Psychic Image Quotes

Gossamer strands of memory flutter over her face and eyes in their furious journey back into the almost-forgotten past.  Smells, feelings, images, and body sensations all coalesce into a mural of previous connections with this place.

Lachlain: 'And you must be the soothsayer - ' Nix: 'I prefer predeterminationally abled, thank you.' Her hand shot out, ripping a button from his shirt, so fast it was a blur. She'd taken the one closest to his heart, and for a moment her face turned very cold. She'd made a point - she could have gone for his heart. Then she opened her hand and gasped in surprise. 'A button!' She smiled delightedly. 'You can never have enough of these!' Lachlain: 'How did you find this place?' Regin: 'A phone tap, satellite imaging, and a psychic,' she said, then immediately frowned. 'How do YOU find places?

But the truth is it’s hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I’ve written. It’s always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it’d be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I’ve published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this "look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate you" syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by "antagonize" or "aggravate" has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of "form." The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.

We need to make fun of and ridicule the media images that seek to keep us down, divide us against each other by age, class, and race, and insist that we spend so much psychic energy on our faces, clothes and bodies that nothing is left for ideas, social change, or politics.

In real life, as opposed to pluralist fantasy, every moral and cultural choice of any consequence rules out a whole series of other choices. In an age of images and ideology, however, the difference between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly elusive.

Soon she is lost in another dimension where images prevail and silence rules.  A large, black eye flutters open, staring at Kate from deep within the oceanic darkness of its mysterious pupil.  Falling into the center of this cyclopean abyss, she comes face to face with something completely unexpected.  A tiny infant, seemingly asleep, is suspended in a cocoon of rotating beads of white light above a luminous white stone altar.

Esther wanted to make her brother understand that he was the sun. That he was bright and burning and brilliant, and without his warmth, without his gravity to orient herself around, she would be nothing. She wished they had that psychic twin thing, that she could push images into his head and make him see. Make him see that he was everything.

The real mystery does not behave mysteriously or secretively; it speaks a secret language, it adumbrates itself by a variety of images which all indicate its true nature. I am not speaking of a secret personally guarded by someone, with a content known to its possessor, but of a mystery, a matter or circumstance which is “secret,” i.e., known only through vague hints but essentially unknown. The real nature of matter was unknown to the alchemist: he knew it only in hints. In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it. In order to explain the mystery of matter he projected yet another mystery - his own psychic background -into what was to be explained: Obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius! This procedure was not, of course, intentional; it was an involuntary occurrence.

Most humans who have been reared with the creature comforts of the spiritually vacuous industrialized Western world will cease their search [for Truth] at the first signs of physical, psychic, or mundane resistance; or as soon as they encounter the difficulties of dissolving deeply entrenched self-delusions. Look at the world around you, and tell me that it appears to be filled with people genuinely in search of Truth!

Dr. Kunkel’s teacher, Dr. Jung, believed that archetypes are blueprints of the basic human qualities we all share. The archetypes themselves are undefinable natural patterns or forces that shape life in all ages and places. They cannot be known directly, but archetypal themes and images appear in myth, fairy tales, dreams, and fantasies. We tend to think of ourselves as unique individuals, and to a great extent we are. But just as there are shared patterns that shape our physical existence, such as having two arms and legs, two eyes, ten fingers and toes, so there are underlying patterns that shape our psychic existence.

To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skin's blister? My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home.

To leave the comforts of home, the mother world, one must have some place to go. Admittedly, the rites of passage of traditional cultures were to initiate the youth into a simpler society, a more homogenous culture than ours. As well, their interest lay not in the individuation of the person but in the integration of the unformed person into the collective definition of tribal masculinity. Still, take away such psychically charged images of identity, take away the wisdom of the elders, take away the community of men, and one has the modern world.

The few weeks I have had at my disposal have not given me the chance to revive and to work through my old memories in such a way that I might offer you a solid introduction into the psychic life of Indians.

Grosso, who traveled to Italy to study Padre Pio's stigmata firsthand, states, "One of the categories in my attempt to analyze Padre Pio is to say that he had an ability to symbolically transform physical reality. In other words, the level of consciousness he was operating at enabled him to transform physical reality in the light of certain symbolic ideas. For example, he identified with the wounds of the crucifixion and his body became permeable to those psychic symbols, gradually assuming their form. "70 So it appears that through the use of images, the brain can tell the body what to do, including telling it to make more images. Images making images. Two mirrors reflecting each other infinitely. Such is the nature of the mind/body relationship in a holographic universe.

The words of the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined....From a psychological viewpoint this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought....The...elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.

I had to first overcome the nightmares: my dreams were populated by menaces, shadows, murderous persecutions, disgusting events and objects, ambiguous sexual relations that excited me while also making me feel guilty. Here, I was a character inferior to my level of consciousness in the real world, capable of misdeeds that I would never have allowed myself to perpetrate while awake. I repeated many times, like a litany, “It is I who dream, just as it is I who am awake, and not a perverse and vulnerable child. The dreams happen in me; they are part of me. All that appears is myself. These monsters are aspects of me that have not been resolved. They are not my enemies. The subconscious is my ally. I must confront the terrible images and transform them.” I often had the same nightmare: I was in a desert, and a psychic entity determined to destroy me would come from the horizon as a huge cloud of negativity. I would wake up screaming and soaked in sweat. Now, tired of this undignified flight, I decided to offer myself in sacrifice. At the climax of the dream, in a state of lucid terror, I said, “Enough, I will stop wanting to wake up! Abomination, destroy me!” The entity approached threateningly. I stood still, calm. Then, the immense threat dissolved. I woke up for a few seconds, then peacefully went back to sleep. I realized it was I myself who had fed my terrors. I now knew that what terrifies us loses all its power in the moment that we stop fighting it. I began a long period during which whenever I had dreams, instead of running I would face my enemies and ask them what they wanted to tell me. Gradually, the images transformed before me and began to offer me presents: sometimes a ring, other times a golden sphere or a pair of keys. I now understood that just as every devil is a fallen angel, every angel is also a demon that has risen.

But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought; the incongruence between its images and the feelings they engender; then the dream's evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or rejecting it—all these and many other problems have for many hundred years demanded answers which up till now could never have been satisfactory. Before all there is the question as to the meaning of the dream, a question which is in itself double-sided. There is, firstly, the psychical significance of the dream, its position with regard to the psychical processes, as to a possible biological function; secondly, has the dream a meaning—can sense be made of each single dream as of other mental syntheses?

Willed introversion, in fact, is one of the classic implements of creative genius and can be employed as a deliberate device. It drives the psychic energies into depth and activates the lost continent of unconscious infantile and archetypal images. The result, of course, may be a disintegration of consciousness more or less complete (neurosis, psychosis: the plight of spellbound Daphne); but on the other hand, if the personality is able to absorb and integrate the new forces, there will be experienced an almost superhuman degree of self-consciousness and masterful control. This is a basic principle of the Indian disciplines of yoga. It has been the way, also, of many creative spirits in the West.25 It cannot be described, quite, as an answer to any specific call. Rather, it is a deliberate, terrific refusal to respond to anything but the deepest, highest, richest answer to the as yet unknown demand of some waiting void within: a kind of total strike, or rejection of the offered terms of life, as a result of which some power of transformation carries the problem to a plane of new magnitudes, where it is suddenly and finally resolved.

However, the natural symbol, without our being sufficiently conscious of the fact, is identical with the reality of the world that appears to us, for every object in the natural world is at the same time a symbolic reality to us. The psyche certainly does not use an "object" of nature as a "symbol," but rather the experience of an "object" itself is always already symbolic experience. The star or tree in us is no less real and no less symbolic than it is in outward experience. For each possibility of experience either presupposes a spiritually forming, that is to say a symbolic activity, or is identical with this. That is, everything spiritual appears to us first not just in nature but as nature; or we could formulate this just as well the other way around: everything natural, whether outward or inward, appears to us as an image, that is to say as formed spirit. We are surrounded by images, inwardly and outwardly, but at the same time formed and determined in all our experiences by the natural symbol as though by a unitary natural-spiritual reality, for our psychic system only grasps that which appears to us as the real world through the world of natural symbolism.

