PAGE TWO

SOME BOOKS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED ME

Mythology, Polytheism and Our Subpersonalities

This supports the idea that any mono-ideology, mono-theism, mono-identity and mono-role we live in, is ultimately false.

Instead of having this one higher self apart from our egos, as so many teach, we may be in realty not single individuals and but made of up of many different sub-personalities or "I's," which make up ourselves, as G.I. Gurdijeff once proposed. Anotherwards we have many persons inside us, there is no real "one" self (higher and lower). Our "I's" take turns in different situations, speaking and acting. We are not the same person all the time. When groups of our "I's" get together and agree on a particular value, it becomes a magnetic center and we favor this decision. Although not all of our "I's," are in agreement, either suppressed, repressed, or allowed to communicate within certain restrictive limitations. The idea of observing our "I's," is through a self awareness Gurdijeff calls "self-remembering."

Getting to know our different and contradicting "I's" is crucial in self observation and in understanding our inner unconscious parts. The drawback would be over critical assessment detracting from full subjectivity and confidence in what one is thinking and doing. This can be balanced in what is just as crucial, in what Victor Frankel calls "self-forgetting," thus fully becoming (as opposed to just acting) the particular "I" that you are at the particular time. Yet there is this awareness that no matter how subjective, sincere and real you fully become in the particular "I" that you are at the time, there is still a relativity pertaining to this "I" you are, as one of many contradicting "I's" or selves within yourself.

Our subpersonalities, "I's" or selves, are organized in either self-tyranny or self-democracy. I think Jacob Needleman has made me aware of this possibility. That is, how our inner "I's" conform to leadership create who we are and how we behave. If our internal "I's" are ruled by a few dominate "I's," being an inner tyranny, and dualistic mindset, we then behave this way in the outside world and our social, cultural, religious and political values then reflect this. On the other hand, if we contain an inner democracy, it is likely we have transformed our consciousness to perceive multiple and contradicting paradigms, aware of the relative truths (and fundamentals) contained within.

It is important to understand the temporality and relative nature of each one of our "I's," in that as real as we are, we are only playing roles, acting on the world stage. There is no escape from this. No matter how sincere and meaningful we are, we are forced to play the role we are dealt. I am Caucasian, American, male, white collar, a certain religious persuasion, the list is endless, however, most people identify with such labels and these labels are actually false (in the absolute sense). Beyond these (false) labels, we then play roles in everything we do. A parent, child, employee, student, customer, lover, the list goes on, each a role to play, and again, the problem is with identification and the inability to separate from such roles, to know that our "I's" are only contradicting parts of our whole.

To understand this temporal nature of our roles is to be aware that we are not them! They are a necessity as a human is in a material world. We are in a complex game of a serious nature, which contains both play and work, comedy and tragedy, a balance which only comes with awareness of the relativity of transparency we really are and that we are no one person, but of many contradicting "I's," characters within us.

It was Timothy Leary and others that wrote of such awareness gained through the use of LSD. Leary compared this experience to entering a dynamic moving energy flux of perception, only to then re-enter this static world, imprinting oneself again (as being born again) in returning from this "trip," or journey beyond the left brain categorical role-playing schematic human life.

The Greek Gods may be archetypes of elemental collective personalities - which may be our subpersonalities, our "I's." Mythology and stories affect our right hemispheres of our brains. Such stories are crucial and just as important as our parroting left brain data and language is. And such stories, or personalities of the fallible and flawed gods and goddesses may well reflect our inner "I's or subpersonalities." 

Our subpersonalities, in line with the elemental archetypes may be based on Rudolph Sheldrake's morpheogenic fields Anotherwards, not only do such stories of the ancient personalities of the fallible and flawed gods and goddesses reflect our inner "I's or subpersonalities, they may very well be them! And be all of us! Our teaser inside of us may be part of the large collective personality of Pan; the serious organized person inside of us may be part of a large collective personality of Apollo, the partier, Dionysus & etc. But which one and how much control we allow them or they control or allow over us, that is the major differences between us. Of course there are biological and neurological differences, not to mention the cultural, social, linguistic differences, and particularly the brains ability to think using both hemispheres and the ability of flexible flowing thought which may very well be what determines our dualistic or integral consciousness. The idea is to be flexible, flowing and willing to have some uncertainties and mystery within your framework. The idea here are the gods being collective morpheogenic fields (based on causative formation) transmitting themselves, our brains acting as receivers.

