Wetiko
Psychospiritual Roots of Evil & Our Culture of Madness
Paul Levy on Reality Sandwich
Paul Levy illuminates the hidden source of the soul-devastating Pump & Dump economy.
MALIGNANT EGOPHRENIA: Instead of focusing on isolated objects and events, we can expand our fixed perspective and allow the deeper process (often taking the form of a mythic narrative of some sort) that is animating events to reveal itself. Instead of superimposing our limiting ideas and beliefs onto the waking dream, we can allow life to reveal its dream-like nature to us.
Once I began to notice the deeper pattern that was emerging, it became clear that people routinely got hooked through their unconscious blind spots and acted as unwitting conduits and agents of obfuscation through which the nonlocal disease could replicate itself. Everyone, to the extent we are not fully awakened, is unwittingly protecting the abuser in their own way, as well as protecting themselves.
At the same time, all of us, when seen together, are being in-formed by and are potentially revealing a deeper pattern of unconscious, human behavior that is always operating in the shadows of the human psyche. We all instinctively assume certain poses and postures relative to each other, like aspects of a deeper, fluidly, shape-shifting emerging process that is revealing itself through our energetic inter-changes.
Our transactions are an externalized reflection of the same shadow dynamics taking place within and between the different parts of our own psyche. From the dreaming point of view─which sees the seemingly outer, objective world as a dream which is speaking in symbols reflecting something within the subject, i.e., ourselves─the dynamic of ‘protecting the abuser’ is an expression of the aspect of ourselves that is hiding from the light and resisting the growth of consciousness. This is the part of us that is complicit with and participating in our own abuse. It is a reflection of the aspect of ourselves that is keeping us in the dark about what we are doing to ourselves.
This book is meant to contribute to the critically important effort of blowing the cover off of this nonlocal protection racket. Hidden in the evil of wétiko is its own medicine. Encoded in the darkness is the revelation of the light. Seeing darkness is a form of illumination. Like C. G. Jung, the great doctor of the soul reminds us, we become enlightened by making the darkness conscious.
Protecting the abuser, though seemingly in the service of the powers of darkness, is, paradoxically, at the same time, potentially revealing the darkness, and hence, ultimately an expression of the light. It is as if the light needs the darkness in order to reveal itself, for not only is the darkness revealed through the light, but the light is revealing itself through the darkness.
Seeing how the field nonlocally protects the abuser is a doorway through which we are introduced to the underlying unified and unifying field of consciousness where light and darkness are both expressions of a single non-dual sentient presence. Seeing the field-like aspect of protecting the abuser is to see the field in its nonlocal glory, which is to be in a glorified, i.e., more lucid state ourselves.
Seeing the field in its nonlinear and nonlocal dis-play magically empowers us with the visionary tools we need in order to navigate safely through to the other side of our experience, from a world of seemingly meaningless, random, separate material events to a world in which life is infused with meaning and we are fully rooted in our seamless connectedness with the biosphere, each other, and within ourselves.
Seeing the field─a place where we are all inter-connected─is the portal through which we plug into the living plenum, the infinite reservoir of zero-point energy that fills all of the space in the universe. This is the place of leverage, our point of power where we can co-operatively help each other to step into the dream and put our lucidityx together as one so as to intervene and creatively transform the waking dream in a way that changes everything. -- Paul Levy
Once I began to notice the deeper pattern that was emerging, it became clear that people routinely got hooked through their unconscious blind spots and acted as unwitting conduits and agents of obfuscation through which the nonlocal disease could replicate itself. Everyone, to the extent we are not fully awakened, is unwittingly protecting the abuser in their own way, as well as protecting themselves.
At the same time, all of us, when seen together, are being in-formed by and are potentially revealing a deeper pattern of unconscious, human behavior that is always operating in the shadows of the human psyche. We all instinctively assume certain poses and postures relative to each other, like aspects of a deeper, fluidly, shape-shifting emerging process that is revealing itself through our energetic inter-changes.
Our transactions are an externalized reflection of the same shadow dynamics taking place within and between the different parts of our own psyche. From the dreaming point of view─which sees the seemingly outer, objective world as a dream which is speaking in symbols reflecting something within the subject, i.e., ourselves─the dynamic of ‘protecting the abuser’ is an expression of the aspect of ourselves that is hiding from the light and resisting the growth of consciousness. This is the part of us that is complicit with and participating in our own abuse. It is a reflection of the aspect of ourselves that is keeping us in the dark about what we are doing to ourselves.
This book is meant to contribute to the critically important effort of blowing the cover off of this nonlocal protection racket. Hidden in the evil of wétiko is its own medicine. Encoded in the darkness is the revelation of the light. Seeing darkness is a form of illumination. Like C. G. Jung, the great doctor of the soul reminds us, we become enlightened by making the darkness conscious.
Protecting the abuser, though seemingly in the service of the powers of darkness, is, paradoxically, at the same time, potentially revealing the darkness, and hence, ultimately an expression of the light. It is as if the light needs the darkness in order to reveal itself, for not only is the darkness revealed through the light, but the light is revealing itself through the darkness.
Seeing how the field nonlocally protects the abuser is a doorway through which we are introduced to the underlying unified and unifying field of consciousness where light and darkness are both expressions of a single non-dual sentient presence. Seeing the field-like aspect of protecting the abuser is to see the field in its nonlocal glory, which is to be in a glorified, i.e., more lucid state ourselves.
Seeing the field in its nonlinear and nonlocal dis-play magically empowers us with the visionary tools we need in order to navigate safely through to the other side of our experience, from a world of seemingly meaningless, random, separate material events to a world in which life is infused with meaning and we are fully rooted in our seamless connectedness with the biosphere, each other, and within ourselves.
Seeing the field─a place where we are all inter-connected─is the portal through which we plug into the living plenum, the infinite reservoir of zero-point energy that fills all of the space in the universe. This is the place of leverage, our point of power where we can co-operatively help each other to step into the dream and put our lucidityx together as one so as to intervene and creatively transform the waking dream in a way that changes everything. -- Paul Levy
Let's Spread the Word: Wetiko
Paul Levy
In the first part of this series, we contemplated the idea of a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that has been wreaking havoc throughout human history that Native Americans call wetiko. In part two, we inquired into how the wetiko bug disrupts and deranges a living system, using the world financial system as our case study. The wetiko virus is like a parasite that literally feeds off, takes over and aberrates the curren(t)cy of the infected system. The wetiko pathogen originally manifests as a disturbance in the field of the collective unconscious of humanity itself, creating the psychic ley lines upon which world events are erected and energized.
The origin of this virulent disease is to be discovered within the psyche (please see my article It's All in the Psyche). Because of the psychic nature of wetiko, it serves us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the virus, which is to say, how it affects our day to day relationships and lives. We begin to ‘see' the bug when we are able to get in focus and recognize ‘its' psychological signature in both ourselves and others. The fact that the source of the wetiko germ is within the psyche means that the cure for this disease lies hidden within the psyche as well.
Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity's inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate with our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this ‘topic of topics' before this virulent madness destroys us. Up until this point in our history we have been too easily distracted by the ruses of the wetiko bug itself. The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us. Its cure is the most pressing and fundamental issue facing us today.
Author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen writes in his foreword to Jack D. Forbes book about wetiko psychosis, "Columbus and other Cannibals is, I think, the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?"[i]
Historian Arnold Toynbee points out that a civilization doesn't die from being invaded from the outside, but unless it creates culture which nourishes the evolution of the creative spirit, a civilization invariably commits suicide. As if possessed, our civilization is, trance-like, sleepwalking in a death-march towards our own demise. The most pressing and inevitable question of our time is not just ‘why?' but more urgently, how can we stop this seemingly out-of-control, self-destructive, hell-bent part of ourselves?
'Psycho'-Analysis
The origin of wetiko is the human psyche. Psychologically speaking, shadow projection is at the very root of wetiko disease. Shadow projection is a process in which we split-off from and project out our own darkness onto others. It is our misguided attempt at a ‘final solution' to the problem of the evil within ourselves which actually deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil. Projecting the shadow opens up the door and invites in the vampiric entity of wetiko to make itself at home in the most intimate spaces of our own psyche. It is through the dynamic of shadow projection that the wetiko bug digs in and entrenches itself within our psyches, where it is then able to commandeer the executive function of the psyche to its own ends.
When we project the shadow, we unwittingly become a conduit for evil to possess us from behind, beneath our conscious awareness, and to act itself out through us. When there is mutual shadow projection between individuals, groups or nations, each side has an unconscious investment in the other playing out the projected evil so as to prove their own self-righteous innocence, a dynamic which becomes self-reinforcing and continually feeds the polarization in the field.
Shadow projection, as it collectively plays out en masse on the world stage is an outer reflection of the initial process within ourselves of our be-night-ed effort to exterminate our own darkness (please see my article Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War). When shadow projection happens en masse, it is as if the archetype of evil emits its toxic radio-activity underground, through the shared unconscious of the collective, and manifests collectively as destructive psychic epidemics.
In shadow projection, we attempt to master and experience power over the internal condition that originally proclaimed our powerlessness to ourselves not by becoming conscious, but by unconsciously identifying with, becoming, and then acting out the power to externally destroy. Unconsciously acting out unbound power without restraint is our perverse way of defending against the internal breakthrough of feelings of helplessness.
Evacuating and relocating our inner darkness outside of ourselves by demonizing the ‘other' seemingly protects us from feeling our vulnerability and pain. Our inner anxiety about our existential 'power to be' attempts to resolve itself in the power to act free from restraint. In an unmediated expression of our disempowered inner condition, our unconscious acting out does not surmount the need for compulsive repetition, however, but rather, assures it. Wetikos' modus operandi, their 'M.O.,' becomes to root out and kill everything that feels tender, vulnerable and alive within themselves, thus systematically murdering anything and everything within them that could possibly melt or produce a crack in the ice that encases their heart.
Because full-blown wetikos are soul murderers who continually recreate the on-going process of killing their own soul, they are reflexively compelled to do this to others; for what the soul does to itself, it can't help but to do to others. In a perverse inversion of the golden rule, instead of treating others how they would like to be treated, wetikos do unto others what was done unto them. The wetiko is simply a living link in a timeless, vampiric lineage of abuse.
Full-blown wetikos induce and dream up others to experience what it is like to be the part of themselves which they have split off from and denied, and are thus not able to consciously experience - the part of themselves that has been abused and vampirized. In playing this out, wetikos are transmitting and transferring their own depraved state of inner deadness to others in a perverse form of trying to deal with their own suffering. Paradoxically, wetikos both try to destroy others' light, as it reminds them of what they've killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the light for themselves.
Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to and accusing other people of doing. Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you're killing them as they kill you. If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don't attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves. In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, wetikos re-act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting (please see Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome (ADS)).
Someone fully taken over by the wetiko bug is like a kitten endlessly reacting to her reflection in a mirror as if it is another kitten separate from and other than herself. The evil we see in the full-blown wetikos is a reflection of our own evil; if we don't recognize this, we will just be projecting our shadow onto them. We are then guilty of the very same thing (shadow projecting) we are essentially reacting to and of which we are accusing them.
The term wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan) which, to quote Forbes, refers to "an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts."[ii] Wetikos are the human instruments for the transpersonal ‘spirit of evil' to terrorize the world. In wetiko disease, we unwittingly become drafted into being foot-soldiers in the war not ‘on,' but ‘of' and ‘for' terror. The wetiko parasite feeds on and harvests the emotions of fear and terror. Terror is the essence of its insidious ‘ill-usory ill-logic.'
In wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror' that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world. We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,' as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large. Wetiko is the bug which feeds the experience of terror within our mind and out in the world, fueling one of its more prominent manifestations in our world today: the ‘Global War on Terror.'
A Frankenstein Monster Come to Life
Wetikos suffer from what is called ‘pseudologia phantastica,' a form of hysteria characterized by a talent for believing their own lies. "Lying," Forbes writes, "in fact may represent a key strand in the entire epidemiology of wetokoism."[iii] Ultimately deceiving themselves as they believe in the propaganda of their own lies, full-blown wetikos become strangers to themselves.
Wetikos continually have to invest their life-force in lying to themselves, while at the same time fooling themselves into believing that they are not doing so, a version of what George Orwell referred to as ‘doublethink.' Suffering from amnesia, they have forgotten what it is to remember, and to ‘seal' the deal, they have forgotten that they have forgotten. The result is that they split their mind in two. Falling into denial, and yet denying they are in the state of denial, becomes a process that they are invested in at all costs, or it would blow their denial. Anything that threatens their perverse state of affairs has to be destroyed. Hiding from their lie, they are in essence hiding from themselves, which is pure madness.
Instead of living from and out of an awareness of the psyche, full-blown wetikos continually avoid awareness of the psyche, a habitual pattern which becomes their internal compass and continual default, their M.O. Taking refuge not ‘in,' but ‘from,' themselves, wetikos are continually fleeing from themselves, endlessly circling around in the hamster wheel of samsara. All of their energy gets invested in fueling their own, and others, deception. Their will becomes dedicated to hiding from the truth of what they are doing, a truth which endlessly pursues them, as they continually avoid relationship with themselves.
Wetikos become wedded to the full-time occupation of keeping one step ahead of themselves, a process which, once it gains a certain momentum, attains a seeming autonomy that is self-generating (please see Autonomous Complexes). As this inner process progresses, it gains a sovereignty over their psyche, as if a self-created Frankenstein monster has come to life in the flesh. The wetikos have then created their own sci-fi nightmare, with themselves in the starring role. Once created, a mind-virus like wetiko, just like the Frankenstein monster, gains a seeming life of its own, independent of its creator. It then holds its creator in its thrall, unable to escape from the out-of-control hell of their own making.
Speaking of someone possessed by the wetiko virus, Forbes writes, "such a person cannot be authentic. Such a person is not merely a pimp, he is also a ghost, as it were, a mere imitation of a person. His life is an imitation of life...their life is less than that of a wild (free) animal who is, after all always authentic."[iv] Wetikos become unreal to themselves, a simulation of themselves. Split in two, they become schizoid, dissociated from themselves, duality having seemingly established itself as the reigning logic at the core of their being.
Different parts of the person taken over by wetiko become compartmentalized, neither connected to each other nor to the whole. This process of inner fragmentation serves to hide from the wetikos what they are doing to themselves, as they become their own never-ending ‘cover-up.' This psychological dynamic is kept in place by how painful it is to behold and contemplate the modes of avoidance they construct to protect themselves from what they do not want to know. And yet, as painful as it is, it is only in the seeing of what they are doing (to themselves) that there is any possibility of becoming free from this malignant malady.
Wetikos can psychopathically (and thus toxically) mimic the human personality perfectly. If it serves their agenda, they can be convincing beyond belief, making themselves out to be normal, caring, politically correct human beings. They are unable, however, to grasp emotionally the meaning implicit in the thoughts and feelings they are exhibiting. They lack insight into how they differ from others, for they do not differ from others as they see others. They are skillful at pretending love and devotion, as if they are imitating a person. Impersonating themselves, their existence is a true parody of life. They can't distinguish between their mimicked (pseudo) responses of love, remorse, etc., and the genuinely felt responses of a healthy person.
Full-blown wetikos are emotionally stunted, as their feelings are confined to the primitive, archaic emotions of anger, frustration, numbness and rage. Suffering from a deep disorder of feeling in which they can not allow themselves to consciously feel, they typically swing between numbness and rage. Fixed in their own limited and myopic point of view, they have no capacity to see themselves as others see them. Proclamations to the contrary, they have no empathy nor compassion. They can't see the world through others point of view, only through their own, which in Hannah Arendt's opinion is a primary characteristic of what she calls the ‘banality of evil.'
Wetikos don't relate to others as autonomous, independent beings, but rather, as pawns to be used as means to their own selfish ends, objects to be manipulated for their own narcissistic benefit, rather than as ends in themselves, subjects with their own intrinsic value and valid viewpoints. Because they have lost connection to their soul, they cannot hear the pleas of nor see the soul in others.
They refuse to see the harm their actions are doing to others, as this would injure their overly-positive, inflated narcissistic self-image, which protects them from consciously feeling their shame and guilt (read more about Malignant Narcissism). Seemingly unable to consciously experience their guilt animates more shadow projection, which fuels the wetiko pathogen in a continually self-regenerating feedback loop. Unwilling to experience their guilt, wetikos are afraid of being exposed, of being found out, which is an outer reflection of the terror that the wetiko parasite within us feels at potentially being illumined.
We secretly feel a sense of guilt when we shadow project, because we inwardly know we are not in our integrity. This sense of guilt itself is the very feeling from which we split-off. Our guilt does not allow us to feel our guilt, which is what we secretly feel guilty over. To the extent that we don't consciously experience our guilt, we become caught in an infinitely-perpetuating double-bind in which we project out our guilt and darkness, which just perpetuates the very thing we feel guilty about, ad infinitum.
Big wetikos[v] may never know nor be forced to come to terms with the harm they have caused, as oftentimes they find themselves in the privileged position of the victors who rewrite history on their own terms. Many of our society's historians, themselves infected by the wetiko virus, exalt aggressive and exploitative behavior, categorizing as ‘primitive' and ‘backwards' those who don't forcibly ‘conquer' others, thereby subtly and subliminally brainwashing the young into the ways of the world of wetiko.
The Self-Destructive Evil of Empire
Being a field phenomenon, wetiko psychosis doesn't just express itself individually, but its nonlocal tentacles are continually manifesting collectively throughout the underlying field of consciousness. The multi-headed hydra that is the wetiko collective psychosis materializes itself in families, groups, nations, and in whole species such as ours. Wetiko's ‘body politic' has an intrinsic and insistent need for centralizing power and control, fueled by the bottom line of corporate-driven profits.
Speaking about the monster of ever-expanding empire, Forbes writes, "imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil"[vi] A ‘front' for the underlying wetiko virus, the military-industrial-criminal-complex, with its ultimately self-destructive, built-in need for endless expansion is like a systematic runaway in cybernetic theory. The Frankenstein monster of ever-enlarging empire is like a runaway locomotive gaining speed, approaching the event horizon of its inevitable ‘crash,' all under the deceptive banner of ‘progress.' Meanwhile, this ‘progress' destroys people, families, communities, and potentially, the biosphere itself upon which human life depends. "Wetikos," Forbes writes, "have taken their Satan to the four-corners of the world, and they have made him their God."[vii]
Evil is like a pathogen that enters a system, be it an individual, nation-state, or world-system, and exploits the system, knocking it off balance. Such disturbances can transform something wholesome, such as the drive to reproduce, into something evil - the drive to rape. Etymologically, the meaning of the word ‘evil' has to do with ‘excess' as well as to ‘transgress boundaries.' Full-fledged wetikos are rapists of the human soul. The word ‘rape,' etymologically speaking, is derived from words that mean to overwhelm, to enrapture, to invade, to usurp, to pillage, and to steal, which are all characteristics of someone who is taken over by the wetiko virus.
Wetiko disease is a self-devouring operating system that leaves nothing unmolested. It is a living death sentence that, if left unchecked, destroys everything within its dominion, including itself. Wetiko psychosis ensures that everything is sacrificed on its altar of death and destruction. From a galactic perspective, our planetary so-called ‘civilization' is a living, spreading outbreak of wetiko psychosis that is threatening to destroy not only its human host, but the entire planetary biosphere which makes life on earth possible as well. Speaking of wetikos' ravenous hunger, Forbes points out, "It's voracious, rapacious, appetite will cause it to literally eat itself."[viii]
Forbes continues, "The rape of a woman, the rape of a land, and the rape of a people, they are all the same...Brutality knows no boundaries. Greed knows no limits. Perversion knows no borders. Arrogance knows no frontiers. Desire knows no edges. These characteristics all tend to push towards an extreme, always moving forward once the initial infection sets in."[ix] Untreated, this psychic infection gradually takes hold of the wetikos' being, corrupting their heart, poisoning their psychic body politic from within. Like the virus of evil insinuating itself into the soul in incremental, un-noticed steps, at a certain point this leukemia of the soul becomes irreversible, inevitably leading to its host's destruction. The wetiko virus's pathogenic effects within an individual are a microcosmic fractal iteration of the collective, macrocosmic dynamics of the disease; how wetiko works within each of us is synchronistically mirrored with stunning perfection in how it is playing out throughout the greater body politic.
Unchecked by a psychic vaccine, the disease, like an addiction running rampant, is progressive and is thus getting worse over time. Forbes writes, "The wetikos destroyed Egypt and Babylon and Athens and Rome and Tenochitlan and perhaps now they will destroy the entire earth. But neither the ‘junkie' looking for money for a shot of heroin nor the capitalists destroying Amazonian forests for big profits are able to stop their own destructive behavior."[x] Wetikos can't help themselves. Suffering from a compulsion to destroy, if left to themselves they are unable to stop their suicidal behavior. Having lost their internal freedom, they are singularly lacking in options.
Having mesmerized themselves, wetikos have, ultimately speaking, become their own victim. Running like a tape that loops back into itself in endless iterations, their self-hypnosis is dedicated to forever forestalling the prospect of the gnawing anxiety of confronting and dealing with the insanity of what they are doing, both to themselves and others. Like the subject of a master hypnotist, their attention becomes attenuated, narrowed and constricted to their limited and particularized viewpoint. After a certain point, wetiko disease becomes so completely internalized that the person so afflicted, as if compulsively repeating their initial moment of trauma, moment by moment recreates their own psychosis without any external stimulus at all. Having unconsciously identified with the aggressor, they become their own perpetrator, police state and control system. Their pathological inner state in-forms their actions in the outer world, which becomes the channel through which their ravaged inner landscape plays itself out and takes on embodied form.
An inner sickness of the soul, wetiko is unique in that it is a boundary-dissolving disease, collapsing the distinction between the inner and the outer, between dreaming and waking. Wetiko nonlocally materializes itself in, as and through the medium of the outside world, which becomes the canvas for its full-bodied revelation of itself. Wetiko nonlocally in-forms, gives shape to and configures events in the world so as to synchronistically express itself, which is to say that just like in a dream, events in the outer world are symbolically expressing an inner, psychological situation (please see my article The World is Psyche).
Wetiko can only be ‘seen' when we snap out of our literal way of interpreting our experience and start seeing with symbolically informed awareness. At the same time, wetiko itself can become the impetus for expanding our consciousness and recognizing that the world itself is a continually unfolding, living revelation of itself that is speaking symbolically, which is the language of dreams.
A Cult(ure) of Madness
People have to be cured of their spiritual sickness before they can build a just society. Forbes says, "to adjust to a wetiko society is to become insane."[xi] It is no great accomplishment to adapt to and be considered sane in and by an insane society. The culture of wetiko promotes the systematic destruction of the human heart, which when fully internalized, alienates us from everything in ourselves, save what reproduces the conditions of the system. Adopting the values of our oppressors, however, insures the continuation of our own dehumanization. The system is set up to be a set up such that, to quote Forbes, "a person oppressed by wetikos adopts the values of wetikos as he ‘rises' in position. The wetikos taught him well, but they taught him falsely."[xii]
Big Wetikos learn to exploit every situation to their advantage and sacrifice in themselves everything that doesn't advance this motive. To become a "Big Wetiko," Forbes comments, "requires a lot of back-scratching, back-stabbing, drinking, and maneuvering. It also requires the corruption of other young men (and women), who in turn, will become hooked into the system."[xiii] Speaking about how "very, very easy" it is to become a wetiko in our society because of all of the perks and incentives, Forbes writes, "they do get promoted, they do get better salaries, and they do get testimonials (and a gold watch) when they ‘retire.'"[xiv] Because of all of the ‘benefits' of the role, there is not merely a passive disinterest, but rather, an active resistance and counter-incentive for wetikos to self-reflect, a contraction which simply feeds their compulsion and further reinforces their addiction to power.
Forbes writes, "the wetiko disease has so corrupted European thinking (at least of the ruling groups) that wetiko behavior and wetiko goals are regarded as the very fabric of European evolution...if we continue to allow the wetikos to define reality in their insane way we will never be able to resist or curtail the disease."[xv] It should be noted that indigenous people are not free from the wetiko virus as well. There are indigenous cultures that are governed by wisdom, but there are also indigenous cultures that are ruled by wetiko.
We should be careful to not romanticize and idealize indigenous, aboriginal cultures as opposed to European cultures, which would be too simplistic, and dualistic of a view.[xvi] When wetikos possess power in any culture, or more accurately, when power possesses them, they are in a position to influence, define and create a certain level of reality that, though based on falsehood, operates as if it is real. In words that would be just as relevant with regards to the current Obama administration, author Ron Suskind quotes a neocon in the previous Bush administration as saying, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality─judiciously, as you will─we'll act again, creating other new realities."[xvii] If left in positions of power, wetikos will ultimately become and dream up into full-bodied materialization their own, as well as our, worst nightmare into reality.
Evil can take many forms - political, social, economic, militaristic, and psychological. Forbes says, "predation can lurk under many guises, such as ‘patriotism,' profit-seeking, ‘protecting our way of life,' and ‘investment returns.'"[xviii] Many ‘isms' themselves are simply thought-forms used by wetikos themselves to justify their rape, criminality, murder and evil. Wrapping their cause in the mantle of goodness allows Big Wetikos, who are in fact full-fledged predators, to sleep at night, seemingly guilt-free. In a form of self-entrancement, they have so thoroughly convinced themselves of the rightness of their actions that they rarely, if ever, have any ethical qualms about what they are doing. Where the evil of wetiko is endemic, there tends to be an ethical, developmental arrest in both individuals and throughout the society.
Full-blown, big Wetikos are morally insane, and abuse power simply because they can. This is why, to quote Forbes, "the development of rigid patriarchy follows the wetiko disease."[xix] In other words, cultures dominated by wetikos tend to organize themselves around the calcified, archetypal mythic pattern of the ‘negative patriarchy,' which, simply put, is based on domination over others (read about The Archetype of the Negative Father). To quote Forbes, "'Might makes right' is the wetiko belief, but it is often accompanied by self-serving doctrines of ‘divine will,' ‘manifest destiny,' ‘providence,' ‘the march of civilization,' ‘doing God's work,' ‘stopping communism,' or comparable slogans."[xx] These slogans are the mantras, or words of power, by which the collective spell of group-think is disseminated throughout the collective psyche. Any rationalization will do, as long as it serves as cover for the wetikos to continue to exploit others, centralize power and feed their sickness.
Interconnected Roles in a Nonlocal Field
Speaking about how our species has never been able to get a handle on what is at the root of our self-destructive behavior, Forbes comments, "Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed because they have never diagnosed the wetiko as an insane person whose disease is extremely contagious. Nor have they, generally, understood that the [seemingly] non-wetikos, whether flunkies, pimps, or the most oppressed, are often ‘secret carriers' of the disease."[xxi]
The wetiko virus can only thrive in the global human family if, just like in any family system, each member enables and is complicit in the abuse. Being a field phenomenon, wetiko incarnates by em-bodying itself through various interconnected, form-fitted roles arising in the field, all at different stages of the disease. Each of these figures are various re-presentations of the multiple faces of the underlying pathogen. Wetikos can be hard to recognize because the people who are its instruments seem like normal, well-intentioned, innocent looking people, and yet, it is these seemingly regular people, just like you and me, who often become the ‘secret carriers' of the disease. To the extent that we are not aware of this insidious, nonlocal, psychological disease, both in others and potentially within ourselves, we can very easily become its ‘secret carriers,' its unwitting accomplices.
Forbes writes, "But this we must emphasize over and over, that the whole wetiko disease is not limited to the brutes and goons who handle the gun, the lash or the instruments of torture. The nice people in the offices, the typists, the lab technicians, the clerks and, of course, the owners, directors, stockholders, senators, generals and presidents who use, profit from, and feed on human exploitation are also cannibals to one degree or another."[xxii] The Big wetikos could never get away with the murder that they do without ‘the nice people in the offices' enabling them.
These ‘typists, lab technicians and clerks' are just ‘following orders,' and yet, are complicit in the insidious evil that is being spread throughout the world with their co-operation. Modern, corporate, technological systems are set up to distance us, both physically and psychologically, between what we do for a living and the ultimate, potentially destructive consequences of our actions. Even ‘the nice people in the offices,' people just like you and me, to the extent that we are not aware of how we are feeding, and being fed by, the wetiko virus, are tiny cogs in the great predatory machine, complicit in the impersonal evil of the faceless system and in the destruction it wreaks upon all life.
Wetiko is an entity that becomes co-dependently entangled and inextricably coupled with others in its environment in order to survive. It serves us to differentiate the interdependent roles in the field which ‘conspire' (which literally means to ‘breathe together') to create and sustain the wetiko disease. All of these figures collaboratively enable the bug of wetiko to play out its reign of (t)error. Forbes writes, "The most guilty of the wetikos are, I would think, those who mastermind, justify and profit most from such systems. Such persons are the ‘master predators."[xxiii]
The full-blown, Big Wetikos, the ‘master predators' in positions of power, can be suave and sophisticated, with refined tastes, highly intelligent, educated people, with offices in places like New York and London, and can be highly respected by society, all of which makes their malady hard to recognize. Others are cast in the role of ‘protecting' the abuser─the master predator's handlers, minions, sycophants, enablers, supporters and followers─while others are complicit by simply remaining silent and looking away. Some pick up the role of feeling powerless, thinking ‘what's the use?' Some politically active sorts can pick up the role of attempting to fight the disease in a way that simply strengthens the diabolical polarization in the field, which just feeds and is the signature of the disease itself (please see my article Spiritually-Informed Political Activism). Whatever the role, it's all just multiple guises wearing the same underlying uni-form.
All wetikos, including the Big Wetikos, are themselves just pawns in the hand of the underlying archetype itself, however. It is like when Toto, in The Wizard of Oz pulls away the curtain, but instead of their being a man behind the curtain, there is no one there but the formless archetype itself. If the master predators are removed from their positions of power, but if the underlying system which spawned them remains in place and not dealt with, over time others will simply pick up their ‘vacant,' and vacuous roles. These power-mad roles exist as potentials in the field waiting to be filled, fleshed-out and incarnated, as these roles are an expression of the full spectrum of possibilities implicit in the underlying field, reflecting, as it always does, this same range of potentials within ourselves. The nonlocal field is seamless, and the roles do not, and cannot, exist in isolation, but rather, in co-relation to each other, as well to the whole field itself, in an interconnected web of infinite relatedness.
It is important to see the whole system, rather than only fixating on, and demonizing, one of its parts as separate from the whole (please see my article Danger: Fasci-Nation with Bush). Focusing on an individual person is analogous to contemplating one finger on a glove without recognizing the underlying hand in-forming and animating all of the interconnected, and fundamentally inseparable fingers in the glove.
To concretize a localized manifestation of the pathology in an individual would be analogous to only seeing the circle that a three-dimensional sphere makes as it passes through a two-dimensional plane. The circle is a lower-level reflection of a higher-dimensional entity (the ‘sphere' of wetiko's influence), just as the person taken over by the wetiko bug is a surface expression of a deeper, more fundamental pathogen that pervades the underlying field. To use another example, the person momentarily afflicted with wetiko is like a shadow on a wall─cast from a globe hanging from the ceiling─relative to the globe. The shadow on the wall is a re-presentation and projection of the higher, three-dimensional entity of the globe into a lower dimension of space.
Studying the shadow within its proper context relative to the globe is the way of understanding the object casting the shadow (the higher-dimensional entity of the ‘global' wetiko psychosis). In these examples, the point is not to focus on the personal manifestation of the disease, but rather, to see the deeper, nonlocal field that is giving shape to, in-forming and pervading the particular, localized outbreaks of the disease in the greater body politic. Seeing, in Jung's words, "the numinous character of the reality in the background,"[xxiv] IS the very expansion of consciousness which becomes the doorway connecting us to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to each other. Recognizing the underlying field paves the road to healing.
In the culture of wetiko, people at various stages of the disease pick up seemingly different and separate roles from each other, but when the deeper, underlying pattern comes into focus and is seen, it can be recognized that all of these inter-locking roles fit together like a higher-order mosaic. This process couldn't play itself out without all of its parts reciprocally co-arising relative to each other. The whole field, with all its myriad, fluid and unfixed roles─each of us at various moments in time picking up the different roles─are mutually conditioning each other in a seamless, interpenetrating net of relations, as if appendages of a higher-dimensional organism that is revealing itself through our nonlinearly orchestrated and coordinated interplay.
Stepping Out of Separation
The in-spirit-ed organism of wetiko is a field phenomenon, and can only be seen when we snap out of the illusion of imagining we exist as a separate self and recognize and become conversant with the deeper, underlying and more fundamental nonlocal field in which we are all indissolubly inter-connected. "The field," as Einstein once succinctly put it, "is the only reality." In modern physics, the field─the invisible organizing principle of the universe─has become more fundamental than matter. Instead of relating to any part of the field as an isolated entity, it's important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the ‘medium' through which wetiko manifests itself.
The native American concept of wetiko disease is a social phenomenon, a relational dynamic of the field itself that can not be understood, and does not exist in isolated individuals apart from the social milieu in which they move, interact and have their being. Seeing the nonlocal field drives a stake into the very heart of the prevailing scientific, materialistic perspective, which ironically enough, still attempts to see the world as ‘machine.'
Seeing the field, and stepping out of the perspective that we are separate from each other converges into being the same experience. Seeing ‘through' the illusion of the separate self, rather than seeing ‘through the separate self' as a lens through which we view the world, entails recognizing that even the full-blown wetikos, the master predators themselves, are not separate from us. The Big Wetikos are fully em-body-ing, in person-ified form, a pathological tendency that exists in potential within ourselves. It is as if they are the externalized materialization of this potential within ourselves that we've projected outside of ourselves and literally collectively dreamed up into manifestation. Recognizing this generates compassion for this part of ourselves. It is only through compassion that we immunize ourselves from the virus.
Paradoxically, although wetiko disease doesn't exist in isolated individuals separate from the field, someone taken over by the wetiko bug, though merely its instrument and not, in the ultimate sense ‘who they are,' literally can be said to be ‘the incarnation' of the disease in human form. The person so possessed (think of, like I did in my book, George W. Bush, as one example) is the ‘revelation' of the pathology in living flesh and blood. The person so stricken is showing us, in fully embodied, personified form, the underlying infrastructure and dynamics of this trans-human disease. When someone is so possessed, they are the local crystallization ‘in form' of a nonlocal, and ultimately ‘formless' phenomenon.
The person taken over has been dreamed up into materialization to be a living, breathing ‘symbol' of the nonlocal disease, an embodied reflection of an archetypal, and yet pathological, part of ourselves. Recognizing this is to realize that this person doesn't exist as an isolated, discrete entity, a skin-encapsulated ego, separate from the surrounding field. Seeing the person so possessed in their true context─as literally inseparable from all of us─becomes a portal through which we can refine our inner vision and see through the transparent illusion of the separate self. Seeing that the person so taken over is not separate from the field is a reflection of our own condition. Seeing the other's transpersonal nature enables us to not person-alize ourselves.
Holographically enfolded within the psyche of every human being, the wetiko virus pervades and underlies the entire field of consciousness, and can therefore potentially manifest through any one of us at any moment if we are not mindful. The wetiko bug is something that we all have unconsciously acted out in our lives at one time or another. We've all had our wetiko ‘moments,' that's just the way it works. Recognizing this cultivates humility, which helps to psychically immunize us from the pernicious effects of the disease. This realization ultimately collapses the boundary between those who have the disease and those who don't. Wetiko's nonlocal nature ultimately makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it to varying degrees, or rather, it has us. We are all in the soup together. This realization engenders both compassion and forgiveness. This does not mean, however, that the Big Wetikos are not ethically, spiritually, and legally responsible for the unimaginable carnage they have caused.
The primary line of distorted code through which the wetiko virus deviates our mind is the presumption of the separate self. The un-reflected upon acceptance of the axiom of separation is what makes all of the other delusions that make up wetiko possible. Seeing the diabolical nature of the disease entails realizing that it is the bifurcating ‘us' vs. ‘them' mind of duality which splits the world into opposites, that is itself the generative root of the wetiko germ.
This series of articles began by invoking the spirit of wetiko through our shared act of inquiry. As we shed light on wetiko, we become sensitive to its movements within ourselves. At this point the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, for there is no place for the spirit to hide. We are then in a position of having access in our lucid, self-reflective awareness to a sacred vessel which can nourish the very spirit which is to be venerated. To come full circle and successfully accomplish the original, healing intent of our magic ritual, the hidden, powerful spirit of wetiko needs to be ‘contained;' this is the archetypal point behind the sacred alchemical idea of a mystical vessel which transforms the entire universe.
As people who are becoming wise to the wiles of wetiko help each other to step out of the illusion of separation together, a psychic alchemical container that is greater than the sum of its parts gets created. This holy grail-like vessel of collectively shared lucidity is reciprocally conjured up through our shared realization. This higher-dimensional mystic container is forever stimulating, stabilizing and strengthening itself in a positive feedback loop which literally gives birth to and inspires the creative spirit. This jewel-like higher-dimensional entity composed of consciousness itself is a lucidity generator that is tapping into the zero point energy of the mind, a form of higher-mind technology that attracts the rest of the universe into itself. When we recognize that we exist not apart from, but relative to each other, our connection with each other is ‘hermetically sealed' with the stamp of Hermes.
