refers to self-reflective awareness ... and yet we know virtually nothing about what
consciousness is, or how it works (Radin, 1997:264-265), although Julian Jaynes
defines consciousness as an analogue of the real world (Jaynes, 1977:55).
Consequently, I have approached consciousness as a conceptual metaphor in which
the boundaries between its ordinary and altered states are uncertain (see page
193). The third element in the makeup of the psyche is what Jung called the
psychoid system. This is where the psyche loses itself in the organic material of the
body ... the instinctual sphere (Papadopoulos, 2006:65), an important concept in my
thesis and which may also aid in understanding another concept mentioned later in
the dissertation, D. H. Lawrence’s blood consciousness. Von Franz has a broader
view of the psychoid and says that for Jung, “ ... the psychoid system is that which
in the psyche is completely unknown ... the really absolutely unconscious ... that
part of the psychic realm where the psychic element appears to [ also] mix with
inorganic matter” (von Franz, 1988:4), a view that further explicates my thesis.
Secondly, White’s injunction intimates that such a tradition embodies an
extraordinary truth and also introduces notions of human potential and the imaginal
that are transpersonal. I ndeed, the word imaginal, coined by the philosopher Henry
Corbin, refers to an act of creative imagination that transcends the subjectivity of
ordinary imagination (Corbin, 1998:117-134). Thirdly, that a dedicated writer has a
very definite role and an extraordinary responsibility, one that may be religious or
spiritual.
These are, indeed, the very issues that I want to investigate; but there is
more. I f, as White suggests, these fictional characters can embody aspects of the
metahistorical imagination, what then is the involvement of the fictive milieu or the
place in which they enact their role? Do these characters reveal that there exist a
dialogical relationship, literally, in the sense of Martin Buber’s I -Thou theory,
between the psyche or soul and the places it inhabits: an extraordinary relationship
that enables deeper, more elemental or archetypal content of the psyche to be
expressed in narrative form? Here I use the word soul in something closer to its
original sense, somewhat different from the modern usage, in that it includes
aspects of the mortal body, mind and emotions as well as something transcending
them; it is an intermediary reality between the physical and the spiritual (Leloup,
2002:14). My thesis requires the progressive amplification of the concepts of soul,
consciousness, place and the spiritual; concepts that constitute the core of my
discourse but that are, nevertheless, difficult to define without the progressive
ron
(Ron)
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