Psyche

There are phantoms in our psyche. They hunt us down in the most stealthy and silent manner. Often we are not even aware that they exist- but they do- and they are powerful.

The psyche is a god in its own right; it ruthlessly overwrites the dictates of intellect, ruling it over like a malevolent despot. In the most crucial moments of our existence, the psyche takes charge and brings us down to our knees, making it clear who is in the ascendancy. We then are helpless, like infants, fearful of the strange environment that we are in. The psyche is not transparent, it is partially obscure and its hidden parts are the most lethal of its instruments.

They are dangerous because of our total lack of knowledge about them. Where do they come from? No one knows for certain. There are theories, both ancient and modern, but none of them have been proved. Some say the psyche is the sum total of the experience a particular genus has, and some say it is the encoded knowledge in our subtle senses. Whatever may be the case, its debilitating influence on human actions is desultory, and other than compromising a situation it achieves little.

The phantoms of the psyche are known to attack us covertly, in the most unwanted of moments, making us useless, demure and defenseless, bowing to the iron dictates of this inscrutable of all phenomena. It dons on the garb of culture sometimes, making it impossible for us to digest even the slightest of variations in an alien culture. We are stricken with wonder when we hear of the inbreeding in Tamil families where dad’s brother is the approved groom for a girl; we abhor it, yet are not averse to accepting a different variation where matriarchy is concerned. These practices have definite cultural and economic origin without doubt, but those have faded into the background establishing a bizarre custom as a social necessity.

Perhaps the psyche is that part in beings that furthers the will to live, it nevertheless decapitates ones intelligence sooner or later, substituting it with something else, more basic and more instinctual. Hence is the origin of differences in life positions. Some of us believe a certain way of life would lead towards salvation; some others contemn it as destructive. These are stances of the mind, superimposing itself over the more reliable faculty of intelligence.

When carefully considered, our life has minimum to do with the aspects of wisdom, we are more in- tuned towards physical survival rather than spiritual uplifting. That is but natural, yet this has certain obvious pitfalls, namely the limits of the freedom that we envisage for us and others. We probably would go all out for unlimited opportunity as regards our own affairs, but would we advocate the same for the rest?

This is the crux of the problem, the stand we take is determined by our mental environment, and the doubts that we have regarding others in our neighborhood. This is an impasse, all efforts to resolve this issue have been fruitless. This is where psyche enters the frame, with all its instruments of terror, catching us unawares, forcing us to bend to its promptings. Thus even the greatest of secularist takes up arms against “the others”, saying he has run out of options. This of course is a lame excuse but nevertheless an inevitable one.

But, why, you might ask. The answer is not that simple. The shrinks say there are definite divisions to our mind; most of the activities are influenced by the outer portions of our personality, which is termed as consciousness. This segment is considered to be miniscule in comparison to the other two portions of the mind, the sub-conscious and the unconscious.

The control of the unconscious is not easily observable, but it is thought to be a store house of unlimited data from time immemorial, Karl Gustave Yung for example had a definite belief that this gigantic storage is filled with archetypes or coded threat signatures, gathered during the evolutionary process. Thus the archetype of the falcon is encoded in the consciousness of the chick, directing its movements when it espies such an adversary.

If this is the case, pressure of survival assumes importance over all other aspects of life making the pacifist to take up the cudgel and brandish it in the face of his opponent. The content of our psyche is violent; it usurps rather than assumes charge. It’s a covert operative, instead of a polished negotiator.

Thus there shall always be phantoms in our minds whether we like them or not.