Royal Ego Trips
Inflation & Other Self-Delusions;
Misguided Inner Authority
You Aren't Royal Unless Both Your Parents Were,
NOT just your ancestors.
It is common for very infantile people to have a mystical, religious feeling, they enjoy this atmosphere in which they can admire their beautiful feelings, but they are simply indulging their auto-eroticism.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11 - Jan 1935, Pages 171.
~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 11 - Jan 1935, Pages 171.
It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended,
but the glory belongs to our ancestors. --Plutarch
Most people with a lot of New England ancestry descend from one or more ‘gateway’ ancestors – i.e., early colonists who descend, themselves, from English kings, primarily the Plantagenets. The latter, in turn, have their own gateway ancestors, through whom we derive our longest possible ‘ancestral lines’ – into the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 450-750),
and perhaps (though far more conjecturally) even the Classical (Greco-Roman) and Ancient (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian) worlds. ALL such descents are hypothetical – that is, all entail many filiative links that are not, in fact, attested in writing, but postulated by scholars on the basis of an assessment of the known chronology, ethno-political situation, and onomastic patterns of the relevant era, locale, and race. In short, ‘ancient’ pedigrees have many ‘dotted lines,’ which are plausible, even likely, but NOT susceptible to proof.
Unfortunately, popular American genealogical literature is rife with supposed ‘ancient’ pedigrees which are neither likely nor plausible, and in some cases provably bogus, passing, as they do, through long chains of supposed personages who never existed. How, short of acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of many phases of world and national history, half a dozen ancient and modern languages, the various branches of philology, and an immense (and highly specialized) research literature (surely a job for several lifetimes!), is the ‘lay’ reader to tell the plausible from the preposterous, the reasonable from the ridiculous?
We can identify the major geographic areas, ethnicities, and pre-Plantagenet ‘gateway’ ancestors through whom we MIGHT descend from Dark Age, Classical, or Ancient kings, warlords, consuls, emperors, and pharaohs, and can outline the major sources of data and forms of reasoning upon which such descents are predicated. It will also draw your attention to proposed ‘ancient’ descents which are known to be false, or have been seriously questioned, and identify the absolute historical limits beyond which it will never be possible to go.
At about 360 years, or just short of 15 generations an individual living today would carry only three thousands of 1% (00.003052%) of the DNA of an ancestor who was “pure” anything 15 generations ago. So even if one ancestor was indeed Mediterranean 15 generations ago, unless they continuously intermarried within a pure Mediterranean population, the amount would drop by 50% with each generation to the miniscule amount that would be found in today’s current generation. With today’s technology, this is simply untraceable in autosomal DNA.
but the glory belongs to our ancestors. --Plutarch
Most people with a lot of New England ancestry descend from one or more ‘gateway’ ancestors – i.e., early colonists who descend, themselves, from English kings, primarily the Plantagenets. The latter, in turn, have their own gateway ancestors, through whom we derive our longest possible ‘ancestral lines’ – into the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 450-750),
and perhaps (though far more conjecturally) even the Classical (Greco-Roman) and Ancient (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian) worlds. ALL such descents are hypothetical – that is, all entail many filiative links that are not, in fact, attested in writing, but postulated by scholars on the basis of an assessment of the known chronology, ethno-political situation, and onomastic patterns of the relevant era, locale, and race. In short, ‘ancient’ pedigrees have many ‘dotted lines,’ which are plausible, even likely, but NOT susceptible to proof.
Unfortunately, popular American genealogical literature is rife with supposed ‘ancient’ pedigrees which are neither likely nor plausible, and in some cases provably bogus, passing, as they do, through long chains of supposed personages who never existed. How, short of acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of many phases of world and national history, half a dozen ancient and modern languages, the various branches of philology, and an immense (and highly specialized) research literature (surely a job for several lifetimes!), is the ‘lay’ reader to tell the plausible from the preposterous, the reasonable from the ridiculous?
We can identify the major geographic areas, ethnicities, and pre-Plantagenet ‘gateway’ ancestors through whom we MIGHT descend from Dark Age, Classical, or Ancient kings, warlords, consuls, emperors, and pharaohs, and can outline the major sources of data and forms of reasoning upon which such descents are predicated. It will also draw your attention to proposed ‘ancient’ descents which are known to be false, or have been seriously questioned, and identify the absolute historical limits beyond which it will never be possible to go.
At about 360 years, or just short of 15 generations an individual living today would carry only three thousands of 1% (00.003052%) of the DNA of an ancestor who was “pure” anything 15 generations ago. So even if one ancestor was indeed Mediterranean 15 generations ago, unless they continuously intermarried within a pure Mediterranean population, the amount would drop by 50% with each generation to the miniscule amount that would be found in today’s current generation. With today’s technology, this is simply untraceable in autosomal DNA.
http://www.elvidge.com/Genealogy/essay1.htm
We should not rise above the earth with the aid of "spiritual" intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.
I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors.
I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
--Don Marquis
He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another. --Seneca
Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants. --Danish Proverb
Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen.
The majority of them weren't even mammals. --Robert Anton Wilson
“The unconscious can only be integrated if the ego holds
its ground,” (Jung 1966, 16:503)
In Jungian psychology, Inflation can be defined as:
An overexpansion of the personality through identification with an archetype or, in pathological cases, with a historical or religious figure, which exceeds individual limitations. (ref Definitions of Jungian Terms)
"The difference between insanity and mental health is not dependent on society or politics, education or chemistry, is entirely dependent on our sense of FICTION. But it is not enough : also taking literally any hypothesis, the education or chemistry, society or politics, as it was the REAL truth and the reason of mental illness, it is in itself a mental illness, this time in the form of an explanatory function, taking it literally rather than heuristically. " --James Hillman
We should not rise above the earth with the aid of "spiritual" intuitions and run away from hard reality, as so often happens with people who have brilliant intuitions. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, Page 114.
I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors.
I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
--Don Marquis
He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another. --Seneca
Unworthy offspring brag the most about their worthy descendants. --Danish Proverb
Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen.
The majority of them weren't even mammals. --Robert Anton Wilson
“The unconscious can only be integrated if the ego holds
its ground,” (Jung 1966, 16:503)
In Jungian psychology, Inflation can be defined as:
An overexpansion of the personality through identification with an archetype or, in pathological cases, with a historical or religious figure, which exceeds individual limitations. (ref Definitions of Jungian Terms)
"The difference between insanity and mental health is not dependent on society or politics, education or chemistry, is entirely dependent on our sense of FICTION. But it is not enough : also taking literally any hypothesis, the education or chemistry, society or politics, as it was the REAL truth and the reason of mental illness, it is in itself a mental illness, this time in the form of an explanatory function, taking it literally rather than heuristically. " --James Hillman
Psychology accordingly treats all metaphysical claims and assertions as mental phenomena, and regards them as statements about the mind and its structure that derive ultimately from certain unconscious dispositions. It does not consider them to be absolutely valid or even capable of establishing a metaphysical truth. We have no intellectual means of ascertaining whether this attitude is right or wrong. ...
[Carl Jung on Psychology’s view of “Metaphysics” and of a “Universal Mind.”]
“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.”
-Thomas Merton - Seeds of Contemplation, New York, 1949, (p 111-112)
**************
This article was at the bottom of one of my file drawers. I don't know who authored it or when, but thank them for their work and agree with their comments about all of us being related to royalty.
Finding a link to them is great because something is usually written about them. Is it always correct? Goodness NO! But, at least there is the possibility that the information is correct and it usually is more complete and extends farther back in time than almost any other knowledge about our 'commoner' ancestors.
"The Associated Press carried a story recently about a man from Maine who traced his ancestry to King Egbert of England as well as all of the royal houses of Europe. The article makes it sound like something rather unusual. My question is, “So what? Almost everyone else can do the same.”
We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. To determine the number of ancestors you have, all you have to do is grab a calculator and determine how many generations you wish to go back. That should easy. Or is it?
For instance, here is a simple chart showing the number of ancestors you have, assuming an average of one generation every twenty-five years:
Number of generations
Approximate years
Ancestors in this generation
Total ancestors
1 25 2
2 2 50 4
6 3 75
8
12
4
100
16
24
5
125
32
48
6
150
64
96
7
175
128
192
8
200
256
384
9
225
512
768
10
250
1,024
1,536
11
275
2,048
3,072
12
300
4,096
6,144
13
325
8,192
12,288
14
350
16,384
24,576
15
375
32,768
49,152
16
400
65,536
98,304
17
425
131,072
196,608
18
450
262,144
393,216
19
475
524,288
786,432
20
500
1,048,576
1,572,864
21
525
2,097,152
3,145,728
22
550
4,194,304
6,291,456
23
575
8,388,608
12,582,912
24
600
16,777,216
25,165,824
25
625
33,554,432
50,331,648
26
650
67,108,864
100,663,296
27
675
134,217,728
201,326,592
28
700
268,435,456
402,653,184
29
725
536,870,912
805,306,368
30
750
1,073,741,824
1,610,612,736
31
775
2,147,483,648
3,221,225,472
32
800
4,294,967,296
6,442,450,944
33
825
8,589,934,592
12,884,901,888
34
850
17,179,869,184
25,769,803,776
35
875
34,359,738,368
51,539,607,552
36
900
68,719,476,736
103,079,215,104
37
925
137,438,953,472
206,158,430,208
38
950
274,877,906,944
412,316,860,416
39
975
549,755,813,888
824,633,720,832
40
1,000
1,099,511,627,776
1,649,267,441,664
As you can see, in the last 1,000 years you have a bit more than one and a half trillion ancestors. There is only one problem with this: that number far exceeds the total number of people who have ever lived on the face of the earth!
In fact, there are duplicates in your family tree. If you were able to identify every single person in your family tree, you would find that many ancestors of a few hundred years ago would show up time and time again. This is inbreeding, and we all have it in our family trees. There are no exceptions; the mathematics involved makes it obvious that we are all the products of inbreeding.
With a theoretical (although impractical) one and a half trillion ancestors in the past 1,000 years, what are the odds that you have royal ancestry? About 99.9999% per cent. Many of the royals had large families with children, grandchildren, and further descendants who were sent far and wide to marry other nobility. In turn, their descendants married minor nobility and wealthy merchants and their children... so on and so forth. Once you can document one royal ancestor, you will probably find hundreds more, thanks to the excellent records kept of nobility marriages.
Now let’s go the other way: let’s look at a hypothetical individual from 750 years ago and identify the number of descendants he or she has. The numbers are not as mathematically precise since each person has a variable number of descendants. Sociologists tell us that families of many years ago were typically larger than those of today. Indeed, history books record that a few kings and other prominent men often had 50 or more children, thanks to multiple wives. Not everyone had children, however. Many people had zero children. For this exercise, I will pick an average number of five children per family:
750
931,322,574,615,478,000,000
1,164,153,218,269,350,000,000
Your ancestor of 750 years ago had more than a sextillion descendants! Again, this will be true of each king and peasant alike. While this may be claimed as a mathematical “fact,” it is obviously impossible. Again, there have not been that many people in the world.
The challenge is to find your royal ancestors. Documentation of the royal families is plentiful, but finding your link back through many generations of commoners may be a challenge. While not every one of us will ever be able to prove descent from royalty, the odds are overwhelming that we all have such connections, documented or not. You just need to spend some time to find them!"
[Carl Jung on Psychology’s view of “Metaphysics” and of a “Universal Mind.”]
“The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.”
-Thomas Merton - Seeds of Contemplation, New York, 1949, (p 111-112)
**************
This article was at the bottom of one of my file drawers. I don't know who authored it or when, but thank them for their work and agree with their comments about all of us being related to royalty.
Finding a link to them is great because something is usually written about them. Is it always correct? Goodness NO! But, at least there is the possibility that the information is correct and it usually is more complete and extends farther back in time than almost any other knowledge about our 'commoner' ancestors.
"The Associated Press carried a story recently about a man from Maine who traced his ancestry to King Egbert of England as well as all of the royal houses of Europe. The article makes it sound like something rather unusual. My question is, “So what? Almost everyone else can do the same.”
We all have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. To determine the number of ancestors you have, all you have to do is grab a calculator and determine how many generations you wish to go back. That should easy. Or is it?
For instance, here is a simple chart showing the number of ancestors you have, assuming an average of one generation every twenty-five years:
Number of generations
Approximate years
Ancestors in this generation
Total ancestors
1 25 2
2 2 50 4
6 3 75
8
12
4
100
16
24
5
125
32
48
6
150
64
96
7
175
128
192
8
200
256
384
9
225
512
768
10
250
1,024
1,536
11
275
2,048
3,072
12
300
4,096
6,144
13
325
8,192
12,288
14
350
16,384
24,576
15
375
32,768
49,152
16
400
65,536
98,304
17
425
131,072
196,608
18
450
262,144
393,216
19
475
524,288
786,432
20
500
1,048,576
1,572,864
21
525
2,097,152
3,145,728
22
550
4,194,304
6,291,456
23
575
8,388,608
12,582,912
24
600
16,777,216
25,165,824
25
625
33,554,432
50,331,648
26
650
67,108,864
100,663,296
27
675
134,217,728
201,326,592
28
700
268,435,456
402,653,184
29
725
536,870,912
805,306,368
30
750
1,073,741,824
1,610,612,736
31
775
2,147,483,648
3,221,225,472
32
800
4,294,967,296
6,442,450,944
33
825
8,589,934,592
12,884,901,888
34
850
17,179,869,184
25,769,803,776
35
875
34,359,738,368
51,539,607,552
36
900
68,719,476,736
103,079,215,104
37
925
137,438,953,472
206,158,430,208
38
950
274,877,906,944
412,316,860,416
39
975
549,755,813,888
824,633,720,832
40
1,000
1,099,511,627,776
1,649,267,441,664
As you can see, in the last 1,000 years you have a bit more than one and a half trillion ancestors. There is only one problem with this: that number far exceeds the total number of people who have ever lived on the face of the earth!
In fact, there are duplicates in your family tree. If you were able to identify every single person in your family tree, you would find that many ancestors of a few hundred years ago would show up time and time again. This is inbreeding, and we all have it in our family trees. There are no exceptions; the mathematics involved makes it obvious that we are all the products of inbreeding.
