The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon
Reflections
As a salon, one of our aims is to present readers with material for reflection and for conversation. A little research uncovered a wealth of topics for this issue.
The following four quotations are from Marie-Louise von Franz, "Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the Soul," 1980, reprinted in Parabola XI, 2 (May 1986), 34-5.
"For primordial man the phenomenon of mirrors and mirroring had the quality of a miracle; for him the mirrored image was a reality in its own right. Spiegel, the German word for 'mirror,' is cognate with the Latin word speculum and goes back to the Old High German scukar, 'shadow-holder,' from skuwo, and kar, 'vessel.' In Old Indian, a mirror was thought of as a 'self-seer' or as 'seer of Doppelgangers.' The mirrored image was regarded as shadow or as Doppelganger, that is, as an image of the soul, and the mirror therefore possessed great magical significance; it was an instrument for becoming objectively conscious of one's soul by means of reflection, in the literal sense of the word."
"The custom of obtaining secret information by staring into a vessel of water, the so-called hydromantia, is therefore practiced throughout the world."
"Mircea Eliade has collected abundant documentation on the part played by shiny or glittering objects as protection against psychic dissolution by evil spirits. In his book on shamanism, wherein he discusses the initiation rites of shamans and medicine men of innumerable peoples, he describes a ritual in which the novice's entrails are symbolically extracted, cleaned, and replaced by small shiny stones and glittering chips that give him magic power over the spirits. Crystals themselves often have the same function of subservient spirits; they mirror events on earth or reveal what is going on in the soul of a sick person."
"In many places mirrors are used as a defense against the evil eye of both human beings and of spirits, because it was thought that mirrors throw the harmful 'rays' back upon their source. In Spain, in Tripoli, and generally in China, mirrors are used for this purpose. A similar purpose is served by 'fear masks,' that is revoltingly evil-looking distorted faces that show the demon in his own image, from which he flees in terror."
From S. Ansky, author of The Dybbuk, quoted in Parabola XI, 2:
"There is a glass in the window and in the mirror, but in the mirror the glass is covered with a little silver; now lo and behold, no sooner is a little silver added than you cease to see others and see only yourself."(48)
From William Shakespeare:
Hamlet, asserting that the ultimate end of acting (playing) is "to hold ... the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
From Helen Luke, "The Only Freedom," an interview by Lorraine Kisley in Parabola XI, 2:
"Reflection comes from an instinct within us and it is the only instinct that is solely human." (56)
"Reflection is the conscious balancing of the opposites." (58)
"Simone Weil said the only purpose of any education should be to train attention. I like that. We're still learning it.... The basic meaning of the word attend is to be present. It is not equivalent to the being present of nature--there is a specifically human content. Attention involves seeing, listening, caring, and courtesy, which arise from the inclusion of the human act of intention and concentration beyond thought. This, the subject and the object are one. In those moment, the mirror is clear." (63)
From C. G. Jung, quoted by Helen Luke above:
"God becomes manifest in the human act of reflection." (58)
On the subtle correspondences such as are found in metaphor (a form of mirroring), these lines from Goethe:
"Were the eye not akin to the sun, how could it behold the sun?"
From Frederick Franck, "The Mirrors of Mahayana," Parabola XI, 2:
"The simile of the mirror is also rooted in the Taoist past. Chuang Tzu, in the third or fourth century B.C., wrote, 'The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror,' and Lao Tze in Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching compared the mind with a mirror." (65)
In Zen Buddhism, there are references to constant wiping the dust from the meditative mirror. Von Franz (above) says,
"In Zen Buddhist meditation the master tries to teach his pupil how he can forever keep the inner mirror free of dust. To the extent that he lives in complete accord with the rhythm of psychic energy and with its regulator, the Self, he looks at reality without illusion. He lives in the creative current or Stream of the Self and has himself, indeed, become part of this stream." (37)
As a counterpoint we find in Franck's article:
"According to D. T. Suzuki, Shen-hsiu's dust-wiping operation (in which dust stands for passions, thoughts, and imagery) is apt to reduce meditation to tranquilization, to mere temporary suspension of consciousness and at most to self-absorbed ecstatic states." (65)
"Sokei-an Sasaki, one of the first two Zen masters (and perhaps the most impressive one ever) to settle in America--he founded the first American Zen Institute-- (says) '... By meditating on the mirror one becomes oneself a mirror .... Keep your eyes and ears open! Don't discriminate between outer and inner, so as not to remain locked up in your own mind!'" (66)
From the Christian apocryphal tradition:
"In the 'Acts of Saint John' (third century), 'the resurrection which the believer experiences in the ritual is his mystical resurrection,' and in the round dance, which may well be an initiation rite, it is the Christ who sings: 'A torch I am to thee who perceives Me, Amen ... A mirror I am to thee who discerns Me, Amen.'" (67)
On the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious, this from James Hillman, Insearch. Dallas, Texas: Spring Publications, 1967 (63-4).
