The Mythic Imagination

[Rimbaud]

Tonight I finished reading "The Mythic Imagination: The Quest For Meaning Through Personal Mythology" by Stephen Larsen. Larsen also wrote "The Shaman's Doorway" and a biography of Joseph Campbell. I've learned a lot from reading the work of Jungian analysts. They seem to understand the spiritual nature of the unconscious although I think they've developed many peculiar ideas which don't mean anything to me.

I picked out a few lines from this book that are meaningful to me; "Consciousness becomes suffused with primary meaning and all perception is numinous" and "The images carry affect and are protean; they metamorphose as one tries to hold them."

However many other Jungian/shaman concepts such as dismemberment, initiation rituals, inner guides, mandalas, etc don't seem to be part of my inner landscape. Somehow I feel that they should entertain different concepts if they found the same things in the depths of the mind as I do.

For me, the depths of the mind is an otherwordly place well beyond the mundane and the adventure of life. Perhaps I should make a better attempt to describe what I consider to be a visionary experience. A visionary experience is like a subtle hallucination of what the psychologists call affect. Larsen describes this as "feeling tone" which is also a good evocative term. The word "numinous" also seems to suggest this altered state of perception. It is as if you saw the world through the eyes of someone else's soul, with an unfamiliar poetry. It is a very curious shift in perception on a very profound and meaningful level. The aesthetic qualities of the world undergoes a slight change and everything becomes eeriely beautiful and extremely haunting, strangely poetic like a dream.

Jungians seem to be somewhat familiar with this experience so they interest me but they are not as interested in waking dreams, haunting experiences, the aesthetic, and mood as they should be.

[Isaiah Mpski]

I think you haven't totally read Jung-few of us could for he practiced when drugs such as cocaine were readily available.
And that is the purpose of a Jesus or a Moses or a Quetzalcoatlor a John D. Son;to metamorphosize all into one idea which lasts forever.

In terms of 9 levels of things that is,I think,related to Hinduism,and according to them we are in the ninth level.Whitewave.

[Caprinardo Delirio]

i guess that category of experience isn't usually viewed as psychopathological, and therefore hasn't recieved the primary attention of those who, in their quest to divert malfuntioning behavioral patterns in individuals, or participating in the attempt to do so in various ways collectively, would produce that which could be called a model or just general systematic descriptive structures of this aspect of the aspects. well, i don't know, since i don't know exactly what is done, and how, all in all.

and in the case of the personal mythology of the hero, the meaning and importance of the entire story would potentially be all-inclusive and life-long, whereas in the case of the postmodern psychedelic astronausts, the potentialities of the experiences are unlimited and inter-referential, although of course, giving sign of some commonalities and perhaps higher narrative.

i think that, in many ways, you cannot seperate the vitality and thus the meaning of this quality of experience, without it in some final realization having to pull the entire carpet of your life into the threads of it's description. and probably well beyond your own rug would have to go into that ball of yawn (ho-ho) as well.

many have talked about what you're not really supposed to be able to talk about. but cataloging all these wonderful real and un-real moments as to come to some worthwhile conclusions on the case by case behalf, that seems like a far shot into the future.

hey, did that make any sense or connect over at all? i'm totally stoned. sounds like a good book. joseph campbell you can't say to many good things about. well maybe, can you?

[ April 03, 2006, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: Caprinardo Delirio ]

[Caprinardo Delirio]

of course you can.... jesus, sorry!

isaiah, you're some deep mother, you know... love your style, your words will forever resonate ghostly in the timefields with more charge and untelling than most's.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Wonderful post Delirio.

By the way Rob-you seem to be cleaver with finding bizarre things on the internet.
Do you know of any about wanna-be Messiahs and our ideas.
What a great reality show.Messiah of the week.

[Rimbaud]

I think you haven't totally read Jung-few of us could for he practiced when drugs such as cocaine were readily available. Do you need cocaine to totally read Jung? I guess it could help. :D I have not read many of his professional books which are rather dry. It is easier to read the many books by post-Jungians. They make a few interesting observations and it can take a while to see the relevance of their ideas. I did not think much of mythology until I considered the prevalence of monsters in dreams and I like the idea that dreams are a form of personal mythology designed to give meaning to life. I didn't see the great significance of classical myths and to argue for their significance seemed a defense of high brow culture.

[Isaiah Mpski]

Of course not.
I was just saying that one of the reasons he produced so much was probably with the help of cocaine.
I think his great message was don't get in over your head when it comes to understanding Gott.