unfinished homework that together we must do. We can learn of their wishes and share ours with them. Together with them we can ritualize our mutual concerns in an initiative that heals our world and theirs.” ~Malidoma Patrice Somé~
We Share the Breath of Our Ancestors
The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create.
The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create.
It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 273.
The unconscious for me is a definite vis-a-vis with which one has to come to terms.
I have written a little book about this.
I have never asserted, nor do I think I know, what the unconscious is in itself.
It is the unconscious region of the psyche. When I speak of psyche I do not pretend to know what it is either, and how far this concept extends.
For this concept is simply beyond all possibility of cognition.
It is a mere convention for giving some kind of name to the unknown which appears to us psychic. This psychic factor, as experience shows, is something very different from our consciousness. C.G. Jung [Letters Volume 1, Pages 195-197]
So we should talk to our animus or anima….So you listen to the inner mentor, you develop the inner ear; or you write automatically, and a word is formed by your hand, or your mouth speaks that which you have not thought. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
We can never enter the collective unconscious but we can send the anima or animus to bring us information. By making things with your hands without conscious intent you find a vision of the things of the unconscious. ~Carl Jung, The Cornwall Seminar, Page 26.
If ever you have the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is your own other standpoint; he tempts you and sets a stone in your path where you least want it. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 261.
I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
But a conscious attitude that renounces its ego-bound intentions—not in imagination only, but in truth—and submits to the supra-personal decrees of fate, can claim to be serving a king. This more exalted attitude raises the status of the anima from that of a temptress to a psychopomp. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 380.
Web of Dialogues
Genuine novelty emerges through dialogical creativity. This creative process is not an instantaneous 'eureka' moment, but a patiently sustained process of responsiveness, addressing the ideas of others, both actual and imaginal. Taken metaphorically, not literally, such internal dialogue can be psychologically fruitful.
How do we know about knowing; and how do we get to know? And when you know, how do you know, and what's it like? That is the epistemological metaphor. How you get to know is a mystery. Uncertainty and doubt build into theorizing, an articulation of conceptual and emotional turmoil created by interpretive attempts.
The dialectical relationship is between conscious and unconscious mind. The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue. Internal dialogue powerfully programs and shapes your self-concept.
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and utilized by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
A multidirectional process takes place in a communicative network with many interlocotures and leads to discovery. Fragments of insight gradually emerge. Ideas clash, change, disappear or survive, forming a preference, choosing an interpretation for the coalescence of insights.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities. The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought.
Uncertainty is a complex process of disagreements, qualifications, elaborations, supplementations, borrowings, and confabulation. We can be immersed in interpretive efforts without any foundational commitments. Constructs form from many contradictory arguments, ad hoc strategies, and powerful forms of persuasion with archetypal roots.
Many-voiced multidirectional theorizing, thought has a complex dialogical nature. It ranges from paradigmatic to idiosyncratic. Multidirectional dialogical flux (matrix) flattens into a personally meaningful monological narrative. Philosophy can inspire intuition along some path in the dialogical web of creativity. We can imagine a clearly delineated conceptual framework without 'beliefs' or 'commitments'. You have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. It's a stream of meaning flowing from, through, and among us.
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/multimind.html
"...Any metaphysics, any reflection of the individual on the world, implies a theory of perception, and any consideration of the latter will react on the former, whether or not one accepts the esse est percipi of Berkeley. Thus, a closed circuit of knowing exists; our concept of the universe depends on the knowledge that we have of the process of perceiving it." --Abraham Moles, INFORMATION THEORY AND ESTHETIC PERCEPTION
But the technical rule with regard to fantasy is to stick to the picture that comes up until all its possibilities are exhausted.
Thus if I conjured up that man and woman, I would not let them go till I had found out what they were going to do in that room.
Thus one makes the fantasy move on.
Usually, however, one has a resistance to doing this, that is, to following the fantasy.
Something is sure to whisper in one’s ear that it is all nonsense; in fact, the conscious is forced to take a highly depreciatory attitude toward the unconscious material in order to become conscious at all, for example, a person making the effort to break away from an outgrown faith can usually be found ridiculing it; he throws out cogs to keep from slipping back into his unconscious acceptance.
This is the reason it is so difficult to get at the unconscious material.
The conscious is forever saying, “Keep away from all that,” and it is always tending to increase rather than reduce the resistance to the unconscious.
Similarly, the unconscious pits itself against the conscious, and it is the special tragedy of man that in order to win consciousness he is forced into dissociation with nature.
He is either under the complete sway of the enantiodromia, or play of nature’s forces, or he is too far away from nature.
Going back to the question of fantasizing, if once the resistance to free contact with the unconscious can be overcome, and one can develop the power of sticking to the fantasy, then the play of the images can be watched.
Any artist is doing that quite naturally, but he is getting only the esthetic values out of it while the analyst tries to get at all the values, ideational, esthetic, feeling, and intuitional.
When one watches such a scene one tries to figure out its special meaning for oneself.
When the figures animated are very far away from the conscious trend, then it may happen that they break forth arbitrarily as in cases of dementia praecox.
The eruption then splits the conscious and tears it to bits, leaving each content with an independent ego, hence the absolutely inadequate emotional reaction of these cases.
If there is a certain amount of ego left there may be some reaction—thus a voice in the unconscious may denounce one as crazy, but another may arise to counter it.
But, aside from dementia praecox cases, so-called normal people are very fragmentary—that is, they produce no full reactions in most cases.
That is to say, they are not complete egos.
There is one ego in the conscious and another made up of unconscious ancestral elements, by the force of which a man who has been fairly himself over a period of years suddenly falls under the sway of an ancestor.
I think the fragmentary reactions and inadequate emotions people so often display are best explained along these lines.
Thus you may have a person who sees always and only the dark side of life; he perhaps is forced into this one-sidedness through ancestor possession, and quite suddenly another portion of the unconscious may get on top and change him into an equally one-sided optimist.
Many cases are described in the literature which show these sudden character changes, but of course they are not explained as ancestor possession, since this latter idea remains as a hypothesis for which there is no scientific proof as yet.
Following these ideas a little further, it is an interesting fact that there is no disease among primitives which cannot be caused by ghosts, which of course are ancestral figures.
There is a physiological analogy for this theory of ancestor possession which may make the idea a little clearer.
