What does it mean, to know thyself?, part one

Within a single lifetime our physical environment has been changed almost beyond

recognition. Yet there's been little corresponding change in how we as

individuals relate to the world and experience reality.

New tools and techniques of the human potentiality and presenting to

us an exhilarating and dangerous frontier renewing in our minds the old

question what are the limits of human ability the boundaries of the human

experience. What does it mean to be a human being.

Seminar big surgery a series of discussions focusing attention on the front tiers of human

development presented by K x K x FM in San Francisco in cooperation with the

excellent Institute of Big Sur California a Center which studies those trends

in religion philosophy and the behavioral sciences which emphasize the potentialities of

human existence. This week we present the final in a series of discussions

from an excellent seminar led by Dr. Rollo May on the unconscious

this week Dr. Mae considers the question what does it mean to know by self our

reconciliation in consciousness. Here now is Dr. Rollo May as he met in

session with his seminar at the Aslan Institute.

Now you will notice that I have.

Always had a. And this is in our talk

keeping consciousness and unconsciousness and that trying to

intellectualize that there's a great danger in the talk of consciousness in

our society. We think we mean talk. We think you mean it like an

explanation. Doing away with the unconscious which is

unfortunate case.

The idea that psychoanalysis has the purpose of making

the unconscious conscious now I think I think even when Freud David it's no

longer true. I want you to keep your unconscious if you can use

that phrase. I want you to keep it I want to live with you notice when we talk

about creativity the first and I was talking about the richness

of the encumbrance again kind of just breaking through but not translating

the experience into intellectualized term. I

think one of the real mistakes of psychoanalysis nowadays instead of

the depths of experience people try to intellectually. So if

I had nothing below the surface if I knew everything if I could formulate everything

then I would be a well-adjusted man. I might be well adjusted all

right but I would be a terrible blow or empty that. And

despairing. I'm interesting to myself or anybody else.

And when I talk about meth you see meth is exactly the way you can teach

the dimensions. Let's not try to interpret one dimension in terms of another.

But let's try to keep the total spectrum of consciousness

and let's try to live with it

phenomenology.

If you recall yesterday morning is not the science of explaining

human experience is the science of understanding human experience.

This is me join the stand with me

valuing it and keeping all the different dimensions.

Oh yeah yeah. Newman I feel I left some of you some up and

I'm very glad I did it because

I want to vary and make very clear to you that you cannot keep the full

dimensions of consciousness. If you run away from either

pole you can't get to four dimensions if you are by no way

conscious rational thought and you cannot keep to four dimensions if you

run into prematurely if I may say into a being

and forget trying to cover up the kind that you cannot love if you try to run

away from your anger and you cannot have being if you try to

cover up now. And so yesterday I was putting it through yesterday in a

kind of oh like the Marines training

to cop cars and I wanted to get home to you the

dialectical polarity in consciousness which I hope you never

knew.

I think our creativity comes out of being able to live

within and to affirm the polarities in

the dialectical relationship.

I was thinking night and morning. And between our

sessions. Think a good deal of what we're talking about and how I

can bring to you what I think would be meaningful.

I was thinking that night about a point that came from a Chinese poet.

I have three centuries ago. And the point of the poem is.

We poets struggle with being to force it to yield being.

We knock on the door of silence for an answer in music. Now

this to me is a beautiful picture of the human experience

that we struggle with known being the force or to your being there

time to break through and to come in the form become a participation in something that could be

on the inside of a dilemma we were an.

But in experiencing being. We find a new

dimension to our lives but we do not then escape

what the poet said. We have a new being but also the new

being is a process to living

again in the struggle of nonbeing with being to make it

being. We knock on the door. And from time to time we get an

answering you are sick but we do not then take away GNS and

live in the life of music the rest of our lives. That's a denial of growth

growth and human existence consists of taking joy

in the music but living still

in the human existential situation. Knocking on the door

of science. Now I want to get across to you that human

growth and consists of living within the

polarities and also consciousness and once you give up on Earth each of

this consciousness this is what's really the tragedy. The simple

solution to life premature salvation premature Satori

premature technology didn't take away the existential

situation. I could use a lot of fancy terms for what I'm talking

about to struggle of being against non being. We live in being

but we never can give up the struggle with God being. Struggle in essence against

existence. We find essences but we never can give up the fact that we live

existential need to struggle. Beauty

without bitterness that we will find beauty only to the extent we can have the

courage to be with unipolarity with

Dana. Human life consists and consciousness consists

of the joy the grief and the creativity and meaning

of living within. This paradox in the framing this paradox.

