zenomax 2014

Current reading ...



Walter Benjamin's Archive: Images, Texts, Signs
by Walter Benjamin

The Exegesis of Philip K Dick.

Wondering where Benjamin will take you.

He's already taken me places, dan. I've had The Arcades project as a bedside book for a couple of years now.

There is still much unknown about Benjamin in the english speaking world, due to limited translations of his lesser pieces.

So 2 days into my attempt to follow a strictly vegan diet. I'm also foregoing alcohol, tea and coffee for this period. After 2 days it is hard going!

I'm also foregoing alcohol, tea and coffee for this period

But how will you regulate the vegan blues? Brave soul.

What is the layout of the Benjamin book like? Is there any attempt to provide documents in their original form or something like it, like cod-archive style, or is it exctracted text only?

I'm thinking of taking a run at The Origin of German Tragic Drama later this year. Have you read it? Any thoughts?

Stay healthy zeno

5 Martin, my worry was that coffee and alcohol would over regulate the vegan blues. So far so good. Aim is to try and last 2 weeks and see what sticks.

The Benjamin book is extracted text and some commentary. I bought it as an adjunct to The Arcades Project, but it probably shouldn't be bought as a first Bejamin book. There is some insight into the way WB's mind works, the word maps he used in order to join multifarious ideas together, and some additional notes on Kafka (additional to what he wrote about in Illuminations and The Arcades Project).

March, I haven't read that book, but I will say that WB will provide a fresh, interesting and always intellectual response.

Bas, I intend to. At the very least some weight may be shed.

Zeno good to see you back for the New year and, if it's not too late, all the best for it.

>2 dchaikin:
Benjamin will take you everywhere.

So Z keeps implying. I haven't gotten past just wondering about it.

Intriguing cover on the Benjamin book. It looks like it really fits.
Vegan is really tough. Keep balancing those nutrients!

Zeno, happy new year old chap!

I'm looking forward to some excerpts from WB. Any chance of that?

11 - thanks Tony, may the year be good to you in turn.

12, 13 - take U's word for it dan.

14 thanks SL, I will look to balance my intake.

15 every chance of it, my dear fellow.

Vegan for a while - I can understand. But forgoing coffee is a cruel and unusual punishment... Good luck in succeeding in your plans anyway :)

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article01131401.aspx

Hey Zeno, saw this and thought of you.

Thanks for posting that link, Murr. It just makes all that more interested in Benjamin...I have so much to learn.

I enjoyed it too and want to read WB (there is a great quote from him that Celan attributes via another in his speech The Meridian, you probably know it from an essay on Kafka). I hope its not out of place to say on your thread Zeno that the article does make me wonder about other sides to the story and to wonder about such judgements as it makes. Perhaps more understanding of what they see as his bullshit (bullshit of a type many at the time fell for, as we all do always) may help to explain what they see as such a miraculous change in register, instead of simply judging a person as identical with their product, I mean who is?

Well still largely vegan, and still foregoing coffee and alcohol weekdays.

Tony I found the article a little too much of a hatchet job on Benjamin. I remember a similar piece on Kafka which seemed to conflate his privacy and lack of disclosure with his writing.

Both K and WB are very interior people and live much of the time in their heads. I can imagine them being two faced in dealing with the outside world, almost out of necessity. Which is not to excuse.

The Chrysalids, John Wyndham.

At some unspecified time in the earth's future, after an unspecified catastrophic event, a community, Waknuk, exists near the frontier known as the fringes, where those disfigured by the catastrophe (known as the Tribulation) dwell haphazardly.

The fringes form a borderlands between normality and the madness of the badlands where trees, plants and sentient beings have become grotesques. Further on, land has become fused into black glass, as the epicentre of the catastrophe is approached.

The residents of Waknuk deal with life by banishing or destroying anything which does not appear normal. This is relatively straight forward where physical irregularities are concerned, but a small group of children have evolved another irregularity, that of telepathy.

The story explores Puritanism, edge dwellers, and the emergence of 'superior' life. Family is seen as stultifying.

