part0031

Active imagination is the most powerful technique Jung ever encountered for metabolizing, digesting, and assimilating the contents of the unconscious and hence, becoming conscious. Instead of passively watching the manifestations of the unconscious, in active imagination we fully engage with and actively participate in a conscious, living relationship with our unconscious. In active imagination we find ourselves being asked to creatively respond and come to terms with the voice of the “other” within ourselves. The psychological process of active imagination is the equivalent of the symbolic operations of alchemy. When the alchemists speak of meditatio and imaginatio (meditation and imagination), they are referring to developing an inner, creative dialogue with, and hence cultivating a living relationship to the answering voice of, the “other” in ourselves, that is, the unconscious. When an unconscious content is about to become conscious, it first becomes partially conscious, simultaneously visible and invisible. In active imagination, we enter into a creative dialogue with these unconscious contents, facilitating their passage from an unconscious, potential state to a conscious, actual one. In active imagination, we “objectify” the contents of our unconscious by creatively giving them shape and form, thereby making them into an object that we, as subject, are separate from, and with whom we have an interactive relationship and dialogue. By objectifying these inner figures, we dis-identify from them and give a body and voice to these seemingly autonomous, disembodied, and dismembered parts of ourselves who appear to have a mind of their own and simply need translation into the three-dimensional, spatio-temporal medium of matter. Objectifying the contents of the unconscious is to discover and step into the perspective that we are a subject with a viewpoint other than that held by the now objectified contents .

Speaking about his own personal experience, Jung writes in his autobiography that it was actually animated figures within his imagination that “brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life.” 1 Seemingly living, autonomous figures existing inside of Jung’s imagination, figures whom Jung subjectively experienced as other than himself, revealed to him and taught him to recognize the autonomous nature of the psyche, what he calls “the reality of the psyche.” Speaking about one such inner figure, Jung comments, “In my fantasies, I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I.” 2 Jung was “hearing voices,” which in his case, as well as in many others, was not a pathological phenomenon, but a revelation. Though many of his psychiatric colleagues at the time thought that he had “gone crazy,” thank God for all of us that he didn’t get medicated out of his illumination by psychiatry. These inner figures helped Jung understand “that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know.” 3 There is a figure in us, the Self, who knows us better than we know ourselves. In the final analysis the decisive factor is always consciousness, which can understand the manifestations of the unconscious and take up a position toward them.

An example of active imagination: after we have awakened from a dream at night, we can go back, with our wake-full consciousness, in our imagination, back into the scene of the dream. We can step back into the dream ego that we were identified with and unconsciously playing out in the dream, and then imagine consciously responding as the dream ego to the circumstances in the dream in the way we would want to respond. If in the dream we were victimized by an abusive figure, for example, how would we respond, what would we want to say to them if we were conscious and in our power? We might be surprised at how the “other” within ourselves responds to our stepping into our voice; for it is not us, as an ego, that is writing their script, but rather, if it is genuine active imagination, it is truly the voice of the unconscious that comes through these other parts of ourselves. In active imagination, we are not passively contemplating the dream, but actively participating in re-dreaming it, as if we are creating new neural pathways in our psyche. Other examples of active imagination would be to draw, paint, or sculpt images from our dreams, imaginations, or visions, and then contemplate, and even dialogue with, the images we have created. When we one-pointedly focus our attention on an image, for example, we can’t help but to impregnate it with meaning, energy, and life; we can’t help but to develop a relationship with it if we pay attention to it. Examples of active imagination in ritual form are Tibetan Buddhist sand mandalas and Native American sand paintings, both of which involve creating living symbols that represent the sacredness of the Self. When we create these images (or when they spontaneously emerge in our dreams and visions), they are reflections of the balanced, harmonic quality of our inner wholeness (and holiness). Typically, the deity, or God-image, is thought to reside in the center of the mandala (as the mandala is considered to be the emanation of the deity). In contemplating the mandala, and identifying with the deity which it represents, we awaken the same energy within ourselves and re-connect with our intrinsic wholeness.

