Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 2: The Psychological Foundation of Miracles 2
9. Psychic Energy, the Basic Conflict, and the Creative Instinct
To illuminate the unconscious with conscious understanding that isn’t intellectually theoretical (given that the original root of “theory” is “observer”) requires that the will aspect of mind be strong, for it is the individual will that must eliminate the fear of the unconscious through its Connection with Divine Will. Toward this end, the concept of the individual will developed by Freud’s colleague Otto Rank was particularly good, except that he preferred to ally it only with a person’s own truly creative ability, but did not extend it to its proper Union with Divine Will. His ideas about birth trauma also had validity, but were also too limited in that they were based on an inaccurate understanding of physical birth, and did not reference all trauma to the separation. Physical birth is not inherently traumatic in itself, as evidenced in births that are experienced as pain-free for both mother and child. The experience of coming through the birth canal and into the light of this world can, however, remind some individuals of the separation, which was and can still be a very real source of fear.
The idea of “will-therapy” to strengthen and enliven the individual will is potentially a very powerful one, but Rank did not approach its real potential because he himself used his own mind’s creative abilities partly to create his own theory of the mind, but also partly to attack his former friend Freud. Rank’s adverse reactions to Freud stemmed from his own unfortunate acceptance of the false belief in deprivation, an idea that itself arose from the separation. This led him to believe that his own mind-creation could stand only if the creation of another’s fell. In consequence, his theory emphasized rather than minimized the double-edged nature of all defenses other than Atonement. In fact this is an outstanding characteristic of Rank’s concepts in general, because it was an outstanding characteristic of the man himself.
Rank’s misinterpretation regarding the source of birth trauma made it inevitable for him to attempt a therapy whose goal was to abolish fear. This goal, while laudable, was unachievable because Rank didn’t understand where the fear, in the form of trauma, came from, which made it impossible for his therapy to abolish it. This is characteristic of all later theorists, who do not attempt to split off the fear, as Freud did in his own form of therapy. The field of psychology hasn’t yet fully recognized either the therapeutic value of fear, which is as an indicator of conflicted will, or the only way in which fear can be truly ended, which is through an unconflicted will.
When a person miscreates, they are in pain. The cause-and-effect principle here is temporarily a real expeditor to help move the person out of pain as quickly as possible through discontinuing the miscreation that is causing the pain. Actually, “Cause” (capitalized) is a term properly belonging to the Divine, and “Effect” (which should in this context also be capitalized) is the Divine’s perfect Creation. The Creator and Its Creation entail a set of cause-and-effect relationships that are totally different from those that the separated ones introduced as the miscreation, or the world of illusions.
The idea of the “basic conflict” was introduced earlier, with the three traditional components of the conflict being the unconscious ways people (and animals) often react to fright or conflict – namely flight, freeze, or fight – which themselves are in conflict with each other. However, the fundamental aspects conflicting in the actual basic conflict are Creation and miscreation. All Love is inherent in Creation, and all fear is implicit in miscreation. Because of this difference, the basic conflict is one between Love and fear, or rather between fear and Love, since fear perceives Love as its opponent, though Love is all encompassing and never in conflict. This, then, is the true nature of the major aspects conflicting in the basic conflict.
Since all psychological theories based on incomplete understanding of the true nature of the conflict lead to forms of therapy in which a redistribution of psychic energy results, rather than elimination of the conflict itself, it is necessary to consider the concept of libido, or sexual drive or energy. In this respect, Freud was more accurate than his followers including Jung and Rank, who were essentially more wishful about the potential of their forms of therapy. It must be realized that energy can originate from both Creation and miscreation, and the particular energetic ratio between them that prevails at a given point in time does determine behavior at that time. If miscreation did not engender energy in its own right, it would be unable to produce harmful behavior, which it very patently does.
Everything that human beings create or miscreate has energy because, like the Divine Creation of which they are a part, human beings come from Energy, and are endowed by their Creator with the Power to create. Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying impulse, but not in terms of the content of the creative activity. This, however, does not deprive the miscreation of its own miscreative power. It does, however, ensure that the power will be misused, or used fearfully. To deny this is merely to engage in the previously mentioned fallacy of depreciation.
Although Freud engaged in a number of fallacies of his own, he did avoid the fallacy of depreciating the power of the libido. Because this power was considered a source of unconscious fear because of its tendency to cause undesirable behavior, Freud introduced the idea of the “censor” in the unconscious to split the power of the libido from causing destruction in a person’s behavior, and redistributing this power into more acceptable social behaviors. This didn’t heal the problem, but merely continuously delayed its harmful effects. The later theorists denied the split-energy concept (the censoring of destructive behavior so as not to cause social harm), not by attempting to heal the problem, but by reinterpreting it instead of redistributing it. This placed these theorists in the illogical position of assuming that the split which their therapies were intended to heal had not occurred. The result of this approach is essentially a form of hypnosis of both patient and therapist agreeing to work in the same place of illusion.
