Stephen:

Yes, forever cloaked in mystery. But I've been wondering about this for decades. Nowadays it's more of a metaphor to explore how we assume the mind's activity is really our personal authorship, which it seems is not usually the case. Here are some of my own meanderings spawned from various sources over the years:

For a more intellectual treatment I like Owen Barfield's book "Saving the Appearances," which also is an inspiring read if you can be patient with his complex grammar and idiom. You may know the book, or Barfield as a friend of C.S. Lewis, who was one of the Inklings. In short, if I'm not distorting his basic ideas, he describes the gradual loss of "original participation" of the ancient as an emerging subjective/internal space of identity that also accounts for the loss of the world's animation. IOW, self and the world as a source of identity weren't strongly differentiated, embodying a different psychology. And so as fallen as this still was, thinking wasn't experienced as privately authored as we assume today. In fact, other authors treat this as the domain of the gods, some reductionistically, others without losing a sense of Rudolph Otto's �mysterium tremendum.�

Julian Jaynes book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind," "The Greeks and the Irrational," by E.R. Dodds, and Bruno Snell's book, a title that slips me, are ones that take up this issue directly. Jaynes' book, as compelling as it is in other ways, in my view fails for its reductionism. He chronicles the history of change in consciousness but assumes that everything arises from brain activity. A better treatment comes, indirectly, from "Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt," by R.T. Rundle Clark. Although Clark doesn't identify it, the symbols of transformation of consciousness are easily identified as kundalini-driven archetypes. I've also seen these during meditation, related to chakras, etc . . . And so it appears Jaynes fails to account for the increased psychic awareness of the ancient who wasn't as withdrawn from the vitality of his surroundings by a strong inner subjectivity. We know from certain studies, such as Rupert Sheldrake's, that animals can function according to non-local psychic means of communication, perhaps more so because that aren't encumbered (or blessed, depending on how you look at it: mixed, it seems to me) with a neocortex as complex as ours. Not to say that this was all good, as we know kundalini without the Holy Spirit can go bad just as often as good. And we could speculate that the human desire for a prolonged taste of the non-dual is rooted somewhere in this anthropology.

So without a strong sense of self as interior and nearly completely private as in the last 3000 years, the archetypes were supposedly experienced externally as the gods. It may also be that the archetypes are themselves a sign of the fracture in the psyche due to the Fall; whereas fully in the presence of God there is a graced unity of all faculties, with self continually released and renewed within the fathomless Triune Presence. For pre-fallen humans, in this scenario, there is unity without a history of disunity such as the contemplative experiences today.


Here's a summary of those distinctions drawn from the sources mentioned above, with an ample smattering of my own foolishness:

Pre-fallen humans:

Unified interior and exterior; no archetypes/no subconscious; multiplicity as creation manifesting the inexhaustible Divine; thoughts as openings to worship rather than enclosures of a private self .

Fallen humans/Bicameral society (Julian Jaynes' notion with flavors added):

birth of the subconscious that is nearly completely unconscious; archetypes projected as gods; relative lack of internal/subjective/private mental space; intermingling of the numinous with the faculties that see their identity arising from the gods;

Post Bicameral Humans

birth (or fallen-rebirth) of interiority as the gods are lost and then over time regained as archetypes once internal private mental space becomes visceral enough; as the unconscious becomes conscious, kundalini is realized as an ascending internal force that can be manipulated by the will, giving rise to the existential and the possibility of despair


The Eden story suggests a kind of discovery of self separate from God, which sounds more like Jaynes' theory of ancient pre-conscious man's emerging sense of self as inner identity. So he tells it as the loss of the gods as structuring psychological life, but misses the psychic nature of those faculties which the iconography depicts, in my view, as cultural awakenings and transformations of Kundalini.

Since I'm not bound to the Eden story literally, yet also not a big fan of Darwinian evolution, I take license (nobody to offend anyway) with some of this and suggest that the Eden story is the only way conscious man can remember his own pre-conscious history; this is similar to Jaynes, but departs with considerations for what kundalini means related to the Fall. IOW, conscious man could only allude metaphorically to the history of god/archetypal-directed pre-consciousness since it was then largely his unconscious, and not yet re-discovered, except by sages, symbollically. My loose rendering of history would have the highly psychic pre-conscious man the first step post-Fall, with the Eden story missing the mark in some ways, but suggesting the theological truth otherwise.

So humans emerge from the Fall without an interiority-exteriority sustained by God, and collapse into a state where unconscious archetypes embody the vestiges or memories of having belonged to grace; hence the birth of the gods and a language that tries to capture that change - first literally, then metaphorically as awareness is internalized.

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and breadth of reading, w.c. A lot to digest and a lot of questions.

For example, is there an experience of pain/fear when the interior/exterior are unified? If so, how can this be classified as pre-fallen?

I'm not quite sure how or if God is experienced in this state, nor what you mean by archetypes experienced externally. Do you mean in a psychic, visionary way? Does that experience come from the K-driven process of evolution/transformation, only to be internalised as self-consciousness develops and increases? The worship of the gods then must be every bit as part of the Fall as the development of a self-wilful consciousness.

I've always come at this from a position based more on imagination (fiction?) than on psychology or anthropology (not to say that a good deal of imagination isn't required to come up with the theories you mention) - though perhaps no less realistic for that. For example, while I don't hold with the literalist interpretation of the Eden story, I do see the possibility for a more sensitive awareness of spiritual worlds and beings (perhaps suggested by the psychic potential of the ancients you mention), the possibility of easier access to these worlds (shielded by Grace), perhaps even the idea that other beings with evolved consciouness spanning both this world and the spiritual inhabited the earth, and the idea that the gods came from these encounters rather than archetypes, although I do like the idea of a Kundalini driven transformation. I'm also partial to the idea that mankind lived in a blissful nondual bubble, telepathically linked to the creator and the creation. Although how this is reconciled with the hazards of living on planet earth I don't know?