What I call “Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome” (ADS for short) is based on the deluded assumption that we are separate from and not participating in calling forth the very situation in the outside world to which we are reacting and object-ing. To the extent that we feel ourselves the victim of circumstances and don’t realize our complicity in what is playing out in our lives is the extent that we have fallen prey to ADS. ADS effectively immobilizes and renders inoperative our ability to self-reflect, as it relates to the world through the fixed and non-negotiable lens of assumptions that the world “object”-ively exists, independent of ourselves. When we are stricken with ADS, we react to our perceptions and interpretations as if they exist inherently and independently in the objects of the world, rather than realizing that they are automatic reflex-ions of the way we are looking and are thus always revealing the subject (ourselves). When we have fallen under the spell of ADS, we always see the cause of our problems as being outside of ourselves. In an unconscious “reflex,” we then try to “attack” the problem from the wrong point of view, externally, instead of approaching its source, which is within ourselves. ADS is a “semantic syndrome” in which we are misinterpreting the nature of our experience, subtly but significantly altering the way our mind gives meaning to and contextualizes our experience of the universe as well as ourselves. ADS is one of the primary, underlying psychological “dynamics” or “engines” that fuels the “malignant” aspect of malignant egophrenia (wetiko).

Though it sounds like a big, fancy word, an “archetype” is something we all experience and know intimately from the inside. Archetypes are the most ancient and universal “thought-forms” of humanity. They are living entities, psychological instincts, or informational fields of influence that pattern human perception and experience. Psychic organs of the pre-rational psyche, archetypes are the invisible, formless “ground plan” which inform and give shape to both individual and collective human behavior. Called by Jung “typical modes of apprehension,” archetypes are like the underlying grid-lines or blueprints which inform and structure how we perceive, interpret, and respond to our experience. They are like the invisible stage managers behind the scenes of the world theater. The determining power underlying both individual and mass psychology, the archetypes of the collective unconscious are the formative templates that give breath (inspire) and depth (materiality) to events in both the inner and outer worlds. Indefinable, the archetypes are the eternally inherited possibilities of ideas which initially have no specific content. They are the psychic skeleton upon which the individual and collective body politic is formed. Archetypes are the structural forms that underlie consciousness, just as the crystal lattice underlies the crystallization process. Archetypes, like the crystal lattice, are empty of concrete, material existence, yet they shape consciousness and events in the world just as the crystal lattice gives shape to and informs the individual crystal. Just like the smallest particles in physics, the archetypes themselves are non-perceptible and irrepresentable, yet are experienced through their effects in the world. The archetypes precede all representation, while simultaneously re-presenting themselves through informing and giving shape to the perceptible universe. The archetypes are exceedingly important to know about because they have powerful real world effects, and thus merit our closest attention. The complexes are the inner, psychological vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Primordial images, archetypes are the image-making factor in the psyche, informing and giving shape to the images in our mind and the dreams of our soul, and as such, they insist on being approached imaginatively.

Archetypes are not produced by us nor are they objects of the mind, but are self-existing, autonomous factors that are their own “living subjects.” The relative autonomy of the archetypes gives rise to the idea of angels, demons, “principalities and powers,” and the archons of the Gnostics. Archetypes are of a “transcendental” nature, meaning they exist in a realm outside of space and time. Archetypes nonlocally exert their informing influence through the frictionless and super-fluid medium of the collective unconscious itself. They irrupt, unfold, and bleed into, over, and through linear time so as to incarnate and reveal themselves in form. The archetypes are pure information. Archetypes become visible by arranging and magnetically attracting events into their field of force so as to give shape to themselves. When an archetype is constellated, it generates and manifests itself individually, as well as in the collective psyche of any group it happens to touch. Archetypes live themselves out in whatever psychic stuff they can appropriate; they are like devouring mouths—finding egos they can consume, and then living out of and through those egos, who become the archetype’s instruments of incarnation into the third dimension (notice the similarity to the eating/consuming/devouring aspect of wetiko). People so enlisted have, knowingly or unknowingly, been drafted into becoming actors in an archetypal drama. Collective psychoses are always animated by a constellated archetype.

The destructive world events that have played out from time immemorial are the effects of an archetype getting constellated and being unconsciously acted out as human history. The archetype is continually creating novel iterations of the same underlying invariant process, which is to say “itself,” like an eternally self-generating fractal unfolding over linear, historical time. The archetypal dimension is continually unveiling and revealing itself to us as it actualizes and materializes itself on the stage of history. Until the archetype is consciously recognized and related to, however, instead of unconsciously acted out, we are doomed to endlessly and compulsively re-create its negative, destructive aspect as if having a recurring nightmare .

