This is the blog of Paul R. Boudreau and Lloyd M. Dickie on the use of myths in support of personal development and self-study.
This is the 5th anniversary of it hitting the shelves: https://www.innertraditions.com/books/awakening-higher-consciousness.
So grateful that people are still buying copies - thanks so much for everyone who has checked it out! Keep safe!
Thus far in our exploration of the creative irrational we have focused on human expressions of the irrational in pre-literate and literate forms. But, being biological organisms/animals, we can’t deny the operation of the rational in a large portion of our functioning. The challenge for us as humans is to appreciate both the rational and the irrational in our lives. One of the key developments in examining this balance comes from the work of the field of psychoanalysis where the world of the human unconscious needs to be uncovered and appreciated. What the psychoanalysts found is that the denial of our unseen, irrational unconscious can result in serious mental illness for some individuals. We see that ignorance of our unconscious also can have implications for people with “normal” personalities.
As we have seen, for much of human development there were strong motivations for action and behaviours that were once considered to be primitive irrational and spiritual. These motivations led to some of the greatest works of human creation in construction and thought such as we have presented in the previous chapters. But such practices were generally lost in the evolution of the Western World in the age of Enlightenment, circa 18th Century. The re-dawning of the role of rationality as an effective worldview left behind many important aspects of our human growth and development. In this chapter we focus on relatively recent explorations of the late 19th and 20th Century that brought back into our view the need to recognize and bring into our active awareness the role of our unconscious. In this time frame, six philosopher-psychologists explored our inner psyche and captured what they saw in terms of different motivating factors that can be identified in both our inner and outer lives: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)[1], Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)[2], Alfred Adler (1870-1937)[3], Theodor Reik (1888-1969)[4], Carl Jung (1875-1961)[5] and Viktor Frankl (1905-1997)[6]. We focus our interest in the creative irrational through the most influential of the field: Nietzsche and Jung (Figure 29).
It was Nietzsche who began investigations into the more-than-merely personal aspects of human psychology with his most insightful and meticulous observations of human nature, based largely on his personal observations of his own nature. He was not medically trained. He began his professional career as a philologist, and undertook intense early studies of Greek and Roman Literature at Bonne and Leipzig, Germany. At the remarkably young age of 24, he was appointed in 1869 to Chairmanship of the Department of Ancient Philology at the University of Basel. His health was never strong, and in 1879 after only 10 years at Basel he was forced by a combination of nervous disorders and poor eyesight to resign from his University post, and shortly after returned home to live with his mother at her home near the Swiss Alps. After her death, in 1884, he was “looked after” by his sister. By 1889 he had become hopelessly insane, a condition that lasted until his death in 1900. In his last years he was dependent on the forces represented by an ambitious sister who tried to bend his inclinations to her own selfish desire for control.
The passing on of his work and ideas was later also coloured and distorted by National Socialism in Germany at the time. The Nazis used their misinterpretations of his writings to support their own later vituperative views of European political anthropology and history. This most deliberate misinterpretation was magnified and manipulated in support of Nazi propaganda leading to serious political upheavals that eventually triggered the Second World War. These incredible circumstances so coloured the views of European and North American Society, that even the study of Nietzsche was actively discouraged for many years. The effect still seems to condition the modern day reader’s approach to his insights. Despite the efforts of the Nazis, as well as Nietzsche’s sister, to manipulate the memory of his original thought, the published works of Nietzsche subsequently prevailed and demonstrate to us even today, his remarkable passion of soul and mind. His deeply personal psychological inquiries, developed in many directions, are illustrated vividly in his published works.[9].
During his entire sane life Nietzsche had written and published passionately, voluminously and obstinately on what eventually became a vast collection of literary works. He wrote prose and poetic works beginning with his “Birth of Tragedy”[10]. His most well-known, extensive major work is “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, published in 1889-91[11]. He held a contemptuous opinion of the morality of Western bourgeois society, which he strongly rejected as a “slave morality” in favour of a new heroic morality that would lead to what he called in his native German language the new “Übermensch” - widely mistranslated as “superman”.
By the age of 39 in 1888 Nietzsche wrote one of his earliest and best-known books “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”[12]. This is a story of the journeys, work and teachings of its main character Zarathustra who is clearly derived from some interest Nietzsche had in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, although he never explicitly makes direct reference to it. Throughout his book he clearly rejects established church and societal practices, recognizing them as often being shallow and inadequate to give expression to the hard-to-perceive spiritual level. By his Übermensch concept he intended to identify a person who consciously attempted to raise himself to a higher level of being: a creator of a new heroic morality; one that consciously affirms life, to live at a level beyond good and evil. It is a concept that we are much inclined to include in our discussion of our capacity to experience the creative irrational. According to Nietzsche, a conscious Being, an Übermensch, would have to have an instinctive impulse: one that would be required in order to set that person apart from “the herd” and lift him/her to a more appropriate level of being. The whole of his writings comprises an extensive and enlighteningly objective, even if sometimes dramatic, even vituperative, style, presented in a compelling framework of allusion, passionate imagery, and metaphor. There can hardly be a match for such a range of prose and poetic works (some he even set to music!) in any other later literary works in the Western World.
Zarathustra is a prince who finds himself on a mountaintop with an urge to travel through the world to “be man again”. He travels the world and has numerous experiences and encounters with others before returning to the mountain. The final section of his book involves his interaction with a number of “Higher Men”. In his native German they are “höheren Menschen”[13]. These Higher Men are listed as the King, the old sorcerer, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious man of the spirit, the sorrowful prophet and the ass. This concept of höheren Menschencontrasts sharply with the concept of the Übermensch. This later concept is better appreciated as beyond-human, over-human, an existence that exists at a level above our ordinary, unthinking, collection of appetites and reactions to our external world.
While there are many well-known themes and archetypes buried in this story, the most strikingly and well known is the concept of the Übermensch. It designates Nietzsche’s particular concept of real human nature. As there is no consensus by modern scholars on what he actually meant specifically by the word it is here more properly kept in its original German form: Übermensch. We introduce it here in our effort to bring his thoughts to our exploration of the various levels of human consciousness involved in our creative irrational side. He sees the need to get beyond the level of existence that we generally occupy. He recognizes the many different distractions that pervade our ordinary lives. The Übermensch is the part of our being that needs to be developed in order to get beyond these low level preoccupations. It is along the “right” lines of thought that some authors have translated the word as “superman”. The difficulty is that this is almost always interpreted in the physical sense instead of as something essentially internal and individual; it deals not with external super villains but with the much more threatening distractions that we harbour inside us. In our view, Übermensch development should be a concern for all humans trying to follow their own wish toward a “Higher” sense of Being[14].
The term “Übermensch” draws our attention to this central idea of Nietzsche, that “man” as we usually find ourselves is actually many different kinds of beings, no one of whom lasts for more than a few moments at a time before another, virtually new one replaces the first, and so on “ad infinitum”. As we work on trying to be present to a central sense of ourselves by examining our more ordinary states of being we can find many examples of these many different selves that come and go in our daily lives. Earlier in this book in Chapter 1 we recounted personal examples of this process from the efforts of the authors, as well as quoting from the dramatic perceptions of Philo although in general the seeing of the multiple I’s is neither easy nor frequent.
This human of “so many faces” but with not one that has any particular outstanding identity must be recognized in all its variations and fluctuations if we are to see the need to “transcend” this usual “asleepness” of multiple identities. We can come to know this if we actually learn to work towards a state that more correctly expresses our potentially higher, proper and rightful state of consciousness. We need to develop our Übermensch to get over our lower-selves and bring them together into a more unified whole. Nietzsche’s use of the Übermensch concept is totally consistent with other aspects of the spectrum of awareness that we present in Table 2 in this Book. We see it as an excellent description of this difficult work towards an awakening of an objective state of “Consciousness” in ourselves.
A second important theme that we see in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is the explicit need for the individual to awaken to see the levels of being. The following quote explicitly lays out Nietzsche’s concept of a need to awaken and shows that this awakening results in joy. He writes:
“O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
‘I was asleep –
From a deep dream I woke and swear:
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe –
Joy – deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity –
Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”[15]
It is obvious from this passage that there is a joy to be found in the deep of eternity. This thought is repeated twice in Nietzsche’s book reflecting its importance to the author. And what kind of awakening is he referring to? It is an awakening that is tied to a death. Nietzsche deals with the need to die in the Chapter of Zarathustra entitled “Of Voluntary Death” that states:
“Many die too late and some die too early. Still the doctrine sounds strange: ‘Die at the right time.”
We would be greatly mistaken to take these processes of death and awakening as an ordinary biological function instead of being a powerful metaphor consistent with all that we have presented so far in this book. Shamanic concepts of death and rebirth can be found in many different belief systems[16] dating back to the earliest civilizations as we described in our earlier book on the Ancient Egyptian stories of Osiris[17]. It can be argued that this idea of death and rebirth is the most universal archetype of human societies. Of course Nietzsche most likely got his concepts from the Christian doctrine that one must die to be reborn[18]. Here we note that Zarathustra is dealing with the necessary concomitant changes in our Being.
But Nietzsche doesn’t stop at the idea of the death of the individual, he continues his thought to the need for “the death of God”. This is the most quoted of all Nietzsche’s phrases. On face value the “death of God” could be seen as a continuation of his simple rebellious statement against all established religion and the false belief that our achievement of higher life could come from a passive participation in external religious structure. But at a higher level of understanding he is pointing to the need to stop seeing God as something external that will save our soul. There is no God sitting external to our being.
We have the responsibility and ability to move towards this higher awareness and Being. Nietzsche seems to be pointing out the danger of getting lost in an external belief in an almighty God as represented in religion. For those of us who take solace in “an old man sitting on a cloud” this death of this God is an essential and difficult task. It is required that we develop an internal spirituality based in our own direct experience of being.
Nietzsche clearly illustrates the need to give attention to the paradoxes in our state of being by a number of references throughout his works. In “The Birth of Tragedy”[19] he explored this in the need to balance Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of our being. In “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”[20] he seems to be contrasting the concept of the Übermensch with what he finds in the many people he encounters in his travels.
Nietzsche’s insights initiated a line of early 20th Century psychoanalytic studies that includes the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung[21]. We focus on C.G. Jung’s work as it has provided many tools for use in personal self-study or as he calls it “the process of individuation”[22]. We greatly appreciate the result of Jung’s work and theories that provide tools for exploring the creative irrational in the form of the more-than-merely personal. Specifically he has written extensively on previously unrecognized aspects of the human psyche:
1) archetypes as expressions of our collective unconscious;
2) archetypes in our personal lives; and,
3) psychological types as generalized patterns of human behavior.
While Jung’s theories and concepts don’t fit easily into the spirituality spectrum presented above, we make an attempt to represent his concepts in Row 6 of Table 2.