We then relate with each other in such a way so that none of our projections unconsciously leak out into the world, for the simple reason that the world is recognized to be our projection. This is the very realization which bonds us together and through which we are united with the world, each other and ourselves. Becoming ‘tight' in this way, we are ‘blessed' by the master magician ‘Hermes/Mercury,' the God of the sacred art of alchemy (please see my article The Sacred Art of Alchemy). ‘The Force' is then with us. Empowered, we are able to trans-fix, trans-mute, trans-form and liberate the vampiric spirit of wetiko, while simultaneously snapping out of our en-trance-ment of ourselves.
Emptiness
Supposedly the greatest ruse of the devil is to convince us that he doesn't exist. Or on the other hand, is the suggestion that the devil does exist that is implicit in the previous statement a deception of the devil (who is, after all, considered a liar), and as such, is a disguised form in which the devil has insinuated himself into not only our conversation, but into the world at large? It is important to shed light on this murky area: An evil, archetypal figure like the devil doesn't exist in the way we have been imagining he does if we have been imagining that he exists objectively, as something apart from ourselves.
The devilish wetiko virus, like a vampire, if left to its own devices, would die, as it is only able to exist if there is someone outside of itself on whom it can feast. A vampire has no intrinsic, independent, substantial existence in its own right, it only exists relative to us. The pathogenic, vampiric, mind-parasite called wetiko is nothing in itself, yet, it has a ‘reality' such that it can destroy our species. The fact that something that only exists as a function of ourselves can destroy us is pointing at the incredibly vast invisible power that is inherent within our being. Ultimately speaking, in wetiko disease we are not being infected by a physical, objectively existing virus outside of ourselves, but rather, the origin of the wetiko psychosis is within us. The fact that a vampire is not reflected by a mirror can also mean that what we need to see is that there's nothing, no-thing to see, other than ourselves. The fact that wetiko is the expression of something inside of us means that the cure for wetiko is within us as well.
In the Gnostic Dialogue of the Savior, it says, "Whoever does not know the root of evil is no stranger to it."[xxv] Wetiko forces upon us the evolutionary responsibility to come to terms with the evil within our own hearts. To the extent we have not rooted out the wetiko bug within ourselves we are complicit in the co-creation of the evil playing out in the world. The part of us that is colluding in the creation of a collective psychosis like wetiko is the part of us that is mad, for why else would we be doing this? To the extent we're not fully awake, we each have a part of us that's mad, which gets acted out in our life. How can we not have a part of us that's mad, living in a world gone mad, a world that is not separate from, but rather, a reflection of ourselves? It is only by confronting what is insane and inhuman in ourselves that we become truly human. It is important to face how we have been deviated by wetiko, for if we cannot see how we have been set off course, we can't orient ourselves to find our true path in life. Seeing how we've been led astray is a form of illumination. To see how wetiko operates with our co-operation is to gain critical insight into the elusive workings of our own mind.
We capture within ourselves and truly ‘see' the nature of wetiko disease─‘Vampire/Cannibal Psychosis'─when we realize that, just like a dream, its full-bodied manifestation in the world theater is a reflection of a process going on deep within our very soul. We are all dreaming up the wetiko epidemic together. Seeing through our experience in this way gives world events a certain transparency, as well as rendering us transparent to ourselves. Seeing through ourselves makes it unlikely that we would fall prey to and be seduced by any wetiko inspired impulses that pulsate through us. This intimacy with ourselves enables us to step into and embody a role in the field of being like a ‘psychic T-cell' that helps to heal the malignant cancer in the collective body politic of the world soul. Seeing the dreamlike nature of the world and ourselves helps to generate a culture of compassion, which is a ‘wetiko dissolver' par excellence.
Compassion can, however, when necessary, set a fierce boundary, displaying itself in the most fearsome of ways.
The Solution
Just as a vampire can't stand the light of day, a bug like wetiko can't stand to be seen. Flooding light on wetiko's machinations takes away its seeming autonomy and alleged power over us, such that it can no longer compel us to act it out unconsciously. Paradoxically, ‘seeing' this vampiric parasite is to relate to it as other than ourselves, while at the same time recognizing it within ourselves. Though the vampire is a figure within us, it is not us. In differentiating ourselves from the vampire, we recognize the difference between ourselves and it. Seeing the vampire, we don't identify with our subjective experience of the vampire within. This is to say that in seeing the vampire, we free ourselves from our unconscious identification with and possession by it, and step back into ourselves.
Forbes laments, "One of the tragic characteristics of the wetiko psychosis is that it spreads partly by resistance to it. That is, those who try to fight wetikos sometimes, in order to survive, adopt wetiko values. Thus, when they ‘win,' they lose, or at least, the people lose."[xxvi] When we see people who are taken over by wetiko and we feel superior to them, our feeling of superiority is itself a symptom of the disease. If we unconsciously react against wetiko, having judgement, anger, hatred, etc., we are then acting out, however well-intentioned, the same process of shadow projection that underlies the wetiko disease in the first place - which is to dissociate from, project outside of ourselves, and react to our own evil. We are then unconsciously reacting to the unconscious part of ourselves which the wetikos embody.
This re-action is an unconscious ritualistic invocation and re-enactment of the initial impulse within ourselves of turning away from and contracting against a part of ourselves. This is the timeless, primal act which called forth and spawned the spirit of wetiko in the first place. To the extent we are unaware of what we are doing, we, as ‘reps' for wetiko, are compulsively re-enacting our trauma, participating in re-creating the wetiko virus in this very moment. We are then playing out our unresolved internal affairs in the outside world by, in and through our reaction, unwittingly becoming a vector that is carrying the wetiko bug out into the world (please see my article, Triggered by Evil). Instead of unconsciously reacting and projecting the shadow outside of ourselves, when we consciously relate to and take responsibility for the evil within ourselves, we are energetically withdrawing and dis-investing from our complicity in the continual re-animation of evil in the world.
The way to engage with wetiko disease is to (at)tend to what it triggers within us (please see The Lion's Gaze). Just as the way to cut off the head of the mythic Medusa is to look at her reflections in the mirror-shield, the way to stalk the vampiric entity of wetiko is to track and sense its fingerprints within ourselves by looking into the mirror of our own mind. The evil of wetiko can be too much to stare at directly, however, just as looking at the snake-haired Medusa face on turns us to stone. Vampires are ‘petrifying,' which means both ‘terrifying,' as well as ‘paralyzing' and ‘turning to stone.' They petrify their victim, just like a mouse becomes immobilized by the transfixing gaze of the serpent. Vampires are not a creature to be messed with by the frivolous.
Mapping wetikos nonlocal footprints, both out in the world and in the co-responding places within ourselves that are being touched, is to discover the nonlocal multi-dimensional ‘anatomy' of wetiko. It is impossible to encounter wetiko and not be activated, as wetiko's nonlocal force-field is activating by its very nature, in that it is co-extensive and interwoven with our own. Our unconscious, knee-jerk reactivity is the primary way that the wetiko psychosis regenerates and propagates itself in the field. Like a pathogen invading a body, this virulent psychic bug strikes and hooks us through our weakest point in the unconscious, the tenderest and most vulnerable spot within ourselves through which we are most likely to re-act.
Wetiko is like a psychic nautilus machine that is continually ‘working' us. Humanity's highest virtues are called upon when we are confronted by evil. Encoded within the evil of the wetiko virus is its own psychic vaccine, a potential inoculation against our own ignorance and laziness, which if not overcome, will overcome us. The wetiko bug's existence requires us to strengthen our muscle of discernment. The virus demands that we cultivate impeccability within ourselves, or we don't stand a chance. Wetiko literally demands that we step into our power and become resistant to its oppression such that we discover how to step out of bondage and become free, or else! Instead of a typical virus mutating so as to become resistant to our attempts at healing it, the wetiko virus forces us to mutate relative to it. It is as though the evil of wetiko is itself the instrument of a higher intelligence. This higher power, through the revelation and understanding of wetiko, connects us to a sacred, creative source within ourselves. The wetiko bug is the greatest catalytic force of evolution ever known─as well as not known─to humanity.
Naming is a magical act, typically done when something new is born into our life. Like Adam naming the animals in the Garden, we have to name something before it can be formally ‘discovered' and brought into our shared collective cartography. It was only by naming these creatures that Adam could differentiate and distinguish himself from them and realize who he was. Finding the name for this higher-dimensional, malignant virus of the psyche helps us to more easily recognize it and get a ‘handle' on it, which is the first step in taking away its destructive power over us. Seeing wetiko and calling it by its rightful name initiates a process that resigns it to the ranks of the unemployed, leading to the wetikonomy that it animates being put out of business. The energy that was being invested and bound up in feeding the wetiko pathogen then returns to nourish and be nourished by the creative wholeness of the psyche. Naming something creates ‘currency' in the economy of the psyche. To name something is to evoke it, to call it out, which is an expression of an intrinsic, magical power that we all have within us. This is related to the Australian Aboriginal belief that we ‘sing' the world into being - that we are creating as we name things.
Understanding the meaning of the name ‘wetiko' is a form of exorcism. Jung says, "For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found." It will serve us greatly as we introduce the word ‘wetiko' into our planetary dialogue, making wetiko part of our day to day vocabulary. In ‘spell'-ing a word, we are casting a spell, calling forth a spirit, and creating a universe, all while discovering our ability to name. In divining the true name we are de-‘literal'-izing language, as we create language to ‘symbol'-ize our experience. The word wetiko, being a sacred name, is like a mantra, a word of power, in that the speaking of it empowers the idea. Let us therefore ‘spread the word.'
We are only able to name ‘wetiko' when we see, and register, its nonlocal nature, both throughout the world and within ourselves. This can only be done when we ourselves become acquainted with our nonlocal nature, to the part of us that is woven into both the evil of wetiko and the wholeness of the divine. Like that great maxim of medicine states, "Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand." The famous Greek philosopher Socrates reminds us that if we want to understand something, we first must name it. Naming something means to find our experience of its nature within ourselves. Indigenous, wisdom-based cultures understand the exorcistic power of finding the right name of a ‘demon,' which is precisely what they would understand the wetiko pathogen to be (please see The Daemonic).
Its simultaneously diabolical and mercurial energy makes the Native American idea of wetiko disease incredibly hard to describe in words. Whether we refer to this trickster-like entity as a virus, parasite, tapeworm, vampire or a demon, or call it wetiko disease or malignant egophrenia doesn't matter. These various names are interchangeable, as they are naming one and the same thing. There is no one definitive model for this disease, however, as each model has both its utility as well as its limits. When all of these models are combined and looked at together, it gives us a greater resolution and capacity to see what no one particular model by itself can reveal.
The Idea of a Cure
Finding the right name(s) invokes the sacred, creative and transformative power of the ‘Word.' Wetiko is the word made flesh in its most depraved form. In finding the name, however, we are accessing the divinely sponsored power of the word to create an idea, which is a living psychic organism of real value and merit, with an intrinsic power all its own. Ideas are ways of regarding things, the means by which we see, as well as perspectives through which we view the world. The word ‘idea,' etymologically speaking, has to do with both ‘to see' as well as ‘to know.' In other words, a novel idea opens our inner eye and helps us know by giving us in-sight into something previously unconscious. What Plato called the "eyes of the soul," ideas are the modes of consciousness through which we envision and create our life. In finding the right name(s), we are impregnating and incubating a novel idea. We can then spread and give birth to our meme by sharing it, as we create our own mind anti-virus, a living antigen to the heretofore unrecognized mind-virus of wetiko. As Communist China's Chairman Mao openly confessed, the one thing he was most afraid of was a new idea. For nothing is more powerful than a magical idea whose time has come.
Let's spread the word.
May these words be of benefit for all beings.
[i] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and Other Cannibals, p. ix.
[ii] Ibid., p. 24.
[iii] Ibid., p. 43.
[iv] Ibid., p. 60.
[v] People taken over and possessed by the wetiko pathogen─‘full-blown wetikos'─might be petty tyrants at home or at work but might not wield real power in the world. What Forbes refers to as "Big Wetikos," however, are full-blown wetikos who have climbed the wetiko ladder, jumped through the wetiko hoops, and have risen in the ranks. ‘Big wetikos' (be they the super wealthy, CEO's of corporations, bank presidents, or leaders of nation-states) find themselves occupying positions of power where they can influence and control events in our world so as to game the system.
[vi] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 24.
[vii] Ibid., p. 188.
[viii] Ibid., p. 164.
[ix] Ibid., p. xvi.
[x] Ibid., p. 164.
[xi] Ibid, p. 173.
[xii] Ibid, p. 60.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 120.
[xiv] Ibid., p. 60.
[xv] Ibid., p. 38.
[xvi] I want to thank Jonathan Zap for this clarification in a comment that he wrote after Part 1 of this series. To quote Zap, "There's an anthropologist with a lecture on ted.com who provides considerable evidence that the per capita war death rate of an indigenous rainforest tribe is much higher than that of Western Civilization (even during the 20th Century). Western Civilization because of its far greater novelty magnifies the outer edge of light and the outer edge of dark," (please see zaporacle.com for more of his writings)
[xvii] From the article by Ron Suskind titled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," in the New York Times magazine of October 17, 2004.
[xviii] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 150.
[xix] Ibid., p. 42.
[xx] Ibid., p. 48.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 171.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiv] Jung, CW 10, Civlization in Transition, par. 886.
[xxv] (II, 5, 134.5-20)
[xxvi] Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 61.
Paul Levy
In the first part of this series, we contemplated the idea of a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that has been wreaking havoc throughout human history that Native Americans call wetiko. In part two, we inquired into how the wetiko bug disrupts and deranges a living system, using the world financial system as our case study. The wetiko virus is like a parasite that literally feeds off, takes over and aberrates the curren(t)cy of the infected system. The wetiko pathogen originally manifests as a disturbance in the field of the collective unconscious of humanity itself, creating the psychic ley lines upon which world events are erected and energized.
The origin of this virulent disease is to be discovered within the psyche (please see my article It's All in the Psyche). Because of the psychic nature of wetiko, it serves us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the virus, which is to say, how it affects our day to day relationships and lives. We begin to ‘see' the bug when we are able to get in focus and recognize ‘its' psychological signature in both ourselves and others. The fact that the source of the wetiko germ is within the psyche means that the cure for this disease lies hidden within the psyche as well.
Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity's inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate with our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this ‘topic of topics' before this virulent madness destroys us. Up until this point in our history we have been too easily distracted by the ruses of the wetiko bug itself. The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us. Its cure is the most pressing and fundamental issue facing us today.
Author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen writes in his foreword to Jack D. Forbes book about wetiko psychosis, "Columbus and other Cannibals is, I think, the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?"[i]
Historian Arnold Toynbee points out that a civilization doesn't die from being invaded from the outside, but unless it creates culture which nourishes the evolution of the creative spirit, a civilization invariably commits suicide. As if possessed, our civilization is, trance-like, sleepwalking in a death-march towards our own demise. The most pressing and inevitable question of our time is not just ‘why?' but more urgently, how can we stop this seemingly out-of-control, self-destructive, hell-bent part of ourselves?
'Psycho'-Analysis
The origin of wetiko is the human psyche. Psychologically speaking, shadow projection is at the very root of wetiko disease. Shadow projection is a process in which we split-off from and project out our own darkness onto others. It is our misguided attempt at a ‘final solution' to the problem of the evil within ourselves which actually deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil. Projecting the shadow opens up the door and invites in the vampiric entity of wetiko to make itself at home in the most intimate spaces of our own psyche. It is through the dynamic of shadow projection that the wetiko bug digs in and entrenches itself within our psyches, where it is then able to commandeer the executive function of the psyche to its own ends.
When we project the shadow, we unwittingly become a conduit for evil to possess us from behind, beneath our conscious awareness, and to act itself out through us. When there is mutual shadow projection between individuals, groups or nations, each side has an unconscious investment in the other playing out the projected evil so as to prove their own self-righteous innocence, a dynamic which becomes self-reinforcing and continually feeds the polarization in the field.
Shadow projection, as it collectively plays out en masse on the world stage is an outer reflection of the initial process within ourselves of our be-night-ed effort to exterminate our own darkness (please see my article Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War). When shadow projection happens en masse, it is as if the archetype of evil emits its toxic radio-activity underground, through the shared unconscious of the collective, and manifests collectively as destructive psychic epidemics.
In shadow projection, we attempt to master and experience power over the internal condition that originally proclaimed our powerlessness to ourselves not by becoming conscious, but by unconsciously identifying with, becoming, and then acting out the power to externally destroy. Unconsciously acting out unbound power without restraint is our perverse way of defending against the internal breakthrough of feelings of helplessness.
Evacuating and relocating our inner darkness outside of ourselves by demonizing the ‘other' seemingly protects us from feeling our vulnerability and pain. Our inner anxiety about our existential 'power to be' attempts to resolve itself in the power to act free from restraint. In an unmediated expression of our disempowered inner condition, our unconscious acting out does not surmount the need for compulsive repetition, however, but rather, assures it. Wetikos' modus operandi, their 'M.O.,' becomes to root out and kill everything that feels tender, vulnerable and alive within themselves, thus systematically murdering anything and everything within them that could possibly melt or produce a crack in the ice that encases their heart.
Because full-blown wetikos are soul murderers who continually recreate the on-going process of killing their own soul, they are reflexively compelled to do this to others; for what the soul does to itself, it can't help but to do to others. In a perverse inversion of the golden rule, instead of treating others how they would like to be treated, wetikos do unto others what was done unto them. The wetiko is simply a living link in a timeless, vampiric lineage of abuse.
Full-blown wetikos induce and dream up others to experience what it is like to be the part of themselves which they have split off from and denied, and are thus not able to consciously experience - the part of themselves that has been abused and vampirized. In playing this out, wetikos are transmitting and transferring their own depraved state of inner deadness to others in a perverse form of trying to deal with their own suffering. Paradoxically, wetikos both try to destroy others' light, as it reminds them of what they've killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the light for themselves.
Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to and accusing other people of doing. Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you're killing them as they kill you. If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don't attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves. In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, wetikos re-act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting (please see Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome (ADS)).
Someone fully taken over by the wetiko bug is like a kitten endlessly reacting to her reflection in a mirror as if it is another kitten separate from and other than herself. The evil we see in the full-blown wetikos is a reflection of our own evil; if we don't recognize this, we will just be projecting our shadow onto them. We are then guilty of the very same thing (shadow projecting) we are essentially reacting to and of which we are accusing them.
The term wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan) which, to quote Forbes, refers to "an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts."[ii] Wetikos are the human instruments for the transpersonal ‘spirit of evil' to terrorize the world. In wetiko disease, we unwittingly become drafted into being foot-soldiers in the war not ‘on,' but ‘of' and ‘for' terror. The wetiko parasite feeds on and harvests the emotions of fear and terror. Terror is the essence of its insidious ‘ill-usory ill-logic.'
In wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror' that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world. We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,' as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large. Wetiko is the bug which feeds the experience of terror within our mind and out in the world, fueling one of its more prominent manifestations in our world today: the ‘Global War on Terror.'
A Frankenstein Monster Come to Life
Wetikos suffer from what is called ‘pseudologia phantastica,' a form of hysteria characterized by a talent for believing their own lies. "Lying," Forbes writes, "in fact may represent a key strand in the entire epidemiology of wetokoism."[iii] Ultimately deceiving themselves as they believe in the propaganda of their own lies, full-blown wetikos become strangers to themselves.
Wetikos continually have to invest their life-force in lying to themselves, while at the same time fooling themselves into believing that they are not doing so, a version of what George Orwell referred to as ‘doublethink.' Suffering from amnesia, they have forgotten what it is to remember, and to ‘seal' the deal, they have forgotten that they have forgotten. The result is that they split their mind in two. Falling into denial, and yet denying they are in the state of denial, becomes a process that they are invested in at all costs, or it would blow their denial. Anything that threatens their perverse state of affairs has to be destroyed. Hiding from their lie, they are in essence hiding from themselves, which is pure madness.
Instead of living from and out of an awareness of the psyche, full-blown wetikos continually avoid awareness of the psyche, a habitual pattern which becomes their internal compass and continual default, their M.O. Taking refuge not ‘in,' but ‘from,' themselves, wetikos are continually fleeing from themselves, endlessly circling around in the hamster wheel of samsara. All of their energy gets invested in fueling their own, and others, deception. Their will becomes dedicated to hiding from the truth of what they are doing, a truth which endlessly pursues them, as they continually avoid relationship with themselves.
Wetikos become wedded to the full-time occupation of keeping one step ahead of themselves, a process which, once it gains a certain momentum, attains a seeming autonomy that is self-generating (please see Autonomous Complexes). As this inner process progresses, it gains a sovereignty over their psyche, as if a self-created Frankenstein monster has come to life in the flesh. The wetikos have then created their own sci-fi nightmare, with themselves in the starring role. Once created, a mind-virus like wetiko, just like the Frankenstein monster, gains a seeming life of its own, independent of its creator. It then holds its creator in its thrall, unable to escape from the out-of-control hell of their own making.
Speaking of someone possessed by the wetiko virus, Forbes writes, "such a person cannot be authentic. Such a person is not merely a pimp, he is also a ghost, as it were, a mere imitation of a person. His life is an imitation of life...their life is less than that of a wild (free) animal who is, after all always authentic."[iv] Wetikos become unreal to themselves, a simulation of themselves. Split in two, they become schizoid, dissociated from themselves, duality having seemingly established itself as the reigning logic at the core of their being.
Different parts of the person taken over by wetiko become compartmentalized, neither connected to each other nor to the whole. This process of inner fragmentation serves to hide from the wetikos what they are doing to themselves, as they become their own never-ending ‘cover-up.' This psychological dynamic is kept in place by how painful it is to behold and contemplate the modes of avoidance they construct to protect themselves from what they do not want to know. And yet, as painful as it is, it is only in the seeing of what they are doing (to themselves) that there is any possibility of becoming free from this malignant malady.
Wetikos can psychopathically (and thus toxically) mimic the human personality perfectly. If it serves their agenda, they can be convincing beyond belief, making themselves out to be normal, caring, politically correct human beings. They are unable, however, to grasp emotionally the meaning implicit in the thoughts and feelings they are exhibiting. They lack insight into how they differ from others, for they do not differ from others as they see others. They are skillful at pretending love and devotion, as if they are imitating a person. Impersonating themselves, their existence is a true parody of life. They can't distinguish between their mimicked (pseudo) responses of love, remorse, etc., and the genuinely felt responses of a healthy person.
Full-blown wetikos are emotionally stunted, as their feelings are confined to the primitive, archaic emotions of anger, frustration, numbness and rage. Suffering from a deep disorder of feeling in which they can not allow themselves to consciously feel, they typically swing between numbness and rage. Fixed in their own limited and myopic point of view, they have no capacity to see themselves as others see them. Proclamations to the contrary, they have no empathy nor compassion. They can't see the world through others point of view, only through their own, which in Hannah Arendt's opinion is a primary characteristic of what she calls the ‘banality of evil.'
Wetikos don't relate to others as autonomous, independent beings, but rather, as pawns to be used as means to their own selfish ends, objects to be manipulated for their own narcissistic benefit, rather than as ends in themselves, subjects with their own intrinsic value and valid viewpoints. Because they have lost connection to their soul, they cannot hear the pleas of nor see the soul in others.
They refuse to see the harm their actions are doing to others, as this would injure their overly-positive, inflated narcissistic self-image, which protects them from consciously feeling their shame and guilt (read more about Malignant Narcissism). Seemingly unable to consciously experience their guilt animates more shadow projection, which fuels the wetiko pathogen in a continually self-regenerating feedback loop. Unwilling to experience their guilt, wetikos are afraid of being exposed, of being found out, which is an outer reflection of the terror that the wetiko parasite within us feels at potentially being illumined.
We secretly feel a sense of guilt when we shadow project, because we inwardly know we are not in our integrity. This sense of guilt itself is the very feeling from which we split-off. Our guilt does not allow us to feel our guilt, which is what we secretly feel guilty over. To the extent that we don't consciously experience our guilt, we become caught in an infinitely-perpetuating double-bind in which we project out our guilt and darkness, which just perpetuates the very thing we feel guilty about, ad infinitum.
Big wetikos[v] may never know nor be forced to come to terms with the harm they have caused, as oftentimes they find themselves in the privileged position of the victors who rewrite history on their own terms. Many of our society's historians, themselves infected by the wetiko virus, exalt aggressive and exploitative behavior, categorizing as ‘primitive' and ‘backwards' those who don't forcibly ‘conquer' others, thereby subtly and subliminally brainwashing the young into the ways of the world of wetiko.
The Self-Destructive Evil of Empire
Being a field phenomenon, wetiko psychosis doesn't just express itself individually, but its nonlocal tentacles are continually manifesting collectively throughout the underlying field of consciousness. The multi-headed hydra that is the wetiko collective psychosis materializes itself in families, groups, nations, and in whole species such as ours. Wetiko's ‘body politic' has an intrinsic and insistent need for centralizing power and control, fueled by the bottom line of corporate-driven profits.
Speaking about the monster of ever-expanding empire, Forbes writes, "imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil"[vi] A ‘front' for the underlying wetiko virus, the military-industrial-criminal-complex, with its ultimately self-destructive, built-in need for endless expansion is like a systematic runaway in cybernetic theory. The Frankenstein monster of ever-enlarging empire is like a runaway locomotive gaining speed, approaching the event horizon of its inevitable ‘crash,' all under the deceptive banner of ‘progress.' Meanwhile, this ‘progress' destroys people, families, communities, and potentially, the biosphere itself upon which human life depends. "Wetikos," Forbes writes, "have taken their Satan to the four-corners of the world, and they have made him their God."[vii]
Evil is like a pathogen that enters a system, be it an individual, nation-state, or world-system, and exploits the system, knocking it off balance. Such disturbances can transform something wholesome, such as the drive to reproduce, into something evil - the drive to rape. Etymologically, the meaning of the word ‘evil' has to do with ‘excess' as well as to ‘transgress boundaries.' Full-fledged wetikos are rapists of the human soul. The word ‘rape,' etymologically speaking, is derived from words that mean to overwhelm, to enrapture, to invade, to usurp, to pillage, and to steal, which are all characteristics of someone who is taken over by the wetiko virus.
Wetiko disease is a self-devouring operating system that leaves nothing unmolested. It is a living death sentence that, if left unchecked, destroys everything within its dominion, including itself. Wetiko psychosis ensures that everything is sacrificed on its altar of death and destruction. From a galactic perspective, our planetary so-called ‘civilization' is a living, spreading outbreak of wetiko psychosis that is threatening to destroy not only its human host, but the entire planetary biosphere which makes life on earth possible as well. Speaking of wetikos' ravenous hunger, Forbes points out, "It's voracious, rapacious, appetite will cause it to literally eat itself."[viii]
Forbes continues, "The rape of a woman, the rape of a land, and the rape of a people, they are all the same...Brutality knows no boundaries. Greed knows no limits. Perversion knows no borders. Arrogance knows no frontiers. Desire knows no edges. These characteristics all tend to push towards an extreme, always moving forward once the initial infection sets in."[ix] Untreated, this psychic infection gradually takes hold of the wetikos' being, corrupting their heart, poisoning their psychic body politic from within. Like the virus of evil insinuating itself into the soul in incremental, un-noticed steps, at a certain point this leukemia of the soul becomes irreversible, inevitably leading to its host's destruction. The wetiko virus's pathogenic effects within an individual are a microcosmic fractal iteration of the collective, macrocosmic dynamics of the disease; how wetiko works within each of us is synchronistically mirrored with stunning perfection in how it is playing out throughout the greater body politic.
Unchecked by a psychic vaccine, the disease, like an addiction running rampant, is progressive and is thus getting worse over time. Forbes writes, "The wetikos destroyed Egypt and Babylon and Athens and Rome and Tenochitlan and perhaps now they will destroy the entire earth. But neither the ‘junkie' looking for money for a shot of heroin nor the capitalists destroying Amazonian forests for big profits are able to stop their own destructive behavior."[x] Wetikos can't help themselves. Suffering from a compulsion to destroy, if left to themselves they are unable to stop their suicidal behavior. Having lost their internal freedom, they are singularly lacking in options.
Having mesmerized themselves, wetikos have, ultimately speaking, become their own victim. Running like a tape that loops back into itself in endless iterations, their self-hypnosis is dedicated to forever forestalling the prospect of the gnawing anxiety of confronting and dealing with the insanity of what they are doing, both to themselves and others. Like the subject of a master hypnotist, their attention becomes attenuated, narrowed and constricted to their limited and particularized viewpoint. After a certain point, wetiko disease becomes so completely internalized that the person so afflicted, as if compulsively repeating their initial moment of trauma, moment by moment recreates their own psychosis without any external stimulus at all. Having unconsciously identified with the aggressor, they become their own perpetrator, police state and control system. Their pathological inner state in-forms their actions in the outer world, which becomes the channel through which their ravaged inner landscape plays itself out and takes on embodied form.
An inner sickness of the soul, wetiko is unique in that it is a boundary-dissolving disease, collapsing the distinction between the inner and the outer, between dreaming and waking. Wetiko nonlocally materializes itself in, as and through the medium of the outside world, which becomes the canvas for its full-bodied revelation of itself. Wetiko nonlocally in-forms, gives shape to and configures events in the world so as to synchronistically express itself, which is to say that just like in a dream, events in the outer world are symbolically expressing an inner, psychological situation (please see my article The World is Psyche).
Wetiko can only be ‘seen' when we snap out of our literal way of interpreting our experience and start seeing with symbolically informed awareness. At the same time, wetiko itself can become the impetus for expanding our consciousness and recognizing that the world itself is a continually unfolding, living revelation of itself that is speaking symbolically, which is the language of dreams.
A Cult(ure) of Madness
People have to be cured of their spiritual sickness before they can build a just society. Forbes says, "to adjust to a wetiko society is to become insane."[xi] It is no great accomplishment to adapt to and be considered sane in and by an insane society. The culture of wetiko promotes the systematic destruction of the human heart, which when fully internalized, alienates us from everything in ourselves, save what reproduces the conditions of the system. Adopting the values of our oppressors, however, insures the continuation of our own dehumanization. The system is set up to be a set up such that, to quote Forbes, "a person oppressed by wetikos adopts the values of wetikos as he ‘rises' in position. The wetikos taught him well, but they taught him falsely."[xii]
Big Wetikos learn to exploit every situation to their advantage and sacrifice in themselves everything that doesn't advance this motive. To become a "Big Wetiko," Forbes comments, "requires a lot of back-scratching, back-stabbing, drinking, and maneuvering. It also requires the corruption of other young men (and women), who in turn, will become hooked into the system."[xiii] Speaking about how "very, very easy" it is to become a wetiko in our society because of all of the perks and incentives, Forbes writes, "they do get promoted, they do get better salaries, and they do get testimonials (and a gold watch) when they ‘retire.'"[xiv] Because of all of the ‘benefits' of the role, there is not merely a passive disinterest, but rather, an active resistance and counter-incentive for wetikos to self-reflect, a contraction which simply feeds their compulsion and further reinforces their addiction to power.
Forbes writes, "the wetiko disease has so corrupted European thinking (at least of the ruling groups) that wetiko behavior and wetiko goals are regarded as the very fabric of European evolution...if we continue to allow the wetikos to define reality in their insane way we will never be able to resist or curtail the disease."[xv] It should be noted that indigenous people are not free from the wetiko virus as well. There are indigenous cultures that are governed by wisdom, but there are also indigenous cultures that are ruled by wetiko.
We should be careful to not romanticize and idealize indigenous, aboriginal cultures as opposed to European cultures, which would be too simplistic, and dualistic of a view.[xvi] When wetikos possess power in any culture, or more accurately, when power possesses them, they are in a position to influence, define and create a certain level of reality that, though based on falsehood, operates as if it is real. In words that would be just as relevant with regards to the current Obama administration, author Ron Suskind quotes a neocon in the previous Bush administration as saying, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality─judiciously, as you will─we'll act again, creating other new realities."[xvii] If left in positions of power, wetikos will ultimately become and dream up into full-bodied materialization their own, as well as our, worst nightmare into reality.
Evil can take many forms - political, social, economic, militaristic, and psychological. Forbes says, "predation can lurk under many guises, such as ‘patriotism,' profit-seeking, ‘protecting our way of life,' and ‘investment returns.'"[xviii] Many ‘isms' themselves are simply thought-forms used by wetikos themselves to justify their rape, criminality, murder and evil. Wrapping their cause in the mantle of goodness allows Big Wetikos, who are in fact full-fledged predators, to sleep at night, seemingly guilt-free. In a form of self-entrancement, they have so thoroughly convinced themselves of the rightness of their actions that they rarely, if ever, have any ethical qualms about what they are doing. Where the evil of wetiko is endemic, there tends to be an ethical, developmental arrest in both individuals and throughout the society.
Full-blown, big Wetikos are morally insane, and abuse power simply because they can. This is why, to quote Forbes, "the development of rigid patriarchy follows the wetiko disease."[xix] In other words, cultures dominated by wetikos tend to organize themselves around the calcified, archetypal mythic pattern of the ‘negative patriarchy,' which, simply put, is based on domination over others (read about The Archetype of the Negative Father). To quote Forbes, "'Might makes right' is the wetiko belief, but it is often accompanied by self-serving doctrines of ‘divine will,' ‘manifest destiny,' ‘providence,' ‘the march of civilization,' ‘doing God's work,' ‘stopping communism,' or comparable slogans."[xx] These slogans are the mantras, or words of power, by which the collective spell of group-think is disseminated throughout the collective psyche. Any rationalization will do, as long as it serves as cover for the wetikos to continue to exploit others, centralize power and feed their sickness.
Interconnected Roles in a Nonlocal Field
Speaking about how our species has never been able to get a handle on what is at the root of our self-destructive behavior, Forbes comments, "Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed because they have never diagnosed the wetiko as an insane person whose disease is extremely contagious. Nor have they, generally, understood that the [seemingly] non-wetikos, whether flunkies, pimps, or the most oppressed, are often ‘secret carriers' of the disease."[xxi]
The wetiko virus can only thrive in the global human family if, just like in any family system, each member enables and is complicit in the abuse. Being a field phenomenon, wetiko incarnates by em-bodying itself through various interconnected, form-fitted roles arising in the field, all at different stages of the disease. Each of these figures are various re-presentations of the multiple faces of the underlying pathogen. Wetikos can be hard to recognize because the people who are its instruments seem like normal, well-intentioned, innocent looking people, and yet, it is these seemingly regular people, just like you and me, who often become the ‘secret carriers' of the disease. To the extent that we are not aware of this insidious, nonlocal, psychological disease, both in others and potentially within ourselves, we can very easily become its ‘secret carriers,' its unwitting accomplices.
Forbes writes, "But this we must emphasize over and over, that the whole wetiko disease is not limited to the brutes and goons who handle the gun, the lash or the instruments of torture. The nice people in the offices, the typists, the lab technicians, the clerks and, of course, the owners, directors, stockholders, senators, generals and presidents who use, profit from, and feed on human exploitation are also cannibals to one degree or another."[xxii] The Big wetikos could never get away with the murder that they do without ‘the nice people in the offices' enabling them.
These ‘typists, lab technicians and clerks' are just ‘following orders,' and yet, are complicit in the insidious evil that is being spread throughout the world with their co-operation. Modern, corporate, technological systems are set up to distance us, both physically and psychologically, between what we do for a living and the ultimate, potentially destructive consequences of our actions. Even ‘the nice people in the offices,' people just like you and me, to the extent that we are not aware of how we are feeding, and being fed by, the wetiko virus, are tiny cogs in the great predatory machine, complicit in the impersonal evil of the faceless system and in the destruction it wreaks upon all life.
Wetiko is an entity that becomes co-dependently entangled and inextricably coupled with others in its environment in order to survive. It serves us to differentiate the interdependent roles in the field which ‘conspire' (which literally means to ‘breathe together') to create and sustain the wetiko disease. All of these figures collaboratively enable the bug of wetiko to play out its reign of (t)error. Forbes writes, "The most guilty of the wetikos are, I would think, those who mastermind, justify and profit most from such systems. Such persons are the ‘master predators."[xxiii]
The full-blown, Big Wetikos, the ‘master predators' in positions of power, can be suave and sophisticated, with refined tastes, highly intelligent, educated people, with offices in places like New York and London, and can be highly respected by society, all of which makes their malady hard to recognize. Others are cast in the role of ‘protecting' the abuser─the master predator's handlers, minions, sycophants, enablers, supporters and followers─while others are complicit by simply remaining silent and looking away. Some pick up the role of feeling powerless, thinking ‘what's the use?' Some politically active sorts can pick up the role of attempting to fight the disease in a way that simply strengthens the diabolical polarization in the field, which just feeds and is the signature of the disease itself (please see my article Spiritually-Informed Political Activism). Whatever the role, it's all just multiple guises wearing the same underlying uni-form.
