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Richard Forster, |
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RichardForster.com -- 4 Chapter/web pages
To the former senior Swiss Jungian training analyst and mentor Dr. Phil. C. Toni Frey-Wehrlin, a very wise learned man who was one of the all time best among the "gnomes of Zürich". And to Michele Pace, former Italian School Director (NYC and Abruzzo) and porch chair philosophy friend who was simply a good man, what it's really all about. To Lodovico ... it takes one to know one ... and Sabina and work in the lavender field and country walks at Torre degli Alberi and holidays at Cala Grande, for reminding me at difficult times it's been an interesting life, not to give up my work and passion for Italy. Special thanks to Carlo ... another ... for encouraging me to write, and Susan and Elisabetta De Rege, for bringing the family together many times in Manta, Manhattan and Vermont. And to Melinda, Bob and the boys for always being there while holding down the Ontario home front and northern lake retreat. Thanks to Canada's Marion Woodman who helped get the ball rolling many years ago, also to Sonja Marjasch, Aesch-Förch CH, Martin Kalff, Zollikon, and many others in the Jungian community for never letting me forget I was doing the right thing hanging in there over the years applying the research and insearch to my original field. Particularly Dr Herman Pfander in Locarno, a hiking friend since the Eranos days, who never let me forget the Design Academy for universal design patterns, 'Ecodesign with Human Nature'(c), educational travel sojourns in EU-Italy, and particularly landscape architecture - urban design grand tour study abroad programs with foundations in archetypal psychology and philosophy are my special calling. Ruth Ammann, very active senior and very grounded Zürich Training Analyst and internationally recognized sandplay therapist - lecturer, and a practising architect herself, shared reservations on American hegemony in landscape architecture and whether much could be achieved in typically extroverted design education lagging behind other fields in consciousness, especially in keeping up with the 21C scientific and philosophical worldview in deference to archetypes and Jungian contributions to the Zeitgeist. The Pedroni/Brizzio family who housed my students in Oggiogno di Cannero Riviera were especially helpful, including Maria Cristina, Maria Teresa, Cesarina and Pina. Special thanks go to Lyn Glanfield former student and award winning Ontario garden designer and to Walt Rickli - Swiss Canadian stone carver and fine garden crafter. Both helped with accommodations and discussion of the issues over the years. Gabriella Pace in Vicenza and others in Italy all opened their doors from time to time over the years welcoming me like one of the family. And to Carnegie Hill's intrepid Lisa (Lisa Lindblad Travel Design), who knows the value of travels and the journey, and who listened.
CG Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Meador, Uncursings xi-xiii
Robert Sardello
What is offered in conclusion is not a purely masculine, intellectual-technical, object-oriented, problem solving approach. That is what we find in universities and technical-trade school education, and it does not get one anywhere on matters of heart. The aim is to develop a more efficient, less time-consuming initiation alternative to reintegrate the feminine principle with the masculine -- for advanced environmental planning and design students, and for post technical training practitioners, and creative people in general. Few would wish to repeat the long-drawn-out ordeal of the lonely pioneer, an odyssey on the quest for knowledge and creativity like the journey of the mythical hero. The pioneer is made to deviate from the conventional path in a given field, no longer compatible with the ideas that have shaped our worldview. A view that encompasses the arts and sciences which shifted beyond a turning point, into a wider sweep of consciousness that began during the previous century. Time and evolution were constellating a compensatory approach in the collective or transpersonal unconscious since the time of the Renaissance, triggering new discoveries in knowledge. If the pioneering individuals in various fields are at all connected with their instincts and creative drive, and remain grounded, they will let go of the old ways and begin to evolve, out of their own unconscious, new approaches contemporary with the newly formed worldview. When a given individual takes it out into the world and into one's discipline or profession, he may suffer a collective reparation from the adherents of conventional wisdom who do not wish to hear of it. He follows his nose and his feelings and he becomes a pathfinder in his field. But it is not yet conscious of what has happened in the world outside its more limited percepts. Architecture and landscape architecture have been cocooned comfortably within self-perpetuating bodies of literature, journals and works based largely on American developed academic concepts, mechanical approaches and professional licensing procedures. Long ago they split away and then from each other, thus fragmenting the field from the global mainstream of evolving ideas that might have impacted design with human nature. Landscape architecture occupies itself with academic training and spreads quickly around the planet begetting an ever multiplying force of busy practitioners, carrying on with business as usual in the patriarchal way, oblivious to the reality of an emergent worldview the nature of which could shatter its most established beliefs about itself and about the world. Many fields today suffer from fragmentation from the mainstream of ideas. A real act of heroism is required for the typical Western mind to open itself and cross a threshold. It demands a courageous act of faith, of imagination, and trust in the integration of feminine values with the masculine in a more complex reality. One that includes the notion of spirit and matter beyond the framework of Western religious dogmas. To achieve this reintegration of the repressed feminine, the masculine must undergo a sacrifice, an ego death. But the first step in a given field is more often to draw the line, to continue to control, deny, exploit and objectify the feminine, as the other. One wants rather to ignore it as a source, goal, and imminent presence to be fully acknowledged, respected and responded to for itself. In design education, especially in landscape architecture, sooner or later, semester rebellions will be joined by more and more students who will become pointedly articulate on the issues. Also, outside authorities, critics and the public in general who are fed up with alienating, non-places in their cityscape will demand a wider perception of the evolutionary imperative -- to open up to feminine values, the unconscious and truly creative environmental design process. What will be required is not more patriarchal attitude but the real masculine, the logos. And that's built on a firm foundation properly constellated within one's own psyche, born out of the womb of the Great Mother Earth principle, so to speak. The challenge of the new century at the outset of the so-called Aquarian Era, or New Age, is for the patriarchal masculine to see through and overcome its hubris and one-sidedness. It must own up to its unconscious shadow and enter into a new relationship of mutuality with the feminine and creative in all its forms. We face a psychological crisis that is existential, together with a biological crisis, in which both have come to be shaped in a such a way as to mirror the masculine view of the world -- i.e., in a man-made environment that is increasingly mechanistic, atomized, and alienating -- without soul, and therefore self-destructive. 'Destructivism' is occurring at an alarmingly increasing pace. It was projected forward in time to give us vignettes of possible futures in films such as 'Clockwork Orange', and more recent films based on science fiction literature, such as 'Star Wars', 'Star Treks' TV series, etc. According to Joseph Campbell, its our new mythology. The initiation process to the feminine principle needed to rebalance our masculine approach to environmental planning and design is ageless. To help the reader understand this, circumstances surrounding the present situation are given spiritual insight and intellectual amplification from symbolism interpreted in a pre-Renaissance fresco cycle inspired by 14C manuscripts. It includes 9 Heroes and 9 Heroines (the number of the muses), Christ's Passion, Errant Knight and Fountain of Youth mythemes -- all to be read symbolically. We discover that by accident, and in vicarious circumstances, the creative forerunner stumbles upon a precedent in his inner landscape -- archetypally and metaphorically like the Errant Knight in the world of chivalry -- and it happens in the outer world as well. One may speculate on the fate of those who do not get the picture on the true nature of the problem, who remain blocked or refuse to see the reality of human evolution, so to be able to let go, to accept change with a wider consciousness. In some cases remaining stuck may mean living a foreshortened life. An example would be today's adolescent smoker, who is vaguely aware of the danger, but remains in the head, with neither feeling nor intuition sufficiently educated in the system to consider the risks, or the nature of the consequences. One smokes himself into a habit because its cool in his in-group, or calms his nerves, perhaps with a false sense of spirit release. The notion of spirit, or pleroma, may be automatically projected from his unconscious contents and perceived in the smoke or incense rising through the air. It symbolizes the joining together of earth and heaven in the spiritualization of humankind. It may be viewed as an unconscious death wish which might better be taken as the need for the ego death of a negative attitude toward reintegrating the feminine in a wider consciousness, in assimilating the religious function. The alchemists' belief -- also widespread throughout the world -- is that the sort of steam or smoke that seemingly rises from a person in the death throws symbolizes, or may really be the soul or pleroma leaving the body. If the smoker has not the will to stop, he may eventually die of throat or lung cancer, thus concretizing the psychological projection. It would seem a strange and very unconscious rite of prayer -- offering homage to God in the form of the ultimate human sacrifice. One may come to see smoking as monotonous, automatic, really an autonomous filling of time, in which one unknowingly avoids spiritual life and thinking with feeling applied to the facts sensed. The doorway also would be closed to intuitive perceptions (insights: including both hindsight and foresight). Life is an endless process of discovery with learning experiences beyond formal education. Education unfortunately has its limitations, as overemphasis on patriarchal values and intellect sets up a functional imbalance in the psyche, within the bicameral mind and older and lower portions of the brain. It can block other instincts, including the feeling and intuition needed to project imaginally, to evaluate and to assimilate the ramifications of one's actions. When too much in the head, it is also possible to lose one's instinctual - material (maternal) ground in the here and now, 5-senses