The Work of the Unconscious Mind

Every day we think thoughts. Most of the thoughts we think are a repetition of thoughts we have thought before. Very rarely do we think a truly new and original thought. Why do we almost never think an original thought? Why do we have access to only certain thoughts? We sense that something else is happening in the depths beneath the thoughts that we have. Yet we have no access to these depths. We call these depths the unconscious. How is the unconscious created? What is its function? And, why do we not have access to it?

Humans have access to only a very shallow depth of their thought processes. Most of what we think and feel is not known to us. We tend to like it that way. Our lives are a series of repetitions. From early childhood we are taught to repeat our actions every day. Most of our thoughts and actions are very simple. Most people have breakfast at a certain time every day. Most people have either the same thing for breakfast or "choose" from a very small variety. Very few people would consider having a different breakfast everyday or having breakfast at a very different time. Why?

To do so would be very disconcerting for most people. We would then leave the norm, and we like the norm, for we know it. We prefer to have very simple thoughts and very simple actions, for this gives us trust. We base our everyday thoughts and actions on trust. We assume that everything will repeat itself more or less every day. We know we will get older with everyday, but this is okay, for every one gets older everyday. What would happen if things changed?

Suppose you take the 8:08 every morning to go to work. Suppose that the 8:08 is the train that takes you to the city where you work every day. Taking the 8:08 every morning makes you feel secure. You generally see the same people, and, generally, the same people do the same thing every morning.

What would happen if the 8:08 didn't come one morning? For most people this would be the source of major panic. Not only are most people exceptionally afraid of not getting to work on time, even deeper in the unconscious massive fear will appear. The world is not the way you thought it was!

If any deep element of the patterns of our life is changed or removed from our life, major panic occurs. Our existence is based on known patterns of repetition. What would happen in France if there were suddenly no baguette in the entire country? The last time that happened, a few short hundred years ago, there was a revolution that changed the face of Europe.

Our fear of leaving the patterns we know is so great that we would almost prefer to continue on a known path of destruction than change. We are doing this with our environment. We know that the path we are on will destroy our environment so greatly that we will no longer be able to exist on this planet. Yet few people give this much thought. We still take the 8:08 every morning. Thank God for the 8:08! Patterns like taking the 8:08 every day give us the “trust” to continue onward as we always have done before.

Sir John Rose, the executive chairman of Rolls Royce Motors told us less than a year ago that we had nothing to worry about the “then” economic downturn. Sir John told us we need not worry. “These things have happened in the past and have always turned out alright.” If you are the chairman of the board of Rolls Royce, you clearly have nothing to worry about. On the other hand, if I were a laborer out of work in Nottingham, I would worry, and rightly so.

Is trust is the right word here? Trust does not necessarily have anything to do with truth. Trust is a word that has to do with the unconscious. When you do not know, you must trust. This is a maxim of an unconscious people.

The maxim of an unconscious people? Doesn’t everyone have an unconscious mind? Only human beings have an unconscious. Beings from other realms are not in any way unconscious. They do not trust. They know.

Firmly established daily patterns are necessary for an unconscious people. Without the trust that emanates from such patterns life could not exist as we know it. Yet, if we have any hope of solving the major problems that confront us as a species, we are going to have to begin to erase the boundary between conscious and unconscious. We need not only to enter the unconscious. We need to make the unconscious conscious.

What creates the unconscious? The hybrid self is what I call the energetic organ that links an individual’s unconscious depths to the outer world. I feel that the term “hybrid self” is more accurate than the word “personality” because personalities are not truly individual. They are made of many sources, most of them societal and cultural. One of the principal functions of the hybrid self is to suppress the unconscious. Whoever we were before major socialization occurred was massively suppressed into the depths of our unconscious so that we became a “standardized self,” a personality acceptable to the world around us.

It is the job of the hybrid self to maintain itself so strongly so that our behavior and thought patterns remain socially standardized and acceptable to others. This happens through an extremely intense program of suppression. Think of all the social situations in which you are truly angry but do not express your anger. Where does your anger go? It goes down into the depths of your unconscious, into a deep and seemingly unfathomable pool of emotion.

Who or what causes the suppression? It is not truly an individual but an unseen social and cultural instrument. Society needs suppression for it to function as it does. Humans live in little inner boxes so that they feel few of the emotions that are truly there. The suppression instrument pushes not only emotions into the depths of the unconscious. It does the same with information. “Think simple and few thoughts. Repeat these thoughts over and over to your self.” This is one of the most basic maxims of culture. All other thought must be suppressed. This is how we live.

The basis of our society is religion. In Western civilization this basis is Christianity. Its thoughts, beliefs and patterns are not only at the base of our civilization; they permeate all aspects of our being, whether we happen to be Christians or not.

Our history is immensely important. Events are some of the deepest building blocks of our selves. One of the most important events in the building of Western civilization was the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. when Emperor Constantine the Great declared Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Empire. With one decree new social forms began to appear. These social forms are the building blocks of self, of the personality we know.

Essential in establishing a new state religion was the elimination of all thought contrary to its dogma. The official dogma of Christianity was decided upon in this council. The decisions made in the Council of Nicaea still form the basis of our society and culture today.

What this means is that the Council of Nicaea is one of the greatest bases of Western thought and behavior. To put it succinctly and clearly: Who we believe we are is largely based on this event.

Who are we?

