The Apocalypse and Ego Death

Tony,

You are wise indeed.  Your post is a great example of the wisdom of the collective unconscious.  Archetypes are both outside and inside, and often, both places at once.  For this is the nature of psychological symbolism:

I just read your comments in the Member's Lounge in this Pod.  I have only read it once, which at the end of a day, may not include 90% of my attention, (I think shooting for 100% of anything is just draining, and forget 110%).  You said so much that is so interesting.  The thing that triggered me to open a Blog called “Tony's comments” is you evoked the archetype of the Apocalypse, which, for many, is so closely tied to the archetype of the Rapture.  A real Yin-Yang set of archetypes.  In any case, we are really living in a time for which the Apocalyptic Archetype is very active, and it seems, for “good” reason. 

Curiously enough Tony, when I asked myself, what is the role of the Apocalypse archetype in spiritual development, you answered it in your comments.  Specifically, it could include the repeated “ego deaths” or endings to ways of being and ways of living.  Note, that symbolically, as in dreams, this may be represented in deaths of characters, or other annihilation.  Jungians know that death in a dream is a good thing, just as it is often thought of spiritually.  Psychosymbolically, death represents the end of a psychological identification or function, or old self, and frees up energy for the birth of a new identification, or function, or Self.  In other words, the Rapture, following the Apocalpse.  Thanks Tony.

So, Death to ya'll






so there may be Rebirth.

twice awakened Doug

Apocalypse on the Big Screen, or, How Do We Get There From Here?

Thank you so much for your acknowledgement Doug––most importantly, for opening up this discussion to a deeper level of import. To begin at a beginning––I was never fond of “Apocalyptic” thought. And I have felt that we have something deep within us––with convictions going back to my early childhood––that allows us an opportunity to awaken, be adaptive and deal with whatever situations (i.e., “deaths”) which we may face throughout our individual lives and as well the “death” (and rebirth/reorganization) of our Collective Unconscious and our planet. We may not escape our own individual corporeal deaths at this point––but the metaphorical and Collective ones we may.

Of late it’s damn difficult to deny what we see, hear and feel as we are apparently running head-on into collision with some very real inconvenient truths. If we were to be fully awake and emerge from our Collective Denial all at once, I believe we’d find many becoming dysfunctional in our hitherto Collective Agreement Fields of Consumerism and our agreed upon mutually shared Reality as it has been. Potentially imminent chaos of some kind might be in store for us if we were all to spontaneously wake up at this exact point in time. I don’t wish to elaborate on these issues as most everyone here is aware of these global situations from natural problems to global sociopolitical and economic issues––all in need of revision.

What I believe we do need is more guidance, education, training and expertise in the area of reaching into the Collective Unconscious––sojourning there to create a new and conscious agreement facilitated by intentional and compassionate deliberation––through whatever means are at our disposal in order to bring forth a global awakening such as we’ve never seen before. And in doing so together, we will be prepared for the result of our efforts. And I realize––not to sound too naive––as in the observations of quantum physics, we’re all in this already, participating as both the doer and the observer all at once. We just need to tighten up our act I think.

We just simply cannot do any of this properly without individual and collective spiritual maturity, compassion, and a much greater degree of diminished selfishness, greed, glamour and illusion as has existed and currently spoon-fed to us with our previously held naive agreements. I’m by no way a radical, but I find our situation so much likened to that of Neo in The Matrix, having found himself shocked into a newly found state of awareness, awakened by having taken the red pill. There’s no turning back our awareness in consciousness––no easy pill that will endure our road ahead. I’ve encountered and endured such awakenings along the way of my life––this one though, that we now face collectively is of ultimate magnitude.

I’ve been enjoying my recent reading of Daniel Pinchbeck’s 2012 - The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Brilliant. Daniel refers to “… the persistent belief in an approaching Apocalypse––a word that literally means “uncovering” or “revealing”––has its roots in human psychology. Since we are horrified by the idea of the death of our own individual egos, we prefer to project our end––or our supernatural transfiguration or cybernetic immortality––onto the entire human world.”

