|
Home
Doors
Essays2007
Essays2008
Essays2009
Essays2010
Wisdom
Gallery
Links
Bios
Contact
|
..:: Enlightenment
III / The Mind ::..
By
Alan Schneider
If we accept the premise that the body, physical senses, and Freudian
Ego account for the great bulk of waking conscious experience, we are
left with a certain quandary. How then does the action of the Superego
– i.e. our conscience – come into play in consciousness, and where does
it come from?
In the theme of
simplification of otherwise abstract and esoteric concepts, I am going
to suggest here that human consciousness essentially exists in two
realms of perceptible influence – the higher and lower minds.
The lower mind is dominated by physical experience and sensation, driven
by emotion and appetite, and occasionally bridges into higher mental
functions such as rational thought, although this thought is most often
oriented toward the successful completion of desire action or ego
gratification that is ultimately physically referenced to the body and
senses. The higher mind is usually aware of the lower mind but is
referenced first to the more social consequences of action in the
physical realm – as opposed to the immediate personal ones – and
thereafter to an extended series of increasingly abstract circumstances
and conditions that can only be experienced through various “alternative
states” to Freudian waking consciousness, including dreams,
extrapersonal visions, hallucinations, and epiphanies. The Superego
forms only the initial manifestation of the higher mind in
consciousness, frequently representing merely the matrix of social
conditioning in many cases – the balance of higher mind in these
instances is dormant until awakened by some personal or environmental
circumstance. This is the region of the archetypes of the collective
unconscious referred to by Jung, lying beyond the sexual observations
and theories of Freud, and often at odds with them. Jung referred to
the “personal or environmental circumstance” just noted as the
synchronicity – a meaningful coincidence that triggers a numinous,
or psychologically commanding, condition in consciousness, causing a
sequence of further investigation and eventual increase in awareness in
its wake.
The goals and methods of the
lower and higher minds exist in fundamental conflict with each other,
and, once the awareness of both realms has been established in conscious
perception, an uneasy dissonance takes place within the Psyche –
the total field of consciousness that both Freud and Jung (as well as
most of their psychological “descendents”) subscribed to. One can
never again bask in the indolent comfort of physical gratification once
the chain of synchronicities has begun to manifest!
The conflict between the two
minds can be quite destructive to the Psyche if the ego cannot accept
and balance them through the order of some kind of system of priorities
of experience, even resulting in psychoses, severe neuroses, markedly
antisocial behavior (including many obsessions and addictions), and – in
the most dire results – suicide and self-mutilation. In one of his
lesser-known masterpieces entitled The Wild Duck the
famous Dutch playwright Ibsen (writer of A Doll’s House)
postulates the Vital Lie as the animating (i.e. enabling)
principle of life. This is the rationalization (in Freudian terms), or
complex of rationalizations, that we tell ourselves to avoid direct
contact with the naked truth of existence – that we are born into a
turbulent and transitory condition that we seldom understand, and which
consumes us eventually as physical beings. In this work, one of the
primary characters is an impressionable young girl who commits suicide
as the result of a confrontation with her vital lie provoked by another
character. Clearly, the Psyche is nothing to be trifled with – follow
our synchronicities we certainly should, but with wisdom and caution
always. Whether physical life ends or not, there is no cause to
rush exuberantly into Death’s cold embrace which comes soon enough
to us all...
At the foundation of the
conflict between higher and lower mind is the conception of levels of
truth. The best description of this series of levels of which I am
aware is the Hindu Chakra system, fundamentally composed of seven stages
of understanding of what truth is, and how it manifests. Again, for
the sake of simplicity, I will say that the first three Chakras are
primarily concerned with worldly, physical operations and understanding
– survival and occupation, sexual activity and relational bonding, and
social power and influence. This is the essence of the Freudian system
of consciousness, and it is all focused in the lower mind. The
forth chakra is something of a turning point, where concern becomes
focused through synchronicity events on the genuine concern of moral
living – beyond the social reality of the Superego – in the
experience of the selfless love and universal compassion present in the
Soul and experienced as the Sacred Heart. Obviously, a considerable
experiential gap exists between the social self of the third chakra and
the Universal Self of the forth, and, bluntly, the price of crossing
this gap is frequently the experience of much suffering,
culminating in a Leap of Faith out of the prison of thought and
linear logic – the Mind Trap of yoga. And, even though there are three
more chakras beyond the Heart, that one is the central focus of
higher mind while incarnate. What can be said of the additional stages
has been the subject of much spiritual discourse, both Eastern and
Western, but the essence of my contention is that we can really only
know about this existence here and now – however engaging and
stimulating the considerations of esoterica may be, we live in the
flesh, and the higher mind is still grounded therein.
