Listen to this album while reading the essay for MAXIMUM THRUST:

On June 13, 2021, I was sitting on the grass at a park near my house, reading ‘Jung on Active Imagination’. I smoked a quarter of a joint of marijuana and continued to read the book. As I read the description of encounters with elements in the unconscious, I began to see visions of my own.

Part 1: The Well of pillars

In the first vision, I was inside a large cylindrical well with stone walls. The Well extended down into darkness, and up not too far above me was a circular opening with a bright light shining down into the Well. Lining the walls were about 20–30 pillars, one of which I was standing on. The pillars were also made of stone, and on each pillar stood a humanoid being. In this scene, I saw each being’s pillar drop straight down toward the darkness, and after some time, straight back up. I got the feeling that each being had the goal of reaching the light. Again and again, each being would go down into the darkness, then come back up and try to reach the light.

It felt during the experience that each being represents elements in my psyche going into the subconscious and extracting something of value. In the first part of the vision, the excitement of each being determined whether their pillar would reach the light. If a being reached the light, their contribution would reach consciousness. The enlightened being would then shine with an aura and begin to help the others reach consciousness, encouraging them. The feeling I got was that enlightened beings were not obligated to help others, but chose to do so voluntarily. The scene was simultaneously competitive and supportive.

After witnessing this process for a few iterations, it changed. All the elements were the same visually, but the process became more democratic. Instead of going down into the subconscious and rising on their own time, the beings would rise to a certain height and wait for the others. Once all pillars were at the same height, the beings would telepathically communicate (I could not understand them) and share their findings with one another. An instantaneous vote was taken, and if someone was deemed to have a good enough contribution to consciousness, their pillar would rise to the light. I cannot remember if the enlightened being would stay in consciousness, but the rest would then go back down and repeat the process.

The sharing process meant every being saw what a good contribution was. I then followed one of these beings down to the subconscious, where I saw it digging tunnels like a miner. It was looking for something of value in the tunnels.

Part 2: The council of elders

The second vision, which occurred just after the first one, took place in a room that looked like a court of law. I was standing in front of a curved table, where three elders sat. Like a court of law, there were people sitting around the elders, watching the process, and keeping the council accountable to the collective. I had an implicit understanding that the elders were the previous generation of successful beings that have contributed greatly to the self. A being would step in front of the council and present its hypothesis in a careful, dry, deliberate manner. The council would then judge each being’s contribution, deciding whether it was worthy of being presented to consciousness. The council was judging by how good the idea’s effect on the collective would be. If the idea presented was contradictory to the established consensus, but clearly better, then the council had to accept it. Each generation of elders needed to eventually be replaced by beings with new contributions.

To generate new ideas, each being needed to be separated from the established order and given creative freedom to see new patterns in new ways. Each being could experiment with far-fetched ideas to the degree that the structure was not rigid and conservative. The established consensus was weary of paradigm-shifting ideas and for good reason. There is danger in ideas that fundamentally change the structure of the process by which ideas are evaluated. For this reason, the council was conservative in its assessment and judged new ideas against previous successes.

At the same time, however, there was a recognition that the established must continually give way to the new and be updated. The audience was making sure the council did not become unbalanced: too conservative (not allowing new ideas to take over), or too progressive (letting new ideas replace old ideas without sufficient cause).

Parallels between the visions and external structures

Extrapolating from these experiences, I’d like to explore if these visions could be the narrative representation of subconscious psychic processes. I attempt to make this connection because it was implicitly understood during the visions that I was observing processes involved in my own cognition. The three different methods I saw represented some of the ways in which patterns in the subconscious can be understood by consciousness. For the psyche to generate new ideas, separation and dissociation between different parts of the psyche must occur. These visions hint that we have in the psyche exploratory elements whose job is to explore the subconscious and synthesize patterns into coherent ideas that consciousness can decode.

The first part of the Well vision is analogous to social structures where the person with the loudest voice and most exciting ideas is heard. This is the least-structured option and is how humans may have interacted with one another before complex social structures were put into place. In the second half of the Well vision, I saw a democratic method analogous to the ancient Greek political system. All voices were heard on equal standing, and ideas were shared freely and then voted on. The council of elders vision is analogous to some of the modern Western processes, such as a court of law, and the method by which PhDs are assessed. These are highly structured, well-defined processes that try to incentivize the renewal of Western society according to its values.

There are two non-trivial explanations for the parallels between these visions and known social structures. The first option is that these psychic processes are universal (archetypal), and consciously or unconsciously inform the formation of social structures. The second option is that I adopted (as analogies) into my own psyche processes in the external world by which ideas are developed. By understanding the processes in the external world, neuronal circuits in my brain were created that represent them. Ideas are then unconsciously routed through my internal representations to approximate the process by which these ideas would go through in the external world to reach the awareness of broader society. One reason could be simply because modelling social structures is a good way to generate useful ideas. Another reason could be that the ideas generated by modelling the social structures are less likely to be rejected socially. If so, modelling acts as a simulation in the psyche for society’s reaction to ideas.

The evolution of social structures over the last several millennia

More hints can be found in the order of events. Consider this proposition: the transitions between visions represents the evolution of the idea-generating process on the individual level (as a Westerner grows up and becomes part of society), as well as the evolution of social institutions over the past several thousand years.

On the individual front, a child begins by acting out whatever impulses it experiences. As it grows, the elements of the psyche begin to communicate with each other and vote. We can call these elements subpersonalities. No longer is each idea allowed to reach consciousness if it’s explosive enough. It first must be approved by the other subpersonalities. In the next stage, the individual matures to conform to a more conservative, specialized system where ideas are critically assessed prior to their acceptance.

To be a part of that system, the individual must predict society’s response to their ideas. This is done by understanding the social structures, consciously. Then routing internal cognitive processes through the mapped representation of the external social structures. Over time this becomes a hard-coded process and is therefore delegated (or moved down) to the subconscious. More neuronal circuitry can then develop on top of this structure—meaning it acts as a foundation for complex thought.

On the societal front, if we go back in time, primitive cultures had simpler social structures than we do today. It is natural to assume that in tribal times the relative homogeneity in values and the low number of members in any given tribe meant a less structured approach was perhaps the most efficient.

The next big jump in the evolution of the Western psyche happened in ancient Greece, where a democratic system was developed. There was a time and place where individuals would openly discuss, debate, and vote on ideas.

Finally, for the last several hundred years in the West, we’ve had specialized judicial and scientific systems. These systems allow a society of hundreds of millions of people to solve problems relatively peacefully. Instead of decisions being made democratically, a small number of individuals are chosen as the arbiters of Western values. These individuals are usually highly regarded, older people who have proven their commitment to Western values. To ensure their commitment to Western values, they are openly judged by the collective.

A little Sir