From the author: Continuation of the course of lectures given in 2008-2009. Last time we focused on the topic of Dionysianism, Dionysus in the general mosaic of the phenomenology of the soul. And today I will continue from the same note and I’ll add what I didn’t say last time: in addition to ecstasy, in addition to nudity, openness to pain, death, static, in addition to his hypostasis of Bacchus, the god of wine, the man or woman in whom Dionysus is manifested was considered an orgastic lover. in the process of pleasure, and at the same time he does not participate in what A. Lowen, a student of Reich (Reich's history), called “serving a woman” The very delivery of sexual pleasure from excess to a loved one is not something shameful in itself. wonderful. But the fact is that in our culture, and not only in ours but also in the early one, most men under the control of the so-called Mother complex are engaged in “servicing” women. They care about how they look, what impression they make. - whether they are a good lover, whether they can bring a woman to orgasm or not. This follows from the expectation of evaluation or from the fear of being rejected. Dionysus doesn’t have all this, because... he separated his mother from the Great and Terrible and, nevertheless, it is Dionysus who, paradoxically, is truly one of the best lovers, he is in the process. In men, the fear of being punished is the fear of a pubescent boy, whose Anima is under the control of the mother complex. This is a big separate conversation, but now I’ll just mention that Jung himself identified four stages: The first stage is the stage when Anima is personified by the figure of Eve. He is a strictly suppressive figure, from whom either retribution or evaluation is expected, to whom, on the other hand, the most powerful sexual attraction, lust, is directed. The second stage - Helen of Troy - is the stage when a woman takes advantage of beauty and intrigue. Here the man is also in the power of the mother complex, although he has overcome partly the unbridled fear of Eve. The anima of people who have emerged from the power of the mother complex. This could be Athena at the third stage and Sophia at the fourth - a symbol of femininity in all its guises from wisdom to sexuality, the whole palette. As I already said, Dionysus separated his mother Semele from the Great and Terrible Mother and became, so to speak in modern language , an adult. A conversation about the Great and Terrible Mother will be a transition to today’s topic, so let’s look at it in more detail. In general, the significance of a female deity is enormous. The emotional, ardent character of a woman, indulging in unbridled passion, is both desirable and terrible for a man, especially for his consciousness. The dangerous side of female voluptuousness, although suppressed, misunderstood and downplayed in patriarchal times, was a living reality in the early centuries. Deep in the emotional layer of youth, the fear of it still lives in every man. We talked about the fact that the puberty period reflects the most ancient centuries of our civilization, thousands and tens of thousands of years of matriarchy. By the way, not only fear is characteristic of this period, but also other feelings, in particular a very deep feeling of lust, passion, unbridledness. And mythology testifies that female unbridledness and the thirst for blood of the Great Mother are subject to the highest law of nature, the law of fertility. The orgiastic element is found not only in sexual festivals, which are fertility festivals, but also in orgiastic rites. These rituals are familiar to us from the later mysteries (Dionysian, Eleusinian), but what happened at these mysteries has not reached us, at least to the uninitiated. Perhaps there are some people who store knowledge along the chain of initiation, but most likely these chains were interrupted. Death and dismemberment or castration was the fate of the young god - the owner of the phallus, the so-called. seasonal god, sacrifice. Both are clearly visible in myth andritual, both of which are associated with the bloody orgies of the cult of the Great Mother. Dismembering the corpse of the Seasonal King and burying his body parts is an age-old part of fertility magic. This has come down to our times in some rituals of black magic, about which we, for the most part, have only hearsay. Behind the archetype of the terrible Mother, the experience of death can be discerned, and in fact, today’s entire lecture will in one way or another touch on the topic of death, as a topic in which a person is on the threshold of his development, and it is advisable for him to think about it. The earth takes back its dead offspring, divides and decomposes them in order to become fertile again. This experience is inherent in the rites of the Terrible Mother, who in her earthly projection becomes a flesh-devourer, and ultimately a sarcophagus - the last remnant of the age-old and long-practiced cults of human fertility. At this level, castration, death and dismemberment are equivalent. Death, castration and dismemberment are dangers that threaten the young lover, but they do not tell the whole truth about his relationship to the Great Mother. If she were only terrible, only the goddess of death, then her brilliant image would lack something that, perhaps, makes her even more terrifying, but at the same time infinitely desirable. For she is also a goddess who maddens and enchants, seduces and brings pleasure, a sovereign enchantress. Inextricably linked with it is the charm of sex, an orgy that culminates in unconsciousness and, as many philosophers and students of mythology write, in death. In literature, this attitude is very clearly demonstrated in Kostya Treplev’s monologue, with which the first act of The Seagull begins. “He loves - he doesn’t love, he loves - he doesn’t love” - who is he talking about? No, not about Nina Zarechnaya. This is him talking to his uncle Sorin about his mother - “loves - doesn’t love (tears off a petal). You see, my mother doesn't love me. Still would! She wants to live, love, wear light blouses, but I am already twenty-five years old, and I constantly remind her that she is no longer young. When I’m not there, she’s only thirty-two years old, but when I’m there, she’s forty-three, and that’s why she hates me. She also knows that I do not recognize the theater. She loves the theater, it seems to her that she serves humanity, sacred art, but in my opinion, modern theater is a routine, a prejudice. When the curtain rises and in the evening light, in a room with three walls, these great talents, the priests of holy art, depict how people eat, drink, love, walk, wear their jackets; when they try to extract a moral from vulgar pictures and phrases - small, understandable, useful in home use; when in a thousand variations they present me with the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, then