Every concept in our conscious mind, in short, has its own psychic associations. While such associations may vary in intensity (according to relative importance of the concept to our whole personality, or according to the other ideas and even complexes to which it is associated in our unconscious), they are capable of changing the "normal" character of that concept. It may even become something quite different as it drifts below the level of consciousness. These subliminal aspects of everything that happens to us may seem to play very little part in our daily lives. But in dream analysis, where the psychologist is dealing with expressions of the unconscious, they are very relevant, for they are the almost invisible roots of our conscious thoughts. That is why commonplace objects or ideas can assume such powerful psychic significance in a dream that we may awake seriously disturbed, in spite of having dreamed of nothing worse than a locked room or a missed train. The images produced in dreams are much more picturesque and vivid than the concepts and experiences that are their waking counterparts. One of the reasons for this is that, in a dream, such concepts can express their unconscious meaning. In our conscious thoughts, we restrain ourselves within the limits of rational statements-statements that are much less colorful because we have stripped them of most of their psychic associations.

It is illegitimate to conclude from the prohibition anything regarding the nature of what is prohibited; for the prohibition proceeds by dishonouring the guilty, that is to say, by inducing a disfigured or displaced image of the thing that is really prohibited or desired. Indeed, this is how social repression prolongs itself by means of psychic repression without which it would have no grip on desire.

In sum, then a conservative tech writer offers a really attractive way of looking at viewer passivity and TV's institutionalization of irony, narcissism, nihilism, stasis. It's not our fault! It's outmoded technology's fault! If TV-dissemination were up to date, it would be impossible for it to "institutionalize" anything through its demonic "mass psychology"! Let's let Joe B., the little lonely guy, be his own manipulator or video-bits! Once all experience is finally reduced to marketable image, once the receiving user of user-friendly receivers can choose freely, Americanly, from an Americanly infinite variety of moving images hardly distinguishable from real-life images, and can then choose further just how he wishes to store, enhance, edit, recombine, and present those images to himself, in the privacy of his very own home and skull, TV's ironic, totalitarian grip on the American psychic cajones will be broken!" E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993)

He stepped on to the balcony and looked out over the desert, at the red dunes rolling to the windows directly below. For the fourth time he had moved up a floor, and the sequence of identical rooms he had occupied were like displaced images of himself seen through a prism. Their common focus, that elusive final definition of himself which he had sought for so long, still remained to be found. Timelessly the sand swept towards him, its shifting contours, approximating more closely than any other landscape he had found to complete psychic zero, enveloping his past failures and uncertainties, masking them in its enigmatic canopy.

To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because the she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened. The bear is associated with many huntress Goddesses: Artemis and Diana in Greece and Rome, and Muerte and Hecoteptl, mud women deities in the Latina cultures. These Goddesses bestowed upon women the power of tracking, knowing, 'digging out' the psychic aspects of all things. To the Japanese the bear is the symbol of loyalty, wisdom, and strength. In northern Japan where the Ainu tribe lives, the bear is one who can talk to God directly and bring messages back for humans. The cresent moon bear is considered a sacred being, one who was given the white mark on his throat by the Buddhist Goddess Kwan-Yin, whose emblem is the crescent moon. Kwan-Yin is the Goddess of Deep Compassion and the bear is her emissary. "In the psyche, the bear can be understood as the ability to regulate one's life, especially one's feeling life. Bearish power is the ability to move in cycles, be fully alert, or quiet down into a hibernative sleep that renews one's energy for the next cycle. The bear image teaches that it is possible to maintain a kind of pressure gauge for one's emotional life, and most especially that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one's territory, make one's boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all the same.

Telling women’s stories was—and would always be—Jackson’s major fictional project. As she had in The Road Through the Wall and the stories of The Lottery, with Hangsaman Jackson continued to chronicle the lives of women whose behavior does not conform to society’s expectations. Neither an obedient daughter nor a docile wife-in-training, Natalie represents every girl who does not quite fit in, who refuses to play the role that has been predetermined for her—and the tragic psychic consequences she suffers as a result. During the postwar years, Betty Friedan would later write, the image of the American woman “suffered a schizophrenic split” between the feminine housewife and the career woman: “The new feminine morality story is . . . the heroine’s victory over Mephistopheles . . . the devil inside the heroine herself.” That is precisely what happens in Hangsaman. Unfortunately, it was a story that the American public, in the process of adjusting to the changing roles of women and the family in the wake of World War II, was not yet ready to countenance.

Individuals blind to the sexual opposite within them, be they men or women, never realise that the partner they choose is chosen because he or she bears some resemblance to the anima or animus. The anger and hurt felt at the 'true discovery' of the partner's failings is really anger and hurt directed at oneself; and this would become apparent, were one to see the dark figure within one's own unconscious impelling one into a particular relationship. Like always attracts like; rather than railing at the partner, one should take a long, close look at one's own psychic makeup. But it is easier to complain bitterly --- to analysts, marriage counsellors, and also astrologers --- that yet another relationship has collapsed and yet another partner has proved to be a bad choice. It is also fashionable to blame this on the failures of the parent of the opposite sex; but the past continues to live within a person not only because in some way it is part of his own substance, but also because he permits it to do so. When a disastrous relationship occurs once, we may fool ourselves into believing it is chance; when it occurs twice, it has become a pattern, and a pattern is an unmistakable indication that the anima or animus is at work in the unconscious, propelling the helpless ego into relationships or situations which are baffling, painful, and frighteningly repetitive. Again, it is much wiser to look within oneself for the source of the pattern, rather than at the inherent failure of the opposite sex. For these destructive patterns are the psyche's way of making itself known, although great effort is often required to fulfil its demand for transformation. And great sacrifices also are required - of such precious commodities as one's pride, one's self-image, one's self-righteousness.

It’s like I have this demon inside of me, and I want it gone, but the idea of removing it via pill is . . . I don’t know . . . weird. But a lot of days I get over that, because I do really hate the demon.” “You often try to understand your experience through metaphor, Aza: It’s like a demon inside of you; you’ll call your consciousness a bus, or a prison cell, or a spiral, or a whirlpool, or a loop, or a—I think you once called it a scribbled circle, which I found interesting.” “Yeah,” I said. “One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.” She turned to her computer, shook her mouse to wake it up, and then clicked an image on her desktop. “I want to share something Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. . . . The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry.’ And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with. Nor do either of those terms connote the courage people in such pains exemplify, which is why I’d ask you to frame your mental health around a word other than crazy.

Ego consciousness is a sense organ which perceives the world and the unconscious by means of images, but this image-forming capacity is itself a psychic product, not a quality of the world. Image formation alone makes perception and assimilation possible.

To make sense of the pain of their lives, they often become spiritual seekers trying to convince themselves that someone loves them; if people do not, then God must. These individuals are often extremely sensitive in both positive and negative ways. Having never embodied, they have access to energetic levels of information to which less traumatized people are not as sensitive; they can be quite psychic and energetically attuned to people, animals, and the environment and can feel confluent and invaded by other people’s emotions.

Only that which acts upon me do I recognize as real and actual. But that which has no effect upon me might as well not exist. The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which, independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature.

