oh, no🫣
i was browsing my kindle unread books and came across this😳
describing how and why we are where we are as a species.
"in mass phenomena the illusory elation is as transient as that induced by hypnosis;
it does not impress itself upon the conscious mind by bringing it to a creative synthesis, but leaks away like any other momentary intoxication.
Yet even this delusive frenzy of mass possession is zealously desired by an ego emptied of all meaning,
and is one of the chief allurements with which the mass hypnotist successfully operates."
"Modern mass propaganda seeks—in part quite consciously—
to restore the old group unity and the mutual projections of the participants,"
"The creativity of consciousness may be jeopardized by religious or political totalitarianism,
for any authoritarian fixation of the canon leads to sterility of consciousness.
Such fixations, however, can only be provisional.
So far as Western man is concerned, the assimilative vitality of his ego consciousness is more or less assured.
The individual is the bearer of this creative activity of the mind and therefore
remains the decisive factor in all future Western developments."
"The integration of personal psychic phenomena with the corresponding transpersonal symbols is of paramount importance
for the further development of consciousness and for the synthesis of the personality.
The rediscovery of the human and cultural strata from which these symbols derive is in the original sense of the word “bildend”—“informing.”
"There was something formless yet complete,
That existed before heaven and earth;
Without sound, without substance,
Dependent on nothing,
unchanging, All pervading, unfailing.
One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven."
Lao tsu..
"The uroboros of the maternal world is life and psyche in one;
it gives nourishment and pleasure, protects and warms, comforts and forgives.
It is the refuge for all suffering, the goal of all desire.
For always this mother is she who fulfills, the bestower and helper."
hence the desire to return to the womb of unconsciousness.
@holon42 It's _supposed_ to take thousands of years?
I thought I was just a slow learner.
evolution is indeed a slow process. patience, the patience of Job, is necessary.
my biggest problem, being a perfectionist and not a very patient one.
@holon42 It seems fairly obvious to me that it wasn't unchanging, but other than that...
; )
(I'm assuming that if you minded my always trying to take a different tack or look at these statements sideways, you'd have got rid of me already)
✌🏽agreement is overrated.
unchanging. it's an elusive concept, pointing to something that would have to be experienced rather than merely thought in order to be understood.
all the statements are pointers to potential experiences, not propositions in an argument.
conclusions, as it were, drawn not logically, but from from direct access.
that is what Parmenides claimed too.
that change is an illusion.
"Creative evolution of ego consciousness means that, through a continuous process stretching over thousands of years,
the conscious system has absorbed more and more unconscious contents and progressively extended its frontiers."