I watched the Jung video the first week of class, before watching Gangaji's "Who are you, really?" video. I made a note of this quote of his, "...One doesn't know what one sees." Then, while watching the Gangaji video, I jotted down, "the truth of who you are cannot be thought." These two statements struck a chord in me and, in my mind, run parallel. While we cannot define who we are in words or with one simple, changeless definition, we cannot know the truth behind everything we see or experience. I've thought of the mystics and how it is impossible to describe to someone their experiences. I've also thought about Maslow's criticism of traditional science and it's reliance on confirmable knowledge - there are things in the world that we see and can't know in the intellectual sense (is what I'm thinking). Accepting that one doesn't know what one sees, to me, is a transpersonal perspective. What do you think?
I just wanted to add a little something to the discussion of the collective unconscious from last night. I couldn't help but have Rupert Sheldrake come to mind, as his ideas of morphic resonance,etc. seem particularly pertinent to me. "According to Sheldrake, living organisms are not just complex biological machines, and life cannot be reduced to chemical reactions. The form, development and behavior of organisms are shaped by 'morphogenetic fields' of a type that at present cannot be detected or measured and is not recognized by physics" (Sheldrake as quoted in Grof, Beyond the Brain, p.63). As far a I can understand this stuff so far, he has found evidence that strongly suggests we are adding to and can glean from these fields all the time. According to Grof, the theory is testable and it is supported by experiments with rats and observations of monkeys. Anyway, its something I want to explore more, I though some of you might too. Nathaniel
Hmm, very interesting. I'd love to explore it more as well. I get stuck on the collective unconscious sometimes. I think I understand intellectually how it functions (the metaphor of it being the internet and my mind being the computer helped) but I really don't understand why it functions or how it exists on a concrete level. In class we talked about how animals (and people too!) have some behaviors that are hardwired into them: a swallow has an inner blueprint (an archetype!) on how to build a swallow's nest, just as a robin is hatched knowing how to build a robin's nest. That way of thinking about the collective unconscious seems like it would go along perfectly with this research. Hmmm. I don't know though, maybe it's something more elusive than thats. Maybe it's not something you can get at from such a logical angle. I don't know. What does everyone else think?
I don't know if it is something we can recognize as existing on a concrete level at this point, like he says "at present [morphic fields] cannot be detected or measured". There does seem to be a good amount of evidence supporting the idea though. He says that when chemists try to create a specific type of crystallized chemical in the laboratory that has never been specifically synthesized before, that it is usually difficult the first time, then easier and easier subsequent times, even in completely unrelated laboratories far away. The idea is that there develops a sort of memory, habit or figurative blueprint that is floating out in the ether somewhere. He also sites rat maze experiments that generally show rats everywhere improve at their ability to solve mazes despite having no involvement whatsoever with the rats in the experiment. It seems sort of like a collective soul of somekind that is specific to things (or resonates more readily) with similar things, i.e. chemical compounds, animals of the same species. It is also related to the idea that our memories may not actually be stored in our brain, possibly out in the ether or morphic field. We may actually have to tune into our memories, which allows the possibility of tuning into memories of other forms or beings that are similar to us, which Sheldrake believes is true and appears to validate the idea of the collective unconscious as a sort of collective memory. However, this is not at all in line with a cartesian mechanistic viewpoint, I don't think, and it would open up a lot of questions about the true nature of evolution with regard to the inheritence of acquired characteristics, etc.
Quote from Jung in the video - "...one doesn't know what one sees." Transpersonal?
ReplyDeleteCan you explain this a little more?
DeleteI watched the Jung video the first week of class, before watching Gangaji's "Who are you, really?" video. I made a note of this quote of his, "...One doesn't know what one sees." Then, while watching the Gangaji video, I jotted down, "the truth of who you are cannot be thought." These two statements struck a chord in me and, in my mind, run parallel. While we cannot define who we are in words or with one simple, changeless definition, we cannot know the truth behind everything we see or experience. I've thought of the mystics and how it is impossible to describe to someone their experiences. I've also thought about Maslow's criticism of traditional science and it's reliance on confirmable knowledge - there are things in the world that we see and can't know in the intellectual sense (is what I'm thinking). Accepting that one doesn't know what one sees, to me, is a transpersonal perspective.
DeleteWhat do you think?
I just wanted to add a little something to the discussion of the collective unconscious from last night. I couldn't help but have Rupert Sheldrake come to mind, as his ideas of morphic resonance,etc. seem particularly pertinent to me. "According to Sheldrake, living organisms are not just complex biological machines, and life cannot be reduced to chemical reactions. The form, development and behavior of organisms are shaped by 'morphogenetic fields' of a type that at present cannot be detected or measured and is not recognized by physics" (Sheldrake as quoted in Grof, Beyond the Brain, p.63). As far a I can understand this stuff so far, he has found evidence that strongly suggests we are adding to and can glean from these fields all the time. According to Grof, the theory is testable and it is supported by experiments with rats and observations of monkeys. Anyway, its something I want to explore more, I though some of you might too. Nathaniel
ReplyDeleteHmm, very interesting. I'd love to explore it more as well. I get stuck on the collective unconscious sometimes. I think I understand intellectually how it functions (the metaphor of it being the internet and my mind being the computer helped) but I really don't understand why it functions or how it exists on a concrete level. In class we talked about how animals (and people too!) have some behaviors that are hardwired into them: a swallow has an inner blueprint (an archetype!) on how to build a swallow's nest, just as a robin is hatched knowing how to build a robin's nest. That way of thinking about the collective unconscious seems like it would go along perfectly with this research. Hmmm. I don't know though, maybe it's something more elusive than thats. Maybe it's not something you can get at from such a logical angle. I don't know. What does everyone else think?
DeleteI don't know if it is something we can recognize as existing on a concrete level at this point, like he says "at present [morphic fields] cannot be detected or measured". There does seem to be a good amount of evidence supporting the idea though. He says that when chemists try to create a specific type of crystallized chemical in the laboratory that has never been specifically synthesized before, that it is usually difficult the first time, then easier and easier subsequent times, even in completely unrelated laboratories far away. The idea is that there develops a sort of memory, habit or figurative blueprint that is floating out in the ether somewhere. He also sites rat maze experiments that generally show rats everywhere improve at their ability to solve mazes despite having no involvement whatsoever with the rats in the experiment. It seems sort of like a collective soul of somekind that is specific to things (or resonates more readily) with similar things, i.e. chemical compounds, animals of the same species. It is also related to the idea that our memories may not actually be stored in our brain, possibly out in the ether or morphic field. We may actually have to tune into our memories, which allows the possibility of tuning into memories of other forms or beings that are similar to us, which Sheldrake believes is true and appears to validate the idea of the collective unconscious as a sort of collective memory. However, this is not at all in line with a cartesian mechanistic viewpoint, I don't think, and it would open up a lot of questions about the true nature of evolution with regard to the inheritence of acquired characteristics, etc.
Delete