Mythic Living
Metaphorical & Heuristic Perception
Mythic Imagination & Genealogy
Iona Miller, (c)1977
http://ionamiller.weebly.com
Edgar Maxence - The Soul of the Forest (1898)
This play that I witnessed is my play, not your play.
It is my secret, not yours. You cannot imitate me.
My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you.
You have your own.
He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone.
He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love. A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing.
Judgment must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit.
Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate.
Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living.
The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy.
But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness) since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 246-247.
It is my secret, not yours. You cannot imitate me.
My secret remains virginal and my mysteries are inviolable, they belong to me and cannot belong to you.
You have your own.
He who enters into his own must grope through what lies at hand, he must sense his way from stone to stone.
He must embrace the worthless and the worthy with the same love. A mountain is nothing, and a grain of sand holds kingdoms, or also nothing.
Judgment must fall from you, even taste, but above all pride, even when it is based on merit.
Utterly poor, miserable, unknowingly humiliated, go on through the gate.
Turn your anger against yourself, since only you stop yourself from looking and from living.
The mystery play is soft like air and thin smoke, and you are raw matter that is disturbingly heavy.
But let your hope, which is your highest good and highest ability, lead the way and serve you as a guide in the world of darkness) since it is of like substance with the forms of that world. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 246-247.
http://mythicliving.iwarp.com/
"The true history of the Spirit is not preserved in learned volumes but in the living psychic organism of every individual." ~Carl Jung, CW 11; 56
"The true history of the Spirit is not preserved in learned volumes but in the living psychic organism of every individual." ~Carl Jung, CW 11; 56
Be prepared to accept the view that spirit is not absolute, but something relative that needs completing and perfecting through life. ~Carl Jung
Life does not come from events, but from us. Everything that happens outside has already been. Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new.
The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it. Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning of events, so that the way of what is to come becomes apparent and our life can grow again.
That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning. The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Page 239.
Life does not come from events, but from us. Everything that happens outside has already been. Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new.
The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it. Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning of events, so that the way of what is to come becomes apparent and our life can grow again.
That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning. The meaning of events is the way of salvation that you create. The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.
This meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but is the God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the way, the bridge and the going across. ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Page 239.
Corbin differentiates between a universal, representational, abstract knowledge and what he calls a “presential illumination which the soul, as a being of light, causes to shine upon its object. By making herself present to herself, the soul also makes the object present to her... the truth of all objective knowledge is thus nothing more nor less than the awareness which the knowing subject has of itself”.
The Angel
https://www.academia.edu/472446/Becoming_an_Angel_the_mundus_imaginalis_of_Henry_Corbin_and_the_Platonic_path_of_self_knowledge
Which now brings us to the supreme form of manifestation of Absolute Being in this tradition, which is in the Presence of the Angel. Corbin says “The Angel is the face that our god takes for us, and each of us finds his god only when he recognises that face.” Such a recognition takes place in the imaginal world. Far from being creations of human fantasy, the angelic beings exemplify an intensity of ‘real being’ of which we are mere reflections. According to this tradition of prophetic philosophy, the active intellect of God can only be encountered through the Angel of Revelation personified as an individual angelic being – it could be speculated upon as an abstract concept, but only fully understood through personal encounter. Now as we saw in the angelology of Avicenna,each human soul has as its counterpart, a celestial soul, who is the eternal and perfected individuality of the person, their “transcendent celestial self” as Corbin describes it. The question then becomes how to integrate the earthly ego with this soul and through it with its angel, for it is through such an engagement that the individual becomes fully a Person,an integrated whole, connected to the source of Being yet also active in the world. As Tom Cheetham puts it, The connection with the Angel, the archetype in Heaven…guarantees that every being can be more itself, more real, more alive, to the degree that it is in contact with this celestial Presence. 23 Making the connection, however, is not easy; it involves breaking through the boundaries of habitual consciousness and opening up to an intensity of existence normally inaccessible – hence the ecstasies of the mystic, or the divine frenzies of the Platonic lover. We can see the importance of an imaginal cosmology as a container and structure for such an experience, providing a navigation map as it were through from one world to the other. As Cheetham observes, without such a guiding image the struggle to achieve the sacred marriage would be in vain and humanity would collapse into an unredeemed chaos. Corbin uses the image of two poles balancing the celestial and human dimensions of the soul. Without the celestial pole, he says, the terrestrial one would topple and the world would be “completely depolarised in vagabondage and perdition”. 24 Indeed failure to connect with the angel results in very real powers of darkness invading the soul, and here Corbin differs from his contemporary Carl Jung, for he did not see the dark forces a sa shadow to be integrated, but as an enemy to be defeated by the powers of Light. In other respects, we could certainly talk of this coniunctio of human and angelic in terms ofi ndividuation, for the ego must undergo a painful transformation before the encounter with the angel can occur. The metaphors of travelling to the underworld, fighting the dragon, undergoing the alchemical nigredo or submitting to the tasks of Psyche all point to the struggle which precedes the dawn of consciousness which will inevitably entail meeting with the angelic Guide. This guardian angel or daimon will be revealed in a manner of ways, through a dream or visionary experience or a passionate encounter with an embodied human being, but it will only manifest in so far as the soul is ready for it.
The point being that the Angel can only manifest itself through the sensory world of images, be they in a dream, in artistic creations or human persons. This is when they become symbols, and this manifestation implies that a spiritual life in no way turns itself away from the world but on the contrary engages even more fully with it in order to penetrate to its depths. Corbin says The sensible species does not divert from the Angel but leads to the “place” of the encounter, on the condition that the soul seeks the encounter. For there are various ways of turning towards the sensible. There is one that simultaneously and as such turns towards the Angel. What follows is the transmutation of the sensible into symbols… If objects are turned to and venerated without the transcendent vision, or if the transcendent vision is separated from the object and worshipped in isolation from its material embodiment, one falls into the “two-faced spiritual infirmity” of idolatry. As in neoplatonic theurgy, re-investing the sensible world with spiritual properties is essential for their apprehension, and heals the divide between gods and men which is a symptom of literal thinking about the world – or we might say, of diabolic thinking, as opposed to the unifying function of the symbolic.
Conclusion - The importance of Corbin’s work cannot be overestimated in a world which is blinkered and starved of a sense of the sacred, and which tends to reduce the imagination to fantasy and illusion. He gives us a language in which to speak with penetrating insight about the reality of visionary experience, a place to locate divinatory ‘realisation’. But perhaps most importantly he reconnects the reader with what has become popularly known as “the power of now” –through demonstrating that a faithful study of religious experience must involve a move away from the objectifying approach of the historian,towards the position of the mystic for whom it is a living reality. He stands in the line of Platonic interpreters from Plotinus, Iamblichus and Ficino through to the archetypal and depth psychologists Carl Jung and James Hillman, who all “battle for the soul of the world”and for the autonomy of the individual, through a championing of the imagination as a faculty of perception which can penetrate far deeper into the mysterious nature of being than any abstract or conceptual thought.
Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson, The Morning Stars
The Angel
https://www.academia.edu/472446/Becoming_an_Angel_the_mundus_imaginalis_of_Henry_Corbin_and_the_Platonic_path_of_self_knowledge
Which now brings us to the supreme form of manifestation of Absolute Being in this tradition, which is in the Presence of the Angel. Corbin says “The Angel is the face that our god takes for us, and each of us finds his god only when he recognises that face.” Such a recognition takes place in the imaginal world. Far from being creations of human fantasy, the angelic beings exemplify an intensity of ‘real being’ of which we are mere reflections. According to this tradition of prophetic philosophy, the active intellect of God can only be encountered through the Angel of Revelation personified as an individual angelic being – it could be speculated upon as an abstract concept, but only fully understood through personal encounter. Now as we saw in the angelology of Avicenna,each human soul has as its counterpart, a celestial soul, who is the eternal and perfected individuality of the person, their “transcendent celestial self” as Corbin describes it. The question then becomes how to integrate the earthly ego with this soul and through it with its angel, for it is through such an engagement that the individual becomes fully a Person,an integrated whole, connected to the source of Being yet also active in the world. As Tom Cheetham puts it, The connection with the Angel, the archetype in Heaven…guarantees that every being can be more itself, more real, more alive, to the degree that it is in contact with this celestial Presence. 23 Making the connection, however, is not easy; it involves breaking through the boundaries of habitual consciousness and opening up to an intensity of existence normally inaccessible – hence the ecstasies of the mystic, or the divine frenzies of the Platonic lover. We can see the importance of an imaginal cosmology as a container and structure for such an experience, providing a navigation map as it were through from one world to the other. As Cheetham observes, without such a guiding image the struggle to achieve the sacred marriage would be in vain and humanity would collapse into an unredeemed chaos. Corbin uses the image of two poles balancing the celestial and human dimensions of the soul. Without the celestial pole, he says, the terrestrial one would topple and the world would be “completely depolarised in vagabondage and perdition”. 24 Indeed failure to connect with the angel results in very real powers of darkness invading the soul, and here Corbin differs from his contemporary Carl Jung, for he did not see the dark forces a sa shadow to be integrated, but as an enemy to be defeated by the powers of Light. In other respects, we could certainly talk of this coniunctio of human and angelic in terms ofi ndividuation, for the ego must undergo a painful transformation before the encounter with the angel can occur. The metaphors of travelling to the underworld, fighting the dragon, undergoing the alchemical nigredo or submitting to the tasks of Psyche all point to the struggle which precedes the dawn of consciousness which will inevitably entail meeting with the angelic Guide. This guardian angel or daimon will be revealed in a manner of ways, through a dream or visionary experience or a passionate encounter with an embodied human being, but it will only manifest in so far as the soul is ready for it.
The point being that the Angel can only manifest itself through the sensory world of images, be they in a dream, in artistic creations or human persons. This is when they become symbols, and this manifestation implies that a spiritual life in no way turns itself away from the world but on the contrary engages even more fully with it in order to penetrate to its depths. Corbin says The sensible species does not divert from the Angel but leads to the “place” of the encounter, on the condition that the soul seeks the encounter. For there are various ways of turning towards the sensible. There is one that simultaneously and as such turns towards the Angel. What follows is the transmutation of the sensible into symbols… If objects are turned to and venerated without the transcendent vision, or if the transcendent vision is separated from the object and worshipped in isolation from its material embodiment, one falls into the “two-faced spiritual infirmity” of idolatry. As in neoplatonic theurgy, re-investing the sensible world with spiritual properties is essential for their apprehension, and heals the divide between gods and men which is a symptom of literal thinking about the world – or we might say, of diabolic thinking, as opposed to the unifying function of the symbolic.
Conclusion - The importance of Corbin’s work cannot be overestimated in a world which is blinkered and starved of a sense of the sacred, and which tends to reduce the imagination to fantasy and illusion. He gives us a language in which to speak with penetrating insight about the reality of visionary experience, a place to locate divinatory ‘realisation’. But perhaps most importantly he reconnects the reader with what has become popularly known as “the power of now” –through demonstrating that a faithful study of religious experience must involve a move away from the objectifying approach of the historian,towards the position of the mystic for whom it is a living reality. He stands in the line of Platonic interpreters from Plotinus, Iamblichus and Ficino through to the archetypal and depth psychologists Carl Jung and James Hillman, who all “battle for the soul of the world”and for the autonomy of the individual, through a championing of the imagination as a faculty of perception which can penetrate far deeper into the mysterious nature of being than any abstract or conceptual thought.
Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson, The Morning Stars
John Curtis Gowan
Spirit of the Pool -
George William (‘A.E.’) Russell
George William (‘A.E.’) Russell
Myth, dream, and ritual meet in sacred psychology. This infintely expanded and extraordinary consciousness introduces us to a culture of the depths, a larger framework of reality. It is transformative. This experience is substantively real, and has consequences in daily life. It is the source of poetry, music, science, and art which we can tap for inspiration, sanctuary, or healing.
"But who says that dream, tragedy, and myth are adequate to the formations of the unconscious, even if the work of transformations are taken into account? Groddeck remained more faithful than Freud to an auto-production of the unconscious in the co-extension of man and Nature. It is as if Freud had drawn back from this world as wild production and explosive desire, wanting at all costs to restore a little order there, an order made classical owing to the ancient Greek theatre." ---Deleuze and Guattari, Anti- Oedipus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Magical practices are the projections of psychic events which, in cases like these, exert a counter influence on the soul and act like a kind of enchantment of one's own personality. That is to say, by means of these concrete performances the attention, or better said, the interest, is brought back to an inner sacred domain which is the source and goal of the soul. This inner domain contains the unity of life and consciousness which, though once possessed, has been lost and must now be found again. ---C.G. Jung/Secret of the Golden Flower
Magical practices are the projections of psychic events which, in cases like these, exert a counter influence on the soul and act like a kind of enchantment of one's own personality. That is to say, by means of these concrete performances the attention, or better said, the interest, is brought back to an inner sacred domain which is the source and goal of the soul. This inner domain contains the unity of life and consciousness which, though once possessed, has been lost and must now be found again. ---C.G. Jung/Secret of the Golden Flower
MYTHOLOGRAMS
The altar at Sekhet-Maat Lodge in Portland, Oregon, with Graal and Paten.
