This post is about a few paragraphs taken from Robert Aziz's book, C.
G. Jung’s Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity on page 78-79. I'm going to write a review of the book using these paragraphs, hoping to explain a 'symptom' that many individuals experience: thought broadcasting and other so called symptoms of mental illness.
Mr. Aziz wrote:
Mr. Aziz wrote:
“The association of
the feeling level experience of the 'numinous' with synchronistic type events is
something Jung suggests, that has long
been recognized, although understood differently. For centuries it has been held that there
exists a connection between the
intensity of one’s emotional state and the activation of special powers
within, which in turn enable one
magically to influence events
taking place in the external world.
In illustration of this point, Jung cites a passage from the writings of
Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) the noted teacher of Thomas Aquinas.
Drawing on the work of the Islamic philosopher and physician Avicenna
(980-1037)
Albertus Magnus writes:
“ I discovered an instructive account (of magic) in Avicenna’s Liber
sextus naturalium, which says that a certain power to alter things indwells in
the human soul and subordindates the other things to her, particularly when she is swept into a
great excess of love or hate or the like. When therefore the soul of a man
falls into a great excess of any passion, it can be proved by experiment that
it (the excess) binds things (magically) and alters them in the way it wants,
and for a long time I did not believe it, but after I had read the nigromantic
books and others of the kind on signs and magic, I found that the emotionality
of the human soul is the chief cause of all these things…..Whoever would learn the secret of doing and undoing these
things must know that everyone can influence everything magically if he falls
into a great excess…and he must do it at that hour when the excess befalls him,
and operate with the things the soul prescribes.”
In the above Albertus Magnus identifies the existence of a
direct connection between the powerful activation of affect on the one hand and
the production of ‘magical .…(synchronistic) happenings on the other.
Impressive as this account was to Jung, he was not however led to agree
completely with its interpretation of things, specifically with its claim that
magical happenings are caused by affect.
In contrast to this interpretation of the relationship
between affect and the “magical
arrangement of outward events, Jung suggests that affect rather than being the
‘arranger’ is itself so to speak “arranged” by the constellated archetype (pattern) that
is present both inwardly and outwardly. “naturally Albertus Magnus” Jung
explains, “ in accordance with the spirit of his age, explains this (the
relationship between the affect and the magical arrangement of events) by
postulating a magical faculty of the soul, without considering that the psychic
process itself is just as much ‘arranged’ as the coinciding image which
anticipates the external physical process. “
According to Jung therefore, the intensely felt emotionality and sense
of inner power described by Albertus Magnus refers in fact to a direct
experience of the numinosity of the psychoid archetype."
_________
_________
That's the end of what Robert Aziz wrote. Because extremes of emotions happen to each of we two- legged uprights all too often, that forced me to think about whether the body, (mine is the only one I can observe as to inner content) even in extreme emotional states, can and in such highly charged situations does actually create changes in the material world. If so, that implies a feed back loop. How can it seem to be that what an individual is highly charged about gets a response from the material world, in my specific location, so often that I feel literally unbalanced?
My question is whether 'numinosity' (a feeling) is the effect or is a real cause of inner content meeting its exact content outside of the body. If the answer is "Yes" doesn't that force a re-thinking about the conjunction, the meeting point, of thought and matter because mirror neurons have been identified and they were obviously at work before they were recognized? What was 'magic' has a name now. (The discovery of the function of neurons in the brain were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1932, the same year the atom was 'cracked open' to reveal smaller particles. I was born in that year which may explain why I became interested in Paul Davies, David Bohm and Joseph Chilton Pearce when I was in my mid 50s, the mid 1980's.) Now science has recognized mirror neurons.
What I was 'doing' then was sharing the experiences created by two local square dance enthusiasts, who were struggling to literally change something: they wanted mainstream dancers to learn higher level, advanced and challenge levels of square dancing. At those levels all the rules area changed, there are no gender roles or positions, every dancer has to learn to dance the other genders' positions in the set!
There are also certain square dance movements at challenge level that add phantom dancers to the 8 real people. That concept call forced me to learn to dance with people who couldn't be seen but who had to be 'tracked' as 'they' moved. To do that required knowing how to use my mind in a way I'd never done before, and that's where 'mixed signals', being in a 'double bind' every day, 360 day, 24 hours, 7 days began to affect me and cause new meanings and contexts to be generated in my mind.
One night one of the square dance callers chanted the name of a familiar movement: "cast a shadow". After I heard his voice, I noticed a thought in my mind, a very quiet thought voice, distinct because it was different repeat the words this caller had chanted: "cast a shadow". After that incident, this was repeated every time this caller, and no other caller chanted those words! I noticed the quiet thought voice that repeated the words: cast a shadow. The only association I knew then was a comic book hero, a radio show character that began with a creepy voice saying: "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man? The Shadow knows! The Shadow has the power to blind men's minds so they cannot see him." I had no knowledge of C. G. Jung and his concept of the shadow. The way I understand the 'shadow' is that ''it" has the power to blind men's minds, but "it" uses that power to open minds also. William Blake in my opinion uses the word 'spectre' where I would use the idea of the 'shadow'.
It can be trivial events that are used by the 'shadow' to open the mind, I noticed that other callers who chanted the words 'cast a shadow' did not generate the quiet thought that repeated the words.
That fact seemed very strange to me when I noticed it. How could one callers' voice produce that 'effect' but no other caller did?
'The two enthusiastic men were somewhat at war in that they disagreed in some ways, one was quite rigid in his standards the other was 'soft and flexible'. Those who were dancing with both men's clubs felt this war, but the mainstream dancers rejected both men basically for several years.
What I was 'doing' then was sharing the experiences created by two local square dance enthusiasts, who were struggling to literally change something: they wanted mainstream dancers to learn higher level, advanced and challenge levels of square dancing. At those levels all the rules area changed, there are no gender roles or positions, every dancer has to learn to dance the other genders' positions in the set!
There are also certain square dance movements at challenge level that add phantom dancers to the 8 real people. That concept call forced me to learn to dance with people who couldn't be seen but who had to be 'tracked' as 'they' moved. To do that required knowing how to use my mind in a way I'd never done before, and that's where 'mixed signals', being in a 'double bind' every day, 360 day, 24 hours, 7 days began to affect me and cause new meanings and contexts to be generated in my mind.
One night one of the square dance callers chanted the name of a familiar movement: "cast a shadow". After I heard his voice, I noticed a thought in my mind, a very quiet thought voice, distinct because it was different repeat the words this caller had chanted: "cast a shadow". After that incident, this was repeated every time this caller, and no other caller chanted those words! I noticed the quiet thought voice that repeated the words: cast a shadow. The only association I knew then was a comic book hero, a radio show character that began with a creepy voice saying: "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man? The Shadow knows! The Shadow has the power to blind men's minds so they cannot see him." I had no knowledge of C. G. Jung and his concept of the shadow. The way I understand the 'shadow' is that ''it" has the power to blind men's minds, but "it" uses that power to open minds also. William Blake in my opinion uses the word 'spectre' where I would use the idea of the 'shadow'.
It can be trivial events that are used by the 'shadow' to open the mind, I noticed that other callers who chanted the words 'cast a shadow' did not generate the quiet thought that repeated the words.
That fact seemed very strange to me when I noticed it. How could one callers' voice produce that 'effect' but no other caller did?
'The two enthusiastic men were somewhat at war in that they disagreed in some ways, one was quite rigid in his standards the other was 'soft and flexible'. Those who were dancing with both men's clubs felt this war, but the mainstream dancers rejected both men basically for several years.