All great, simple images reveal a psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a "psychic state," and even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy. Psychologists generally, and Francoise Minkowska in particular, together with those whom she has succeeded interesting in the subject, have studied the drawing of houses made by children, and even used them for testing. Indeed, the house-test has the advantage of welcoming spontaneity, for many children draw a house spontaneously while dreaming over their paper and pencil. To quote Anne Balif: "Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug, protected house which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations." It will have the right shape, and nearly always there will be some indication of its inner strength. In certain drawings, quite obviously, to quote Mme. Balif, "it is warm indoors, and there is a fire burning, such a big fire, in fact, that it can be seen coming out of the chimney." When the house is happy, soft smoke rises in gay rings above the roof. If the child is unhappy, however, the house bears traces of his distress. In this connection, I recall that Francoise Minkowska organized an unusually moving exhibition of drawings by Polish and Jewish children who had suffered the cruelties of the German occupation during the last war. One child, who had been hidden in a closet every time there was an alert, continued to draw narrow, cold, closed houses long after those evil times were over. These are what Mme. Minkowska calls "motionless" houses, houses that have become motionless in their rigidity. "This rigidity and motionlessness are present in the smoke as well as in the window curtains. The surrounding trees are quite straight and give the impression of standing guard over the house". Mme. Minkowska knows that a live house is not really "motionless," that, particularly, it integrates the movements by means of which one accedes to the door. Thus the path that leads to the house is often a climbing one. At times, even, it is inviting. In any case, it always possesses certain kinesthetic features. If we were making a Rorschach test, we should say that the house has "K." Often a simple detail suffices for Mme. Minkowska, a distinguished psychologist, to recognize the way the house functions. In one house, drawn by an eight-year-old child, she notes that there is " a knob on the door; people go in the house, they live there." It is not merely a constructed house, it is also a house that is "lived-in." Quite obviously the door-knob has a functional significance. This is the kinesthetic sign, so frequently forgotten in the drawings of "tense" children. Naturally, too, the door-knob could hardly be drawn in scale with the house, its function taking precedence over any question of size. For it expresses the function of opening, and only a logical mind could object that it is used to close as well as to open the door. In the domain of values, on the other hand, a key closes more often than it opens, whereas the door-knob opens more often than it closes. And the gesture of closing is always sharper, firmer, and briefer than that of opening. It is by weighing such fine points as these that, like Francoise Minkowska, one becomes a psychologist of houses.

And I’d stand there trying to see it, the way you try to remember a dream, where you squint and it’s right there on the tip of your psychic tongue but you can’t get it back. The image is gone. That is one of the worst feelings I can think of, to have had a wonderful moment or insight or vision or phrase, to know you had it, and then to lose it.

This argument illustrates the way in which archetypes appear in practical experience: They are, at the same time, both images and emotions. One can speak of an archetype only when these two aspects are simultaneous. When there is merely the image, then there is simply a word-picture of little consequence. But by being charged with emotion, the image gains numinosity (or psychic energy); it becomes dynamic, and consequences of some kind must flow from it.

It is the same problem as in Job. As the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the self, and everything that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter. Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasiness in the self, for which reason the question is generally ignored because of its painfulness. But that does not mean that it remains unasked in the unconscious.

The outcome of an actual encounter with someone who is a carrier of the anima or animus projection 'frequently gives rise in dreams to the symbol of psychic pregnancy, a symbol that goes back to the primordial image of the hero's birth. The child that is to be born signifies the individuality, which, though present, is not yet conscious.' The real psychic purpose of the conventional man's affair with his very unconventional anima woman is to produce a symbolic child, which represents a union of the opposites in his personality and is therefore a symbol of the self. The meeting with the anima/us represents a connection to the unconscious even deeper than that of the shadow. In the case of the shadow, it is a meeting with the disdained and rejected pieces of the total psyche, the inferior and unwanted qualities. In the meeting with the anima/us, it is a contact with levels of the psyche which has the potential to lead into the deepest and highest (at any rate furthest) reaches that the ego can attain.

In practical terms this means that the existence of human beings will never be satisfactorily explained in terms of isolated instincts or purposive mechanism such as hunger, power, sex, survival, perpetuation of the species, and so on. That is, man’s main purpose is not to eat, drink, etc., but to be human. Above and beyond these drives, our inner psychic reality serves to manifest a living mystery that can be expressed only by a symbol, and for its expression the unconscious often chooses the powerful image of the Cosmic Man.

Just as the Self is not entirely contained in our conscious experience of time (in our space-time dimension), it is also simultaneously omnipresent. Moreover, it appears frequently in a form that hints at a special omnipresence; that is, it manifests itself as a gigantic, symbolic human being who embraces and contains the whole cosmos. When this image turns up in the dreams of an individual, we may hope for a creative solution to his conflict, because now the vital psychic center is activated (i.e., the whole being is condensed into oneness) in order to overcome the difficulty.

I am therefore of the opinion that, in general, psychic energy or libido creates the God-image by making use of archetypal patterns, and that man in consequence worships the psychic force active within him as something divine. (Pl. va.) We thus arrive at the objectionable conclusion that, from the psychological point of view, the God-image is a real but subjective phenomenon. As Seneca says: “God is near you, he is with you, he is within you,” or, as in the First Epistle of John, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love,” and “If we love one another, God abides in us.”13

There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action. When a situation occurs which corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.

Our Christian doctrine is a highly differentiated symbol that expresses the transcendent psychic—the God-image and its properties, to speak with Dorn. The Creed is a “symbolum.” This comprises practically everything of importance that can be ascertained about the manifestations of the psyche in the field of inner experience, but it does not include Nature, at least not in any recognizable form. Consequently, at every period of Christianity there have been subsidiary currents or undercurrents that have sought to investigate the empirical aspect of Nature not only from the outside but also from the inside.

Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. The image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or "archetype" of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman—in short, an inherited system of psychic adaptation. Even if no women existed, it would still be possible, at any given time, to deduce from this unconscious image exactly how a woman would have to be constituted psychically.

Repeated belittling remarks or criticisms have serious, damaging psychological effects on the victim. The negative thought, when accepted into the aura and into some of the chakras (energy centers) of the victim, will result in poor self-image, low level of self-confidence and will hinder the future success of the victim. Negative thoughts planted into the chakras of the victim are sometimes called negative programs by other authors of self-help books. In most cases, the planting of a negative thought into the chakra of another person is usually unintentional. Intentional or not, the effects are still psychologically damaging.

As the highest value and supreme dominant in the psychic hierarchy, the God-image is immediately related to, or identical with, the self, and everything that happens to the God-image has an effect on the latter. Any uncertainty about the God-image causes a profound uneasiness in the self, for which reason the question is generally ignored because of its painfulness. But that does not mean that it remains unasked in the unconscious. What is more, it is answered by views and beliefs like materialism, atheism, and similar substitutes, which spread like epidemics. They crop up wherever and whenever one waits in vain for the legitimate answer. The ersatz product represses the real question into the unconscious and destroys the continuity of historical tradition which is the hallmark of civilization. The result is bewilderment and confusion.

It is for this reason that Jung may be right in assuming that energy is a universal concept applicable to psychic functioning as well as the physical universe. Jung then describes how energy has two attributes, intensity and extensity. Extensity of energy is not transferable from one structure to another without changing the structure; intensity of energy is. By extensity, Jung is referring to the quality of the energy. In other words, he is pointing out that there is "something" that travels from one place to another when an energy transformation occurs. For example, a ball that is hit straight up carries with it energy continually undergoing transformation. It has kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy. The quantity of kinetic energy is continually transferring into potential energy as the ball rises. Thus at the top of its trajectory, the ball is momentarily at rest, i.e., with no kinetic energy, but with full potential energy. The evaluation of its quantities of energy is intensive but the qualities of kinetic and potential are extensive. The ball cannot transfer its kinetic quality into potential quality without changing its form by breaking up, for example, into parts. Similarly there is a psychic extensive factor that is not transferable. Jung's concept of extensity and intensity are forerunners of David Bohm's concept of implicate and explicate order, about which I shall have more to say later. They are also forerunners of the conceptual division of the world into objects and actions of objects: subjects and verbs. They comprise a complementarity, a dual way of dealing with experience. They are hints of the division between mind and matter, physical and psychical, words and images.

