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Rough Notes on Symbols, Consciousness, Primal Reality, Etc.

12/30/2023

I'm in the process of reviewing and clarifying some things concerning symbols and the evolution of consciousness. What follows are some very rough, uncrafted notes going over less-than-original concepts. Not the most exciting blog reading, I'm sure, but it's something I needed to do.

Before symbols, primal reality engulfed human consciousness. We were essentially “at one” with, united with other primal units of being, but our awareness of ourselves as primal units within that primal reality was dim. More accurately, our submergence and engulfment limited our ability to add creatively to that primal reality. We knew primal reality directly – but too directly.

Symbols helped separate us as primal units within reality. However, they also distanced us from primal reality. As symbols became more complex, we, as primal units of reality, surrendered our union with primal reality in favor of symbols signifying primal reality. We formed communities and, eventually, civilizations around these symbols and became “at one” with these civilizations of symbols.

We no longer participated in primal reality at a primal level; our participation and knowledge of primal reality became increasingly symbolic. More aware but less direct.

The symbol communities and civilizations required loyalty and obedience to the symbols connecting to primal reality. Instead of being submerged in primal reality, we became submerged in communities of symbols signifying or pointing to primal reality. Such communities and civilizations worked as long as the symbols attempted to serve as sincere intermediaries to primal reality.

Over time, the symbols took precedence over the primal reality they signified. The more symbols eclipsed or stood in place of primal reality; the more diminished spiritual participation in primal reality became.

Instead of participating in primal reality, people participated in symbolic systems with the caveat that they began to regard the symbolic systems as primal reality rather than as connectors to primal reality. Reliance on symbols as primary reality increased individuation. We became more aware of ourselves as “units”; however, we also became less aware of ourselves as authentic units of reality. We became symbolic units.

Expanding disconnection between symbols and primal reality heightened our alienation. We have attempted to bridge this gap by returning to earlier modes of participation through the use of symbolic systems, but these have always failed for the simple reason that our participation was always limited to the symbol systems themselves.

A gaping void now separates symbols from primal reality. We can no longer rely on symbols as reality. Those who rely on or mistake symbols for reality are led hopelessly astray. They are crossing bridges leading to nowhere.

Symbols can still serve as intermediaries. They can, perhaps, still help connect us to reality, but only if we acknowledge them as intermediaries first. The knowledge we obtain via the intermediaries must go beyond or rise above the intermediaries. Such knowledge cannot be symbolic; it must be direct.

The reality symbols point to what must be self-discovered and directly known by each of us, individually and spiritually. We are bound to find that many symbols are partial or misguided intermediaries. In such cases, we must have the courage and creativity to stick to our direct knowledge.

Our task now is to reunite with primal reality, but as “ones” aligned with and in harmony with other “ones” in primal reality rather than as submerged, dissolved units “at one” with primal reality or as “ones” submerged in collective symbolic systems.

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The Loss of Primal Reality Via a Breach Between the Subjective and Objective

12/28/2023

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Introversion and extroversion are not only Jung’s best-known psychological types but are also grounded in everyday language. Even those unfamiliar with Jung’s work know introverted means inward-turning and extroverted means outward-turning. Thus, an introverted person is more inclined to be shy, withdrawn, and reserved, while an extroverted individual is bold, outgoing, and sociable. As is the case with most classifications, the difference is relative, and it is quite common for an individual to be both introverted and extroverted at the same time.

From a Christian perspective, introversion could point to a Christian for whom the faith is largely a matter of delving into himself to explore spiritual depths, whereas extroversion denotes a believer who directs his faith into activity aimed at the world and man. I suppose the ideal Christian would be both introverted and extroverted – turned inward enough to be attuned to internal spiritual guidance but also turned outward enough to engage with the world and other people positively and creatively.

Nikolai Berdyaev was among those who believed that a blend of Christian introversion and extroversion was desirable. At the same time, he also discerned the danger of distorted introversion and extroversion. After acknowledging the positive characteristics of Christian introversion – turning within to plumb spiritual depths – and Christian extroversion – going out in creative activity to the world and man, Berdyaev highlighted two potential risks inherent within the two “turns.”

To what extent may introversion mean egocentricity and extroversion mean estrangement and exteriorization?

For Berdyaev, egocentricity, estrangement, and exteriorization all stand as examples of objectivization (also translated as objectification), which he defined in the following way:

In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolic. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality.

