240. Elena - November 16, 2009 [Edit]After reading this article, what surprises me is that the author would choose to speak only about Demons and not Angels which carry the same process but I think both words are too loaded for there to be a better understanding of their reality for us today. Treating them as Demons or Angels gives them a connotation that is not exactly human and although “HUMAN” are demons and angels, when we can rest our selves in the purely human aspect of our experience, it is easier to deal with suprasensory reality because we experience it from our selves and not as forces coming from outside our selves. Perhaps this is true mainly because when we can come to the suprasensible with our I, we have a powerful enough anchor that can relate to both demons and angels without being blown away by either one of them, which is what happens when we are deeply identified with both pleasure or suffering.
Perhaps the mastery of Gurdjieff and particularly Ouspensky was to bring those realities down to the language of an industrialized world in which they could be almost touched: “man is a machine that reacts to the external world when his buttons get pushed” is exactly the same idea that “man is possessed by complexes when he is unconsciously identified”
Man is a “machine” that reacts mechanically when he doesn’t have control over his identifications is not different to “man is possessed when he is identified with complexes that overpower him”.
Man is a “machine” that reacts mechanically when he doesn’t have control over his identifications is not different to “man is possessed when he is identified with complexes that overpower him”.
“The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength” states Levy, which is no different to the idea that through the effort of non-identification a man can free himself from the many ‘I’s.
It seems necessary to relate to people in different stages of development to be able to understand how the process works.
In childhood there are states of well-being and ill being of which the child doesn’t have much control. Things “happen” to the child without the child having a mature enough I to “act” on them but a reaction to the experience is set off that “takes a life of its own” in the unconsciousness of the individual. In the teenager those unconscious reactions to the world “as it was experienced by the child” form an incipient personality that matures with the adult. The personality is no other than Reich’s character armor that is formed as a reaction to the experiences of childhood. This armor holds within itself the unconscious processes that have taken a life of their own and become the individual’s “imaginary picture” of him/herself. But the “imaginary picture” is not only an image of who one is but a living conditioning of the ability to experience joy and suffering and it is THAT conditioning, THAT personality, what will “look for”, “attract” and “choose” experiences of a particular kind.
“Personality” conditions the tendencies the individual develops. A “shy personality” attracts shy experiences or on the other end of the spectrum, extreme experiences that justify the shyness. A “strong personality” attracts strong experiences or on the other end of the spectrum, “shy” experiences that justify the strength. A balanced personality attracts balanced experiences, that is, chooses and discards what is not so balanced. While in childhood, the individual receives strong or weak impressions over which she or he has no control, in adulthood, the individual’s personality “unconsciously” chooses the experience and the strength or weakness of the experience in accordance with the way the childhood experience has become FIXED in the individual’s inner world; In accordance with the complex that the individual is repeating, re-experiencing, resurrecting or recurring.
The unconscious repetition of the experience is what becomes pathological over time and the experience is repeated over and over until light is shed on it: Consciousness.
The “facts” are only the “crystallization” or external “materialization” of forces “impressed” on the child from the outside references. The “conditioning” that personality “crystallizes” in, is what will impel the individual to reproduce the experience and materialize it, inversely proportionate to the imprint, in “new” facts. The “facts” in themselves are, in childhood, what formed the complex, the “conditioning” and in adulthood what can reveal it. In adulthood, the facts or the external experience and how it repeats itself are simply the outward expression of the inner conditioning but the individual is now actively seeking them out unlike in childhood, when he was “impressed” by them without a choice.
In “separating” one’s self, in the “will” impulse to not identify with the “conditioned action” or “reaction”, the individual sheds light on the complex and reveals its causes freeing him or her self from its power.
Both the action that gets impressed on the individual and the reaction that triggers him off to repeat it, take place unconsciously. A “conscious process” takes place only when the individual inwardly “separates” from the conditioning and chooses a free action that responds accurately to reality. Then we can speak about “Presence”.
This “studies” will eventually give us a basis to study the pathological conditioning in which Robert Burton and anyone under the power of his or her complexes will re-enact them recurrently without being able to free him or herself from them.
Elena
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Autonomous Complexes
“Autonomous complexes” are parts of the psyche which have split-off due to shock, trauma, or breach of our boundaries, and have developed a seemingly autonomous life and apparently independent will of their own. Though we are unconsciously identified with them, autonomous complexes are subjectively experienced as other than ourselves. Apart from their inherent obscurity and strangeness, our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes is the essential reason why it is so hard to get a handle on them.
