Soul, pneuma and body...part 2.

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 Part 1

On stepping backwards through time - as one does if one takes Tibetan Buddhism seriously - I shifted my thinking out of a 20th century education in science, into an 11th century view that corresponds very neatly with both contemporary esoteric concepts, and the Platonic version of perceived reality as simply a projection.

But what is projected?

The answer is - spoiler alert -  memory.

But, let's go back - Buddhism 101.

The material world is an undivided field of chaotic activity, an ocean of ripples, a sea of electrons, protons and neutrons and as everything is at least to some extent connected; changing one thing affects another. Everything is only where it is because of everything else. I create you create me...our perception is our interpretation. And from this thought we get the notion (well - I say 'we' but to be honest, please leave me out of this!) some people maintain that the world is an image of the condition of our own souls.

Actually I encounter this belief a lot with modern Pagans, who explain all kinds of untoward happenings as due to their state of mind; thinking created the flat tyre?! And it seems that in therapy there is a similar confusion about projection - but regardless, if it is all projection, then our illusions and concepts are simply approximations of reality and better than nothing. And that's why we need our projections -  mistaken as they are -  for we can't see without them...Putting this another way, in order to interact with the bubbling sea of chaos we give names to the patterns we see, organising chaos by projecting our meanings. Fortunately of course, our meanings change with experience as the gestalt is always more than the sum of its parts. 

And suddenly here I am, imagining myself sitting in Kit's room. 

He is saying yet again, "fantasy, not with an f - with a ph"...and I'm thinking, Eros and Magic, of Couliano, of Bruno and Jung. 

The concept of inner alchemy, nei-tan - was imported by Jung, from 12th century practice, into his view of psychology. The alchemists regarded sulphur as analogous to the soul, salt to the body and mercury to spirit. Mercury is used in Tibetan Buddhism, and garlic - as it contains sulphur - is avoided, so don't make the mistake in thinking that these ideas are only to be found in books.

Tangential Ballardian contrary note - Mercury sulphide is  vermillion!

As far as I recall, in Jungian thought, the self can be imagined as residing within a layered cloud. Closest to the centre, the cloud is lunar mercury, and then the next layer towards the outside reality is the solar sulphur of soul. The result of their union is the crystallisation into salt - the body.

Anyway!

Jung took the concept of pneuma - the animating star stuff - combined it with lunar symbolism - as mercury is a silver liquid metal and called it the Anima/ Animus. Meanwhile, he regarded the sulphurous, fiery sun-stuff of soul as the layer of emotion wrapped around the self. So really it is all pretty simple and Kit would agree 100% with Herr Jung, that people see themselves mirrored in the clouds of their past memories which act as filters - and project meanings onto events, because as he and William James said - events are in themselves meaningless.

To be honest, I neither know or care, or agree of disagree - except Jung was adamant that regardless of the past, new realities could always be forged. 

I agree with him there. 

It is just fascinating how that concept of pneuma communicating via the soul, to the body - remains though. And that transference and projection are seen as obscurations (Buddhist thinking) a misalignment with reality, this is core to psychotherapy too. But originally, the projected psyche was thought of as like a sense organ which interprets and translates the information from the physical senses, and relays them to consciousness.

In the older view, it was better understood that all the meanings around us are actually projected, pareidolic hallucinations.

In contemporary psychotherapy, projection and pareidolia are regarded as the problem. Yet the alternative, to be without projections, to see reality as it is - would be an encounter with pure meaninglessness...very Lovecraftian!

I don't even remember who Kit quoted as using the term phantasy - but phantasms are of course what pneuma creates...

I just love that idea of pneuma as star stuff!

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