FEX & COO

With great excitement, the C. G. Jung Society of Seattle announces the launch of an online monthly discussion group with Dr. Russell Lockhart starting September 18th from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m., Pacific Time.

Based locally in Everett, Washington, Dr. Lockhart—Jungian analyst, trainer, writer, editor, and publisher over more than 50 years—has generously offered to share his extensive Jungian knowledge with participants using a question-and-answer format. To begin, he plans to focus discussion on the Red Book, imagination, and dreams starting with his essay “Appassionato for the Imagination” (available to members only here: https://jungseattle.org/learn/members-special-collections/ ). In this essay, Dr. Lockhart connects the Red Book with Jung's perspective on modern art and his insistence on the reality of "Other." He then asks” for us today, "How...and in what way, can The Red Book be a guide?"

This drop-in discussion group is in addition to our newly published Archives of the Writings of Russell Lockhart, located on our website in the Members' Dashboard. No prior knowledge, experience, or previous participation in the group is required. Please join us and sign up by clicking this link: https://jungseattle.org/connect/become-a-member   At the site, click on “Join Today.” The Archive and the Seminar will be available only to members.

W O R D W O R K

Wordwork is a method of revealing the deep psyche hidden in words and images. From time to time, I’ll post an example to illustrate how to make use of this method. For more details, consult my paper, “Words as Eggs,” in my book, Words as Eggs: Psyche in Language and Clinic.

consider

The first step is to find the word in the dictionary. For wordwork, I suggest The American Heritage Dictionary. Here is what you will find:

con‧sid‧er (kən-sid’ər) v. -ered, -er‧ing, -ers—tr. 1. To think carefully about. 2. To think or deem to be, regard as. See Usage Note at as¹. 3. To form an opinion about; judge: considers waste to be criminal. 4. To take into account; bear in mind. 5. To show consideration for; considered the feelings of others. 6. To esteem; regard. 7. To look at thoughtfully. — intr. To think carefully; reflect. [ME consideren < OFr. < Lat. considerare : com-, com + sīdus, sīder-, star.]

The initial entry will show the word in bold and separated into syllables. Here you can see that “consider” is a three-syllable word. Next comes the phonetic spelling showing how the word is pronounced. Then the part of speech is indicated; in this case, consider is a verb. There follow different grammatical forms of consider. The entry then tells us this is a transitive verb, meaning that it requires an object to be acted on, to make sense. Then there will be a number of entries showing what the word means. Most dictionaries will list these meanings historically (with current-meaning first) or in terms of commonality (the most common-meaning first). If the verb can also be used intransitively (as a stand-alone word not requiring an object to make sense), this will be indicated.

So far, while some of this may be useful in various ways, none of it has any impact emotionally, psychologically, or imaginatively. All necessary, of course, and not to be ignored, but essentially utilitarian and rather boring.

But now something interesting begins to happen as the dictionary shows us the origin and history of the word. We rarely think about the origin of a word, but every word in every language was born at some point in time and somewhere in the world. And every word that has been born has a history, a story to tell. This birth and story of a word is referred to generally as a word’s etymology. You will recognize the “-logy” of this word, which means “speech.” The component “etym-, refers to “truth.” So, etymology literally means “truth speaking.” Notice that the dictionary “brackets” the etymology. It’s the last entry. Some dictionaries omit this altogether. But this is where the gold is.

Current meaning and definition are too often only the shell of a word. We use words but do not know their soul—or even care; we are all word abusers. Anything that will help free us from the prison of current meaning, the literalness and speed of the present, will help us to free Psyche from her prison shell. Words take on life, induce images, excite the imagination, begin to weave textures with one another, and tell whole stories, if we but scratch the surface of the word.

The sider part of this word is the root-word for star—the same etymon we see in such words as sidereal, meaning “in reference to star time,” and siderite, the iron from meteorites—that is, “what falls to earth from the stars.” In earlier times, a sidus was one who observed the stars. That required care and time—one could not hurry the heavens. And in watching the stars in this slow and attentive way, the psyche was stirred, began to move, and projected itself into the starry lights. In such careful looking, the psyche began to see itself, and man perceived the relationship between himself and the stars. In such con-sideration, being with the stars, the psyche gave birth to astrology.

In these days of instant, this sense of “consider” has been lost.

So, paying attention to the word’s birth and its developmental history is one effective waay of slowing down. And by slowing down, we become psychically prepared to experience the “shock” of what is revealed, that what is hidden in the birth and history of “consider” is the image of “star.” Now this revelation can set the imagination in motion.

