Re: Cells that act like unique, adaptable organisms...
Posted: Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:00 pm
There are clearly changes that happen in the cultural psyche around 40 000 years ago when the Venus figures, cave art etc takes off, again in the axial age, again with the rise of christianity etc. How much these changes happen within the space of shared culture versus within the collective subconscious itself is an interesting question, and I’m certainly open to there being a kind of evolution of consciousness.AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 7:06 pm
Simon - I think you have mistaken an evolution of ideas-values for an evolution of the collective subconscious itself, the latter being what I am referring to as the process revealed in scripture. It is an evolution of how humanity has experienced the world. This process is discussed in the writings of quite a few 20th century thinkers, such as Owen Barfield, Jean Gebser, Heidegger, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Rudolf Steiner. Perhaps you are familiar with one or two of those names and can use as a reference point. It can be discerned in the evolution of language, art, science-technology, and culture over the millennia.
A very simple and crude summary - there was a time when humanity did not experience any I/Self, only a group consciousness where psychic processes were dispersed throughout the cosmos and Earth environment. Then the collective subconscious evolved to the mode of ego consciousness, where the I/Self was experienced and sharp distinctions could be made between one's Self and the world (yet there was still a polar unity between Self-World). Eventually we come to the rational consciousness in which I/Self becomes totally detached from the world and is experienced as a completely private realm, while the public realm is experienced as completely devoid of spirit-mind (apart from other private bubbles of consciousness).
Under this view, the Christ incarnation event is a sort of fulcrum point of human history in which Spirit had completed its descent into the 'physical' I/Self and the latter is set to the task of reuniting with the 'astral' Spirit. It is about each individual human experiencing the reality of Christ within, not simply as an intellectual understanding but as a voluntary and fully conscious alignment of will, feeling and thinking. The ideologies you mention seek to find solutions to the isolation-alienation of I/Self and corresponding void of meaning through external powers, or fall into the abyss of nihilism, rather than seeking meaning from Christ within.
However this way of seeing things reminds me of when I moved from atheism to eastern religions, and I decided that religions were like a groove that was carved into the collective consciousness, one which people would slip into with a little push, and only eastern religions tried to look behind the grooves. Of course what you are suggesting is very different to this, and I have no doubt the likes of Teilhard de Chardin and Owen Barfield have deeper insights into these things than me. Nonetheless, from where I am now, when this perspective is transposed onto scripture, it gives me the feeling I get from (the small bit I’ve read of) Jung, which is a kind of flattening of everything into one dimension. It feels like the colour has been taken out of a painting, with god becoming some aspect or director of the human psyche.
I probably sound a bit ignorant, but my understanding has lead me to be content and at ease with myself, in a way I haven’t since I was a small child. It’s far from perfect and has a long way to go still, and there are plenty of mysteries I don’t have the first clue about. The way I connect to the christ within is through simple things, such as lifting my heart and mind to god, being aware of my day, saying sorry for the things I got wrong, saying thank you, and being quiet. If you have a similar way of emptying yourself and inviting god into that space, but which frames this around collective phenomena, then who am I to criticise!