Metaphysics of Rock&roll and the collective unconscious

Art by Leonora Carrington

 

It is obvious that music had always been a reflection of an inner personal experiences, observations and perceptions, for what had been happening in the contemporary culture of the specific era. The need that an individual possess — to create something musical, can be quite strongly suggested by an inside aspirations and can manifest in many forms. This internal urge which puts a musician into dimension of inner thoughts and feelings, rising out of his unconscious/subconscious mind — to then be expressed and to become recognized outside their own personal space, from which a specific piece of music was created.

 I want to talk about one of the most known and influential genre that is still relevant today for its controversy and so it was in the past few decades, especially because of the self and global realization potential, which can be found by deconstructing some aspects and is very much linked with our own psychological processes and the mysterious world behind the visible — day to day perception we perceive as reality. It’s Rock&Roll.

Using more of a Jungian approach I would like to show and reveal the metaphysical side/impact, that I believe is the ultimate goal and reason behind that or any other kind of artistic expression.

 A rock musician has the potential to tap and channel his own subconscious material, as well as the collective unconscious energies that are collected in this field of unexpressed emotions, experiences and perspectives, which are a byproduct of a deeper yearnings, searching for freedom, reflections etc. and repressed parts of our own psyche and society. There’s a generational gap, or lets say a misunderstanding and misinterpretation about the way this expressions were presented at a certain time period.

 Music is very powerful; It is uncontrollable. And when the performer is tapping into the unseen dimension of emotions and then puts it out there to be heard and seen — it becomes a great tool of expression, even for other people who didn’t have any direct influence on it for the time it was created. Those emotions and energies, which have found a home in the collective unconscious get very amplified, so in times where there were a lot of discord between people and the rules they place for us as a society, or any kind of inner conflict a man is facing with, an influential persona or a music group appear, to gather all of the energies from the collective state and then present it on the canvas of life — a manifestation of everything that is held back behind the curtain. It then becomes a moment of rebellion, frustration, realization. It can raise the awareness — it was always considered as a revolution.

 Musician represents a type of archetypal idea from our collective unconscious and it is through exploration that we can recognize parts of ourselves reflected by the artist.

 In the beginning the most important phenomena that “caused” rock to evolve was slavery, which brought together entirely different cultures. Then in 1950’s it develops and the original rock’n’roll stars were created (Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, etc.), emphasizing the power of the music and the emerging dominance of the rock’n’roll culture. By the early 1960s, this chapter then moves on to the arrival of Bob Dylan and protest folk rock. The inspiration was focused on individualism and widespread political awakening. Later the rebellious energies from Europe soon found its way to American shores in the wake of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and The Who. This was also manifested as a clear desire for anti-war movement. Starting in the middle of the 60’s and then in the beginning of the 70’s it shifted to a sexual revolution, at the same time as the pornography industry started to take off. During this decades a drug use has begun and philosophical issues raised by drug use and abuse in general. This can be perceived as an unconscious aspect that was created, because the activity was soo high it could not brake through for people, to deal with it in the right way. It’s a propaganda that the solution is just to focus on “love and light” and not to recognize the “dark” aspect of the psyche, which many of the leaders in music industry were actually pretty aware of, but the crowd didn’t get it for what it is. So the end of the 70’s have started with Art rock, which later and in the beginning of the 80’s emerged into Punk, New wave and Heavy metal. It was more angrily oriented and this was like a reflection from past discontentment and failure which manifested inside the collective unconscious. So while this energies of rage were still present, there was this deep sense of yearning and the most basic question appeared; what is that, that we really feel. It was the beginning of the 90’s when a Grunge movement had begun. Many people say that this was the last true memorable moment of rock’n’roll expression, revolutionary in a larger sense.

Rock music is showing shadow material that needs to be reintegrated. It’s an unspoken message of rock’n’roll. This shadow is a byproduct of an emotional or seed energies that remaining in our subconscious minds and are then gathered into the collective soup, that later manifest in this 3D reality as an unconscious aspect we try to suppress. So the artist is a filter for those energies and then tries to mirror it back.

People don’t like the fact that there’s something in us we don’t want own up to, so we adamantly deny the existence of our own “dark” aspects. What can also happen, is that while the musician provides a persona that reflects a imagery — projection from the collective unconscious, we rarely can make sense of it.

 Kurt Cobain once said in an interview, that they as a band are very much unconscious of their own creative process and that the reason for the expression become more obvious later on. I would really like to put on a spot a shock rocker Marilyn Manson, whose way of expression goes to such an extreme, it’s soo bizarre and intended to push people’s buttons. Ironically this kind of performance can be judged as a disturbing act, but it’s just a reflection of a deeper unseen reality, which is intentionally presented in a very dark and mysterious way. What then the people the media does, is to put a blame on the artist and make them a scapegoat for everything that is happening in a culture.

We became very misguided as a society — from which many responses are born and are a natural reaction to a fallen, ridiculous, cut off world. Nevertheless, there is enormous potential to heal and integrate those pieces from our psyche and the collective unconscious.