Symbolically speaking, the prima materia, the very stuff which needs to be transformed in the alchemical opus, corresponds to lead, which relates to Saturn-Chronos, the archetypal figure of the negative father. One of the prima materia’s many symbols is a weak and infirm old man, the mythic dying king, or “senex.” This figure of the rigid-old-man-negative-father is symbolic of a calcification of consciousness which, out of fear of its own weakness, clings and becomes addicted to power and control, dictating to all who fall under its dominion. The archetype of the negative father has to do with dominating and using force (“might makes right”) over others, rather than participating in a reciprocal, dialectical relationship. The dying old man symbolically represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness, and thus becomes an obstacle to the further growth and development of consciousness. This archetypal figure of the negative father is in need of being liquefied, dissolved, and de-solidified, of being given an alchemical bath in the healing and renewing waters of the psyche. To be under the spell of Saturn-Chronos, the dark father, “Father Time,” is to be entranced by and absorbed in linear, “chrono”-logical time at the expense of the timeless, “syn-chronic” dimension of our being. Saturn, the corrupted patriarchy, mythologically speaking, is the governor of the prison, the one who binds us and seemingly limits our freedom, while simultaneously being the supreme tester and great purifier. Saturn-Chronos’s peculiar form of “blessing”—restraining us as it seemingly takes away our freedom—is almost always “cursed” by its recipient, and yet, is the very thing which catalyzes us to discover our own power and authority. Encoded in seemingly hidden form within this archetype is our own intrinsic power, as it challenges us to find and speak our true voice, access and step into our place of empowerment and true authority, and in so doing connect with the intrinsic wholeness of the Self. Due to its initiatory aspect, the archetype of the negative father is an unmediated expression of the Self, but in its darker aspect .

Thematically organized (such as the power complex, savior complex, mother complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Having complexes is not pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking that we don’t have complexes. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us .” 4 We don’t need to get rid of our complexes; rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes. Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream … but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” 5 Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting as the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious is concentrated. An emotionally charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating everything that has any resonance, relevance, or is related to it in any way into itself. This inner process can be seen as it enacts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt, and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. When split off from consciousness, what are called “autonomous complexes” develop a seeming independent will and quasi-life of their own that can potentially engulf and possess the total personality .

A power of nature, the “daemonic” is not an objectively existing metaphysical entity in the Christian sense, but rather is an archetypal function of human experience, a psychic as well as an existential reality in which we all participate. Being an archetypal, transpersonal energy that can literally take over and possess a person, group, nation, or species, the daemonic announces itself by drafting people into its service, enlisting human beings as instruments of its full-bodied revelation of itself. People so possessed will be compelled to unconsciously act out so as to give shape and living form to this archetypal, daemonic energy in the third dimension. The word “daemon,” etymologically speaking, is related to our inner voice and guiding spirit. The daemon is also related to the words “genius” and “genie” (as reflected in the punning title of the old TV show I Dream of Jeannie ); the word genie has its roots in the Arabic jinn , the spirit beings of Islamic lore, mentioned in the Qur’an as “the hidden ones.” The daemon is also related to the words “calling” and “vocation.” Encoded within the daemonic is the creative spirit. The idea is that if we honor and connect with our daemon, we will access our creativity, discover our calling, and find our true mission in life; if we turn away from our daemon, it turns negative and becomes a “demon.”

Etymologically speaking, “diabolic” means that which separates, divides, and disintegrates; its antonym is “symbolic,” which means that which unites, connects, and integrates. Symbols are the language of dreams. This is to say, the antidote to the diabolic evil playing out in our world is symbolic awareness, which is to realize the dreamlike nature of our situation.

I refer to the process of how projections constellate counterprojections as “the dreaming.” The dreaming is the shared, interactive space between us which informs us. The dreaming is the deeper, underlying dynamic which shapes our reactions and configures our relation to each other. I am dreaming you up, but you, likewise, are dreaming me up to dream you up, ad infinitum and vice versa at the same time. The dreaming is the space between us in which our relationship happens; it is a whole, self-perfected, and self-contained universe, a living entity, a mutually shared dream that is clothing itself in our form as it reveals itself in ever new guises. The dreaming takes “two (or more) to tango,” so to speak, in that it is created by being in relationship with each other. We have conjured up the dreaming through our collaborative interaction, and there is a way of “following the dreaming” that can awaken us to a deeper level of freedom and healing. This calls to mind Christ’s statement, “Whenever two or more are gathered in my name, there I am” (Matthew 18:20).

