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THE STAR: Archetype of Revelation · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, to honor the holiday season, we thought we would
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: take a look at an important archetype this week, the
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: archetype of the star. which of course plays an important
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: role in the story of the birth of Christ with
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  Speaker 2: the star of Bethlehem. It's an important symbol of the season,
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  Speaker 2: but it has wider and broader significance. As we all know,
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  Speaker 2: it's an important archetype, an important image for humanity throughout
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  Speaker 2: our existence. And it's very moving to think about man's
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  Speaker 2: relationship with the stars and, and, Lots of different ways
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  Speaker 2: to come at that. So hopefully we'll get to them
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  Speaker 2: all today or at least some of them.
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  Speaker 3: As we were preparing for this episode, it was really
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  Speaker 3: fun to delve a little bit into what stars are,
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  Speaker 3: the birth and the sustaining of stars and the death
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  Speaker 3: of stars. And thinking about all these marvelous documentaries I've
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: seen in the Hubble Space Telescope, images of nebula and
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  Speaker 3: the science of stars is really fascinating. really compelling.
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  Speaker 2: It sure is.
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  Speaker 3: And one of the things I really was so astounded by,
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  Speaker 3: and I heard this years ago, that when we look
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  Speaker 3: into the heavens and we'll see this incredible vault of stars,
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  Speaker 3: some great number of points of light are from stars
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  Speaker 3: that have long since died and disappeared. That the light
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  Speaker 3: that comes from a star is continues to have this independent,
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  Speaker 3: traveling existence long after its source has passed away. And
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  Speaker 3: when it strikes our retina, the light actually comes into us,
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: which is what makes it visible. And it's carrying information
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  Speaker 3: that might have been traveling for billions, billions of years.
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  Speaker 3: So the star as the message giver and the light
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  Speaker 3: as the message. It's something that's been so tickling my
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  Speaker 3: poetic imagination.
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  Speaker 4: I've been thinking about the metaphor, the trope of follow
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  Speaker 4: your star, and how it is, and that it is,
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  Speaker 4: that we say follow your star. Not your sunbeam, you know,
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  Speaker 4: not the moonlight, but follow your star. And as a child,
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  Speaker 4: I always loved the story of the three wise men.
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  Speaker 4: Following the star to Bethlehem and the verse from the
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  Speaker 4: song of star of wonder, star of light, guide us
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  Speaker 4: to the perfect light. It just is, I think, a
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  Speaker 4: lovely image of that which is always there and a
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  Speaker 4: source of guidance, a source of hope, inspiration.
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  Speaker 2: What both of you said brought up some thoughts for
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  Speaker 2: me that I was thinking about as I pondered this topic.
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  Speaker 2: First of all, Joseph, I like your idea of the
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  Speaker 2: star as the messenger. And I think when I learn
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  Speaker 2: about how old the stars are and kind of the
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  Speaker 2: science of the stars, I am so filled with awe.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: You know, I think about physicists who like do this,
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  Speaker 2: you know, they get up in the morning, they have
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  Speaker 2: their coffee and then they go to the office and
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  Speaker 2: they ponder it. these amazing truths. And like, how do
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  Speaker 2: you not just feel so, you feel so small, right?
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  Speaker 2: When you realize how big the cosmos is and how,
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  Speaker 2: you know, tiny and insignificant we are. And it's a
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  Speaker 2: wonderful relativization of the ego. And I think if you're
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  Speaker 2: a physicist, perhaps you just experience that every day because
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  Speaker 2: it's like, wow, you know, this is just, but it
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  Speaker 2: inspires awe and reverence, I think. To ponder the science
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  Speaker 2: of the stars. And Deb, of course, that's such an
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  Speaker 2: important phrase, follow your star. And I think it gets
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  Speaker 2: into some of the psychology.
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  Speaker 3: Wait, can we pause for a second?
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  Speaker 2: What is going on?
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  Speaker 3: As you were talking, the sun has come from the
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  Speaker 3: clouds and this incredible explosion of light. We probably should
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  Speaker 3: leave this in the episode because it's a manifestation of
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  Speaker 3: the star, but I'm going to pull a shade.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, I did sort of wonder what was happening,
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  Speaker 2: but I thought I was going to keep rolling with it.
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  Speaker 4: He's been starstruck.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, there it was. We were just talking about the
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  Speaker 2: messenger of light.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, and our sun, of course, is a star. That's right.
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  Speaker 4: It's shown upon you.
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  Speaker 2: It did. When we think about what it means to
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  Speaker 2: follow your star and what we're talking about psychologically, I
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  Speaker 2: think we're talking about the realization of one's individual, unique,
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  Speaker 2: personal destiny. And there's this notion that for every star
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  Speaker 2: in the sky, there's a soul, right? Every soul has
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  Speaker 2: its star. And it goes to this idea that Edinger
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  Speaker 2: talks about. He talks about the monad, this idea of
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  Speaker 2: our kind of unique individuality, which corresponds, I think, with
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  Speaker 2: the notion of soul, that there's something eternal, indestructible, but
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  Speaker 2: utterly unique that is ours. And that seems to correspond
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  Speaker 2: to the idea of a star. And for amplification, I'm
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  Speaker 2: going to share a dream that Gilgamesh had. So this
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  Speaker 2: is the world's oldest literature, King Gilgamesh, who they believe
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  Speaker 2: was a real person. So perhaps this was a real dream.
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  Speaker 2: It does feel a little bit like a real dream.
