Quote:
Originally Posted by ashurbanipal  |
Thanks for the link,
ashurbanipal. That was an interesting article.
In the article, Carl Jung is mentioned in relation to his work on dreams in which he explored, with an open mind, the ‘paranormal’. This is his particular relevance to the article. However, I’d like to mention a few things about his research into dreams and the unconscious mind, in which he explored not just the paranormal, but mythology and alchemy as well as the beliefs of so-called ‘primitive’ peoples such as the pueblo Indians in North America.
Firstly, Jung grew up in rural Switzerland in the late 19th century. Dreams and fairy stories as well as ghost stories were part of everyday life and totally normal to the folk of the Swiss countryside. There was nothing ‘para’ about such stories, in fact!
When Jung was qualifying to be a psychiatrist his interest in dream interpretation led him to take a professional interest in the ‘paranormal’. He observed that his interest was treated with derision and ridicule by the people he worked with at university – scientists and medical people - as well as by the towns-people e.g. business people, with whom he socialised while at university. In fact, by pursuing an interest in dreams and thus mythology and the paranormal, Jung risked professional isolation later on in his career.
At one time Jung had an opportunity to visit the US where he encountered Native American Indians in New Mexico. He was interested in their beliefs, particularly spiritual beliefs. The Indians were particularly secretive about their religion but an old tribal chief had this to say about the white men they encountered:
"We do not understand them. We think that they are mad.”. Jung asked him why he thought the whites were mad, and the reply was "They say that they think with their heads……We think here,” said the chief, indicating his heart.
(In fact, the chief went on to give a very unflattering portrait of the white men, with their thin lips, pointed noses, always searching, never content.)
I am homing in on the chief’s observation that white men said they thought with their heads, which led the Indians to conclude that the white men were mad. Thinking with one’s head? Nothing wrong with that, you might think. What else would one think with?
I suggest what the chief was observing was the limited way in which we ‘white people’ or ‘westerners’ (more suitable modern parlance, perhaps?) use our minds. Scientists in particular, including the scientists/psychologists of the article referred to above, regard logic and reason as the only valid way to think. That is what was meant by “think with their heads’. On the other hand, the chief, when he said that the Indians think with their hearts, was, I believe, referring to a much more sophisticated way of thinking which accesses far deeper levels of our minds that logic and reason can never hope to access. These deeper levels of the mind come from experience and might manifest themselves as ‘intuition’ or ‘gut-feeling’. So no wonder the chief thought white people were mad. By thinking only with their heads, they were/are disabling their minds from functioning properly – and that would send anyone round the bend!
I now quote a sentence from the end of the article given in the link:
“Support for psychic claims seems unlikely.”
The scientists who conducted the research also ‘think only with their heads’ (logic and reason) and, in fact, science disallows any other type of thinking. So given the restrictions placed upon their thinking, how on earth can these scientists draw any valid conclusion about astrology at all?
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