Three Worlds
A brief exposition of my experience with what the ancient Scandinavians and indigenous shamanic traditions refer to as the three worlds:
The middle world is the closest in essence to the ordinary world of sense perceptions. The middle world includes all of the sensory, but also includes extrasensory aspects such as dead souls and nature spirits. One who extends the light of consciousness into the middle world is apt to find a world very much like the ordinary with a few key differences: all action on that plane is symbolic, and everything is autonomous, magical, and alive with spirit. This plane, despite its differences from the ordinary world, is accessible to a healthy Ego that has use of the transcendental function. In essence, the experience of the middle world is normal: to speak with the trees does not require any inversion of the natural conscious order — it only requires the use of an open mind and a curious spirit. The Ego can move in this world quite of its own accord, self-directed, seeing what it wishes according to its own volition. The relative normalcy of the experience of nature as a living, breathing, agent does not diminish its power: in fact there is a tremendous amount of psychic energy available in the development of a healthy orientation toward all living beings. Such a relationship with the natural world, and the strength of the contracts and commitments that can be forged between man and the elements, is absolutely essential and can prove a potent medicine and amazing ally to the whole journey.
The lower world is what Jung called the unconscious, or what indigenous cultures of the Aborigine called dreamtime. There is a different logic in the lower world than there is in the ordinary and middle worlds; the contents are not sensory or extrasensory, but rather pre-cognitive. The unconscious also fundamentally differs in its logical, teleological, epistemological, methodological, phenomenological, and ontological characteristics. The severity of the distinctions in this world make it an inhospitable place for the conscious Ego to endure, and yet, since the lower world is an aspect of the totality of existence, and since the package of life provides the necessary infrastructure for endurance of the universe, life naturally provides an interface for interaction with the unconscious, as a sort of digital doppelgänger, in the personage of The Dreamer. Albeit a strange distinction, but the Dreamer is not the same as the Ego.
Just like the Ego is an personage, or interface, that is fashioned in a way to operate within the parameters of the ordinary and middle worlds, the Dreamer is a separate, but related, interface made for navigating the operational parameters of the imaginal world. The Ego is there, as is the Superego, back in the peanut gallery, and though they may comment on the experiences had in the lower world, (and the respective converse is true of navigation of the middle and upper worlds), when it comes to the unconscious the Dreamer is the experiencer. To prove this to oneself, one only need consider among the types of experiences had during dream in the context of ordinary life: if your dead mother showed up at the doorstep of Ego consciousness and told you-as-ego to get to work the you-as-ego would drop dead of fright, but to the Dreamer that event would be just another Monday. That Dreamer is built-different for a dangerous world; one with less laws; one full of imagination, contradictions, nonlinearity, non sequiturs, absurdities, paradoxes, with no clear beginning, sudden starts and stops, non-permanent deaths, and, perhaps most significant of all, driven not by its own accord, but directed by an outside force: the Self as Dreammaker.
Now Jungians have proven that the contents of the unconscious, or lower world, are accessible to the Ego during the process termed active imagination, in which the Ego applies the transcendental function to the contents of the unconscious. However, I wonder if it is healthy to do so without necessary precautions: for there are certain risks implicated in the Ego entering unconscious territory without adequate protection. First, the Ego is already often in a undifferentiated state relative to the unconscious as per the constant misidentification of the lower world, or Dreamtime, as fantasy, without substance: Second, given such unfortunate reduction of the unconscious to mere fantasy, there is a confusion of Dreamer and Dreammaker as synonymous with Ego. I am not a clinician, but I suppose that either position results in certain symptoms and complexes, including inflation. Third, there are other risks due to the Ego’s vulnerability and fallibility in that world, such as depression from a smashing of the Ego, or dialing up the wrong contents and having them follow the Ego home to roost. Of course, it is hard enough to clear a way to enable healing; the last thing anyone needs is stray material of unknown provenance.
As an amateur traveler, I suggest that it is more cautious for the Ego who wants to interact with the unconscious, ostensibly in order to extract medicine, to employ an intermediary personality such as a “power animal”, as the indigenous do, or a magical persona within the magical circle, as the practiced occultists are apt to do. These intentional intermediaries can fetch the medicine just as well, if not better, without running the same psychic risks. I say if not better because there are certain strategic advantageous to anonymity. As the traveler knows, the lower world is overpopulated with autonomous intelligences; some that may be hostile to the perspective of an Ego dressed in Gucci, or otherwise reticent to cooperate. As a simple precaution, I, for one, enjoy asking the Self, in respect to its relationship to the trickster archetype, to populate the intermediary best suited for my quest: and honoring that figure —be it crow, ant, salmon, or old maid. After all, even as the agents of the unconscious are autonomous, the laws of operating in that plane require a rather childlike sense of acceptance, wit, and wonderment relative to the events that unfold. So sometimes a less alarming, more persuasive, image earns the medicine quicker.The upper world is another matter: one in which I admit my experience is limited. Did Jung ever discuss, as a separate stud, the teleological, epistemological, methodological, phenomenological, and ontological characteristics of this world? Or has anyone addressed it from a serious philosophical or psychological point of view? Again, the laws and operating principles of the upper (colloquially astral) world differ significantly from the middle and lower worlds. What I know from experience is that journey to the upper world is, unlike the ordinary and lower worlds, not (or is no longer) routine to consciousness. Perhaps it was routine, but the instrument has since atrophied. For entry requires an extraordinary amount of settled, ecstatic, energy. And still, even if that energy is present, there is the question of the adequacy of grace, faith, and surrender. The operative informational mode in this state is synesthesiac; a simultaneous combination of all senses coextensive with the middle world. The trigger for the event appears to be the application of the transcendental function to the Ego; an absolute, horrible, and total surrender of the whole personality to the divine. The contents of this state are not charged by the visual imagination, but rather exist as something like ethereal, cosmic, vibrations — oms, chants, and arias—music that moves. And yet who is moved and who is the mover? Again, it would be a mistake to identify the Movement with a product of the Ego; it is also not an absurdist product of the Dreamer. The experience of descent is different; evening and lunar. The laws of the upward environment are more morning and solar. What moves is beyond the conscious and subconscious. Is it the Self who moves? Perhaps. And who is The Mover? It is not the Self, but God, power beyond Self: Power that calls and coordinates The Movement.
Similarly as with exploration of the lower world, it is dangerous for the Ego to confuse itself with The Movement of the upper world. To have a healthy relationship with the unconscious, the Ego has to differentiate symbolic, subconscious, meaning from the literal and ordinary. Likewise, possessing a functional, healthy, relationship with the Self requires an equal differentiation in a contrasting direction. Just as consciousness in dealing with the unconscious, as a matter of differentiation and hygiene, requires the use of a mediating symbol while in the presence of Ego, consciousness also requires a similar mediating symbol in conversation with the Self. Much of the aim of psychoanalysis is to lead the undifferentiated individual through the process of differentiation, through the unconscious territory, ultimately to discover and recover “the holy grail”, that divine symbol. The extraordinary, wholesome, proxy to the Self is buried there and its recovery is necessary to bring into consciousness an experience of the personality that is greater than the Ego, to bring that level of exalted coordination as a healing power to the world.
