Duality and the Tree of Life

(This is Part 3 of a series of 4 on the subject I call: Kαιρός—Metamorphosis of the Gods.)

            A lot of Christians would consider me a pagan. After spending 3 or 4 days up on the hill last year, without any food or water, and only a sacred pipe, and a boundary made up of tobacco ties to protect me, my Christian sister thought I must be possessed by evil spirits. My stepdaughter, misunderstanding my beliefs, warned me that it is wrong to worship animals, or trees, or whatever it is that I worship. I am not a new age weekend warrior, who tries out the latest spiritual fad until things get tough, and then moves to the next one. However, for a number of years I have followed traditions that were on this land long before white man came, and probably even before Moses led a small group of Hebrews out of Egypt.

          But during the years I had previously spent living in Asia, I learned that no matter what one believes, culturally, they are still a part of the dominant religion of their culture. A Japanese person may claim to be a Christian or an atheist, but culturally, they will always be a Shinto-Buddhist, i.e. a part of the two dominant religious institutions of Japan (granted Shinto is more animistic spirituality than organized religion, but…). Having grown up in America, no matter what I do, I am still culturally a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Even if I was to profess atheism, I am still culturally Judeo-Christian. This makes all those idiot arguments about Christmas decorations on public property, well, pretty stupid and mundane.

           Living in different parts of Asia, and here in America, I have also come to agree with the Quantum Physicist, Fred Alan Wolf, when he wrote that he believes there are local spirits of the land, but that is a deeper and different issue.

           Since America is the center of modern Western Culture, and since, as part of that culture here in America, we cannot escape the culture of Judeo-Christianity, I wanted to touch a little further on this subject, again, from a Jungian and indigenous perspective.

           (Before moving into the discussion though, I would like to make a point to Christians about my comments here. Please keep in mind that I am writing about Kαιρός (kairos)—Metamorphosis of the Gods. From your own perspective this is probably represented by the manifestation of the second coming. Consider the differences between the Old and New Testaments. The older one is represented by the philosophy of, ‘an eye for an eye.’ The newer one is, ‘Love thy brother.’ Isn’t it possible that we have reached that time, when this teaching of love thy brother has to be expanded upon? Thus we are at a point of Kαιρός. While I may sound critical of certain dogmatic points of the faith, I will never say that your beliefs are wrong. The points I make concern how I see changes occurring in this philosophy. There are many paths to the divine and the important thing is to find that one that is right for you. So, I ask of you, if I seem a little critical, don’t dismiss it, but see where it leaves you at the end).

            There is a universal concept across all spiritual traditions, in all corners of the globe: The Tree of Life, or as it is also called, the World Tree, Celestial Axis, Axis Mundi, World Mountain, and so forth. In its most basic form it represents a tree whose roots lie in the lower world(s), which then passes through our world, universally the middle world, and rises up into the upper world(s). The World Tree is therefore a connection between all the worlds, and is a center point of the universe. Because it traverses all the worlds of the local cosmology, it is also a portal. It is through the World Tree that the divine enters into our world, and we enter into the world of the divine. In Central Asian tribes, the shaman literally climbs the world tree set up in the center of his yurt to heal or to perform the purpose for which he must go into the spirit world. As he does this, typically the shaman will describe what is happening to him in the spirit world to all present as he makes his way up and down the tree.

           An interesting aspect of the World Tree is that it is universally connected to the serpent. In one corner of the Southern tip of South America, the World Tree is nothing more than a long snake. The caduceus, with its snakes coiling up a cross, which is the symbol of medicine today, was an ancient Greek representation of the World Tree. The Nordic World Tree, Yggdrasil, is circled around its roots by the World Serpent. In the Midwestern US is a very old petroglyph of a tree that stretches through the 3 worlds, and which a giant snake stretches diagonally across the tree. In the Western Pacific, where the snake has been long forgotten on many Maori Islands, it was replaced by the tail of a giant lizard which circles the World Tree. As we move East across the Pacific, and the snake becomes even more forgotten, it is replaced by an eel. In other cultures, the serpent can be replaced with a serpentine creature, such as the dragon, a lizard, or an alligator.

           As the center of the universe, the tree in northern latitudes is connected to the North Star, in central latitudes where the pole star is not readily experienced, the World Tree is often associated with the Milky Way. In the tropics where gardening, and agriculture is very old, the World Tree is the source of all food.

           The cave is another aspect of the World Tree. It too is a portal to the other side. The stupa and minaret are symbolic representations of the World Mountain, with the World Tree at its top, and the World Cave at its center. Temples typically symbolize the same thing with the inner most chambers beneath the tallest temple structures. The pyramids are representations of the World Mountain, with the burial chambers within the World Cave. In both Egypt and Central America, there are similar traditions that the pyramid represented the World Mountain as it first emerged from the primal sea. The ziggurat is another case of the World Mountain, and has a lot to do with why the people in the story of Babel felt that their tower could reach heaven (it didn’t have to actually reach heaven since as the celestial axis it already was a portal). We find the same symbolism of the World Mountain/Cave with the dolmens and menhirs which stretch clear across North Africa, Europe, and Asia, and some possible examples in the US. The labyrinth is another example of the World Cave, and it too exists in both the old and the new world.

           The world tree is commonly portrayed as a tree, a pillar, a cross, a ladder, a sunbeam, and so forth. It is the center point of the Medicine Wheel, the swastika, and the spiral. It is symbolically connected to the fire at the center of the Mongolian and Siberian yurt, and the North American teepee. The same is true for the pit holding the hot stones at the center of the sweat lodge. The sacred pipe, or čanuŋpa (pronounced chanunpa), or what white people call the peace pipe, is a symbol of the World Tree as universal center, that combines the male (the stem) and the female (the bowl) which is actually an intimate aspect of the Tree. The čanuŋpa is also a portable World Tree. I believe the Egyptian Ankh hieroglyph (the symbol (or key) of life) is also the World Tree, and I can point out other hieroglyphs that back up my theory. This makes much more sense than the suggestion by some  Egyptologists that it is a sandal strap.

           But what I have often wondered about as very fascinating, is that the only case I am aware of where the World Tree was broken down into two trees, is in the Old Testament book, Genesis. In the Garden of Eden, the early Jewish writers broke the World Tree into the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life.

           I have found that every religion has an older precedents behind it. The Jewish tradition has plenty of older symbolism going back to the older Goddess cults of Aster and Astarte. The Jewish traditions surrounding the blood sacrifice go back even into our Paleolithic ancestors. But I couldn’t figure out why they split the World Tree into two parts. I explored ideas of where the Egyptians seemed to hint to two celestial portals, for the path of the sun: points of sunrise and sunset. I even considered archeological finds of twin pillars in the Neolithic sites of the Goddess cultures that flourished in South Eastern Europe and Turkey.

           But I finally realized that the reason for the twin trees was more basic than that. In my last post, The Burden of Western (and Modern) Man, I discussed the rise of the Group ethic at the dawn of agriculture (civilization), and the rise of the masculine. I discussed briefly on how these things are all evident in the story of the Garden of Eden.

           While Adam and Eve were thought of as the first man and woman, the story tells of the dawn of agriculture, and the rise and fall of the feminine. Genesis then ends with man already living in a male-dominated planter society. Let me expand on this.

           After the creation of Adam and Eve (Eve was made from the rib of Adam and therefore subservient to him—demonstrating male dominance. But Genesis is written in the past tense and therefore from a later male-dominated perspective, so lets ignore that for the moment) we find them living in an innocent and naïve state. They are without sin, and able to communicate directly with the animals and God.

           This is an idealized picture of mankind as hunter-gatherer. The indigenous hunter-gatherer does not understand the secular and non-secular. Because they are surrounded by the divine, they see the divine in mundane things that planter and modern cultures do not. Examples such as the hunter gatherer tribes deep in the Amazon, demonstrate a satisfied and humble existence. Their desires and wants are not bothered by the materialism that has clouded the minds of members of civilization. They are more in tune with the subconscious (the path to the divine) and therefore have an understanding of direct communication with God. They communicate with nature and the animals directly at an archetypical level. And their shamans or medicine people are able to communicate at a more physical level to aid in their hunts. Their lives may not be perfect, but clearly they represent the ideal described in Adam and Eve’s naïve existence in the Garden.