Approaching sorrow, however, requires enormous psychic strength. For us to tolerate the rigors of engaging the images, emotions, memories, and dreams that arise in times of grief, we need to fortify our interior ground. This is done through developing a practice that we sustain over time. Any form will do—writing, drawing, meditation, prayer, dance, or something else—as long as we continue to show up and maintain our effort. A practice offers ballast, something to help us hold steady in difficult times. This deepens our capacity to hold the vulnerable emotions surrounding loss without being overwhelmed by them. Grief work is not passive: it implies an ongoing practice of deepening, attending and listening. It is an act of devotion, rooted in love and compassion. (See the resources at the end of this book for more on developing the practice of compassion.)

The principle of conscious life is: 'Nihil est in intellectu, quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' But the principle of the unconscious is the autonomy of the psyche itself, reflecting in the play of its images not the world but itself, even though it utilizes the illustrative possibilities offered by the sensible world in order to make its images clear. The sensory datum, however, is not the causa efficiens of this; rather, it is autonomously selected and exploited by the psyche, with the result that the rationality of the cosmos is constantly being violated in the most distressing manner. But the sensible world has an equally devastating effect on the deeper psychic processes when it breaks into them as a causa efficiens. If reason is not to be outraged on the one hand and the creative play of images not violently suppressed on the other, a circumspect and farsighted synthetic procedure is required in order to accomplish the paradoxical union of irreconcilables.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize once again that the fish symbol is a spontaneous assimilation of the Christ-figure of the gospels, and is thus a symptom which shows us in what manner and with what meaning the symbol was assimilated by the unconscious. In this respect the patristic allegory of the capture of Leviathan (with the Cross as the hook, and the Crucified as the bait) is highly characteristic: a content (fish) of the unconscious (sea) has been caught and has attached itself to the Christ-figure. Hence the expression used by St. Augustine: “de profundo levatus” (drawn from the deep). This is true enough of the fish; but of Christ? The image of the fish came out of the depths of the unconscious as an equivalent of the historical Christ figure, and if Christ was invoked as “Ichthys,” this name referred to what had come up out of the depths. The fish symbol is thus the bridge between the historical Christ and the psychic nature of man, where the archetype of the Redeemer dwells. In this way Christ became an inner experience, the “Christ within.

Accordingly, love would seem to be no trifling thing: it is God himself.46 But, on the other hand, “love” is an extreme example of anthropomorphism and, together with hunger, the immemorial psychic driving-force of humanity. It is, psychologically considered, a function of relationship on the one hand and a feeling-toned psychic condition on the other, which, as we have seen, practically coincides with the God-image. There can be no doubt that love has an instinctual determinant; it is an activity peculiar to mankind, and, if the language of religion defines God as “love,” there is always the great danger of confusing the love which works in man with the workings of God. This is an obvious instance of the above-mentioned fact that the archetype is inextricably interwoven with the individual psyche, so that the greatest care is needed to differentiate the collective type, at least conceptually, from the personal psyche. In practice, however, this differentiation is not without danger if human “love” is thought of as the prerequisite for the divine presence (I John 4: 12).

I have made several comparisons... between modern and primitive man. Such comparisons... are essential to an understanding of the symbol-making propensities of man, and of the part that dreams play in expressing them. For one finds that many dreams present images and associations that are analogous to primitive ideas, myths, and rites. These dream images were called "archaic remnants" by Freud; the phrase suggests that they were psychic elements surviving in the human mind from ages long ago. This point of view is characteristic of those who regard the unconscious as a mere appendix of consciousness (or, more picturesquely, as a trash can that collects all the refuse of the conscious mind)... Further investigation suggested to me that this attitude is untenable and should be discarded. I found that associations and images of this kind are an integral part of the unconscious, and can be observed everywhere whether the dreamer is educated or illiterate, intelligent or stupid. They are not in any sense lifeless or meaningless "remnants." They still function, and they are especially valuable.

threat condition state. Although Sheepdogs operate in “yellow,” they’re prepared to escalate to “orange” or “red” in a moment’s notice. Though the warrior trains for violence and can withstand the psychological impact of violence, he/ she abhors violence. Identifying and diffusing a threat is the largest segment of the Unbeatable Mind warrior training. Only when all else fails will the warrior engage in a violence to end the threat. When this happens, he/he terrifies their opponent with an offensive mind. Exercise Think about a violent and vicious animal - wolverine, lion, or bear. Sit in silence and begin your breath control. Count backwards from 100. At 50, invoke the image and psychological energy of your chosen animal. Feel the animal’s ferocious attack energy. Feel the animal’s emotions as it seeks to protect its offspring. Imagine yourself fighting a violent criminal with the same psychic animal. Now, practice turning this energy on and off, like a light switch. Repeat this exercise daily for a month. This will cultivate an offensive mind-set and provide an enormous amount of psychological energy to be used in the event of a violent encounter.

At the present time, political power is everywhere constituted on insufficient foundations. On the one hand it emanates from the so-called divine right of kings, which is none other than military force; on the other from universal suffrage, which is merely the instinct of the masses, or mere average intelligence. A nation is not a number of uniform values or ciphers; it is a living being composed of organs. So long as national representation is not the image of this organization, right from its working to its teaching classes, there will be no organic or intelligent national representation. So long as the delegates of all scientific bodies, and the whole of the Christian churches do not sit together in one upper council, our societies will be governed by instinct, by passion, and by might, and there will be no social temple. ...We are beginning to understand that Jesus, at the very height of his consciousness, the transfigured Christ, is opening his loving arms to his brothers, the other Messiahs who preceded him, beams of the Living Word as he was, that he is opening them wide to Science in its entirety, Art in its divinity, and Life in its completeness. But his promise cannot be fulfilled without the help of all the living forces of humanity. Two main things are necessary nowadays for the continuation of the mighty work: on the one hand, the progressive unfolding of experimental science and intuitive philosophy to facts of psychic order, intellectual principles, and spiritual proofs; on the other, the expansion of Christian dogma in the direction of tradition and esoteric science, and subsequently a reorganization of the Church according to a graduated initiation; this by a free and irresistible movement of all Christian churches, which are also equally daughters of the Christ. Science must become religious and religion scientific. This double evolution, already in preparation, would finally and forcibly bring about a reconciliation of Science and Religion on esoteric grounds. The work will not progress without considerable difficulty at first, but the future of European Society depends on it. The transformation of Christianity, in its esoteric sense would bring with it that of Judaism and Islam, as well as a regeneration of Brahmanism and Buddhism in the same fashion, it would accordingly furnish a religious basis for the reconciliation of Asia and Europe.

Even man’s strength comes from Brahman. It is clear from these examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, that the Brahman concept, by virtue of all its attributes and symbols, coincides with that of a dynamic or creative principle which I have termed libido. The word Brahman means prayer, incantation, sacred speech, sacred knowledge (veda), holy life, the sacred caste (the Brahmans), the Absolute. Deussen stresses the prayer connotation as being especially characteristic.71 The word derives from barh (cf. L. farcire), ‘to swell,’72 whence “prayer” is conceived as “the upward-striving will of man towards the holy, the divine.” This derivation indicates a particular psychological state, a specific concentration of libido, which through overflowing innervations produces a general state of tension associated with the feeling of swelling. Hence, in common speech, one frequently uses images like “overflowing with emotion,” “unable to restrain oneself,” “bursting” when referring to such a state. (“What filleth the heart, goeth out by the mouth.”) The yogi seeks to induce this concentration or accumulation of libido by systematically withdrawing attention (libido) both from external objects and from interior psychic states, in a word, from the opposites. The elimination of sense-perception and the blotting out of conscious contents enforce a lowering of consciousness (as in hypnosis) and an activation of the contents of the unconscious, i.e., the primordial images, which, because of their universality and immense antiquity, possess a cosmic and suprahuman character. This accounts for all those sun, fire, flame, wind, breath similes that from time immemorial have been symbols of the procreative and creative power that moves the world. As I have made a special study of these libido symbols in my book Symbols of Transformation, I need not expand on this theme here.

