there is still at work a more primal process. Given that even the most dedicated
researchers find it difficult, if not impossible to define consciousness, even to locate
an area of the brain in which it might be localized, all that we are left with is the
evolution of a form of subjective awareness. That awareness is related to the same
area of the brain from which poetry and chanting originated. Often that awareness
oscillates along a continuum between highly subjective and highly objective
polarities.
Jung, contrary to Jaynes’ thesis, cautions that Nature herself deigned to
produce consciousness because without it things go less well. Though it has this
practical function Jung warns that we tend to prize it as a fine achievement, and he
reminds us that consciousness is also our own worst devil because it helps us to
invent “ ... every thinkable reason and way to disobey the divine will” (in Adler,
1973:486). I n other words, along the continuum of consciousness, egoic
consciousness seems to be in absolute opposition to participation mystique. Martin
Heidegger also identified these two polarities of consciousness: calculative and
meditative. The former seeks definite results whereas the latter contemplates the
meaning which reigns in everything that is and that as “ ... meditative beings we
stand at once within the realm of that which hides itself from us” (Heidegger,
1966:55). This meditative thinking, as it is seen in symbols and metaphors in
language, points to something beyond consciousness since language is symbolic
and real metaphors are not translatable. I f language is a function of the mind it
points to something that has to do with the language making part of the brain “ ...
and the obvious fact, as asserted by Hayakawa, that language determines the
structure of consciousness” (Van Eenwyk, 1997:84). That something beyond
language might well be soul, which we must now examine.
8.2 The Human Soul and World Soul (Anima Mundi)
Before fully engaging with the issue of the nature of the Soul and the Anima
Mundi, or Soul of the World, it is necessary to clarify the idea of the de-centred self
in relationship to soul and place. That might best be achieved by returning, in an
illustrative manner, to the biographical information of the introduction to this thesis.
I remember myself in my infancy in that very significant first house in Tudor
Street at Surry Hills and I have distinct and vivid impressions, mainly images; things
I see, looking out from behind my eyes at the furniture, at my family and I