More and more, we know what lies outside ourselves, even to the far reaches of the universe, but we know so little about who we are within. Freud and others mapped our depth-charged psyche, dividing it into conscious, subconscious and unconscious — the sedimentary layers of psychic archaeology. But the unconscious, by definition, is veiled in darkness.
Visionary Carl Jung added one level more: the collective unconscious, suggesting universality, but leaving it largely to tantalizing guesswork.
So let’s guess:
Let’s say the collective unconscious is a kind of ocean, ancient, primordial, all-encompassing.
For want of a better word, for want of a better world, let’s call it Love,
That mysterious energy, that force, that atmosphere, that amniotic fluid, surrounding, saturating,
A haven, a realm, a refuge, a sanctuary, a solution, a solvent, a soup,
A point of departure and a final destination, pre-life and afterlife,
Yet eternally, preternaturally alive,
Filled with the holy ghosts of once were’s and premonitions of will be’s,
Something other, yet familiar.
Let’s call it an ocean of Love,
Something universal, to which all are tethered,
Of which each life is a single channel, which in turn we channel,
Our individual signal, tuned, streamed, conducted, sometimes broadcast,
Bearing our unique witness to the world,
Until we return, finally, to that fertile, limned sea at the end of what we call life.
But who, or what, is our host?
The Big Banger behind the Big Bang?
The spark that blew up e.e. cummings’ “no of all nothing”?
The ultimate Black Hole, where “everything, everywhere, all at once” was stored,
From which launched all matter when it could no longer be contained?
A divine longing whose reach even now exceeds its grasp, “else what is heaven for” (Robert Browning)?
The ultimate mystery that even science bows before?
God giving birth to God, as firmament, fulfillment, filament,
Lighting the way from Alpha to beautiful Omega, beginning and ending?
Love itself in its finest, fullest, fiercest, foremost form — like discovering fire a second time (Teilhard de Chardin)?
Meanwhile, we sift through the spinning, star-clustered “heaventree” for signs of “nightblue fruit” (James Joyce),
Searching for hidden gods, connecting the shining dots in vain.
Instead of heaven above, heaven below?
An ocean, connected inseparably to each other and the divine?
Whatever that turns out to be.
The “kingdom of heaven,” lying in wait within us all along,
Subterranean realm where whale songs echo endlessly,
A brimming sea that birthed us onto this beachhead of the universe,
Harboring our obscure images, curious mythologies,
And recurring stories of heroes with “a thousand faces” (Joseph Campbell),
Source of archangel archetypes?
Have we been looking in the wrong direction all this time?
Searching for gods above instead of the still waters beneath heart and soul?
Instead of ascending to heaven, we descend?
Not to some purgatorial hell but a different brand of heaven altogether,
The one glimpsed in our deepest, brightest dreams?
Is this the origin of our dearest desire: defeating death?
Not, perhaps, the immortality we desired and bargained for
But something else (something better)?
And what then?
For want of a better word
For want of a better world
For the time being anyway
Let’s call it Love.