The goal of life is the coming to perfection of each single individual. This cannot take place without the tremendous interchange of love from all the four great poles of the first, basic field of consciousness. There must be the twofold passionate flux of sympathetic love, subjective-abdominal and objective-devotional, both. And there must be the twofold passional circuit of separatist realization, the lower, vital self-realization, and the upper, intense realization of the other, a realization which includes a recognition of abysmal otherness. To stress any one mode, any one interchange, is to hinder all, and to cause corruption in the end. The human psyche must have strength and pride to accept the whole fourfold nature of its own creative activity.
CHAPTER VI
HUMAN RELATIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
The aim of this little book is merely to establish the smallest foothold in the swamp of vagueness which now goes by the name of the unconscious. At last we form some sort of notion what the unconscious actually is. It is that active spontaneity which rouses in each individual organism at the moment of fusion of the parent nuclei, and which, in polarized connection with the external universe, gradually evolves or elaborates its own individual psyche and corpus, bringing both mind and body forth from itself. Thus it would seem that the term unconscious is only another word for life. But life is a general force, whereas the unconscious is essentially single and unique in each individual organism; it is the active, self-evolving soul bringing forth its own incarnation and self-manifestation. Which incarnation and self-manifestation seems to be the whole goal of the unconscious soul: the whole goal of life. Thus it is that the unconscious brings forth not only consciousness, but tissue and organs also. And all the time the working of each organ depends on the primary spontaneous-conscious center of which it is the issue — if you like, the soul-center. And consciousness is like a web woven finally in the mind from the various silken strands spun forth from the primal center of the unconscious.
But the unconscious is never an abstraction, never to be abstracted. It is never an ideal entity. It is always concrete. In the very first instance, it is the glinting nucleus of the ovule. And proceeding from this, it is the chain or constellation of nuclei which derive directly from this first spark. And further still it is the great nerve-centers of the human body, in which the primal and pristine nuclei still act direct. The nuclei are centers of spontaneous consciousness. It seems as if their bright grain were germ-consciousness, consciousness germinating forever. If that is a mystery, it is not my fault. Certainly it is not mysticism. It is obvious, demonstrable scientific fact, to be verified under the microscope and within the human psyche, subjectively and objectively, both. Of course, the subjective verification is what men kick at. Thin-minded idealists cannot bear any appeal to their bowels of comprehension.
We can quite tangibly deal with the human unconscious. We trace its source and centers in the great ganglia and nodes of the nervous system. We establish the nature of the spon taneous consciousness at each of these centers; we determine the polarity and the direction of the polarized flow. And from this we know the motion and individual manifestation of the psyche itself; we also know the motion and rhythm of the great organs of the body. For at every point psyche and functions are so nearly identified that only by holding our breath can we realize their duality in identification — a polarized duality once more. But here is no place to enter the great investigation of the duality and polarization of the vital- creative activity and the mechanico-material activity. The two are two in one, a polarized quality. They are unthinkably different.
On the first field of human conscious — the first plane of the unconscious — we locate four great spontaneous centers, two below the diaphragm, two above. These four centers control the four greatest organs. And they give rise to the whole basis of human consciousness. Functional and psychic at once, this is their first polar duality.
But the polarity is further. The horizontal division of the diaphragm divides man forever into his individual duality, the duality of the upper and lower man, the two great bodies of upper and lower consciousness and function. This is the horizontal line.
The vertical division between the voluntary and the sympathetic systems, the line of division between the spinal system and the great plexus-system of the front of the human body, forms the second distinction into duality. It is the great difference between the soft, recipient front of the body and the wall of the back. The front of the body is the live end of the magnet. The back is the closed opposition. And again there are two parallel streams of function and consciousness, vertically separate now. This is the vertical line of division. And the horizontal line and the vertical line form the cross of all existence and being. And even this is not mysticism — no more than the ancient symbols used in botany or biology.
On the first field of human consciousness, which is the basis of life and consciousness, are the four first poles of spontaneity. These have their fourfold polarity within the individual, again figured by the cross. But the individual is never purely a thing-by-himself. He cannot exist save in polarized relation to the external universe, a relation both functional and psychic-dynamic. Development takes place only from the polarized circuits of the dynamic unconscious, and these circuits must be both individual and extra-individual. There must be the circuit of which the complementary pole is external to the individual.
That is, in the first place there must be the other individual. There must be a polarized connection with the other individual — or even other individuals. On the first field there are four poles in each individual. So that the first, the basic field of extra-individual consciousness contains eight poles — an eightfold polarity, a fourfold circuit. It may be that between two individuals, even mother and child, the polarity may be established only fourfold, a dual circuit. It may be that one circuit of spontaneous consciousness may never be fully established. This means, for a child, a certain deficiency in development, a psychic inadequacy.
