It's hard to be in the local Jung library without taking several books home. I've got more books than I have space for already. I've been interested in C.G. Jung's ideas because he did establish the existence of the 'transcendental function' and I believe that function is what creates the processes of individuation. Even if he didn't define it very well, Joseph Campbell did say that function operated similar to a mathematical function.
As though that explains everything. Or anything.
Whatever this function is it created so called 'synchronicities', or to be more accurate and specific, synchronization between me and what's outside my body. As though a 'zipper-like pull' operated between me and whatever was happening outside my body at the time. (DNA + RNA) the material world + 'me' = a new understanding of me, on this planet.
What is a 'transcendental function' you may ask? Before I answer I'd like to point out something that ought to be obvious about psychiatric ideas, the basic fact is that something hidden has to be brought to the light of waking consciousness.
C. G. Jung heard a voice in a vision after he asked: 'What is this, that I am doing?" that answered him: "This is Art." Think about what art is basically:, a representation of something that requires decoding and intepretation. Codes are very much in the air at this point in Time.
I would never have understood Picasso's 'art' if I'd not read in Rollo May's Courage To Create that his paintings 'represented' the state of man, disconnected from nature. but that was just the beginning.
Reading words to get information is not the only way to get information, every day experience is what the 'transcendental function' utilizes. But I grew up hearing people remark in offhand ways that 'life is a school and we are the pupils'. There was a point when I began to understand that I was a pupil in a school and there was an instructor, not present physically but it was there; not materially, but it was there. I suspect the 'transcendental function' is it's program/process/pattern and it is a real educational force in the field of 'imagination'.
The originator of modern psychiatry Sigmund Freud discovered there was meaning in dreams, but also behind slips of the tongue, mistakes, forgetting, jokes, i.e., there's something hidden in every day pathology. The definition of 'every day pathology' as being 'mistakes, forgetting, jokes, slips of the tongue' was a surprise! That information surprised me but I grew up in a restricted environment. I didn't know about that information until about 1996 when I read the first page of Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death,The Psychological Analysis of History in which he provided that information. Psychiatry is about 'art', decoding and getting meaning from...everything.
The transcendental function as I understand it operates like a 'highlighter' that selects, abstracts, creates curiosity, activates attention (and holds it captive basically) and it creates new meaning as well as new contexts.
My understanding is that its a defined program that operates in time, not necessarily linear time, since the process of individuation is where it 'functions'; but within a clearly defined situation: an individual life. The transcendental function would operate using material supplied by every day life circumstances and personal memories, using whatever is available in that specific life. The specificity is not easy to describe or prove to someone else.
This blog is my attempt to describe what I have learned as well as the difficult task of describing how I learned from the 'voice of the planet' after 1984. It's what some people experience as 'synchronistic events' but the 'voice aspect' isn't easy to detect because years of events reveal that attribute. It's an identification process, as well as a communication of information to that individual, from...?
I suggest reading the earliest posts first
What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities?
What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities to the 'rational'? That question has been answered:
"Accompanying the more profound occurrences of synchronicity (is) a dawning intuition, sometimes described as having the character of a spiritual awakening, that the individual herself or himself not only is embedded in a larger ground of meaning and purpose, but also in some sense (is) a focus of it."
Richard Tarnas Cosmos and Psyche
The above quotation is embedded in 492 pages + 50 pages of endnotes, etc, little bitty print, not many pictures in the book.
"There is another world, but it is 'in' this one." Paul Eluard, Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World"
"Here again the dialectic that runs through the whole development of the mythical-religious consciousness stands out with particular sharpness....It is a fundmantal trait in mythical thinking that where ever it posits a definite relation between two members it transforms this relation into an identity. An attempted synthesis leads here necessarily to a coincidence, an immediate concrescence of the elements that were to be linked. " Ernst Cassirer, page 250, The Philosophy of symbolic Forms, Vol 2.
Concrescence is a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead
to show the process of jointly forming an actual entity that was without form, but about to manifest itself ...
"I saw not with the eye of the body, but the eye of the soul." Goethe; Theodore Reik's Fragment of a Great Confession
In discovering the other world, the hidden world, a very strange kind of conversation can be experienced but it's not the typical 'voice' that speaks in that other world. It's created artificially! It uses whatever is available to the individual, the specific individual.
This quotation is from War In Heaven by Charles Williams.
"When Mr. Batesby had spoken that morning it had seemed as if two streams of things: actual events and his own meditations had flowed gently together; as if not he but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world. He reminded himself now that such a simplicity was unlikely; explanations did not lucidly arise from mere accidents and present themselves as all but an ordered whole."
Read only the words in Bold-red. and that's the best example I can give of the process of 'abstraction' from embeddedness. This is an excellent description of synchronization as a life process. One's own meditations and actual events flow together and a new 'voice' speaks through this natural process.