It is thought that cancer may be due to the later and anarchical development of embryonic cells folded away in the mature and differentiated tissues.
Strong evidence for this lies in the finding, for example, of a partially developed fetus in the thigh of an adult man, say, in those tumors known as teratomata.
Perhaps a similar thing goes on in the mind, whose psychological makeup may be said to be a conglomerate.
Perhaps certain traits belonging to the ancestors get buried away in the mind as complexes with a life of their own which has never been assimilated into the life of the individual, and then, for some unknown reason, these complexes become activated, step out of their obscurity in the folds of the unconscious, and begin to dominate the whole mind.
I am inclined to describe the historical character of the images from the unconscious in this way.
Often there occur details in these images that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be explained in terms of the personal experience of the individual.
It is possible that a certain historical atmosphere is born with us by means of which we can repeat strange details almost as if they were historical facts.
Daudet has developed a similar idea (L’Hérédo and Le Monde des images), which he calls “auto-fécondation.”
Whatever the truth of these speculations, they certainly fall within the frame of the notion of the collective unconscious.
Another way of putting these ideas of ancestor possession would be that these autonomous complexes exist in the mind as Mendelian units, which are passed on from generation to generation intact, and are unaffected by the life of the individual.
The problem then becomes this: Can these psychological Mendelian units be broken up and assimilated in a way to protect the individual from being victimized by them?
Analysis certainly makes a fair attempt to do this.
It may not achieve the complete assimilation of the complex, or unit, into the rest of the mind, but at least it points out a way of dealing with it.
In this way analysis becomes an orthopedic method analogous to that used in a disease like tabes, for example.
The disease remains the same, but certain adjustments can be developed to compensate for the kinesthetic disturbance—the tabetic can learn to control his body movements in walking, through his eye movements, and thus achieve a substitute for his lost tactile sense.
I would like today to speak further about the background for the book on the types.
As soon as one begins to watch one’s mind, one begins to observe the autonomous phenomena in which one exists as a spectator, or even as a victim.
It is very much as if one stepped out of the protection of his house into an antediluvian forest and was confronted by all the monsters that inhabit the latter.
One is naturally a little reluctant to reverse the machinery and get into this situation.
It is as though one gave up one’s freedom of will and offered oneself up as a victim, for with this reversal of the machinery, an entirely different attitude from that of directed thinking grows up.
One is swept into the unknown of this world, not just into a psychological function.
In a way the collective unconscious is merely a mirage because unconscious, but it can be also just as real as the tangible world.
I can say this is so, this thing I am experiencing, but it does no good.
One must be willing to accept the reality for the time being, to risk going a long way with the unconscious in other words.
I once read some stories by the German author Hoffmann, who wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
He wrote in the vein of Poe, and in the midst of writing these stories he would become so gripped by the reality of the fantasies that he would shout for help and have people running to his rescue.
In fairly normal cases there is no danger, but it cannot be denied that the unconscious is overwhelmingly impressive.
The first observation I made began before I really had begun any systematic attempt to examine my unconscious—before I was fully aware of the full significance of the problem.
You remember what I told you of my relation to Freud.
When I was still writing the Psychology of the Unconscious, I had a dream which I did not understand—perhaps I only fully understood it last year, if then. This was the dream: I was walking on a road in
the country and came to a crossing. I was walking with someone, but did not know who it was—today I would say it was my shadow.
Suddenly I came upon a man, an old one, in the uniform of an Austrian customs official. It was Freud.
In the dream the idea of the censorship came to my mind.
Freud didn’t see me but walked away silently. My shadow said to me, “Did you notice him?
He has been dead for thirty years, but he can’t die properly.”
I had a very peculiar feeling with this.
Then the scene changed and I was in a southern town on the slopes of mountains.
The streets consisted of steps going up and down the steep slopes.
It was a medieval town and the sun was blazing in full noon, which as you know is the hour when spirits are abroad in southern countries.
I came walking through the streets with my man, and many people passed us to and fro.
All at once I saw among them a very tall man, a Crusader dressed in a coat of mail with the Maltese cross in red on the breast and on the back.
He looked quite detached and aloof, not in any way concerned with the people about him, nor did they pay any attention to him.
I looked at him in astonishment and could not understand what he was doing walking about there.
“Did you notice him?” my shadow asked me.
“He has been dead since the twelfth century, but he is not yet properly dead.
He always walks here among the people, but they don’t see him.”
I was quite bewildered that the people paid no attention, and then I awoke.
This dream bothered me a long time.
I was shocked at the first part because I did not then anticipate the trouble with Freud.
“What does it mean that he is dead and so depreciated?” is the question I asked myself, and why did I think of the principle of the censor in these terms when, as a matter of fact, it seemed to me then the best theory available?
I realized the antagonism between the figure of the Crusader and that of Freud, and yet I realized that there was also a strong parallelism.
They were different, and yet both were dead and could not die properly.
The meaning of the dream lies in the principle of the ancestral figure; not the Austrian officer—obviously he stood for the Freudian theory—but the other, the Crusader, is an archetypal figure, a Christian symbol living from the twelfth century, a symbol that does not really live today, but on the other hand is not wholly dead either.
It comes out of the times of Meister Eckhart, the time of the culture of the Knights, when many ideas blossomed, only to be killed then, but they are coming again to life now.
However, when I had this dream, I did not know this interpretation.
I was oppressed and bewildered. Freud was bewildered too, and could find no satisfactory meaning for it.
This is the origin of the technique I developed for dealing directly with the unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Lecture 5, Pages 37-45.
Genuine novelty emerges through dialogical creativity. This creative process is not an instantaneous 'eureka' moment, but a patiently sustained process of responsiveness, addressing the ideas of others, both actual and imaginal. Taken metaphorically, not literally, such internal dialogue can be psychologically fruitful.
How do we know about knowing; and how do we get to know? And when you know, how do you know, and what's it like? That is the epistemological metaphor. How you get to know is a mystery. Uncertainty and doubt build into theorizing, an articulation of conceptual and emotional turmoil created by interpretive attempts.
The dialectical relationship is between conscious and unconscious mind. The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue. Internal dialogue powerfully programs and shapes your self-concept.