perception. Working with or following the innovator who becomes an original teacher, and in electing the timeless way which honors the feminine principle as well as the masculine, other individuals with similar concerns, professionally and psychologically, then begin their own more balanced growth process toward individual freedom and wellness, allowing access to the feminine principle, the unconscious and original creativity. But the process is now abridged. It becomes more contained, the path is less precarious, less divergent and time consuming than that of the pioneer. Moreover, students must alway be free to choose. There are many approaches and any given path taken by the forerunner isn't necessarily for all. No one on a study abroad semester, for example, should be made to work with the timeless way or archetypal pattern languages for planning designing and building. No one should be forced to reject conventional wisdom or method against one's will. It has to do with maturity, and arriving at a balanced viewpoint embodying the opposites. One eventually has to come to terms with inner and outer reality which are divergent. The way of the self is neither the collective way at present, nor for those who are completely in their heads, nor for the weak of heart, insecure or rootless. It requires a calling from within, a mission to serve humanity and some inner or outer event signalling it's time to begin the inner grand tour -- like the opus magnus of the alchemists -- in which one masters one's own lifework. The most common signal for the opus to begin is the onset of what the alchemists' called nigredo, when life and work become boring. Obsolete routines with filling in of time and mechanical functioning are simply depressing. The self which knows more than the ego is not putting up with the old stuff done superficially anymore. As one begins to get the picture, to move forward on the path to the whole self and wider consciousness, one quickly finds a renewed source of energy for life and work. If one recognizes the source lies within one's inner well-springs and gets into his canoe and paddles down river with the energy, so to speak, he encounters considerably less stress in work and life. If one manages to get away with it in the collective, that is. If one also learns how to keep the doors open to the unconscious, and to work originally, the split which has been educated between the greater self (including the feminine) and the profession with its one-sided masculine ego is healed. The effect is to greatly reduce the amount of stress and conflict between psyche and soma (body). The dis-ease caused by the split may have been leading one down the wrong path toward disease, in whatever forms one may be genetically predisposed, with symptoms ever more life threatening. One needs to discover the key. It unlocks the doorway to the psyche, to the creative and growth-potential source in the well-springs of the unconscious. It enables one to get on the path in the psychological centering and maturing process in order to maintain wellness with access to creativity. In this work and the grand tour study abroad advocated, students are invited to experience a series of environments that are whole, allowing timeless sense of place and archetypes of wholeness in the biophysical environment, the guide and their own inner landscape to go to work in a kind of grand tour, inner-outer landscape synchronicity. An initiation, for those who are ready and open to it, allows one to begin, or to work further life's individuation (self realization) process unfolding the true self, as one reintegrates the opposites including the masculine and feminine principles. It is often compared with removing one's false persona, or mask, which is like gradually peeling away many layers of an onion to expose the core which has been surrounded by shadow, both positive and negative. In the process one begins to evolve an independent view of the world while mastering confidence in the fuller potentials of the self, including access to authentic-original creativity that may be applied in profession. The process is organic with eco-vernacular sensibilites. One works to stay grounded in the body as one begins to differentiate and reintegrate sensation, feeling and intuition into a wider, more balanced consciousness previously fused in archaic combinations with a masculine approach to thinking. The aim is to balance these functions in a more conscious quaternity with the calculative, analytical and reductive thinking more formally educated in a technique-based society. The emphasis in formal education has been on concrete thinking, a way of thinking which overpowers or negates feeling. Concretism is archaic (primitive) and undifferentiated, based entirely on perception through sensation. In civilized man, such thinking is attuned to and bound by physiological stimuli and material facts. Such an orientation is valuable in the recognition of outer reality, but deficient in how it is interpreted. It results in the projection of inner subjective factors into the objective data and produces an almost superstitious veneration of mere facts. There is a general inability to conceive of anything except immediately obvious facts transmitted by the senses, or an inability to discriminate between subjective feeling and sensed object. The rounding out of personality in a quaternity of more consciously differentiated functions allows a centering process in the psyche. It opens the doorway to the well-springs of creativity in the collective or transpersonal unconscious. It is experienced with a liberating effect. There is an enlivening of personality, as one becomes more animated, feels rejeuvenated, more alive and free -- like the Errant Knight emerging from the bath in the alchemical Fountain of Youth. The fountain concretized in stone was a popular Renaissance mytheme central to the piazza and garden villa. As access to the unconscious remains at the discretion of the greater self, the individuation or psychological growth process is not entirely under control of ego, or will. To move forward one must be receptive to the feminine principle and remain very grounded. One needs to let go, not to remain stuck in the head with compulsion and inability to control oneself (where the ego is possessed by archaic thinking, or thinking is fused with sensation or feeling or intuition, or any other with a counterpart). The 'timeless way' has been advocated and described in books by Christopher Alexander on the process for evolving towns, buildings and construction. It appeals to down-to-earth common sense and values. It enables one to work with archetypal pattern languages in generating environments embued with an ageless sense of place, with qualities that call up a compassionate humanity. Places made in the timeless way support being and dwelling, in place, in nature, where one feels a sense of belonging as a part of nature, v apart from nature. Environments are made with a more conscious perspective on the entire human nature - nature's nature relationship. The timeless way of building is the way of the self. It is less calculative, less manipulative, less deterministic and reduces the power trip of single-minded intellect that is against nature and human nature. It is not conceptually abstract, or a coldly engineered, mechanical method of approach. It can neither be mastered by strict adherence to concept or method, nor 'acquired' with didactic instruction, nor by going to the bookstore or to the library for reading material that is merely 'about' the timeless way. But reading works written with feeling, narrative and metaphor can help constellate illumination. It is the awakening process on the way to enlightenment. In the Gestalt, or 'aha' experience of discovery, we learn to take advantage of our fleeting perceptions, thus moving forward into ever wider consciousness and higher levels of spirit and intellect. The present work embraces spirit and higher intellect. It argues for integration of feeling and intuition in a more functionally balanced design process. The work, ever evolving and compensatory, is directed at balancing planning and design education. The goal, simply, is to improve the quality of teaching for profession, and, to promote stewardship in the broadest sense for professional practise generating environments which are whole. The actual principle which implicates the unconscious has been given a feminine gender and repressed in many cultures, historically. It is innate -- inherited -- indigenous to the archetypal level in everyone's unconscious, female or male. The imbalance caused when the feminine is repressed, or oppressed and then remains blocked, is a problem for all education. It is viewed generally in the light of CG Jung's contributions to philosophy and psychology and more recent works by Joseph Campbell and many others. The work involved connecting the dots between many ideas into a whole, one that is plausible, but not easily verifiable or communicable owing to esoteric origins of some of the ideas. It calls for some intuitive understanding and a good grip on subjective, inner values. It requires faith in the female principle and the creative well-springs, which flow instinctively, from an activated unconscious in an organic process, into awareness with a discrimination of opposites by the ego. The process must be nurtured with respect. The feminine nature is matriarchal and of a consciousness that has been described as lunar in character. It is more deeply rooted in the darker, intuitive side of life. It is more lit by the dimmer reflections of the moon, metaphorically speaking, than man with his simpler nature and patriarchal tendencies for a more blinding solar consciousness, where the brighter, direct light of the midday sun makes it impossible to see one's shadow. The idea of wholeness referred to above embraces both the yin-feminine and yang-masculine in the Chinese ancient symbol of the opposites contained within a circle of dark and light, divided by a reversing double spiral, wherein each half of the spiral contains a nucleus, the germ of contrasting light or dark from which its opposite may develop. The symbol is holistic. The movement is from the hermaphrodite -- with a potential for the opposites archetypally constellated within the depths of the individual's unconscious -- to the androgyne, symbolizing the opposites have been brought up into the light, consciously realized, and integrated. The individual's own health and wellness, or wholeness (also, holiness - being the religious function) become intertwined, with the success of the operation (in the alchemists' opus) of separation and reintegration of the female and male principles. It is a process emblemized by another at least 4,000 year old symbol for divinities. Two winged serpents (male and female, as sun and moon, traveling in time, sometimes separate and sometimes coming together) are coiled in a double spiral (DNA-like helix) round the magic staff (symbol of office) of Hermes-Mercurius, Messenger of the Gods. He is the guide of humans through their changes of being. It suggests cosmic energy. It is the Hindu and Buddhist kundalini awakening energy which flows upwards coiled at the base of the spine. It rises through successive Chakra to the apex at the fontanelle. One may image it as a well-spring or little fountain, a symbol of the pure energy which drives a person's inner development and creativity. The cadeuceus also suggests phallic power and