Jung, writing in the mid-20th century, described ways in which we operate as collections of observable psychological patterns and habits. In his career he worked to address the advantages that might accrue to us, were we able to develop these further possibilities in ourselves. The powerful effects of Jung’s perception of psychological types has been documented by many authors who regard them as tools for “awakening” an awareness of previously unknown - but still seen as mysterious – behaviours in oneself and others. Row 6 in Table 2 presents the concepts of Jung in the context of the spirituality spectrum. As we shall see in later chapters, his work in the field of psychology dealt initially with individuals who were considered to have medical problems, but subsequently became a much broader study of humankind and ourselves as individuals in the setting of the total potential human experience. His introduction to the understanding of our individual natures and potential development starts with the classification of personality that he called psychological types. With a relatively small number of categories or classes he was able to capture the bulk of variation in the individuals he observed – including himself. As he and many others have shown, individuals can be led to observe and recognize their own psychological types with relatively little effort or background.
Beyond the personal awareness of one’s habits, Jung further developed an understanding of the “more than personal” that he called the “collective unconscious”. That is, in these more-than-personal archetypes in our behaviour he found images and patterns that reflect societal memories shared amongst all members of the culture. These images seemed to arise in recurring dreams and memories that are incomprehensible from any one individual’s life experiences. As a result, Jung deduced that he had to include in his model of psychology, the existence of psychic material that is beyond the strictly personal. Ultimately, however, Jung captured in his analyses the idea of the development of the whole of an individual that he distinguished with the word “Individuation”[23] within which lies the challenge of seeing and encouraging our individual creative irrational. As his work was grounded in the more concrete aspects and challenges of our lower levels of awareness it is not surprising that, although he alludes to the higher levels, he doesn’t specifically deal with the levels as more clearly recognized by religious and philosophical practices.
Important to this presentation are Jung’s thoughts concerning influences that exist beyond the life and history of us as individuals. He sees the human psyche as including components of our individual lives, but also components that extend beyond personal history to include broader aspects common to humankind. Jung was on the track of a more normal if superior development of human possibilities beyond repression of bad experiences and emotions. Rather than restrict himself to mental illness, as Freud had done, Jung, influenced by Nietzsche, proposed that we must consider the whole of life as the period over which psychological influences will be determined, including influences that are not readily identified within one’s life. That is, there is a need to include concepts of the “collective unconscious” to explain some of our motivations and reactions. His development of psychological types helps us to see that we are not entirely unique individuals that result from unique lives. We share general traits with others that can be perceived through a limited number of our behavioural patterns. Such an expansion of our understanding of ourselves, beyond our totally personal, is critical to our “proper” development.
Even in the early stages of his studies, Jung perceived that problems in psychological development required a more general theory than just personal history, experience and memory. He held it to be related not only to early life factors, but that most patients displayed reactions that continued to be developed throughout their entire lives. That is, their behaviour could not be characterized only by events that were the proximate cause of their infirmities, but required insights into the whole of their life. As we have already indicated, he found incontrovertible evidence that not only what we call our consciousness but additional relatively unknown elements of our unconscious are involved. In what follows we need to weigh these theories and the evidence supporting them in more careful detail.
Jung’s approach was one of exploring broad patterns in individual and personal as well as group behaviour. It led his studies toward the more comprehensive view of a psychology that became a philosophy of the whole person. It was ultimately based on many years of observations of patients, and was also coupled with his personal, especially widely-based, studies of the whole cultural environment in which psychological factors arise. Coupled with his own personal breadth of experience, it led Jung to an appreciation of the innate need we have to direct our intellectual and practical efforts towards what emerges as most satisfying to us individually as apparently personal configurations of our life’s many facets. They are factors that can only be understood and developed from within our whole cultural context. His studies and the lectures he gave about them took him through the entire lives of his subjects and into studies conducted over many different environments. They arose in the course of his extensive travels and lectures in both America and Europe in a way that the other researchers had not considered necessary or even possible. We shall in later Chapters direct our efforts towards a study of the many ramifications of this understanding. It was only later in his own life that he characterized his researches into the long courses of psychological development of individuals with their different life histories as what he called a process of “individuation”.
It was only after Nietzsche’s death that this work came to the attention of Jung. In his last, summary book entitled “Memories, Dreams and Reflections”[24], Jung says, “The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me that is a supra-personal task, which I accompany only by effort and with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question that preoccupied my ancestors, and which they could not answer? Could that be why I am so impressed by the problem on which Nietzsche foundered, the Dionysian, to which the Christian seems to have lost the way?” Nietzsche was thus seen to have formulated the question concerning the hidden role of the unconscious in our worldview. Although he wasn’t able to fully clarify an answer, he left a vivid trail for others to follow.
The common thread amongst their interests was the previously unappreciated but now known to be most important role of the unconscious in how we live our lives. Over time their research resulted in medical practices and techniques for dealing with the personal psychological concerns raised by the clinical practices initiated at the turn of the 20th century. Characteristics that had been generally unseen or unnoticed by the medical profession became of key importance in treatment of patients with neurosis.
It is through the personal searches undertaken by these great investigators that at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, the Western world has been able to turn attention towards concepts and experiences of our unconscious selves that were formerly unnoticed and thus start to better appreciate the role of the unconscious in our actions. A balanced combination of our thoughts, our bodily experiences and our emotions can, together, enable us to appreciate the value that is to be found in what has become our eternal search for a sense of the significant in ourselves in terms that are usually referred to as our “Being”. It is to this appreciation that we now turn our attentions, directing it toward that part of our psychological nature and development that many of us initially perceive in our heads, but necessarily expand it here to a closer study of the development of our emotional attitudes and of a necessary but hard to perceive need to nurture and develop our capacity for receiving and recognizing direct impressions in both our conscious and unconscious selves.
According to Jung, Nietzsche’s character was intensely connected with the need for balance between strong positive and negative forces. This is best shown in Nietzsche’s scarcely controlled contempt for his polar opposite in the world; the musical genius, Richard Wagner, of whom Nietzsche wrote, “Everything about him is false. What is genuine is hidden or decorated. He is an actor, in every good and bad sense of the word.” Nietzsche found expression of the extremes of human psychology in the opposition of the Greek Apollonian versus Dionysian tendencies. We delve deeper into these tendencies in terms of our rational and irrational sides and the need for their recognition and reconciliation later in this chapter.
Nietzsche captured the need to balance the forces in his image of what he termed “the blonde beast” to be represented as a lion[25]. His metaphorical presentation of “the lion”, as just a beast of prey doing what it is meant to do in life without judgment of being good or bad, was intended to illustrate his interest in seeing our life at the correct level of operation. In his works Nietzsche dwelt at length with his concept of the “higher” in human consciousness, a concept that attracted Jung to the need to balance what is higher with what is lower in ourselves[26]. That is, while Nietzsche himself recognized the need for balance, in the end his contributions show how difficult this is to maintain, to the point where in his passionate evaluation of values he broke out into extremes that showed that he was overcome by his own unrecognized opposites, and so falling under the power of the uncontrollable Dionysian or “Lion-nature” in himself.
The writer/poet Nietzsche and the five other researchers introduced above were, of course, bound within the confines of the mores of the society or societies of which they were a part. The initiator, Nietzsche in particular, railed against the morality aspects of his surroundings. The others worked to make it clear that unconscious processes needed to be included in the understanding of both normal and troubled humans. Work continues today on understanding the extent to which our irrational unconscious sides control our judgment, actions and decisions[27] and we will revisit this again in Chapter 9. The combined efforts of this field of scientific study enable us to make the necessary distinction between what may be regarded as conscious behaviours and the scarcely recognized but powerful unconscious, primarily irrational elements that together with the more rational conscious parts constitute our total behavioural system. It takes us a rather long time to even recognize let alone assimilate all of these combined influences. In particular, one must become familiar with the intellectual constructs and concepts as well as detailed direct observations of one’s own behaviours to begin to appreciate the power that the conjunction of conscious and unconscious elements has on us. In such a case, Gurdjieff’s “three-brained beings” phrase becomes less of a metaphor and more of a clear simple description of our state.
The signs do, however, with effort appear and eventually become guides to the role of the “unconscious” elements of our psyche on the whole, that had been especially neglected in explicit terms in studies of patients, perhaps because of the difficulty of perceiving and assigning causes. Concern with this problem virtually requires the researcher to regard himself as becoming “one” with his patient, yet reserving the distance that is necessary for an objective view. The difficulties became especially evident through Nietzsche’s work, but need to become more apparent for us personally if we should wish to be able to join the beings concerned with the impediments to the sense of our unity of “being”.
These concepts deal with understanding ourselves as more-than-merely personal. The idea that there exist aspects of our unconscious that extend beyond our own individual life histories allows us to connect with a broader world of forces that predates and surrounds us as humans. The psychological types concept provides an understanding of the limited number of general “types” of individuals that develop in the modern Western world. For many, this may be the first encounter with their type that opens the door to observing themselves as non-unique. These examples or tools all pertain to a personal sense of the creative irrational.
In the past several chapters we have been presenting examples of the creative irrational in human worldview that are useful for those who wish to initiate and continue with work of self-study. The seeing of our collective unconscious in archetypes and experiencing aspects of our psychological makeup are all useful approaches to our work especially when we accept that these motivations are shared with the multitudes of humanity. We share much with our fellow occupants on this Earth. In this section we look towards Nietzsche and Jung who help us explore the changes in attitude necessary to incorporate the opposing sides of ourselves in order to rise above them to a higher level of perception to exercise the ultimate need for the experience of the creative irrational in our personal lives. As we shall see this points us conclusively to the fact of our need for a deeply personal work.
This work is firmly rooted in our “direct experience” of ourselves in the greater world.[28] It requires a special degree of “alertness” in the present moment to what is taking place in our own inner parts. We need to be aware that under appropriate circumstances we can actively participate in a distinct process of momentary transformation by which our understanding is raised from one level to another higher one. With sufficient accustoming of ourselves free of imagination to an experience of this idea we will already have to sense that there are certain vectors in the direction that our study needs to take. To fully appreciate the meaning and value of any event in our life we can scarcely do better than to refer back once again to the work of Nietzsche and the expansion of his work by Jung (Figure 29) into concepts of “enantiodromia” and “individuation” in support of the general need for the recognition and reconciliation of opposites. They may often appear to require almost a superhuman effort to raise us to the new level of understanding that can come only as a result of the creative irrational in ourselves.
A particularly important insight into this effort is found in the broader studies of human nature expressed in the line of study initiated by Nietzsche[29]. He dramatically expressed his understanding of our nature through his notable evocation of the stories of the two Greek gods Dionysius and Apollo, whose characters were used as metaphors for our conflicting internal tendencies. He recognized the unmistakable struggle within us that occurs as the result of interactions between our two opposing tendencies. He held that they underlie our internal struggle to be more aware of our irrational unconscious sides and their power to direct our thoughts and actions continues to be a living force. Nietzsche’s work, based on his own philological background[30], lives on in the many doctors and researchers directly involved as psychologists. He initiated a line of questioning concerning the need to pay attention to, if not fully understand, our underlying conscious and unconscious motivations and continue to drive us in daily life today.
Nietzsche’s main line of thought and writing revolved around the need for individuals to awaken to their own higher selves. We see this as an expression of the requirement to bring oneself into a state where “work” to raise ourselves to the full potential of our being. As Nietzsche put it:
“…. life itself told me this secret: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘ I am that which must overcome itself again and again.”[31]
We believe that such a work is a lifelong effort that is essential to development of Being towards “Higher Consciousness”. We see this as our innate but necessarily individual creative human will towards a larger sense of our Being, one that leads us on towards what is Spiritual.