So as an introductory thoughts, I suggest we begin to investigate––each from wherever we’re currently working from––a further dip into our fertile imaginations with an intent of meeting in and bringing about a coherent common ground of greater enlightenment.

From a transcript on “Three Lectures on Alchemy” by Terence McKenna given at Wetlands Preserve in 1998 (originally posted by David Ulansey, source unknown to me):

The imagination is central to the alchemical opus because it is literally a process that goes on the realm of the imagination taken to be a physical dimension. And I think that we cannot understand the history that lies ahead of us unless we think in terms of a journey into the imagination. We have exhausted the world of three dimensional space. We are polluting it. We are overpopulating it. We are using it up. Somehow the redemption of the human enterprise lies in the dimension of the imagination. And to do that we have to transcend the categories that we inherit from a thousand years of science and Christianity and rationalism and we have to re-empower and re-encounter the mind and we can do this psychedelically, we can do this yogically, or we can do it alchemically and hermetically.

How will we make and transition this collective momentous awakening within ourselves––from the original Pod statement of the Self consuming the self in order to achieve our rebirth? And how will we be capable of unifying and collaborating this process in our Collective Unconscious? Somehow we must venture––together and in a new agreement. If it’s true that science is too late, then we must make our strongest concerted effort at working from within and in unison in achieving this vital transformation of awareness and resultant action on our planet.

Within his acceptance speech for this year’s (2007) Vision 97 Award in Prague, Stanislov Grof, M.D., renowned researcher into non-ordinary states of consciousness had these things to say (with thanks to Stanislav Grof in his blog on RealitySandwich.com):

The work with holotropic states offers a surprising radical alternative – mobilization of deep inner healing intelligence of the clients that is capable to govern the process of healing and transformation.

New observations show that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of matter – a product of complex neurophysiological processes in the brain – but a fundamental primary attribute of existence, as it is described in the great spiritual philosophies of the East. As suggested by the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, the psyche is not enclosed in the human skull and brain, but permeates all of existence (as anima mundi). The individual human psyche is an integral part of this cosmic matrix and can under certain circumstances experientially identify with its various aspects.

From Vishu Magee in Archetype Design - House as a Vehicle for Spirit, he delineates a subtle point between journeying inward through Shamanic method versus that of Holotropic Breathwork. I’m not sure if I agree with his isolation in classification as such here, but of the conscious intention of the individual in traveling into these other landscapes of the imagination and/or dimension and Collective Unconscious I applaud his stressing of the concept of traveling with intention as he portrays in the role of the shaman.

The distinguishing characteristic of shamanic journey is that it is highly intentional: whereas in Holotropic Breathwork we are trained to receive whatever images and emotions our inner healer sends us, the shaman journeys for a quite specific purpose such as healing, information, or creative vision. Thus we are at our disposal a very different tool which can be used specifically for both architectural and transformational purposes. The basic sequence is as follows: first, we enter an altered state; second, we project our consciousness to a place where the information or inspiration is to be bound; third, we return with the prize. Though at first glance the process looks like active imagination or free association, in fact the altered state makes a significant difference. Here we won’t be imagining or fantasizing anything––we’ll actually go there.

I thought it of interest here to offer Dr. Stanislav’s own take on “Holotropic,” for which he lays claim to having coined (from the same source earlier cited in this posting):

Research of non-ordinary states of consciousness (or their important subgroup, for which I coined the term “holotropic”) has been for me a source of countless surprises and conceptual shocks, requiring radical changes in understanding consciousness, the human psyche, and the nature of reality.

I didn’t notice a statement of intention (or the lack thereof) here with regard to the term “Holotropic” as Vishu Magee points out.

And of course this all brings me back to the work and words of the New York artist and visionary, Alex Grey as well.

In closing, I encourage any and all of us to seek and share our experiences which may assist in these intentions made real concerning archetypes, the Apocalypse, and vital, compassionate, co-creative alterations in our multi-dimensional multi-sensory world in this time of change and crisis.

Re: Apocalypse on the Big Screen, or, How Do We Get There From He

Don't mind me but,i feel that we have to make a change not because we are afraid of what will happen or our death but really more in the name of love!! and because things are just not working the way they are.

