HUMAN RELATIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
The aim of this little book is merely to establish the smallest foothold
in the swamp of vagueness which now goes by the name of the unconscious.
At last we form some sort of notion what the unconscious actually is. It
is that active spontaneity which rouses in each individual organism at
the moment of fusion of the parent nuclei, and which, in polarized
connection with the external universe, gradually evolves or elaborates
its own individual psyche and corpus, bringing both mind and body forth
from itself. Thus it would seem that the term _unconscious_ is only
another word for life. But life is a general force, whereas the
unconscious is essentially single and unique in each individual
organism; it is the active, self-evolving soul bringing forth its own
incarnation and self-manifestation. Which incarnation and
self-manifestation seems to be the whole goal of the _unconscious_ soul:
the whole goal of life. Thus it is that the unconscious brings forth not
only consciousness, but tissue and organs also. And all the time the
working of each organ depends on the primary spontaneous-conscious
center of which it is the issue—if you like, the soul-center. And
consciousness is like a web woven finally in the mind from the various
silken strands spun forth from the primal center of the unconscious.
But the unconscious is never an abstraction, _never to be abstracted_.
It is never an ideal entity. It is always concrete. In the very first
instance, it is the glinting nucleus of the ovule. And proceeding from
this, it is the chain or constellation of nuclei which derive directly
from this first spark. And further still it is the great nerve-centers
of the human body, in which the primal and pristine nuclei still act
direct. The nuclei are centers of spontaneous consciousness. It seems as
if their bright grain were germ-consciousness, consciousness germinating
forever. If that is a mystery, it is not my fault. Certainly it is not
mysticism. It is obvious, demonstrable scientific fact, to be verified
under the microscope and within the human psyche, subjectively and
objectively, both. Of course, the subjective verification is what men
kick at. Thin-minded idealists cannot bear any appeal to their bowels of
comprehension.
We can quite tangibly deal with the human unconscious. We trace its
source and centers in the great ganglia and nodes of the nervous system.
We establish the nature of the spontaneous consciousness at each of
these centers; we determine the polarity and the direction of the
polarized flow. And from this we know the motion and individual
manifestation of the psyche itself; we also know the motion and rhythm
of the great organs of the body. For at every point psyche and functions
are so nearly identified that only by holding our breath can we realize
their _duality_ in identification—a polarized duality once more. But
here is no place to enter the great investigation of the duality and
polarization of the vital-creative activity and the mechanico-material
activity. The two are two in one, a polarized quality. They are
unthinkably different.
On the first field of human conscious—the first plane of the
unconscious—we locate four great spontaneous centers, two below the
diaphragm, two above. These four centers control the four greatest
organs. And they give rise to the whole basis of human consciousness.
Functional and psychic at once, this is their first polar duality.
But the polarity is further. The horizontal division of the diaphragm
divides man forever into his individual duality, the duality of the
upper and lower man, the two great bodies of upper and lower
consciousness and function. This is the horizontal line.
The vertical division between the voluntary and the sympathetic systems,
the line of division between the spinal system and the great
plexus-system of the front of the human body, forms the second
distinction into duality. It is the great difference between the soft,
recipient front of the body and the wall of the back. The front of the
body is the live end of the magnet. The back is the closed opposition.
And again there are two parallel streams of function and consciousness,
vertically separate now. This is the vertical line of division. And the
horizontal line and the vertical line form the cross of all existence
and being. And even this is not mysticism—no more than the ancient
symbols used in botany or biology.
On the first field of human consciousness, which is the basis of life
and consciousness, are the four first poles of spontaneity. These have
their fourfold polarity within the individual, again figured by the
cross. But the individual is never purely a thing-by-himself. He cannot
exist save in polarized relation to the external universe, a relation
both functional and psychic-dynamic. Development takes place only from
the polarized circuits of the dynamic unconscious, and these circuits
must be both individual and extra-individual. There must be the circuit
of which the complementary pole is external to the individual.
That is, in the first place there must be the _other individual_. There
must be a polarized connection with the other individual—or even other
individuals. On the first field there are four poles in each individual.
So that the first, the basic field of extra-individual consciousness
contains eight poles—an eightfold polarity, a fourfold circuit. It may
be that between two individuals, even mother and child, the polarity may
be established only fourfold, a dual circuit. It may be that one circuit
of spontaneous consciousness may never be fully established. This means,
for a child, a certain deficiency in development, a psychic inadequacy.
