Archetipi e immaginazione mitica

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1° Parte

Archetypes, Mythic Imagination, and Modern Society. Stanislav Grof, M.D.

I will begin this paper on the importance of mythic imagination and archetypal psychology for modern society with a brief discussion of the nature and function of the According to the understanding that has emerged from Jungian psychology, consciousness research, and scholarly mythological research, archetypes are timeless primordial cosmic principles underlying, informing, and forming the fabric of the material world (Jung 1959). The tendency to interpret the world in terms of archetypal principles first appeared in ancient Greece and was one of the most striking characteristics of Greek philosophy and culture.
As Richard Tarnas pointed out in his sequel to The Passion of the Western Mind entitled Psyche and Cosmos: Intimations of a New World View (Tarnas 1993), archetypes can be seen from several different perspectives:
1. In Homeric epics they took the form of personified mythological figures, as deities, such as Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysos, Hera, Aphrodite, or Ares.

2. In the philosophy of Plato, they were described as pure metaphysical principles, transcendent Ideas or Forms. They possessed independent existence of their own in a realm not accessible to ordinary human senses.
According to him, earthly things partake in the shape or character of these universal Forms or Ideas, but they fall far short of the perfect glory or perfect reality of these transcendent Forms/Ideas (Plato 1961).

3. In modern times, C. G. Jung brought the concept of archetypes into modern psychology, describing them primarily as psychological principles.

The existence of hidden invisible dimensions of reality is an idea that is alien to materialistic science, unless these are material in nature and can be made accessible through the use of devices that extend the range of our senses, such as microscopes,
telescopes, or sensors detecting various bands of electromagnetic radiation. In addition, academic and clinical psychiatrists use a very narrow conceptual framework that limits the human psyche to postnatal biography and the Freudian individual unconscious.
According to them, the experiences of archetypal beings and realms are not ontologically real; they are figments of human imagination or pathological products of the brain that require treatment by tranquilizing medication.

Modern materialistic science thus joined the centuries old philosophical argument between the nominalists and realists concerning the ontological nature of archetypes (Plato’s Ideas or Forms), a heated debate that had permeated in its many variations the entire history of Western thought.

The nominalists saw the archetypes as “names,” abstractions from human experience of concrete objects and situations and thus derivatives of the material world. The realists believed that the archetypal world is ontologically real, although not accessible to human senses. Western science dominated by monistic materialism emphatically decided in favor of the nominalists.
The clinical and philosophical work of C. G. Jung radically changed this situation. Jung’s analysis of the dreams and symptoms of his clients, as well as his study of world mythology, art, comparative religion, and ritual life of native cultures brought convincing evidence for the existence of the collective unconscious and for ontological reality of the archetypes as its governing principles (Jung 1959). However, Jung’s understanding of the nature and function of archetypes changed dramatically in the course of his life. In his early work, he saw them as transindividual but essentially intrapsychic phenomena. He believed that they were hard-wired into the human brain and often compared them with instincts.

It was the observation of a phenomenon that Jung called synchronicity that radically changed his perspective on archetypes (Jung 1960). He observed that everyday life often brings striking coincidences that by far transcend any reasonable probability;
they should not happen if the universe were governed exclusively by chains of causes and effects. He cited as examples the work of the Austrian biologist Kammerer and Flammarion’s story of the rare plum pudding. Moreover, he observed that in many of these coincidences intrapsychic events form meaningful patterns with material reality (Jung’s scarab, Campbell’s praying mantis, my When the Impossible Happens).

This would be possible only if archetypes were cosmic organizing principles governing the
human psyche, as well as material reality.Joseph Campbell’s comparative studies of mythology brought strong supportive
evidence for Jung’s understanding of archetypes and represent an important complement to and support for his clinical explorations.

Of particular interest in this regard is Campbell’s crosscultural study of the archetypal motif of the Hero’s Journey that he
referred to as “monomyth” because of its universal and ubiquitous nature transcending historical and geographical boundaries. He first described this motif in his 1947 classic
The Hero with A Thousand faces (Campbell 1968) and later demonstrated how it manifests in a variety of situations including the shamanic initiatory crisis, experiences in rites of passage, mysteries of death and rebirth, and in psychoses.
Additional validation of the ontological reality of archetypes came from psychedelic therapy and powerful non-drug experiential techniques (Grof 1985 and 2000).

