Kindred Spirit

 

Earlier today I hiked up at Mt Toyon. I walked past the vista point with the bench and out “my” little remote trail, where I generally just stand and take it all in—the silence, the greenery, the trees, the grass, the bushes, the breeze, the view through the trees to the ocean. I feel how my body is in the moment, I settle down into it exactly where I am standing. I don’t consciously “merge myself with nature”; it just happens, like exhaling and inhaling: I take in the forest as it takes me in. I take in the silence as it takes me in. Yet, most strangely, I felt a presence, a person, close, but, looking around me and gazing up the path I had taken, saw no one. So I let that go and started walking back on the path I had taken there.

 

As I exited the path, I noticed a young woman standing there looking at me. Her presence was a surprise to me, though I realized I had already previously felt it. We spoke as if we knew each other well and deeply. She spoke of her current state of mind and I spoke of mine. She shared with me her view of how she was, in so many words, and of her interests. I was amazed at her honesty and place of self-knowing. There was what I perceived as an immediate trust between us and also our ability to understand each other. She carried with her a Buddhist meditation bench on which one sits and kneels. I was most impressed by this, for I had built one for myself probably forty years ago and had used it for the last thirty years before storing it in the garage, where it is now. We talked about many topics and our personal sense of things.

 

I have walked on Mt Toyon for ten years and have always wished to meet someone on the trail and to be able to engage in a deep and enjoyable discussion with them. And today it actually happened. The very fact that she goes to the same out of the way place in the forest where I go touched me. “Here is a person with whom I share something in common,” I thought. To be able to share a deep meditative state of mind and to be understood by another is quite rare. We seemed to be able to understand each other on a philosophical level. Compared to me, she was quite young, yet she expressed such depth and honesty as if she were without guile. It was a most pleasant experience that I appreciated. I gave her my card listing my various blogs, email address, and my quote: Too much irony makes one overwrought (which not every gets). It was a rare and special moment. I have my wife and a few other friends with whom I am able to share of myself on a deep level, but to come upon such a rare person in the forest “just like that” is a rare pleasure. I am grateful to her for her openness and trust.

Sitting on the Beach Out of Time

 

I find myself sitting alone on the beach of a tropical isle. The sun shines, the surf rolls gently, the air is warm. I am clothed in my usual tartan flannel shirt, grey shorts, and sneakers with white crew socks. I am comfortable upon a large piece of driftwood. I watch waves crashing upon the reef a short distance away. I do not know how I got here or where I am. I have no other belongings or gear or food. I seem to be sitting here out of time and space, surely out of the world as it is normally known by me. I seem to be quite physically alive yet wonder if I have not perhaps died and somehow been delivered of this place, which is of heaven at the moment. I am not worried right now about my survival, though I turn and look inland from the beach where I see a forest of palm trees and some thickly-leaved trees with underbrush. The land rises, becoming darker and rockier as it rises into a jungle before becoming steep, fissured hills and eventually much higher mountains. In fact I don’t know if this is an island; it could be a peninsula or even a coast, though from where I am, it is bounded by the ocean on three sides and I am unable to see a beach that doesn’t appear to curve around rather than extend itself straight in any direction. I would rather just sit here. I don’t really even want to know if I am dead or alive; I am just here.

 

I recall a few nights ago when I sat in my big recliner in front of the fire. I seemed to lapse into a kind of sleep. My eyes were closed. I sat there even as I sit here. What I first noticed was that my mind was a blank; I was not thinking whatsoever. I felt as if I had just vanished, as if I simply did not exist. I had no feeling, no preference or non-preference. As I said, it was as though I did not exist, as if I were not there, or even a ghost of the presence I once was. I don’t have that sense of no-being as I sit here now. My mind is not blank now. But the similarity is that I am out of time and place; that I am in a place that does not exist. But I am aware that I still somehow exist, for I am noting my thoughts and reflections, though, if I am out of time and space, that doesn’t make sense.

 

One thing I like about being out of time and space is that it puts me out of the world at large; out of its ebb and flow, out of its history, its interactivity. When I am in the world I feel defiant towards it and its inhabitants, its expectations, even its necessities. I have the thought that “I must survive” which means that I must consider what I must do to find water, food, fire, warmth, comfort, safety. But I also have the thought that it may be that I do not have to have the thought, that I may not even exist. What has come to my mind and my experience for some time is the Cartesian notion that “I think, therefore I am” in reverse: “I do not think, therefore I am not.” The truth of this thought has been borne out for me time and time again when, particularly in meditation, I had no thought of “I, myself.” When that happened, “I” did actually cease to exist. So, as I sit here, I do wonder if I have been overtaken by this “not selfness.” Still, I appear to see the waves rolling in and feel the warmth of the sun upon my skin. I realize that there are people in psychiatric institutions who are still alive in their bodies but have left themselves, have gone blank. Perhaps I am one of them who has simply “gone blank” and found myself here on this log in this place. What happens when one no longer lives in one’s memories or in the normal tensions of being in the world? We are led around in our bodies until life finally leaves them.