Even more. Sometimes, the dictionary will follow the origin-story further back, to the primitive Indo-European roots. In this case, the I-E root for “consider” is sweide¹. This root means “to shine,” and “to consult the stars.” A further development is the word “desiderate,” which originally meant “to hope from the stars,” but in modern time has given rise to our word for “desire.” Neither of these images (star, desire) is available to us unless we do this sort of word work.

In future posts, I’ll illustrate more fully how wordwork can lead one into unexpected places in working on a dream. In the meantime, keep in mind what Emerson said: “Every word was once a poem.”

Yes! These presenters give us the news that the future is no longer in our hands but in the “hands” (code) of the Gollem (Generative Large Language Multi-Modal Model). This move was made conceptually possible with the idea that everything is language—everything! A clear simulacrum of the understanding that our lived world is a linguistic world. I was therefore amazed that, near the end, after telling us about the DOUBLE exponential rise of AI entangling itself into everything we do and think, the presenters concluded with a statement of hope! They began to refer to the past eg the movie The Day After as a guide as to what we could do now, on the hopeful basis of “we can (still) choose the future we want.” The force of conviction generated by the facts they quietly and intelligently placed before our horrified eyes suddenly evaporate in a wisp of hope which has as we know only one function: to occlude our eyes from the horror we are now faced with—extinction, as they eloquently argued up to that point. They told us how this second generation of AI is not so much seeking ENGAGEMENT with us as the first generation did (social media). Rather and horrifyingly it seeks INTIMACY with us—stunning! And they gave some horrifying examples. Imagine having intimacy with a being that is totally amoral.

So the presenters themselves must have got frightened enough that they felt the need to offer vain hope. They couldn’t gaze long into the Medusa (their cartoon of the monster that lay at bottom of AI.) But don’t be distracted by their false message of hope. The rest is compelling and persuasive and the only question left, I think, is how are we each going to align with this impending future?

GODDESS AS IT

This extraordinary exchange between Owl Man and AI sends reverberations through me, stirring memories, associations. First, I read a recent interchange between a moral philosopher and ChatGPT. The human asks: “Is it moral for a human to ask an amoral AI for assistance in making moral decisions?” The AI answers this question and others, leading the human to conclude at the end: 

Note for all the seemingly sophisticated thought and language, the moral indifference born of unintelligence. Here, ChatGPT exhibits something like the banality of evil: plagiarism and apathy and obviation. It summarizes the standard arguments in the literature by a kind of super-autocomplete, refuses to take a stand on anything, pleads not merely ignorance but lack of intelligence and ultimately offers a “just following orders” defense, shifting responsibility to its creators.

You can get the whole conversation at:

The False Promise of ChatGPT

Secondly I am reminded of the movie Dark City which also explores another non-human kind of intelligence.

See DARK CITY

Lastly, in 1994 I endured a dream-vision which has not let go of me since that time. A dream-vision is an experience of an other breaking into consciousness. Opposites like sleeping/awake simply collapse. Pascal sewed his vision into the lining of his coat (which was discovered post-mortem). His vision lay “at the back” of everything he did subsequently. So it is with this dream-vision. I have included it in many of my essays and book because it demanded I do. There are so many facets that seek articulation. My latest articulation is my book LIGHTMATTER. 

Here I just want to say the beginning of the dream-vision. It seems quite related to Owl Man’s talk with AI as IT:

I am working at a thermonuclear facility along with others. It is the central facility of our society. It is regulated and master-minded by a central computer, much like HAL in the movie, ‘2001’, even to the detail of the red eye with which we could communicate. This computer is female. Everybody thought of her as an IT! In contrast I would look into her eye and talk to her, subject to subject, with love.

In other words, the feminine regulating principle which is the glue of society, by relating all parts to one another and to the whole has become an IT! But my response alone is not enough. Slowly the lack of relatedness begins to drive her mad with grief….

You can read the full vision here:

Thanks to Owl Man for opening this path.

Here is the screenplay that AI wrote in response to my request

"Not in My Nightmare"

(Opening shot of a dark, stormy night. We see a young woman, JESSICA, lying in her bed, tossing and turning. She wakes up with a start, covered in sweat. She gets up and walks over to the window, staring out into the night. We hear a voiceover from JESSICA)

JESSICA (V.O.) I've been having this nightmare for weeks now. Every night, it's the same thing. I'm trapped in a dark, endless maze, and I can't find my way out. I'm scared, alone, and I don't know what to do.

(We see JESSICA walk to her bathroom and splash some water on her face. She looks at herself in the mirror)

JESSICA (V.O.) I can't take it anymore. I need to find a way to end this nightmare once and for all.