Nietzsche, having been raised in the home of his father who was a Lutheran pastor, developed strong attitudes towards established religions. He wrote of the need to “inquire”, reflecting his early, objective scrutiny of a strict religious following. Contained within his questions about spirituality was the appropriate application of logic and reason. In one of his first writings he moves beyond his criticism of established religions into a critique of, on the one hand, the hyper-rational and logical thinking and its opposite relating to the irrational creative aspects of human character. In his book “The Birth of Tragedy”[32], among other publications, he uses the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysius to characterize these two paradoxical aspects of the rational and irrational.
This division of particular behaviours into their component opposing aspects has also been recognized by writers of all ages. For example, in ancient Sumerian the differences in the behaviour of the two principle gods Enlil and Enki are outstanding and clear illustrations[33]. Egyptian stories of Osiris and Seth capture it as well. In the Christian and Muslim teachings there is God and Satan operating in opposition to one another. There are many other cultural and religious examples of the importance of such oppositions.
In Nietzsche’s use of Apollo and Dionysus he saw an inherent opposition between the two sides that represent our rational and irrational sides respectively. The modern Western World sees in itself the overwhelming image of an innocent, pure, beautiful and ultimately rational Apollo. This superficial attitude towards this specific god-image is to completely misunderstand and neglect both his origin and his nature. Apollo found in Homer’s stories from Ancient Greece, circa 850 BCE, was a god of the Trojans working against the Greeks. Coming from Anatolia, Apollo was a terrible god who brought death and disease[34]. In these beginnings it seems that it was difficult to discern whether he brought the trouble or helped to alleviate it. Centers dedicated to Apollo could be found in Delphi and Delos in the 8thcentury BCE. These were sites where oracles could be addressed with questions concerning the future. This Greek view of Apollo offers quite a contrast to the logical, rational aspects that are captured in today’s view of the god. While Apollo is conventionally credited with the development of rationality in modern philosophy, as we shall see later in Chapter 10, Kingsley[35] questions this simplistic interpretation of our attributions of character to him in a strong and original manner. In his interpretation, Apollo is recognized as the god who is the source of our ability to probe the literal understanding of our 20th century morality.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche used the Apollonian type to represent the ideal balanced, intellectual, even aloof, orderly approach to life. Such an individual is very much in control of events, correctly interpreting and acting on their importance. Apollo’s reasonable and responsible approach conveys a sense of a balanced, hence superior judgmental capacity that is unmistakably conveyed to surrounding associates. In all respects he assumes a dominant position in the world.
The Apollonian individual presents a marked contrast to what Nietzsche presented as it’s opposite: the Dionysian nature. All Greek gods reflected multiple aspects of life. Dionysus was originally conceived as a bearded old man dressed in robes. Later he took the form of a young, naked, sensuous, often androgynous, male. Although widely associated with wine and drunkenness, Dionysus also expressed the conditions of ecstasy, fertility and religiosity[36].
For Nietzsche the Dionysian as an individual is found in an intuitive and sensual life on the irrational axis of Jung’s functional types that were described in Chapter 1. This manifestation is often expressed in Nietzsche’s writings in dramatic social terms. It may show up as an impulsive, obstinate, pleasure-seeking, uncontrolled being, whose very aim in life seems to be the cultivation of the irrational. But the approach may also display a distinctly refreshing quality in the very originality and freedom of expression from the norms of the conventional society that it plays upon. But it should be noted that its unpredictability may also present family and associates with the uncomfortable consequences of the very volatility and unexpectedness that they would be expected to cope with. To the well-controlled, overly rational Apollonian type, such Dionysian behaviour reflects weak and vacillating impulses, resulting from the influences of a shameful unconscious that is a result of our failure to have been faithful to this same logical morality. In the average Western World situation of the early 20th Century, these Dionysian impulses were seen as motivations that clearly needed to be brought into line in accordance with established morality. That is, they should be” rooted out” so that the result would be in accord with the opinions of those admirable beings who aspire to and espouse “right” behaviour. As many psychoanalysts found in the treatment of their patients, if these popular efforts of both individuals and society toward self-improvement were not found sufficient, the erring subjects would then have to seek the aid of the psychiatric profession. It was confidently believed that psychiatric analysis would be able to mediate the obvious and needed cures, to which the ministers of religion who once had been expected to carry out this function had been unable to rise.
A somewhat superficial knowledge of the different characteristics represented by Apollo and Dionysus may have already have been gleaned in part from our own early upbringing. For example, at the height of ascendancy of the various “temperance” movements in North America during the prohibition of the 1920’s, the character of Dionysus was portrayed and remembered as the depths of debauchery shown by the habitual drunkard. By appropriate contrast, then, the upright, clear-minded and handsome Apollo could be seen as a model of an easily comprehended and attractive opposite, an ideal to be followed. Such cultural motivations continue to rise throughout history. In more recent times such moralistic dichotomies results in the continued restriction and suppression of groups of humans who are not upstanding enough, too weak to benefit the masses, overly lazy, or truly mentally ill and/or addicted to substances. Extreme conservatives, financial protectionists, and in politics and human interactions, positions are often justified by discussions of right and wrong. But as we shall see the dominance of the “logical might” may not be sufficiently “right” in the context of our own personal will towards a sense of Being. We make the case here for a necessary balance.
Greater exposure to stories involving the two gods helps us to realize that these initial and facile understandings and distinctions between Dionysius and his fellow god, Apollo, are not so quickly and simply understood and interpreted. In fact, our appreciations of them have been changing over time. Now it is more generally understood that Dionysius reflects the hidden, more sensitive, emotional parts of one’s psyche. While this is not inconsistent with circumstances of unruly orgiastic behaviour, his role can be seen within a much broader emotionally sensitive, creative individual that is additional to the logical aspects of Apollo. The two supporting sides can be seen more clearly in music, with its strong mathematical basis that can bring audiences to tears or laughter. These two sides of every individual, the rational Apollonian and the irrational Dionysian, are the basis of our individual work to reconcile opposites within us by the work of finding a higher level of consciousness, to which Gurdjieff also made reference. But what did Nietzsche see as the way to a productive and useful resolution?
By all accounts it is the Dionysian quality of Nietzsche’s personal behaviour, reflected in his writings, that posed both its attraction and repulsion for Jung. Jung was seemingly fascinated by Nietzsche’s writings, although Nietzsche the man had actually died before Jung was well into his professional career. However Jung was certainly fully aware of both his writing and his ideas, and explicitly recognized this influence in his book “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, which we quote as follows:
“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. That is a supra-personal task, which I accompany only by effort and with difficulty. Perhaps it is a question which preoccupied my ancestors, and which they could not answer? Could that be why I am so impressed by the problem on which Nietzsche foundered: the Dionysian side of life, to which the Christian seems to have lost the way?”[37]
Jung’s continuation of Nietzsche’s exploration appears particularly with Jung’s apparent respect for the “compensatory” aspects of the Nietzschean style that shows up so clearly in his own appreciation of the actions of the “collective unconscious” and the “compensatory” modes of its operation in the “conscious” behaviour of both himself and his patients. Jung believed that these “compensatory” modes were the basis for Nietzsche’s principal books[38]. Such appreciation depends on an understanding of the importance of this compensatory mechanism, and on how consciously, if with difficulty, we must be able to perceive the results of our own unconscious motivations in relation to our everyday life. It is well understood by scholars of psychology that Nietzsche was aware of this part of his nature and willingly displayed it in his writings. His closer associates, of whom there were but few, knew that he was not always in control of his manifestations during his ordinary life. While he himself recognized the many I’s that are within us, he was no more able than we are to keep his attention focused on any one of them. In the end, Nietzsche’s own neurotic nature eventually got the better of him and eleven years before his death he became hopelessly insane.
It is through this sense of meaning, conveyed to us so strongly through Nietzsche’s publications that we are enabled to attempt to understand our own natures, prospects and preferences. The observable contrasts and their reconciliation, such as captured by Jung’s later concept of “enantiodromia”, were certainly the springboards from which Nietzsche’s understanding of our unconscious need for compensation arose.
We are familiar with the image of the eastern Yin and Yang graphically showing a possible balancing and the working together of opposites (Figure 30).
![Figure 30. The Yin and Yang symbol[39].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542d4f86e4b06a71cbdb01c9/1587210021729-39DJNXGRGKLG60BP2NJL/YinYang.png)
Figure 30. The Yin and Yang symbol[39].
Jung introduced the term “individuation” as the synthetic process of “integrating the unconscious opposites”[40]. Elsewhere he defines it more specifically as a “syzygy of energies” that is usually the anima/animus pair, but also reflects other "opposites," as we have seen in his treatment of our rational and irrational types. He uses it in the sense that it must be a “completing” process. It brings the elements composing it together into a new form of “wholeness”, an integration of opposites [41]. That is, it is an illustration of the process of bringing the wholeness of “the one” into a state of consciousness in a single “fell swoop”. Jung calls these actions a process of “natural transformation”; that is, they comprise a form that accomplishes the aim of “the union of opposites” into a completely new level of human being.
In Jungian psychoanalysis, individuation is treated in the therapeutic, medical context of patient care. According to Stein[42], therapy is fundamentally geared toward promoting and facilitating, or toward unblocking and restarting, the individuation process. He lays out three main stages of the individuation process and two major crisis periods. The three stages of individuation are:
“a) the containment/nurturance (i.e., the maternal, or in Neumann’s terminology the ‘matriarchal’) stage;
b) the adapting/adjusting (i.e., the paternal, or, again in Neumann’s terminology, the ‘patriarchal’) stage; and,
c) the centering/integrating (in Neumann’s terminology, the individual stage).
These can be coordinated with Erickson’s seven stages of psychological development. The two major crises of individuation fall in the transitions between these stages, the first between adolescence and early adulthood and the second during midlife.”
From this perspective, individuation is a natural process that can be traced distinctly in an individual’s psychological development. From a medical perspective, most individuals go through this process of individuation without becoming medical patients in need of psychoanalytical treatment. From the perspective of this book, we inquire as to where the Jungian use of the term individuation fits on the spectrum of self-study leading to the arising of a Sense of Self. General medical objectives do not deal with an individual’s pursuit of enlightenment, which is more generally the interest of religion, but are we able to place individuation in a useful context related to the question of the strength of our own wish for a sense of Being?
Jung wrote:
“Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in man that which lives of it and causes like. Therefore God breathed into Adam a living breath that he might live. With her cunning play of illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived. She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should reach the earth, entangling himself there so that life should be lived; as Eve in the garden of Eden could not rest content until she had convinced Adam of the goodness of the forbidden apple. Were it not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his greatest passion, idleness. A certain kind of reasonableness is its advocate, and a certain kind of mortality adds its blessing. But to have soul is the whole venture of life, for soul is a life-giving demon who plays his elfin game above and below human existence, for which reason - in the realm of dogma - he is threatened and propitiated with superhuman punishments and blessings that go far beyond the possible deserts of human beings. Heaven and hell are the fates meted out to the soul and not to civilized man, who in his nakedness and timidity would have no idea what to do with himself in a heavenly Jerusalem.[43]”
Failure to reconcile important emotional opposites within us is recognized in psychology as the stuff that neuroses are made from. That is, psychology recognizes the large part of our nature that is associated with unconscious elements. They appear in habits of body and emotion that we have discussed above, as well as in our unquestioned attitudes towards them. As long as we fail to bring about a relation among these various conflicting functionings, we are liable to become trapped into struggles between what we think we want, and what is ordained by the unconscious sides of our nature. As Jung[44] put it:
“Underlying our appetites are desires; underlying our desires are needs; and underlying our needs are goals. At each level of the peeling away of the layers of our unrecognized motivations, we encounter new sets of contradictory elements that may command the field unless they are resolved by being seen in their successively broader settings.”
