Psychology and psychoanalysis in SEL
I find that in many analyses of SEL, Carl Jung's collective unconscious takes an overwhelming place of importance, and the works of other psychologists, philosphers and even non-western bodies of thought are constantly ignored. In this section, I try to illuminate some aspects of Jung that are not focused on in many youtube analyses
Unconscious and Superconscious
Carl Jung borrowed a lot of his theories from multiple non-western cultures.
For example, Jung postulated that at the deepest level of the unconsciousness, one could find the "god" archetype at the deepest layer of the unconscious. This , in eastern Buddhist and Indian thought, would be the the Atman or Truest self. Jung and India's ancient sages would talk of the Cosmic Man or great soul, an archetype of divinity existing within the human body, similar to the Jewish Kabbalistic idea of Adam Kadmon
However, Jung and the east divide at this point. While Jung only believed in a collective unconscious hidden within the micro-scale of human psychology, the east believed that the human being was a perfect copy of the nature of the cosmic order. This is the parallel reality of Consciousness and Superconsciousness, or Anand/ Brahmanand, which is what Tielhard chardin would also refer to in Phenonmenon of man as the Omega. This merge of the Atman and the Brahman is mirrored by the greeks in the process called Henosis, where the journey of the soul culminates in its merger with the All.
The reason why SEL's writers claim the Wired can refer to the collective unconscious, the Akashic records and the Kabblah as the same concept in the interview is because the Wired is all 3 of these things at once.
As the collective unconscious, it operates through the schuman resonance alowing the EMF fields of the earth and the human brain to reconnect. As the Kabbalah, the mystical networked diagram that represents god, it's an allusion to the swarm logic that created Lain in the first place. But the Wired specfically functions as a global superconsciousness or supermind by being a "vault in the sky" through network technology, holding all existing information in a non-physical form that can be downloaded into individual minds at ease.
Similarly, we see two different interpretations of Deus Ex Machina. Eiri tries to become the God in the machine called the Wired by denying his human body, attepting to manifest as a God in the supermind. But Lain realizes that she is Atman, the god that exists within the machine that Eiri called the human body.
"It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by 'God,' but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology."
-Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind
The Double Bind
Gregory Bateson first coined the term double bind when he was studying the emergence of schizophrenia in families. The double bind refers to an internal contradiction in the nature of the psyche which is very difficult to resolve. The term was later adopted by R.D Laing, a psychiatrist who wrote a book called the "divided self".
To quote:
"The body for the unembodied person is experienced as a mere object amongst other objects, and not as the foundation of his being in the world.
The body isn’t the core of the self but of a false self which is divorced from the real self. Such a divorce contributes to the emergence of a feeling of unreality in the unembodied self where everything that happens around it doesn’t seem to be able to reach the core of the ‘true’ self.
The unembodied self is hyper conscious. It takes note of the feelings of the body and his operations at a safe distance. This is where the split occurs, where the asymmetrical crack between the false and the true self first starts growing."
Double binds are a trick often used by Zen Koans. Most famously quoted from the teachings of the Zen buddhist master Mumon, the Zen master uses the innate paradoxical nature of the Koan to help the follower escape the self-referential nature of the cultural signs and symbols that create logic, reason and linguistics, to finally experience the true world of enlightenment beyond literal description.
Lain frequently enters multiple double binds throughout the show with regards to her identity, her family and the meaning of everything. Especially when it comes to her "multiple selves". Especially when it comes to the notion of family and society, we see that Lain is repeatedly convinced to believe that she is crazy. This has historical background in the work of RD Laing, Bateson and Foucault.
According to these writers, the conditions of madness can under certain conditions only seem like madness when society is normalized to very disturbing things. In this case, children are taught to be unquestioningly obedient of certain norms and structures without question by a variety of people: the nuclear family, the school, the law etc. People who "do not obey" are then termed mad or insane, and as such schizophrenia develops (Of course this is a very primitive view of schizophrenia. We now currently know that schizophrenia is caused by a degree of chemical imbalances in the brain. Whether this is the final holistic explanation remains to be seen)
The eighth circuits of consciousness
The eight circuits of consciousness is a venture of psychology and philosophy by Timothy Leary , and while it is seen as archaic and rejected by most of academia and has its own interpretation of Tielhard De Chardin. In it, he talks about how the levels of consciousness in the human species is constantly evolving to a greater state. Near the end state of the stages, human beings attain parapsychological abilities such as ESP and premonition.
From this link I found:
"Timothy Leary came up with this theory- or I guess model or map would be better terms- for human consciousness. I get the impression he started working on it early in his LSD involvement, though I haven't yet been able to find where he first started talking about the ideas ( I suspect there may be a reference in 'High Priest', but I haven't waded all the way through yet).
His book on the subject was called 'Exo-Psychology', and has been republished with additional material in recent years under the title 'Info-Psychology' (New Falcon Publishing). This is a good book, and it's especially valuable because it's original source material on the whole idea, but it really is out there- it's hard to make sense of it unless you already know what he's talking about.
There are, however, two excellent books that introduce, explain, and develop these ideas. Before describing their strong & weak points, let me give a thumbnail sketch of the big picture:
The 8-circuit model describes eight levels of function of human consciousness. Different books call these by different names- 'circuits' (like different circuits in a computer), 'gears' (like shifting gears on a bicycle), 'grades' (like in elementary school)- you could call them 'burritos' if you want- I like 'circuits'. Anyhow, there are eight circuits.
The lower four deal with normal psychology, while the upper four deal with 'psychic', 'mystical', enlightened', or perhaps even 'tripped-out' consciousness. The strong point of this system is that it integrates the two so well.
Most theories deal with one or the other, but not both- mundane psychology with no consideration of transcendant experience, or mystical foo-fa-ra with octaves and rays and spiritual this or that but no grounding in nitty-gritty down-to-earth surviving in the human jungle.
The first four 'normal' circuits are influenced very much by modern psychology, especially Adlerian developmental stuff. Part of the idea is that as you grow up from infancy, the various circuits are activated and begin to function, and you take an 'imprint' from the conditions at the time. The most obvious example is when the sexual/social circuit kicks on in adolesence, the imprint is taken when you have your first sexual experience. Sometimes, if this happens in the back seat of a car, with the panic of wondering whether Mom or Dad will appear, later in life the same person will discover that nothing turns them on quite as much as doing it in the back seat of a car, and especially if they feel a bit panicked"
CyberPsychology
When it comes to analyzing the many intricacies of Serial Experiments Lai, the work of John Suler is a great resource. From gems such as " On being God" to "Y2k and apocalyptic thinking", the powerful social effects that emerge from the use of the internet and its exposure to society en masse are made explicitly clear in a number of fascinating essays. The entire book can be read on his website here, although some essential links are now lost to time never to be read again.