Therefore, in objectification and its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world, nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects.

The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom, and death.

Spiritual disconnection lies at the heart of all objectivization. A particular orienting tendency of the subject causes the disconnection, which occurs when Christians enslave themselves to symbols and shut themselves off from primal reality and spirit to which the symbols point. Symbols are objects but also intermediaries, bridges connecting a subject and primal reality. Objectivization occurs when a subject walks onto the bridge but does not cross. Or when the subject regards the bridge as the other side.

Concerning Christian introversion, egocentricity occurs when the individual turns away from the world within himself and becomes enclosed, engulfed by his ego, and focused only on himself without taking note of the world or other people. Within such an egocentric state, the inward turner fails to align with internal spiritual guidance or plumb spiritual depths.

In the end, he also turns away from the divine. He steps onto the bridge, encounters himself – his ego as an object – and mistakes this for the primal self, the core subject of his subjectivity. Confined to his ego, he also refuses to engage with subjects in the external world. Thus, he alienates himself from the divine within and estranges himself from the divine beyond him.

The other extreme – extroversion – involves Christians ejecting the spirit exclusively into the external world and regarding that exteriorization as the culmination and pinnacle of spirituality, thereby overpowering and enslaving human subjectivity. By refusing to turn inward, the subject remains fixated on religious objects, ceremonies, rites, social aspects, and traditions, not as intermediaries or symbols pointing toward primal reality but as primal realities within themselves. Authentic, spiritually creative activity in the world and with others is substituted with mindless obedience and “going through the motions” that pose as faith.

Berdyaev referred to these distortions of introversion and extroversion as “breaches between the subjective and the objective” whereby the objective either entirely washes out the subject and enslaves human subjectivity or arouses such repugnance and disgust within the subject as to imprison subjectivity within itself. Berdyaev considers both to be slaves. The subject consumed by his ego is a slave to himself, and the subject consumed by the world is a slave to the world. Both are examples of unformed or disintegrated personalities.

As mentioned earlier, the source of the breach lies in a “certain directing tendency of the subject” or, more simply, an orientation of consciousness. The directing tendencies of the subject outlined above worked in the past when man was at an earlier stage of consciousness development but neither serves to connect man to primal reality now, as Berdyaev outlines below:

In the primitive stages of civilization, the ejection of the subject into the object, the social group, into a horde, into a clan, predominates. At the summit of civilization, the engulfing of the subject by his ego prevails. But at the summit of civilization there takes place also a return to the primitive horde.

Free personality is a flower that blooms but rarely in the life of the world. The immense majority of people is not made up of persons. In this majority, personality is either potential or else already disintegrated. Individualism certainly does not mean that the personality is rising into prominence. Or it implies that only as the effect of an inaccurate use of language. Individualism is a naturalistic philosophy, whereas personalism is a philosophy of the spirit.

Berdyaev uses personalism and personality to define his belief in the subject as the ultimate center of primal reality. Objects (symbols) are meant to serve as intermediaries between subjects; a means through which one subject (a unit of primal reality) may approach, apprehend, and relate to another subject (another unit of primal reality).

Objects are not subjects within themselves. When they are treated as such, they become bridges to nowhere. The reality they are meant to identify is obscured, and a false or partial reality settles into its place, leaving the subject (as a primal unit of reality) disconnected from primal reality.

The withdrawn, egocentric Christian cannot connect to reality because he is too ensconced within his false self to approach primal reality. The outgoing, external Christian cannot connect because he has turned away from himself as a unit of primal reality in favor of religious objects, which he regards as the very epitomes of spiritual reality rather than merely as bridges to spiritual reality.

Neither approach works anymore. Some blend of the two seems to be required to attain Berdyaev's "philosophy of spirit", which addresses another question concerning the “crisis of symbolism” — Which has experienced the greater disintegration? The symbol serving as a bridge to primal reality or man’s consciousness of primal reality as primal reality, starting with himself as a unit of primal reality?

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Without You, I Cannot Know Who I Am

12/26/2023

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Though inherently true, Descartes’ insight, “I think, therefore I am” is an extremely limited comprehension.

The answer I am – proof of one’s existence as a thinking entity or self – opens up the much larger question of, who am I? What sort of thinking entity or self am I?