With a theoretical (although impractical) one and a half trillion ancestors in the past 1,000 years, what are the odds that you have royal ancestry? About 99.9999% per cent. Many of the royals had large families with children, grandchildren, and further descendants who were sent far and wide to marry other nobility. In turn, their descendants married minor nobility and wealthy merchants and their children... so on and so forth. Once you can document one royal ancestor, you will probably find hundreds more, thanks to the excellent records kept of nobility marriages.
Now let’s go the other way: let’s look at a hypothetical individual from 750 years ago and identify the number of descendants he or she has. The numbers are not as mathematically precise since each person has a variable number of descendants. Sociologists tell us that families of many years ago were typically larger than those of today. Indeed, history books record that a few kings and other prominent men often had 50 or more children, thanks to multiple wives. Not everyone had children, however. Many people had zero children. For this exercise, I will pick an average number of five children per family:
750
931,322,574,615,478,000,000
1,164,153,218,269,350,000,000
Your ancestor of 750 years ago had more than a sextillion descendants! Again, this will be true of each king and peasant alike. While this may be claimed as a mathematical “fact,” it is obviously impossible. Again, there have not been that many people in the world.
The challenge is to find your royal ancestors. Documentation of the royal families is plentiful, but finding your link back through many generations of commoners may be a challenge. While not every one of us will ever be able to prove descent from royalty, the odds are overwhelming that we all have such connections, documented or not. You just need to spend some time to find them!"
"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens." -Khalil Gibran
■ Wilson Family History HOME PAGE: http://mineralogicalrecord.com/wilson/family.asp■■■by
Wendell E. Wilson 399
The Royal Lineages
It has been said that, if accurate genealogies were universally available, just about everyone of white skin and European extraction could trace a direct line of ancestry back to the Emperor Charlemagne (747-814). The centuries of intermarriage have, one way or another, tied everyone together. Consequently, one cannot really feel privileged by virtue of having traced a personal line of royal lineage. This may be disappointing to those with aristocratic or classist pretensions, whose only motivation for genealogical research is to find a documented excuse to feel superior. However, there are ample other fascinations in distant genealogy to hold our interest, personal aggrandizement aside. The main virtue is that it helps us to feel a part of history, to really (literally) relate to times past and to the people who lived their lives in those times.
Most people not involved in historical or genealogical research are quite surprised (and somewhat skeptical) to learn that so much is known about medieval genealogies, even going back to Roman times. It must be remembered that, in those days, personal lineage was one of the few things considered worth recording and preserving. Many potential rewards and advantages were bestowed on the basis of birthright, sometimes many generations removed. The possibility of a hereditary windfall involving titles, lands, privileges, and even occupations existed only for those who could substantiate their hereditary claims through an accurate genealogical record which could survive the challenges of competing claimants.
■ Wilson Family History HOME PAGE: http://mineralogicalrecord.com/wilson/family.asp■■■by
Wendell E. Wilson 399
The Royal Lineages
It has been said that, if accurate genealogies were universally available, just about everyone of white skin and European extraction could trace a direct line of ancestry back to the Emperor Charlemagne (747-814). The centuries of intermarriage have, one way or another, tied everyone together. Consequently, one cannot really feel privileged by virtue of having traced a personal line of royal lineage. This may be disappointing to those with aristocratic or classist pretensions, whose only motivation for genealogical research is to find a documented excuse to feel superior. However, there are ample other fascinations in distant genealogy to hold our interest, personal aggrandizement aside. The main virtue is that it helps us to feel a part of history, to really (literally) relate to times past and to the people who lived their lives in those times.
Most people not involved in historical or genealogical research are quite surprised (and somewhat skeptical) to learn that so much is known about medieval genealogies, even going back to Roman times. It must be remembered that, in those days, personal lineage was one of the few things considered worth recording and preserving. Many potential rewards and advantages were bestowed on the basis of birthright, sometimes many generations removed. The possibility of a hereditary windfall involving titles, lands, privileges, and even occupations existed only for those who could substantiate their hereditary claims through an accurate genealogical record which could survive the challenges of competing claimants.
At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness / you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
I won my soul, and to what did she give birth for me? You, monster, a son, ha!-a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt's brain, a primordial lizard! You want to be king of the earth? You want to banish proud free men, bewitch beautiful women, break up castles, rip open the belly of old cathedrals? Dumb thing, a lazy bug-eyed frog that wears pond weed on his skull's pate! And you want to call yourself my son? You're no son of mine, but the spawn of the devil. The father of the devil entered into the womb of my soul and in you has become flesh. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
What do you break apart? You broke love and life in twain. From this ghastly sundering, the frog and the son of the frog come forth. Ridiculous-disgusting sight! Irresistible advent! They will sit on the banks of the sweet water and listen to the nocturnal song of the frogs, since their God has been born as a son of frogs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, not sung, the one that sings itself I subject myself to the son, the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has produced him, and no woman has given birth to him. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
I: "My soul, do you still exist? You serpent, you frog, you magically produced boy whom my hands buried; you ridiculed, despised, hated one who appeared to me in a foolish form? Woe betide those who have seen their soul and felt it with hands. I am powerless in your hand, my God!" ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
How now, you want to speak? But I won't let you, otherwise in the end you will claim that you are my soul. But my soul is with the fire worm, with the son of the frog who has flown to the heavens above, to the upper sources. Do I know what he is doing there? But you are not my soul, you are my bare, empty nothing-I, this disagreeable being, whom one cannot even deny the right to consider itself worthless. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"Oh," I answered, "what's that, beloved? The God of the spirit is in the night? Is that the son? The son of the frogs? Woe betide us, if he is the God of our day!" ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"He is the lord of toads and frogs, which live in the water and go up on the land, whose chorus ascends at noon and at midnight. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"These dead have given names to all beings, the beings in the air, on the earth and in the water. They have weighed and counted things. They have counted so and so many horses, cows, sheep, trees, segments of land, and springs; they said, this is good for this purpose, and that is good for that one. What did they do with the admirable tree? What happened to the sacred frog? Did they see his golden eye? Where is the atonement for the 7,777 cattle whose blood they spilled, whose flesh they consumed? Did they do penance for the sacred ore that they dug up from the belly of the earth?~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"These dead laugh at my foolishness. But would they have raised a murderous hand against their brothers if they had atoned for the ox with the velvet eyes? If they had done penance for the shiny ore? If they had worshiped the holy trees? If they had made peace with the soul of the golden-eyed frog? What say things dead and living? Who is greater, man or the Gods? Truly, this sun has become a moon and no new sun has arisen from the contractions of the last hour of the night." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"You shall experience even more of it. You are in the second age. The first age has been overcome. This is the age of the rulership of the son, whom you call the Frog God. A third age will follow; the age of apportionment and harmonious power." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The God of the frogs or toads, the brainless, is the uniting of the Christian God with Satan. His nature is like the flame; he is like Eros, but a God; Eros is only a daimon. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
Note: To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, referred to by Egyptologists as Heqet
I won my soul, and to what did she give birth for me? You, monster, a son, ha!-a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt's brain, a primordial lizard! You want to be king of the earth? You want to banish proud free men, bewitch beautiful women, break up castles, rip open the belly of old cathedrals? Dumb thing, a lazy bug-eyed frog that wears pond weed on his skull's pate! And you want to call yourself my son? You're no son of mine, but the spawn of the devil. The father of the devil entered into the womb of my soul and in you has become flesh. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
What do you break apart? You broke love and life in twain. From this ghastly sundering, the frog and the son of the frog come forth. Ridiculous-disgusting sight! Irresistible advent! They will sit on the banks of the sweet water and listen to the nocturnal song of the frogs, since their God has been born as a son of frogs. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The myth commences, the one that need only be lived, not sung, the one that sings itself I subject myself to the son, the one engendered by sorcery, the unnaturally born, the son of the frogs, who stands at the waterside and speaks with his fathers and listens to their nocturnal singing. Truly he is full of mysteries and superior in strength to all men. No man has produced him, and no woman has given birth to him. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
I: "My soul, do you still exist? You serpent, you frog, you magically produced boy whom my hands buried; you ridiculed, despised, hated one who appeared to me in a foolish form? Woe betide those who have seen their soul and felt it with hands. I am powerless in your hand, my God!" ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
How now, you want to speak? But I won't let you, otherwise in the end you will claim that you are my soul. But my soul is with the fire worm, with the son of the frog who has flown to the heavens above, to the upper sources. Do I know what he is doing there? But you are not my soul, you are my bare, empty nothing-I, this disagreeable being, whom one cannot even deny the right to consider itself worthless. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"Oh," I answered, "what's that, beloved? The God of the spirit is in the night? Is that the son? The son of the frogs? Woe betide us, if he is the God of our day!" ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"He is the lord of toads and frogs, which live in the water and go up on the land, whose chorus ascends at noon and at midnight. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"These dead have given names to all beings, the beings in the air, on the earth and in the water. They have weighed and counted things. They have counted so and so many horses, cows, sheep, trees, segments of land, and springs; they said, this is good for this purpose, and that is good for that one. What did they do with the admirable tree? What happened to the sacred frog? Did they see his golden eye? Where is the atonement for the 7,777 cattle whose blood they spilled, whose flesh they consumed? Did they do penance for the sacred ore that they dug up from the belly of the earth?~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"These dead laugh at my foolishness. But would they have raised a murderous hand against their brothers if they had atoned for the ox with the velvet eyes? If they had done penance for the shiny ore? If they had worshiped the holy trees? If they had made peace with the soul of the golden-eyed frog? What say things dead and living? Who is greater, man or the Gods? Truly, this sun has become a moon and no new sun has arisen from the contractions of the last hour of the night." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
"You shall experience even more of it. You are in the second age. The first age has been overcome. This is the age of the rulership of the son, whom you call the Frog God. A third age will follow; the age of apportionment and harmonious power." ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
The God of the frogs or toads, the brainless, is the uniting of the Christian God with Satan. His nature is like the flame; he is like Eros, but a God; Eros is only a daimon. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book.
Note: To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, referred to by Egyptologists as Heqet
"Divine Pride" & Ego Inflation
So you find you come from royalty -- get over it! You also come from far more numerous 'nobodies' whose descents were not recorded -- thousands of them, as or more influential in your genetics.
The expansion of the soul is experienced as inflation of the ego -- ego superficiality with no concept of psychological 'digestion' or integration. It is both a psychological and spiritual phenomenon. This inflation or distancing creates a greater disconnect from the spirit/body.
Ego-inflation is a potential pitfall—Jung would call it a “shadow”—for anyone practicing a “spiritual path.” Indeed, without the prerequisite humor, honesty and humility, the danger only increases as one’s practice advances into the “higher” stages. Where the personal is denied, archetypal inflation can overwhelm the ego with an exaggerated persona. Minimally, the consequence of inflation is excessive pride in the presumed uniqueness -- the mask of bald ambition, a House of Cards, not a noble house.
Pride goes before a fall. Jung's main injunction was a warning against inflation. Many who make this discovery of ancestry become ego inflated, self-proclaiming pretentious titles to which they have no claim. The blunt fact is anyone tracing their ancestry into the World Tree shares this with millions of others, many of whom would have far greater claims to lost or disenfranchised nobility.
Anyone who makes such a proclamation, most likely reeks with the stink of inflation with no sense of humility in the face of the issue. Examples of "the men who would be king" are too numerous to mention, thus revealing the collective nature of such imaginal superiority. We are, once aware of this problem, invited to do two things. One is watch ourselves for evidence of this imbalance. The other is to take with a grain of salt anyone's assertion that they have just presented you with "the truth" or the most perfect or best representation of a certain idea or question.
Rather than an altruistic quest, it becomes a regressive tendency, one of self-gratification, a self-consoling fantasy for what is not happening in the daily life. We think we are bigger than we really are. Inflation justifies the motivations of anger to prevail and dominate. In many cases the ego inflation and grandiosity has swept away the individual ego's idea of it own importance, and seeks to draw others into its sphere of confusion. The ego seeks reinforcement for its views, and often will believe it is entertaining its listeners or readers.
It seems to be a common mistake of the grandiose to think "Gnostic" means "looking for a new prophet to follow" or worse, some misguided inner authority. Even the sincere get ego inflated by their experiences, but some really try to fill up a balloon and fly away. And some seem to succeed to the awe and amazement of many. But they are not the air, the breath, the spirit that fills the balloon--they are dead weight that is trying to contain it, thinking by doing so they are in control, when in fact they are now at the mercy of the winds.
As Merton reminds us, ego inflated people can be very sincere, very appealing, and very dangerous. Who are these people? Sometimes, we are, it is a part of the spiritual path and we must learn to recognize it. But there are also those who seem to be addicted to ego inflation, to the spiritual high it brings. They equate it with spirituality, with progress on the path. If there is no one to aid them, or if they make themselves impervious to aid, they can become lost. Just as in the balloon analogy, the inflated ego becomes a puppet for larger forces.
History is riddled with such claimants, with only the wise understanding that their kingdom is not of this world. Thus, to do so is immature "acting out". It is identification with a false ego state, rationalized by a paper trail which only takes on meaning when matched by lived reality. They hold on to every scrap of validation for dear life, often seeking publicity for themselves -- a self-augmenting experience. Self-evaluation is distorted.
This is a failure of self-regulation, the very self-sovereignty which is claimed. The unbalanced fancy themselves possessing a social or spiritual status that in fact they do not really have. The distortion is a living out that demonstrates just the opposite of the claim. The ego cannot distinguish what belongs to itself and what is simply universal. Perhaps some books or person has "blown air in their raft" to corroborate and validate their own view. Thus, the blind lead the blind. The ego sets itself up as the center of the psyche.
C. G. Jung defined inflation - an unconscious psychic condition - as expansion of the personality beyond its proper limits by identification with the persona or with an archetype, or in pathological cases with a historical or religious figure. It produces an exaggerated sense of one's self-importance and is usually compensated by feelings of inferiority (Jung, 1934-1939, 1963).
Most of Jung's comments about inflation are concerned with an identification of the ego or consciousness with the numinosity of an archetype (Jung, 1934/1950, 1952), leading to a distortion or ego dissolution. The key to avoiding inflation is knowledge of the proper boundaries of the ego or consciousness, and this is achieved by discrimination between it and the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious - the self, anima, animus, and shadow - which possess psychic autonomy.