"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell
The Ultimate Fate of every Dogma.............
The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul.
Note that I do not go so far as to say that the archetype actually produces the divine figure. If the psychologist were to assert that, he would have to possess a sure knowledge of the motives that underlie all historical development and be in a position to demonstrate this knowledge. But there is no question of that. I maintain only that the psychic archetype makes it possible for the divine figure to take form and become accessible to understanding.
But the supremely important motive power which is needed for this, and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of the archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation.
Who, for instance, could logically have foretold that the Jewish prophet Jesus would give the decisive answer to the spiritual situation in the age of Hellenistic syncretism, or that the slumbering image of the Anthropos would waken to world dominion?
The limitations of human knowledge which leave so many incomprehensible and wonderful things unexplained do not, however, exempt us from the task of trying to understand the revelations of the spirit that are embodied in dogma, otherwise there is a danger that the treasures of supreme knowledge which lie hidden in it will evaporate into nothing and become a bloodless phantom, and easy prey for all shallow rationalists.
It would be a great step forward, in my opinion, if at least it were recognized how far the truth of dogma is rooted in the human psyche, which is not the work of human hands. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; Pages 347-348; Para’s 488-489.
The ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has always helped man to express the mystery of the soul.
Note that I do not go so far as to say that the archetype actually produces the divine figure. If the psychologist were to assert that, he would have to possess a sure knowledge of the motives that underlie all historical development and be in a position to demonstrate this knowledge. But there is no question of that. I maintain only that the psychic archetype makes it possible for the divine figure to take form and become accessible to understanding.
But the supremely important motive power which is needed for this, and which sets the archetypal possibilities in motion at a given historical moment, cannot be explained in terms of the archetype itself. Only experience can establish which archetype has become operative, but one can never predict that it must enter into manifestation.
Who, for instance, could logically have foretold that the Jewish prophet Jesus would give the decisive answer to the spiritual situation in the age of Hellenistic syncretism, or that the slumbering image of the Anthropos would waken to world dominion?
The limitations of human knowledge which leave so many incomprehensible and wonderful things unexplained do not, however, exempt us from the task of trying to understand the revelations of the spirit that are embodied in dogma, otherwise there is a danger that the treasures of supreme knowledge which lie hidden in it will evaporate into nothing and become a bloodless phantom, and easy prey for all shallow rationalists.
It would be a great step forward, in my opinion, if at least it were recognized how far the truth of dogma is rooted in the human psyche, which is not the work of human hands. ~Carl Jung; Mysterium Coniunctionis; Pages 347-348; Para’s 488-489.
Andrzej Mazur ~ “The Soothsayer”
MYTHICAL LIVING
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Iona Miller, c1977
Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self. --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I I.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or race evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega principle.
As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order. 4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture.
Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience.
Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep waters, will quickly regress to the natural standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may bring back (which has both personal and collective significance), is not given to him. He does not find the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life. He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire to stay "high."
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined.
The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth.
The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition. There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
(2) Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does not merely stand in the place of or represent the union of several elements, but rather it is identical with the whole. If the part is the whole, then whoever controls the part controls the whole. In normal discourse, symbols represent their referents and are separable from what they represent; in metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are their referents; they cannot be separated. The elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate symbol from experience so that symbols can be manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be. While we cannot experience precisely the same thing ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent two experiences as being roughly the same.
(3) The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised mythological images have certain typical features. We may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms to their simplest expressions as a means of recognizing them. Jung's list of salient characteristics includes: Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation (circle, sphere); and finally the centering process and a radial arrangement usually followed by some quaternity system. The centering process is...the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else." The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role."
(4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
Personification is a mode of viewing archetypal processes in their traditional forms as gods and goddesses. This method allows us to love the gods, giving them attention and worship. Their names aid us in discriminating them one from another. They give us the ability to call upon them. This process of devotion takes place in the imaginal realm of the heart. In QBL, this is Tiphareth, the heart-center. In Eastern systems, it is known as anahata chakra. It is the realm of soul-making. Personification is a spontaneous process, springing from the heart, where imagination reigns. This process of active imagination allows us to "see through" the literalisms of mundane existence and to participate in relationships with the divine.
A primary purpose of Middle Pillar Exercise is to orient oneself with the Universe (5). It promises equilibration and renewal. In Middle Pillar Exercise, the gods are brought into consciousness by intoning their names. This creates a resonance effect which stimulates glands. These names are related, via correspondence, to various centers in the body. Repeated practice of Middle Pillar Exercise is fundamental for any Magickal development. It heals the culturally-preprogrammed split between mind, soul and body. The Banishing Ritual and Middle Pillar Exercise are particularly effective because they are a dramatization of the Creation Myth.
In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade states, The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. Every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model. Techniques of orientation (aligning oneself to the directions), are designed for the construction of sacred space.
The more closely a ritual reproduces the work of the gods in creation, the more effective it is in producing the desired psychological results. Knowing the value of a ritual satisfies both the rational and aesthetic mind. The model for the creation of sacred space begins from a center and projects horizons in the four cardinal directions. This model has been followed throughout history when settling new territory or in the founding of cities.
We always reside at the center of "our world." This quadrated circle sets up the conditions necessary for us to enter into sacred time. The Banishing Ritual "cleanses" the portion of space within the perimeter of the circle. This eliminates unwanted thoughts which could cause distraction. One then has enhanced ability to focus and concentrate.
The circle is cleared of all 'entities,' good or evil. Then one may call in specific gods, at will. We may contact the gods through the medium of the sacred pole or cosmic pillar. Sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of mythical eternal present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites. When we enter this space, we experience the feeling of immortality, since we are in a time which is equivalent to the "beginning."
The principle characteristics of sacred space are: a) A break in the homogeneity of space; b) This break is symbolized by an opening where passage from one cosmic region to another is facilitated (i.e. between heaven and earth; earth and the underworld); c) Communication with heaven is expressed by variants of the Cosmic Pillar, which stands at the Center of the World. This Pillar is a useful symbol for what is termed in psychology the Ego-Self Axis. The axis is built up through various psychological exercises, involving active imagination. It forms the link between ego-consciousness and the Self. This represents both the conscious and subconscious mind working together in harmony. It is known in Magick as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
The Banishing and Middle Pillar exercises conform precisely to the creation myth. Since a myth is a paradigmatic model, one can see it is a very effective exercise. It establishes one's relationship to the cosmos, or totality. Eliade has said: What men do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence, it is a vain and illusory activity, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious a man is, the more paradigmatic models he possesses to guide his attitudes and actions.