The dialogical tendency of the psyche has been noticed and utilized by both mystics and psychologists. Examples include meditative encounters with wise figures, such as Christ, the Beloved, an Inner Healer, guide or shaman figure. The dialogue might even take place with an animal or object. Other pluralistic spiritual constructs include the chakra system and the multiple states of consciousness circuit of the Tree of Life in Qabala.
A multidirectional process takes place in a communicative network with many interlocotures and leads to discovery. Fragments of insight gradually emerge. Ideas clash, change, disappear or survive, forming a preference, choosing an interpretation for the coalescence of insights.
http://asklepia.tripod.com/Chaosophy/chaosophy7.html
Narration is a root metaphor. These stories help order world and self. We can investigate this dialogical realm which is familiar from mysticism. It creates a mind-space with multiple positions possible for multiple selves. The result is a multiplicity of dialogically interacting selves, in a variety of "as if" (virtual) realities. The free flow of fantasy as internal dialogues with various aspects of the self allows for creative development of higher thought.
Uncertainty is a complex process of disagreements, qualifications, elaborations, supplementations, borrowings, and confabulation. We can be immersed in interpretive efforts without any foundational commitments. Constructs form from many contradictory arguments, ad hoc strategies, and powerful forms of persuasion with archetypal roots.
Many-voiced multidirectional theorizing, thought has a complex dialogical nature. It ranges from paradigmatic to idiosyncratic. Multidirectional dialogical flux (matrix) flattens into a personally meaningful monological narrative. Philosophy can inspire intuition along some path in the dialogical web of creativity. We can imagine a clearly delineated conceptual framework without 'beliefs' or 'commitments'. You have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. It's a stream of meaning flowing from, through, and among us.
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/multimind.html
"...Any metaphysics, any reflection of the individual on the world, implies a theory of perception, and any consideration of the latter will react on the former, whether or not one accepts the esse est percipi of Berkeley. Thus, a closed circuit of knowing exists; our concept of the universe depends on the knowledge that we have of the process of perceiving it." --Abraham Moles, INFORMATION THEORY AND ESTHETIC PERCEPTION
But the technical rule with regard to fantasy is to stick to the picture that comes up until all its possibilities are exhausted.
Thus if I conjured up that man and woman, I would not let them go till I had found out what they were going to do in that room.
Thus one makes the fantasy move on.
Usually, however, one has a resistance to doing this, that is, to following the fantasy.
Something is sure to whisper in one’s ear that it is all nonsense; in fact, the conscious is forced to take a highly depreciatory attitude toward the unconscious material in order to become conscious at all, for example, a person making the effort to break away from an outgrown faith can usually be found ridiculing it; he throws out cogs to keep from slipping back into his unconscious acceptance.
This is the reason it is so difficult to get at the unconscious material.
The conscious is forever saying, “Keep away from all that,” and it is always tending to increase rather than reduce the resistance to the unconscious.
Similarly, the unconscious pits itself against the conscious, and it is the special tragedy of man that in order to win consciousness he is forced into dissociation with nature.
He is either under the complete sway of the enantiodromia, or play of nature’s forces, or he is too far away from nature.
Going back to the question of fantasizing, if once the resistance to free contact with the unconscious can be overcome, and one can develop the power of sticking to the fantasy, then the play of the images can be watched.
Any artist is doing that quite naturally, but he is getting only the esthetic values out of it while the analyst tries to get at all the values, ideational, esthetic, feeling, and intuitional.
When one watches such a scene one tries to figure out its special meaning for oneself.
When the figures animated are very far away from the conscious trend, then it may happen that they break forth arbitrarily as in cases of dementia praecox.
The eruption then splits the conscious and tears it to bits, leaving each content with an independent ego, hence the absolutely inadequate emotional reaction of these cases.
If there is a certain amount of ego left there may be some reaction—thus a voice in the unconscious may denounce one as crazy, but another may arise to counter it.
But, aside from dementia praecox cases, so-called normal people are very fragmentary—that is, they produce no full reactions in most cases.
That is to say, they are not complete egos.
There is one ego in the conscious and another made up of unconscious ancestral elements, by the force of which a man who has been fairly himself over a period of years suddenly falls under the sway of an ancestor.
I think the fragmentary reactions and inadequate emotions people so often display are best explained along these lines.
Thus you may have a person who sees always and only the dark side of life; he perhaps is forced into this one-sidedness through ancestor possession, and quite suddenly another portion of the unconscious may get on top and change him into an equally one-sided optimist.
Many cases are described in the literature which show these sudden character changes, but of course they are not explained as ancestor possession, since this latter idea remains as a hypothesis for which there is no scientific proof as yet.
Following these ideas a little further, it is an interesting fact that there is no disease among primitives which cannot be caused by ghosts, which of course are ancestral figures.
There is a physiological analogy for this theory of ancestor possession which may make the idea a little clearer.
It is thought that cancer may be due to the later and anarchical development of embryonic cells folded away in the mature and differentiated tissues.
Strong evidence for this lies in the finding, for example, of a partially developed fetus in the thigh of an adult man, say, in those tumors known as teratomata.
Perhaps a similar thing goes on in the mind, whose psychological makeup may be said to be a conglomerate.
Perhaps certain traits belonging to the ancestors get buried away in the mind as complexes with a life of their own which has never been assimilated into the life of the individual, and then, for some unknown reason, these complexes become activated, step out of their obscurity in the folds of the unconscious, and begin to dominate the whole mind.
I am inclined to describe the historical character of the images from the unconscious in this way.
Often there occur details in these images that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be explained in terms of the personal experience of the individual.
It is possible that a certain historical atmosphere is born with us by means of which we can repeat strange details almost as if they were historical facts.
Daudet has developed a similar idea (L’Hérédo and Le Monde des images), which he calls “auto-fécondation.”
Whatever the truth of these speculations, they certainly fall within the frame of the notion of the collective unconscious.
Another way of putting these ideas of ancestor possession would be that these autonomous complexes exist in the mind as Mendelian units, which are passed on from generation to generation intact, and are unaffected by the life of the individual.
The problem then becomes this: Can these psychological Mendelian units be broken up and assimilated in a way to protect the individual from being victimized by them?
Analysis certainly makes a fair attempt to do this.
It may not achieve the complete assimilation of the complex, or unit, into the rest of the mind, but at least it points out a way of dealing with it.
In this way analysis becomes an orthopedic method analogous to that used in a disease like tabes, for example.