So we are again face to face with the basic problem of human conduct. No
human being can develop save through the polarized connection with other
beings. This circuit of polarized unison precedes all mind and all
knowing. It is anterior to and ascendant over the human will. And yet
the mind and the will can both interfere with the dynamic circuit, an
idea, like a stone wedged in a delicate machine, can arrest one whole
process of psychic interaction and spontaneous growth.
How then? Man doth not live by bread alone. It is time we made haste to
settle the bread question, which after all is only the A B C of social
economies, and proceeded to devote our attention to this much more
profound and vital question: how to establish and maintain the circuit
of vital polarity from which the psyche actually develops, as the body
develops from the circuit of alimentation and respiration. We have
reached the stage where we can settle the alimentation and respiration
problems almost off-hand. But woe betide us, the unspeakable agony we
suffer from the failure to establish and maintain the vital circuits
between ourselves and the effectual correspondent, the other human
being, other human beings, and all the extraneous universe. The tortures
of psychic starvation which civilized people proceed to suffer, once
they have solved for themselves the bread-and-butter problem of
alimentation, will not bear thought. Delicate, creative desire, sending
forth its fine vibrations in search of the true pole of magnetic rest in
another human being or beings, how it is thwarted, insulated by a whole
set of India-rubber ideas and ideals and conventions, till every form of
perversion and death-desire sets in! How can we _escape_ neuroses?
Psychoanalysis won’t tell us. But a mere shadow of understanding of the
true unconscious will give us the hint.
The amazingly difficult and vital business of human relationship has
been almost laughably underestimated in our epoch. All this nonsense
about love and unselfishness, more crude and repugnant than savage
fetish-worship. Love is a thing to be _learned_, through centuries of
patient effort. It is a difficult, complex maintenance of individual
integrity throughout the incalculable processes of interhuman-polarity.
Even on the first great plane of consciousness, four prime poles in each
individual, four powerful circuits possible between two individuals, and
each of the four circuits to be established to perfection and yet
maintained in pure equilibrium with all the others. Who can do it?
Nobody. Yet we have all got to do it, or else suffer ascetic tortures of
starvation and privation or of distortion and overstrain and slow
collapse into corruption. The whole of life is one long, blind effort at
an established polarity with the outer universe, human and non-human;
and the whole of modern life is a shrieking failure. It is our own
fault.
The actual evolution of the individual psyche is a result of the
interaction between the individual and the outer universe. Which means
that just as a child in the womb grows as a result of the parental
blood-stream which nourishes the vital quick of the fœtus, so does every
man and woman grow and develop as a result of the polarized flux between
the spontaneous self and some other self or selves. It is the circuit of
vital flux between itself and another being or beings which brings about
the development and evolution of every individual psyche and physique.
This is a law of life and creation, from which we cannot escape.
Ascetics and voluptuaries both try to dodge this main condition, and
both succeed perhaps for a generation. But after two generations all
collapses. Man doth not live by bread alone. He lives even more
essentially from the nourishing creative flow between himself and
another or others.
This is the reality of the extra-individual circuits of polarity, those
established between two or more individuals. But a corresponding reality
is that of the internal, purely individual polarity—the polarity within
a man himself of his upper and lower consciousness, and his own
voluntary and sympathetic modes. Here is a fourfold interaction within
the self. And from this fourfold reaction within the self results that
final manifestation which we know as _mind_, mental consciousness.
The brain is, if we may use the word, the terminal instrument of the
dynamic consciousness. It transmutes what is a creative flux into a
certain fixed cypher. It prints off, like a telegraph instrument, the
glyphs and grafic representations which we call percepts, concepts,
ideas. It produces a new reality—the ideal. The idea is another static
entity, another unit of the mechanical-active and materio-static
universe. It is thrown off from life, as leaves are shed from a tree, or
as feathers fall from a bird. Ideas are the dry, unliving, inscutient
plumage which intervenes between us and the circumambient universe,
forming at once an insulator and an instrument for the subduing of the
universe. The mind is the instrument of instruments; it is not a
creative reality.