Secular novelist Stephen Vizinczey responded to this larger question by claiming that, “Only action can testify to the validity of thoughts and emotions: action alone verifies the personality. It is the only form of authentic self-expression: I act; therefore, I know who I am.”

Ah, the personality. The validity of thoughts and emotions entails some form of thinking preceding the act, yet an act completed in atomized isolation will not reveal my personality as an act-or, least of all, to myself.

Personality draws in thinkers like the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, who stated, “It is in and through my consciousness of other persons alone that I can know myself as a person.” And “There is no ‘I’ without a ‘You’…This mutuality of the personal is the basic fact of religion.”

So, where does that leave us?

I think, therefore, I am

Becomes

I act, therefore I know who I am

But

I think and act, but it is only through the consciousness of other persons alone that I know who I am

Leading to

I am and know I am because you are

And ending with

Without you, I cannot know who I am.

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Merry Christmas

12/24/2023

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Christmas celebrations start on the Christmas Eve in Hungary. I've just come home from watching the Nativty play the village's children perform every year. Dinner is on the stove. After dinner comes the Midnight Mass, which is not at midnight, but at 7:00 pm because the priest presides over four churches and has to stagger out the services.

I've had a couple of snifters of brandy and am feeling quite festive at the moment, making it the perfect time to wish everyone who reads here a very Merry Christmas!

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Settling for a White December 23rd

12/23/2023

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This painting provides a good semblance of "white December 23rd" in my neck of the woods.

I have been yearning for a white Christmas since moving to northwestern Hungary over eight years ago, and the weather has disappointed every year. This Christmas is shaping up to continue the tradition of relatively warm and rainy December 25ths. However, we did have a white December 23rd this year, which is better than nothing, I suppose.

Although the forecast called for rain all day yesterday, the precipitation turned to snow last night, leaving a handsome blanket of snow that remained on the ground today. We even had a lovely snowfall with big, fluffy snowflakes in the afternoon, but by evening, it turned to rain again. The meteorologists are predicting temperatures of twelve degrees Celsius tomorrow and thirteen degrees for Christmas Day, which will certainly melt all the snow that fell today.

Aw well. There is always next year. Still, it was nice to see a white landscape, even it was a couple of days before it would have been even nicer to see it.

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Getting in the Christmas Spirit - Let's Imagine that Tiny Tim Had Died

12/22/2023

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Selecting a beloved tale like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to draw attention to a perceived eclipsing of heart-set Christianity in the mid-nineteenth century appears opposed to the very spirit of the season, but I hope this post will clarify the method in my apparent madness.

In connection to yesterday’s post on the subject, valued commenter A. Probst noted the following:

I don't disagree with your general assessment of the story, but Tiny Tim's averted early death is less a turning away from life eternal but performs the function of underscoring Scrooge's conversion. The child would now receive the nourishment and medicine he needed.

Mr. Probst is right, of course. Tiny Tim’s averted death is not indicative of any sort of turning away from life eternal, and it does indeed serve to underscore Scrooge’s miraculous overnight transformation from an icy, embittered skinflint into “as good a man, as the good old city ever knew…” On top of that, it works narratively. From the perspective of storytelling, it would be inconceivable and unsatisfying to imagine Dickens ending the novella any other way.

The ending also “works” within the framework of Christian values – Scrooge is not only saved but also redeems himself by saving Tiny Tim. As Mr. Probst observes, Tiny Tim’s averted death does not imply any sort of turning away from the eternal. On the contrary, the crippled child’s survival merely emphasizes the magnanimity and depth of Scrooge’s transformation.

None of this points to any eclipsing of heart-set Christianity, so what, precisely, was I complaining on about in yesterday’s post?

Well, let’s conceive the inconceivable and simultaneously commit a literary crime by conjuring up an alternate ending to A Christmas Carol.

Let’s pretend that Tiny Tim DOES die at the end of the story despite Scrooge’s attempts to save the boy.

Such an ending would render the story utterly unsatisfying narratively. Notwithstanding, Tiny Tim’s death would not oust the story from the framework of authentic Christian values, where the boy’s loss – though sad and tragic – is of secondary importance to Scrooge’s spiritual transformation.

Bear with me here.

The question of the eternal does not hinge upon Tiny Tim’s salvation, which, I believe, is all but assured. Nor does it hinge upon some notion that Scrooge’s prolonging Tim’s life may have exposed the boy to the possibility of losing that salvation. The question hinges upon Tiny Tim’s averted death as vital and indispensable to Scrooge’s redemption and transformation.