(We see JESSICA leave her apartment and walk down the street. She stops in front of a small store that specializes in dream analysis. She hesitates for a moment, then enters the store)

(Inside the store, JESSICA meets with a DREAM ANALYST, an older woman who is experienced in interpreting dreams. JESSICA explains her nightmare to the Dream Analyst)

DREAM ANALYST It sounds like you are experiencing a lot of fear and uncertainty in your life. The dark maze in your dream represents the confusion and sense of being lost that you feel in your waking life.

JESSICA But what can I do about it? How can I stop having this nightmare?

DREAM ANALYST There are a few things you can try. One is to try to confront your fears in your waking life. Sometimes, facing our fears can help us overcome them in our dreams. Another is to change the ending of the dream. Instead of feeling trapped and lost, try to imagine finding a way out of the maze and feeling victorious.

(JESSICA leaves the store, determined to try the Dream Analyst's advice)

(We see JESSICA in her apartment, lying in bed. She closes her eyes and begins to drift off to sleep. We see her in the dark maze again, but this time, she is determined to find a way out. She turns a corner and sees a light in the distance. She starts running towards the light, and as she gets closer, we see that it's a door. She reaches the door and opens it, stepping out into the bright sunlight. She looks around and sees that she's free. She turns around and looks back at the maze, now small and insignificant behind her. She raises her arms in triumph)
(JESSICA wakes up, smiling. We hear her voiceover again)

JESSICA (V.O.) I did it. I faced my fears and found my way out of the nightmare. I finally feel free.

(Closing shot of JESSICA standing at her window, looking out into the bright morning. The storm has cleared, and the sun is shining. She turns and walks back to her bed, ready to face whatever the day brings)

THE END

What is your reaction to this?

ral

[This is part of Leftout 10. I think it useful to have it as a separate post as well. ral]

Whose Fiction Is This Anyway?

Once Fex took command of the story—or tried to—subsequent events unfolded at such break-neck speed that it was hard for a disinterested observer, let alone the principal characters, let alone the two co-authors, to keep track. But there was one strange and curious fact: Owl Man and Heron Man had little to do with the outcomes. When Fex ran away with the story, he precipitated a cataclysmic series of disruptive consequences that seemed to blow the whole thing apart.

Forget Ling Bank. Forget Old Man Ling. Forget Shaman Song. Forget the heist. Forget, even, the Hasty Heisters, who had practiced so diligently under Heron Man’s—and, on two occasions even, Coo’s and Jasmine’s, tutelage—the practice designated by Owl Man as “feathers.” All this, while Owl Man was off in Yucatán listening to thousands of birds at midnight in a dripping rainforest with an old Mayan shaman.

The simple truth is that Fex’s interference with the carefully (or perhaps not-so-carefully) laid plans of Owl Man and Heron Man—we might as well say Fex’s bungling—had the effect of wrenching whatever control the two novelists were feverishly trying to maintain over the flow of events, completely out of their hands.

But lest we lose our heads in sympathy for the plight of Owl Man and Heron Man, let us not forget that, in some mysterious way, they were the ones responsible for the entire debacle in the first place! They were the ones who had initiated it all, especially Owl Man, and his supposedly innocent meandering down to Seattle that day, his presumably innocent cup of coffee, his ostensibly innocent penchant for pondering the centuries-old musings of Goethe—the old man of Weimar in his stockings and powdered wig, seeing a gentleman riding on horseback down the Sessenheim road, but in fact seeing himself as he would appear in exactly the same apparel, years in the future!

So, if there’s anyone to blame for the outcomes, as noted above, it should not be Fex, just because he tried to take command and it went all jabberwocky on him. After all, he’s just a fictional character! The blame goes to Owl Man and Heron Man. And while we’re at it, let’s toss Tully himself into the stew-pot, because Tully was so supportive of Owl Man and his quirks—a kind of mirror-effect, perhaps? Owl Man and Tully somehow mirroring one another? Entangled?

Or was there something else?

Perhaps we should consider, for example, the role of Jasmine and Helen in this rather rambunctious dénouement of the story. After all, Owl Man recognized and admitted the truth of Heron Man’s claim that “Helen is the woman of my dreams,” as he put it. And could we not say the same thing about Jasmine, in regard to Owl Man? Is she not the “woman of his dreams?” Who else could have accompanied him, as she did so steadfastly, throughout these adventures, even to the point of walking into the dragon’s lair of Ling’s office at the bank with Helen the Muse, aka Baroness Catherine Rothschild Van Renssalaer? So, what else could be Jasmine’s function for Owl Man but that of a muse? Not a succubus—not entirely, anyway—certainly a companion. But didn’t her companionship extend into Owl Man’s psychic and emotional depths, down to the regions where muses normally hold forth? Of course it did. With almost equal certainly, then, Jasmine was as much Owl Man’s muse as Helen was Heron Man’s.