 

I used to walk back to my “perch” atop a redwood trunk far back in the Forest of Nisene Marks and sit there contented as if I could literally sit there forever; that this was “my spot.” I would only get up after a long time because the world called me with its social and existential responsibilities and practicalities; “everyone knows one cannot sit upon a tree trunk in the forest lost in nowhereness and everywhereness forever.” But sitting here on this beach is different; I didn’t walk here but, rather, just appeared here. Does that make any difference at all? And this “defiance” of the world, of being in the world, that I have; where did that come from? From my simple experience of being in the world and not liking it? From having to be born too early? For having to be born in the first place? Born into a physical body? After being free of such or being in another more preferable form? From having to live in fear of the pain of beatings? Or simply from the rejection felt from them? Does sitting here on this log then present me with some kind of a test in which I choose or reject life in the world for all the future? If it is such a test, I do not yet choose to make a choice. Perhaps I can just sit here for an eternity. My life has already felt as if I were sitting here for an eternity, waiting for a directive from On High; an On High that remained silent because perhaps it too did not exist. Is my test, then, to decide whether or not it does exist? Or to even realize for myself that it does or it doesn’t? If that’s the case, I still wait for such a realization—which may never come. And if it did, I just might not realize it; I might not even notice it.

 

Where I am right now may be like the holodeck on the Enterprise, a make-believe, manufactured reality of my own making. The sun may not set; it may stay just as it is. If it did get dark, I would probably be convinced that it had enough reality that I should begin at least to insure my own survival. That’s the natural response anyway.

 

Usually I just give up when nothing is there to say or realize. I am not interested in “wasting my time.” Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree, refusing to leave until he had clarity. Now clarity is not necessarily understanding; in fact it could be the very opposite of understanding. Buddha became one who lives for others without self-concern: a bodhisattva. Or so tis said. And I know that when I cease to think about myself, I no longer identify myself to myself, and the whole thing of me being “I” just vanishes: “I” no longer exist. In American culture, this is the opposite of what we see as “normal”; we no longer “assert ourselves” because we realize there is nothing to assert.

 

In the same vein, I see that nothing in itself has any meaning; it is as it is and that’s it. I may fit into the scheme of things, into the “great chain of being,” and be defined by its location primarily, but it “means” nothing at all. And even locating something as here rather than there, which defines to a certain extent, does not give it meaning. Now, just because it’s a fire does indicates that it will function according to its “nature,” which is to be hot and therefore possibly dangerous if one puts a hand too close to the flames. (Though the narrative stops here, it is not over.)

NO ACCIDENTS OR ALL ACCIDENTAL

It's been a while since I've been here but today I crossed paths with Scott and Emily at what is called the Buddha Bridge a mile or so beyond the remote parking area at Nisene Marks Forest State Park. I was blathering about the inherent absence of meaning in existence whereas Scott stated that there are no accidents, which is to say, to me, that there is inherent meaning in things, in what happens. I said that things or events have no meaning in themselves but, rather, are given meaning by ourselves. Scott seemed to believe that meaning exists independently of our response or interpretation or understanding of things or events. Perhaps it was simply the words we were using, for I see events that occur to be fate, which is to say happening as they happen. Jung had a term, synchronicity, which might be exemplified by an external occurrence that coincides with an internal state of mind. Two people were present as I crossed the bridge. They greeted me as I greeted them. Then we spoke at length about various things, kind of bouncing our thoughts and perspectives off of each other, all within the "container" of our instant relationship, our "connection," which was quite trusting, and if not the same track, was of the same spirit. To me it was fateful, which is to say it occurred and we all chose to participate with each other, which is what happened. Was our crossing paths accidental? Or was it fated? If it was fated, who fated it? Who meant it to happen? I say that I fated it and they fated it, causing it then to move beyond more that simply crossing paths. Now, some believe that "things are meant to happen" which coincides with Scott's sense of no accidents. But what if nothing had been said? Would we say that also "things are not meant to happen," which is to say that they still are happening but are happening differently? 