The symbol is described by the poet as bizarre, immoral, illicit, outraging our moral feelings and our ideas of the spiritual and divine; it appeals to sensuality, is wanton, and liable to endanger public morals by provoking sexual fantasies. These attributes define something that is blatantly opposed to our moral values and aesthetic judgment because it lacks the higher feeling-values, and the absence of a “guiding thought” suggests the irrationality of its intellectual content. The verdict “opposed to God” might equally well be “anti-Christian,” since this episode is set neither in antiquity nor in the East. By reason of its attributes, the symbol stands for the inferior functions, for psychic contents that are not acknowledged. Although it is nowhere stated, it is obvious that the “image” is of a naked human body—a “living form.” It expresses the complete freedom to be what one is, and also the duty to be what one is. It is a symbol of man as he might be, the perfection of moral and aesthetic beauty, moulded by nature and not by some artificial ideal. To hold such an image before the eyes of present-day man can have no other effect than to release everything in him that lies captive and unlived. If only half of him is civilized and the other half barbarian, all his barbarism will be aroused, for a man’s hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities. Hence the fate of the jewel was sealed the moment it appeared in the world. The dumb shepherd lad who first found it was half cudgelled to death by the enraged peasants, who in the end “hurled” the jewel into the street. Thus the redeeming symbol runs its brief but typical course. The parallel with the Passion is unmistakable, and the jewel’s saviour-nature is further borne out by the fact that it appears only once every thousand years. The appearance of a saviour, a Saoshyant, or a Buddha is a rare phenomenon.

I have a friend—she is the kind of friend that all of us have—who is a true believer in astrology and psychic phenomenon, a devotee of reiki, a collector of crystals, a woman who occasionally sends me emails with cryptic titles and a single line of text asking, for example, the time of day that I was born or whether I have any mental associations with moths. None that come immediately to mind, I write back. But then of course moths are suddenly everywhere: on watercolor prints in the windows of art shops, in Virginia Woolf’s diaries, on the pages of the illustrated children’s book I read to my nieces. This woman, whom I have known since I was very young, also experiences strange echoes and patterns, but for her they are not the result of confirmation bias or the brain’s inclination toward narrative. She believes that the patterns are part of the very fabric of reality, that they refer to universal archetypes that express themselves in our individual minds. Transcendent truths, she has told me many times, cannot be articulated intellectually because higher thought is limited by the confines of language. These larger messages from the universe speak through our intuitions, and we modern people have become so completely dominated by reason that we have lost this connection to instinct. She claims to receive many of these messages through images and dreams. In a few cases she has predicted major global events simply by heeding some inchoate sensation—an aching knee, the throbbing of an old wound, a general feeling of unease. This woman is a poet, and I tend to grant her theories some measure of poetic license. It seems to me that beneath all the New Agey jargon, she is speaking of the power of the unconscious mind, a realm that is no doubt elusive enough to be considered a mystical force in its own right. I have felt its power most often in my writing, where I’ve learned that intuition can solve problems more efficiently than logical inference. This was especially true when I wrote fiction. I would often put an image in a story purely by instinct, not knowing why it was there, and then the image would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for some conflict that emerged between the characters—again, something that was not planned deliberately—as though my subconscious were making the connections a step or two ahead of my rational mind. But these experiences always took place within the context of language, and I couldn’t understand what it would mean to perceive knowledge outside that context. I’ve said to my friend many times that I believe in the connection between language and reason, that I don’t believe thought is possible without it. But like many faith systems, her beliefs are completely self-contained and defensible by their own logic. Once, when I made this point, she smiled and said, “Of course, you’re an Aquarius.

Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused." ~African Saying

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Appreciation! Appreciation…. One of the nicer things we can get or give is appreciation. It makes what we do worthwhile! It inspires us to work harder, do better and above all, makes us feel better about ourselves. I feel appreciated when someone says thank you…. It’s as simple as that! Of course it’s also nice to receive an award for something I wrote. I recently won two awards for The Exciting Story of Cuba and it made my day! It felt even better to share the moment with my crew because they deserved it and I certainly appreciate them and their contribution, for the effort I got credit for. It’s really very nice when we appreciate people for what they have done for us and remember that it is better to give than receive. Now here is an existential thought that I’ll run past you. You might have heard the ancient chestnut.… “Does a tree make a noise when it falls in a forest with no one around to hear it?” The answer is debatable, with no definitive answer that everyone accepts. Now let’s take this thought one step further by contemplating life itself. Is there really anything, if there is no one to appreciate it? Could this account for our existence? Do we really have to exist at this time and place, within this sphere of infinity, to appreciate everything we are aware of including the universe? To me it’s an interesting thought, since philosophically “I am!” More interesting is that so are you and everyone else. Without us, would there be universe? And if so, would it make any difference, because there would be no one to know. What makes the difference is that we are here and we know that we are here! Therefore, we can appreciate it! I’m not a philosopher. I’m really just another “id” that is contemplating my existence, but what I want to impart is the importance of sharing this existence with others by appreciating them. The English poet John Donne said, “No man is an Island.” I guess the original content is found in prose, not poetry; however it’s the thought that counts. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theory of personality states that, “The id is the personality component made up of unconscious psychic energy that works to satisfy basic urges, needs and desires.” Now the way I see it, is that the reason that we are here is to appreciate each other and our wondrous surroundings. I might even take things a step further by getting religion into the mix. If we are made in our creator’s image, could that mean that our creator, like us, desires the appreciation of his creation and we are here to appreciate what he, or she, has created? The way we as a people are polarized causes me to wonder, if we are not all acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. Has our generation been so spoiled that we all insist on getting things our way, without understanding that we are interdependent. Seeing as how we all inhabit this one planet, and that everything we possess, need, aspire to and love, is right here on this rock floating in space; we should take stock and care for each other and, above all, appreciate what we have, as well as each other. So much from me…. I’ve been busy trying to get Suppressed I Rise – Revised Edition and Seawater One…. Going To Sea!, published before the holidays. It’s been a long time in coming, but I’m hoping that with just a little extra effort, these books will be available at your favorite book dealer in time to find a place under your Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush. That’s right! Just look at your calendar and you’ll see its October and that the holidays are almost here again! Take care, appreciate each other and have a good week. It’s later than you think….

The images on the tape had not been created mechanically, by a television camera or any similar device. Instead, the individual responsible had utilized his or her own psychological power to project them directly onto the videotape. Psychic photography, “thoughtography”. Psychic power had imprinted those images onto a blank tape that had been left in the VCR by pure chance. The Loop was a closed world. Going strictly by the physical laws that obtained there, such a thing was not possible. That wasn’t the way the set-up worked. Kaoru began to feel as if he were watching a movie—a well-made one, to be sure, but based on some pretty juvenile premises.

You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about vampirism being the ultimate oral fixation.” I groaned. “Please, can we give this whole vampire thing a rest?” “I don’t mean vampires as blood suckers or soul suckers. But as oral robbers.” My brow furrowed. “Oral robbers?” “Yes. Those who steal with their mouths—not by way of fangs, but with words.” “I don’t understand,” I said. Grayson turned his back on me and reached back into the cupboard. “What if I told you I was thinking of letting you go, Drex?” My gut fell four inches. “What? Why? What did I do wrong?” He turned back around. “Did you feel an internal shift?” “Internal shift?” I said. “I feel destroyed. Like I want to throw up! Why are you doing this?” “To prove my point.” “What point? That I’m no good?” “No. That in a way, we’re all oral robbers—with our words.” “Huh?” I whined. Grayson studied me clinically. “All I did was utter some particular arrangement of tones through my vocal chords. You interpreted them as words, and applied your own meaning to them.” I was hurt. And on my last nerve with Grayson’s stupid analogies. “Come on, Grayson! Just tell me. Am I fired, or what?” Grayson locked his green eyes on mine. “My words formed images in your mind that sent chemical and hormonal secretions into your bloodstream, causing emotions that shifted your entire world view.” I glared at him. “Fine. I’ll pack my bags and leave with the Triple A guy.” “See?” Grayson said. “Now you’re insecure about your whole future, based on a couple of words that came out of my mouth.” “You’d be undone, too, if you just got fired and had to go back to Point Paradise and work with Earl!” “That’s just it,” Grayson said. “You don’t have to. I didn’t fire you. I only asked you, ‘What if I told you I was thinking of letting you go?’ You did the rest yourself.” I blanched. “So ... I’m not fired?” “No. Like I said before, it was all to prove my point. Every word we say is a psychic vampire, Drex, striking others with the power of suggestion that either drains or boosts the energy of its intended target.” “Oh,” I said, feeling a wave of confused relief wash over me. “In other words, we all live and die by the thoughts and words we chose to believe?