In the end, the puritanicals are killed with as little compunction as the fringe dwellers, as a new, more rational, more advanced society comes to the rescue.

Strange and ultimately distasteful story, from an interesting writer.

The Exegesis of Philip K Dick.

Enrique F hectored me about needing to purchasing this. I gave in and bought the book, and have begun to browse through it.

I think I will be reading it over the next few weeks.

All I can say at this stage is that PKD is a genius. Despite his chequered history with drugs and mental illness, he seems to be a natural successor to Jung (whom he read closely over the years).

I don't see him as any less sane than Jung (which, admittedly, is not 100% sane) and with the same breadth of vision and background knowledge of gnosis and philosophy.

I also see a connection with the philosophical structure behind my other interest, the enneagram. This philosophy argues that we are born with a personality fully integrated with the universe, which then quickly becomes detached and at a variance with who we really are. Our life is then a constant battle to return to the pristine personality, that oneness with everything else.

PKD discusses this in terms of the Platonic idea of anamnesis.

Their is much in these edited diaries to consider. PKD also touches on another area of interest to me, the link between a Gaian universe, self regulating and connected, and the esoteric world of linkages between levels of existence... Spiritual, psychological, rational.

Wow! Can't wait to hear more about this one.

Enjoyed your review of The Chrysalids You didn't like the ending?

Enjoy The Exegesis of Philip k Dick

Thanks bas.

I guess The Chrsyalids disappointed me on a couple of levels. It didn't have as much depth as I had hoped for after the promising opening chapters. The premise is in itself interesting, and the suggestion of a lot of unknowns in the wider world set up some potential for imaginative themes and storylines. But it seemed to drift into shallow waters in the latter part.

Which leads me in to the second level of disquiet with the ending. Our heroes move from being potential outcasts, scapegoats, the 'other' of our subconscious, to becoming members of the next stage of human evolution (we can surmise from the arc of the story). They escape from the outcasts and the puritans, leaving significant numbers of dead in both groups, using a humane way of killing - another proof of evolutionary superiority.

I'm not sure what Wyndham's politics were, and it is hard to tell from this story. However, eugenics, which may be the crux of my issue, appears in both left and right ideology. There is a real whiff of it in this story.

I know that Wyndham is more complex than that if you measure him across all his works, but this story was not one I could find enthusiasm for, despite its interesting themes.

Thanks March-Hare.

To summarise, I am hoping that reading the Exegesis will help clarify my thoughts around Dick's conception of reality compared/collided with Jung's theory of collective subconscious, Lovelock's Gaia, and Naranjo's hovering abyss.

Ok, so I'm going to set down some descriptions of these different concepts, so that I can understand myself where it is I am trying to get to here. These are just ethereal clouds of mist bumping together in my mind at present, not sure if there is anything really there or not.

Let's start with the more flaky end of things:

The Akashic Records

According to theosophist lore, a 'compendium of mystical knowledge' exists: "The akashic record is like an immense photographic film, registering all the desires and earth experiences of our planet". These records have also been compared to a supercomputer, recording all possible events in our particular universe (and, who knows, potentially beyond that).

Now, having just begun reading The Exegesis of Philip k Dick, I came across a theory of his on the concept of 'time'. Dick argues that time is actually a force (like gravity), and that we are at a stage in the evolution of the universe where time is weakening, at least in comparison with other forces.

Dick, with his SF masterbrain, argues that this means a slippage in linear, progressive time, such that we both:

1.regress back in time (he seems to suggest these are only short hops backwards, maybe hours, days or weeks), and that we only feel something is amiss through feelings of oddly acknowledged dreams or amnesia, and
2. Find matter from the future 'leaking' back into our own time, Dick describes this as 'information, images, weak energy fields'. These, he suggests, can become known to us, such that we experience feelings of ESP.

The interesting link here with the Akashic Records, is the view that information can transcend linear time. The records hold data on past, present and future. Dick's theory is that time itself weakens and leaks out elements of both past and future.

Interesting zeno.

Starred!