The importance of persistent practice of Middle Pillar technique, throughout the Magickal career, is not to be underestimated. Israel Regardie is quite firm on this point. To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work. It is a process which is the basis of Magic. That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again. Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors. (6)
Timelessness will appear as a multiple recurrence (chronicity). The archetypal order will make these appearances regular, both in time (wave frequency) and magnitude (wave amplitude). The ego has the option of actively participating in the process through the medium of active imagination. This develops insight. To restore our earth to a ground in creative imagination we must re-imagine the creation. (7)
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Iona Miller, c1977
Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self. --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I I.
Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.
A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.
The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or race evolves the three primary questions:
1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?
The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.
Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.
The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega principle.
As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.
A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order. 4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.
Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.
The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.
This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture.
Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."
The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience.
Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.
A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep waters, will quickly regress to the natural standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may bring back (which has both personal and collective significance), is not given to him. He does not find the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life. He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire to stay "high."
There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined.
The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.
The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth.
The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition. There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.
(2) Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does not merely stand in the place of or represent the union of several elements, but rather it is identical with the whole. If the part is the whole, then whoever controls the part controls the whole. In normal discourse, symbols represent their referents and are separable from what they represent; in metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are their referents; they cannot be separated. The elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate symbol from experience so that symbols can be manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be. While we cannot experience precisely the same thing ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent two experiences as being roughly the same.
(3) The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised mythological images have certain typical features. We may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms to their simplest expressions as a means of recognizing them. Jung's list of salient characteristics includes: Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation (circle, sphere); and finally the centering process and a radial arrangement usually followed by some quaternity system. The centering process is...the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect.
Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.
Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.
James Hillman, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else." The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role."
(4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.
Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.
Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.
However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."
"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."
Personification is a mode of viewing archetypal processes in their traditional forms as gods and goddesses. This method allows us to love the gods, giving them attention and worship. Their names aid us in discriminating them one from another. They give us the ability to call upon them. This process of devotion takes place in the imaginal realm of the heart. In QBL, this is Tiphareth, the heart-center. In Eastern systems, it is known as anahata chakra. It is the realm of soul-making. Personification is a spontaneous process, springing from the heart, where imagination reigns. This process of active imagination allows us to "see through" the literalisms of mundane existence and to participate in relationships with the divine.
A primary purpose of Middle Pillar Exercise is to orient oneself with the Universe (5). It promises equilibration and renewal. In Middle Pillar Exercise, the gods are brought into consciousness by intoning their names. This creates a resonance effect which stimulates glands. These names are related, via correspondence, to various centers in the body. Repeated practice of Middle Pillar Exercise is fundamental for any Magickal development. It heals the culturally-preprogrammed split between mind, soul and body. The Banishing Ritual and Middle Pillar Exercise are particularly effective because they are a dramatization of the Creation Myth.
In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade states, The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. Every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model. Techniques of orientation (aligning oneself to the directions), are designed for the construction of sacred space.
The more closely a ritual reproduces the work of the gods in creation, the more effective it is in producing the desired psychological results. Knowing the value of a ritual satisfies both the rational and aesthetic mind. The model for the creation of sacred space begins from a center and projects horizons in the four cardinal directions. This model has been followed throughout history when settling new territory or in the founding of cities.
We always reside at the center of "our world." This quadrated circle sets up the conditions necessary for us to enter into sacred time. The Banishing Ritual "cleanses" the portion of space within the perimeter of the circle. This eliminates unwanted thoughts which could cause distraction. One then has enhanced ability to focus and concentrate.
The circle is cleared of all 'entities,' good or evil. Then one may call in specific gods, at will. We may contact the gods through the medium of the sacred pole or cosmic pillar. Sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of mythical eternal present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites. When we enter this space, we experience the feeling of immortality, since we are in a time which is equivalent to the "beginning."
The principle characteristics of sacred space are: a) A break in the homogeneity of space; b) This break is symbolized by an opening where passage from one cosmic region to another is facilitated (i.e. between heaven and earth; earth and the underworld); c) Communication with heaven is expressed by variants of the Cosmic Pillar, which stands at the Center of the World. This Pillar is a useful symbol for what is termed in psychology the Ego-Self Axis. The axis is built up through various psychological exercises, involving active imagination. It forms the link between ego-consciousness and the Self. This represents both the conscious and subconscious mind working together in harmony. It is known in Magick as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
The Banishing and Middle Pillar exercises conform precisely to the creation myth. Since a myth is a paradigmatic model, one can see it is a very effective exercise. It establishes one's relationship to the cosmos, or totality. Eliade has said: What men do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence, it is a vain and illusory activity, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious a man is, the more paradigmatic models he possesses to guide his attitudes and actions.
The importance of persistent practice of Middle Pillar technique, throughout the Magickal career, is not to be underestimated. Israel Regardie is quite firm on this point. To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work. It is a process which is the basis of Magic. That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again. Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors. (6)
Timelessness will appear as a multiple recurrence (chronicity). The archetypal order will make these appearances regular, both in time (wave frequency) and magnitude (wave amplitude). The ego has the option of actively participating in the process through the medium of active imagination. This develops insight. To restore our earth to a ground in creative imagination we must re-imagine the creation. (7)
"You can't predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can predict what you're going to dream tonight. Myths and dream come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that have then to find expression in symbolic form. And the only myth that's going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet and everybody on it. That's my main thought for what the future of myth is going to be."
--Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers
--Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers
PARANORMAL DEVELOPMENT
Ways of Navigating the Numinous Psyche
A scale of consciousness, a model based on John Curtis Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity) -
Gowan's work and taxonomies of consciousness remain useful to the transdisciplinary community, including the fields of parapsychology, paranthropology, consciousness studies, psychotherapeutics, neurobiology, psychology of religion, neurotheology, child development, and more. In developing creative talent, imagery is more fluid and malleable to processing than language.
Dysfunctionality, developmental arrest and dissonance between rational and emotional dynamics resulting in self-defeating or self-destructive tendencies that hold back self-actualizing potential. We can also become stuck at any phase of successful adaptation.
Most mature adults become emotionally arrested at the level of vocational fulfillment, financial success, and happy marriage.
Another stall may occur as the psychedelic nature-mystic experience where nature is enjoyed for its own sake. Success at any stage of development may promote the desire to continue at play rather than integrating the lessons learned into the task of the next stage. Further development is an evolutionary task/opportunity.
The interface of psyche and matter is that point where psyche matters. In finding meaning and expressing that meaning we exalt our humanity in our individuation. Current notions in post-Jungian thought (archetypal and imaginal psychology), experiential process work, and even process theology, are less focused on the developmental perspective of the coping heroic ego -- becoming -- and more focused on the ground state of Being, the dynamic Void or naked reality and unconditioned consciousness. The older view under-emphasizes the initiatory capacity of these breakthrough experiences.
