The Collective Unconscious

The collective unconscious is usually defined as society’s commonly shared beliefs, customs and values. The term was coined by Carl Jung as a way to demonstrate how aspects of the unconscious influence human beings through the past experiences of humanity’s ancestral lineage. But what Jung and other pioneers of the workings of the mind intuited was merely the tip of the iceberg. We are each intimately connected to a vast system of intelligence as an intrinsic part of universal life.

Existence begins as a point which expands to encompass the whole of the manifested universe before disappearing and starting anew every moment. Within an infinitesimal gap of time between each frame of the creative sequence appears the physical world, the idea of existence being released from the realm of higher mind at a time gradient consonant with sensory perception. Within the area of reality where abstract space merges with the first level of the psyche, the focus of intelligence bends the structure of mind to create the first time change. This is the realm of mind called the unconscious.

The function of the unconscious is manifold, but comparable to the creative process as the storehouse of the primal energies of sex and death. At this level of mind, sex is synonymous with divine love; and death with the creative principle of immortal life. It’s only in the denser levels of mind closer to the surface of the world that the virtue of the primal energies are divested of their original purity.

The experience of every living organism, from the first microbe to the dinosaur, is energetically preserved within the collective unconscious. In the development of human beings, every experience from the deepest raptures of love to the most intense feelings of hate and perversity are energetically stored within the collective unconscious. These oppressive energies periodically arise into sensory awareness and account for many of the irrational fears and psychoses that afflict the human race. Collectively, the combination of the vast energetic experience of life on earth is our humanity, the living record of Mankind.

The external symbol of the body of humanity is the view of the earth as seen from outer space. Each of us is a minute cell within this vast body, the task of which is to be a source of radiant vitality. And yet, demonstrably, the body of humanity is ailing through the pressure of the times, the effects of which are clearly visible in the appalling condition of the world. Climate change and the pollution of the oceans are symbolic of the overall degeneration of the virtue of life on planet earth. Each day more and more people of the earth increasingly display overt signs of confusion, distress and bewilderment.

The collective unconscious extends beyond the experience of organic life on the surface of the earth. It also contains the original knowledge of how life came into existence from behind the visible world. Everybody’s living life replicates the actual origins of life on earth that unfolds as the original archetypal pattern from which every subsequent archetype arises. The process of life becoming conscious on earth, from nothing to something, was fraught with unimaginable challenges. This is why living is such a struggle at times – each of us is endeavouring to break through the resistance of matter in becoming a more conscious being of love and truth. And yet through all the hardships, setbacks and disappointments, we get through in the end. For we are all living for something greater than the person we give a name to beyond our relatively brief time on earth – a cosmic principle called life.