           But then Eve is tempted by the snake to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The serpent on the Tree of Knowledge represents first the connection between the World Tree and the serpent. But it also represents the magic of the Goddess cults. Being that the Goddess cults were an earlier precedent to the spirituality of the early Hebrews, it is natural that they associated, for the most part, the serpent with the older Goddess cults. The serpent was an intricate part of the Goddess cults, being that it was chthonic (of the underworld, or within the earth) and had attributes suggestive of both male and female genitalia. In fact, in another Hebrew tradition where Adam had a first wife, Lilith, we see a stronger symbol of the male perspective of the Goddess cults. She was obstinate and therefore a bad wife, it was her that became the serpent, in fact, as Leviathan, she became the World Serpent.

           So through the Magic of the Goddess (the serpent) Eve was tempted and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. In other words, she gained the knowledge of the Tree, which is carnal love or sexuality, and fertility. She gained the knowledge of creating life, through sex and planting—the knowledge of the Goddess. If men hunted, while women gathered, a typical social structure among hunter-gatherer cultures, it makes sense that it would be the women, who would have accidentally spilled seeds on the ground, only to later notice that they sprouted into new plants. In addition, it is the female that is the vessel through which a new life emerges, and therefore the Goddess who personifies the power of fertility. Fertility is intricately associated with sexuality, and sexuality is one of the constant aspects of the shadow through the bible.

           In most of the Goddess cultures, property and other rights were passed through the woman. The Goddess was the all-powerful and had eternal life, while her consort, the God was mortal, like the cycle of vegetation (plant, grow, harvest, die). Only through the  grace of the Goddess, was the God able to be reborn. Her living representative was also the Queen, and often times she too took on an annual consort. The harlot, the Bible’s personification of the evil of wanton sex (and one of the feminine personifications of the shadow), was the temple prostitute, and she too had a high status and performed an important service to the Goddess. No wonder Lilith, who would have dominated over Adam was deemed evil in the subsequent male-focused culture.

           Briefly Eve held power over Adam, for she held knowledge that Adam did not. But the knowledge was, from the male perspective, evil, which is why Adam hesitated before attaining the same knowledge. This is also why it went against God’s commandment. The fact that Eve’s temptation and consumption of the fruit was evil, is recognition of the rise of the masculine and the rebellion against the feminine. If women controlled society and the evil of wanton sex was the result, then man had to take control, harlotry became evil, and women were controlled through matrimony (which translates to a life-binding contract over the matrix or womb. In other words, if the contract was broken, the womb could be broken too. By the way, you can guess what would be broken if you were to break the contract of a testimony).

           From a Jungian standpoint, Adam clearly represents the ego. Adam tries to define and follow what is right. But he is led astray by the shadow (Eve, and the serpent).  There is another, very male oriented, analogy here: If we consider Adam as the ego, or the key aspect of the male consciousness, then Eve is the anima, the inner female archetype of the male subconscious. Jung discovered that every male has an inner female (anima) and every female has an inner male (animus) as a key archetype within their subconscious. Here again is the rise of the conscious mind, versus the subconscious mind, and the rise of the masculine vs the feminine as I discussed in the previous post. 

           The Tree of Knowledge itself, represented the feminine aspect of the World Tree, because it held the knowledge of the feminine: carnal love or sexuality, and fertility.

           After having consumed of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve had placed themselves into the realm of the planter. No longer could they exist in the Garden of the hunter-gatherer. They now had the knowledge to bring about new life, and that meant new responsibilities.

           This could have been a good thing, but it was considered a sin. Adam & Eve had broken the Lord’s commandment and had to be removed from the Garden. The Tree of Life had to be taken away, and was guarded by flaming swords and cherubs. I believe that there were several factors that played in the rise of the masculine. First of all, after hundreds of thousands of years of hunting, and defending the family and tribe, it would be hard for the man to simply work the fields and abide peacefully in one place. Digs of early Goddess culture sites tend to validate the fact that they were largely peaceful settlements with very few weapons. But as these early villages grew larger and institutions developed to manage, control, and protect the bigger villages, which soon became cities and then city states, a military and police force would also have developed. As the military developed, inevitably there would be skirmishes with other city-states. Sooner or later the inherited male aggression within the collective subconscious would play out. Hundreds of thousands of years of history does not just disappear without a trace in the human psyche. It would be inevitable that the masculine would rise up, and eventually certain aspects of the feminine would be repressed into the shadow. Eventually this growing shadow would be projected onto the feminine-based cultures and their morals and traditions would then become evil. Consequently the female could take the blame for our being kicked out of the garden, where the male would have been free to hunt to his delight.

           If you think about it though, man now had the knowledge to plant and create life, so obviously, the ancient Jewish writers rationalized (remember that the rise of the masculine meant that the masculine side of the psyche was predominant. Rationalism would be dominant over intuition), they no longer needed the knowledge afforded by that part of the World Tree. That fruit had been consumed. But they did not have power over death. In fact, the precedent at the time was that it was the Goddess who was immortal, while the God was mortal. Yahweh, in fact was the consort of Astarte/Astoreth/Asherah, and therefore it was part of this Goddess complex that was the source of his rebirth. But with the rise of the masculine, and the rise of Yahweh to the supreme position, he would therefore need to become immortal. But there was no such symbolic example of this like the old symbols of the Goddess (for example, father sky, like the vegetation, changed with the seasons, while Mother Earth remained forever constant).          

           So while the feminine aspect of the tree (the Tree of Knowledge) was already possessed by man, the masculine aspect of the tree (the Tree of Life) was taken away and had to be achieved. Therefore the Tree of Life represented all the ego ideals of perfection and goodness, based on the masculine perspective, which had to be reached by achieving perfection based on the persona of the ego-consciousness, or the ego-ideal.  

           On top of this duality of ego/shadow, good/evil, Tree of Life/Tree of Knowledge, masculine/feminine, conscious/subconscious, we must add the duality of perfection to achieve the ego ideal in order to win over death vs the carnal forces of fertility to create life, but which represented the breaking of God’s rules. An easier way to express this duality is the achievement of the ego-ideal (perfection)/inherited carnal vulgarity (imperfection).

           So the Hebrews took away the Tree of Life—which is actually pretty strange. No one else lost the Tree of Life, nor did anyone else split it into two. The Tungus Shaman has his Tree of Life, or World Tree, and when needed it is placed right in the center hearth of his yurt. I have seen in an Igorot village in the Philippines a very prominent post, and at the top of this is the skull and horns of a water buffalo, a classic representation of the World Tree. When that horrible South East Asian tsunami struck earlier this decade, it was noted that very few animals, and no indigenous people were harmed. One indigenous tribe in Indonesia explained that when the, ‘World Tree starts shaking very hard, there will be a battle between the sky and the water over where the horizon should be,’ and by this they knew it was time to move to higher ground.

           I have seen the World Tree at the center of the Lakota Sundance. I understand that it is also symbolically in the center of the inipi ceremony (the Lakota sweat lodge), just as it is in the center of the fire for the Mongol Shamans. The čanuŋpa (sacred pipe), is also a symbolic World Tree, for when it is filled with tobacco, its circular bowl represents all of the universe, i.e. it is the center of the universe. The smoke of the tobacco, just like any other form of the World Tree as portal, carries the prayers skyward, to the divine. And the čanuŋpa, like some other symbols of the world tree, blatantly retains the symbolism of the male and female.  

           Perhaps the problem was that Hebrews had lost control of their power over death. There must have been a deep significance in the death and rebirth of the male God in the older traditions. While the Goddess was immortal and never changing, the God’s vegetation cycle of life signified that man’s life in this realm is only a temporary stopping point, and with death, he must move to his next stopping point. If everything is sacred in the hunter-gatherer and early planter universe, than a God who is reborn, is made up of that same substance that the rest of the universe is. The animals die and are reborn, trees and plants die and are reborn, therefore man too, must also be reborn after death. And that is the purpose of the blood sacrifice, as it was physically practiced, and the natural blood sacrifice that made up the menstrual cycle (which was an obvious cosmological event, because it was tied to the lunar cycle). That is why there was a universal practice of covering the dead in ochre (the color of blood) in mankind’s early burials.