Autonomous complexes act upon us, they feel like our most intimate self, eventually need to be owned, but paradoxically, don’t belong to us. The seeming autonomy of the archetypes and complexes is what gives rise to the idea of supernatural beings. Endowed with a numinous energy, autonomous complexes are what our ancestors used to call “demons.” Autonomous complexes are a psychological name for the demons in the archetypal process of addiction that animate us to compulsively act out our addictive behavior. A demon or autonomous complex, to quote Jung, “behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.” Due to their lack of association with the conscious ego, autonomous complexes are typically not open to being influenced, educated, nor corrected by “reality.” An intruder from the unconscious and a disturber of the peace, an autonomous complex, Jung points out, “behaves exactly like a goblin that is always eluding our grasp.” If left un-reflected upon, these demons or autonomous complexes wreak havoc for everyone within their sphere of influence.
Jung writes, “…any autonomous complex not subject to the conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the latter’s freedom.” As it takes over and becomes in charge of a person, a complex incorporates a seemingly autonomous regime within the greater body politic of the psyche. Writing about autonomous complexes, Jung says “…the complex forms something like a shadow government of the ego,” in that the complex dictates to the ego. When we are taken over by and in internal conflict with and because of an autonomous complex, it is as if we, as natural rulers of our own psychic landscape, have been deposed, and are living in an occupied country. We are allowed our seeming freedom as long as it doesn’t threaten the sovereignty and dominance of the ruling power. Jung comments, “…a man does not notice it when he is governed by a demon; he puts all his skill and cunning at the service of his unconscious master, thereby heightening its power a thousandfold.” Being nonlocal, this inner, psychological situation can manifest both within our psyche and out in the world at the same time.
Demons or autonomous complexes have a possessive and obsessive effect on consciousness. Interestingly, the word “obsession” originally meant to be under the influence of an evil “possession.” Obsession refers to certain ideas that have taken possession of the person. We can become possessed by unshakable ideas of the way things should be or who we think we are, oppressing and tyrannizing both ourselves and others who hold a different viewpoint in the process. Jung writes, “The idea is like an autonomous being that wants a body so much that it even incarnates in the body; one begins to play, to perform the idea, and then people say one is completely mad. The idea has taken possession of one till it is as if one were out of one’s mind.”
Millions of our species have killed and been killed over a fixed idea.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating and en-livening the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating and en-livening the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Like cancer cells ravaging the body, dis-associated, autonomous complexes are like “splinter psyches” that can become overly swollen with psychic energy, and then will propagate and metastasize themselves within the psyche, consuming, devouring, and cannibalizing the healthy aspects of the psyche. Drawing and attracting all of the wholesome parts of the psyche into itself, an autonomous complex can potentially warp and destroy the psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, nonlocally infecting and spreading by psychic contagion its malaise to the surrounding field in the process.
An autonomous complex can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way that a vampire detests the light. A demon or autonomous complex will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being illumined, for once it is seen, its autonomy and omnipotence are taken away. Anchored, connected and related to consciousness, the demon or autonomous complex can then no longer vaporize back into the unconscious, which is to say it is no longer able to possess us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness so as to compel us to unwittingly act it out and do its bidding.
Taken from Paul Levy’s article. Are we possessed
241. Elena - November 16, 2009 [Edit]I finished the whole of the article. It’s worth every word. There is one issue that I would mention which is the impression I get that when the author speaks about mass behavior all of which I agree to, he seems to leave out the possibility that all those of us who are experiencing a possible “awakening of the universe through us” in a very positive sense, could at a certain point CONSCIOUSLY act “en masse”. In fact, I would not label ALL mass revolutions as evil possessions but often as necessary critical moments that revolt against the unconsciousness of the status quo and that allow for the subsequent change in the individuals. Every time we enter and leave no matter what group of people acting as club, cult or institution, we are submitting our selves and often identifying with the group’s Archetype, only to leave and reflect it or deflect it in our own lives. It’s the dialogue between community and individual that keeps the balance alive.
I’ll continue to work on this article in pieces in the future because it adapts all too clearly to the cult and fofblog experience that we’ve been going through.
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