Imagine the redeemed Scrooge at the end of the story doing everything he could to save the boy’s life but failing. Is Scrooge’s redemption and transformation contingent upon Tiny Tim’s averted death? Put another way, would the boy’s death diminish the quality of Scrooge’s transformation and subsequent act of love?

Max Scheler offers the following viewpoint in Ressentiment:

There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. Indeed, the achievements of love are only symbols and proofs of its presence in the person.

From a Christian perspective, Scrooge’s act of love should be considered higher than any result or achievement of the act. To say that it matters little whether Tiny Tim lives or dies comes off as callous, yet the point remains – Tiny Tim’s life or death should have no bearing on the spiritual value of Scrooge’s movement of love.

When the rich youth is told to divest himself of his riches and give them to the poor, it is really not in order to help the “poor” and to affect a better distribution of property in the interest of general welfare. Nor is it because poverty as such is supposed to be better than wealth. The order is given because the act of giving away, and the spiritual freedom and abundance of love which manifest themselves in this act, ennoble the youth and make him even “richer” than he is.

As a brief aside speculation, it is interesting to contemplate how the other characters in the story would have responded to Scrooge’s failed attempt to save Tiny Tim’s life. Would they have continued to praise him as “a good man," or would they have resentfully grumbled about Scrooge’s conversion coming too late?

Although Scrooge spurned the poor and wretched before his transformation, Dickens depicts him as a veritable champion of the downtrodden after the conversion. Once again, we must pause to examine where the value lies. Is Scrooge a good man because he suddenly wants to do everything he can to alleviate sickness and poverty, or is he a good man simply because he is engaging with his fellow man through love?

Scheler, once again:

When a person’s spontaneous impulse of love and sacrifice finds a specific goal, an opportunity for applying itself, he does not welcome it as a chance to plunge into such phenomena as poverty, sickness, or ugliness. He does not help this struggling life because of those negative values, but despite them—he helps in order to develop whatever may still be sound and positive. He does not love such life because it is sick, poor, small, and ugly, and he does not passively dwell upon these attributes. The positive vital values (and even more, of course, the spiritual personal values of that individual) are completely independent of these defects and lie much deeper. Therefore, his own fullness of life can (and therefore “should”) overcome his natural reaction of fearing and fleeing them, and his love should helpfully develop whatever is positive in the poor or sick man. He does not love sickness and poverty, but what is behind them, and his help is directed against these evils.

Love is no spiritual “institution of charity” and is not in contrast to one’s own bliss. In the very act of self-renunciation, the person eternally wins himself. He is blissful in loving and giving, for “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Love is not valuable and does not bestow distinction on the lover because it is just one of the countless forces that further human or social welfare. No, the value is love itself, its penetration of the whole person—the higher, firmer, and richer life and existence of which its movement is the sign and the gem. The important thing is not the amount of welfare, it is that there should be a maximum of love among men. The act of helping is the direct and adequate expression of love, not its meaning or “purpose.” Its meaning lies in itself, in its illumination of the soul, in the nobility of the loving soul in the act of love. Therefore, nothing can be further removed from this genuine concept of Christian love than all kinds of “socialism,” “social feeling,” “altruism,” and other subaltern modern things.

I touch upon this because it is key to the eclipsing of heart-set Christianity I mentioned in my previous post. The phenomenon of loving the poor and the sick because of their poverty and sickness began to flicker during Dickens’s time. Dickens himself was quite aware and critical of such altruistic standpoints, which is evident in some of the caricatures he created, most notably, Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House.

Scheler:

A further characteristic: Love in Jesus’ sense helps energetically. But it does not consist in the desire to help, or even in “benevolence.” Such love is, as it were, immersed in positive value, and helping and benevolence are only its consequences. The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like “sickness” and “poverty” have become goods.

But this does not mean that the value of love in the genuine Christian sense lies in the usefulness of its helping deed. The usefulness may be great with little love or none at all, and it may be small while love is great.

Thus, the increase in value originally always lies on the side of him who loves, not on the side of him who is helped.

The last point above focuses on the eclipsing of the eternal I mentioned in my previous post. Dickens certainly understood the fake love of ressentiment, and I will wager that he understood the true Christian value of “loving energetically,” yet the distinction between these two understandings and approaches was already blurring during Dickens’ time.