Implications of the new understanding:

1. Archetypes in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy:

In the light of the observations from psychedelic therapy and the work with holotropic breathwork, the cartography of the psyche used by academic psychiatry and psychology, which is limited to postnatal biography and to the Freudian individual unconscious, has to be vastly expanded. It has to include the perinatal domain and the transpersonal domain – particularly the collective unconscious with its archetypal dynamics (Grof 1985, 2000).

Modern consciousness research has shown that in nonordinary states archetypes can be directly experienced and bring new information about mythologies of the world unknown to the subject (Jung’s example of the chronic psychotic patient – sun making wind with the movements of its penis as in Mithraic mythology).

To illustrate this, I would like to describe one of many situations in which the authenticity of such information could be verified.
It involved one of my clients in Prague, whom I treated for depression and pathological fear of death (thanatophobia). In one of his psychedelic sessions, he experienced a powerful sequence of psychospiritual death and rebirth.

As the experience was culminating, he had a vision of an ominous entrance into the underworld guarded by a terrifying pig goddess. At this
point, he suddenly felt an urgent need to draw a specific geometrical design and asked me to bring him some sheets of paper and drawing utensils. He drew an entire series of complex abstract patterns and he kept impulsively tearing and crumpling these intricate designs as soon as he finished them. He was very dissatisfied with his drawings and was getting increasingly
frustrated, because he was not able to ‘get it right’.

At that time, I was still under a strong influence of my Freudian training and I tried my best to identify the unconscious motives for this
strange behavior by using the method of free associations. We spent much time on this task, but without much success. The entire sequence simply did not make any sense. Eventually, the process moved to other areas and I stopped thinking about this situation. The entire episode had remained for me completely mysterious until many years later, when I moved to the United States.

During our stay at Esalen, Joseph Campbell frequently conducted workshops there and participated as guest faculty in many of our monthlong seminars. In the middle of the week, he regularly came for dinner in our house, because he became tired of the Esalen menu, which he called “rabbit food.” We had many fascinating discussions over the years, during which I shared with him various observations of obscure archetypal experiences from my work that I was not able to understand. In most instances, Joseph had no difficulties identifying the cultural sources of the symbolism involved.

During one of these discussions, I remembered the above episode and shared it with him. “How fascinating," said Joseph without any hesitation, “it was clearly the Cosmic Mother Night of Death, the Devouring Mother Goddess of the Malekulans in New Guinea.” He then continued to tell me that the Malekulans believed they would encounter this deity during the Journey of he Dead. She had the form of a frightening female figure with distinct pig features. According to the Malekulan tradition, she sat at the entrance into the underworld and guarded an intricate sacred labyrinthine design.

The Malekulans had an elaborate system of rituals that involved breeding and sacrificing pigs. This complex ritual activity was aimed at
overcoming the dependency on their human mothers and eventually on the Devouring Mother Goddess. The Malekulans spent an enormous amount of time practicing the art of the labyrinth drawing, since its mastery was considered essential for a successful journey to the Beyond. Joseph, with his lexical knowledge, was able to solve an important part of this puzzle that I had come across during my research.

The remaining question, that even he was not able to answer, was why my client had to encounter specifically this Malekulan deity at that particular time of his therapy. However, the task of mastering the posthumous journey certainly made good sense for somebody
whose main symptom was pathological fear of death.
Of the many experiences involving the archetypal world I have myself had in my psychedelic sessions, the most interesting one happened in a session with MDMA.

About fifty minutes into the session, I started experiencing strong activation in the lower part of my body. My pelvis was vibrating as enormous amounts of energy were being released in ecstatic jolts. At one point, this streaming energy swept me along in an intoxicating frenzy into a whirling cosmic vortex of creation and destruction.

In the center of this monstrous hurricane of primordial forces were four giant herculean figures performing what seemed to be the ultimate cosmic saber dance. They had strong Mongolian features with protruding cheekbones, oblique eyes, and clean-shaven heads decorated by large braided ponytails. Whirling around in a frantic dance craze, they were swinging large weapons that looked like
scythes or L-shaped scimitars; all four of these combined formed a rapidly rotating swastika.