I run and run, like Maupassant ran from the Eiffel Tower, which was crushing his brain with its vulgarity. New forms are needed. New forms are needed, and if they are not there, then nothing better is needed. (Looks at his watch.) I love my mother, I love her very much; but she leads a stupid life, is always running around with this fiction writer, her name is constantly being trashed in the newspapers - and this tires me. Sometimes the egoism of an ordinary mortal simply speaks to me; It’s a pity that my mother is a famous actress, and it seems that if she were an ordinary woman, I would be happier. Uncle, what could be more desperate and stupid than the situation: it used to be that all the celebrities, artists and writers were visiting her, and among them there was only me - nothing, and they tolerated me only because I was her son. Who am I? What am I? I left the third year of university due to circumstances, as they say, beyond the editor’s control, no talents, not a penny of money, and according to my passport I am a Kiev tradesman. My father was a Kiev tradesman, although he was also a famous actor. So, when it happened that in her living room all these artists and writers turned their merciful attention to me, it seemed to me that with their glances they measured my insignificance - I guessed their thoughts and suffered from humiliation...” Kostya’s attitude and his mother, they are mutual. If you remember the scenebandages, where Kostya asks his mother to bandage his head after an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, everything begins peacefully, but gradually turns into such a scandal that the mother throws a stunning accusation at her son: “a nonentity, a Kiev tradesman, a ragamuffin.” As a result, although reconciliation occurs, in essence it perfectly reflects these relationships, and the relationships in which Chekhov, as it seems to me, showed a soul in which dependence on the maternal complex remains. For us, in order to illustrate the main features of the archetype of the Great and Terrible Mother and her son-lover, the wonderful myth of Osiris and Isis may be needed. Moreover, the patriarchal version of this myth shows clear traces of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Moreover, this was a very important period for humanity, which every person one way or another goes through in his internal development. But the big question here is whether humanity, if we consider it as a self-organizing system, has followed that path, judging by the fact that it was done too hastily. And the Great Mother, instead of transforming and uniting with the Great Father, found herself displaced. This does not mean that we have overcome the phase of matriarchy, but means that patriarchy is a social layer, and psychologically, most of us continue to live in the same matriarchy. In the XX-XV centuries BC. There was a gradual transition to patriarchy, with the appearance of patriarchal pharaohs in Egypt, then the whole story with Moses and the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. In Greece, this happened when the Olympian gods appeared and drove the Titans into Tartarus. The Egyptian version of the myth is as follows: Isis, Nephthys, Set and Osiris form a foursome of two sisters and two brothers. Even in the womb, Isis and Osiris are kept together, and in its final part the myth presents Isis as a positive symbol of conjugal and maternal love. But, along with her characteristic features of a sister-wife, Isis also retains something magical and maternal in her relationship with Osiris. For when the latter is killed and dismembered by his enemy and brother Seth (and Seth, as we will see later, will go over to Hosts and Yahweh), it is his sister-wife Isis who revives him and, thereby, manifests herself at the same time as the mother of her brother-husband ( a sort of incestuous character on both sides). In subsequent presentations of the myth, she almost completely loses the character of the Great Mother and appears primarily as a wife. Nevertheless, in the early version, Isis, who seeks, mourns, finds, recognizes and revives her husband, still remains a great goddess, adored by youths, and the following sequence is typical of her rites everywhere: death, mourning, seeking, finding and rebirth. The essential function of the “good” Isis is the renunciation of her matriarchal dominance, which was such an expressive feature in the original matriarchy of the Egyptian Queens even before the pharaohs. Typical of this refusal and of the transition to a patriarchal system is the struggle of Isis for recognition by the gods of the legitimacy of her son Horus. The transition of Osiris to Horus was the real transition to patriarchy. A son is always the son of his mother. Isis fights for recognition of the paternity of Osiris in relation to Horus, who must accept from him the paternal legacy of patriarchy. The pedigree of the Egyptian Pharaohs was based on this inheritance, each of them calling himself the "Son of Horus". This tradition survived until Pharaoh Etankhamun. Osiris is “the one who establishes justice, equality.” In fact, there was a moment when it was possible to make a transition, although it is not for us to judge why humanity took the path of repression and did not remain at this stage of harmony. An amazing fact is that Horus gave birth to four sons from his mother Isis. That is, we again have incest and a maternal complex. But this is just a repetition of what happens everywhere in the territory of worship of the Great Mother. For all generations of men, she remains the only one. The terrible side of Isis is also revealed in the fact that Osiris, revived with her help, remains castrated. His sexualthe member was never found; according to legend, it was swallowed by a fish. Dismemberment and castration are no longer carried out by Isis, but by Seth. However, the result remains the same as in the primary myth about the Great Mother. Horus, which the Greeks call Harpocrates, is conceived by Isis from the already dead Osiris. This moment is puzzling. This symbolism is repeated in the story of Bata, whose wife became pregnant from a splinter of a felled Bata tree. This becomes clearer when we consider that the impregnation of the Great Mother presupposes the death of the man, and that Mother Earth can only become fertile through death, murder, castration and sacrifice. If we take the animal world in general, or even the world of insects, there are known cases in which a female spider eats a spider, or a female grasshopper bites off the head of a male after fertilization - this is a very ancient program imprinted in the genes of all living things. For some reason this was necessary. During the transition to patriarchy, Horus symbolizes a very young sun (Osiris is the old sun), and its meaning is undoubtedly phallic. This is how the young ego manifested itself in ancient history. This is the beginning