In a process that happens in, over, and outside of time, when two or more people come together, projections activate counterprojections, creating a mutually shared dream of relationship. For example, say I have an unhealed wound in my psyche. If I go to sleep tonight and dream, my unhealed wound will be sure to show up in my night dreams, which are a projection or reflection of my inner process. Similarly, I will unconsciously connect the dots and give meaning to the inkblot called waking life so as to dream up into materialization aspects of my inner process that need resolution. I will unconsciously dream up and attract to myself someone in the outer world with whom to play out my unhealed, inner process. All it takes is the slightest “hook” in the other upon which I can hang my projection. The hook is like a piece of velcro upon which my projection becomes lodged, as it is where the other buys into and secretly agrees with my projection. Even though the part of them that resonates with my projection might be only 1 percent of who they are, my attention will tend to focus on this 1 percent of them as being all of who they are. Jung comments, “The moment one forms an idea of a thing and successfully catches one of its aspects, one invariably succumbs to the illusion of having caught the whole.” 6 My focusing on and relating to only one narrow part of the other will amplify this particular quality in them, thus making it far more likely that they will step into and embody this very quality, providing all the evidence I need to prove to myself even more that this is who they really are, further entrenching me in my viewpoint of seeing them this way, which only serves to draw this quality out of them all the more, in a diabolical, self-confirming, and self-perpetuating feedback loop which becomes a mutually created self-fulfilling prophecy.

Co-creating a shared dream-space to inhabit together, at this point we are as much in the psyche as the psyche is within us. Something deeper is revealing itself through our synchronistic interplay. To recognize this in oneself is to become lucid in the waking dream. When both people involved recognize this and become cooperatively lucid together, they can collaboratively play with and transform the shared waking dream they are having, which is evolution in action. This is a reflection in the microcosm, an iteration of a fractal on the small scale of individual relationship, of what is available to us, macrocosmically speaking, as a species.

We are always dreaming others up while at the same time being dreamed up by them. I imagine we have all experienced, consciously or otherwise, what it feels like to be dreamed up by someone else into their process. With certain people, we find parts of ourselves that we usually don’t manifest getting drawn out of us, as if the other for some reason needs someone to play this particular role for them. As we watch and participate in how we get drafted into the other person’s inner process, we discover that synchronistically, the role we are cast in is not only showing us something about them, but at the same time is revealing a previously unconscious part of ourselves as well .

A living symbol that points beyond itself, the God-image is not a concoction of the conceptual mind, but is an autonomous, self-produced phenomenon that is not invented by the intellect, but rather, experienced. The God-image is not a static entity but a living, dynamically evolving process which is the core archetype and supreme symbol of the collective unconscious. It is the collective unconscious’ projection of itself, representing the Self as well as the individuation process. The God-image expresses our conception of and relation to God, while at the same time being the image through which God (i.e., the Self) is revealing itself to us. A unique phenomenon, it is the intersection point through which the human and divine imagination reciprocally inform each other. The human psyche is the organ through which we imagine God while God simultaneously imagines Itself into incarnation through our imagination. The God-image is the expression of the unconscious of humanity, while simultaneously being God’s disclosure of Itself to us. On the one hand, we are supposedly made in the image of God; on the other hand, it is our image of God that makes us.

The figure of Christ, for example, is a living symbol of the God-image of the Western psyche. Christ in himself represents a completely perfect emanation of the Self in its radiant light aspect, lacking nothing, being an open doorway into and mirror of our divine and primordially pure nature. Seen symbolically, however, the figure of Christ is too one-sided a symbol of the two-sided, bipolar archetype of the Self. Christ himself is too overly light and identified with the good, and as the Gnostics realized, he “cast off his shadow from himself,” which Satan is carrying. Because he is the full-blown Incarnation of the Light, psychologically speaking, Christ is only a symbol for one side of the Self (the light), whereas the figure of the devil embodies the other (the dark). Seen as dream characters who symbolically represent aspects of ourselves, in the figures of Christ and Satan the opposites had become completely severed and dissociated from each other. When the Christ event is viewed as a dream of the deeper dreaming Self and interpreted symbolically like a dream, it reflects the incredible polarization and deep inner split existing in the collective unconscious of humanity. This tension of the opposites symbolically played itself out on the world stage in the adversarial figures of Christ and Satan. Christ’s utterly sublime and spotless nature evoked a blacker darkness on the seemingly other side to oppose it, as if the two interconnected opposites reciprocally co-arose together. Seen symbolically, Satan represented the counterpole of the tremendous tension in the world psyche which Christ’s advent on the scene signified. Satan was a relation of and related to Christ as inseparably as the shadow belongs to and cannot be separated from the light. Seen as a symbol in a dream, the figure of Christ lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, however, since it does not include the dark side of existence within itself, but specifically excludes it in the form of a Luciferian opponent. Seen psychologically, Christ corresponds to only one half of the archetype of the Self, which is to say that the Christian image of the self—Christ—lacks the shadow that properly belongs to it.