Neither the status nor accomplishments of your ancestors are your own. But the self-deceived genuinely believe that they are extraordinary, enlightened beings, nobles, avatars, and so on, when in fact their consciousness has obviously not attained that status.
The Narcissist does not go beyond the ordinary egoic identification at the level of the basic surface consciousness (even if they believe they do). The Inflationist has, but has attained a sort of psychotic identification with an Attractor or archetype. They have in other words lost touch with common-sense reality. The Narcissist lacks empathy. The Inflationist lacks any sense of perspective at all.
Inflation, as defined here, is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is an extreme form of egotism, which is associated (in the case of so-called gurus as well as ordinary people) with gross emotional immaturity, lack of empathy, and even child-like behavior (not child-like in the sense of innocence, but in the sense of selfish, wanton, unrestrained, uncaring). It pertains to lack of development of the affective body and when excessive results in the narcissistic personality disorder.
Over-Valuing Oneself
Inflation may occur even in a partially enlightened individual, for example, or a person on a drug trip, or having a psychotic experience. They connect with something much vaster than their small human personality and are swallowed up by it. They identify with it and confuse their little human personalities with this much larger power.
The ego is potentially engulfed and disintegrated by the archetype. Over-valuation is usually over-compensation for someone who lacks personal achievement and stability in their own right, who attempt of idealize themselves as 'The One', however they imagine that.
We can call these big vast things "attractors". In the olden days they were called "gods" (this term is retained by contemporary hermeticists). Jung calls them "archetypes". It really doesn't matter what name we use, or what conceptuual framework. What does matter is the dynamic autonomous reality of these forces.
The danger of retreating into a persona of fatuous, unfounded, “noble character” at the same time wreaks havoc on all those around such posers, irregardless of pedigree. No one is fooled by such collusion except those who remain in the dark maintained by the contamination of Persona with Shadow.
The largely emotional over-reaction substitutes an egoic grandiose fantasy, a delusional self-hypnotic trance of control for the Great Work of a lifetime. Most spiritual disciplines and communities exert pressure on persons who have become too grandly public in their virtues or presumed status.
M.-L. von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the victim "thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. M-L von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Jung ed.
In everyday life, the Self may be projected onto such powerful figures as the state, God, the universe or fate. Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London 1990) p. 41
When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality. One potential counterbalance to this is however the social or collective aspects of the Self. Even if they have authentic transcendent enlightenment experiences of the Intermediate Zone, it can be distorted with side effects such as paranoia, and secondary mental and emotional self-deception.
Where both narcissism and inflation is present, the delusional will have tied up a lot of egotism and ego-defense mechanisms in this belief, and when their claims are challenged they become extremely defenisive and hostile and engage in rampant shadow projection on the wicked person or people who would dare imply such a thing. They may also encourage others to behave in similar ways, too.
Over-Identification
Contrary to Jung's injunctions, such identifications are taken literally, and may be fed and reinforced by the delusions of others in the same boat. Negative inflation means to be over—identified with too great an absorption in the deeper self. This blocks rather than facilitates the transformative process. Anyone who immediately reacts to such suggestions is clearly a stakeholder in their own stalled process. This is the opposite of individuation which is freedom from grossly collective response and complexes. Supporting such allegations with metaphysical claims is another dodge.
What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of figurative death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thödol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning
person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what
is the difference between the fantasies of this kind and phantasmagoria of a lunatic.
(Jung 1964,11:846)
Lying or confabulating does not make the delusion so, nor does becoming incensed about it. In fact, it reveals the discrepancy. The collective is pretentiously assimilated by the ego. The over-identification is the opposite of the healthy psychological move. At the very least, it puts the cart before the horse. Such an ungrounded position poses an inherent psychological danger. It is a projection of exaggerated self-importance which ignores the dynamics of unconscious autonomous complexes.
Jung describes his remedy: assimilation of contents of the collective unconscious, not through identification, but through confrontation, avoiding equation with either the lowest or highest aspects of one’s own psyche.
Jung’s warning that inflation means identifying oneself with an archetypal motif is completely applicable to self-styled "royal" claimants. To do so means one is in the very first stage of initiation, utterly unconscious that the Persona or social mask is confounded with your Shadow self. It is a fallacious attempt to prop up a weak ego, not the claim of a "noble" ego or a valid claim of anything. As psychologists well know, the moral conflict is not to be settled merely by a declaration of superiority bordering on inhumanity, nor a declaration one is better than or fit to rule others in any way.
Afflicted pride is a version of ego-inflation which Jung sought to avoid by advising against identifying with assimilated contents. But people will defend their self-deluded self image to the grave, even when profoundly misconceived. It is an assurance of later problems and is an avoidance of the work of individuation. Jung's cautions are profound and highlight the enormity of the task we are attempting. Jung frequently warns against the inflation that comes with assimilation of autonomous complexes and identification with their content.
It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953, 7:243 )
Such an inflation can arise with the discovery of one's ancestral ines. Misperception and misapplication of genealogy findings leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant ills:
In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred.
In introjection, he gets involved in a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil. Here we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110).
Positive inflation of the religious or megalomaniacal sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself as having the universal panacea:
The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This
would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form, but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260)
The prophet is convinced that he/she has the final truth but is merely inflated through identification with the forces of deep contents. The humble disciple affects the posture of only
following the master’s dictums:
But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.…The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being.… Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet. (Jung 1953, 7:263-265)
In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence
of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein:
These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140)
Jung advises against identifying with offices and titles since such excludes the richness of our situation:
A very common instance is the humourless way in which many men identify themselves with their business or their titles. The office I hold is certainly my special activity; but it is also a collective factor that has come into existence historically through the cooperation of many people and whose dignity rests solely on collective approval. When, therefore, I identify myself with my office or title, I behave as though I myself were the whole complex of social factors of which that office consists, or as though I were not only the bearer of the office, but also and at the same time the approval of society. I have made an extraordinary extension of myself and have usurped qualities which are not in me but outside me. (Jung 1953, 7:227)
Ego inflation is an over-compensation for an otherwise non-illustrious personality, which is the opposite of self-realization or self-actualization. And:
There is, however, yet another thing to be learnt from this example, namely that these
transpersonal contents are not just inert or dead matter that can be annexed at will. Rather they are living entities which exert an attractive force upon the conscious mind. Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office—or whatever their outer husk may be—is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies. (Jung 1953, 7:230)
The basic problem is that one has lost a healthy respect for the need to mediate between the
conscious and the unconscious, thereby (in one version) inflating the importance of the ego:
To the extent that the integrated contents are parts of the self, we can expect this influence [of assimilation] to be considerable. Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated.…I should only like to mention that the more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures. (Jung 1969, 9:43-44)
The problem of inflation occurs whether the ego is drowned in the larger self or the larger
self is pretentiously assimilated to the ego:
So you find you come from royalty -- get over it! You also come from far more numerous 'nobodies' whose descents were not recorded -- thousands of them, as or more influential in your genetics.
The expansion of the soul is experienced as inflation of the ego -- ego superficiality with no concept of psychological 'digestion' or integration. It is both a psychological and spiritual phenomenon. This inflation or distancing creates a greater disconnect from the spirit/body.
Ego-inflation is a potential pitfall—Jung would call it a “shadow”—for anyone practicing a “spiritual path.” Indeed, without the prerequisite humor, honesty and humility, the danger only increases as one’s practice advances into the “higher” stages. Where the personal is denied, archetypal inflation can overwhelm the ego with an exaggerated persona. Minimally, the consequence of inflation is excessive pride in the presumed uniqueness -- the mask of bald ambition, a House of Cards, not a noble house.
Pride goes before a fall. Jung's main injunction was a warning against inflation. Many who make this discovery of ancestry become ego inflated, self-proclaiming pretentious titles to which they have no claim. The blunt fact is anyone tracing their ancestry into the World Tree shares this with millions of others, many of whom would have far greater claims to lost or disenfranchised nobility.
Anyone who makes such a proclamation, most likely reeks with the stink of inflation with no sense of humility in the face of the issue. Examples of "the men who would be king" are too numerous to mention, thus revealing the collective nature of such imaginal superiority. We are, once aware of this problem, invited to do two things. One is watch ourselves for evidence of this imbalance. The other is to take with a grain of salt anyone's assertion that they have just presented you with "the truth" or the most perfect or best representation of a certain idea or question.
Rather than an altruistic quest, it becomes a regressive tendency, one of self-gratification, a self-consoling fantasy for what is not happening in the daily life. We think we are bigger than we really are. Inflation justifies the motivations of anger to prevail and dominate. In many cases the ego inflation and grandiosity has swept away the individual ego's idea of it own importance, and seeks to draw others into its sphere of confusion. The ego seeks reinforcement for its views, and often will believe it is entertaining its listeners or readers.
It seems to be a common mistake of the grandiose to think "Gnostic" means "looking for a new prophet to follow" or worse, some misguided inner authority. Even the sincere get ego inflated by their experiences, but some really try to fill up a balloon and fly away. And some seem to succeed to the awe and amazement of many. But they are not the air, the breath, the spirit that fills the balloon--they are dead weight that is trying to contain it, thinking by doing so they are in control, when in fact they are now at the mercy of the winds.
As Merton reminds us, ego inflated people can be very sincere, very appealing, and very dangerous. Who are these people? Sometimes, we are, it is a part of the spiritual path and we must learn to recognize it. But there are also those who seem to be addicted to ego inflation, to the spiritual high it brings. They equate it with spirituality, with progress on the path. If there is no one to aid them, or if they make themselves impervious to aid, they can become lost. Just as in the balloon analogy, the inflated ego becomes a puppet for larger forces.
History is riddled with such claimants, with only the wise understanding that their kingdom is not of this world. Thus, to do so is immature "acting out". It is identification with a false ego state, rationalized by a paper trail which only takes on meaning when matched by lived reality. They hold on to every scrap of validation for dear life, often seeking publicity for themselves -- a self-augmenting experience. Self-evaluation is distorted.
This is a failure of self-regulation, the very self-sovereignty which is claimed. The unbalanced fancy themselves possessing a social or spiritual status that in fact they do not really have. The distortion is a living out that demonstrates just the opposite of the claim. The ego cannot distinguish what belongs to itself and what is simply universal. Perhaps some books or person has "blown air in their raft" to corroborate and validate their own view. Thus, the blind lead the blind. The ego sets itself up as the center of the psyche.
C. G. Jung defined inflation - an unconscious psychic condition - as expansion of the personality beyond its proper limits by identification with the persona or with an archetype, or in pathological cases with a historical or religious figure. It produces an exaggerated sense of one's self-importance and is usually compensated by feelings of inferiority (Jung, 1934-1939, 1963).
Most of Jung's comments about inflation are concerned with an identification of the ego or consciousness with the numinosity of an archetype (Jung, 1934/1950, 1952), leading to a distortion or ego dissolution. The key to avoiding inflation is knowledge of the proper boundaries of the ego or consciousness, and this is achieved by discrimination between it and the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious - the self, anima, animus, and shadow - which possess psychic autonomy.
Neither the status nor accomplishments of your ancestors are your own. But the self-deceived genuinely believe that they are extraordinary, enlightened beings, nobles, avatars, and so on, when in fact their consciousness has obviously not attained that status.
The Narcissist does not go beyond the ordinary egoic identification at the level of the basic surface consciousness (even if they believe they do). The Inflationist has, but has attained a sort of psychotic identification with an Attractor or archetype. They have in other words lost touch with common-sense reality. The Narcissist lacks empathy. The Inflationist lacks any sense of perspective at all.
Inflation, as defined here, is not the same as narcissism. Narcissism is an extreme form of egotism, which is associated (in the case of so-called gurus as well as ordinary people) with gross emotional immaturity, lack of empathy, and even child-like behavior (not child-like in the sense of innocence, but in the sense of selfish, wanton, unrestrained, uncaring). It pertains to lack of development of the affective body and when excessive results in the narcissistic personality disorder.
Over-Valuing Oneself
Inflation may occur even in a partially enlightened individual, for example, or a person on a drug trip, or having a psychotic experience. They connect with something much vaster than their small human personality and are swallowed up by it. They identify with it and confuse their little human personalities with this much larger power.
The ego is potentially engulfed and disintegrated by the archetype. Over-valuation is usually over-compensation for someone who lacks personal achievement and stability in their own right, who attempt of idealize themselves as 'The One', however they imagine that.
We can call these big vast things "attractors". In the olden days they were called "gods" (this term is retained by contemporary hermeticists). Jung calls them "archetypes". It really doesn't matter what name we use, or what conceptuual framework. What does matter is the dynamic autonomous reality of these forces.
The danger of retreating into a persona of fatuous, unfounded, “noble character” at the same time wreaks havoc on all those around such posers, irregardless of pedigree. No one is fooled by such collusion except those who remain in the dark maintained by the contamination of Persona with Shadow.
The largely emotional over-reaction substitutes an egoic grandiose fantasy, a delusional self-hypnotic trance of control for the Great Work of a lifetime. Most spiritual disciplines and communities exert pressure on persons who have become too grandly public in their virtues or presumed status.
M.-L. von Franz considered that "the dark side of the Self is the most dangerous thing of all, precisely because the Self is the greatest power in the psyche. It can cause people to 'spin' megalomanic or other delusionary fantasies that catch them up", so that the victim "thinks with mounting excitement that he has grasped the great cosmic riddles; he therefore loses all touch with human reality. M-L von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Jung ed.
In everyday life, the Self may be projected onto such powerful figures as the state, God, the universe or fate. Anthony Stevens, On Jung (London 1990) p. 41
When such projections are withdrawn, there can be a destructive inflation of the personality. One potential counterbalance to this is however the social or collective aspects of the Self. Even if they have authentic transcendent enlightenment experiences of the Intermediate Zone, it can be distorted with side effects such as paranoia, and secondary mental and emotional self-deception.
Where both narcissism and inflation is present, the delusional will have tied up a lot of egotism and ego-defense mechanisms in this belief, and when their claims are challenged they become extremely defenisive and hostile and engage in rampant shadow projection on the wicked person or people who would dare imply such a thing. They may also encourage others to behave in similar ways, too.