of our story about the young Ego. In the last lecture we interpreted the emergence of the ego from the point of view of the sacrificial crisis. When, during the first sacrifice, a part of the person himself is projected onto the victim, and so a split occurs into what is unconscious and what is visible and conscious as a feeling of guilt. Then comes worship, etc. This is how the ego is formed. This can be related to the story of Osiris. In the relationship of the young lover to the Great Mother we can distinguish several stages. And we can trace these stages back to modern literary classics. The earliest stage is natural submission to fate, the uroboric stage. At this stage, suffering and grief remain anonymous, the consciousness is vegetative, the ego is not manifested at all, the victim is doomed to death - all this is still too close to the stage of a sacrificed child, unconscious of himself. This stage is characterized by the pious hope of the natural creature that he, like nature, will be reborn through the Great Mother, thanks to her grace, without any participation or merit on his part. This is the stage of complete powerlessness in the face of uroboric unconsciousness, matter and the overwhelming force of fate. Right down to the figure of Oedipus, who is also in a state of powerlessness in the face of the force of fate that has overwhelmed him, this stage is preserved. Masculinity and the consciousness associated with masculinity have not yet won independence. The mortal ecstasy of sexual incest is symptomatic of the youthful Ego, which is not yet strong enough to resist what the Great Mother symbolizes. The transition to the next stage is personified by the “fighters.” Their fear of the Great Mother is the first sign of the formation of the Ego and the beginning of its stabilization. This fear is expressed in various forms of flight and resistance. This is still passive fear; resistance to the Great Mother here is carried out in the form of flight. The symbol of escape is self-castration - we know many Christian ascetics and saints who tried in this way to escape from the domination of the Great Mother by castrating themselves. Suicide – we’ll also talk about that today, but it’s not so clear-cut. In general, this is a position of disobedience, a refusal of what the Terrible Mother wants, namely, the sacrifice of the phallus, which is done here in a negative sense. Here you can turn to such a figure as Narcissus. He resists the fiery love of the Great Goddess and is punished by her or her representatives. Narcissus rejects Aphrodite's love, falling madly in love with his own reflection. Here there is a turn towards oneself, away from the all-consuming object with its urgent demands. But he turns to himself and thereby still to the formation of the Ego. At this stage the essential feature is the striving of the Ego-consciousness, which becomes aware of itself, and in the myth we see Narcissus peering at his reflection in the mirror. As we will see later when we talk aboutphilosophy of structuralism and structuralist psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, he clearly outlines the mirror stage, when a child aged 6 months to 1.5 years begins to recognize himself in the mirror, and when a division into “I” and “I-Image” occurs, which is the embryo of the Ego. Narcissus is pursued by the love of the Nymphs, who are also the personification of seductive forces, and resistance to them is equivalent to resistance to the Great Mother. But he withdraws from them into himself, into autoeroticism. Aphrodite herself in this myth no longer appears in her transpersonal greatness; she split and turned into images of nymphs, sirens, water fairies and dryads who are trying to seduce Narcissus. This does not mean that in the history of religion this process is always absolutely clear. But the Nymphs into whom Aphrodite split - partial aspects of the archetype - can just as easily appear before the historical worship of the mother archetype as after. Structurally, they remain partial aspects of the archetype and are its psychological fragments. Next comes Hippolytus, also a hero of Greek myth. Hippolytus is at the stage of decisive resistance to the Great Mother. He already recognizes himself as a young man who is fighting for independence and independence. He rejects the advances of the Great Mother and her orgiastic sexuality. But his "chastity" means much more than aversion to sex; it expresses the coming to consciousness of a “higher” masculinity, as opposed to the “lower” phallic stage. This is what Freud meant by the division into the phallic stage and the genital, adult stage. Although Ippolit did not reach the genital stage, he stopped somewhere in between. On a subjective level, this is an attempt to realize “solar” masculinity, which is associated with the Sun and consciousness. His father characterizes Hippolytus’s love for Artemis and the chastity of nature negatively - he sees in this “virtuous pride” and “self-adoration.” But Hippolytus is surrounded by young men and has support among his male peers. At this stage, the importance of male friendship is very great, as well as the presence of a certain “spiritual” sister whom Hippolytus chose for himself in the person of Artemis. The significance of a “spiritual” sister for male consciousness is very great at this stage - the struggle for independence. But as we know from the myth, Hippolytus’ disobedience still ends in tragedy. Aphrodite kills Hippolytus by giving him mad horses that carry him to his death. We can say that he becomes a victim of the world of instincts; Logos, consciousness, ego are not yet strong enough. Although, Hippolyte already seemed to be proud of conquering instincts. The horses carry out the merciless will of Aphrodite. When you know how the Great Mother carries out her vengeance in myths, then this story appears in the appropriate design. Even stronger is Hippolyta’s position of Gilgamesh in relation to Ishtar. In contrast to Hippolytus, Gilgamesh, with his more strongly developed masculinity, is what we call the real hero of the epic. Supported by his friend Enkidu, he behaves all his life as a hero, independent of the Great Mother, while Hippolytus remained unconsciously connected with her, although he openly disobeyed. The youth who struggles for self-awareness has to accept his own fate, to the extent what an individual he is. For him, the Great Mother becomes unfaithful and the bringer of death. With this begins a great revaluation of the feminine principle, followed by its transformation into a negative principle in patriarchal religions. Here, in my opinion, civilization has suffered quite badly; take Judaism, Christianity, Islam - the negative principle of matriarchy is taken to the limit. And this is a very strong overkill. On the one hand, the growth of self-awareness and the strengthening of masculinity, but on the other hand, the image