Now if we can do that then we can move on to reconciliation but reconciliation

sure that will be a neurotic to facts. It will

be a short circuit experience. You are

precious things in life that essential to human

growth and meaning. And so I want to talk to you destroying

the first half hour about the myth of

reconciliation and the meaning of reconciliation. Then I will have a

discussion and then I want to take that I just 15 minutes this morning to. Talk about

meditation and the things that we can. Personally

do to make grow all these dimensions of

consciousness within us. This myth knowing

dies. The drama of knowingness out the ground of

reconciliation is an old story in an old dog the

part of which you are very familiar with but helped introduce you to some new

aspects of it and this is the drama of Oedipus.

Because that edifice the story of Oedipus that the Greeks knew

was a story that came out of quite a feat

in the olden days named Larry married to a wife named your cast and

God bless them with the sun you know which otherwise when the son was born

the prediction the Oracle

was that the son would kill his father.

I'm talking there yes. Put the sign. On the side of the

mountain there he is to be and by the world.

Now this son was found by a shepherd and the shepherd with the milk of

human kindness picked up and took the little baby back

to Corinth where he had that feeds it. I've been to Greece down the road from

Athens. Perhaps 30. And then beyond that about

twenty or thirty miles is a city of quiet assured the shepherd

took the boy to clients in the little infant was raised by the king and queen the car of course.

That in a drunken bout. When the Oedipus

as he was called grew up in current with this friend somebody

remarked to him that there had been a prediction that he was going to kill his father.

Now he loved the king of client and the queen well into them

if you really believe the Oedipus complex eat other people he would have killed and he killed a

very interesting and I'm about to tell you that this drama has now whatever

delicious sex. Except this happen could always happen.

Any place he didn't run to kill his father. So he

acts out in shuffle card. And writing is rocking across the

Isthmus and he and many others are at a crossroads he

met a chariot in which there was an old man

and the show it was driven by an obstreperous chauffeur. Who demanded that

he had to first get off the road edifices of a willful man that you were

asking yesterday and this is partly the drama the glory

of having some proud the drum of the glory of not being afraid to get mad.

You get into a lot of trouble but it also life gets away from that. The

reconciliation if you stick with it. So there was a fight between Oedipus

and the chauffeur and the man got out to help the

chauffeur and in the fire deal man is killed. Now Oedipus then

walked down to the thieves and there were a plague.

And they they remember the Sphinx. They're

getting everybody up until somebody could give the answer.

What walks on four legs in the morning and two legs at noon in tree lakes at

night and as you know the answer is man Oedipus

guessed the answer to the riddle and so he then married the queen Joe caster

and they don't happen ever after now or ever after for 20

years and then that's where we

start. And passed in the Greeks on the loud and

Sophocles and everybody else who wrote the dramas on except the dad like the Pilgrim Fathers

and as we know that now we've got a problem. And if this were to die on the ground it

is about. And the drama of whether a man can

be what he is where he was born and

what he has done is to drown it. Whether it's a drone of a man facing

reality of himself. Then when a drama or plans.

The Oedipus is noted in the dryer as

a very good Kang he's the mightiest head among the stars. He

has reigned wisely and well in thieves for a number of

years and been happily married to Queen Jo caster.

There then comes a. Clegg and

feeds as the curtain rises in this drama. Where it has been brought from the Oracle

with the plague will be lifted only when they discover who the murderer

King and I was at home twenty years before. So

Oedipus cause the old blind see eye to receive and do any of you know

much about disfigured to receive.

It Have you read it.

Well we see an entity he may be but I was one

of you know much about him if he's an old blind see act as a symbol.