I definitely enjoyed this conversation with these people. Scott noted something about the validity and value of hugging people. This struck me, causing me to realize that I go off into my head, my thoughts, my talking perhaps even as a distraction. I became aware that the body also exists and seeks to participate, to be included. Scott added that it is the "heart," which then made me realize that, yes, this is another element of being that I sometime do exclude, perhaps because it is somewhat "risky" to extend oneself vulnerably in that way. At the end of our conversation, we hugged. It expanded my own level of trust and acceptance; it was joyous. I was very surprised at how I felt. I walked away with a smile. 

I think that when one opens oneself to others and they open themselves as well, there is a recognition of the other as oneself. One can intellectually believe this or even remember it, but at the moment in the situation, especially in the physical contact, it is real--not thought about or interpreted but actual. I gave Scott and Emily my card which has my email address on it and invited them to visit my wife and I when they are in the area. We could have a good conversation and enjoy the moment. And since I gave them my card which listed my current and past blogs, God forbid, I thought I might actually add to this blog. A personal touch.

As I have aged (today is my 73rd birthday), I have found myself to be interested in other people, in what they think, in how they feel, in what the world and their existence in it is to them. And I make a distinction between what it "is" and what it "means." I think that is the distinction I was trying to explain and understand when I spoke to Scott and Emily today. They are two very fascinating, sweet people.
I do give such meetings great meaning. I am grateful for such a fate. And am always aware of the quote on my card: Too much irony makes one overwrought.

IN MEMORY OF ALAN, OUR DEAREST FRIEND

Three or so months ago I was walking, as I often do, back in Nisene Marks State Park on a part of the trail that eventually leads to Maple Falls. Ahead of me I saw an older man clinging onto a branch with eyes closed, breathing heavily with a very pained expression on his face. I thought he might be having a heart attack. I stopped next to him and said in a loud voice, “How we doin’?” He, without opening his eyes, responded in a surprisingly strong, resonant voice, “OK. I’m just catching my breath, so you can go on ahead.” Feeling uncomfortable leaving him, I lingered a bit. Opening his eyes and noticing my UCSC T-shirt, he commented on the “Fighting Banana Slugs” and we both agreed it was a funny and most impressive mascot name for a college. Then he said, “I’m moving slower, so you best walk on.” He seemed much better now and was walking on his own, I imagined, to the bench not far ahead at the Porter House sign. So I proceeded to fall back into my regular pace and then, from twenty feet away, he yelled out a riddle to me, and I stopped to listen, also realizing that he didn’t want me to walk away but to walk with him. I stopped and he approached me, telling me jokes and riddles, at which I laughed. We arrived at the bench where he sat down. While walking, I recognized his face and his voice though I couldn’t place it. I told him so while he sat but he couldn’t recall me. He told me his name, which I remembered; he and his wife (at the time) had once, 35 or so years earlier, been my clients when I was a financial advisor. He later remembered me from est and his decision that he could trust a fellow est member with his financial information as well as his finances. Alan told me of his chiropractic and “healing” work, I told him of my various serious and chronic physical aches and pains, he assured me that he could “take care of that,” and I decided I would go and see him. I also noticed that the chronic pain in the occipital nerve in my head, and the level of pain in my neck and back had actually subsided in Alan’s presence as he sat on the Porter House bench. Alan told me that he often walked this trail at Nisene Marks and that he was getting better and better at it. He said he had walked one day for six and a-half hours and had the intention of hiking all the way to Maple Falls. At that point we parted, with him proceeding up a very steep hill and me looping down the hill to the fire road, over the bridge and back to the parking lot. Those few minutes with Alan inspired me to hike to Maple Falls the following week, which was harrowing and exhausting, shutting my body down for the next few days. I realized that I didn’t much care about going through such an ordeal but that I “did it for Alan,” which surprised and pleased me. I also absolutely enjoyed the falls; stripping down and standing under them.

From Alan’s weekly treatments for a few months I felt some improvement in body and mind. I believed that Alan was gifted in his intuitive and technical understanding of the body. My wife, Amy, felt that Alan was a breath of fresh air and loved talking with him and sharing his presence, as did I. We had him over to our house a number of times over a number of weeks for very lively discussions. Alan demonstrated that he was a person of "big mind"; he saw life in cosmic terms and great context. He was one who "prayed to God" with much faith and love. We joked about "knowing so much of everything and so little of anything." Alan was our dearest friend. We loved him very much.