Direct experience of God became lost through this political event. We became encapsulated selves who relied on belief rather than knowledge. We were told that humans could not know, that we could only live in the faith. This faith was based on what we were told. We then learned to believe that what we were told was true.

Humans who cannot know need blockages, deep blockages to separate the shallow levels of “the known” from “the unknown.” This means the shallow conscious mind must become so separated from the infinitely deep unconscious mind so that the unconscious becomes a separate and almost non-accessible entity.

Who creates these blockages? With the Council of Nicaea a polytheistic religion was replaced by a monotheistic religion. The gods of the old religion found employment in the new religion by becoming part of the “new” god. Humans did not need to know this consciously. All could play the game that there was then only one god.

This wasn’t the first time this happened. Judaism was also overtly monotheistic. When Yahweh entered the Temple in Jerusalem he didn’t truly kick out all of the previous gods. He had to share the temple with them! One need only consult the work of Swiss theology professor Othmar Keel from the University of Fribourg to find detailed corroboration of this fact. Among other things, Keel has discovered that the god Yahweh had a female partner, namely the Middle Eastern goddess known as Ishtar or Astarte.

This goddess is also important in Christianity, in a hidden and exceptionally powerful form. Christianity did not only integrate Roman gods and goddess into its one god; the new religion also integrated the gods and goddesses of the Middle East into its one god.

I am not alone in asserting that Christianity is a more modern form of Judaism. The Christian saint Edith Stein not only asserted this but also lived her belief until her death in 1942 in Auschwitz. Edith Stein was born into an orthodox Jewish family but converted to Catholicism and became a nun after reading the story of Teresa of Avila in one night. Edith Stein stated that for her, Christianity was simply a development from Judaism. One must not forget that Jesus was a Jew. He never began a Christian religion. It first developed out of the teachings of his disciples and then became codified into a state religion 300 years later.

So the goddess known as Ishtar or Astarte became part of Christianity, hidden to view within the deep and dark depths of the unconscious. Can Astarte be felt or somehow perceived? She is there strongly and can be sensed when you begin to understand what I call the “Maria complex.” The figure Maria is very unclear in Christianity. One often wonders if one is praying to Mother Mary or Mary Magdalene. In fact, the picture is far more complex than just the two figures. If you begin to uncover the massive energetic structures not only underlying Christianity, but also extremely active in everyday Christian life, you are going to discover that many non-Christian goddesses combine into the Maria complex, among them Astarte, the Roman goddesses Vesta, Venus, Cera and Diana as well as the Celtic Brigantia, Ariadne and others.

These goddesses are extremely important in building up one of the three main “Christian pillars of energetic support” not only for the institution but also for all Western society. For Christian life is in reality Western life. The three main pillars are “Peter,” “Paul” and “Mary.” I place these names in quotation marks because the energies associated with them (and therefore the beings Christians pray to) are in no way identical to the original Biblical figures.

The energy world is a place of maximum efficiency for the job. No one in the world of the gods and goddesses is greatly attached to a name. The work is important.

What is important in the work of the beings that make up the Maria complex? One of their biggest jobs is to create the energies and behavioral and thought patterns that build and maintain the repetition so important in the Christian social and cultural world. It is this repetition that keeps the unconscious mind unconscious.

If you begin to break or even give up your normal patterns, you are going to become aware. Becoming aware means that the clear boundary between your known world (the conscious mind) and the unknown (the unconscious mind) begins to crumble.

If you let go of your patterns deeply enough, you are going to discover that the space-time complex begins to crumble. You will not only discover that Einstein was right that space and time are one, but also that our “world” is not only made up of physical beings but also of energy beings from many different places. Some of these energies, you are going to discover, are not from earth. You are also going to discover that most of this unknown is not there to hurt you, and that there is no true danger in opening up.

On the contrary, you are going to discover that the greatest danger is in closing down. For, in the known of repetition there are no true answers. In the repetition of the suppression of knowledge the past can only be repeated. Repeating the past in the global technologization that now exists means the extinction of our species, something we cannot afford.

The repetition of not knowing is so great that we have forgotten that we do not know. We believe that we live in an advanced civilization. A civilization that has an unconscious mind is not in any way advanced. I find it sad to say that we are currently one of the most primitive civilizations in the universe. Advanced societies do not create circumstances that threaten very physical life of the species making up the society. If we do not change on a very deep level of our being, we are headed for self-extinction.

Should we blame the beings that make up the Maria complex or even the Church for the present situation? By no means. Humans generally wish to remain unaware. At the present time, most would rather die in their old ways rather than change.

The gods and the goddesses have not created our present situation. The present Church has not created the unconscious mind. It simply finds itself in the uncomfortable position of perpetuating it. It is as if we were in a Perpetuum mobile from which we cannot escape. Present-day humanity demands the blockages and the illusions that come with the blockages. The institutions of society, principally among them the Church, are forced to deliver illusion rather than truth and to provide the means to maintain the illusion.

An age of consciousness is coming upon us in which we will not pray to an upper being to “deliver us from our sins.” The kind of delivery we are still demanding is that someone else not only care for us because we are so unknowing and so incapable but also because we do not wish to know.

This new stage of consciousness means massive changes in awareness and in responsibility for our own actions and thoughts. We are about to enter the era of the cosmic mind. This means that massive fields of knowledge and wisdom will soon be available to us. We need this knowledge and wisdom not only leave our unconscious state but to survive as a species.

Andrew Terker