So we are again face to face with the basic problem of human conduct. No human being can develop save through the polarized connection with other beings. This circuit of polarized unison precedes all mind and all knowing. It is anterior to and ascendant over the human will. And yet the mind and the will can both interfere with the dynamic circuit, an idea, like a stone wedged in a delicate machine, can arrest one whole process of psychic interaction and spontaneous growth.
How then? Man doth not live by bread alone. It is time we made haste to settle the bread question, which after all is only the A B C of social economies, and proceeded to devote our attention to this much more profound and vital question: how to establish and maintain the circuit of vital polarity from which the psyche actually develops, as the body develops from the circuit of alimentation and respiration. We have reached the stage where we can settle the alimentation and respiration problems almost off-hand. But woe betide us, the unspeakable agony we suffer from the failure to establish and maintain the vital circuits between ourselves and the effectual correspondent, the other human being, other human beings, and all the extraneous universe. The tortures of psychic starvation which civilized people proceed to suffer, once they have solved for themselves the bread-and-butter problem of alimentation, will not bear thought. Delicate, creative desire, sending forth its fine vibrations in search of the true pole of magnetic rest in another human being or beings, how it is thwarted, insulated by a whole set of India-rubber ideas and ideals and conventions, till every form of perversion and death-desire sets in! How can we escape neuroses? Psychoanalysis won’t tell us. But a mere shadow of understanding of the true unconscious will give us the hint.
The amazingly difficult and vital business of human relationship has been almost laugh ably underestimated in our epoch. All this nonsense about love and unselfishness, more crude and repugnant than savage fetish-worship. Love is a thing to be learned, through centuries of patient effort. It is a difficult, complex maintenance of individual integrity throughout th
e incalculable processes of inter- human-polarity. Even on the first great plane of consciousness, four prime poles in each individual, four powerful circuits possible between two individuals, and each of the four circuits to be established to perfection and yet maintained in pure equilibrium with all the others. Who can do it? Nobody. Yet we have all got to do it, or else suffer ascetic tortures of starvation and privation or of distortion and overstrain and slow collapse into corruption. The whole of life is one long, blind effort at an established polarity with the outer universe, human and non-human; and the whole of modern life is a shrieking failure. It is our own fault.
The actual evolution of the individual psyche is a result of the interaction between the individual and the outer universe. Which means that just as a child in the womb grows as a result of the parental blood-stream which nourishes the vital quick of the foetus, so does every man and woman grow and develop as a result of the polarized flux between the spontaneous self and some other self or selves. It is the circuit of vital flux between itself and another being or beings which brings about the development and evolution of every individual psyche and physique. This is a law of life and creation, from which we cannot escape. Ascetics and voluptuaries both try to dodge this main condition, and both succeed perhaps for a generation. But after two generations all collapses. Man doth not live by bread alone. He lives even more essentially from the nourishing creative flow between himself and another or others.
This is the reality of the extra-individual circuits of polarity, those established between two or more individuals. But a corresponding reality is that of the internal, purely individual polarity — the polarity within a man himself of his upper and lower consciousness, and his own voluntary and sympathetic modes. Here is a fourfold interaction within the self. And from this fourfold reaction within the self results that final manifestation which we know as mind, mental consciousness.
The brain is, if we may use the word, the terminal instrument of the dynamic consciousness. It transmutes what is a creative flux into a certain fixed cypher. It prints off, like a telegraph instrument, the glyphs and grafic representations which we call percepts, con cepts, ideas. It produces a new reality — the ideal. The idea is another static entity, another unit of the mechanical-active and materio-static universe. It is thrown off from life, as leaves are shed from a tree, or as feathers fall from a bird. Ideas are the dry, unliving, inscutient plumage which intervenes between us and the circumambient universe, forming at once an insulator and an instrument for the subduing of the universe. The mind is the instrument of instruments; it is not a creative reality.
Once the mind is awake, being in itself a finality, it feels very assured. “The word became flesh, and began to put on airs,” says Norman Douglas wittily. It is exactly what happens. Mentality, being automatic in its principle like the machine, begins to assume life. It begins to affect life, to pretend to make and unmake life. “In the beginning was the Word.” This is the presumptuous masquerading of the mind. The Word cannot be the beginning of life. It is the end of life, that which falls shed. The mind is the dead end of life. But it has all the mechanical force of the non-vital universe. It is a great dynamo of super-mechanical force. Given the will as accomplice, it can even arrogate its machine-motions and automatizations over the whole of life, till every tree becomes a clipped tea-pot and every man a useful mechanism. So we see the brain, like a great dynamo and accumulator, accumulating mechanical force and presuming to apply this mechanical force- control to the living unconscious, subjecting everything spontaneous to certain machine- principles called ideals or ideas.
