W H: You have crossed over, you have written as a foetus, for example. That
continuum of consciousness, the collective unconscious, I think, can be accessed.
You said you believed in a unified consciousness, is that, do you think, similar to de
Chardin’s Noosphere or Henry Corbin’s I maginal Realm?
TK: Yes, I think that they said it in a classier way but that’s what I ’m striving for.
I ’m striving for that state of un-self reflecting grace which characterized the hunter-
gatherer society because I ’m very conscious in Bullie’s House and indeed in the
aboriginals who performed Bullie’s House, that there is no fear of, no genre .... no
terror of genre in the aboriginals. I mean they are all actors, all singers, all painters
and all musicians and they cross over ... I am suggesting that when we write, that
when you write, well that’s what’s being called into play. A sort of mind that
predates specialization, a mind which contains the entire mythic and imaginative
history of humankind. This is what fascinates me.
And of course anyone who brings that sort of consciousness into play is not
only disliked by totalitarian systems but there is a threat in it to themselves and to
others too. I t’s a very dangerous thing to do altogether but it’s the only way I know
how to write. I just believe that all the equipment we need to be everyone else is
laid down in that noosphere ... I think of it existing both spiritually and biologically,
if there is any difference between those two. And being the part of existence
necessary to art ... to be the sort of strong man – political leader ... you know, to be
John Howard in other words, it’s most convenient if that part of the brain is totally
cemented over. I t can’t be eradicated but attempts are made by such people to
obliterate it because in it lies potentially an overwhelming empathy with, you know,
universal empathy. This is why writers bring this stuff into play all the time,
because they are involved in crossing over the categories, because they contain all
the archetypes in themselves and are conscious of that even if they’re not conscious
of how these archetypes will play when they begin a novel. I think that’s why
they’re so politically troublesome because they spend all their time crossing over the
cultural, categorical interface between things and they spend a lot of their time
swimming in foreign, in alien waters, what other people would consider swimming
in alien waters.
W H: You might like to know that it’s been confirmed. There’s a doctor in
California, Leonard Slain and his recent book is The Alphabet versus the Goddess:
The Conflict Between Word and I mage, and what he’s suggested is that, in fact, this
division of hemispheres, one side was predominantly used for intuition, for art and
ron
(Ron)
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