The act of perception by a conscious entity beings matter into physical existence!
and my immediate mental connection was to Jung's Answer to Job in which he writes:
The character thus revealed [i.e. God] fits a personality who can only convince himself that he exists through his relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is totally lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself. It is as if he existed only be reason of the fact that he has an object which assures him that he is really there. . . . Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody. That is why the Creator needs conscious man even though, from sheer unconsciousness, he would like to prevent him from becoming conscious.
The italicized sentence (emphasis added by me) is almost identical to Anthony's statement. I'm not sure how far we can take this but one conclusion is that God is a wave function! And our interaction with him collapses him down to a measurable (and knowable?) entity.
I caught myself supporting this notion the other day. My daughter (almost 2) was sitting just outside my office door eating blueberries. She LOVES blueberries and was very intent on getting each one out of the bowl with her spoon and into her mouth. I was stepping over the piles of junk getting something off the printer or something and saw her and it arrested me. I just stood there watching her (she was so intent that she didn't notice me watching her). Then I found myself wishing that my wife would come out of the bedroom and see me. When I realized this thought had presented itself, I, again, thought of Jung and how this experience didn't exist until some consciousness -- outside of myself -- witnessed it. I really don't think it would have "worked" if my daughter looked up and "witnessed" it because she was in the experience (albeit unknowingly) the same as I.
13 comments:
What a fine post, and what finely articulated reflections. There are so many parallels of Anthony to Jung; I read Jung all through my 20s and 30s, and when I encountered Anthony's text I jotted down all the parallels to Jung in a notebook, and in the margins of ITLAD. Ken, do you still plan to teach that course on Jung? I'll bet Anthony's new book will bring even more Jungian themes to light. . .
I'd love to see your notebook and your copy of ITLAD. That's half the fun of used books - reading margin notes and dedications by past readers. Sort of the book's previous lives. It's sometimes very interesting to compare what others found important with what I find important today.
Yes, I am teaching the intro courses. March 27th is a whirlwind 2 hour intro based on the Tavistok Lectures in Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice. And in June is a (hopefully) 2 night class based on Jolande Jacobi's book The Psychology of CG Jung.
I am very much looking forward to Anthony's next book.
Ken; The courses sound wonderful. By the way, where are you teaching them? And I am sure I will scribble all over the margins of the new book as well.
Susan Marie, I am in Kansas City, Missouri, and I'm teaching them through the Kansas City Friends of Jung.
I'm a scribbler AND a dog-earer. I try to have levels with dog-eared pages being the most important, then there's one or more checks in the margins and one or more vertical lines in the margins to delineate important ideas. Sometimes, I use stars. The books are a mess when I get done with them.
In my latest book I have a section on the Daemonic 'nudges' that took place over a period of years that lead my to writing ITLAD. One of them has reference to something mentioned in the posts above. Unlike Ken I have never dog-eared pages of my books (I also try to avoid breaking the spines - must be something deeply Freudian (am I allowed to mention Freud on a posting discussing Jung?). In early 2002 I was heavily into research for my putative first book. At that stage I had no idea what it was to be about - I just knew that deja vu was to be the main theme. The concept of the Daemon was to occur months in the future. Now for some reason - it may have been wanting to know more about Barrow & Tipler's 'The Anthropic Cosmological Principle' I needed to read up about the structures called mitachondria. These are found in each cell of the body and have their own form of DNA, called mitachondrial DNA. I needed more information. Now I have (as I suspect most readers of this blog do) a vast collection of books. I went to my bookcases searching for any book that may reference mitachondria. My left hand reached out automatically, and without my active involvement (I am right-handed by the way and never use my left hand if I can help it), and picked out one particular book - 'The Blind Watchmaker' By Richard Dawkins. Now it may come as a surprise to many but Prof. Dawkins is one of my intellectual heroes and I have all of his books. At that stage I owned about eight so this particular one had been selected at random for me by the non-dominant hemisphere of my brain. I looked at the book and was surprised/horrified to notice that an earlier version of me, when reading the book many years before, had dog-eared one page of this book - and only one. Before opening the page I checked every other Dawkins book and this was the only page I had 'damaged'. I opened the book at the offending page (176) and scanned down. Something inside me knew what was coming next. Ther was the word 'mitachondria' with a full explanation of the role of this object and its curious DNA. I flicked to the back of the book. It is the only page that Dawkins references mitachondria. With mounting excitement I flicked through his other books. Again, no reference. I suddenly had a massively detailed flashback to the time I had dog-eared the page. I was on a beach in a place called Pedi on the Greek Island of Symi (for many years my favourite place on Earth). This was twelve years earlier. My younger self had decided to go up for lunch at the taverna and I watched, in my Bohmian IMAX reverie (not that I knew what that was in 2002) as my hand - I distinctly recall it was my left (the same one that had reached out for the book in the first place) dog-eared the page. Then in a flash I was back in my study in Horsham in England.