We must be able to leave dualistic thinking and a limited monotheistic dominant paradigm and return to Polytheism to reflect our subpersonalities. Stephen Larsen goes into some good points in neurological, psychological and mythological relations including Daniel Dennett’s idea (as in Gurdijeff's "I's"), that we are made of "little robots." Also are the thoughts on the brains dualistic nature, Julian Jayne's Bicameral Mind and the brains two hemisphere nature with its bridge, the corpus callosum our hemispheric asymmetry and phase synchrony or flow experience, brain injuries and when problems occur with the cingulate gyrus, thus causing dualistic disorders such as OCD, getting stuck on thoughts and cognitive inflexibility and rigidity. The important thing to understand is that fundamental orthodoxy can occur within any teaching, both religious and secular, conservative and liberal, etc. The idea is to be flexible, flowing and willing to have some uncertainties and mystery within your framework.

This change from monotheistic and/or dualistic thinking to integral (multi-paradigms) is based on the transformation of consciousness, not simply growth in left brain intellect Jung compares such growth to alchemy of the mind. It is not some logical left brain rationalization or teaching of facts and ideas, but a transformation from one paradigm to many, a pluralism occurs. Anotherwards, you must leave your one or two paradigms and understand many, including the contradictions without polarizing into an either/or mentality. And this, according to symbolism in Rosicrucian alchemic thought is conveyed in the archetypical mythological theme in death and resurrection, where a man and woman die and are "born again" and transformed as a hermaphrodite; an opposing set of contradictions contained within. The monotheistic dualism of one paradigm intolerance is transformed into multi-paradigm pluralism and polytheistic variations.

Much of our subpersonalities and free will may be part of a teleological cosmic plan - Some ancient theories are the world tree, and various earth waves reflecting our brain waves (delta, theta, alpha & beta). What makes this theory so interesting is the teleological influence over our brains, causing us to think either dualistically and prominently left brained and that of more right brained and/or rigidness verses flexibility. This also can be (as noted above) the morpheogenic fields, where our brains act as receivers, the collective fields of the gods (our "I's") are transmitted and neurologically received.

All of our thinking falls into the higher paradigm encompassing subjective, objective and the collective forms of each (the four Quads). I find this supports the idea that all of our thinking is neither limited to biological, neurological, social, cultural, linguistic, historical, religious & etc paradigms. That we are contained within these constraints, yes, however, none of these alone will contain all our thoughts and experiences both subjective and objective. And so there are contradicting paradigms and yet they still contain truth, ouch! And so, who we are remains a mystery.

The fact is we are in ignorance. As along as we are limited to our human senses, our culture, language, linear historical measurements, our biological make up and neurological designs, our psychological imprints, the list goes on, then we remain in ignorance. Monotheistic and Mono-ideology becomes the limited polarized paradigm of ignorance we are required to transform our consciousness from to enter into a polytheistic and poly-ideology of multiple and contradicting paradigms within our selves, while maintain foundations both individually and collectively within a pragmatic paradigm of unity from diversity.

Removing from this objectivity and floating back into the paradigm of our multiple "I's" or subpersonalities and correlating them with polytheism, multiple paradigms, mythological stories and morpheogenic collective fields, it would be through empirical observance of ourselves that we can learn about other people, the gods / goddesses, the elementals, spirits, and the universe from the hermetic law of so above so below.

The idea here is if you get to know yourselve(s) (including the good, bad, beautiful and the ugly), listen to your voices (voice dialogue is one avenue), objectify over your different "I's" and you will get to know the gods and goddesses. Get to know the flawed and personalities of the gods and goddesses (including the good, bad, beautiful and the ugly) and you will get to know the "I's" you really are.

This supports the idea that any mono-ideology, mono-theism, mono-identity and mono-role we live in, is ultimately false. It is the reduction of a shadow reality Plato spoke of, living in a cave, reading shadows and illusions (maya) as the absolutes of reality, when in truth, we live in, and are of, multiple variations, which can be so without moral relativism, which is the false attack of the absolutists. To achieve this awareness is the transformation toward an integral approach and survival of humanity and this planet we live on.