Unconscious Mind Related Quotes

My chances of returning to America were small, and I thought with regret about all the things I would miss about America: the TV dinner; air-conditioning; a well-regulated traffic system that people actually followed; a relatively low rate of death by gunfire, at least compared with our homeland; the modernist novel; freedom of speech, which, if not as absolute as Americans liked to believe, was still greater in degree than in our homeland; sexual liberation; and, perhaps most of all, that omnipresent American narcotic, optimism, the unending flow of which poured through the American mind continuously, whitewashing the graffiti of despair, rage, hatred, and nihilism scrawled there nightly by the black hoodlums of the unconscious. There were also many things about America with which I was less enchanted, but why be negative?

It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and head-lands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round, – for a man lost, – do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

You say that an emotion is the mind’s reflection in the body. But sometimes there is a conflict between the two: the mind says “no” while the emotion says “yes,” or the other way around. If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth. Not the ultimate truth of who you are, but the relative truth of your state of mind at that time. Conflict between surface thoughts and unconscious mental processes is certainly common. You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.

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.

Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. Their minds have been trained to be blindly and unconsciously subjugated. In a time related to Heaven-on-Earth, the smallest amount of worry, will drive a human into the arms of death. This is how weak and fragile the human mind and will is. It's funny, because the best friend of humanity, is none other than Chaos itself.

Devaluation of the Earth, hostility towards the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are all from the psychological point of view the expression of a weak patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from the fascinating and overwhelming domain of the Earthly. For we know that the archetypal projection of the Masculine experiences, not without justice, the Earth as the unconscious-making, instinct-entangling, and therefore dangerous Feminine. At the same time the projection of the masculine anima is mingled with the living image of the Earth archetype in the unconscious of man; and the more one-sidedly masculine man's conscious mind is the more primitive, unreliable, and therefore dangerous his anima will be. However, the Earth archetype, in compensation to the divinity of the archetype of Heaven and the Father, that determined the consciousness of medieval man, is fused together with the archaic image of the Mother Goddess. Yet in its struggle against this Mother Goddess, the conscious mind, in its historical development, has had great difficulty in asserting itself so as to reach its – patriarchal - independence. The insecurity of this conscious mind-and we have profound experience of how insecure the position of the conscious mind still is in modern man-is always bound up with fear of the unconscious, and no well-meaning theory "against fear" will be able to rid the world of this deeply rooted anxiety, which at different times has been projected on different objects. Whether this anxiety expresses itself in a religious form as the medieval fear of demons or witches, or politically as the modern fear of war with the State beyond the Iron Curtain, in every case we are dealing with a projection, though at the same time the anxiety is justified. In reality, our small ego-consciousness is justifiably afraid of the superior power of the collective forces, both without and within. In the history of the development of the conscious mind, for reasons which we cannot pursue here, the archetype of the Masculine Heaven is connected positively with the conscious mind, and the collective powers that threaten and devour the conscious mind both from without and within, are regarded as Feminine. A negative evaluation of the Earth archetype is therefore necessary and inevitable for a masculine, patriarchal conscious mind that is still weak. But this validity only applies in relation to a specific type of conscious mind; it alters as the integration of the human personality advances, and the conscious mind is strengthened and extended. A one-sided conscious mind, such as prevailed in the medieval patriarchal order, is certainly radical, even fanatical, but in a psychological sense it is by no means strong. As a result of the one-sidedness of the conscious mind, the human personality becomes involved in an equally one-sided opposition to its own unconscious, so that actually a split occurs. Even if, for example, the Masculine principle identifies itself with the world of Heaven, and projects the evil world of Earth outwards on the alien Feminine principle, both worlds are still parts of the personality, and the repressing masculine spiritual world of Heaven and of the values of the conscious mind is continually undermined and threatened by the repressed but constantly attacking opposite side. That is why the religious fanaticism of the representatives of the patriarchal World of Heaven reached its climax in the Inquisition and the witch trials, at the very moment when the influence of the archetype of Heaven, which had ruled the Middle Ages and the previous period, began to wane, and the opposite image of the Feminine Earth archetype began to emerge.

Darkness seems to have prevailed and has taken the forefront. This country as in the 'cooperation' of The United States of America has never been about the true higher-good of the people. Know and remember this. Cling to your faith. Roll your spiritual sleeves up and get to work. Use your energy wisely. Transmute all anger, panic and fear into light and empowerment. Don't use what fuels them; all lower-energy. Mourn as you need to. Console who you need to—and then go get into the spiritual and energetic arena. There's plenty work for us to do; within and without. Let's each focus on becoming 'The President of Our Own Life. Cultivate your mind. Pursue your purpose. Shine your light. Elevate past—and reject—any culture of low vibrational energy and ratchetness. Don't take fear, defeat or anger—on or in. The system is doing what they've been created to do. Are you? Am I? Are we—collectively? Let's get to work. No more drifting through life without your higher-self in complete control of your mind. Awaken—fully. Activate—now. Put your frustrations or concerns into your work. Don't lose sight. There is still—a higher plan. Let's ride this 4 year energetic-wave like the spiritual gangsters that we are. This will all be the past soon. Let's get to work and stay dedicated, consistent and diligent. Again, this will all be the past soon. We have preparing and work to do. Toxic energy is so not a game. Toxic energy and low vibrations are being collectively acted out on the world stage. Covertly operating through the unconscious weak spots and blind spots in the human psyche; making people oblivious to their own madness, causing and influencing them to act against–their–own–best–interests and higher-good, as if under a spell and unconsciously possessed. This means that they are actually nourishing the lower vibrational energy with their lifestyle, choices, energy and habits, which is unconsciously giving the lower-energy the very power and fuel it needs—for repeating and recreating endless drama, suffering and destruction, in more and more amplified forms on a national and world stage. So what do we do? We take away its autonomy and power over us while at the same time empowering ourselves. By recognizing how this energetic/spiritual virus or parasite of the mind—operates through our unawareness is the beginning of the cure. Knowledge is power. Applied knowledge is—freedom. Our shared future will be decided primarily by the changes that take place in the psyche of humanity, starting with each of us— vibrationally. In closing and most importantly, the greatest protection against becoming affected or possessed by this lower-energy is to be in touch with our higher vibrational-self. We have to call our energy and power back. Being in touch with our higher-self and true nature acts as a sacred amulet, shielding and protecting us from the attempted effects. We defeat evil not by fighting against it (in which case, by playing its game, we’ve already lost) but by getting in touch with the part of us that is invulnerable to its effects— our higher vibrational-self. Will this defeat and destroy us? Or will it awaken us more and more? Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us and our stepping out of the unconscious influence of low vibrational/negative/toxic/evil/distraction energy (or whatever name you relate to it as) that is and has been seeking power over each of our lives energetically and/or spiritually, and step into our wholeness, our personal power, our higher self and vibrate higher and higher daily. Stay woke my friends—let's get to work.

