Liberating Psyche in the Aftermath of 911

Randy Morris, Ph.D.

Let us enter the terrain of 911 gently by invoking the name of one of the great gentlemen of our nation, Abraham Lincoln. In the darkness of a terrible and divisive war, he said these words, “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” What I would give for a national leader who could speak such words today and know what they mean! The value of these words for us is that in one economical move, Lincoln links the political future of our democracy to the state of the human psyche. He tells us that there is some part of us that is enthralled, held in bondage, tied in chains, and that only by waking up to that condition and liberating ourselves from it, can our country be saved. It is this image that forms the basis of my remarks because I believe that the events of September 11^th are revelatory. They carry the radical power of waking us up to the situation in which we find ourselves. The fireballs of the World Trade Center can shatter the illusions under which we live. It is time to break the trance so that we may assist our country to become a mature leader for the free world. This would be a country worth saving, one in which we could take great pride.

Depth Psychology and the Trance

But how does one recognize that one is in a trance? Just as in the dream state there is no way to know with certainty that you are dreaming, so too it is extremely difficult to know anything about our unconscious states. So how do we break out of our thralldom? How can we liberate psyche? To answer this question we need to work with a method that has the power to objectivate unconscious states so that they can be revealed. In the post-modern universe in which we live, method is all, for it is now a commonplace assumption that the methods we use to analyze anything determine what can become an answer. In other words, the truths that are revealed are determined by the questions we ask. So let us ask good questions! My own method of choice for asking good questions is depth psychology, that lineage of ideas that emerged from the Romantic movement, gave birth to psychoanalysis and flourished in the psychology of C.G. Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, James Hillman, Thomas Moore and Robert Sardello, to name a few. Let me address briefly three key ideas to this method that will clarify its power to ask the questions we need.

The first idea essential to understanding depth psychology is that it privileges the imagination. In the contemporary mainstream world of ideas, not to mention the culture of materialist and capitalist America, this assertion continues to be met with derision and scorn. Witness the place of art in our public schools. It is a radical idea, even for psychology. It says, in Hillman’s words, that depth psychology is a theory of mind that “starts neither in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, the organization of society, nor the analysis of behavior, but in the processes of imagination.1 Jung put it even more succinctly when he said that psyche is image; it is the imaginative possibilities in our nature. The imagination, not our ideas about it, is the well out of which our experience flows.

A second idea crucial to the depth psychological perspective is that in some deep and mysterious way, we are divided against ourselves. Perhaps St. Paul said it most succinctly, “For I do not do the good I desire, but rather the evil that I do not desire. Now if I should do what I do not wish to do, it is not I that do it, but rather sin which dwells within me.” This “I” that thinks it knows what it is doing, depth psychology calls the “ego”, and that strange force in my limbs that compels me to do things I do not understand it calls “the unconscious”. Depth psychology is the study of the relationships between the ego and the unconscious. Its goal is for the ego to establish a conscious relationship with the unconscious. When this happens, forces are released from within the unconscious that guide an individual to individuate, that is, to fulfill their destiny by becoming the person that they were always meant to be. Jung said that this goal is an essentially religious concern because it restores us to our rightful place in the world. It gives us an identity and a cosmos in which we belong. So while the unconscious is the repository of the best and worst of ourselves, it is also the place wherein we meet and converse with the divine.

And thirdly, depth psychology asserts that the push of the unconscious into the affairs of the ego has an intentionality about it. Random thoughts and images do not simply appear on the screen of awareness. What “shows up” in our minds is regulated by an intelligence that informs the core of our being. That intelligence is akin to the ancient Greek notion of the logos, one of the most enduring and generative principles of Western thought. According to Richard Tarnas, the historian of ideas, the idea of the logos assumes that “the universe possesses and is governed according to a comprehensive regulating intelligence, and that this same intelligence is reflected in the human mind, rendering it capable of knowing the cosmic order.”2. Different religious and philosophical traditions have different names for this intelligence. Mainstream Christians use theological categories and call it God or the Holy Spirit. Esoteric Christians (and spiritual psychologists) personify it and call it Sophia, or holy wisdom. Scientists objectivate it and call it cause and effect. Jungians psychologize it, calling it the Greater Self. They say it is the driving force behind the individuation process itself. When we live in accord with the promptings of the Self, we are living in accord with “God’s will”. Phenomena such as synchronicities, dreams, intuitions, visions and seemingly random thoughts, are all playing a role according to some intentionality that is different from the ego’s. This intentionality has plans for us, which the ego has a moral obligation to know and act upon. If we would but listen, every dream is trying to tell us something. When we take this idea out of our personal orbit and use it as a lens with which to view the world, we see that the bombing of the World Trade Center is a bad dream taking place at the level of the world psyche. And like the bad dream I had last week, it has something urgent to tell me.