A few days before the day of his death, I invited Alan to our house for some good conversation and some food. Alan, however, wanted me to first bring him to my “perch,” a redwood trunk not too far in from the fire trail "road" on the Aptos Ridge Trail. It was a short 15-minute walk from the fire trail, with some uphill hike on the way and a lot of downhill coming back. Alan was waiting for me when I arrive on 9:45AM on September 12. He hadn’t been on this trail before and he loved it, exclaiming again and again how beautiful it was, finding a redwood “throne” to sit on and claiming himself to be “king.” He was so thrilled and so much like a little kid that I said, “Alan, you’re just like a little kid. You have such wonder!” Alan smiled and said, “Ye must become as little children to enter into the kingdom of heaven!” I replied with my own wonder at his statement, “Then you’re right at the very gates, my Friend.” Alan proceeded along the path impressively, stopping two or three times to rest and seemingly not winded at all. We got up to the perch after 45 minutes and Alan stretched out on the large trunk with all the self-satisfaction of a little kid or a cat finding the perfect spot. He said, “This is now MINE. You have to wait your turn and I will NEVER leave.” I told him of my instructions to my daughter to inter my ashes in that very trunk upon which Alan sat so that I could “haunt” that spot forever. Alan said, “Well now it’s MY place too.” I said, "I suppose our ghosts will have to share this place eternally." He looked at me and smiled. I was so pleased that I had been able to share something with Alan that he so loved. On the way down from the perch, I told Alan he was mensch, a good man, one with a "good heart.” I think Alan was touched; for the first time, he said nothing.

I miss Alan. I felt like a child with him; we played like little kids in the forest. We laughed; we understood each other. We accepted and appreciated each other. He was a twin soul, my soul brother. Amy, my spouse, loved him too. I was overly critical of him in his passion and energy. He was so enthusiastic, so bhakti, so trusting and believing. I came to the realization that I saw in Alan myself as I had been a long time ago. He believed! He was inspiring! After forty years of Zen practice, I had come to neither be a believer nor a non-believer, “seeing through” both without great passion. Alan told me that he was a boddhisatva, to which I asked, “And why did you wish to be reborn?” Alan responded, “So I could have a body again.” In all my supposed “great wisdom,” I reprimanded him, saying: “I doubt whether any boddhisatva boasts of being one and I don’t think they do it just so they ‘can have a body again’.” In retrospect, I have to believe that perhaps Alan was, after all, a bodhisattva. He lived a life of service and healing. He taught me much about “being as a little child.” Alan was oil to this Tin Man.

Alan told me that he considered himself to “be Zen” more than anything else. He extolled Zen to me all the time. When I shared my own worldview with him, he wrote to me that it was “morbid.” I concluded that Alan was the quintessential “light seeker in the light.” My own was more "light seeker in the dark,” through paradox and irony, the contemplative via negativa, the apophatic (or “hidden”) perspective. Alan seemed to neither fathom nor agree in his light-filled state of mind and being. 22 years ago I wrote a Masters Thesis, The Rebirth of the Christian Apophatic Spirit: Embracing the Dark Night of the Soul, in which I explored the writings of St. John of the Cross and Buddhist parallels as well as Western mystics such as Meister Eckhardt.Twelve years ago I wrote a Doctoral Dissertation, Forty Days and Forty Nights in the Wilderness: Comprehending Myth in Today’s World, in which I recognized and described various essential and elemental archetypes of Nature and Being that presented themselves to me during my ordeal. Nine years ago I published a book, Depression’s Seven Steps to Self-Understanding: A Guide to Comprehending and Navigating Your Inner Journey, in which I recognized and explored depression as an expression of the soul’s needs in its journey through our lives and us. Alan was in the process of reading the latter two of these writings, which we had begun to discuss.

I never met anyone with such enthusiasm, faith, love, and passion. Alan truly believed. He was such a mensch, such a good person. Alan had FAITH! Alan was INSPIRING. Amy and I loved him. We do and will miss him. As already noted, Alan said, he would "like to be in a body" again. Even as I write this, almost a month after his death, I can envision a little baby somewhere, smiling already, and bringing hope, joy, love, and great heart and mind once more into the world.