We know, however, that the mind is capable of understanding these matters in all their complexity and in all their simplicity. A ball flying through the air is responding to the force and direction with which it was thrown, the action of gravity, the friction of the air which it must expend its energy on overcoming, the turbulence of the air around its surface, and the rate and direction of the ball's spin. And yet, someone who might have difficulty consciously trying to work out what 3 x 4 x 5 comes to would have no trouble in doing differential calculus and a whole host of related calculations so astoundingly fast that they can actually catch a flying ball. People who call this "instinct" are merely giving the phenomenon a name, not explaining anything. I think that the closest that human beings come to expressing our understanding of these natural complexities is in music. It is the most abstract of the arts - it has no meaning or purpose other than to be itself. Every single aspect of a piece of music can be represented by numbers. From the organization of movements in a whole symphony, down through the patterns of pitch and rhythm that make up the melodies and harmonies, the dynamics that shape the performance, all the way down to the timbres of the notes themselves, their harmonics, the way they change over time, in short, all the elements of a noise that distinguish between the sound of one person piping on a piccolo and another one thumping a drum - all of these things can be expressed by patterns and hierarchies of numbers. And in my experience the more internal relationships there are between the patterns of numbers at different levels of the hierarchy, however complex and subtle those relationships may be, the more satisfying and, well, whole, the music will seem to be. In fact the more subtle and complex those relationships, and the further they are beyond the grasp of the conscious mind, the more the instinctive part of your mind - by which I mean that part of your mind that can do differential calculus so astoundingly fast that it will put your hand in the right place to catch a flying ball- the more that part of your brain revels in it. Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about. Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.

The ego isn't a bad thing. If we didn't develop a strong ego, a strong sense of self, we wouldn't be able to relate to and engage with the extremely powerful and archetypal forces (both dark and light) of the unconscious. If we don't have a strongly developed sense of self (even though it is not, ultimately speaking, the true self), we will get overwhelmed and taken over by the powers of the unconscious such that we will compulsively act them out.

Every concept in our conscious mind, in short, has its own psychic associations. While such associations may vary in intensity (according to the 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.

One criticism of Freud still sometimes heard on the political Left is that his thinking is individualist — that he substitutes ‘private’ psychological causes and explanations for social and historical ones. This accusation reflects a radical misunderstanding of Freudian theory. There is indeed a real problem about how social and historical factors are related to the unconscious; but one point of Freud’s work is that it makes it possible for us to think of the development of the human individual in social and historical terms. What Freud produces, indeed, is nothing less than a materialist theory of the making of the human subject. We come to be what we are by an interrelation of bodies — by the complex transactions which take place during infancy between our bodies and those which surround us. This is not a biological reductionism: Freud does not of course believe that we are nothing but our bodies, or that our minds are mere reflexes of them. Nor is it an asocial model of life, since the bodies which surround us, and our relations with them, are always socially specific.

Rosenthal went on to study precisely that – what expectation mean for our children. In one line of research he showed that teachers´ expectations greatly affect their students´ academic performance, even when the teachers try to treat them impartially. For example, he and a colleague asked schoolkids in eighteen classrooms to complete an IQ test. The teachers, but not students, were given results. The researchers told the teachers that the test would indicate which children had unusually high intellectual potential. What the teachers didn’t know was that the kids named as gifted did not really score higher than average on the IQ test – they actually had average scores. Shortly afterwards, the teachers rated those not labeled gifted as less curious and less interested than the gifted students – and the students´ subsequent grades reflected that. But what is really shocking – and sobering – is the result of another IQ test, given eight months later. When you administer IQ test a second time, you expect that each child´s score will vary some. In general, about half of the children´s scores should go up and half down, as a result of changes in the individual’s intellectual development in relation to his peers or simply random variations. When Rosenthal administered the second test, he indeed found that about half the kids labeled “normal” showed a gain in IQ. But among those who´d been singled out as brilliant, he obtained a different result; about 80 % had an increase of at least 10 points. What´s more, about 20 % of the “gifted” group gained 30 or more IQ points, while only 5 % of the other children gained that many. Labeling children as gifted had proved to be a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy.

My chances of returning to America were small, and I thought with regret about all the things I would miss about America: the TV dinner; air-conditioning; a well-regulated traffic system that people actually followed; a relatively low rate of death by gunfire, at least compared with our homeland; the modernist novel; freedom of speech, which, if not as absolute as Americans liked to believe, was still greater in degree than in our homeland; sexual liberation; and, perhaps most of all, that omnipresent American narcotic, optimism, the unending flow of which poured through the American mind continuously, whitewashing the graffiti of despair, rage, hatred, and nihilism scrawled there nightly by the black hoodlums of the unconscious. There

Ego and Shadow, indeed, although separate, are inextricably linked together in much the same way that thought and feeling are related to each other... The ego, nevertheless, is in conflict with the shadow, in what Dr. Jung once called "the battle for deliverance." In the struggle of primitive man to achieve consciousness, this conflict is expressed by the contest between the archetypal hero and the cosmic powers of evil, personified by dragons and other monsters. In the developing consciousness of the individual the hero figure is the symbolic means by which the emerging ego overcomes the inertia of the unconscious mind, and liberates the mature man from a regressive longing to return to the Blissful state of infancy in a world dominated by his mother.

The rapport between art and science is something I remain of several minds about, but as it applies to psychoanalysis it has never been captured better than by the brilliant and troubled Italian poet Alda Merini (2007: 15) in the aphorism: Psychoanalysis Always looks for the egg In a basket That has been lost. For over a hundred years, psychoanalysts were trained to talk to their patients about an inferred egg, through associations and interpretations, because the basket (an entity called the unconscious) was believed “lost” (inaccessible) to here-and-now existence. At this point in the evolution of psychoanalysis it is increasingly recognized that the “egg” can manifestly be brought into palpable existence by accepting that “the unconscious” (the basket) is not a mental entity but rather a relational process that is accessible through enactment.

[11] “There are many Europeans who began by surrendering completely to the influence of the Christian symbol until they landed themselves in a Kierkegaardian neurosis, or whose relation to God, owing to the progressive impoverishment of symbolism, developed into an unbearably sophisticated I-You relationship—only to fall victims in their turn to the magic and novelty of Eastern symbols. This surrender is not necessarily a defeat; rather it proves the receptiveness and vitality of the religious sense. We can observe much the same thing in the educated Oriental, who not infrequently feels drawn to the Christian symbol or to the science that is so unsuited to the Oriental mind, and even develops an enviable understanding of them. That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity

The further we delve into the origins of a "collective image" (or, to express it in ecclesiastical language, of a dogma), the more we uncover a seemingly unending web of archetypal patterns that, before modern times, were never the object of conscious reflection. Thus, paradoxically enough, we know more about mythological symbolism then did any generation before us. The fact is that in former times men did not reflect upon their symbols; they lived them and were unconsciously animated by their meaning... Goethe's Faust aptly says: "Im Anfang war die Tat [In the beginning was the deed]." "Deeds" were never invented, they were done; thoughts, on the other hand, are a relatively late discovery of man. First he was moved to deeds by unconscious factors; it was only a long time afterward that he began to reflect upon the causes that had moved him; and it took him a very long time indeed to arrive at the Preposterous idea that he must have moved himself-- his mind being unable to identify any other motivating force than his own.

Choice implies consciousness — a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present. Until you reach that point, you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. This means that you are compelled to think, feel, and act in certain ways according to the conditioning of your mind. That is why Jesus said: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” This is not related to intelligence in the conventional sense of the word. I have met many highly intelligent and educated people who were also completely unconscious, which is to say completely identified with their mind. In fact, if mental development and increased knowledge are not counterbalanced by a corresponding growth in consciousness, the potential for unhappiness and disaster is very great. Your friend is stuck in a relationship with an abusive partner, and not for the first time. Why? No choice. The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re-create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it.

