I’m talking to Mikhail, who came to me with a problem: constant anxiety. It is like a background, which, however, appears only during contact with people. The fall of a meteorite, any variant of the end of the world worries no more than an ordinary person. But with people, it’s hard. I want to move away, fence myself off from them with a barrier …
Consciousness is a great phenomenon. Psychology professor Nicholas Humphrey, in his book Consciousness: Soul Pollen, argues that consciousness is “a magical show that you put on stage in your head.” What is this show? This is the attribution of properties surrounding a person to objects that they do not possess. For example, the “beauty” of a thing is, in general, a property that does not exist in the objective world, the feeling of the beauty of something is a subjective phenomenon, depending on a personal “magic show”. William James, the great psychologist of the turn of the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, once wrote: “Imagine, if you can, that you were suddenly deprived of all the emotions that the world arouses in you, and try to imagine this world as it is, by yourself. to yourself, without dividing into favorite or unloved, without hopes and anxieties. It will be almost impossible for you to reach such a state of denial before the state of death.
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And why do we need this endowment of the world with subjective properties that do not exist in it (like “the sun kissed”, “the world smiles at me today” or “how beautifully this bird sings!”)? Humphrey has the answer: “It is by mistakenly attributing phenomenal properties to things that do not have them that the conscious human being begins to feel that everything around him is full of its own beauty. Psychologically, you become a resident of an enchanted world.” And “thanks to the growth of the joy of life, the previously unknown fascination with the world in which they live, the unknown sense of their own metaphysical importance, people in the course of evolution began to invest much more resources and forces in their own survival” (and the knowledge of this world, by the way, too).
However, phenomena with exceptionally positive characteristics are rare in nature. Consciousness is, alas, no exception. Under the influence of the surrounding people (who, in fact, are the main factors in the formation of consciousness), the “enchanted world” may turn out not to be a cozy conditional Hobbitshire, but quite Mordor itself. Consciousness projects a powerful three-dimensional picture onto the “colorless world” world, attributing certain characteristics to the objectively neutral phenomena of this world (things or processes). And what if on the path of the beam of consciousness, which is projected from our brain outwards, there is a distorting prism, stuffed with initially destructive ideas? As a result, two people ride in public transport, but one is surrounded by terrible zombies under the guise of ordinary people, and the other is surrounded by creatures like elves. In the world of zombies, the natural behavior will be constant paranoia and a lot of precautions so that these scary creatures do not “eat the brain.” And in the world of elves, a person will be extremely trusting and naive. True, the world is arranged in such a way that negative “magic worlds” are more conducive to survival than exclusively positive ones, so the “world of elves” may well turn into a world of wolf packs…
K. Jung “Essays on the Psychology of the Unconscious”
The new book combines two major works by C. Jung, “Psychology of the Unconscious” and “Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious”, as well as the essays “New Ways in Psychology” and “The Structure of the Unconscious”.
Of course, if we are talking about mentally healthy people, “zombie” is not a literal perception, it is an attempt through a certain image to express the feeling of oppressive danger that a person has in the presence of other people. Mythological images and metaphors help very well to feel the worlds in which people exist. And it can be insanely exciting – to discover what world a person lives in, through what filter he perceives me or other people whom he sees in the place of the interlocutor. I live in my own “enchanted world”, and it is completely different.
Michael does not at all give the impression of an introverted hermit who has a minimal need for contact with people. No, he is alive, emotional, agitated – and afraid of people … Strong emotions – his own and others’ – also frighten him. When there is a risk that someone close to you will get very excited (even about something that has nothing to do with Mikhail), then you need to urgently calm down, find an immediate solution, just to avoid meeting with the partner’s strong feelings. And with other people, it is also important to urgently do something so that they do not worry too much. Constant tension, readiness to help other people and at the same time, if necessary, to squeeze yourself, to give up some of your plans or expression of feelings if they interfere with others. Giving bad news to someone is a matter of great difficulty, exhausting and generating a sense of guilt – as if you yourself are the source of these troubles … That is, we are not talking about the fact that people are dangerous for Mikhail, this is not a world of orcs and zombies, this is some kind of a different reality in which people are dangerous to themselves and Michael himself is a source of an incomprehensible threat to others, from which others must be protected. And if this threat cannot be prevented, a feeling of guilt overtakes you for not coping, not saving other people …
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What is this enchanted world? What personal myth did Mikhail find himself in? What kind of danger is poured into the cities, forests and seas of this inner Universe? The image came through several meetings, when some details of Mikhail’s life became clear … Crystal people. All the people around Mikhail – and he himself – were fragile crystal people. A strong sound or emotional wave could shatter them into a thousand pieces. Therefore, strong emotions cannot be expressed in this world. If you see how a strong experience flares up inside some crystal person (in the form, for example, of a red or green glow), do something immediately so that the person does not explode from this flaring-bursting radiance. With yourself, it’s the same. If someone begins to sway dangerously from excitement, stop immediately, because falling is death.
Existence in such a world requires a lot of skills and compliance with certain rules. How to walk between these crystal people? Extremely carefully, constantly squeezing yourself – God forbid you hit it hard! You need constant vigilance so as not to collide. Hold yourself back. And in general, it’s better to stay in the background so that people don’t have too many reasons to worry about you, and you have less guilt because someone crashed, but you didn’t see, didn’t save, didn’t have time … In the background – eternal anxiety as an expression of readiness and vigilance …
There are “enchanted worlds” – the jungle, where “first strike, then raise your voice” operates. There are worlds where you are a saint carrying a cross among Brueghel’s freaks, or a superman-savior, on whose decisions the future of the world or the whole life of specific people depends … Ice Age worlds with alpha males and Neanderthals. Black and white worlds of the Struggle of Good and Evil.
It is good that the awareness of these worlds allows consciousness to make adjustments and become the creator-progenitor of the history of the new Universe. For example, such a Universe in which people are not crystal beings, but young flexible trees, bending in the wind, but straightening up again and again. Dropping leaves in autumn and giving new shoots in spring… You can make this world more diverse and realistic: there are not only young trees, but also indestructible thousand-year-old oaks, and fragile, withered from lack of nutrient moisture, plants. A wave of the hand – and the world is transformed. You can, of course, make crystal people stone idols from Easter Island. You are free to do whatever you want with them. However, stone – they are stable, but insensitive and cold. And for me, for example, it is somehow warmer and happier in a sunny grove on a summer day.