This process can be clearly seen in the minds of the alchemists, who after the Christ event discovered a new God-image—Mercurius—within their own psyche. Mercurius was a further differentiation over time as well as a revelation in time of the archetype of the Self, which exists outside of time. The symbolic figure of Mercurius is a living example of the Self making itself known by revealing itself through the image-making psyche. A further emanation of the resurrected body, Mercurius is an elaboration over time of the birth of the Self, an Incarnation which is happening within the creative imagination of humanity. The symbolic figure of Mercurius is a spontaneous God-image that has crystallized into and out of the human psyche, which is a manifestation of, as well as a doorway into, an inner experience that unites the opposites. The alchemists were having a living experience that evil didn’t exist outside of, nor in opposition to, God but rather was an internal component of the deity. In Mercurius, the energy that had animated the Christ event had further extrapolated itself in the imagination of the alchemists by taking into itself its darker half. In a radical re-visioning of itself, in the figure of Mercurius the collective unconscious has offered us an image of God which includes and embraces evil as an integral aspect of our wholeness. It was as if in the fully revealed Incarnation of Christ, the Word had become flesh such that it precipitated its symbolic complement in the figure of Mercurius, a genuine praising of the Logos. Just like consciousness and the unconscious, the figures of Christ and Mercurius collaboratively illumine each other as complementary and compensatory aspects of a greater whole. Not meant to replace the figure of Christ, nor be identical with him, in the figure of Mercurius the collective unconscious compensated its one-sided image of itself through its own ever-evolving self-revelation. Mercurius is a prefiguration of and a symbol related to wetiko, in that, just like wetiko, Mercurius represents the juxtaposition in one phenomenon of the highest divinity and the deepest evil. From this point of view, the idea of wetiko can be recognized to be a newly emerging God-image.

Integrating within ourselves an expanded image of God can only be achieved at the moment when we ourselves change in relation to our new imagination. To enlarge our conception of God is to ourselves grow and become greater in volume, as the limits of who we imagine we are and what we imagine we are capable of expand simultaneously to greater heights and more abysmal depths. Seen in its progression since ancient times, the God-image was mediated in the Old Testament through the law , in the New Testament it was dependent on faith , and in the new psychological dispensation of our time the God-image is centered in and mediated by direct experience .

One of the key conditions needed for the success of the alchemical art is a closed, air-tight hermetic vessel, or “container,” which is able to withstand the pressure needed for the transformation and “cooking” of the prima materia. The life-giving alchemical container typically is portrayed as having a purifying fire underneath it, symbolizing the heat of introspective, contemplative awareness, which is needed to create sufficient psychological pressure for transformation. If there’s not enough pressure, no transformation takes place. In alchemy, the fire purifies, while simultaneously melting and synthesizing the opposites into a unity. Attention warms and activates the unconscious, thereby breaking down and making more permeable the barriers that separate it from consciousness, allowing its contents to pass between the conscious and unconscious more easily. The alchemists used images of the gentle warmth of a brooding hen incubating her eggs and the baking of bread to symbolize this process. The first was an image of the heat from nature; the second was an image of humanity’s ability to alter nature through the heat of awareness. “Heating” is necessary for the alchemical operation to succeed; that is, there must be an intensification and concentration of consciousness in order for light to be kindled in the dark dwelling place of the true self. For the “work” to be successful, the “heat” generated by the mutual cooperation and cross-fertilization of nature (both terrestrial and celestial), combined with human art, was essential.

A “hermetically sealed” vessel (sealed with the stamp of Hermes, who is related to Mercurius, the two-faced God-image of the alchemists), symbolically speaking, prevents anything extraneous from entering into the operation, as well as stopping unreflected-upon projections from leaking out into the world. In addition, a hermetically sealed container keeps the flask from “blowing its lid,” which would be symbolic of not being able to “contain” the creative tension and pressure. “Blowing our top” is to become possessed by, and thereby compelled to unconsciously act out, primitive, un-integrated, archetypal affects of overwhelming emotion and passion.

Speaking of the profundity of the alchemical vase, the legendary writer of antiquity Maria Prophetissa says that “The whole secret lies in knowing about the Hermetic vessel.” A vessel of and for the spirit, the alchemical container is no mere physical apparatus, but is a mystical idea, a primal image, a genuine symbol expressing something of real value within the very psyche that produced it. The concept and experience of the hermetic vessel develops and emerges out of the unconscious itself as a result of contemplating and thus shedding light on the unconscious.