Psychoanalysis has been used to show that as long as these contradictory elements are held separate from one another, they create tensions that inhibit a development that depends on the free circulation of energies. The “impeded” energy easily explodes into irrational behaviour. So, for example, is explained the zealousness of religious "temperance" leaders, or the immoderacy of the modern activist environmentalists, whose externalized moral judgments, fortified by tensions, prevent them from recognizing their own unconscious urges to violence. On both sides it is seen as justifiable righteous anger in the face of perceived evil.
The process of resolving unrecognized and possibly deeply fundamental dichotomies or contradictions in our nature was termed by Jung a process of enantiodromia [45]. This remarkable word for a remarkable phenomenon he credits to the Greek Heraclitus, who recognized the inevitable "running contrariwise" of the forces within us. By enantiodromia Jung meant the process that makes the tug-of-war between alternatives relatively unimportant. It is a process through which the opposing forces are enabled to flow together in such a way as to provide an under-current of energy for the real, higher goals of our lives. It is a phenomenon that is essential to sustaining the kind of development that he called "individuation". It also appears to be a process that ancient knowledge understood. It lies behind the resolution among disparate forces that the stories personify in the form of oppositions between gods of all cultures and time periods from the Sumerian Enlil and Enki, Ancient Egyptian Seth and Osiris and the Christian dichotomy of God and Satan.
The need for a neutralizing higher sense of purpose between the polar opposites of our ordinary life points to a direction that can be seen and understood in relation to simple events. It may show up in the simple reluctance to undertake studying for an exam or beginning to start writing an essay. Our lives are filled with other almost trivial examples: the struggle between eating or not eating that extra piece of cake must surely take into account the present strength of my aim to lose weight. If I "think" about it too long, would I go jogging? And how does this state of initial resistance to physical exertion compare with the sense of being alive that appears after the effort has been successfully undertaken? The feeling that I "should" get up in the morning, versus the delicious warmth of lying in bed, may easily be resolved when I remember that I wanted to go enjoy a quiet relaxing day of fishing. Even the automatic tendency to snap back at a neighbour's stupid remark, or react to his accidental intrusion on a corner of my new, carefully laid-out lawn, may disappear altogether if I remember, in time, that I want to borrow his brand-new lawnmower, and he won't lend it if he is angry with me.
In these examples of opposites, when I compare the two levels of awareness of which I have direct experience, it is apparent that my sense of purpose requires a centre of attention in me that cannot be found in the automatic reactions. In the sleep of reaction between unconscious opposites there is something missing, and that something is, in fact, an awareness of myself! The sense of awakening to a larger framework that allows release from the tension between opposites has in every case an element of standing aside from them. To the habitual ordinary mind one must add a freedom in the emotional energies to generate an active awareness at the very site of reaction and that invites a balanced response. In encounters with my neighbour, for example, the added element of perspective that accompanies the attention of self-awareness enables a freedom from my reactive temper. The energy is enabled to flow in the service of another, broader and more desirable purpose. The examples we use may describe minor incidents, but experience shows us that more than incidental effects can be involved. That is, most of our personal examples are trivial compared to the levels of opposites that are represented in the stories.
Jung is at pains to point out that by the process of enantiodromia he does not mean a disappearance of the formerly opposing forces or simply an awareness of their differences. Instead he intends to draw attention to the development of the perspective that allows us to learn that the level at which we encounter opposites is not the level at which we find our purposes to be best served. In order to learn to live with such forces we have to find within us a level of understanding that is able to make use of the energies that would otherwise be tied up in unconscious oppositions. They are inevitably kept separated by our various partial appreciations of ourselves, by our failure to be attentive either to the many "I's" or to the different levels at which they appear. Study of examples given in the cultural stories may, in fact, be a particularly effective way of establishing the actuality of the scales at which different levels may appear, enabling us to better understand the often unrecognized levels of phenomena that are of such importance in our experiences.
To undertake a bridging between opposites requires an additional force; one that is characteristic of a different level of being than the elementary oppositions themselves. This missing force seems to be a necessary sense of myself and my aim in relation to the opposing elements[46]. To step outside the points of conflict between the existing forces, we need to create in ourselves a separate place to move to. This place is one we recognize as giving us a sense of unity, quite beyond the oppositions. This is a principle that the ancients clearly intended that we be able to examine through myth, and one to which we alluded earlier in this discussion.
Another way that the reconciliation of opposites can be represented visually is in the Vesica piscis of Sacred Geometry[47] (Figure 31). The reconciliation of the opposites creates a new area between the two circles.
![Figure 31. The Vesica piscis[48].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542d4f86e4b06a71cbdb01c9/1587210209361-LM3X9Q97G7E9E8G53236/Vesica.png)
Figure 31. The Vesica piscis[48].
Figure 32 shows how the simple Vesica piscis can express many important creative irrational relations in Sacred Geometry such as the Golden Ratio.
![Figure 32. The Vesica piscis, shown above, and below, its representation to include geometric directions for its construction[49].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542d4f86e4b06a71cbdb01c9/1587210269732-JB5LRQM56IEOPLTRBBHT/Golden+section.png)
Figure 32. The Vesica piscis, shown above, and below, its representation to include geometric directions for its construction[49].
We believe that these two processes of individuation and enantiodromia are different aspects of the rarely explicitly appreciated but essential phenomenon of “transformation”. In the case of individuation we are envisaging a longer time scale than is implied with the term enantiodromia[50]. This latter word we use in a sense of the immediate completing of a particular finite process; completing a particular phenomenon that may be only part of a longer developmental process. What arises from this union is an obligatory successor point of view that can then become the beginning of a new encounter in another process that is logically distinguishable as the beginning of a new event at a higher level of understanding.
As Jung well understood, this transformation into a totally new state always depends on the union of an original set of opposites. It is the union of the original “do” or “don’t” opposites resolved into a new understanding that has been illustrated as a natural part of the process of joke-telling by the Sufi writer Rumi[51] as we presented in the last Chapter and by Arthur Koestler[52]. As Koestler points out, the unexpected resolution of an opposition set up by the joke-teller always results in a sudden, “explosive” but harmless energy release, of the sort shown by the laughter elicited in joke telling. It results in an unexpected change from one level of thought to a quite new level; one that is a logically unexpected event that nevertheless evokes that sense of agreement that is always at a level of understanding above where the original confrontation took place. Jung termed this process an enantiodromia to express the nature of the process of “arising” that is experienced at the always new level of understanding that is unveiled. That is, the phenomenon of “enantiodromia” gives rise to a complex, if delicate, process of an immediate increase in the sense of personal understanding to a new level, which, as might be said in English colloquial language is “no joke”(!) in the sense that it accomplishes the needed defusing of the short-term build-up of energy in the original confrontation of opposites.
What has this discussion on Nietzsche and Jung provided us in the way of presenting the importance of the creative irrational to individual and species success? In the late 18th and early 19th Century these researchers were forced to face the irrational unconscious in their efforts to understand and treat their patients. What they found is of use to our present day efforts to observe and appreciate the necessary balance between our rational and irrational sides. Rather then the common approach at the time of denying and burying the irrational impulses, they found great profitability in recognizing and supporting that sides of our nature that could not be denied. The creative irrational of humans is essential to our full sense of Being.
—— Chapter 9: Love, Comedy and Mystery: Power the Irrational — Awakening Higher Consciousness ——
———— Table of Contents ———————————-
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredrich_Nietzsche
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Reik
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor Frankl
[7] Kaufmann, W. 1959. The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin Books.
[8] http://www.biography.com/people/carl-jung-9359134
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich Nietzsche.
[10] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.
[11] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.
[12] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.
[13] https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jksadegh/A Good Atheist Secularist Sceptical Book Collection/Also Sprach Zarathustra Nietzsche English_Deutsch final.pdf – pp. 432
[14] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions.
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying-and-rising_god
[17] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egypt and Sumer. Inner Traditions.
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_again_(Christianity)
[19] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.
[20] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.
[21] Jung, C.G. 1958. Psychology and Religion: West and East. Vol. 11, The Bollingen Foundation, New York. 261 pp.
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_in_Jungian_psychology
[23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individuation
[24] Jung, C.G. 1961. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Random House, New York.
[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality
[26] Jung, C.G. 1953. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. Vol. 7. The Collected Works. Bollingen Series XX. Pantheon Books. Princeton University Press. 329 pp.
[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
[28] Shaw, F.S. 2010. Notes on The Next Attention: Chandolin 1993-2000. Indications Press, New York. 360 pp.
[29] Kaufmann, W. 1974. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. (4th edition) Princeton University Press. 532pp.
[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philology
[31] Nietzsche, F. 2003. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Classics.
[32] Nietzsche, F. 2003. The Birth of Tragedy. Penguin Classics.
[33] Dickie, L.M. and P.R. Boudreau. 2015. Awakening Higher Consciousness: Guidance from Ancient Egyptian and Sumer. Inner Traditions. Vermont
[34] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo
[35] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing, Inverness, California.
[36] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus
[37] Jung, C.G. 1965. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Random House.
[38] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
[39] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
[40] Jung, C.G. 1959. Collected Works, vol. 9.1: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Bollingen Series. XX. Pantheon Books.
[41] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)
[42] http://murraystein.com/individuation.shtml
[43] Jung, C.G. 1959. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Volume 9.1 of the Collected Works. Bollingen Series XX. Pantheon Books. Pp. 26-27.
[44] Jung, C.G. 1953. Psychology and Alchemy. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 563 pp.
[45] Jung, C.G. 1953. Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. vol. 7. Bollingen Series XX, Pantheon Books, New York. 329 pp.
[46] Ouspensky, P.D. 1949. In Search of the Miraculous. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. New York and London.
[47] Lawlor, R. 1992. Sacred Geometry, Philosophy and Practice. Thames and Hudson, London.
[48] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesica_piscis
[49] http://portal.groupkos.com/index.php?title=POVRay_scene_Vesica_pisces.pov
[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia
[51] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi
[52] Koestler, A. 1969. “The Act of Creation”. Hutchinson of London. 491pp.