All wetikos, including the Big Wetikos, are themselves just pawns in the hand of the underlying archetype itself, however. It is like when Toto, in The Wizard of Oz pulls away the curtain, but instead of their being a man behind the curtain, there is no one there but the formless archetype itself. If the master predators are removed from their positions of power, but if the underlying system which spawned them remains in place and not dealt with, over time others will simply pick up their ‘vacant,' and vacuous roles. These power-mad roles exist as potentials in the field waiting to be filled, fleshed-out and incarnated, as these roles are an expression of the full spectrum of possibilities implicit in the underlying field, reflecting, as it always does, this same range of potentials within ourselves. The nonlocal field is seamless, and the roles do not, and cannot, exist in isolation, but rather, in co-relation to each other, as well to the whole field itself, in an interconnected web of infinite relatedness.
It is important to see the whole system, rather than only fixating on, and demonizing, one of its parts as separate from the whole (please see my article Danger: Fasci-Nation with Bush). Focusing on an individual person is analogous to contemplating one finger on a glove without recognizing the underlying hand in-forming and animating all of the interconnected, and fundamentally inseparable fingers in the glove.
To concretize a localized manifestation of the pathology in an individual would be analogous to only seeing the circle that a three-dimensional sphere makes as it passes through a two-dimensional plane. The circle is a lower-level reflection of a higher-dimensional entity (the ‘sphere' of wetiko's influence), just as the person taken over by the wetiko bug is a surface expression of a deeper, more fundamental pathogen that pervades the underlying field. To use another example, the person momentarily afflicted with wetiko is like a shadow on a wall─cast from a globe hanging from the ceiling─relative to the globe. The shadow on the wall is a re-presentation and projection of the higher, three-dimensional entity of the globe into a lower dimension of space.
Studying the shadow within its proper context relative to the globe is the way of understanding the object casting the shadow (the higher-dimensional entity of the ‘global' wetiko psychosis). In these examples, the point is not to focus on the personal manifestation of the disease, but rather, to see the deeper, nonlocal field that is giving shape to, in-forming and pervading the particular, localized outbreaks of the disease in the greater body politic. Seeing, in Jung's words, "the numinous character of the reality in the background,"[xxiv] IS the very expansion of consciousness which becomes the doorway connecting us to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to each other. Recognizing the underlying field paves the road to healing.
In the culture of wetiko, people at various stages of the disease pick up seemingly different and separate roles from each other, but when the deeper, underlying pattern comes into focus and is seen, it can be recognized that all of these inter-locking roles fit together like a higher-order mosaic. This process couldn't play itself out without all of its parts reciprocally co-arising relative to each other. The whole field, with all its myriad, fluid and unfixed roles─each of us at various moments in time picking up the different roles─are mutually conditioning each other in a seamless, interpenetrating net of relations, as if appendages of a higher-dimensional organism that is revealing itself through our nonlinearly orchestrated and coordinated interplay.
Stepping Out of Separation
The in-spirit-ed organism of wetiko is a field phenomenon, and can only be seen when we snap out of the illusion of imagining we exist as a separate self and recognize and become conversant with the deeper, underlying and more fundamental nonlocal field in which we are all indissolubly inter-connected. "The field," as Einstein once succinctly put it, "is the only reality." In modern physics, the field─the invisible organizing principle of the universe─has become more fundamental than matter. Instead of relating to any part of the field as an isolated entity, it's important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the ‘medium' through which wetiko manifests itself.
The native American concept of wetiko disease is a social phenomenon, a relational dynamic of the field itself that can not be understood, and does not exist in isolated individuals apart from the social milieu in which they move, interact and have their being. Seeing the nonlocal field drives a stake into the very heart of the prevailing scientific, materialistic perspective, which ironically enough, still attempts to see the world as ‘machine.'
Seeing the field, and stepping out of the perspective that we are separate from each other converges into being the same experience. Seeing ‘through' the illusion of the separate self, rather than seeing ‘through the separate self' as a lens through which we view the world, entails recognizing that even the full-blown wetikos, the master predators themselves, are not separate from us. The Big Wetikos are fully em-body-ing, in person-ified form, a pathological tendency that exists in potential within ourselves. It is as if they are the externalized materialization of this potential within ourselves that we've projected outside of ourselves and literally collectively dreamed up into manifestation. Recognizing this generates compassion for this part of ourselves. It is only through compassion that we immunize ourselves from the virus.
Paradoxically, although wetiko disease doesn't exist in isolated individuals separate from the field, someone taken over by the wetiko bug, though merely its instrument and not, in the ultimate sense ‘who they are,' literally can be said to be ‘the incarnation' of the disease in human form. The person so possessed (think of, like I did in my book, George W. Bush, as one example) is the ‘revelation' of the pathology in living flesh and blood. The person so stricken is showing us, in fully embodied, personified form, the underlying infrastructure and dynamics of this trans-human disease. When someone is so possessed, they are the local crystallization ‘in form' of a nonlocal, and ultimately ‘formless' phenomenon.
The person taken over has been dreamed up into materialization to be a living, breathing ‘symbol' of the nonlocal disease, an embodied reflection of an archetypal, and yet pathological, part of ourselves. Recognizing this is to realize that this person doesn't exist as an isolated, discrete entity, a skin-encapsulated ego, separate from the surrounding field. Seeing the person so possessed in their true context─as literally inseparable from all of us─becomes a portal through which we can refine our inner vision and see through the transparent illusion of the separate self. Seeing that the person so taken over is not separate from the field is a reflection of our own condition. Seeing the other's transpersonal nature enables us to not person-alize ourselves.
Holographically enfolded within the psyche of every human being, the wetiko virus pervades and underlies the entire field of consciousness, and can therefore potentially manifest through any one of us at any moment if we are not mindful. The wetiko bug is something that we all have unconsciously acted out in our lives at one time or another. We've all had our wetiko ‘moments,' that's just the way it works. Recognizing this cultivates humility, which helps to psychically immunize us from the pernicious effects of the disease. This realization ultimately collapses the boundary between those who have the disease and those who don't. Wetiko's nonlocal nature ultimately makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it to varying degrees, or rather, it has us. We are all in the soup together. This realization engenders both compassion and forgiveness. This does not mean, however, that the Big Wetikos are not ethically, spiritually, and legally responsible for the unimaginable carnage they have caused.
The primary line of distorted code through which the wetiko virus deviates our mind is the presumption of the separate self. The un-reflected upon acceptance of the axiom of separation is what makes all of the other delusions that make up wetiko possible. Seeing the diabolical nature of the disease entails realizing that it is the bifurcating ‘us' vs. ‘them' mind of duality which splits the world into opposites, that is itself the generative root of the wetiko germ.
This series of articles began by invoking the spirit of wetiko through our shared act of inquiry. As we shed light on wetiko, we become sensitive to its movements within ourselves. At this point the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, for there is no place for the spirit to hide. We are then in a position of having access in our lucid, self-reflective awareness to a sacred vessel which can nourish the very spirit which is to be venerated. To come full circle and successfully accomplish the original, healing intent of our magic ritual, the hidden, powerful spirit of wetiko needs to be ‘contained;' this is the archetypal point behind the sacred alchemical idea of a mystical vessel which transforms the entire universe.
As people who are becoming wise to the wiles of wetiko help each other to step out of the illusion of separation together, a psychic alchemical container that is greater than the sum of its parts gets created. This holy grail-like vessel of collectively shared lucidity is reciprocally conjured up through our shared realization. This higher-dimensional mystic container is forever stimulating, stabilizing and strengthening itself in a positive feedback loop which literally gives birth to and inspires the creative spirit. This jewel-like higher-dimensional entity composed of consciousness itself is a lucidity generator that is tapping into the zero point energy of the mind, a form of higher-mind technology that attracts the rest of the universe into itself. When we recognize that we exist not apart from, but relative to each other, our connection with each other is ‘hermetically sealed' with the stamp of Hermes.
We then relate with each other in such a way so that none of our projections unconsciously leak out into the world, for the simple reason that the world is recognized to be our projection. This is the very realization which bonds us together and through which we are united with the world, each other and ourselves. Becoming ‘tight' in this way, we are ‘blessed' by the master magician ‘Hermes/Mercury,' the God of the sacred art of alchemy (please see my article The Sacred Art of Alchemy). ‘The Force' is then with us. Empowered, we are able to trans-fix, trans-mute, trans-form and liberate the vampiric spirit of wetiko, while simultaneously snapping out of our en-trance-ment of ourselves.
Emptiness
Supposedly the greatest ruse of the devil is to convince us that he doesn't exist. Or on the other hand, is the suggestion that the devil does exist that is implicit in the previous statement a deception of the devil (who is, after all, considered a liar), and as such, is a disguised form in which the devil has insinuated himself into not only our conversation, but into the world at large? It is important to shed light on this murky area: An evil, archetypal figure like the devil doesn't exist in the way we have been imagining he does if we have been imagining that he exists objectively, as something apart from ourselves.
The devilish wetiko virus, like a vampire, if left to its own devices, would die, as it is only able to exist if there is someone outside of itself on whom it can feast. A vampire has no intrinsic, independent, substantial existence in its own right, it only exists relative to us. The pathogenic, vampiric, mind-parasite called wetiko is nothing in itself, yet, it has a ‘reality' such that it can destroy our species. The fact that something that only exists as a function of ourselves can destroy us is pointing at the incredibly vast invisible power that is inherent within our being. Ultimately speaking, in wetiko disease we are not being infected by a physical, objectively existing virus outside of ourselves, but rather, the origin of the wetiko psychosis is within us. The fact that a vampire is not reflected by a mirror can also mean that what we need to see is that there's nothing, no-thing to see, other than ourselves. The fact that wetiko is the expression of something inside of us means that the cure for wetiko is within us as well.
In the Gnostic Dialogue of the Savior, it says, "Whoever does not know the root of evil is no stranger to it."[xxv] Wetiko forces upon us the evolutionary responsibility to come to terms with the evil within our own hearts. To the extent we have not rooted out the wetiko bug within ourselves we are complicit in the co-creation of the evil playing out in the world. The part of us that is colluding in the creation of a collective psychosis like wetiko is the part of us that is mad, for why else would we be doing this? To the extent we're not fully awake, we each have a part of us that's mad, which gets acted out in our life. How can we not have a part of us that's mad, living in a world gone mad, a world that is not separate from, but rather, a reflection of ourselves? It is only by confronting what is insane and inhuman in ourselves that we become truly human. It is important to face how we have been deviated by wetiko, for if we cannot see how we have been set off course, we can't orient ourselves to find our true path in life. Seeing how we've been led astray is a form of illumination. To see how wetiko operates with our co-operation is to gain critical insight into the elusive workings of our own mind.
We capture within ourselves and truly ‘see' the nature of wetiko disease─‘Vampire/Cannibal Psychosis'─when we realize that, just like a dream, its full-bodied manifestation in the world theater is a reflection of a process going on deep within our very soul. We are all dreaming up the wetiko epidemic together. Seeing through our experience in this way gives world events a certain transparency, as well as rendering us transparent to ourselves. Seeing through ourselves makes it unlikely that we would fall prey to and be seduced by any wetiko inspired impulses that pulsate through us. This intimacy with ourselves enables us to step into and embody a role in the field of being like a ‘psychic T-cell' that helps to heal the malignant cancer in the collective body politic of the world soul. Seeing the dreamlike nature of the world and ourselves helps to generate a culture of compassion, which is a ‘wetiko dissolver' par excellence.
Compassion can, however, when necessary, set a fierce boundary, displaying itself in the most fearsome of ways.
The Solution
Just as a vampire can't stand the light of day, a bug like wetiko can't stand to be seen. Flooding light on wetiko's machinations takes away its seeming autonomy and alleged power over us, such that it can no longer compel us to act it out unconsciously. Paradoxically, ‘seeing' this vampiric parasite is to relate to it as other than ourselves, while at the same time recognizing it within ourselves. Though the vampire is a figure within us, it is not us. In differentiating ourselves from the vampire, we recognize the difference between ourselves and it. Seeing the vampire, we don't identify with our subjective experience of the vampire within. This is to say that in seeing the vampire, we free ourselves from our unconscious identification with and possession by it, and step back into ourselves.
Forbes laments, "One of the tragic characteristics of the wetiko psychosis is that it spreads partly by resistance to it. That is, those who try to fight wetikos sometimes, in order to survive, adopt wetiko values. Thus, when they ‘win,' they lose, or at least, the people lose."[xxvi] When we see people who are taken over by wetiko and we feel superior to them, our feeling of superiority is itself a symptom of the disease. If we unconsciously react against wetiko, having judgement, anger, hatred, etc., we are then acting out, however well-intentioned, the same process of shadow projection that underlies the wetiko disease in the first place - which is to dissociate from, project outside of ourselves, and react to our own evil. We are then unconsciously reacting to the unconscious part of ourselves which the wetikos embody.
This re-action is an unconscious ritualistic invocation and re-enactment of the initial impulse within ourselves of turning away from and contracting against a part of ourselves. This is the timeless, primal act which called forth and spawned the spirit of wetiko in the first place. To the extent we are unaware of what we are doing, we, as ‘reps' for wetiko, are compulsively re-enacting our trauma, participating in re-creating the wetiko virus in this very moment. We are then playing out our unresolved internal affairs in the outside world by, in and through our reaction, unwittingly becoming a vector that is carrying the wetiko bug out into the world (please see my article, Triggered by Evil). Instead of unconsciously reacting and projecting the shadow outside of ourselves, when we consciously relate to and take responsibility for the evil within ourselves, we are energetically withdrawing and dis-investing from our complicity in the continual re-animation of evil in the world.
The way to engage with wetiko disease is to (at)tend to what it triggers within us (please see The Lion's Gaze). Just as the way to cut off the head of the mythic Medusa is to look at her reflections in the mirror-shield, the way to stalk the vampiric entity of wetiko is to track and sense its fingerprints within ourselves by looking into the mirror of our own mind. The evil of wetiko can be too much to stare at directly, however, just as looking at the snake-haired Medusa face on turns us to stone. Vampires are ‘petrifying,' which means both ‘terrifying,' as well as ‘paralyzing' and ‘turning to stone.' They petrify their victim, just like a mouse becomes immobilized by the transfixing gaze of the serpent. Vampires are not a creature to be messed with by the frivolous.
Mapping wetikos nonlocal footprints, both out in the world and in the co-responding places within ourselves that are being touched, is to discover the nonlocal multi-dimensional ‘anatomy' of wetiko. It is impossible to encounter wetiko and not be activated, as wetiko's nonlocal force-field is activating by its very nature, in that it is co-extensive and interwoven with our own. Our unconscious, knee-jerk reactivity is the primary way that the wetiko psychosis regenerates and propagates itself in the field. Like a pathogen invading a body, this virulent psychic bug strikes and hooks us through our weakest point in the unconscious, the tenderest and most vulnerable spot within ourselves through which we are most likely to re-act.
Wetiko is like a psychic nautilus machine that is continually ‘working' us. Humanity's highest virtues are called upon when we are confronted by evil. Encoded within the evil of the wetiko virus is its own psychic vaccine, a potential inoculation against our own ignorance and laziness, which if not overcome, will overcome us. The wetiko bug's existence requires us to strengthen our muscle of discernment. The virus demands that we cultivate impeccability within ourselves, or we don't stand a chance. Wetiko literally demands that we step into our power and become resistant to its oppression such that we discover how to step out of bondage and become free, or else! Instead of a typical virus mutating so as to become resistant to our attempts at healing it, the wetiko virus forces us to mutate relative to it. It is as though the evil of wetiko is itself the instrument of a higher intelligence. This higher power, through the revelation and understanding of wetiko, connects us to a sacred, creative source within ourselves. The wetiko bug is the greatest catalytic force of evolution ever known─as well as not known─to humanity.
Naming is a magical act, typically done when something new is born into our life. Like Adam naming the animals in the Garden, we have to name something before it can be formally ‘discovered' and brought into our shared collective cartography. It was only by naming these creatures that Adam could differentiate and distinguish himself from them and realize who he was. Finding the name for this higher-dimensional, malignant virus of the psyche helps us to more easily recognize it and get a ‘handle' on it, which is the first step in taking away its destructive power over us. Seeing wetiko and calling it by its rightful name initiates a process that resigns it to the ranks of the unemployed, leading to the wetikonomy that it animates being put out of business. The energy that was being invested and bound up in feeding the wetiko pathogen then returns to nourish and be nourished by the creative wholeness of the psyche. Naming something creates ‘currency' in the economy of the psyche. To name something is to evoke it, to call it out, which is an expression of an intrinsic, magical power that we all have within us. This is related to the Australian Aboriginal belief that we ‘sing' the world into being - that we are creating as we name things.
Understanding the meaning of the name ‘wetiko' is a form of exorcism. Jung says, "For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found." It will serve us greatly as we introduce the word ‘wetiko' into our planetary dialogue, making wetiko part of our day to day vocabulary. In ‘spell'-ing a word, we are casting a spell, calling forth a spirit, and creating a universe, all while discovering our ability to name. In divining the true name we are de-‘literal'-izing language, as we create language to ‘symbol'-ize our experience. The word wetiko, being a sacred name, is like a mantra, a word of power, in that the speaking of it empowers the idea. Let us therefore ‘spread the word.'
We are only able to name ‘wetiko' when we see, and register, its nonlocal nature, both throughout the world and within ourselves. This can only be done when we ourselves become acquainted with our nonlocal nature, to the part of us that is woven into both the evil of wetiko and the wholeness of the divine. Like that great maxim of medicine states, "Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand." The famous Greek philosopher Socrates reminds us that if we want to understand something, we first must name it. Naming something means to find our experience of its nature within ourselves. Indigenous, wisdom-based cultures understand the exorcistic power of finding the right name of a ‘demon,' which is precisely what they would understand the wetiko pathogen to be (please see The Daemonic).
Its simultaneously diabolical and mercurial energy makes the Native American idea of wetiko disease incredibly hard to describe in words. Whether we refer to this trickster-like entity as a virus, parasite, tapeworm, vampire or a demon, or call it wetiko disease or malignant egophrenia doesn't matter. These various names are interchangeable, as they are naming one and the same thing. There is no one definitive model for this disease, however, as each model has both its utility as well as its limits. When all of these models are combined and looked at together, it gives us a greater resolution and capacity to see what no one particular model by itself can reveal.
The Idea of a Cure
Finding the right name(s) invokes the sacred, creative and transformative power of the ‘Word.' Wetiko is the word made flesh in its most depraved form. In finding the name, however, we are accessing the divinely sponsored power of the word to create an idea, which is a living psychic organism of real value and merit, with an intrinsic power all its own. Ideas are ways of regarding things, the means by which we see, as well as perspectives through which we view the world. The word ‘idea,' etymologically speaking, has to do with both ‘to see' as well as ‘to know.' In other words, a novel idea opens our inner eye and helps us know by giving us in-sight into something previously unconscious. What Plato called the "eyes of the soul," ideas are the modes of consciousness through which we envision and create our life. In finding the right name(s), we are impregnating and incubating a novel idea. We can then spread and give birth to our meme by sharing it, as we create our own mind anti-virus, a living antigen to the heretofore unrecognized mind-virus of wetiko. As Communist China's Chairman Mao openly confessed, the one thing he was most afraid of was a new idea. For nothing is more powerful than a magical idea whose time has come.
Let's spread the word.
May these words be of benefit for all beings.
[i] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and Other Cannibals, p. ix.
[ii] Ibid., p. 24.
[iii] Ibid., p. 43.
[iv] Ibid., p. 60.
[v] People taken over and possessed by the wetiko pathogen─‘full-blown wetikos'─might be petty tyrants at home or at work but might not wield real power in the world. What Forbes refers to as "Big Wetikos," however, are full-blown wetikos who have climbed the wetiko ladder, jumped through the wetiko hoops, and have risen in the ranks. ‘Big wetikos' (be they the super wealthy, CEO's of corporations, bank presidents, or leaders of nation-states) find themselves occupying positions of power where they can influence and control events in our world so as to game the system.
[vi] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 24.
[vii] Ibid., p. 188.
[viii] Ibid., p. 164.
[ix] Ibid., p. xvi.
[x] Ibid., p. 164.
[xi] Ibid, p. 173.
[xii] Ibid, p. 60.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 120.
[xiv] Ibid., p. 60.
[xv] Ibid., p. 38.
[xvi] I want to thank Jonathan Zap for this clarification in a comment that he wrote after Part 1 of this series. To quote Zap, "There's an anthropologist with a lecture on ted.com who provides considerable evidence that the per capita war death rate of an indigenous rainforest tribe is much higher than that of Western Civilization (even during the 20th Century). Western Civilization because of its far greater novelty magnifies the outer edge of light and the outer edge of dark," (please see zaporacle.com for more of his writings)
[xvii] From the article by Ron Suskind titled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," in the New York Times magazine of October 17, 2004.
[xviii] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 150.
[xix] Ibid., p. 42.
[xx] Ibid., p. 48.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 171.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiv] Jung, CW 10, Civlization in Transition, par. 886.
[xxv] (II, 5, 134.5-20)
[xxvi] Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 61.
Vampire Squid Economics: A Case Study in Full-Blown Wetiko Disease
Paul Levy
The following is Part Two of a series. Read Part One here.
In Part One of this article, I contemplated a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that I call malignant egophrenia and indigenous people call wetiko which is undermining the evolutionary development of our species. Wetiko/malignant egophrenia (heretofore referred to as wetiko) is nonlocal, in that it is an inner disease of the spirit, soul and psyche that explicates itself through the canvas of the outside world. Certain people, groups of people, corporate bodies, or nation-states embody and act out this psychological malady in the world. Specific situations in the world, such as the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by myriad multi-national corporations, or Monsanto instituting terminator seeds as it tries to gain control of the production of the food supply, are real-life enactments, both literally and symbolically, of this self-destructive, inner process. Certain potent symbols in our shared waking dream are literally showing us this inner, vampiric dynamic, a stupefying process in which we get bled dry of what really counts.
Seen as a symbolic entity, the global financial system, for example, is the revelation of wetiko disease displayed graphically and schematically in its architecture, operations and overall design, so that anyone with a trained eye can discern the telltale signs and spore prints of this maleficent psycho-pathology getting down to business. The global economy (which can appropriately be referred to as the ‘wetikonomy'), displays the fear-based, linear logic of wetiko disease as it reduces everything to the bottom line of dollars and cents. We are living inside of a horrifying, abstract economic structure that itself is a living symbol and re-presentation of the out-of-control insanity of the wetiko virus. The global financial system is one of the most rapid vectors and pathways through which the virus of wetiko is going pandemic in our world.
The economy as an entity is a projection of the collective human psyche, but particularly of the "Big Wetikos," who hold a disproportionate power in crafting its operating system and in running its day-to-day operations in the world. In the wetikonomy, money has become indispensable for our biological survival, as well as our psychological well being and need for social prestige. This results in the drive for acquiring money becoming hardwired into the most primal centers of our lower, animal nature. This can generate a dependency that can easily lead to a treadmill that spirals downwards towards degeneracy, a true ‘rat race' in which we become addicted to chasing after ‘the buck,' as we increasingly worship Mammon (the God of the love of money; Interestingly, the esteemed economist John Maynard Keynes considered the love of money a form of mental illness). Our need for money becomes the ‘hook' through which the Big Wetikos, who control the supply and value of money, can ‘yank our leash' and manipulate humanity. To say it differently, the economy is engineered by a few, the "Big Wetikos," who then utilize their creation to manipulate the collective human psyche and in so doing influence and warp it in a wetiko-like way.
Using the global financial and monetary system as our case study, we can see and understand how the wetiko virus operates in the psyche and in the world, which are both interactive and co-creative reflections of each other. The invention of money was a breakthrough in human affairs, an innovation in which real wealth is allowed to be symbolically re-presented by something else. Money is a construct, something made up, which adds convenience in the trading of goods and services that have value. The wetiko-created fiat money system, however, is the doorway through which a deviant distortion in this co-operative process of exchanging value amongst ourselves emerges.
The wetikonomy's fiat-currency is not backed by real value, but rather, is a system in which, as if by magic, money is created out of thin air. Having fallen through the rabbit hole, we now live in a world where money materializes simply by decree (fiat) of an elite cabal of Big Wetikos, who can exchange the tokens of value they have conjured up for the time and natural resources of everyone else. The wetiko-economy is basically a legitimized counterfeiting operation. The Big Wetikos use their military and police state ‘enforcement' resources to ensure that others cannot accumulate and circulate capital outside of their system. As if that isn't bad enough, in a further diabolic sleight of hand, this virtual fiat currency, backed by nothing real and having no intrinsic value in and of itself, is then equated with debt, thus making it worse than nothing. This total inversion of our concept of value itself is a glaring symbol in our midst primal screaming that there is something terribly amiss with our financial system. There is indeed something wrong with a virtual, bubble economy that is decoupled from the real economy and is dictated and manipulated by the few at the expense of the many.
The over-leveraged wetiko economy is a ‘phantom menace,' in that there is hardly any real substantial value changing hands except in appearance. Unlike a real economy that is based on, backed by and generates genuine wealth, the wetikonomy, because it has no conventional solid, objective, substantial reality, has only a phantom-like, apparent existence. It is as if authors of a fantasy novel or a fairy tale are trying to ‘market' and ‘sell' their creation as nonfiction, and we, as consumers, are ‘buying' it, believing it to be true. Collectively pretending the fiction is real, we have forgotten that we are playing a mass game of ‘make believe.' The bubble economy of wetiko is a con-fidence game (a ‘con' game), a con-struct of our mind maintained in each moment by the belief that the system is real, solvent and legitimate.
A virtual, synthetic economy such as ours is a product cooked up by the fevered imagination of the wetiko financiers. Like a collective dream, or a mass spell, it is a concoction based upon mutually shared agreements among its participating members. The wetikonomy in which we live, unlike a free market economy, is subject to the intervention of and manipulation by the central bank, an entity which has interposed itself between us and the market. The agency of the central bank, in its attempts to interfere with and control a natural, self-regulating marketplace, is a living symbol of the wetiko pathogen and how it disrupts a living system.
Just as a vampire can't stand to be seen and thus avoids the light of day at all costs, as it is only able to operate by the deceptive cover of darkness, so the very nature of the institutions and operations by which the phantom wetikonomy functions must be kept hidden from the light of public awareness. The financial instruments of the wetikonomy are purposely crafted to be incredibly complex and hard to understand so as to hide and obfuscate the theft that is happening. Hiding the reality of what they are doing is one of the ‘chief features' of wetiko finance. Replacing transparency with opacity, it has become standard account-ing practice in the wetikonomy to ‘cook the books' so as to avoid being held account-able.
If clearly illuminated and exposed to the light of collective disclosure and transparency, the shell-game and Ponzi scheme that IS the global financial system will be revealed to be the staggering and unlawful deception that it is. In a vast computerized web of electronic transfers and accounting shenanigans, the global economic system has become an insanely desperate pyramid scheme, a high-tech casino-like scam. A monstrous, planet-wide Madoff-like rip-off done with smoke and mirrors, the wetikonomy is like a massive optical illusion that is projected by the Big Wetikos, a cadre of master spell-casting wizards, who have nearly infinite resources at their disposal to make their illusion seem real. The wetikonomy, like apparitions of majestic castles in the sky, is a magical display that captivates and holds spell-bound the credulous, semi-conscious masses, who are more than willing, based on their childlike need to hope and believe in an authority outside of themselves, to give away their power so as to quell their fear. This is a regressed form of magical thinking writ large on the world stage.
At first glance, an optical illusion looks one way, but when we investigate further, we can see the illusion for what it really is. If this grand financial illusion were to be unmasked and collectively seen through, the underlying and pervasive ‘fraud as a business model' approach to running the global economy would reveal itself to be the spectral phantasm that it is. Once the seemingly rock-solid, concrete skyscrapers of the wetikonomy reveal themselves to be a stage set with nothing behind it, built on ever-shifting sand, it is not enough just to realize this and do nothing. It is then our responsibility to re-create and re-dream a different set of agreements regarding how to be in relationship with each other.
This sets the stage to re-engineer the system of wetiko-ized control mechanisms that, through locked-in contractual relationships, freezes the economy in a corporate, and wetiko-ized trajectory. The power structure in a wetiko-ized society is inherently fiscal instead of political, which is why political change doesn't result in economic change. It is the banks that control the government, not the other way around. As our collective realization gathers momentum, however, such a process of waking up en masse could dissolve the wetikonomy to its empty core, bursting the bubble economy and collapsing the whole artificial edifice - the artifice - of fake finance, like the house of cards that it is. This realization lays the groundwork for a more enlightened financial and investment system grounded in real economics, a healthy environment and the cultivation of a humane human civilization.
The unsustainable illusion that is the wetikonomy, however, is based on and supported by violence or the threat of violence, from a personal level up to the capacity to collectively wage war, both visible and invisible. The ability and willingness to kill is not an illusion. This is why many people collude in supporting and perpetuating the illusion, for to not do so inevitably leads to some form of coercion, which is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of violence. In the highly uncivilized world of the wetikonomy, ‘might makes right.' The nature of the beast that we are dealing with needs to be factored into the equation of how we creatively and strategically respond.
The wetikonomy, to use journalist Matt Taibbi's infamous phrase describing the major global investment bank Goldman Sachs, is a "vampire squid" that is sucking, draining off and redistributing more and more wealth from the poor, and the formerly middle class, into the hands of the already unthinkably wealthy. This "great vampire squid," to quote Taibbi, is "wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Unlike a real economy that creates wealth, the vampire squid wetikonomy, a global, organized crime syndicate, extracts and extorts wealth from the real economy and from real people like you and me. There is an actual creature called Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, which literally translates as Vampire Squid from Hell, a living symbol and perfect description of wetikonomics.
The Big Wetikos, are debt 'pushers,' in that they inject credit into the would-be victim, artificially enlarging, pumping up and ultimately poisoning the recipient. The more money owed the better, as the bigger the meal of debt off of which the predators will be able to cannibalistically feed. The bigger the debt, the deeper the pockets they can pick, and the more blood there is for the vampires to drink. They create VSID -- ‘Vampire Squid Induced Debt,' whose victims become its slaves and indentured servants. As it says in Proverbs (22:7), "The borrower is servant to the lender." The modern-day, debt-based wetikonomy is designed to have an exponentially, ever-increasing debt that in principle can never be paid off, analogous to how in wetiko disease there exists an insatiable hunger that can never be satisfied.
The economic system imposed on humanity by the rapacious Big Wetikos is a perversion of the original, wholesome meaning of the word ‘eco-nomy,' which has the same root as the word ‘eco-logy,' and refers to the harmonious management of a household. The wetikonomy, instead of creating value and wealth that can be shared by all, impoverishes and enslaves the vast majority of humanity while simultaneously enriching the Big Wetiko predators. Big Wetikos are the ‘anti-Robin Hoods,' as they rob from the poor to give to the rich (themselves).
The Big Wetikos buy up all of the assets that have tangible, real world value, like land for example, in exchange for their made-up fiat currency. Once the exchange is made, and they are in possession of the stuff of real value, they then devalue and debase the currency, which becomes ‘worth less' as time passes. The people are left holding an empty bag, while the Big Wetikos are increasingly in possession of everything else of value. The Big Wetikos are financial terrorists, actively engaged in warfare against humanity, using weapons of financial mass destruction (WFMD's).
In a wetikonomy, a perverse synergy occurs in the revolving door between government and high finance. The political system becomes a front for and extension of the banks. The United States Treasury is bankrupt, which is to say that it is owned by the banks. Having the upper hand, an international clique of banking elites are the ones who give the orders and, appearances to the contrary, choose the politicians who will occupy the positions of power to do their bidding. This is clearly evidenced by President Obama stacking his cabinet with the very same people who created the economic crisis in the first place, all of whom have intimate insider connections with and allegiance to a corrupt cabal of high financiers.
In a wetikonomy such as ours, the Big Wetikos who create economic crises get rewarded for their actions, gaining untold riches. Think of the bank bailouts, a criminal heist of historical proportions, where the banks blackmailed our nation, putting a metaphorical gun to our government's head, threatening that if we don't give them what they ask for, they will crash the global economy and we will have martial law. We acquiesced at the expense of our national sovereignty.
True to form, there was very little accountability regarding how the banks used this money, and much of what happened to it is still a mystery. In the total opposite of what happens in a ‘real' economy, in the bailout, money was invested and sucked into the least productive aspect of the economy -- the financial system -- all at the expense of the taxpayers. The Big Wetikos get the booty, and the risks and liabilities are then dumped onto the general population, increasing our nation's debt, and turning almost everyone else into ‘serfs.' The inevitable austerity measures, e.g., cuts in retirement benefits and social services, will then be put squarely on the backs of the working people. Taxpaying citizens will be forced to pay off the debt over decades of hard work and toil, as they become indentured servants to the bank. As it is said, ‘Crime that pays, stays.' We live in a ‘klepto-plutocracy': a ruler-ship by really wealthy thieves. We need to ‘wake up' to that we are being taken for all that we are worth.
The result is the largest gap in the distribution of wealth between the rich and poor since right before the 1929 Great Depression, which creates enormous economic instability, a situation that the Big Wetikos can then use to their own advantage. This transferring of assets from the broad class of working people and entrepreneurs to the super-rich is no accident, but is purposefully being implemented by the cold-blooded, Big Wetiko banksters and power brokers, who operate as a global banking cartel, so as to continually centralize their power and control. Unfortunately, this isn't some sort of wacky conspiracy theory. The evidence is all around us, fully visible to anyone who has the eyes to see.
A global robbery is in progress; the Big Wetikos are enacting a financial coup d'etat of staggering proportions right in front of our eyes. It is quite symbolic that the one time in the New Testament that Jesus got really pissed was towards the money-changers. Big Wetikos in positions of power in high finance, manipulating the markets so as to loot the planet's treasuries and precious resources, have become the modern-day pirates, ransacking and pillaging humanity and all living things. This real world process is an externalized reflection of the psychic coup d'etat being perpetrated by the wetiko bug within our own psyche. This is to say that we can recognize a deep process within ourselves as it is revealed to us in the seemingly outside world. Seeing this is to begin to spiritually awaken, as we aren't just ‘waking up' to the fact that we are being robbed, but are ‘waking up' to the deeper, dreamlike nature of our overall situation.
The Big Wetikos are not just draining the resources of individuals, but are sucking up the real assets of and taking down the economies of entire nations around the world (Think of what is happening in Europe now, i.e., Greece and Ireland, and ever more so in the U.S.). One striking symbol of this process is the IMF (International Money Fund), a vampire squid-like entity if there ever was one. The IMF is essentially a bankrupt institution backed by a cadre of banks that are themselves mostly insolvent. The IMF is constantly on the lookout for real assets to scarf up so as to sate its voracious debt-driven hunger.
When a country finds itself in financial dire straits (a crisis oftentimes created by a coordinated, criminal cabal of financial terrorists that are in league with the IMF), the IMF swoops in, and offers a seemingly beneficent, helping hand in the form of bailouts to the ailing country in their time of need. The IMF, however, effectively loots and pillages the country that it is purportedly aiding, for once the country accepts the IMF's ‘help,' the IMF winds up taking over the country's real assets to pay back the loan, thus turning it into an economic hostage. Each country that the IMF subjects to its ‘economic shock therapy' becomes a laboratory experiment by which it continually refines and perfects its financial weaponry. The crisis in Greece is a recent example of this sinister experiment in how to financially take down and extract the wealth from an entire country. The resulting austerity measures imposed upon the now enfeebled and hobbled country are akin to a modern form of feudalism. Subsequent to Greece, Ireland was taken down using the same tactics, and other nations (Portugal, Spain and Italy to name but a few) are in the cross-hairs of this internationally organized form of financial warfare.
As the wetiko infection progresses in the global body politic, the global economic system becomes gradually redesigned to exert more and more effective top-down control by the few over the many, to the benefit of the elite few. These very hard economic times we live in, unbelievably, are the times of the greatest profits for certain select corporate conglomerates in all of history. Are people aware of this eye-opening and mind-blowing fact? It is revealing that the very phrases used to describe the grand larceny occurring daily in and as the global financial system are terms that specifically apply to the psycho-pathology of wetiko disease, such as ‘predatory lending,' ‘liar loans,' ‘zombie banks,' ‘disaster capitalism,' ‘financial terrorism,' ‘monster capitalism' ‘voodoo economics,' and ‘tapeworm economics,' to name but a few.