In a mysterious way, the alchemical vase is identical with its contents. The psyche itself is the mystical hermetic vessel, in that the psyche catalyzes the transformation of the prima materia, is itself the prima materia which is being transformed, is the container in which the transmutation occurs, as well as being the philosopher’s stone that is born out of the work. Feminine in nature, the spacious hermetic vessel is a receptive uterus and matrix of spiritual renewal and rebirth. Jung writes that as the psyche of humanity becomes conscious, “It becomes the divine cradle, the womb, the sacred vase in which the deity itself will be locked in, carried and born.” 7

If we try to escape the pain, frustration, and dissatisfaction of our existential situation by continually acting out our unconscious without reflecting upon what we are doing, we are postponing a deeper and more genuine relationship with ourselves. In avoiding relationship with ourselves, we are like a hamster frantically running around inside of a wheel, and our suffering is totally neurotic and unproductive. Conversely, if we are able to hold the powerful psychic energies that get constellated when we go inward, and consciously explore, express, and embrace the experience, a psychic container gets created through our efforts; our suffering then becomes redemptive and genuine transformation occurs. Creatively holding the tension of the opposites without splitting, dissociating, or projecting out one of the opposites is a conscious experience of reclaiming the darkness that nourishes and cultivates the light of the Self. Instead of oscillating and being thrown back and forth between the opposites, a state in which we identify with one of the opposites while having no conscious connection with the other, we develop a “container” within ourselves in which we are able to experience both opposites simultaneously. The inspiration for this process is the philosopher’s stone, which crystallizes in, as, and through the individual psyche as a result. Consciousness is a psychic substance that is produced by the opposites suffered, not blindly, but in living awareness. With a good container, the endless circling and cycling, instead of being an endless holding pattern that parasitically drains our energy, becomes a circulating spiral that leads both ever higher into consciousness and deeper into the unconscious, where it circumambulates, illuminates, and activates the latent creative source at its center.

Full-blown wetikos, and particularly Big Wetikos, suffer from inflation, a situation where the ego unconsciously identifies with the archetype of the Self, the wholeness and totality of our being. Inflation is when something small (the ego), instead of being in conscious relation to something larger than itself (the Self), has arrogated to itself its qualities. As a result, the ego is blown up beyond its proper human limits. In unconsciously identifying with the archetype, the ego appropriates its power, while simultaneously forfeiting its own humanity, which is to truly “miss the mark.” Inflated personalities are filled with hubris, becoming “full of themselves,” a legend in their own mind, feeling they are not bound by the laws of the three-dimensional universe.

Being caught up in an inflation is like being sucked up by a cyclone, as there is no getting through to the person who is inflated, who has been taken over and lifted off the ground by a more powerful energy. Jung pointed out that “Inflation magnifies the blind spot of the eye.… A clear symptom of this is our growing disinclination to take note of the reactions of the environment and pay heed to them.” 8 When we are inflated, we don’t accept any reflection, feedback, or informing influence from the outer universe that contradicts our puffed up image of ourselves. Instead of being open, receptive, in relationship with, and learning from the outer world, when we are inflated we continually interpret everything so as to support our delusional, grandiose self-image. We see the world through the filter of our own narcissistically self-serving image, which is a form of psychic blindness.

Speaking about an inflated consciousness, Jung says that it “is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it [and others within its sphere of influence] dead.” 9 Just as the unconscious always compensates a one-sidedness, inflation inevitably results in all of the air (life, breath, spirit) being taken out of the person who is inflated. Inflation is ultimately self-destructive, and if not consciously reflected upon, always results in disaster. Talking about inflation, Jung says that it “can be damped down only by the most terrible catastrophe to civilization, another deluge let loose by the gods upon inhospitable humanity.” 10

A narcissist is someone who has become hypnotized and entranced by their own inflated self-image. They have become so self-absorbed, that not only are they not in genuine relationship with others, but they relate to others (including the environment) as objects to satisfy their own need for self-aggrandizement. A full-blown wetiko is a “malignant” narcissist, however, which is a narcissist who reacts sadistically to others who don’t support and enable their narcissism. Ultimately, a malignant narcissist wants to annihilate anyone who in any way threatens their illusory self-image and self-serving agenda. Malignant narcissism is a flatland version of wetiko/malignant egophrenia, in the sense that it is one particular surface aspect of this higher-dimensional pathology. Malignant narcissism is to wetiko as the shadow on a wall is to the object that is casting the shadow. Studying the shadow (malignant narcissism) can therefore help us to understand the object that is casting it (wetiko). To learn more about malignant narcissism, see chapter 5, “George Bush and Malignant Narcissism,” in my book The Madness of George W. Bush .

Memes are self-replicating thought-forms, like thought-viruses. Memes can be either potentially fear-based and negative, or inspiring, empowering, and positive. Memes are the instruments with which we, knowingly or unknowingly, create our reality. This is why the very first words in the Dhammapada , the Wisdom Sayings of the Buddha, are as follows: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” When we collectively entertain a thought-form as having a certain reality, we literally materialize that very thought-form into full-bodied incarnation; we dream it up. As more and more people contemplate memes that liberate, we will dream up a universe where more of us are truly free.

