Wednesday, August 07, 2013

One of the TED GROUPS themes, was:

"Will humans ever be reintegrated into the holistic, interconnected universe in which we exist?" 

  This statement, or question is essentially flawed. It suggests, or makes a dualistic statement, that "humans" have been inhabiting a separate, aparheid-style universe, into which they must be "reintegrated". According to most  systems of mysticism, All is One, and God, or the Gods, is/are All Pervading. Thus within the Body of God, Hitler, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, the Concentration Camps, and all the atrocities, must exist as well. Or, must we accept, that it is logical - that a separate universe exists for so-called  Evil - . . .  and we can inhabit our Purer than the Whitest Snow Universe without any shame. Watching Marie Louise von Franz, in her filmed series, The Way of The Dream - we can see, a la the Jungian perspective, evidence of this titanic fault line in so-called Western conscious, not to mention its more unsavoury fundamentalisms in the Religions of the People of the Book. We do not want to admit that this collective shadow exists until it is too late and it erupts into some form of genocide. Humans have always been integrated into the holistic universe . . .  warts and all. 

 Throwing a work of Art, into this discourse, from an English novelist, Mervyn Peake. In his novel, Mr Pye, Mr Pye struggles with growing angel wings, when he is good, and devil's horns when he is bad. The two poles are eventually reconciled. Read the book. A similar fusion takes place at the deepest levels of alchemical imagery - when the Rebis appears - the Divine Androgyne. We also see the Androgyne in Hinduism, and in Tibetan Buddhism another form of reconciled dualism - the YAB/YAM. Recently, I posted an interview with Jacob Needleman where he talked about "psychological starvation" of the masses. The vacuity of theological & ideological discourse suppresses these deeper layers of the psyche, wherein, we may perchance, find images that are healing, and reconciling, and reintegrating. Of course, the last word also brings us to dis-integrating . . . and we see so many manifestations of this process in the world today, e.g. the wide spectrum of liberation movements, pulling away from the centre, even in Spain. Again, from mythological material, we have dismembering and re-membering. After all, Jesus said Forgive them for they KNOW NOT what they DO! As a Buddhist I see this as ignorance - avidya . . not-seeing, not knowing. This mass nescience is one of the greatest problems of the day. In order to advance into the future, we have as C.G. Jung said, to DIG ! In the Biblical image - we have sold our divine birthright for a mess of pottage . . . this material shithouse, is also devoid of imagination. The world is suffering because of a lack of imagination in solving the problems before us. The writer Jules Cashford outs it this way:

“It is impossible to define Imagination since the only definition we can make is that we are far from it when we talk about it. It is perhaps a power so ultimate that only its own numinous images can call it forth, as though we have, as it were, to ask the Imagination to imagine itself. We might say that whenever there is numinosity – a coming alive of divine presence – literally, the “nod” or “beckoning” of a god – whenever an image becomes translucent to a reality beyond itself, we are in the presence of Imagination. The images that come towards us – as divinities, daimons, soul-birds, angels, geniuses, muses – are all figures who bring messages from afar or beyond, from the heights or the depths – the realms where consciousness may not go, yet on which it rests and through which it grows. “Wisdom first speaks in images,” W. B. Yeats, says.”

The woven ideas above, may bear some fruit if amplified.  Samten de Wet

 Sources. MERVYN PEAKE @ WIKIPEDIA   and  MR. PYE

Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Messenger, ARAS Connections, Issue 3, 2011

Yeats, W.B. Essays and Introductions, The Macmillan Press, 1961, London, p. 95.