The one thing the Big Wetikos are most afraid of, however, is large numbers of people seeing through their charade and realizing that the emperor has no clothes. If enough people clearly see what the Big Wetikos are doing -- committing unconscionable crimes against humanity on a grand scale while they play roulette with our planetary inheritance -- their gig will be up. This is an externalized reflection of how the wetiko virus within ourselves is terrified of being seen, for once the bug is seen, it is ‘out of business.' The global financial system is a symbolic reflection openly revealing the psycho-spiritual disease of wetiko ‘in business.'
The wetiko economic system is a bribery system. The Big Wetikos give us a tiny, overflow trickle of the over-the-top profits they unjustly reap, in which we gladly share. We then pretend that we are ‘clean,' that we are not complicit in the systematic evil that is playing out. We fall under the self-inflicted illusion that we are not responsible and are merely victims of the system, and yet, we are simultaneously feeding off and supporting the very evil of the system as it kills us. Energetically, on the level of the deeper, underlying field, we pay a steep price if we are buying into this Faustian pact with the Devil. We receive what appear to be benefits, wetiko ‘frequent flyer miles,' so to speak, but at the ultimate cost of our own genocide. Similar to accepting candy from a predator, the rush of immediate gratification provides an apparent short-term benefit at the cost of our integrity, our freedom and ultimately, our lives. Our true power comes when we see our culpability and complicity in this process and accept our responsibility, thus enabling our ability to respond, which gives us the power to choose differently and change things.
The wetikonomy is both a symbol of and a portal through which we can see the bug of wetiko as it in-forms a living, yet diseased system emerging from the human mind. When we see the workings of the wetiko virus in any system, be it the financial system, the family system, or within our own selves, we are at the same time generating a living antibody of awareness which neutralizes the virulence of wetiko. Seeing how the global financial system is literally being animated and driven by the wetiko virus is to pop into a heightened state of awareness in which we are seeing a wetiko-ized system from outside of itself. We could only do this if we are beginning to see with healthy, wetiko-free eyes, and are thus separating and freeing ourselves from the toxic system. As we increasingly illumine the workings of wetiko, we more and more ‘distinguish ourselves' from it.
Our real debt is to ourselves; we owe it to ourselves to take a closer look and in-form ourselves and see through the business of wetiko. We can discover how money can be used as a tool that helps us cultivate and share true abundance. The return on our investment of attention will truly stimulate the neglected real economy and further inspire deeper heights of lucidity. This allows us to tap into the place within ourselves that is untainted by wetiko, through which we can consciously leverage and redesign the system to our collective advantage, which is to say, for the benefit of all. Herein lies our power to overcome the plague of wetiko, and in so doing, to build a world that works for everyone.
I would like to thank Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com, for our many years of discussion about integrating spiritual and economic phenomenon. For an excellent detailed case study of wetikonomics, please go to Catherine's Dillon, Read and Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits.
Paul Levy
The following is Part Two of a series. Read Part One here.
In Part One of this article, I contemplated a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that I call malignant egophrenia and indigenous people call wetiko which is undermining the evolutionary development of our species. Wetiko/malignant egophrenia (heretofore referred to as wetiko) is nonlocal, in that it is an inner disease of the spirit, soul and psyche that explicates itself through the canvas of the outside world. Certain people, groups of people, corporate bodies, or nation-states embody and act out this psychological malady in the world. Specific situations in the world, such as the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by myriad multi-national corporations, or Monsanto instituting terminator seeds as it tries to gain control of the production of the food supply, are real-life enactments, both literally and symbolically, of this self-destructive, inner process. Certain potent symbols in our shared waking dream are literally showing us this inner, vampiric dynamic, a stupefying process in which we get bled dry of what really counts.
Seen as a symbolic entity, the global financial system, for example, is the revelation of wetiko disease displayed graphically and schematically in its architecture, operations and overall design, so that anyone with a trained eye can discern the telltale signs and spore prints of this maleficent psycho-pathology getting down to business. The global economy (which can appropriately be referred to as the ‘wetikonomy'), displays the fear-based, linear logic of wetiko disease as it reduces everything to the bottom line of dollars and cents. We are living inside of a horrifying, abstract economic structure that itself is a living symbol and re-presentation of the out-of-control insanity of the wetiko virus. The global financial system is one of the most rapid vectors and pathways through which the virus of wetiko is going pandemic in our world.
The economy as an entity is a projection of the collective human psyche, but particularly of the "Big Wetikos," who hold a disproportionate power in crafting its operating system and in running its day-to-day operations in the world. In the wetikonomy, money has become indispensable for our biological survival, as well as our psychological well being and need for social prestige. This results in the drive for acquiring money becoming hardwired into the most primal centers of our lower, animal nature. This can generate a dependency that can easily lead to a treadmill that spirals downwards towards degeneracy, a true ‘rat race' in which we become addicted to chasing after ‘the buck,' as we increasingly worship Mammon (the God of the love of money; Interestingly, the esteemed economist John Maynard Keynes considered the love of money a form of mental illness). Our need for money becomes the ‘hook' through which the Big Wetikos, who control the supply and value of money, can ‘yank our leash' and manipulate humanity. To say it differently, the economy is engineered by a few, the "Big Wetikos," who then utilize their creation to manipulate the collective human psyche and in so doing influence and warp it in a wetiko-like way.
Using the global financial and monetary system as our case study, we can see and understand how the wetiko virus operates in the psyche and in the world, which are both interactive and co-creative reflections of each other. The invention of money was a breakthrough in human affairs, an innovation in which real wealth is allowed to be symbolically re-presented by something else. Money is a construct, something made up, which adds convenience in the trading of goods and services that have value. The wetiko-created fiat money system, however, is the doorway through which a deviant distortion in this co-operative process of exchanging value amongst ourselves emerges.
The wetikonomy's fiat-currency is not backed by real value, but rather, is a system in which, as if by magic, money is created out of thin air. Having fallen through the rabbit hole, we now live in a world where money materializes simply by decree (fiat) of an elite cabal of Big Wetikos, who can exchange the tokens of value they have conjured up for the time and natural resources of everyone else. The wetiko-economy is basically a legitimized counterfeiting operation. The Big Wetikos use their military and police state ‘enforcement' resources to ensure that others cannot accumulate and circulate capital outside of their system. As if that isn't bad enough, in a further diabolic sleight of hand, this virtual fiat currency, backed by nothing real and having no intrinsic value in and of itself, is then equated with debt, thus making it worse than nothing. This total inversion of our concept of value itself is a glaring symbol in our midst primal screaming that there is something terribly amiss with our financial system. There is indeed something wrong with a virtual, bubble economy that is decoupled from the real economy and is dictated and manipulated by the few at the expense of the many.
The over-leveraged wetiko economy is a ‘phantom menace,' in that there is hardly any real substantial value changing hands except in appearance. Unlike a real economy that is based on, backed by and generates genuine wealth, the wetikonomy, because it has no conventional solid, objective, substantial reality, has only a phantom-like, apparent existence. It is as if authors of a fantasy novel or a fairy tale are trying to ‘market' and ‘sell' their creation as nonfiction, and we, as consumers, are ‘buying' it, believing it to be true. Collectively pretending the fiction is real, we have forgotten that we are playing a mass game of ‘make believe.' The bubble economy of wetiko is a con-fidence game (a ‘con' game), a con-struct of our mind maintained in each moment by the belief that the system is real, solvent and legitimate.
A virtual, synthetic economy such as ours is a product cooked up by the fevered imagination of the wetiko financiers. Like a collective dream, or a mass spell, it is a concoction based upon mutually shared agreements among its participating members. The wetikonomy in which we live, unlike a free market economy, is subject to the intervention of and manipulation by the central bank, an entity which has interposed itself between us and the market. The agency of the central bank, in its attempts to interfere with and control a natural, self-regulating marketplace, is a living symbol of the wetiko pathogen and how it disrupts a living system.
Just as a vampire can't stand to be seen and thus avoids the light of day at all costs, as it is only able to operate by the deceptive cover of darkness, so the very nature of the institutions and operations by which the phantom wetikonomy functions must be kept hidden from the light of public awareness. The financial instruments of the wetikonomy are purposely crafted to be incredibly complex and hard to understand so as to hide and obfuscate the theft that is happening. Hiding the reality of what they are doing is one of the ‘chief features' of wetiko finance. Replacing transparency with opacity, it has become standard account-ing practice in the wetikonomy to ‘cook the books' so as to avoid being held account-able.
If clearly illuminated and exposed to the light of collective disclosure and transparency, the shell-game and Ponzi scheme that IS the global financial system will be revealed to be the staggering and unlawful deception that it is. In a vast computerized web of electronic transfers and accounting shenanigans, the global economic system has become an insanely desperate pyramid scheme, a high-tech casino-like scam. A monstrous, planet-wide Madoff-like rip-off done with smoke and mirrors, the wetikonomy is like a massive optical illusion that is projected by the Big Wetikos, a cadre of master spell-casting wizards, who have nearly infinite resources at their disposal to make their illusion seem real. The wetikonomy, like apparitions of majestic castles in the sky, is a magical display that captivates and holds spell-bound the credulous, semi-conscious masses, who are more than willing, based on their childlike need to hope and believe in an authority outside of themselves, to give away their power so as to quell their fear. This is a regressed form of magical thinking writ large on the world stage.
At first glance, an optical illusion looks one way, but when we investigate further, we can see the illusion for what it really is. If this grand financial illusion were to be unmasked and collectively seen through, the underlying and pervasive ‘fraud as a business model' approach to running the global economy would reveal itself to be the spectral phantasm that it is. Once the seemingly rock-solid, concrete skyscrapers of the wetikonomy reveal themselves to be a stage set with nothing behind it, built on ever-shifting sand, it is not enough just to realize this and do nothing. It is then our responsibility to re-create and re-dream a different set of agreements regarding how to be in relationship with each other.
This sets the stage to re-engineer the system of wetiko-ized control mechanisms that, through locked-in contractual relationships, freezes the economy in a corporate, and wetiko-ized trajectory. The power structure in a wetiko-ized society is inherently fiscal instead of political, which is why political change doesn't result in economic change. It is the banks that control the government, not the other way around. As our collective realization gathers momentum, however, such a process of waking up en masse could dissolve the wetikonomy to its empty core, bursting the bubble economy and collapsing the whole artificial edifice - the artifice - of fake finance, like the house of cards that it is. This realization lays the groundwork for a more enlightened financial and investment system grounded in real economics, a healthy environment and the cultivation of a humane human civilization.
The unsustainable illusion that is the wetikonomy, however, is based on and supported by violence or the threat of violence, from a personal level up to the capacity to collectively wage war, both visible and invisible. The ability and willingness to kill is not an illusion. This is why many people collude in supporting and perpetuating the illusion, for to not do so inevitably leads to some form of coercion, which is a subtle (or not so subtle) form of violence. In the highly uncivilized world of the wetikonomy, ‘might makes right.' The nature of the beast that we are dealing with needs to be factored into the equation of how we creatively and strategically respond.
The wetikonomy, to use journalist Matt Taibbi's infamous phrase describing the major global investment bank Goldman Sachs, is a "vampire squid" that is sucking, draining off and redistributing more and more wealth from the poor, and the formerly middle class, into the hands of the already unthinkably wealthy. This "great vampire squid," to quote Taibbi, is "wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." Unlike a real economy that creates wealth, the vampire squid wetikonomy, a global, organized crime syndicate, extracts and extorts wealth from the real economy and from real people like you and me. There is an actual creature called Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, which literally translates as Vampire Squid from Hell, a living symbol and perfect description of wetikonomics.
The Big Wetikos, are debt 'pushers,' in that they inject credit into the would-be victim, artificially enlarging, pumping up and ultimately poisoning the recipient. The more money owed the better, as the bigger the meal of debt off of which the predators will be able to cannibalistically feed. The bigger the debt, the deeper the pockets they can pick, and the more blood there is for the vampires to drink. They create VSID -- ‘Vampire Squid Induced Debt,' whose victims become its slaves and indentured servants. As it says in Proverbs (22:7), "The borrower is servant to the lender." The modern-day, debt-based wetikonomy is designed to have an exponentially, ever-increasing debt that in principle can never be paid off, analogous to how in wetiko disease there exists an insatiable hunger that can never be satisfied.
The economic system imposed on humanity by the rapacious Big Wetikos is a perversion of the original, wholesome meaning of the word ‘eco-nomy,' which has the same root as the word ‘eco-logy,' and refers to the harmonious management of a household. The wetikonomy, instead of creating value and wealth that can be shared by all, impoverishes and enslaves the vast majority of humanity while simultaneously enriching the Big Wetiko predators. Big Wetikos are the ‘anti-Robin Hoods,' as they rob from the poor to give to the rich (themselves).
The Big Wetikos buy up all of the assets that have tangible, real world value, like land for example, in exchange for their made-up fiat currency. Once the exchange is made, and they are in possession of the stuff of real value, they then devalue and debase the currency, which becomes ‘worth less' as time passes. The people are left holding an empty bag, while the Big Wetikos are increasingly in possession of everything else of value. The Big Wetikos are financial terrorists, actively engaged in warfare against humanity, using weapons of financial mass destruction (WFMD's).
In a wetikonomy, a perverse synergy occurs in the revolving door between government and high finance. The political system becomes a front for and extension of the banks. The United States Treasury is bankrupt, which is to say that it is owned by the banks. Having the upper hand, an international clique of banking elites are the ones who give the orders and, appearances to the contrary, choose the politicians who will occupy the positions of power to do their bidding. This is clearly evidenced by President Obama stacking his cabinet with the very same people who created the economic crisis in the first place, all of whom have intimate insider connections with and allegiance to a corrupt cabal of high financiers.
In a wetikonomy such as ours, the Big Wetikos who create economic crises get rewarded for their actions, gaining untold riches. Think of the bank bailouts, a criminal heist of historical proportions, where the banks blackmailed our nation, putting a metaphorical gun to our government's head, threatening that if we don't give them what they ask for, they will crash the global economy and we will have martial law. We acquiesced at the expense of our national sovereignty.
True to form, there was very little accountability regarding how the banks used this money, and much of what happened to it is still a mystery. In the total opposite of what happens in a ‘real' economy, in the bailout, money was invested and sucked into the least productive aspect of the economy -- the financial system -- all at the expense of the taxpayers. The Big Wetikos get the booty, and the risks and liabilities are then dumped onto the general population, increasing our nation's debt, and turning almost everyone else into ‘serfs.' The inevitable austerity measures, e.g., cuts in retirement benefits and social services, will then be put squarely on the backs of the working people. Taxpaying citizens will be forced to pay off the debt over decades of hard work and toil, as they become indentured servants to the bank. As it is said, ‘Crime that pays, stays.' We live in a ‘klepto-plutocracy': a ruler-ship by really wealthy thieves. We need to ‘wake up' to that we are being taken for all that we are worth.
The result is the largest gap in the distribution of wealth between the rich and poor since right before the 1929 Great Depression, which creates enormous economic instability, a situation that the Big Wetikos can then use to their own advantage. This transferring of assets from the broad class of working people and entrepreneurs to the super-rich is no accident, but is purposefully being implemented by the cold-blooded, Big Wetiko banksters and power brokers, who operate as a global banking cartel, so as to continually centralize their power and control. Unfortunately, this isn't some sort of wacky conspiracy theory. The evidence is all around us, fully visible to anyone who has the eyes to see.
A global robbery is in progress; the Big Wetikos are enacting a financial coup d'etat of staggering proportions right in front of our eyes. It is quite symbolic that the one time in the New Testament that Jesus got really pissed was towards the money-changers. Big Wetikos in positions of power in high finance, manipulating the markets so as to loot the planet's treasuries and precious resources, have become the modern-day pirates, ransacking and pillaging humanity and all living things. This real world process is an externalized reflection of the psychic coup d'etat being perpetrated by the wetiko bug within our own psyche. This is to say that we can recognize a deep process within ourselves as it is revealed to us in the seemingly outside world. Seeing this is to begin to spiritually awaken, as we aren't just ‘waking up' to the fact that we are being robbed, but are ‘waking up' to the deeper, dreamlike nature of our overall situation.
The Big Wetikos are not just draining the resources of individuals, but are sucking up the real assets of and taking down the economies of entire nations around the world (Think of what is happening in Europe now, i.e., Greece and Ireland, and ever more so in the U.S.). One striking symbol of this process is the IMF (International Money Fund), a vampire squid-like entity if there ever was one. The IMF is essentially a bankrupt institution backed by a cadre of banks that are themselves mostly insolvent. The IMF is constantly on the lookout for real assets to scarf up so as to sate its voracious debt-driven hunger.
When a country finds itself in financial dire straits (a crisis oftentimes created by a coordinated, criminal cabal of financial terrorists that are in league with the IMF), the IMF swoops in, and offers a seemingly beneficent, helping hand in the form of bailouts to the ailing country in their time of need. The IMF, however, effectively loots and pillages the country that it is purportedly aiding, for once the country accepts the IMF's ‘help,' the IMF winds up taking over the country's real assets to pay back the loan, thus turning it into an economic hostage. Each country that the IMF subjects to its ‘economic shock therapy' becomes a laboratory experiment by which it continually refines and perfects its financial weaponry. The crisis in Greece is a recent example of this sinister experiment in how to financially take down and extract the wealth from an entire country. The resulting austerity measures imposed upon the now enfeebled and hobbled country are akin to a modern form of feudalism. Subsequent to Greece, Ireland was taken down using the same tactics, and other nations (Portugal, Spain and Italy to name but a few) are in the cross-hairs of this internationally organized form of financial warfare.
As the wetiko infection progresses in the global body politic, the global economic system becomes gradually redesigned to exert more and more effective top-down control by the few over the many, to the benefit of the elite few. These very hard economic times we live in, unbelievably, are the times of the greatest profits for certain select corporate conglomerates in all of history. Are people aware of this eye-opening and mind-blowing fact? It is revealing that the very phrases used to describe the grand larceny occurring daily in and as the global financial system are terms that specifically apply to the psycho-pathology of wetiko disease, such as ‘predatory lending,' ‘liar loans,' ‘zombie banks,' ‘disaster capitalism,' ‘financial terrorism,' ‘monster capitalism' ‘voodoo economics,' and ‘tapeworm economics,' to name but a few.
The one thing the Big Wetikos are most afraid of, however, is large numbers of people seeing through their charade and realizing that the emperor has no clothes. If enough people clearly see what the Big Wetikos are doing -- committing unconscionable crimes against humanity on a grand scale while they play roulette with our planetary inheritance -- their gig will be up. This is an externalized reflection of how the wetiko virus within ourselves is terrified of being seen, for once the bug is seen, it is ‘out of business.' The global financial system is a symbolic reflection openly revealing the psycho-spiritual disease of wetiko ‘in business.'
The wetiko economic system is a bribery system. The Big Wetikos give us a tiny, overflow trickle of the over-the-top profits they unjustly reap, in which we gladly share. We then pretend that we are ‘clean,' that we are not complicit in the systematic evil that is playing out. We fall under the self-inflicted illusion that we are not responsible and are merely victims of the system, and yet, we are simultaneously feeding off and supporting the very evil of the system as it kills us. Energetically, on the level of the deeper, underlying field, we pay a steep price if we are buying into this Faustian pact with the Devil. We receive what appear to be benefits, wetiko ‘frequent flyer miles,' so to speak, but at the ultimate cost of our own genocide. Similar to accepting candy from a predator, the rush of immediate gratification provides an apparent short-term benefit at the cost of our integrity, our freedom and ultimately, our lives. Our true power comes when we see our culpability and complicity in this process and accept our responsibility, thus enabling our ability to respond, which gives us the power to choose differently and change things.
The wetikonomy is both a symbol of and a portal through which we can see the bug of wetiko as it in-forms a living, yet diseased system emerging from the human mind. When we see the workings of the wetiko virus in any system, be it the financial system, the family system, or within our own selves, we are at the same time generating a living antibody of awareness which neutralizes the virulence of wetiko. Seeing how the global financial system is literally being animated and driven by the wetiko virus is to pop into a heightened state of awareness in which we are seeing a wetiko-ized system from outside of itself. We could only do this if we are beginning to see with healthy, wetiko-free eyes, and are thus separating and freeing ourselves from the toxic system. As we increasingly illumine the workings of wetiko, we more and more ‘distinguish ourselves' from it.
Our real debt is to ourselves; we owe it to ourselves to take a closer look and in-form ourselves and see through the business of wetiko. We can discover how money can be used as a tool that helps us cultivate and share true abundance. The return on our investment of attention will truly stimulate the neglected real economy and further inspire deeper heights of lucidity. This allows us to tap into the place within ourselves that is untainted by wetiko, through which we can consciously leverage and redesign the system to our collective advantage, which is to say, for the benefit of all. Herein lies our power to overcome the plague of wetiko, and in so doing, to build a world that works for everyone.
I would like to thank Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com, for our many years of discussion about integrating spiritual and economic phenomenon. For an excellent detailed case study of wetikonomics, please go to Catherine's Dillon, Read and Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits.
In the first part of this series, we contemplated the idea of a psycho-spiritual disease of the soul that has been wreaking havoc throughout human history that Native Americans call wetiko. In part two, we inquired into how the wetiko bug disrupts and deranges a living system, using the world financial system as our case study. The wetiko virus is like a parasite that literally feeds off, takes over and aberrates the curren(t)cy of the infected system. The wetiko pathogen originally manifests as a disturbance in the field of the collective unconscious of humanity itself, creating the psychic ley lines upon which world events are erected and energized. The origin of this virulent disease is to be discovered within the psyche (please see my article It's All in the Psyche). Because of the psychic nature of wetiko, it serves us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the virus, which is to say, how it affects our day to day relationships and lives. We begin to ‘see' the bug when we are able to get in focus and recognize ‘its' psychological signature in both ourselves and others. The fact that the source of the wetiko germ is within the psyche means that the cure for this disease lies hidden within the psyche as well.
Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity's inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate with our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this ‘topic of topics' before this virulent madness destroys us. Up until this point in our history we have been too easily distracted by the ruses of the wetiko bug itself. The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us. Its cure is the most pressing and fundamental issue facing us today.
Author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen writes in his foreword to Jack D. Forbes book about wetiko psychosis, "Columbus and other Cannibals is, I think, the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?"[i] Historian Arnold Toynbee points out that a civilization doesn't die from being invaded from the outside, but unless it creates culture which nourishes the evolution of the creative spirit, a civilization invariably commits suicide. As if possessed, our civilization is, trance-like, sleepwalking in a death-march towards our own demise. The most pressing and inevitable question of our time is not just ‘why?' but more urgently, how can we stop this seemingly out-of-control, self-destructive, hell-bent part of ourselves?
'Psycho'-Analysis
The origin of wetiko is the human psyche. Psychologically speaking, shadow projection is at the very root of wetiko disease. Shadow projection is a process in which we split-off from and project out our own darkness onto others. It is our misguided attempt at a ‘final solution' to the problem of the evil within ourselves which actually deprives us of the capacity to deal with evil. Projecting the shadow opens up the door and invites in the vampiric entity of wetiko to make itself at home in the most intimate spaces of our own psyche. I
t is through the dynamic of shadow projection that the wetiko bug digs in and entrenches itself within our psyches, where it is then able to commandeer the executive function of the psyche to its own ends. When we project the shadow, we unwittingly become a conduit for evil to possess us from behind, beneath our conscious awareness, and to act itself out through us. When there is mutual shadow projection between individuals, groups or nations, each side has an unconscious investment in the other playing out the projected evil so as to prove their own self-righteous innocence, a dynamic which becomes self-reinforcing and continually feeds the polarization in the field.
Shadow projection, as it collectively plays out en masse on the world stage is an outer reflection of the initial process within ourselves of our be-night-ed effort to exterminate our own darkness (please see my article Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War). When shadow projection happens en masse, it is as if the archetype of evil emits its toxic radio-activity underground, through the shared unconscious of the collective, and manifests collectively as destructive psychic epidemics.
In shadow projection, we attempt to master and experience power over the internal condition that originally proclaimed our powerlessness to ourselves not by becoming conscious, but by unconsciously identifying with, becoming, and then acting out the power to externally destroy. Unconsciously acting out unbound power without restraint is our perverse way of defending against the internal breakthrough of feelings of helplessness. Evacuating and relocating our inner darkness outside of ourselves by demonizing the ‘other' seemingly protects us from feeling our vulnerability and pain. Our inner anxiety about our existential 'power to be' attempts to resolve itself in the power to act free from restraint. In an unmediated expression of our disempowered inner condition, our unconscious acting out does not surmount the need for compulsive repetition, however, but rather, assures it. Wetikos' modus operandi, their 'M.O.,' becomes to root out and kill everything that feels tender, vulnerable and alive within themselves, thus systematically murdering anything and everything within them that could possibly melt or produce a crack in the ice that encases their heart.
Because full-blown wetikos are soul murderers who continually recreate the on-going process of killing their own soul, they are reflexively compelled to do this to others; for what the soul does to itself, it can't help but to do to others. In a perverse inversion of the golden rule, instead of treating others how they would like to be treated, wetikos do unto others what was done unto them. The wetiko is simply a living link in a timeless, vampiric lineage of abuse. Full-blown wetikos induce and dream up others to experience what it is like to be the part of themselves which they have split off from and denied, and are thus not able to consciously experience - the part of themselves that has been abused and vampirized. In playing this out, wetikos are transmitting and transferring their own depraved state of inner deadness to others in a perverse form of trying to deal with their own suffering. Paradoxically, wetikos both try to destroy others' light, as it reminds them of what they've killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the light for themselves.
Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to and accusing other people of doing. Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you're killing them as they kill you. If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing. Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don't attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves. In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, wetikos re-act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting (please see Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome (ADS)). Someone fully taken over by the wetiko bug is like a kitten endlessly reacting to her reflection in a mirror as if it is another kitten separate from and other than herself. The evil we see in the full-blown wetikos is a reflection of our own evil; if we don't recognize this, we will just be projecting our shadow onto them. We are then guilty of the very same thing (shadow projecting) we are essentially reacting to and of which we are accusing them.
The term wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan) which, to quote Forbes, refers to "an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts."[ii] Wetikos are the human instruments for the transpersonal ‘spirit of evil' to terrorize the world. In wetiko disease, we unwittingly become drafted into being foot-soldiers in the war not ‘on,' but ‘of' and ‘for' terror. The wetiko parasite feeds on and harvests the emotions of fear and terror. Terror is the essence of its insidious ‘ill-usory ill-logic.' In wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror' that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world. We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,' as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large. Wetiko is the bug which feeds the experience of terror within our mind and out in the world, fueling one of its more prominent manifestations in our world today: the ‘Global War on Terror.'
A Frankenstein Monster Come to Life
Wetikos suffer from what is called ‘pseudologia phantastica,' a form of hysteria characterized by a talent for believing their own lies. "Lying," Forbes writes, "in fact may represent a key strand in the entire epidemiology of wetokoism."[iii] Ultimately deceiving themselves as they believe in the propaganda of their own lies, full-blown wetikos become strangers to themselves. Wetikos continually have to invest their life-force in lying to themselves, while at the same time fooling themselves into believing that they are not doing so, a version of what George Orwell referred to as ‘doublethink.' Suffering from amnesia, they have forgotten what it is to remember, and to ‘seal' the deal, they have forgotten that they have forgotten. The result is that they split their mind in two. Falling into denial, and yet denying they are in the state of denial, becomes a process that they are invested in at all costs, or it would blow their denial. Anything that threatens their perverse state of affairs has to be destroyed. Hiding from their lie, they are in essence hiding from themselves, which is pure madness.
Instead of living from and out of an awareness of the psyche, full-blown wetikos continually avoid awareness of the psyche, a habitual pattern which becomes their internal compass and continual default, their M.O. Taking refuge not ‘in,' but ‘from,' themselves, wetikos are continually fleeing from themselves, endlessly circling around in the hamster wheel of samsara. All of their energy gets invested in fueling their own, and others, deception. Their will becomes dedicated to hiding from the truth of what they are doing, a truth which endlessly pursues them, as they continually avoid relationship with themselves. Wetikos become wedded to the full-time occupation of keeping one step ahead of themselves, a process which, once it gains a certain momentum, attains a seeming autonomy that is self-generating (please see Autonomous Complexes). As this inner process progresses, it gains a sovereignty over their psyche, as if a self-created Frankenstein monster has come to life in the flesh. The wetikos have then created their own sci-fi nightmare, with themselves in the starring role. Once created, a mind-virus like wetiko, just like the Frankenstein monster, gains a seeming life of its own, independent of its creator. It then holds its creator in its thrall, unable to escape from the out-of-control hell of their own making.
Speaking of someone possessed by the wetiko virus, Forbes writes, "such a person cannot be authentic. Such a person is not merely a pimp, he is also a ghost, as it were, a mere imitation of a person. His life is an imitation of life...their life is less than that of a wild (free) animal who is, after all always authentic."[iv] Wetikos become unreal to themselves, a simulation of themselves. Split in two, they become schizoid, dissociated from themselves, duality having seemingly established itself as the reigning logic at the core of their being. Different parts of the person taken over by wetiko become compartmentalized, neither connected to each other nor to the whole. This process of inner fragmentation serves to hide from the wetikos what they are doing to themselves, as they become their own never-ending ‘cover-up.' This psychological dynamic is kept in place by how painful it is to behold and contemplate the modes of avoidance they construct to protect themselves from what they do not want to know. And yet, as painful as it is, it is only in the seeing of what they are doing (to themselves) that there is any possibility of becoming free from this malignant malady.
Wetikos can psychopathically (and thus toxically) mimic the human personality perfectly. If it serves their agenda, they can be convincing beyond belief, making themselves out to be normal, caring, politically correct human beings. They are unable, however, to grasp emotionally the meaning implicit in the thoughts and feelings they are exhibiting. They lack insight into how they differ from others, for they do not differ from others as they see others. They are skillful at pretending love and devotion, as if they are imitating a person. Impersonating themselves, their existence is a true parody of life. They can't distinguish between their mimicked (pseudo) responses of love, remorse, etc., and the genuinely felt responses of a healthy person.
Full-blown wetikos are emotionally stunted, as their feelings are confined to the primitive, archaic emotions of anger, frustration, numbness and rage. Suffering from a deep disorder of feeling in which they can not allow themselves to consciously feel, they typically swing between numbness and rage. Fixed in their own limited and myopic point of view, they have no capacity to see themselves as others see them. Proclamations to the contrary, they have no empathy nor compassion. They can't see the world through others point of view, only through their own, which in Hannah Arendt's opinion is a primary characteristic of what she calls the ‘banality of evil.' Wetikos don't relate to others as autonomous, independent beings, but rather, as pawns to be used as means to their own selfish ends, objects to be manipulated for their own narcissistic benefit, rather than as ends in themselves, subjects with their own intrinsic value and valid viewpoints. Because they have lost connection to their soul, they cannot hear the pleas of nor see the soul in others. They refuse to see the harm their actions are doing to others, as this would injure their overly-positive, inflated narcissistic self-image, which protects them from consciously feeling their shame and guilt (read more about Malignant Narcissism). Seemingly unable to consciously experience their guilt animates more shadow projection, which fuels the wetiko pathogen in a continually self-regenerating feedback loop. Unwilling to experience their guilt, wetikos are afraid of being exposed, of being found out, which is an outer reflection of the terror that the wetiko parasite within us feels at potentially being illumined.
We secretly feel a sense of guilt when we shadow project, because we inwardly know we are not in our integrity. This sense of guilt itself is the very feeling from which we split-off. Our guilt does not allow us to feel our guilt, which is what we secretly feel guilty over. To the extent that we don't consciously experience our guilt, we become caught in an infinitely-perpetuating double-bind in which we project out our guilt and darkness, which just perpetuates the very thing we feel guilty about, ad infinitum.
Big wetikos[v] may never know nor be forced to come to terms with the harm they have caused, as oftentimes they find themselves in the privileged position of the victors who rewrite history on their own terms. Many of our society's historians, themselves infected by the wetiko virus, exalt aggressive and exploitative behavior, categorizing as ‘primitive' and ‘backwards' those who don't forcibly ‘conquer' others, thereby subtly and subliminally brainwashing the young into the ways of the world of wetiko.
The Self-Destructive Evil of Empire
Being a field phenomenon, wetiko psychosis doesn't just express itself individually, but its nonlocal tentacles are continually manifesting collectively throughout the underlying field of consciousness. The multi-headed hydra that is the wetiko collective psychosis materializes itself in families, groups, nations, and in whole species such as ours. Wetiko's ‘body politic' has an intrinsic and insistent need for centralizing power and control, fueled by the bottom line of corporate-driven profits. Speaking about the monster of ever-expanding empire, Forbes writes, "imperialism and exploitation are forms of cannibalism and, in fact, are precisely those forms of cannibalism which are most diabolical or evil"[vi] A ‘front' for the underlying wetiko virus, the military-industrial-criminal-complex, with its ultimately self-destructive, built-in need for endless expansion is like a systematic runaway in cybernetic theory. The Frankenstein monster of ever-enlarging empire is like a runaway locomotive gaining speed, approaching the event horizon of its inevitable ‘crash,' all under the deceptive banner of ‘progress.' Meanwhile, this ‘progress' destroys people, families, communities, and potentially, the biosphere itself upon which human life depends. "Wetikos," Forbes writes, "have taken their Satan to the four-corners of the world, and they have made him their God."[vii]
Evil is like a pathogen that enters a system, be it an individual, nation-state, or world-system, and exploits the system, knocking it off balance. Such disturbances can transform something wholesome, such as the drive to reproduce, into something evil - the drive to rape. Etymologically, the meaning of the word ‘evil' has to do with ‘excess' as well as to ‘transgress boundaries.' Full-fledged wetikos are rapists of the human soul. The word ‘rape,' etymologically speaking, is derived from words that mean to overwhelm, to enrapture, to invade, to usurp, to pillage, and to steal, which are all characteristics of someone who is taken over by the wetiko virus.
Wetiko disease is a self-devouring operating system that leaves nothing unmolested. It is a living death sentence that, if left unchecked, destroys everything within its dominion, including itself. Wetiko psychosis ensures that everything is sacrificed on its altar of death and destruction. From a galactic perspective, our planetary so-called ‘civilization' is a living, spreading outbreak of wetiko psychosis that is threatening to destroy not only its human host, but the entire planetary biosphere which makes life on earth possible as well. Speaking of wetikos' ravenous hunger, Forbes points out, "It's voracious, rapacious, appetite will cause it to literally eat itself."[viii] Forbes continues, "The rape of a woman, the rape of a land, and the rape of a people, they are all the same...Brutality knows no boundaries. Greed knows no limits. Perversion knows no borders. Arrogance knows no frontiers. Desire knows no edges. These characteristics all tend to push towards an extreme, always moving forward once the initial infection sets in."[ix] Untreated, this psychic infection gradually takes hold of the wetikos' being, corrupting their heart, poisoning their psychic body politic from within. Like the virus of evil insinuating itself into the soul in incremental, un-noticed steps, at a certain point this leukemia of the soul becomes irreversible, inevitably leading to its host's destruction. The wetiko virus's pathogenic effects within an individual are a microcosmic fractal iteration of the collective, macrocosmic dynamics of the disease; how wetiko works within each of us is synchronistically mirrored with stunning perfection in how it is playing out throughout the greater body politic.
Unchecked by a psychic vaccine, the disease, like an addiction running rampant, is progressive and is thus getting worse over time. Forbes writes, "The wetikos destroyed Egypt and Babylon and Athens and Rome and Tenochitlan and perhaps now they will destroy the entire earth. But neither the ‘junkie' looking for money for a shot of heroin nor the capitalists destroying Amazonian forests for big profits are able to stop their own destructive behavior."[x] Wetikos can't help themselves. Suffering from a compulsion to destroy, if left to themselves they are unable to stop their suicidal behavior. Having lost their internal freedom, they are singularly lacking in options.
Having mesmerized themselves, wetikos have, ultimately speaking, become their own victim. Running like a tape that loops back into itself in endless iterations, their self-hypnosis is dedicated to forever forestalling the prospect of the gnawing anxiety of confronting and dealing with the insanity of what they are doing, both to themselves and others. Like the subject of a master hypnotist, their attention becomes attenuated, narrowed and constricted to their limited and particularized viewpoint. After a certain point, wetiko disease becomes so completely internalized that the person so afflicted, as if compulsively repeating their initial moment of trauma, moment by moment recreates their own psychosis without any external stimulus at all. Having unconsciously identified with the aggressor, they become their own perpetrator, police state and control system. Their pathological inner state in-forms their actions in the outer world, which becomes the channel through which their ravaged inner landscape plays itself out and takes on embodied form.
An inner sickness of the soul, wetiko is unique in that it is a boundary-dissolving disease, collapsing the distinction between the inner and the outer, between dreaming and waking. Wetiko nonlocally materializes itself in, as and through the medium of the outside world, which becomes the canvas for its full-bodied revelation of itself. Wetiko nonlocally in-forms, gives shape to and configures events in the world so as to synchronistically express itself, which is to say that just like in a dream, events in the outer world are symbolically expressing an inner, psychological situation (please see my article The World is Psyche). Wetiko can only be ‘seen' when we snap out of our literal way of interpreting our experience and start seeing with symbolically informed awareness. At the same time, wetiko itself can become the impetus for expanding our consciousness and recognizing that the world itself is a continually unfolding, living revelation of itself that is speaking symbolically, which is the language of dreams.