People continue to use myth to give purpose to their lives. We can reinvent meaning in our lives through a variety of myths and different moments in history. We conjure beauty from the power of myth. We need meaning because we are conscious of our own mortality. Humans throughout history, and prehistory, have engaged in all sorts of meditation, either to shift the way they perceive the world, or to produce in themselves, some state of silence, from which something else will come.
THE THREE MODES: PROTOTAXIC, PARATAXIC and SYNTAXIC
a) SHAMANISM: prototaxic experience (characterized by trance-state and loss of ego; ego control absent); dissociation, superstition, possession. Shadow, instinct.
b) ARCHETYPE, MYTH & DREAM: Art : ( Ego expressive) parataxic experience, characterized by the production of images whose meaning is not clear or categorical because it remains largely unconscious; muse, anima/animus
c) CREATIVITY: Self-Actualization. (Ego stabilized in practice and service). Syntaxic experience, conscious clarity, (where meaning is more or less fully cognized symbolically, with ego present). Gifts, genius, compassion, recognition available as a resource at will. The authentic life. Illumination is a steady state where the art of cooperating with navigating numinous experience has been mastered. Self.
Three popular names for these three modes are TRANCE, ART, and CREATIVITY, respectively. Possibly delusional and idiosyncratic beliefs evolve into expressed but little understood beliefs, then into fully cognizable states of cognitive and affective parity. The emotions don't run away with the mind and the mind doesn't dissociate and distort or exploit the emotions. The first is a feeling-oriented possession by the numinous, the second an imaginary attempt to communicate with it expressively, and the third a fully-cognizant stabilized steady state of balance and cooperation between the ego and numinous.
When climbing the "mystic mountain," balancing the mental and emotional energy opens a Middle Way, a transitional mode of consciousness referred to as Art or Temperance. This path leads directly to the core of "Creativity," which radiates integration and magnetically draws us toward individualized consciousness, self-actualization or fulfillment of our unique potential. Such genius has traditionally been called "divine".
"Trance" is achieved in therapy and ritual by interrupting ordinary awareness -- by creating a discontinuity, disruption, temporary chaos. At this prototaxic level, the ego is overwhelmed, and transformations manifest as sensations at the psychophysical and psychosexual level. Self-image, perceptions, and sense of time may be temporarily lost or distorted. The ego dissolves in unconscious communion with the primal preconscious.
Further development leads not only to a change in planes, but a change in the style of cognition to "Art," the parataxic mode, as expressed through gesture, body language, art, myth, ritual, dream, and archetypes. In this plane, the accent is on affect (emotional response). On the glyph of the Tree of Life, the polarities are depicted as horizontally balanced centers of force, yoked opposites of Cognition and Affect (Hod / Netzach). With greater experience and understanding of the inner world, a relationship develops which allows the ego to glimpse and participate with transpersonal forces.
At the integral stage, we can finally put it all together in an integrated whole. This transrational synthesis creates new degrees of insight, freedom, and creativity. All previous stages are united in a holistic viewpoint, greater than the sum of its parts. According to Gowan, the road to high well-being and creativity has five milestones: "1). confrontation of differences, 2). integration, 3). a yielding up or giving up of the old for a new reorganization, 4). a process of differentiation and 5). a positive directionality."
The Gnosis stage is direct experiential contact with the numinous or divine element, multi-sensory "visionary" state, perceptual synesthesia; complementary images of fullness and void; temporary but profound communion with Nature, God, and Mankind; oceanic and peak experiences. Illumination is the Unitive state of pure unconditioned consciousness.
PROTOTAXIC MODE includes the procedures of dissociation, trance, possession, mediumship, hypnosis, psychedelic drug experiences, automatisms, organ possession including glossolalia [talking in tongues] and automatic writing. These varied states have in common the excursus of the ego with loss of memorability of the incident, an altered state of consciousness involving trance or dissociation. There is obviously a "hierarchy" or taxonomy involved in the list of procedures above, which appear to go from "heavy" to "light," with the former procedures involving more characteristic behavior, and the latter less.
Between the primary stages of the prototaxic mode manifested in trance and gross somatic behaviors, expressing the dreadful and uncanny aspects of the numinous element, and the terminal cognitive levels of the syntaxic mode in meditation, peak experiences, and theophanies, all reflecting benign aspects of the numinous, there is certainly a great gulf. This neutral area is occupied by the parataxic mode in which the "awful" aspects of the numinous element are veiled, and the syntaxic glories not yet unfolded. Although archetypes, dreams, myth, and ritual are also in the mode, in the popular mind these outlets are stereotyped as "art."
"Parataxic" according to Sullivan (1953:xiv) is a mode of representation using symbols and images in a private or idiosyncratic manner, similar to Bruner's "iconic" representation. Parataxic representation is identified by a presentational form or image, which has a hidden meaning or one not clearly evocated, and generally ambiguous in that it may often be inarticulately understood in different ways or at several levels of meaning.
The representation is not a reproduction of nature, but some transformation or highly personalistic interpretation of it. The form is figural and non-verbal and tends toward action, but the action is not definitive or a solution to the psychic tension; it is more like a rehearsal of it. The form may have numinous or uncanny qualities, but these are commonly more muted than in the prototaxic mode, as though they were veiled; and there is a gradual increase of ego control from the ASC and dim cognition of the procedures of archetype and dream, surfacing in OSC in myth and ritual and finally expressed in the creative products of art.
In the parataxic mode, encounters with the numinous element are veiled in archetype, myh and dream. There is veiling first of the numinous element itself in archetype; there is veiling of the ego's cognition of the numinous element so that the product appears as an incompletely differentiated image, and finally there is veiling of the mysterium tremendum quality so that the numinous is gradually stripped of its awe-full-ness and hence appears in a more benign and aesthetic guise. The result is not ecstatic nor awe-inspiring, but is diminished to the human dimension. As art is nature transformed, so the parataxic mode represents the numinous element transformed. There is an element of magic in this change: representations of the parataxic are not so much gods, asuras, or demons, as they are fairies, sprites, and sylphs.
We come now to the culmination of our search, for if there is any fit vessel in the universe to receive the numinous element in propria persona it is the human consciousness in the syntaxic mode.
All that has gone before, the trance miracles of the prototaxic, and the magical art of the parataxic, are like the dumb show and the music before the play - the mere overture to the cognitive powers and the affective glories of the syntaxic mode.