Its an individualizing experience in every day life that has been named various names throughout history. C. G. Jung named it individuation, Emanuel Swedenborg had accurately identifed it as regeneration, a process that includes a life review.
An individuation process is not commonly recognized because its such a unique personalized life experience of one's own body and mind. You may be as surprised as I was to have to learn that the 'irrational' is what can't be scientifically validated because it's unique, ultra personal experiences that happen over a life span and science requires repeatability.
So the irrational is what ever isn't rational because science excludes personal analysis, the process requires repeatability. In fact the irrational is a wholeness of experience in that it includes the rational when the individuation process operates in a life or in lives. An individuation process is not commonly understood yet but I became aware of the process and the pattern without knowing about it myself!
How it creates a 'voice' and a conversation is the most personalizing life experience that can be experienced if it's recognized, because the form of its 'speech' is difficult to be discerned. Order emerges from chaos, literally over a span of time that may be decades in a life. It's speech is created artificially, the 'voice' aspect is created by a process of abstractions from every day life content. The bibliography at the end of a technical non-fictional book is in my opinion the result of that process of abstractions, its basically invisible to the author.
When quantum physics was 'discovered' that was a message that 'said': "The physical world is derived from another world" and: " there are no causes in the physical world, only effects." (Emanuel Swedenborg had already written that fact and other important details about the process of life, regeneration was his name for it, that he believed prepared a person for life after death.) One attribute of its speech is symbolic but literalness is also part of how the' voice' is created by a process literally of 'abstractions' , highlighted by the mind from every day life content, by a special function of mind that creates a 'second under lying context' automatically, with an extra 'sense'. The term 'second underlying context' was my own definition but a local Jungian psycyhiatrist told me it was an excellent term. Swedenborg's term, 'double thought' is appropriate too.
Only last year I saw an old movie (Blade Runner) and the process of 'abstraction' caused me to hear a remark made in it about 'tears lost in rain' with that 'extra meaningful sense' that I've noticed myself in my mind. It has helped me describe the undescribable invisibility of such events that occur, embedded in every day life until the 'extra sense' abstracts and highlights them. The 'jokes' that cause you to laugh most heartily are the simplest example I can give now. Television situation comedies in our time are popular from this mechanism's operations but that's just one of 'its' attributes.
There is a kind of rational logic inherent to the process, not Aristolean, or linear, because 'it' uses personal memories and experiences as the content of the process. But that's a fact that had to be recognized over a span of time when 'it' created in my life a consistent synchronization between inner content that was new to me, certain memories from my past and everything, every thing, outside my body.
The process itself was almost overwhelming for a few years until it was a new kind of 'normal', but not yet invisible. What's new eventually becomes normal but whatever is normal gets to be invisible eventually, its ever presence has made it invisible.
The process as I had to figure out myself, operates 'in' every day events. I believe it is a special sense that unites (synchronizes is the best word to use) the body and brain with what's outside the body, history and Time itself with the flow of what I believe is the 'ongoing endeavor of Time'. It may be a function of the unconsciousness itself to create the process of individuation, from the depths of mind but I'm not sure about that. But let me emphasize that I had to discover all, every 'bit of information' myself and notice how it was created from mechanisms of mind that alter 'thought' and the direction of attention. The most difficult to discover was that there is a kind of 'prompter within'. It created a new relationship with every day life events gradually.'
" The medium is the message." The extension in Time of an idea can be 'like' a signal, in my opinion.
The process of individuation is virtually unknown but I have experienced that the 'transcendental function' is in charge, it's building a future event: The Future. Sometimes long strings of events have to happen, widely spaced in time so that the personal 'meaning and context' can in some situations only be given decades later. I've had several events, separated by even decades happen, then a 'closing event ' completes the string and then an inner display retrieves them and assembles them in a flash of a second as 'insight'. Only then suddenly, it's obvious that part of me in the past somehow 'knew' the future.
I wouldn't abandon 'string theory' which F. David Peat wrote is an 'interactive force'. He did not write about or mention a process of individuation. I will have to describe in detail why I believe Sigmund Freud's 'discovery' of psychoanalysis was his experience of this individuation process and Carl G. Jung's much deeper experience was the result of recognizing the effects of the same pattern.
What ever "it" is that energizes my body in that 'kind' of event, which often happens as an ordinary situation, it's not always 'numinous' (feelable at the moment) or even unusual. It's 'feelable' when a creative 'function' of the unconscious mind that is not unconscious its self., 'highlights' the event or the memory of an event. I know it never sleeps, I've had more than acceptable evidence of that fact. That's where its possible to see evidence of foresight, when I see what happened when I was 'moved' by that function in certain specific events and finally realized I'd been alone when many of them happened.
