"In more poetic terms I might say that it is the 'space' in which the dream can take place but it is not the dream nor the dreamer as they would be effects/distinctions."
I'm with this. I think I'm okay thinking of the Plemora as 'the dreamer' than you are. I'm not sure why. But I fully am with understanding it as the fundamental context in which all qualities do and will emerge.
"But it does appear to me that these excitations are 'instinctive' and 'blind'. I would see these as the foundational 'indefinite' yet 'distinct' expression of all potential forms/images, coming into being/transforming/going out of being/coming into being etc. This also seems to me, in the limited way I understand, to be Schopenhauer's 'blind, instinctive will'. Which to me seems similar to Abraxas "Had the pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, not any particular effect, but effect in general......It is force, duration, change."
Okay, thanks for that, because now I am seeing more clearly where the interesting question you are circling lies. But first let me put a few more of your comments. Or, rather, Jung comes next
form Jung:
"...but from Abraxas life" Life, death, good, evil, hot, cold etc and even more specifically "It is the life of creatura." (Man) and "It is the operation of distinctiveness." (Images) or as Kastrup would say "What it looks like..."
Monkey, you then said:
"So then it gets interesting for me because Kastrup suggests that at some point there are images that loop back on themselves and in doing so create a reflective surface and it is from this reflective surface that awareness or meta-cognition can arise. But what's really interesting for me is that this arises out of the 'effect' of Abraxas or 'blind, instinctive will', which is not meta-conscious."
Right, I'm in agreement that blind, instinctive will is not meta-consciousness.
"So in a real sense whilst Jung says that we are inescapably bound to 'terrible' Abraxas, "But Abraxas is the world, its becoming and its passing." we are a Creatura of the Pleroma, "Yet because we are parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire, since small and great are qualities which are contained in it. It is that nothingness which is everywhere whole and continuous...So, for me, M@L is the Pleroma and Abraxas is 'Blind, instinctive will.' Apologies if this isn't entirely all lined up and neat and if my articulation isn't spot on....
Okay, I'm on the same page as much of this.
I want to threw out a couple more Kastrup distinctions and then see if my first response will keep us moving in an interesting direction.
In Kastrup's model we can say that qualities don't exist until a dissociated alter is created. The qualities 'fall out' in the living interaction and interpenetration of M@L and the alter. Before the alter exists, those qualities might be thought of as potentialities of M@L.
Might we that M@L itself is fundamentally the blind, instinctive, eternally inhabiting all of it's living potentialities, but that it isn't until a very special 'kind' of potential is actualized in the form of an alter that M@L has the kinds of qualities Jung is attributing to Abraxas? In other words, M@L would be the fundamental striving that is God. Abraxas is the sudden force of being that precedes and 'causes' all that emerges once we have dissociation.
From Jung:
"We are, however, the pleroma itself, for we are a part of the eternal and infinite. But we have no share thereof, as we are from the pleroma infinitely removed; not spiritually or temporally, but essentially, since we are distinguished from the pleroma in our essence as creatura, which is confined within time and space."
I think language can get really tricky here because it's not always clear what we mean by terms like 'essence', 'infinite,' and 'share'. If Jung is expression a form of Gnosticism and if Gnosticism can be characterized as:
"Viewing material existence as flawed or evil, Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament)[2] who is responsible for creating the material universe." (from Wiki)
Then I think one of our first moves must be to see that Kastrup's is spacious enough to include Gnostic cosmologies and non-Gnostic cosmologies. My personal inclination is non-gnostic in the sense that I think there is a continuous 'thread' of The living Word (or many other metaphors can point to it) running through all manifestation, rather than an abrupt break between M@L and manifestation as world or creatures.
I think I'm happy to explore this on either side of the coin. If we take Abraxas as 'blind, instinctive will', I would want to know what symbols we might use to point to the 'qualitative' (although our Jungian model will definitely rule out that word!) nature of M@L. If we take Abraxas as pointing to the 'force' that comes when there is dissociation, we still will want to explore the relationship between M@L and Abraxas.
But let me stop here to see if you need to ask me questions so that we can see what our next step is....
side note: I'm still slowly going through the sermons. I see at the end of #1, Jung makes clear that God is not to be equated with Plemaora so in our conversation I will try to be conscious not to equate God with M@L which is my typical approach. But it is very interesting to see why and how Jung would want to hold God as distinct, as this first with much of what he is trying to point to in the first sermon.