Nevertheless, a lot to dwell on and stir those imaginative faculties. BTW - Have you read H.P. Lovecraft?

Stephen:

"the possibility of easier access to these worlds, and the idea that the gods come from these encounters rather than archetypes,"


I nearly edited the original post last night to say that the "gods" may involve more than the archetypes. This partly comes from my own experience of support via "communion of saints," as well as some visitations from benevolent beings that seem to occupy a niche somehow different than simply dis-incarnate humans or Christ, and even different, but more like, angels. It seems a diverse spiritual world, as you allude, and an imagination quickened through prayer and K may yield some partial insight on its structure, along with visitations that may be more direct communications. But something more than the archetypes would be more respectful for these ancient cultures, and of the kundalini that can lead to deeper awakenings than just the subconscious becoming conscious.

So your comment there would seem right on, as well as the bit about much latitude with the imagination on these subjects. In the spirit of the thread, which is largely indulging the imagination along the line of science fiction, one could wonder if in some way, for these ancient fallen cultures, the gods weren't arbitrators of the archetypal world, where the slowly emerging unconscious (entering as subconscious) was generating an internal mental space so that more of the spiritual world could be discerned as part of the individuation process.


"Do you mean in a psychic, visionary way? Does that experience come from the K-driven process of evolution/transformation, only to be internalised as self-consciousness develops and increases? The worship of the gods then must be every bit as part of the Fall as the development of a self-wilful consciousness."


Yes, that sums up what I understand from those authors rather nicely, with provisions for a Christian attempt at reconciling their views with the Fall (Barfield discusses it, but not with long treatment as it is so speculative, even "blasphemous" he says).

I'll get back to more of your post later today.

Much of what you two are discussing reminds me of the work of Jean Gebser, who was a predecessor of Clare Graves, Don Beck, and the Spiral Dynamics approach (which is all very much concerned with the evolution of consciousness). Teilhard de Chardin also had a lot to say about this, and we have a thread on his work somewhere on this board.

- see http://www.gaiamind.org/Gebser.html for a good summary of Gebser's work; the stages are described beginning with Archaic structure, so scroll down if you're not especially interested in his bio.

- see also http://www.12manage.com/method...spiral_dynamics.html for a good summary of spiral dynamics

How the Fall has influenced this emergence is difficult to say. One can imagine an ongoing evolutionary development as culture became more complex and diverse. In my teachings on the Fall, I usually emphasize that it introduced three existential pains into the race: fear, shame, and resentment. Obviously, these weigh down our growth and development.

For example, is there an experience of pain/fear when the interior/exterior are unified? If so, how can this be classified as pre-fallen?


Stephen:

I'm guessing that looking to the lives of the saints would be as far as we could reasonably surmise for that question. The states of transforming union described by Teresa of Avila still, as I read them, suggest the capacity for some form of pain, but her and John of the Cross certainly seemed to be largely without fear as all the contractions of the false self had been unravelled and purified. But they both write about the limits of that graced fullness in this mortal coil. One then wonders . . . how alike will our new bodies be to the pre-fallen bodies of Eden?

" . . . then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known."


More speculation on what we've toyed with so far:

Because there was no stable interior mental space in newly fallen humans (a space dependent before the fall on something like ongoing tranforming union or bridal mysticism/Beatific Vision), the spiritual realm, via the still active psychic faculties not requiring introspection, remained the source of psychological life, but without the archetypes (unconscious) to reflect/embody an interiority.

As Kundalini descended the spine post Fall, psychic awareness slowly diminished as well, becoming dormant in the base of the spine (the unconscious) and leaving humans searching for the lost gods (spiritual world with its fallen representatives) through divination, idols, etc. The unconscious becoming sub-conscious (or kundalini rising again) might be the result of the endlessly restless soul seeking to recover what Barfield calls "original participation," but now with an emerging sense of self that becomes an internal idol, both loathed and cherished, and threatened by the archetypes that both conceal the spiritual world and make the self inherently unstable via powerful polarized energies that cannot resolve their own fallen dynamic.

"More speculation . . ." - which sounds good, w.c. And what we're left with subconsciously is an endless source of myth, fairy tale, idyll, an almost nostalgic longing for paradise on earth.

I also wonder at the relationship with nature, especially regards shelter,food etc, whether there would have been some kind of natural flow of provision which pre-fallen man could have partaken of quite effortlessly, somewhere along the lines of Christ's kingdom teaching, "Worry not for tomorrow ", "All these things will be given to you" etc, a kind of provision self-conscious, ego bound man only experiences fleetingly today, and perhaps wouldn't be able to accomodate without the total loss of false self. (See also Elijah and the ravens).

The connection between nature and fairy tale seems rooted here too. One wonders at the panoply of elves, goblins, nature spirits - the roots of paganism, earth magic, hippie philosophy, Tolkein(!?) all based in this unified interior/exterior consciousness.

Yes, the Inklings all seemed deeply inspired by what you're describing. Lewis explores this as the main theme in his autobiography "Surprised By Joy." As a young man these moments of joy seem to have inspired his gradual turn and conversion, although he also is clear how nature's wonder either leads us to a need for what generates her, or to a kind of stagnation, if I'm remembering Lewis correctly.

And you know there are the stories of saints who ate very little or nothing at all, subsisting physically on the way grace transformed their bodily needs, such as Therese Neumann, and some of the Hindu saints as well - all of which suggests the body's original purpose as embodying a super-abundance of grace, maybe like the bodies we shall be given in His presence post death.

And is it any wonder that securely attached children enjoy mere existence so much?