Creativity is the popular name for the mode, as were trance and art for the earlier ones, but this mode is creative with a vengeance. For it displays besides creativity, escalation, emergent capacities undreamed or unheard of before, intuition, transcendence, ecstasy, metamorphosis, and salvation.
The syntaxic mode embraces three levels or stages. The first is the creative (including mediation) which we identified earlier (1972) as the sixth developmental stage, and the occultists call the third state of consciousness. This level generally involves the ordinary state of consciousness, although there may be momentary intuitive intimations of something higher. Siddhis (psychic powers) are generally absent, although a few are found in creative states, some in biofeedback and orthocognition, and perhaps more in meditation.
The next level we have called earlier (1972) the psychedelic (for mind expansion), and have identified as developmental stage 7. (The occultists call it the fourth state of consciousness). This level has the property that those in it experience a transient altered state of consciousness known as an ecstasy in which there is loss of self, time, or space, the infusion of a special knowledge, and purification of self. Siddhis are often seen. There are six procedures in this level (see Table VIII).
a) Response Experience (Jhana -1) (nature-mystic, oceanic, or peak experience);
b) Adamic Ecstasy (Jhana 0) ("cleansing of the doors of perception");
c) Knowledge ecstasy (Jhana 1) (illumination through special instant knowledge);
d) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 2) (contact with numinous element);
e) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 3) (rapture ceases);
f) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 4) (all feelings cease).
This level is the purview of the mystic life.
Finally there exists a highest level which we now call the unitive (earlier we had called it the illuminative). It is development stage 8, and the 5th level of consciousness for the occultists. Words fail to be of much use in describing this high level and its four procedures (Table VIII.) Those few who may dwell here are in a permanent altered state of consciousness, with attendant siddhis (which they evidently disdain to use). Since there are very few of them, and they shun publicity, we know very little about this level. Goleman says there are four procedures, all involving self-transcendence, and the last two Union. They are:
a) Ineffable Contact (Jhana 5) (consciousness of infinite space);
b) Transcendental contact (Jhana 6) (objectless infinite consciousness);
0 Ineffable Union (Jhana 7) (awareness of "no-thing-ness");
d) Transcendental Union (Jhana 8) (neither perception nor nonperception) (see Table VIII).
4.37 Creativity as Evidence of Mental Health and Self-Actualization
a) Introduction.A final way of looking at creativity is to regard it as early evidence of progress in mental health and self-actualization. The amount of creativity, other things being equal, may be regarded as a barometer of one's mental health.
Mary Anne Atwood writes, "The Philosopher' s Stone is a real entity produced by spiritual generation; it is a real ens of light; it is both objective and subjective - an actuality as well as a theory." Paracelsus said, “When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.”
Eliphas Levi claimed, "The philosopher’s stone is first and for all the creation of man by himself, that is the entire conquest of his potentials and his future; it is especially the complete liberation of his will, that will give him the absolute rulership over the Azoth and the realm of magnetism, that is the absolute power over the universal magnetic force”.
The magic of the Philosopher' s Stone is in the seeking after it. The Philosopher’s Stone declares, “My light, exceeds every light, and my good things are better than all other good things. I give freely and reward the intelligent with joy and gladness, glory, riches, delights; and them that "seek" after me I make to know and understand, and to posses divine things." (Golden Tractates of Hermes)
"...the text [of Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis, 16th century] explains the alchemical work as an opus contra naturum in which the libido is pulled back to the germinating earth for the purpose of letting it 'putrefy' there in a cruel spring... ... [a] running brook disappears inside the temple as a river Styx leading to the underworld and the land of the dead. ...Torn between fear and desire, [two philosophers] discuss the descensus ad inferos implied by an entrance into the sanctuary. Its season of spring is a season of sacrifice, its river of life a stream of blood, its royal rulers a violent sun and moon." (Johannes Fabricuius, Alchemy, London: Diamond Books, 1994) Maslow (1970) believed that the origin, core and essence of every known "high religion" was "the private, lonely, personal illumination, revelation, or ecstasy of some acutely sensitive prophet or seer" (p. 19). Peak experience is a kind of transpersonal and ecstatic state, particularly one tinged with themes of euphoria, harmonization and interconnectedness. He described peak experiences as self-validating, self-justifying moments with their own intrinsic value; never negative, unpleasant or evil; disoriented in time and space; and accompanied by a loss of fear, anxiety, doubts, and inhibitions.
Peak experiences are comparable with myth: They fulfill on a personal level what myths historically have fulfilled for whole peoples. Both embody truths that are independent of factual knowledge, and bring about attitudinal changes. Symbolism, however, plays a more minimal role in peak experiences than in myths.
The two types of peak experiences are relative and absolute. Peak experiences are relative when they retain an awareness of subject and object, and are extensions of the individual's own experiences. They are not true mystical experiences, but rather inspirations, ecstasies, and raptures. It is thought that probably the majority of peak experiences fall into this category. Absolute peak experiences are characteristic of mystical experiences, and are comparable to experiences of great mystics in history. They are timeless, spaceless, and characterized by unity, in which the subject and object becomes one.
Maslow describes peak experiences as especially joyous and exciting moments in life, involving sudden feelings of intense happiness and well-being, wonder and awe, and possibly also involving an awareness of transcendental unity or knowledge of higher truth, altered states, and a vastly expanded, profound and awe-inspiring perspective. They usually come on suddenly, often inspired by deep meditation, intense feelings of love, exposure to great art or music (aesthetic arrest), or the overwhelming beauty of nature.
Maslow describes how the peak experience tends to be uplifting and ego-transcending; it releases creative energies; it affirms the meaning and value of existence; it gives a sense of purpose to the individual; it gives a feeling of integration; it leaves a permanent mark on the individual, evidently changing them for the better. Peak experiences can be therapeutic in that they tend to increase the individual's free will, self-determination, creativity, and empathy.
The highest peaks include "feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, and the loss of placing in time and space" (1970, p. 164). When peak experiences are especially powerful, the sense of self dissolves into an awareness of a greater unity.
Maslow claimed that all individuals are capable of peak experiences. Virtually everyone, he suggested, has a number of peak experiences in the course of their life, but often such experiences either go unrecognized, misunderstood or are simply taken for granted. Stabilized peak experience is more voluntary, noetic, and cognitive. He described it as a witnessing or cognitive blissfulness. Its achievement requires a lifetime of long and hard effort.
In so-called "non-peakers", peak experiences are somehow resisted and suppressed. Maslow argued that peak experiences should be studied and cultivated, so that they can be introduced to those who have never had them or who resist them, providing them a route to achieve personal growth, integration, and fulfillment.