The disease remains the same, but certain adjustments can be developed to compensate for the kinesthetic disturbance—the tabetic can learn to control his body movements in walking, through his eye movements, and thus achieve a substitute for his lost tactile sense.
I would like today to speak further about the background for the book on the types.
As soon as one begins to watch one’s mind, one begins to observe the autonomous phenomena in which one exists as a spectator, or even as a victim.
It is very much as if one stepped out of the protection of his house into an antediluvian forest and was confronted by all the monsters that inhabit the latter.
One is naturally a little reluctant to reverse the machinery and get into this situation.
It is as though one gave up one’s freedom of will and offered oneself up as a victim, for with this reversal of the machinery, an entirely different attitude from that of directed thinking grows up.
One is swept into the unknown of this world, not just into a psychological function.
In a way the collective unconscious is merely a mirage because unconscious, but it can be also just as real as the tangible world.
I can say this is so, this thing I am experiencing, but it does no good.
One must be willing to accept the reality for the time being, to risk going a long way with the unconscious in other words.
I once read some stories by the German author Hoffmann, who wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
He wrote in the vein of Poe, and in the midst of writing these stories he would become so gripped by the reality of the fantasies that he would shout for help and have people running to his rescue.
In fairly normal cases there is no danger, but it cannot be denied that the unconscious is overwhelmingly impressive.
The first observation I made began before I really had begun any systematic attempt to examine my unconscious—before I was fully aware of the full significance of the problem.
You remember what I told you of my relation to Freud.
When I was still writing the Psychology of the Unconscious, I had a dream which I did not understand—perhaps I only fully understood it last year, if then. This was the dream: I was walking on a road in
the country and came to a crossing. I was walking with someone, but did not know who it was—today I would say it was my shadow.
Suddenly I came upon a man, an old one, in the uniform of an Austrian customs official. It was Freud.
In the dream the idea of the censorship came to my mind.
Freud didn’t see me but walked away silently. My shadow said to me, “Did you notice him?
He has been dead for thirty years, but he can’t die properly.”
I had a very peculiar feeling with this.
Then the scene changed and I was in a southern town on the slopes of mountains.
The streets consisted of steps going up and down the steep slopes.
It was a medieval town and the sun was blazing in full noon, which as you know is the hour when spirits are abroad in southern countries.
I came walking through the streets with my man, and many people passed us to and fro.
All at once I saw among them a very tall man, a Crusader dressed in a coat of mail with the Maltese cross in red on the breast and on the back.
He looked quite detached and aloof, not in any way concerned with the people about him, nor did they pay any attention to him.
I looked at him in astonishment and could not understand what he was doing walking about there.
“Did you notice him?” my shadow asked me.
“He has been dead since the twelfth century, but he is not yet properly dead.
He always walks here among the people, but they don’t see him.”
I was quite bewildered that the people paid no attention, and then I awoke.
This dream bothered me a long time.
I was shocked at the first part because I did not then anticipate the trouble with Freud.
“What does it mean that he is dead and so depreciated?” is the question I asked myself, and why did I think of the principle of the censor in these terms when, as a matter of fact, it seemed to me then the best theory available?
I realized the antagonism between the figure of the Crusader and that of Freud, and yet I realized that there was also a strong parallelism.
They were different, and yet both were dead and could not die properly.
The meaning of the dream lies in the principle of the ancestral figure; not the Austrian officer—obviously he stood for the Freudian theory—but the other, the Crusader, is an archetypal figure, a Christian symbol living from the twelfth century, a symbol that does not really live today, but on the other hand is not wholly dead either.
It comes out of the times of Meister Eckhart, the time of the culture of the Knights, when many ideas blossomed, only to be killed then, but they are coming again to life now.
However, when I had this dream, I did not know this interpretation.
I was oppressed and bewildered. Freud was bewildered too, and could find no satisfactory meaning for it.
This is the origin of the technique I developed for dealing directly with the unconscious contents. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Lecture 5, Pages 37-45.
Creating a Living Relationship with Your Ancestors
by Iona Miller, (c)2012
‘The Work’, to Jung, involved firstly accessing archetypal forces resident in the collective unconscious such that they entered into a meaningful discourse with consciousness. Active imagination is one of the techniques Jung developed to encourage this consciousness/unconsciousness exchange of energies. Symbols communicate archetypal patterns and conflicts originating in the personal or collective unconscious to consciousness.
Our quest for psychological integrations is a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters. The anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest. In our visioning we link earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and sublime.
We can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
This journey toward wholeness is easier to integrate into daily life with a psychological framework for containing and accommodating a wide range of images, emotions, moral views, styles of thought, beliefs, and even dress. When we know the characteristics of the various archetypes, we find them relected back to our consciousness from the environment.
We can learn to view their effects on our lives directly and gain in personal, social, and spiritual freedom. If we fail to become consciously aware of their effects, their spontaneous activation may produce devastating effects on the personality. They can create internal divisions in the psyche which may lead to the disintegration of personality. This can result in disease, self-destructive behavior, or even culminate in death.
Hillman knows we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors; or, as Ventura stresses, telepathic, living inside constant psychic contagions. Not only are we continually resonating with others, we're fused also with the "things" of this world: our rooms, city streets, fluorescent lights, traffic jams, the homeless, dying animal species. Hillman says: "The world is getting worse. Ask the animals, ask the trees, ask the wind ... " He ends this letter: "Once individualism dissolves its notion of self ... there is no alone. I am never only myself, always out of myself, out of control. And I can never recover."
Community doesn't reside in grand utopian schemes, but it's already alive in our nuanced moments, simply by reframing the small episodes that make up our days.
http://open.salon.com/blog/wendyo/2011/10/30/james_hillman_just_died_he_was_my_mentor_close_friend
So, like our question of the rigidity of so-called "basic" "image schemas", we have the question of which comes first: The "non-imaginal archetype" or the "archetypal image"?
If Jung privileged the abstract concept before the precision of the thing, it is because he understood it to be a “psychological fact” that, upon encountering an archetypal situation (say, crossing a raging river in the jungle) we are already psychologically pre-conditioned by our ancestors in history. That is, we do actually respond accordingly to these archetypes and the abstract concept may be actual (indeed, more actual) in a way that the “precision of the thing” is not.
http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/james-hillman
Psychologically speaking, the domain of "gods" begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish. To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place.