Of course human examination of who and what we are has continued throughout the ages and we have much written material to contribute to our present day understanding. Next in our presentation of the creative irrational we select the much more recent the works of 19th and 20th Century researcher G.I. Gurdjieff. Next in the Table 2 in lines 4, we cite the works describing the terminology developed by this 20th Century mystic, philosopher and spiritual teacher[1]. Gurdjieff studied the esoteric teachings of cultures in the Middle East. He developed his own approach to the question of human existence based on the various potential “Reasons” of a human. At the base of his teaching is the idea that we as individuals are not a single whole entity. On the left hand side of the spectrum in Table 2, we note that he taught that we are a collection of three independent Reasons or functionings. Gurdjieff called them “Reason of Body” “Reason of Feeling”’ and “Reason of Thinking”, thus emphasizing the virtual separation among the various members of the set as separate entities. Gurdjieff argued that as a result of this separation and isolation of functions within us, we live our lives in a waking sleep. As a result, he referred to average humans as “Three-Brained Beings” because of the prominence that these lower three Reasons have in our ordinary lives. He taught, however, that the existence of higher, more fully conscious levels of existence are natural for real human existence. His metaphoric style, with many new and unfamiliar terms, deliberately requires hard work on the part of the reader who ventures to comprehend it. Nevertheless, the body of his work can be seen as similar to others that we present in this book.
As we have shown, we are far from being the first to consider these ideas of levels of consciousness and higher Being. Expressions of the more-than-merely physical world have been made by humans since the beginning of time. In fact we are arguing that this is what makes us human. Appreciation for this, our creative irrational, is a common thread that runs through the history of Homo sapiens. In this section we present a look into the work of an individual from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, G.I. Gurdjieff, who spent his life working with individuals to help them awaken from their waking sleep, to experience the more-than-merely physical components of life within us so that we might become more like the “real” humans we need to be[2].
Gurdjieff was born in 1855 in Alexandropol, Armenia in the southern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains between the Black and Caspian Seas[3]. He spent his life travelling and searching the world for an understanding of the human condition. He developed and taught a system of self-study based on ancient esoteric knowledge that has since become known as “The Work”. He established a centre for study and work called “The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man”, in Fontainebleau, France just south of Paris where he died in late 1949. Groups following his method continue to function in various locations around the globe today. It is important to note that Gurdjieff intentionally demanded constant work of his students to continually challenge themselves physically, emotionally and mentally to develop their levels of consciousness. He refers to such a practice of constant challenges as “Conscious Labours and Intentional Suffering”. He maintained that only by aspiring to such a manner of self observation could a person hope to develop one’s Self, which he recognized as the aim of all sensible human beings. We find ourselves much indebted to him. Later authors have been publishing for decades attempting to convey the substance of his teachings[4]. Readers are encouraged to explore the extensive body of work that exists. Intensive study must be left to readers to undertake for themselves.
In approaching his thoughts on the human condition it is important to note that language was not a challenge to Gurdjieff. He was a polyglot speaking Armenian, Greek, Russian and Turkish along with a working facility with several European languages including English. Yet, when we come to his writings he presents readers with seemingly absurd images and concepts. Gurdjieff produced three books that are referred to as the “All and Everything” trilogy. They are “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson”[5], “Meetings With Remarkable Men”[6] and “Life is Real Only Then, When ‘I Am’ ”[7]. In none of these books does he simply and clearly lay out his ideas about the state of humans and his recommendations on how to improve consciousness. Readers are constantly required to struggle to decipher the meaning of long and involved sentences and paragraphs. He avoided using words that would easily allow us to make a mental note and mindlessly move on. He was well aware of how easily we get distracted by our lower Reason of Thinking, or as he called it “Degindad” (Table 2).
In regard to the levels of a real human, Gurdjieff’s view is buried in Beelzebub’s Tales where he writes about one of the “Laws of the Universe” that he called “Heptaparaparshinokh”. The basis of this Law is that any active process can be regarded as consisting of a series of seven distinctive steps. Its name comes partially from the Greek word for the number seven “Hepta”. We can gain some insights into this meaning from something that we are accustomed to hearing in music as the “octave”. There we have a succession of seven tones in an octave scale, an eighth tone beginning the repeat of the original sequence one octave higher. In such a situation the final note following any sequence of seven musical notes in the scale leads to the repeat of the pattern. We in the Western World have learned and become accustomed to calling it an octave[8]. Gurdjieff alternatively refers to Heptaparaparshinokh as “The Law of Octaves”. Of course most musicians understand that development of this octave series is not an isolated event, but follows a particular historical series that most of us have now become accustomed to. For example, we may take the first three notes of this octave scale: “Doh, Re, Me”. Almost everyone who has done any group singing will recognize how seemingly natural it is for us to sing this simple sequence repeatedly – up three notes, then down three notes, then up again. The simple repetition seems quite natural to us, and is often utilized by singers “warming up”. Such simple practices can effectively impress on us a certain feeling, tone or mood. Musically Gurdjieff, as all artists, composed pieces in which the Law of Octaves is used to deliberately promote certain moods in the listener.
But Gurdjieff definitely did not restrict the application of Heptaparaparshinokh to music alone. The study of this Law of Seven permits us to seek to understand psychological ideas of harmony other than those that are strictly associated with physical phenomena, but that are still a part of our living experience. For instance, it is useful in appreciating our inability to hold an intention beyond the initial motivation for action. It draws attention to our difficulty in progressing from an initial movement of the “do, re, me sequence” to a full octave through the difficult intervals of the “me” and “fa” steps in the octave progression. These naturally occurring difficult intervals impede our reaching goals and objectives in our lives. So whether it is an intention to lose weight, or to be more relaxed, or to be a better person, Gurdjieff’s concept of Heptaparaparshinokh seems to capture some key properties that are not clearly recognized in our usual functioning. It is evident that there is much important information buried in the obscure lexicon of Gurdjieff’s writing that applies to the creative irrational and the spiritual levels that can be experienced in much of our daily lives.
Recognizing that Gurdjieff deliberately avoided clear language, what can we present here that could contribute to our creative irrational concept, spirituality and the levels of human consciousness? Of critical importance, the basic Gurdjieff model of the average modern everyday participant in Western culture was that we are “three-brained beings”. He meant this in no way as a complement. He identified the body, emotion and mind as separate, distinct independent functions within us. As shown by us in the three cells to the left of Row 4 in our Spirituality Spectrum in Table 2 these are the three lowest levels of human “Reason”.
While we present his concepts as levels of “Reason” it is important to bear in mind his efforts to use words that are commonly used by Western minds, but may mean much more. In the typical manner of Gurdjieff’s teaching his language is difficult and requires unusual effort for followers to understand it. It is for this reason we also present here the terminology of one of his students, P.D. Ouspensky. In row 5 of Table 2 we present Ouspensky’s complimentary, more simplified version of Gurdjieff’s thoughts. He published extensively about his experiences in groups led by Gurdjieff as well as extensive studies of later work with his own pupils. Ouspensky was more of a thinking type and as a result his writings are much more approachable by individuals in Western culture. In contrast to Gurdjieff’s deliberate cloaking of his thoughts in mystery, Ouspensky, refers to the separate independent functions as simply “centres”, thereby displaying them more as aspects of a single body. We show, starting at the left side of row 5, Ouspensky’s names for the first three, lower categories of our functionings. Yet with Gurdjieff’s obscure terminology and Ouspensky’s potential oversimplification, both clearly recognize our need to appreciate several levels of being and the striving for higher consciousness that we call the creative irrational and spirituality.
While Ouspensky recognized the importance of Gurdjieff’s ideas he presented his own versions of them in his own style, a style that generally appeals more readily to modern Western readers (Row 5 in Table 2). For instance Ouspensky presents our three brains as independent “centres”. The more approachable concept of “centre” refers to our independent internal “functionings”. In our experience Ouspensky’s clarity provides an important introduction to the more challenging terms presented in detail by Gurdjieff but the overall work and effort of understanding these concepts, whether referred to as Reasons, centres or functionings, is critical to fully experiencing and appreciating our disjunctive day-to-day operations.
Returning to the question of us as “three-brained beings”, we continue our introduction with reference to long established esoteric studies of human functions by initiates from other non-western tradition. In their study of human development, both Gurdjieff and Ouspensky encountered individuals who concentrated their work on only one of their specific functionings or centers[9] & [10]. These ancient forms of study and self-work are known as:
1) The Way of the Fakir focusing on the “body”[11];
2) The Way of the Monk focusing on the “emotion” [12]; and,
3) The Way of the Yogis focusing on the “mind” [13].
These three Ways or lifestyles for self-study require initiates to undergo extensive training and exercise in an effort to reach higher levels of states of spiritual existence and consciousness. These approaches generally require work isolated away from ordinary life. While monks, or at least the image of a stylized monk, are somewhat acceptable in the development of Western Christian thought, we are less familiar with the other “Ways”.
As an example of the Way of the Fakir, we mention Egypt's most famed fakir from the 1920s Tahra Bey[14] as reported by Paul Brunton[15]. Bey was trained and practiced as a fakir to accomplish seemingly impossible physical feats. According to Brunton, Bey subjected himself to scientific study while with great control and intention he deliberately put himself in death-like trance states. He was able to exist while his physical body displayed nothing of what we would consider signs of life. Of significance to our study, Bey is said to have had the ability to separate his physical body from his other centres, thus maintaining himself isolated from a heartbeat, breath and sensory reactions. As a result of this manipulation in his state, Bey was reported to have been physically rejuvenated upon regaining consciousness. While impossible for us to be sure, it seems to us that Bey’s experience, may have been similar to what took place in the 5,000-year old Ancient Egyptian pharaonic initiation rites suggested in the Pyramid Texts.
While the modern western world has many examples of the use of yoga for improving health and well-being, they are a mere shadow of what Gurdjieff, Ouspensky and Brunton would have encountered in the early 20th Century in Central and East Asia. Yogi’s of that time and place were intent on following a lifestyle in search of higher levels of consciousness, quite different from the common modern day yoga practices associated with ordinary health and well-being. The real yoga self-study focused on their “Reason of Thinking”.
Building on the three independent Ways of the fakir, monk and yogi, Gurdjieff developed an approach where an individual works to develop simultaneously his/her three lower brains in our ordinary day-to-day lives. Thus Ouspensky’s teachings are often referred to as the Fourth Way[16]. So from Gurdjieff’s work we come to appreciate that he is talking about a nature that is based on three independent functions: “doing”, “feeling”, and “thinking”, that are relatively easy to identify in ourselves. When we come to seriously study them we may also come to realize that while they may seem to act almost independently of each other, according to this prescription of “three-brained”, they must be identifiable as aspects of a being with at least the possible reality of a central unity. It is the bringing of this supposedly unified set of functionings into a true unity of action that includes the proper operation of our other higher Reasons shown in Table 2that is the central theme of Gurdjieff’s whole teaching and the reason why we need to deal with it here. And while going beyond our lower three brain operation is not so simple, with persistent practice and attention, our own experience suggests that it is possible to find all three functions operating at once.
Here we turn our focus to Gurdjieff’s grand allegory of human history and our present state that is found in Beelzebub’s Tales. It is nominally an allegorical journey of the central figure Beelzebub across the universe in a spaceship with his grandson. Throughout the tale we are provided with an expansive and distracting view of our world. Nothing is stated in simple terms. It deserves intensive study, but we can only summarize certain points here that pertain to the levels of human consciousness. So far in this section we have focused on the three lower, elementary stages of consciousness on the left side of Table 2. These are or can be directly addressed through our self-study and with prolonged effort can result in a degree of “self-knowledge”. Here we find that there are possibilities working towards those higher levels to which Gurdjieff gave the strange names used in line 4 of Table 2.