I intuitively understood that this monumental archetypal scene was related to the beginning of the process of creation and simultaneously to the final stage of the spiritual journey. In the cosmogenetic process (in the movement from the primordial unity to the worlds of plurality) the blades of the scimitars represented the force that is splitting and fragmenting the unified field of cosmic consciousness and creative energy into countless individual units. In relation to spiritual journey, they represented the stage when the seeker’s consciousness
transcends separation and polarity and reaches the state of original undifferentiated unity.

The direction of this process seemed to be related to the clockwise and counterclockwise rotation of the blades. Projected into the material world, this archetypal motif seemed to be related to growth and development (the fertilized egg or seed becoming an organism) or destruction of forms (wars, natural catastrophes, decay).

Then the experience opened up into an unimaginable panorama of scenes of destruction. In these visions, natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions,earthquakes, crashing meteors, forest fires, floods and tidal waves, were combined with images of burning cities, entire blocks of collapsing high-rise buildings, massdeath, and horror of wars.

Heading this wave of total annihilation were four archetypal images of macabre riders symbolizing the end of the world. I realized that these were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. (pestilence, war, famine, and death). The continuing vibrations and jolts of my pelvis now became synchronized with the movements of this ominous horseback riding and I became I joined the dance, becoming one of them, or possibly all four of them at once, leaving my own identity behind.

Suddenly, there was a rapid change of scenery and I had a vision of the cave from Plato’s Republic. In this work, Plato describes a group of people who live chained all of their lives in a cave, facing a blank wall. They watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of the cave entrance.

According to Plato, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to seeing reality. The enlightened philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from this illusion and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are illusory, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners. This was followed by profound and convincing realization that the material world of our everyday life is not made of «stuff» but created by cosmic consciousness by infinitely complex and sophisticated orchestration of experiences.

It is a divine play that the Hindus call lila, created by cosmic illusion maya.
The final major scene of the session was a magnificent ornate theater stage featuring a parade of personified universal principles, archetypes - cosmic actors, who through a complex interplay create the illusion of the phenomenal world.

They were protean personages with many facets, levels, and dimensions of meaning that kept changing their forms in extremely intricate holographic interpenetration as I was observing them. Each of them seemed to represent simultaneously the essence of his or her function and all the concrete manifestations of this element in the world of matter.

There was Maya, the mysterious ethereal principle symbolizing the world illusion; Anima, embodying the eternal Female; a Mars-like personification of war and aggression; the Lovers, representing all the sexual dramas and romances throughout ages; the royal figure of the Ruler; the withdrawn Hermit; the elusive Trickster; and many others.

As they were passing across the stage, they bowed in my direction, as if expecting appreciation for the stellar performance in the divine play of the universe.

The work with non-ordinary states of consciousness (their important subgroup that I call “holotropic”) has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that archetypal experiences are not erratic products of brain pathology of unknown origin (symptoms of “endogenous psychoses”), but creations of anima mundi emerging into individual consciousness (Grof 2000). It has also revealed the existence of the perinatal domain in the unconscious that contains a unique mixture of fetal and archetypal elements. This has profound theoretical and practical implications for psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy:

a. Archetypes play an important role in the genesis of emotional and psychosomatic symptoms as part of multilevel dynamic systems that consist of biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal material (COEX systems). Conversely, archetypes can also play an important role in healing and transformation (the extreme being emergence and integration of a demonic archetype)

b.This is closely related to inner healing intelligence of the psyche (Jung’s individuation process) and healing potential of archetypal figures or cosmic energy that ancient and native cultures see as divine (Apollo of the Greek temple incubation, deities of the Caribbean and South American syncretistic religions – the loa in Voodoo or orishas in Umbanda and Santeria, pneuma of the Gnostics, prana
of Kundalini Yoga, ntum of the Kalahari Bushmen, mana of the Polynesians, etc.)

c.The discovery of the ontological reality of the archetypal realm and the inner healing intelligence supports the concept of “spiritual emergency” (emergence of perinatal and transpersonal material into consciousness) as an alternative to the medical understanding of “endogenous psychoses” as mental diseases, caused by a pathological process (Grof and Grof 1989, Grof and Grof 1991).

Continua