           But with the rise of the masculine, and the simultaneous rise of rationalism, which shone bright as day, the Hebrew tribes must have questioned this. At the very least, it is easy to imagine that they would have questioned their own burial practices against the backdrop of the complex Egyptian rites that ensured a place in the afterlife for the extremely righteous.

           So instead of the eternal life that was guaranteed in the Garden—the easy passage of the hunter-gatherer, after having committed the sin of eating the fruit (ego-shadow development) they now had to become worthy of such a great thing as a good afterlife. You had to achieve that ego-ideal.       

           The Christians believe that Jesus brought the Tree of Life back to earth, at least for all those that believe in him. He was born under an αστέρος (asteros, star) and left the earth on a σταυρός (stauros, cross). Notice the root form of star, for both words? That is not a coincidence. Some theologians try to downplay the symbolism of the cross, saying that it was merely a tool of capital punishment. But the significance is blatant—it is the axis Mundi, the World Tree. I mentioned earlier the significance of the star to the World Tree (which gives me some trouble because this is more significant just a little bit further north). Then consider that the place of the crucifixion is atop a hill whose name refers to the place where the skull of Adam was buried (the first World Man). Once again, as in the Igorot Villages, we have that classic symbolism of the axis mundi of the Sky Father—the World Tree with the skull, only it is reversed with the skull at its base in the earth.

           The act of his crucifixion also provided a significant victory, at least for the Christian, of God over the Goddess (man over woman, conscious mind over anima, and perhaps a bit of further repression by the ego of the feminine into the shadow), for it was a case of the God (Jesus) sacrificing himself to himself (God), and resurrecting himself of himself. No Goddess was needed. (This was also seen in the Indo-European scripture, the Rig Veda, and in the Germanic story of Odin).   

           But this didn’t resolve the issue of the duality between the ego and the shadow. And death was not returned to being another step in the course of our lives. Jesus did phase out the blood sacrifice for much of Western Man, replacing it with communion (though earlier Gods who died and were reborn incorporated the same rite). But the institution still required achievement of that ego-ideal. If you slipped up or didn’t believe, then it was eternal damnation for you. And to get you to slip up was that ever present personification of evil, the Devil, who was thought to be more powerful than you.

           But let’s return to the early Hebrew tribes and their early ego-shadow creation. Historically, we know that the Hebrew tribes were still goddess worshippers even after they would have left from the Garden. They were a Canaanite tribe, and the Canaanites worshipped the Goddess that fell into the complex of Asher (which includes Isis (Egyptian), Aphrodite (Greek) and Venus (Roman) as aspects of this same complex). By the time of Abraham, the male God was already toppling the dominance of the Goddess. But this was certainly not yet the exclusive belief of the Semitic peoples. And it wasn’t until much later with Moses that Yahweh became significant as the male God. Even as Moses came down from the hill with the first stone tablets, he found the Hebrews with the Golden Calf, and returning to their not-so-older traditions. But Moses taught them well with his Ten Commandments, and there would be no more of that hanky panky. In other words, much of those older traditions, and particularly the worship of the Goddess (and her other consorts such as Baal) was repressed into the shadow.   

           And what do you suppose happens next? These Hebrews go around attacking, killing, and destroying every Goddess (or Baal) village they come to. We could question whether or not they needed to go so far in smiting their enemies. Or we could ask, why doesn’t the ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy go the other way? Shouldn’t some retribution be given for all this killing? But the answer is very clear, they were fighting their own shadow. Many of these other enemies, like the Hebrews themselves, were part of the Canaanite tribes. It is easy to assume that they were almost all Semitic (unless they had a run in with the Indo-European Hittites). The point is their enemies all followed the same traditions that their own ancestors did, but having now repressed that into their own shadow, these older traditions became something they abhorred and were angered over. Being that the traditions now went against their morals and religious teachings, it probably embarrassed them, just as Adam and Eve had suddenly became embarrassed over their own nakedness. But no matter how many tribes and villages they destroyed, it would never be enough, because their real battles were within their own psyche.

           This is the duality that Western, or Judeo-Christian-Islamic, culture has carried out of the Garden.   

           From this dualistic perspective, the only way to achieve final resolution is for a final massive battle of good over evil, which destroys most of creation (for there is much inherent evil in all of it, as the projected shadow runs deep), and good finally wins out. But this ultimately doesn’t achieve anything. If good (the ego) wins out over evil (the shadow) then all we have really done is to repress the shadow back into the shadows of the subconscious. Or in religious terms, the devil already is within the prison of hell, if he is immortal as all the other heavenly forms, then all we can do in the end is put him back into hell. The shadow can never be destroyed.

           If the shadow is repressed, it will be projected again. The deeper we repress it, the more wild, uncontrollable and dangerous it will once again become. How can an earthly, or any other, paradise ever be achieved if the good-evil duality still exists.

           Once again we are faced with the problem that in order to defuse the power of the shadow, it has to be accepted, understood, and integrated into the whole self. Then we realize that our psyche is not a duality of just the ego and the shadow, but a multiplicity of all the different archetypes and complexes, that need to be integrated into a holistic self.

           And who would the Christian soldiers be fighting in this final conflict of good over evil, besides their projected shadow? The feminine has been all but wiped out by the Ancient masculine-based forces of the West. We stamped it out of Europe, the Indo-Europeans invaded Persia and the Indian subcontinent and oppressed the Goddess worshippers there (though in a major case of institutional manipulation of the masses, reintegrated the feminine back into the cosmology, possibly as an indoctrination technique of what were to become the lower castes within Hindu India), We then saw a rebellion there against the hypocrisy and dogma (pronounced dharma), resulting in Buddhism which moved across the rest of the Asian continent and added, at least somewhat, to the milder repression of the feminine there.

           The most likely target of our projected shadow is the Muslims, which would also make sense of where this battle is supposed to occur. But really–are Muslims actually evil? They are also a descendant of Abraham. The Koran has many shared stories with the Bible and even talks of Moses and Jesus as a prophet who revealed God to man. What can they be other than a projected shadow?

           And we must ask the same of the Muslims, some of whom take literally the concept of, ‘believe in Allah or die by the sword’ (and isn’t it fair to say that Allah simply means God in Arabic, just as Allat is Goddess?) So, really, are the Christians evil, or just a projected shadow?      

           But if our cosmology, or the spiritual structure of our universe, is a reflection of our psyche (this being the way we were created in God’s image, and there are similar indigenous ontological concepts), and that the Western psyche from the very start of Genesis and man’s fall from grace, became entrapped in this duality between the ego and the shadow, then perhaps for many Christians a final conflict is needed to start the resolution process. This is just as the mentally ill patient may not be able to heal until his or her internal conflicts are raised to the surface.

           If I remember correctly, it is at the height of this final battle, that the divine intervenes. Perhaps at this point of dialectic crisis, the divine provides the revelation that enables a synthesis of the shadow and ego into the whole self (by synthesis, I do not mean that the shadow and ego are combined into a new form, but that the ego finally accepts, and integrates the shadow into the recognized self, and thereby defuses it).

           If that is the case, it brings us right back to the problem I am writing about of the Kαιρός. If we do not change, we will find ourselves headed for a long bloody war, or nature will take it upon itself to destroy us. From the Judeo-Christian perspective then, we have 3 possibilities:

1. This Western duality is resolved through a bloody horrible conflict of conflicts that is so bad it requires an unexpected irrational climax that brings about a new understanding of humanity and our relationship with nature and the universe. 
2. Christians, Jews, and Muslims through prayer, and the raising of awareness, break down the duality between the ego and shadow such that a final conflict is no longer necessary to resolve this duality. An example of what I am talking about from a religious standpoint, the Christians and Jews would have to pray that Satan once again be reintegrated into God’s heavenly fold. Muslims, without the strong personification of the devil, but still a black and white contrasted shadow, would have to pray for all the nonbelievers to be reintegrated into the same heavenly fold.
3. Another possibility is that the actual secular forces of objectivistic rationalism, combined with the propensity for diversity that technology brings forth, may have actually deflated the power of the personified shadow, and is continuing to break down this Western duality, simply through the evolution of society. In today’s world you have quite a few people who do not believe in God, but you have many more people who do not believe in the Devil. Many people are turning to non-Western religion, and even indigenous spirituality is having a comeback. If society has deflated enough of the power of the old Western duality, then again such a final battle is no longer necessary. Though this alone does not save the environment and the issue of dwindling resources.