For example, in the previously mentioned example of my leaving for work in a rush, being short with my wife, and then walking out with no further words, we can see that I am not relating with my experience in a complete way and that this is creating further karma. I am simply not present to the totality of my situation, of my feelings and my interactions with my wife. When I “rush,” I have disengaged; I am in a disembodied state. I am running from the painful feelings of my situation—of having gotten up late, not having left enough time to get ready, fearing being late for work—and from being with my wife, who looks for some basic level of decency and emotional presence from me. In my disembodied state, though the anxiety is coursing through my body, I am only dimly aware of feeling it. The anxiety has me by the throat, and I am trying to deal with it by ignoring it and everything it reflects. I do this by going faster and faster, as if I could outrun the situation and outrun my anxiety. So, driven by my fear, I am skimming the surface of my life, dropping my tube of toothpaste, leaving my pajamas on the floor (for my wife to pick up), stubbing my foot on the bedroom door, spilling my coffee, all capped off by being short with my wife. I am in a state of complete disembodiment and in such a mind of confusion that I am unconsciously acting as if being on time is of more consequence than respecting the tender and open feelings of my wife, my life partner and truest friend.

In fact, properly speaking, no parish priest has any convictions on politics. At the back of his mind, he regards the state as an enemy that has usurped the temporal power of the Pope. Being an enemy, the state must be exploited as much as possible and without any qualms of conscience. Because of this innate and perhaps unconscious hostility to the state as an institution, the parish priest cannot see that it is the duty of a citizen to endeavour to make political life as morally clean as possible. He cannot see that the community as a whole must always come into the forefront of every citizen's political consciousness and that personal interests must be sacrificed to the interests of the nation. No. The parish priest regards himself as the commander of his parish, which he is holding for His Majesty the Pope. Between himself and the Pope there is the Bishop, acting, so to speak, as the Divisional Commander. As far as the Civil Power is concerned, it is a semi-hostile force which must be kept in check, kept in tow, intrigued against and exploited, until that glorious day when the Vicar of Christ again is restored to his proper position as the ruler of the earth and the wearer of the Imperial crown. This point of view helps the parish priest to adopt a very cold-blooded attitude towards Irish politics. He is merely either for or against the government. If he has a relative in a government position, he is in favour of the government. If he has a relative who wants a position and cannot get it, then he is against the government. But his support of the government is very precarious and he makes many visits to Dublin and creeps up back stairs into ministerial offices, cajoling and threatening. He is most commonly seen making a cautious approach to the Education Office, where he has all sorts of complaints to lodge and all sorts of suggestions to make. Every book recommended by the education authorities for the schools is examined by him, and if he finds a single idea in any of them that might be likely to inspire thought of passion, then he is up in arms at once. Like an army of black beetles on the march, he and his countless brothers invade Dublin and lay siege to the official responsible. Woe to that man.

In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people,” the artist Lorraine O’Grady said in 2018, a prognosis that seemed, at least on the surface, to counter what James Baldwin said fifty years ago, which is that “the white man’s sun has set.” Which is it then? What prediction will hold? As an Asian American, I felt emboldened by Baldwin but haunted and implicated by O’Grady. I heard the ring of truth in her comment, which gave me added urgency to finish this book. Whiteness has already recruited us to become their junior partners in genocidal wars; conscripted us to be antiblack and colorist; to work for, and even head, corporations that scythe off immigrant jobs like heads of wheat. Conscription is every day and unconscious. It is the default way of life among those of us who live in relative comfort, unless we make an effort to choose otherwise. Unless we are read as Muslim or trans, Asian Americans are fortunate not to live under hard surveillance, but we live under a softer panopticon, so subtle that it’s internalized, in that we monitor ourselves, which characterizes our conditional existence. Even if we’ve been here for four generations, our status here remains conditional; belonging is always promised and just out of reach so that we behave, whether it’s the insatiable acquisition of material belongings or belonging as a peace of mind where we are absorbed into mainstream society. If the Asian American consciousness must be emancipated, we must free ourselves of our conditional existence. But what does that mean? Does that mean making ourselves suffer to keep the struggle alive? Does it mean simply being awake to our suffering? I can only answer that through the actions of others. As of now, I’m writing when history is being devoured by our digital archives so we never have to remember. The administration has plans to reopen a Japanese internment camp in Oklahoma to fill up with Latin American children. A small band of Japanese internment camp survivors protest this reopening every day. I used to idly wonder whatever happened to all the internment camp survivors. Why did they disappear? Why didn’t they ever speak out? At the demonstration, protester Tom Ikeda said, “We need to be the allies for vulnerable communities today that Japanese Americans didn’t have in 1942.” We were always here.

Because Prometheus has a one-sided orientation to his soul, all tendencies to adapt to the external world are repressed and sink into the unconscious. Consequently, if perceived at all, they appear as not belonging to his own personality but as projections. There would seem to be a contradiction in the fact that the soul, whose cause Prometheus has espoused and whom he has, as it were, fully assimilated into consciousness, appears at the same time as a projection. But since the soul, like the persona, is a function of relationship, it must consist in a certain sense of two parts—one part belonging to the individual, and the other adhering to the object of relationship, in this case the unconscious. Unless one frankly subscribes to von Hartmann’s philosophy, one is generally inclined to grant the unconscious only a conditional existence as a psychological factor. On epistemological grounds, we are at present quite unable to make any valid statement about the objective reality of the complex psychological phenomenon we call the unconscious, just as we are in no position to say anything valid about the essential nature of real things, for this lies beyond our psychological ken. On the grounds of practical experience, however, I must point out that, in relation to the activity of consciousness, the contents of the unconscious lay the same claim to reality on account of their obstinate persistence as do the real things of the external world, even though this claim must appear very improbable to a mind that is “outer-directed.” It must not be forgotten that there have always been many people for whom the contents of the unconscious possessed a greater reality than the things of the outside world. The history of human thought bears witness to both realities. A more searching investigation of the human psyche shows beyond question that there is in general an equally strong influence from both sides on the activity of consciousness, so that, psychologically, we have a right on purely empirical grounds to treat the contents of the unconscious as just as real as the things of the outside world, even though these two realities are mutually contradictory and appear to be entirely different in their natures. But to subordinate one reality to the other would be an altogether unjustifiable presumption. Theosophy and spiritualism are just as violent in their encroachments on other spheres as materialism. We have to accommodate ourselves to our psychological capacities, and be content with that.

Absolute means Universal or fixed. So I think nothing is fixed and universal in Conscious manner. But I also think everything is fixed and universal via Unconscious state of our mind and Nature. In this case Practically , We are living world of Relativism via Absolute means. I mean every thing is made from atom. Everything have same roots. This is Universal. Every body are related with each other and depends on each other. From this we can say this world is more relativity centric then that of absolute. In other hand, everything have it is starting point and ending point. Even time have it's starting time and ending time. But universal time is constant. It is neither fast nor slow. Nor it have past , present or future. And for absolute, All the thing that are made , manufacture in this world are made from atom. This is Absolute.

goal in this book, however, is not to train you in this research technique or describe it in detail; rather, it is to demonstrate that deep metaphors play powerfully yet silently in the unconscious minds of consumers, are relatively few, and are universal.