When something is said to be nonlocal, it is not bound or localized to one particular place or time, but on the contrary, transcends the conventional, three-dimensional rules of space and time. Nonlocal interaction is characterized by instant informational exchange, where one part of the universe, in no time whatsoever (i.e., outside of time), appears to interact with, affect, and communicate with another part of the universe in an immediate and unmediated way. Imagine, in baseball terminology, a throw from deep centerfield to home plate, only the outfielder is halfway around the planet, and the ball takes zero seconds to arrive. The interaction involved in a nonlocal universe is not any known form of interaction we are familiar with, as it occurs infinitely faster than the speed of light can travel through the medium of space, while at the same time it doesn’t involve any expenditure of energy. Nonlocality’s action-at-a-distance is an expression of an underlying and outflowing information-filled field which connects and inextricably links every part of the universe with every other part in no time. In a nonlocal universe such as ours, no part of the universe is or can be fundamentally separate from any other part, which is to say that nonlocality is an expression of the indivisible wholeness of the universe. This linking, according to the quantum theoretician Henry Stapp, could be the most profound discovery in all of science. To view the universe as consisting of separate parts is as off the mark as to view the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river as separate from the water .

A similar idea to that of the pleroma which is referred to by Jung in his writings, the plenum is a field of abundant potential, boundless luminosity, and infinite sentience. Instead of space being defined as a quantum vacuum that is empty, the plenum expresses the idea that space is characterized by an ever overflowing fullness.

Seen alchemically, wetiko is related to the prima materia of alchemy. The “famous secret” and the basis of the entire alchemical opus is the unique prima materia, which is the chaos and raw material out of which the refined substance or “gold” is revealed. The elusive prima materia needs to be found before the magnum opus could begin. Psychologically speaking, the mysterious prima materia represents, and is discovered in, the parts of the psyche that we deny, disown, and marginalize, the aspects of ourselves that we feel ashamed of, and turn away from in revulsion and disgust. Our neuroses and our wounds are the alchemical prima materia, the rejected and despised part of the psyche, the raw material which we should learn to be thankful for, without which we would be unable to make the alchemical gold.

This is related to how the figure of Christ, the archetypal incarnation of the Messiah who is the symbol of the True Self, unless recognized for his divinity, was an object of scorn and contempt. “And just as, in Christianity, the Godhead conceals itself in the man of low degree,” Jung writes, “so in the ‘philosophy’ [alchemy] it hides in the uncomely stone [i.e., the philosopher’s stone].” 11 Symbolically, this is the stone “rejected by the builders,” which ultimately becomes the cornerstone. It is an archetypal, universal idea that the highest value is to be found in the lowest, that the blessing is to be found in the curse, and wisdom is to be found in ignorance. Similarly, encoded in wetiko is a revelation.

To the alchemists, there was a spirit hidden in the darkness of the prima materia, a divine spark buried in the darkness of matter. The much-prized prima materia is the psychic flypaper which catches every imaginable projection buzzing around in the human mind. Symbolically speaking, the enigmatic prima materia represents the unknown substance within us that carries the projections of the unconscious. It is the psychic emulsion or medium in which the subconscious contents within us are encoded. The prima materia is thus a symbol for the unconscious itself.

The prima materia is often symbolized as an old man, as it is related to the figure of Saturn-Chronos, the archetypal negative father, who is a binding and limiting power that is related to the element “lead.” The prima materia in its leadlike aspect contains the spirit of depression, a downward movement into the depths of our being which is felt as melancholia, and which corresponds, psychologically speaking, to the encounter with the shadow. The tantalizing prima materia has a dangerous, toxic aspect, and was considered “bedeviled,” causing insanity if not approached with the highest regard. Though potentially deadly, the prima materia, like the wetiko virus, contains within itself its own medicine, which is to say that the alchemical process is its own solution. The prima materia is a quantum phenomenon, in that it is of an indeterminate nature of open-ended potentiality, and contains within itself both the poison and its own medicine. The more virulent the poison, the more powerful are its potential healing qualities.

In its original form, the paradoxical prima materia contains the most incompatible possible opposites inherent in the human psyche within itself in uncombined form. An eruption of the unconscious, the prima materia is often symbolized as a dragon, as it is the personification of the instinctual psyche. The prima materia is called radix ipsius (root of itself). It is an increatum , an uncreated, autonomous, self-generating, spirit-like entity which is rooted in itself, is dependent on nothing, and has everything that it needs. 12 Without beginning or end, and in need of “no second,” it can by definition only be something of a divine nature. Its a priori, beginning-less, and self-existing nature brings to mind the famous words from the Bible, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58, D.V.). Alchemically speaking, the ungraspable prima materia is considered to be the virginal mother which gives birth to the lapis .