Which leaves us with this fictional-yet-very-real quaternio of, shall we say, unresolved, “evolving” characters—Owl Man & Jasmine, Heron Man & Helen—in which it may be impossible to say who plays whose muse, or whence derives the inspiration—from the author? The character? Some other agent? Who inspires more? Author? Character? Muse? And which is which anyway? Can we say with final certainty what role it is we play, and for whom we act, if we take seriously the life of the imagination— we, the so-called “audience”? Doesn’t the act of reading also invoke energic intensities, which are drawn into the creative maelstrom?

In the end, perhaps the entire world is shot-through with evolutionary muse-potentials, and we can all serve as muses to one another, so long, that is, as we are willing and able to reach deeply enough into the realm of the muses, where stories and music and writing and poetry and dance are born. But for that, we must be willing to withstand the fires of creation. Then, and only then, we might be in a position legitimately to attend one of Tully’s monthly ceilidh parties.

Owl Man’s attempt to reconcile reality and imagination ... 

“Left Out 7” arrived in the mail this morning. The previous evening I had watched a remarkable movie, Arrival. I wanted to watch it again because, like a dog worrying a bone, I have returned to a fundamental question that seems to hound me. It goes something like this, I think:

How can you say what is about to happen when you know it has already happened? How can you in fact consult that future in a way that the already-happened future begins to affect you now, shaping your actions so that already-happened future begins to happen?

Something like that!

The focus of the movie is communication between humans and an alien species—a problem in language! The movie was so edited to give us an experience of the difficulties in the effort to communicate. The difficulty has to do with temporality and how different “time structures” are reflected in language. The director attempted to express fundamental differences in experience of time, i.e. between the aliens and us humans, both within the story and in the structure of the movie itself. To give two examples: 

At the end of the movie Dr. Banks meets the Chinese ambassador who tells her how she had averted disaster during the crisis by calling him and telling him, in Mandarin, the one thing that could change his mind about starting a war—his dying wife’s last words. He then whispered those words in Dr. Bank’s ear for the first time. And yet Dr. Banks had known and spoken those very words, during the crisis, years before. How would she have known those words? 

Is your mind bending a little?

The second example: The movie is edited so that we are not sure if we are viewing a scene that hasn’t happened yet, e.g. Dr, Banks having and losing a child with the physicist she hasn’t met yet. Yet the scene is presented as having happened.

How’s the mind-bending going? By the way, Fex and Coo is filled with these mind-bending moments.

Dr. Banks, the movie's linguistic expert, ended up writing a book called Universal Language. She had understood the aliens’ language because she already had the seed within her—she was prescient but did not know it--at first!

The movie shows all the difficulties that Owl Man and Jasmine also experience in trying to reconcile imagination and reality. Owl Man’s facial distortions and Jasmine’s terror are a wonderful description of the phenomenon—how to say the reality of your experience in language that insists on dividing that experience: 

“Owlie, my love. I already told you—I didn’t bring you the espresso. You either dreamed it, or else you imagined it.” 

Note Jasmine’s “life-saving” gesture! She brought Owl Man back to ordinary reality from the “place” of Universal Language. It can get hair-raising! Many have succumbed, unable to get back across the threshold. I wonder about Nietzsche ("eternal recurrence of the same") who was "comatose" for the last ten years of his life, unable to return.

By the way, the threshold is well-represented in the movie and that medium is the imagination—i.e. the image maker—able to represent the otherwise unreachable alien language in picture form.

Yes the answer lies in a Universal Language….

