Creating Consciousness, Building Relationships, Making Whole: Insights into Integrating Psyche from the Hindu Tradition

Abstract

The ego builds consciousness by knowing with an “other.” However, the ego’s partial views and personal biases stymie consciousness. This dissertation argues that the iti-iti (this too, this too) ethos of the Hindu mythic landscape aids consciousness. The mythos offers manifold perspectives of many imaginal objects and weaves them with integrative narratives. Images, myths, and rituals emerge as meaning-laden, cohesive “whole-grams.”

I employ the mythographies of Viṣṇu and Śrī-Lakṣmī to explicate the Self archetype’s propensity for whole-making. In the unconscious, archetypal realm, the Self sustains, supports, and mediates. To the ego, the Self is guide and bringer of new consciousness that rounds out ego partiality. The mythographies of Brahmā and Gaṇeśa bring clarity to ego structure, functioning, and teleology. I argue that the ego needs to be permeable yet protective, imaginative yet discerning, and creative yet deconstructive while assimilating the new.

Myths are also a play of libidinal energy. I analyze the myth of Satī-Pārvatī to elucidate how libidinal energy (śakti) manifests as emotions (rasa). The myth’s rasa-play also showcases how śakti flows in psyche to balance and connect opposing archetypal forces. The myth of the Descent of Gaṅgā exemplifies how trauma causes libidinal blockages and how ego-consciousness and Self can work together to engender libidinal flow. How that energy is expended for wellness in real life is explicated through the mythography of Lakṣmī, the goddess of wealth and value (artha). I argue that by encompassing the mundane realm, her mythos bridges the sacred with the secular. Well-being and flow are also at the heart of the Navarātri festival. I dissect the festival’s rituals to understand how visual, aural, and kinetic cues come together to create consciousness.

Psyche’s telos is towards pūrṇatva, differentiated wholeness. I conclude that ego-consciousness is best served by a mythic landscape where object-symbols and narratives stem from and lead back to unity. Such a setting is fertile; each object is a doorway and each relationship, a pathway, to greater consciousness.