Once the mind is awake, being in itself a finality, it feels very
assured. “The word became flesh, and began to put on airs,” says Norman
Douglas wittily. It is exactly what happens. Mentality, being automatic
in its principle like the machine, begins to assume life. It begins to
affect life, to pretend to make and unmake life. “In the beginning was
the Word.” This is the presumptuous masquerading of the mind. The Word
cannot be the beginning of life. It is the _end_ of life, that which
falls shed. The mind is the dead end of life. But it has all the
mechanical force of the non-vital universe. It is a great dynamo of
super-mechanical force. Given the _will_ as accomplice, it can even
arrogate its machine-motions and automatizations over the whole of life,
till every tree becomes a clipped tea-pot and every man a useful
mechanism. So we see the brain, like a great dynamo and accumulator,
accumulating _mechanical_ force and presuming to apply this mechanical
force-control to the living unconscious, subjecting everything
spontaneous to certain machine-principles called ideals or ideas.
And the human will assists in this humiliating and sterilizing process.
We don’t know what the human will is. But we do know that it is a
certain faculty belonging to every living organism, the faculty for
self-determination. It is a strange faculty of the soul itself, for its
own direction. The will is indeed the faculty which every individual
possesses from the very moment of conception, for exerting a certain
control over the vital and automatic processes of his own evolution. It
does not depend originally on mind. Originally it is a purely
spontaneous control-factor of the living unconscious. It seems as if,
primarily, the will and the conscience were identical, in the pre-mental
state. It seems as if the will were given as a great balancing faculty,
the faculty whereby automatization is _prevented_ in the evolving
psyche. The _spontaneous_ will reacts at once against the exaggeration
of any one particular circuit of polarity. Any vital circuit—a fact
known to psychoanalysis. And against this automatism, this degradation
from the spontaneous-vital reality into the mechanic-material reality,
the human soul must always struggle. And the will is the power which the
unique self possesses to right itself from automatism.
Sometimes, however, the free psyche really collapses, and the will
_identifies_ itself with an automatic circuit. Then a complex is set up,
a paranoia. Then incipient madness sets in. If the identification
continues, the derangement becomes serious. There may come sudden jolts
of dislocation of the whole psychic flow, like epilepsy. Or there may
come any of the known forms of primary madness. The second danger is
that the will shall identify itself with the mind and become an
instrument of the mind. The same process of automatism sets up, only now
it is slower. The mind proceeds to assume control over every
organic-psychic circuit. The spontaneous flux is destroyed, and a
certain automatic circuit substituted. Now an automatic establishment of
the psyche must, like the building of a machine, proceed according to
some definite fixed scheme, based upon certain fixed principles. And it
is here that ideals and ideas enter. They are the machine-plan and the
machine-principles of an automatized psyche.
So, humanity proceeds to derange itself, to automatize itself from the
mental consciousness. It is a process of derangement, just as the fixing
of the will upon any other primary process is a derangement. It is a
long, slow development in madness. Quite justly do the advanced Russian
and French writers acclaim madness as a great goal. It is the genuine
goal of self-automatism, mental-conscious supremacy.
True, we must all develop into mental consciousness. But
mental-consciousness is not a goal; it is a cul-de-sac. It provides us
only with endless _appliances_ which we can use for the
all-too-difficult business of coming to our spontaneous-creative
fullness of being. It provides us with means to adjust ourselves to the
external universe. It gives us further means for subduing the external,
materio-mechanical universe to our great end of creative life. And it
gives us plain indications of how to avoid falling into automatism,
hints for the _applying_ of the will, the loosening of false, automatic
fixations, the brave adherence to a profound soul-impulse. This is the
use of the mind—a great indicator and instrument. The mind as author and
director of life is anathema.
So, the few things we have to say about the unconscious end for the
moment. There is almost nothing said. Yet it is a beginning. Still
remain to be revealed the other great centers of the unconscious. We
know four: two pairs. In all there are seven planes. That is, there are
six dual centers of spontaneous polarity, and then the final one. That
is, the great upper and lower consciousness is only just broached—the
further heights and depths are not even hinted at. Nay, in public it
would hardly be allowed us to hint at them. There is so much to know,
and every step of the progress in knowledge is a death to the human
idealism which governs us now so ruthlessly and vilely. It must die, and
we _will_ break free. But what tyranny is so hideous as that of an
automatically ideal humanity?
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).