Over-Identification
Contrary to Jung's injunctions, such identifications are taken literally, and may be fed and reinforced by the delusions of others in the same boat. Negative inflation means to be over—identified with too great an absorption in the deeper self. This blocks rather than facilitates the transformative process. Anyone who immediately reacts to such suggestions is clearly a stakeholder in their own stalled process. This is the opposite of individuation which is freedom from grossly collective response and complexes. Supporting such allegations with metaphysical claims is another dodge.
What this means in practice is complete capitulation to the objective powers of the psyche, with all that this entails; a kind of figurative death, corresponding to the Judgment of the Dead in the Sidpa Bardo. It means the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thödol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning
person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what
is the difference between the fantasies of this kind and phantasmagoria of a lunatic.
(Jung 1964,11:846)
Lying or confabulating does not make the delusion so, nor does becoming incensed about it. In fact, it reveals the discrepancy. The collective is pretentiously assimilated by the ego. The over-identification is the opposite of the healthy psychological move. At the very least, it puts the cart before the horse. Such an ungrounded position poses an inherent psychological danger. It is a projection of exaggerated self-importance which ignores the dynamics of unconscious autonomous complexes.
Jung describes his remedy: assimilation of contents of the collective unconscious, not through identification, but through confrontation, avoiding equation with either the lowest or highest aspects of one’s own psyche.
Jung’s warning that inflation means identifying oneself with an archetypal motif is completely applicable to self-styled "royal" claimants. To do so means one is in the very first stage of initiation, utterly unconscious that the Persona or social mask is confounded with your Shadow self. It is a fallacious attempt to prop up a weak ego, not the claim of a "noble" ego or a valid claim of anything. As psychologists well know, the moral conflict is not to be settled merely by a declaration of superiority bordering on inhumanity, nor a declaration one is better than or fit to rule others in any way.
Afflicted pride is a version of ego-inflation which Jung sought to avoid by advising against identifying with assimilated contents. But people will defend their self-deluded self image to the grave, even when profoundly misconceived. It is an assurance of later problems and is an avoidance of the work of individuation. Jung's cautions are profound and highlight the enormity of the task we are attempting. Jung frequently warns against the inflation that comes with assimilation of autonomous complexes and identification with their content.
It will be remembered that in the analysis of the personal unconscious the first things to be added to consciousness are the personal contents and I suggested that these contents which have been repressed, but are capable of becoming conscious, should be called the personal unconscious. I also showed that to annex the deeper layers of the unconscious, which I have called the collective unconscious, produces an extension of the personality leading to the state of inflation. (Jung 1953, 7:243 )
Such an inflation can arise with the discovery of one's ancestral ines. Misperception and misapplication of genealogy findings leads to positive and negative inflation and all their attendant ills:
In projection, he vacillates between an extravagant and pathological deification of the doctor, and a contempt bristling with hatred.
In introjection, he gets involved in a ridiculous self-deification, or else a moral self-laceration. The mistake he makes in both cases comes from attributing to a person the contents of the collective unconscious. In this way he makes himself or his partner either god or devil. Here we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike (Jung 1953, 7:110).
Positive inflation of the religious or megalomaniacal sort can lead to assumptions of grandeur, viewing oneself as having the universal panacea:
The second possible mode of reaction is identification with the collective psyche. This
would be equivalent to acceptance of the inflation, but now exalted into a system. In other words, one would be the fortunate possessor of the great truth that was only waiting to be discovered, of the eschatological knowledge that means the healing of the nations. This attitude does not necessarily signify megalomania in direct form, but megalomania in the milder and more familiar form it takes in the reformer, the prophet, and the martyr. (Jung 1953, 7:260)
The prophet is convinced that he/she has the final truth but is merely inflated through identification with the forces of deep contents. The humble disciple affects the posture of only
following the master’s dictums:
But besides the possibility of becoming a prophet, there is another alluring joy, subtler and apparently more legitimate: the joy of becoming a prophet’s disciple.…The disciple is unworthy; modestly he sits at the Master’s feet and guards against having ideas of his own. Mental laziness becomes a virtue; one can at least bask in the sun of a semidivine being.… Naturally the disciples always stick together, not out of love, but for the very understandable purpose of effortlessly confirming their own convictions by engendering an air of collective agreement.…[J]ust as the prophet is a primordial image from the collective psyche, so also is the disciple of the prophet. (Jung 1953, 7:263-265)
In both cases inflation is brought about by the collective unconscious, and the independence
of the individuality suffers injury. In a similar vein:
These few examples may suffice to show what kind of spirit animated these movements. They were made up of people who identified themselves (or were identified) with God, who deemed themselves supermen, had a critical approach to the gospels, followed the promptings of the inner man, and understood the kingdom of heaven to be within. In a sense, therefore, they were modern in their outlook, but they had a religious inflation instead of the rationalistic and political psychosis that is the affliction of our day. (Jung 1969, 9:140)
Jung advises against identifying with offices and titles since such excludes the richness of our situation:
A very common instance is the humourless way in which many men identify themselves with their business or their titles. The office I hold is certainly my special activity; but it is also a collective factor that has come into existence historically through the cooperation of many people and whose dignity rests solely on collective approval. When, therefore, I identify myself with my office or title, I behave as though I myself were the whole complex of social factors of which that office consists, or as though I were not only the bearer of the office, but also and at the same time the approval of society. I have made an extraordinary extension of myself and have usurped qualities which are not in me but outside me. (Jung 1953, 7:227)
Ego inflation is an over-compensation for an otherwise non-illustrious personality, which is the opposite of self-realization or self-actualization. And:
There is, however, yet another thing to be learnt from this example, namely that these
transpersonal contents are not just inert or dead matter that can be annexed at will. Rather they are living entities which exert an attractive force upon the conscious mind. Identification with one’s office or one’s title is very attractive indeed, which is precisely why so many men are nothing more than the decorum accorded to them by society. In vain would one look for a personality behind the husk. Underneath all the padding one would find a very pitiable little creature. That is why the office—or whatever their outer husk may be—is so attractive: it offers easy compensation for personal deficiencies. (Jung 1953, 7:230)
The basic problem is that one has lost a healthy respect for the need to mediate between the
conscious and the unconscious, thereby (in one version) inflating the importance of the ego:
To the extent that the integrated contents are parts of the self, we can expect this influence [of assimilation] to be considerable. Their assimilation augments not only the area of the field of consciousness but also the importance of the ego, especially when, as usually happens, the ego lacks any critical approach to the unconscious. In that case it is easily overpowered and becomes identical with the contents that have been assimilated.…I should only like to mention that the more numerous and the more significant the unconscious contents which are assimilated to the ego, the closer the approximation of the ego to the self, even though this approximation must be a never-ending process. This inevitably produces an inflation of the ego, unless a critical line of demarcation is drawn between it and the unconscious figures. (Jung 1969, 9:43-44)
The problem of inflation occurs whether the ego is drowned in the larger self or the larger
self is pretentiously assimilated to the ego:
The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton, By James P. Driscoll
The work of recovery is to adjust what Jung called the Ego/Self Axis; as he conceptualized it, life begins in a state of inflation, with the ego submerged in the Self. In healthy development, the ego and the Self separate, such that the ego is able to differentiate reality from fantasy, but is also able to transform the enchanted energies of the Self into actualization in the world. [Big egos attempt] to inflate identity on the royalty of the timeless Self. This results in a vacillation between alienation and inflation, in which the missing link is re-acceptance after a fall from grandiosity. In the inflated state, with the bewitchment of the unconscious amplified through the use of alcohol or drugs, the personality becomes a fractured pantheon of the demi-gods, or archetypesn: the tragic Artist, the Hero, the Scholar, the Rebel, the divine Victim. By identifying God or the Higher Power as other than the ego, the personality becomes "right sized," and learns to live "life on life's terms," bounded by space and temporality, by the body and the limitations of reality. At the same time, through daily prayer and meditation, the connection to this other remains, such that reality is neither the barren desert of alienation, nor the engulfing allure of the siren's song, but is both connected to, and separate from, the Other of the Self.
http://jungian12steps.org/12steps.html
http://jungian12steps.org/12steps.html
Jung frequently makes clear his position that one must negotiate the passage between the
Scylla and Charybdis of the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of
effective individuation. For example, “The unconscious can only be integrated if the ego holds
its ground,” (Jung 1966, 16:503) and:
If our psychology is forced, owing to the special nature of its empirical material, to stress the importance of the unconscious, that does not in any way diminish the importance of the conscious mind. It is merely the one-sided over-valuation of the latter that has to be checked by a certain relativization of values. But this relativization should not be carried so far that the ego is completely fascinated and overpowered by the archetypal truths. The ego lives in space and time and must adapt itself to their laws if it is to exist at all. If it is absorbed by the unconscious to such an extent that the latter alone has the power of decision, then the ego is stifled, and there is no longer any medium in which the unconscious could be integrated and in which the work of realization could take place.…Against the daemonism from within, the church offers some protection so long as it wields authority. But protection and security are only valuable when not excessively cramping to our existence; and in the same way the superiority of consciousness is desirable only if it does not suppress and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis. (Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.
(Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its
own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It
is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself
to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes
too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the
sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore,
that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there
are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a
psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a
threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow
themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the
spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it
the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master
in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call the unconscious.
(Jung 1959, 10:673)
One can approach only with caution:
The victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, the capture of the
hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth
in terms of the myth, lets himself be devoured by the monster—and vanishes in it, is
near to the treasure that the dragon guards, but he is there by extreme constraint and
to his own greatest harm. (Jung 1954, 7:261)
From this, it can be seen that there is no question that, for Jung, identification with the
ultimate deity would be an horrendous mistake. In his introduction to the Tibetan Book of the
Dead he suggests that it is only Westerners who would take literally an injunction to identify
with the clear light:
The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this
statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it
unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always
have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to
refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put
them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from
these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which
vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the
radiance and reflection of our own souls. (Jung 1964, 11:840)
Scylla and Charybdis of the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of
effective individuation. For example, “The unconscious can only be integrated if the ego holds
its ground,” (Jung 1966, 16:503) and:
If our psychology is forced, owing to the special nature of its empirical material, to stress the importance of the unconscious, that does not in any way diminish the importance of the conscious mind. It is merely the one-sided over-valuation of the latter that has to be checked by a certain relativization of values. But this relativization should not be carried so far that the ego is completely fascinated and overpowered by the archetypal truths. The ego lives in space and time and must adapt itself to their laws if it is to exist at all. If it is absorbed by the unconscious to such an extent that the latter alone has the power of decision, then the ego is stifled, and there is no longer any medium in which the unconscious could be integrated and in which the work of realization could take place.…Against the daemonism from within, the church offers some protection so long as it wields authority. But protection and security are only valuable when not excessively cramping to our existence; and in the same way the superiority of consciousness is desirable only if it does not suppress and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis. (Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore, that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the and shut out too much life. As always, life is a voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.
(Jung 1966,16:502)
He identifies the two perils eloquently:
Even when the conscious mind does not identify itself with the inclinations of the
unconscious, it still has to face them and somehow take account of them in order
that they may play their part in the life of the individual, however difficult this may
be. For if the unconscious is not allowed to express itself through word and deed,
through worry and suffering, through our consideration of its claims and resistance to
them, then the earlier, divided state will return with all the incalculable consequences
which disregard of the unconscious may entail. If, on the other hand, we give in to the
unconscious too much, it leads to a positive or negative inflation of the personality.
(Jung 1966, 16:522)
Without such care, a person is subject to psychological disaster, primarily the loss of the
powers of discrimination:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its
own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding
contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It
is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself
to calamities that must strike it dead. Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of
consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes
too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the
sine qua non of all consciousness.…It seems to me of some importance, therefore,
that a few individuals, or people individually, should begin to understand that there
are contents which do not belong to the ego-personality, but must be ascribed to a
psychic non-ego. This mental operation has to be undertaken if we want to avoid a
threatening inflation. (Jung 1968, 12:563)
Jung’s view is that certain contents, although associated with the ego merely by the fact of
being in the collective unconscious, are definitely non-ego and must be left so. Otherwise,
one is swallowed up and destroyed by them:
…they are meant to fulfill their earthly existence with conviction and not allow
themselves any spiritual inflation, otherwise they will end up in the belly of the
spider. In other words, they should not set the ego in the highest place and make it
the ultimate authority, but should ever be mindful of the fact that it is not sole master
in its own house and is surrounded on all sides by the factor we call the unconscious.
(Jung 1959, 10:673)
One can approach only with caution:
The victory over the collective psyche alone yields the true value, the capture of the
hoard, the invincible weapon, the magic talisman, or whatever it be that the myth
in terms of the myth, lets himself be devoured by the monster—and vanishes in it, is
near to the treasure that the dragon guards, but he is there by extreme constraint and
to his own greatest harm. (Jung 1954, 7:261)
From this, it can be seen that there is no question that, for Jung, identification with the
ultimate deity would be an horrendous mistake. In his introduction to the Tibetan Book of the
Dead he suggests that it is only Westerners who would take literally an injunction to identify
with the clear light:
The soul is assuredly not small, but the radiant Godhead itself. The West finds this
statement either very dangerous, if not downright blasphemous, or else accepts it
unthinkingly and then suffers from a theosophical inflation. Somehow we always
have a wrong attitude to these things. But if we can master ourselves far enough to
refrain from our chief error of always wanting to do something with things and put
them to practical use, we may perhaps succeed in learning an important lesson from
these teachings, or at least in appreciating the greatness of the Bardo Thödol, which
vouchsafes to the dead man the ultimate and highest truth, that even the gods are the
radiance and reflection of our own souls. (Jung 1964, 11:840)
The problems with identification—loss of essential rationality and perspective—are so great
that even the alchemical model of a successful union, in which Jung invested much interest, is
for him only suggestive, far from the truth. Although he says:
…the alchemist’s endeavour to unite the corpus mundum, the purified body, with the
soul is also the endeavour of the psychologist once he has succeeded in freeing the
ego-conscious from contamination with the unconscious. (Jung 1966, 16:503)
He also holds that the aim of such grand transmutation of the collective unconscious is
partly an illusion:
I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical
gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect
of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great
importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their
symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation
into the phenomena of chemical change. (Jung 1968, 12:564)
that even the alchemical model of a successful union, in which Jung invested much interest, is
for him only suggestive, far from the truth. Although he says:
…the alchemist’s endeavour to unite the corpus mundum, the purified body, with the
soul is also the endeavour of the psychologist once he has succeeded in freeing the
ego-conscious from contamination with the unconscious. (Jung 1966, 16:503)
He also holds that the aim of such grand transmutation of the collective unconscious is
partly an illusion:
I hold the view that the alchemist’s hope of conjuring out of matter the philosophical
gold, or the panacea, or the wonderful stone, was only in part an illusion, an effect
of projection; for the rest it corresponded to certain psychic facts that are of great
importance in the psychology of the unconscious. As is shown by the texts and their
symbolism, the alchemist projected what I have called the process of individuation
into the phenomena of chemical change. (Jung 1968, 12:564)
Autonomous Complexes.