Thus it is that things must
be satisfactorily resolved in the first three chakras before work can be
fruitful in the forth – home, love, family, society – all must be
achieved with some adequate degree of stability. Provided this
can be and has been done, the individual is then positioned for the
transition into the Heart, if this is the Karma, or destiny,
involved. Perhaps the process stops at chakra three – as it does
for the very many people – such being the case, we can and must only say
“So be it!” out of respect for the Divine Will active within the higher
mind. Not everyone can function in the Heart, nor should
they. The key to understanding this lies with synchronicity.
The Jungian synchronicity is the Voice
of God calling to the lower mind to awaken the Sacred Heart and the
profound spiritual potential to be experienced there. Once more, for
the sake of simplicity and clarity of meaning, I will refer to this
phenomenon as the Voice of the Higher Mind calling the lower mind
to know the Self at the center – i.e. the point of origin – of
the total mind. This is the process of spiritual development
and revelation expressed in the most scientific terms possible.
Consciousness is a quantum
phenomenon. The total mind referred to above cannot be seen, weighed
(certain New Age assertions to the contrary), measured (certain
scientific assertions to the contrary), or otherwise quantified, yet it
clearly is observable and does exist – as a massless,
formless, Presence having a focus of expression from which it emerges –
the Self. What is massless is by definition weightless, and if it yet
exists, it must be an extradimensional quantum field as the sole
remaining scientific possibility. Extradimensional here means
that (in particular) the Self as the manifest source of the field lies
beyond the threshold of observation in a state of pre-manifest chaos out
of which all subsequent manifest form emerges. In Jungian
psychodynamics, those forms are the archetypal symbols being driven
into perception by the archetypes themselves, which also lie within the
pre-manifest region of chaos, but are presumably less focal than the
Primary Archetype of the Self. The Self is the core and origin of
the higher mind, and lies beyond the body in a condition of
quantum existence, while the ego is the core and origin of the lower
mind, and lies within the body at the center of the physical
senses. The Heart is the bridge between the two – in traditional
psychic terms, the Antarkarana, or spiritual bridge, connecting the body
with the spirit.
The construction of this
psychic bridge has always been called the Great Work throughout history,
and is the known or unknown cause driving all of existence as we know
it. Without the Great Work, the Freudian ego remains incomplete,
existing in doomed isolation, and the Jungian Self remains
obscure, irrelevant, and unattainable. Every human thought, word,
or deed has this motivation at its core, however mundane these might
appear to be. The scientific term for the Great Work is
individuation, coined by Jung as one of his many contributions to
psychological investigation, and, as it implies by its semantic
construction, it involves the making-fully-personal of something (i.e.
an archetype or archetypal symbol) that was not quite so individual and
personal prior to the experience of this process. The individuation
process and its clarification will form the content of the remainder of
this essay, since it includes and eclipses all other forms of spiritual
investigation, including meditation, chanting, visualization, and
contemplation.
Individuation is the key to
the scientific construction of an integrated Psyche and complete
consciousness – the total mind.
Individuation is accomplished
by, in fact is the natural outcome of, another fundamental Jungian
process – realization. Once again, as this term implies, it
involves the making real and personal of something significantly less so
when initially encountered in the Psyche – the archetypal symbol, which
emerges into perception driven by the exclusively extra-personal
mechanism of the underlying archetype. As the symbol in question is
interacted with by the ego within the total mind, it becomes more and
more “real” – i.e. an integrated part of that mind and consciousness.
Paradoxically, although
realization is an interactive process, it is, like psychological
involvement in general, not pure science – nothing is weighed,
counted, or measured in an objective sense. Realization entails the
discovery or identification of a mental symbol of interest (often a
subconscious one), followed by a frequently prolonged series of
interactions with it, all occurring on fundamentally higher, subtler
planes of expression existing beyond the physical one. In the process
of realization, the imaginary becomes the real from the point of
view of psychological interaction, and it must be noted here that, after
all of experience is said and done, psychology is reality.