The story ends with Beelzebub receiving the greatest of honours and recognition, by beings with even higher understanding. Such a story cannot be omitted from our consideration of our higher levels of awareness and consciousness. In spite of Gurdjieff’s stated objectives of “burying the bone deeper”[17] there are definite insights that, with sufficient attention, the reader can penetrate to understand the various levels of Being and appreciate the difficulties encountered in the seeing of these levels within oneself.
In the allegory the final “transformation” in Beelzebub’s development of “level of being” is represented by the sprouting of forked horns on the top of his head. Gurdjieff describes a scene that occurs during Beelzebub’s final appearance on earth. The story tells of how a group of assembled observers witness the expression of Beelzebub’s levels of being through the growth of new prongs on his horns. His antlers keep growing new prongs up to and including a special fifth fork. This indicates that his being had indeed reached only one step below the level of what he called “The Sacred Anklad” or the “Reason of God” which, as shown in Table 2, is the step just before the highest level of “OUR ENDLESS CREATOR”.
We present here one small section from Beelzebub’s Tales to explore his representation of the higher levels Being. We quote it as follows:
“At first, while just the bare horns were being formed, only a concentrated quiet gravely prevailed among those assembled. But from the moment that forks began to appear upon the horns a tense interest and rapt attention began to be manifested among them. This latter state proceeded among them, because everybody was agitated by the wish to learn how many forks would make their appearance on Beelzebub’s head, since by their number the gradation of Reason to which he had attained according to the sacred measure of Reason would be defined.
“First one fork formed, then another, and then a third, and as each fork made its appearance a clearly perceptible thrill of joy and unconcealed satisfaction proceeded among all those present. As the fourth fork began to be formed on the horns, the tension among those assembled reached its height, since the formation of the fourth fork on the horns signified that the Reason of Beelzebub had already been perfected to the sacred Ternoonald and hence that there remained for Beelzebub only two gradations before attaining to the sacred Anklad.
“When the whole of this unusual ceremony neared its end and before all those assembled had had time to recover their self-possession from their earlier joyful agitation, there suddenly and unexpectedly appeared on the horns of Beelzebub quite independently a fifth fork of a special form known to them all.
“Thereupon all without exception, even the venerable archangel himself, fell prostrate before Beelzebub, who had now risen to his feet and stood transfigured with a mystical appearance, owing to the truly majestic horns which had arisen on his head. All fell prostrate before Beelzebub because by the fifth fork on his horns it was indicated that He had attained the Reason of the sacred Podkolad, i.e., the last gradation before the Reason of the sacred Anklad.
“The Reason of the sacred Anklad is the highest to which in general any being can attain, being the third in degree from the Absolute Reason of HIS ENDLESSNESS HIMSELF.”
In regards to the levels of individual development as portrayed by the growth of Beelzebub’s horns, beyond the three lower levels of Reason, Gurdjieff adds the several categories of Being as the steps through which humans may eventually proceed: “Reason of Astral Body” (Ternoonald), “Reason of Spiritual Body” (Podkolad), “Reason of God” (Anklad). The highest level he calls “Common Endless Creator, Our Endless Endlessness-all Quarters Maintainer” which we equate with the Egyptian Ra and which Plato presents as the Sun itself.
It is through his description of prongs sprouting on the head of Beelzebub that we find a terminology that allows an equivalence to be drawn between his perception and those of others that we study in this book. These all too difficult to recognize “higher” levels presented allegorically in Gurdjieff’s book as growth of horns on the head of Beelzebub make it easy for the casual reader to laugh off this scene as a humorous, useless fiction. We argue that it is no more fanciful than the human-headed birds and sphinx of the Ancient Egyptians or chained observers in Plato’s cave. To speak about the more-than-physical, creative irrational world has always been a challenge.
Gurdjieff’s writing provides insights into how we may be able capitalize on what he calls our “Conscious Labours and Intentional Suffering” to enable us to recognize the potentially higher states that he suggests are true possibilities for us. He points out that such higher states require a deliberate balancing of the characteristics that are revealed in our ordinary lives so that with additional understanding of ourselves we can gradually learn to pass from these primitive natural levels of reactivity to the higher levels that appear only with conscious balanced efforts; revealed with phenomena that only appear when these lower stages act together.
Coming as it does towards the end of the long tale of Beelzebub’s travels it is easy for the reader to fall “asleep” and get lost in the amusement of the image of horns growing on the head of a superior being. To Gurdjieff’s credit the “bone is indeed well buried” in these distracting images. Our purpose for inserting the line of Gurdjieff’s “Reasons” into Table 2 is to emphasize that this unusual image of sprouting horns may represent the most important guidance for us of what is in his book, and what we need to know. As we see in Table 2 his “Reasons” can be aligned with the major thoughts of other traditions. His lack of detail on the characteristics of these higher Reasons is also consistent with our ordinary understanding that they are very rarely realized but are ultimately personal and important in our recognition.
Are we, at this point in our study, being invited once again for some specific reason to seriously re-consider this assumed unity of being and the parts of which it is composed? We are accustomed to the idea of there being three basic functions of our natures that he calls “bodies”: (our bodies, our emotions, and our minds), but there seems to be something more suggested here. We customarily consider that these three independent functions work together in a recognizable harmony of operation towards a particular purpose. But one of the apparently main purposes of the life teachings of Gurdjieff was to encourage us to seriously question this supposed unity for ourselves. In examining this Table we therefore remind our readers that we need to take the question of this unity seriously. We invite our readers to do the same, perhaps being better able to keep this qualification of our sometimes-erratic functioning in mind when we are specifically pointed in that direction. How then are we to proceed?
By such methods Gurdjieff utilized many elements of every-day life to illustrate particular phenomena that are not otherwise familiar to us. As an example we point out that in this description he utilized quite specific esoteric influences on us that are not usual during our daily activities. We regard his utilization of an almost automatic action of the three notes of the octave sequences in this way. While the 3-note sequence may be familiar to singers, we need to appreciate how it may, without our intention, induce or help hold particular moods in us.
Over his lifetime Gurdjieff developed a method for awakening out of our daily sleep so as to ascend from it to a higher level of being alive to oneself, and through that to live a more real human life. In addition to the books that he prepared for publication, his pupils have since compiled others, including a volume entitled “Views from the Real World: Early Talks of Gurdjieff as Recollected by his Pupils[18]”. Additional works have also appeared, one of particular note based on discussions led and reported by Madame Jean de Salzmann, who spent much of her life attending Gurdjieff’s activities. She published works of her own, based on his leadership, but after his death. Notable among them is the collection of essays comprising a Book entitled, “The Reality of Being. The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff.”[19]
While Gurdjieff deliberately chose the new and unfamiliar imagery to convey much of what he intended his readers to understand, it can be seen to be in keeping with other great traditions concerning our striving for a more complete existence in this world, our creative irrational.
—— Chapter 8: 20th Century Psychoanalysts: Different Paths and Different Insights ———
———————— Table of Contents ———————————
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gurdjieff
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia
[4] Churton, T. 2017. Deconstructing Gurdjieff Biography of a Spiritual Magician. Inner Traditions. Vermont.
[5] Gurdjieff, G.I. 1950. Beelzebub’s Tales To His Grandson. All and Everything Third Series. Penguin Putnam Inc. 375 Hudson St., New York.
[6] https://www.amazon.com/Meetings-Remarkable-Men-G-Gurdjieff/dp/1578988934/
[7] https://www.amazon.com/Life-Real-Only-Then-When/dp/0140195858/
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meetings_with_Remarkable_Men
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Miraculous
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi
[14] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahra-Bey
[15] Brunton, P. 2007. A Search in Secret Egypt. Larson Publications. Burdett, New York.
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beelzebub%27s_Tales_to_His_Grandson
[18] Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World 1973. Early talks in Moscow, Essentuki, Tiflis,, Berlin, London, Paris, New York and Chicago As Recollected by his Pupils. With a Forward by Jeanne de Salzmann. E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc. New York.
[19] de Salzman, J. 2010. The Reality of Being. The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff. Shambala
The Ancient Greeks followed the Ancient Egyptians in the final centuries of the Egyptian culture. Between 728 and 525 BCE the glory of Ancient Egypt was fading with the waves of invasions by the Nubians, Assyrians and Persians. It was during this period that the Ancient Greeks were learning at the feet of the remaining Egyptian teachers. Both early Greek philosophers ,Thales of Miletus[1] (circa 624 – c. 546 BCE) and Solon[2] (circa 638 – c. 558 BCE), journeyed to Egypt and met with Pharaohs, and were trained by priests. Thales was considered by Aristotle as the first philosopher and the later was noted by Plato as the source of the tales of the sinking of Atlantis. It should not then surprise us to find a comparable spectrum of spirituality in the Greek tradition.
Comparable to the Egyptians, the approaches of Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus provide us with a means for exploring the underlying human expression of our creative irrational and its striving towards spirituality at the highest levels.
We begin with the lessons of the ancient Greek teacher Parmenides (circa 550 BCE) as presented by Kingsley[3]. His presentation helps us trace the possibilities for a new path to higher development. In particular we note that Kingsley’s insights into the writings of Parmenides show a link from the practices of the Ancient Egyptians into what the Greeks saw as the attraction to the higher.
Parmenides[4] was an early philosopher teaching in the town of Velia in Southern Italy. He was apparently an early priest of the worship of Apollo. While only a small amount of his original works has survived, one of his major works, entitled “On Nature” has survived. In this writing he provides a metaphor for the journeys to the edge of existence, the edge of our creative irrational. The first of the three sections of “On Nature” describes the undertaking of an initially spiritual journey from Parmenides’ ordinary life to the edges of this world to learn the great mysteries of life. He issummoned by the “Daughters of the Sun”.
We quote:
“In short, the Daughters of the Sun have come along to fetch him from the world of the living and take him right back to where they belong. This is no journey from confusion to clarity; from darkness into light. On the contrary, the journey Parmenides is describing is exactly the opposite. He is travelling straight into the ultimate night that no human being could possibly survive without divine protection. He is being taken to the heart of the underworld, the world of the dead.[5]”
So what does Parmenides, an early Ancient Greek with Phocaean heritage, have to contribute to our understanding of the purpose and drive behind the human creative irrational? What would make Parmenides succumb to this exceptional journey to the “edges of existence”? Kingsley portrays his motivation as originating from “longing”. To quote Kingsley again:
“The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach.”[6]
Parmenides is being dragged along by the power of allegorical horses at breakneck speed. This longing is no ordinary longing. It is not the rational individual ephemeral desires, appetites and wants of food, shelter and sex. His longing cannot be any stronger. It is almost as if this longing is insatiable; that it seems beyond reach. It is core to his Being. Although this longing is personal to Parmenides, it appears of exceptional and unusual scale to us all.
A little later Parmenides’ poem states:
“For it is no hard fate that sent you travelling this road - so far away from the beaten track of humans - but Rightness, and Justice.”
This introduces the necessary balance between the high-level internal longing on the part of Parmenides and the external influences of higher morals. Rightness and Justice have put him on this extraordinary journey. They are not personal. They are basic properties of the World that are beyond the ownership of any particular individual. So his journey is the result of both an exceptional personal longing and one that is combined with the more-than-merely personal higher forces at work in him.
