C.G. Jung’s concept, which answers today,in my opinion, to the full what’s what, has lain down foundations of the schema, set out below. As the body and the psyche in any not clear way coincide, the zero line on the schema is a conditional border, separating the subject from the phenomenal world. On the left it is placed Big space — a field of infinite transformations of energy, on the right — the psychical substance of an individual, containing the element of eternity. The foundation of all living and lifeless things is unified, but in process of complicating the organization there are distinctions. Molecules of living matter polarize light, and it is represented by a great number of the independent and self-similar objects moving due to own power resources contrary to external influence, while the mobility of inert matter is based on extraneous energy sources and is a consequence of external influence.
Further we observe a difference between animal species; difference of the person from other mammals is the third level of complexity of «assembly», and here consciousness enters into game.
Psychosomatics is a product both of phylogenesis (development of the human species from sea ancestors up to this date) and ontogenesis (development of a separate individual). An acceptable (without a stressful reaction) in the given community degree of disorder of the typical form of the body and borders of psyche-emotional reactions can be named the norm.
The information containing a history of species development, and also a «layer» of psyche in which it had been fixed, was named by Jung the archetypical or collective unconscious, the foundation from which the ego «grows». The person is similar to a complex number in mathematics, with that only difference that the imaginary part is a person who sometimes can simple not be present, there is the body and consciousness without self-sensibleness like animals are.
Optimization of contacts of thecumulative mind (G. Bateson’s term: It is implied that in the psyche of an individual there is a «super-subject» havingallinformation perceived during life, instead of its scanty part which is in personal memory) with the ego is a problem which is solved successfully by yoga.
Jung had noted that development of the modern society has conflicted to interests of a separate person, who does not know (does not wish to know) either directions of this development or its costs which had arisen as result of destructive behavior of mankind for lack of the ecological aspect of culture at all levels, from the individual up to the TNC.
The satisfaction of infinite desires in the West is similarly to a frenzied search of variants of the survival in the East. On the one hand, all this isolates the superheated ego from the «rest» of psyche, on the other hand, does not give an opportunity to estimate consequences of your behavior which results in full alienation of a person from the systemic mind against what he protests by neuroses, borderline states, and mental disorders.
The body has own needs, sometimes it is necessary for it to realize its animal nature, the same is possible to tell about consciousness which at times requires desperately prevalence of instincts.
On the one hand, the society of the West produces infinite pseudo-needs and the aspiration to their satisfaction, on the other hand, cannot give to everyone an opportunity of such satisfaction. Intrapsychic imbalance generates some perverted forms of compensation: aggression, deviating behavior, unmotivated criminality, alcoholism, and narcomania.
The degree of mental integrity is individual, there are people balanced from birth; someone is forced to self-knowledge by circumstances, for some people it turns into the end in itself. What occurs to consciousness at the intrapsychic communicationof full value?
Enormous influence on civilization had been exerted by mystical experiences during which the subjectas though falls outside the limits of being, time, and space. For those who had gone through this condition, the aspiration to test it again and again frequently becomes life goal; some «spiritual teachers» assert that they are constantly in it, and it is for them more trustworthy than reality.
The essence of the experiences, called enlightenment, actually is extremely simple, just as the truth, submitted in it: the particular is manifestation of the One. Hinduism, asserting that all is God, considers the spirit as an indivisible and nonlocalized substance. The nature (matter) is either declared illusion (Maya) or the reality of the lowest level, which is divided into object and subject only for the saddened perception. The idea (and acceptance of the concept) of such unity — tat tvam asi (you are that) — is the highest level of the religious abstraction which had exerted, due to the East, a powerful influence on mentality and culture of the West.
If to take, for instance, agrain of sand, and then a part of your own nail and to examine sequentially them in an electronic microscope, then, since some level, the distinction between living and lifeless disappears, we see a structural identity – the unity! As in a joke about a sergeant all shown consists «of the same material», but, one thing, to comprehend it in the speculative way, and another — to get from mystical experiences! Exactly interpretation of these experiences by different cultures had led to the beginnings of world religions.