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  Speaker 2: Here's a dream of Gilgamesh. In the middle of the night,
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  Speaker 2: I walked proudly up and down among my people. There
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  Speaker 2: were stars in the sky. Suddenly, one of the stars
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  Speaker 2: of the sky god Anu fell upon me. I tried
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  Speaker 2: to lift it, but it was too heavy for me.
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  Speaker 2: All Uruk assembled around this star, and the people kissed
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  Speaker 2: its feet.
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  Speaker 4: Aww.
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  Speaker 2: And... It's a beautiful dream. And Marie-Louise von Franz discusses
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  Speaker 2: this dream in her book, The Way of the Dream.
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  Speaker 2: And she says that, you know, up until that moment,
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  Speaker 2: Gilgamesh was sort of a generic hero king. he could
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  Speaker 2: bask in the love of his people, but that the
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  Speaker 2: moment the star falls upon him and is his burden
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  Speaker 2: to carry, that is the moment that he recognizes that
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  Speaker 2: the burden of his own uniqueness, that he has his
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  Speaker 2: own personal destiny, his own personal greatness, that now he
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  Speaker 2: must shoulder responsibility for. And she makes the point that
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  Speaker 2: people don't worship him, they worship the star. And it's
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  Speaker 2: a really lovely dream. And I think she's done a
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  Speaker 2: beautiful job at interpreting it, you know, that it has
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  Speaker 2: something to do with our immortal soul. And that following
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  Speaker 2: your star is something like the principle of individuation. And
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  Speaker 2: it will often require us to kind of follow a
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  Speaker 2: lonely way. And she makes the point that it's easier,
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  Speaker 2: rather than following our own individuation, to project our personal
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  Speaker 2: daimon onto someone like a star.
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  Speaker 4: The story of Gilgamesh and this dream is a wonderful
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  Speaker 4: connection here between individuation and following the star, and it's
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  Speaker 4: a superordinate reality.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: And You know, Jung's injunction to all of us to
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  Speaker 4: find our own relationship to the infinite. So it's a
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  Speaker 4: both and of how to become uniquely ourselves and in
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  Speaker 4: relation to that which is greater. The people worship the star,
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  Speaker 4: not the man. a specific individual human being, even if
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  Speaker 4: a king.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's not the ego, right? It's the transpersonal that
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  Speaker 2: sometimes comes through us. Yes. Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And that's the goal, is for those two elements, those
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  Speaker 4: two realities to find each other in us, in each
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  Speaker 4: of us.
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  Speaker 3: And as Jung was saying, looking at this, which he
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  Speaker 3: writes about in Volume 8, actually, the ideas of the scintilla,
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  Speaker 3: the points of light, or stars, and that the alchemists
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  Speaker 3: refer to these sparks of light which are distributed throughout
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  Speaker 3: the world, connected to Gnosticism, but also the alchemists were
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  Speaker 3: studying the Kabbalah, which speaks about this, but also the
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  Speaker 3: sparks of light that are in humanity. And because there
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  Speaker 3: are sparks of light in heaven, and there are sparks
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  Speaker 3: of light in humanity, the alchemists say, in that regard,
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  Speaker 3: we are like God, or made in the image of God.
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  Speaker 3: If we lean back a bit into the idea of
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  Speaker 3: the guiding star, we're back in this ancient Chaldean world
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  Speaker 3: where stars were worshipped. And the Chaldeans developed the first
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  Speaker 3: very comprehensive system of astrology, which for them was about
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  Speaker 3: tracking the reality of the gods, because the stars were
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  Speaker 3: the visible bodies of the gods. There were the transitional stars,
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  Speaker 3: and then there were the stable stars. For us, the
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  Speaker 3: North Star, the pole star, is always the stable star,
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  Speaker 3: and that since ancient times, mariners have used sextants in
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  Speaker 3: order to locate the position of their ships in this vast,
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  Speaker 3: undifferentiated ocean, that it was the stars that told them
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  Speaker 3: where they were. In this astrologic system, Studying the stars
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  Speaker 3: in relationship to the individual has to do with discerning
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  Speaker 3: the gods' position towards humanity. And knowing what the gods desire,
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  Speaker 3: what their opinions are, what their relationship is to the individual,
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  Speaker 3: then defines one's fate. So the guiding star is an ancient,
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  Speaker 3: ancient intuition. about the bodies of the gods and how
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  Speaker 3: they have this vast influence on us, which goes to
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  Speaker 3: what you were saying, Deb, that there is an intuition
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  Speaker 3: inside of us, that there is something greater out of
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  Speaker 3: which my ego has come, and that is influencing my
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  Speaker 3: day-to-day decisions. And Jung said that we project that unconscious
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  Speaker 3: knowledge onto the starry sky, which never disagrees with us.
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  Speaker 2: I'm thinking, Joseph, I love everything you just said, and
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  Speaker 2: it sort of spun around for me to this. You know,
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  Speaker 2: Jung said at one point that there's two worlds. There's
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  Speaker 2: the everyday world, and then there's the world of the eternal.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that's so true, and I think we're
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  Speaker 2: always trying to, we're always longing for a way to
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  Speaker 2: kind of find the point between those two things. And
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  Speaker 2: it strikes me that stars are a wonderful expression of that.
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  Speaker 2: because they're out there, they're vast, whether or not we
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  Speaker 2: have the understanding, the kind of astrophysicist understanding of them,
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  Speaker 2: or as you're saying with the Chaldeans, that these are
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  Speaker 2: the gods, or most kind of pre-modern cultures felt that
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  Speaker 2: the stars were of incredible significance, of cosmic, transpersonal, divine significance.