REALIZATIONS OF PAIN

I do live “by pain” and now sleep by pain as well. Pain legislates my being, the rules of my movement, my life. Yet I count my blessings and am most grateful that the pain is far more moderate than severe, that I am allowed so much pain-free movement, that I am able to walk in the forest and at the ocean when I choose to go. So, yes, there is pain, but there is also much freedom from it. And for that I am most grateful and most fortunate and, yes, most blessed by God and all the gods and goddesses. I have not been forgotten by the divinities who look after me. True, I am severely reminded of my life transgressions, my hurting, usually not malicious or intentional, of others, and I am given the benefit of knowing on a certain level how others do actually suffer in their bodies, as well as touching upon the suffering deeply and sharply in their minds, hearts and souls. I so feel their pain, as is said. Not just the physical pain but the deep pain of loss and abandonment and loneliness and regret for harms that I have committed upon others in my life. To be able to feel and go through this while I am still alive is a great blessing and gift that allows me not to have to wander lost and alone when I finally do leave the body. This is not morbid; rather, this is good fortune, the greatest of gifts, allowing me to feel myself one with all other human beings and to have and feel deep compassion and understanding for all, even the worst of them. And not only compassion, but hope, and a sense that my suffering is not in vain but possesses the purpose of giving me understanding and acceptance of myself and others and of the way it is in the world, of what we have done to ourselves and each other, in the hope and faith that it can be unraveled and undone, that we can make it right for ourselves and for each other in our understanding and our forgiveness. For, though this pain may even cripple our bodies, which may be their ultimate fate, it can also free our souls and hearts to operate beyond the poor body, the recipient of the blows of physical life and its ever-unsatisifed yearnings and desires of even heart and mind. Such pain squeezes these desires and appetites out of us as we come to recognize how much of mind and thought is driven by the needs and desires of a sixteen year-old seeking to conquer the world in so many ways to capture sexuality, power, fame, wealth and health for himself. And so I once did in great confidence and some success. But this conquering mind by necessity, by reality, changes. Life itself aids in our realizing our limits as times proceeds, as we age. The pain and limitation help us to disidentify with the world of the young, the endless conquest of everything by sheer will and drive of the young mind and body. Yet, still, at age 72, it foolishly persists as if it were still eighteen. Such hard-drivenness takes its toll on body and soul, and one realizes such in due time: one is simply no longer who one was over fifty years ago. One loses the dexterity, the strength, the endurance, the flexibility, the utter prowess one once possessed overwhelmingly. One loses the sense of unlimitness and endless faith in one’s utter and inevitable success and ignorant fearlessness of youth, which is the exact reason why young men are sent to war as cannon fodder; older men are not so naturally inclined in this way.

One becomes able to recognize reality regarding oneself and one’s limitations. One notices others, that there are others, if one is fortunate. One realizes the value and benefit of living for them, even as equal or better than living for oneself only. One, if one is fortunate and blessed in life, finds that love of others transcends love of self, or, more truly, is the epitome of love of self, for the other is oneself. The greatest joy comes from helping another.

And all this has come to arise out of my own experience of my own utter pain that has such power in my life. I am grateful for what it has revealed to me and utterly so.

THE MYTH OF HAPPINESS

Sometimes I forget some of the more sane, even wise, notions I put forth when I was younger. In my book, Depression's Seven Steps to Self-Understanding, which was published maybe eleven years ago, I spoke of the place of "happiness" in our lives and how it is so overemphasized because we are not only so unhappy but because we even more so refuse to face, much less realize, the reasons why. Rather than being willing to see the pain that is within us, that is within the world itself, we all believe that we must maintain a facade, a masque of "happiness" at all times. We equate happiness with "healthiness," with "good spirits." We dare not expose ourselves as unhappy, believing that to do such will only "spiral us downwards" into the deepest depression, even suicide. We believe that once we "open ourselves up," like Pandora's Box, all hell will break loose and we will either burn up in the flames of our own rage or drown in the tears of our own sorrow. In my book, I speak of Schopenhauer's notion of weltschmertz, or "world pain" or "world sorrow." Schopenhauer wrote that he felt this universal human pain and loss in the very pores of his own body. 

     Our need for such an overlay of happiness upon despair and rage and fear ultimately kills us, weighing so heavily upon our being that we are smothered or crushed. We have such an expectation of ourselves to be "normal" and socially acceptable that we repress and smother parts of ourselves that know we are not such happy, well and socially-balanced creatures at all. Some of those who cannot bear themselves or the so-called "culture of happiness" lash out against themselves through suicide or in group settings against those who believe they are having a good time. 

     In my book I speak of the reality of unhappiness, of the darkness it brings to the doorstep of happiness and all that that implies. If happiness is "normal," then unhappiness is "abnormal," thus to be avoided so that one is not "socially marked," shunned and outcast. Of course, happiness, in perhaps a truer, more inclusive, greater context is able to hold, though not hide, unhappiness within itself. In other words, when one is unhappy, one is unhappy, and one is quite aware of this and able to hold it within one's general context of being as a whole. One is thus able to be unhappy but also to be with it, as it were, rather than having to act out the rage of unacceptance it may create on either oneself or others. The Yijing or Book of Changes notes, seemingly paradoxically, that when one is unhappy, when one is "obstructed," one must be able to be unhappy with "good cheer," which is to say, understanding and acceptance of one's self in this moment. Being aware of oneself in such a "greater context" as this is the perpetual challenge to us all, is it not?

