motifs” (1991, p. 27). Culture activates the archetype in order to create myth, which is why Jung distinguished between archetype and archetypal image—and why archetype and myth are not synonymous. Further, when Felser claimed that we are enchanted by a magical spell, it would have been worth noting that, for Jung, magical thinking is so-called “primitive” thinking, for which Jung borrowed L. Lévy-Bruhl’s term participation mystique—a subjective view having no clear demarcation between psychic content and outer experience, versus the allegedly objective view that Western science promotes. Since the fear of change from a magical mentality toward greater differentiation and objectivity was a major factor that kept the belief system of primitive peoples homogeneous, could it be that the Agricultural Revolution generated an ongoing fear of the unknown that now manifests as the Myth of the Great Ending? If so, then it is not just the separation from nature that fuels the myth but also fear of the unfolding alternatives. The first half of The Myth of the Great Ending analyzes the myth itself, the second half discusses how to address it, and the final third deals primarily with two exemplary persons who successfully shifted their paradigms—J. Roberts, who channeled the entity known as Seth, and R. A. Monroe. In the first half, Felser showed that the Great Ending was never “a
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mass public event” and is now “a museum piece, an antique, not a living, breathing myth” (pp. 99−101). For the remainder of the text, it becomes a metaphor for self-transformation via intuition, creative insight, D. Bohm’s “in-seeing,” inner vision, the right brain, the unconscious, the Higher Self, holism (versus dualism or reductionism), and a proper connection with nature. Thus the only “world” to be destroyed is an individual person’s outworn belief system. We must “unlearn all that has been so assiduously learned—that is what ends our personal world” and what enables, in Monroe’s parlance, a “‘different overview’” (p. 186, 102). Felser is referring to such pernicious assumptions as the following: consciousness is biochemical, imperfect, and untrustworthy; the supernatural is unnecessary; self-knowledge is impossible; and the only reliable knowledge comes from external authority. He should have pushed a step further and stated, as would Jung, that we Next Page 13 TMI JOURNAL 2012 should stop projecting our inner dysfunction in the form of the Great Ending and tend to our own psychic gardens in order to move from the “self,” which Felser has used to refer to individuality, to the “Self,” the archetype of wholeness. (The title
of chapter 6, “To thine own self,” borrowed from Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet—“to thine own self be true” [1.3.78; qtd. in Bevington, p. 1072], refers to financial self-interest and material well-being, not individuation, and is taken out of context.) The solution, then, is both Jungian and Taoist: if we plumb the “dark depths” (p. 78) and do our shadow work in order to become more in tune with who we really are, then the outer world will mirror our progress. The greater worldview that may be achieved is akin to the expanded consciousness of the lightning shaman among indigenous peoples. Felser cites a modern American example, Tony Cicoria, and might well have discussed Dannion Brinkley’s (1995) similar experience in Saved by the Light. Just as Cicoria’s lightning-induced NDE unlocked musical ability, so Brinkley—a hard-nosed businessman who had been a sniper in Vietnam—developed psychic abilities that he now uses to help others. Felser believes that Roberts and Monroe, along with Socrates and Black Elk, are in a similar category. In particular, Monroe receives great praise for overcoming his fears and for becoming “a mystic, psychic, and philosopher whose passage through our culture may yet prove to be one of the most creative disturbances witnessed by the 20th century—or any other” (p. 163). Regarding the lightning shaman, Felser wondered what happens when one is struck by lightning. Does a lightning