The theoretical underpinning of Jung’s caution is his estimation, based on experience both
with his own quest and with patients, that complexes are autonomous:
This points also to the complex and its association material having a remarkable
independence in the hierarchy of the psyche, so that one may compare the complex
to revolting vassals in an empire. (Jung 1973, 2:1352)
Though autonomous complexes may and, in fact, must be approached, they never come
under conscious control:
What then, scientifically speaking, is a “feeling-toned complex”? It is the image of a
certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover,
incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful
inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of
autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of conscious mind to only a limited extent,
and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness.
The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of
existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.
(Jung 1970, 8:201)
Autonomous complexes seem even to have their own consciousness:
We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our
knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness.…These fragments
subsist relatively independently of one another and can take another’s place at any
time, which means that each fragment possesses a high degree of autonomy.…whether
such small psychic fragments as complexes are also capable of a consciousness of
their own is a still unanswered question. I must confess that this question has often
occupied my thoughts, for complexes behave like Descartes’ devils and seem to
delight in playing impish tricks.…As one might expect on theoretical grounds, these
impish complexes are unteachable. (Jung 1970, 8:202)
They have the character of splinter psyches:
But even the soberest formulation of the phenomenology of complexes cannot get round the impressive fact of their autonomy, and the deeper one penetrates into their nature—I might almost say into their biology—the more clearly do they reveal their character as splinter psyches. (Jung 1970, 8:203)
And:
I have frequently observed that the typical traumatic affect is represented in dreams as a wild and dangerous animal—a striking illustration of its autonomous nature when split off from consciousness. (Jung 1966, 16:267)
Furthermore, since autonomous complexes are the very structure of even normal psychic
life, they remain autonomous and cannot be fully assimilated:
I am inclined to think that autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena
of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche. (Jung 1970,
8:218)
For Jung, it seems that almost everything is an autonomous complex. The soul is an autonomous complex:
Looked at historically, the soul, that many-faceted and much-interpreted concept, refers to a psychological content that must possess a certain measure of autonomy within the limits of consciousness. If this were not so, man would never have hit on the idea of attributing an independent existence to the soul, as though it were some objectively perceptible thing. It must be a content in which spontaneity is inherent, and hence also partial unconsciousness, as with every autonomous complex. (Jung 1971, 6:419)
Objects of an ordinary consciousness are autonomous complexes, overvalued with psychic
force, and religion seeks to collect back the libido that has been over-invested in the external:
To be like a child means to possess a treasury of accumulated libido which can constantly stream forth. The libido of the child flows into things; in this way he gains the world, then by degrees loses himself in the world (to use the language of religion) through a gradual over-valuation of things. The growing dependence on things entails the necessity of sacrifice, that is, withdrawal of libido, the severance of ties. The intuitive teachings of religion seek by this means to gather the energy together again; indeed, religion portrays this process of re-collection in its symbols. (Jung 1971, 6:422)
Even when this overvaluation is withdrawn, God (or let us substitute the mind of clear light
or ultimate deity) becomes an autonomous complex:
If the ‘soul’ is a personification of unconscious contents, then, according to our
previous definition, God too is an unconscious content, a personification in so far as
he is thought of as personal, and an image of expression of something in so far as he
is thought of as dynamic. God and the soul are essentially the same when regarded
as personifications of an unconscious content. Meister Eckhart’s view, therefore, is
purely psychological. So long as the soul, he says, is not only in God, she is not
blissful. If by “blissful” one understands a state of intense vitality, it follows from the
passage quoted earlier that this state does not exist so long as the dynamic principle
“God,” the libido, is projected upon objects. For, so long as God, the highest value,
is not in the soul, it is somewhere outside. God must be withdrawn from objects and
brought into the soul, and this is a “higher state” in which God himself is “blissful.”
Psychologically, this means that when the libido invested in God, that is, the
surplus value that has been projected, is recognized as a projection, the object loses
its overpowering significance, and the surplus value consequently accrues to the
individual, giving rise to a feeling of intense vitality, a new potential. God, life at is
most intense, then resides in the soul, in the unconscious. But this does not mean that
God has become completely unconscious in the sense that all idea of him vanishes
from consciousness. It is as though the supreme value were shifted elsewhere, so that
it is now found inside and not outside. Objects are no longer autonomous factors,
but God has become an autonomous psychic complex. An autonomous complex,
however, is always only partially conscious, since it is associated with the ego only
in limited degree, and never to such an extent that the ego could wholly comprehend
it, in which case it would no longer be autonomous. (Jung 1971, 6:421)
Even the ego, the mediator, is an autonomous complex:
Researches have shown that this independence is based upon an intense emotional
tone, that is upon the value of the affective elements of the complex, because the
‘affect’ occupies in the constitution of the psyche a very independent place, and
may easily break through the self-control and self-intention of the individual.…For
this property of the complex I have introduced the term autonomy. I conceive the
complex to be a collection of imaginings, which, in consequence of this autonomy, is
relatively independent of the central control of the consciousness, and at any moment
liable to bend or cross the intentions of the individual. In so far as the meaning of
the ego is psychologically nothing but a complex of imaginings held together and
fixed by the coenesthetic impressions, also since its intentions or innervations are eo
ipso stronger than those of the secondary complex (for they are disturbed by them),
the complex of the ego may well be set parallel with and compared to the secondary
autonomous complex. (Jung 1973, 2:1352)
Remarks
As we have seen, Jung’s estimation of the nature of the mind does not allow for complete
transformation; it is of the nature of the mind for elements to remain unconsciously imbedded in its framework, assimilatable into consciousness only in the sense of the ego’s confronting them and then only in a never-ending, piecemeal way. We can speculate that, for him, identification with an ideal being—a deity or "god-king"—would exalt to the grandiose level of a systematic religious practice the self-inculcation of inflation and all its attendant ills. Having lost respect for and a critical attitude toward unconscious contents and their powerful influence on mental life, one would have pretentiously assimilated too much to the ego in “positive inflation,” and also, due to denying the powerful autonomous contents that can wreak havoc with those who neglect them, one would eventually be overpowered by those autonomous contents—drowned in the larger self in “negative inflation.”
The ideal being as whom the practitioner would be masquerading would be unable to negotiate between the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of
effective individuation, drowned in a sea of a pretension of grand, merely public affectations of compassion, love, generosity, and so forth. Self-hypnotized, closed to criticism, bloated from feeling that the very structure of pure reality is his or her own basic nature, the practitioner would lose the faculty of discrimination, the essence of a healthy psychological life.
The basic problem would be the failure to recognize that since the structure of the psyche is to be found in autonomous complexes—ranging from unconscious contents in the personal unconscious, to those in the collective unconscious, to the ego itself—the primary need is to learn that these autonomous factors need to be negotiated; nothing could be worse than a pretension of grandiose control.
The theoretical underpinning of Jung’s caution is his estimation, based on experience both
with his own quest and with patients, that complexes are autonomous:
This points also to the complex and its association material having a remarkable
independence in the hierarchy of the psyche, so that one may compare the complex
to revolting vassals in an empire. (Jung 1973, 2:1352)
Though autonomous complexes may and, in fact, must be approached, they never come
under conscious control:
What then, scientifically speaking, is a “feeling-toned complex”? It is the image of a
certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is, moreover,
incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful
inner coherence, it has its own wholeness and, in addition, a relatively high degree of
autonomy, so that it is subject to the control of conscious mind to only a limited extent,
and therefore behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness.
The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of
existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.
(Jung 1970, 8:201)
Autonomous complexes seem even to have their own consciousness:
We have to thank the French psychopathologists, Pierre Janet in particular, for our
knowledge today of the extreme dissociability of consciousness.…These fragments
subsist relatively independently of one another and can take another’s place at any
time, which means that each fragment possesses a high degree of autonomy.…whether
such small psychic fragments as complexes are also capable of a consciousness of
their own is a still unanswered question. I must confess that this question has often
occupied my thoughts, for complexes behave like Descartes’ devils and seem to
delight in playing impish tricks.…As one might expect on theoretical grounds, these
impish complexes are unteachable. (Jung 1970, 8:202)
They have the character of splinter psyches:
But even the soberest formulation of the phenomenology of complexes cannot get round the impressive fact of their autonomy, and the deeper one penetrates into their nature—I might almost say into their biology—the more clearly do they reveal their character as splinter psyches. (Jung 1970, 8:203)
And:
I have frequently observed that the typical traumatic affect is represented in dreams as a wild and dangerous animal—a striking illustration of its autonomous nature when split off from consciousness. (Jung 1966, 16:267)
Furthermore, since autonomous complexes are the very structure of even normal psychic
life, they remain autonomous and cannot be fully assimilated:
I am inclined to think that autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena
of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche. (Jung 1970,
8:218)
For Jung, it seems that almost everything is an autonomous complex. The soul is an autonomous complex:
Looked at historically, the soul, that many-faceted and much-interpreted concept, refers to a psychological content that must possess a certain measure of autonomy within the limits of consciousness. If this were not so, man would never have hit on the idea of attributing an independent existence to the soul, as though it were some objectively perceptible thing. It must be a content in which spontaneity is inherent, and hence also partial unconsciousness, as with every autonomous complex. (Jung 1971, 6:419)
Objects of an ordinary consciousness are autonomous complexes, overvalued with psychic
force, and religion seeks to collect back the libido that has been over-invested in the external:
To be like a child means to possess a treasury of accumulated libido which can constantly stream forth. The libido of the child flows into things; in this way he gains the world, then by degrees loses himself in the world (to use the language of religion) through a gradual over-valuation of things. The growing dependence on things entails the necessity of sacrifice, that is, withdrawal of libido, the severance of ties. The intuitive teachings of religion seek by this means to gather the energy together again; indeed, religion portrays this process of re-collection in its symbols. (Jung 1971, 6:422)
Even when this overvaluation is withdrawn, God (or let us substitute the mind of clear light
or ultimate deity) becomes an autonomous complex:
If the ‘soul’ is a personification of unconscious contents, then, according to our
previous definition, God too is an unconscious content, a personification in so far as
he is thought of as personal, and an image of expression of something in so far as he
is thought of as dynamic. God and the soul are essentially the same when regarded
as personifications of an unconscious content. Meister Eckhart’s view, therefore, is
purely psychological. So long as the soul, he says, is not only in God, she is not
blissful. If by “blissful” one understands a state of intense vitality, it follows from the
passage quoted earlier that this state does not exist so long as the dynamic principle
“God,” the libido, is projected upon objects. For, so long as God, the highest value,
is not in the soul, it is somewhere outside. God must be withdrawn from objects and
brought into the soul, and this is a “higher state” in which God himself is “blissful.”
Psychologically, this means that when the libido invested in God, that is, the
surplus value that has been projected, is recognized as a projection, the object loses
its overpowering significance, and the surplus value consequently accrues to the
individual, giving rise to a feeling of intense vitality, a new potential. God, life at is
most intense, then resides in the soul, in the unconscious. But this does not mean that
God has become completely unconscious in the sense that all idea of him vanishes
from consciousness. It is as though the supreme value were shifted elsewhere, so that
it is now found inside and not outside. Objects are no longer autonomous factors,
but God has become an autonomous psychic complex. An autonomous complex,
however, is always only partially conscious, since it is associated with the ego only
in limited degree, and never to such an extent that the ego could wholly comprehend
it, in which case it would no longer be autonomous. (Jung 1971, 6:421)
Even the ego, the mediator, is an autonomous complex:
Researches have shown that this independence is based upon an intense emotional
tone, that is upon the value of the affective elements of the complex, because the
‘affect’ occupies in the constitution of the psyche a very independent place, and
may easily break through the self-control and self-intention of the individual.…For
this property of the complex I have introduced the term autonomy. I conceive the
complex to be a collection of imaginings, which, in consequence of this autonomy, is
relatively independent of the central control of the consciousness, and at any moment
liable to bend or cross the intentions of the individual. In so far as the meaning of
the ego is psychologically nothing but a complex of imaginings held together and
fixed by the coenesthetic impressions, also since its intentions or innervations are eo
ipso stronger than those of the secondary complex (for they are disturbed by them),
the complex of the ego may well be set parallel with and compared to the secondary
autonomous complex. (Jung 1973, 2:1352)
Remarks
As we have seen, Jung’s estimation of the nature of the mind does not allow for complete
transformation; it is of the nature of the mind for elements to remain unconsciously imbedded in its framework, assimilatable into consciousness only in the sense of the ego’s confronting them and then only in a never-ending, piecemeal way. We can speculate that, for him, identification with an ideal being—a deity or "god-king"—would exalt to the grandiose level of a systematic religious practice the self-inculcation of inflation and all its attendant ills. Having lost respect for and a critical attitude toward unconscious contents and their powerful influence on mental life, one would have pretentiously assimilated too much to the ego in “positive inflation,” and also, due to denying the powerful autonomous contents that can wreak havoc with those who neglect them, one would eventually be overpowered by those autonomous contents—drowned in the larger self in “negative inflation.”
The ideal being as whom the practitioner would be masquerading would be unable to negotiate between the needs of unconscious contents to manifest and the imperative of
effective individuation, drowned in a sea of a pretension of grand, merely public affectations of compassion, love, generosity, and so forth. Self-hypnotized, closed to criticism, bloated from feeling that the very structure of pure reality is his or her own basic nature, the practitioner would lose the faculty of discrimination, the essence of a healthy psychological life.