But one element of this contention remains true; namely, that all scientific descriptions of facts are highly selective, that they always depend upon theories. The situation can be best described by comparison with a searchlight (the ‘searchlight theory of science’, as I usually call it in contradistinction to the ‘bucket theory of the mind’3). What the searchlight makes visible will depend upon its position, upon our way of directing it, and upon its intensity, colour, etc.; although it will, of course, also depend very largely upon the things illuminated by it. Similarly, a scientific description will depend, largely, upon our point of view, our interests, which are as a rule connected with the theory or hypothesis we wish to test; although it will also depend upon the facts described. Indeed, the theory or hypothesis could be described as the crystallization of a point of view. For if we attempt to formulate our point of view, then this formulation will, as a rule, be what one sometimes calls a working hypothesis; that is to say, a provisional assumption whose function is to help us to select, and to order, the facts. But we should be clear that there cannot be any theory or hypothesis which is not, in this sense, a working hypothesis, and does not remain one. For no theory is final, and every theory helps us to select and order facts. This selective character of all description makes it in a certain sense ‘relative’; but only in the sense that we would offer not this but another description, if our point of view were different. It may also affect our belief in the truth of the description; but it does not affect the question of the truth or falsity of the description; truth is not ‘relative’ in this sense4. The reason why all description is selective is, roughly speaking, the infinite wealth and variety of the possible aspects of the facts of our world. In order to describe this infinite wealth, we have at our disposal only a finite number of finite series of words. Thus we may describe as long as we like: our description will always be incomplete, a mere selection, and a small one at that, of the facts which present themselves for description. This shows that it is not only impossible to avoid a selective point of view, but also wholly undesirable to attempt to do so; for if we could do so, we should get not a more ‘objective’ description, but only a mere heap of entirely unconnected statements. But, of course, a point of view is inevitable; and the naïve attempt to avoid it can only lead to self-deception, and to the uncritical application of an unconscious point of view5. All this is true, most emphatically, in the case of historical description, with its ‘infinite subject matter’, as Schopenhauer6 calls it. Thus in history no less than in science, we cannot avoid a point of view; and the belief that we can must lead to self-deception and to lack of critical care. This does not mean, of course, that we are permitted to falsify anything, or to take matters of truth lightly. Any particular historical description of facts will be simply true or false, however difficult it may be to decide upon its truth or falsity. So far, the position of history is analogous to that of the natural sciences, for example, that of physics. But if we compare the part played by a ‘point of view’ in history with that played by a ‘point of view’ in physics, then we find a great difference. In physics, as we have seen, the ‘point of view’ is usually presented by a physical theory which can be tested by searching for new facts. In history, the matter is not quite so simple.

Later, while Andrew Demont was in hospital in Halifax, Ed White visited him and told him that the water had been up to Demont’s lips by the time White was able to secure him in the rope-harness. Demont told me that at the top of the shaft he could smell nothing, but that as he started down the ladder, a foul-smelling odor had overwhelmed him. As he looked into the shaft he could see Karl Graeser sitting underwater, with only the very top of his head showing. Andrew said he saw Bobby, his eyes closed, supporting his dad’s head just above the waterline. Andrew said he placed his hand on Bobby’s shoulder, and then he, too, drifted into unconsciousness. Apparently he stayed like that as the water slowly rose around him, until Ed White came to rescue him. Many years later I was told that the gas that overwhelmed the men was probably hydrogen sulphide, a lethal gas that can form when rotting vegetation is combined with salt water. Apparently, it can be odourless or have a foul rotten-egg smell, depending on the concentration. There is no doubt in my mind that there was salt water in the ground near the new shaft. Right beside it were two tall apple trees. The apples that grew on those trees looked like a type we call “Transparents” in Ontario. Those two trees looked exactly like others on the island, but they bore delicious, crisp, tangy fruit, whereas apples from similar trees were tasteless. A local woman told me that when apple trees grow near the sea in a mix of fresh water and salt water, they produce juicy, sharp, flavourful apples. Could the salt water that nurtured those apples have reacted with the coconut fibre, eel grass, and other old vegetation that had lain dormant for so long in the pirates’ beachwork, producing the deadly hydrogen sulphide? Could the “porridge-like” earth that was encountered only at this location on the island be in some way related to this toxic combination? We may never know.

The main problem related to the presuppositions of the sub-systems is that mainly the denotation of the concepts can be noticed, on a conscious level, but their connotation is mainly hidden in unconsciousness. To explain it in a simple way, the rational mind devotes more attention to the ‘reality’ which, with the use of this concept, it wants to indicate (the denotation) than which essential attributes carries the ‘reality’ indicated in the concept (connotation). However, denotation and connotation are quite different things. Let’s say that the so-called ‘religious’ sub-system of the mind which controls the spiritual state necessarily require the existence of God. Without its existence other ’emotional-motivational’ sub-systems would be blocked, which in turn would deeply affect the whole mental state. Let’s say that with disbelief in God and afterdeath, which closely connected with the God’s existence in the thought, it is impossible or hard to find the ultimate purpose of morality and justice and so on. Therefore, your mind automatically takes it for sure that God exists, its existence is logical and beneficial rather than its non-existence. And your mind denotes some ‘reality’ by the concept of ‘God’, and claims that God exists. The whole process so far is logical in context and quite understandable. (The Denotation and Connotation of the concept of God, Part 2)

The cognitive system of the brain is based on the functional operation of several sub-systems. If there is relatively perfect accordance among them, then the mind can reach the harmony and clarity. Each sub-system in mind has got its start point – presuppositions, the deep content of which is hidden in unconsciousness, but in most cases, if not all, actively affects the whole process of rational thinking. You can be aware of mostly its consequences, and you can intuitively sense whether these consequences are logical and clear, or illogical and vague. If the latter is the case, it means that the presuppositions of the sub-systems in mind are incompatible, which in turn influences the functions of whole sub-systems and conclusions that the sub-systems draw as the consequence of these functional operations. Ultimately, the mind would suffer from inevitable disagreement and disharmony, which in turn would constantly keep the mental state under stress. (The Denotation and Connotation of the concept of God)

I believe that the formative years of childhood are relatively brief but very important segments of a person’s life. The parents, the teachers, the librarians, and, yes, the writers and illustrators of children’s books must take their responsibility most seriously, for the images, the verbal patterns, and the patterns of behavior they present to children in these lighthearted confections are likely to influence them for the rest of their lives. These aesthetic impressions, just like the moral teachings of early childhood, remain indelible. They will, most likely, be the bedrock upon which (or in opposition to which) a person’s spiritual existence, consciously or unconsciously, will be based.