The more the ego (wakeful consciousness) is isolated from the unconscious (cumulative mind) the less he is capable to comprehend the true reason of his despondency, and the more strongly he «bruises himself» on its real consequences. Distinction of necessary and possible appears only after finding of integrity: «A free person does not do mistakes as he sees not only the facts, but also laws, staying behind them» (Leibnitz). Freedom is a difference between knowledge and being; M.K. Mamardashvili had noted that now and then people should operate in situations, when it is already late. And in relation to them there is only one freedom — knowledge of laws what allows not to get in such situations, when it is already late.
| Macrocosmos | Microcosmos — human being | ||||||||||
| GIVEN – surrounding world | Subjective human substance | Objective information, but being a part of subject | |||||||||
| Unconscious personality information | The general collective | ||||||||||
| REFLECTED | |||||||||||
| Sense | Emotions (feelings) | Intuition | Thinking | Running memory | Memory, forgotten | Repressed | Inhuman material | Emotions | Affects, instincts | Sensations | |
| Bursting out content | |||||||||||
| Conscious | Personal unconscious | Collective unconscious | |||||||||
The person learns the world by five sense organs, the first kind of perception is sensations. They speak: there is «something», and it is perceived.Sensationsare one of the functions of consciousness. Fixing perceived and even not having grasped all the details, what it is, we already react interestedly,emotionsare the second function. The unconscious supplies us with intuition; frequently not having had time to understand and consider anything, we already know what perceived means and what meaning it has;intuitionis the third function of consciousness. And the fourth, the slowest and most viscous is logical thinking.
Functions make pairs of oppositions: «sense — thinking», «sensation — intuition». One of them is always the leading; it is the basic way of interaction of the subject with reality. Taking into account the conditional distribution in two big groups of «extraverts» and «introverts», we receive eight types of the personality pattern.
Memory exists in two «kinds»: as an operative, controlled at will, and a long-term, a distinctive warehouse of the general perceived information, to full content of which consciousness has no access. The first five «layers» of psyche are united by a steady system of coordinates — the ego. His «structure» is formed by: sensation of the body, the existence, memory data, and attention — the operative part of consciousness, capable to distract, concentrate or to direct at will energy of perception. Then there is area of the personal unconscious, subconsciousness (superseded «material») is its «layer», the «closest» to consciousness. Subconsciousness contains the shadow part of the «ego», the information, incompatible with self-concept (and relationship), and also the emotional traumas, forming roots of neuroses.
The brain «writes» everything, what gets in volume of perception, but this information stream is initially divided into two not equivalent parts, one of which, apprehended, makes up approximately one thousandth of perceived. Some part of the information as required is blocked by the unconscious to provide comfort and safety of the «ego».
« … The modern science disposes facts that the person, generally speaking, remembers everything what once has by him been pronounced, read, received as images, however he actively uses in his activity only an insignificant part of this huge luggage» («Foundations of Synergetics», 2002).
Instincts and emotions, «growing» from archetypical, are located even «more deeply»; they rise in consciousness from the primeval darkness, answering constellations (condensations) of external influences and factors. Jung considers that exactly this layer delivers «material» of psychoses.
And then — archetypical. Under certain combinations of external and internal events it can break in consciousness by images, pulses of emotions, or sensations. Any displays of human have an animal «base», including instinctive reactions and forms of behavior. Therefore one can speak about archetype as a matrix according to which the psyche of each human being develops and functions. «The crystal lattice defines the spectrum of possible forms; the environment causes any of these opportunities to realization» (1937, Kilman).
Archetypical is a universal substratum in which the history of evolution of a kind had been embodied and there is a genetic «set» of potential reactions. When archetypical somehow directly contacts with the person, it always has a character of the Divine Revelation (according to expression of Jung- numinous).
As a rule, archetypical «contacts» only with a «superstructure» of full value possessing creative abilities; the Network (the One) selects subjects of contact itself.
In the analytical model there are two more psychic structures – a «mask» and a «soul-image»; it is nothing more than dampers(shock-absorbers), protecting consciousness from direct collision with external and internal influences.
The mask is a set of the habitual reactions, implanted in the body: tone, mime, clichés, manner of communication, etc. It is a labor body on which perfection the quality of social contacts depends. The lack of elasticity of a «mask», its unchangeability speaks either about the uncommon force allowing to the subject successfully «to punch» this world or about the complete loss of adaptibility what causes psychentonia, accumulates and usually leads to catastrophe.