 

            This is a good argument for Process Theology, the concept that God changes as our perception of God changes (I personally think that the validity of Process Theology, goes only as far as the higher dimension of human mind, which from the 3-dimensional perspective of physical reality, is still a higher dimension and of the spirit. But I would argue that the divine itself, The Great Mystery, is of a still higher dimension and is the ultimate constant of the universe. But that is my opinion.).

           If you are a fundamentalist Christian, you may think that the only option for man is the first one. I suspect that you would have trouble with the second one, but, there is the teaching after all, of ‘love thy enemy as thyself.’ Or is that ‘neighbor?’ Either way, in terms of shadow projection, it can all become the same.

            But some of the more liberal Christians may be able to understand option 3 as a possibility. There are Christians who have trouble with the Book of Revelations and other doomsday predictions. This was a significant part of my own break from the Christian religion. The church I grew up in didn’t focus on this, so I didn’t really encounter it until I was 10 or 11. At that age, it was some pretty scary stuff, and to me it had a very sinister feeling about it. As I grew a bit older I felt very strongly that a God of unconditional love could never do such a thing.

           The book of Revelations has always been a problem for theologians. Its symbolism was better understood by the people at the time it was written. In fact, it was written in response to political issues of that time. It was believed back then that it would happen within their lifetimes.

           Then there is the issue of all the intense symbolism. The problem with myth and prophecy is that it is related in terms of a spiritual reality, which often times is different from our physical reality (Whenever I use the term myth, I am not referring to fictional fairy tales. I define myth as a story or revelation that puts a spiritual reality into something we can understand within our physical world. The problem is that it can only be related to us through the language of the subconscious so it is filled with archetypical symbolism, and so forth). Therefore things do not always play out the way we would expect from a literal interpretation.

           But what if there is a deeper purpose in this. What if the actual purpose is to create questions within the faithful. To create a time when people would really look at this and have trouble with it; to foster a time when more liberal interpretations would develop and in response more liberal branches of the church would appear; a time when some people would even break away and explore other traditions. In other words, what if man was meant to go through a period of time when the ego-shadow duality would define his existence, and the rise of objectivistic empiricism would lead man down a path where he would achieve great progress on his own, but where eventually the religious foundations of his being would break as that same rationalistic masculine-based consciousness would attack some of the very forces that gave it life.

           For what purpose would this serve? The first purpose would be to ensure a faithful following during the years when this stark duality was needed to instill future progress. The Book of Revelations provides plenty of fuel to feed that fire of fear, which is one of the problems I have with the institutions of religion. But the rationalism that this male-based ontology creates would inevitably come back to attack it, and perhaps that was meant to one day break down the ego-shadow duality before it destroys all of us.

           In this regard, The Book of Revelations would become the dire warning that indigenous prophecy is, i.e. It becomes a prophecy of what could happen if we continue down the same path. As people question, and re-examine, the duality starts to break down. Mankind would still have the choice over his future.

           This would also serve to prepare man for this period of Kαιρός, or if you are Christian, the second coming. People who are so deeply stuck in the mentality of a struggle between good and evil, God and Devil, ego and shadow, would seem to have a much more difficult time to understand a mentality where the power of the shadow is defused by being integrated into the self in an act of self-realization.   

           Even more of the traditional lines of shadow projection seem to be breaking down. In the Middle East you see change occurring, as people are finally rising up against the old totalitarian regimes and the old ways and institutions they represented. As I write this, President Obama has suggested to Israel, peace talks that incorporate the 1967-Palestinian borders. It wasn’t long ago that the King of Jordan told the Daly Show that the whole crux of the Middle East issues lie on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Solve that, and the whole dynamic changes for the Arab countries. 

           Each person will have to answer on their own what the future will hold in this regard. But you can certainly see how deep this duality runs, created by splitting the World Tree into two, within Western civilization. To Christians perhaps, the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ represents the return of the Tree of Life (though still riddled with duality). To many Jews, perhaps we have yet to achieve that Tree of Life. But to the indigenous people of the world, who still keep the World Tree in the center of their ceremony, the World Tree was never lost—and to that I say, Mitakuye oyasiŋ.*

* Mitakuye oyasiŋ (mitakuye Oyasin) is a proclamation or acknowledgement in Lakota that means, ‘All My Relatives.’ By relatives, it refers to, not just humans, but all of creation from Mother earth, and the rocks, stones, water, and dirt upon her, to the trees, and all of life on the planet, to the moon, the sun, and the stars. It acknowledges that all of creation is our living relatives, just as our own relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, and so forth. This also implies that all of creation should be acknowledged, respected, and cared for, just as our own immediate family of relatives. Aho, Mitakuye oyasiŋ…

The Burden of Western (and Modern) Man

(This is Part 2 of a series of 4 on the subject I call: Kαιρός—Metamorphosis of the Gods. Part 1 is the previous post. I like to have the theme song of, Long Time Gone to go along with this)

            There has been a lot of discussion, particularly in recent decades, of how the Western concept that man is superior to nature has been detrimental to both man and nature, and is largely responsible for mankind’s poisoning and destruction of his surroundings and much of the life within it. But the problem of this concept goes much deeper than that. It literally promotes a stronger burden in the Western psyche than that carried by those cultures that have resisted the Western influence, and remained an integral part of nature. (For purposes of this discussion I will define Western culture to include the cultures of the Middle East, for they have had extensive Indo-European influence from ancient times, and have likewise influenced Indo-European cultures from a very early period. Also, in the sense that American or Western ‘culture’ has achieved world domination in a way far more effective than any military or political entity could have ever achieved, we must also include a concept of the ‘Modern Man’ under the definition of Western).

            The burden I am referring to here is the burden of the shadow, that dark side of the self that represents all those elements of our individuality that we abhor, hate, that disgust us, and that we have therefore repressed as dark demons into our subconscious minds. The shadow is, of course, a part of each human being regardless of his or her culture. But there are several factors that have caused the shadow in Western cultures to stand out in the psyche as a particularly strong nemesis to the ego.

            The first factor is one that is a little bit more universal than just the Western culture as defined here, and that is the rise of agriculture, which coincides with the dawn of civilization. As different cultures of man moved from a hunter-gatherer society to a planter society, the focus on the individual was, out of necessity for survival, shifted to the group. Thus we have the rise of the institutions (religion, government, military, etc). In this new kind of societal structure, the individual could no longer simply go out and hunt to provide for his family and others. Instead, humans needed to work fields large enough that they would be able to both provide for the whole community, and provide surplus that would feed the community during the non-productive seasons. This required that the people had to organize together as a group. Rules, ethics, and beliefs had to be suitable for harmony of a growing community, which is very different from that of a nomadic tribe of families with more focus on the individual. This group effort naturally extended from sustenance to governance, defense, and even the ever-important process of ensuring harmony with the deities so that the needed natural forces (water, sun, etc) would be provided for the crops to grow. 

            This switch to group ethics certainly had a profound effect on the development of the ego. The ego develops as the individual’s personality trend interacts with external reality, which Dr. Edward Whitmont called the ‘outer collectivity.’ In other words, the ego develops as the individual, initially as a child, tries to coordinate his own being with his parents and other significant authority figures to find acceptance. In the process he learns of behaviors and concepts that are not accepted, and these get repressed into the shadow. As this outer collectivity expanded to include new groups of individuals, new kinds of authority figures, new institutions in authority positions, and new rules, and moral concepts to be followed, the shadow obviously grew to new levels. In fact one thing that has only recently been recognized by anthropologists is that, for the first time, people had to actually ‘work’ on a regular basis.

