One of the greatest differences between ourselves and our ancestors is the use of the symbolic mind — as opposed to the conceptual mind.
Most of us have been trained and educated to prioritize the rational and the linear. In our educational system, the conceptual brain that categorizes and classifies is seen as the pinnacle of evolution. Even among spiritual seekers, the journey usually begins with the quest for right answers, a linear solution to a particular problem.
We can also approach the rational mind as the masculine part of ourselves, and the symbolic mind as the feminine part. In that, we can begin to see parallels with the societal development in the last few thousand years.
The old nursery with the yellow wallpaper is for the irrational, chaotic women and children who are prone to flights of fancy and imagination.
Men, on the other hand, are reasonable and linear. They know best how to fix the world and subjugate nature. Nature, after all, needs subjugation and control. Nature is irrational and prone to wild outbursts, just like women and children.
We can also look at separation between the rational and the symbolic as the tension between mysticism and rigid religiosity, or mysticism and science.
In my own experience, those from post-Puritan countries tend to automatically label the historical Christian church as Catholic (even if they speak of the church before the split into Catholic and Orthodox). And of course, blame it for all persecution and distortion of spirituality. Most certainly, church (Catholic, Orthodox or otherwise) politics, like any other politics, have been about domination and control.
But in the Christian world, nothing is more blotted of the mystical, the symbolic and the feminine than Protestantism and Evangelicalism.
It was the doctrine of "only scripture" and the Protestant fight against idolatry that divorced the symbolic mind, the mind that could read festivals, signs, icons, statues and magical rituals. Now, God was locked inside a book your had to read and study. At the same time, the book of nature was impure and evil, mirroring man's total depravity and fall from grace.
Man became a machine — a machine meant to subjugate the world. And to develop the rational mind. Of course (too late to blame Chat GPT now...).
Problem is, we long for magic. We long for the language of symbol, the language in which the universe itself speaks to us. The symbolic is a part of us. Even if it is divorced, abandoned or locked up, it will scream at us. Through dreams, visions, addictions, obsessions, through spiritual hunger. Through falling in love.
Now, more than ever, it is time to re-discover our birthright and the gift of the feminine brain, the symbolic mind.
In this podcast interview with Betty Kovacs, we talk about the symbolic mind, altered states, our heritage and birthright, and some of the ways in which we can bridge the connection between thinking and dreaming, the masculine and the feminine, the mystic and the scientist.
Betty J. Kovacs, PhD earned her doctorate from the University of California, Irvine, in Comparative Literature and Theory of Symbolic/Mythic Language. She taught Literature, Writing, and Symbolic/Mythic Language for twenty-five years. She served many years as Chair and Program Chair on the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont in California and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation. Dr. Kovacs is author of Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of the Nautilus Silver Book Award and the Scientific & Medical Network 2019 Book Prize. She has also written The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life. Her website is www.kamlak.com.
In this interview, we mention a documentary on the Merchants of Light. You can watch it HERE.