the Tree of Life associated with the dwelling of, or a substitute for the godhead (a means of communication or route for messages between Earth and Sky). With the winged serpents added by the Greeks, the symbol became a synthesis of the cthonian world below and that of the sky above transcending its origins. The spiritualized phallus -- or wand of Hermes -- originally worshiped in an early Greek agrarian cult, included magical powers which he controlled. It is thus the conductor of souls. It penetrates from the known into the unknown world, seeking a spiritual message of deliverance. It has the prophetic and healing powers of the tree-god. The cadeuceus also stood for moral conduct, balancing and reconciliation of the opposites, including female and male, or the feminine and masculine principles, in a single, sentient being (Lat. sentire, able to consciously perceive with the senses and intuition and to feel -- qualitatively -- with an instinctive intelligence). As the god of alchemy, Hermes-Mercurius stood for the integration of opposing principles which have to be reconciled (mercury - masculine solar principle, and silver - feminine lunar principle). One participates in the dynamic equilibrium of opposing forces evoked, which come together to constitute higher and stronger static forms and active structures. The ultimate condition is strength and self-mastery, and peacefulness of the Greater Self (projected into the heavens as the godhead with the power of the word, often mistakenly associated with -- overvalued as -- one-sided intellect). The Self may be realized equally in proportion by instinct (serpents) and on a spiritual level (wings). There is a link implied between the snake and rejeuvenation. Individually and collectively, it may be viewed as a symbol of Renaissance. To the alchemists the unifying gold of the rod of the cadeuceus was seen in male and female integration, also as expressing the basic dualism of fixed and volatile, wet and dry, hot and cold and other opposites, which is the well-spring of alchemical thought which must be sucked back into the oneness of the Philosopher's Stone. With but a single snake entwined, the cadeuceus is an attribute of Aesculapius, god of healing and, as Jung saw it, an emblem of homeopathic medicine -- the snake that both poisons and cures -- wounds the unconscious hero or heroine for a purpose, and then cures the person into wider awareness (presumably, with the opposing snake's energy then brought into play). The cadeuceus with the serpents remained the symbol of ambiguity and complexity and of the infinite potential of development, all uniquely human characteristics. The serpents entwined around the staff -- symbolizing the Tree of Life -- indicate egoism (possession) associated mainly with the god of intellect (and power-head trips over nature) tamed and brought under control. According to the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols: "their venom is transformed to healing, the corruption of life force brought back to its proper channel. Health 'is right proportion, harmonization of desire (the serpents' symmetrical coils), control of emotional stimuli, the need for spiritualization and sublimation [which] not only rule the health of the soul, [but] determine the health of the body as well.' Such an interpretation would make the cadeuceus the especial symbol of psychosomatic balance." The individuation process evolves within psyche and soma in a timeless way which may be difficult for some to comprehend, beholden to conventional wisdom, more linear thought process and an intellect focussed mainly on the visible and tactile aspects of one reality limited to the outer world. This one-sided mentality is transcended by the 'initiated', the one who awakens to the 'other', the feminine, the inner landscape and the opposites, as one strives for completeness, remains open and manages to stay absolutely grounded and centered, typologically, being quintessentially receptive to the Music of the Spheres. It may be experienced as a kind of Divine intervention from a transpersonal unconscious with archetypes of potential for all kinds of developmental/behavioral patterns innate to the deepest reaches of the human psyche, in the DNA. The origins of consciousness are in the evolution of the human brain with its development of Self in the bicameral mind. The authentic-creative, 'True Self' individual discovers in an evolutionary process that is uniquely individual an ever greater personality. It would include the art of designing, working instinctively with fleeting perceptions, or aided by the dream, or other creative manifestations rising into awareness like bubbles from the depths of the oceans, from what Jung termed the universal, or transpersonal, ''collective unconscious". It is the way of the small, the humble and the beautiful filled with the radiance of the gods. It inspires awe. It has been stumbled upon by many of the greatest minds in history. Some of these people were inducted into the timeless way by self-made masters who became guides or teacher-mentors. Their works endure through the ages, like the etherial quality and mood of Botticelli's beautiful 'Spring' maiden, seemingly guiding one through the forest as an inner anima figure to be introjected mythologically and metaphorically. Also, his 'Birth of Venus' with its obvious connection to the sacred feminine as she rides the waves over the waters of the unconscious on her seashell. Or Leonardo's Mona Lisa, with her knowing, enigmatic smile. She would seem to entice all who pass by her in that gallery of the Louvre to pause in front of her and to ponder the nature of her secret. The archetypal foundations on which this work rests are diverse. They include an appreciation for the part played by irrational and synchronistic processes, the opposites, the subjective, mythology, metaphor and the significance of symbolic life and the experiential value of Ancient Greek, Roman and other secret societal mystery rites -- for a compensatory calling up of intuition, feeling and values to round out, to rebalance the human psyche, originally created whole and thus unified at birth. The synthesis was informed, secondarily, by 'great works' of alchemists whom Jung interpreted in uncovering typology: the psychological functions and the attitudes of extroversion and introversion contributing to the unfolding of personality in the human psychological growth - maturation process. The present work was inspired by a similar underground current of philosophy and ideas on which it is apparent the Renaissance Academies were grounded, particularly of Marsilio Ficino, who mentored several of the greatest artists of all time. The work is infused with the author's passion for an interpretive hypothesis: the archetype of healing, of wholeness aimed at the rounding out and balancing of personality, is what drives the journey of life's purpose in the pursuit of happiness. The journey encompasses, in a centering process, both inner and outer landscapes, the opposites, their interrelationships and interdependencies, as one begins to discover, initially, what lies in the lowness and psychological depths of one's personal shadows. And then what follows -- the whole resplendent self with one's higher potentials. The inner journey to wholeness, or wellness, has been projected by people onto natural and cultural landscape in the form of the traditional, European 'grand tour', over the alps. It was largely for northerners of colder climates (however unselfconscious) to ground the psyche and experience the 'other', in the warmth radiating from the overall environment, the people, and the creative inspiration to be gained from the cultural heritage of southern regions, particularly in, but not limited to present day Italy. This journey, and the experience of the 'traveler' (to be distingished from today's typical tourist) may be viewed as archetypally driven toward a teleological aim for rounding out typology in greater consciousness, in compensation to formal education focussed on one-sided thinking. Over several centuries (17C - 20C) the journey was made by so many 'northerners' of the artistic and/or scientific temperament -- both the famous and unknown.
Ronald Reagan, former American President Now the suggestion I ought to write something on the subject of 'design for human nature' first came long ago, in 1968 in Washington D.C., at a small White House invitational Conference on Natural Beauty and the Roadside chaired by Lawrence Rockefeller. I was a rookie Instructor and Research Associate representing Harvard federally funded research on the freeway and its impact on environment and driver behavior. Another landscape architect was there, an ecoplanning consultant who had been attracting a lot of media and public attention. It was Ian McHarg, Professor and Chairman of Landscape Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He had been Visiting Professor at Harvard 2 years before, helping out with a regional landscape planning studio, providing lectures, project critiques, and his ecoplanning reports also for a modest case study publication we attempted, which became something of a classic over the years. This was Three Approaches to Environmental Resources Analysis, funded and published by The Conservation Foundation in Washington. It described McHarg's ecological planning contributions as one of the 3 authors 'case studied' in a time honored Harvard tradition. At this meeting, Ian, Lawrence Rockefeller and Russell Train, then President of the Conservation Foundation, and several others, who's names or presence I am sorry to have forgotten, were having coffee during a break. Conversation was about Ian's slide-talk to the group and his forthcoming book, Design with Nature, which also had been funded by the Conservation Foundation. During the conversation, Ian referred to my work abstracting his environmental inventory and analysis 'approach' contributions from his various projects, and the conclusion I wrote in our little Harvard study report, and his own substantial book which was to become a widely read ecological planning landmark publication over subsequent decades, saying someone needed to do the obvious complement to his natural resource-oriented contribution. The subject would be human considerations, or 'design for human nature'. And with my interests and MIT course background with planning author Kevin Lynch, who wrote The Image of the City, The Openess of Open Space, What Time is this Place? and Managing the Sense of the Region (and subsequently, A Good Theory of Urban Form), I should tackle 'design with human nature', one day! I was not ready or up to the task then, as I knew the human side was in a far more infant conceptual stage than was design with nature's nature. And besides, I had a traveling fellowship and a research/writing grant in my pocket to travel and experience the landscape and great outdoor spaces and places in Europe, for myself, requiring I make studies as deemed appropriate for a year. I obviously had a burning desire to get moving on the traditional 'Grand Tour' for the artistic/scientific personality I had earned. The seeds planted with that "You should write Design with Human Nature!" remained 'downstairs' many years, germinating in my subconscious. And I suppose it probably had a considerable influence on me for over 3 decades, occasionally trying to push to the surface like an obnoxious weed in a field that was outright hostile to such 'touchy' content, causing