            The second factor was the rise of the Sky Father; in other words, the toppling of the Goddess and the rise of the masculine. Sometime after the dawn of agriculture, and after numerous villages in the Middle East and a few other corners of the globe had evolved into City States, and even into States, there was a global rebellion against the feminine. But the conquest and victory of the masculine was nowhere as great as it was across the Mediterranean and into the Middle East. The rise of the masculine in a psychological sense meant that mankind began to think more from the perspectives that we associate with the masculine side of the brain. For example, mankind became more objective (as opposed to subjective), and more rational (as opposed to intuitional). Unfortunately, mankind’s perception of the world also became more dualistic and less holistic. A good analogy of this was given during an interview with the Jungian Analyst John A. Sanford, when he said that the, “…masculine element sees things in bright sunlight; this is this, and that is that. The feminine is like seeing in the moonlight; things kind of blend together, and they’re not so distinct from one another.”  

           This dualistic thinking pits the ego against the shadow, like night and day. But since the shadow is an aspect of the subconscious mind, it takes on a numinous quality from the standpoint of the conscious mind. In other words, it has a supernatural or otherworldly power to it. This is why coming face to face with the shadow is a very scary experience for the individual. The further repressed the shadow becomes, the darker and more evil it appears to the ego and the conscious mind. This could have only been exacerbated by the fact that as mankind centered more on the masculine side of his psyche, that he began losing the invaluable contact with his intuitive (feminine) side of his psyche. It is through the intuitive side that we have the more direct connection to our subconscious.

           It is easy to imagine the religious implications of this change. This is literally man’s fall from grace, his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. As man began to separate himself from nature, and more significantly—to separate from his own subconscious, his world became more objectivistic and dualistic. He associated himself with his ego-consciousness, and for the sake of his community and group harmony, repressed his shadow to deeper levels. The shadow became even more sinister, evil, and powerful, and in turn he projected it outwards to the world around him. The shadow within, was probably responsible for that Western concept of ‘original sin.’ While the projected shadow over the centuries became personified as the devil.

           In fact I believe that the Garden of Eden myth, along with so many other Golden Age myths, is an account of man’s emergence from the hunter-gatherer state to that of a planter-based state where man now had attained the ‘knowledge’ of fertility (symbolized by the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge) and could grow his own food; but with the added element of the defeat of the Goddess (Eve and the Serpent) and the rise of the masculine. Adam and Eve had their first stages of ego development (realization that they did something that would separate them from God via their eating of the Tree of Knowledge) and their first repression of an ‘undesirable’ into the shadow to seek acceptance (their nakedness). Then you have the continued rise of the shadow with the story of Cain and Able, where the drive to be the most ‘correct,’ and jealousy lead to the first murder.

           Let me point out here that the shadow does not mean that man is inherently evil. The ancient Hebrews seemed to understand this well: the root word for the Hebraic, Satan, meant ‘the returning breath of God.’ The problem is that the contents of the shadow, as an archetype, are inherited primal structures that go back even to our animal ancestors.

           As they are repressed deeper into the subconscious mind, they break into more primeval elements. I imagine that this means that the further they are pushed into this older inherited structure of the subconscious, the more they become associated with, and form complexes of these older archaic archetypes. Science shows us that if we break the brain down into its basic parts, we find deeper layers of inherited brains. Peel enough of the brain off, for example, and you find a structure that matches a reptile brain. Jung believed that there are archetypical levels that are inherited from, even our pre-human ancestors, probably sitting in these older structures. This is why the further it is repressed the more wild and evil it appears to become.

           But time and again you have cases of patients and others meeting their shadow head on, and accepting it. This defuses the power of the shadow and results in a much healthier and enlightened individual. This illustrates why man is not inherently evil, he just represses his shadow deep enough to become that way.

           But here is the twist: the shadow does not lie—it is what it is. It is the ego that lies and tries to cover up and hide the shadow. It is the ego that creates the shadow. It is the ego that denies the existence of the shadow, and then tries to project it out onto others. So the duality between the ego and shadow tries to place the ego as good, when in fact it is the ego that is bad. The shadow just is what it is. But we can’t blame the ego either; it is merely trying to fit in with the external collective. In other words, it is only acting to make us be good little boys and girls. 

            But I digress. The third factor is that Western man placed himself above nature. As man became separated from nature and his subconscious, it stands to reason that eventually he would place himself above nature. This is exactly what happened starting with the philosophers of ancient Greece. This concept was later validated by the church, which spread it throughout Europe as it trampled upon the older pagan spiritualities. This road of Western domination over nature continued to evolve through Descartes and into the Empirical sciences. It is easy to argue that this was a necessary step to allow the progress that brought us up to today.

           One of the problems of this, however, is that it exemplified duality: Man vs nature, good vs evil, conscious vs subconscious, and ego vs shadow. Man was not a part of nature, but stood over nature. Likewise, the conscious mind, or the ego definition of our self, stood over the unconscious mind. This ‘us’ and ‘them’ perception of the universe inevitably broke down into black and white, good and bad. In psychological terms, the good of the conscious mind was the dualistic opposite of the bad of the shadow. This was a misguided perception of the subconscious, and therefore the ‘whole self’ because the subconscious consists of all kinds of archetypes and complexes in addition to the shadow. An example of this is one of the major differences between Freud and Jung. Freud admonished Jung to push his sexual theory as he believed that the subconscious was filled with perversions and devils. (Jung however, understood the subconscious to be rich in content and purpose, and therefore advanced psychology beyond the theories of Freud). Or take the case of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This was a good tale of man’s confrontation with his shadow. But an earlier, or less sophisticated, interpretation of the story is one of what could happen if we were to switch off our conscience (or ego) and give in to our ‘animal’ instincts. This latter explanation is once again a dualistic picture of good vs evil.

           The motif of the mythical twins is very ancient, but I would wager that it tends to arise within the planter societies (even where the rise of the masculine is not so significant)—particularly where the duality of good and evil (good twin/evil twin) is the purpose of their existence. (If anyone can think of an exception from a hunter-gatherer culture, please share it with me). Even in the Americas, the twins are found in the planter cultures of the Southern and Eastern US, and down through Central America where spirituality was beginning to give way to the early forms of institutional religion (the process had even gone further in the Mayan and Aztec cultures).

           I have been trying to think of an example of the twins in the Lakota traditions but have not thought of any. While there may have been an earlier planter history among the Lakota, on the plains they followed a largely hunter-gatherer tradition. A good example of a Lakota mythical motif is that of the 4 brothers which represented the four winds. Their purpose during the creation of our world was to go out to the four directions and establish their position or wind. Before this happened, the sky-woman or star-woman (another common North American motif) fell to the earth as Woh’pe (Shooting Star) to become the sister of the four brothers. But she fell in love with the South Wind (who she subtly tried to seduce), and the North Wind fell in love with her (who she spurned as a lover), creating a dissonance which resulted in the opposing seasons of winter and summer. But this is not a story of duality, for you also have the interaction of the East and West brothers and the baby brother (whirlwind). Woh’pe herself, plays a very significant role in creation, and later returns to the Lakota people as the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who brought the sacred traditions and the sacred pipe. Also consider the fact that spring (east) and fall (west) last just as long as do summer (south) and winter (north). This story of multiplicity is a much more accurate story of the workings of both nature, and our own subconscious than the dualistic myths of the planter cultures, and even more so than those comparable myths of the West.   

           Where the Western man tends towards a dualistic perspective of the universe, indigenous man tends towards a multiplicity. Rather than Good winning over Evil, or even a transcendence of the duality, indigenous man seeks harmony among and between the multiplicity of nature. From a psychological standpoint, instead of empowering the shadow as Western man does by emphasizing the split between the ego and the shadow, indigenous traditions allow for the multiplicity of the subconscious and conscious minds, and the harmony between the ego, the shadow, anima, and animus, and all the other  archetypes and pieces of the psyche, or whole self.

           This harmony is exactly the process needed for actualization. Western psychologists help individuals to make great strides towards becoming healthy individuals by helping them to face their shadow. But this is only part of the step. Carl Jung said that the goal of the individual is to achieve individualization, which is achieved through acceptance and knowledge of the whole self. In other words, it is a situation where all aspects of the psyche are accepted, knowledge of them is attained, and they are all brought into harmony.  