     As I initially noted, I forget that of which I was once more seemingly aware: that happiness is not an event, a moment, but, rather, a state of mind. And a state of mind in which one is aware of a larger context of being, of life, than merely what is happening, to oneself in particular in any given moment. Everything passes. We pass, for Christ's sake. In the great scheme of things, we are but a twinkling in our own eye. I myself talk of the reality of the "present moment," of the "here and now," even as the very moment I make note of it, it is no longer here and now but rather there and then. We actually believe that we can even define ourselves as "happy" or "unhappy," while even that is so utterly vague and relative. I am perpetually reminded of my favorite bumpersticker, Are We Having Fun Yet? 

    It may be a sin but I notice that I have far more trust of anyone who does NOT smile than those who smile all the time, though I also admit that there are those who can do both who are absolutely insane in their darkness, some in the highest places of our society. Still, a little happiness goes a very long way for me. I am also reminded of the handsome, charming, Poe's Masque of Red Death, recognized only after everyone has been mortally infected. Strange that I have wandered down this dark path is speaking of much-cherished Happiness. But there is a cherished place for Darkness, for the hidden, the unspoken, the unknown as well. Some of us head deep into the forest for this exact reason. For the peace, stillness, and quiet of the Darkness. I like to think of the soul as a dark place, like the womb from which we are born and is our first experience of life itself, a time before any happiness or unhappiness, but only perhaps a wholeness.

    It may be that our truer purpose is not to find answers but to seek questions.

M. ESTHER HARDING'S POST-WWII THOUGHTS PERTINENT TO OUR CURRENT AMERICAN PSYCHE

[I first published this essay in this blog in 2016. I reprint it here because I believe it to still be quite relevantto our current political situation. Harding was a Jungian author. Here she writes about thepsychic/psychological underpinnings of the influence of Hitler upon the German people.]

Harding wrote Psychic Energy: Its Source and Its Transformation, first published in 1948, with its Foreword written by Jung in 1947. I have excerpted quotes from the text (pp. 3-9) that, in my estimation, can be clearly related to our current political, social, and cultural situation in America. A crossroads seems to have been reached with choices to be made. My hope is that we may approach what confronts us as consciously and responsibly as possible.  The following material is directly quoted from Harding:

“Beneath the decent façade of consciousness with its disciplined moral order and its good intentions lurk the crude instinctive forces of life, like monsters of the deep—devouring, begetting, warring endlessly. They are for the most part unseen, yet on their urge and energy life itself depends … But were they left to function unchecked, life would lose its meaning … In creating civilization man sought, however unconsciously, to curb these natural forces and to channel some part at least of their energy into forms that would serve a different purpose. For with the coming of consciousness, cultural and psychological values began to compete with the purely biological aims of unconscious functioning.”

             “Throughout history two factors have been at work in the struggle to bring about the control and discipline of these non-personal, instinctive forces of the psyche. Social controls and the demands of material necessity have exerted a powerful discipline from without, while an influence of perhaps even great potency has been applied from within the individual himself, in the form of symbols and experiences of a numinous character … So powerful indeed were these experiences that they became the core of religious dogmas and rituals that in turn have influenced the large mass of the people. That these religious forms have had power to curb the violence and ruthlessness of the primitive instincts to such an extent and for so long a time is a matter for the greatest wonder … It must mean that the symbols of a particular religion were peculiarly adapted to satisfy the urge of the conflicting inner forces, even lacking the aid of conscious understanding, and in many cases without the individual’s having himself participated in the numinous experience on which the ritual was originally based.”

             “So long as the religious and social forms are able to contain and in some measure to satisfy the inner and outer life needs of the individuals who make up a community, the instinctive forces lie dormant … Yet at times they awaken … and then the noise and tumult of their elemental struggle break in upon our ordered lives and rouse us rudely from our dreams of peace and contentment. Nevertheless we try to blind ourselves to the evidence of their untamed power, and delude ourselves into believing that man’s rational mind has conquered not only the world of nature around him but also the world of natural, instinctive life within.”