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  Speaker 2: And so there they are, we don't see them during
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  Speaker 2: the day, but there they are at night. And like
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  Speaker 2: you're saying, they can show us where we are, they
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  Speaker 2: can indicate what time of year it is. So it's
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  Speaker 2: the way that we can find the connection between our
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  Speaker 2: own little personal life and this kind of cosmic reality
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  Speaker 2: out there. And that shows up in our language because
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  Speaker 2: the word disaster means it comes from dis and aster,
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  Speaker 2: the word for stars. So it's like the stars are
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  Speaker 2: are misaligned or there's a problem with the stars. That's
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  Speaker 2: what disaster means. Even the word consider comes from the
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  Speaker 2: word sidere. Sidereal is the same root. So it's something
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  Speaker 2: like to consider is to maybe be with the stars.
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  Speaker 2: So this sense that we can sometimes, through the use
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  Speaker 2: of astrology, for example... leave our little conscious perspective and
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  Speaker 2: gain the perspective of the stars.
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  Speaker 4: It's really lovely to think about, you know, the stars
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  Speaker 4: way up there and the little spark of the divine
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  Speaker 4: that is in each one of us, our own personal star,
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  Speaker 4: to think about the North Star that is stable and still,
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  Speaker 4: and you can always orient toward it. And then the
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  Speaker 4: morning and evening star, Venus, who is there in transit
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  Speaker 4: and has long been associated with the goddess. There are
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  Speaker 4: over and over again the unities of the opposites or
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  Speaker 4: the relationship between the opposites of way out there and
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  Speaker 4: in here, the science of astrophysics and the symbolism of
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  Speaker 4: cultures all throughout time, that which is stable and still,
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  Speaker 4: that which is in motion. We're part of a great
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  Speaker 4: cosmic dance.
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  Speaker 2: I'm thinking of that hermetic aphorism, as above, so below.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm thinking about how that's true on so many
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: different levels. And now I want to pull in If
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: I can find it. I was, I don't know, I
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: was a kid when Carl Sagan's Cosmos aired.
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  Speaker 3: I remember that. It was so, it's almost life-changing. Yes.
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  Speaker 3: Those images.
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  Speaker 2: It was so moving. It was so moving. And I've
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: read the book since and it just kind of blew
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  Speaker 2: me away. So I'm remembering him talking about stars. And
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  Speaker 2: so I have a couple of Carl Sagan quotes, which
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I think relate to just what we're talking about. He says,
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  Speaker 2: our sun is a second or third generation star. All
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the
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  Speaker 2: iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the
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  Speaker 2: carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago
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  Speaker 2: in the interior of a red giant star. We are
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: made of star stuff. And then there's another quote too.
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  Speaker 2: It's very similar. He says, the cosmos is within us.
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  Speaker 2: We are made of star stuff. We are a way
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  Speaker 2: for the universe to know itself.
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  Speaker 3: There is a way, I came across this in a
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  Speaker 3: similar vein, where the light of the stars, these neutrons
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  Speaker 3: that come barreling through the earth, are so tiny that
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  Speaker 3: for the most part they just pass through physical matter
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  Speaker 3: and continue. But some tiny part of these bits of
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  Speaker 3: energy of the stars occasionally collide with human beings and
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  Speaker 3: in a sense knock one of the protons out of
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  Speaker 3: your body and it takes the place of something that
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: used to be in you. So there's a way in
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  Speaker 3: which these bits of starlight actually find their way into
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  Speaker 3: you and add themselves to you. I think it's such
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: an uncanny scientific piece of information.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we really did come from the stars. We really did,
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  Speaker 2: and in a very real way. It's astounding to contemplate.
• 17:53
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• 18:35
  Speaker 2: of soul.
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Another way that this lives in our archetypal unconscious is
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: that the ancient astrologers assigned certain body parts, to certain
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: constellations of stars. Like the constellation of Pisces is said
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  Speaker 3: to rule the feet. Cancer rules the chest. And in
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  Speaker 3: some of these mystical systems, there's a feeling, an intuition
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  Speaker 3: that certain groupings of stars hold or even emanate certain
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  Speaker 3: archetypal structures. and that those structures have an impact on
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  Speaker 3: the forms in human beings and the forms in other
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  Speaker 3: bits of life. And so the ancients would say, gosh,
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  Speaker 3: most creatures on the earth have feet. And everything that
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: has a foot like a human being must in some
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: way be influenced by the constellation of Pisces, because there
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  Speaker 3: must be one superordinate grouping of gods that is interested
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  Speaker 3: in creating feet because they're all over the place. Aries
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  Speaker 3: is associated with the creation of eyes. Why do so
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  Speaker 3: many creatures have two eyes far beyond human beings or
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: two nostrils? So the assigning of these archetypal structures like
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  Speaker 3: eyes and feet is also, for Jung, projected into the heavens,
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: but for the mystics, they abide in the heavens and
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  Speaker 3: they come to us through the light of the stars,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: the lumen. So these ancient writings, maybe some of us
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  Speaker 3: take them literally, maybe we don't, but they create a feeling,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: an internal sense that we are influenced by something outside
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  Speaker 3: of ourselves. And that could create a kind of reverential
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: tone in us. And Jung said that's a very good
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: thing to have.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And it goes to what you said earlier, Lisa. You've
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: just said in a different way, Joseph, of the relativization
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: of the ego. Someone just asked me about that. And
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: what a funny and awkward question. stilted phrase that is
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  Speaker 4: for what we're talking about in a much more immediate
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  Speaker 4: poetic and kind of reverential way that we are really
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: made of the stars that stars are ancient we follow
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: our star it's out there it's in here and all
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: of the kind of reassuringly magical qualities that stars have had,
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: although there's also the phrase about an evil star, that
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: so-and-so was born under an evil star. So like all archetypes,
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: there is a dark as well as a luminous, from
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: our point of view, positive side of the star. What
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: does it mean to be born under an evil star?