A Cult(ure) of Madness
People have to be cured of their spiritual sickness before they can build a just society. Forbes says, "to adjust to a wetiko society is to become insane."[xi] It is no great accomplishment to adapt to and be considered sane in and by an insane society. The culture of wetiko promotes the systematic destruction of the human heart, which when fully internalized, alienates us from everything in ourselves, save what reproduces the conditions of the system. Adopting the values of our oppressors, however, insures the continuation of our own dehumanization. The system is set up to be a set up such that, to quote Forbes, "a person oppressed by wetikos adopts the values of wetikos as he ‘rises' in position. The wetikos taught him well, but they taught him falsely."[xii] Big Wetikos learn to exploit every situation to their advantage and sacrifice in themselves everything that doesn't advance this motive. To become a "Big Wetiko," Forbes comments, "requires a lot of back-scratching, back-stabbing, drinking, and maneuvering. It also requires the corruption of other young men (and women), who in turn, will become hooked into the system."[xiii] Speaking about how "very, very easy" it is to become a wetiko in our society because of all of the perks and incentives, Forbes writes, "they do get promoted, they do get better salaries, and they do get testimonials (and a gold watch) when they ‘retire.'"[xiv] Because of all of the ‘benefits' of the role, there is not merely a passive disinterest, but rather, an active resistance and counter-incentive for wetikos to self-reflect, a contraction which simply feeds their compulsion and further reinforces their addiction to power.
Forbes writes, "the wetiko disease has so corrupted European thinking (at least of the ruling groups) that wetiko behavior and wetiko goals are regarded as the very fabric of European evolution...if we continue to allow the wetikos to define reality in their insane way we will never be able to resist or curtail the disease."[xv] It should be noted that indigenous people are not free from the wetiko virus as well. There are indigenous cultures that are governed by wisdom, but there are also indigenous cultures that are ruled by wetiko. We should be careful to not romanticize and idealize indigenous, aboriginal cultures as opposed to European cultures, which would be too simplistic, and dualistic of a view.[xvi] When wetikos possess power in any culture, or more accurately, when power possesses them, they are in a position to influence, define and create a certain level of reality that, though based on falsehood, operates as if it is real. In words that would be just as relevant with regards to the current Obama administration, author Ron Suskind quotes a neocon in the previous Bush administration as saying, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality─judiciously, as you will─we'll act again, creating other new realities."[xvii] If left in positions of power, wetikos will ultimately become and dream up into full-bodied materialization their own, as well as our, worst nightmare into reality.
Evil can take many forms - political, social, economic, militaristic, and psychological. Forbes says, "predation can lurk under many guises, such as ‘patriotism,' profit-seeking, ‘protecting our way of life,' and ‘investment returns.'"[xviii] Many ‘isms' themselves are simply thought-forms used by wetikos themselves to justify their rape, criminality, murder and evil. Wrapping their cause in the mantle of goodness allows Big Wetikos, who are in fact full-fledged predators, to sleep at night, seemingly guilt-free. In a form of self-entrancement, they have so thoroughly convinced themselves of the rightness of their actions that they rarely, if ever, have any ethical qualms about what they are doing. Where the evil of wetiko is endemic, there tends to be an ethical, developmental arrest in both individuals and throughout the society.
Full-blown, big Wetikos are morally insane, and abuse power simply because they can. This is why, to quote Forbes, "the development of rigid patriarchy follows the wetiko disease."[xix] In other words, cultures dominated by wetikos tend to organize themselves around the calcified, archetypal mythic pattern of the ‘negative patriarchy,' which, simply put, is based on domination over others (read about The Archetype of the Negative Father). To quote Forbes, "'Might makes right' is the wetiko belief, but it is often accompanied by self-serving doctrines of ‘divine will,' ‘manifest destiny,' ‘providence,' ‘the march of civilization,' ‘doing God's work,' ‘stopping communism,' or comparable slogans."[xx] These slogans are the mantras, or words of power, by which the collective spell of group-think is disseminated throughout the collective psyche. Any rationalization will do, as long as it serves as cover for the wetikos to continue to exploit others, centralize power and feed their sickness.
Interconnected Roles in a Nonlocal Field
Speaking about how our species has never been able to get a handle on what is at the root of our self-destructive behavior, Forbes comments, "Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed because they have never diagnosed the wetiko as an insane person whose disease is extremely contagious. Nor have they, generally, understood that the [seemingly] non-wetikos, whether flunkies, pimps, or the most oppressed, are often ‘secret carriers' of the disease."[xxi] The wetiko virus can only thrive in the global human family if, just like in any family system, each member enables and is complicit in the abuse. Being a field phenomenon, wetiko incarnates by em-bodying itself through various interconnected, form-fitted roles arising in the field, all at different stages of the disease. Each of these figures are various re-presentations of the multiple faces of the underlying pathogen. Wetikos can be hard to recognize because the people who are its instruments seem like normal, well-intentioned, innocent looking people, and yet, it is these seemingly regular people, just like you and me, who often become the ‘secret carriers' of the disease. To the extent that we are not aware of this insidious, nonlocal, psychological disease, both in others and potentially within ourselves, we can very easily become its ‘secret carriers,' its unwitting accomplices.
Forbes writes, "But this we must emphasize over and over, that the whole wetiko disease is not limited to the brutes and goons who handle the gun, the lash or the instruments of torture. The nice people in the offices, the typists, the lab technicians, the clerks and, of course, the owners, directors, stockholders, senators, generals and presidents who use, profit from, and feed on human exploitation are also cannibals to one degree or another."[xxii] The Big wetikos could never get away with the murder that they do without ‘the nice people in the offices' enabling them. These ‘typists, lab technicians and clerks' are just ‘following orders,' and yet, are complicit in the insidious evil that is being spread throughout the world with their co-operation. Modern, corporate, technological systems are set up to distance us, both physically and psychologically, between what we do for a living and the ultimate, potentially destructive consequences of our actions. Even ‘the nice people in the offices,' people just like you and me, to the extent that we are not aware of how we are feeding, and being fed by, the wetiko virus, are tiny cogs in the great predatory machine, complicit in the impersonal evil of the faceless system and in the destruction it wreaks upon all life.
Wetiko is an entity that becomes co-dependently entangled and inextricably coupled with others in its environment in order to survive. It serves us to differentiate the interdependent roles in the field which ‘conspire' (which literally means to ‘breathe together') to create and sustain the wetiko disease. All of these figures collaboratively enable the bug of wetiko to play out its reign of (t)error. Forbes writes, "The most guilty of the wetikos are, I would think, those who mastermind, justify and profit most from such systems. Such persons are the ‘master predators."[xxiii] The full-blown, Big Wetikos, the ‘master predators' in positions of power, can be suave and sophisticated, with refined tastes, highly intelligent, educated people, with offices in places like New York and London, and can be highly respected by society, all of which makes their malady hard to recognize. Others are cast in the role of ‘protecting' the abuser─the master predator's handlers, minions, sycophants, enablers, supporters and followers─while others are complicit by simply remaining silent and looking away. Some pick up the role of feeling powerless, thinking ‘what's the use?' Some politically active sorts can pick up the role of attempting to fight the disease in a way that simply strengthens the diabolical polarization in the field, which just feeds and is the signature of the disease itself (please see my article Spiritually-Informed Political Activism). Whatever the role, it's all just multiple guises wearing the same underlying uni-form.
All wetikos, including the Big Wetikos, are themselves just pawns in the hand of the underlying archetype itself, however. It is like when Toto, in The Wizard of Oz pulls away the curtain, but instead of their being a man behind the curtain, there is no one there but the formless archetype itself. If the master predators are removed from their positions of power, but if the underlying system which spawned them remains in place and not dealt with, over time others will simply pick up their ‘vacant,' and vacuous roles. These power-mad roles exist as potentials in the field waiting to be filled, fleshed-out and incarnated, as these roles are an expression of the full spectrum of possibilities implicit in the underlying field, reflecting, as it always does, this same range of potentials within ourselves. The nonlocal field is seamless, and the roles do not, and cannot, exist in isolation, but rather, in co-relation to each other, as well to the whole field itself, in an interconnected web of infinite relatedness.
It is important to see the whole system, rather than only fixating on, and demonizing, one of its parts as separate from the whole (please see my article Danger: Fasci-Nation with Bush). Focusing on an individual person is analogous to contemplating one finger on a glove without recognizing the underlying hand in-forming and animating all of the interconnected, and fundamentally inseparable fingers in the glove. To concretize a localized manifestation of the pathology in an individual would be analogous to only seeing the circle that a three-dimensional sphere makes as it passes through a two-dimensional plane. The circle is a lower-level reflection of a higher-dimensional entity (the ‘sphere' of wetiko's influence), just as the person taken over by the wetiko bug is a surface expression of a deeper, more fundamental pathogen that pervades the underlying field. To use another example, the person momentarily afflicted with wetiko is like a shadow on a wall─cast from a globe hanging from the ceiling─relative to the globe. The shadow on the wall is a re-presentation and projection of the higher, three-dimensional entity of the globe into a lower dimension of space. Studying the shadow within its proper context relative to the globe is the way of understanding the object casting the shadow (the higher-dimensional entity of the ‘global' wetiko psychosis). In these examples, the point is not to focus on the personal manifestation of the disease, but rather, to see the deeper, nonlocal field that is giving shape to, in-forming and pervading the particular, localized outbreaks of the disease in the greater body politic. Seeing, in Jung's words, "the numinous character of the reality in the background,"[xxiv] IS the very expansion of consciousness which becomes the doorway connecting us to a deeper part of ourselves, as well as to each other. Recognizing the underlying field paves the road to healing.
In the culture of wetiko, people at various stages of the disease pick up seemingly different and separate roles from each other, but when the deeper, underlying pattern comes into focus and is seen, it can be recognized that all of these inter-locking roles fit together like a higher-order mosaic. This process couldn't play itself out without all of its parts reciprocally co-arising relative to each other. The whole field, with all its myriad, fluid and unfixed roles─each of us at various moments in time picking up the different roles─are mutually conditioning each other in a seamless, interpenetrating net of relations, as if appendages of a higher-dimensional organism that is revealing itself through our nonlinearly orchestrated and coordinated interplay.
Stepping Out of Separation
The in-spirit-ed organism of wetiko is a field phenomenon, and can only be seen when we snap out of the illusion of imagining we exist as a separate self and recognize and become conversant with the deeper, underlying and more fundamental nonlocal field in which we are all indissolubly inter-connected. "The field," as Einstein once succinctly put it, "is the only reality." In modern physics, the field─the invisible organizing principle of the universe─has become more fundamental than matter. Instead of relating to any part of the field as an isolated entity, it's important to contemplate the entire interdependent field as the ‘medium' through which wetiko manifests itself. The native American concept of wetiko disease is a social phenomenon, a relational dynamic of the field itself that can not be understood, and does not exist in isolated individuals apart from the social milieu in which they move, interact and have their being. Seeing the nonlocal field drives a stake into the very heart of the prevailing scientific, materialistic perspective, which ironically enough, still attempts to see the world as ‘machine.'
Seeing the field, and stepping out of the perspective that we are separate from each other converges into being the same experience. Seeing ‘through' the illusion of the separate self, rather than seeing ‘through the separate self' as a lens through which we view the world, entails recognizing that even the full-blown wetikos, the master predators themselves, are not separate from us. The Big Wetikos are fully em-body-ing, in person-ified form, a pathological tendency that exists in potential within ourselves. It is as if they are the externalized materialization of this potential within ourselves that we've projected outside of ourselves and literally collectively dreamed up into manifestation. Recognizing this generates compassion for this part of ourselves. It is only through compassion that we immunize ourselves from the virus.
Paradoxically, although wetiko disease doesn't exist in isolated individuals separate from the field, someone taken over by the wetiko bug, though merely its instrument and not, in the ultimate sense ‘who they are,' literally can be said to be ‘the incarnation' of the disease in human form. The person so possessed (think of, like I did in my book, George W. Bush, as one example) is the ‘revelation' of the pathology in living flesh and blood. The person so stricken is showing us, in fully embodied, personified form, the underlying infrastructure and dynamics of this trans-human disease. When someone is so possessed, they are the local crystallization ‘in form' of a nonlocal, and ultimately ‘formless' phenomenon. The person taken over has been dreamed up into materialization to be a living, breathing ‘symbol' of the nonlocal disease, an embodied reflection of an archetypal, and yet pathological, part of ourselves. Recognizing this is to realize that this person doesn't exist as an isolated, discrete entity, a skin-encapsulated ego, separate from the surrounding field. Seeing the person so possessed in their true context─as literally inseparable from all of us─becomes a portal through which we can refine our inner vision and see through the transparent illusion of the separate self. Seeing that the person so taken over is not separate from the field is a reflection of our own condition. Seeing the other's transpersonal nature enables us to not person-alize ourselves.
Holographically enfolded within the psyche of every human being, the wetiko virus pervades and underlies the entire field of consciousness, and can therefore potentially manifest through any one of us at any moment if we are not mindful. The wetiko bug is something that we all have unconsciously acted out in our lives at one time or another. We've all had our wetiko ‘moments,' that's just the way it works. Recognizing this cultivates humility, which helps to psychically immunize us from the pernicious effects of the disease. This realization ultimately collapses the boundary between those who have the disease and those who don't. Wetiko's nonlocal nature ultimately makes the question of who has the disease irrelevant, as we all have it to varying degrees, or rather, it has us. We are all in the soup together. This realization engenders both compassion and forgiveness. This does not mean, however, that the Big Wetikos are not ethically, spiritually, and legally responsible for the unimaginable carnage they have caused.
The primary line of distorted code through which the wetiko virus deviates our mind is the presumption of the separate self. The un-reflected upon acceptance of the axiom of separation is what makes all of the other delusions that make up wetiko possible. Seeing the diabolical nature of the disease entails realizing that it is the bifurcating ‘us' vs. ‘them' mind of duality which splits the world into opposites, that is itself the generative root of the wetiko germ.
This series of articles began by invoking the spirit of wetiko through our shared act of inquiry. As we shed light on wetiko, we become sensitive to its movements within ourselves. At this point the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, for there is no place for the spirit to hide. We are then in a position of having access in our lucid, self-reflective awareness to a sacred vessel which can nourish the very spirit which is to be venerated. To come full circle and successfully accomplish the original, healing intent of our magic ritual, the hidden, powerful spirit of wetiko needs to be ‘contained;' this is the archetypal point behind the sacred alchemical idea of a mystical vessel which transforms the entire universe.
As people who are becoming wise to the wiles of wetiko help each other to step out of the illusion of separation together, a psychic alchemical container that is greater than the sum of its parts gets created. This holy grail-like vessel of collectively shared lucidity is reciprocally conjured up through our shared realization. This higher-dimensional mystic container is forever stimulating, stabilizing and strengthening itself in a positive feedback loop which literally gives birth to and inspires the creative spirit. This jewel-like higher-dimensional entity composed of consciousness itself is a lucidity generator that is tapping into the zero point energy of the mind, a form of higher-mind technology that attracts the rest of the universe into itself. When we recognize that we exist not apart from, but relative to each other, our connection with each other is ‘hermetically sealed' with the stamp of Hermes. We then relate with each other in such a way so that none of our projections unconsciously leak out into the world, for the simple reason that the world is recognized to be our projection. This is the very realization which bonds us together and through which we are united with the world, each other and ourselves. Becoming ‘tight' in this way, we are ‘blessed' by the master magician ‘Hermes/Mercury,' the God of the sacred art of alchemy (please see my article The Sacred Art of Alchemy). ‘The Force' is then with us. Empowered, we are able to trans-fix, trans-mute, trans-form and liberate the vampiric spirit of wetiko, while simultaneously snapping out of our en-trance-ment of ourselves.
Emptiness
Supposedly the greatest ruse of the devil is to convince us that he doesn't exist. Or on the other hand, is the suggestion that the devil does exist that is implicit in the previous statement a deception of the devil (who is, after all, considered a liar), and as such, is a disguised form in which the devil has insinuated himself into not only our conversation, but into the world at large? It is important to shed light on this murky area: An evil, archetypal figure like the devil doesn't exist in the way we have been imagining he does if we have been imagining that he exists objectively, as something apart from ourselves.
The devilish wetiko virus, like a vampire, if left to its own devices, would die, as it is only able to exist if there is someone outside of itself on whom it can feast. A vampire has no intrinsic, independent, substantial existence in its own right, it only exists relative to us. The pathogenic, vampiric, mind-parasite called wetiko is nothing in itself, yet, it has a ‘reality' such that it can destroy our species. The fact that something that only exists as a function of ourselves can destroy us is pointing at the incredibly vast invisible power that is inherent within our being. Ultimately speaking, in wetiko disease we are not being infected by a physical, objectively existing virus outside of ourselves, but rather, the origin of the wetiko psychosis is within us. The fact that a vampire is not reflected by a mirror can also mean that what we need to see is that there's nothing, no-thing to see, other than ourselves. The fact that wetiko is the expression of something inside of us means that the cure for wetiko is within us as well.
In the Gnostic Dialogue of the Savior, it says, "Whoever does not know the root of evil is no stranger to it."[xxv] Wetiko forces upon us the evolutionary responsibility to come to terms with the evil within our own hearts. To the extent we have not rooted out the wetiko bug within ourselves we are complicit in the co-creation of the evil playing out in the world. The part of us that is colluding in the creation of a collective psychosis like wetiko is the part of us that is mad, for why else would we be doing this? To the extent we're not fully awake, we each have a part of us that's mad, which gets acted out in our life. How can we not have a part of us that's mad, living in a world gone mad, a world that is not separate from, but rather, a reflection of ourselves? It is only by confronting what is insane and inhuman in ourselves that we become truly human. It is important to face how we have been deviated by wetiko, for if we cannot see how we have been set off course, we can't orient ourselves to find our true path in life. Seeing how we've been led astray is a form of illumination. To see how wetiko operates with our co-operation is to gain critical insight into the elusive workings of our own mind.
We capture within ourselves and truly ‘see' the nature of wetiko disease─‘Vampire/Cannibal Psychosis'─when we realize that, just like a dream, its full-bodied manifestation in the world theater is a reflection of a process going on deep within our very soul. We are all dreaming up the wetiko epidemic together. Seeing through our experience in this way gives world events a certain transparency, as well as rendering us transparent to ourselves. Seeing through ourselves makes it unlikely that we would fall prey to and be seduced by any wetiko inspired impulses that pulsate through us. This intimacy with ourselves enables us to step into and embody a role in the field of being like a ‘psychic T-cell' that helps to heal the malignant cancer in the collective body politic of the world soul. Seeing the dreamlike nature of the world and ourselves helps to generate a culture of compassion, which is a ‘wetiko dissolver' par excellence. Compassion can, however, when necessary, set a fierce boundary, displaying itself in the most fearsome of ways.
The Solution
Just as a vampire can't stand the light of day, a bug like wetiko can't stand to be seen. Flooding light on wetiko's machinations takes away its seeming autonomy and alleged power over us, such that it can no longer compel us to act it out unconsciously. Paradoxically, ‘seeing' this vampiric parasite is to relate to it as other than ourselves, while at the same time recognizing it within ourselves. Though the vampire is a figure within us, it is not us. In differentiating ourselves from the vampire, we recognize the difference between ourselves and it. Seeing the vampire, we don't identify with our subjective experience of the vampire within. This is to say that in seeing the vampire, we free ourselves from our unconscious identification with and possession by it, and step back into ourselves.
Forbes laments, "One of the tragic characteristics of the wetiko psychosis is that it spreads partly by resistance to it. That is, those who try to fight wetikos sometimes, in order to survive, adopt wetiko values. Thus, when they ‘win,' they lose, or at least, the people lose."[xxvi] When we see people who are taken over by wetiko and we feel superior to them, our feeling of superiority is itself a symptom of the disease. If we unconsciously react against wetiko, having judgement, anger, hatred, etc., we are then acting out, however well-intentioned, the same process of shadow projection that underlies the wetiko disease in the first place - which is to dissociate from, project outside of ourselves, and react to our own evil. We are then unconsciously reacting to the unconscious part of ourselves which the wetikos embody. This re-action is an unconscious ritualistic invocation and re-enactment of the initial impulse within ourselves of turning away from and contracting against a part of ourselves. This is the timeless, primal act which called forth and spawned the spirit of wetiko in the first place. To the extent we are unaware of what we are doing, we, as ‘reps' for wetiko, are compulsively re-enacting our trauma, participating in re-creating the wetiko virus in this very moment. We are then playing out our unresolved internal affairs in the outside world by, in and through our reaction, unwittingly becoming a vector that is carrying the wetiko bug out into the world (please see my article, Triggered by Evil). Instead of unconsciously reacting and projecting the shadow outside of ourselves, when we consciously relate to and take responsibility for the evil within ourselves, we are energetically withdrawing and dis-investing from our complicity in the continual re-animation of evil in the world.
The way to engage with wetiko disease is to (at)tend to what it triggers within us (please see The Lion's Gaze). Just as the way to cut off the head of the mythic Medusa is to look at her reflections in the mirror-shield, the way to stalk the vampiric entity of wetiko is to track and sense its fingerprints within ourselves by looking into the mirror of our own mind. The evil of wetiko can be too much to stare at directly, however, just as looking at the snake-haired Medusa face on turns us to stone. Vampires are ‘petrifying,' which means both ‘terrifying,' as well as ‘paralyzing' and ‘turning to stone.' They petrify their victim, just like a mouse becomes immobilized by the transfixing gaze of the serpent. Vampires are not a creature to be messed with by the frivolous. Mapping wetikos nonlocal footprints, both out in the world and in the co-responding places within ourselves that are being touched, is to discover the nonlocal multi-dimensional ‘anatomy' of wetiko. It is impossible to encounter wetiko and not be activated, as wetiko's nonlocal force-field is activating by its very nature, in that it is co-extensive and interwoven with our own. Our unconscious, knee-jerk reactivity is the primary way that the wetiko psychosis regenerates and propagates itself in the field. Like a pathogen invading a body, this virulent psychic bug strikes and hooks us through our weakest point in the unconscious, the tenderest and most vulnerable spot within ourselves through which we are most likely to re-act.
Wetiko is like a psychic nautilus machine that is continually ‘working' us. Humanity's highest virtues are called upon when we are confronted by evil. Encoded within the evil of the wetiko virus is its own psychic vaccine, a potential inoculation against our own ignorance and laziness, which if not overcome, will overcome us. The wetiko bug's existence requires us to strengthen our muscle of discernment. The virus demands that we cultivate impeccability within ourselves, or we don't stand a chance. Wetiko literally demands that we step into our power and become resistant to its oppression such that we discover how to step out of bondage and become free, or else! Instead of a typical virus mutating so as to become resistant to our attempts at healing it, the wetiko virus forces us to mutate relative to it. It is as though the evil of wetiko is itself the instrument of a higher intelligence. This higher power, through the revelation and understanding of wetiko, connects us to a sacred, creative source within ourselves. The wetiko bug is the greatest catalytic force of evolution ever known─as well as not known─to humanity.
Naming is a magical act, typically done when something new is born into our life. Like Adam naming the animals in the Garden, we have to name something before it can be formally ‘discovered' and brought into our shared collective cartography. It was only by naming these creatures that Adam could differentiate and distinguish himself from them and realize who he was. Finding the name for this higher-dimensional, malignant virus of the psyche helps us to more easily recognize it and get a ‘handle' on it, which is the first step in taking away its destructive power over us. Seeing wetiko and calling it by its rightful name initiates a process that resigns it to the ranks of the unemployed, leading to the wetikonomy that it animates being put out of business. The energy that was being invested and bound up in feeding the wetiko pathogen then returns to nourish and be nourished by the creative wholeness of the psyche. Naming something creates ‘currency' in the economy of the psyche. To name something is to evoke it, to call it out, which is an expression of an intrinsic, magical power that we all have within us. This is related to the Australian Aboriginal belief that we ‘sing' the world into being - that we are creating as we name things.
Understanding the meaning of the name ‘wetiko' is a form of exorcism. Jung says, "For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found." It will serve us greatly as we introduce the word ‘wetiko' into our planetary dialogue, making wetiko part of our day to day vocabulary. In ‘spell'-ing a word, we are casting a spell, calling forth a spirit, and creating a universe, all while discovering our ability to name. In divining the true name we are de-‘literal'-izing language, as we create language to ‘symbol'-ize our experience. The word wetiko, being a sacred name, is like a mantra, a word of power, in that the speaking of it empowers the idea. Let us therefore ‘spread the word.' We are only able to name ‘wetiko' when we see, and register, its nonlocal nature, both throughout the world and within ourselves. This can only be done when we ourselves become acquainted with our nonlocal nature, to the part of us that is woven into both the evil of wetiko and the wholeness of the divine. Like that great maxim of medicine states, "Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand." The famous Greek philosopher Socrates reminds us that if we want to understand something, we first must name it. Naming something means to find our experience of its nature within ourselves. Indigenous, wisdom-based cultures understand the exorcistic power of finding the right name of a ‘demon,' which is precisely what they would understand the wetiko pathogen to be (please see The Daemonic).
Its simultaneously diabolical and mercurial energy makes the Native American idea of wetiko disease incredibly hard to describe in words. Whether we refer to this trickster-like entity as a virus, parasite, tapeworm, vampire or a demon, or call it wetiko disease or malignant egophrenia doesn't matter. These various names are interchangeable, as they are naming one and the same thing. There is no one definitive model for this disease, however, as each model has both its utility as well as its limits. When all of these models are combined and looked at together, it gives us a greater resolution and capacity to see what no one particular model by itself can reveal.
The Idea of a Cure
Finding the right name(s) invokes the sacred, creative and transformative power of the ‘Word.' Wetiko is the word made flesh in its most depraved form. In finding the name, however, we are accessing the divinely sponsored power of the word to create an idea, which is a living psychic organism of real value and merit, with an intrinsic power all its own. Ideas are ways of regarding things, the means by which we see, as well as perspectives through which we view the world. The word ‘idea,' etymologically speaking, has to do with both ‘to see' as well as ‘to know.' In other words, a novel idea opens our inner eye and helps us know by giving us in-sight into something previously unconscious. What Plato called the "eyes of the soul," ideas are the modes of consciousness through which we envision and create our life. In finding the right name(s), we are impregnating and incubating a novel idea. We can then spread and give birth to our meme by sharing it, as we create our own mind anti-virus, a living antigen to the heretofore unrecognized mind-virus of wetiko. As Communist China's Chairman Mao openly confessed, the one thing he was most afraid of was a new idea. For nothing is more powerful than a magical idea whose time has come.
Let's spread the word.
May these words be of benefit for all beings.
[i] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and Other Cannibals, p. ix.
[ii] Ibid., p. 24.
[iii] Ibid., p. 43.
[iv] Ibid., p. 60.
[v] People taken over and possessed by the wetiko pathogen─‘full-blown wetikos'─might be petty tyrants at home or at work but might not wield real power in the world. What Forbes refers to as "Big Wetikos," however, are full-blown wetikos who have climbed the wetiko ladder, jumped through the wetiko hoops, and have risen in the ranks. ‘Big wetikos' (be they the super wealthy, CEO's of corporations, bank presidents, or leaders of nation-states) find themselves occupying positions of power where they can influence and control events in our world so as to game the system.
[vi] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 24.
[vii] Ibid., p. 188.
[viii] Ibid., p. 164.
[ix] Ibid., p. xvi.
[x] Ibid., p. 164.
[xi] Ibid, p. 173.
[xii] Ibid, p. 60.
[xiii] Ibid., p. 120.
[xiv] Ibid., p. 60.
[xv] Ibid., p. 38.
[xvi] I want to thank Jonathan Zap for this clarification in a comment that he wrote after Part 1 of this series. To quote Zap, "There's an anthropologist with a lecture on ted.com who provides considerable evidence that the per capita war death rate of an indigenous rainforest tribe is much higher than that of Western Civilization (even during the 20th Century). Western Civilization because of its far greater novelty magnifies the outer edge of light and the outer edge of dark," (please see zaporacle.com for more of his writings)
[xvii] From the article by Ron Suskind titled "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," in the New York Times magazine of October 17, 2004.
[xviii] Forbes, Jack, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 150.
[xix] Ibid., p. 42.
[xx] Ibid., p. 48.
[xxi] Ibid., p. 171.
[xxii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiii] Ibid., p. 68.
[xxiv] Jung, CW 10, Civlization in Transition, par. 886.
[xxv] (II, 5, 134.5-20)
[xxvi] Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. 61.
IT’S ALL IN THE PSYCHE
Paul Levy
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/its-all-in-the-psyche/
The underlying source of what is playing out on the world stage is the unconscious psyche of humanity. However, because of its obviousness, this fact goes unnoticed by most people. Jung said, “The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the “sin qua non” [indispensable ingredient] of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that western man, with but very few- and ever fewer- exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge [the psyche] has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence.”
We have overlooked the fact that we cannot have an experience of the seemingly external world without the presence of the psyche. The psyche is the organ through which we experience the seemingly outer world. This is to say that on a deeper level the inner psyche and the outer world are inseparably united parts of a greater, more all-encompassing whole. Modern humanity has fallen asleep to the primary importance of our own psyche in creating our experience, our world and ourselves.
Recognizing the psychic nature of our experience is analogous to recognizing the dream-like nature of our universe. Unaware of the role that our psyche plays in the co-creation of our universe, we of necessity “dream up” or create our world in such a way so as to remind us of the profound importance of the psyche. This is analogous to how, in a night dream, we “dream up” our unconscious into manifestation in, as and through the dream so as to reveal itself to us and help us to awaken. And just like in a night dream, if we don’t get the “message” that our dream-like universe is revealing to us, we can expect to have endless re-iterations of the same waking nightmare, as if we are having a recurring dream.
Interestingly, in the above quote, Jung uses the word “eclipsed,” which means “to hide.” Etymologically, the word ec-lipse is the antonym of the word “apoca-lypse,” whose inner meaning is “the unveiling of what has been hidden.” In these apocalyptic times we are living in, the light is being “un-eclipsed,” thereby penetrating our universe to the core so as to illumine the hidden darkness for all to see. Something that has remained “hidden” is being revealed to us. The veil is being lifted, and the integral role the human psyche plays in co-creating our world is being shown to us in bold relief through events unfolding in our world. We are simply asked to recognize what is being revealed.
When we disassociate from a part of ourselves, we of necessity project it outside of ourselves and unconsciously “dream up,” and create the universe to reflect back to us our underlying psychic disassociation. If we are disassociated from the psyche, the psyche is disassociated from itself, which of necessity will then play itself out in the sandbox of the outer world. The seemingly outer world is not only not separate from the psyche that is experiencing it, but is in fact an unmediated reflection of the very psyche itself. The indisputable fact that the outer world and the inner psyche are never found apart from one another is to say that they are inseparably united in a “Oneness” that is unable to be divided. The obviousness of this realization is what makes it so seemingly difficult to see.
We tend to not see the primary role the psyche plays in our world because it is the psyche through which we see the world in the first place. The psyche is simultaneously the object and subject of its own investigation. In observing the psyche, the observer is truly the observed.
Due to our unawareness of the key role that the psyche plays in our world, we experience this disassociation from our own psyche through the medium of the seemingly outer world. When we are inwardly disassociated, the external world gets dreamed up to continually embody and reinforce our disassociation. The external world is the canvas upon which the psyche gives shape and form to, as well as cultivates, its “inner” disassociation. The seemingly outer world gets “dreamed up” into materialization to reflect and play out, in full-bodied form, the inner state of disassociation within ourselves. And yet, due to our inner disassociation, we become convinced, or more accurately, entranced, that the problem exists outside of ourselves.
To quote Jung, “Once the symptoms are really outside in some form of sociopolitical insanity, it is impossible to convince anybody that the conflict is in the psyche of every individual, since he is now quite sure where his enemy is. Then, the conflict which remains an intrapsychic [within the psyche] phenomenon in the mind of the discerning person, takes place on the plane of projection in the form of political tension and murderous violence. To produce such consequences the individual must have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the insignificance and worthlessness of his psyche and of psychology in general.”
The role that the psyche plays in world events is oftentimes looked down upon, ridiculed, marginalized and ignored. Jung said, “…very little attention is paid to the essence of man, which is his psyche…. Man’s greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, if not actually mistrusted and despised. ‘It’s only psychological’ too often means: It is nothing.” This is analogous to how in alchemy, the “prima materia” the very “raw material” out of which the alchemical “gold” (which is consciousness) is produced, is oftentimes rejected, despised and an object of revulsion. This is also related to how the figure of Christ, the Messiah who is the symbol of the True Self, is oftentimes an object of scorn and contempt.
What is being acted out as history is actually a process that is “intrapsychic,” which is to say it is an experience whose origin lies deep within the psyche of humanity. This “inner” process is both literally and symbolically expressing itself by playing itself out collectively on “the plane of projection” in the outside world. Our collective experience can only continue to unfold in such a murderously violent way if people persist in not realizing that the conflict they are enacting in the world is actually a re-presentation of a process happening deep inside every one of us.
It’s almost unbelievable that the very “root” of what is playing out in the world is itself the very thing that most people are unaware of, refusing to look at and not talking about. Jung said, “It is high time humanity took cognizance of the nature of the psyche, for it is becoming more and more evident that the greatest danger which threatens man comes from his own psyche and hence from that part of the empirical world we know the least about.”
There is an interconnection between our “not” looking at the root of our problem- the role the psyche plays in shaping the outer world, and the destructive manifestation of our world. The inner psyche and the outer world are interdependent reflex-ions of each other, reciprocally co-arising together. The inner and the outer are aspects of a single unified field, an indivisible unitary continuum. The implications of this realization are crystal clear: If we want to create a more grace-filled universe, we simply have to recognize what the universe itself is revealing to us. Events in our world are continually showing us that the origin of our experience, of experience itself for that matter, can only be found within our own psyche.
Jung said, “It is indeed paradoxical that the category of existence, the indispensable sine qua non of all existence, namely the psyche, should be treated as if it were only semi-existent. Psychic existence is the only category of existence of which we have immediate knowledge, since nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image.” The world is never experienced without the psyche. The world manifests within the psyche and the psyche within the world. The two are never found apart, which is to say they are utterly, seamlessly, inseparably and effortlessly one.
The world and the psyche reciprocally co-arise in a self-generating, synchronistic feedback loop. Each creates and is concurrently created by the other. The world and the psyche mutually in-form and give shape to each other, as they are interdependent and mutually condition each other. The world and the psyche completely interpenetrate each other, co-joined in a timeless embrace of Oneness. We don’t have to “do” anything to make this so. We simply have to recognize this already existing state of affairs.
Being disassociated from our own psyche makes us susceptible to looking for answers outside of ourselves, whether from the church, the government, other people, books, or articles talking about how we’re disassociated from our own psyche. Commenting on keeping people in this state of disassociation, Jung said, “One must preach at him from all the pulpits of authority that salvation always comes from outside.” Giving away their power to an outer authority, it is as if people fall under a spell, becoming like sheep, disconnecting from the true source of their power, which is their own psyche.
Jung continues, “He can then be led docilely to the place where of his own natural [unconscious] accord he would rather go anyway: to the land of childhood, where one makes claims exclusively on others, and where, if wrong is done, it is always somebody else who has done it.” We then become caught in the adolescent stage of blaming others, which is to be projecting our own darkness outside of ourselves. In projecting the shadow, we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, always playing the role of the self-righteous, innocent victim.
And yet, when we play the victim and project out our own darkness, we are unwittingly perpetrating the very abuse we wish to avoid. Projecting the shadow is itself a reflection of the inner violence we do to ourselves by not embracing our own darkness. When we disassociate from our own darkness, this inner process explicates itself collectively on the world stage as violence, criminality, war and madness. We are thus all complicit in what is playing out in the world theater.
In this adolescent state of scapegoating others, we are secretly acting out the role of the victimizer who hides behind the guise of being victimized. We are then enacting the very abuse of which we ourselves are victims. Traumatized ourselves and traumatizing to others, we collectively and unwittingly enact our trauma en masse on the world stage, thereby perpetuating the endless cycle of abuse. When groups of people, nations, or an entire planet collectively act out and reciprocally reinforce each others’ trauma, it is called “collective psychosis.” (I talk about this in greater depth in my book “The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis,” available on my website www.awakeninthedream.com).
Ours is an extremely dangerous time. Jung said, “…the future will be decided neither by the threat of wild animals, not by natural catastrophe, nor by the danger of world-wide epidemics, but simply and solely by the psychic changes in man. It needs only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers’ heads to plunge the world into blood, fire, and radioactivity.” We, as a species are quickly approaching an event horizon. The darkness that is manifesting in our world will either continue to generate endless suffering and self-destruction, or precipitate an expansion of consciousness and wake us up.