This is quite different from Freud’s approach toward the libido, which merely ended in a deadlock with regard to dealing with the perceived problem, a deadlock, incidentally, that guarantees that the patient and therapist will remain indefinitely in their therapeutic relationship. A similar deadlock occurs when both the Power of Creation and the power of miscreation coexist. This is experienced as conflict only because the individual feels as if both Creation and miscreation are occurring at the same level of consciousness, though the former takes place in the superconscious and the latter in the unconscious, and therefore proceed with very different dynamics.
Everyone believes in what they have formed in their own unconscious and they naturally believe it is real because they have formed it, even though it is not true that it is real just because it resulted from the creative activity of a Child of the Divine. This confusion about Reality is, in fact, the fundamental basis of miscreation. People who fall into this error thus place themselves in a position where the fearful becomes real to them. Nothing but level confusion can result as long as this belief is held in any form.
Inappropriate denial and equally inappropriate misidentification of the real factors in the basic conflict will not solve the problem itself. The conflict cannot disappear until it is fully recognized that miscreation, though powerful, is not real, because it is not aligned with Creation, and therefore that there is no real conflict between an individual’s will and Divine Will even if the individual miscreates. This entails a full realization of the basic fact that although people have miscreated in a very real sense, they need neither continue to do so nor to suffer from their past errors in this respect.
A redistribution of psychic libido energy into more socially-acceptable forms of behavior, then, is not the solution. The idea that both acceptable and unacceptable forms of psychic energy must exist, and the belief that one of these forms is able to be directed for either use or misuse, are both distortions. The only solution for any individual experiencing fear, which is always the result of the basic conflict between Creation and miscreation, is to stop miscreating now, and at the same time to accept the Atonement for themself to erase all guilt for miscreations of the past. Only this can reestablish true single-mindedness.
It is interesting to note that a theorist’s or therapist’s perceived structure of the psyche follows along the lines of the particular libido concept they embrace. In fact, the concepts of psyche and libido flow from each other in many traditional psychoanalytical approaches.
Freud’s concept of the psyche was essentially an image of good and evil comingling, with very heavy weight given to the evil. As I worked with him in his search for the truth about this, every time I inwardly suggested the Idea of the Atonement to him, which was quite often, he responded by outwardly defending his theory more and more against the Idea. This resulted in his increasingly strong attempts to make the illogical arrangement of the components of his conception sound more and more logical. I was very sorry about this because his was an exceptionally perceptive mind, and it was a shame to observe it wasted in this kind of unnecessary defensiveness of his ideas. However, the major purpose of his incarnation was not neglected. He did succeed in bringing about recognition of the unconscious into people’s considerations about themselves, a step in the right direction which should not be minimized.
Freud was one of the most genuinely religious people I have known recently. Unfortunately, he was at the same time so afraid of religion that the only way he could deal with it was to regard religion, rather than himself, as sick. This naturally prevented his healing.
Freud’s concept of the “super-ego” is a particularly interesting example of the real power of miscreation. It is noteworthy throughout the entire development of his theories that the superego never allied itself with Freedom. The most it could do in this direction was to work out a painful truce or stalemate in which neither opponent in the imagined battle between superego and id won. This perception could not fail to force Freud himself to emphasize discontent in his view of civilization.
The Freudian id is really only the more superficial sublevel of the unconscious, and not connected at all with the deepest sublevel of miracle-mindedness. This, too, was inevitable, because Freud could not in his mind separate true miracles from his understanding of enchantment. It was therefore his constant endeavor, even preoccupation, to continue thrusting more and more material between consciousness and the true deepest sublevel of the unconscious, the miracle level, so that the latter became increasingly obscured in his conception. The result was a kind of bedlam in his model of the unconscious in which there was no order, no control, and no sense. This was exactly how he actually felt about it.
Freud’s later theoretical switch to the idea that anxiety is the cause rather than the result of repression was an interesting device intended to deny both the instinctive nature of the harmful quality of mindlessness, and the force of the power of miscreation. By making the result of miscreation, i.e., anxiety or fear, the cause, and placing the emphasis on this component of the process, the nature of the power of miscreation to generate fear was minimized. The instinct for creation or creative activity isn’t obliterated in miscreation. That is why it is always invested with the belief of reality. It is the misdirected use of the Power of the mind that becomes harmful or destructive. In this sense, the harmful behavior of miscreation is instinctual.
One of the primary ways in which a person can correct confusion about the difference between miracles and enchantment is to remember that we did not create ourselves. People are apt to forget this when they become egocentric, and this places them in a position where belief in enchantment is virtually inevitable, because they themselves became to some degree enchanted when they became egocentric. Because we did not create ourselves, our instincts for creation were given to us by our own Creator, Who was expressing the same creative Instinct in Its Creation. Since creative ability rests solely in the mind, everything that a person creates or miscreates is necessarily instinctive. The distinction is that our creations are always and forever real in Spirit, while our miscreations are real only in our own eyes and those who may temporarily be sharing our illusions.