Re: Etoile's Reply to Apocalypse on the Big Screen, or, How....

Etoile,

Since you specifically replied to my post on this thread regarding this theme of “Apocalypse” I had to go back and reread what I'd written to see if I'd come across as inspired by fear.  Did you feel that what I had to say did not intend to take a motivation of Love as its premise? I wholeheartedly agree with what you've said about coming from a point of love, and as well, have to admit that I do also experience a sense of fear. I get that it's not hip or in vogue or necessarily contributive to the positive transformation, but it is also something that as I pass through it, I acknowledge it and attempt to move beyond.

The more I live and the more I read and hear from others, there are levels of experiencing and undoing, healing, that are all just as much a part of our transformation as the beautiful loving end in sight. I see it all as part of the work and the living of it. Check out Christopher M. Bach's book, Dark Night, Early Dawn––he has some awesome experiences, observations, thoughts, and studies in this area. There are levels to our individual growth as well as our collective growth which parallel each other in this very area of moving through our pains before we can fully acknowledge our bliss, love and beauty.

I know that there's a lot out there on problem solving in ways that “don't come from fear,” or are “not fear based,” and the like. So, no, I don't think we want to create our own fears in the process (this is fairly universally understood by most at this point) via our focus––but being aware of the problems and knowing our reactions is not necessarily a bad thing. Again, it's in the conscious process of transcendence and loving transformation of all these “not-so-good” things we've collectively co-created heretofore that's important––as well as our movement through fear to higher ground. Truly though, if “fear” is that which motivates some of us to come to our senses and out of the closet as a starting point so be it––at least it will be a waking call and we can move from there.

All the power to Love Awakening!
Let us get it right!

Re: Etoile's Reply to Apocalypse on the Big Screen, or, How....

Another idea presented in Dark NIght, Early Dawn, by Christopher Bache, is a concept I've run across before––that being, when one individual experiences, penetrates, or transcends, a level of former hinderance, or blockage, via a collective connection with that which is larger than the individual but also inclusive of the individual, things are altered, leaving open the potential for all others within the collective, within the trans-personal realm, to share in the newer broader perspective. As we are all part of the collective, that which one or some of us experience is potentially available to all others in the collective. This is the area which Stanislav Grof calls the perinatal  (not solely relating to birth period, but including the land between the individual and the transpersonal consciousness) and that which Bache refers to as leading us into the overarching space of Sacred Mind.

No doubt, this was the concept of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth––he at least in theory entered into a new stage of development or evolution…growth…or transcendence, which was then laid open to all of humanity. The same with all the other prophets and visionaries. Now I would guess that what's possible in potential just does not always find immediate follow-through in the natural progression of things. It may take more of what we call time and/or experience…trial and error…more successive or sequential repetition in order for an awareness to permeate, to percolate, through to others' awareness––to reach critical mass.

And so it is also with that Loving state––the greater in number who are able to cross the threshold of awareness, understanding, compassion and love in our experiences and understandings…and our actions, the closer we come to that 100th Monkey. It's already all there, as there are those who have experienced beyond what the majority, the masses, have––but we also have to contend with what is not so pretty in light of the human conditiion––at least as we have known it so far. We cannot simply turn away from it so quickly––it begs to be dealt with somehow, someway, before or as, we move on in our transcendence. I think we're going to have to process this human experience as we've known it to date––as we, and before we, move into our next progression of evolution.

Further Reference on Spiritual Creativity

On Daniel Pinchbeck's website, RealitySandwich, a contributing writer, Paul Levy, has posted a blog on: The Artist as Healer of the World. It's a truly fabulous and numinous piece of stunning originality, depth of perception and clarity––which truly speaks from the Spirit of the heart, mind and beyond. I feel it answers some of the questions raised in our thread of reaching through to other dimensions in light of our meditative, holotropic and shamanic methods of intentionality in our endeavors to acquire and manifest––to give voice to––the archetypes and the messages of the daemon within us and the collective. I think you'll enjoy it.