“In the startling dreams of terror, of ugly images, and cruelties, we often forget that the unconscious shows the face which we show it. It is like a mirror. If I flee, it pursues. If I am high up, it is an abyss below. If I am too noble, it sends me nasty dreams. And if I turn my back, it attracts and tempts me to turn and look with seductive images. The gulf between consciousness and the unconscious narrows as we are able to feel for it and give to it, as we are able to live with it as a friend.”
"But never is passive fantasy enough; for fantasy is endless, spinning a veil, confusing image and action. The phase beyond fantasy is imagination, which is the work of turning daydreams and fantasies into scenic inscapes wherein one can enter and which are peopled with vivid figures with whom one can converse and feel, and touch their presence. This, then, would be psychological insearch. Such imagination costs great effort. The work of converting fantasy into imagination is the basis of the arts. It is also the basis for the new steps we take in life, since the visions of our personal futures come first as fantasies." (117)
"Attention is the cardinal psychological virtue. On it depends perhaps the other cardinal virtues, for there can hardly be faith nor hope nor love for anything unless it first receives attention." (119)
From Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone:
It is a dimension as vast as space
and as timeless as infinity.
It is the middle ground between light and shadow,
between science and superstition,
and it lies between the pit of man’s fears
and the summit of his knowledge.
This is the dimension of imagination.
From Lawrence M. Krauss, Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein, and The Twilight Zone), New York, Penguin Books, 2005:
"Through his paintings Van Gogh freed our minds from the 'tyranny' of color, daring us to imagine everyday objects in a completely different way, and thereby demonstrating that exotic realities could be discovered in even the otherwise most ordinary things. His paintings are haunting not because they are so bizarre but because they are just bizarre enough to capture the essence of reality while at the same time forcing us to reexamine what exactly reality is." (6)
"What if extra dimensions exist but they remain hidden from even the most sophisticated detectors? Can our imaginations alone enable us to pierce nature's veil to discover them?... This very question drove the most famous of all philosophers in Western history to write a tale about a two-dimensional world as an allegory for our own limited understanding of reality. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in his most famous set of Dialogues, The Republic, Plato invented the allegory of a cave to describe his belief in the possibility of uncovering hidden realities within all of the objects of our experience.... Plato envisaged our lives as being like those of individuals confined in shackles within a cave, unable to directly see the world of light beyond. These prisoners viewed all objects located outside the mouth of the cave via the shadows they cast on the cave's back wall. To the viewers, who had no other experience, the shadows themselves represented the real objects.... Imagine, says Plato, through his interlocutor, Socrates, what it would be like to be unchained and dragged out to the light outside. First, of course, the brilliant glare would be painful, and one would crave a return to the dark familiarity of the cave. Ultimately, however, the true wonder of the world would be come intoxicating--so much so that a return to one's previous state of ignorant slavery would be unthinkable. And even if one did return, how would it be possible to communicate the truth without appearing mad to those who had no idea of it?" (8-9)
"These are the luxuries of art and literature: to create imaginary worlds that cause us to reconsider our place within our own world. Science has comparable impact. It, too, unveils different sorts of hidden worlds, but ones that we hope might also actualy exist and, most importantly, can be measured. Nevertheless, the net result is the same: In the end we gain new insights into our own standing in the universe." (6)
"When we imagine the world beyond our experience, we are digging deep into our own psyches." (7)
"All of these creative human activities reflect the essence of human imagination, the spark that raises our existence from the mundane to the extraordinary. If we couldn't imagine the world as it might be, it is possible that the world of our experience would become intolerable.... Such imagination almost defines what it means to be human." (6)
From James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, New York: Gotham, 2005:
"No one awakens in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, 'I think I will repeat my mistakes today,' or 'I expect that today I will do something really stupid, repetitive, regressive, and against my best interests.' But frequently, this replication of history is precisely what we do, because we are unaware of the silent presence of those programmed energies, the core ideas we have acquired, internalized, and surrendered to. As Shakespeare observed in Twelfth Night, no prisons are more confining than those we know not we are in." (18)
Here is Hollis on the psychological subject of insufficient mirroring through good parenting in early childhood:
"Another of the saddest, and most destructive, of ... power stratagems is that employed by the narcissist. Narcissists work very hard to conceal their inner poverty from recognition by others. They may boast, inflate their reputations, swagger and belittle others, or they may fall apart at the first hint of neglect and criticism, making others feel guilty for the alleged injury done to them. All of these behaviors are designed to deflect us from the central truth, that their sense of self is predicated upon emptiness, and derives from early childhood neglect or insufficient mirroring." (58)
And on relationships as mirrors:
"In the encounter with the other, we begin to realize the immensity of our own soul; by encountering the immensity of the other's soul, including the parts we do not like, we are summoned to largeness, not the diminishment that our infantile agenda seeks. Like personhood, the gift of relationship is not so much a gift as it is an achievement to be earned." (119)
From Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters on Life ed. Ulrich Boer. New York: The Modern Library 2006
Rilke makes a distinction between the beloved as a mirror and as a window open “into the expanded universe of existence.” (196)
Imagine, on reflection at midlife, being able to say with Rilke,
"And then the knowledge comes to me that I have space within me for a second, timeless, larger life."
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