of the Great Mother is relegated to such a background that patriarchal society simply splits it, and only the picture of the good Mother (Madonna) is preserved in the consciousness, and its terrible aspect is completely transferred to the unconscious and from there he takes revenge. This is a very big topic. Patriarchyhas been rigidly dominant for the last 3 thousand years, but at the psychological level matriarchy remains, and some kind of merger and harmony between them has not yet occurred. But maybe, as they predict for us, the return of Isis, maybe some kind of alignment will happen. I started with Kostya Treplev’s monologue, and he is not just a character in Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” just like other characters, they are characters of our psyche. Like other heroes of Chekhov, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky. Especially Chekhov, he managed in some incomprehensible way to capture the transition of eras. The question arises, who is Kostya Treplev inside us? Who is Arkadina? Who is Troigorin? What happens inside us in this archetypal plot? We will approach this issue later and gradually, since it is key to understanding a weak ego and what to do about it. And whether a weak ego is good or bad is another question. Let's start with Chekhov's earlier play Ivanov. Chekhov had the prerequisites for “Ivanov” from the very first play, when he was just beginning his literary career - the play “Platonov” or “The Untitled Play,” based on excerpts from which Nikita Mikhalkov made the film “An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano.” The play turned out to be too cumbersome and difficult to stage in the theater, 4-5 hours. Then Chekhov simplifies the details a little, removes several characters, changes the plot a little, and before us appears the play “Ivanov” - also one of his rather early plays. In the play, the landowner Ivanov, as is often the case with Chekhov, is on a bankrupt estate, where the manager - a drunkard and a thief. The wife of this landowner, whom he once loved, has been sick with consumption for five years and is close to death, according to Dr. Lvov, who is treating her. And, to be honest, Ivanov stopped loving her, but he has to deal with her illness and doctors. He took her abroad, but it was all to no avail. He is experiencing what can now be called a “midlife crisis” - 35 years old. Next door, on a neighboring estate, live the elderly landowners Lebedevs, who treat Ivanov very well - he is their permanent guest, who finds here an outlet from his constant worries. The Lebedevs have a young daughter, Sashenka. She and Ivanov fall in love, and a story begins that soon becomes a secret to no one. The wife withers and withers, Ivanov increasingly leaves for Sashenka, and in the end he is increasingly torn by doubts, he reproaches himself for being unfaithful to his wife. He does not understand what is happening to him, the estate is falling apart at the seams, everything is abandoned, he cannot do anything, he reaches complete exhaustion and in the end he shoots himself. There is a very typical monologue by Ivanov, he pronounces it towards the end of the play, and it is very strong and emotionally charged: “I am a bad, pathetic and insignificant person. How I despise myself, my God! How deeply I hate my voice, my steps, my hands, my clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't it funny, isn't it offensive? Less than a year ago, he was healthy, strong, cheerful, tireless, passionate, he worked with these very hands, he spoke in such a way that he touched even the ignorant to tears, he knew how to cry when he saw grief, he was indignant when he encountered evil. I knew what inspiration was, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights, when from dawn to dusk you sit at your desk or entertain your mind with dreams. I believed,... I looked into the future as if into the eyes of my own mother... And now,... oh my God! I’m tired, I don’t believe it, I spend my days and nights in idleness. Neither the brain, nor the arms, nor the legs obey. The estate goes to dust, the forests are cracking under the ax. (cries) My land looks at me like an orphan. I don’t expect anything, I don’t regret anything, my soul trembles out of fear of tomorrow... And the story with Sarah? He swore eternal love, prophesied happiness, opened before her eyes a future that she had never dreamed of even in her dreams. She believed. But all five years I saw only how she was fading away under the weight of her victims, how she was exhausted in the struggle with her conscience, but, God knows, not a sidelong glance at me, not a reproach!... So what? - I stopped loving her... How? Why? For what? I don't understand. Here she is suffering, her days are numbered, and I, like the last coward, run from her pale face,sunken chest, pleading eyes... It's a shame... it's a shame!.. Sasha, the girl, is touched by my misfortunes. She declares her love to me, almost an old man, and I get drunk, forget about everything in the world, enchanted and shout: “New life! Happiness!" And the next day I believe in this life and happiness as little as I do in a brownie.... What’s wrong with me? What abyss am I pushing myself into? Where does this weakness come from in me? As soon as my sick wife pricks my pride, or the servants don’t please me, or the gun misfires, I become rude, angry and not like myself... I don’t understand! I don't understand! I don’t understand!!!” After all, he says it well: “... he knew how to cry when he saw grief, he was indignant when he encountered evil...” - here it is, human, where did it go? If we look closely at this play and other plays by Chekhov, Shakespeare, Ostrovsky, as a play where some kind of integral personality and the processes occurring in it are presented, then we can see that Ivanov represents the very weak Ego that is in the power of the mother complex, and this complex, oddly enough, is connected with his wife Sarah. He strives for Psyche, the soul - Sasha, but this desire is useless. Doctor Lvov, who reproaches him and tries to poke him where it hurts most every time, is a shadow figure of painful conscience. As a result, Ivanov shoots himself - the weak Ego disappears, and where are we? Whether a strong, mature Ego appears in place of a weak Ego is not clear; Chekhov does not give us this answer. Many of his heroes, in almost every play, commit suicide. One can consider a weak ego as the ego of a person who does not dare to break out from under the maternal or paternal complex; one can consider a weak ego from the point of view of Hegel’s Master and Slave, that is, the one for whom the motive of victory (in particular and mainly over the Great Mother) is stronger than the instinct of self-preservation, and whoever is ready to put his life on the line and the one in whom the instinct of self-preservation is stronger. We will consider the weak ego from the