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  Speaker 4: Doesn't that sound ominous?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Ooh. And what could you do about it? My goodness.
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  Speaker 2: But it does go to this idea of fate. I
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  Speaker 2: think this way that we have felt securely connected to
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: the stars and to feel that our fate was ruled
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: by the stars, whether that was an evil fate or
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: a positive fate, it does give you a sense of
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: having a place in an ordered cosmos. And I think
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: most of us go through our day and we may
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  Speaker 2: not think about it, but we don't necessarily as moderns,
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  Speaker 2: we don't necessarily have that assurance that we have a place,
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  Speaker 2: a defined place, that we have a connection with the transpersonal,
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  Speaker 2: that our personal little destiny as we go about picking
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: up our dry cleaning or putting in the pot roasts
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: that there is a kind of corresponding part of our
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  Speaker 2: psyche that exists out there in the stars so that
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  Speaker 2: we have one foot in the everyday world and one
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  Speaker 2: foot in the eternal. I think that belief in astrology,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: whatever kind of astrology, and there have been many, many
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  Speaker 2: kinds that have evolved, it is a sense of having
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  Speaker 2: a foot in the everyday world and then another foot
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: that is controlled by something much greater. that we are
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: knitted up in an ordered universe. But most of us
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: don't really have a secure sense of that. And we
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: just kind of bounce around like free atoms or something,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: bouncing around out there.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: Well, that we think we are.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yes.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Either there is an order, whether or not we can
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: see it. Jung said famously, or wrote, And every chaos
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: there is a cosmos. That chaos is a perception and
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: that we perceive chaos for lack of our ability to
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: perceive a secret order. In great measure, this was so
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: much an important part of Jung's work and Freud's also.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: Freud found the Oedipal myth so important. because it took
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: the chaos of his observations and organized them into an
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: archetypal narrative, which then allowed him to surmise any number
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: of other things. And by the way, Jung didn't disagree
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: with that. I mean, he really thought sometimes the Oedipal
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: archetype in that story really is playing itself out. He
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: just said it can't be the only archetype. There have
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: to be a lot of other things going on, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: of course there are. So the archetype which we already
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: know gives meaning, orders the perception, grants us a capacity
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: to see relationships between things that normally would not be
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: visible because they all partake of a particular archetype. And
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: that's visible in the way that a single archetype can
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: give rise to multiple images and not just the same image.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: And that's a kind of secret, isn't it? that all
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: these different ways, all the visions of the mother in
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: all her different derivations and across time and in all
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: the different ethnicities and cultures, all can be identified as
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: coming from a singular place. So all the permutations of
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: a thing give us a way of grouping them and
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: finding a core meaning for ourselves and a way to
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: make sense.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: And it's universal. I mean, that's the thing about stars, right?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Is that we are all looking at the same stars.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: So there's a sense of a, you know, kind of
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: common humanity. It's both eternal and much, much bigger than us,
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: but kind of comfortingly similar. We see the same stars
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: no matter where we are. I mean, depending on the
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: time of year and all that, but.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: And I think about our appropriate, wonderful ego ability to
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: make meaning of the stars, of this is a dog,
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: that is a dipper, this is Orion. And the list is,
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: it's immense. I used to love to go to the
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: planetarium when I was a child. We lived in Connecticut,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: and every now and then we would make these big
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: trips to New York and could go to the Museum
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: of Natural History in the Hayden Planetarium. And that giant
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: dome with all of the images of the stars was magical.
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: And the narrator would sometimes articulate, there's this constellation and
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: that constellation. Man has always seen himself in relation to
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: the stars. The great hinges have to do with solstice,
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: the solstices. So we've always oriented to the cosmos, always.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: We belong.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: I want to just share another quote, which I think
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: is similar to the Carl Sagan quote, but it comes
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: from a play. This play must be from the 60s
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: or 70s called The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: and the Moon Miracles.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, yes.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Paul Zindel is the author. So I think it opens
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: with this monologue and this young high school student named Tilly,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: and I'm just going to read like a couple sentences.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: He told me to look at my hand for a
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: part of it came from a star that exploded too
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: until there was our sun. And this part of me,
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: this tiny part of me was on the sun when
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: it itself exploded and whirled in a great storm until
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the planets came to be. And she goes on, but
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: it's that idea that the very stuff that we're made
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: of was once part of a star.