             “These childish beliefs have received not a few shocks of late. The increase in power that science has made available to man has not been equaled by a corresponding increase in the development and wisdom of human beings; and the upsurge of instinctive energies that has occurred in the last twenty-five years in the political field has not as yet been adequately controlled, let alone tamed or converted to useful ends. Yet for the most part we continue to hope that we will be able to reassert the ascendancy of reasonable, conscious control without any very radical concomitant change in man himself. It is of course obviously easier to assume that the problem lies outside of one’s own psyche than to undertake responsibility for that which lurks within oneself … Can we be so sure that the instinctive forces that caused the dynamic upheavals in Europe, and obliterated in a decade the work of centuries of civilization, are really limited by geographical or racial boundaries to the people of other nations? May they not, like the monsters of the deep, have access to all oceans? … Is “our sea”—the unconscious as we participate in it—exempt from such upheavals?”

             “The force that lay behind the revolutionary movements in Europe was not something consciously planned for or voluntarily built up; it arose spontaneously from the hidden sources of the Germanic psyche, being evoked perhaps but not consciously made by will power [and it is here that the comparison to our American circumstances may come to mind]. It erupted from unfathomable depths and overthrew the surface culture that had been in control for so many years. This dynamic force seemingly had as its aim the destruction of everything that the work of many centuries had laboriously built up and made apparently secure, to the end that the aggressors might enrich themselves in the resulting chaos, at the expense of all other peoples, meanwhile ensuring that none would be left with sufficient strength to endanger the despoilers for centuries to come.”

             “The excuse they offered for their disregard of international law and the rights of others was their own fundamental needs had been denied. They justified their actions on the ground of instinctual compulsion, the survival urge that requires living space, defensible frontiers, and access to raw materials—demands in the national sphere corresponding to the imperatives of the instinct of self-preservation in the individual.”

             “The aggressors claimed that the gratification of an instinct on the lowest biological level is an inalienable right, regardless of what means are employed for its satisfaction: ‘My necessity is of paramount importance; it has divine sanction… Your necessity, by comparison, is of no importance at all.’ This attitude is either cynically egotistic or incredibly naïve. The Germans are a Western people and have been under Christian influence for centuries; they might therefore be expected to be psychologically and culturally mature. Were this the case, would not the whole nation have to be judged to be antisocial and criminal? It was not only the Nazi overlords, with their ruthless ideology, who disregarded the rights of others so foully; the whole nation manifested a naïve egocentricity akin to that of a young child … and this, rather than a conscious and deliberate criminality, may perhaps account for their gullibility and their acquiescence in the Nazi regime. Deep within the German unconscious, forces that were not contained or held in check by the archetypal symbols of the Christian religion, but had flowed back into pagan forms, notably Wotanism [regressive because focused on the individual in contradistinction to the collective focus of Christianity], were galvanized into life by the Nazi call. For that which is the ideal or the virtue of an outworn culture is the antisocial crime of its more evolved and civilized successor.”

             “The energy that could change the despondent and disorganized Germany of 1930 into the highly organized and optimistic, almost daemonically powerful nation of a decade later, must have arisen from deeply buried sources … These dramatic changes swept over the country like an incoming tide or a flood brought about by the release of dynamic forces that had formerly lain quiescent in the unconscious. The Nazi leaders seized upon the opportunity brought within their reach by this ‘tide in affairs of men.’ They were able to do this because they were themselves the first victims of the revolutionary dynamism surging up from the depths, and they recognized that a similar force was stirring in the mass of the people; they had but to call it forth and release it from the civilized restraints that still ruled the ordinary, decent folk. If these forces has not been already active in the unconscious of the German people as a whole, the Nazi agitators would have preached their new doctrine in vain; they would have appeared to the people as criminals or lunatics, and by no means would have been able to arouse popular enthusiasm or to dominate the nation for twelve long years.”

             “The spirit of this dynamism is directly opposed to the spirit of civilization. The first seeks life in movement, change, exploitation; the second has sought throughout the ages to create a form wherein life may expand, may build, may make secure. And indeed Christian civilization, despite all its faults and shortcomings [which are legion], represents the best that man in his inadequacy has as yet succeeded in evolving. … Crimes against … humanity are constantly being perpetrated not only in overt acts but also … through ignorance and … ego-oriented attitudes. Consequently the needs of the weak have been largely disregarded, and the strong have had things their own way.”

             “But those who are materially and psychologically less well endowed have as large as share of instinctive desire and as strong a will to live as the more privileged. These natural longings, so persistently repressed, cannot remain quiescent indefinitely. It is not so much that the individual rebels—the masses of the people being proverbially patient—but nature rebels in him: the forces of the unconscious boil over when the time is ripe. The danger of such an eruption is not, however, limited to the less fortunate in society, for the instinctive desires of many of the more fortunate likewise have been suppressed, not by a greedy upper class but by the too rigid domination of the moral code and conventional law. This group also shows signs of rebellion and may break forth in uncontrollable violence, as has so recently happened in Germany. If this should happen elsewhere, the energies unleashed would pour further destruction over the world. But there remains another possibility, namely, that these hidden forces stirring in countless individuals the world over may be channeled again, as they were at the beginning of the Christian era, by the emergence of a powerful archetype or symbol, and so many create for themselves a different form, paving the way for a new stage of civilization.”

