Re: Jordan Peterson “Beyond Order” book excerpt: Aeon of Horus, Osiris, Star Wars, Jung and Crowley
Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2021 10:35 pm
Santeri, you say "collective spirit of the tribe and it's ecosystem individuating a human body into its vessel and a tool.". You also say "Jungian way, which reflects the very old way".
To me this seems exactly reversed. The old way of shamanism, which is also historically older, reflects the time of instinctive relations to the spirit. The shaman becomes a visionary, the collective spirit projects the higher order patterns of existence within the shaman's soul substance. The shaman's human role is to act as gradient for the visions so that they can be used as guides in the sensory world affairs (healing, places for hunting, weather patterns, etc.). But the collective being remains in the spiritual world. You put that very well when you say that the collective turns a human body into a vessel and a tool. The human soul in the body must step back, so to speak, so that the collective can speak in visions, which the shaman's soul must then incorporate into the life of the tribe.
In the course of evolution the collective spirit of all men (not only of a certain tribe) descends closer and closer to the sensory realm as experienced in each individual human experience. This descent of the collective from above is reflected in the waters below, within the individual body, as the gradual awakening of the "I". But there's marked difference - in the new Initiation the human "I" is not displaced by the collective. This doesn't make sense, it would be like to expect that the closer you get to a mirror, the farther your reflection should go. In fact, the limited human "I" turns out to be what the universal collective human being experiences as "I" within the confines of human bodies. Note the difference: in old times the collective spirit overshines the human being and inspires Imaginations in it from 'distance'. When the collective spirit inspires the shaman it doesn't say to itself "I am that human being". It feels itself spread out in the spiritual world and caring for its offsprings so to speak. In the new times the collective spirit itself descends to the level of the physical human beings. Now the collective can in full consciousness say "I" within a human body, it feels incarnated in the body.
What we call "I" has always been the refraction of the human universal. But this "I" is torn between different influences so it has to decide what it wants to give way to. As said, unlike the old way, the new Initiation doesn't subdue the "I" in order to receives communications of the spirit through visions. This doesn't make sense, it would mean that the collective spirit subdues itself! Instead, the collective says to itself "I am lost and torn asunder by various influences. Among these influences are also those of my own higher nature that is spread out in the Cosmos. What I now experience is only a small aperture of it. Even though we are the same being, my higher self is so much vaster than what I currently experience, that it will be untruthful if I claim that I, in my limited state, am the higher self. Yes, we are the same essential being but for all practical purposes my higher self is an independent and infinitely wiser being. I can only become this, my own, higher self if I fully consciously work to become like it, by sacrificing everything that makes me different from it. This requires conscious and unceasing effort to recognize the different influences and in full freedom to align with those of my own higher nature."
In the ancient times the collective inspired visions in the shaman. Through evolution these visions were becoming more and more focused and palpable. What did they become? Thoughts! In Greek times the collective was close enough that it could be experienced in philosophical thoughts. But the Greek philosopher couldn't yet say "I think" in the way we do it today. For him thinking was a mysterious process, something that was flowing in spiritual ways. It was not that much that he thought but he was carried on the waves of thinking. In other words, thinking was proceeding purely instinctively (as it is for many people even today by the way, although not in the exact same way). That's why the Greeks spoke of the Muses, the Logos as realities. They still felt that thinking has spiritual origin. The Greek philosophers were the shamans of the day, they were transducing the inspirations of the collective, which were now experienced much more intimately, as crystalized thought-visions of the spiritual world, just as the shamans of old were transducing living, mobile visions of the spiritual world. So there's a tradeoff - the thought-visions become more and more personal so that the collective itself can experience its own reflection in them more and more clearly, but at the same time these thoughts become more and more sensory-like and rigid, they lose the living mobility of the shamanic visions. What for the shaman was the vision of the spirit of the forest, for the Greek was reduced to the concept of the forest.
What we can experience today in our thinking is something that neither the shaman could experience in relation to the visions, neither the Greek in relation to the thoughts. We experience that we create our thoughts. Previously, the collective was creating the visions within the shaman and the thoughts within the Greek but now the collective has found its contact with the world of perceptions. Now the collective, experiencing itself as a limited "I", creates its own visions and thoughts. It is at the same time the collective source and the shamanic perceiver.
From this point on follows the ascending path where these thoughts regain their Cosmic character again, first becoming living expression of the spirit, then being raised into living and mobile Imaginations (the analog of the shamanic visions) - but this time experienced from 'the other side' - from the side from which visions and thoughts have always been created.
This is the struggle of today, admittedly going through trial and error in many ways. Battles that Jung was fighting, that JP is fighting and many others. We are rediscovering the reality of the myths and archetypal beings but this can happen in the evolutionary correct way only if we discover them not as visions as they were experienced in the past (as something coming externally to us, which we can only receive if we subdue the "I") but as thoughts and Imaginations that we rediscover from our own experience within the world of living idea-beings. In certain sense we perceive the higher beings when we are able to recreate through loving resonance the thoughts and Imaginations of them, through our own forces (the forces of the higher self).