More amazing thoughts from Tony

Although I don't have much time right now, your discussion of Pinchbeck's Apocalypse meaning and uncovering is exactly what this Pod is about.  In other words, the psychospiritual and psychosymbolic meaning of the Apocalypse image/archetype is uncovering of something more significant.  So, we may ask ourselves, what would an environmental crisis uncover, what would be our “environmental rapture.”   I remember watching a t.v. program, and it may have been Jeffrey Mishlove's, who is a psychologist that is a Zaadz member.  In any case his guest was saying that we are going to have unification on the planet as a result of the environmental crisis, which will force us to stop the hostility and negativity toward one another, and unify us in common cause.  One of the preconditions of this is the internet, which is laying the groundwork for this unifying.  Hence, the Rapture following the apocalypse.  
Your question of what to do about the environmental issues from an archetypal point of view is indeed challenging.  When I have more time tonight, I'll more deeply consider what you wrote here.  Thanks again Tony!!!

With great appreciation, in the Light,

twice awakened Doug

Re: The Apocalypse and Ego Death

I realize that in this pod we're beginning with the concept of “The Apocalypse,” and ego death, as being an archetypal form––forms in which we participate, recognize and define our greater reality of the collective through. So just where is it that we draw the line between archetypal form and fully manifest real dimensions of our Existence which extend out and beyond the limitations suggested by an archetype––where archetypal form might even be viewed as an obstruction or restriction to our conscious communion and understanding of The Greater Picture? What one person views as “apocalyptic” may in fact be a completely different scenario with varied implications than another person.

There are in-depth experiences and reports in Christophere Bache's work which deal in overlapping areas with what we're discussing here in “The Apocalypse” as archetype, but which also walk through the doorway via non-ordinary states of consciousness into realms of individual and collective interconnectivity beyond ego death of the individual as well as the collective. Here we're at play in the field of the archetype in a form that is seemingly very real and potentially transformative, not only for the individual, but possibly for the collective.

And so it is that I offer up these pieces in context of the individual's ego death experience in connection with the collective's ego death and our interconnectedness of the archetype's twilight resonance with our experience of reality in its many forms.

There are passages in Bache's book, Dark Night, Early Dawn, which share his and others' experiences in what seems to be their own ego death (in the context of non-ordinary psychedelic consciousness)––very very deep and agonizing pain and suffering, then to surface in one of two places following.

One dealt with the moving on into the greater world of Spirit in which he/they felt they were vitally and integrally a part of as Themselves, connected to all others in the One so to speak––with the Great Being sharing all the depth of Everything in a state of overwhelming love and the feeling that it had been so long since It/(s)he/we have been in contact … that all It wanted to do was to share this wondrous unspeakable divine creativity of the Universe with its other part (us) of Our Creation.

The other version took Bache and others through another level, after having experienced ego death and the pain and suffering of their own long term multi-incarnational being, to surface again in a level which they found profoundly even deeper––inclusively deeper––and more agonizing than the previous one––a situation which they felt was just way too much for one individual's ego death and chain of lives. And even then, they seemed to realize that even this was only a fraction of what must exist for all of humanity and All That There Is.

… Just as problematic experiences can collect and block the healthy functioning of the individual, similar blockages might also occur at the collective level. This suggests that the unresolved anguish of human history might still be active in the memory of the species-mind, burdening its life just as our individual unresolved anguish burdens ours. Continuing the parallel, if conscious engagement of the previously unresolved pain brings therapeutic release at the personal level, the same might also occur at the species-level… .

… Modern examples might be the movements to abolish slavery, to enfranchise women, and to end child molestation… .

When we follow the roots of our pain in psychedelic states, we discover that our individual suffering is embedded in an historical web of suffering. The life of the individual appears to crystallize patterns that extend beyond the individual, both socially and historically. As your inner life unfolds in this intense arena, we spontaneously find ourselves being opened beyond our individual existence to encompass various aspects of a larger surround, and this surround is, at one important level, the historical experience of our species. Furthermore, the experience is not one of becoming something other than what we are, but rather of reaching into deeper levels of what we already are. We do not take on the species-mind, but rather we open to that part of our being where we already are the species-mind. And as this happens, we suffer, at least initially.

