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Union
How does absorption function?
Consider meditation. Suppose that a meditator focuses his / her concentration
on an object. For the practitioner of sufficient ability the knower and the known
become one. The perceiver and the object of perception become one. The
meditator links his / her mind to the mind within the object.
To illustrate what absorption means I give an example from my 20s. On one
occasion when I had taken the drug LSD, I hallucinated a caterpillar (or more
correctly, my consciousness was transported to where that particular caterpillar
happened to be). I seemed to become one with that caterpillar  I could feel its
feelings. A kind of temporary one-sided symbiosis (I do not know if that
caterpillar was aware of me, or of my feelings). The knower and the known
became one. What in fact occurred was that my mind came into union with the
mind of that caterpillar, so enabling me to know it.
Absorption indicates the union of two minds. In self-absorption the
individual takes their own idealism or their own mystical aspirations as their
object ; the two minds are those of their own ego plus their idealised image of
themself. So in self-absorption, the person effectively identifies with their own
idealised image of themself.
When an inanimate object is used as the focus of concentration, the mind that
the meditator unites with is some aspect of the mind of the immanent
consciousness within the object. [My view of the material universe is pantheistic
in the broad sense, that is, the world is part of god but god is more than the
totality of the universe].
For many poets and artists, absorption can take the form of absorption into
Nature. R.D. Laing, in  The Divided Self  , page 91, gives a description of an
experience by James. James began to feel a tremendous oneness with the whole
world. This both amazed and terrified him. He wanted to be absorbed into
infinity, yet was afraid to do so since it meant losing his self. There is no half-
way stage to absorption : the person either becomes absorbed into himself or
absorbed into Nature.
This longing for absorption is a characteristic of a mentality which is
narcissistic. Absorption is the quintessence of feeling. It is the
entrancement with emotion. The person becomes absorbed into love, even
though it is usually self-love.
I sum up these ideas on identification and
absorption.
The ego functions through identification. Evolution is a gradual process of
changing identifications, and of reflecting identification back onto itself to
produce self-absorption. Once the infant has exhausted all the possibilities
inherent in identification with the sensual body, then to support its continuing
evolution the ego progresses to identification with the mother, then to the
father, to peers (or to itself), to teachers. Eventually it graduates to
identification with its own idealised mind. In the course of time (a scenario
presupposing a time scan of countless incarnations) it will progress to some
degree of identification with the mind of the absolute reality (or god).
References
Laing, R.D. The Divided Self. Pelican 1987.
The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back
to the paragraph that featured it.
[¹]. The differences between consciousness and ego are described on my
website A Modern Thinker, in the section on Sign Systems. See Links. [1]
[²]. Identification features jealousy in love mode. See the article on
Transference. [2]
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Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved
The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be
reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.
Ian Heath, London UK
e-mail address:
iheath3.tsm@relative-mindmatter.co.uk
New Ideas in
The Subconscious Mind
Psychology
Home List
Infancy . Trauma
The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this
article.
Desolation of the Will
Sub-headings
Towards the beginning of winter in the second
year (1988) of my self-analysis I was plunged into a
Childhood wounds
state of catatonia.
Subconscious
Subsequently when I abreacted, some years later,
emotions of parents
the origins of this state of mind my experience
showed me that catatonia in the adult is just a
Two strategies
replay of trauma suffered in infancy, during the
time when the infant is creating its ego. [1]
Reference
In the lead up to this event in 1988 I had embarked on a deep search for
meaning in my life. I examined everything that I had ever done. Looking into
my past, I examined my involvement in local politics, my social and sexual
relationships, my practice of yoga and Buddhism, my standards of ethics.
Over a period of some weeks I gradually found that meaning was absent or non-
existent. I had already discovered, in my 20s, that there was no meaning in
science. Now I reached the conclusion that meaning was merely an ethereal will-
of-the-wisp. According to the predilection of the person, so science, religion,
sex, etc may seem glamorous, but there is nothing underneath that glamour. I
gradually understood that all religious and secular doctrines, ideas and
practices were nothing more than a hollow panacea over a black hole of
meaninglessness, a black hole of nihilism.
This inquiry had been predominantly intellectual in manner, but in November
1988 I followed it through to its psychological termination. I was sitting in my
living room at home, looking vacantly out of the window into space  this
attitude facilitates reverie and intuitive thinking in me. I was thinking about the
complete absence of meaning in life, when all of a sudden my intellectual
understanding was transposed into a totally intuitive one and I experienced the
emotional impact of that understanding. The transposition was instantaneous
and devastating.
In the twinkling of an eye I went from sanity to insanity. The speed of the
transition was unbelievable. There was no possibility of defence. My whole
being was filled with fear and self-pity (as a mode of guilt). I was petrified. I
could not move my body. My will collapsed completely. I just sat there, staring
out of the window, immovable, in utter desolation. I had never before
experienced such mental pain  the totality of the desolation is indescribable.
The pain was so intense that I could not endure it. Slowly I resurrected my will
and withdrew from that state. This experience had profound and lasting effects
on me, among which it instantly deepened my level of self-awareness.
Catatonia is a state characterised by the complete collapse of the will: the adult
becomes petrified, his mind overwhelmed by fear and guilt (mode of self-pity). I
call this state  the desolation of the will , or  DOW for short. The central
core of a person's being is his / her will ; when it collapses, the resulting state of
mind is one of complete desolation. It is unimaginable to anyone who has never
experienced it.
However, catatonia is not the original infancy trauma itself but a particular [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]