point of view of the philosophy of death and the philosophy of suicide - one from the central problems of philosophy of the 20th century, precisely the post-Chekhov period. This problem was raised by Plato when he described Socrates’ attitude to death and philosophy as a process of dying, but it was in the 20th century that a huge amount of work appeared on the philosophy of death and suicide, and in fact this is the central question of 20th century philosophy. But we will not make hasty conclusions about the weak ego, about why and how it should die, and that should be the outcome of this death, we will first examine this issue from different sides. If we turn to the problem of death from the point of view of mythology, we will see that in addition to physical death, the human soul strives for mortal experiences during life, i.e. the dying away of something old and the rebirth in the form of something new. This is a painful process and we will see that behind the soul's needs for the experience of death and the experience of transformation are gods such as Hades and Kronos. And here we begin to approach the solution. What does Hades want? Hades is one of the primordial universal and earthly forces, which exists as a thirst to absorb something, to contain something - this is the force of gravity. This is a very strong thirst! Hades longs to possess something, longs to attract it, store it and contain it. There are prototypes of ideas in it, there is a dump of all sorts of necessary and unnecessary things. It is Hades who is responsible for looking inward and looking from within. Anyone who looks inside already enters its space. The one who is inside, whether inside himself or inside something, does not matter - he is in Hades, in the inner. What Hades absorbs into himself, he almost never returns in the same form. You can only get out of it by being transformed. Hades is the god of deep transformations. Including through the experience of self-deepening, looking inside, both meditative and introspective. Those. both meditation and through reflection on oneself, reflection not on the superficial, but on the deep, figurative. What happens in the mouth of Hades: it deprives everything of the charge, the tension that he had at the moment when it came to him. He puts everything into pieces, that which can smolder, -decays, the incorruptible remains. Hades doesn't contribute anything, he just takes away all the power. Therefore, what is created perfectly remains. Confrontations, contradictions, tensions, charges - Hades takes all this for himself. It is his. If you are tense, straining, trying to do something, then you are in his power, in his snare. But these snares should definitely not be feared. Yes, they can lead to the death of the body, or they can lead to the transformation of the soul. The kingdom of Hades is the kingdom of substance, matter. First of all, it is material and material to the very last degree of materiality. This is the human body with all its parts, visible and tangible, and all kinds of fossils, and in general the whole earth, which is called dry land. The kingdom of the dead is the shadow of Hades, the opposite of materiality. And precisely because he possesses an extreme degree of materiality, therefore his shadow is the kingdom of the most immaterial, the kingdom of the dead, Navi, the kingdom of imagination. It is through Hades that both coming and going take place. When the Soul comes into contact with matter, this is also under his control. Of course, not only in his, all the gods are present there, but Hades plays the first violin there. This must be known, understood and respected. In a sense, if we consider Hades as a manifestation of planetary, noospheric force - this is gravity, this is the earth's crust, this is the core of the earth, these are the agonies that sweep across the planet in the form of earthquakes, natural disasters, eruptions volcanoes. Together with Poseidon it is a tsunami. Hades, compressed, is furious, and if this compression is exceeded too much, then a flow from the compressed state to the subtle level occurs, and part of the power of Hades comes out into this world from the world of shadows. Moreover, what is happening is connected with humanity, as part of the noosphere, as part of a thinking living planet. When a certain concentration of passions regarding something is exceeded in humanity, the worlds get mixed up. Neither this world nor this is good for this and no one needs it, it’s just a consequence of illiterate actions. Therefore, Hades and other gods are interested in channels of communication with people. So that it is possible to anticipate. What are these channels: these are meditations on death. Meditation in all senses of the word: both in the East - contemplation, and in the West - reflection. Evil for Hades, as strange as it may seem, is non-vision, rejection, ignorance, which is what most people are in now. People, as a rule, are afraid of Hades, it scares because it is associated with death, and it’s scary to even think about it, but by thinking about death and meditation you can transform this fear - with the help of Hades. The lower world - the kingdom of Hades and other lower gods - is the basis. We wouldn't be able to walk, we wouldn't have bones, we wouldn't be able to move or talk. Hades provides support - a root. If you listen to his voice, he seems to say: “Stay on me, feed from me, live.” To the wise (as the ancient Chinese called a person contemplating death), Hades gives peace and constancy. In the human body itself, in addition to its very materiality, there is a zone where Hades is represented by its strongest projection. This is the anal zone (anal fixation - from Freud's terminology). A person has anal fixation, i.e. fixation on that period of infant life when he held back his feces, receiving anal pleasure, i.e. in a sense, he was using the power of Hades. On the other hand, if we turn to the last lecture and the definition of the Aggregate Customer, we talked about how, running away from pain or striving for pleasure, unconscious “contracts” are concluded with the gods? - and as a result he gets neurosis. And the reason for the neurosis associated with the power of Hades is retention, prohibition, again, excessive. Or vice versa, what in psychoanalysis is called anal aggression and which manifests itself in incontinence. But the principle is the same - do not worry, do not feel, do not touch. But the power of Hades is contact to the very marrow of the bones. Why don't many people like to be themselves? Because Hades is bodily existence. And instead of experiencing the pain in due time, we give itto take place, ran away from it, created defense mechanisms, selling parts of the soul to different gods, as a result, a muscular shell was formed in the body. Feeling it again is extremely unpleasant. So we are running from Hades, but we should be doing the