The depths of mind is where an unsleeping part of me (and probably everyone else) is at work. Nothing materially changes but 'associations and understanding'. Its nearly impossible to detect that there's a vast space between upper regions of mind and the most remote regions of mind that produces content that is thankfully strangely visible. It uses symbols that the individual 'knows' or can recognize.
My main symbol is the moebius band in all it's forms. An impulse caused me to make my first one in 1941 when I was 9 years old. The same impulse caused me to discover its 'secret', it's hidden forms that day after I'd made the band with a 180 degree turn. "Cut around it lengthwise." was a thought and I cut it once lengthwise, surprised at the result. The thought words repeated : "Cut around it lengthwise." so I obeyed again. The result was two bands separated but joined in a knot that didn't look like it could be undone. The two bands were joined but separated. The impulse has caused me to look over my shoulder at just the right moment, in the right location and what it brings to my attention is ALWAYS a surprise, sometimes its a real shock, perfectly timed.
It's connected to a part of 'me' that knows where I am, what's in front of me, where I've been and 'it' knows my most private thought. That part evidently knows the future, it has foresight and 'it' or whatever it's connected to uses a different language than our words. But it's within me, looking through my eyes, and I'm not unusual.
"Accompanying the more profound occurrences of synchronicity (is) a dawning intuition, sometimes described as having the character of a spiritual awakening, that the individual herself or himself not only is embedded in a larger ground of meaning and purpose, but also in some sense (is) a focus of it."
Richard Tarnas Cosmos and Psyche
The above quotation is embedded in 492 pages + 50 pages of endnotes, etc, little bitty print, not many pictures in the book.
"There is another world, but it is 'in' this one." Paul Eluard, Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World"
"Here again the dialectic that runs through the whole development of the mythical-religious consciousness stands out with particular sharpness....It is a fundmantal trait in mythical thinking that where ever it posits a definite relation between two members it transforms this relation into an identity. An attempted synthesis leads here necessarily to a coincidence, an immediate concrescence of the elements that were to be linked. " Ernst Cassirer, page 250, The Philosophy of symbolic Forms, Vol 2.
Concrescence is a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead
to show the process of jointly forming an actual entity that was without form, but about to manifest itself ...
"I saw not with the eye of the body, but the eye of the soul." Goethe; Theodore Reik's Fragment of a Great Confession
In discovering the other world, the hidden world, a very strange kind of conversation can be experienced but it's not the typical 'voice' that speaks in that other world. It's created artificially! It uses whatever is available to the individual, the specific individual.
This quotation is from War In Heaven by Charles Williams.
"When Mr. Batesby had spoken that morning it had seemed as if two streams of things: actual events and his own meditations had flowed gently together; as if not he but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world. He reminded himself now that such a simplicity was unlikely; explanations did not lucidly arise from mere accidents and present themselves as all but an ordered whole."
Read only the words in Bold-red. and that's the best example I can give of the process of 'abstraction' from embeddedness. This is an excellent description of synchronization as a life process. One's own meditations and actual events flow together and a new 'voice' speaks through this natural process.
Its an individualizing experience in every day life that has been named various names throughout history. C. G. Jung named it individuation, Emanuel Swedenborg had accurately identifed it as regeneration, a process that includes a life review.
An individuation process is not commonly recognized because its such a unique personalized life experience of one's own body and mind. You may be as surprised as I was to have to learn that the 'irrational' is what can't be scientifically validated because it's unique, ultra personal experiences that happen over a life span and science requires repeatability.
So the irrational is what ever isn't rational because science excludes personal analysis, the process requires repeatability. In fact the irrational is a wholeness of experience in that it includes the rational when the individuation process operates in a life or in lives. An individuation process is not commonly understood yet but I became aware of the process and the pattern without knowing about it myself!
How it creates a 'voice' and a conversation is the most personalizing life experience that can be experienced if it's recognized, because the form of its 'speech' is difficult to be discerned. Order emerges from chaos, literally over a span of time that may be decades in a life. It's speech is created artificially, the 'voice' aspect is created by a process of abstractions from every day life content. The bibliography at the end of a technical non-fictional book is in my opinion the result of that process of abstractions, its basically invisible to the author.
When quantum physics was 'discovered' that was a message that 'said': "The physical world is derived from another world" and: " there are no causes in the physical world, only effects." (Emanuel Swedenborg had already written that fact and other important details about the process of life, regeneration was his name for it, that he believed prepared a person for life after death.) One attribute of its speech is symbolic but literalness is also part of how the' voice' is created by a process literally of 'abstractions' , highlighted by the mind from every day life content, by a special function of mind that creates a 'second under lying context' automatically, with an extra 'sense'. The term 'second underlying context' was my own definition but a local Jungian psycyhiatrist told me it was an excellent term. Swedenborg's term, 'double thought' is appropriate too.