it slip below the daily agenda of conscious thought. The working paper which follows is an attempt to exorcise a little daimon creative implant in the discoverer, the curious one, who always wants to see what lies ahead along the road beyond the next hill. It grew from a timeless quest for the truth, 'veritas', that was given additional impetus by Ian McHarg. Since the beginning semesters of undergraduate landscape architecture education in the 1960's, I never felt comfortable with so-called 'human factors' or the aesthetic 'criteria' for design. What schools are still trying to teach students in 'basic design' to use calculatively -- yet we almost never manipulated such 'criteria' into solutions, ourselves -- may be sometimes useful in evaluating designs, but are impractical, incapable of generating designs. The truth is the environmental design professions in general and landscape architecture in particular have no humanistic - intellectual - philosophical constructs for an in-depth foundation based on universal understanding that can justify their existence, one that is communicable in accord with today's scientific worldview. Whenever the subject comes up landscape architects have tried to escape what many regard as vital and specific to their profession: the very issues of quality, aesthetic beauty and balance or harmony in the character of biophysical environment which has tremendous psychological effect on people, primarily at the unconscious level. And there is a possibility landscape architecture as we have known it will not survive very long in our 'New Age' marked by accelerated change, where the only thing certain will be accelerated widening of consciousness in the collective with major shifts in worldview. Undoubtedly, there will be a lot more watering of ground from carefully measured out jars of awareness which astrological - mythological images of the era symbolized by 'Aquarius' would suggest. Insights on subjective - 'objective' interpretive facts will pour forth from an activated unconscious in increasing numbers of creative people, whether bursting forth autonomously like bubbles rising from an ocean or coaxed up out of the eternal-internal wellsprings constellated to inform individuals and the world as creative people step forward with courage, unafraid to speak up on the impending environmental inevitability. For some enlightened insights on a profession that has been continuing to lose its relevance for some decades in contributing education to broaden its vision in solving environmental problems, see Landscape Architecture Canada, Fall 1980, 'Research Needs for the Future'. It is a collection of papers from a seminar held earlier in the year at the Université de Montréal, with summary and conclusions by Richard Forster who raised the issue: 'Can the profession Survive on Mythical Assumptions -- in Theoretical Vacuum?' Senior, most successfully experienced, Canadian professionals were interviewed more recently, echoing similar things, which clearly were assimilated more than a decade later. One reaffirmed the point referred to above about the profession's losing its relevance, another admitting professionals can't cope as generalists (in an interdisciplinary manner) as the schools can't teach them what they don't know. The present author would take the analysis to its conclusion. The context for the professional knowledge base needs to be broadened to encompass natural systems which are being worked on steadily, successfully, in many schools. But what clearly is not being done, which must be included, is work on biological habitat theory, particularly in accepting the reality of the human psyche, archetypes, the need for a better understanding of 'the opposites' or opposing principles -- male and female, yang and yin, classicism and romanticism, and etc. We need to understand better how creative - originative, synthesizing processes function, the role of compensatory, intra-psychic processes in evolution and the 'enantiadromia' or upset effect. We don't recognize the function of the female or 'yin' principle given the feminine gender collectively assigned to the unconscious. We need a more conscious framework of understanding contributing to a more in-formed conscious and unconscious design process embracing design for human needs. For the brief reaffirmation that was in the more recent report see the English language web page below by Linda M. LeGeyt, 1998, Université de Montréal, École d'Architecture de Paysage: 'A vision for the future based on voices from the past'
NOTA: As the web page cited above was removed shortly after this link was made, perhaps a mere coincidence, perhaps one may infer to conceal the truth as timing and the ISP reader log for the present page might suggest. It may be noted the author has electronic and hard copies on file containing the summary with quotations from faculty and senior professionals interviewed. It may well ring true -- landscape architecture is in a self-destruct mode -- as one may conclude from removal of such valuable information clearly posted with intent to help professional education in promoting healthy discussion, research and work to move forward in rendering a profession more relevant. This mistaken or wrongful act was not helpful and is further evidence of a festering situation. It is simply unhealthy and misleading. It only adds to delusion among students, professionals and professional associations. It also brings into question the validity of legislative enactments for professional registration. Ultimately, it contributes to the deception of society which has entrusted the profession. The mere existence of a problem we shall refer to as 'patriarchal one-sidedness' causes dis-ease at the unconscious level in the individual, adding to the stress factor in students and professionals. A conflict or 'split' is set up in the psyche, between mind and body, between culture with a professional 'false persona' overlay on the one hand and the individual's whole or 'true Self nature' and the instincts on the other. From a psychological standpoint, if the split is substantial and is allowed to continue, it is a major cause of neurosis: often referred to as 'mid-life crisis'. Moreover, this critical state of affairs is occurring earlier nowadays for an increasing number of people who are in their twenties and thirties. If the problem is not addressed soon and openly in education, as people are becoming better informed, one of the inevitabilities will be lawsuits. If the suspicion is true, there may be character traits typical of many who unconsciously projected on the design professions in choosing to study and enter them. Meaning, psychologically, a cultured 'professional mastery' or authority 'complex' which hooked them into the field in order to be forced eventually to deal with their power complexes to exert order and control over others and environment. In other words an outer projection of an inner need to heal themselves, by better designing their own personal inner - outer landscape relationship, to mirror, to better reflect positively a whole balanced self. And, if the complex is relatively autonomous and unconscious and it is in grip or possession of the person, it is know as a 'splinter psyche'. One of the commonest causes is a moral conflict, notably exacerbated while undergoing formal education, which is not without traumatizing effects due to oppression of the psyche with intellectual power (head) trips. The conflict develops out of the individual's repression of wellness. It may include repressed compassion for others and nature. It prevents the healthy integrated mind - body system, as blocked psychological growth retards development of a more balanced differentiation of typological functions necessary for the synthesis of the psyche, with the apparent impossibility of culturally reaffirming the whole of one's nature in the collective. Complexes are what Jung called the building blocks of the psyche. They are the source of all emotions, which may be further transmuted into real feeling rooted in universal values and archetypal potential for psychological growth in greater personality, within an evolving, evermore conscious, sophisticated, balanced and interrelated mind and body-instinct system. The problem discussed here is one of educationally frustrated archetypal intent. Almost everyone knows nowadays that people have complexes. But what is not so well know is that our complexes virtually can have us. Unconscious identification with a complex associated with a cultured, patriarchal mentality focussed on one-sided intellect suppresses the contrasexual or matriarchal principle associated with the 'opposites' in one's unconscious. It sets up a conflict between one's repressed instincts (especially feeling and intuition), and a prevailing analytical - calculative, 'rational', functional engineering approach, which is mechanistic, with many unknown presumptions built in. An approach which at base is interpretive and, therefore, it is colored by subjectivity and is not really objective at all. On the surface it looks more like traditional 'classicism', however the work of the ancients was really more grounded in other instincts, notably feeling and intuition. Apart from intellect there are other psychological needs and functions instinctual to the psyche, requiring a counterbalance honoring receptivity to values so deep in the unconscious they may be said to be archetypal, with patterns embodied in the 'timeless way' in originative design, from origins. In synthesis this process is more organic, humane, and in nature it is synchronistic when properly constellated and incubated. It must be allowed to well up through one's biographical unconscious without negative shadow contamination. It stems from origins in a deeper, transpersonal collective unconscious which is cross-cultural, being universal. The timeless way requires creative access to archetypal pattern languages stemming from the deeper unconscious, in a more subjective and imaginal, intuitive-feeling design process. The process is informed or constellated by conscious external knowledge of the patterns mirroring the inner landscape patterns and it embraces metaphor. It is more typical of the 'classicism' of the Ancients and the vernacular traditions and indeed some aspects of 'romanticism'. Moreover, the history of ideas synthesized within the present worldview enables the designer to function with more of the process in cognitive awareness. One can work with greater knowledge of the nature of creative process, knowing how, and more importantly, when to feed analytical work into the process, or to cultivate receptivity, incubation, and to be able to let go, to allow an unconscious synthesis to come into awareness imaginally and be expressed verbally, or graphically, or modelled three-dimensionally. The timeless way tends to be culturally suppressed by many individuals, and further, it may be oppressed deliberately in formal design education, or by professional societies (and state licensing enactments) unknowingly obsessed with a mentality that is sometimes superficial and merely technologically functional - mechanical. What we have is more like pseudo-science. It is less grounded than true science which honors instinct, in which both objectivity and subjective interpretation are taken into account. Design education neither recognizes the objective reality of the psyche, nor has it been aware of archetypal and analytical depth psychologies and it