I will close off the post with some concluding thoughts from Scheler:

This element is also present in the metaphysical-religious conceptions of man's relation to God. The old covenant between God and man, which is the root of all “legality,” is replaced by the love between God and his children. And even the love “for God” is not to be founded on his works alone, in gratitude for his constant gifts, his care, and his maintenance. All these experiences of God’s actions and works are only means to make us look up to “eternal love” and to the infinite abundance of value of which these works are but the proof. They should be admired and loved only because they are works of love!

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The Eclipse of the Eternal in Dickens' A Christmas Carol

12/21/2023

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Is Dickens’ A Christmas Carol a religious allegory or a secular one?

The reams dedicated to this question are copious. Those in the religious allegory camp point to the Christian themes of sin, pride, repentance, redemption, and salvation, while those who adhere to the secular perspective argue that Scrooge’s miraculous transformation derives from the humanistic currents of philanthropy, charity, social injustice, and altruism conquering the old miser’s unfeeling capitalistic greed and cold Malthusian unconcern for humanity.

As interesting as many of these positions are, I can’t help but feel that they all sorely miss the point, the very same point Dickens himself missed when his ghostly tale was published on December 19, 1843, nearly 120 days ago to the day.

Though A Christmas Carol contains both Christian and secular themes, it is neither secular nor religious in any pure sense. Instead, it presents an inadvertent insight into man’s consciousness development in the West near the beginning of what would eventually be known in British history as the Victorian era.

For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to this inadvertent insight as the eclipsing of the eternal heart-set in Christian consciousness in the West. I use the term heart-set instead of mindset intentionally here to indicate that though man still thought and reasoned about eternity, heaven, and life-everlasting at that time, his ability to think about such assumptions via the heart had all but faded away.

Bob Cratchit’s refusal or inability to resent Scrooge exemplifies the purest example of genuine Christian virtue and vitality within the story, and Dickens’ is quick to juxtapose Mrs. Cratchit’s modern lower-class resentment against her husband’s high virtuousness.

Yet one can’t help but wonder how Victorian readers responded to the juxtaposition. Did it cause a flicker of recognition in the heart? Later generations of readers were quick to label Cratchit’s refusal to resent Scrooge as foolish and sentimental. Contemporary readers probably scoff and label it internalized oppression or some such thing.

The supernatural provokes – yes, provokes – Scrooge into choosing freedom-from the eternal hell that has consumed his former business partner, Jacob Marley, which is very different from an internal, freedom-for commitment based on Jesus’s offer of heaven and everlasting life.

Marley’s ghost is a disembodied being whose this-worldly deeds condemn him to walk the earth dragging a ponderous chain as a clanking testament to his evil and sin. His repentance came too late – after death – and hence, means nothing other than to serve as salt to eternally rub and irritate the unforgivable spiritual wounds of not realizing that mankind was his business.

The best Marley can do is attempt to save Scrooge from the same fate, which might have been a purely vital and spiritual motivation had it not focused entirely on the issue of good works in mortal life and the eventual dramatic revelation of Ignorance and Want later in the story.

Altruism was the mankind business Marley failed to learn, the very same business Scrooge refuses to do unless it is to remind the charity gentlemen of what prisons and workhouses amply provide. That all changes at the end after Scrooge bursts forth from his chambers, enraptured by an uber-Romantic passion for life that quickly whittles to something akin to manic philanthropism.

Scrooge’s transformation subconsciously tears away at Dickens. The sudden generosity and disregard for the material trappings that had congealed the old miser’s heart into ice over a lifetime suggests authentic spiritual transformation, the value of which lies in the transformation itself and its consequent outpouring of love for Creation, not in any apparent this-worldly good the transformation initiates.

The suggestion lingers, yet Dickens cannot commit to it. The outpouring of this-worldly good ultimately reigns. After all, Tiny Tim did NOT die, and not dying is, in this sense, Dickens’ proof of ultimate good.

A Christmas Carol is both secular and religious. At the same time, A Christmas Carol is neither secular nor religious. Any seeming process of hybridization between these two disparate components is a flagrant misreading, not of what Dickens wrote, but of what Dickens reveals in his ghostly Christmas allegory.