opposite. As a result, religious doctrines appeared, saying that the flesh is sinful, material things are sinful and connected with the devil, etc. This is the mechanism of fear of materiality, of Hades, rejection of corporeality. Still, in the life of every person there will come a moment when he comes into contact with Hades. Those who escape from the body with other meditations aimed not at the body, but at getting out of it, will not go anywhere. The moment of death is the moment of maximum physicality. The soul leaves the body, but before that it is completely in it. At this moment, Hades is present in his specific form. It is this hypostasis that people are afraid of, because it is truly terrible for life in the body. Only a few can overcome this barrier and this fear. We will approach this from another angle, and now we will look at how gods appeared in the models of Jung and the post-Jungians, especially in the school of Archetypal Psychology of James Hillman. Initially about Jung. Psychoanalysis began with the study of neuroses and psychoses, and Jung especially with psychoses; neuroses were studied by Freud. Jung believed that neuroses and psychoses are generated by the tendency of the psyche to split in a situation of unbearable suffering. He first saw this while working on his master's thesis. He worked with an elderly psychotic patient, Babette, who had been in his analysis for more than seven years. This provided the material for his first book, “The Psychology of Schizophrenia” (1907). Outwardly, it was a completely meaningless and random production of the psyche, dreams, and Jung showed that this information could be decomposed into two complexes, which, upon further study, revealed a pair of opposites: inflated grandiosity and a feeling of deep inferiority. Jung later showed that these poles are the basis of all psychic splits. Although Babette suffered from incurable psychosis, Jung believed that neurotic patients also experienced similar splits. In Babette's case, this splitting could not only be explained by traumatic childhood experiences and emotionally disturbed parents, but also could be seen in the present as a reaction to immediate moral conflicts in her psyche. Jung believed that whatever roots neurosis may have in previous experience, it consists of a refusal or inability to endure suffering here and now. Let us remember our discussions about the splitting of the soul and debts to one or another god of the Aggregate Customer. Instead of experiencing painful feelings, they are split off from awareness, and the original integrity - the primary unconscious self - is destroyed, so that then the reverse path of reunification of the self occurs - already conscious, around the ego. It turns out that painful symptoms lead to neurosis or to a split ego psychosis, and the path back, the restoration (probably always only partial) is already the work of individuation. Splitting occurs unconsciously and takes many forms in different people. Jung described splitting in hysteria as follows: “If the patient can maintain his emotional rapport by dissociating into two personalities, one religious and transcendental, and the other perhaps all too human, he will become hysterical.” Thus, hysteria comes from a conflict between two powerful complexes, and it affects mainly the feeling function, and accordingly, the opposite to it, the suppressed thinking one. Thus, Jung has the idea of ​​​​complexes, but gradually it acquires a deeper philosophical sound. He writes: “The existence of a complex calls into question the naive assumption about the unity of consciousness and the supremacy of the will.” He defined a complex as “an image of a certain mental situation, which is strongly distinguished emotionally and, moreover, incompatible with the usual attitudes of consciousness. This is a powerful, internally consistent holistican image that has a relatively high degree of autonomy.” Ultimately, Jung came to the idea of ​​sensually colored complexes as “living units of the unconscious psyche” - this is where archetypes and gods appear. With unbearable suffering (and almost every baby experiences unbearable suffering), the ego splits into many parts, each of which becomes an autonomous complex, acquires its own individuality, its own motives, and is no longer the ego itself. The ego does not perceive this as “itself”, it is something else, located in the unconscious, which acts on the ego, fights with it, forces it to act in one way or another, but is not “me”. Each of these fragments carries a certain awareness of itself, intentionality, i.e. the ability to achieve goals, and are similar to real people with images, qualities and feelings. If they take over the ego - what Jung calls inflation - they determine behavior. They cause conflict and destroy mental integrity. However, once formed, they tend to be one day recognized and integrated by the ego. Actually, this is where Jung’s teaching about individuation came from as the return of all these complexes into a single whole. We can consider the soul as certain channels of communication between the gods. On the other hand, Jung saw a picture of the core of the ego and various complexes, which he called archetypes. These are different views, but they already create some volume. Hillman saw in this a completely new picture, where, unlike Jung, he does not insist that the ego must necessarily be strong, but should simply be a regulatory mechanism, thanks to which certain gods come to the surface, into awareness, into the fundamental human motives. Jung's concept differs significantly from the Freudian concept of regression. According to Freud, all the contents of repressed complexes were once conscious. But according to Jung, this is not so: some contents were conscious and were repressed, but most contents were never conscious. They came into the psyche from the collective unconscious as fresh archetypal images moving towards consciousness. It is Jung who sounds that the concept of the complex is not based on the medical model, in which illness is considered simply an unpleasant interruption of a state of well-being. For Jung, the patient must go through illness in order to become healthy: illness contains the “germ” of integrity. From this, let us move on to an attempt to understand what is happening from the point of view of the Aggregate Customer. From the Great Mother, her fragmentation into complexes of gods and goddesses, the transition to patriarchy, the emergence of a weak ego, and as I said, this is connected with Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Why Chekhov's dramaturgy? In 2001, in my article “Dramaturgy and Directing the Path of Life,” I put forward the concept of a cultural-information matrix of personality (CIML). This is the basis into which our consciousness and unconsciousness are inscribed, and everything. KIML is inscribed in the cultural and information matrix of