I once had a dream with this sense of urgency. It was dreamed ten years ago, but it is still teaching me today. It goes like this. A dinner party is being prepared in a large room at the United Nations. I am seated at one of the tables. In the front of the large room, there is a table of dignitaries. The people in charge of this event are quite concerned that everything proceeds smoothly. Before the main speeches, the entire room pauses to honor those UN soldiers who have died in the line of duty. I see a picture of a young woman in her uniform, holding her baby. Then I see another picture of two young men with their families. The camera seems to back up as more and more pictures of soldiers who have died are revealed. The emotion in the room becomes palpable, the grief is strong. People are crying. Finally, a well-respected UN leader stands up and speaks in a poignant voice. His words are these: “We are all, myself included, held in bondage by forces we must begin to identify and break free of, that we must give form to and consume. The time is now for huge international shifts of consciousness!” He says one more line, which is a real zinger. And then the lights go out. When they come on again, there is loud music and confetti flying through the air. Champagne fountains begin to flow. The people at my table all look towards one another, wondering if what they had heard really happened. When I am asked about it, I say simply, “I think this is part of some larger lesson plan”. This dream has much to tell us about the nature of Psyche’s thralldom. It says that we are all held in bondage and that the key to our freedom lies in identifying the forces that hold us there. But the lesson does not stop there. It says that upon giving form to these oppressive forces, we must consume them, take them into ourselves, digest and assimilate them. Now this is an image that has great depth. Let us hold it as our work proceeds.

So we now have three ideas at our disposal: that psyche is image, that within her there is an ego and unconscious in dynamic relationship to one another, and that she carries with her a mysterious intelligence that operates both within me and within the world at large. By allowing these ideas to inform the language by which we descend into the darkness of 911, perhaps we can get to the bottom of this nightmare.

Entering the Imaginal Landscape of 911

I have often thought that where you were and what you were doing when you first heard the news of the September 11^th may reveal something about your destiny and the role you are being asked to play in the healing process. As I tell my story, I invite you to remember back to your own situation, remaining curious about how the context in which you heard this news might carry some clues for you about the role that destiny has assigned you. It is as if, in addition to a time stream from the past that pushes us into the present, there is also a time stream from the future that is reaching back to pull us into our destiny. In special moments, such as presidential assassinations, near death accidents, and major catastrophes like 911, we are given a brief glimpse into the formative forces of our own future, and that of our country’s.

Such was certainly the case for me. On September 11^th I was a 45-minute drive to the nearest phone, camped in a wilderness area on the east side of Mt. Rainier. I was one of four guides leading a vision quest experience for eight brave souls who were planning to sit in their ritual circles seeking a vision with which to illuminate the purpose of their lives. Using depth psychological language, the vision quest is designed to lead the ego into the underworld where it is given an opportunity to die to the habitual forms of the day world and be initiated into the gifts of the Greater Self. For indigenous people, this right of passage was meant to serve as an initiation into the mysteries of death, for they knew that only by living in a conscious relationship with death could they walk a path of beauty. Contemporary rites of passage seek a similar outcome. So after months of ritual preparation, of talking circles, prayer ties, sweat lodges and all the rest, we arrived at our base camp near Bumping Lake. On the morning of September 11^th, we set off together on a long hike through old growth forest to choose our ritual spot in which to sit. At sunrise of the next day, each person set off alone to return to that place to seek his or her vision. They created a circle out of their prayer ties and sat in the middle, prepared to endure three days of fasting. Meanwhile, back in camp, the four guides who had been dutifully participating in increasingly skimpy meals were ecstatic that they could once again eat. Two guides left to make the long drive to town to pick up supplies and it was upon their return later in the day that I first learned what had happened.

