goldenboy

Collective unconscious is that aspect of the unconscious, which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. Inwardly, the whole history of the human race, back to the most primitive times, lives on in us.

All products of the unconscious are symbolic and can be taken as guiding messages. What is the dream or fantasy leading the person toward? The unconscious will live, and will move us, whether we like it or not.

- Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961)

The above picture: (MANDALA. The Sanskrit word for circle. For Jung, the mandala was a symbol of wholeness, completness, and perfection. Symbolized the self)

Yesterday, on the Internet, I had set out to find ways to celebrate the festival of Navratri in a spiritual way, the rituals connected with the festival (for I have started believing that rituals are powerful, made so by the intention of the ritualist involved).

And as if by pure chance, if there is any such thing for I have read books that say nothing is by chance, I was led to pages on magick and sorcery.  

My mom’s uncle died recently, and my mom says that he was known to have practiced a local occult in kerala in his time. He was very rich, died a rich man too, with people laying claim to his property.

My ancestors were Brahmins from a small village in the present south- Indian state of Karnataka. In the south, we see that Vedic Brahminism thrived with Tantrism of the day, with Tantric rituals forming a part of everyday rituals in all Temples in Kerala to the present day. I don’t know if they were adept in Tantra too.

However those were the times when Emperor Ashoka was sending out Buddhist missionaries all across India, Sri Lanka, China, and other South-East Asian countries. A wave of Buddhist conversions was sweeping the land of India at the time. It was almost like the theological Hinduism was losing its sway to a new atheist religion of the time- Buddhism.

My Brahmin ancestors too came under the sway of the new religion. It must have inspired them to such an extent so as to step out of their societal limits and support the Buddhist thought. They had to pay dearly for their convictions. They were exiled out of their homeland. They lost their status in the society, they lost their caste, and they lost their homeland too.

Coming to the coastal state of erstwhile-Malabar (now Kerala) they sought shelter under the Zamorin. The Zamorin, in his now-famous secular spirit, accepted this community and gave them the permission to reside in his kingdom.

But I wonder how many generations of my ancestors could really follow the Buddhist life-style. For soon, a new Hindu-revivalist movement was to be launched by a short young Brahmin from Malabar by the name of (Adi) Shankaracharya, who was a staunch believer in the existence of God. He traveled throughout the length and breadth of Hind (India) and defeated great Buddhist scholars of the time in debates, propogating his Advaita Vedanta (a sub-school of Vedantic thought). Big Buddhist monasteries lost their sway, and Buddhist Temples were converted into Hindu Temples. 

Somewhere along that timeline, the latter generations of my ancestors came back to the Hindu fold, however were unable to retrieve their status in the society- that of Brahmins (the highest, priest class). They continued to teach alphabets to the sections in the society which had no access to education due to the caste-system.

Their was a tribe that declined in prosperity over the ages, but the search for truth somehow thrived. My mom’s uncle was an occultist. I see him as a man who was not satisfied with his place that was accorded to him by the scheme of things in the universe, and wanted to use every power possible to rise above it, be it beckoning the world of supernatural. It is said that he once enslaved a Yakshi (an Indian fairy). However the clever lady of divinity succeeded in fleeing away by seeking help from my uncle’s wife, but not before blinding her in one eye, as a punishment for my uncle’s deeds.

That is the genetic code I am born with. I have no idea what histories lay encoded, what passions live-on unfulfilled in my genes, passed over generations from mother and father to their child. When I was born, it was not just the stars and planets in the sky that transpired to shape my destiny, but also my genes that were to shape my impulses and longings.

What searches myself in this desert of the world, what sweet mirages beckon my soul, and what beauty of spirit bewitches my heart I know not. For as the night falls over the land, the moon beckons me to far-away lands, not on the physical planes but beyond. And as the day approaches, my spirit is cast in fear… like a lost-child wanting to go back home…

-x-

NEUROSIS. Jung had a hunch that what passed for normality often was the very force which shattered the personality of the patient. That trying to be “normal”, when this violates our inner nature, is itself a form of pathology. In the psychiatric hospital, he wondered why psychiatrists were not interested in what their patients had to say.

STORY. Jung concluded that every person has a story, and when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration comes when the person discovers or rediscovers his or her own personal story.