The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. -Jung
Meaning is not an entity, not a creed, a doctrine, a worldview, also not something like the fairytale treasure hard to attain. It is not semantic, not a content. Meaning, where it indeed exists, is first of all an implicit or a priori fact of existence. It can never be the answer to a question. It is, conversely, an unquestioned and unquestionable certainty that predates any possible questioning. It is the groundedness of existence, a sense of embeddedness in life, of containment in the world.
by Iona Miller, (c)2012
‘The Work’, to Jung, involved firstly accessing archetypal forces resident in the collective unconscious such that they entered into a meaningful discourse with consciousness. Active imagination is one of the techniques Jung developed to encourage this consciousness/unconsciousness exchange of energies. Symbols communicate archetypal patterns and conflicts originating in the personal or collective unconscious to consciousness.
Our quest for psychological integrations is a pilgrimage of archetypal encounters. The anima and animus, the process of individuation, the mythopoetic archetypes of the collective unconscious--all spring to life in the fiery imagery of the vision quest. In our visioning we link earth and sky, body and spirit, the infernal and sublime.
We can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.
This journey toward wholeness is easier to integrate into daily life with a psychological framework for containing and accommodating a wide range of images, emotions, moral views, styles of thought, beliefs, and even dress. When we know the characteristics of the various archetypes, we find them relected back to our consciousness from the environment.
We can learn to view their effects on our lives directly and gain in personal, social, and spiritual freedom. If we fail to become consciously aware of their effects, their spontaneous activation may produce devastating effects on the personality. They can create internal divisions in the psyche which may lead to the disintegration of personality. This can result in disease, self-destructive behavior, or even culminate in death.
Hillman knows we are many, encased in the spirits of our ancestors; or, as Ventura stresses, telepathic, living inside constant psychic contagions. Not only are we continually resonating with others, we're fused also with the "things" of this world: our rooms, city streets, fluorescent lights, traffic jams, the homeless, dying animal species. Hillman says: "The world is getting worse. Ask the animals, ask the trees, ask the wind ... " He ends this letter: "Once individualism dissolves its notion of self ... there is no alone. I am never only myself, always out of myself, out of control. And I can never recover."
Community doesn't reside in grand utopian schemes, but it's already alive in our nuanced moments, simply by reframing the small episodes that make up our days.
http://open.salon.com/blog/wendyo/2011/10/30/james_hillman_just_died_he_was_my_mentor_close_friend
So, like our question of the rigidity of so-called "basic" "image schemas", we have the question of which comes first: The "non-imaginal archetype" or the "archetypal image"?
If Jung privileged the abstract concept before the precision of the thing, it is because he understood it to be a “psychological fact” that, upon encountering an archetypal situation (say, crossing a raging river in the jungle) we are already psychologically pre-conditioned by our ancestors in history. That is, we do actually respond accordingly to these archetypes and the abstract concept may be actual (indeed, more actual) in a way that the “precision of the thing” is not.
http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/james-hillman
Psychologically speaking, the domain of "gods" begins where consciousness leaves off, for at that point man is already at the mercy of the natural order, whether he thrive or perish. To the symbols of wholeness that come to him from there he attaches names which vary according to time and place.
The self is defined psychologically as the psychic totality of the individual. Anything that a man postulates as being a greater totality than himself can become a symbol of the self. For this reason the symbol of the self is not always as total as the definition would require. -Jung
Meaning is not an entity, not a creed, a doctrine, a worldview, also not something like the fairytale treasure hard to attain. It is not semantic, not a content. Meaning, where it indeed exists, is first of all an implicit or a priori fact of existence. It can never be the answer to a question. It is, conversely, an unquestioned and unquestionable certainty that predates any possible questioning. It is the groundedness of existence, a sense of embeddedness in life, of containment in the world.
Dialoging with Ancestors Using the Intensive Journal Method
http://intensivejournal.org/index.php
Of course, interpretation is not the only Jungian method. There is also active imagination. Active imagination requires an ego-image that is curious and inquisitive. The ego-image actively engages the non-ego image in a dialogue. Active imagination is a conversation between the ego-image and the non-ego image. It is not a dictation but a negotiation. In this sense, active imagination is a variety of diplomacy. It is not only a "talking cure" but also a "listening cure." In active imagination, the ego-image talks to the non-ego image and listens to it, and the non-ego image talks to the ego-image and listens to it. Active imagination is interactive imagination. Both the ego-image and the non-ego image pose questions, and both provide answers. There is no imperative, I would emphasize, for the ego-image to capitulate to the non-ego image. In active imagination, the only obligation is for the ego-image to entertain seriously and consider critically what the non-ego image has to say. What the non-ego image has to say is not necessarily the "truth." It is an opinion that the ego-image may either accept or reject. In the process, not only may the non-ego image persuade the ego-image, but also the ego-image may convince the non-ego image. The non-ego image may transform the ego-image, and the ego-image may transform the non-ego image. In active imagination, the ego-image is just as much an "image of transformation" as the non-ego image is. http://www.jungnewyork.com/imaginology.shtml
The Mystic Vortex
The gateway between the physical and spirit realms is known as a vortex. Geomagnetic vortex sites are often called Dragon’s Lairs and link the Dragon ley lines in a vast Earth grid. The Serpent life-force is the spiraling life-force energy that moves through the portals. Shaman consider these Serpent vortices inter-dimensional doorways. These vortex sites facilitate spontaneous synchronization of the anomalous geomagnetic event, EEG brainwaves, and Schumann Resonance which amplifies the vortex effect (Miller & Lonetree, 2010). This resonance produces a sense of high well-being and paranormal effects.
Within the energy body, vortexes manifest as chakras. The vortex in our DNA enables vision, illumination, lucid dreaming, and memory through death. Genetic memory is invoked to explain feelings and ideas inherited from our ancestors as part of a "collective unconscious". Entering the primal transformative spiral means entering the vortex of the internal structuring process, the natural kaleidoscope of shapes.
In a vortex of consciousness, questions and answers form in the scintillating swirling ether that also symbolizes the Collective Unconscious. Ezra Pound defined the vortex as, "a radiant node or cluster" "from which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing." An image is a compositional vortex. Soulful images weave a vortex of longing. In the flow, the forces impel us. As we spin deeper into the creative vortex we are flooded with knowledge -- gnosis.