Of. It.

Yeah but that is the law going to Pacific symbolism.

Well something I learned on a short time ago and I was reading TS Eliot's The Waste Land

Resources mentioned in that remember the TV

series such and such and such a fantastically good thing out to receive it

was like a scene at the head dress.

They speak of in a Sea Org with the paps had his Bras Rouge

is for a blind prophet who represented both

the female and the male role and it is a very fascinating in that

like opinion that the reconciliation must occur by means

somebody who can reconcile the pallette

is the right female male as another vehicle or at least that we knew and had.

No issues are so honest. The role of the cycleway.

I wish all analysts were as wise to research and also said

as little prior to

reach us is always trying to.

It's making Oedipus discovered himself to resist refuses to talk.

Here's a give the answer and I'm not in favor of Santa's treatment which generates

three distinct consecutively but knew that if the truth is going to come

out that it has got to find himself. And his

brightness blind yes. It also might have a symbol.

And it's a symbol of prophets all through the ages.

What it means is that if you can close your eyes to art of the who

are outside of everything going on all the prime.

In the real world you close your eyes and if you are blind then you are more

after getting inward sight.

I love to tell you about a blind patient that 110 died from whom I don't have to mend

it and but you could do it through world. When your eyes were

closed.

And in any case in this during the

drama of this this tragic drama of a man trying to face the

truth about himself. Is the drama of the passionate relation to

know that I'm sure was step by step

to reach us as a central character. Not saying much but he's the one all

Oedipus bounces up against in a middle age edifice

and just bounces up against and thereby has to sooner or

later discover the truth. It's a paraffin and gripping unfolding

of a man's knowledge of himself and in the course of it.

Oedipus goes through rage. Resistance projection.

Many of the characteristics that we know so well in

psychoanalysis a human being struggling desperately

against seeing the truth about himself.

Oedipus cause all to receive this. And. When

Oedipus asked him who is a guy who is guilty of slaying to Laos.

To refuse answers how terrible it is to know. Where no good

comes from knowing. I've used matters I was fully aware but let

them slip me an Oedipus makes two demands and threats. And

discontinuous let me go home so she lowered most

easily. You are unknowing my saying any

sort I will not say the best I display my story.

This is not quite an analytical role.

I mean it goes. Dramatically it wrecks.

Because it fries at edifice to take the initiative it reaches as a

grantor talent he says they. Know then Oedipus.

Struggles with this true. And when it comes out

in the first place a projection of Oedipus

get angry at your easiest and accuses to reshift to planning to destroy the

city. That's why I had to resist when that speak in the CEA replies

I will not bring reamer Soprano myself and upon you. Why do you

search these matters. And then in a burst of anger projection.

Oedipus accuses to receive. Ganging up with Korea

on the car in order to put out you know accused

of having kill a ASSIM self. When Oedipus is

friendly toward the truth by the goaded prophet that he himself is

murder of his father he turned to go into recess and he chooses to

resist again up with Korea. Got to take over for

the state. And these are all forms of resistance. Projection and

early struggles that a person goes through.

Oedipus going to resurface and do the whole thing you see was simply saying it's a terrible

thing and interested they don't want to be a

party to telling you. I. Know the resistance

is that a person is going through. I cannot bear to admit it is

so I will not see it. I will say it's somebody out and then the

projection occurs if it is true it's somebody else not not

and this is what I want of a school through all the time. You know having to face the

most well known better

things about our selves.

How do you cast the right Anderson picture and here we have a lovely

drama you can make sure to start with instead it is written by a man and

left to the streets. Freud would say it's to assuage the fairer

sex. I don't know if this was the first

actually I think it does say something about how men are hung

up with the fact that there's one thing in the world that never can do and that's have a

baby and the one thing they never can get over is that a woman had to bring them

to birth. This has far reaching implications but

I suggest you women when you demand start making this woman the

villain like in that Adam and he you just remind yourself that

that's the only compensation they've got and any

job and there is and it's a completely modern life.

This really amuses me greatly as I read the drama.