The creative irrational pull that draws him is a central theme of the poem. But there is another aspect of his journey that cannot be missed. After he arrives in the presence of the goddess she provides him with insights. But there is an additional requirement paced on him. He is directed to “carry it away”. It is not sufficient that he receives the higher knowledge, but he is compelled to return to life with this knowledge. It becomes evident that this journey of his is not a one-way street. It seems that the return is an integral part of the motivation for the journey. There is a need for this knowledge to be delivered by Parmenides back to those who have not, or cannot, make the journey. There is something beyond the individual that is being satisfied by the experience.
So in Kingsley’s treatment of Parmenides we see the key elements of our personal creative irrational that includes an extreme internal personal longing as well as an external, more-than-merely personal influence to continue our existence beyond the rational biological, physical requirements.
The difficulties of simultaneously understanding different states within ourselves, ones that constitute our more usual situation, and others that are transformed states that we know only in special moments, comprise the main theme of “The Allegory of the Cave”, contained in Plato's writing called “The Republic[7]”. This classic allegory is an extended metaphor; a comparative image intended to convey a deeper level of understanding.
The second line of Table 2 describes in our own wording the description of the various stages in development of a human being according to the famous portrayal by Plato of his concept of the development of an individual’s movement from darkness into the bright light of the sun, as it is described in his essay the “Allegory of the Cave”. Plato, the archetypal classical Greek philosopher, thinker and writer circa 400 BCE, continues to be highly revered in the modern Western World for his contribution to our present day worldview. One of Plato’s it greatest works deals with levels of human existence. This “Allegory of the Cave” makes no sense if thought of literally in a physical world. It points to the need to see the levels of Being that are required for living consciously.
As we can see from the first two lines in Table 2 there are strong similarities between Plato’s description and that of the much earlier Ancient Egyptian. They both contain descriptions of both the rational biological and physical bodies and the more-than-merely personal levels of higher existence. In keeping with our definition of the creative irrational as being “beyond reason”, they are both dealing with the creative irrational using their preferred language and images.
Plato's mental construct in the Allegory begins with his presentation of the lowest level of human existence. He likens it to that of prisoners who from earliest childhood have been chained so that they can only look at the back of a long cave. They sit in a row and in only one position, unable to turn their heads; thus constrained to look only ahead of them at shadows cast on the back wall of the cave by the light of a fire burning behind them. They see only the shadow images, cast from what moves behind them, between them and the fire, images that appear to move along the wall. If someone carried implements behind them between them and the light, they would see only shadows of the carriers and the implements. And if sounds were heard, they would think that they came from the shadow images. These images would be the whole perceptual basis for their concept of what is real.
Plato then asks that we picture what would happen if one of the prisoners was freed and compelled to stand up and turn around to look at the light of the fire. He would suffer pain at gazing directly at it, and be so dazzled that he could scarcely discern the objects that had cast the shadows, and which made the sounds.
The story continues:
"What do you suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and turned toward more real things, he saw more truly? And if also one should point out to him each of the passing objects and constrain him by questions to say what it is, do you not think that he would be at a loss and that he would regard what he formerly saw as more real than the things now pointed out to him?...
"...and if someone should drag him by force up the ascent ... into the light of the sun, do you not think that he would find it painful,...and when he came out into the light that his eyes would be filled with its beams so that he would not be able to see even one of the things that we call real?...
"There would be need of habituation, ... to be able to see the things higher up. At first he would most easily discern the shadows, ... later the things themselves, and from that he would go on to contemplate the appearances in the heavens and heaven itself .... And so finally, he would be able to look upon the sun itself and see its true nature, not by reflections in water or phantasms of it in an alien setting, but in and by itself in its own place.[8]"
By using such relatable physical items such as “cave”, “shadows”, “fire” and “Sun”, the story presents the very abstract, intangible concepts in a spectrum of spirituality from the lower physical to the highest level of being. The Allegory captures not only the various levels of spirituality but also the key point that progress up the spectrum involves great effort and pain for the person striving for the higher levels. The allegory also points out that the climb from the back of the cave into full daylight might take a rather long time and a great deal of effort. The allegory refers specifically to the need for what it calls a period of habituation for acclimating ourselves to what is encountered on the climb. This is consistent with the many statements in the Pyramid Texts that urge the central figure to rise, to continue on, to do what is difficult for an ordinary person – such as fly. Both sets of text make no secret of the difficulty in reaching the higher levels of experience. The texts speaks of the fact that in one state it is very difficult to appreciate what might be encountered in the others; the very objects accessible to sight are seen entirely differently in the different situations, so differently that experience in one state is insufficient preparation for understanding what is seen in others. To reach a "higher" state from that which determines our present outlook clearly requires a considerable effort of understanding and tolerance, both towards ourselves and towards others with whom we may be related.
The allegory states in several instances that movement from the dark to the light is both painful and dazzling, so much so that it is questionable if it could be undertaken voluntarily by ordinary man. Plato suggests that the act could be undertaken only under duress or being forced by some outside power, perhaps an event or condition that might lead us to recognize an inner sense of great need.
It is even suggested that if the possibilities were introduced without this help from our circumstances, and if we were able to apprehend it under ordinary conditions we would rather kill the urge than obey it. This follows the situation of Parmenides being drawn by forces both internal and external. Such dramatic language is not easy to appreciate until one encounters the resistance in oneself, such as our resistance to a re-interpretation of symbols with which we have been raised or have lived with for a long time.
But the allegory doesn’t stop with the scenario of the person appreciating the highest levels of existence as represented by the image of the Sun. Plato goes on to discuss what would happen to the same person brought down again into the cave among the former fellow prisoners. What had been experienced in the bright light of the full strength of the sun would now make it impossible for the person to see and identify the shadows as well those who remained in the cave. The person would be laughed at and counted as one who had lost their sight if the person tried to tell them about it, and they would all conclude that it was clearly not worth even to attempt such folly in an ascent. In fact, they would actively resist exposure to the new interpretations. As Plato puts it, "If it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?" What is more, the person’s situation, having returned to their former world of illusion would be worse, not better.
"Do you think it at all strange if a man returning from divine contemplations to the petty miseries of men cuts a sorry figure and appears most ridiculous, if, while still blinking through the gloom, and before he has become sufficiently accustomed to the environing darkness, he is compelled in courtrooms or elsewhere to contend about the shadows of justice or the images that cast the shadows and to wrangle in debate about the notions of these things in the minds of those who have never seen justice itself?
"A sensible man would remember that there are two distinct disturbances of the eyes arising from two causes, according as the shift is from light to darkness or from darkness to light, and, believing that the same thing happens to the soul too, whenever he saw a soul perturbed and unable to discern something, he would not laugh unthinkingly, but would observe whether coming from a brighter life its vision was obscured by the unfamiliar darkness, or whether the passage from the deeper dark of ignorance into the more luminous world and the greater brightness had dazzled his vision. And so he would deem the one happy in its experience and way of life and pity the other, and if it pleased him to laugh at it, his laughter would be less laughable than that at the expense of the soul that had come down from the light above....[9]"
One of the principal attractions of Plato’s work in the current context is that it uses images from an everyday level of experience to cast additional light on states that are removed but that can be recognized in our ordinary life. It thus provides important further perspective on what is needed to bridge the gap that separates our ordinary life from other levels of understanding. Plato states in the very beginning of this dialogue that in developing his ideas he is not intending to describe man's situation in the exterior world, so much as using the imagery of social and political situations to enlighten our understanding of what takes place within us (emphasis added), when we are able to pay attention. The imagery captures much of what we can discern about our confused, lack of understanding between the vastly different states within ourselves - see Row 2 in Table 2.
In keeping with the theme of the creative irrational being “beyond reason”, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents us with a description of human life that is far beyond food, shelter and procreation. He presents a model of human existence that includes higher levels, each requiring effort and habituation to appreciate as well as a necessary return from full experience to assist our fellow “prisoners”. Perhaps because of the great difficulty of seeing how these infrequent, hence unfamiliar insights depend on us, many religions have implied that they arise outside of us, in a consciousness that exists independently of us. In such a case insights might only be activated in special conditions of need, such as we presented in Chapter 1 regarding the car accident or the encounter with the aged “Mi’kmaw” woman. Perhaps it is possible from comparable states of prayer. We do not wish here to enter into a debate on the impartiality or reality of religious beliefs. However, if we treat all such statements as symbolic in the same sense that the allegory of the cave is told, we might be able to agree that images of external influences are speaking of externality in the sense that they are external to our exoteric sense of reality. For instance who or what would force the prisoner to break their shackles and turn to the burning bright light of the fire at the back of the cave?
But is the same true for our esoteric parts? Such interpretation is consistent with the theory that they arise through an innate commonality of our individual unconscious. We can at least conclude that we seem to harbour within us a knowledge of influences and functions that are properly the characteristics of another level of being. For our level, however, they are the "secrets" told to initiates.
What matters most at the moment is to recognize that because of the way new understanding arises and works in us, certain ancient, traditional stories can be seen to have been deliberately intended to use metaphor and allegory to appeal to personal experience as the primary means of conveying the meanings of questions of quality and value. In this way, our new understandings may often seem to be a rediscovery of what has long been known. The insights provided by the ancient stories can nevertheless be seen as in some way essential to the continued development of the sense of coherence and unity that we individually seek. They contain influences that do not appear under the ordinary processes of learning in a context of an orderly elaboration of knowledge of external things. The sense that there is a direction towards a higher level of values in civilization, a change in level that might also be likened to our wish for objectivity, seems to depend on the existence within us of this common capacity to use characteristics to discriminate between levels of comprehension. It appears as a mode of knowing that we learn about in special circumstances and that may be evoked in metaphor.
Whether we accept the later views of Philo who thought that only a select few humans can attain the higher levels of connection with the divine[10] or the view of Saint Paul that all may reach the kingdom of Heaven, there is certainly agreement of the existence of higher spiritual levels in the spirituality spectrum.
So we are dealing with a sphere of human interest that is not well communicated by common language. Throughout the history of human activities we have had to resort to metaphor and allegory to try and address our higher interest. Of course the greatest difficulty is that the lesson may be taken literally – missing the whole point of the artistic creation. As might be expected from the Egyptian lineage of Plato’s ideas, it is relatively easy for us to draw equivalence between the various levels found in each of the two traditions (Table 2). Each culture presents their understanding in different ways. It may also be expected that the representation of levels found in the Classic Greek version seems more approachable. The symbolism of fire, shadow and the sun connects more easily with our modern sensitivities than human-headed birds, disembodied hearts on scales and crocodile-headed gods. Yet the insights are the same: there is more to us than we normally attend to.
Plotinus, circa 200 CE, was a Neo-Platonic philosopher writing about 800 years after Parmenides[11]. His major works entitled the “Enneads”[12] developed ideas of levels of existence that included the soul (Psuchē), the Intellectual Principle (Nous) and the highest level of the One (Monad). The third line of Table 2 names the levels according to the Plotinus. While his philosophy is linked to Plato, he is likely to have been influenced by Philo and the early Christian authors[13].