The interaction of fields, and the formation of a vortex of energy, the attractor, represents the beginning of our consciousness structure. This process culminates in the formation of separate identity, the ego. In therapy or shamanic Dreamhealing, the vortex can also heal. For example, an image of a deep red stab wound with a black center might become a swirling vortex pulling the dreamer and guide into a blackness. It is cold and empty, and the spinning of the vortex dismembers the dreamer. In fact, he experiences a sense of being disintegrated. The old self dies, so the transformed self image can be reborn, completing the transformational cycle.
The unconscious lends itself to the language of chaos. The whirling, twisting motion of a molecule of water in the chaotic world of non-laminar flow through a pipe is analogous to chaos consciousness. The disorienting, dizzying surrender to the vortex, tornado, or whirlpool is a surrender to chaos, an experience of no form and total confusion and disorientation. We penetrate deeper into the psyche -- into the vortex of the internal structuring process -- through progressively de-structuring patterns of organization.
It is like the experience of committing oneself to the fire and becoming it, then as the random flickering of the flames and torrid heat, disintegrating into pure energy. It means becoming the boiling, flowing, every-changing molten magma at the core of the earth, or the root of a volcano. A spiral or a vortex exerts a magnetic draw and the journeyers are drawn into it. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper often cause the journeyer to report intense dizziness and disorientation. Often there are feelings of flying apart, limbs and eventually all parts of the self flying off in the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex.
These are all descriptions of the personal, subjective experience of total chaos. Always, after passing through this state, the new order which emerges of self-image, thought, emotion, and sensory perception reflects the new and less dis-eased state of being. The deeper self-image undercut or superseded the old belief system, and began to create a new order of being, a new way of perceiving self and world. The new image provides a magnetic nucleus around which to order the personality, and often the physiology.
Carl Jung likened complexes to impersonal psychological vortex points, into which we are drawn. We mediate it through myths, ritual, art and dreams. The vortex is a focal point or eddy in the vast ocean of consciousness, in the individual stream of consciousness. It is an icon of the Flow State, from which creativity emerges. For active, trancendent consciousness, the center of the vortex is primordial emptiness, the gap between breaths, the stillpoint of illumination which is a royal marriage with the eternal. Our future is a vortex of emergent fateful change. Mythemes of the Vortex form their own widening gyre.
Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution. This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential vortex. Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors, because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like," they are more like vortices within vortices. The Philosopher's Stone is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet, ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion.
THE BLOOD & THE BONE
Ancestors Gone and Yet to Come
Inherent Wisdom: 'Foresight through Insight on Hindsight!
"We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization." C.G. Jung
We all have a need for meaning that drives us to search deeply within and without ourselves for connection and creativity. Meta-meaning pulls us to discover from within, by breaking through old paradigms to discover what is waiting to be born. We can experience a personal archaic renaissance through reflexive practice (RP), turning our attention back toward the deep time of our being and all it contains. The universal field isn't just manifesting itself all around us. The field is coming through us and expressing itself in our inner subjective domain as well.
A method helps these deeper underlying patterns to come into focus and be seen, identified, even communicated with and ultimately fitted together like pieces, or shards, of a higher-order jigsaw/mosaic and simultaneously a deeper order grounding/embodying. Not merely the ‘subjects’ of our inner process, we become the ‘objects’ of a deeper, mythic, archetypal and divine process that is incarnating through us. We are the conduits through which the universe, in becoming consciously aware of itself, is waking itself up. Self-reflection i.e. reflexion, is therefore the best service we can do for ourselves and the world.
Such reflexive practice is self-referential. Retrospectivity is often found at the heart of creativity and poetics. "Reflexivity" refers to recursion, of referring back to a starting point, an original position, a beginning state. There is a loop in the time course of an action, where that action goes "out" to something, then comes "back" to oneself. Self-reference is the act, let us say, of paying attention being "bent" back towards the self that is paying attention. Self-description is the act of description being directed back toward the person actually doing the description. The "loop" structure is from you, your "self", back into or towards your self.
Wildman suggests, "accept the challenge of looking backwards from time to time over the years and let the patterns emerge, to surface the deep structures, patterns, processes, insights and connections. Not only individuals, but also organizations, communities and cultures could well undertake such an approach." It is a response to the need to seek for general explanations. Transcendent research embraces the spiritual, symbolic and physical realities of being fully human.
Internal Encounters
It is through this reflexive - even meditative, poetic, noetic process (one of apperception) that we believe we can gain vital noumenal (understanding, perception, discernment) insights. Out of the spaces can come the patterns and linkages so vital to understanding. Process work helps us uncover these deeper patterns and linkages. It might even be a form of deep futures reverse causation -- psychoretrocausality. What might conventionally be seen as an effect that exists in the future could in some way be a causal agent affecting the outcome of events that occurred before it in linear time.
Immersion leads to a recognition of intuitive knowledge and tacit understanding (incubation) generating enhanced awareness and knowledge of (illumination) one's inner world which in turn suggests the validation of this knowledge. Finally, the process concludes with an integration of these illuminations (creative synthesis) into the way the we see the world. We may even be entranced by images, intuitions, and dreams that can connect themselves to our personal quest. An unshakeable connection exists between what is out there, in its appearance and reality, and what is within us -- the internal world of reflexive thought, tacit knowledge, feeling, and awareness.
We are a braided emanation of our ancestral lines. There is a world of characters within us, waiting to share their knowledge and their gnosis with us, if we but ask. We may also explore awakening and finding our divinity within. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis have been used for years if not aeons. for such self-knowledge, therapeutic and healing purposes. Besides our ancestors, we all host an inner healer, a critic or judge, an inner child and a host of other "discarnate" participants in our multimind.
The basis of the human psyche seems to be a collective of selves -- a multimind in a multiverse. Independent and autonomous, they relate with one another mostly unknown to the outer awareness. The "multistate paradigm" of human nature extends toward a psychology and spirituality that is polytheistic, even pantheistic. Parapsychology is primarily a social science, though we try to bring in measuring tools of the physical sciences. The best evidence still comes from
people who witness the phenomena. The only way to study consciousness, whether of the living or the dead, is through the experiences of people.
