In the portion of a very interesting book below you have some serious discussion about the energetic field of an Archtype–such energetic may be what we experience as Gnosis.  Also, this article does point toward an understanding that Gnosis will likely occur when we (whatever “we” IS) are in a liminal state of some kind. 

I will return to this idea later since it would be of some value to examine Liminality and Gnosis in the work of Victor Turner.

============================

Pathways to the Self: Excerpt from Sacred Portal by Constance S. Rodriguez PhD, LCSW

 

To Jung the imaginal soul is the “mother of all possibilities” joining together the inner and the outer worlds in a living union. Indeed the soul has all the earmarks of the Hindu Maya-Shakti – the creative energy of Brahman, the life-giving daemon who entangles man’s consciousness with the world, conjuring up a delusory world by her dancing.

-Roberts Avens

 

Anatomy of the Psyche

Rudolf Steiner and others have alluded to the nature of “higher” dimensions and planes of existence. Steiner writes about seven “regions” in the higher dimensions. These states have vibrational signatures that can be accessed through meditative states, or altered states. These threshold places are intermediate realms that have subtle differences in how they “feel” at each level. The psyche, having both conscious and unconscious states is often thought of as being on a continuum between these two poles. However, this is too simplistic, as when we are in a very focused state of attention, our psyche’s antennae can be picking up other information outside of our immediate awareness. And conversely, when we are in a diffused state of consciousness, our psyche can be picking up very succinct information. Therefore, when speaking of the multidimensionality of the psyche, I am speaking to all of these aspects of the personal psyche as well as the world psyche and all of its relative dimensions. I am referring to “fields” of consciousness.

William James, a philosopher of religion and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, wrote this about the field and its surround in the early 1900’s. He said that the important fact which this field formula commemorates is the indetermination of the margin. Inattentively realized as is the matter which the margin contains, it is nevertheless there, and helps both to guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention. It lies around us like a “magnetic field,” inside of which our centre of energy turn like a compass-needle, as the present phase of consciousness alters into its successor. Our whole past store of memories floats beyond this margin, ready at a touch to come in; and the entire mass of residual powers, impulses, and knowledges (sic) that constitute our empirical self stretches continuously beyond it.

I like the image of a magnetic field “ready at a touch to come in.” That is my experience of how the field makes itself known. There are like vibrational keys that when “touched” become activating sources which allow us entrance into the realms of the unknown, sometimes frightening, sometimes ecstatic, always awe-ful.


The Collective Unconscious

Carl G. Jung was truly a visionary; writing during a time when the emphasis on a mechanistic world embedded in Cartesian thought left no room for the creative and spiritual nature of the psyche. Today, the notion of the collective unconscious may not seem so radical as it did when Jung introduced the concept, a time when the collective paradigm was still very entrenched in Cartesian thought.

From his psychiatric work in a mental hospital, Jung began to see the unconscious as holding the potential for all human spiritual and cultural creativity. Jung called this the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is a human unconscious psychic matrix, which Jung also called the objective psyche. Jung, like James speaks to the “remarkable effects” of the unconscious contents as well stating that once unconscious contents are activated, or have made themselves felt, they possess a specific energy that enables them to manifest everywhere. He also said, “Consciousness, no matter how extensive it may be, must always remain the smaller circle within the greater circle of the unconscious, an island surrounded by the sea; and, like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing abundance of living creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming. We may long have known the meaning, effects, and characteristics of unconscious contents without ever having fathomed their depths and potentialities, for they are capable of infinite variation and can never be depotentiated”.

The objective psyche has a deeper substrate that Jung referred to as the “psychoid,” or the place where subjective and objective states blend into one, where matter and spirit are no longer differentiated. Most recently, this psychoid state of the world psyche made itself known in my life as well as in the life of my clients. Sadly, as I write this, the United States has just endured one of the most horrific losses of death at the hands of a terrorist who struck down the World Trade Center. In separate sessions the week prior to this event, I had three people who came in telling me their dreams of being in foreign countries while trying to escape terrorists! All three of these people said to me that they were having odd dreams that did not feel like dreams they usually had. One woman said she was in some place “like Afghanistan,” and was being held hostage there. The other two had dreams saying there were in an “Islamic country” and were trying to escape, while feeling threatened by terrorists. None of these people had ever been to these countries nor did they have any reason in their personal lives to have had these kinds of frightening dreams. It was only after September 11, 2001 did we understand that the world psyche had impacted their dreamlife.

This is a perfect example of the collective unconscious at work. At this same time, many movies had been made in which the World Trade Center was being bombed or implicated. These movies were not released because the events in the movies were too uncannily close to the actual event. Once again is not pure coincidence, but rather a deeper knowing that arises from the substrates of a world psyche where all events are accessible in a timeless vacuum.

As a young psychiatrist, Jung discovered a common theme among his schizophrenic patients. He found that often they would speak to him of visions, and the themes in their artwork began to have common features among them. Jung further discovered that their drawings were similar to the art seen in his studies in alchemy. It was out of these correlations formulated the important notion of the collective unconscious and how archetypal imagery is found in this layer of the psyche. Jung discovered many images common to humankind are revealed through dreams and art in the form of archetypes. Archetypes are psychic blueprints that govern the expression of symbolic images found throughout human history. Within the confines of a psychiatric hospital, Jung found archetypal motifs that are universal to all human psyches throughout the world.