28, 29> I guess that would explain things like deja vu?

Fascinating Zeno. I recently wrote a poem that featured holistically GPS stamped photographs of myself/my life, so am very interested by the idea of Akashic records, albeit my view was personal. I know nothing of Theosophy really. I can't help wonder if the records store room would be as bare as that of the filing room of Sherlock's (in Benedict Cumberbatch guise) most recent adversary. if perhaps they are reached like that previous sense of oneness.

Time, it's a funny old thing. I like his thinking.

http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2014/02/06/metaphor-as-extratemporal-moment-in-rob...

Links to a very interesting piece on Musil and Proust. Two mainstays of my theoretical background of reality, and therefore quite pertinent to what I am looking at presently on this thread.

Well met Tony!

Yes, time is a fascinating concept. Where, for instance, and with Proust in mind, does it go once it has passed? And from whence do we retrieve its faint footprint?

31 thank you.

32 yes, my presumption too. We possibly did relive the very same experience that happened maybe 48 hours earlier.....that conundrum of time!

The Collective Subconscious

Jung believed that the deepest recesses of our mind, based on our most primordial attributes, contained a set if archetypical images, shared by all. This could also be termed a supercomputer of humanity's past, present and future. It encompasses all human understanding, and, potentially, is a living thing which evolves over time.

We are all, according to Jung, connected via this concept. Our ego provides our conscious understanding of ourself and our place in the world, our personal subconscious provides us with memory (both remembered and suppressed), and the collective subconscious provides us with a link to the rest of humanity and to our ancient forebears.

So we again have a concept of information that almost transcends time. Potentially there is interaction between past, present and future via the collective subconscious? It seems too powerful and pervasive a concept to be restricted by linear time.

It is also a rival too the divinity, because, potentially it could be a spontaneous, non conscious phenomena. When we speak of nature, potentially this us the spiritual, transcendent part of what nature is.

It is interesting to note, and further evidence of Jung as Esotericist as opposed to Scientist, that Madame Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled, had already spoken of hidden and unknown forces of nature, and the common source of all religions, an ancient wisdom religion.

So what would be you recommend as a starting point for Jung on the collective unconscious?

I read Psychological Types awhile back and it disappointed my expectations a bit. I thought there would be more "theory" of types. Most of the book was taken up with a meandering and somewhat uneven discussion of the antecedents to his theory. Not bad, just not what I was looking for.

Thanks for the link to the Proust/Musil article by the way.

Naranjo's Abyss

The enneagram assumes a connected universe, and a pathway for each of 9 types to respond to that universe. However, because the 9 types have been distanced from the true nature if the universe, each type in its own way, there is an abyss of meaningless just out if reach. Out if reach because each type also hides from the abyss in its own way.

For Naranjo, the abyss is a void caused by our errant view of the world. The real world, the true universe, is one connected living thing, ultimately benign and liberating.

41, meandering is what Jung does best. Often it is his successors who flesh out his theories.

Jung's Archetypes and the collective unconscious is his most elaborate explanation, but there are many books commenting in the concept.

You've reminded me that I've really been meaning to pick up some of Jung's writings, largely because one of his disciples, James Hillman, is the psychologist I most admire (and most enjoy reading).

Lovelock's Gaian theory

The earth is a self regulating organism, whereby animate and inanimate parts work together to keep a balance. There is no suggestion of a presence other than nature itself, the self regulation is almost an automaton, not an intelligent presence. Like gravity, it is a law that continues to act regardless.

44 yes, if you like Hillman you will be attuned to Jung.

Biocentrism

scientist Robert Lanza has proposed that biology is central to the construction of the universe. Life creates the universe, rather than the other way around. Lanza argues that consciousness is of prime importance, and that the universe only exists through the existence of consciousness.

This is an interesting twist on the argument that the universe only knows itself through our actions.

The fifth principle of Biocentrism is particularly interesting. This 'points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life'.

Not unlike Gaia or the enneagram view of aconnected universe.