Meta-Cognition
Dialogue is a form of imagery which creates and sustains a worldview through the means of imaginal conversations. Within the fabric of multiple centers or vortices within the psyche, an on-going dialogue emerges which ranges from selftalk (ego to ego), through "group" discussion (ego with subpersonalities), to spiritual dialogue (ego with transpersonal entities), even ancestral spirits. Beyond the dialogical realm lies the unspeakable experience (untranslatable) of the Void or Clear Light, the realm of archetypal light and sound as pure consciousness.
The "Word" helps us create and define reality. Conversation as well as observation defines our reality. Dialogue of the self with its various conscious and unconscious forms creates a series of "virtual realities" which form the basis of self-simulation and world-simulation. These forms are limitless in number, far beyond the classic archetypes such as persona, anima/animus, etc., suggesting the notion of "radical pluralism."
Dialogical Gnosis
Gnosis, wisdom from within, can arise in imaginal dialogues with our Ancestors, by adapting Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal technique to the process. Non-literal, imaginal, dialogical "discussions" often turn up material that can be proofed through history, archaeology, genealogy and genetic genealogy. This is yet another special case of "knowing more than we know we know." The simple technique can be used by anyone, virtually anywhere.
While not an official part of the the journal process, it can be readily adopted both with or without the rest of the program. Such imaginal conversations give a voice to the deeper constituents of our unconscious psychophysical system, and can even reveal unknown details about the functioning and fate of our physical organism. As such, it is a therapeutic tool which reflexively plumbs the depths of the collective unconscious and personal ancestral base.
The technique functions as a "ghost bridge", but not in the literal way of speaking with the dead used by mentalists and psychics. It is a conscious act, unlike dream contact with deceased or ancient ancestors. The process can be facilitated by pictures and art of the chosen ancestor, and pictures of their ancestral homes and lands that prompt memory and imagination.
Dialogue and questions open the way for myriad possibilities. Immersing oneself and trusting the process opens a virtual world, a holographic domain that is multidimensional. It is capable of influencing us by changing our attitudes, which affects our psychophysical, hormonal, and energetic being. It isn't 'real' or 'unreal', but takes place in psychic reality -- that is, the realm of the psyche which is both physical and imaginal.
Gestalt theory contends that we are all of the figures within our dreams, and well as the ground underlying them. Jung extended this notion inferring that we each contain and can contact many figures of the collective unconscious "within" us. Today, we speak of the quantum and holographic encoding of our DNA and our holographic memory, which is analogous to the Akashic Field of the East.
Dialogue is a social device we can employ in our noetic exploration. When we intentionally enter a conscious dialogue meditation we understand that we are evoking a portion of our self with its inherent wisdom. We may personify and amplify that feeling in numerous ways, including artistic means, or perhaps Tarot cards, and other means of divination. While the process shares some features of automatic writing and channelling, one maintains consciousness and critical thinking, not confusing the planes. It is more a process of "letting go", allowing than dissociating, of associating and amplifying than trance.
Wikipedia describes Progoff's method:
The intensive journal method is a psychotherapeutic technique largely developed in 1966 at Drew University and popularized by Ira Progoff. It consists of a series of writing exercises using loose leaf notebook paper in a simple ring binder, divided into sections to help in accessing various areas of the writer's life. These include a dialogue section for the personification of things, a "depth dimension" to aid in accessing the subconscious and other places for recording remembrances and meditations.
The original Intensive Journal contained only 16 sections, but was later expanded to include five additional sections as part of Progoff's "process meditation" method. It has been the inspiration for many other "writing therapies" since then and is used in a variety of settings, including hospitals and prisons, by individuals as an aid to creativity or autobiography, and often as an adjunct to treatment in analytic, humanistic or cognitive therapy.
Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more ("dia" means through or across) people or imaginal characters. Its chief historical origins as narrative, philosophical or didactic device are found in classical Greek and Indian literature, in particular in the ancient art of rhetoric.
Once you are proficient in the technique it can also be employed as a group discussion, along the lines of NLP's subpersonalities, Boardroom or "part's party" discussions. Another source of therapeutic suggestions is Assagioli's Psychosynthesis, which likewise can employ dialogue. It can be combined with the Gestalt two-chair technique, but with a written record one has the additional benefit of a permanent record, which might yield additional depth over time.
Bohm's Dialogue
Physicist David Bohm proposed a dialogue technique with different aims. He introduced the concept of a dialogue stating that dialogue can be considered as a free flow of meaning between people in communication, in the sense of a stream that flows between banks. These “banks” are understood as representing the various points of view of the participants.
In a Bohm dialogue, twenty to forty participants sit in a circle for a few hours during regular meetings, or for a few days in a workshop environment. This is done with no predefined purpose, no agenda, other than that of inquiring into the movement of thought, and exploring the process of "thinking together" collectively. This activity can allow group participants to examine their preconceptions and prejudices, as well as to explore the more general movement of thought. Bohm's intention regarding the suggested minimum number of participants was to replicate a social/cultural dynamic (rather than a family dynamic). This form of dialogue seeks to enable an awareness of why communicating in the verbal sphere is so much more difficult and conflict-ridden than in all other areas of human activity and endeavor.
Participants in the Bohmian form of dialogue "suspend" their beliefs, opinions, impulses, and judgments while speaking together, in order to see the movement of the group's thought processes and what their effects may be. According to Dialogue a Proposal [Bohm, Factor, Garrett], this kind of dialogue should not be confused with discussion or debate, both of which, says Bohm, suggest working towards a goal or reaching a decision, rather than simply exploring and learning. Meeting without an agenda or fixed objective is done to create a "free space" for something new to happen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue
Bohm claims, "...it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated."
Principles of Dialogue
"Bohm Dialogue" has been widely used in the field of organizational development, and has evolved beyond what David Bohm intended: rarely is the minimum group size as large as what Bohm originally recommended, and there are often other numerous subtle differences. Specifically, any method of conversation that claims to be based on the "principles of dialogue as established by David Bohm" can be considered to be a form of Bohm Dialogue. Those principles of "Bohm Dialogue" are:
- 1. The group agrees that no group-level decisions will be made in the conversation. "...In the dialogue group we are not going to decide what to do about anything. This is crucial. Otherwise we are not free. We must have an empty space where we are not obliged to anything, nor to come to any conclusions, nor to say anything or not say anything. It's open and free" (Bohm, "On Dialogue", p.18-19.)"
