Transcendent aspects of the cosmos

How to define the transcendent aspects of the universe? Let’s call that all unreachable elements for direct or indirect sensory perception.
The dark face of the moon isn’t accessible to the vision, it is nevertheless a part of the material aspects, because you can send them an explorer or a camera that will come back with coherent pictures, or a robot to collect some pebbles you can see and touch if you have the opportunity to belong to NASA.

The transcendent part of the real is that which is accessible only to extrasensory perception is (or possibly what’s not accessible at all to anyone, but we’re not considering that possibility, because imperceptibility equals out of any influence or possibility of knowledge, by definition).

Experience shows that the elements that can be perceived by extrasensory way are “archetypal” in nature: they are responsible, as rightly notes Jung, both symbol and emotion. The symbolic part is for our intellect, and our emotional part to affect. Intellect and affect are two channels through which we can decipher the archetypes received by extrasensory perception. We can also say that the archetypes are loaded with energy-information, the information component feeding the thought, and the energy component feeding the feelings.

The affective component acts as a motor prompting the intellect to seek the interpretation of the symbol in relation to personal experience. This inner work Jung called individuation to clarify that it was the action of the universal values on the individual is at the heart of all authentic spiritual evolutions. The intellect not fed by the archetypes inevitably drift towards all kinds of egotistical representations, philosophical, religious etc. which are ultimately an illusion.

The archetypes seem at first big waves, but unimportant. The reductionist view of reality that our rationalistic culture inoculated us, like images provided by religions, do not take them into account abilities. There is so little room for them in the way we perceive things and events. The notion of archetype is often reduced to a purely intellectual general model derived from multiple experiments, such as Voltaire. But if we look carefully, they are the ones thatfeed our emotions, our motivations, our intuition, our creativity, our imagination, our judgments, our decisions even if we do not realize it because we can not access them directly. Thus, they have a direct impact on the course of human events. Or material events through the premonition of weathers or other disasters.

In the rare case of perception of archetypes, religions speak of apparitions, unaware that a vision of the Virgin, for example, is a form among others an archetype can take, loaded e.g. with an energy designed to raise awareness of the importance of spiritual work. We can see how these “miracles” influence history. In other settings, the archetype may take the form of a chariot of fire, or a flying saucer. They use some cerebral content available for expression, and must be decrypted based on the experience of the individual.

When psychic abilities developed normally (Plato spoke to put into action the appropriate organ of the soul), the archetypes involved in any situation are permanently accessible. Then we can see that these are archetypal energies from which love is born, inspire artists, feed tolerance, encourage meetings, determine the notion of justice, power the desire of harmony, breath into us repulsion toward evil. It is there that are the primordial energies that control our destinies, altering the probability of events to happen through the laws of chance, but always for the greater good.

Evil can by the way, be defined as anything contrary to the archetypes and source of disorders, diseases, psychological conflicts, destruction. While the notion of well characterized conform to archetypal elements, always going in the direction of order and harmony, such as health, inner peace, love, tolerance, patience, forgiveness, etc.

This way of thinking may seem abstract or arbitrary. It gradually becomes clear when psychic abilities resume their natural function, which is precisely to put us in touch with this archetypal dimension. Visions can for example lead others in the path of love, so that it achieves its original purpose, which is to develop psychic abilities in a feeling of bliss and ensure spiritual evolution. This establishes a virtuous circle that will restore the natural functioning of the normal part of the mind, and the extrasensory-aware part, characterized by constant contact with the transcendent dimension.

Let us recall that Plato perfectly describes this problem in two of his dialogues: The Symposium and the Phaedrus. To truly understand something is put in resonance with Essences floating at the surface of consciousness, and felt as a magic discovery of a wonder wiping out the effort, making things easy and beneficial, and deeply embedding them in memory. Plato’s explanations are usually misunderstood, already for the simple reason that scholars translate the notion of essence, identical to that of Archetype, by “Idea”. The ideas are in the current conception of purely mental processes, far from any “connection” with this subtle dimension. Thus Plato’s teaching is immediately reduced to banal and hollow digressions.

The question arises whether there are other transcendent entities that the world of archetypes, the words of some very intellectualized concepts such theogonies put forward by different religions.

Two views are opposed: either religions give access to more advanced spiritual levels than the archetypal level; or the loss of access to Archetypes has unleashed religious speculations coming to graft on sporadic paranormal occurrences (intuition, vision, miracle …).

In this second hypothesis, the notion of divinity appears as a substitute in a human or animal form, the lost dimension (see the totems).

The notions of heaven or hell would be substitutes for internal states of bliss or guiltiness associated with obedience or disobedience to Archetypes.

Knowing that scientific process requires merely the simplest and most directly testable hypothesis, Evolutionary Ecopsychology tables on the second hypothesis, while remaining open to any justified change of point of view.