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September 1998

September 7, 1998

As always in Eastern mysticism, the intellect is seen merely as a means to clear the way for the direct mystical experience, which Buddhists call the 'awakening.' The essence of this experience is to pass beyond the world of intellectual distinctions and opposites to reach the world of acintya, the unthinkable, where reality appears as undivided and undifferentiated 'suchness.'

Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics

September 14, 1998

�today that is precisely where we do discover the Gods--in the unconscious psyche--and because of this unconsciousness we are unable to distinguish Gods from archetypes, or archetypes from heroes and daemons. Therefore, our descriptions of the archetypes and the classical descriptions of the Gods, heroes, and daemons have to be analogous. In both descriptions we run into the same style of question: Where are they located? Are they knowable-if so by what means, and how can we "prove" their existence? What is their origin? How many are there, and do they form hierarchies and subclasses? Do they change or age or go through history? What sort of "body" do they have? How soon a psychology of archetypes begins to sound like a mythology of Gods! How necessary it is to speak of both in metaphorical language?

Whenever we try to define conceptually either a God or an archetype we find that neither can be grasped adequately by conceptual means. As metaphysical principles they elude our knowledge. The Greeks learned about their Gods through unwritten mythology. We learn about our archetypes through lived psychology. Both can be grasped best as persons.

James Hillman

Re-Visioning Psychology

September 21, 1998

When you gaze at an object, you bring blessing to it. For through contemplation, you know that it is absolutely nothing without the divinity that permeates it. By means of this awareness, you draw greater vitality to that object from the divine source of life, since you bind that thing to absolute nothingness, the origin of all. On the other hand, if you look at that object as a separate thing, by your look that thing is cut off from its divine root and vitality.

Dov Baer of Mezritch (?-1772)
from The Enlightened Mind, edited by Stephen Mitchell

September 28, 1998

Still another guideline for the initiation of action or expression that has been withheld is the person's own sense of lack of "finishedness," or in Gestalt terminology, lack of closure. Words unsaid and things undone leave a trace in us, binding us to the past. A considerable part of our daydreaming and thinking is an attempt to live out in fantasy what we fail to live in reality. Most frequently, "unfinishedness" is created by witholding the expression of appreciation or resentment.

Claudio Naranjo
Gestalt Therapy

Comment:

This could be one source of the "Call" in the Hero's Journey. Leaving things "unfinished" creates tension, and when the tension becomes strong enough, we are "called" to do something about it, to release the tension, to complete the "incomplete gestalt", to restore equilibrium to our psyche. [R. Harris]