Following Libet’s instructions, all of the five subjects flicked their wrist whenever the spirit (or something) moved them. They also reported where the oscilloscope spot was when they first became aware of the will to move. Libet compared that self-report with concurrent measurements of the onset of the readiness potential. The results of forty trials—which have since been replicated by other researchers—are straightforward to relate, if difficult to interpret. The readiness potential again appeared roughly 550 milliseconds before the muscle moved. Awareness of the decision to act occurred about 100 to 200 milliseconds before the muscle moved. Simple subtraction gives a fascinating result: the slowly building readiness potential appears some 350 milliseconds before the subject becomes consciously aware of his decision to move. This observation, which held for all of the five subjects in each of the six sessions of forty trials, made it seem for all the world as if the initial cerebral activity (the readiness potential) associated with a willed act was unconscious. The readiness potential precedes a voluntary act by some 550 milliseconds. Consciousness of the intention to move appears some 100 to 200 milliseconds before the muscle is activated—and about 350 milliseconds after the onset of the readiness potential.

Dunne’s dreams seemed to him evidence for what Einstein and other physicists and mathematicians were just beginning to assert: that since the present moment depends entirely on where you stand in relation to events—what might be in the past for one observer may still be in the future for another observer, and vice versa—then the future must in some sense already exist. Einstein’s theory of relativity suggested that time was a dimension like space. To help visualize this, his teacher, Hermann Minkowski, pictured “spacetime” as a four-dimensional block. For the purposes of this book, let’s make it a glass block so we can see what is happening inside it. One’s life, and the “life” of any single object or atom in the universe, is really a line—a “world line”—snaking spaghetti-like through that glass block. The solid three-dimensional “you” that you experience at any moment is really just a slice or cross section of a four-dimensional clump of spaghetti-like atoms that started some decades ago as a zygote, gradually expanded in size by incorporating many more spaghetti-strand atoms, and then, after several decades of coherence (as a literal “flying spaghetti monster”) will dissipate into a multitude of little spaghetti atoms going their separate ways after your death. (They will recoalesce in different combinations with other spaghetti-strand atoms to make other objects and other spaghetti beings, again and again and again, until the end of the universe.) What we perceive at any given moment as the present state of affairs is just a narrow slice or cross-section of that block as our consciousness traverses our world-line from beginning to end. (If it helps envision this, the comic artist, occult magician, and novelist Alan Moore has recently revised the “block” to a football—one tip being the big bang, the other the “big crunch” proposed in some cosmological models.32 I will stick with the term “glass block” since I am not a football fan and “glass football” sounds odd.) Precognitive dreams, Dunne argued, show that at night, as well as other times when the brain is in a relaxed state, our consciousness can wriggle free of the present moment and scan ahead (as well as behind) on our personal world-line, like a flashlight at night illuminating a spot on the path ahead. This ability to be both rooted mentally in our body, with its rich sensory “now,” and the possibility of coming unstuck in time (as Vonnegut put it) suggested to Dunne that human consciousness was dual. We not only possess an “individual mind” that adheres to the brain at any given time point, but we also are part of a larger, “Universal Mind,” that transcends the now and that spaghetti-clump body. The Universal Mind, he argued, is ultimately shared—a consciousness-in-common—that is equivalent to what has always been called “God.

METTA MEDITATION Metta is an active form of meditation in which, instead of concentrating on the air, we concentrate on bringing positive thoughts and wishes out into the world, and hope that our good will affects people— or animals — in our heads. In some forms of this practice, we go a step further and believe that whosoever may be the target of our metta (and this includes ourselves) is relieved of their particular form of suffering, discomfort or pain as they are influenced by the force of our goodwill. Benefits of metta meditation Research supports what meditators have known for centuries who incorporate metta into their practice: it enhances well-being. Including strengthened feelings of empathy to better interactions to increased tolerance to coping with PTSD and other trauma-based disorders, daily meditation on love-kindness has been connected to a variety of effects, much like rituals of mindfulness and consciousness. And, yeah, sympathy can even grow. STEP BY STEP METTA MEDITATION Sit in a comfortable and relaxing way to practice metta meditation. For steady, long and full exhalations, take two to three deep breaths. Let go of any fears or doubts. Experience or visualize the wind flowing through your chest core in the direction of your heart for a few minutes. Metta is first applied against ourselves, as we often fail to love others without respecting ourselves first. The following or related sentences are sitting quietly, unconsciously repeated, gradually and steadily: may I be satisfied, may I be all right, may I be safe, may I be at ease and peaceful. Enable yourself to slip into the thoughts they share as you utter these words. Metta meditation is mainly about communicating with the purpose of wishing joy to ourselves or to others. Nevertheless, if the body or mind has emotions of comfort, friendliness, or affection, communicate with them, allowing them to grow as you repeat the words. You may keep a picture of yourself in the center of your mind as an aid to meditation. It allows the thoughts conveyed in the words to be improved. Bring to mind a friend or someone in your life who has cared about you profoundly after a period of steering metta towards yourself. And echo slowly words of love-kindness towards them: May you be satisfied. May you be fine. Please be safe. May you be at ease and in peace.

The collective unconscious is the collective mind of the universe and is related to every individual mind. The interface of the collective unconscious and consciousness is the personal unconscious, populated by complexes. The personal unconscious is the liminal zone between individual consciousness and the collective unconscious, between man and God.

Somebody is in a queer state of mind, perhaps behaves oddly, and no reason for this can be discovered at the time. Later—a month, a year, 10 years—the cause of this effect reveals itself. Because of where or what or how I am now, I behaved in such a fashion then.”54 Priestley called this the “future-influencing-present effect”—not unlike what later researchers would call presentiment but unfolding in many cases across a much longer timeframe of an individual’s life. In his 1964 book Man & Time, Priestley described several examples. One letter-writer was a WWII veteran with what we would now call PTSD, who experienced a “breakdown” during the war and relapses of his condition thereafter. He credited his recovery to a somewhat older woman with children whom he met and married after the war and, by the time of his writing, had a teenage daughter with. But “for a year before he met his wife or knew anything about her, he used to pass the gate of her country cottage on the local bus. And he never did this without feeling that he and that cottage were somehow related.”55 Another, older letter writer recalled being a girl during the First World War and when out walking one night in London, “found herself looking up at a hospital, quite strange to her, with tears streaming down her cheeks.” Years later, she moved in with a woman friend, and they remained partners for 25 years. “This friend was then taken ill and she died in that same hospital at which the girl so many years before had stared through her inexplicable tears.”56 Priestley also gives an example from two acquaintances of his own: Dr A began to receive official reports from Mrs B, who was in charge of one branch of a large department. These were not personal letters signed by Mrs B, but the usual duplicated official documents. Dr A did not know Mrs B, had never seen her, knew nothing about her except that she had this particular job. Nevertheless, he felt a growing excitement as he received more and more of these communications from Mrs B. This was so obvious that his secretary made some comment on it. A year later he had met Mrs B and fallen in love with her. They are now most happily married. He believes … that he felt this strange excitement because the future relationship communicated it to him; we might say that one part of his mind, not accessible to consciousness except as a queer feeling, already knew that Mrs B was to be tremendously important to him.57