"The longer I look at the paintings of Jan Peter Tripp, the more I realize that beneath the surface illusionism there lurks a terrifying abyss. It is, so to speak, the metaphysical underside of reality, its dark inner lining."

W G Sebald. He was familiar with the abyss.

http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612.pdf

An essay by David Foster Wallace on the humour in Kafka's stories.

"No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke - that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home."

Enjoyed DFW's essay. Thanks for the link.

'When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.'

Peter Handke, excerpt from Song of childhood.

Part of this poem is read, as it is being written, in the introduction to the Wenders film, Wings of Desire. Wings of Desire was written by Handke.

You're welcome dan.

Two Anna Kavan's on their way. Could be a new kind of magic.

Haven't forgotten Mr P K Dick.

So Dick is working through ideas in order to stave off any impending glimpse of the abyss. In this he is no different to Jung, Freud, Indian religious gurus, Camus, Sartre or even Hitler.

If the abyss is always hovering a hair's breadth away for us, like an alternative universe, there are some who seem more aware of it than others. A slight rising of the hairs on their skin, or an imaginary electric shock, brought ion by the presence of that which is not present in form.

Hmmmm...what about the possibility of (a perhaps partial) integration?

>51 zenomax: Wings of Desire is one of my favorite films, and that poem has a habit of drifting into my brain. Thanks for sending it there again!

My favourite film too.

Wenders taps into the visionary (as opposed to rationalist) side of the INTJ.i think from memory you are INTJ too?

55 yes where does any integration come from? That is indeed the question.

>57 zenomax: I had to go back and look at your thread from last year, but yes, INTJ.

My reaction about abyss may be similar to question about integration (if you can integrate figure and ground) -- I wonder if there are people who don't stave off the abyss. But struggle to name any for sure -- maybe Heidegger in 'What is metaphysics' Am interested if you can think of others. I wonder about Camus as not staving it off in Sisyphus, accepting.

what about Dostoevsky's underground man? Seems to me he was aware of and embraced the abyss.

A long time sine I read the part of that I did, so I will have to reread and see tomcat, but you caused me to reflect that Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy would seem to be embracing this abyss too, how could I forget.

The argument with Nietzsche is that he confronted the abyss and lost his sanity as a result.

I had the thought of Camus too. He potentially has come up with the most sensible way of treating the unknowingness we continually have to confront. Be interested in hearing bas' view given his recent coverage of Camus.

I think writers who have an existential understanding of existence have produced characters who react to the situation. Dostoevsky, on my basic understanding, was an early modernist, before modernism truly broke, and knew very well about the abyss.

Kafka of course knew the abyss, and although not integrating it, at least gave it a personal face, populating it with characters (his famous 'messengers' who childlike and eventually inconsequential at least do point to something or someone vaguely pulling the strings in the background).

Tony, as you read more of Benjamin you will find he has a great deal to say about Kafka.

One wonders what Camus last thoughts were as he went hurtling towards that tree. I think he said it all in The Myth of Sisyphus one of my all time favourite essays.

where does any integration come from?

Dieter Henrich on Holderlin in Between Kant and Hegel p. 293.

"It is impossible, however, to achieve complete reunification of that which has been separated (and this is Holderlin's next step). There is no way back into undifferentiated "Being" once the mind has originated. There is no way to overcome the the separation in the finite world, because that would mean the mind overcoming its very nature. Therefore, Holderlin continues, three ways are available for the mind to relate itself to its original correlate: (1) the practical process of building a rational world (this is what Fichte had in mind, and this alone); (2) the recollection of the origin and subsequent history, by which recollection a transcendence of all present finite objects is attempted: and (3) the surrender of the mind to the "beautiful objects" in the world, which are very special correlates that symbolize the perfect unity sought by the mind. These correlates are the only objects to which the mind can surrender itself without losing its freedom and its internal infinity. Holderlin calls the way in which this surrender can take place "love", an attitude for which Fichte could never account.

I'm hoping you've not fallen into the abyss? If so do you need a life-belt?

No, still here Tony.

I've been counting down my top 100 books on another thread, as well as sundry real life stuff.