At first, I thought that my colleagues were joking and it took some time to establish the relative validity of the information. But in the absence of television images pounding the facts into our consciousness at the rate of 198 replays in 48 hours, the four of us were left to allow our own impressions of the facts to do their soul work on us. It took another trip into town the following day to fix the images in our hearts. And what of those who were still in their vision circles? We left them there. Furthermore, the extremity of their emotional state after three days alone and without food suggested that we should not tell them about these events on the first day of their return. It was only after the second day that we initiated a discussion about re-incorporation and the return to civilization after a week of being in the wilderness. We began by telling them that the world they left was very different from the world they were about to rejoin and that the news they were about to hear had a great deal to tell them about their vision quest. Then we told them. I will not speak at this time about the dynamics of how news of this magnitude penetrates a soul that has been open and bleeding for days. Suffice it to say that the psychic experiences that each of these people acquired during their vision quest was considerably deepened in light of the events of 911. In these matters, there are no accidents and each person was left to ponder the intersection of their personal rite of passage with that of their country’s.

My own feelings were crystallized in our final sweat lodge. There, in the darkness of the lodge and in the midst of the swirling steam and heat, I beheld a clear image of those individuals who had leapt off of the World Trade Center towers to be annihilated on the pavement below. I was right there. Indeed, for a brief moment, I was one of them. Before entering the lodge I had read a short article that suggested that several of those people had carefully composed themselves and then deliberately stepped into space. One man made a graceful swan dive. A couple held hands. A prim lady simply clutched her handbag and stepped off. Something about this image moved my soul in a very profound way and tears of gratitude for these gestures of beauty in the face of death mingled with the sweat and the steam of the lodge. I realized in a very profound way how the shadow cast by death serves to illuminate life in all its particulars. The close proximity of death to beauty within the human soul accounts for the incredible outpouring of love that followed the 911 event. The heart of America was blasted open by the violence and love poured out like a river. Now everyone knows what is possible and it cannot be taken back, though it can be forgotten. I wonder how this relationship between death and the perception of beauty continues to play out in your own heart?

I often wonder why I put myself in situations wherein I will experience the suffering of the world. I realize that the only reason to do so is to liberate psyche from her imprisonment. How? By witnessing suffering on such a scale that something in the ego is relativized, its position jarred loose from habitual moorings so that a larger stance outside of the ego is born. This position has the peculiar property of carrying a kind of non-possessive love for humanity that is very difficult to achieve in any other way. I have seen this kind of love in my study of nuclear nightmares. In those dreams, when a bomb has landed and the people know they have only a few moments to live, the characteristic and recurrent move made by those humans that are present is to form a circle, arms interlocked, heads pointed toward the center, awaiting their annihilation. The images of 911 have a similar power to penetrate the heart, initiating it into an experience of divine love for the purposes of liberating Psyche. Our choice is to seize the opportunity presented by this opening, or watch it slowly close until the next tragedy, even greater than 911, is visited upon the American psyche.

The Landscape of Apocalyptic Imagery

When we enter a landscape of massive suffering for the purposes of the transformation of consciousness, we are in the land of apocalypse. I have studied the archetype of apocalypse for many years through my personal encounters with the city of Hiroshima. Allow me to recapitulate a few key ideas about which I have written elsewhere.3

The word "apocalypse" comes from the Greek apocalypses meaning "to reveal" or "a tearing away of the veil, of that which conceals" (kalyptein). Embedded in the history of this word is the image of two realities between which exists a partition, a thin veil which conceals something of great value on the other side. Most often, this sense of "passing over" from one reality to the other is understood to be a function of the religious imagination in humans. One lifts the veil that separates the everyday, material, profane world and communes with the extraordinary, spiritual and sacred world that is "revealed" on the other side. It is also imagined as a two way street -- something from the spiritual world can tear away the veil and insinuate itself into the mundane world. When the imagining ego beholds a visitation from "beyond the veil" it is experienced as a revelation. I contend that the events of 911 qualify as a revelatory experience.