The word the Anglo-Saxon poets of Dark Age England used for fate highlights this ironic, circling, swerving logic; they called it wyrd—a word related to a lot of other w-r words still existing in our language that connote twisting and turning (worm, wrap, writhe, wreath, wring, and so on—even word, which, as writers know, is made of bendy-twisty marks on paper or stone). Wyrd, or weird, is the bending force in our lives that, among other things, causes dark prophecies to be fulfilled not only despite but actually because of our best efforts at preventing them. It also warps our mind and induces a kind of compulsion around more appealing-sounding prophecies, as it did to Shakespeare’s Macbeth after hearing the Weird Sisters’ prophecy that he would become king. When we realize that the Minkowski block universe, in its resolute self-consistency, imposes a wyrd-like law upon us (a “law in the cosmos,” you might call it), then all those antique myths about prophecy and the ironic insistency of fate start to appear less like the superstitions of benighted folk in the Back When and start to seem remarkably, well, prescient. And not only prescient, but based on real-life experience with prescience. Divination was an important part of Greek culture, for instance; it was even the basis of their medicine. Sick patients went to temples and caves to have healing dreams in the presence of priests who could interpret their dreams’ signs. They were not strangers to this stuff, as we now are. As intrinsically precognitive beings who think of ourselves as freely willed, the logic of wyrd is our ruler. We can’t go anywhere that would prevent ourselves from existing, prevent ourselves from getting to the experiences and realizations ahead of us that will turn out to have retroinfluenced our lives now, and this imposes a kind of blindness on us. That blindness may keep us from going insane, reducing the level of prophecy to a manageable level. It is why our dreamlife only shows us the future as through a glass, darkly. It is also why the world seems so tricksterish to those who are really paying attention. That we are interfered with by an intelligence that is somehow within us but also Other is the human intuition that Freud theorized in such a radical new way. His focus was on how this Other inside could make us ill; the flip side is that it really does serve as our guide, especially when we let ourselves be led by our unreason. Research shows that “psi” is an unconscious, un-willed function or group of functions.2 The laboratory experiments by Daryl Bem, Dean Radin, and many others strongly support something like presentiment (future-feeling) operating outside of conscious awareness, and it could be a pervasive feature or even a basic underlying principle of our psychology.

Well, we think that time ‘passes,’ flows past us, but what if it is we who move forward, from past to future, always discovering the new? It would be a little like reading a book, you see. The book is all there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order. So the universe would be a very great book, and we would be very small readers.” “But the fact is,” said Dearri, “that we experience the universe as a succession, a flow. In which case, what’s the use of this theory of how on some higher plane it may be all eternally coexistent? Fun for you theorists, maybe, but it has no practical application, no relevance to real life. Unless it means we can build a time machine!” he added with a kind of hard, false joviality. “But we don’t experience the universe only successively,” Shevek said. “Do you never dream, Mr. Dearri?” He was proud of himself for having, for once, remembered to call someone “Mr.” “What’s that got to do with it?” “It is only in consciousness, it seems, that we experience time at all. A little baby has no time; he can’t distance himself from the past and understand how it relates to his present, or plan how his present might relate to his future. He does not know time passes; he does not understand death. The unconscious mind of the adult is like that still. In a dream there is no time, and succession is all changed about, and cause and effect are all mixed together. In myth and legend there is no time. What past is it the tale means when it says ‘Once upon a time’? And so, when the mystic makes the reconnection of his reason and his unconscious, he sees all becoming as one being, and understands the eternal return.

The shadow work we do before, where we explore the contents of the unconscious through analysis is then also really a much easier part than Anima or Animus work, which connects to the emotional and relational aspects of individuation. The memories and emotions connected to these experiences are often far from what people perceive as pleasant. Yet an important aspect of this is then again also how we relate to the unconscious, our inner aspects and the archetypes, each other and the world itself. In that sense cultivating the necessary wind-horse, both in the sense of our connection to our instinctual foundation, and also an increased mindfulness of our mind and body are as much key in this.

It's a psychological fantasy of the dream type, more like Kafka I suppose, or like 'The Man Who Was Thursday.' There is no fantasy premise: that is, a fantastic postulate from which things proceed logically; the beginning is natural, factual, normal, as in Hubbard's 'Fear;' the ordinary world, in fact. From there, the book 'degenerates into sheer fantasy,' as my agent puts it. It progresses, I would say, into greater and deeper levels of fantasy; a trip into the dream-regions of symbolism, the unconscious, etc. as one finds in 'Alice in Wonderland,' where the work ends with a final cataclysm of dream-fantasy. I'm saying all this because my point is this: I'm not sure a reader of fantasy would consider this a fantasy. He might consider this merely 'morbid neurotic psychological investigations for sick minds' as del Rey tends to put it. Actually, I think all human minds, sick or well, have regions of dream-symbolism; I see nothing morbid in these symbolistic worlds . . . they have their own logic and structure, their own typical relationships, as Lewis Carroll showed. Not a chaotic or formless world, at all . . . a world that fascinates me. But perhaps not of interest to fantasy readers. Yet, I don't know what else to call this. I call Kafka's work 'fantasies,' for want of a better name. Or Conrad Aiken's ' Silent Snow, Secret Snow.' Or even THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN, and certainly Molnar's 'Liliom,' or the plays of the Capek brothers, or that ghastly Maeterlinck 'Bluebird' thing, and certainly Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt.' To me, the myth and the dream are related; I see myths as symbolistic proto-type experiences, archaic and timeless, occurring in the individual subconscious. The fairy tale, the myth, the dream, are all related. And I see nothing morbid in it . . . the button molder, in 'Peer Gynt' absolutely terrifies me. I sense meaning, there. I can't exactly define it rationally . . . perhaps that's why Ibsen chose to present it that way; perhaps these symbols can't be reduced to exact literal descriptions. Like poetic images, they can't be translated.

Collier understood and preached this swim-with-current-rather-than-against strategy. Do not arrive as an interruption or disruption, attempting to divert your reader's attention from the object it is focused on, fighting to interest him in something different from what he is already, at this moment, interested in. Instead, align yourself with the subjects already possessing his attention, the matters already garnering his interest, the self-talk conversation already occurring in his mind, and the conversations he is already having around the water-cooler at work or at the kitchen table at home with peers, friends, and family. About this, Collier wrote: “Study your reader first — your product second…. The reader of your letter wants certain things and the desire for them is, consciously or unconsciously, the dominant idea in his mind all the time. He is also engaged by the news or events or public conversations of the day. Put yourself in his place. If you were deep in discussion with a friend over some matter and a stranger came up and said: ‘Mister, I have a fine coat I want to sell you!’ — what would you do? The same thing happens when you approach a man by mail. He is in discussion with himself. If you just butt in, will you be welcome? How would you do it if approaching him and his friend in person? You'd listen and get the trend of the conversation. Then, when you chimed in, it would be with a remark on a related subject. Then you could gradually bring the talk around logically to the point you wanted to discuss. Study your reader. Know what interests him. Listen to the conversation he is already having with himself. Enter where he already is.” There are some obvious, perennially occurring attention dominators, such as seasons and holidays, and linking to these — regardless of whether your business naturally links or not — can be extremely helpful. You need not be a florist, jeweler, or restaurant to utilize Valentine's Day, for example. Beyond that, and deeper than that, every customer group has some shared item on their minds. Know it. Start your conversation with them with it. And be sure to take advantage of one of the great advantages of today's online media, including e-mail, blogs, and social media sites — being day to day, even hour by hour, timely. You can link a marketing message to world or local, financial, or cultural news of the moment — and you should.