4.37 Creativity as Evidence of Mental Health and Self-Actualization
(excerpt Gowan, Trance, Art & Creativity)
a) Introduction.A final way of looking at creativity is to regard it as early evidence of progress in mental health and self-actualization. The amount of creativity, other things being equal, may be regarded as a barometer of one's mental health. Maslow (Anderson, 1958:88) elaborates this idea further in saying: "The creativity of my subjects seemed to be an epiphenomenon of their greater wholesomeness and integration, which is what 'self-actualized' implies." It is as natural to express creativity under conditions of high mental health as it is for a black object when heated to radiate electromagnetic waves of heat and light.
The creative person is not necessarily perfect and without flaw. Actually, creativity occurs early in the development of the mentally healthy individual and promises the continuation of such mental health, much as ego strength predicts the successful termination of therapy. Creative performance tends to influence development in the direction of mental health, as fruit on a tree or dividends on a stock promise the future vitality of an organism.
After a careful case study investigation of the influence of mental health on creativity, Fried (1964) concluded that increased mental health as established through therapy improved artistic work habits, freed and sublimated aggressive, destructive tendencies into productive work patterns, reduced omnipotent fantasy which had caused the artists to destroy many of their works which were below the masterpiece level, and improved human relations which tended to preserve creative (page 304) energy. The creativity increase in these artists undergoing therapy appeared as an early dividend resulting from their increased mental health.
The essence of process toward both greater mental health and greater creativity lies in the strengthening and developing of the preconscious so that it enlarges to assume a more important share in the tripartite membership of the individual psyche. This aggrandizement signals improved mental health and progress toward self-actualization, of which creative performance is an early indication. McLuhan and the existentialists emphasize a better balance between rational and pararational aspects of the psyche, and perhaps in this instance they are merely restating the thesis which has just been illustrated here.
b) General Research on Self-Actualization. Damm (1970) after analyzing studies of Arnold (1961), Blatt (1964), MacKinnon (1964), Barron (1963), Roe (1963), and Gerber (1965) on the relationship between creativity and mental health in adults, concludes that a strong relationship exists. Damm (1970) found students high in intelligence and creativity are more self-actualized as measured by Shostrom's (1966) Personal Orientation Inventory than students who are high in intelligence only. He concluded that students who obtained high scores on both areas were superior in self- actualization and recommended that the development of both intelligence and creative abilities should be a prime educational goal.
Hallman (1963), speaking about self-actualization, says:
Empirically, this criterion is supported by the great wealth of data which has been reported. Maslow (1956) has spoken most forcefully on this theme. He equates creativity with the state of psychological health, and this with the self-actualization process. There is no exception to this rule, he says. "Creativity is an universal characteristic of self-actualizing people." This form of creativeness reaches beyond special-talent creativeness; it is a fundamental characteristic of human nature. It touches whatever activity the healthy person is engaged in.
Craig (1966) reviewed trait theories of creativity and listed four personality correlates which were congruent with Maslow's holistic scheme of self-actualization and character integration. Newton (1968) in doctoral research found high correlation between progress toward self-actualization and intelligence.
Moustakas (1967) attempted to conceptualize creativity in terms of self-growth and self-renewal by stressing the uniqueness of the individual and his potentialities for mental health.
Helder, in doctoral research (1968) contrasted mystical and peak (page 305) experiences found in the more open creative stance with traditional perceptual-cognitive consciousness. It is interesting to note that Maslow in his famous study of self-actualizing persons, found none who were not creative. In imitation of Maslow's work, we present some characteristics of self -actualizing persons which seem to be related to their creativity as follows:
a) introduction
b) general research on self-actualization,
c) joy, content, and expectation of good,
d) serendipity,
e) increased control over environment,
f) sense of destiny,
g) acceptance of self, others, and nature,
h) spontaneity,
i) detachment and autonomy,
j) Gemeinschaftsgefuhl,
k) a philosophical and unhostile sense of humor,
1) psychological and semantic flexibility, and
m) the "witness-phenomenon."
These aspects represent the maturing of the creative phase of development, or the spread of the function through man's mind which signals increasing readiness for the next level of mind expansion.
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Rogers (1968) in unique doctoral research investigated the childhoods of self-actualizing persons (identified on the POI), using the high and low fifteen out of 183 undergraduate males. The degree and variety of common participation among members of the family was significantly greater in the families of the self-actualizing students, with their parents more approving, more trusting, and more lenient. Fisher (1972) using the POI on nominated paranormals, found a trend for paranormals to score in the direction of self-actualization. McClain and Andrews (1969) has 139 students write about their most wonderful experience, and found evidence that those who wrote about peak experiences were more self-actualized than those who did not. Thorne and Piskin (1968) did a factor analysis on successful executives and found five factors which they claimed were related to self- actualization: secure individualism, egocentrism, doing right, self-determination, and independent self-assertion. Garfield (1968) in doctoral research found that subjects whose mental health and growth were improved by a psychotherapy treatment of fifteen weeks, showed significantly greater gains in creativity than a control group. Blanchard (1970) investigated the psychodynamics of the peak-experience and reported that "the creative act pushed the boundaries of the self . . . " He stressed both the exhilaration arid danger in the greater creativity which the peak-experience releases. Frankl (1966:97ff) in talking about self-transcendence says that motivational theories based on homeostatic principles overlook the satisfaction which is intrinsic to finding more meaning and order in life as a result of peak-experiences.
(page 306)
The self-actualization explanation of creativity is not just another way of looking at the subject; for some it is the only way. The mind expanding aspect is seen as a fundamental property of life, with creativity the aurora of the new dawn. Barron (1968:305) echoes this view:
The tendency of life then is toward the expansion of consciousness. In a sense, a description of means for the expansion of consciousness has been the central theme of this book, and it is in this evolutionary tendency that such diverse phenomena as psychotherapy, surprising or unexpected self-renewal, the personally evolved and deepened forms of religious belief, creative imagination, mysticism, and deliberately induced changes of
consciousness through the use of chemicals find a common bond. c) Joy, Content, and Expectation of Good. One of the most interesting aspects of creativity is that affective development seems to go along with cognitive development, so that positive feelings about oneself, others, and the universe are felt by most creative persons. There is in particular an absence of generalized fear, anxiety, and insecurity, which is perhaps related to a wider competence, but seems more due to a dawning realization of the beneficence of the cosmos. The optimist is luckier than the pessimist, and creative people tend to be optimists. Perhaps this is because creativity represents the ability to solve new problems so that one is not fearful of the future. One is reminded of Bucke's characteristics of illumination (White, 1972:87ff) which mentions joy, assurance, a sense of immortality, the vanishing of the fear of sin and death. One is also reminded of the reply of Thoreau on his death-bed when asked if he wanted to make his peace with God: "We have never fallen out."