- 2. Each individual agrees to suspend judgement in the conversation. (Specifically, if the individual hears an idea he doesn't like, he does not attack that idea.) "...people in any group will bring to it assumptions, and as the group continues meeting, those assumptions will come up. What is called for is to suspend those assumptions, so that you neither carry them out nor suppress them. You don't believe them, nor do you disbelieve them; you don't judge them as good or bad...(Bohm, "On Dialogue", p. 22.)"
- 3. As these individuals "suspend judgement" they also simultaneously are as honest and transparent as possible. (Specifically, if the individual has a "good idea" that he might otherwise hold back from the group because it is too controversial, he will share that idea in this conversation.)
- 4. Individuals in the conversation try to build on other individuals' ideas in the conversation. (The group often comes up with ideas that are far beyond what any of the individuals thought possible before the conversation began.)
Usually, the goal of the various incarnations of "Bohm Dialogue" is to get the whole group to have a better understanding of itself. In other words, Bohm Dialogue is used to inform all of the participants about the current state of the group they are in.
Preparation
Temple Sleep a traditional way of non-interpretive dream incubation and healing. It also refers to hypnosis, and by extension to self-hypnosis.
Egyptian priest, Imhotep. (I-em-hotep, he comes in peace) is the great-grandfather of Hypnosis, or suggestive therapy, which can be traced back over 4000 years to ancient Egypt. The Egyptians used healing sanctuaries for curing all sorts of problems, both physical and mental, most of which today would be classed as psychological problems. Before falling asleep they were influenced by suggestions, in the hope of provoking dreams sent by the gods.
These healing sanctuaries were called "Sleep or Dream Temples." In these temples, the sick person was put into a trance like sleep; priests and priestesses then facilitated healing dreams to gain knowledge about the illnesses and to find a cure for the illnesses. Such dreams were themselves epiphanies with the inner healer. It is that contact, not interpretations, that is healing.
Healing took place while the person being cured was in a deep trance-like sleep. The god Asklepius could perform miraculous cures in the dreams. The priests used chanting and magical spells to put the patient into a trance, known as incubation. A person could be kept in this state for up to three days, during which time the priests using suggestions would help the person, through their dreams, to make contact with the god, thus helping them to obtain a cure for their illness. The temples were a place of spirits, and mysterious powers, a place to find mental and physical healing.
The people looking for a cure or an insight to their problems were called Seekers. The Seeker did not just go in to the temple; they had to wait for the right time to come. A Seeker had something on their mind, an ailment, an issue, and an inner quest to discover themselves. They came on a pilgrimage to seek an insight into their problems, to contact the healing god, to get a new vision that would heal, guide, or provide comfort.
They had to cleanse the body, mind and soul. They would meditate, fast, take hot baths, and make a sacrifice to the god. They looked for signs in their dreams. They would dream of the god healing them. A good dream would be one in which the god or a serpent would cure the wound by touching it. The dreams of the seeker contained the insightful seeds of their own healing.
Ritualistic methods include purifying baths, trance-inducing chanting, and symbolic sacrifices, The Greek treatment was referred to as incubation, and focused on prayers to Asklepius for healing. A similar Hebrew treatment was referred to as Kavanah, and involved focusing on letters of the Hebrew alphabet spelling the name of the Hebrew God. Sir Mortimer Wheeler unearthed a Roman Sleep temple at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire in 1928, with the assistance of a young J.R.R. Tolkien.
When a candidate for initiation into these mysteries had been prepared through various disciplines, the priest (hierophant) then led the candidate into a cave or tomb where he or she was put to sleep. The priest suggested the etheric body leave the initiate for three and a half days. During this time it was joined to the astral body and received through it impressions from the spiritual world. When the etheric body was brought back into the physical, the initiate was awakened by the priest and remembered what was experienced in the spiritual world. But while the etheric body was out of the physical, the latter would have appeared to an outsider to be dead.
SECOND SIGHT
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_13_3_cohn.pdf
Second Sight and Family History: Pedigree and Segregation Analyses
This study concerns second sight, a psychic ability that has for centuries been believed, in Scotland and other traditions, to be hereditary. The ability manifests itself through the person having spontaneous vivid imagery through different senses which apparently gives information about a spatially or temporally distant event. A total of 130 family histories were constructed and examined using segregation analysis. Second sight seems to be consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance, particularly for small family sizes. People with the trait were also evenly distributed with respect to their birth order position, in line with the expectations of a genetic model. It is argued that if other studies find a similar mode of inheritance in other cultures, then second sight could be a creative mental ability where the hereditary aspect lies in the sensitivity of the sensory systems which convey the experiences.
Invoking the Gods
There is nothing to prevent us from including in our dialogues the calling up of godforms, who are found both in Jungian practice as archetypes and within our antic family lines. For example, having Aphrodite, Zeus, or Odin included in your genealogy adds an air of familiarity to the essentially universal phenomenon.
What you might ask of a grandparent might be very different than what a mere mortal might request of the gods. One should likely approach this as a ritual activity or at least an exercise in sacred space, which opens the timeless realm to penetration and assimilation of entangled information from the deepest layers of Being. Below is an example of Venus or Aphrodite. Many such dialogue outlines appear in my online book, PANTHEON: ARCHETYPAL GODS IN DAILY LIFE. http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html
PANTHEON, as a manual of personal self-discovery, is a practical guide to recognizing and realizing the origins and development of our individual characters and characteristics. As such, it leads to a growth of self-knowledge, and gives us insight into the traits and behaviors of our acquaintances and intimates. Pantheon provides not only background knowledge for reference, but also practical psychological technique which we can implement in our journey toward understanding.
One can gain access to the deeper psyche, soul, or imagination through both the rational and experiential methods. These are self-analysis and active imagination. Active imagination includes consciousness journeys deep into the psyche, identification, and internal dialogues with personified archetypes. It is the dialogical method. This is a way of building experiential relationships with archetypal forces--harmonizing with them, honoring them. These are "as if" real relationships, not taken literally.
These internal dialogues can be useful, revealing the autonomous dynamics and agendas at work in our lives. They reveal things to us we know, but don't know we know. We can use many methods for this communication, such as journal work, hypnosis, or ritual. These are moments where we create and enter sacred space. These relationships reveal the meaningfulness behind the many complications in our modern lives. The more we approach our individual wholeness, through expanding our awareness and experiences, the more we are likely to encounter these divine principles from the realm of imagination.