It was only after I had finished ITLAD that I realised the amazing significance of these two, chronologically distanced, events. This was my Daemon proving his own existence years before I was to find him in my research.
The event above is one of four amazing events that I describe in my next book - and believe me that is not the best one ... not by a long way!
If you wish to check the page out it is 176 of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, Penguin Books (1988)
That is a fascinating story and I feel privileged to have read it. I am - as I am certain countless other bloggers are also - awaiting the publication of "The Daemon" with extreme anticipation. Colin Wilson once attributed such expereinces to "the library angel". Schopenhauer also marvelled that we inuitively reach for books that we will need years in the future.
Again, wow. During a chat with Tony yesterday Colin Wilson came up and Tony asked me if I had a particular book of his, which I indeed do own. Once I got home I popped into my library (sounds posher than it is - just a back bedroom with about 2500 books in it!!) and I read a couple of chapters, one of which was regarding the "library angel" and I was going to put something to that effect on here today.
Hmmmmm, maybe the Quantum Entaglement between you and I Susan Marie is more Daemonic than we think.
(a post on my theories of Quantum Entanglement and Concurrent Universes in Consciousness will follow in a few days when I can finish the theory without giving myself headaches)
*hug*
This is all very promising. "Heaven will direct it."
Define Heaven !
KARL: I mean "heaven" in the sense that Horatio meant it, when answering the Lord Hamlet. In terms of the starry heavens, and the secret order contained in the cosmos, and the ethics of a higher reason, transcending man. . . and ummmmmm. . . I am trying to recall the exact context. . .He was not answering Hamlet, he was replying to one of the castle guards. . "Perchance 'twill walk again." "Aye, I warrant it will. Heaven will drect it; come, let us go our ways.". . . And I feel that Karl shall also walk again, and heaven will direct him, and now I am going my way. . .
RE: Colin Wilson,
You may be interested to know that Colin has not only read ITLAD but loved it. This is his actual comment that will, hopefully, be placed in the peer-review section of the second edition of ITLAD:
“This book is a remarkable intellectual adventure that has the qualities of a thriller - at times reading it is like a ride on the big dipper. Is There Life After Death? – The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When You Die reminds me of one of my favourite films; Groundhog Day. I found Anthony Peake’s theory to be as thought-provoking and as exhilarating as this great film.”
As he is one of my all-time intellectual heroes I was on cloud nine for days and days after receiving this!
Good Lord; I can certainly see why ! Colin Wilson is to my thinking almost of mythic stature; for him to speak that way about your book (although, having his astute mind, how could he do otherwise? And you are surely his equal in your own right. But still. . . ) His remarks should appear on both texts; your publishers must know that CW is a sort of hero to millions, and it would lend the more credence to your writing (richly and highly warranted). The shocks are never ending; I actually feel faint. But then I had steeped myself in his wrtings for years. . .
I'm just re-re-reading my copy of Colin Wilson's "Beyond The Occult" and am being constantly struck by the Peakeian linkages, so it doesn't surprise me that Colin liked ITLAD - indeed, there is much I could say on the whole Occult subject but I shall bide my time except for....................
See New Post !
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