The prima materia is also considered to be an orphan because it is so completely unique and utterly one of a kind. It is seemingly hard to find because it is found everywhere. To quote an ancient alchemist, the prima materia is the subject of the “Great Stone of the Philosophers, which the whole world has before its eyes yet knows not.” Jung contemplates, “Yet nobody has ever known what this primal matter is. The alchemists did not know, and nobody has found out what was really meant by it, because it is a substance in the unconscious which is needed for the incarnation of the god.” 13

Jung uses the word “psyche” (Seele in German) in an all-inclusive sense, meaning the totality of all psychic processes, both conscious and unconscious. (The adjective “psychic” here has no parapsychological connotation.) Not reducible to biochemical processes in the brain, it is a mysterious “substanceless substance” that exists between spirit and matter. See chapters 2 and 4 .

“Retrocausality,” also referred to as “backward time causality” or “reverse time causality,” is defined as the future influencing the past; it adds to and enlarges the idea of linear causality in the sense that it implies that the effect is not only produced by a cause, but that the effect can also precede the cause. This is to say that what might conventionally be seen as an effect that exists in the future could in some way be a causal agent affecting the outcome of events that occurred before it in linear time. Retrocausality thus implies a symmetrical treatment of time in which both past and future events can play a role in causing the present moment to happen the way it does. Such a perspective collapses our notion of sequential time as always flowing in one direction, that is, from the past to the future, as it allows causal movement in two directions simultaneously. In this Archimedian “view from nowhen,” there is a two-way contact, contract, and information exchange between the past and the future. The present moment, the point where our power to shape reality is to be found, is the place in which the “handshake” completing this transaction happens. Retrocausality implies that not only a future self, so to speak, is influencing us in the present, but that the questions we ask and perceptions we have in the present affect the past as well. The past is not thought to be fixed, unchangeable, and already existing, but is considered to have no existence except as it is recorded in the present. This view considers that the past doesn’t exist in a solid or objective way that causes or determines our present-moment experience in the way that is imagined by classical physics. Rather, the perspective of retrocausality says just the opposite—the way we observe the present moment reaches back in time and creates the past, selecting one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe. Because of the probabilistic nature of the quantum universe we live in, the arena of history is enlarged such that the past is an amalgam of all possible pasts compatible with the version of the present moment we are currently experiencing. Retrocausality greatly expands our sphere of influence, pointing out that we have a great deal more ability to influence historical events than we have previously imagined. Retrocausality is related to the shamanic perspective which considers that the shaman journeys, in the present moment, both backward and/or forward in time so as to effect changes in the past and/or future, thereby changing the present circumstance.

The shadow, a term coined by Jung, is a living part of the personality. We all have a shadow, as everything substantial casts a shadow; it is what makes us human. Psychologically speaking, the shadow is typically conceived of as the underdeveloped, undesirable, and inferior parts of our personality, the aspects of ourselves which we repress the most; it is the part of ourselves we are least proud of and want to hide from others. It is our dark side, the “other” in ourselves; in terms of family systems, it is likened to a darker brother. If we consciously identify ourselves as being a good, kind, spiritual person, for example, then imagine the polar opposite of this perspective—this is what comprises the contents and informs the point of view of the shadow side of our psyche. The less the shadow is embodied in an individual’s conscious life, and the more one-sidedly the person identifies with a bright persona, the darker and more destructive the shadow becomes. Unless we are “working on our shadow” by making consistent efforts to become conscious of it, we typically relate to it by classifying it as not-self and reflexively projecting it outside ourselves onto others. The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole egoperson. The shadow is not merely negative, but contains within it hidden gifts that can revitalize the personality. There are personal and archetypal dimensions to the shadow, which is to say that parts of our shadow have to do with our own personal darkness, while another part of our shadow has to do with the darkness that is the inheritance of our species. The shadow is not to be eradicated, but more “come to terms with.”

The shadow includes both a dark and a light aspect. It is not just our darkest parts which we project; we also have a “positive shadow,” which we also project outside of ourselves. We are just as willing to project onto someone else, be it Christ, Buddha, or our guru, our positive or “golden shadow,” which is our highest genius. It is time for us to withdraw our positive shadow projections and creatively express and incarnate our true genius, for God’s sake, as well as our own. The world needs, and deserves, nothing less. To own our shadow (both positive and negative) and withdraw our projections is to embrace all of ourselves.