the family, clan, ethnic group, humanity, that is, in those circumstances (!) and prerequisites according to which universal human stories of a given era develop. Thus, the personal plot of each person is one of the projections of the universal plot, and the personal plot is based, first of all, on the basis of the culture in which a given person lives. Variations of universal plots are captured in works of culture. Of these, the most ancient ones form the basis of myths and fairy tales. But time passes and with each new generation, universal human stories become more complex and enriched. In a crystallized form, they are presented in those works of culture that are recognized as classical (they are recognized as classical because they reveal a certain universal human problem). Such a cultural layer accumulates from generation to generation, a kind of additional ballast appears in the consciousness, and with an ever-increasing barrier on the path of awareness moving towards one’s depths, towards archetypes and self. No matter how much we would like to pretend that heno (which, by the way, is the sin of many esotericists who try to immediately, bypassing this layer, get to the “essence of things” and using for this the same methods as, for example, ancient yogis or adherents of other ancient Traditions - forgetting that For the ancient yogi, the cultural layer of consciousness was immeasurably “thinner” and he did not need special efforts to pass through this layer), this layer will drag on with his tail. On the other hand, it is the presence of this layer that makes it possible for each person to go through an increasingly unique and inimitable development trajectory, since the number of variations and forks increases over time. We create the soul, we create and complicate the Rhizome in ourselves, and each person goes through his own unique path, and thereby contributes to the universal treasury, creating an even greater range of opportunities for subsequent generations. In other words, life becomes more difficult with each generation, but also more interesting. And we talked about this in the myth of Kronos, where the original civilization seemed to freeze in place, time did not exist, and followed cyclically in the footsteps of its ancestors. Then someone took a step aside - not the way their ancestors did, this someone became a hero, came out of this stereotype, made a fork in the road. The primary river, which was the only flow for the first man, flowed in various streams. On the one hand, being an additional load, the cultural layer of consciousness increases negentropy, the degree of orderliness, which actually provides the necessary conditions for development. This cultural layer can be comprehended in different ways. Firstly, this is an elementary education, secondly: emotional living of the images of the classics, there is another option - to see existing archetypal plots from a different angle. For the first time, perhaps, this sounded like a fundamental discovery in the film “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” where the plot of Hamlet is presented not from the point of view of Hamlet as the central figure, but from the point of view of two semi-episodic figures, and where Hamlet, in turn, is an episodic figure. There is a complete change in perspective - we are looking at the same plot, but from a completely different angle. This is how we can look at different heroes: King Claudius, Polonius, Gertrude, Horatio. This plot really resonated with me, and I wanted to write a variation on Chekhov’s The Seagull. I wrote a 5-page story, which I called “Plot for a short story,” where the narration comes from Trigorin - he is the central person, from his point of view all events take place, and what happens to Kostya Treplev is stated in only one line, and the main the line is the relationship between Trigorin and Nina. Moreover, the plot develops in such a way that Trigorin experiences a moment of unity with God. Treplev only wrote about the One World Soul, and Trigorin experienced this World Soul at the moment of his impulse, when he came out of his conditioning, allowed himself a non-standard, non-stereotypical step for himself, broke away from Arkadina, and the moment of meeting Nina turned out to be a clash with the divine for him. Here is another option to go further, to create new plots. So what are the features of Chekhov’s plots? We have already talked about the cultural layer of consciousness as a platform for individual consciousness. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, certain circumstances arose in the history of mankind, which in dramaturgy are usually called leading circumstances, which became turning points for world history. Cultural studies places an emphasis on them, but in my opinion, this emphasis is not sufficient to understand the turning point in consciousness that is happening to us. These events were naturally reflected in world culture and in dramaturgy, in the dramaturgy of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. What are these circumstances? There are at least two presenters. The first circle of circumstances is social: the heyday of capitalism, the impoverishment of the nobility and intelligentsia, and pre-revolutionary sentiments. The second circle of circumstances is related to the development of science and several revolutionary discoveries. This is Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Heisenberg. Both of thesecircumstances undermine the mass consciousness, and at the unconscious level a crack appears that we can no longer patch up, no matter how much we would like to return to the fold of religion. And this split is growing, the words of Darwin and Nietzsche have already been spoken, no matter how they tried to refute them, the split has already occurred. Looking for a way back or going forward? Individual people and groups of people may still try to find protection in a religious worldview, but the general human situation is already different. One could look at this fact with pessimism, but in essence it is progressive! It is the collapse of the mass religious worldview that makes it possible for this plot to develop towards individuation for more and more people. This is the path from mass religious consciousness to individual Volumetric consciousness, that is, to the experience of unity with the Whole, remaining oneself and without losing individuality. The split in religious consciousness is manifested extremely clearly in Chekhov’s dramaturgy. Most of his characters experience tragedy and purposelessness in their lives, and it is not explicitly stated that this is for this reason, it is in the context, in reflection. The situation of Chekhov's heroes is hopeless. They feel (explicitly or indirectly) that the old support in consciousness has collapsed, and there is no new phase yet, the phase of individualization. It still does not exist