The ideas of depth psychology about which I spoke earlier can now be expanded with respect to the apocalypse of 911. First, because psyche is image, we must work with the event imaginally. If we only literalize the images, then we are limited to purely political responses, such as going to war, suspending human rights, and labeling “evil” those who do not agree with the status quo. As we have seen with our little exercise, working with images of 911 has the power to open the heart, creating possibilities that cannot exist if we remain solely at the level of the literal. Second, the relations between the ego and the unconscious operate at both personal and collective levels. Personally, 911 has the capacity to liberate each one of us from our habitual modes of thinking, opening our perception to “look upon everything as a brotherhood and sisterhood” and to see “each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular.” Collectively, 911 has the capacity to liberate America from her egocentric provincialism, opening her to new possibilities in the exercise of humane power and compassionate leadership.

But it is the third idea, that there is an intentionality behind all of these events, that I wish to examine more closely as I begin to conclude my remarks. Recall that depth psychology asserts that there exists within our psyche an intelligence that pursues aims and intentions beyond the comprehension of the ego. This assertion is amply documented at the personal level by a century of clinical experience in which dreams and other manifestations of the personal unconscious are seen to have an uncanny knack for pinpointing the precise needs of a one-sided ego attitude. It is as if there is a "sacred other" within our own psyche that knows just what we need to achieve optimum health and well being. This "sacred other" reveals itself in and through unconscious processes such as dreams, visions, body symptoms, illnesses, etc. It is the responsibility of the moral ego to convert these messages into an ethical obligation by acting upon the hints given by the "sacred other". This is not an easy thing to do since the hints given by the intentional psyche often run counter to the aims of the waking ego. It is for this reason that Jung states that an experience with this larger sense of the psyche is "always a defeat for the ego."4 Moving beyond our habitual ego attitudes usually involves a painful crisis of "letting go,” which is why it is so difficult to do. Believe me when I say that the theoretical language I am using to describe this process does not do justice to the experience itself. What it actually feels like is closer to the experience of death. Ask anyone who has been on a vision quest in which they came back with a sense of renewal. It is not a pleasant experience. However, it does lead to an advancement in personal growth.

The corresponding dynamic at the collective level is even more profound. Perhaps Jung states it best when he says:

“Our personal psychology is just a thin skin, a ripple on the ocean of collective psychology. The powerful factor, the factor which changes our whole life, which changes the surface of our known world, which makes history, is collective psychology, and collective psychology moves according to laws entirely different from those of our consciousness. The archetypes are the great decisive forces, they bring about the real events, and not our personal reasoning and practical intellect. .... The archetypal images decide the fate of man.”5.

What Jung is saying here is that from the point of view of the psyche, the transpersonal patterns of images that he calls archetypes are not located within human beings. Rather, human beings are located in and subject to the intentions of the archetypes. Hence, when the archetypal images that have governed the collective body of a culture begin to shift and transform, so moves the fate of mankind. It is my contention that one year after the end of the twentieth century, a lethal century that has left 100 million people dead in massive epidemics of violence, we are witnessing in the apocalyptic imagery of 911 the transformation of archetypal dominants in our culture. At the collective level, America is being asked to undergo a vision quest, to take an underworld journey, to die to herself in order to be reborn into a more sustainable form. From this point of view, 911 was a nightmare sent to instruct us. Like a nightmare, it wants to scare us in order to get our attention. Why? Because it wants to redeem us. Tough work in a death-denying culture such as America’s. But not only is America being invited to an underworld journey. The global suffering inflicted upon the earth in the form of deforestation, exploitation of resources, poverty and disease suggests that apocalyptic imagery is calling to the inhabitants of the planet as a whole. Recall the dream voice, “The time is now for huge international shifts of consciousness!” No wonder our leaders are using their rhetorical skills to keep us in the same old story of good and evil, of blame and punishment. The reality over which they preside is being severely challenged.

However you choose to react to my words tonight, I know this much is true: we in America are living in a psychic wasteland that has been created out of the manipulation and distortion of desire. The city of Seattle which I call home, no less than New York, is a shining city that is built upon tremendous suffering to which we turn a blind eye. We are all, myself included, held in bondage by forces that we must begin to identify and break free of, that we must give form to and consume. We must disenthrall ourselves. Images of liberation abound in the mythologies of our culture. They all demand a sacrifice, an ego death. The shattering reality of 911 serves as an initiatory threshold into the dark underworld of the personal and collective psyche. Each of us is being called to follow that path down into the darkness in order to seize the opportunity for liberation and love. My faith is this: there is gold at the bottom of that rubble. There is gold at the bottom of that rubble!

Endnotes