What is playing out collectively in the global arena is a reflection of a deeper, psycho-spiritual process that has occurred within individuals from time immemorial. To quote Jung, “And so we can draw a parallel: just as in me, a single individual, the darkness calls forth a helpful light, so it does in the psychic life of a people.” The darkness that is manifesting in our world is an expression that light is nearby, just as shadows are themselves expressions of light. Everything depends upon if we are able to draw upon the “helpful light” of consciousness that is called forth by the darkness. If we are able to connect with this emerging light of consciousness and recognize what is being revealed by the darkness, we can creatively mediate, transform, and assimilate these darker, destructive powers of the psyche.
Paradoxically, the cause as well as the healing of our collective psychosis lies within the human psyche. Secretly encoded in the psychic epidemic we have fallen into is its own medicine. Hidden in our collective madness are the keys to its resolution and healing. Our collective madness itself is revealing to us the crucial role our own psyche plays in-forming events in our world.
The part of us that doesn’t see that our experience of ourselves and the world exists in the psyche is itself a manifestation of the psyche. Recognizing this fact occurs within the all-embracing confines of the psyche. Recognizing the profound role of the psyche in creating the madness in our world occurs within the agency of the psyche itself. The psyche, through its non-local effects of shaping our world and ourselves, is inviting us to partake in its, and our own transformation and self-realization.
Whether our collective madness continues to destroy us, or wakes us up to the dream-like, open-ended potential of our current situation, depends upon our recognizing what it is revealing to us. Paradoxically, both the origin and re-solution of what is playing out in the world today lies within our own psyche. All we have to do to see is open our eyes and look. The universe, or should I say the psyche, is asking us to do nothing less.
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at [email protected]; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2010
Paul Levy
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/its-all-in-the-psyche/
The underlying source of what is playing out on the world stage is the unconscious psyche of humanity. However, because of its obviousness, this fact goes unnoticed by most people. Jung said, “The psyche is the greatest of all cosmic wonders and the “sin qua non” [indispensable ingredient] of the world as an object. It is in the highest degree odd that western man, with but very few- and ever fewer- exceptions, apparently pays so little regard to this fact. Swamped by the knowledge of external objects, the subject of all knowledge [the psyche] has been temporarily eclipsed to the point of seeming nonexistence.”
We have overlooked the fact that we cannot have an experience of the seemingly external world without the presence of the psyche. The psyche is the organ through which we experience the seemingly outer world. This is to say that on a deeper level the inner psyche and the outer world are inseparably united parts of a greater, more all-encompassing whole. Modern humanity has fallen asleep to the primary importance of our own psyche in creating our experience, our world and ourselves.
Recognizing the psychic nature of our experience is analogous to recognizing the dream-like nature of our universe. Unaware of the role that our psyche plays in the co-creation of our universe, we of necessity “dream up” or create our world in such a way so as to remind us of the profound importance of the psyche. This is analogous to how, in a night dream, we “dream up” our unconscious into manifestation in, as and through the dream so as to reveal itself to us and help us to awaken. And just like in a night dream, if we don’t get the “message” that our dream-like universe is revealing to us, we can expect to have endless re-iterations of the same waking nightmare, as if we are having a recurring dream.
Interestingly, in the above quote, Jung uses the word “eclipsed,” which means “to hide.” Etymologically, the word ec-lipse is the antonym of the word “apoca-lypse,” whose inner meaning is “the unveiling of what has been hidden.” In these apocalyptic times we are living in, the light is being “un-eclipsed,” thereby penetrating our universe to the core so as to illumine the hidden darkness for all to see. Something that has remained “hidden” is being revealed to us. The veil is being lifted, and the integral role the human psyche plays in co-creating our world is being shown to us in bold relief through events unfolding in our world. We are simply asked to recognize what is being revealed.
When we disassociate from a part of ourselves, we of necessity project it outside of ourselves and unconsciously “dream up,” and create the universe to reflect back to us our underlying psychic disassociation. If we are disassociated from the psyche, the psyche is disassociated from itself, which of necessity will then play itself out in the sandbox of the outer world. The seemingly outer world is not only not separate from the psyche that is experiencing it, but is in fact an unmediated reflection of the very psyche itself. The indisputable fact that the outer world and the inner psyche are never found apart from one another is to say that they are inseparably united in a “Oneness” that is unable to be divided. The obviousness of this realization is what makes it so seemingly difficult to see.
We tend to not see the primary role the psyche plays in our world because it is the psyche through which we see the world in the first place. The psyche is simultaneously the object and subject of its own investigation. In observing the psyche, the observer is truly the observed.
Due to our unawareness of the key role that the psyche plays in our world, we experience this disassociation from our own psyche through the medium of the seemingly outer world. When we are inwardly disassociated, the external world gets dreamed up to continually embody and reinforce our disassociation. The external world is the canvas upon which the psyche gives shape and form to, as well as cultivates, its “inner” disassociation. The seemingly outer world gets “dreamed up” into materialization to reflect and play out, in full-bodied form, the inner state of disassociation within ourselves. And yet, due to our inner disassociation, we become convinced, or more accurately, entranced, that the problem exists outside of ourselves.
To quote Jung, “Once the symptoms are really outside in some form of sociopolitical insanity, it is impossible to convince anybody that the conflict is in the psyche of every individual, since he is now quite sure where his enemy is. Then, the conflict which remains an intrapsychic [within the psyche] phenomenon in the mind of the discerning person, takes place on the plane of projection in the form of political tension and murderous violence. To produce such consequences the individual must have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the insignificance and worthlessness of his psyche and of psychology in general.”
The role that the psyche plays in world events is oftentimes looked down upon, ridiculed, marginalized and ignored. Jung said, “…very little attention is paid to the essence of man, which is his psyche…. Man’s greatest instrument, his psyche, is little thought of, if not actually mistrusted and despised. ‘It’s only psychological’ too often means: It is nothing.” This is analogous to how in alchemy, the “prima materia” the very “raw material” out of which the alchemical “gold” (which is consciousness) is produced, is oftentimes rejected, despised and an object of revulsion. This is also related to how the figure of Christ, the Messiah who is the symbol of the True Self, is oftentimes an object of scorn and contempt.
What is being acted out as history is actually a process that is “intrapsychic,” which is to say it is an experience whose origin lies deep within the psyche of humanity. This “inner” process is both literally and symbolically expressing itself by playing itself out collectively on “the plane of projection” in the outside world. Our collective experience can only continue to unfold in such a murderously violent way if people persist in not realizing that the conflict they are enacting in the world is actually a re-presentation of a process happening deep inside every one of us.
It’s almost unbelievable that the very “root” of what is playing out in the world is itself the very thing that most people are unaware of, refusing to look at and not talking about. Jung said, “It is high time humanity took cognizance of the nature of the psyche, for it is becoming more and more evident that the greatest danger which threatens man comes from his own psyche and hence from that part of the empirical world we know the least about.”
There is an interconnection between our “not” looking at the root of our problem- the role the psyche plays in shaping the outer world, and the destructive manifestation of our world. The inner psyche and the outer world are interdependent reflex-ions of each other, reciprocally co-arising together. The inner and the outer are aspects of a single unified field, an indivisible unitary continuum. The implications of this realization are crystal clear: If we want to create a more grace-filled universe, we simply have to recognize what the universe itself is revealing to us. Events in our world are continually showing us that the origin of our experience, of experience itself for that matter, can only be found within our own psyche.
Jung said, “It is indeed paradoxical that the category of existence, the indispensable sine qua non of all existence, namely the psyche, should be treated as if it were only semi-existent. Psychic existence is the only category of existence of which we have immediate knowledge, since nothing can be known unless it first appears as a psychic image.” The world is never experienced without the psyche. The world manifests within the psyche and the psyche within the world. The two are never found apart, which is to say they are utterly, seamlessly, inseparably and effortlessly one.
The world and the psyche reciprocally co-arise in a self-generating, synchronistic feedback loop. Each creates and is concurrently created by the other. The world and the psyche mutually in-form and give shape to each other, as they are interdependent and mutually condition each other. The world and the psyche completely interpenetrate each other, co-joined in a timeless embrace of Oneness. We don’t have to “do” anything to make this so. We simply have to recognize this already existing state of affairs.
Being disassociated from our own psyche makes us susceptible to looking for answers outside of ourselves, whether from the church, the government, other people, books, or articles talking about how we’re disassociated from our own psyche. Commenting on keeping people in this state of disassociation, Jung said, “One must preach at him from all the pulpits of authority that salvation always comes from outside.” Giving away their power to an outer authority, it is as if people fall under a spell, becoming like sheep, disconnecting from the true source of their power, which is their own psyche.
Jung continues, “He can then be led docilely to the place where of his own natural [unconscious] accord he would rather go anyway: to the land of childhood, where one makes claims exclusively on others, and where, if wrong is done, it is always somebody else who has done it.” We then become caught in the adolescent stage of blaming others, which is to be projecting our own darkness outside of ourselves. In projecting the shadow, we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, always playing the role of the self-righteous, innocent victim.
And yet, when we play the victim and project out our own darkness, we are unwittingly perpetrating the very abuse we wish to avoid. Projecting the shadow is itself a reflection of the inner violence we do to ourselves by not embracing our own darkness. When we disassociate from our own darkness, this inner process explicates itself collectively on the world stage as violence, criminality, war and madness. We are thus all complicit in what is playing out in the world theater.
In this adolescent state of scapegoating others, we are secretly acting out the role of the victimizer who hides behind the guise of being victimized. We are then enacting the very abuse of which we ourselves are victims. Traumatized ourselves and traumatizing to others, we collectively and unwittingly enact our trauma en masse on the world stage, thereby perpetuating the endless cycle of abuse. When groups of people, nations, or an entire planet collectively act out and reciprocally reinforce each others’ trauma, it is called “collective psychosis.” (I talk about this in greater depth in my book “The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis,” available on my website www.awakeninthedream.com).
Ours is an extremely dangerous time. Jung said, “…the future will be decided neither by the threat of wild animals, not by natural catastrophe, nor by the danger of world-wide epidemics, but simply and solely by the psychic changes in man. It needs only an almost imperceptible disturbance of equilibrium in a few of our rulers’ heads to plunge the world into blood, fire, and radioactivity.” We, as a species are quickly approaching an event horizon. The darkness that is manifesting in our world will either continue to generate endless suffering and self-destruction, or precipitate an expansion of consciousness and wake us up.
What is playing out collectively in the global arena is a reflection of a deeper, psycho-spiritual process that has occurred within individuals from time immemorial. To quote Jung, “And so we can draw a parallel: just as in me, a single individual, the darkness calls forth a helpful light, so it does in the psychic life of a people.” The darkness that is manifesting in our world is an expression that light is nearby, just as shadows are themselves expressions of light. Everything depends upon if we are able to draw upon the “helpful light” of consciousness that is called forth by the darkness. If we are able to connect with this emerging light of consciousness and recognize what is being revealed by the darkness, we can creatively mediate, transform, and assimilate these darker, destructive powers of the psyche.
Paradoxically, the cause as well as the healing of our collective psychosis lies within the human psyche. Secretly encoded in the psychic epidemic we have fallen into is its own medicine. Hidden in our collective madness are the keys to its resolution and healing. Our collective madness itself is revealing to us the crucial role our own psyche plays in-forming events in our world.
The part of us that doesn’t see that our experience of ourselves and the world exists in the psyche is itself a manifestation of the psyche. Recognizing this fact occurs within the all-embracing confines of the psyche. Recognizing the profound role of the psyche in creating the madness in our world occurs within the agency of the psyche itself. The psyche, through its non-local effects of shaping our world and ourselves, is inviting us to partake in its, and our own transformation and self-realization.
Whether our collective madness continues to destroy us, or wakes us up to the dream-like, open-ended potential of our current situation, depends upon our recognizing what it is revealing to us. Paradoxically, both the origin and re-solution of what is playing out in the world today lies within our own psyche. All we have to do to see is open our eyes and look. The universe, or should I say the psyche, is asking us to do nothing less.
A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, Paul Levy is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dreamlike nature of reality. Paul is also a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis,which is available on his website www.awakeninthedream.com. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at [email protected]; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2010
by Jung, Red Book
ARE WE POSSESSED?
by Paul Levy C. G.
Jung, the great doctor of the soul and one of the most inspired psychologists of the twentieth century, had incredible insight into what is currently playing out, both individually and collectively, in our modern-day world. He writes, “If, for a moment, we look at mankind as one individual, we see that it is like a man carried away by unconscious powers.” We are a species carried away — “possessed” by — and acting out, the unconscious. Jung elaborates, “Possession, though old-fashioned, has by no means become obsolete; only the name has changed. Formerly they spoke of ‘evil spirits,’ now we call them ‘neurosis’ or ‘unconscious complexes.’” To condescendingly think that we, as modern-day, rational people, are too sophisticated to believe in something as primitive as demons is to have fallen under the spell of the very evil spirits we are imagining are nonexistent. What the ancients call demons are a psychic phenomena which compel us to act out behaviors contrary to our best intentions. To quote Jung, “…the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”
“Possession,” according to Jung is “a primordial psychic phenomenon” that “denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended.” Though the possessed might imagine they have free will, their freedom is an illusion. They are unwittingly being used as an instrument for some “other” energy or force to incarnate and express itself through them. Having complexes is not necessarily pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking we don’t have complexes, which is the precondition that makes us most vulnerable to possession. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” The more complexes we have, the more we are possessed. We don’t need to get rid of our complexes, rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes.
Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream…but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” Thematically organized (such as the power-complex, savior-complex, mother-complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting like the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious are concentrated. An emotionally-charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating into itself everything that has any resonance, relevance or is related to itself in any way. This inner process can be seen as it en-acts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. Complexes, when split-off from consciousness, can potentially engulf and possess the whole personality. (read the rest)
“Possession” is an interesting word. It conjures up immediate associations of the Devil, who, mythologically speaking, is the one who “possesses” us, in the demonic sense of the word. Jung, however, differentiates his meaning of the word “possession” from the meaning associated with the Catholic Church, for example, when he writes, “The Church’s idea of possession, therefore, is limited to extremely rare cases, whereas I would use it in a much wider sense as designating a frequently occurring psychic phenomenon.” Possession, psychologically speaking, is to identify with a complex of the unconscious, and become taken over by it such that we act it out in, as and through our lives. Who among us hasn’t done this? Who among us shall cast the first stone?
Synchronistically, as I write this article, multiple examples of people becoming possessed by and en-acting their unconscious on the world stage happened for everyone to see. Tennis star Serena Williams “losing it” when she fell into a rage at the U. S. Open, Republican congressman Joe Wilson’s unrestrained outburst, yelling “You lie,” during President Obama’s speech in front of congress, and rapper Kanye West melting down and rudely interrupting and ruining country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards all illustrate exactly what I am pointing at. They were all “taken over by something.”
Jung writes, “since the world began, mankind has been possessed.” Possession is synonymous with bondage. Jung comments that in states of possession it comes down to “the same age-old experience: something objectively psychic and strange to us, not under our control, is fixedly opposed to the sovereignty of our will.” Possession means being supplanted by something stronger, being taken over and “owned” by something other than ourselves. Jung says, “Wherever we are still attached, we are still possessed; and when we are possessed, there is one stronger than us who possesses us.” We’ve all had moments where we’ve been possessed by something, where we’ve felt “not ourselves,” where we are no longer identical with ourselves. Some of us spend our whole lives living someone else’s life instead of our own. We’ve all had moments where “something” has gotten into us, where we feel out of sorts, beside ourselves. When deeper, primordial archetypes seize us, Jung writes “They easily catch hold of you and you are possessed as if they were lions or bears, say – primitive forces which are quite definitely stronger than you.”
At any moment any one of us can become “possessed” by the unconscious in a way such that a more powerful energy than our conscious ego moves and animates us. To quote Jung, “…it easily happens to any one of us that we do not act through our own volition. Then I cannot say I do, but it is done through me; something takes possession of me, the very action can take possession of me.” When we have fallen into our unconscious and compulsively en-act an unconscious complex, we become manipulated by more powerful forces than ourselves. In Jung’s words, a person then becomes “the devil’s marionette. This could happen only because he believed he had abolished the demons by declaring them to be superstition. He overlooked the fact that they were, at bottom, the products of certain factors in the human psyche.” In dismissing the demons as being mere illusions without realizing their psychological reality, we unwittingly become possessed by them. The demons are ultimately split-off, rejected, and disowned parts of the psyche that are experienced as alien and other than who we imagine ourselves to be (please see my article, “Meeting the Other Within”). The demons, psychologically speaking, are very real, in that they alter our experience of ourselves. Jung says, “As a rule there is a marked unconsciousness of any complexes, and this naturally guarantees them all the more freedom of action. In such cases their powers of assimilation become especially pronounced, since unconsciousness helps the complex to assimilate even the ego, the result being a momentary and unconscious alteration of personality known as identification with the complex. In the Middle Ages it went by another name; it was called possession.” We, as “modern” people, to the extent we are acting out our unconscious, are as much “plagued” by possession as people in the Middle Ages.
Jung comments, “…in all cases identification with the unconscious [complex] brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the danger. You do not ‘make’ an identification, you do not ‘identify yourself,’ but you experience your identity with the archetype in an unconscious way and so are possessed by it.” Anything we are unconsciously identical with we are possessed by, and hence, compelled to act out in our life without understanding why. Though we have dismissed the idea of demons on the altar of our rationality, to quote Jung, “…man himself has taken over their role without knowing it and does the devilish work of destruction with far more effective tools than the spirits did. In the olden days men were brutal, now they are dehumanized and possessed to a degree that even the blackest Middle Ages did not know.” More than ever, current-day humanity is certainly acting as if it’s a species possessed. Eminent theologian and 9/11 Truth Activist David Ray Griffin writes, “It does seem that we are possessed by some demonic power that is leading us, trancelike, into self-destruction.”
Jung comments, “…an unknown ‘something’ has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession.” When we are possessed we are not free, we are not masters in our own house. When we are possessed by the unconscious, we become dissociated from ourselves such that, as Jung writes, there is “a tearing loose of part of one’s nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which thereupon becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man. It throws him off course and drives him to actions whose blind one-sidedness inevitably leads to self-destruction.”
AUTONOMOUS COMPLEXES
“Autonomous complexes” are parts of the psyche which have split-off due to shock, trauma, or breach of our boundaries, and have developed a seemingly autonomous life and apparently independent will of their own. Though we are unconsciously identified with them, autonomous complexes are subjectively experienced as other than ourselves. Apart from their inherent obscurity and strangeness, our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes is the essential reason why it is so hard to get a handle on them. Autonomous complexes act upon us, they feel like our most intimate self, eventually need to be owned, but paradoxically, don’t belong to us. The seeming autonomy of the archetypes and complexes is what gives rise to the idea of supernatural beings. Endowed with a numinous energy, autonomous complexes are what our ancestors used to call “demons.” Autonomous complexes are a psychological name for the demons in the archetypal process of addiction that animate us to compulsively act out our addictive behavior. A demon or autonomous complex, to quote Jung, “behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.” Due to their lack of association with the conscious ego, autonomous complexes are typically not open to being influenced, educated, nor corrected by “reality.” An intruder from the unconscious and a disturber of the peace, an autonomous complex, Jung points out, “behaves exactly like a goblin that is always eluding our grasp.” If left un-reflected upon, these demons or autonomous complexes wreak havoc for everyone within their sphere of influence.
Jung writes, “…any autonomous complex not subject to the conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the latter’s freedom.” As it takes over and becomes in charge of a person, a complex incorporates a seemingly autonomous regime within the greater body politic of the psyche. Writing about autonomous complexes, Jung says “…the complex forms something like a shadow government of the ego,” in that the complex dictates to the ego. When we are taken over by and in internal conflict with and because of an autonomous complex, it is as if we, as natural rulers of our own psychic landscape, have been deposed, and are living in an occupied country. We are allowed our seeming freedom as long as it doesn’t threaten the sovereignty and dominance of the ruling power. Jung comments, “…a man does not notice it when he is governed by a demon; he puts all his skill and cunning at the service of his unconscious master, thereby heightening its power a thousandfold.” Being nonlocal, this inner, psychological situation can manifest both within our psyche and out in the world at the same time.
Demons or autonomous complexes have a possessive and obsessive effect on consciousness. Interestingly, the word “obsession” originally meant to be under the influence of an evil “possession.” Obsession refers to certain ideas that have taken possession of the person. We can become possessed by unshakable ideas of the way things should be or who we think we are, oppressing and tyrannizing both ourselves and others who hold a different viewpoint in the process. Jung writes, “The idea is like an autonomous being that wants a body so much that it even incarnates in the body; one begins to play, to perform the idea, and then people say one is completely mad. The idea has taken possession of one till it is as if one were out of one’s mind.” Millions of our species have killed and been killed over a fixed idea.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating and en-livening the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Like cancer cells ravaging the body, dis-associated, autonomous complexes are like “splinter psyches” that can become overly swollen with psychic energy, and then will propagate and metastasize themselves within the psyche, consuming, devouring, and cannibalizing the healthy aspects of the psyche. Drawing and attracting all of the wholesome parts of the psyche into itself, an autonomous complex can potentially warp and destroy the psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, nonlocally infecting and spreading by psychic contagion its malaise to the surrounding field in the process.
An autonomous complex can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way that a vampire detests the light. A demon or autonomous complex will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being illumined, for once it is seen, its autonomy and omnipotence are taken away. Anchored, connected and related to consciousness, the demon or autonomous complex can then no longer vaporize back into the unconscious, which is to say it is no longer able to possess us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness so as to compel us to unwittingly act it out and do its bidding (please see my article “Shedding Light on Evil”).
FINDING THE NAME
When we “see” a demon, we know its name, which helps us to get a “handle” on it. Naming is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon’s power over us. Jung says that “The act of naming is, like baptism, extremely important as regards the creation of personality, for a magical power has been attributed to the name since time immemorial. To know the secret name of a person [or a demon] is to have power over him.” Elsewhere, Jung writes, “For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found.” Finding the name is an act of power. Jung comments, “The moment you can designate the lived archetype by its symbol, you feel relieved, that is a good and positive moment even if it is horrible…Therefore old Egyptian medicine consisted in giving the thing the right name…A new name always produces an extraordinary effect; we cannot rationalize these things, they cast a spell, they are symbols, they really do influence the unconscious as the unconscious influences us.”
It is very important for us to re-introduce the words “demon” and “possession” back into our vocabulary, minus the fear that we will be seen as being primitive, crazy or even possessed ourselves if we use such words. We need to expand our psycho-spiritual fluency to enable us to navigate the living waters of our inner and outer landscapes. Being “possessed by demons” – taken over by unconscious, psychic forces – is something that happens to all of us, and it is to our great advantage to be able to properly name our experience. Finding the name empowers us to creatively engage with these parts of ourselves that are emerging from the shadows “in the name of healing.”
How do we make a word? We “spell” it. In finding the words for our experience, we are casting a “positive spell” whose nonlocal orbit and influence is liberating. We are then able to consciously language and give voice to our experience, which is to step into and access the creative spirit. In learning new, creative ways to express ourselves, we are dis-spelling the curse we were under of not being able to symbolize our experience. In learning to consciously spell-cast, the world is no longer written in stone, with us as its passive victims, as we realize and tap into the creative and transformative power of the Word, the Logos. As it says in the Bible, “And first was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God.” Creating a new language so as to re-create ourselves anew, we step into the archetypal figures of the “Wounded Healer” (read Part 1 and Part 2), and the “Creative Artist.” In animating these archetypal figures, we actively and creatively participate in our own evolutionary process, expanding and refining the ways we tel-empathically commune and telepathically communicate with each other, as well as with ourselves.
In addition, part of re-establishing the words “demon” and “possession” as meaning-filled is to complement these words with the idea that if we have a reaction and become “triggered” by these words, the figure within us who is being triggered might be the very demon who is possessing us (please see my article “Triggered by Evil”). I’ve coined the name “NonLocal Demon” (“NLD” for short) to “capture” this elusive, mercurial and nonlocal demon that “haunts” our world. Like minting a coin, when we coin a phrase and find the name, we create currency in the realm of mind with which to engage in commerce with each other, as well as with ourselves. This is to generate consciousness, which is something of genuine value. Once we see how the NLD clandestinely operates throughout the underlying field of consciousness by hiding and obfuscating itself through our unconscious, hooking and insinuating itself into our blind spots, we have simultaneously taken away its power and empowered ourselves, creating a wealth of new ways for us to creatively respond that were previously unavailable. Being nonlocal, one of the ways the NLD incarnates itself is through our internal, unconscious re-actions to encountering the myriad and ever shape-shifting forms and guises of the NLD in the outer world. The way to most effectively deal with a demon is to courageously turn our attention upon what it triggers inside of us. The Gnostic text “The Gospel of Philip” says,
So long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved When it is revealed, it perishes…As for ourselves, let us each dig down after the root of evil which is within each of us, and produces its fruit in our hearts. It masters us. We are its slaves. It takes us captive, to make us do what we do not want, and what we do want, we do not do. It is powerful because we have not recognized it. (II, 3, 83.5-30)
The source of the demons lies within ourselves. As compared to existing “by virtue” of something, demons can only live by the “lack of virtue” of our own obscured and unexamined minds. The above Gnostic quote brings to mind Paul’s famous passage from the New Testament, “That which I would do, I do not, and that which I would not do, I do.” (Romans 7:15 King James version), which is a clear and simple expression of our human proclivity for possession if there ever was one. An un-illumined and unrecognized autonomous complex diabolically compels us to act out contrary to our best intentions, as any of us who’ve struggled with any form of addictive behavior knows from our own experience. Being possessed by demons is a problem as old as humanity.
We are all potential shamans and healers, for as we metabolize the darkness and assimilate our own demons, we add light to and nonlocally “lighten-up” the collective shadow for everyone (please see my article, “We are all Shamans-in-Training”). If the demons are not integrated, neither is the human soul, which is to say that embracing and integrating our demons is critical to the evolution of the soul. Jung ponders, “How can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.” Raising the demons to the level of consciousness takes away their autonomous existence, as they rejoin the profound unity of the psyche. Jung comments, “Then the opus magnum [the ‘great work’ of alchemy] is finished; the human soul is completely integrated.” (please see my article,“The Sacred Art of Alchemy”).
THE DAEMONIC
To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person [or whole nation]…the daemonic can be either creative or destructive [i.e., demonic]…violence is the daemonic gone awry…ages [such as ours] tend to be times when the daemonic is expressed in its most destructive form.” The daemonic is not an objectively existing metaphysical entity in the Christian sense, but is an archetypal function of human experience, a psychic as well as an existential reality in which we all participate.
The daemonic is an archetypal energy which can take over a person, group or a nation. Jung writes, “We know that an archetype can break with shattering force into an individual human life and into the life of a nation.” Archetypes are living, dynamic entities, psychological instincts or informational fields of influence that provide the underlying template which patterns human behavior, perception and experience. The daemonic announces itself by drafting people into its service, enlisting human beings as instruments of its full-bodied revelation of itself. Jung comments, “One does not realize yet that when an archetype is unconsciously constellated and not consciously understood, one is possessed by it and forced to its fatal goal.” The daemonic expresses itself by conscripting us to its cause and compelling us to unconsciously act it out so as to give living form to itself in the third dimension.
The word daemonic is related to “the devil,” which in turn is related to the word diabolic, whose inner meaning is to divide, separate, and dis-integrate. Being divisive, the diabolic splits us into multiple fragmented and compartmentalized pieces. Jung comments, “Possession by the unconscious means being torn apart into many people and things, a disiunctio. That is why, according to Origen [an early Christian theologian], the aim of the Christian is to become an inwardly united human being.” Becoming a true follower of Christ, who is symbolic of the wholly integrated Self, is to transform the diabolical nature of the disiunctio into a sacred coniunctio, where all the parts of the psyche are connected and the opposites unite. This is why the greatest protection against demons is to be in touch with our intrinsic wholeness, which is to be “self-possessed,” — in possession of the part of ourselves that is not possess-able, which is the Self, the wholeness of our being. The antonym of diabolic is the word symbolic, which, in addition to being the language of dreams, means to unite, bring together and integrate. The daemonic is a quantum phenomenon, in that it contains both the symbolic and diabolic encoded within it in a superposed state, which is to say that hidden within the daemonic is the creative seeds of its own transformation. Both constructive and destructive forces are fully present in the daemonic simultaneously, and either energy can potentially manifest, depending upon how an observing consciousness interacts with it.
To quote Jung, “…the daemon of the inner voice is at once our greatest danger and an indispensable help.” Hidden in the daemonic is our inner voice, our guiding spirit, our angel, and our genius. Jung refers to the daemonic as the “not yet realized creative,” which is to say it is creativity not yet “made real” or actualized by the ego. Developing a healthy and strong ego is crucially important in entering into relationship with and creatively expressing the daemonic energies within us. One of the most destructive things in the human psyche is unrealized creativity.
If the daemonic is not honored and treated religiously (i.e., carefully considered with reverence and a sense of the sacred), however, it constellates negatively and turns truly “demonic,” in the destructive sense of the word. Jung comments, “Generally speaking the daemonic is that moment when an unconscious content of seemingly overwhelming power appears on the threshold of consciousness. It can cross this threshold and seize hold of the personality. Then it is possession.” Before an archetype can be consciously integrated, it will always manifest itself physically, because, in Jung’s words, “…it forces the subject into its own form.” In its negative form, which is a truly virulent form of madness, we, because of our unconsciousness, become a living conduit for the incarnation of an inhuman, malevolent, predatory, rapacious energy that only cares about feeding its own insatiable narcissism, ultimately victimizing, consuming, and cannibalizing both ourselves and others in the process. Describing this moment of being possessed, Jung elaborates, “The beast of prey seizes hold of him and soon makes him forget that he is a human being. His animal affects hamper any reflection that might stand in the way of his infantile wish-fulfillments, filling him instead with a feeling of a new-won right to existence and intoxicating him with the lust for booty and blood.” This in-toxic-ating energy, which is the narcissistic ego running wild as it entrances itself, is the fuel which animates any form of addiction. “Intoxication,” to quote Jung, is “that most direct and dangerous form of possession,” as unless it is reflected upon, and therefore illuminated and transformed by the light of consciousness, it inevitably leads to self-destruction.
Jung reminds us that “Insanity is possession by an unconscious content that, as such, is not assimilated to consciousness, nor can it be assimilated since the very existence of such conditions is denied.” We then fall into the infinite regression and self-perpetuating feedback loop of denying we are in denial, a self-created strain of madness that I have given the name “malignant egophrenia,” or “ME disease” for short. This is a form of self-deception, dissociation and psychic blindness in which we are ultimately lying to and hiding from ourselves. At a certain point this process entrenches itself within the psyche such that it develops sufficient momentum to seemingly become its own self-generating, autonomous entity. We’ve then become a “problem” to ourselves, creating our own Frankenstein monster in the process, and it is us. We can then be said to be the incarnation of ME disease in the flesh, its revelation in human form. Similar to being possessed by a demon, being taken over by ME disease is simultaneously its own self-revelation; encoded within the apparent pathology is its own medicine.
One of the main ways that demons become empowered within us is when we are unconscious of our shadow. Jung says, “Anyone who is unaware of his shadow is too wonderful, too good, he has a wrong idea of himself, and to that extent such a person is possessed.” The extent to which we are unconscious of our shadow is the extent to which we are unaware of our potential to unwittingly enact our unconscious in a way which could be hurtful. Jung writes, “If we don’t see the negative side of what we do, what we are, we are possessed…Only through understanding of unconscious aspects, as a rule, can we liberate ourselves from possession.” Understanding “unconscious aspects” is to shed light on darker, asleep parts of ourselves – “the negative side of what we do” — which is essentially the act of becoming conscious. The demons act themselves out through our psychic blind-spots. Jung comments, “…the demon that is always with you is the shadow following after you, and it is always where your eyes are not.”
The places where we are possessed by our unconscious are the places in ourselves where we are not able to see, where “our eyes are not,” where we are unable to self-reflectively speculate. Symbolically, this is like a vampire who casts no reflection in the mirror. Jung writes, “Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.” Interestingly, Jung simply refers to “shadow projection,” a process in which we project our own un-embraced aspects (our “own condition”) onto our neighbor, as “the lie.” One of the meanings of the word “devil” is “the liar.” (please see my articles “Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War,” and “Shadow Projection is its Own Medicine”). Projecting our shadow onto others is an activity which is itself an expression of the devil who is hiding within us, lurking behind the projection. Speaking about how easy it is for the “demons” to find a new victim, Jung comments, “…that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey.”
Jung comments on the state of being possessed by an archetype such as the daemonic when he writes, “For an archetype has a life of its own; the life that is proper and peculiar to the archetype shows its autonomy by the fact that it can swallow one’s own life. It is so strong that one can be swallowed up into it and be nothing but that archetype. Of course, one does not know it.” The formless, invisible archetype has in-formed itself and made itself visible through the person, group or nation which it seizes. They can be said to be the living incarnation of the archetype, as they are its full-blown revelation in form.
An essential quality of being possessed by the unconscious is that we don’t know we’re possessed, for if we knew, we wouldn’t be possessed. To quote Jung, “When you are just at one with a thing you are completely identical – you cannot comprehend it, you cannot discriminate, you cannot recognize it.” When we are identical with something, we are not able to differentiate ourselves from it, which is to say, we have no freedom of choice relative to that with which we are unconsciously identified. When we identify with and act out the unconscious, we are truly unconscious.
Jung conjectures, “suppose I am identical with an archetype; I don’t know it and the archetype of course won’t tell me, because I am already possessed and inundated by the archetype…Just as I pay no attention to the hammer I use; I use it and afterwards I throw it away. It is not a personal hammer. That is the way the archetype uses man, simply as an instrument, as a tool of a most transitory kind.” Even though an archetype expresses itself through individuals, an archetype is impersonal. Archetypes enlist us for their purposes, taking possession of us like a piece of property, and drop us when we are no longer of use. Jung continues, “But the man is of course in an awful situation. He is possessed, and he cannot defend himself, for he doesn’t even know that he is possessed, and that is a wonderful opportunity for the unconscious.” Not knowing we are possessed by the unconscious, it is as if the parents aren’t home, creating an opportunity for the kids (the unconscious) to act out without restraint.
Jung says, “The forces that burst out of the collective psyche have a confusing and blinding effect.” The emergence of unconscious forces out of the collective unconscious typically evokes confusion and blindness, i.e., unconsciousness. Jung continues, “…as the influence of the collective unconscious increases, so the conscious mind loses its power of leadership. Imperceptibly it becomes the led, while an unconscious and impersonal process gradually takes control. Thus, without noticing it, the conscious personality is pushed about like a figure on a chess-board by an invisible player. It is this player who decides the game of fate, not the conscious mind and its plans.” It is as if an invisible coup has taken place within the psyche. Falling into self-deception, the conscious mind is under the illusion that it is deciding, that it is in control, while it is actually being led and manipulated like a puppet. To quote W. H. Auden, “We are lived by Powers we pretend to understand.”
Jung says, “The devil is the aping shadow of God.” When we are possessed by the unconscious, a more powerful, archetypal energy shape-shifts and takes on our seeming form, which we absorb into, identify with and believe to be who we are. Bamboozled and hoodwinked by the slick “salesmanship” of this imposter of ourselves, we “buy” into its version of who we are. We then live a simulation of ourselves, miming ourselves, becoming a master copy, a duplicate of our original selves. To the extent we are unconsciously possessed by the daemon, it is as if a psychic parasite has taken over our brain and tricked us, its host, into thinking we are feeding and empowering ourselves while we are actually nourishing the parasite. It is as if our soul has become hijacked by a deeper, archetypal force, and has been replaced with a pale imitation of ourselves, and, to the extent we are taken over, we don’t even realize it. Archetypes, Jung points out, “have the most disagreeable quality of appearing in your own guise.” The spirit of the unconscious impersonates us, fooling even ourselves, as it cloaks itself in our form. This mercurial spirit has “put us on” as a disguise, appearing as ourselves, or at least who we imagine ourselves to be.
FORFEITING HUMANITY
Describing the experience of being led and taken over by the unconscious, Jung continues, “whenever a powerful content emerges from the unconscious, which we cannot yet grasp with our consciousness, there is a danger that the whole ego-consciousness will be pulled down into the unconscious and dissolved…Consciousness is completely emptied, because its contents are attracted by the unconscious as by a magnet. This process leads to a complete loss of the ego, so that the person in question becomes a mere automaton. Such a person is actually no longer there.” How many people do we know, including at times even ourselves, who zombie-like, compulsively and mechanically enact their habitual patterns with no spontaneity or creativity, like a programmed robot?