However, a catch up on what I've been reading over the interim:

Anna Kavan - interesting, I should like to read a bio of her after reading her fiction. I've just read (most of) Sleep has his house, which I came to after hearing that the Current 93 song of the same name was based on it.

Also looking to read some surrealist and Dadaist books, having relied heavily on their poetry and art in the past, neglecting their novels. I have books to read by Hugo Ball, Louis Aragon, Phillipe Soupault and Paul Eluard.

My dada/Surrealist reading dates back to my late school years and university. It would be interesting to re explore in detail after my Jung and esoteric readings of the last few years.

I'd also like to understand the work of some of the women in these movements. They seem to have been somewhat neglected. The likes of Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington and Hannah Hoch seem at least as interesting as there male counterparts.

I've also purchased a couple of Lispector books, my first. Quite interesting.

Maybe I need to dedicate a thread to female alternative reality writers of the twentieth century. I'm thinking of Marguerite Duras as well in this context.

Hi Zeno! I was wondering where you were. You have been in my thoughts recently because of a book I was reading called Archetypal Imagination by Noel Cobb, and Jung's name is invoked frequently. In some ways it is reminiscent of The Philosopher's Secret Fire by Patrick Harpur, which we both read a couple of years ago. The common thread being that archetypal psychology, as represented by Cobb, seems to also think that monotheism is an enemy to our collective mental health.

Reading through your thread, I see that you continue to read books that sound thought-provoking.

Anyway, good to catch up with you. Don't be a stranger!

70 - I've just been through your review of Archetypal Imagination, and it appears to be very much on topic for me. Imagination is the key concept that I have been trying to grapple with these last few years - it seems to me it is central to the human experience. Excellent review, it provided me also with a reminder that I want to get hold of Andrei Rublev.

In turn let me inform you about the book I'm now reading, The idea of the numinous. These are essays on a variety of topics relating to Jung and the idea of the numinous. The essay on Jung and Derrida is interesting, looking (as Harpur did) at the difference between spirit and soul, the male and female perspectives (Earth Mother as the necessary counterpoint to masculine spirit).... Very, very interesting.

I suggest we look to swap books.

Good to see you posting here again Zeno :)

>71 zenomax: Thanks for telling me about The Idea of the Numinous. I just took a look inside at the table of contents and sampled a bit here and there, and this is going onto my wish list. It looks as though it will answer a couple of questions I have been pondering myself. Indeed, it does look very interesting!

Also reading Alfred Kubin, The Other Side.

Reading up on background to Anna kavan, I came across this quote.

"Surrealism begins with the recognition that the real (the real real, one might say, opposed to the fragmented, one-dimensional pseudo-real upheld by narrow realisms and rationalisms) includes many diverse elements that are ordinarily repressed or suppressed."

Penelope Rosemont.

Also came across this interesting author and book:

Anita Konkka, A Fool's Paradise.

>75 zenomax: Also famous for having the surname with the most ks.

Correct, bas.

The ego that relates to the other as to a “Thou” is different from the ego that’s relating to an “It.” You can turn anything into a Thou, so the whole world is a Thou. That’s what the mystical experience is supposed to be. As soon as anything is an It, you have duality. I-Thou is not a duality.

Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living.

Campbell reveals himself to be a Jungian mystic, with an intuitive thinking personality type.

The use of duality is interesting and reminds me of a book I read a couple of years back on the birth of modernity in Vienna at the turn of the last century, in which the idea of duality, of conflicting opposites played a big part.

Freud was part of the general milieu around this movement, so Jung must have also been influenced by it.

Jung's response, though, was to see these opposites as ultimately uniting in one. Thus the circle, as reflected for instance in the mandala, the circular rather than the linear, was of prime importance in his worldview.

Mandalas also tend to reflect the number four, Jung's quaternity. The adding of a fourth component to a three makes it radically different in both nature and future possibility.

The trinity could be said to form the basis of the spiritual whilst the quaternity is reflective more of the soul and of nature.