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: It creates a feeling, an archetypal feeling in us, which
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: is so important because it's that feeling that tells us
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: the idea is alive.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: As we're talking, I'm feeling moved and also saddened because
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: I live in Philadelphia and I don't really see stars ever.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, just one or two.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, light pollution is a strange idea.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: It's what a loss. I mean, if you see pictures
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: of what the night sky looks like without stars, artificial
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: light and you think that's what we evolved with that's
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: what we knew until I don't know what 50 100
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: years ago I.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: Mean it was remarkable is when I got the place
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: in North Carolina because it's so rural no light pollution
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: I remember swimming at night which many people said I
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: probably shouldn't do but going way out into the water
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: at night and turning over and seeing the milky way
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: for the first time, just right there in front of me.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: That was shocking. Just shocking.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: And now being deprived of that, it's so much the
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: cost of modern life.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: But it's a real metaphor, I think, for what we
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: lose with modernity is, you know, we gain a lot, obviously.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: But one of the things we lose is that sense
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of being intimately connected with the transpersonal. And part of
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: that arises from our relationship with the night sky.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: That is a simple sentence that has so much resonance
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: to it that When we can see the night sky
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: in all of its brightness and majesty, we are affected.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I remember being out in the desert
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: years and years ago and being astonished at how vivid
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: the Milky Way was. And it was called the Milky
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: Way because it was sort of milky, I thought. And
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: oh no, it is a river. It is an amazing streak.
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: And we are affected. Our bodies know. And men everywhere
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: used to know.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: And now we often don't because the night sky is
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: occluded by lights everywhere.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: And we, you know, I sometimes use like white noise
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: to fall asleep and I'll like program like a rainstorm
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: and thunder. And it's like, it is nice, but it's like, wow,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm like listening to a digital version of
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: a rainstorm to fall asleep. And it's a little bit like,
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: like knowing the constellations by going to the planetarium.
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Then seeing them really. So I'm, I'm just aware of
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: that and I'm aware of, Yeah, of what it's like
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: to live in this kind of ersatz world where we
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: experience this tremendous beauty only because we hear about it
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: or maybe make a special trip to go and appreciate it.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: To visit me.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I think I will.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: But this idea of light pollution, I like. Yeah. Because
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: when I think about our modern world, my own very
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: much included, and our ability to control light in my home,
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: my home can be blazingly lit up in the middle
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: of the night like a noonday sun, that the light
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: of too much rational consciousness, the light of too much
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: of that left brain, makes it difficult, if not impossible,
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: to see the more subtle light of the unconscious. And
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: so Jung talked about active imagination and the need to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: dim the light of the ego through a deep relaxation,
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: a movement towards sleep, so that the light of the unconscious,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: the stars in the unconscious, then can become visible. And
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: so the idea of light pollution is there's so much drive,
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: so much conscious need that it can blind us. And
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: it does blind us to other things.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a wonderful extension of the analogy, Joseph.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I want to read you a great quote. I
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: believe it's from Paracelsus, which goes to this idea of
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: the secret lights in the darkness, the secret light in
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: the unconscious. Paracelsus was a somewhat ancient alchemist who had
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: an enormous influence on early chemical experiments, but also in philosophy.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: He was widely known by Europeans and something Jung would
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: have studied just as a classicist, as a student. So
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: one phrase he says, Man is a prophet of the
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: natural light. He learns the lumen nature through dreams, among
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: other things. As the light of nature cannot speak, it
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: buildeth shapes in sleep. From the power of the word
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: of God. Wow.
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: So we've been brought back around to dreams. And the
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: light within dreams. The lumen.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: Which also you have to experience when the light of
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: consciousness gets dimmed. In fact, I think you used that
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: analogy at one point that Jung said, I suspect we're
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: dreaming all the time. But just like you can't see
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: the stars during the daylight, you have to wait for
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: the ego to go to sleep before you can see dreams.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: And the possible danger or downside of too much consciousness
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: that we might say is reflected or imaged by all
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: the lights at night in most of the towns and
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: cities that most of us live in, and our very
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: individualistic kind of culture make it hard to see what's
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: there in the dark. They make it hard to see
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: the stars in the dark night sky, and they make
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: it hard to see what is going on in the rich,
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: generative darkness of the unconscious, which is where we find
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: our dreams and their connection to something mysterious that we
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: call the dream maker or the self of where do
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: they come from? And can we let them, can we
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: see them, can we notice them, or are they occluded
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: by too many city lights, the city lights of consciousness?
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: You know, Deb, I love that you brought in the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: self because I think that the star is a wonderful
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: image for the self.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: That sort of eternal, greater-than-ego part of ourselves that Jung
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: once referred to as the God within.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: So when we think about the worship of stars... the
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: interest in stars. Jung found that so important because the self,
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: the archetypes, are invisible to the ego. We don't encounter
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: them directly. And so he writes, this is a quote
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: from Jung, The starry vault of heaven is in truth
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: the open book of cosmic projection in which are reflected
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: the mythologiums. i.e. the archetypes. In this vision, astrology and alchemy,
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: unconscious join hands. So if we take that at face value,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: that in the ancient world, and for children as well
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: even now, to look upon the stars and then to
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: notice the recurrent fantasies that we project onto the stars,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: tell us something about the forces in our own unconscious
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: that want to be made visible through the fantasies that
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: we have about things that are as neutral as stars.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: And so, when we think of the stars as holding
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: our own archetypal material, and then Paracelsus saying that the
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: stars are the things that shape our dreams, Jung is
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: writes about both of those things because he's trying to
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: talk about the influence that these eternal forces have, even
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: in our very private parts of our psyche, all the
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: way down to our dreams, that there is a relationship
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: between these things, these mysteries.