The second damper is the «soul-image», the rear cover of consciousness, something foggier rather than «mask», something like vague idea of the person about his own character and how he can show himself. It is like a vague presentiment of what one should not do, ongoing from within.
One of the major functions of consciousness is assurance of the body safety and prolongation of its life, and also transformation of two realities (external and internal) to a kind with which the logical mind is capable to deal.
All animal instincts and promptings, belonging to the body, passing through personal «filters», become universal properties. Sometimes in extreme situations the cumulative mind intercepts the initiative, saving the body life at the cost of interim loss, and at times the ego disintegration. When health had been undermined, energy of the unconscious, trying to «evoke a response» from the mind, only aggravates destructive tendencies.
Let’s compare Jung’s concept with the model of the Indian, Castaneda’s teacher, for the doubtless literary talent of the last had created magnificent metaphors. So, Don Juan names wakeful consciousness (subject, ego) the tonal: «The tonal is your social face. The organizer of the world. Everything what we know and do as people is work of the tonal. («Tales of Power», books I — IV, p. 505) Everything for what we have word is the tonal. The tonal begins from birth and ends with death (ibid, p. 506). Its function is to judge, estimate, and testify. The tonal is an island. This island is actually all our world. The mind is a part of the tonal (ibid, 508)».
«Nagval (the cumulative mind or the unconscious — V.B.) is that part of us with which we in general have nothing to do. But does it mean that in your opinion there is no God? No, I have not told that. I have only said that nagval is not God because God belongs to our personal tonal. God is all the same of what we can think, therefore, correctly speaking, he is only one of the subjects on this island. It is impossible to see God at own will, one can only speak about him. Nagval is there, he said. There, around the island (ibid, p. 507)».
«Under the certain circumstances the tonal starts to realize that except him there is still something. This something is like a voice which comes from depths, the voice of nagval(ibid, p. 511)».
The tonal begins from birth and ends with death, but nagval never comes to an end… Nagval is boundless. It is possible to tell that nagval is responsible for creativity (ibid, p. 516)».
In the scheme of Don Juan nagval is not only the unconscious, «belonging» to the given material bearer, but something more global which fragment is the unconscious of individuals living in one time «layer». That is the matter is of the same supersystem or the One whose concept is divided by the author of the given work.
«Nagval, having once learned to outcrop, can cause a big harm to the tonal, coming out into the open without any control (ibid, p. 527). Nobody can survive in the intentional meeting with nagval without a long training (ibid, p. 535). Years are required to prepare the tonal (consciousness — V.B.) to such meeting. Colliding face to face with nagval (the unconscious, his own, or archetypical), the ordinary person usually dies from shock (ibid, p. 536). A warrior should become faultless and completely empty (in case of yoga — to provide the required quality of mental emptiness – chitta vritti nirodho). The pure island (the cleared mental space) does not make resistance; it has nothing for resistance (as the usual structure of consciousness is for a while removed — V.B.).
Nagval is inexpressible; all possible sensations, both beings and persons float in it as barges — peacefully, invariably, and always. The tonal is that where any integrated organism is» (ibid, p. 592). Magicians say that through a will they can be witnesses (also Vedanta speaks the same) of nagval’s effects(ibid, p. 595). The tonal is a reflection of an indescribable unknown, filled with the order (an obstacle to exhaustive self-knowledge is Gödel’s theorem, speaking in the given context that the processes, providing creation of a semantic image on the screen, cannot be display onthe samescreen), and nagval is a reflection of an indescribable emptiness which contains all (ibid, p. 596).
Nagval is attractive beyond all measure, and the warriors who depart for it, find that returning to the tonal or to the world of the order, noise and pain is the most unpleasant thing» (ibid, p. 599).
In Samyama it begins the process of distribution of consciousness depthward, and it lasts until the person assimilates all survived and endogenous experience, till to archetypical. Inborn ability for association of the ego with the «rest» of psyche is inherent in a mere handful of people about whom G. Bateson had told: «If mystics float in the sea of the unconscious, schizophrenics drown in it». Or, according to Montague Ullman, the founder of the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York, «such personalities are not capable to organize (to «digest» – V.B.) rationally their experience, therefore their visions are only a tragic parody of experience of mystics». But even in India itself the true enlightened are a rarity.