Corbin, Rupert Sheldrake, Teilhard de Chardin, Jung and others. Such a dimension,
posited as it is beyond the purview of the ordinary, demands consideration of the
relationship between psychological processes, soul or psyche and anima mundi and
this is provided in Chapter 8, Consciousness and Soul.
My approach to consciousness in that chapter is based on Julian Jaynes’
impressive theory explained in his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind (1977), and although I disagree strongly with his dating of the
emergence of egoic consciousness, his work provides a basis on which to develop
my hypothesis of the imaginal dimension of reality as it is expressed in mythopoeic
literary consciousness. Jaynes concedes that “ ... the Greek subjective conscious
mind ... has been born out of song and poetry ...” but he sadly dismisses soul as a
pseudostructure (1977:292). Thus, I have in that chapter also defined soul and
explained its relationship to consciousness though the faculty of the psychoid
dimension and also necessarily extended the discussion to implicate the anima
mundi.
Chapter 9, Mythopoeic Literary Consciousness, explains and integrates the
findings of my research to show the similarities between SC and MLC; the links
between shamanism and creative-imaginal writing or mythopoeic literature and
substantiates the existence and importance of the I maginal Realm. Such an
approach deliberately affiliates itself with the arts, culture and the history of ideas
and moves beyond psychological and empirical models. I t is also an approach that
facilitates investigation of those same elements outside and beyond the Western
cultural tradition; in my approach I found the theories of Carl Jung and James
Hillman invaluable because they reflect universal psychological patterns and
influences.
I n Chapter 10 The Mythopoeic Dimensions of Place-elsewhere-place, I have
examined conceptualisations of place, more in the sense of the enchantment of
place, the extraordinary effect that place has on human consciousness and soul
under certain conditions and the interaction or relationship that takes place between
them. My argument here is that place, rather than being a particular entity, is a
continuum possessing a structure somewhat akin to that of a Mobius strip. I have
attempted to illustrate the subjective experience of place, and implicitly the literary
experience of place, and the way people come to understand place and to identify
the metaphysical aspects of a human geography filled with emotions and memories
about places. Thus, the thesis returns to the original concept of boundaries of the
ron
(Ron)
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