 There is the very essence and critical part in a role musicians play today. All music throughout the ages serves two purposes. The first part we can recognize as a reflection of the outer world and the second part is the one, that is in the hands of aware musician and it has gotten past that, so the power of the music can uplift the spirit of the man. Those kind of artists aren’t just reflecting from the collective unconscious, but are trying to change the perception of other people and to illuminate that, what is still unrecognized and hidden from our own eyes. It is a power to bring people together. It is universal.

 Uni — Vers (The song of one)

 

Author: Luka Višnikar

"Survival of the fittest" - Fact or illusion?

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from Darwinian evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. So before I start, please don’t pick on me about it, because I’ll do this with a little bit of harshness and humor, just to make a point … and because I like it that way!

 So … do we really need to be selfish, egocentric, controlling and always ready for a fight - to take whatever we need for ourselves, with no empathy for other human beings nor for animals? Is this a norm, how we need to be on the top from everyone else, be “better”, posses more material things, deceive others for our own personal gain and all the bullshit we as people have created in this outer reality. Is this really normal biological, animalistic fact about human drive to survive, or is this just an illusion we were taught for the time we spent in primary schools, so that now has become a perfect mind controlling mechanism for global slavery? To make us fight for what we possess and what “we are”, to keep the false identity alive - just to justify all the crap we project onto others, to feed the Ego consciousness in order to bypass dark shit we want to avoid in ourselves.

There’s a lot that is fed to us as a truth of science and is actually just bs. It’s a collaboration that ensures the harmonious system in nature, but man chose to focus on competition. And so called The Selfish gene, which states that we are all inherently selfish bastards.

 I don’t want to get too much into a psychological view of this men, who was separated from his parents and sent to English boarding school, at the age of 4. We can have a sympathy, but that doesn’t mean we need to accept his bleak view on humanity. However there are also other sources that imply on Darwin who concluded that survival depends more on the ability to co-operate and to help other species than to dominate. So from that point of view the survival of the fittest is a propaganda. He also did conducted those experiments solely on animal and not humans.

 We are hardwired for love and collaboration and when we will come back to this place inside ourselves, we no longer think that abuse, exploitation and greed are acceptable. I think that is what they are afraid of, which is why they promote the selfish, competitive agenda and call it “Science and Truth”. And it is not a secret that today’s media, for example, are using a lot of primal human instincts to mask agenda behind it and play with those bloods cards, but we have forgotten that we hold a trump card in our hands!

It seems that it’s just an idea they invented - the idea of hierarchy, that one person is of more value than another. They did this to motivate people to work, so they make a profit for themselves. The reward was to move higher up the hierarchy and to be considered more important. Hierarchy is a human invention, as everything else is. A men made mind concept. So this is then manifested as a final belief that we can’t escape from being a human animal. Only the fittest genes survive to go on. If your genes are no good, you die and don’t get to procreate. Because that is obviously the most important and the only thing a human being has to achieve on this planet right?

 We are biologically designed to shit everywhere, but we don’t. We are biologically designed to fuck everywhere, but we don’t (although that would be a great proposition now and then). Those are examples of humans transcending genetic programming. And we have plenty of those. But it’s our destination to transcend certain patterns and to move forward evolutionary. That’s why we are here. We don’t do things as we did many hundred years ago and which are normal to us today.

 Around 17th century the western world split all the old philosophical questions into two categories; Questions of the inner world and questions of the outer world. They gave the inner world investigations to the church and outer world investigations to the science. Over time, the west and science forgot to bring this two investigation back together, so we are left with the idea that truth can only be known by studying the external reality. And also that we are only physical beings and that religion or spirituality is a load of nonsense (which of course can be and it has become in some fashion). In another words, we have all become separated from our inner experience, which is the original one, but because we have created collective unconscious as well, it is now presented to us as our primal fear to be faced with what’s inside.

 The science denies this inner experience and the most dangerous example of this is artificial intelligence. The idea that we can be physically modified to be “better” and to transcend the limitations of our genes in that way. But our genes do not control us, because we are not purely physical beings.

 Not to get into a lizard stuff conspiracy (it’s another topic), but I believe that all of this was influenced by a reptilian brain programming. Reptilian brain part is the oldest of the three (reptilian, limbic and neocortex) and is responsible for involuntary functions as a beating of the heart, the workings of our organs and our breathing. So one part of the brain can dominate and thus far it has been the reptilian brain. It is also very easy to manipulate and control this part of us, because it is very primal and contains a lot of aspects from everyday routine we live in and can be easily mixed up with and be manipulated with certain functions that operates deep inside our psyche. It can make us more territorial, greedy, hungry for power and wanting to dominate. Just look at how this mind controlling agendas has influenced our systems; government, society, education, politics, sports, business etc.

 So the only way there is, is to reconnect with our inner world and places inside of us and not to perceive just what is “out there”. And yes, the shit will start to fly around again. But that is the only way. We even don’t want to know what other options are.

And at the end it all depends on the story-teller. Just because some rigidly disturbed people create and promote their stories, doesn’t mean it’s true. Just think of how much suffering they had to go through themselves to feel so much drive to publish their theories. Every theory is just a belief. And every belief is a vibration! That’s why we resonate with something based on how we feel inside. But we have to take into consideration that there are layers of the psyche, so the truth can be covered with something that make us feel better in that particular moment - for as long as we need, to become conscious again.

Author: Luka Višnikar