Plotinus believed that, “Everything leads to the One”. The One is the indivisible “All” containing the foundation of everything. Below the One he identified a number of levels of existence showing increasing differentiation as they occur lower in the scale. The key challenge of life according to Plotinus is to find within the highest existence, the Nous, that has been variously translated from Greek as the Intellectual Principle, Divine Mind, Logos or Order. Although Plotinus’ writings are not as widely recognized today as Plato’s, they have greatly influenced many of the Western World’s religions and Christianity in particular[14].
In light of our discussions regarding the different levels of phenomena in our daily existence, and the creative irrationality in seeing beyond our common experiences in our inner world, we can with effort still approach the terminology of Plato or of Plotinus. Thus, for example, perhaps without directly experiencing what the ancients called a Soul, or being able to identify exactly what was meant by Spirit, we are still in a position to recognize in these expressions hierarchies of phenomena in the inner world that do not differ in principle from levels in the hierarchy of phenomena described in exoteric models. In this way we can, for example, be prepared to appreciate the intent of Plotinus’ terminology. We can understand such terms to describe what he has detected as the levels or stages of ascent in inner spiritual transformation, rather than immediately dismissing them as either personal or “merely” metaphysical abstractions. By realizing the analogy with our own models of exoteric hierarchical structures, we can begin to contemplate the possibility of structures in the inner world that, while inaccessible to us in our ordinary conditions, are nevertheless phenomena that can be appreciated by us from their description by Plotinus.
In his presentation the Nous is the God within us that is simply a part of the indivisible, ever-present Monad. Plotinus speaks of the essential attraction of that part of us, the Nous, towards the all-present Monad. In his words:
“Any that have seen know what I have in mind: the soul takes another life as it draws nearer and nearer to God and gains participation in Him; thus restored it feels that the dispenser of true life is There to see, that now we have nothing to look for but, far otherwise, that we must put aside all else and rest in This alone, This becomes, This alone, all the earthly environment done away, in haste to be free, impatient of any bond holding us to the baser, so that with our being entire we may cling about This, no part in us remaining but through it we have touch with God. Thus we have all the vision that may be of Him and of ourselves; but it is of a self-wrought to splendour, brimmed with the Intellectual light, become that very light, pure, buoyant, unburdened, raised to Godhood, better, knowing its Godhood, all aflame then – but crushed out once more if it should take up the discarded burden.
“But how comes the soul not to keep that ground:
“Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of scission unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body.”[15]
This sounds very similar to the experience that Philo witnessed and reported.
Plotinus describes the Monad as a non-duality state that permeates everything. Its emanations establish all lower levels of existence. These ideas were developed a hundred years before Constantine formulated Christian beliefs of an omnipresent God[16]. Christianity later corrupted the concept of an all-present God into a concept of a separate, identifiable father figure that oversees everthing. In the Renaissance, 14th to 17th century CE, this “ever-present” God even became represented as an external old man sitting on a cloud surveying a physical world (Figure 28).
![Figure 28. An image of the “Creation of Adam” painting by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City[17].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542d4f86e4b06a71cbdb01c9/1586347493982-7PQ88970VHGG64TDT3VH/Sistine+Chapel.png)
Figure 28. An image of the “Creation of Adam” painting by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City[17].
While recognizing that the pictorial representation in Figure 28 is a piece of art created to convey complex higher level metaphysical thoughts to a general audience, we must also see that it unintentionally actually presents a vision of a separation into many parts – human from God, sky from earth, higher from lower. Quite a distraction from Plotinus’ urge to find the unity in our being that represents the Monad.
So what does Plotinus have to offer our search for the creative irrational in Greek philosopy? He specifically refers to our true nature as the soul or Intellectual-Principle that is a shared aspect of God. He makes an awkward analogy with the “love of a daughter for a noble father” who falls as a result of being lured by a mortal love. He says, “But one day coming to hate her shame, she puts away the evil of earth, once more seeks the father, and finds her peace.”[18] We call this awkward because it still falls into depending on the duality of two separate and independent beings, father and daughter. Duality is a philosophical position that it is not easy for us to avoid. In the Western world we seem consumed by thoughts of good versus bad, you versus me, etc.
Indeed Plotinus frequently espouses “love” as the driving force that underlies our desire for levels above the physical ordinary life. Elsewhere he expresses the shared components among God and ourselves as individuals. He states:
“So it is with the individual souls; the appetite for the divine Intellect urges them to return to their source.”[19]
And
“It looks towards its higher and has intellection; towards itself and orders, administers, governs its lower.”[20]
The sharing of the aspects of God in ourselves leads us to a sense of loss in our ordinary lives and a desire to get back into contact with the higher. According to Plotinus, it is a shared love of a singularity that motivates us. Our preparation for this reconnection requires us to become disassociated from the distractions of our ordinary lives. The reconnection requires quiet preparation and waiting as well as the occurrence of God showing himself like an “eye waits on the rising of the sun”[21].
It is important to point out that Plotinus also recognizes our inability to stay connected with the higher. He says:
“Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentred; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be.”[22]
And from a translation by Hadot, Plotinus states:
“Often I reawaken from my body to myself: I come to be outside other things, and inside myself. What an extraordinarily wonderful beauty I then see! It is then, above all, that I believe I belong to the greater portion. I then realize the best form of life; I become at one with the Divine, and I establish myself in it. Once I reach this supreme activity, I establish myself above every other spiritual entity. After this repose in the Divine, however, when I come back down from intuition into rational thought, then I wonder: How is it ever possible that I should come down now, and how was it ever possible that my soul has come to be within my body, even though she is the kind of being that she has just revealed herself to be, when she appeared as she is in herself, although she is still within my body?[23]”
The attitudes developed in contemplating such testimonials can help us understand the intent of searches into the phenomena of the inner world by allowing the creation within us of a sympathetic impulse towards the sincerity of the messages they have undertaken to convey to our generations. Plotinus recognizes the need to connect with the higher as well as the inevitable return to the ordinary.
He makes the point that the two states, the higher and lower, are naturally occurring and can be realized according to their circumstances:
“Souls that take this way have place in both spheres, living of necessity the life there and the life here by turns, the upper life reigning in those able to consort more continuously with the divine Intellect, the lower dominant where character or circumstances are less favourable.”
Critical to the distinction between Plotinian thought and the later Christian thought is the sense of who has access to the higher. In this quote the phrase “able to consort” strongly suggests that Plotinus saw a distinction between individuals who were prepared and able to access the higher and those who did not or could not access the higher. This is quite different from the modern Christian view espoused by Saint Paul that everyone who undergoes the process of baptism can expect access to the Kingdom of Heaven[24]. This distinction between those who expended significant effort and work and those who gain “entry” into heaven through a short, once in a lifetime ceremony certainly would have been seen and appreciated by Nietzsche.
So to summarize, Plotinus saw in us a portion of the unified God that longed to extend beyond our physical body and return to a communion with the Higher. Individuals are required to see themselves, develop a calm, quiet waiting posture and be prepared for when the unity of God presents itself. The answer to the question of “why awaken?” found in Plotinus’ teaching is that we inevitably hold a share of the indivisible, ever-present Monad within us. With time, effort and patience, our work in our ordinary life opens up the possibility of seeing this part of the Monad in ourselves and calls us out of our limited, unsatisfactory lives to the higher. Returning to the quote that we have presented in the “Introduction” of this book, he spoke of the attraction of ourselves to the higher with these words:
“I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All”[25].
The shared themes of Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus for a necessary departure and return to normal life are key. Parmenides was dragged away by “mares”, instructed by external powers and ordered to “carry it away”. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave what constitutes our awakening involves moving from the dark to stare into the sun before returning into the cave. He explicitly addresses the need and the challenges that a returnee faces upon descending back into the cave after acclimating to the bright light of the sun. The “Allegory of the Cave” doesn’t deal much with the reasons why a person would go through the pain and suffering of moving up and out of the cave to look directly at the bright sun. Following that difficult challenge, he doesn’t suggest a reason for a person’s actions in leaving the sun behind and returning into the depths of the cave in an attempt to unshackle those remaining in the shadows. But both the exit and the return seem essential parts of the process. Finally in our presentation Plotinus, in this same lineage of thought, refers to awe of experiencing Monad and the inability of the individual to maintain such a connection. One must inevitably return to “real” life. The distancing and return to normal life seems to be a part of a completing process in a full cycle of reaching for Being and then returning again to one’s usual existence. Whereas there appears to be a deep-seated longing required for an individual to strive for higher consciousness, the return in our long-term personal development is also required by these philosophers as being obligatory. The whole concept of such movements highlights the creative irrational of such great and influential thoughts in the development of Western culture.
Although we present this creative irrational as something intrinsically human, it is obvious that its strength varies greatly and its full potential is only ever realized in a very limited number of individuals. It is not clear from the Greek writings whether they were addressing something realized by a few select dedicated individuals or all humans. As reported by Plotinus, the difficult and fleeting ultimate goal of the creative irrational in connecting with the “ever present” occurs rarely and requires individual preparation and work to become open to the opportunities when they present themselves. Using a Christian phrase it is said that, “many are called but few are chosen.” Thus we do not present the creative irrational as a recipe for the attainment of higher consciousness, but as a potential work aid to help focus our attention on the internal more-than-personal movements within us.
In summary, we appreciate from the points of view presented by Parmenides, Plato and Plotinus that they were struggling to provide insights into a process of individual development that while clearly irrational, is incredibly powerful in forming a human connection with the more-than-merely personal. All are obviously dealing with life beyond rational normal day-to-day existence towards the higher levels of existence and Being. All of them allude to a natural process of longing to be reunited with something that is more-than-merely-personal, something that is more than ordinary for most of us as individuals. Plotinus specifically points out that we are a part of something that is all encompassing in our world. The higher levels draw our interest in rejoining the higher. Parmenides made the point that there is great reward in experiencing the life at the edge of existence. But his view is that our initial encounters with the higher are unsustainable in our regular being. The creative irrational is a part of our existence; a longing for something that is beyond our ordinary lives, something more-than-merely personal in our consciousness.
———————— Chapter 7: A Modern Allegory of the Spirituality Spectrum: The Gurdjieff Work ————
————————- Table of Contents ———————————
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales_of_Miletus
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon
[3] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness, California.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides
[5] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness California.
[6] Kingsley, P. 2003. Reality. The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing. Inverness California.
[7] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.
[8] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.
[9] Hamilton E. and H. Cairns. 1980. Plato, The Collected Dialogues, including the letters. Bollingen Series LXXI. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1743 pp.
[10] Sandmel, S. 1979. Philo of Alexandra: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. New York.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
[12] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications.
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo
[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
[15] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.9 (9-10)
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Christianity
[17] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam
[18] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. VI.9.
[19] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.4.
[20] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.3.
[21] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. V.5.5.
[22] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. IV.8.1.
[23] Hadot, P. 1993. Plotinus or The Simplicity of Vision. M. Chase (trans.). Chicago. University of Chicago Press.
[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle - Basic_message
[25] MacKenna, S. 1992. Plotinus The Enneads. Larson Publications. Page 2.
![Figure 29. Friedrich Nietzsche (left) [7] and C.G. Jung (right)[8].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/542d4f86e4b06a71cbdb01c9/1587209800470-TTHRC1LEHYG5GPX7F9DR/Screenshot+2020-04-18+08.36.20.png)