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going2leavethishere t1_j8n8g1f wrote

Reply to comment by dollywooddude in [Image] The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you. by crm_expert

Just did a wiki rabbit hole dive. The man was all about the collective consciousness that we are who we are because of those before us.

He states that his inspiration towards such a philosophy came from when he was around the age of 5-6. He carved a small mannequin into the ruler and would place it in his pencil case. He painted a rock on both sides and put that into his case. He then hid the case in his attic. From time to time he would visit the case with notes that were coded in a language he created.

Later in life he learned of totems and how he had been preforming a similar ritual to indigenous people all around the world. That a young boy who never learned of any of this would be able to accomplish the same things as a group miles away.

What really fascinated me was the dude started developing signs of schizophrenia and instead of medicating or hospitalization. He isolated himself and let the hallucinations run ramped. Scribbling everything in a note book which later became The Black Book. Full of random dark thoughts and imagery. He later came out of isolation and made a new transcript of the entire thing which is known as The Red Book.

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_chippchapp_ t1_j8opfql wrote

Thanks for this fascinating information, thats new to me.

But i'd say its also worth noting that he teamed up with Freud and was one of the fathers of psychotherapy. Which is heavily inspired by buddhisg philosophy that both of them studied intensivly. For everyone has highly autonomous parts in their psyche, schizophrenia is just a desise where the managment of those gets out of balance. And buddhist practises (meditation) enables you to clearly look inward and connect/map out these parts of your mind.

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going2leavethishere t1_j8pilaz wrote

Wiki mentioned that the they had a short lived partnership. Freud thought he found his messiah, his prince, his successor to the head of psychology but they differed on the ideology behind the collective consciousness and then parted ways.

Kind a of a sad story overall.

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Ed_Hastings t1_j8oy4dx wrote

As interesting as that is, I feel like a totem worshiping untreated schizophrenic is not the ideal person to take life advice from.

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going2leavethishere t1_j8piswa wrote

Hahahah fair point. The beauty of theology, psychology, philosophy is there is no right or wrong answers. Just understanding of how we as humans interact with the world.

We see it as he needs medication or help. He saw it as an opportunity to witness first hand what was happening and the ability to properly document what was happening.

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