The basic problem would be the failure to recognize that since the structure of the psyche is to be found in autonomous complexes—ranging from unconscious contents in the personal unconscious, to those in the collective unconscious, to the ego itself—the primary need is to learn that these autonomous factors need to be negotiated; nothing could be worse than a pretension of grandiose control.
References
Jung, Carl. 1953-1974. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Translated and edited by G.
Adler and R.F.C. Hull. 21 vols. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Hopkins, Jeffrey, Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation, University of Virginia, Emeritus
http://www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/chbj/21/008-New_Hopkins_CHBJ_V21.pdf
Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal (2008, 21:159-174), Taipei: Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies
http://www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/inflation.html
Psychology of Self-Regulation: Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Processes edited by Joseph P. Forgas, Roy F. Baumeister, Dianne M. Tice - http://books.google.com/books?id=83qkRG-_vswC&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=psychological+inflation,+ego+inflation&source=bl&ots=FHAledxoi-&sig=P9GZovzsbwv9RJXDJsjKW5nIzE4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xzhoUuezMeqpiQK9-IDoDA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=psychological%20inflation%2C%20ego%20inflation&f=false
Jung, Carl. 1953-1974. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Translated and edited by G.
Adler and R.F.C. Hull. 21 vols. Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Hopkins, Jeffrey, Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation, University of Virginia, Emeritus
http://www.chibs.edu.tw/ch_html/chbj/21/008-New_Hopkins_CHBJ_V21.pdf
Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal (2008, 21:159-174), Taipei: Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies
http://www.kheper.net/topics/gurus/inflation.html
Psychology of Self-Regulation: Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Processes edited by Joseph P. Forgas, Roy F. Baumeister, Dianne M. Tice - http://books.google.com/books?id=83qkRG-_vswC&pg=PA80&lpg=PA80&dq=psychological+inflation,+ego+inflation&source=bl&ots=FHAledxoi-&sig=P9GZovzsbwv9RJXDJsjKW5nIzE4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xzhoUuezMeqpiQK9-IDoDA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=psychological%20inflation%2C%20ego%20inflation&f=false
COMMON ANCESTORS OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.html
USING GENETICS:
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.genetic.html
By following only the female-female or male-male paths, we ignore the billions of other ancestral paths we could follow, thus pushing the common ancestor much further back into the past. The MRCA in any line will be much more recent than Mitochondrial Eve or Y chromosome Adam. DNA studies have a problem in telling us about the MRCA. As [Chang, 1999] notes, the MRCA will be much more recent than any MRCA that could ever be found in DNA studies, even if one were to study the ancestry of every single gene. The reason being that we are considering people who are simply ancestors, through any route, whether or not any of their genes actually survived the journey. Conclusion - Within historical times, you have ancestors from whom you have no DNA. All Common Ancestors in DNA studies will be much older than the Most Recent Common Ancestor, MRCA. Archaeology is also of limited use in telling us about the MRCA. For instance, even the MRCAs found in DNA studies will exist much more recently than the paleontologists might imagine looking at the fossil evidence - for the simple reason that they are merely "statistical artefacts" of no real importance to the overall story of human evolution. It would be totally wrong, for example, to imagine that the CA lived in an important or influential place or culture.
Genealogy, like my Royal Descents page, has the problem of only focusing on the ancestors for whom records survived, not all your ancestors. However, despite the sketchy records, it still provides strong support for the suggestions above from mathematical models and computer simulations of an MRCA in historical times. The huge number of proven descents of people from common European royal ancestry in historical times, when considered with the vastly greater number of descents that must exist but are not among the rare few that can be proven, suggest strongly that everyone, in the West at least, is descended from an MRCA in historical times.
Research suggests, for example, that everyone in the West is descended from Charlemagne, c. 800 AD. Quite likely the entire world is descended from the Ancient Egyptian royal house, c. 1600 BC. Quite likely almost everyone in the world descends from Confucius, c. 500 BC. These findings do not necessarily have any implications for our DNA. To descend from someone does not mean you necessarily inherit any DNA from them. Probably sixty percent or more of the American people are descended from kings. These findings do not conflict with the idea that most or all of your DNA is inherited from your local area. Even if you do descend from the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, that does not mean this can be detected in your DNA. In fact, there may be no evidence at all of these findings in humanity's DNA. And yet the findings can still be true. The MRCA of the West is in historical times, quite possibly as recent as 1000 AD. We pick him as an example because he is the proven ancestor of some people alive today (for example, he is a proven ancestor of my children). Hence probably the ancestor of all people alive today. By the same reasoning, as well as from Continental/pre-Norman figures like Charlemagne, quite likely everyone in the West descends from figures like:
All humanity is interrelated many times over (contrary to what an endless procession of racists and tribalists throughout history have claimed). For any two humans in history or today, it is not a question of do they have a common ancestor, it is only a question of when was the most recent one. If we had full genealogical records for all history, then any 2 living people on earth could identify their closest relationship to each other. Or indeed any 2 living organisms on earth, since DNA probably did not evolve twice. One could also pick any famous person, alive or dead, and show your closest relationship to them. For they are all related. See pre-historical estimates for Common ancestors of all humans.
Showing descents from successive English monarchs is probably the most convenient way of tying the West together. You will be aware, of course, that later monarchs are descended many times over from earlier ones. So it allows us show short descents from the most recent monarch (rather than every descent needing a long tail going up to some very remote common ancestor). Some continental descents, though, may have to go all the way up to Charlemagne, from whom all English monarchs since William the Conqueror descend. Anthropologists claim everyone on earth is a 40th cousin" (i.e. any pair of 2 people can find at least 1 common ancestor since about 800 AD).
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.html
USING GENETICS:
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.genetic.html
By following only the female-female or male-male paths, we ignore the billions of other ancestral paths we could follow, thus pushing the common ancestor much further back into the past. The MRCA in any line will be much more recent than Mitochondrial Eve or Y chromosome Adam. DNA studies have a problem in telling us about the MRCA. As [Chang, 1999] notes, the MRCA will be much more recent than any MRCA that could ever be found in DNA studies, even if one were to study the ancestry of every single gene. The reason being that we are considering people who are simply ancestors, through any route, whether or not any of their genes actually survived the journey. Conclusion - Within historical times, you have ancestors from whom you have no DNA. All Common Ancestors in DNA studies will be much older than the Most Recent Common Ancestor, MRCA. Archaeology is also of limited use in telling us about the MRCA. For instance, even the MRCAs found in DNA studies will exist much more recently than the paleontologists might imagine looking at the fossil evidence - for the simple reason that they are merely "statistical artefacts" of no real importance to the overall story of human evolution. It would be totally wrong, for example, to imagine that the CA lived in an important or influential place or culture.
Genealogy, like my Royal Descents page, has the problem of only focusing on the ancestors for whom records survived, not all your ancestors. However, despite the sketchy records, it still provides strong support for the suggestions above from mathematical models and computer simulations of an MRCA in historical times. The huge number of proven descents of people from common European royal ancestry in historical times, when considered with the vastly greater number of descents that must exist but are not among the rare few that can be proven, suggest strongly that everyone, in the West at least, is descended from an MRCA in historical times.
Research suggests, for example, that everyone in the West is descended from Charlemagne, c. 800 AD. Quite likely the entire world is descended from the Ancient Egyptian royal house, c. 1600 BC. Quite likely almost everyone in the world descends from Confucius, c. 500 BC. These findings do not necessarily have any implications for our DNA. To descend from someone does not mean you necessarily inherit any DNA from them. Probably sixty percent or more of the American people are descended from kings. These findings do not conflict with the idea that most or all of your DNA is inherited from your local area. Even if you do descend from the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, that does not mean this can be detected in your DNA. In fact, there may be no evidence at all of these findings in humanity's DNA. And yet the findings can still be true. The MRCA of the West is in historical times, quite possibly as recent as 1000 AD. We pick him as an example because he is the proven ancestor of some people alive today (for example, he is a proven ancestor of my children). Hence probably the ancestor of all people alive today. By the same reasoning, as well as from Continental/pre-Norman figures like Charlemagne, quite likely everyone in the West descends from figures like:
- The English/Saxon/pre-Royal Cerdic, c. 500 AD.
- The Irish/Celtic Niall of the Nine Hostages, c. 450 AD.
All humanity is interrelated many times over (contrary to what an endless procession of racists and tribalists throughout history have claimed). For any two humans in history or today, it is not a question of do they have a common ancestor, it is only a question of when was the most recent one. If we had full genealogical records for all history, then any 2 living people on earth could identify their closest relationship to each other. Or indeed any 2 living organisms on earth, since DNA probably did not evolve twice. One could also pick any famous person, alive or dead, and show your closest relationship to them. For they are all related. See pre-historical estimates for Common ancestors of all humans.
Showing descents from successive English monarchs is probably the most convenient way of tying the West together. You will be aware, of course, that later monarchs are descended many times over from earlier ones. So it allows us show short descents from the most recent monarch (rather than every descent needing a long tail going up to some very remote common ancestor). Some continental descents, though, may have to go all the way up to Charlemagne, from whom all English monarchs since William the Conqueror descend. Anthropologists claim everyone on earth is a 40th cousin" (i.e. any pair of 2 people can find at least 1 common ancestor since about 800 AD).
MISGUIDED INNER AUTHORITY
Remediation of Misconceptions & Self-Delusions in the Search for Self
by Iona Miller, 2013
Remediation of Misconceptions & Self-Delusions in the Search for Self
by Iona Miller, 2013
The Self is the center of the psychic labyrinth where we battle with ourselves for the treasure hard to attain.
The labyrinth is a powerful central symbol of the subconscious.
Soul-loss (being lost in life) is analogous to what Jung referred to as ‘losing the Ariadne thread.'
“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.” ~ C. G. Jung, CW, Vol. 12, para. 208
The labyrinth is a powerful central symbol of the subconscious.
Soul-loss (being lost in life) is analogous to what Jung referred to as ‘losing the Ariadne thread.'
“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the “thorn in the flesh” is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.” ~ C. G. Jung, CW, Vol. 12, para. 208
Self-Delusion, Misguided Inner Authority & Obsessions
Premature claims to Knowledge and Enlightenment
ABSTRACT: Grave distortions and fraudulent claims to power characterize the spiritual path in our times. Discernment can be aided by a taxonomy of periodic risers in the stabilization of spiritual states of consciousness -- the milestones of transformation -- and learning the dynamics of self-delusion and misguided inner authority. Ready access to disinformation in beliefs and ideas created by others magnifies the problem. Emotionally appealing truths are sandwiched into idiosyncratic notions ranging from the speculative to the fantastical, and trap many individuals like flypaper, because our minds love a good story. The brain feeds on stories, but the wrong stories just lead us down the garden path into ancient worlds that never happened, and mythic scenarios that were never meant to be taken literally.
Accepting the generalized commentary of so-called internet or media experts without critical thinking can derail the dynamic process of self transformation, by leading us down the garden path of false beliefs. Accepting such beliefs uncritically is precisely the opposite of what Jung recommended as individuation. Such false beliefs tend to cluster around an individual's personal issues, but are mistaken for and confounded with historical, philosophical and scientific 'reality'. Much of the "self-delusion" can be linked to exposure to memes functioning as emotional strange attractors or cultural artifacts or fallout,, as well as pre- and pseudo-scientific notions of by-gone centuries, and lack of understanding of standards and discernment. It's a truism that mediocrity (gaps and gaffs in awareness) boasts the loudest.
Through hysteria, lack of critical judgment, and naive enthusiasm, a false idea can be hyped by the mainstream media to the point of not only looking entirely plausible, but even certain.
Keywords: literalization, concretization, epistemology, metaphysics, self-delusion, misconceptions, pseudo-science, emperor's new clothes, role-boundedness, trickster phenomena, adaptive changes, species survival, transcendental models, symbolic abstraction, critical thinking, disinformation, misinformation, conscience, social communication, neuraloscillation
Things here are but signs that show to the wise how
the Supreme God is known; the enlightened sage
reading the sign may enter the holy place and make
the vision real. This Term, attained only by those
that have over-passed all, is the All-Transcending.
There is thus a converse in virtue of which the
essential man outgrows Being, becomes identical
with the Transcendent of Being. He that knows
himself to be one with This, has in himself
the likeness of the Supreme; if from that
heightened self he can pass higher still--
image to archetype— he has won
the term of all his journeying.
-Plotinus, The Enneads :: "The Flight of the Alone." Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth--more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. --Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction
We all desire by our nature to know. The chief cultural factors which influence us include: hunger, sex, self-defense, power, possession, fear, unseen powers, law, custom, hope, self-respect, position, achievement, need for fun, companionship, concern for other, need for children, exercise of skills, appropriate degree of social, political, and individual freedom, appropriate degree of tradition, knowing where one stands with respect to each of the above, role and goal of man. Our needs are expressed through environmental, bodily needs, political, religious, legal, social, human relations, gambling, ideals, identity, knowing the system. Physical and non-physical (or psychic) merge in the human mind
We imagine we know a lot, much more than in the past. But there is no unified theory in physics. Furthermore, there is certainly no unified theory in psychology. Sometimes we fall into the experiential and imaginal cracks in reality. We seems to retain some of our ancient hardwiring. No clear epistemological framework sets the stage for defining the disciplines and coherently unifying the major paradigms in the field.
To construct or own worldviews we are still confronted with the old formula - the cosmological creative and destructive cycles of time. Cosmology is the study of the origin and nature of the universe. Ontology studies the nature of being as being and existence. We have to fit the pieces together from epistemologies and psychodynamics into some sort of cumulative understanding. Some basic epistemological agreement about the phenomena under examination is needed. Metaphysics abstracts universal conceptions. Some of these grand narratives are more fanciful than others.
We can be sincerely convinced of the utterly wrong. Why do we continue to accommodate the irrelevant and easily falsifiable? Are we conscientious about our own self-delusions or simply unconsciously immersed in them due to a delusional perspective on our own misguided "gnosis" and obsessions with misguided theoretical perspectives? Even conscience is no ineffable guide to inner authority. There is no shortage of new myths to capture our attention. Dreams tell us who we are, collectively and individually.