is barely cognizant of the nature and role of unconscious processes in the act of design. The complex situation briefly outlined above is a precondition for neurosis in individuals when a body-mind imbalance or an actual split is allowed to continue in the psyche. Further, when it remains uncompensated, it may lead to more serious problems, even psychosis or physical illnesses to which one may have been cultured in trauma and/or genetically predisposed. The imbalance which may be observed in design education connects however with a forward moving teleological aim associated with an underground current of thought running very deep in the collective unconscious linked with a larger, phylogenetic metaprogram in the DNA. Until the last quarter of the previous century it was not well understood. It is metaphysical and evolutionary in nature and it is better appreciated in the context of the middle to end of Twentieth Century scientific and philosophical worldview, or weltanschaaun (D). This problem is amplified and discussed further in what follows. Jung said the anima soul is the archetype of life itself. It is personified in a man's dreams by images of women. They range from the seductress to the spiritual and creative guide, thus being associated with the Eros principle, spontaneity and relatedness, like a muse mythologizing, influencing ideas, attitudes and emotions, while also being an inner personality complementary to ego identity with the persona. The anima stands in a compensatory relationship to the persona which is just a societally cultured or professional mask. The psychological priority in the first half of life is to free oneself from the anima fascination with the mother. But in later life a lack of conscious relationship with one's anima (including the Great Earth Mother - Gaia aspects of personality) is accompanied by symptoms characteristic of a "loss of soul". Ongoing or permanent loss means a diminuation of vitality, of flexibility, of receptivity, and of human sympathy, empathy and compassion. In other words -- no relatednesss. It follows then, where there is 'no sense -- no feeling', as the saying goes. Soullessness is accompanied by crustiness, rigidity, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, weary resignation and childish irresponsibility, with an overriding intellect causing one to be too much in the head, or perhaps leading a scholarly life, that is didactic and arid -- dry-as-dust -- merely academically pedantic, narrowly controlling and overly reductive. In such a state of possession it is impossible to become typologically whole (encompassing Jung's 4 functions of sensation, feeling, thinking and intuition, with the 2 attitudes of introversion and extroversion for each function, all being more or less differentiated at some level in awareness). The anima quest is one and the same as the historical grail conquest. It really means the completion of a whole personality, also exhibiting character, wit and grace. It transforms a male into the individuated individual who is broadly integrative and humane. It is symbolized by Leonardo's Vitruvian icon for Universal man. It is the Renaissance personality, with a person's masculine side reborn whole within an integrated hieros gamos, an inner union of the masculine and feminine principles, in which the relationships between inner and outer landscape are also reconnected. The individuating personality now finds renewed energy to move forward in life with vitality, while experiencing a feeling of liberation (to avoid today's much overused utterance: 'freedom'). We will examine Leonardo's Uomo Universale icon in more detail later. Jung had suggested that if the encounter with one's shadow, the unrecognized or repressed hidden aspects about oneself, both good and bad, is the "Apprentice-piece" in masculine development, then coming to terms with his anima is the "Master-piece", evolving from a troublesome inner female adversary into a functional relationship between consciousness and the unconscious. The grail conquest of the anima as an autonomous complex is finding one's place in relationship in-the-world with self-identity, an inner authority coming from being centered and balanced within the true or whole self with access to one's greater human potential. In a woman the inner masculine side is the animus functioning more like an unconscious mind, manifesting negatively in fixed ideas, collective opinions and unconscious or a priori presumptions laying claim to absolute truths and it is called the 'animus possession', where Eros usually takes second or no place at all to a kind of pseudo-Logos in identification with the patriarchal world or the father, where a woman is in danger of losing her femininity. And while a man's task in assimilating the effects of his anima requires discovering his true feelings, a woman familiarizes herself with the nature of her animus by constantly questioning her ideas and opinions, reflecting on them and discovering their origins to penetrate more deeply into the background of her own inner landscape discovering the primordial images of archetypes giving form to the world. This particular psychological complex problem, which is widespread in the general population and may be endemic to the design professions, is a cultural - educational issue. It points to the need for the individual always to maintain inner and outer landscape, subjectivity and objectivity, the arts and sciences in an interdependent, balanced relationship. The complex driven by overemphasis on patriarchal attitudes actually inhibits professionals maturing beyond a professionally educated mechanical functionalism, an engineering 'technical high school' approach to planning and design viewed as mere problem solving, ignoring or expressing an ambivalence toward qualitative relationships, subjectivity and any connection between inner and outer landscape. It is exacerbated where there is too little educational focus on the conceptual supportive framework for the design professions and too little psychological understanding of the role of subjective, irrational, acausal and synchronistic aspects in design process and in design synthesis derived from the creative well-springs from the 'source' incubated in the unconscious historically given a feminine gender identity. Mythologically it has been projected as the matriarchal Gaia principle associated metaphorically with the fecundity of the Great Mother Goddess. Its as if superficiality, fads and stylism were ever the name of the design game -- apart from good progress made in technological design implementation, professionalism and natural ecosystems planning from functional standpoints -- when confronted with a serious and in-depth psychological problem of designing for basic human habitat needs which are not merely limited to the physical or mechanical-functional. Then landscape architecture indeed faces an uncertain future as knowledgeable people outside the field in coming to awareness of its existence would dismiss it as an 'unconscious profession'. Peter Jacobs suggested in regard to the intellectual constructs he spoke of in the 1998 report by Linda M. LeGeyt, a non-landscape architect incidentally -- whom this author does not wish to construe also to include depth psychology or the history of ideas shaping the current scientific and philosophical worldview which may or may not have been intended by Peter -- "It contributes to the very real possibility the profession won't exist in the very near future, because if it doesn't have a basis for arguing on its own behalf, then I don't see any way it can exist." One may intuit with feeling, both differentiated and integrated in one's thinking -- perfectly valid in the current scientific worldview, one would emphasize -- it is as if landscape architecture, as a profession in Canada, would seek to forsake human behavior and needs, the reality of the unconscious, and irrational or subjective aspects of the human psyche, including certain 'a priori' inherited aspects, archetypal - depth psychology, and the profession's historical roots in the arts, giving it all over for a single-minded patriarchal technology with rational-functional planning. From a wider perspective, one may see this a collective, unselfconscious attempt to regress to an existential, more calculative and mechanistic approach to design from the past which overlooks the whole inner landscape, the subjective and the qualitative, and its interdependent relationship with the outer landscape. Whereas, this author stated elsewhere, mechanical fuctionalism may be less than the half of a holistic approach according to Carl Jung, the post-Jungians and various scientist - philosophers studied who contributed to the closing Twentieth Century worldview.
To obtain a quick perspective on the end of the century shift in world view one may refer to the concluding chapters of "The Brilliant Bestseller" this author discovered in 2003 on the "Museum Staff Favorites" display occupying a small table by the cash registers at the entrance to the Bookstore within New York's Metropolitan Museum. The book: 'The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View', Richard Tarnas, 1991. There are 4 pages of accolades inside the cover by respected authorities in many fields and one on the cover itself penned by Professor Joseph Campbell, an earlier reviewer of the project before his death several years before publication: "The most lucid and concise presentation I have read, of the grand lines of what every student should know about the history of Western thought. The writing is elegant and carries the reader with the momentum of a novel.... It is really a noble performance." Professor David L. Miller, like Campbell a lecturer and seminar leader attended by this author, but on a number of occasions in Zürich and Toronto, wrote of it: "Exceptionally well-organized ... extremely well-written.... Above all, it is replete with insights that 'go off' like wonderful little firecrackers throughout the text.... Its radically interdisciplinary nature explicitly calls into question the division of knowledge into 'fields', which is, to be sure, a large part of the point of the tale and its significance: not trees, but the whole jungle in compelling articulation..." The point made here, fellow designers, is that architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, landscape design, urban design or any fragment of the whole 'environmental design' field can neither ignore human needs, the subjective and interpretive psyche, or its myth-making functions or the projection-making nature of creative processes, on the one hand, nor, on the other, attempt to assume or artificially 'make up' or isolate a discreet body of knowledge for that particular technology-based subset, for so-called 'human factors' or needs, one that is not congruous with the current scientific - philosophical worldview. This is the leading edge, integrating the female principle in what has been until now an entirely masculine approach on all fronts. In our time, there are people working across disciplines at the forefront of human knowledge, who have been struggling, and rather successfully, to bring forth something fundamentally new in human history, something which already has been accepted as needing to be accomplished, paraphrased below: Richard Tarnas, concluding para: 'The Passion of the Western Mind' The argument presented below is there is little appreciation of the meaning underlying the prototypes