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: It goes back to, as above, so below. As above,
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: in the cosmic mysteries and awe, so below in each
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: of us, a macrocosm and microcosm. And there's a relationship
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: that encourages us and has encouraged mankind from early beginnings
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: to build the hinges and create the cosmologies to make
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: meaning for themselves of what they were really immersed in,
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: living in, that urge, the religious instinct, which Jung says
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: is one of only five instincts. We only have five instincts,
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: according to Jung, and the religious urge is one of them,
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: that we seek what is numinous, we seek what is greater,
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: and we recognize that that we are part of a
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: greater whole.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: You know, Deb, you mentioned the Henges, and pretty much
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: every culture has had like a foundational relationship with the stars.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: And I'm thinking in particular of the Maya, the ancient Maya.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: They were unbelievable astronomers. I mean, the accuracy of their
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: predictions is the way they understood the movement of the stars,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: the buildings that they built to observe them and mark them.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: It's just staggering. You really appreciate how meaningful this relationship
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: has always been.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Another piece of work that Jung associated with the starry
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: heavens is that the multiplicity of stars and the writings
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: of the alchemists and Kabbalists, to him, reinforce the idea
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: of the multiplicity of the psyche. That we are not
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: just our ego, or as I like to tell my analysis,
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: at the very least, you are ruled by a committee.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: At the very least, but maybe far more than that.
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: And that if we think of every kind of consciousness
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: as a point of light, then inside your your head,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: there is a constellation of points of light, scintilla, each
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: of them being a guiding complex. You can call them
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: functional complexes that come together in such a way that
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: you have a cohesive sense of self and you have
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: a sense of inner resources. The idea that the ego
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: is just one thing or that you yourself are walking
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: around as a single thing didn't match what Jung was observing,
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: both in his deep dialectic work with patients, but also
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: in the dreams of patients. So the many stars outside
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: and the many points of light in us seem to
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: correspond to his observation. And the idea of the monad,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: which is there is a central sun among the great
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: starry heavens, goes to what you were saying, Lisa, about
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: the self. having one ordering center of all things. In
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: the Kabbalah, there is a part of their creation myth.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: It's that at first, well, one, there is an unknowable
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: divinity called the Ensof, which is depicted as darkness because
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: we have no possibility of perceiving what that is. But
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: this unknowable God creates a void inside within its own
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: substance and projects a kind of divinity into that this
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: divinity is all one thing and all that it could
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: be is held in a potential state this one thing
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: creates a substance where it can perceive itself and in
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: that regard the entire universe at that moment becomes a
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: symbol of a greater reality. The universe is a symbolic
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: representation of what God discovers itself to be. And that
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: mirror is said to be this great field of light
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: that is ordered and structured. And the great symbol of
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: that is the starry heavens. which is said to be
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: the ordering of light, and prior to that, a single
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: field of light where nothing was differentiated. So the movement
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: from the one great light to the differentiated points of
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: light is that first capacity for self-reflection. Now, one could
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: make a good case that the ancient rabbis were projecting
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: their own deep psychological processes onto this astronomic phenomena as
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: the alchemists were, and that's just fine as well. But
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: this need to know ourselves and to order that knowledge
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: and that the starry heavens give us a perfect metaphor
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: for that kind of process.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: You know, stars have inspired us these kinds of cosmologic reflections.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: That's really beautiful, Joseph. I'm just struck by the way
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: that this topic has just taken us into really deep water,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: which is not surprising, right? Because we're actually talking about
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: a cosmological phenomenon. It is deep and beautiful and awe-inspiring.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: And the stars have always inspired us. They've inspired songs
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and poetry and they've inspired us and filled us with
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: beauty and they've reassured us as we were saying earlier
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: that we're we're a part of things and and that
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: we belong and you know it it takes me or
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: it puts me in mind of a quote from perhaps
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: my favorite book Which is the Lord of the Rings.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: And of course, if you're a Tolkien fan, you know
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: how important the stars are to the elves and therefore
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: to all of Middle-earth. So I'm just going to read
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: just a little bit from The Return of the King.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: So Frodo and Sam are in the land of Mordor
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: and there's hardly any water and there's hardly any food.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: And Sam tells Frodo to go to sleep and Frodo
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: sighed and was asleep almost before the words were spoken.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Sam struggled with his own weariness, and he took Frodo's hand,
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: and there he sat, silent, till deep night fell. Then
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: at last, to keep himself awake, he crawled from the
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: hiding place and looked out. The land seemed full of
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: creaking and cracking and sly noises, but there was no
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: sound of voice or a foot. Far above the Efelduath
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: in the west, the night sky was still dim and pale. There,
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tor, high
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold,
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: was only a small and passing thing. There was light
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer is a 56-year-old female who is a writer
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: and academic. She titles this dream, Helping the Baby Escape.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: I am in a cellar with a baby or a toddler,
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: dressing him because I'm going to help him escape. High
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: on the wall is a barred window. Someone on the
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: outside is sawing on the bars. We are waiting for
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: them to finish. And also for Leo Tolstoy to appear
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: on TV. because he is going to make some kind
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: of speech, and at that time everyone's attention will be
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: on him and the escape can be made. I think
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: I see him in a glimpse, like a big gray-haired
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: and bearded wizard, Harry Potter type. The next moment I'm
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: getting into a car. I think the baby is in
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: a baby seat in the front passenger seat. I'm going
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: in at the back, but the space is so sparse.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I have to go in head first and lie flat
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: on the back seat. For context, she writes, The day
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: before the dream I learned that the man I have
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: a very deep and complex unreturned feelings for, and whom
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: I probably should get over with, is probably in a
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: relationship with someone else. We meet regularly for sex. The
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: main feelings were anxiety for the escape, but maybe even
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: more a somewhat surprising calm sense of control. As long
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: as I could wait for the right moment, it would
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: work out fine. Frustration about not having space in the car.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: She adds a few associations. I used to dream a
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: lot about driving, usually way too fast over narrow bridges, tunnels,
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: or steep mountain paths. This has come to an end
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: and I don't like that I was here in the
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: back seat and that there wasn't even space provided for me.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: I'm also unsure as to whether I was really included
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: in the escape plan or was just a helper for
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: the baby. I quite often dream about babies or being pregnant,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: often beautiful dreams. Tolstoy I associate with an old wise
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: man who spoke about peace, but also with a somewhat
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: human gap between ideal and reality, consciousness and body, as
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: he also preached celibacy, but had about 14 children. Reading
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: his Kreutzer Sonata about mad passionate love and murder made
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: a huge impression on me years ago. So, the setting.