I need to read more on this area. What does it mean exactly?

Have you read Buber?

I'm not even going to try to answer the last question.

I guess the thing about the trinity is that it is also one, capital O. Oh i'm going to start answering afterall, cos then it occurred to me that anything after that one and three is in relation to it.

if i don't press post now i'lll forget whatever that meant and will have to delete it all, lost, but no.

I haven't read Buber, Tony. Should I?

Yes, the additional after three must be seen in relation to it rather than as part of it (and in what sense? Oppositional, complementary, helping it evolve or making it radically something else?).

I knew this would be a fruitful area to explore.

I need to see what else Jung (and maybe Campbell, whom I have only just started readi) have to say about it.

I'm going to look into Buber as well if I can.

Buber wrote I and thou which was just the sort of thing to go with the Campbell quote. It's excellent, though I have never read it all. It could be Campbell was thinking of it when he wrote what he did.

I'm not sure on after three, it was a thought that went off when writing here. I could wonder if the other numbers are somehow subject to it part of nature as you say. I suspect we can have that any way we want it and anticipate some quibbling with putting a trinity first.

The Idea of the Numinous, Edited by Ann Casement and David Tacey.



This book carries a chapter by Susan Rowland titled 'Jung and Derrida: the numinous, decosnstruction and myth'. It is interesting in two areas, one in adding to my understanding of the differences between what James Hillman calls the soul and the spirit. Secondly in introducing me to Derrida's concept of borders or, in Derrida's term: the 'frame'.

So, spirit versus soul. Soul, for Hillman, is about imagination. It is open to experience and to reflection, and it can break into our daily lives through natural urges, memories and fantasies. The soul appears grounded, yet somehow connected with the realm of the night, the dead, the moon and lunar cycle.

Spirit is about the one path, the right path. It is about the beyond and above, where there is always and anon something superior to be aiming for. Spirit is about light, about quickening, vertical and ascending.



Rowland also looks at these two 'paths' but in a different way, as the two creation myths relating to the Sky Father (aka Spirit) and the Earth Mother (Soul). She then considers how the conservative Swiss burgher, Jung and the more radical Derrida dealt with these two competing traditions or world views. Jung is described by Rowland as 'a conservative with revolutionary ideas' which is, I think, an apt description. Jung sees the presence, and the importance of the myth of eros, or the Earth Mother, but, as Rowland puts it: he 'wants to save the modern world more than he wants to transform it'. In other words, he sees the importance of the balancing of the two traditions, but doesn't want to transform the modern, paternalistic world of the Sky father because of his conservative nature.

Interestingly, Rowland describes how Jung considered both theologians and secular scientists as actually being on the same path, following a Sky Father:

"So theologians continue to seek the good and rational mind of God as logos transcendant of creation. Eventually belief in the sacred in the sky declines and those theologians studying creation re-define themselves as scientists. They are still in pursuit of a logos: now science, knowledge and reason are regarded as transcendant, logocentric, and divisible from irrationality, the human psyche, and matter. The Christian myth of transcendece produces the scientific myth of objectivity."

These two antogonists are therefore part of the same tradition of the paternalistic, we know best school. The logocentric nature of the Sky Father is also dualist in nature, so the dichotomies between (for instance) good and evil, inside and outside, masculine and feminine are integral (and, in passing, such a dualist view is also in fact the basis of modernism - which perhaps underscores the difficulty the esoteric movement has - it is not only an antecedant but also now anithetical to the modernist impulse).

Yet the Earth Mother fights back in the modernist world through the esoteric and underground traditions, the eco movements, and those who see human beings as immanent in nature. In this respect the concept of culitvation appears to be an important human grounding mechanism (both literally and metaphorically).

The esoteric movements from the neo platonists onwards appear to be tacit followers of soul, or the Earth Mother. Hillman says 'Neoplatonism.... sought to see through literal meanings into occult ones, searching for depth in the lost, the hidden, and the buried...' This suggests that the mainstream is almost exclusively and at all times in modern history subject to the logos of the Sky Father.