in historic landscape styles from the archetypal point of view of modern depth psychology, especially the analytical psychology of Carl Jung. Jung's unique Twentieth Century contribution to knowlege synthesized the history of pivotal ideas that shaped our worldview in the 3000 year-odyssey in pursuit of the truth underlying our highest instincts for spirit and intellect with a conscience. His paradigm-shifting framework of opposites, archetypes and wider understanding infused with timeless wisdom of the ages pulled so much into perspective and laid the conceptual foundation for us as we enter the new century in the so-called Aquarian Era, a time of even greater transition and enlightenment than the Renaissance. The historical meaning of metaphoric content in the outer landscape has not been well understood for its symbolism masking an unknown, subterranean line of thought reflected in timeless, archetypal patterns motivating behavior. In landscape design, we lack an in-depth, psychological understanding of the relationship of human beings to the landscape throughout history -- in mytho-poesis -- where many of these timeless patterns have been mutilayered and embedded in spaces to make true 'places'. Genuine places have a genius locus, rooted in values so deep with feeling, they may be said to be archetypal. Environments embued with character from the patterns 'emplace' us, so we may dwell within them and ourselves, feeling at home, at one with, or at-one-meant, in 'atonement' with nature. Dwelling in place is supportive of -- we even may say it nurtures -- never changing humanistic needs of the soul for human psychological growth in an ever widening, more balanced state of consciousness with a feeling of greater personal security, together with an unfolding of spiritually animated personality. We 'dwell' in a 'participation mystique' between subject and object, sustaining 'orientation' (a sense of where we are in the world of space and time) and 'identity' (a timeless feeling of true self, of who we really are, from one moment to the next), with a sense of belonging, of being in place, a part of -- and not apart from -- the natural world and the universe. Slowly, we arrive, with a sense of empowerment, where we become more and more unshakeable in an uncertain world, where the only thing that is certain is change itself. This 'grounding', on earth, enables the human species alone to actualize within the inner landscape of the individual -- and the collective psyche as well -- a reflective consciousness encompassing psychological opposites. It enables a stewarding of ourselves and the earth's resources with a conscience. The survival of the planet and the human species depends on our maintaining our ground. Only by reuniting scientific understanding with psychology, religion and spirituality, natural philosophy, and a more enlightened approach to intuitively original, artistic-creative process will we be able to create places that are spiritually life-sustaining, that are more in accord with our DNA - phylogenetic metaprogram in a truer sense than present artifice. Attempts to preserve nature and re-create psychologically resonant, metaphorical representations in designed environments may heighten a spiritual bond between these little understood humanistic ideals and the built form and more natural environments. It may help us reconnect mind with body to ground ourselves in the Self, as we maintain contact with nature's nature participating in the timeless unfolding of our human nature, as we differentiate and balance the opposites in the the psyche, in rounding out the ego with greater consciousness, awareness of values and personality. We lack the necessary understanding of how culturally sustaining myths may be embodied creatively in environments to reanimate our spiritual selves. What we find today is a tendency toward an unconscious, or at best, superficially understood mirroring of fragments of the human soul in stylistic multiplicity and eclectic design, in which even modernism and post-modernism finally have become stylistic design options to be manipulated, functionally and mechanically, in an assemblage that is like a pastiche without resonance of soul, without the spiritual radiance of the gods. What has been offered up in design education has not been put to question from the perspective of advanced scientific thinking in general, especially, from what we now know about the realm of the human psyche with insights into archetypal and depth psychology, contributed most substantially by Jung. This perspective decisively, fundamentally, altered and broadened dominant views of the human being as conceived by natural and human scientists in the twentieth century. The work is pragmatic. It is constantly being refined so to be carefully integrated and, hopefully, it will be easy to understand as a thoughtfully balanced, in-depth, sensing-feeling-intuitive piece. One which places humanistic questioning of values at the forefront. It is offered for open-minded discussion as palpable, creatively derived and synthesized, non-conventional wisdom. Apologies are respectfully offered in advance, for an approach which is more down to earth will seriously undermine some of the mystique or 'fuzzy thinking' that has sometimes been characteristic of design and of some designers. At least those more tied to an academic conventional wisdom that may well in conclusion be viewed as a mistaken 'head trip'. That would be like seeing with blinkered vision when confined by a single-minded intellect that has been culturally split off, being more in the head, with thinking that is not so rooted in the other instincts, or in Earth and the base animal sensing and intuitive part of nature. This earthy, rooted nature grounds the psyche, allowing an internal separation of spirit and matter for the elevation of spirit, or a higher intellect with conscience. It is integrated with innate feeling and values residing at the core, centered in a very deep archetypal level in the psyche connecting the mind-body totality. As a society we are cultured to get stuck in our past beliefs. We look for what is safe and secure, even when it doesn't work anymore. We all learn that Gallileo was excommunicated for his observation that the earth revolved around the sun, and not vice versa. And one can imagine how threatening it was for the Europeans, when their belief that the earth was flat was challenged by a guy named Christopher (really It.Cristoforo) who literally toppled their world, the tower of intellect with concepts they had erected. They were really threatened by a paradigm shift that eventually made a major change in their society, and their way of life. As we deal with shifts in our belief system today, we also feel threatened. To be creative, to be a paradigm shifter, or to experience it after it has happened you need to have one foot out, so to speak, to see the boundaries that you have taken upon your ego, to think beyond or 'out of' the little box which contains it. 'The view of the paradigm is emerging as the role of the individual's consciousness, that the inner experience of individuals, such as intuition, emotions, creativity, and spirit are vastly more important than the world of the senses alone' (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). 'To survive, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before', as Alvin Toffler said in his 'Future Shock'. The greatest paradigm shifts will occur from within. All things being considered outside of ourselves, finding our power from external sources, and not seeing the power within will drive us to the need to know ourselves and discover our own personal power. And it is as Einstein said: 'The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them'. It leaves us with only one conclusion: So change the way you think and that will change everything.
Leonardo da Vinci In retranslating scientific abstractions into concrete personal experiences one may observe, as Freud did, it may be said that the 'Ancients' interpreted in modern terms of patriarchal authority only correspond to some aspects of the father, (father archetype of the 'Wise Old Man', Jung would have argued) and nature, including Leonardo's own inner nature, again became the tender mother (archetypal, nurturing 'Earth Mother', according to Jung, again). It is the mother principle that would have been constellated within who nourished Leonardo's creativity, in Jung's wider and deeper understanding based on his own inner philosophical journey encompassing both the human soul and spirit. Had Leonardo, an illegitimate son, not been deprived of his actual genetic father and the more limited patriarchal view for a short time in the first years of his life, such creativity constellated within may not have been possible. In most human beings growing up in patriarchal society today, the need for authority is so imperative that their world becomes unsteady and fearful when that authority is threatened. Interestingly, the view here on Leonardo da Vinci is supported in a book on the New York Times and Toronto Globe and Mail, 2003, 2004 and 2005 bestseller lists for fiction, a well researched, historical document based novel: 'The Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown, a work of pure genius. It is a riveting, intelligent, mystery thriller about a mind-bending code thought to be hidden in Leonardo's works. It offers what may be an astonishing truth about the sacred feminine that has been concealed for centuries. It has captured the imaginations of millions of readers and stirred up controversies and consideable academic debate. This has been summerized in another book sorting out fact, informed speculation and fiction, presenting the views of the experts from various fields, many of whose works Brown relied on himself in developing his intriguing story. This book also made the New York Times bestseller list: Secrets of the Code: The Unauthorized Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code, edited by Dan Burnstein. One of the more compelling papers from the Gnostic point of view -- and a viewpoint of ideologically committed feminist scholarship -- is by professor Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School. One refers to the 'Music of the Spheres' and design implications meaning, literally and figuratively, creative integrations produced from the workings of both hemispheres of the human brain, in a more harmonious balance than in a typically, left-brained thinking approach. Such an integrated intelligence may sometimes be projected outward in metaphor, or it may be mirrored by being introjected from without as well, if that is your view. Ever wonder why the unconscious craze for all those climatologically and flat terrain-made unnecessary, 4-wheel drive, gas guzzling SUV's on our urban streets... think of it, symbolically, as something mistakenly extroverted and concretized in the outer world, which needs to be internalized in the form of psychological growth and development of Jung's 4 psychological functions, identified by the ancients as the the 4 elements, 4 humors, 4 seasons, 4 cardinal directions, etc. We may say the harmony (including a balancing of the fourfold functions) is in tune with the vibrations of the 'Celestial Spheres' resonating to The Music, the mysterious and synchronistic spiritual forces within the human body emanating from the inner Self. Moreover, there are intuitive and other contributions stemming from the older and lower limbic