On Science and the Unconscious.

 

Empiricism cannot account for nearly all phenomena. I may begin to imagine: What is it like to be possessed if a Conviction? Could it be possible that one might confuse the sense of tension that comes about from the futility of trying to prove one’s own self right with the frustration of failing to prove another wrong? If the tension is experienced simultaneously with the argument, one may easily make that error.

Yet how am I to test such a hypothesis? I should have to be possessed of such a Fanaticism, in which case I would lack the Reasoning faculties necessary to observe myself objectively in the process of delusion. I cannot stage an experiment because I have no more control of the Unconscious Complexes that would produce such a neurosis than I do over my own hart or liver; each functions Involuntarily; my only hope at changing their behavior would be by a series of fruitless decisions that would ultimately so impair my judgement that I would be unsuccessful, again, in making an objective observation.

Thankfully, I am NOT a fanatic, so I cannot know what the mind of one is except secondarily. Alan Watts was right: The Ego cannot be held onto. It dies when the Unconscious necessitates it, though perhaps not by the ‘command’of the Unconscious so much as its withdrawal of support for the Ego. The sense of tension identified with clinging to an obsolete self-conception is futile and unnecessary; it has nothing to do with the magical and mysterious interplay of psychic forces. Yet one attempts to salvage this naïve self-conception when one feels it slipping away.

At times, such an enterprise is necessary to prevent psychosis. Yet in the functioning of a healthy mind during a Transitional Period, such clinging is ridiculous.

Is it not possible that my recent interest in it stems from a self-defensiveness? What if all egoic tension is in self-defense, with the intent to prove oneself ‘Right’ and another ‘Wrong’?

It is conceivable, however Universalised.

This all seems to serve as a reminder that the mind, like the body, is largely outside of our control. What would we be otherwise? Power Gods.

Dm.A.A.