To me this seems exactly reversed. The old way of shamanism, which is also historically older, reflects the time of instinctive relations to the spirit. The shaman becomes a visionary, the collective spirit projects the higher order patterns of existence within the shaman's soul substance. The shaman's human role is to act as gradient for the visions so that they can be used as guides in the sensory world affairs (healing, places for hunting, weather patterns, etc.). But the collective being remains in the spiritual world. You put that very well when you say that the collective turns a human body into a vessel and a tool. The human soul in the body must step back, so to speak, so that the collective can speak in visions, which the shaman's soul must then incorporate into the life of the tribe.
In the course of evolution the collective spirit of all men (not only of a certain tribe) descends closer and closer to the sensory realm as experienced in each individual human experience. This descent of the collective from above is reflected in the waters below, within the individual body, as the gradual awakening of the "I". But there's marked difference - in the new Initiation the human "I" is not displaced by the collective. This doesn't make sense, it would be like to expect that the closer you get to a mirror, the farther your reflection should go. In fact, the limited human "I" turns out to be what the universal collective human being experiences as "I" within the confines of human bodies. Note the difference: in old times the collective spirit overshines the human being and inspires Imaginations in it from 'distance'. When the collective spirit inspires the shaman it doesn't say to itself "I am that human being". It feels itself spread out in the spiritual world and caring for its offsprings so to speak. In the new times the collective spirit itself descends to the level of the physical human beings. Now the collective can in full consciousness say "I" within a human body, it feels incarnated in the body.
What we call "I" has always been the refraction of the human universal. But this "I" is torn between different influences so it has to decide what it wants to give way to. As said, unlike the old way, the new Initiation doesn't subdue the "I" in order to receives communications of the spirit through visions. This doesn't make sense, it would mean that the collective spirit subdues itself! Instead, the collective says to itself "I am lost and torn asunder by various influences. Among these influences are also those of my own higher nature that is spread out in the Cosmos. What I now experience is only a small aperture of it. Even though we are the same being, my higher self is so much vaster than what I currently experience, that it will be untruthful if I claim that I, in my limited state, am the higher self. Yes, we are the same essential being but for all practical purposes my higher self is an independent and infinitely wiser being. I can only become this, my own, higher self if I fully consciously work to become like it, by sacrificing everything that makes me different from it. This requires conscious and unceasing effort to recognize the different influences and in full freedom to align with those of my own higher nature."
In the ancient times the collective inspired visions in the shaman. Through evolution these visions were becoming more and more focused and palpable. What did they become? Thoughts! In Greek times the collective was close enough that it could be experienced in philosophical thoughts. But the Greek philosopher couldn't yet say "I think" in the way we do it today. For him thinking was a mysterious process, something that was flowing in spiritual ways. It was not that much that he thought but he was carried on the waves of thinking. In other words, thinking was proceeding purely instinctively (as it is for many people even today by the way, although not in the exact same way). That's why the Greeks spoke of the Muses, the Logos as realities. They still felt that thinking has spiritual origin. The Greek philosophers were the shamans of the day, they were transducing the inspirations of the collective, which were now experienced much more intimately, as crystalized thought-visions of the spiritual world, just as the shamans of old were transducing living, mobile visions of the spiritual world. So there's a tradeoff - the thought-visions become more and more personal so that the collective itself can experience its own reflection in them more and more clearly, but at the same time these thoughts become more and more sensory-like and rigid, they lose the living mobility of the shamanic visions. What for the shaman was the vision of the spirit of the forest, for the Greek was reduced to the concept of the forest.
What we can experience today in our thinking is something that neither the shaman could experience in relation to the visions, neither the Greek in relation to the thoughts. We experience that we create our thoughts. Previously, the collective was creating the visions within the shaman and the thoughts within the Greek but now the collective has found its contact with the world of perceptions. Now the collective, experiencing itself as a limited "I", creates its own visions and thoughts. It is at the same time the collective source and the shamanic perceiver.
From this point on follows the ascending path where these thoughts regain their Cosmic character again, first becoming living expression of the spirit, then being raised into living and mobile Imaginations (the analog of the shamanic visions) - but this time experienced from 'the other side' - from the side from which visions and thoughts have always been created.
This is the struggle of today, admittedly going through trial and error in many ways. Battles that Jung was fighting, that JP is fighting and many others. We are rediscovering the reality of the myths and archetypal beings but this can happen in the evolutionary correct way only if we discover them not as visions as they were experienced in the past (as something coming externally to us, which we can only receive if we subdue the "I") but as thoughts and Imaginations that we rediscover from our own experience within the world of living idea-beings. In certain sense we perceive the higher beings when we are able to recreate through loving resonance the thoughts and Imaginations of them, through our own forces (the forces of the higher self).