           In order to move forward in a way that will not end in the destruction of mankind, I see four main steps that are critical to the progress of mankind. I am not speaking of progress such as what we have seen in the 20th Century. I am talking of the progress that is needed to prevent the demise of mankind. Progress befitting, Kαιρός—Metamorphosis of the Gods:

           1.) Western man needs to meet its collective shadow—to accept and understand the shadow so that it may be integrated into the social psyche. The movie Black Swan, like a bad dream is about us, it is about our Western Culture. We cannot continue to create Black Swan events.

           2.) We must break down the focus on the group, and group ethics, and support the individual.  As America shifts to the right, the status quo is once again gaining hold of America. Other areas I defined as ‘The West’ for purposes of this discussion, find themselves much deeper in the grip of the Group, take for example, the older planter cultures of the Middle East where the individual has very little value. Even Europe is still dealing with an invisible caste system, inherited from its Indo-European ancestors.   

           3.) There must be a rise of the feminine—most likely into a dialectic synthesis along the lines of the philosophy of Hegel and Kant. Rather than domination by the feminine as we had in the Goddess cultures of the early planter societies, or the domination of the masculine as we had in subsequent societies, we would see a return to that primal state of a synthesis between the masculine and feminine. This more accurately reflects the whole psyche as well as the indigenous multiplicity.

           4.) Man needs to once again realize that he is a part of nature, not above nature. Mother Nature tries to remind us. The power of the recent earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, is certainly a reminder of that. My experience of a 7.2 earthquake near Manila was certainly humbling.

           If we can achieve these 4 things, it will help break down the power of the shadow, it will break down the duality between the ego and the shadow, conscious and subconscious, and will reunite our conscious minds with the subconscious. It will lead to becoming a whole psyche. It will help break down the divisions of us vs them, good vs bad. And it will be a large step towards the closing of the Sacred Hoop.     

           Some people will read this and respond, “Wait, we need a stronger belief in God, or a stronger identification with the divine,” (based on whatever one believes that the ‘divine’ is). But the connection to the divine is through the subconscious mind. And I would certainly wager that achieving these four things would greatly enhance our experience of the divine.

           Failure to do this, can only lead us to destruction and ruin. We either destroy ourselves in a horribly destructive and bloody battle, or as we use up our resources, nature will take care of our demise for us.

           We will come back to this later and discuss how these changes are taking place, and where we could be headed. But first I would like to discuss a little further one of the major institutions of Western Culture, that of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Current State of Affairs

(This is Part 1 in a series of 4 titled, Kαιρός—Metamorphosis of the Gods)

(The theme song for this and the next 3 posts is the following link: Long Time Gone by Crosby Stills & Nash , If you want to listen to it as you read, right-click on it and open it up in a new tab so it won’t kick you out of this.)

            There are two things that really concern me about America’s shift to the right, and about such social factors as the dogmatization of ‘being politically correct,’ or the runaway legislation of attempting to raise social justice.

           The first thing is that it is a process that is empowering and strengthening the shadow of society. The shadow is that dark side of our psyche, or in this case, of society’s psyche, that we don’t want to admit to. It is everything we abhor, and therefore repress into the inner realm of that psyche, not realizing that the further it is repressed, the more wild and dangerous it becomes.

            To quote from the book, The Symbolic Quest, written by the Jungian psychologist, Dr. Edward Whitmont, as he wrote about the collective implications of the Shadow: “…since the shadow is the archetype of the enemy, its projection is likely to involve us in the bloodiest of wars precisely in times of the greatest complacency about peace and our own righteousness. The enemy and the conflict with the enemy are archetypal factors, projections of our own inner split, and cannot be legislated or wished away. They can be dealt with—if at all—only in terms of shadow confrontation and in the healing of our individual split.”

           In other words, it is when we take all those aspects of life that we dislike, or offend us, and bury them inside, where they won’t exist, then try especially hard to be righteous and perfect, conservative, prudent, and peace-loving, and force our society to reflect that, that we find ourselves fighting our shadow, in a terrible and bloody war.  

           The second thing that concerns me is that which Carl Jung warned about in his book, The Undiscovered Self, written back in the 1950’s. The book is about how man’s inability to understand his true self, (man thinks he understands himself, but in most cases, understands only his ego-consciousness, if that much) coupled with rational objectivism (i.e. science, but also the modern rational thinking which is ego-consciousness based) makes him fall victim to mass-mindedness, ultimately losing his dignity and the foundation of his being (his individuality) to the state. Man becomes a number—a mere statistic—and without a counterbalance that leads to individuation (knowledge of the self) he inevitably loses personal rights in the name of social progress. This counterbalance could be spiritual or other ways that help one learn of the whole self. Unfortunately, religion generally falls way too short of an effective counterbalance. As man loses his individuality to the State, he falls victim to state control (i.e. totalitarianism).

           It’s easy to write this book off as the result of Jung’s observation of Germany’s rise into National Socialism that led into World War II and the holocaust. And as he wrote the book, Stalinist policies were starving to death countless state slaves in the Eastern Block.

           Americans assume that won’t happen here, but the 1950’s saw the rise of McCarthyism, and other forces that trampled on individual rights in the name of National Security.  The US spread its philosophy of freedom and democracy around the world by moving pro-US dictators into power. One such despotic dictator tried to force a predominantly Buddhist nation into becoming a Catholic State, owned by the wealthy. When Buddhists and peasant farmers rebelled, we were pulled into a long bloody war that killed way too many of our drafted 18-year olds. It was a war against communism, but in truth, it was mostly a war against Buddhists who were not allowed to openly practice their beliefs, and South Vietnamese farmers who never got the land that was promised to be returned to them. When we decided that the Dictator Diem was too ruthless (i.e. turning too much of his own country against him) we simply had him assassinated. I am not writing radical left-wing propaganda, it is merely historical fact.

            This is why I feel that as we hurled ourselves towards self-destruction in the 1950s and ‘60s, the counterculture movement was so important to our survival. As it rose up from among the 1950s avant-garde Beats, and spread from San Francisco throughout the free world in the 1960’s (and even affected people and philosophy behind the iron curtain) it changed the world at a deeper level than many realize. I say this because it was a release of the collective shadow, enabling it to be confronted by the status quo. It is why the dangers Carl Jung wrote about in The Undiscovered Self, never materialized to the degree he feared.

           But there are some fascinating parallels that one can see in Jung’s descriptions of a country headed for state slavery of its citizens, with the America of today. Economic woes and threats from outside (e.g. terrorists) have always been catalysts to set the wheels in motion for social progress (i.e. the rise of the state). The value of the individual has to be at the forefront to protect social liberties and human rights.

            Once again, with our shift to the right, we are trying to recreate that ‘Father Knows Best’ America only with what we perceive as a much improved social enlightenment (for example, no segregated drinking fountains this time). All those qualities that we hate and want to pretend do not exist are being thrust into the dark recesses of that collective shadow. The further we repress them, the more they break down into the primal instincts that they emerged from. The further they are repressed, the more animal-like, or wild, they become.

            We may not have segregated drinking fountains today, but we have not solved the issues of discrimination in America. My work with, and relationships with, Native Americans has opened my eyes up to that fact. And look at the terrible treatment America has piled onto the Muslims in the wake of 9-11. But then to take prejudice and the other ills of society and repress them into the collective unconscious does not resolve them either.

            Some of the symptoms of what I am talking about are not hard to find. In today’s America, one has to be very careful to be ‘politically correct.’ On the surface, this is a good thing, but then to zealously turn it into a dogmatic code of conduct that attacks even the most innocent of semantic expression, or actions, is to lose sight of the meaning of its original intent.

           For example, I spent around 15 years living in Japan, around 5 years in the Philippines; I speak fluent Japanese, can read Chinese to an extent, and speak conversational Tagalog; my wife and step-kids who I love dearly, are Asian immigrants to America; and I have both extensively studied Asian culture and religion and experienced it first hand; add to this the fact that I am a strong proponent for human rights, and have done numerous fund-raising efforts and other activities to help people throughout Asia and elsewhere; I think I would be one of the last people to be targeted as racially insensitive. But I do enjoy bad English (or as it is popularly called in Asia, Engrish), just like all of my Asian friends who study or speak English do too. I can tell you some of the mistakes I made in Japanese or Tagalog that created funny results, and I can laugh about them. They were sometimes embarrassing at the time, but they taught me the correct usage of the language, and when the results were funny, how could I not laugh about them. Language teachers even use examples of such poor usage to teach the proper use of the language. Asians who learn English, enjoy collecting Engrish, and if they do not understand why something is funny, they certainly enjoy learning about it, and this adds to their understanding of our culture, idioms, and slang. Yet I was attacked and accused of being racially insensitive because of two very inoffensive cases of Engrish. My Asian friends enjoyed them, yet a few white people with very little understanding of Asian culture or language, attacked me for being racially insensitive.