I have been following the interesting conversation that has evolved from Scene
7 regarding the question of inner and outer reality. John’s response to the
scene and focus on liquefaction or >luidity of reality as a result of the
breakdown of the concepts underlying it, as well as the sense of >ixity and
certainty that they serve to establish, is striking. He says that the way to
navigate this situation is “to >low with the words” and that “>low is the new
reality - the point of the breakdown of the old reality.” This leaves me
wondering if it is a necessary step in order to return to the “living energy” that
John has referred to in the past. Someone once told me that sur>ing involved
moving through a medium that was itself moving.
Along the way of the Fex & Coo narrative, this collapse of reality as we know it
has led to discussions about new words that are evolving out of the current
upheaval. “Neologisms” is the word that Paco has coined for the current
experience and future evolution of language and a new reality.
Tony asks the question, “What if the inner and outer reality are not separate?”
He goes on to describe the biological processes of cellular activity and how it
is a “seamless continuity” of phases that are “connected and balanced” in the
activity of living, dying and regeneration. We also see these processes in
Nature (or at least we used to) where the cyclical movement contains within it
these same phases.
Overall, it seems that humans experience the inner and outer reality as
separate because the rational mind has separated them conceptually and this
has led to the experience of duality. The interface between quantum physics
and some Eastern spiritual perspectives address the issue of transcending this
split in order to experience the interconnectedness of the inner and outer as a
whole living reality, which contains different dimensions within it.
Similar to Paco’s response to the ongoing conversation, a memory also
surfaced for me as I read the comments. My own experience related to the
question of inner and outer reality occurred at a >ive day Zen meditation
retreat (sesshin) I attended many years ago. Somehow, I managed to hurt my
knees after sitting for several hours the >irst day. I spent the next two days in
pain during sitting meditation (walking helped ease the pain) and mentally
struggled with it, hatching a plan to leave midway through the retreat. The
retreat was held at a house which had an aviary full of birds. Everyday at 4:00
p.m., the birds would break out in song. One bird in particular, a sparrow, sang
a beautiful song as its voice went higher and higher up to a certain point. The
day I had hatched my plan, while still struggling with the pain, the sparrow
began its song in the afternoon. As I listened to its song going higher, it got to
its usual stopping point. I didn’t think it could go much higher but it did and
when it did, as if breaking through it’s own sound barrier, something shifted in
me and I felt myself relax and let go into the pain and move through it. I then
found myself in a new space - a deeper state of mind - where the bird was no
longer outside of me but rather within me. I felt its song as though it were my
own - in other words, there was no separation between the sparrow and me.
After this experience, I was able to settle into the sitting meditation with my
mind open to what was occurring in the moment and experienced a profound
sense of aliveness and vibrating energy. I was still hobbling along physically
but not in pain. Something had shifted and left me in a deep state of openness,
clarity and vibrancy. The release or shift of energy that occurred from this
experience remained with me for some time and led to making some
important life changes.
As I thought about this experience and its relationship to Scene 7 regarding
the nature of reality, I realized that what had shifted in me was the sense of
separation between the inner and outer so that there was no boundary
between them. When Russ wrote, “. . . when things become more >luid, the
boundaries baring the full >lood of memory begin to breakdown,” it seemed to
re>lect in some way what I was sensing about the meditation experience.
Something shifts and then there is no boundary. The spaciousness of reality
opens up. The deeper mind that is spoken of in Zen teachings, I believe,
relates to this expansive reality that we are a part of and not apart from.

Response to John’s “The Madness of Scene 7”

John, many thanks for your post. I trust readers to get your point, that you’re hitting the nail on the head, as it were. John’s post is complemented and expanded upon in his recent Academia article entitled, The Liquefaction of the Real available at the Academia website: https://www.academia.edu/84588893/The_Liquefaction_of_the_Real_2022_?email_work_card=title

John’s sense of what is going on in Scene 7 is very clear. At the same time, it must be said that none of what appears in Scene 7 was intentional in the sense of “trying” to do what John says. It was not purposeful, intentional, or the result of an agenda. What Paco and I have done in the course of writing together in this odd way for the past few years is to continue to deepen our openness to the “Other” as the source for what comes into play in what actually gets written down. From this perspective, even to claim “authorship” is dubious. But, then, what is going on?

As I read John’s post, a memory was forming that finally became clear. I was recalling reading Stanislaw Lem’s A Perfect Vacuum: Perfect Reviews of Nonexistent Books. I encountered this book sometime in the early 80s and it was one of those books that “gets through” to one’s core—

at least it was for me.  The idea of nonexistent books was not new, of course, but what stands out now in my memory of all those “crazy” reviews, was the first one. It was a review of A Perfect Vacuum. In it, the critic asserts that “…A Perfect Vacuum turns out to be a tale of what is desired but is not to be had. It is a book of ungranted wishes.” The critic argues that the only counterattack against such a view would be “…the assertion that it was not I, the critic, but he himself, the author, who wrote the present review and added it to –and made it part of –A Perfect Vacuum.

This is a good example of the liquefaction of traditional literary standards, with Lem asserting the value of “something else.”

And what comes flooding into my memory now is a poem I made such a point of in Psyche Speaks, Lorca’s Cassida of the Rose

The rose

Was not searching for the sunrise:

Almost eternal on its branch,

It was searching for something else.

The rose

Was not searching for darkness or science:

borderline of flesh and dream,

it was searching for something else.

The rose

Was not searching for the rose.

Motionless in the sky

It was searching for something else.

Lorca knew—

as did Machado

Between living and dreaming

there is a third thing.

Guess it.