             [At this point Harding approaches Communism.] “For this new dynamic or daemonic spirit that sprung into being is endowed with an almost incredible energy … Can it conceivably create a new world order? … It does not look as if it could be repressed once more into the unconscious. It has come to stay. And the spirit that conserves and builds up, if it survives at all, cannot remain unaffected by the impact of so vital a force.”

             “These two world spirits, which Greek philosophy called ‘the growing’ and ‘the burning,’ stand in mortal combat … Will the revolutionary spirit triumph and become the dominant spirit of the next world age? Will war follow war … ? Or dare we hope that out of the present struggle and suffering a new world spirit may be born, to create for itself a new body of civilization?”

             [Now Harding turns to the psychologist-as-healer.] “For the psychologist can observe the unfolding of this same conflict in miniature in individual persons. The problems and struggles disturbing the peace of the world must in the last analysis be fought out in the hearts of individuals before they can be truly resolved in the relationships of nations. On this plane they must of necessity be worked out within the span of a single life.”

             “In the individual, no less than in the nation, the basic instincts make a compulsive demand for satisfaction; and here to civilization has imposed a rule of conduct aimed to repress or modify the demand. Every child undergoes an education that imposes restraint on his natural response to his own impulses and desires, substituting a collective or conventional mode of behavior. In many cases the result is that the conscious personality is too much separated from its instinctive roots; … until in the course of time the repressed instincts rebel and generate a revolution in the individual similar to that which has been threatening the peace of the world.”

             “… But not real solution of such a fundamental problem can be found except through a conscious enduring of the conflict that arises when the instincts revolt against the too repressive rule of the conscious ego. If the ego regains control, the status quo ante will be re-established and the impoverishment of life will continue … If, on the other hand, the repressed instincts obtain the mastery, unseating the ego, the individual will be in danger of disintegrating either morally or psychologically. That is, he will either lose all moral values … or he will lose himself in a welter of collective or nonpersonal, instinctive drives … .”

             “But if the individual who is caught in such a problem has sufficient courage and stability to face the issue squarely, not allowing either contending element to fall back into the unconscious, regardless of how much pain and suffering may be involved, a solution of the conflict may develop spontaneously in the depths of the unconscious. Such a solution will not appear in the form of an intellectual conclusion or thought-out plan, but will arise in dream or phantasy in the form of an image or symbol, so unexpected and yet so apt that it appearance will seem like a miracle. Such a symbol has the effect of breaking the deadlock. It has power to bring the opposing demands of the psyche together in a newly created form through which the life energies can flow in a new creative effort. Jung has called this the reconciling symbol [and sounds much like Hegel’s “synthesis”]. Its potency avails … to effect a transformation or modification of the instinctive drives within the individual … .”

        

                “This is something entirely different from a change in conscious attitude, such as might be brought about by education or precept. It is not a compromise, nor is the solution achieved through an increased effort to control the asocial tendencies, the outbursts of anger or the like. … It is only after all … efforts towards a solution have failed that the reconciling symbol appears. It arises from the depths of the unconscious psyche [or, as I see it, soul or embodied spirit] and produces its creative effect on a level of the psychic life beyond the reach of the rational consciousness, where it has power to produce a change in the very character of the instinctive urge itself, with the result that the nature of the “I want” is actually altered.” (3-9)

                It seems that Harding, in her understanding of Jung, is suggesting a mass radical evolution of consciousness, an enlightenment for all, a Hegelian synthesis of understanding and action, a Christian “act of God,” even a miracle, an Anthroposophical recognition and understanding of the positive aspects of our “lower (instinctive) nature” as presented in the luciferic (ego-centered, individualistic) and ahrimanic (materialistic, nature-based, instinctive) “impulses” (as put forth in The Influences of Lucifer and Ahriman: Human Responsibility for the Earth by Rudolf Steiner), and a Jungian exposition of Self, including all of its shadow aspects, as an individuation of humanity. I share Harding with you that we may all find the “greater context” in which we “live and move and have our being.” And thus be more enabled to make wise and real choices.

             Please note that I do not necessarily agree with all that Harding or Jung say here, but that I do believe that what Harding says is quite relevant and important here and now for us all.