Another example of this phenomenon is in children’s art seen across the world. Rhoda Kellogg, in her research of cross-cultural children’s art, noticed that children begin making scribbles that correspond to their age, and that the development of these scribbles to human form can be seen across the boundaries of culture and time. She discovered that the scribbles develop into “suns” or mandalas, then into human form. Kellogg states that the “Mandala and the sun appear to provide the stimulus for the child’s first drawings  of a Human”. The mandala is an example of an ancient symbol of wholeness found throughout history and in every culture. It is an archetype that is inherent in the human psyche, yet exists “a priori” to it. Like the stars that exist in the skies before our birth and will exist after our death, archetypes are guiding soul prints that manifest to mediate between our conscious mind and the collective unconscious. In my work as a Jungian Sandplay therapist, this same premise holds true. Adults and children select small miniatures and place them in a sandtray. These miniatures represent archetypal symbology that mediates between the conscious mind and the unconscious realm. It provides a way to enter a liminal or threshold place that then allows for psychic expression and the internalization of its needs. Like in a dream, or in art, or in the sandtray, the psyche generates the images it needs for its wholeness and growth.

Jung made another important distinction with regard to archetypal images or symbols. He stated that archetypes could only be known through the experience of either psychic phenomena or somatic phenomena, or somewhere in between. It is not that they are either one or the other; actually archetypes hold both polarities and reside along a spectrum with the psychoid at the most unconscious realm of both poles.

Van Eenwyck in his book, Archetypes and Strange Attractors, takes the position that “symbolic images are not stored in the psyche somewhere to be released when the needs arises. They occur on the interface between individual and environment, through the interaction of archetypes with perceptions and experiences. He said that the archetype “is a vessel which we can never empty, and never fill. It has a potential existence only, and when it takes shape in matter it is no longer what it was”. It is also a matrix of energy that has the ability to attract or repel.

A friend of mine recently was thinking a lot about death. After buying a used car, he “felt” that someone had died in it. The next day, as he was sitting in his vehicle near sundown, an owl flew into the front seat of his car, while he was sitting in it! He became quite upset, as the owl seemed disoriented and he was unable to get it out of the car. Finally, he got it out, but it was quite frightening for him as he saw the owl an omen of death. Native American tradition holds the owl as a harbinger of great, and lasting change, death being one kind of transformation. It seems to me that the archetype of magnetically attracted Owl to my friend, and although the omen has yet to make itself known.

“The archetype seems to have a ‘field’ effect; the constellation power of the archetype-its ‘magnetic’ tendency to stimulate and draw to itself events which correspond to-ensure that inner predispositions and outer events belong together. The structure of our inner life and our outer relationships mirror each other” state Lionel Corbett in his book, Religious Function of the Psyche. Tapping into this realm elicits the energetic source and creative ground of our being. It also constellates events in the outer world as a mirror and guide for our inner world, and journey on the path to Self.

Archetypal Fields

Several authors in the realm of archetypal psychology refer to this energetic and creative realm as an “archetypal field.” Michael Conforti, a contemporary author and archetypal psychologist, supports the idea of an archetypal field and defines the field as follows: “A field is the energetic component of an archetype, which exerts its influence over space and time. This influence is not bound by space and constraints. Rather, we find that in contrast to fields in the outer world which are space-time dependent, such as gravitational and electromagnetic fields, these archetypal fields are non-local, as evidenced for instance by telepathy, synchronicities and non-local transmission of information, etc.”

The archetypal field is unique from other fields due to its nonlocality Conforti points out that fields in the mathematical and scientific usage refer to operations occurring within a three dimensional plane. Because these fields occur in three-dimensional matter, their effects can be measured. Archetypal fields, on the other hand, appear to function non-locally as they are not space-time dependent, nor from what we can tell, are they subject to any causal limitation as are fields in the outer, natural world What I find most significant is that Conforti also believes that archetypal fields emit specific archetypal frequencies that we are all impacted by whether we know it or not. In other worlds, some fields can be measured and obey the laws of the three-dimensional world. Yet other fields, such as archetypal fields, move beyond the veil of “Chronos” or linear time.

One must use perceptual organs outside of the five senses to recognize field states. Often a liminal state, or altered state is entered whereby one taps into an archetypal field. Perhaps it is this field that visionaries tap into, or the realm where gods and goddesses abide. When one is in contact with an archetypal field, the field itself seems to bring matter and psyche together, as in synchronicities and synchronistic events. I notice a sensory experience when I have crossed a threshold into an activated field. I always get chills on the right hand side of my body. Perhaps others notice a different sensory experience when crossing the threshold into these liminal realms in the imaginal world.

The reader may see more about this author on her website www.soulmatters.com. Sacred Portals, Pathways to the Self may be ordered from the publisher: www.1stbooks.com )

=====================

On your WAY,  “maybe” says Parzifal