Only last year I saw an old movie (Blade Runner) and the process of 'abstraction' caused me to hear a remark made in it about 'tears lost in rain' with that 'extra meaningful sense' that I've noticed myself in my mind. It has helped me describe the undescribable invisibility of such events that occur, embedded in every day life until the 'extra sense' abstracts and highlights them. The 'jokes' that cause you to laugh most heartily are the simplest example I can give now. Television situation comedies in our time are popular from this mechanism's operations but that's just one of 'its' attributes.
There is a kind of rational logic inherent to the process, not Aristolean, or linear, because 'it' uses personal memories and experiences as the content of the process. But that's a fact that had to be recognized over a span of time when 'it' created in my life a consistent synchronization between inner content that was new to me, certain memories from my past and everything, every thing, outside my body.
The process itself was almost overwhelming for a few years until it was a new kind of 'normal', but not yet invisible. What's new eventually becomes normal but whatever is normal gets to be invisible eventually, its ever presence has made it invisible.
The process as I had to figure out myself, operates 'in' every day events. I believe it is a special sense that unites (synchronizes is the best word to use) the body and brain with what's outside the body, history and Time itself with the flow of what I believe is the 'ongoing endeavor of Time'. It may be a function of the unconsciousness itself to create the process of individuation, from the depths of mind but I'm not sure about that. But let me emphasize that I had to discover all, every 'bit of information' myself and notice how it was created from mechanisms of mind that alter 'thought' and the direction of attention. The most difficult to discover was that there is a kind of 'prompter within'. It created a new relationship with every day life events gradually.'
" The medium is the message." The extension in Time of an idea can be 'like' a signal, in my opinion.
The process of individuation is virtually unknown but I have experienced that the 'transcendental function' is in charge, it's building a future event: The Future. Sometimes long strings of events have to happen, widely spaced in time so that the personal 'meaning and context' can in some situations only be given decades later. I've had several events, separated by even decades happen, then a 'closing event ' completes the string and then an inner display retrieves them and assembles them in a flash of a second as 'insight'. Only then suddenly, it's obvious that part of me in the past somehow 'knew' the future.
I wouldn't abandon 'string theory' which F. David Peat wrote is an 'interactive force'. He did not write about or mention a process of individuation. I will have to describe in detail why I believe Sigmund Freud's 'discovery' of psychoanalysis was his experience of this individuation process and Carl G. Jung's much deeper experience was the result of recognizing the effects of the same pattern.
What ever "it" is that energizes my body in that 'kind' of event, which often happens as an ordinary situation, it's not always 'numinous' (feelable at the moment) or even unusual. It's 'feelable' when a creative 'function' of the unconscious mind that is not unconscious its self., 'highlights' the event or the memory of an event. I know it never sleeps, I've had more than acceptable evidence of that fact. That's where its possible to see evidence of foresight, when I see what happened when I was 'moved' by that function in certain specific events and finally realized I'd been alone when many of them happened.
The depths of mind is where an unsleeping part of me (and probably everyone else) is at work. Nothing materially changes but 'associations and understanding'. Its nearly impossible to detect that there's a vast space between upper regions of mind and the most remote regions of mind that produces content that is thankfully strangely visible. It uses symbols that the individual 'knows' or can recognize.
My main symbol is the moebius band in all it's forms. An impulse caused me to make my first one in 1941 when I was 9 years old. The same impulse caused me to discover its 'secret', it's hidden forms that day after I'd made the band with a 180 degree turn. "Cut around it lengthwise." was a thought and I cut it once lengthwise, surprised at the result. The thought words repeated : "Cut around it lengthwise." so I obeyed again. The result was two bands separated but joined in a knot that didn't look like it could be undone. The two bands were joined but separated. The impulse has caused me to look over my shoulder at just the right moment, in the right location and what it brings to my attention is ALWAYS a surprise, sometimes its a real shock, perfectly timed.
It's connected to a part of 'me' that knows where I am, what's in front of me, where I've been and 'it' knows my most private thought. That part evidently knows the future, it has foresight and 'it' or whatever it's connected to uses a different language than our words. But it's within me, looking through my eyes, and I'm not unusual.
The four world balloon was created from an impulse to do something irrational.
About the image of 4 balloons?
I had an impulse to create my own image to represent (re-present) of the four worlds that William Blake's Tree of Life allegory had brought to my mind. I described what I wanted to a young man in a craft store and he thought it was impossible to do what I had in mind. Yet he did it without too much trouble then he made one for himself.
I had an impulse to create my own image to represent (re-present) of the four worlds that William Blake's Tree of Life allegory had brought to my mind. I described what I wanted to a young man in a craft store and he thought it was impossible to do what I had in mind. Yet he did it without too much trouble then he made one for himself.