If Inner Authority is linked to authentic power and wisdom, we need to examine our personal interaction with inner wisdom figures (archetypes) and values in order to create lives of positive action that arise from deep inner wisdom. Most of us shirk such important inner work, substituting a fantasy of transformation and mindfulness. Delusional self-improvement projects are aimed at adorning the ego.
People claim to hear messages that ring in their hearts as truth, or 'resonate' with material that confirms their own tacit or recognized beliefs, but most it originates in cultural conditioning and memetic patterning. All we hold is a piece of the Mystery. Buzzwords such as True Nature, intentionality, and mis-identified integrity compound the situation. Premature spiritual fixation can just as readily be a form of transcendental escapism.
Both the strategies of "transcendence" and "reduction" are expressions of bad faith — i.e., forms of self-deception and escapism that seek to deny the realities of the human existential situation. Self-delusion may be self-evident but few give themselves a reality check on it and doing so is compounded by our own psychological blindspots. This is a form of escapism or neo-mythology.
Metaphysical Assumptions
Utopian dreams of Vernor Vinge's numinous 'Singularity', grand cosmic narratives, free-will, intentionality, and resonance have been coopted, mis-applied, and mis-attributed to delusional biopsychosocial processes. But, some suggest magic may be a fundamental property of the human mind, embraced at whatever level by otherwise completely rational people.
We can harbor a subconscious belief in the supernatural. For example, Einstein read alchemy for relaxation. The interface of our inner and outer worlds appears in the paranormal, as well as our beliefs about phenomena and principles. Is continually catching ourselves in the reflexive act of self-delusions the most we can hope for?
“Culture is wired in the brain,” Smail writes, and “cultural practices can have profound neurophysiological consequences.”
Subbotsky reports, "Research also shows how engagement in magical thinking can enhance cognitive functioning, such as creative thinking, perception and memory. Further, this paper suggests that certain forms of social compliance and obedience to authority historically evolved from magical practices of mind control and are still powered by the implicit belief in magic."
He concludes, "Unlike magical thinking, which remains a conscious practice throughout the life span, the belief in magic in adult educated individuals becomes mostly subconscious. This view links together phenomena that thus far have been studied separately from one another: magical beliefs in ancient and medieval cultures and modern developing and developed cultures, magical thinking in mentally disturbed patients, children’s magic, superstitions in adults, religious beliefs, indirect suggestion and persuasion effects in politics and commerce, military and political terror, and the use of magical effects in the entertainment industry."
Describing Transcendental Pragmatism, Evans says, "Careful thinking about our existential situation reveals the following initial convictions: 1) Good evidence for metaphysical beliefs (e.g. the existence and nature of God) need not consist of a deductive, absolute proof, but sufficient evidence to satisfy a rational person; 2) An argument for a comprehensive life philosophy should be a cumulative case, i.e. it should consist of evidence from all areas of human life and experience; 3) Metaphysical propositions are not “guilty until proven innocent”; no special burden of proof lies on the religious believer, since atheists are committed to equally risky worldviews; and 4) Evidence for living problems cannot be mechanically interpreted by experts, but must be interpreted by every individual with sensitivity, since each of us is responsible for the consequences of our beliefs (Evans 53)."
Pragmatism, according to William James, is “first, a method; and second, a genetic theory of what is meant by truth” (Pragmatism 33). As a method, Pragmatism locates truth by finding the most expedient/useful belief(s). As a genetic theory of truth, Pragmatism is the explanation that all knowledge is in the process of becoming. Truth is always being made (not discovered), always in flux, always being reformed, always plastic, always tentative, always relative. The truth is “only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in our way of behaving” (James, Pragmatism 100). The process of the development of truth is a kind of dialectical progression in which an old truth is reformed into a new truth as people come into contact with new experiences that challenge old truth.
Pragmatic “truth” is not truth as traditionally understood; it has no necessity (it is plastic) and no universality (truth is a way of thinking relative to every individual). Pragmatism does focus attention on human needs, but cannot support happiness because of its naive grasp of human psychology. It is impossible to live effectively with the view that everything one believes and upon which one makes major life decisions is just a plastic idea.
INTRODUCTION
In Jungian psychology the labyrinth is one of the most powerful symbols of the subconscious. In his book ‘Man and His Symbols’, Jung explains its meaning:
“The maze of strange passages, chambers, and unlocked exits in the cellar recalls the old Egyptian representation of the underworld, which is a well-known symbol of the unconscious with its abilities. It also shows how one is “open” to other influences in one’s unconscious shadow side and how uncanny and alien elements can break in.”
TOXIC NARCISSISM: When Pathological Ignorance meets Intellectual Malpractice and the Marketplace
The Lords of Disinformation are now worshiped in the shrine of alternative media with utter lack of discernment. The Shadow hijacks the authority of the wisdom Self and the trickster/pretender emerges with the Flapdoodle Effect - much ado about nothing, as if saying it louder and with more inflection makes the utterly incredulous believable.
Levels of Cognitive Awareness
Personality Work
Grounding & Centering
Eliminating Misconceptions
The Self
Self-Actualization or sterile self-absorption in idiosyncratic fantasy
CONCEPTUAL CHANGE
Critical Thinking vs. Delusions of Grandeur
Personality Disorders
Narcissism & Self Delusion
Confounded & Conflated Archetypes
Persona & Self
Shadow & Self
Anima/Animus & Self
SELF ACTUALIZATION & Self Intervention
Leading post- and trans-humanist, Ray Kurzweil revises the customary conception of God to accommodate the possibility that humans are taking part in a process by which post-human beings (creatures, according to traditional theism) will attain powers equivalent to those usually attributed to God. Some may construe post-humanism as an appalling instance of hubris, in which individuals propose taking enormous risks both with themselves and with the human species, in order to pursue an impossible goal. Others, however may construe post-humanism as calling for alignment of personal energy with a cosmic evolutionary imperative: to preserve self-conscious organic life—currently threatened by anthropogenic environmental disaster—long enough to transfer it to a more enduring substrate needed to support an evolutionary process that culminates when the entire universe is made conscious. If this astonishing goal ever begins to bear fruit, future theologians would presumably rethink traditional conceptions of cosmos and history, humankind and God.
INTENTIONALITY: The Psi Buzzword
Intentionality is Philosophy, Not Physics or Neurology
We May Think We Are Directing Ourselves, but Free Will Is a Meme, a Neurological Myth
Can or Should the Ego Invade the Self-Organizing Psyche with Control Fantasies?
Most of our decisions are made before we think about them, about 10 seconds before we become aware of them.
The Introspection Illusion - The philosophies of the determinists and libertarians existed long before neuroimaging was possible. Neuroscience sheds light on the question of free will: a person’s brain has already made decisions before the person actually becomes aware of having made them. You probably think that your brain has made the decision maybe a half or one second before you become aware of it, but a 2008 study predicted that people choose approximately 10 seconds before they become aware of it. Humans have made a wrong connection between being aware of a choice and what it causes – or more clearly put, we have confused correlation with causation. Introspection illusions are the notion that people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origin of their mental states. This means that in some situations, people are confident in making false explanations of their own behavior. The illusion of introspection is often mistaken for true self-knowledge. For instance, people often think they are less biased and less conformist than the rest of a group. Even when people learn about other people’s introspections, they are regarded as unreliable (while they treat their own introspections as reliable). "I suppose that sooner or later the physicists will complete the catalogue they've been compiling of the ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the likes of spin, charm, and charge will perhaps appear on their list. But aboutness surely won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep...If the semantic and the intentional are real properties of things, it must be in virtue of their identity with (or maybe of their supervenience on?) properties that are themselves neither intentional nor semantic. If aboutness is real, it must be really something else." (Fodor 1987, 97)
Doctrine of Intentionality
Jung (1961) said, "To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly; all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of life for better or worse.”
There are several subcultures whose worldviews embrace psi phenomena as Reality, or react as if they do. They range through governments to tribal people to new agers and neo-pagans to leading-edge researchers. Even the most skeptical scientist can be compartmentalized or even superstitious in his or her subjective thinking at times.
Vision Bored
To conduct sound research, we must catch ourselves in the act of trying to verify our own preconceptions, a “perception Lab.” This is an intrisic problem of armchair scientists who are long on theory and short on experimentation. We have to pierce beyond the perceptual artifact to solid postulates, testable hypotheses, rigorous protocols, and acurate statistical analysis.
But psi may prove to be more than just an artifact of primitive belief. Meta-narratives emerge as mythologizing, literature, psychology, sociology, religion or philosophy and cutting-edge science theories. The philosophy of science describes the dynamics of the scientific method. The issue of intentionality is riddled with philosophical problems. Moreso, remote mental intention. Is a brain state the template for action?
The loose use of the term intentionality as a buzzword is an import into pop culture from philosophy. As a collective belief, it has boomeranged back into the public and new age thought from psi research meta-analysis, justified by the research of Radin, Emoto, Schlitz, Targ, Taggert and others.
"Psi intentionality" is a term lifted from remote viewing and other distance intentionality practices and psi energetic theories. It has been confounded with physics notion of nonlocality, entanglement, resonance and "spooky action at a distance", peculiar to particular theories of quantum mechanics, and holism or holographic models. It is shorthand for what might be called quantum psychokinesis (PK). In psi theory, the transmission of information from a sender to receiver is less problematical than physical influence.
Intentionality bears on ontological and metaphysical questions about the fundamental nature of mental states: perceiving, remembering, expectancy, believing, desiring, hoping, knowing, intending, feeling, experiencing, and so on. What is it to have such mental states? How does the mental relate to the physical, i.e., how are mental states related to an individual's body, to states of his or her brain and to his or her behavior?
Intentionality is a pervasive feature of many different mental states: beliefs, hopes, judgments, intentions, love and hatred all exhibit intentionality. In an ideal world we can mentally wish things into and out of existence. It can seem that consciousness and intentionality pervade mental life. Perhaps one or both somehow constitute what it is to have a mind.
But achieving an articulate general understanding of either consciousness or intentionality presents an enormous challenge, part of which lies in figuring out how the two are related. In plain talk, we consider a behavior intentional when it appears purposeful or done intentionally -- that is, based on reasons (beliefs, desires) and performed with skill and awareness.
Just because the subject of psi remains objectively problematical doesn’t mean we should stop systematic investigation, both scientifically and metaphysically. Babies don’t know how the world works so they constantly keep testing their environment, over and over. Are we just cosmic babies, feeling our way along, blindly? We are when it comes to proofs of mind over matter. Perhaps intentionality is a permissible metaphor until we have a better shorthand for the effect. But we really need a bigger and better metaphor already without trotting out the well-worn notion of paradigm shift - another buzzword.
Quantum Chaos
We must be willing to question our own beliefs, comprehending the nature of subjectivity, experimenter bias, and memes or groupthink. The mind deploys them as explanations for unknown agency, the blindspots of our consciousness. As ever, any postulate and hypothesis we can make depends on "which" physics it is based in, since there are several competing models: Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Transactional, M-Theory, Plenum Physics, hyperspace, etc.
This simple fact makes quantum physics a domain of self-contained, mutually exclusive belief systems with their own presumed truths about the primordial nature of Reality. New Agers and armchair philosophers often confound them together into half-baked theories, sometimes compounded by theories of “ascension”, aliens, and evolution.
Philosophically, what does it mean that man's intention now substitutes for the exiled Demiurge, or divine "maker"? We've put ourselves in place of God or nature to augment healing, muddle about in global politics, and presumably perturb our evolutionary arc. We have to question how much more effective realworld pro-active behavior might be, considering that "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride." There is no end to the places the human ego would like to meddle in structure, meaning and labeling.
Ordinary intentionality means being directed toward some goal. It comes down to a control issue; who's got it and who wants it. Perhaps the most compelling results come from the realms of mindbody healing by deploring human beliefs and activating the mysterious placebo effect for shorter or longer periods of time. But this in no way means that this is a quantum process, since the mechanisms may be largely molecular and biochemical. We know that both psychosomatics and psychosemantics are influential.
“Fill in the blank” explanations can be outlandish, possible, plausible, probable, or match reality. The distinction between "true believers" and skeptics comes at the point of interpretation of phenomena, attributions of the source of events or perceptions, whether one's model is psibernetics, "magical thinking", external agents, nested hierarchies, holistic mysticism, or physicalism.
A theist will tend to attribute positive expectations of “agency” to God, a pagan to nature, a humanist to self, and an atheist to complex dynamics, or randomness,. A debunker is dismissive. A true skeptic remains open-minded, at home in the ambiguity. And the loose use of the buzzword ‘intentionality’ leaves its agent or means totally ambiguous, meaning not mechanism.
Is anomalous intentionality a catalyst? It came into the psi lexicon from consciousness studies and a few psi experiments that showed some promise suggesting mind/matter interaction. The protocols of all these experiments are questionable in terms of rigour even though the field polices itself. Replication for these studies is far from exhaustive. So, maybe it isn't outlandish, and perhaps it is possible, and maybe its plausible. But in no way is it probable. And we don't really know the deepest nature of reality to know whether it matches or we are simply deluding ourselves with a romantic notion.
My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
This fashionable term for mind/matter interaction, "intentionality", fails as a shorthand to explain anything. "Free will" has been dismissed as an agent by most consciousness researchers, though evolutionary intentionality is connected with the dynamic behavior of systems. You may as well call it karma, luck, or True Will, like the magicians do. Karma, whether you believe in it or not, at its root just means natural consequences of behavior.
Does it really work to claim an intention to be intentional? Doesn’t intentionality always imply future tense rather than concrete results? If the paradoxical implication is that the intentional result is acausal, isn’t that a pretzel-twist in logic? Jung tried to account for an acausal factor with his notion of synchronicity, but it is hardly testable, though most of us notice meaningful coicidences all the time. But then human beings have an inclination to look for "signs". Why this is so is another avenue of sociological investigation.
Even in clinical research, to name psi expression intentionality doesn't make it so. In actual fact, most of us can’t form enough intentionality to drink the amount of water the body needs each day or eat healthy. The unresolved New Year’s resolution is a truism.