We are our minds and mental processes – even the body is
ultimately experienced as a construct in and of the mind, if a very
persistent one. We experience in the Newtonian context, but
perceive that experience in the Quantum field of consciousness.
Jung felt that the archetypes and archetypal symbols were more
real than physical experience in their numinousity within the Psyche,
and that their origin in the Self superseded and eclipsed physical
existence.
The essence of the
realization process is dependent upon what symbol is being
realized, and there is an apparent hierarchy of many such symbols
descending in an elaborate and convoluted sequence from the Primary
Archetype of the Self. And the Self may be realized as well –
the well known Self Realization Fellowship of the great Indian
Saint Paramahansa Yogananda being a specific case in point, although the
Jungian Self is arguably even more inclusive than the Yoga Self
of Yogananda, and realization is more effective than meditation alone
as a spiritual development approach. And, although the Self lies
beyond the threshold of observation in an undefined quantum field state,
it can be directly experienced – or realized – through the
attainment of a sufficient degree of detachment on the part of the
observer. Among other things, this requires the detachment by the
observer from being the observer, in fact from being anything
at all – even from expecting anything or knowing anything at all –
but once this is accomplished (and it can be accomplished in deep
meditation used as an adjunct to the realization process) the Self
becomes attainable to the mind, as the mind, without
the mind in a state of pure non-dual ecstasy and Presence. Lesser
archetypal symbols require less effort to realize (the realization of
the Self requires the complete sacrifice of everything) and one
must begin somewhere – e.g. an archetype like the Child is much
more attainable for realization without such extreme sacrifice being
required. In any event, the realization process remains: symbol
identification, interaction, and finally bonding.
Interaction may take place in
many ways and on many psychic levels. One must bear in mind that, if
Jung was correct, the archetype driving the symbol is in control of the
process, and we are not. In fact, there are so many different
ways that this may occur on an individual basis that they are almost
innumerable. The Self is universal, but it appears in human expression
through the multiplicity of individual, personal forms. This was once
expressed in the Hindu documentary 360 Million Gods. As it so
happened, 360 million people was the estimated total population of India
at the time, and each person had accepted the responsibility for
developing personal knowledge of the Divine, along with a personal
relationship with God! Hence, we must all come to know the Self
(Jung’s equivalent expression for God) on an individual, personal basis,
through the Great Work of individuation as accomplished through the
realization process.
Meditation has been mentioned
in a preceding paragraph as an adjunct to the realization process, and
it is a most useful adjunct to be sure, occurring under precisely the
correct conditions of mental balance and heightened internal
receptivity. As often as any other spiritual “laboratory technique”,
meditation yields realization as an outcome, up to and including the
“death before death” mentioned in the last essay, Enlightenment II,
as the goal of Buddhist enlightenment. If the Self exists in a
functionally nonexistent realm of chaotic pre-manifestation, then the
only conceivable way to approach It is to cease personal ego existence,
a goal that would seem at first glance to be contradictory to the
individuation process touted by Jung, wherein we apparently become
more present through archetypal realization. But, consider this –
what are we realizing and individuating but the contents of the
collective unconscious, all of which originate with the Self. Once
again, what Jung was saying with his theories was that it is the
physical expression of consciousness – the body, senses, and ego – that
is fundamentally unreal and the seat of mental dysfunction
inevitably represented by lower mind, and the individuation
process creates reality by bonding with the Self and
archetypes through interaction with the higher mind in this final
stage of the realization process. And all of this takes place in the
Sacred Heart as the spiritual center of human consciousness. The Heart
is the gateway to the Self, the Light, and the Truth of Consciousness –
that we are all One Being United in Love. As we become more and more
fully individuated in the higher mind, the isolation and mental disarray
of the lower mind is dispelled by the Divine Grace of the Self.
What this all comes down to is the consideration of who and what we
really are as living organisms perceiving an existence. Body, senses,
ego? Yes, we all are at least basically these elements of lower
mind. Heart, Soul, Self? Once again, we all are at least
potentially these archetypal elements of higher mind, if we
choose to develop them within the total mind. In the utterly
complex and deceptive matrix of the Post-Post Modern environment this
remains the challenge of human individuation – to scientifically realize
the Truth of Consciousness as the living Self in the knowledge that we
are all each others brothers and sisters under God.
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2010, by Alan Schneider)
Return to Top
|