Some suffer more than others, but all suffer… . However, the principle of summation by itself is insufficient to explain the full scope of this anguish for two reasons. First, the sheer quantity of pain can exceed anything that could reasonably be explained in terms of even a long succession of incarnations. Even more telling, however, is the peculiar quality of the suffering. This pain is inherently collective. It's organizational patterns are the historical patterns of a species, not an individual. Its sweep is the sweep of whole groups of people arching against the backdrop of millennia… . Going beyond Grof, however, we should speculate that there is (at least) a two-tier structure of healing operating––one at the level of the individual and a second at the level of the species.

In relating to an experience of a clergyman's voyage, Bache comments:

This second death [the experiential ego death in the psychedelic session] is markedly different from the first. The confusion and panic have vanished, his experiential field is clear, and the agony has intensified as he moves to a collective level where he becomes the entire human race. Religious imagery consummates this sense of expanded identity as he experiences a death that touches all humanity and seems to involve even God, the field of all fields… .

… We need to recognize that both the cleansing and the ecstatic vision this m an so eloquently describes were experienced not in a personal state of consciousness but in a transpersonal state that reached deep into the species-mind. What died that day was not just this man's individual ego, but part of humanity's ego. Correspondingly, the transformative vision he describes poured its blessings not simply into his private mind but directly into the depths of the collective unconscious, making it slightly more aware of its true relation to the divine consciousness… . I am deeply convinced that this man's death and rebirth carried a little piece of all of us into God-awareness and in so doing drew us all one step closer to awakening.

A little earlier in the book Bache describes one of his own sessions––where we're picking up here quite a way through it after his having passed through an anguishing cleansing experience of pain––he now is in touch with The Greater Field of Conscious (for lack of better words):

… This exploration seemed to answer a cosmic need not only to know but to be known.

Initially I was on a cosmic tour not unlike session 19 when I realized again that this larger field of consciousness that I was with (or in) had been waiting a long time to be seen and known. Then I asked something I had not asked before. I asked, “Who am I talking to?” With that question my experiential field began to change, and I shifted to a new level. It was as though I made a quantum jump to a deeper operational level where I discovered that I was, in fact, with MYSELF. The creative impulse that had at the previous level been other than me was at this level Myself.

These are examples of the individual experiencing ego death, merging with the collective and encountering through transcendence a direct union with Spirit.

Just food for thought.

And now a word from our Apocalypse

Thought I ought to remind us here, that Apocalypse does not solely mean “The End”––as Daniel Pinchbeck writes in 2012:

We yearn for some explosive, extraordinary escape from the inescapable and, none forthcoming, we put our faith in an apocalyptic rupture whereby the inevitable is solved by the unbelievable: grasshoppers, plagues, composite monsters, angels, blood in industrial quantities, and, in the end, salvation from sin and evil––meaning anxiety, travail, and pain. By defining human suffering in cosmic terms, as part of a cosmic order that contains an issue, catastrophe is dignified, endowed with meaning, and hence made bearable.

Re: The Apocalypse and Ego Death

Tony, your post brings to mind the image of The Tower from the Tarot…

Re: The Apocalypse and Ego Death

Tony, your post brings to mind the image of The Tower from the Tarot…

Re: The Apocalypse and Ego Death

Yes, yes Traveling Alchemist.  I know the card. Please keep in mind that the posting quoting Pinchbeck refers to both the “uncovering” and “revealing” aspects, with a reminder of how the masses may traditionally “see” the idea of the Apocalypse.

Re: The Apocalypse and Ego Death

I am not well-versed in the Tarot, but whenever The Tower card has appeared in a reading for me, I have viewed it as a time of change - not so much as destruction.  It is a time of 'collapse' of old ways in order to reveal the new.  Whenever we begin anew we are not beginning from ground zero, but from a new starting place, which is a higher place than we've been before.  It is a time of reaching higher still…And in our reaching, or 'processing', we enter the apocalyse - the place where the conflicts within ourselves, and with others, may become more conscious.