Some astrologers are, as we shall say from now on, psychically aligned, and can even “get” images of those factors. I don’t have Cathy’s natal chart, so I can’t say for sure if her

The psychic subject in remote-viewing a site with an atomic reactor may well overlay the impressions with a ‘teapot’ or a ‘furnace’ because these are the memory images which come closest to what is being psychically sensed. “If you take the time to let the viewer study diagrams of atomic reactors and photographs of them and their surroundings, the next time they encounter one in psychic seeing they are more likely to identify it correctly rather than call it a teapot.

Safer for him if he didn’t have to see that smile every day, to imagine sucking those rings from her toes, one at a time. He tamped that image down as quickly as it rose to the surface and tried not to imagine how she would taste, how the texture of her skin would feel against his own.

SEEING Seeing is one of human beings' highest features. It's an extraordinary experience that helps you to grasp your own vastness. There are, of course, different levels of vision. Our constant aim will be to escape the lower astral clear-sightedness of the trance-medium psychics and to step into the ‘vision of Truth’ or self-vision, which is like an eruption of all mental limitations. A key difference between these two ways of vision is that the pictures that stream into the consciousness are attached in the latter. On the other hand, one of the ways to achieve the sight of Truth is to become less interested in what you see and focus more on the act of seeing, enabling your state of consciousness to grow by seeing. Then you arrive at a completely different experience and comprehension of the world. One can never completely turn what is ‘seen’ into words because the perception transcends the mind's common logic. Therefore, real sight feeds the Spirit and dissipates the soul's false perceptions. ‘Seeing’ should not be seen simply as a device of interpretation, but as an experience that has in itself a transformative meaning. Seeing is an extended form of perception. It's an ‘ontological amplification,’ which means a way of being more. When you think in these terms of clairvoyance, you're much less likely to be deluded by the lower astral vision hallucinations. One of the common mistakes of beginners is to expect their normal vision and physical eyes to see celestial realities as if unexpectedly auras and supernatural entities were to be attached to the pictures of the world obtained through the brain. This cannot function because the normal cognitive perception is precisely the blind part of yourself. The first thing to do to start seeing is to get out of your head. Therefore, one of the constant reminders provided in this chapter will be: stop looking if you want to ‘see.’ Stop processing and analyzing images, in other words, as you are used to doing with your brain. Don't bother to see. And you work from your heart as you try. Let yourself switch into another state of consciousness and let ‘something else’ happen.

A painting of Jesus hanging on the cross in agony can emit the energies of peace and reverence generated by a phenomenon known as the “psychic feeding of the masses.” The emotions and thoughts from two billion Christians become absorbed into the image of an agonizing Jesus, then radiate from it. But the same art piece can also emit energies of sadness, agony, depression, grief, horrific pain, and death.

it creates a three-dimensional image of light, a hologram,

The main shift, and it has been obvious for decades, is that art history can no longer occupy itself in an innocent fashion with the biography of form because art itself is no longer preoccupied with form. The generation of classic art history, from the 1890s to the 1920s, as by no means out of tune with an artistic modernism that, for all its rhetoric of rupture, still reckoned in ratios of good form to bad form, form to non-form, form to content. That early twentieth-century paradigm has long since broken down as art redistributes itself in events, vectors, emotions, ideas, clusters or swarms of artifice. Art today is less about form than about the conditions of possibility of effective speech and action, the tension between enunciation and performance, the virtues of images. Today creativity itself is differently distributed in society: in the mass media and social networks, i amateur or outsider art, in fashion elite and democratic, in the proliferation of recognized but little-esteemed aesthetic categories - 'the zany, the cute, and the interesting,' for example. Even the sophisticated discourses of modernism that have dominated art-history departments over the last three decades - the 'classic art history' of our time - are not keeping pace. They are still organized by master-discipline chains reaching back into the 1960s, chains of psychic involvement that binds generations, despite everything, to the old courses of form.

There are three types of persons who pass within the Veil - the mystic, the psychic, and the occultist. The mystic aspires to union with God, and achieves his end by putting aside all that is not of God in his life. The psychic is a receiver of subtle vibrations, but not a transmitter. The occultist must needs be to some extent at least a receiver, but his primary aim is to be able to control and direct in the invisible kingdoms in the same way that the man of science has learnt to control and direct in the kingdom of Nature. In order to achieve this end he must work in harmony with the invisible forces in the same way that the scientist masters Nature by understanding her. “Netzach, in the Microcosm, represents the instinctive, emotional side of our nature, and Hod represents the intellect; Netzach is the artist in us, and Hod is the scientist. “No one can handle magic in whom the Sphere of Netzach is not in function, for the scepticism of Hod will kill all magical images before their birth. Like all things in nature, Hod, unfertilised by its opposing polarity, is sterile. There must be something of the artist in every occultist who wants to do practical work. The intellect alone, however powerful, does not confer powers. It is through the Netzach in our own nature that the elemental forces obtain access to consciousness; without Netzach, they remain in the subconscious Sphere of Yesod, working blindly.

Jason tried to imagine her conjuring images in her crystal ball -- or whatever it was psychics used these days. It explained her reputation as a witch.

I asked Hogan to describe his process in performing this task. He replied: In 1998, I read Tracks in the Psychic Wilderness by Dale Graff333 [retired Defense Intelligence Agency director of the US government’s classified psi research program] in which he described how to remote view. I sat in front of a monitor with the code for a target in my mind and closed my eyes. I made my mind “an empty rice bowl.” I repeated the code to myself and waited. The impressions came and I sketched them. I nailed the target the first time. What I do hasn’t changed much [since then], but I have some nuances that are different. I go to a quiet place and sit. I close my eyes and warm down for a minute or two by relaxing. [Former army “psychic spy”] Joe McMoneagle takes 45 minutes to warm down. I’d be asleep by then. I can go only a minute or two. With my eyes closed, I blank my mind and repeat the target code or location. It could be a code like [the letters] AMEF or a location like “on the table in Wayne’s office.” I just need something to focus my attention on that thing out of the innumerable other things in the universe. I have a place I “look” in my mind, and I know my eyes actually focus on it. It isn’t like an infinity setting on a camera. I think it’s with a focus of about three feet. The next part is difficult to describe. I allow images to come. If someone says it’s an object on a table, I allow an “impression” of a table to come into that space. I’m not really remote viewing the table. It’s just a platform. Then my mind relaxes into allowing target impressions through. I may say, “Let me see the object on Wayne’s table.” As I relax into it, I get a feeling that is a little like a very small feeling of that time when you’re starting to drift into sleep. I could guess it’s going from Alpha [brainwave rhythm] into Theta, but I don’t know. I don’t hold it for long, though. I come back from it and have to go back in. I have to open my eyes and sketch what I get, but I’m not a good artist and by the time I get a part of a sketch started, I’ve lost some of the target. I write the impressions in words and sketch what I can. Then I have to close my eyes again, warm down briefly, and repeat the process. I have to stay with details and avoid naming something. I’m much better at objects than pictures. I’ve learned that everything I get is meaningful, but some can’t be associated with an object. It’s still attached to some real thing. I have had no training, and probably haven’t done more than a hundred sessions since I first learned I could do it in 1998.