Jung says, “One can only alter one’s attitude and thus save oneself from naively falling into an archetype and being forced to act a part at the expense of one’s humanity. Possession by an archetype turns a man into a flat collective figure, a mask behind which he can no longer develop as a human being, but becomes increasingly stunted.” When we are possessed by an archetype, it’s as if we are frozen back in time, akin to what happens in trauma, where we become fixated in a rigidified and self-reinforcing point of view. Unconsciously identified with the “persona,” the façade personality that we’ve created for protection and present to the world, we have no real depth, and stop growing and evolving. “Altering” our attitude would be to step out of our “alter-personality,” which is to stop compulsively and ritualistically worshipping at the “altar” of the false self, and step into our authentic self.
Jung elaborates on the process of falling under the spell of an activated archetype when he writes, “…an archetype is mobilized within him which affects him like a narcotic. That is typical; when you get into a situation where an archetype becomes constellated, you will undergo this peculiar hypnotic effect; you fall asleep rather suddenly. It has a peculiar fascination which makes you unconscious.” The image of Dorothy and friends falling asleep in the poppy field as they approach the Emerald City in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” symbolically expresses this arche-typical situation of falling under a spell as we approach the sacred.
Jung points out that “The potentialities of the archetype, for good and evil alike, transcend our human capacities many times, and a man can appropriate its power only by identifying with the daemon, by letting himself be possessed by it, thus forfeiting his own humanity.” In unconsciously identifying with and becoming possessed by the daemon, on the personal, human level we forfeit our humanity and become an empty shell. At the same time, however, we access, become channels for and are inflated by a more powerful, archetypal, and nonhuman energy to come through us. When we are possessed by an archetype, we are a paradoxical juxtaposition of subhuman and superhuman qualities at the same time.
Jung continues, “…anyone possessed by an archetype cannot help having all the symptoms of an inflation. For the archetype is nothing human; no archetype is properly human. The archetype itself is an exaggeration and it reaches beyond the confines of humanity…So anybody possessed by an archetype develops inhuman qualities.” When we become taken over by an archetype we become inflated, unconsciously identifying with God-like powers while simultaneously forgetting our humanity. Jung clarifies, “…we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike.” Interestingly, one of the meanings of the word “evil,” etymologically speaking, is to transgress boundaries.
Continuing his description of the state of being possessed by an archetype, Jung says “…when a person has an unconscious content – say a certain archetype is constellated – then his conscious, not realizing what the matter is, will be filled with the emanation or radiation of that activated archetype. And then he behaves unconsciously as if he were that archetype, but he expresses the identity in terms of his ego personality…For he unconsciously plays a role and tries to represent something which he has taken to be his own self.” Behaving as if he, as an ego, were that archetype, he plays a mythical, archetypal role and unconsciously identifies with it (“which he has taken to be his own self”), fooling himself, and potentially others, in the process. Jung continues, “You see, the unconscious activated archetype is like a rising sun, a source of energy or warmth which warms up the ego personality from within, and then the ego personality begins to radiate as if it were God-knows-what.” The formless archetype takes on and expresses itself through the limited and particular form of the ego personality. The activated archetype transfigures the ego from within so as to suit its purposes. Jung continues, “It is a psychological fact that an archetype can seize hold of the ego and even compel it to act as it – the archetype – wills. A man can then take on archetypal dimensions and exercise corresponding effects.”
INFLUENCING THE FIELD
Conflated with and inflated by the hypnotically fascinating psychic force-field of the archetype, people so possessed become mouthpieces and amplifiers for the archetype to transmit and nonlocally extend and incarnate itself throughout the field of consciousness. Jung writes, “people who constellate an archetype have such a hypnotic effect.” People who are gripped by an archetype have a gripping effect on others; when we are under the fascination of an archetype, we unwittingly have a fascinating influence on others. Jung makes the point that “identification with an archetypal figure lend almost superhuman force to the ordinary man.” People who are possessed by their unconscious have a very magnetic, charismatic and “possessive” effect upon others’ unconscious. The part of them that is bewitched evokes the corresponding suggestible and bedeviled part of others’ psyche and hooks it, spell-binding it and entraining it into its archetypal spin. In other words, when someone is possessed by an archetype, they are literally the channel through which that archetype, both locally and nonlocally, is materializing in the field, which is to say they wield great energetic influence on their surroundings. Jung says, “But the power of the archetype is not controlled by us; we ourselves are at its mercy to an unsuspected degree…because everyone is in some degree ‘possessed’ by his specifically human preformation, he is held fast and fascinated by it and exercises the same influence on others without being conscious of what he is doing. The danger is just this unconscious identification with the archetype.” To the extent we are identified with and hence possessed by the archetype, is the extent to which we are not conscious of the corresponding influence we have on others’ unconscious. This is a dangerous situation because it is unconsciously being en-acted in such a way that guarantees that we will abuse our unresolved power issues to the extent that we stay unconscious.
Jung gets right to the point when he writes, “When someone is able to perform the art of touching on the archetypal, he can play on the souls of people like on the strings of a piano.” Connecting with the archetypal is like plucking a higher-dimensional chord of our being, which immediately activates a resonance in the collective unconscious in whoever hears it. Just like the pendulum with the strongest swing entrains all the other pendulums into its swing, the person who is channeling the living power of the deeper, archetypal force can potentially en-train and en-trance others. This power can be used for the highest good – helping people to awaken – or it can be used for the deepest evil so as to manipulate, dis-empower and enslave other people. Being archetypal, this energy is fundamentally neither good nor bad, but can potentially manifest either way depending upon our intent.
Speaking of the hypnotic power of the archetype, Jung writes, “It gets you below the belt and not in your mind, your brain just counts for nothing, your sympathetic system is gripped. It is a power that fascinates people from within, it is the collective unconscious which is activated, it is an archetype which is common to them all that has come to life.” When an archetype is constellated, rational logic and facts have no effect. The deep emotion which is characteristic of an activated archetype ensures that, to quote Jung, “…the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” Being unconsciously identified with an archetype is extremely dangerous, in that it is at the root of both individual and collective psychoses. Our tendency to unknowingly fall into the grip of an archetype is animating what is being acted out in the world theater, which is to say that the origin of world events is the unconscious of humanity (please see my article “It’s All in the Psyche”).
Jung writes “Nobody can realize an archetype without having been identified with it first.” Speaking of our initial tendency to identify with and become hooked by activated archetypes, Jung continues, “…you cannot realize them without having been thoroughly caught by them.” No one can realize their daemon without first having been unconsciously identified with it, which is to say, caught by it, and hence, possessed by it. In the process of integration, we have to learn to experience our archetypal daemon from the outside as well as from the inside. Experiencing the archetype from the outside means to experience it objectively, as other than ourselves, which is to separate ourselves from it, for an archetype, in Jung’s words, “…can be truly understood only if experienced as an autonomous entity.” Ultimately, we have to eventually both see the archetype as an object outside of ourselves as well as experience what it’s like relative to us, which is an experience within ourselves.
Maybe there’s a hidden reason in the deeper plan of things why we, as a species, have a tendency to be taken over by our unconscious. Jung points out that “…autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche.” Having autonomous complexes, or having a spare demon or two in our closet, is a “normal” human phenomenon, something we all possess at the same time that it possesses us. Identifying with our unconscious such that we act it out, i.e., being possessed, seems to be a natural expression of the human experience. Might there be a hidden evolutionary potential, an underlying teleology, a mysterious purpose or goal, which is possessing us to act as we do?
Perhaps we are being dreamed up to be the very instruments and midwives through which the archetypes transform themselves, the world, and ourselves as well. Becoming possessed by the unconscious is, paradoxically, the way we learn how not to be possessed, which we clearly haven’t learned yet, or we wouldn’t be possessed. By differentiating ourselves from the archetype, we make it conscious, while creating ourselves relative to it. In relating to the archetype consciously, we do not fall under the thrall of the archetype, but are able to mediate, humanize and channel its transpersonal energies and contents in a constructive, creative and life-enhancing way. As we connect with each other through our lucidity, we can potentially become a vehicle through which the archetypes themselves transform and evolve, which instantaneously, and nonlocally, has a transformative and evolutionary effect throughout the entire collective field of consciousness.
Mythologically speaking, the figure of the “would-be-hero,” which is all of us in potential, is always inhabited by a daemon. Having a daemon taking up residence inside of us is the very thing that “makes” us a hero. Our heroic fight against the paralyzing grip of the daemon is initiatory, in that it calls forth our latent, creative powers. In coming to terms and wrestling with our daemon, which is to say ourselves, we create ourselves. The daemon is the source of all creativity. It takes genuine courage to do battle with these internal forces and wrest from them the mythic “treasure hard to attain,” which is none other than our soul-filled selves. Jung comments, “As the result of the political situation and the frightful, not to say diabolic, triumphs of science, we are shaken by secret shudders and dark forebodings; but we know no way out, and very few persons indeed draw the conclusion that this time the issue is the long-since-forgotten soul of man.”
When we realize an archetype such as the daemonic, we are able, from the inside out, to channel its transpersonal power into a creative, soul-full, life-giving spirit that comes from a source beyond our ego. Encoded in the daemonic is everything we need for our healing and self-realization, as if the daemonic is a compensation of the deeper unified and unifying field of consciousness, offering us exactly what is required for us to wake up. The demons are like psychic nautilus machines that we are dreaming up to help us develop our muscles of realization. Alchemically transmuting on the spot the potential destructiveness of the demonic into stimulators of our own creative lucidity, we give birth to our daemon, our guiding spirit. Or rather, in that moment our daemon gives birth to us.
Realizing an archetype such as the daemonic is to realize ourselves as an active, participatory agent in the creation of our experience of ourselves relative to the world. This realization comes with great responsibility. We are offered a choice: either we continue to destroy ourselves, or we learn together how to create a new world. Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us as we act our unconscious out in the world. The emergence of the daemonic in our world is both potentially and actually the doorway into and revelation of the light. Being a function of our consciousness, how the daemonic materializes – as the deepest, destructive evil, or as creative genius, depends upon nothing other than how we dream it. Jung comments, “The archetype is spirit or anti-spirit: what it ultimately proves to be depends on the attitude of the human mind.”
When we become possessed by the unconscious, we become unconsciously taken over by our primal, animal-like instincts in such a way that we regress, devolve and fall into our lower nature. Jung elaborates, “Only the animal man can be possessed…It is easier to talk or to argue with a dog or a cow than with someone possessed by such a figure. For nothing that one says permeates, it is impossible to pierce the wall they put up, it is a wall of unconscious beliefs, and people behind the wall cannot be reached. They are totally inaccessible. There is no access because the human being is degraded to the state of an animal, and the thing that seems to function is not a divine being, it is a ghost.” I imagine we all know people like this, people who are under a spell such that there is really no talking with them, as they perversely take in and interpret whatever reflection is being offered of their unconsciousness as evidence of the rightness of their deluded point of view. Psychologically speaking, they are possessed, as if an “entity” has taken them over, they are no longer there, and they have no idea, literally, of their situation. When a group of people in this condition enter into agreement about the “truth,” and become card-carrying members of a dogmatic “ism,” a collective psychosis is being brewed in the cauldron of the collective unconscious.
COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
Jung never tired of warning that the greatest danger that faces humanity is to unwittingly fall into our unconscious en masse such that we become instruments for a psychic epidemic to wreak havoc in the world, just like we see today (please see my article, “Diagnosis: Psychic Epidemic”). Jung writes that psychic epidemics “…are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes. The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger.” We are in the midst of a collective psychosis that has become so normalized that very few people are even talking about it, which is itself an expression of our collective madness. (please see my article, “Why Don’t We See our Collective Madness”?) Jung writes, “…collective psychoses are based on a constellated archetype, though of course this fact is not taken into account at all. In this respect our attitude is still characterized by a prodigious unconsciousness.”
Once these archetypal contents become activated in the unconscious, Jung elaborates, it is like “they have taken possession of certain individuals, irresistibly draw them together by mutual attraction and knit them into smaller or larger groups which may easily swell into an avalanche.” People who have fallen into their unconscious naturally attract and connect with each other, as they reciprocally reinforce each others’ madness. An impenetrable bubble of shared, rigid beliefs gets conjured up around them which deflects and resists any self-reflection which threatens their fixed worldview. Anyone who reflects back their unconscious state is demonized and seen as a heretic, blasphemer and enemy.
Though using individuals as its instruments, evil needs the unconscious masses for its genesis and proliferation on the world stage. Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics. In a collective psychosis there is a herd mentality, where people stop thinking for themselves and let others think for them, like sheep (“sheeple”) who just follow wherever they are being led. Jung writes that whoever buys into the collectively agreed upon group-think “is infected with the leprosy of collective thinking and has become an inmate of that insalubrious stud-farm called the totalitarian State.” When we give away our power, there is always someone bearing the authority of the State who is more than happy to accept our offering, feeding the insatiable will-to-power of the shadow. Jung comments, “The shepherd’s staff soon becomes a rod of iron, and the shepherds turn into wolves.” Being archetypal, the reciprocal process of people giving away their power to others who abuse it simply because they can has continually re-created itself all throughout history.
Jung warns us that “The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.” In a collective psychosis, the many are manipulated by the few who are attracted to holding power over others. Jung points out that, “Whoever prefers power, is therefore, in the Christian view, possessed by the devil. The psychologist can only agree.” In a psychic epidemic, the masses, led and inspired by the few who are perversely possessed by and addicted to the need for power, collectively collude with, support and mutually rein-force each others’ irrational beliefs, narcissistic needs, and fears, creating a culture crazy beyond belief. This culture, or lack thereof, is simultaneously the cause and effect of their madness, as they collectively incarnate a living, self-fulfilling prophecy. They become the instruments through which the NLD, the nonlocal demon, reproduces itself, like a multi-headed hydra, in, as, and through the field.
BLESSINGS IN DRAG
Jung writes, “This state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identify themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious, and because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers [in the negative sense, such as falling into a megalomaniacal inflation]” People who have been swallowed up by the archetype and fallen into the unconscious, instead of shedding light on and integrating the meaning of the activated unconscious contents within themselves, are unwittingly acting out the mythic, symbolic dimension of “the role which is being thrust upon them” in concretized, literal form on the stage of life. The new contents are understood when we realize that the role which is coming through us has its origin in the collective unconscious itself, as if we are playing a role in a cosmic drama. In addition to bestowing upon us a choice of how we want to play this role, this realization snaps us out of personally identifying with the role as well. The part of us that has been unconsciously possessed becomes liberated, creating more consciousness in the process.
When we become taken over by the unconscious, to quote Jung, “…the unconscious in large measure ousts and supplants the function of the conscious mind. The unconscious usurps the reality function and substitutes its own reality. Unconscious thoughts…manifest themselves in senseless, unshakable judgments upheld in the face of reality.” When we find ourselves ignoring factual evidence and holding a “magical” belief that we rationally know not to be true, we are under a spell, being “driven” by the unconscious, which is at that point in the driver’s seat. The psychic factors which make possession possible are suggestibility, lack of critical discernment, unwillingness or inability to self-reflect, fearfulness, propensity to superstition and prejudice. The contents that take us over when we are possessed by the unconscious appear as phobias, exaggerated affects, peculiar convictions, idiosyncrasies, stubborn plans, compulsions and obsessions, all of which are not open for discussion or correction.
Demons work through our psyche, “managing our perceptions” in a way such that we aren’t able to see their influence. Demons bedazzle, bewitch, and bedevil consciousness in such a way that we become blind to our own underlying, assumed viewpoint. We fall under their spell when we become entranced by our own version of reality in such a way so as to think the world “objectively” exists as we perceive it, separate from our own mind. In other words, we fall under the power of the demons when we become fixated in our non-negotiable viewpoint and imagine that what we are seeing objectively exists, in solid form, outside of ourselves, in a way that applies to everyone. We then draw to ourselves all the evidence we need to prove to ourselves the seeming truth of our self-evident viewpoint, confirming our delusion that we are separate from and not participating in helping to create the very situation we find ourselves in, which we are ultimately creating. I call this “Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome,” or ADS for short (please see my article “Delusions of Separation”).
On the other hand, we break the spell of the demons when we realize that every moment of our experience is inseparable from our own consciousness, which is to recognize the fluid, non-objective and thus, “dreamlike nature” of reality. Just like figures in a dream, the demons are, ultimately speaking, our own energy, not separate from our own mind (please see my article “God the Imagination”). Just like a dream, the way we observe the world literally evokes the very world we are observing. This means that it is through our awareness itself that we can intervene in the underlying matrix of creation and find the leverage point where we can change the waking dream we are having, which is “evolution-in-action.” Interestingly, we wouldn’t have woken up and had this realization without the antagonistic co-operation of the demons, which is to say the demons are secretly allies in disguise, catalysts of consciousness appearing as adversaries, blessings in drag (please see my article “The Light of Darkness”).
NOT THE ONLY ONE
Jung writes, “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” To the extent that we are not consciously working on integrating, via the process of individuation, the unconscious contents and conflicts that are activated within us, is the extent to which these psychic contents will manifest externally and be unconsciously acted out collectively in a literal, concrete way on the world stage. Jung comments, “One shouldn’t evade this conflict by escaping into a premature and anticipated state of redemption, otherwise one provokes it in the outside world. And that is of the devil.” An activated psychic content not realized consciously in the course of individuation manifests externally, where it gets “dreamed up” in, as, and through the outer world. To use Jung’s metaphor, the sponsor of this project(ion) is “the devil.”
Jung says, “The world powers that rule over all mankind, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors…We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche.” This brings to mind various quotes in the Bible about “powers and principalities” that rule over humanity, which is the metaphysically equivalent expression of our psychological situation. The Gospel of Luke, for example, has the devil say that the kingdoms of the world are under his control (4:5-6). The Gospel of John speaks of the devil as “the ruler of the world.” (14:30, 16:11). The First Letter of John says that “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.” (5:19). Paul speaks of Satan as “the god of this world.” (Gal. 1:4; Cor. 4:4). Whether we call it a demon or an unconscious psychic factor, the force that rules over us is created by and an expression of our own psyche.
Reflecting upon the first World War, Jung says, “When fate, for four whole years, played out a war of monumental frightfulness on the stage of Europe – a war that nobody wanted – nobody dreamed of asking exactly who or what had caused the war and its continuation.” Similarly, in today’s “war on terror,” a war that nobody, or at least very few people want, we need to dream of asking exactly who or what has caused this war and its continuation. Jung continues, “Nobody realized that European man was possessed by something that robbed him of all free will. And this state of unconscious possession will continue undeterred until we Europeans become scared of our ‘god-almightiness’ [inflation]. Such a change can begin only with individuals, for the masses are blind brutes, as we know to our cost.” The real carrier of life is the individual. Real transformation doesn’t come through mass movements, or new legislation, but via change within the individual.
Speaking about the effects of being identified with, possessed and inflated by the unconscious, Jung writes, “Everything that exceeds a certain human size evokes equally inhuman powers in man’s unconscious. Totalitarian demons are called forth.” As a result of becoming overly one-sided in a multi-sided universe, “totalitarian demons” are “dreamed up” both within the unconscious, and, synchronistically, out in the world. Events in the outer world are symbolic reflections of what we are dreaming inside of ourselves (please see my article “Catching the Bug of Synchronicity”). What this means is that the most effective way to change the world is to change ourselves.
Jung writes, “…the historic events of our time have painted a picture of man’s psychic reality in indelible colors of blood and fire, and given him an object lesson which he will never be able to forget if – and this is the great question – he has today acquired enough consciousness to keep up with the furious pace of the devil within him.” Will we, each one of us, be able to mediate, channel and transform the archetypal, daemonic energy which is flowing through us into creativity such that we can constructively build a new world? This is the question upon whose answer rests the future survival or destruction of the world as we know it.
Jung says, “mankind, because of its scientific and technological development, has in increasing measure delivered itself over to the danger of possession…Man’s worst sin is unconsciousness…When shall we…in all seriousness seek ways and means to exorcize him, to rescue him from possession and unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization?” When shall we make “the most vital task of civilization” the exorcism of the demons that are possessing us? In other words, when shall we make our most vital task “waking up?”
Jung saw this present-day manifestation of the daemonic as an archetypal expression of the potentially catastrophic upheavals that accompany the great transitions from one age to the next. When an archetype like the daemonic appears, both within ourselves and out in the world, things become critical, with possibilities for both good and evil alike. How things actually turn out depends upon how consciousness responds to the situation. During a collective manifestation of the daemonic, such as we have today, the great danger is a mass movement where millions, or even billions of people fall into their unconscious together, igniting a psychic epidemic which spawns an apocalyptic war that ravages life on earth and destroys the biosphere of the planet (see my article “Archetypal Dimensions of World Events”). To quote Jung, “The unconscious works sometimes with most amazing cunning, arranging certain fatal situations, fatal experiences, which make people wake up.” Catastrophe can only be avoided if enough people wake up to what is being revealed to us as we act out the unconscious, and then connect with each other so as to de-activate, assimilate, and transform the potentially deleterious effects of the activated daemon. We can then, under the guidance of the Self, our intrinsic wholeness, help each other to usher in a new era of sustainable peace, understanding and mutual co-operation. Our very continued existence as a species on this beautiful planet depends upon this realization.
To be pessimistic and think that we can’t change the trajectory of our species’ suicidal, trance-like behavior is to be under a spell, to have fallen under a “demon’s curse.” Having fallen under such a spell, we only strengthen and solidify our spell-bound convict-ion by acting as if there are no other possible outcomes. Pessimism is food for the demons (please see my article “Our Situation is Dire, and There’s no Need for Pessimism”). It is crazy to not invest our creative energy into envisioning that we can “come together,” and just as crazy to imagine that we can’t. If we aren’t investing our creative imagination in ways for us to heal and wake up, then what are we thinking? Just like in a dream at night, when enough of us become lucid in the waking dream of life, we can connect with each other and put our lucidity together, changing the world in positive ways in the process (please see my article “Lucid Dreaming”).
If people tell me I am a “dreamer” when I profess these idealistic and seemingly naïve beliefs, I will simply say, to quote the late John Lennon, “I am not the only one.” There are ever-expanding numbers of us – millions? billions? — around the planet who in various ways are being drafted by the Self to be channels for a deeper process of awakening, enabling a vast range of entirely new and previously unimagined possibilities to become available to us. The universe is dreaming itself awake through us. When enough of us simply recognize the deeper, archetypal pattern that is happening, i.e., that the universe is waking itself up through us, we can “come together,” I “imagine,” and help each other to deepen and stabilize our mutually shared awakening, what I call “dreaming ourselves awake.” As wounded healers, shamans, dreamers, and artists whose canvas is life itself, we can collaboratively create an “Art-Happening Called Global Awakening.”
The real demon is our own ego-clinging. To the extent we are under the seeming influence of a demon is the extent to which we are clinging and grasping, trying to hold onto our concept of ourselves as a discrete and separate self, when in actuality there is nothing (no “thing”) to hold onto. To the extent we are clinging or grasping, we have fallen into the self-reinforcing, habitual pattern of contracting against ourselves, and in so doing we are blocking our own light. We can, in this very moment, step out of our own way and let our light shine.
Paul Levy is a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, he is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dream-like nature of reality. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, which is available on his website. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul (at) awakeninthedream (dot) com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2009
by Paul Levy C. G.
Jung, the great doctor of the soul and one of the most inspired psychologists of the twentieth century, had incredible insight into what is currently playing out, both individually and collectively, in our modern-day world. He writes, “If, for a moment, we look at mankind as one individual, we see that it is like a man carried away by unconscious powers.” We are a species carried away — “possessed” by — and acting out, the unconscious. Jung elaborates, “Possession, though old-fashioned, has by no means become obsolete; only the name has changed. Formerly they spoke of ‘evil spirits,’ now we call them ‘neurosis’ or ‘unconscious complexes.’” To condescendingly think that we, as modern-day, rational people, are too sophisticated to believe in something as primitive as demons is to have fallen under the spell of the very evil spirits we are imagining are nonexistent. What the ancients call demons are a psychic phenomena which compel us to act out behaviors contrary to our best intentions. To quote Jung, “…the psychic conditions which breed demons are as actively at work as ever. The demons have not really disappeared but have merely taken on another form: they have become unconscious psychic forces.”
“Possession,” according to Jung is “a primordial psychic phenomenon” that “denotes a peculiar state of mind characterized by the fact that certain psychic contents, the so-called complexes, take over the control of the total personality in place of the ego, at least temporarily, to such a degree that the free will of the ego is suspended.” Though the possessed might imagine they have free will, their freedom is an illusion. They are unwittingly being used as an instrument for some “other” energy or force to incarnate and express itself through them. Having complexes is not necessarily pathological, as everyone has them. What is pathological, however, is thinking we don’t have complexes, which is the precondition that makes us most vulnerable to possession. Jung clarifies, “Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes.’ What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.” The more complexes we have, the more we are possessed. We don’t need to get rid of our complexes, rather, we need to become consciously aware of them. What is important is what we do with our complexes.
Complexes are the psychic agencies which flavor and determine our psychological view of the world. To quote Jung, “The via regia [royal road] to the unconscious, however, is not the dream…but the complex, which is the author of dreams and of symptoms.” Thematically organized (such as the power-complex, savior-complex, mother-complex, inferiority complex, etc.), the complexes are the vehicles that flesh out the rich repository of contents of the underlying archetypes, giving the formless archetypes a specifically human face. Complexes are the living elemental units of the psyche, acting like the focal or nodal points of psychic life, in which the energy charge of the various archetypes of the collective unconscious are concentrated. An emotionally-charged complex acts like the epicenter of a magnetic field, attracting and potentially assimilating into itself everything that has any resonance, relevance or is related to itself in any way. This inner process can be seen as it en-acts itself in the outer world when we come in contact with someone who has an activated complex and we find ourselves drafted into their process, picking up a role in their psyche. This is an outer reflection of how a complex can attract, co-opt and subsume other parts of the environment, both inner and outer, into itself. Complexes, when split-off from consciousness, can potentially engulf and possess the whole personality. (read the rest)
“Possession” is an interesting word. It conjures up immediate associations of the Devil, who, mythologically speaking, is the one who “possesses” us, in the demonic sense of the word. Jung, however, differentiates his meaning of the word “possession” from the meaning associated with the Catholic Church, for example, when he writes, “The Church’s idea of possession, therefore, is limited to extremely rare cases, whereas I would use it in a much wider sense as designating a frequently occurring psychic phenomenon.” Possession, psychologically speaking, is to identify with a complex of the unconscious, and become taken over by it such that we act it out in, as and through our lives. Who among us hasn’t done this? Who among us shall cast the first stone?
Synchronistically, as I write this article, multiple examples of people becoming possessed by and en-acting their unconscious on the world stage happened for everyone to see. Tennis star Serena Williams “losing it” when she fell into a rage at the U. S. Open, Republican congressman Joe Wilson’s unrestrained outburst, yelling “You lie,” during President Obama’s speech in front of congress, and rapper Kanye West melting down and rudely interrupting and ruining country singer Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards all illustrate exactly what I am pointing at. They were all “taken over by something.”
Jung writes, “since the world began, mankind has been possessed.” Possession is synonymous with bondage. Jung comments that in states of possession it comes down to “the same age-old experience: something objectively psychic and strange to us, not under our control, is fixedly opposed to the sovereignty of our will.” Possession means being supplanted by something stronger, being taken over and “owned” by something other than ourselves. Jung says, “Wherever we are still attached, we are still possessed; and when we are possessed, there is one stronger than us who possesses us.” We’ve all had moments where we’ve been possessed by something, where we’ve felt “not ourselves,” where we are no longer identical with ourselves. Some of us spend our whole lives living someone else’s life instead of our own. We’ve all had moments where “something” has gotten into us, where we feel out of sorts, beside ourselves. When deeper, primordial archetypes seize us, Jung writes “They easily catch hold of you and you are possessed as if they were lions or bears, say – primitive forces which are quite definitely stronger than you.”
At any moment any one of us can become “possessed” by the unconscious in a way such that a more powerful energy than our conscious ego moves and animates us. To quote Jung, “…it easily happens to any one of us that we do not act through our own volition. Then I cannot say I do, but it is done through me; something takes possession of me, the very action can take possession of me.” When we have fallen into our unconscious and compulsively en-act an unconscious complex, we become manipulated by more powerful forces than ourselves. In Jung’s words, a person then becomes “the devil’s marionette. This could happen only because he believed he had abolished the demons by declaring them to be superstition. He overlooked the fact that they were, at bottom, the products of certain factors in the human psyche.” In dismissing the demons as being mere illusions without realizing their psychological reality, we unwittingly become possessed by them. The demons are ultimately split-off, rejected, and disowned parts of the psyche that are experienced as alien and other than who we imagine ourselves to be (please see my article, “Meeting the Other Within”). The demons, psychologically speaking, are very real, in that they alter our experience of ourselves. Jung says, “As a rule there is a marked unconsciousness of any complexes, and this naturally guarantees them all the more freedom of action. In such cases their powers of assimilation become especially pronounced, since unconsciousness helps the complex to assimilate even the ego, the result being a momentary and unconscious alteration of personality known as identification with the complex. In the Middle Ages it went by another name; it was called possession.” We, as “modern” people, to the extent we are acting out our unconscious, are as much “plagued” by possession as people in the Middle Ages.
Jung comments, “…in all cases identification with the unconscious [complex] brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the danger. You do not ‘make’ an identification, you do not ‘identify yourself,’ but you experience your identity with the archetype in an unconscious way and so are possessed by it.” Anything we are unconsciously identical with we are possessed by, and hence, compelled to act out in our life without understanding why. Though we have dismissed the idea of demons on the altar of our rationality, to quote Jung, “…man himself has taken over their role without knowing it and does the devilish work of destruction with far more effective tools than the spirits did. In the olden days men were brutal, now they are dehumanized and possessed to a degree that even the blackest Middle Ages did not know.” More than ever, current-day humanity is certainly acting as if it’s a species possessed. Eminent theologian and 9/11 Truth Activist David Ray Griffin writes, “It does seem that we are possessed by some demonic power that is leading us, trancelike, into self-destruction.”
Jung comments, “…an unknown ‘something’ has taken possession of a smaller or greater portion of the psyche and asserts its hateful and harmful existence undeterred by all our insight, reason, and energy, thereby proclaiming the power of the unconscious over the conscious mind, the sovereign power of possession.” When we are possessed we are not free, we are not masters in our own house. When we are possessed by the unconscious, we become dissociated from ourselves such that, as Jung writes, there is “a tearing loose of part of one’s nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which thereupon becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man. It throws him off course and drives him to actions whose blind one-sidedness inevitably leads to self-destruction.”
AUTONOMOUS COMPLEXES
“Autonomous complexes” are parts of the psyche which have split-off due to shock, trauma, or breach of our boundaries, and have developed a seemingly autonomous life and apparently independent will of their own. Though we are unconsciously identified with them, autonomous complexes are subjectively experienced as other than ourselves. Apart from their inherent obscurity and strangeness, our unconscious identification with autonomous complexes is the essential reason why it is so hard to get a handle on them. Autonomous complexes act upon us, they feel like our most intimate self, eventually need to be owned, but paradoxically, don’t belong to us. The seeming autonomy of the archetypes and complexes is what gives rise to the idea of supernatural beings. Endowed with a numinous energy, autonomous complexes are what our ancestors used to call “demons.” Autonomous complexes are a psychological name for the demons in the archetypal process of addiction that animate us to compulsively act out our addictive behavior. A demon or autonomous complex, to quote Jung, “behaves like an animated foreign body in the sphere of consciousness. The complex can usually be suppressed, with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at the first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.” Due to their lack of association with the conscious ego, autonomous complexes are typically not open to being influenced, educated, nor corrected by “reality.” An intruder from the unconscious and a disturber of the peace, an autonomous complex, Jung points out, “behaves exactly like a goblin that is always eluding our grasp.” If left un-reflected upon, these demons or autonomous complexes wreak havoc for everyone within their sphere of influence.
Jung writes, “…any autonomous complex not subject to the conscious will exerts a possessive effect on consciousness proportional to its strength and limits the latter’s freedom.” As it takes over and becomes in charge of a person, a complex incorporates a seemingly autonomous regime within the greater body politic of the psyche. Writing about autonomous complexes, Jung says “…the complex forms something like a shadow government of the ego,” in that the complex dictates to the ego. When we are taken over by and in internal conflict with and because of an autonomous complex, it is as if we, as natural rulers of our own psychic landscape, have been deposed, and are living in an occupied country. We are allowed our seeming freedom as long as it doesn’t threaten the sovereignty and dominance of the ruling power. Jung comments, “…a man does not notice it when he is governed by a demon; he puts all his skill and cunning at the service of his unconscious master, thereby heightening its power a thousandfold.” Being nonlocal, this inner, psychological situation can manifest both within our psyche and out in the world at the same time.
Demons or autonomous complexes have a possessive and obsessive effect on consciousness. Interestingly, the word “obsession” originally meant to be under the influence of an evil “possession.” Obsession refers to certain ideas that have taken possession of the person. We can become possessed by unshakable ideas of the way things should be or who we think we are, oppressing and tyrannizing both ourselves and others who hold a different viewpoint in the process. Jung writes, “The idea is like an autonomous being that wants a body so much that it even incarnates in the body; one begins to play, to perform the idea, and then people say one is completely mad. The idea has taken possession of one till it is as if one were out of one’s mind.” Millions of our species have killed and been killed over a fixed idea.
Commandeering and colonizing our psyche, a split-off, autonomous complex is, potentially, like a “vampiric virus,” in that it is fundamentally “dead” matter; it is only in a living being that it acquires a quasi-life. Just like a vampire re-vitalizes itself by sucking our life-force, when we unconsciously identify with an activated autonomous complex, we are literally animating and en-livening the undead. Complicit in our own victimization, we then unwittingly give away our freedom, power, and life-force in the process.
Like cancer cells ravaging the body, dis-associated, autonomous complexes are like “splinter psyches” that can become overly swollen with psychic energy, and then will propagate and metastasize themselves within the psyche, consuming, devouring, and cannibalizing the healthy aspects of the psyche. Drawing and attracting all of the wholesome parts of the psyche into itself, an autonomous complex can potentially warp and destroy the psyche of the person (or nation) so afflicted, nonlocally infecting and spreading by psychic contagion its malaise to the surrounding field in the process.
An autonomous complex can’t stand to be seen, however, in much the same way that a vampire detests the light. A demon or autonomous complex will shape-shift and do everything in its power to resist being illumined, for once it is seen, its autonomy and omnipotence are taken away. Anchored, connected and related to consciousness, the demon or autonomous complex can then no longer vaporize back into the unconscious, which is to say it is no longer able to possess us from behind and beneath our conscious awareness so as to compel us to unwittingly act it out and do its bidding (please see my article “Shedding Light on Evil”).
FINDING THE NAME
When we “see” a demon, we know its name, which helps us to get a “handle” on it. Naming is exorcistic, as it dis-spells the demon’s power over us. Jung says that “The act of naming is, like baptism, extremely important as regards the creation of personality, for a magical power has been attributed to the name since time immemorial. To know the secret name of a person [or a demon] is to have power over him.” Elsewhere, Jung writes, “For mankind it was always like a deliverance from a nightmare when the new name was found.” Finding the name is an act of power. Jung comments, “The moment you can designate the lived archetype by its symbol, you feel relieved, that is a good and positive moment even if it is horrible…Therefore old Egyptian medicine consisted in giving the thing the right name…A new name always produces an extraordinary effect; we cannot rationalize these things, they cast a spell, they are symbols, they really do influence the unconscious as the unconscious influences us.”
It is very important for us to re-introduce the words “demon” and “possession” back into our vocabulary, minus the fear that we will be seen as being primitive, crazy or even possessed ourselves if we use such words. We need to expand our psycho-spiritual fluency to enable us to navigate the living waters of our inner and outer landscapes. Being “possessed by demons” – taken over by unconscious, psychic forces – is something that happens to all of us, and it is to our great advantage to be able to properly name our experience. Finding the name empowers us to creatively engage with these parts of ourselves that are emerging from the shadows “in the name of healing.”
How do we make a word? We “spell” it. In finding the words for our experience, we are casting a “positive spell” whose nonlocal orbit and influence is liberating. We are then able to consciously language and give voice to our experience, which is to step into and access the creative spirit. In learning new, creative ways to express ourselves, we are dis-spelling the curse we were under of not being able to symbolize our experience. In learning to consciously spell-cast, the world is no longer written in stone, with us as its passive victims, as we realize and tap into the creative and transformative power of the Word, the Logos. As it says in the Bible, “And first was the word. And the word was with God. And the word was God.” Creating a new language so as to re-create ourselves anew, we step into the archetypal figures of the “Wounded Healer” (read Part 1 and Part 2), and the “Creative Artist.” In animating these archetypal figures, we actively and creatively participate in our own evolutionary process, expanding and refining the ways we tel-empathically commune and telepathically communicate with each other, as well as with ourselves.