brain with important archaic connections through the body. The body is like the foundations of the house which are a symbol for a centering in one's true Self. Such 'foundations' ground mind in the instincts which connect us with Earth, with nature's nature, as the source of all wisdom in the higher sublimation attainable to humankind associated with the eternal ground of our very being in-the-world. For an update on the findings of modern brain research, however, the reader must go elsewhere as suggested in other chapters. This ongoing work is an attempt to supplant by way of injecting substance below the foundations laid on soft or shifting subsoils, as if to right an outworn controlled view of the world which leaves us with the imperative to solve a great riddle in cultural history. It is a paradox symbolized by a dangerously leaning ivory tower, of intellect, from which the view became distorted over time. It became increasingly difficult to experience universals and the rediscovered wisdom of the Ancients -- looking upon the cardinal directions in landscape -- with reference to grounding the psyche with a centering in the self, allowing an ego-consciousness in basic principles that the 4 directions stood for, philosophically in metaphor, at the archetypal level of the foundations in the human psyche. Whether the work evolves further into printed publication remains to be seen. The foundations for the task seem to have fallen into place, and a framework of understanding is emerging from an accumulation of life and library experience and from within, bubbling to the surface out of waters of the seas of the unconscious, a metaphor for the wellsprings of creativity. The work requires being of 2 minds, so to see and integrate the reality of two viewpoints, inner and outer landscapes. It must also reconcile and integrate evaluational opposites on an axis, with thinking and feeling at each end, forming a north-south, or 'up' and 'down' polar arrangement with thinking at the top. There is a perceptual axis, with the 5-senses and intuition at each end, on yet another plane superimposed to form a horizontal, west-east cross-axis, from left to right, respectively. This cross-axial, quaternity arrangement provides a conceptual framework for us to bring the whole question of value and values into a holistic framework for design and for design education. For reasons which may be apparent, this biaxial configuration is a difficult cross to bear, or to find oneself stretched upon, particularly where the initials I. N. R. I. may appear (Iron Nails Run In!). Or, where the feeling end of the pole is the extended, bottom end of the cross, planted out of sight (out of mind) below the ground level. One needs to look at the whole thing positively and mythologically -- with awe, respect and a good sense of humor -- keeping a well-known, supposed historical event in perspective. One needs to keep in mind it is an inner journey that accompany's the life of every individual. It is, however, more pronounced in creative people, and it is part of the mythical foundation of our very existence. It has to deal with the little ego-box, and being able to 'think out of the box', as if to stand with one foot outside with a receptivity toward the unknown. It refers to a sequence of psychological deaths during our lives, followed by rebirths, as we allow our 'view of the world' to transform itself to encompass self knowledge, including the landscape which lies within, the inner realm of the mind and the interdependencies between inner and outer landscapes. The cardinal rule here is there can be no rebirth, no Renaissance, unless it is first preceeded by a death to the ego's previous concept of conventional wisdom, its paradigm, its worldview. 'Letting go' is quintessential to all originative-creative process... from origins. Perhaps there is a better image to illustrate this transformative, creative principle, which calls upon us to discover and bring new knowledge into life, more consciously, with a rebirth, or 'renaissance', following a death to the little ego box -- to be able to think out of the box, so to speak -- a better image than the one signed by a male figure nailed to the cross. This is not simply 'male stuff', as it also represents the animus, or inner masculine principle in the female. For designers, a preferred image may be Leonardo's 'Vitruvian Man', the Renaissance icon for 'Uomo Universale', or Universal Man. You may recall this figure, drawn with arms and legs outstretched, in 2 positions, one wider than the other, within the circle and the square. Perhaps it is a better myth to live by. It may be a myth less fraught with ups and downs in life's living! More will be said about da Vinci's projection of Uomo Universale, and illustrated, in later chapters. The inquiry requires the subject be circumnambulated, more in an unfolding, spiralling motion touching all of the bases -- describing the breadth and depth-diversity of discovery experiences -- not to lose a sense of eros or 'warmth', or of feelings resulting from perceptions made with both feet on the ground including insights involving hindsight and foresight. Much of this would have been sacrificed in an easier to ecapsulate, more linear, academic-intellectual writing style that, frankly, reflects a linear thought process that is as arid, slow moving and cold as the glacier. Boring. It often misses the 'quintessential' (think of the sculpted/pollarded quinconce, consisting of a canopy with 4 trees on a square plan and a fifth which is centered), with an appealing, prescious and numinous, lively quality very difficult to name, like that of a luminescent and numinous pearl reflecting the holism of universal wisdom in a kernal of 'veritas', the truth, often found in the inner beauty and value that has arisen from the irritations or trials, the afflictions and oppressions of life. Finally, if it is to be useful, the inquiry must go into the reality of an archetypal world that is at once subjective and objective. It lies beyond the literal world of the academic landscape research dimension and the objective limits of the good work which has been done over 35 years in the area of statistically verifiable behavior observation. In today's research context it must bring forth and integrate into a holistic perspective the other side, the seemingly more irrational and subjective, but inherently objective reality of the psyche, the inner landscape of the soul, depth psychology and the archetypes, reflected in primordial images inherited by all, the original model and the prototypes which modern psychology of the Twentieth Century demonstrated motivate human behavior. It has taken many years for the scientific world to recognize archetypal psychology owing to its partial roots in the philosophy and metaphysics of the Ancients, in mythology including religions, and in alchemy and mysticism from medieval times, all of which Cartesian science eschewed. But modern research on the human brain and the evolution of consciousness has paved the way for a wider acceptance of the existence of the non-rational part of the human psyche, and the simple fact things do happen which cannot be explained, rationally. They are part of a great Mystery about which all we really can say with certainty is, "I don't know." What we do know is the non-rational aspect of human behavior accounts for far more than 50% of a supposed left brain/right brain, rational/non-rational equation. We no longer can look the other way in research and education pretending it doesn't exist any more than we can avoid the reality of human intuition and feeling. The non-rational part of psyche is between the body and the unconscious and it is called the liminal world, from the Latin, limen, meaning threshold. This is where your creativity comes from, including the products of synthesis in purposeful design. It is found in the places between sleep and waking, where the veils between the world thin. This happens in moments of synchronicity, lucid dreaming, or when time slows down, when we become less focussed, intellectually. Art, music, sports, meditation and a silent form of therapy using sandplay with various materials, including the actual elements of earth, air, fire and water, have been found to open the doorway to access this place between your body and your conscious, in the deep well from which your dreams also appear. It is the place the rational mindset may block, as it is cultured in 'schooling' more based on Cartesian thinking, with a tendency to shut out the work of creativity which tries to enter into consciousness. When our creativity gets stuck, when we refuse to move forward in life and into ever widening consciousness, it may bottle-up under increasing stress thus demanding our attention. Ignoring it may lead to neurosis or depression, with a hidden informative purpose or agenda, or worse if continually repressed, to psychosis and/or to physical illnesses to which one may be genetically predisposed. It is as if creativity and consciousness were programmed by some sort of internal biological clock which functions in each individual, signalling a need for the conscious ego to take another step forward in an ever widening and more complete and instinctively balanced view of the world. Grave illness and stress can suddenly open the door between these worlds to reveal hidden messages about our mind-body connection and our archetypal interdependencies and relationships between the inner landscape of the psyche and the landscapes of the external bio-physical, social and cultural world. Looking at it more positively, this liminal land may be compared with the place between high tide and low tide on the oceans called littoral land. We each have a place like the littoral land, a tidal shoreland place between the sea and the land where the waters ebb and flow. It is here as it is with the tides where we follow the moon, not the blazing sun of the "I", but the softer lunar glow if the "i". In this place we become more 'down to earth' in outlook and more respectful of 'the small', beauty and our humble place within nature, of being 'a part of nature', as opposed to being 'apart from', or removed from 'it'... nature's nature. We are not as rational here in this place between. Perhaps you already know of this place between your body and your unconscious. It is the deep source for the 'wellspring' from which your creative images and ideas may come streaming in, when receptive to spontaneous fantasy or, perhaps, in a slightly more actively guided imagination. The creative wellsprings connect when we feel safe, secure, centered and stimulated, being more contained, within socially non-judgemental and biophysically receptive and nurturing, 'good enough' environments. They would include many natural environments, the sympathetically designed home or classroom, indeed, any cultural form radiating the 'Music of the Spheres'. These environments have certain qualities of receptivity, of 'warmth' and of liveliness characteristic of positive, experiential, archetypal patterns, densely layered like the metaphors of the poet in poesis, but in 3-dimensional architecture or landscape/townscape. In environments that are safe and nurturing a receptive, 'here and now' frame of mind is constellated. When we are centered in such places, our creativity can flow more naturally like the stream, as we relax and 'let go' of calculative, manipulated thinking, in freedom, in more originative design process, or through meditation.