This searching for depth seems very much a soul matter. Spirit thinks it has depth, but in reality it treads lightly but rapidly on its pathway, ever forwards to the promised land. As Hillman notes:

...spirit is after ultimates and it travels by means of a via negativa. "Neti, neti," it says, "not this, not that." Strait is the gate and only first and last things will do."

Very interesting review of The Idea of the Numinous, Zeno. It seems to touch on and confirm other things we have read. Adding it to my wish list.

Thanks for sharing this Zeno, very nourishing thoughts. It made me think of the duende or dark soul in the tradition of Flamenco and southern Spain I think. It also makes me think how the logocentric is resistant - I suppose this is the "Neti, neti" - to anything that challenges the word. Even for myself I suppose no matter how much I believe in soul type things of the type you suggest, it is very hard to argue them to the spirit, in fact of course they cannot be, and I know this too, they must be shown and felt. And that is an important thing for me to remember. Yet the scientist and maybe theologian I imagine doubt this very much, or some of them may...maybe? My impression is they can do, or it can be a spin off of following their thinking without working through wholly all the time, but following.

85, 86 Suzanne, Tony thanks for your thoughts. It is an area I have been thinking about over the last year, particualrly how it relates to the work of Jung, and to the workings of the Enneagram.

The modern Enneagram theorists (Naranjo in particular) seem to have been influenced more by Freud than by Jung. There is a degree of emphasisng the negative, empahasising the need to displace the ego, and proscribing a rigid path to follow. This sounds like spirit, like the Sky Father talking. Freud is very much of this school I think. Straight lines, "only the first and last things will do". In this context, the conservative Swiss, Jung, comes across as a radical - the circular (think Mandala), the mysteries of life that Jung has trouble discerning, the eternal rather than a fixed point in the future.

Interestingly, there are now Enneagram teachers who are looking more at the positives in personality types. The enneagram is itself circular, and one could argue that it points to an ongoing process, a search for an absolute point, but one which we can never achieve. We are seekers who as a species need to be chasing the goal, but on that chase we are constantly learning new things, about ourselves and our universe. Maybe that is the grail after all, the ongoing process of learning in the context of a living universe.

86 Tony - there are theologians and scientists who see things in this way. In terms of scientists - Lovelock and the concept of Gaia, John G Bennett, a mathematician who wrote on the enneagram, and David Bohm the theoretical physicist and his work on the implicate order.

I mentioned above Derrida's concept of the 'frame'. In her essay 'Jung and Derrida: the numinous, decosnstruction and myth', Susan Rowland discusses how the concept might help us understand Jung's ideas around myth and the numinous.

Rowland considers the frame around an artwork. The frame tells us where the piece of art finshes and where the world outside the artwork begins. But is the frame in the art work, outside it or in some third dimension - neither outside nor in? This example shows that the frame is not a neutral device, it informs the artwork and it impacts on the outside world, yet is potentially part of neither. Rowland argues that this concept provides a difficulty for the spirit/logos:

'The assumption that a frame is unproblematic, that inside and outside are self evident logical distinctions, is part of the form/matter distinction in Christian theology.'

So the frame is problematic, given as it is to providing a theoretical boundary between form and matter, a boundary that is both important and supposedly invisible or insubstantial (because it supposedly does not effect the nature of form or the nature of matter).

Derrida also argues that meaning is subjective, subject to context, and to constant slippage (as signifiers lead to more signifiers, ad infinitum). Furthermore, if events cannot happen outside of textual narrative, how can 'truth' of the present and past have objective significance? This is problematic for the logos - no objectivity means no reality independent of the textual meaning.

Therefore, finality, which is in the gift of the logos, can in fact never be achieved. Context, signifiers within signifiers, the problem of the frame, the inside and outside of the frame, all suggest we can never reach an objective finality. This can be related back to Jung as it is the playground of myth, this borderland between the logos and the earth mother, between form and matter. As Rowland states it:

'Myth is Jung's mediation between the realm of the Sky-Father and the generative properties of the Earth-Mother. Myth is the psyche as potentially endless storytelling (Earth-Mother) and so stories yielding images capable of bearing logos signification (Sky-Father)....So Jung's myth is the liminal dance of the Sky-Father and Earth-Mother in the human psyche.'