            You don’t have to look far to see other examples of where being politically correct is so dogmatic it is turning ridiculous. Just think of America’s reaction to Janet Jackson’s pasty. There was no exposed nipple, or even an areola, but it significantly changed how even women’s fashion magazines advertise.

            The same is true of much of the draconian legislation that is being enacted around the country. I don’t smoke, and I do enjoy walking into a restaurant where I can sit and enjoy my food without a lot of cigarette smoke. But I do fill sorry for the smokers who are limited to a small outside corner far away from any building where they are now restricted to enjoy their addiction (At least that is the case here in Colorado).

           Or take the example of how the courts and police treat the youth of America today. I have seen over and over how the slightest naïve infraction of the law has resulted in uncalled for levels of treatment, which seemed to be based on the assumption that our children are all psychopathic gang members that need to be taught hard lessons right away. I can cite cases where an adult would be convicted of misdemeanor trespassing, because they happened to be somewhere they shouldn’t have been, but children are charged with and convicted of felony trespassing (which requires the intent to commit a crime), even though there was no intent to commit a crime. Our horrible and insensitive immigration policies are another example of such draconian, and dehumanizing legislations (and people wonder why people try to enter our country illegally).

            But just read the newspaper, or read the popular Newsoftheweird website, and you will see case after case of legislation that has gone too far.         

            Returning to Jung’s book, The Undiscovered Self, we find that one of the main factors that leads us down the path of State control, or mass-mindedness, is that of rational objectivism–in other words, science. The objectivism of science tries to find an average, or mean, individual, which it can build social polices upon. But Jung tells us that there is no such thing as an average individual. Just like if you had a collection of rocks with an average weight of 0.521 pounds, you would probably never find a rock in that pile that actually weighed 0.521 pounds. Unlike a rock, however, when you turn an individual into a number, Jung shows that this person  is already losing his value as an individual. Anyone who has studied Marxism from a humanistic and subjective point of view should certainly understand what Jung is talking about.

           How important do you think the individual is in modern America? Jung says that the moment one begins to feel that he (or she) is impotent to the masses, that he as a mere individual has no power, and thus compared to the masses he is meaningless, then that individual is on his way to becoming a slave of the state. It is this very same objective rationalism that is responsible for the runaway, and often draconian legislation I used as an example above, or many other policies enacted in the name of social progress.

            Here is another example, a seemingly innocent symptom of the times: The misguided belief that surveys can provide meaningful input into how well a company is doing and how its employees should be incented. This idea was brought up by a university professor who wrote that companies should seek to create ‘raving fans.’ Corporate America has embraced this dogma, and now employees for everything from coffee houses to stock brokerages have at least at one point, if not more, in recent years been materially impacted by unfair surveys that have little use. From experience I have seen that very few people really provide a meaningful response to such surveys. The main problems are that, a.) most people really don’t care about the purpose, and if they do provide feedback will most likely give all high marks skewing the overall results upward. b.) those that do want to give feedback, tend to be those that were angry and respond in the negative impacting someone who had no connection to the experience they were angry over. c.) the few people who are truly serious about giving feedback usually interpret the measuring scale differently than the intention of the corporate matrix, especially when compared to the positively skewed numbers provided by everyone else. Therefore, for service that is ‘just fine’ a serious survey taker may give what they interpret as an average score, but applied to the corporate matrix with its upwardly skewed numbers, this would be a very unsatisfactory score.

            For example, Charles Schwab used a scale of 1 to 9 for customers to rate an experience with a representative. Some customers felt that a 5 represented an average score for an average transaction with a rep. However, based on the statistical results, a 5 was deemed so bad, that it required a manager to call the customer back to find out what terrible thing happened to merit such a low score. The fact that the customer thought it was an average experience with no fault on the rep did not, per corporate policy, change the score. In fact, anything less than a 9, based on statistical results, damaged the representatives ranking towards bonus and other incentives. Representatives resorted to manipulating calls to try to prevent the customer from getting a survey. This only exacerbated the inaccurately upward skew.

            In short, corporate surveys do not provide accurate readings of individual employees, stores, or branches, and unfairly harm them, while unfairly rewarding others, who were lucky to be on the right side of the skewed and incorrect numbers. To defend this practice the rallying cry from corporate policymakers is that it is ‘equally unfair’ but actual results don’t agree. These surveys lose their usefulness when applied to benefits, rewards and incentives of individuals, stores or branches, and should not be used as a measure of such things. There is no average man, and the individual is always an aberration of the mean.

            Another issue that Jung brings up is that it is in the best interest of the State to have a splintered society. This is a society where interactions between individuals become guarded, and individual relations break down. This is a typical characteristic of a police state, where citizens report on other citizens, and everyone watches everyone else. A splintered society is more easily controlled, and the mass-conscious manipulated by a smaller minority of people in power. 

            The 1950’s in this regard was fairly benign, as far as we know.Americawas doing its best to live up to the persona of democracy and freedom. McCarthyism was of course a dark mark on this persona, and is a good example of the very practice of the State we are talking about. But the more widespread secret police tactics that we can easily point to did not become that apparent until the 1960’s, when the FBI, CIA, and other local and federal government agencies broke laws to spy on, intimidate, incriminate, and imprison citizens of the United States. Much of this activity was targeted at minorities and the civil rights movement. But it is no secret that President Nixon literally waged a domestic war on the youth of America, or at least everyone who he assumed to be a hippy. Or take the case of the CIA experimenting ith LSD on innocent Americans who had no knowledge of what was happening to them.

            One simple example involved the Denver Police and the popular hippy blues band, Canned Heat. They had just done a concert here in Denver, when the Denver Police Chief got the idea of setting an example of the band andDenver’s zero drug tolerance policy. That night, the police stormed the band’s hotel room, and finding no drugs, and no high band members, proceeded to plant drugs in the room. They then promptly arrested all of the band members except for one. Ironically, the one band member they didn’t arrest was the one who was actually holding drugs, and was high at the time. He was the individual standing outside the hotel, and whom the police asked, “Is the band upstairs?”

            But even if we argue that there was a high band member who was holding, the police never knew about him, and they clearly violated the civil rights of the rest of the band members—some of whom didn’t even use drugs. The legal battles lasted for years, and cost the band far more money than crooked agents ever tricked them out of. Because of this, the members of Canned Heat were never really able to enjoy the financial benefits of their great talents.   

           People can argue that the justice system has gotten rid of most such abuse of civil rights. That is except for a few isolated cases here and there. But go back a few paragraphs and you will see where I talk about the value of the youth in the eyes of today’s justice system.

           Generally speaking however, there is a different source of fragmentation in our society today: technology. Today we don’t know much about our neighbors, which is considerably different from  the America of the 1950’s and 60’s. American citizens are losing their circle of actual physical meet and greet friends, at least to the extent it once was. The days of bridge, pinochle, cocktail, or Tupperware parties, and just getting together on a regular basis, are all but gone for many Americans. Social networking is generally done at a whole different level today. In short, the youth of America are hypnotized by Play Station, and for the rest of America, technology provides a continuous feed of similar hedonistic rewards which has only recently been recognized as having the same potential of addiction as any other drug or escape.

           This type of splintered society I believe is a bit paradoxical. I believe it leads to a more diverse society, and is part of the process that Alvin Toffler sees as carrying us into the Third Wave (after the First Wave of agriculture and Second Wave of industrialization). I will come back to the good aspects of this trend later. But the benefits of this fragmentation do not prevent the risks that Carl Jung talks about with a splintered society. Such a society is easier to control by a small minority, because a splintered society is, a.) less aware of what is happening around them, and b) they are less organized to do something about it.