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: She's in a cellar. I find that it's not uncommon
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: for people to dream about, for instance, being in the
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: basement of their childhood home or going down into basements.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: Jung had a dream where he went down into his
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: basement and then found a trap door and went down
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: and down and down. And so, in one way, the
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: cellar I often associate with the personal unconscious in as
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: much as it's not arcane. It's something that we're not
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: looking at generally, but could look at if we just
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: opened the door and went down and poked around a
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: little bit. So it's an accessible part of the unconscious
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: where often things are stored, but not tended to generally
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: by the conscious mind.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Forgotten until you look at them and then you're like,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, there was that. I forgot about that.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: She's working in that realm, looking at stuff that perhaps
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: at one point she knew, And now she is trying
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: to help something that was stored in the basement escape
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: out into the light of day.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: I am really pondering the image of the baby.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: And, you.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: Know, at this time of year and the Christian story,
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: you know, the new beginning is symbolized by the birth
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: of a baby. And the baby is not born in
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: a wonderful castle with throes of attendants and ermine blankets.
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: It's somewhere outside the manger, unacknowledged. And that's often, you know,
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: like this. This baby is in a cellar, not in
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: the main part of the house, getting dressed. I'm going
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: to help him escape. I'm going to bring something from
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: the accessible but unconscious realm into consciousness. And Part of
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: me wants to go into sort of as in real life,
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: wouldn't you just carry the baby up the stairs? Wouldn't
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: that be easier than having outside people having to saw
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: away at bars on a window? And then there is
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: this surprising thing of, and we're also waiting, by the way,
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: while we do all this, for Leo Tolstoy to appear
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: on TV. And I always enjoy these sort of total
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: non sequiturs that the dream maker throws in there as
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: if like, what on earth does Tolstoy have to do
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: with any of this? And so that's a question for
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: us to at least ponder. It would be great to
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: have the dreamer here. What is her association with Tolstoy.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Although I think the ones she's provided are interesting. But Deb,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: I just want to say you really sparked something for
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: me with your talking about like the divine infant, which
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I hadn't even really gone to. So there's this mythologism
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: that occurs again and again about the baby who is imperiled,
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: the divine child who's imperiled. So Deb, why don't you
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: tell that story from the Christian perspective?
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell that I'll preface it with stories like
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Oedipus and other babies that are abandoned. Yes. We have
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: Moses floating down the Nile in his basket of bulrushes.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: We have Kronos eating his children.
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: Right. And Harry Potter.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, and Harry. Yes. Yes.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Harry Potter. That's perfect. Yes. The boy who lived.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: And in the Christian story, I believe that it comes
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: to Joseph in a dream. He is warned to take
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt, to escape into Egypt,
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: because Herod has had wind of this new birth and
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: has issued orders that every male child under two shall
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: be killed. And Joseph heeds the voice of the dream.
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: And They seek asylum in Egypt.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: There's also the story of Krishna's birth. Basically, the demon
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: king Khansa has learned that one of the children of
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: Devaki and Vasudeva will kill him. So he goes about
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: killing all of their children, but their eighth son survives,
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: and that's Krishna. And they have to spirit him away
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: and across the river and get him out alive. So
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: this idea of a baby who's got to be rescued,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: it's a real archetypal theme.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: And it always comes from some place of being unwanted,
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: some place of having been endangered, exiled. And that is
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: where the new beginning is.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Arises so there's this precious thing which is in the
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: basement which as you pointed out joseph is this kind
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: of part of the psyche that's often kind of disregarded
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: maybe we you know you don't put your good stuff
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: in the basement you know so it's it's that the
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: sort of the treasure is found on the dung heap
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: kind of thing the baby's in the in the cellar
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: and then there has to be some kind of rescue
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: for some reason we're not really sure exactly why And
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: then there's Leo Tolstoy. And what I got from that was,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: you know, Leo Tolstoy was pretty preoccupied with like sex
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: and morality and adultery. Of course, that's the topic of
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: his great novel, Anna Karenina. He did struggle with a
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: lot of appetites himself. I believe all of his children,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: I believe, were all legitimate. But yeah, he had really
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: strong opinions about it and he wasn't able to he
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: wasn't able to kind of live out his ideals. So
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: it does make me wonder about the split state she's
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: in with this relationship where they're meeting regularly for sex,
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: but she knows she needs to give it up.
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: I want to go back to Tolstoy. He also wrote
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: about and had a kind of religious awakening in later
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: adulthood and can't dredge up all of the All the
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: material from a very long ago class in Russian literature.