In addition, part of re-establishing the words “demon” and “possession” as meaning-filled is to complement these words with the idea that if we have a reaction and become “triggered” by these words, the figure within us who is being triggered might be the very demon who is possessing us (please see my article “Triggered by Evil”). I’ve coined the name “NonLocal Demon” (“NLD” for short) to “capture” this elusive, mercurial and nonlocal demon that “haunts” our world. Like minting a coin, when we coin a phrase and find the name, we create currency in the realm of mind with which to engage in commerce with each other, as well as with ourselves. This is to generate consciousness, which is something of genuine value. Once we see how the NLD clandestinely operates throughout the underlying field of consciousness by hiding and obfuscating itself through our unconscious, hooking and insinuating itself into our blind spots, we have simultaneously taken away its power and empowered ourselves, creating a wealth of new ways for us to creatively respond that were previously unavailable. Being nonlocal, one of the ways the NLD incarnates itself is through our internal, unconscious re-actions to encountering the myriad and ever shape-shifting forms and guises of the NLD in the outer world. The way to most effectively deal with a demon is to courageously turn our attention upon what it triggers inside of us. The Gnostic text “The Gospel of Philip” says,
So long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved When it is revealed, it perishes…As for ourselves, let us each dig down after the root of evil which is within each of us, and produces its fruit in our hearts. It masters us. We are its slaves. It takes us captive, to make us do what we do not want, and what we do want, we do not do. It is powerful because we have not recognized it. (II, 3, 83.5-30)
The source of the demons lies within ourselves. As compared to existing “by virtue” of something, demons can only live by the “lack of virtue” of our own obscured and unexamined minds. The above Gnostic quote brings to mind Paul’s famous passage from the New Testament, “That which I would do, I do not, and that which I would not do, I do.” (Romans 7:15 King James version), which is a clear and simple expression of our human proclivity for possession if there ever was one. An un-illumined and unrecognized autonomous complex diabolically compels us to act out contrary to our best intentions, as any of us who’ve struggled with any form of addictive behavior knows from our own experience. Being possessed by demons is a problem as old as humanity.
We are all potential shamans and healers, for as we metabolize the darkness and assimilate our own demons, we add light to and nonlocally “lighten-up” the collective shadow for everyone (please see my article, “We are all Shamans-in-Training”). If the demons are not integrated, neither is the human soul, which is to say that embracing and integrating our demons is critical to the evolution of the soul. Jung ponders, “How can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.” Raising the demons to the level of consciousness takes away their autonomous existence, as they rejoin the profound unity of the psyche. Jung comments, “Then the opus magnum [the ‘great work’ of alchemy] is finished; the human soul is completely integrated.” (please see my article,“The Sacred Art of Alchemy”).
THE DAEMONIC
To quote noted psychologist Rollo May, the daemonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person [or whole nation]…the daemonic can be either creative or destructive [i.e., demonic]…violence is the daemonic gone awry…ages [such as ours] tend to be times when the daemonic is expressed in its most destructive form.” The daemonic is not an objectively existing metaphysical entity in the Christian sense, but is an archetypal function of human experience, a psychic as well as an existential reality in which we all participate.
The daemonic is an archetypal energy which can take over a person, group or a nation. Jung writes, “We know that an archetype can break with shattering force into an individual human life and into the life of a nation.” Archetypes are living, dynamic entities, psychological instincts or informational fields of influence that provide the underlying template which patterns human behavior, perception and experience. The daemonic announces itself by drafting people into its service, enlisting human beings as instruments of its full-bodied revelation of itself. Jung comments, “One does not realize yet that when an archetype is unconsciously constellated and not consciously understood, one is possessed by it and forced to its fatal goal.” The daemonic expresses itself by conscripting us to its cause and compelling us to unconsciously act it out so as to give living form to itself in the third dimension.
The word daemonic is related to “the devil,” which in turn is related to the word diabolic, whose inner meaning is to divide, separate, and dis-integrate. Being divisive, the diabolic splits us into multiple fragmented and compartmentalized pieces. Jung comments, “Possession by the unconscious means being torn apart into many people and things, a disiunctio. That is why, according to Origen [an early Christian theologian], the aim of the Christian is to become an inwardly united human being.” Becoming a true follower of Christ, who is symbolic of the wholly integrated Self, is to transform the diabolical nature of the disiunctio into a sacred coniunctio, where all the parts of the psyche are connected and the opposites unite. This is why the greatest protection against demons is to be in touch with our intrinsic wholeness, which is to be “self-possessed,” — in possession of the part of ourselves that is not possess-able, which is the Self, the wholeness of our being. The antonym of diabolic is the word symbolic, which, in addition to being the language of dreams, means to unite, bring together and integrate. The daemonic is a quantum phenomenon, in that it contains both the symbolic and diabolic encoded within it in a superposed state, which is to say that hidden within the daemonic is the creative seeds of its own transformation. Both constructive and destructive forces are fully present in the daemonic simultaneously, and either energy can potentially manifest, depending upon how an observing consciousness interacts with it.
To quote Jung, “…the daemon of the inner voice is at once our greatest danger and an indispensable help.” Hidden in the daemonic is our inner voice, our guiding spirit, our angel, and our genius. Jung refers to the daemonic as the “not yet realized creative,” which is to say it is creativity not yet “made real” or actualized by the ego. Developing a healthy and strong ego is crucially important in entering into relationship with and creatively expressing the daemonic energies within us. One of the most destructive things in the human psyche is unrealized creativity.
If the daemonic is not honored and treated religiously (i.e., carefully considered with reverence and a sense of the sacred), however, it constellates negatively and turns truly “demonic,” in the destructive sense of the word. Jung comments, “Generally speaking the daemonic is that moment when an unconscious content of seemingly overwhelming power appears on the threshold of consciousness. It can cross this threshold and seize hold of the personality. Then it is possession.” Before an archetype can be consciously integrated, it will always manifest itself physically, because, in Jung’s words, “…it forces the subject into its own form.” In its negative form, which is a truly virulent form of madness, we, because of our unconsciousness, become a living conduit for the incarnation of an inhuman, malevolent, predatory, rapacious energy that only cares about feeding its own insatiable narcissism, ultimately victimizing, consuming, and cannibalizing both ourselves and others in the process. Describing this moment of being possessed, Jung elaborates, “The beast of prey seizes hold of him and soon makes him forget that he is a human being. His animal affects hamper any reflection that might stand in the way of his infantile wish-fulfillments, filling him instead with a feeling of a new-won right to existence and intoxicating him with the lust for booty and blood.” This in-toxic-ating energy, which is the narcissistic ego running wild as it entrances itself, is the fuel which animates any form of addiction. “Intoxication,” to quote Jung, is “that most direct and dangerous form of possession,” as unless it is reflected upon, and therefore illuminated and transformed by the light of consciousness, it inevitably leads to self-destruction.
Jung reminds us that “Insanity is possession by an unconscious content that, as such, is not assimilated to consciousness, nor can it be assimilated since the very existence of such conditions is denied.” We then fall into the infinite regression and self-perpetuating feedback loop of denying we are in denial, a self-created strain of madness that I have given the name “malignant egophrenia,” or “ME disease” for short. This is a form of self-deception, dissociation and psychic blindness in which we are ultimately lying to and hiding from ourselves. At a certain point this process entrenches itself within the psyche such that it develops sufficient momentum to seemingly become its own self-generating, autonomous entity. We’ve then become a “problem” to ourselves, creating our own Frankenstein monster in the process, and it is us. We can then be said to be the incarnation of ME disease in the flesh, its revelation in human form. Similar to being possessed by a demon, being taken over by ME disease is simultaneously its own self-revelation; encoded within the apparent pathology is its own medicine.
One of the main ways that demons become empowered within us is when we are unconscious of our shadow. Jung says, “Anyone who is unaware of his shadow is too wonderful, too good, he has a wrong idea of himself, and to that extent such a person is possessed.” The extent to which we are unconscious of our shadow is the extent to which we are unaware of our potential to unwittingly enact our unconscious in a way which could be hurtful. Jung writes, “If we don’t see the negative side of what we do, what we are, we are possessed…Only through understanding of unconscious aspects, as a rule, can we liberate ourselves from possession.” Understanding “unconscious aspects” is to shed light on darker, asleep parts of ourselves – “the negative side of what we do” — which is essentially the act of becoming conscious. The demons act themselves out through our psychic blind-spots. Jung comments, “…the demon that is always with you is the shadow following after you, and it is always where your eyes are not.”
The places where we are possessed by our unconscious are the places in ourselves where we are not able to see, where “our eyes are not,” where we are unable to self-reflectively speculate. Symbolically, this is like a vampire who casts no reflection in the mirror. Jung writes, “Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.” Interestingly, Jung simply refers to “shadow projection,” a process in which we project our own un-embraced aspects (our “own condition”) onto our neighbor, as “the lie.” One of the meanings of the word “devil” is “the liar.” (please see my articles “Shadow Projection: The Fuel of War,” and “Shadow Projection is its Own Medicine”). Projecting our shadow onto others is an activity which is itself an expression of the devil who is hiding within us, lurking behind the projection. Speaking about how easy it is for the “demons” to find a new victim, Jung comments, “…that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey.”
Jung comments on the state of being possessed by an archetype such as the daemonic when he writes, “For an archetype has a life of its own; the life that is proper and peculiar to the archetype shows its autonomy by the fact that it can swallow one’s own life. It is so strong that one can be swallowed up into it and be nothing but that archetype. Of course, one does not know it.” The formless, invisible archetype has in-formed itself and made itself visible through the person, group or nation which it seizes. They can be said to be the living incarnation of the archetype, as they are its full-blown revelation in form.
An essential quality of being possessed by the unconscious is that we don’t know we’re possessed, for if we knew, we wouldn’t be possessed. To quote Jung, “When you are just at one with a thing you are completely identical – you cannot comprehend it, you cannot discriminate, you cannot recognize it.” When we are identical with something, we are not able to differentiate ourselves from it, which is to say, we have no freedom of choice relative to that with which we are unconsciously identified. When we identify with and act out the unconscious, we are truly unconscious.
Jung conjectures, “suppose I am identical with an archetype; I don’t know it and the archetype of course won’t tell me, because I am already possessed and inundated by the archetype…Just as I pay no attention to the hammer I use; I use it and afterwards I throw it away. It is not a personal hammer. That is the way the archetype uses man, simply as an instrument, as a tool of a most transitory kind.” Even though an archetype expresses itself through individuals, an archetype is impersonal. Archetypes enlist us for their purposes, taking possession of us like a piece of property, and drop us when we are no longer of use. Jung continues, “But the man is of course in an awful situation. He is possessed, and he cannot defend himself, for he doesn’t even know that he is possessed, and that is a wonderful opportunity for the unconscious.” Not knowing we are possessed by the unconscious, it is as if the parents aren’t home, creating an opportunity for the kids (the unconscious) to act out without restraint.
Jung says, “The forces that burst out of the collective psyche have a confusing and blinding effect.” The emergence of unconscious forces out of the collective unconscious typically evokes confusion and blindness, i.e., unconsciousness. Jung continues, “…as the influence of the collective unconscious increases, so the conscious mind loses its power of leadership. Imperceptibly it becomes the led, while an unconscious and impersonal process gradually takes control. Thus, without noticing it, the conscious personality is pushed about like a figure on a chess-board by an invisible player. It is this player who decides the game of fate, not the conscious mind and its plans.” It is as if an invisible coup has taken place within the psyche. Falling into self-deception, the conscious mind is under the illusion that it is deciding, that it is in control, while it is actually being led and manipulated like a puppet. To quote W. H. Auden, “We are lived by Powers we pretend to understand.”
Jung says, “The devil is the aping shadow of God.” When we are possessed by the unconscious, a more powerful, archetypal energy shape-shifts and takes on our seeming form, which we absorb into, identify with and believe to be who we are. Bamboozled and hoodwinked by the slick “salesmanship” of this imposter of ourselves, we “buy” into its version of who we are. We then live a simulation of ourselves, miming ourselves, becoming a master copy, a duplicate of our original selves. To the extent we are unconsciously possessed by the daemon, it is as if a psychic parasite has taken over our brain and tricked us, its host, into thinking we are feeding and empowering ourselves while we are actually nourishing the parasite. It is as if our soul has become hijacked by a deeper, archetypal force, and has been replaced with a pale imitation of ourselves, and, to the extent we are taken over, we don’t even realize it. Archetypes, Jung points out, “have the most disagreeable quality of appearing in your own guise.” The spirit of the unconscious impersonates us, fooling even ourselves, as it cloaks itself in our form. This mercurial spirit has “put us on” as a disguise, appearing as ourselves, or at least who we imagine ourselves to be.
FORFEITING HUMANITY
Describing the experience of being led and taken over by the unconscious, Jung continues, “whenever a powerful content emerges from the unconscious, which we cannot yet grasp with our consciousness, there is a danger that the whole ego-consciousness will be pulled down into the unconscious and dissolved…Consciousness is completely emptied, because its contents are attracted by the unconscious as by a magnet. This process leads to a complete loss of the ego, so that the person in question becomes a mere automaton. Such a person is actually no longer there.” How many people do we know, including at times even ourselves, who zombie-like, compulsively and mechanically enact their habitual patterns with no spontaneity or creativity, like a programmed robot?
Jung says, “One can only alter one’s attitude and thus save oneself from naively falling into an archetype and being forced to act a part at the expense of one’s humanity. Possession by an archetype turns a man into a flat collective figure, a mask behind which he can no longer develop as a human being, but becomes increasingly stunted.” When we are possessed by an archetype, it’s as if we are frozen back in time, akin to what happens in trauma, where we become fixated in a rigidified and self-reinforcing point of view. Unconsciously identified with the “persona,” the façade personality that we’ve created for protection and present to the world, we have no real depth, and stop growing and evolving. “Altering” our attitude would be to step out of our “alter-personality,” which is to stop compulsively and ritualistically worshipping at the “altar” of the false self, and step into our authentic self.
Jung elaborates on the process of falling under the spell of an activated archetype when he writes, “…an archetype is mobilized within him which affects him like a narcotic. That is typical; when you get into a situation where an archetype becomes constellated, you will undergo this peculiar hypnotic effect; you fall asleep rather suddenly. It has a peculiar fascination which makes you unconscious.” The image of Dorothy and friends falling asleep in the poppy field as they approach the Emerald City in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” symbolically expresses this arche-typical situation of falling under a spell as we approach the sacred.
Jung points out that “The potentialities of the archetype, for good and evil alike, transcend our human capacities many times, and a man can appropriate its power only by identifying with the daemon, by letting himself be possessed by it, thus forfeiting his own humanity.” In unconsciously identifying with and becoming possessed by the daemon, on the personal, human level we forfeit our humanity and become an empty shell. At the same time, however, we access, become channels for and are inflated by a more powerful, archetypal, and nonhuman energy to come through us. When we are possessed by an archetype, we are a paradoxical juxtaposition of subhuman and superhuman qualities at the same time.
Jung continues, “…anyone possessed by an archetype cannot help having all the symptoms of an inflation. For the archetype is nothing human; no archetype is properly human. The archetype itself is an exaggeration and it reaches beyond the confines of humanity…So anybody possessed by an archetype develops inhuman qualities.” When we become taken over by an archetype we become inflated, unconsciously identifying with God-like powers while simultaneously forgetting our humanity. Jung clarifies, “…we see the characteristic effect of the archetype: it seizes hold of the psyche with a kind of primeval force and compels it to transgress the bounds of humanity. It causes exaggeration, a puffed-up attitude (inflation), loss of free will, delusion, and enthusiasm in good and evil alike.” Interestingly, one of the meanings of the word “evil,” etymologically speaking, is to transgress boundaries.
Continuing his description of the state of being possessed by an archetype, Jung says “…when a person has an unconscious content – say a certain archetype is constellated – then his conscious, not realizing what the matter is, will be filled with the emanation or radiation of that activated archetype. And then he behaves unconsciously as if he were that archetype, but he expresses the identity in terms of his ego personality…For he unconsciously plays a role and tries to represent something which he has taken to be his own self.” Behaving as if he, as an ego, were that archetype, he plays a mythical, archetypal role and unconsciously identifies with it (“which he has taken to be his own self”), fooling himself, and potentially others, in the process. Jung continues, “You see, the unconscious activated archetype is like a rising sun, a source of energy or warmth which warms up the ego personality from within, and then the ego personality begins to radiate as if it were God-knows-what.” The formless archetype takes on and expresses itself through the limited and particular form of the ego personality. The activated archetype transfigures the ego from within so as to suit its purposes. Jung continues, “It is a psychological fact that an archetype can seize hold of the ego and even compel it to act as it – the archetype – wills. A man can then take on archetypal dimensions and exercise corresponding effects.”
INFLUENCING THE FIELD
Conflated with and inflated by the hypnotically fascinating psychic force-field of the archetype, people so possessed become mouthpieces and amplifiers for the archetype to transmit and nonlocally extend and incarnate itself throughout the field of consciousness. Jung writes, “people who constellate an archetype have such a hypnotic effect.” People who are gripped by an archetype have a gripping effect on others; when we are under the fascination of an archetype, we unwittingly have a fascinating influence on others. Jung makes the point that “identification with an archetypal figure lend almost superhuman force to the ordinary man.” People who are possessed by their unconscious have a very magnetic, charismatic and “possessive” effect upon others’ unconscious. The part of them that is bewitched evokes the corresponding suggestible and bedeviled part of others’ psyche and hooks it, spell-binding it and entraining it into its archetypal spin. In other words, when someone is possessed by an archetype, they are literally the channel through which that archetype, both locally and nonlocally, is materializing in the field, which is to say they wield great energetic influence on their surroundings. Jung says, “But the power of the archetype is not controlled by us; we ourselves are at its mercy to an unsuspected degree…because everyone is in some degree ‘possessed’ by his specifically human preformation, he is held fast and fascinated by it and exercises the same influence on others without being conscious of what he is doing. The danger is just this unconscious identification with the archetype.” To the extent we are identified with and hence possessed by the archetype, is the extent to which we are not conscious of the corresponding influence we have on others’ unconscious. This is a dangerous situation because it is unconsciously being en-acted in such a way that guarantees that we will abuse our unresolved power issues to the extent that we stay unconscious.
Jung gets right to the point when he writes, “When someone is able to perform the art of touching on the archetypal, he can play on the souls of people like on the strings of a piano.” Connecting with the archetypal is like plucking a higher-dimensional chord of our being, which immediately activates a resonance in the collective unconscious in whoever hears it. Just like the pendulum with the strongest swing entrains all the other pendulums into its swing, the person who is channeling the living power of the deeper, archetypal force can potentially en-train and en-trance others. This power can be used for the highest good – helping people to awaken – or it can be used for the deepest evil so as to manipulate, dis-empower and enslave other people. Being archetypal, this energy is fundamentally neither good nor bad, but can potentially manifest either way depending upon our intent.
Speaking of the hypnotic power of the archetype, Jung writes, “It gets you below the belt and not in your mind, your brain just counts for nothing, your sympathetic system is gripped. It is a power that fascinates people from within, it is the collective unconscious which is activated, it is an archetype which is common to them all that has come to life.” When an archetype is constellated, rational logic and facts have no effect. The deep emotion which is characteristic of an activated archetype ensures that, to quote Jung, “…the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.” Being unconsciously identified with an archetype is extremely dangerous, in that it is at the root of both individual and collective psychoses. Our tendency to unknowingly fall into the grip of an archetype is animating what is being acted out in the world theater, which is to say that the origin of world events is the unconscious of humanity (please see my article “It’s All in the Psyche”).
Jung writes “Nobody can realize an archetype without having been identified with it first.” Speaking of our initial tendency to identify with and become hooked by activated archetypes, Jung continues, “…you cannot realize them without having been thoroughly caught by them.” No one can realize their daemon without first having been unconsciously identified with it, which is to say, caught by it, and hence, possessed by it. In the process of integration, we have to learn to experience our archetypal daemon from the outside as well as from the inside. Experiencing the archetype from the outside means to experience it objectively, as other than ourselves, which is to separate ourselves from it, for an archetype, in Jung’s words, “…can be truly understood only if experienced as an autonomous entity.” Ultimately, we have to eventually both see the archetype as an object outside of ourselves as well as experience what it’s like relative to us, which is an experience within ourselves.
Maybe there’s a hidden reason in the deeper plan of things why we, as a species, have a tendency to be taken over by our unconscious. Jung points out that “…autonomous complexes are among the normal phenomena of life and that they make up the structure of the unconscious psyche.” Having autonomous complexes, or having a spare demon or two in our closet, is a “normal” human phenomenon, something we all possess at the same time that it possesses us. Identifying with our unconscious such that we act it out, i.e., being possessed, seems to be a natural expression of the human experience. Might there be a hidden evolutionary potential, an underlying teleology, a mysterious purpose or goal, which is possessing us to act as we do?
Perhaps we are being dreamed up to be the very instruments and midwives through which the archetypes transform themselves, the world, and ourselves as well. Becoming possessed by the unconscious is, paradoxically, the way we learn how not to be possessed, which we clearly haven’t learned yet, or we wouldn’t be possessed. By differentiating ourselves from the archetype, we make it conscious, while creating ourselves relative to it. In relating to the archetype consciously, we do not fall under the thrall of the archetype, but are able to mediate, humanize and channel its transpersonal energies and contents in a constructive, creative and life-enhancing way. As we connect with each other through our lucidity, we can potentially become a vehicle through which the archetypes themselves transform and evolve, which instantaneously, and nonlocally, has a transformative and evolutionary effect throughout the entire collective field of consciousness.
Mythologically speaking, the figure of the “would-be-hero,” which is all of us in potential, is always inhabited by a daemon. Having a daemon taking up residence inside of us is the very thing that “makes” us a hero. Our heroic fight against the paralyzing grip of the daemon is initiatory, in that it calls forth our latent, creative powers. In coming to terms and wrestling with our daemon, which is to say ourselves, we create ourselves. The daemon is the source of all creativity. It takes genuine courage to do battle with these internal forces and wrest from them the mythic “treasure hard to attain,” which is none other than our soul-filled selves. Jung comments, “As the result of the political situation and the frightful, not to say diabolic, triumphs of science, we are shaken by secret shudders and dark forebodings; but we know no way out, and very few persons indeed draw the conclusion that this time the issue is the long-since-forgotten soul of man.”
When we realize an archetype such as the daemonic, we are able, from the inside out, to channel its transpersonal power into a creative, soul-full, life-giving spirit that comes from a source beyond our ego. Encoded in the daemonic is everything we need for our healing and self-realization, as if the daemonic is a compensation of the deeper unified and unifying field of consciousness, offering us exactly what is required for us to wake up. The demons are like psychic nautilus machines that we are dreaming up to help us develop our muscles of realization. Alchemically transmuting on the spot the potential destructiveness of the demonic into stimulators of our own creative lucidity, we give birth to our daemon, our guiding spirit. Or rather, in that moment our daemon gives birth to us.
Realizing an archetype such as the daemonic is to realize ourselves as an active, participatory agent in the creation of our experience of ourselves relative to the world. This realization comes with great responsibility. We are offered a choice: either we continue to destroy ourselves, or we learn together how to create a new world. Everything depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us as we act our unconscious out in the world. The emergence of the daemonic in our world is both potentially and actually the doorway into and revelation of the light. Being a function of our consciousness, how the daemonic materializes – as the deepest, destructive evil, or as creative genius, depends upon nothing other than how we dream it. Jung comments, “The archetype is spirit or anti-spirit: what it ultimately proves to be depends on the attitude of the human mind.”
When we become possessed by the unconscious, we become unconsciously taken over by our primal, animal-like instincts in such a way that we regress, devolve and fall into our lower nature. Jung elaborates, “Only the animal man can be possessed…It is easier to talk or to argue with a dog or a cow than with someone possessed by such a figure. For nothing that one says permeates, it is impossible to pierce the wall they put up, it is a wall of unconscious beliefs, and people behind the wall cannot be reached. They are totally inaccessible. There is no access because the human being is degraded to the state of an animal, and the thing that seems to function is not a divine being, it is a ghost.” I imagine we all know people like this, people who are under a spell such that there is really no talking with them, as they perversely take in and interpret whatever reflection is being offered of their unconsciousness as evidence of the rightness of their deluded point of view. Psychologically speaking, they are possessed, as if an “entity” has taken them over, they are no longer there, and they have no idea, literally, of their situation. When a group of people in this condition enter into agreement about the “truth,” and become card-carrying members of a dogmatic “ism,” a collective psychosis is being brewed in the cauldron of the collective unconscious.
COLLECTIVE PSYCHOSIS
Jung never tired of warning that the greatest danger that faces humanity is to unwittingly fall into our unconscious en masse such that we become instruments for a psychic epidemic to wreak havoc in the world, just like we see today (please see my article, “Diagnosis: Psychic Epidemic”). Jung writes that psychic epidemics “…are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes. The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger.” We are in the midst of a collective psychosis that has become so normalized that very few people are even talking about it, which is itself an expression of our collective madness. (please see my article, “Why Don’t We See our Collective Madness”?) Jung writes, “…collective psychoses are based on a constellated archetype, though of course this fact is not taken into account at all. In this respect our attitude is still characterized by a prodigious unconsciousness.”
Once these archetypal contents become activated in the unconscious, Jung elaborates, it is like “they have taken possession of certain individuals, irresistibly draw them together by mutual attraction and knit them into smaller or larger groups which may easily swell into an avalanche.” People who have fallen into their unconscious naturally attract and connect with each other, as they reciprocally reinforce each others’ madness. An impenetrable bubble of shared, rigid beliefs gets conjured up around them which deflects and resists any self-reflection which threatens their fixed worldview. Anyone who reflects back their unconscious state is demonized and seen as a heretic, blasphemer and enemy.
Though using individuals as its instruments, evil needs the unconscious masses for its genesis and proliferation on the world stage. Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics. In a collective psychosis there is a herd mentality, where people stop thinking for themselves and let others think for them, like sheep (“sheeple”) who just follow wherever they are being led. Jung writes that whoever buys into the collectively agreed upon group-think “is infected with the leprosy of collective thinking and has become an inmate of that insalubrious stud-farm called the totalitarian State.” When we give away our power, there is always someone bearing the authority of the State who is more than happy to accept our offering, feeding the insatiable will-to-power of the shadow. Jung comments, “The shepherd’s staff soon becomes a rod of iron, and the shepherds turn into wolves.” Being archetypal, the reciprocal process of people giving away their power to others who abuse it simply because they can has continually re-created itself all throughout history.
Jung warns us that “The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.” In a collective psychosis, the many are manipulated by the few who are attracted to holding power over others. Jung points out that, “Whoever prefers power, is therefore, in the Christian view, possessed by the devil. The psychologist can only agree.” In a psychic epidemic, the masses, led and inspired by the few who are perversely possessed by and addicted to the need for power, collectively collude with, support and mutually rein-force each others’ irrational beliefs, narcissistic needs, and fears, creating a culture crazy beyond belief. This culture, or lack thereof, is simultaneously the cause and effect of their madness, as they collectively incarnate a living, self-fulfilling prophecy. They become the instruments through which the NLD, the nonlocal demon, reproduces itself, like a multi-headed hydra, in, as, and through the field.
BLESSINGS IN DRAG
Jung writes, “This state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identify themselves with the archetypal contents of their unconscious, and because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers [in the negative sense, such as falling into a megalomaniacal inflation]” People who have been swallowed up by the archetype and fallen into the unconscious, instead of shedding light on and integrating the meaning of the activated unconscious contents within themselves, are unwittingly acting out the mythic, symbolic dimension of “the role which is being thrust upon them” in concretized, literal form on the stage of life. The new contents are understood when we realize that the role which is coming through us has its origin in the collective unconscious itself, as if we are playing a role in a cosmic drama. In addition to bestowing upon us a choice of how we want to play this role, this realization snaps us out of personally identifying with the role as well. The part of us that has been unconsciously possessed becomes liberated, creating more consciousness in the process.
When we become taken over by the unconscious, to quote Jung, “…the unconscious in large measure ousts and supplants the function of the conscious mind. The unconscious usurps the reality function and substitutes its own reality. Unconscious thoughts…manifest themselves in senseless, unshakable judgments upheld in the face of reality.” When we find ourselves ignoring factual evidence and holding a “magical” belief that we rationally know not to be true, we are under a spell, being “driven” by the unconscious, which is at that point in the driver’s seat. The psychic factors which make possession possible are suggestibility, lack of critical discernment, unwillingness or inability to self-reflect, fearfulness, propensity to superstition and prejudice. The contents that take us over when we are possessed by the unconscious appear as phobias, exaggerated affects, peculiar convictions, idiosyncrasies, stubborn plans, compulsions and obsessions, all of which are not open for discussion or correction.
Demons work through our psyche, “managing our perceptions” in a way such that we aren’t able to see their influence. Demons bedazzle, bewitch, and bedevil consciousness in such a way that we become blind to our own underlying, assumed viewpoint. We fall under their spell when we become entranced by our own version of reality in such a way so as to think the world “objectively” exists as we perceive it, separate from our own mind. In other words, we fall under the power of the demons when we become fixated in our non-negotiable viewpoint and imagine that what we are seeing objectively exists, in solid form, outside of ourselves, in a way that applies to everyone. We then draw to ourselves all the evidence we need to prove to ourselves the seeming truth of our self-evident viewpoint, confirming our delusion that we are separate from and not participating in helping to create the very situation we find ourselves in, which we are ultimately creating. I call this “Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome,” or ADS for short (please see my article “Delusions of Separation”).
On the other hand, we break the spell of the demons when we realize that every moment of our experience is inseparable from our own consciousness, which is to recognize the fluid, non-objective and thus, “dreamlike nature” of reality. Just like figures in a dream, the demons are, ultimately speaking, our own energy, not separate from our own mind (please see my article “God the Imagination”). Just like a dream, the way we observe the world literally evokes the very world we are observing. This means that it is through our awareness itself that we can intervene in the underlying matrix of creation and find the leverage point where we can change the waking dream we are having, which is “evolution-in-action.” Interestingly, we wouldn’t have woken up and had this realization without the antagonistic co-operation of the demons, which is to say the demons are secretly allies in disguise, catalysts of consciousness appearing as adversaries, blessings in drag (please see my article “The Light of Darkness”).
NOT THE ONLY ONE
Jung writes, “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate.” To the extent that we are not consciously working on integrating, via the process of individuation, the unconscious contents and conflicts that are activated within us, is the extent to which these psychic contents will manifest externally and be unconsciously acted out collectively in a literal, concrete way on the world stage. Jung comments, “One shouldn’t evade this conflict by escaping into a premature and anticipated state of redemption, otherwise one provokes it in the outside world. And that is of the devil.” An activated psychic content not realized consciously in the course of individuation manifests externally, where it gets “dreamed up” in, as, and through the outer world. To use Jung’s metaphor, the sponsor of this project(ion) is “the devil.”
Jung says, “The world powers that rule over all mankind, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors…We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche.” This brings to mind various quotes in the Bible about “powers and principalities” that rule over humanity, which is the metaphysically equivalent expression of our psychological situation. The Gospel of Luke, for example, has the devil say that the kingdoms of the world are under his control (4:5-6). The Gospel of John speaks of the devil as “the ruler of the world.” (14:30, 16:11). The First Letter of John says that “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.” (5:19). Paul speaks of Satan as “the god of this world.” (Gal. 1:4; Cor. 4:4). Whether we call it a demon or an unconscious psychic factor, the force that rules over us is created by and an expression of our own psyche.
Reflecting upon the first World War, Jung says, “When fate, for four whole years, played out a war of monumental frightfulness on the stage of Europe – a war that nobody wanted – nobody dreamed of asking exactly who or what had caused the war and its continuation.” Similarly, in today’s “war on terror,” a war that nobody, or at least very few people want, we need to dream of asking exactly who or what has caused this war and its continuation. Jung continues, “Nobody realized that European man was possessed by something that robbed him of all free will. And this state of unconscious possession will continue undeterred until we Europeans become scared of our ‘god-almightiness’ [inflation]. Such a change can begin only with individuals, for the masses are blind brutes, as we know to our cost.” The real carrier of life is the individual. Real transformation doesn’t come through mass movements, or new legislation, but via change within the individual.
Speaking about the effects of being identified with, possessed and inflated by the unconscious, Jung writes, “Everything that exceeds a certain human size evokes equally inhuman powers in man’s unconscious. Totalitarian demons are called forth.” As a result of becoming overly one-sided in a multi-sided universe, “totalitarian demons” are “dreamed up” both within the unconscious, and, synchronistically, out in the world. Events in the outer world are symbolic reflections of what we are dreaming inside of ourselves (please see my article “Catching the Bug of Synchronicity”). What this means is that the most effective way to change the world is to change ourselves.
Jung writes, “…the historic events of our time have painted a picture of man’s psychic reality in indelible colors of blood and fire, and given him an object lesson which he will never be able to forget if – and this is the great question – he has today acquired enough consciousness to keep up with the furious pace of the devil within him.” Will we, each one of us, be able to mediate, channel and transform the archetypal, daemonic energy which is flowing through us into creativity such that we can constructively build a new world? This is the question upon whose answer rests the future survival or destruction of the world as we know it.
Jung says, “mankind, because of its scientific and technological development, has in increasing measure delivered itself over to the danger of possession…Man’s worst sin is unconsciousness…When shall we…in all seriousness seek ways and means to exorcize him, to rescue him from possession and unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization?” When shall we make “the most vital task of civilization” the exorcism of the demons that are possessing us? In other words, when shall we make our most vital task “waking up?”
Jung saw this present-day manifestation of the daemonic as an archetypal expression of the potentially catastrophic upheavals that accompany the great transitions from one age to the next. When an archetype like the daemonic appears, both within ourselves and out in the world, things become critical, with possibilities for both good and evil alike. How things actually turn out depends upon how consciousness responds to the situation. During a collective manifestation of the daemonic, such as we have today, the great danger is a mass movement where millions, or even billions of people fall into their unconscious together, igniting a psychic epidemic which spawns an apocalyptic war that ravages life on earth and destroys the biosphere of the planet (see my article “Archetypal Dimensions of World Events”). To quote Jung, “The unconscious works sometimes with most amazing cunning, arranging certain fatal situations, fatal experiences, which make people wake up.” Catastrophe can only be avoided if enough people wake up to what is being revealed to us as we act out the unconscious, and then connect with each other so as to de-activate, assimilate, and transform the potentially deleterious effects of the activated daemon. We can then, under the guidance of the Self, our intrinsic wholeness, help each other to usher in a new era of sustainable peace, understanding and mutual co-operation. Our very continued existence as a species on this beautiful planet depends upon this realization.
To be pessimistic and think that we can’t change the trajectory of our species’ suicidal, trance-like behavior is to be under a spell, to have fallen under a “demon’s curse.” Having fallen under such a spell, we only strengthen and solidify our spell-bound convict-ion by acting as if there are no other possible outcomes. Pessimism is food for the demons (please see my article “Our Situation is Dire, and There’s no Need for Pessimism”). It is crazy to not invest our creative energy into envisioning that we can “come together,” and just as crazy to imagine that we can’t. If we aren’t investing our creative imagination in ways for us to heal and wake up, then what are we thinking? Just like in a dream at night, when enough of us become lucid in the waking dream of life, we can connect with each other and put our lucidity together, changing the world in positive ways in the process (please see my article “Lucid Dreaming”).
If people tell me I am a “dreamer” when I profess these idealistic and seemingly naïve beliefs, I will simply say, to quote the late John Lennon, “I am not the only one.” There are ever-expanding numbers of us – millions? billions? — around the planet who in various ways are being drafted by the Self to be channels for a deeper process of awakening, enabling a vast range of entirely new and previously unimagined possibilities to become available to us. The universe is dreaming itself awake through us. When enough of us simply recognize the deeper, archetypal pattern that is happening, i.e., that the universe is waking itself up through us, we can “come together,” I “imagine,” and help each other to deepen and stabilize our mutually shared awakening, what I call “dreaming ourselves awake.” As wounded healers, shamans, dreamers, and artists whose canvas is life itself, we can collaboratively create an “Art-Happening Called Global Awakening.”
The real demon is our own ego-clinging. To the extent we are under the seeming influence of a demon is the extent to which we are clinging and grasping, trying to hold onto our concept of ourselves as a discrete and separate self, when in actuality there is nothing (no “thing”) to hold onto. To the extent we are clinging or grasping, we have fallen into the self-reinforcing, habitual pattern of contracting against ourselves, and in so doing we are blocking our own light. We can, in this very moment, step out of our own way and let our light shine.
Paul Levy is a visionary artist and a spiritually-informed political activist. A pioneer in the field of spiritual emergence, he is a healer in private practice, assisting others who are also awakening to the dream-like nature of reality. He is the author of The Madness of George Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis, which is available on his website. (See the first chapter, The Madness of George W. Bush: A Reflection of our Collective Psychosis). Please feel free to pass this article along to a friend if you feel so inspired. You can contact Paul at paul (at) awakeninthedream (dot) com; he looks forward to your reflections. © Copyright 2009