           This leaves the door wide open for those with inflated egos, in other words an individual with a largely repressed shadow, and a strong belief that he is the persona that his overly active ego tries to convince him that he is. He projects this persona onto others, who are never actually able to live up to the persona, and therefore require stiff rules, regulations, and penalties, to meet the persona. This is made worse by the fact that the faults he sees in others are the projections of his own shadow. Such individuals falsely believe that they can fix their own internal dilemmas only by fixing the outside world. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these are the people who are naturally led into positions of great power.

           Look at the horrific destruction that Hitler caused, which as I understand, stemmed from the psychological issues he had as the offspring from the rape of his German mother, by a member of the wealthy and powerful, but Jewish, Rothschild family. Whether or not this is true, there is no denying that this villain—had issues.   

           So today, we show only a superficial interest in what is happening around us as ego-centered zealots form policies to turn society into their own persona. These policymakers are completely unaware that they are merely trying to fix the outside world in hopes that it will fix their own inner world (their shadow). But that will never happen.

            But with such social factors at work, one would think that the collective unconscious of our society would somehow be aware of such things. As individuals our dreams are usually symbolic attempts of our subconscious mind to make outside contact and to try to resolve the issues of inner complexes. Unfortunately the symbolism is often lost to our conscious minds, and the message may only be partially understood if ever at all. I think that at a social level, popular media often inadvertently provides the social subconscious (or collective unconscious) with that same attempt to contact the external and resolve the issues that the inner psyche has with the social collective consciousness.

            I think that the movie Black Swan is just that. That is why it has won so many awards, and received so much praise. It is a story, based on the Swan Lake version of the good-twin/evil-twin motif, which provides a perfect portrayal of the shadow. I only just recently saw it, and since then have enjoyed talking about it with numerous people. I especially like asking people, subtly, about whether they see Nina (the innocent white swan/good twin) in themselves. The black swan (the anything-but-innocent/evil twin) is of course the personification of the shadow. I was surprised at how people did not make their own connection to Nina, and saw Nina’s transformation into evil as the result of all the forces that made her sick.

            The only difference between Nina (as both white and black swan) and absolutely everyone else is that her shadow had been repressed to the point of becoming pathological. But just as Nina projects her shadow onto Lily, we do the same thing. And just as we have unnerving or even scary dreams where we confront our shadows as the subconscious tries to signal us, The Black Swan is a signal from the collective unconscious to society as a whole.

            It worries me. If we continue down this path of repressing our collective shadow, and undermining the individual, we are certainly headed for some painful and destructive times. Carl Jung had an important formula that Americans should be aware of: if you can’t see your shadow, that is because your shadow already has you.

A Long Time Gone

(This is something I originally posted on Facebook, with a link to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s song, Long Time Gone)

Long Time Gone by Crosby Stills & Nash

In 1957, Carl Jung wrote, “We are living in what the Greeks called the καιρός—the right time—for a ‘metamorphosis of the gods,’ i.e., of the fundamental principals and symbols.” He was writing about Modern Art as a clue into the psyche of modern man.

Art has always drawn from myth, “…from the unconscious process of symbolization which continues through the ages and which, as the primordial manifestation of the human spirit, will continue to be the root of all creation in the future. The development of modern art with its seemingly nihilistic trend toward disintegration must be understood as the symptom and symbol of a mood of world destruction and world renewal that has set its mark on our age.”

This καιρός (kairos), while represented in art going back into the early 1900′s, has only truly come to be evident in the past 50 years. But it is a long process, because it is probably of greater significance than man’s evolution into the industrial age.

I see technology carrying us into Alvin Toffler’s, Third Wave, but it is more significant than that. I see quantum physics coming to terms with spirituality, and that will be more significant than society can imagine. The move into this new age (not to be confused with the current hodgepodge of pseudo-spirituality scams and weekend gurus and plastic shamans we call New Age) will be the dawn of the distant future society that science fiction writers create positive views of.

But to get there, we have to survive and stop the destruction of our mother earth and her resources. And the Old Guard senses its loss of control and is fighting to strengthen and maintain its reigns over mankind. New shadows are coming to the surface from man’s collective unconscious. As old enemies fall (communism), new ones are created (jihadists or mujahideen). I am generally not a conspiracy theorist, but I have a Jungian view of politics and feel that there are social unconscious forces that play out in a conspiratory way.

I believe that the counterculture movement was a necessary reaction to the dualistic world the West had created after World War II. The shadow projected from the free world onto the ‘other side’ was communism, while the Communist countries projected their shadow of democracy onto the free world. (The shadow, you see, is the dark side of the human unconscious that we deny, and often project onto others. Think of Spitzer’s attack on prostitution, while secretly using their services). The counterculture movement came out in defense of the individual.

But society has grown more splintered, and even Jung states that this makes man more vulnerable. Though something Jung did not see in his lifetime, is that it is technology that is doing this today, not police action of pitting one citizen against another. Today, the forces of control over the common man are growing, outside of a few corners of social media (e.g. The Colbert Report, The Daly Show, and others), no one is really speaking up. No one is protecting the individual. People are more concerned over the dogma of politically correctness, and personal gratification.

It appears to be a long time. Appears to be a long time—-till the dawn…

(One of my Facebook Friends who is a Christian responded that he really liked this, but he also thought that the problem is that people no longer believe in God. Here is my follow up comment to him:)

I can understand your thinking on that Jerry. I think it is all part of the same thing. The unconscious is the doorway to the spiritual. Whatever someone’s beliefs, and their definition of the divine, it is lacking in modern society. (Even for an atheist, such as the existentialist Sartre who put that same belief in mankind because if there is no God than each individual has the responsibility of making mankind Godlike to remove the misery of our lives). While there are many paths to the divine, the lack of belief on at least one of those paths, is part of all this. In this sense it truly is a time kairos.

Carl Jung would also agree with you. He felt that the church needed to stand up in defense of the individual from the State—-not necessarily by defying the State, but by providing a counterbalance to the rational objectivism of the state, and by providing a separate target of loyalty in addition to the State.

However his assessment of organized religion today was that it was no longer a religion which provided a subjective relationship to a metaphysical factor, but that it had become a creed, i.e. merely providing an expression of collective belief. In fact he believed that the churches have compromised with the State, which defeats the significance of a subjective metaphysical relationship with a greater force. He also wrote, “People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to think that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled Πίστις into us—that is, trust and loyalty.”

If the unconscious is the doorway to the spiritual, than this lack of belief, lack of the inner experience that instills Πίστις, is the inevitable result of a culture that represses the unconscious forces in the name of rational objectivity and science. This is the end result of the Cartesian empiricism that enabled science to rise up in the 17^th, 18^th Centuries to create our modern world today. But it is a world devoid of myth (and by myth I don’t mean superstition and fantasy—myth is a spiritual teaching that puts otherworldly events into a context that fits our reality). It is a world lacking in that inner experience.

If the bad side of our psyche is repressed it expresses itself in other ways. For healthy people it is through dreams and moments of unintended behavior. But all too often it expresses itself through the shadow. And many people who act through their shadow are completely unaware of what they are doing, or are at least unaware of their hypocrisy and the fact that their shadow projections are in fact their own selves (Spitzer is a good example again). This also leads all too commonly to inflation of the ego consciousness, which in combination with the projected shadow, produces new laws and codes and draconian policies and controls—the loss of human rights. Unfortunately society as a whole, reflects the actions, both good and bad, of its individuals.

Society is suffering from rational suppression of the subconscious. It is suffering from the lack of inner experience. It is suffering from the lack of a belief in God, or in whatever way you experience the divine.

Protection of the individual is necessary to protect the individual subconscious. It may be through horrific events, or through a general reawakening, but if mankind can yield to the subconscious enough to reopen that doorway to the divine, he will once again find that inner experience. He will find God, even to the sacrifice of his own rationality. This may even occur from the unlikely direction of science—quantum physics is pushing the limits of the rational well into the irrational (based on the classic concept of a Newtonian Universe). I think it is approaching a point where ‘spirit’ has to be incorporated into our scientific cosmology to move forward. Then we will see a new paradigm in everything from medicine to psychology to physics. (If we survive that long—-it is a long time gone, and a long time till the dawn).