In many ways, our consciousness is a trainer. A large part of its function is to train the unconscious to do things that would be impossible if the unconscious were directed purely by instinct. Animals can never change their basic instinctual repertoire, which is why all animals belong to narrow evolutionary niches. Humans, by contrast, can train themselves to do almost anything. That’s because they are conscious. With consciousness, they can plan new activities entirely unknown to instinct. That’s why humans escaped from their original niche and became the masters of the earth, able to dominate the niches of all other species. Consciousness overcomes instinct. That’s the point of consciousness. If we couldn’t break from instinct, we would still be living in the trees, or in caves, and scarcely be any different from apes. Consciousness is the greatest power in the animal universe, because it can allow any animal that becomes conscious to transform its destiny. Only humans have. Why did Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) go extinct and Homo sapiens didn’t? Was it because the latter became conscious and the former didn’t? The latter were able to solve problems that the former could not. Leibniz said, “… it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God.” You cannot do systematic reasoning unless you have a mind space in which to conduct it. You need a space where you can deal with relations of ideas, truths of reason, universals, holism, coherence, pure logic, and so on.

Social ecologist Gregory Bateson foresaw how the separating of mind from matter – spirit from nature – creates all sorts of problems. For Bateson, this separation is an error of the most fundamental degree. This error, Bateson saw woven into Western habits of thought at deep and partly unconscious levels, undermining our capacity to flourish sustainably on Earth. He felt that it is what pits humanity against nature and provides for our prevalent worldview of survival through competition, in what he viewed as “an ecology of bad ideas” breeding parasitic humans, purely self-centered and destructive of their host environment. He noted that if you, “see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration, the environment will be yours to exploit…If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and over-grazing” (Bateson, 2000).

Divination is not mere fortune-telling or superstition. Rather, it is an exceedingly subtle psychological technique whereby the secrets of the unconscious can be discovered, its powers (extrasensory and others) can be made accessible, and guidance for our confused and disordered lives can be obtained. The most important fact to fix in one’s mind is that there is nothing haphazard or accidental in the universe, and that external events—no matter how seemingly trivial—are intimately related to happenings within the human psyche. Thus, if we learn the art of discovering and interpreting the external signs, we may thereby gain access to the world of inward realities in our own souls and in the soul of the cosmos. The magic of Tarot divination is not in the cards but in ourselves. The cards can and do act as instrumentalities whereby the subjective reality within the unconscious becomes able to project a portion of itself into objective existence. Through this projection, a meaningful and useful relationship or a creative dialogue between the subjective and objective sides of our lives may be established, which is a great accomplishment. Thus divi­nation by means of the Tarot may be defined as a practical way in which a bridge is built between the temporal world of physical events, on the one hand, and the timeless world of the archetypes of the collective unconscious, on the other. It may be useful to recall that divination was considered an important part of the cur­riculum of certain mystery schools, not primarily in order to teach how to foretell the future, but in order to construct a psychic mechanism within the initiate whereby a source of guidance and insight might be made accessible to his conscious self.

The Self is not conscious in the ordinary sense of the word. However, it is also not unconscious. It is, rather, pure Awareness or Superconsciousness (cit). All other attributes are simply superimpositions, projections of the mind. For the Self to reveal itself in its native splendor, all these projections must be withdrawn, or pierced through. This is achieved by means of the via negativa of the neti neti method. This approach of negation is succinctly illustrated in the Nirvāna-Shatka (Six [Stanzas] on Extinction), which is one of the many didactic poems attributed to Shankara. The full text reads as follows: I am not the mind or the wisdom faculty (buddhi), the I-sense, or thought; neither hearing nor the tongue; neither the nose nor the eyes; nor am I ether, earth, fire, or air. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness (cit) and Bliss (ānanda). I am Shiva. I am not what is called the life force (prāna), nor am I the five airs [circulating in the body]; nor the seven [bodily] constituents; nor the five [bodily] sheaths. I am also not mouth, hands, feet, genitals, and anus. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am Shiva. I have neither hatred nor passion, neither greed nor delusion; neither exhilaration nor the mood of envy. I am without virtue or prosperity, without lust or liberation. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. [In me there is] neither good nor evil, neither happiness nor suffering, neither mantra nor pilgrimage, neither the Vedas nor sacrifices. I am not food, the eater, or eating. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva. I am not [subject to] death, fear, or category of birth. I have no father or mother; [in fact, I have] no birth. I have no relatives or friends, no teacher or pupils. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva I am undifferentiated, of formless form. Due to [my] omnipresence I am everywhere [present for the benefit of all the senses. I am neither in bondage nor in liberation. [I am] immeasurable. I am Shiva in the form of Awareness and Bliss. I am Shiva.

Carl Jung coined the term collective unconscious to refer to the part of the mind that holds ancestral memory, or experience that is common to all humankind. Whereas Freud interpreted dreams on the object level, meaning how the content of the dream related to the dreamer in real life (the cast of characters, the specific situations), in Jungian psychology, dreams are interpreted on the subject level, meaning how they relate to common themes in our collective unconscious. It’s no surprise that we often dream about our fears. We have a lot of fears.

Carl Jung coined the term collective unconscious to refer to the part of the mind that holds ancestral memory, or experience that is common to all humankind. Whereas Freud interpreted dreams on the object level, meaning how the content of the dream related to the dreamer in real life (the cast of characters, the specific situations), in Jungian psychology, dreams are interpreted on the subject level, meaning how they relate to common themes in our collective unconscious. It’s no surprise that we often dream about our fears. We have a lot of fears. What are we afraid of? We are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid of being humiliated. We are afraid of failure and we are afraid of success. We are afraid of being alone and we are afraid of connection. We are afraid to listen to what our hearts are telling us. We are afraid of being unhappy and we are afraid of being too happy (in these dreams, inevitably, we’re punished for our joy). We are afraid of not having our parents’ approval and we are afraid of accepting ourselves for who we really are. We are afraid of bad health and good fortune. We are afraid of our envy and of having too much. We are afraid to have hope for things that we might not get. We are afraid of change and we are afraid of not changing. We are afraid of something happening to our kids, our jobs. We are afraid of not having control and afraid of our own power. We are afraid of how briefly we are alive and how long we will be dead. (We are afraid that after we die, we won’t have mattered.) We are afraid of being responsible for our own lives. Sometimes it takes a while to admit our fears, especially to ourselves. I’ve noticed that dreams can be a precursor to self-confession—a kind of pre-confession. Something buried is brought closer to the surface, but not in its entirety.

There comes to mind the case of a man who had found himself financially well-off enough to retire from business at an early age and who shortly thereafter developed the pain syndrome for which I saw him. As we talked, it became apparent that since his retirement, he had become preoccupied with a number of family problems, there had been a number of deaths in the family, he was worried about the health of the business he had left (in the hands of relatives), and he had begun to wonder what his life was all about now that he was retired and was thinking about aging and mortality for the first time. His concern about these matters, considered consciously and unconsciously, had produced sufficient anxiety (and anger) to precipitate the TMS. Conventional medicine had attributed his pain to an aging spine, and treatment for that had, naturally, failed. He had TMS; his troubles were not in his spine—they were in his life.

Having choice is a neurological and relational capacity that can only be built with practice. With all our deeply wired neural grooves, we will keep on going into habits of enduring. We won’t know what we authentically want. We will be afraid to change our minds. We will act out cultural scripts and unconscious entitlements.