And the human will assists in this humiliating and sterilizing process. We don’t know what the human will is. But we do know that it is a certain faculty belonging to every living organism, the faculty for self-determination. It is a strange faculty of the soul itself, for its own direction. The will is indeed the faculty which every individual possesses from the very moment of conception, for exerting a certain control over the vital and automatic processes of his own evolution. It does not depend originally on mind. Originally it is a purely spontaneous control-factor of the living unconscious. It seems as if, primarily, the will and the conscience were identical, in the pre- mental state. It seems as if the will were given as a great balancing faculty, the faculty whereby automatization is prevented in the evolving psyche. The spontaneous will reacts at once against the exaggeration of any one particular circuit of polarity. Any vital circuit — a fact known to psychoanalysis. And against this automatism, this degradation from
the spontaneous-vital reality into the mechanic-material reality, the human soul must always struggle. And the will is the power which the unique self possesses to right itself from automatism.
Sometimes, however, the free psyche really collapses, and the will identifies itself with an automatic circuit. Then a complex is set up, a paranoia. Then incipient madness sets in. If the identification continues, the derangement becomes serious. There may come sudden jolts of dislocation of the whole psychic flow, like epilepsy. Or there may come any of the known forms of primary madness.
The second danger is that the will shall identify itself with the mind and become an instrument of the mind. The same process of automatism sets up, only now it is slower. The mind proceeds to assume control over every organic-psychic circuit. The spontaneous flux is destroyed, and a certain automatic circuit substituted. Now an automatic establishment of the psyche must, like the building of a machine, proceed according to some definite fixed scheme, based upon certain fixed principles. And it is here that ideals and ideas enter. They are the machine-plan and the machine-principles of an automatized psyche.
So, humanity proceeds to derange itself, to automatize itself from the mental consciousness. It is a process of derangement, just as the fixing of the will upon any other primary process is a derangement. It is a long, slow development in madness. Quite justly do the advanced Russian and French writers acclaim madness as a great goal. It is the genuine goal of self-automatism, mental-conscious supremacy.
True, we must all develop into mental consciousness. But mental-consciousness is not a goal; it is a cul-de-sac. It provides us only with endless appliances which we can use for the all-too-difficult business of coming to our spontaneous-creative fullness of being. It provides us with means to adjust ourselves to the external universe. It gives us further means for subduing the external, materio- mechanical universe to our great end of creative life. And it gives us plain indications of how to avoid falling into automatism, hints for the applying of the will, the loosening of false, automatic fixations, the brave adherence to a profound soul-impulse. This is the use of the mind — a great indicator and instrument. The mind as author and director of life is anathema.
So, the few things we have to say about the unconscious end for the moment. There is almost nothing said. Yet it is a beginning. Still remain to be revealed the other great centers of the unconscious. We know four: two pairs. In all there are seven planes. That is, there are six dual centers of spontaneous polarity, and then the final one. That is, the great upper and lower consciousness is only just broached — the further heights and depths are not even hinted at. Nay, in public it would hardly be allowed us to hint at them. There is so much to know, and every step of the progress in knowledge is a death to the human idealism which governs us now so ruthlessly and vilely. It must die, and we will break free. But what tyranny is so hideous as that of an automatically ideal humanity?
FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
Written in Lawrence’s most productive period in 1922, Fantasia of the Unconscious is a response to psychoanalytic criticism of his novel Sons and Lovers. The essays develop his ideas about the upbringing and education of children, about marriage, and about social and even political action. Lawrence described them as ‘this pseudo-philosophy of mine which was deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The absolute need one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and
things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one’s experiences as a writer and as a man’. These conclusions form an illuminating guide to his works.
The first edition
CONTENTS
FORWARD
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER II
THE HOLY FAMILY
CHAPTER III
PLEXUSES, PLANES AND SO ON
CHAPTER IV
TREES AND BABIES AND PAPAS AND MAMAS
CHAPTER V
THE FIVE SENSES
CHAPTER VI
FIRST GLIMMERINGS OF MIND
CHAPTER VII
FIRST STEPS IN EDUCATION
CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION AND SEX IN MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD
CHAPTER IX
THE BIRTH OF SEX
CHAPTER X
PARENT LOVE
CHAPTER XI
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
CHAPTER XII
LITANY OF EXHORTATIONS
CHAPTER XIII
COSMOLOGICAL
CHAPTER XIV
SLEEP AND DREAMS
CHAPTER XV
THE LOWER SELF
EPILOGUE
FORWARD
The present book is a continuation from “Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious.” The generality of readers had better just leave it alone. The generality of critics likewise. I really don’t want to convince anybody. It is quite in opposition to my whole nature. I don’t intend my books for the generality of readers. I count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. I count it a misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like slaves exposed naked for sale. But there we are, since we live in an age of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 927