Following this up by seeing how James Hillman describes myth. He argues that it makes

'concrete particulars into universals, so that each image, name, thing in my life when experienced mythically takes on universal sense, and all abstract universals, the grand ideas of human fate, are presented as concrete actions'.

This again illustrates the intertwining of logos and eros, of spirit and soul each reflecting and contrasting the other.

Hillman also quotes Jung on archetypes (in a passage that suggests Jung understood the importance of eros, the Earth-Mother):

'The discriminating intellect naturally keeps on trying to establish their singleness of meaning and thus misses the essential point; for what we can above all establish as the one thing consistent with their nature is their manifold meaning, their almost limitless wealth of reference, which makes any unilateral formulation impossible'.

So in this case Jung sees the archetype as an emissary of the Earth-Mother, of nature, of recurrent time, of the multiple levels of all things.

Hillman adds:

'Archetypes are the skeletal structures of the psyche, yet the bones are inter changeable constellations of light - sparks, waves, motions. They are principles of uncertainty'.

Does this leave us with a conflict between the knowable of the logos, with its endpoint to aim for, and the fundamental unknowableness of nature/eros/the feminine? A conflict which, perhaps, is the spark that drives us on? Perhaps if the spark goes out do we as a species disappear?

And if we are talking of frames, and what is inside and outside the frame, do we imagine the Earth-Mother and Sky-Father themselves are outside the frame, inviolate? Could they also be archetypes, mythic structures that help us define our universe, but not the ultimate finality? That being the case, might they be inside the frame with us?

We have to come to a point where we ask what ultimately is the frame, and what sits beyond it? Where do the hazy, indistinct marchlands reside, the places that indicate that we are nearing the frame? When do we pass through the frame, and when (and how) do we penetrate the frame and reach the other side? If we use deconstructionist terms, how can we describe it when we find it? Is it imagined, in archetypical/mythical/metaphorical terms - or is it a reality outside of us, an objective finality?

Finally, what would we find if we ever reached the other side? Would it, ultimately, be a reflection of ourselves staring back?


Tarkovsky's Stalker, penetrating the marchlands...


Trakovsky's Stalker: the 'guide' and the black dog.

>88 zenomax: - thanks Zeno, I think about science less these days. As I write it I thought yes there must be scientists who do understand, and generally thought the best won't fall into these traps. But I didn't think of examples. I have Gaia still to read and also wonder about the Tao of Physics. There are doubtless others.

What was going through my mind though was a bit like the idea that inventors invent stuff and people misuse it. Or an idea like whilst Wittgenstein was all for pushing away ladders once he had used them there are many that come and use the ladder somewhere else without asking. I mean the world is full of this, the misuse of a scientific idea, or any idea, or advance and many who come along and tell us they are using it right but in fact aren't thinking things through fully at all but ascribing certainty to things (yes in a way as you suggest) when it is not there (and that sky father and science or logos as certainty idea made me think of Thomas Kuhn and the idea it is not as sure as many think it is). I feel this point is relevant in the field of mental health.

I like that idea of Jung's myth, fascinating. It also made me think of a minute of Nietzsche and The Birth of Tragedy and Apolline/Dionysiac.

My perception of mental health (filtered through my wife who works in that area) is that too seldom is the 'client's' perspective even considered let alone understood.

>90 zenomax: This conversation has passed my complete understanding, but I particularly relate to the Hillman quotes in post #90. Especially the requote of Jung. Trying to make archetypes fit into neat little definitional boxes does indeed miss their essential point — not to mention their usefulness to the psyche: . . . their almost limitless wealth of reference, which makes any unilateral formulation impossible. As Hillman says, each image, name, thing in life when experienced mythically takes on universal sense. And that universality is understood by each person individually and uniquely and may mean one thing in one context and another in another. At least that's how it seems to me.