In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts

This world of Time and Death, which we call the secular order, is the dark side. It is the domain of the hungry ghosts, and we are those hungry ghosts in both life and death. We are the depraved ones. That is the meaning of samsara and of samsaric existence. We must be clear on this before we can even hope to understand the first Noble Truth of Buddhism — life is dukkha — let alone hope for emancipation from samsaric existence. That is to say, what the Church calls mysterium iniquitatis — the mystery of iniquity — is samsaric existence. Samsara and the mysterium iniquitatis are the same.

Bear in mind, too, that “samsara” has the meaning of “wandering” — the lost — and thus with the fuller meaning of the parable of the Prodigal Son.

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The Quantum Self

In the last couple of posts I neglected also to mention that Dana Zohar’s The Quantum Self, and her follow up book The Quantum Society, also point to the Daemon as emergent consciousness structure. I regret that I have only skimmed these books so I can’t really comment on them as yet, but only to point out the new efforts to revision mind and society in terms of the cosmos described by quantum physics. There isn’t as yet a “quantum psychology” (or a “quantum biology“) except what is being described as a “proto-science”.

In this post, though, I want to take a stab at it in connection with the meaning of “the Daemon” and time. I see that the December edition of Scientific American has a “special collector’s edition” devoted to time called “A Matter of Time: It begins, it ends, it’s real, it’s an illusion. It’s the ultimate paradox.” The title alone summarises our present confusion about time, particularly as being “the ultimate paradox”.

The Daimon and Time

Last evening, around supper time, I went into my meditation. I went very, very deep. Deeper than I had ever gone before. When I came out of meditation I was quite disoriented. I simply wasn’t there. The physical world seemed drab and dreary. I had to re-construct myself like a jigsaw puzzle. It was tedious and fatiguing work, so I went to bed. I slept for almost 16 hours! As far as I recall, I have never in my life slept that long.

But what a trip! I’m not even going to try and narrate what strange, disturbing dreams I had during that time, because if you suspect I might be crazy now, you would certainly do so afterwards. I’m hoping that these dreams are just dreams, and not rehearsals or anticipations of things to come — the apocalyptic “global catastrophe” that Jean Gebser anticipates as co-incident with the “irruption” of the new consciousness structure — the integral consciousness. I’ve taken to calling that integral consciousness structure “the Daemon” after the historian William Irwin Thompson.