The pressure of the academic workplace on me to repress subjectivity and creativity, to produce quantities of publications and statistically derived research, and to conform to a profession increasingly taking a more calculative planning/design approach and a narrower and falsely 'mechanistic' view of the world caused considerable stress and dis-ease. Too much stress over time may lead to serious body symptoms and to disease. I developed colon problems which became more serious over the years. The path had been traveled too long on a route leading to symptoms just before onset of cancer, predictable medically, but earlier suggested by dreams containing messages of truth not to be ignored. Dreams are incapable of falsehood, offering guidance as to future decisions and are sometimes a better basis for decision-making than reasoning. They occasionally point awareness to illness developing in parts of our bodies. Western man relies too heavily on rationalism and if one does not open to this other side with respect and trust when it presents itself, one very well may get done in. Cancer on the Zodiac is the sign for the crayfish or CRAB, a creature of the waters dwelling inside its protective shell. Its movement is not linear, as it seldom goes forward directly. It tends to move sideways in a circuitous, encircling or spiral fashion. And it can reverse very quickly out of harm's way. Cancer is also a lunar sign, signifying self-withdrawal, introspection, sensitivity, shyness and perserverence. These are characteristics of introversion, a mode of psychological orientation where the movement of energy is toward the inner world. It is the opposite of extraversion where the movement of energy flows toward the outer world. In the spirit of the waters we may see a quality of inwardness and internality. It reminds us of the beginnings and prefigurations of rebirth in seed and egg wrapped in shell, or womb of protection identified with the maternal archetype and all that implies. It would be the large -- receiving, enfolding, sheltering, preserving, protecting -- engendering what is small. It is the female principle of generation and conservation of life, including everything from the womb to Mother Earth and the depths, the abyss, wells, caverns, grottoes, oases, enclosed gardens, pots, shelters, houses, churches, piazzas and towns. It extends to the great refuge, the sanctuary of mankind, the Mother Goddess. It associates with a pallid, earth-lit moon, a planetary symbol of the womb-principle of the unconscious, universal soul and of the dimmer light of the mineral and vegetable world, of life forces and resources still uncontrolled by reason. The 'Music of the Spheres' is Cancer's score in which the bars call not for rest, but for sounds which imitate the relaxed and murmuring melody of dusk, or the dreamy songs of twilight. On the positive side then, in our 'Astrological Houses' of personality, the Cancerian aspect evolves through receptivity to every aspect of what this means through nourishing the sensivity of the child's soul in a good enough, maternal environment. In parenting and in formal education it involves nurturing various aspects of the developing personality of 'the individual', including stimulating the growth of the imagination in a world of romantic, fantastic and lyrical subjectivity, memories and dreams. The disease Cancer is a symbol of what is not positive, what may go wrong with denial of mythical roots and with too much objectivity, control, negativity, repression, or attack against the subjective and imagination. Cancer is also a symbol for 'the devouring mother', an unconscious complex or attitude which sometimes prevails in our society, our culture. This unfortunately negative aspect may be described as the false-self mother in a society cultured with a patriarchal attitude which does not embody the real masculine, the Logos. The masculine principle grows upwards like a plant on a rhizome, on a firm foundation rooted in nature, Mother Earth and the Great Goddess, or Gaia principle from a mythical viewpoint. The 'terrible or pushy mother' instils within those affected a fear toward anything which may be unknown, especially what still lurks below one's awareness level in the unconscious, like the greater mass of an iceberg below the oceans's surface. This may include aspects of psychological awareness of the reality of our own inner life and the unconscious, the human growth or maturing process, soul and spirit, emotions and feeling, intuition and creativity. As the negative forces attack spirit, they eat away at our own sense of well-being, ultimately, the physical flesh, organs and bone of our bodies... when a part of our personality or being has become out of harmony with our wholeness, our wellness. It was as if I was having trouble digesting the fact that my required 'professional persona' or face differed greatly from the inner landscape architect and the person who was the real me. When one is not aware that one's public and professional persona, or mask, is so different, so dissociated from one's integrity, one's whole balanced inner personality, or truth, it is cause for neurosis. And it may develop further in body symptoms, including physical illnesses to which one may be genetically predisposed... the stroke or heart attack at 50, cancer, etc. The truth is... one of the best things one can have in our western, highly extroverted lifestyle is a neurosis. It is part of an early warning system between psyche and soma, or mind and body. And providing one works on it and gets the message coming from liminal land, one finds the way forward -- to round out consciousness in a more balanced view of the world -- with a receptivity to the introverted side of life and the existence of soul and of the imaginal landscape which lies 'within'. I saw several friends or colleagues die, sadly, rather young around or just after midlife. It included a former University of Guelph President, who had moved back to the University of Toronto where he had once been Provost to become President there. He was a distant relative being one of the last of 2 males with the same surname descendent from a family from Queenston Ontario where my own grandfather was born. The family roots go back to English (Northumberland Forsters), preceeded by Flemish origins, in A.D. 640, with the naming of the First Great Forester of Flanders. Others I knew who died rather young were colleagues more closely allied with the creative design professions. In dreams I obtained a sort of Promethian foresight on these calamities, sometimes years before they actually happened, with insights on the meaning eventually being revealed. It became apparent from an understanding of psychological projection, or mirroring, in order to see it 'out there', there would have to be potential for it to happen in some way 'in here', in my own body. It thus pointed to the fact I might be next, that I too could die prematurely if I didn't 'get the picture' from this strangely indirect, imaginal medium which in itself was the message... to be assimilated more with intuition and with feeling. I learned from these insights into the workings of 'Nature' that I had to come to grips with the meaning of inherited predispositions to be diseased in certain ways and that illness is no isolated occurrence, that 'Nature' lets us grow as a species only by saddling us with 'illness' in order to check 'success' in an overly materialistic way. If we do not have illness we are not likely to become very conscious individuals, and if anything, we need to want to live with it, even to love one's own illness as oneself. Consciousness itself, including a reflective conscience, would seem to be the ultimate purpose of life to which all of creation has strived in the great chain of evolution from the simplest forms to plants and animals to modern humankind. It is an aspect of a chimera-like quality of human existence that our optimistic, positivistic and superficially cosmetic modern age has refused to accept in its scientific determinism, that symptoms and health as such are only a secondary concern. Illnesses and diseases and personal ordeals in life, experientially, may be essential to the meaning of life itself and only with such pathology or tough times dealing with elements of society comes 'soul'. Hence the need for 'soul doctors' to help us culture our relationship to our genetic code. It seems that what gets labelled as 'the occult' today is everything that used to be called culture by the Ancients and heremetics in the so-called 'Hippocratic Collection' founded on such beliefs as the imaginative process involved in their medicines and healing practices was the secret of health. Today, we don't take the imaginative process very seriously referring to it merely as the 'placebo effect'. The establishment has difficulty accepting a darkness of shadow that exists beneath human life, faced with a business-as-usual attitude, only wanting to hear cheerful, superficial news in a world that demands only to be 'cured', that is... of a symptom appearing merely on the surface of things. Who has ever asked him or herself: 'Now, what is the meaning of my getting this affliction? What can I learn from the symtoms? Is there something from associations at the symbolic level that may give me some clues?' It would not necessarily always be the case, but sometimes, when one finds oneself falling onto the right track in a forward moving inquiry the symptom may simply go away, or until one gets stuck once again or may lose the thread or a mythological and timeless connection with some avenue of internal-eternal truth. If this sounds a little being under the influence of someone like Marsilio Ficino, the most important writer in the Florentine awakening of the Italian Renaissance, Cosimo de Medici's chosen head of the Firenze Accademia named after Plato's own school in Greece, well it is. But the independent-minded person is a Maverick who would not submit to any 'system'. I discovered the Florentine in Charles Boer's fascinating translation of Ficino's Book of Life, a long-suppressed Renaissance work on health, demons and the practical life. Ficino was acclaimed in his own lifetime as the inspiriting force behind some of the greatest poets and artists, philosophers and statesmen of the era. Cosimo declared him a "doctor of souls" and the Medici consulted him for help as their resident "archetypal"-- a word used by Ficino himself for therapist. He was the teacher of young Michelangelo and young Botticelli at the Medici-loaned little villa at Careggi, the home of the Florentine Academy which became the meeting-place for artists and philosophers as well as for bankers and statesmen of the Medicean empire. It's been said Marsilio Ficino was the founder of modern Archetypal Psychology as he crossed the boundary between the conventional Christian religion of his day and the study of antiquity with a new way of looking at religion based on Platonic enlightenment. He returned with a new perception of Christianity, having crossed into the area Carl Jung would have called psychology, then reconverted to Christianity with a new perception of it. Both of these men braved the storm of quarrels arising from discussions of images and the power of the planets within over human will, and the legitimicy of ancient magic and astrology. Joseph Campbell, a well-known mythologist, was another big influence on my awareness, through his books, on film, and in a lecture/seminar workshop with him. The American PBS/PRI broadcaster Bill Moyers interviewed Campbell in a film series which was seen by forty million people when it was shown the first time on television in the 80's, and it has been aired many times since. It is entitled The power of Myth, also available on videotapes, DVDs and CDs, and in book form (a Doubleday-Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis project). Joseph Campbell believed it was important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery and one's own mystery and that all myths deal with the transformation of consciousness followed by trials -- "it's no longer this, now it's going to be that". And the hero is one who gives his life to, or gets thrown into something bigger than himself where he has to say 'Yes', or 'No' to the serpent which means being alive in the adventure. The snake in our dreams and mythology is thus positive, like throwing off an outworn attitude or life for another, as the snake sheds its skin. The real enemy is the dragon who represents greed -- building oneself inside the little ego box -- the dragon cage. Consciousness, then, is energy, the energy of simply being alive. Consciousness animates our spiritual being in the experience of life which is the experience of timelessness and eternity in the 'here and now'.
Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Igjugarjuk, shaman of a Caribou Inuit tribe in northern Canada Bill Moyers noted the unpardonable sin in Campbell's "book" was the "sin of inadvertence, of not being alert, of not being awake". Moyers wrote of Campbell: One of his books was The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Joseph Campbell has been described as a man with a thousand stories. He was very learned on the vast sweep of our panoramic past, moreover he knew a story is the best way to tell it. He danced to the Music of the Spheres.
Diane K Osbon with reference to Joseph
Campbell |