She said Don't pay any attention to what this was to us as. A listener and she

said nothing and human life turns on the soothsayers are. And

then he began to Oedipus as you know there's something here that's terribly important as a

portent just a mystery that surrounds my birth. And the mother

becomes concerned. The wife and mother whom he's married

and she may begin to sense just know she hasn't

known it before. And then she tries very desperately to dissuade him. She

says But why should men be fearful or whom fortune is mischievous

at the word faith instead like you see in the Greek Period the Renaissance and so on.

If you could get anybody to believe it was fate or fortune and they didn't have to be responsible for it.

Now there's the older more out of it. Oedipus isn't going to buy it. He's

responsible even though it was fortune or fate. But in any case why should she says why

should bend fear for it was over fortune Aroon fortune

his mistress and before a night of nothing is sure to best take

life easily. But even that that's from the Greeks of his

century B.C. and that take life

easily and as a man may appear.

We do it in good times everything is prosperous and thieves. We have two cars in the garage.

I am sure you forget about Vietnam

if you can and you assume rather than I want to

assume but you forgot about it and things are getting better every day in every way

and so we get about these problems of

oneself and then jihad for that maternal

wedding you know there's been in the the prediction that this

is the mother that predict the turn wedding have no fear for

many men ere now have dreamed as much but he

who Bryson extremists that's nothing. No story has been

yet another winter Oedipus dream before

it. Everybody has to look at that.

Having read the books in the book of the month

I should add having read my bit Mead in red book. Everyone

mad at me and out of me and them if I may.

Completely unconscious. I think I should know that it will be coming out in two or three days it's

September issue of Redbook. I have an article in time if you would

never read read myself and come across that only by action. I

think you'd like that. So we do have some things we've been talking about

here waiting and

a huge red red book that hasn't you know that everybody has a difficult dream

and why should you and I need to live by in between

and then proclaim to the face the truth whatever it may

be. He said I must know. And the like. Then

and then she cries don't get the complete woman because the last

check in the plaque in the school

yard has great confidence here that that's going to do the trick. Back with most of

us men it does to the woman start to cry

and in our every case she says she cried

Don't take it.

I am sick and that's enough.

Oh my it is never a no. Here is saying that

one should not take dreams for and there are symbols. Seriously

saying what is said in our culture best to be addressed best to live life.

OK whatever that mean. And it was interesting that we read in most of

my psychology textbooks and was in there in the dream so

maybe a little bit interesting significant symbolism there for the

birds in the evolution. Now that's what you have to tell yourself if you can't

face the reality of the dimensions of it. Conscious of

the principle of adjustment to press

me and the radical upheaval that cause it. Pursuing truths about

oneself. The acceptance of oneself without the passion that

reality with relation to truth. Now let me

put in a footnote about why I think the feminine principle comes in

there is a principle that stands for refusing to face the truth.

It's not fair to women it's women that replace your

head in the two are women. I think we're going

to certainly know better. What are you trying to say there that the

biological There is a tide that we are always struggling

again.

And it was difficult to transcend and the same principle here

Orestes that we show yesterday that the brown eyed girl with a

man and his with his mother and with a woman too as far as it goes and the tie

that would keep you embedded in life the kind of people you know

tied to previous levels of consciousness is the tie that symbolized by the

umbilical cord symbolized by the fact of having come from women

and would tend to stay home. Now we all know how two of the of

adolescents who need to fight it to get free with it doing it to

do. And all through life. The problem

is the freedom and the

reconciliation. Higher level of differentiation

of ourselves with our biological shells with feet

tied to their. Idol rock. Put this best when he

says that growth is a series of birth experiences.

Him and every new view of truth is a cutting off

of the guy with the umbilical

cord.

Every new fuel to the ship breaking out of the womb and being born into

greater individuation.

I remember it it occurred to me that the fight against the mother had to

break out of the womb and I assume that the mother wanted to hold me you know

she probably does not relevant to the struggle probably read

today and my plight about it that I have a hard time bringing myself the

struggle. Of imbedded into my rage because

again the mother who is the holder of

the room and also they're going to put hostility at each step and

grow hostility toward the mother put rejecting you into the world in the first place.