Christianity continued to live in the minds of Dickens and his contemporaries, where it freely mixed and blended with the enlightened, the scientific, the democratic, and the progressive, transforming it from a religion of eternal life to a religion of NOT dying and everyone being blessed.

Yes, Tiny Tim did NOT die, yet not dying is not the same as living eternally.

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Placeholder Post

12/15/2023

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Work has hindered my blogging this past week. I'm up to my eyeballs with no end in sight. All the same, I hope to get back to regular posting in the next couple of days.

Until then --

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The Evolution of Consciousness – No “U” in Sight. “W,” “L,” or “ϟ” Remain as Possibilities

12/12/2023

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I’m currently reading R.J. Reilly’s Romantic Religion, A Study of Owen Barfield, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien, and I found how Barfield conceptualizes the evolution of consciousness quite striking :

(Reilly):

Diagrammatically, Barfield says, the process of evolution appears not as a straight line sloping always upward but more as a capital “U.”

(Barfield):

If you move down the left-hand side, or limb, of a letter u, round the curve at the bottom, and up the right-hand limb, you will keep on reaching points on the right side, which are at the same level as corresponding points on the left, and these levels you certainly did pass on the way down. The journey will by its nature—to that extent—involve a journey or a return.

Reilly also quotes the following from Barfield, “a descent, an involution of the Spirit into the Material, which it, the Spirit, organizes and transforms, and through which it acquires a new intensity, a new level of self-awareness.”

This new level of self-awareness should eventually include a reascent to the Spirit, which Barfield describes in the following way,

. . . the metaphysical conception of the human being which sees him as a “microcosm” evolving from a “macrocosm” and finally returning, in a sense, to the great whole from which he took his birth: which sees him reposing at first unconscious in the bosom of the Father, then like she seed, separating himself from this unity and finally regaining in some remote future his “at-one-ment” with the Father principle, only now in full self-consciousness, as a self-poised, self-contained “Ego.”

I won’t delve into any minutiae regarding Barfield’s terms. What interests me here is his “U” shape conceptualization of the evolution of consciousness and the nagging feeling that the “U” shape movement has been rendered invalid.

Though this is pure speculation on my part, I sense that the U-shaped evolutionary movement is broken and has been replaced by a “W”—optimistic scenario—or will form into something resembling either an “L” with a perpetual horizontal flatline—a pessimistic scenario— or devolve into a descending lightning bolt “ϟ”—an extremely pessimistic scenario.

My conjecture is based on the belief that an upward turn occurred during the Romantic Period (or Romanticism as a movement), but the ascent was brief and was subsequently followed by a dramatic plunge back down to the bottom point of the original descent. This consciousness nosedive could eventually turn back up, resume the ascent, and form that “W” shape (with the middle peak of the W being far lower than the tips of the left and right sides).

At the same time, the upward turn during the Romantic Period may also have been a mere blip, too insignificant to graph. In this case, consciousness appears stuck at the bottom of the “U” with no apparent ascent up the “right side” of the “U” in sight. Without the ascent, consciousness flatlines and forms the “L” shape signifying permanent stagnancy.

The most pessimistic outlook involves the degeneration of the L-shaped torpor and inertia, initiated by a further drop in consciousness, which would resemble a descending lightning bolt (ϟ). Unlike the original descent, any further potential “sinking” of consciousness would signify a negative rather than a positive movement.

The cut-off-ed-ness would presumably coagulate and solidify into the intense virtual or pseudo-self-awareness and self-consciousness of a consciousness that had rejected Spirit outright and whose faux upward movement sought only the purely material and external, which it regarded as the only true “at-one-ment.”

Such a development would have no upward movement because it would signify the abandonment of freedom, agency, love, creativity, and responsibility – in a word, the complete surrender of Spirit. It would instead be a massive, perpetual plummet, presumably into bottomless depths.

Being optimistic, I believe in the “W” pattern, at least at the level of individuals; however, the way things appear to be going, I don’t rule out the “L” or the descending lighting bolt as possibilities.

Note added: Of course, Barfield places Romanticism into the U-shaped pattern, implying the U is still in play. I struggle to see it that way. I don't see any potential curving up occurring on the horizon. At best, we have flatlined. At worst, we are descending again, this time negatively. If (when) the ascent happens, it will be relatively sudden and jarring, which is more akin to the sharp edges of a W - if we count the initial burst of Romanticism as a brief and temporary ascent.

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