The proliferation of substance dependency, physical abuse, sexual promiscuity, and living on the fast track in order not to feel the emptiness of one's life—all point to the loss of a vital element in life. Contemporary men and women, unlike Urbaal of ancient times, no longer have the opportunity to hold tenderly the little image of the goddess or become awe-­inspired while viewing the sacred prostitute dancing in the temple, her beautiful body the representation of joy and passion. Without benefit of direct experience, we can know of the sacred prostitute only through reading deciphered cuneiform tablets or ancient manuscripts describing her rituals. The archetype, as a psychic entity, is surrounded by energy which has the ability to activate and transform conscious contents. When the archetype is constellated, that is, activated, the release of that specific energy is recognized by consciousness and felt in the body through the emotions. Thus, for example, when the archetype of the goddess of love is constellated, we are imbued with the vitality of love, beauty, sexual passion and spiritual renewal. Jung writes that the loss of an archetype gives rise to that frightful 'discontent in our culture'. Instead of digging deep in the earth to recover hidden treasures, I would "dig" in the dark, mysterious spaces of the unconscious to bring those dormant images to the light of consciousness.

No believer, no matter how sincere, could possibly write the Divine Comedy today, even if he possessed a talent equal to Dante’s. Visions and symbols do not have the immediate and overwhelming reality for us that they had for the medieval poet. In the Divine Comedy the whole of nature is merely a canvas upon which the religious symbol and image are painted. Western man has spent more than five hundred years – half a millennium – in stripping nature of these projections and turning it into a realm of neutral objects which his science may control. Thus it could hardly be expected that the religious image would have the same force for us as it did for Dante. This is simply a psychic fact within human history; psychic facts have just as much historical validity as the facts that we now, unlike the man of Dante's time, travel in airplanes and work in factories regulated by computing machines. A great work of art can never be repeated – the history of art shows us time and again that literal imitation leads to pastiche – because it springs from the human soul, which evolves like everything else in nature. This point must be insisted upon, contrary to the view of some of our more enthusiastic medievalists who picture the psychic containment of medieval man as a situation of human completeness to which we must return. History has never allowed man to return to the past in any total sense. And our psychological problems cannot be solved by a regression to a past state in which they had not yet been brought into being.

The noble images of physician and clergyman are forever accompanied by the shadow figures of quack and false prophet. Now the psychotherapist, the analyst, constitutes the meeting ground, in our day, of the images and the practices of physician and clergyman, of physical and psychic healer. It is thus that he carries a double shadow.

Stevie evokes a raw, sensual-but-innocent power and, dressed in her black Rhiannon outfit, she cuts a surrealistic image onstage. But, really now, she’s not a witch. “I’m not a heavy psychic weirdo. I just happen to love black and I love to dance. I hate seeing rock ‘n’ roll ladies that stomp across the stage and that are so hard core. It’s so unfeminine. Being a sex symbol has never been my goal in life. I just happen to love beautiful flowing movements. You know,

The Buddha believed in reincarnation, which means he thought that something reincarnates. The Pali literature says: “There are no real ego entities hastening through the ocean of rebirth, but merely life waves, which, according to their nature and activities, manifest themselves here as men, there as animals, and elsewhere as invisible things.” “Life waves”—that’s a nice image. In Hinduism they’re called vasanas, subtle thought-forms. Every act we do creates vasanas, life waves, based on the desires connected with the act. Those life waves go out and out. Even when we die, they continue; the physical body dies, and what remains are those subtle life waves, those mental tendencies that function like a kind of psychic DNA code to determine your next round. In Hinduism that’s called karma. Karma is basically a pattern of life waves, or desire waves, that keep going and going, life after life, until they spend themselves. When they do, there’s no more individual desire, no more separation, and therefore no more incarnation. The game is over.

Our cultural passion for the angelic expresses our longing to be in paradise, to return on earth to a time of connectedness and goodwill, to a time when we were heart-whole. Even though the images of angels we most commonly see are childlike figures aglow with rapture and unspeakable delight, as messengers they carry the weight of our burdens, our sorrows, and our joys, In representations they are most often given a childlike visage to remind us that enlightenment comes only as we return to a childlike state and are born again. We see angels as light-hearted creatures in swift motion reaching for the heavens. Their being and the weight of their knowledge is never static,. Always changing, they see through our false selves. Possessing psychic insight, intuition, and the wisdom of the heart they stand for the promise of life fulfilled through the union of knowledge and responsibility, As guardians of the soul's well-being, they care for us and with us. Our turning toward the angelic is evocative of our yearning to embrace spiritual growth. It reveals our collective desire to return to love.

Jung is deeply and unambiguously committed to Kantian epistemology, according to which psychic life (i.e. the Kantian ‘phenomena’) is all we can really know, everything else (i.e. the Kantian ‘noumena’) being unknowable. He expresses this commitment in passages such as: [The psyche] will never get beyond itself. All comprehension and all that is comprehended is in itself psychic, and to that extent we are hopelessly cooped up in an exclusively psychic world. (MDR: 385) And: psychic happenings constitute our only, immediate experience. … My sense impressions—for all that they force upon me a world of impenetrable objects occupying space—are psychic images, and these alone are my immediate experience … All our knowledge is conditioned by the psyche which, because it alone is immediate, is superlatively real. (MMSS: 194, emphasis added) Often, however, Jung seems to cross the boundary that separates epistemology from metaphysics and assert that the psyche is metaphysically primary: I am not alluding to the vulgar notion that anything “psychic” is either nothing at all [as in eliminative materialism 11] or at best even more tenuous than a gas [i.e. a reducible epiphenomenon, as in mainstream materialism]. Quite the contrary; I am of the opinion that the psyche is … indisputably real. (ACU: 116, emphasis added)

genuine psychics also live in a world of sensations and "vibrations", of deeply felt intuitions. Their conscious awareness, like that of the artist, is extraordinarily open to invasion from other people's thoughts and feelings and from the murky realm of the collective unconscious. They seem to move in a world behind or beneath the world of daylight common sense. From this hidden world they receive, often in the form of almost audible words, gusts of strong feelings, unaccounted-for smells, sensations of heat and cold not accessible to others, images of great horror and beauty, and clues about what is really going on with people.

Lots of people see visions when they stare into shiny surfaces like crystals, or mirrors, or bodies of water,” Charlie explained. “Remember how the West Indian servant taught Betty Parris and her cousin how to break an egg into a glass of water to see visions of their future husbands? They were using the white of an egg in a clear container as a substitute for a crystal ball. When people stare into something intently like that, they’re more than likely to see images. For people with psychic ability, those images may sometimes reflect past or future events. There’s nothing supernatural about it, it’s just what happens.

The monks used two types of meditation. Deity Yoga involves generating and holding a three-dimensional color image of a deity surrounded by his or her divine entourage. The other type of meditation is called Open Presence, in which attention is broadly distributed without focusing on any experiences, images, or thoughts that may arise. The claim tested about Deity Yoga was the assertion that highly complex images could be mentally maintained for minutes to hours. Kozhevnikov also tested nonmeditators and meditators who did not engage in their practice prior to the test. The results showed that all the groups performed at the same level before meditation, but after meditation, the Deity Yoga practitioners, according to Kozhevnikov, “demonstrated a dramatic increase in performance on imagery tasks compared with the other groups. Therefore, [Deity Yoga] specifically trains one’s capacity to access heightened visuospatial memory resources via meditation, rather than generally improving long-lasting imagery abilities” (p. 645).59

From one test session to the next, the interference patterns tended to differ because of slight variations in ambient temperature and vibration. So for the sake of simplicity I based the formal statistical analysis not on a change in the precise shape of the interference pattern, but rather on a decrease in the average illumination level over the entire camera image during the concentration or “mental blocking” condition as compared to the relaxed or “mental passing” condition. To test the design and analytical procedures for possible problems, I also included control runs to allow the system to record interference patterns automatically without anyone being present in the laboratory or paying attention to the interferometer. Data from those control sessions were analyzed in the same way as in the experimental sessions. Results I was fortunate to recruit five meditators, four of whom had many decades of daily meditative practice. Those five contributed nine test sessions. Five other individuals with no meditation experience, or less than two years of practice, contributed nine additional sessions. I referred to the latter group as nonmeditators. I predicted an overall negative score for each experimental session (illustrated by the idealized negative curve shown in Figure 15). The combined results were in fact significantly negative, with odds against chance of 500 to 1. The identical analysis across all the control sessions resulted in odds against chance of close to 1 to 1, indicating that the experimental results were not due to procedural or analytical biases. Figure 16 shows the cumulative score (in terms of standard normal deviates, or z-scores) for the nine sessions contributed by experienced meditators and nine other sessions involving nonmeditators. The experienced meditators resulted in a combined odds against chance of 107,000 to 1, and the nonmeditators obtained results close to chance expectation. This supported my conjecture that meditators would be better at this task than nonmeditators. Figure 16. Experienced meditators (more than two years of daily practice) obtained combined odds against chance of 107,000 to 1. Nonmeditators obtained results close to chance.