What makes us think we can be more consistently intentional in the extradimensional? It is a ‘fantasy of intentionality,’ a subjective hypothesis that human intervention at some subtle level perturbs outcomes in some desirable manner. It might express our insecurity in an uncertain, uncontrollable world more than a physics process.
People often mystify their experiences unnecessarily when they don't have a more plausible explanation. It is endlessly interesting to speculate on, but the notion that the all-knowing nonlocal field identity exerts some influence over environment and personality may simply be mythopoesis, myth-making.
In mythopoesis many cultural forms meet and form an organic fusion. Does the contemporary revival of myth with focus on our creative potential point to the possibility of a unified world, a neo-Utopian variant where we wish and make it so? If collective intentionality could create a better world, why didn't we do it long ago?
The real question is why do all cultures engage in mythopoeisis? Mythopoesis means change, re-mythologizing in times of cultural chaos. What I mean here is not a mis-spelling, but an amalgamation of mythopoesis or story-making and the autopoeitic self-organization of chaos theory; self-maintaining unity.
Autopoiesis describes the way living systems address and engage domains in which they operate. What human need do these mythically patterned meta-theories fill? Identification with the field body may just be another way of being attached to a belief to explain the Unknowable, to push the agent beyond the threshold of observability.
The Emperor’s New Intentionality
The notion "we create our own reality" is a relative truth. From a Jungian point of view, any "intentionality" we could exert would be subject to the competing agendas of autonomous archetyal forces and dynamics that don't give a fig about your personality needs. Existentially, we are moved by more than a single metaphor, a single role, a singlular self-image. Whatever you choose to call them, we harbor nested competing agendas, conscious and unconscious.
Even in chaos theory, many forget there are strange repellors as well as strange attractors. Resonance is another buzzword rapidly equalling the old standby of spiritualism, “vibrations”, which has found vindication in quantum and vacuum fluctuation But somehow, both in our lives and quantum mechanics, these extradimensional entanglements are unobservable, beyond physics, and therefore strictly speaking, metaphysical.
The ancients conceived of magic working through focus and will. Now a diffuse holistic awareness is preferred, perturbing the quantum flow. Whether we think we are changing reality through a focused act of will or even by "broad-beam" self-transformation the whole scenario may be a self-delusion cast in perennial truths and pseudo-scientific terms.
If it bothers or offends you to think otherwise, this is more likely true. There is emotional attachment there, not clarity. If you think you can do it by "aligning" yourself rather than manifestation, why are you harboring fantasies of misalignment? It makes little sense that the particle "intends" and the field "corresponds". In Nature, the reverse leads to manifestion.
Is this notion harboring a demiurgic God-complex, a control fantasy in an otherwise uncontrollable world? If we believe in God, why do we presume to interfere with that fiat by introjecting our small agendas? Does it conceal a spiritual hubris to be co-equal or co-creator with divinity? Or, more to the point, why would we look to the divine as an agent of psychophysical dynamics?
Nonlocal Intentions
Intentions may or may not exert a nonlocal organizing effect. They do when they mobilize effective action. Often the 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is invoked for pumping holistic mental effects up to macro- proportions. But chaos theory doesn't organize through intentionality; just the opposite, by criticality.
Correlation is not identity. There is appearance being and process being, which correlate with particle/wave. We are both particle and field, and they are both complex, and may be analogous or metaphorically connected to the hypothesis of intentionality - but that doesn't make it real: it makes it a belief, an operational worldview. The ego somehow facilitating the holistic self to manifest is solipsistic, because the field self is in no way diminished even by negative thinking by personality.
If you think distant intentionality works for you, that is an interpretation, an arbitrary allocation of a cause to a perceived effect, which may be largely unrelated and/or statistically irrelevant. Once the narrative is "set", that becomes the story and the person zealously sticks to it, right or wrong. This is human nature and the nature of emotional investment. It may be the eternal human yen to create order from the fear and chaos of our lives and cleave to faith in the Great Beyond, whatever one thinks resides there.
A myriad of "brandable" new age technologies are based on non-scientific interpretations and confabulations of scientific theory. Though having its own organic root in metaphysics, new age tech has hijacked and romanticized the philosophical territory of psi research with its own prosaic interpretations. Because it makes a romantically appealing metaphor doesn't mean it matches up with naked Reality. Often incompatible physics theories are confounded together for the so-called explanations.
Psi and Intentionality
Four models of psi intentionality are drawn from relativity theory and two from quantum mechanics. First is the energetic transmission model, which presumes the effects of conscious intention are mediated by an as-yet-unknown energy signal. Second is the model of path facilitation. According to general relativity, gravity "warps" space–time, easing certain pathways of movement, so may acts of consciousness have warping and facilitating effects on the fabric of the surrounding world.
Nonlocal entanglement is drawn from quantum mechanics, suggesting people, like particles, can become entangled so they behave as one system with instantaneous and unmediated correlations across a distance. Actualization of potentials reflects the act of measurement in quantum mechanics collapsing a probabilistic wave function into a single outcome. This notion of observer effect relates only to the standard Copenhagen interpretation of QM. Researrchers claim conscious healing intention and alignment may actualize one of a series of possibilities; for example, recovery from a potentially lethal tumor.
Psi researchers must be careful to see these explanatory buzzwords like 'alignment' and 'intentionality' for what they are, smoke and mirrors explaining nothing, not what some say they are. Like the next new buzzword, "extradimensionality", it is just a displacement into the Unknown of a process that may be something entirely other than what the experiencer thinks it is.
To get to the Truth we have to follow the age-old axiom to ‘Know Thyself,’ and be willing to engage in some conceptual atom-smashing of our cherished notions. Otherwise, one engages in a pre-conceived, self-confirmatory journey for validation not a Quest for knowledge.
Rather than extradimensional participation in some subtle physics process, it may just be another trick of the mind - in the end, nothing more than a concept that doesn't match up with nor describe Reality. Oh sure, intentionality may function mystically in some nonfungable parallel universe, or that could be just another mentally attractive perennial fantasy. Those most concerned with “changing the paradigm” may be among those most firmly attached to their own idiosyncratic interpretations.
If there are memes in our culture, there are strange attractors in our thought patterns, that can harden into fixed beliefs. The fact is we don't know, and anyone who charges you and says they do is a either a fraud or self-deluded, or both. We are components of mythic culture which recursively regenerates itself in a network of self-similar productions.
Anywhere there is non-equilibrium, a gap in personal or cultural awareness, myth will self-organize a meta-narrative to fill the lacuna. Mythic beliefs are self-contained. Even fantasies of holism automatically exclude other options, except through embedding and hierarchy.
There are many aspects of psi, some more credible and testable than others. ESP (information transfer) is the most plausble, psychokinesis (mind over matter) most problematical. Serious researchers are beyond parlour tricks such as seances, regressions, or ghostbusting.
Still, there is no scientific or spiritual consensus about the mechanics of physics or consciousness, much less mind/matter interaction or the influence of one mind on another organism. Some models appeal to our intuition, others are profoundly counter-intuitive. But Mystery doesn't need to be metaphysical, mystical, nor dismissed as "noetic nonsense". It simply isn't limited by any of our concepts nor scientific blindspots. We can just admit we stand in the Mystery.
The way to keep a path alive is to walk on it. Studying psi phenomena invariably involves extracting a signal from a lot of noise: the only credible way to do that is scientifically. But for many researchers, those disconcerting or luminous moments of utter uncanniness in our own personal experience sustain our interest, year after year. The effects aren't so much in question as the images and the way we imagine them.
In the future, our important practical and moral choices could be improved by our understanding of the brain's workings. The more we know about our monkey brains, the more likely we are to control them. But at the same time, we may be subjected to more powerful and insidious manipulation by merchandisers and propagandists who seek better ways to bypass our rational minds and appeal more directly to our primal fears and desires. REFERENCES
Blackmore, Susan, There is no stream of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 9, number 5-6, on the Grand Illusion. See http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs/, it is reprinted here with permission. http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/jcs02.htm
Eugene Subbotsky, The belief in magic in the age of science, http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/subbotsk/%20E.Subbotsky-2.pdf
Evans, TRANSCENDENTAL PRAGMATISM: A SYSTEMATIC EXISTENTIALISM Method & Application,
http://beutel.narod.ru/write/transprag.htm
Fodor, Jerry. Psychosemantics. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1987.
Leder, Drew (1995) "Spooky Actions at a Distance": Physics, Psi, and Distant Healing, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Oct 2005, Vol. 11, No. 5 : 923 -930 Schlitz, Marilyn and Braud, William (1997). "Distance intentionality and healing", Alternative Therapies, Vol. 3, No. 6.
Lutz, Antoine and Thompson, Evan, Neurophenomenology Integrating Subjective Experience and Brain Dynamics in the Neuroscience of Consciousness http://espra.risc.cnrs.fr/LutzThompson.pdf
Anthony J. Marcel, Introspective Report Trust, Self-Knowledge and Science, http://web.gc.cuny.edu/cogsci/private/marcel-introspective.pdf
Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten & Elizabeth M. Miller, Worldview Transformation and the Development of
Social Consciousness, http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/JCS_17_7-8_018-036.pdf
S - Introspective Training
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/IntrospTrain.pdf
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13662242/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/genealogists-discover-royal-roots-all/
By MATT CRENSON
Genealogists Discover Royal Roots for All
Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.
Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive."
By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We'll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes.
It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones.
Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England's present population descends from Edward III.
A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In 1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king's ineffectual rule. The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III.
Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn't have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars _ not to mention everybody else.
Of course, the only reason we're talking about Edward III is that history remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced.
The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world.
Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today.
The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam.
Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville.
Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail, claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by Ismail's son, to Muhammad.
The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon.
Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point.
But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the line eventually leads to Isabel's fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla (though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the process).
Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes, spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe.
Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia.
Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
By MATT CRENSON
Genealogists Discover Royal Roots for All
Actress Brooke Shields has a pretty impressive pedigree — hanging from her family tree are Catherine de Medici and Lucrezia Borgia, Charlemagne and El Cid, William the Conquerer and King Harold, vanquished by William at the Battle of Hastings.
Shields also descends from five popes, a whole mess of early New England settlers, and the royal houses of virtually every European country. She counts renaissance pundit Niccolo Machiavelli and conquistador Hernando Cortes as ancestors.
What is it about Brooke? Well, nothing — at least genealogically.
Even without a documented connection to a notable forebear, experts say the odds are virtually 100 percent that every person on Earth is descended from one royal personage or another.
"Millions of people have provable descents from medieval monarchs," said Mark Humphrys, a genealogy enthusiast and professor of computer science at Dublin City University in Ireland. "The number of people with unprovable descents must be massive."
By the same token, for every king in a person's family tree there are thousands and thousands of nobodies whose births, deaths and lives went completely unrecorded by history. We'll never know about them, because until recently vital records were a rarity for all but the noble classes.
It works the other way, too. Anybody who had children more than a few hundred years ago is likely to have millions of descendants today, and quite a few famous ones.
Take King Edward III, who ruled England during the 14th century and had nine children who survived to adulthood. Among his documented descendants are presidents (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, both Roosevelts), authors (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning), generals (Robert E. Lee), scientists (Charles Darwin) and actors (Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, Brooke Shields). Some experts estimate that 80 percent of England's present population descends from Edward III.
A slight twist of fate could have prevented the existence of all of them. In 1312 the close adviser and probable lover of Edward II, Piers Gaveston, was murdered by a group of barons frustrated with their king's ineffectual rule. The next year the beleaguered king produced the son who became Edward III.
Had Edward II been killed along with Gaveston in 1312 — a definite possibility at the time — Edward III would never have been born. He wouldn't have produced the lines of descent that ultimately branched out to include all those presidents, writers and Hollywood stars _ not to mention everybody else.
Of course, the only reason we're talking about Edward III is that history remembers him. For every medieval monarch there are countless long-dead nobodies whose intrigues, peccadilloes and luck have steered the course of history simply by determining where, when and with whom they reproduced.
The longer ago somebody lived, the more descendants a person is likely to have today. Humphrys estimates that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, appears on the family tree of every person in the Western world.
Some people have actually tried to establish a documented line between Muhammad, who was born in the 6th century, and the medieval English monarchs, and thus to most if not all people of European descent. Nobody has succeeded yet, but one proposed lineage comes close. Though it runs through several strongly suspicious individuals, the line illustrates how lines of descent can wander down through the centuries, connecting famous figures of the past to most of the people living today.
The proposed genealogy runs through Muhammad's daughter Fatima. Her husband Ali, also a cousin of Muhammad, is considered by Shiite Muslims the legitimate heir to leadership of Islam.
Ali and Fatima had a son, al-Hasan, who died in 670. About three centuries later, his ninth great-grandson, Ismail, carried the line to Europe when he became Imam of Seville.
Many genealogists dispute the connection between al-Hasan and Ismail, claiming that it includes fictional characters specifically invented by medieval genealogists trying to link the Abbadid dynasty, founded by Ismail's son, to Muhammad.
The Abbadid dynasty was celebrated for making Seville a great cultural center at a time when most of Europe was mired in the Dark Ages. The last emir in that dynasty was supposed to have had a daughter named Zaida, who is said to have changed her name to Isabel upon converting to Christianity and marrying Alfonso VI, king of Castile and Leon.
Yet there is no good evidence demonstrating that Isabel, who bore one son by Alfonso VI, is the same person as Zaida. So the line between Muhammad and the English monarchs probably breaks again at this point.
But if you give the Zaida/Isabel story the benefit of the doubt too, the line eventually leads to Isabel's fifth great-granddaughter Maria de Padilla (though it does encounter yet another potentially fictional character in the process).
Maria married another king of Castile and Leon, Peter the Cruel. Their great-great-granddaughter was Queen Isabel, who funded the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Her daughter Juana married a Hapsburg, and eventually gave rise to a Medici, a Bourbon and long line of Italian princes and dukes, spreading the Mohammedan line of descent all over Europe.
Finally, 43 generations from Mohammed, you reach an Italian princess named Marina Torlonia.
Her granddaughter is Brooke Shields.
© 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
(c) 2013, Iona Miller, All Rights Reserved, Sangreality Trust; GenIsis Genealogy
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on all graphic and written content.
If you mirror my works, pls include the credit and URL LINK for reference.
[email protected]
http:ionamiller.weebly.com
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.