d) Serendipity. The princes of Serendip upon being sent on missions by their father to discover certain things, discovered, instead, other things for which they were not looking. The word has entered the language since it expresses a phenomenon which occurs to creative people: namely the situation of which Einstein speaks: if we quiet the mind and relax, we find to our surprise that "a new idea modestly presents itself." The discovery of things for which one was not looking, indicates that the collective preconscious is wiser than we are, for it seems to know what we need to discover, even though our conscious mind does not. In this sense serendipity replaces the random aspects of nature with an ordering in the mind which is a great time saver.
e) Increased Control over Environment. There are several senses in which creative persons gain this control. In the first place there is the purely outer consequence that a creative product solves an (page 307) environmental challenge with a higher response. In the second place, the fact that one is creative gives one the potentiality to solve the next crisis, and hence, to have potential control. In the third place, because creativity represents an intuitive brush with the noumenon, it involves some kind of esoteric control of the environment. We shall call this control "orthocognition"; healing, in some respects the "twin" of creativity, is an aspect of this increased control.
f) Sense of Destiny. Because the creative person sees some order and plan in the universe, and believes himself to be a part of that plan, he has a sense of destiny. He is ordered in the sense that the atoms in a piece of magnetized iron are ordered. Like the last two sections, the concept involves an escalation from randomness to order, or if you are a physics major, a decrease in entropy. The creative person also becomes more independent of time, and more conscious of past-present-future all at once, and this too gives him a perspective which others interpret as a sense of destiny.
g) Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature. If I can't accept me, I can't accept you, and if I can't accept you, I certainly can't accept those other even more dreadful people. Consequently the ability to accept ourselves (with all our faults), our loved ones (with all their faults), and finally the rest of the world (with all its faults) is a real barometer of maturity. This acceptance signals development away from egocentricity and the identity crisis. Maslow (1954:207-8) points out that self-actualizing people can accept the animal part of themselves without neurotic disgust; they can accept others because of their lack of defensiveness, but show distaste for cant and hypocrisy in social relationships. They accept nature because they see reality more clearly and without the spectacles of prejudice: "One does not complain about water because it is wet."
h) Spontaneity. Creative persons are spontaneous and free. They are not constricted or compartmentalized. They have an open, free, loving life style which resembles that of an artist more than that of an undertaker. They are intraceptive in being open to feelings; they are therefore childlike, although not immature. Maslow (1954:208-9) points out that the behavior of self-actualizing persons is marked by simpleness and naturalness. Spontaneity is related to the essential autonomy of the person of which we shall next speak.
i) Detachment and Autonomy. Creative persons are inner-oriented, and need privacy and some degree of withdrawal. They are in the world but not of it. They "march to the music of a distant drum" and hence need quiet in order to hear it. While not in the least (page 308)
immoral, they are often unconventional; they obey a higher inner law, rather than a lower outer statute. When Thoreau was in jail for refusing to support the Mexican War and Emerson bailed him out, Emerson is supposed to have said: "Henry, why are you here?" to which Thoreau replied: "Ralph, why are you not here?" This exchange is an excellent example of autonomy, as Thoreau's three years at Walden Pond is an excellent example of detachment. Creative persons appear to have psychological needs for both of these aspects, even though their expression often causes pain to their more conventional friends. Maslow (1954:212-213) discusses both of these qualities in the self-actualizing person. Of detachment he says: "They like solitude and privacy more than the average person." Their extreme concentration which requires privacy is interpreted as coldness by some people. Their autonomy results from a transcendence of lower orders of the Maslow hierarchy which require others, to one which requires the best in oneself. As a result, these persons are relatively stable in adversity, and maintain serenity and content in the midst of the vicissitudes of life.
j) Gemeinschaftsgefuhl (Brotherly love). This quality is often seen in higher creatives. It manifests itself in a general reverence for life (Schweitzer); "We are all tarred with the same brush" (Gandhi), or a broad humanitarianism (Eleanor Roosevelt). American culture tends to suppress this gentle quality in favor of violence and self-interest, so it is often more seen in other peoples; it is a much more noticeable aspect of New Zealand life, for example. It is fostered by a sense of communitas, and it answers Cain's question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Maslow (1954:217) says of this quality: "They have for human beings in general a deep feeling of identity and affection." He notices their "general desire to help the whole human race" "as if they were all members of a single family."
k) A Philosophical and Unhostile Sense of Humor.It may seem surprising that Maslow would mention this quality, which is denigrated as a rather low one, but is in fact a characteristic of the highest importance. Whenever you see a humorist of this type, always suspect a philosopher of deep wisdom underneath: Mark Twain, Voltaire, Artemus Ward, Mr. Dooley, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Will Rogers, and Art Buchwald are all examples. Humor of this type stems from semantic flexibility plus the ability to see behind appearances to reality. It also requires ego-transcendence or psychological objectivity. The humor must be unhostile (like Mr. Magoo of the movie shorts), not concerned with our insensitivity to the woes of (page 309) other people. It is closely connected (as was seen in Lincoln's stories) with the telling of parables, which is a kind of verbal analogy. Humor is a peculiar characteristic of creative persons, in that it is one of the earliest predictors (appearing even in childhood) as well as being one of the highest evidences. Maslow (1954:222) found humor common to all of his self-actualizers. It was not, however, the common type of humor; it was "the humor of the real because it consists in large part in poking fun at human beings in general when they are foolish. It masked a deeper philosophy.
l) Psychological and Semantic Flexibility. One of the very interesting aspects of continued creativity is the development of a very considerable degree of psychological (affective) and semantic (cognitive) flexibility, which turn out to have emergent properties. Both cut down on the inertia of the mind, making it easier and more expeditious in the change required for new insights. Rothenberg (1971)calls this process "Janusian thinking," which he defines as the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas simultaneously. The higher reconciliation of these ideas often leads to a creative breakthrough (e.g., the "complementarity principle" in physics). Semantic flexibility also allows the individual to avoid semantic traps which engulf the formal operations philosopher; one zeros in on the similarity of process not being confused by the dissimilarity of different languages used to describe the process. This sort of semantic flexibility leads to "problem-centering" and "problem-finding" so noticeable in really creative persons, whereas most other people get lost in the maze of symptoms, or in their outraged reactions to the situation. Psychological flexibility is an evidence of the dismantling of the egocentricity so characteristic of earlier stages. The truly creative person does not need to support his ego at the expense of the crisis situation. Finally, such flexibility leads to an ability to understand and deal with general systems theory, another effort at looking beneath the empirical to find logical unity in seeming diversity.
m) The "Witness" Phenomenon. Although not mentioned by Maslow, this effect is also part of the final perfection of creative performance.
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