Repression works like the refraction of light as it passes from one lens (or psychic system) to another, thus distorting the image perceived in the mind's eye.

The psychic world of images is a synthesis of experiences of the inner and outer world, as any symbol will show.

He who wishes to attain the profoundly marvelous must free images from their conventional associations, associations always dominated by utilitarian judgement; must learn to see the man behind the social function, break the scale of so-called normal values, replacing it by that of sensitive values, surmount taboos, the weight of ancestral prohibitions, cease to connect the object with profit one can get out of it, with the price it has in society, with the action it commands. This liberation begins when by some means the voluntary censorship of the bad conscience is lifted, when the mechanism of the dream is no longer impeded. Magic ceremonies, psychic exercises leading to concentration and ecstasy, the liberation of mental automatism, are so many means capable of refining vision through the tensions they induce. It is a means to enlarge normal facilities; they are a way of approach to the realm of the marvelous.

The horror of what Fiona witnessed—both physical and the psychic images she picked up from the other side—dampened her appetite completely. She ordered an iced tea and since I

For psychic life, activation of the experience has only a negative significance, removing both the image-content and the accompanying stimulation. If the desired union with the love object approaches and word becomes deed, the corresponding cluster of images fades, producing a pleasurable feeling of released tension. At this moment, one is psychically wholly unproductive. Every image attains its peak in life as it intensely awaits transition into reality; with realization, it immediately is destroyed.

And just as rhythm is not an artificial embellishment of language but a form of expression which predates language, so visual images and symbols are not fanciful embroideries of concepts, but precursors of conceptual thought. The artist does not climb a ladder to stick ornaments on a facade of ideas-he is more like a pot-holer in search of underground rivers. To quote Kretschmer for the last time: 'Such creative products of the artistic imagination tend to emerge from a psychic twilight, a state of lessened consciousness and diminished attentivity to external stimuli. Further, the condition is one of "absent-mindedness" with hypnoidal over-concentration on a single focus, providing an entirely passive experience, frequently of a visual character, divorced from the categories of space and time, and reason and will. These dreamlike phases of artistic creation evoke primitive phylogenetic tendencies towards rhythm and stylization with elemental violence; and the emergent images thus acquire in the very act of birth regular form and symmetry.

Even assuming that a mantra's shabdic ["sacred sound"] quality is an important component of its effectiveness, that quality can come into play only when the mantra is uttered by one properly instructed in the art of yogic visualization; for mantras have not only sound, but also form and color; the form or the archetypal image or symbol with which it is associated must be evoked at the moment of utterance, since that image is the repository of all the psychic, emotional and spiritual energy drawn from all the adepts who have ever concentrated upon that particular image or symbol since it first came into being. (That the energy generated by a succession of yogins throughout the centuries is present in such symbols is a concept that will not surprise those acquainted with C.G. Jung's teaching about archetypes.) […T]he lamas teach that the mantra appropriate to each of the divine forms contemplated embodies the psychic energy of that 'being'. In other words, the yogically visualized image of the deity or the mantric syllable that symbolizes it is a centre for the powerful through-associations built around it by countless yogins during past centuries and by the adept himself in his meditations; however, it also constitutes a particular embodiment of the energies streaming from the Source and it is to this aspect that the shabdic quality of the appropriate mantra probably pertains. As the sound is no more than a symbol of the mantra's latent power, mispronunciation of the syllables is no grave matter; for it is the adept's intention that unlocks the powers of his mind. Though the mantra may consist of syllables to which no conceptual meaning is attached, pronouncing them nevertheless enables him to conjure up instantly in his mind the psychic qualities he has learnt to associate with them.

The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

The end of the twentieth century and the dawn of the new millennium had seen something of a renaissance in the public awareness of the paranormal. Psychics, haunts, vampires—you name it. People still didn’t take them seriously, but all the things Science had promised us hadn’t come to pass. Disease was still a problem. Starvation was still a problem. Violence and crime and war were still problems. In spite of the advance of technology, things just hadn’t changed the way everyone had hoped and thought they would. Science, the largest religion of the twentieth century, had become somewhat tarnished by images of exploding space shuttles, crack babies, and a generation of complacent Americans who had allowed the television to raise their children. People were looking for something—I think they just didn’t know what. And even though they were once again starting to open their eyes to the world of magic and the arcane that had been with them all the while, they still thought I must be some kind of joke.

In her article, Williams (1997) describes a class of "psychically porous” patients who suffer from eating disorders, most frequently bulimia nervosa, and suggests that they had parents who themselves suffered extensive traumas and as a result were either frightening or frightened or both in relation to the child.

Intuitive information—unuttered, mind-locked data—does pass from person to person. Energy medicine is largely dependent upon a practitioner getting an image, gut sense, or inner messages that provide diagnostic and treatment insight. Edgar Cayce, a well-known American psychic, was shown to be 43 percent accurate in his intuitive diagnoses in a posthumous analysis made from 150 randomly selected cases.43 Medical doctor C. Norman Shealy tested now well-known intuitive Caroline Myss, who achieved 93 percent diagnostic accuracy when given only a patient’s name and birth date.44 Compare these statistics to those of modern Western medicine. A recent study published by Health Services Research found significant errors in diagnostics in reviewed cases in the 1970s to 1990s, ranging from 80 percent error rates to below 50 percent. Acknowledging that “diagnosis is an expression of probability,” the paper’s authors emphasized the importance of doctor-patient interaction in gathering data as a way to improve these rates.45 A field transfers information through a medium—even to the point that thought can produce a physical effect, thus suggesting that T-fields might even predate, or can at least be causative to, L-fields. One study, for example, showed that accomplished meditators were able to imprint their intentions on electrical devices. After they concentrated on the devices, which were then placed in a room for three months, these devices could create changes in the room, including affecting pH and temperature.46 Thought fields are most often compared to magnetic fields, for there must be an interconnection to generate a thought, such as two people who wish to connect. Following classical physics, the transfer of energy occurs between atoms or molecules in a higher (more excited) energy state and those in a lower energy state; and if both are equal, there can be an even exchange of information. If there really is thought transmission, however, it must be able to occur without any physical touch for it to be “thought” or magnetic in nature versus an aspect of electricity. Besides anecdotal evidence, there is scientific evidence of this possibility. In studying semiconductors, solid materials that have electrical conduction between a conductor and an insulator, noteworthy scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize in 1937, discovered that all molecules forming the living matrix are semiconductors. Even more important, he observed that energies can flow through the electromagnetic field without touching each other.47 These ideas would support the theory that while L-fields provide the blueprints for the body, T-fields carry aspects of thought and potentially modify the L-fields, influencing or even overriding the L-field of the body.48

…interoceptive confusion and body image distortions are forms of impaired embodied mentalizing and expressions of pre-mentalistic thinking. For example, psychic equivalence demonstrates how patients’ painful self and affect states are expressed though extreme body hatred and the mistaken belief that being “skinny” will bring them self-acceptance, "confidence," and agency. The teleological stance explains the obsessive drive for thinness as a method to obtain self-acceptance and the approval of others. In short, subjugation of the body is a confused attempt to gain mastery and control over feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of self-worth.