But although external ties between the Eleatics and first Cynics are scanty, the conceptual resemblances are striking. Again, one must not read literally, and must bear in mind that the tenets of Eleaticism were so compelling that they essentially created the philosophical atmosphere breathed by the Cynics: these tenets determined a general orientation that the Cynics unconsciously adopted, despite the fact that their explicit rhetoric was to reject the convoluted "wisdom" of Eleatics, Academics, Peripatetics, and other schools. In order to trace the intellectual asceticism of the Cynics back to Eleatic ontology, we will first describe Parmenides' vision of the One and the attributes of reality itself. These attributes had immense influence especially over subsequent physics and epistemology. Moreover, they give the Greek praise of poverty a philosophical aspect: the truth is so beautiful and absorbing that to glimpse it transforms a person, turns him in a different direction, and wrenches him away from his previous devotion to conventional goods. Philosophy is a solitary activity that pulls the thinker away from work, marriage, family, citizenship, away even from sensual pleasure and the distractions of sense-experience. Indeed, the physical world as a whole loses its hold over the "wise;' who knows something far more real and compelling. That is, the Eleatic elevation of the absolute over the relative - of the singular, eternal, and unchanging over the heterogeneous, temporal, and shifting - introduces a lasting dualism into much Greek thought. This dualism culminates eventually in a variety of types of philosophical poverty. The Platonic philosopher becomes an intellectual and even religious ascetic who devotes himself to the pursuit of divine Ideas. The Cynic, on the other hand, dismisses such talk of eternity simply to contrast mundane Fortune and the self. While the external world is filled with "smoke" ( tuphos), and is as undesirable as it is unintelligible, the Cynic unconsciously emulates the attributes of the Eleatic One, and so proclaims his self-sufficiency, unity, consistency, and inner purity from contaminating desires and relations.

The relative unconscious mind is

At the ‘top’ end, I am talking about any context – and these are not by any means to be found in poetry alone – in which words are used so as to activate a broad net of connotations, which though present to us, remains implicit, so that the meanings are appreciated as a whole, at once, to the whole of our being, conscious and unconscious, rather than being subject to the isolating effects of sequential, narrow-beam attention. As long as they remain implicit, they cannot be hijacked by the conscious mind and turned into just another series of words, a paraphrase. If this should happen, the power is lost, much like a joke that has to be explained (humour is a right-hemisphere faculty). At the ‘bottom’ end, I am talking about the fact that every word, in and of itself, eventually has to lead us out of the web of language, to the lived world, ultimately to something that can only be pointed to, something that relates to our embodied existence

Carl Jung coined the term collective unconscious to refer to the part of the mind that holds ancestral memory, or experience that is common to all humankind. Whereas Freud interpreted dreams on the object level, meaning how the content of the dream related to the dreamer in real life (the cast of characters, the specific situations), in Jungian psychology, dreams are interpreted on the subject level, meaning how they relate to common themes in our collective unconscious.

These odd vicissitudes of memory appear to be part of a larger phenomenon. The aliens of these perceived encounters, or some other agent, appear able to control the minds and perceptions of abductees. It is common during abductions that spouses and others who are in the room when the abductee is taken seem to be “switched off,” i.e., rendered in some way unconscious during the abduction. This may be quite aggravating to the abductee calling for assistance in his or her helpless distress. This alteration of consciousness may be related to the differential perception of UFOs themselves on the part of witnesses.

In a world of general relativity, special relativity, string and super-string theory among other scientific oddities, Mattie Bennings would not have been all too surprised to know that as Alex Wayne, her close friend, had been locked in a battle of minds with another person, his body lay unconscious until the end. The fact that it had happened during the whole time from school to hospital, still somehow, though, escaped her notice until they were in the very room Alex was wheeled into upon arrival. In the journey to the hospital and through the gurney being transported to a room Alex only conveyed muscle spasms and pain, but when they got to his newly acquired room all hell had broken loose.

The cross-cultural manifestations of basic experiences related to shamanism (e.g., soul flight, death-and-rebirth, animal identities) illustrates that these practices are not strictly cultural but are structured by underlying, biologically inherent structures. These are neurobiological structures of knowing that provide the universal aspects of the human brain/mind (Laughlin, McManus, and d’Aquili 1992). Neurognostic structures are the inherent knowledge structures of the organism that predispose and mediate the organization of experience. Universal shamanic characteristics reflect these neurognostic structures, such as those of archetypes, the primordial organization of the collective unconscious.

This vicious circle is but the first of a series in which the mind that studies itself gets lost in a giddy whirling. The very simplicity of these paradoxes makes them irreducible. Whatever may be the plays on words and the acrobatics of logic, to understand is, above all, to unify. The mind’s deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man’s unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat’s universe is not the universe of the anthill. The truism “All thought is anthropomorphic” has no other meaning. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse of the human drama. But the fact of that nostalgia’s existence does not imply that it is to be immediately satisfied. For if, bridging the gulf that separates desire from conquest, we assert with Parmenides the reality of the One (whatever it may be), we fall into the ridiculous contradiction of a mind that asserts total unity and proves by its very assertion its own difference and the diversity it claimed to resolve. This other vicious circle is enough to stifle our hopes

The term “real” is a misnomer. You could say that the life forms that occupy earth are real. They appear as physical structures and they are based on mathematical formula and geometry. We are, in a sense, code. This code interacts with the physical senses, which decodes the formula and we are transformed to flesh and blood “life forms.” But at a quantum level we are, as I said, code. Underneath or beyond the quantum level—call it the pre-quantum level—we are infinite beings. We are Sovereign Integrals. What I am suggesting is that the term real, applies to the Sovereign Integral state of being and consciousness. The term is relative, however, because the Sovereign Integral consciousness is not considered real in the three-dimensional plane, and the human instrument is not real in the Domain of Unity. It is the reality of the dominant environment that determines the reality of the subjects and objects of that environment. The environment of three and four dimensional planes like earth, establishes a consensual, subjective reality—propagated by our unconscious and genetic mind. The environment of the infinite establishes a reality that has no mediation or signal transformation. It is elemental and core. There is no sensory “middleman” or propagation of perception. It is one and all in action. The individual is allowed to decide what is real and what is not. Illusion is a Russian doll; it has many layers, some of which transmit a sense of true awareness. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: Perception is reality. The subjective realm defines the seemingly objective. Illusion, the outermost doll, is the only one that is seen and therefore, known. However, if you open the outermost doll, you find another, albeit smaller one waits. This repeats seven times until you find the indivisible. We would call this core, innermost doll: the Sovereign Integral. This is where you want your imaginative faculty trained and honed in. This is where you want your life to progress, not satisfied that perception is reality, or that the outermost “doll” is real and worthy of your devotion. All of that said, it does not mean that the outer world—physical reality—is a waste of time or so mired in illusion that it isn’t worth developing. Quite the opposite. The outer world is your workshop, the place you can experiment, build things, create, try and fail, and so on. It is a place of severe challenges at time, but also of beauty and joy. The illusion isn’t in the physical things of this world. The illusion is in the self-perception of the individual life form.As long as the individual perceives themselves as a human instrument, maybe with a soul, maybe not, they will see all life as a place of separation and disunity. They will accept the illusion that life emits, which is one of separation. In this, they become lost, lost to themselves as infinite beings, and unable, as a result, to generate and sustain the vision into their true self.