in mass form. This period is still dragging on and can last for many years and even many centuries, and maybe within a few years this will happen. In this tragedy, in this extreme drama, we can find the starting point for entering the Path of individualization. After all, in order to take the Path, you need to be aware of where you currently stand. Chekhov's stories provide us with this opportunity - they show where we are - at the stage of a weak ego. Thus, a weak ego becomes a condition of formation, through splitting and neurosis - a paradoxical conclusion to which we are gradually coming. Throughout life, a person experiences a fairly large number of plots associated with different contexts and circumstances. In different areas of life there is interaction with different people. Various problems are solved that, at first glance, are in no way connected with each other. In the family, at work, in creative activities, among friends, on vacation, in unexpected - atypical situations. Each of these areas develops its own storyline. This is, for example, a storyline of behavior with parents, a storyline of behavior with a wife, with a boss, with a friend, with a random fellow traveler on a train. Moreover, each such storyline, in addition to the fact that it is connected, for example, with a specific person or type of activity, also undergoes changes in time phases. These lines may undergo breaks, such as divorce from a wife, a move, a promotion, or a change of job. Sometimes there are such strong breaks in storylines that the entire environment of a given person, all contexts, all “scenery” changes (a typical example is emigration or even just moving to another city). As each storyline progresses, separate plots seem to be strung on it. Living through each plot leads to the fact that the leading circumstances of life along a given plot line change to a greater or lesser extent and a person’s life moves into a new phase. The scale of change can be very significant, or it can be weakly expressed, nevertheless, something is changing. For example, in the life of spouses, after the betrayal of one of them, new circumstances appear, which (depending on their ability to comprehend these circumstances and survive the conflict introduced by them) lead to changes that are different in different cases: from divorce at one pole to a new wave of relationships to another. But it will still be impossible to live as before (even if outwardly it seems that nothing has changed). That is, the plot represents a set of events, as a result of which a change in the leading circumstances along a given plot line occurs. The plot development time ranges from several minutes to several years.The variety of plots speaks of the richness of the inner world. Thus, for one person, a change in leading circumstances occurs only once every few years, while another experiences radical changes almost every day. So, the plot is determined by the leading circumstance. It is the main condition by which the development of events begins: the initial, main and final events of a given plot. For a detailed description of the features of considering plots, it is necessary to be familiar with the special literature on Dramaanalysis (the theory of staging performances based on the works of K.S. Stanisavsky and his followers), but since, firstly, this literature is not always at hand, but -secondly, what I propose is not Dramaanalysis - I will very briefly give a few definitions. And in the process of these determinations, we connect with the second figure associated with the weak ego - with Kronos. Kronos is associated with such a concept as leading circumstances, that is, in essence, limitations. If we perceive the soul as a set of channels of feelings and images connecting the prototypes - the gods - together, then the work of the soul consists in a constant choice between the motives of different gods, their proposals to incarnate through oneself, and each god, incarnating through a person, carries his own experience, his own picture. The work of the soul is to accept oneself in circumstances: external, internal, in a small circle of circumstances, in a large circle - well, this is all developed in dramaturgy by Stanislavsky. Circumstances are always certain limitations. A person lives in certain circumstances. You are no longer born into freedom and limitlessness, but are born in a certain climate, in a certain urban or rural area, in a certain ecological zone, in a certain era, under a certain government system, under power structures, in a certain family with its traditions, genetics, family etc. Here you are born into a circle of large and small circumstances. Major circumstances are related to ecology, politics, historical moment, minor circumstances are the circumstances of family, upbringing, family traditions, social circle. All these are limitations. You live in a certain yard, you go to a certain school, you have certain classmates, friends in the yard. We all studied in different schools. Somewhere teachers work out their problems and insecurities harshly on their students, somewhere teachers behave creatively, trying to reveal the talents of their students and treat them as kindly as possible. Not only school, but also kindergarten, nursery, yard company, hierarchy of roles in this company, people you meet along the way of life, institute, work team, etc. All this is a circle of circumstances. The simplest example is someone in your family gets sick, you need to take care of him - this is a circumstance in your life, it introduces a limitation, and you can no longer do what you did before. This is the law of dramaturgy on stage. What does an actor need to get into character? According to Stanislavsky’s system, and it seems to me that Kronos’s participation in the creation of this system of training actors is obvious, a person needs to experience himself in circumstances, for example, Kostya Treplev from “The Seagull”. You are a young, promising, talented person with a certain pride, but you cannot leave the estate, although your mother is rich, you live on a meager allowance, you are surrounded by an atmosphere of routine, you love a girl who does not love you, although you hope , that he loves, you have not taken place at the age of 25 like anyone else: “Getting used to it” is the verdict that your mother, Arkadina, passes on to you. The actor gets used to these circumstances, and from this an image, a role, emerges. In exactly the same way we, in the theater called Life, have other circumstances, not invented, or rather invented by another playwright - by himself as a creative team of gods who creates certain circumstances of life. And Kronos is the key figure here - he is a kind of limitation, he creates circumstances, they allow some possibilities, but limit a person in other possibilities. It is impossible to imagine a person in a vacuum, without circumstances, although.