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: So I wonder if there is a parallel between what
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: you were just saying, Lisa, and Tolstoy, as somebody engaged
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: in the mundane world of appetites and achievement and children
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: who then accesses something deeper and are dreamer. where the figure,
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: I wonder if Tolstoy could represent something like that in her,
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: of the mundane life that we all live, that certainly
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: includes sex, and something else that's starting to come to
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: the surface of, I know this isn't really the real deal.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Now, that's interesting, Deb, because the dreamer, I'm just checking again, well,
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: she's 56, and Tolstoy did I don't know when that
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: was that he really had this sort of religious conversion,
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: but he got excommunicated from the church and he freed
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: his slaves and he was communicating with Gandhi and he
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: was going to give away his entire estate. And his
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: wife did not really like that idea. So there was
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: a sense that he really tried to live out his ideals,
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: especially toward the end of his life. And he always
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: wanted to just be a poor hermit, basically, a mendicant.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: And he finally did that and died like the next
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: day or died a day or two later at a
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: train station after he left home. But that image of
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: him as sort of a wise old man with a
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: big white beard, that would have been from those later years.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: So I think it's interesting that she's not sure if
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: she is.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Part of the escape or she's just the baby's helper.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: I think there's something there about how we understand our
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: relationship with the unconscious, you know, and it goes maybe
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: to that idea that we were talking about earlier about
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: the relativization of the ego. Because in a sense, I
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: think like psychologically, of course, we're always just the baby's helper.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: You know, like we're sort of the function of ego
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: is to navigate the inner and outer world and to
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: make it possible for our inborn destiny to become manifest.
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: I'm paying attention to the resolution, the end of the dream.
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: Our dream ego is getting into a car. Baby seems
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: to be in the front seat on the passenger side.
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: I'm in the back, but the space is sparse. So
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: I have to go in headfirst and lie flat on
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: the back seat. So our dream ego is in the
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: vehicle and isn't, you know, in the sort of conscious
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: sitting up position, but, you know, sort of in the
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: dark where you can't see too much if you're lying
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: flat on the back seat. And then there's all the
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: imagery of the back seat. It implies to me that
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: something is coming online about a new beginning. And I
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: am wildly curious about, hmm, I wonder who's driving the car. Huh,
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: who could that be? You know, and typically in dreams
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: like this, oftentimes a dreamer will say, well, I don't know.
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: I never got a look at him or her, just
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: somebody driving. And that there's this mysterious agency, sense of
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: agency who can drive a car the way we kind
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: of get around in the world.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: And it's going to get away.
• 59:50
  Speaker 4: And we're getting away. So something, the baby's out of
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: the basement and you're on your way somewhere with our
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: dream ego. Still not really fully a part of things. Nevertheless, going.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Along for the ride.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: I think the troubling part of the dream for me
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: is that there's a quality of compulsion in the dream.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: But she doesn't seem to know why she's doing a
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: lot of the things she's doing. It seems that she
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: is in service to something else that's driving her car.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: And I'm just curious about it. I'm sure there's more
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: detail in the dream if we were to try to
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: remember more fully. I feel like things are missing from
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: the dream.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: I really want to ask her, why are you escaping?
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: Who do you need to escape from? Who's rescuing you?
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: You're right, we don't really have a sense of that.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Overall, my sense is one I can feel myself smiling.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: Something new is beginning. It's not all clear yet. Don't
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: we often begin something without fully knowing all of the
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: ins and outs and whys and wherefores? Nevertheless, the dream
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: says she is in the car with the baby going somewhere.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: something has happened. And, you know, my sense is like
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: a good serial of like, well, stay tuned. And then,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: and then what happens?
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, there is a, there is like a lysis
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: or a resolution to this dream, right? She gets away.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: And I want to say, as I do, I put
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of stock in, in this report on the feeling.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: She says there was a surprising calm sense of control.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: As long as I could wait for the right moment,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: it would work out fine.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: So there's this sense of needing to find the right moment.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: And the right moment has to do with this kind
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: of pronouncement by Tolstoy when people will be sort of...
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting, though, because it's sort of
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: like everyone's going to be focused on that. That's going
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: to be the thing that's conscious. That's going to be
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: the thing that's known, is whatever Tolstoy has to say about...
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: And that's the moment that this kind of shadowy thing
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: can happen. I don't quite know what to do with that.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: I'm going to take a shot in the dark. Since
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: Tolstoy is associated with war and peace, and that's one
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: of the cornerstones, I think, of how he lives in
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: the culture, and his primary message is about the futility
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: of war. And she's just found out that a man
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: that she's in love with that has been her lover
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: is now in a relationship with another woman. And so
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: she has a choice inside of her. Is she going
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: to go to war or is she going to seek peace?
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: And so what I'm thinking is that the decision to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: just take her child or the child and just leave,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: just go. And maybe even go in a way that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: nobody notices. You know, when your lover has become interested
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: in somebody else, the option of just kind of turning
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: away walking in the other direction and making the life
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: that you want. It's a little bit like just hopping
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: out of the basement, hop into the car and just
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: drive away. It's not a lot of noise. There's not
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: a lot of fighting. There's not a lot of recriminations.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: There's an inevitability of what's kind of happening. And we
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: can't force somebody to want us or to love us.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: We simply have to absorb the reality. So Tolstoy is
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: there advocating for the futility of war. She makes a
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: non-violent slip out through the back door. And she should
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: take her toddler with her, which is her own potential,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: her life, her joie de vivre. And jump in the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: car and find better environs for your heart and your
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: creativity or who you want to be in. And doing
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: it quietly and secretly without a big confrontation might be
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: what's advised.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:04:27
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• 1:04:32
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• 1:04:35
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