Manuscript 19 Het Fundementele Conflict - a podcast by Een Cursus in Wonderen

XI. The Basic Conflict

You are willing to accept primarily what does not change your mind too much, and leaves you free to leave it quite unguarded most of the time. 2You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful. 3It is time to consider the whole world of the unconscious, or unwatched mind. 4This will frighten you because it is the source of fright. 5You may look at it as a new theory of basic conflict if you wish, which will not be entirely an intellectual approach, because I doubt if the truth will escape you entirely.128

2 The unwatched mind is responsible for the whole content of the unconscious which lies above the miracle level.129 2All psychoanalytic theorists have made some contribution to the truth in this connection, but none of them has seen it in its true entirety.

3 Jung’s best contribution was an awareness of individual versus collective unconscious levels. 2He also recognized the major place of the religious spirit in his schema. 3His archetypes were also meaningful concepts. 4But his major error lay in regarding the deepest level of the unconscious as shared in terms of content.130

4 The deepest level of the unconscious is shared as an ability.131 2As miracle-mindedness, the content—or the particular miracles which an individual happens to perform—does not matter at all. 3They will, in fact, be entirely different, since I direct them, because I make a point of avoiding redundancy. 4Unless a miracle actually heals, it is not a miracle at all.132 5The content of the miracle level is not recorded in the individual’s unconscious because if it were, the miracle would not be automatic or involuntary, which we have said repeatedly that it should be.133 6However, the content is a matter for the record, which is not within the individual himself.

5 All psychoanalysts made one common error, in that they attempted to uncover unconscious content. 2You cannot understand unconscious activity in these terms, because “content” is applicable only to the more superficial unconscious levels to which the individual himself contributes. 3This is the level at which he can readily introduce fear, and usually does.

6 Freud was right in calling this level “preconscious,” and emphasizing that there is a fairly easy interchange between preconscious and conscious material.134 2He was also right in regarding the censor as an agent for the protection of consciousness from fear.135 3His major error lay in his insistence that the preconscious is necessary at all in the psychic structure. 4If the psyche contains fearful levels from which it cannot escape without splitting, its integration is permanently threatened. 5It is essential not to control the fearful but to eliminate it.

7 Here, Rank’s concept of the will was particularly good, except that he preferred to ally it only with humanity’s own truly creative ability, but did not extend it to its proper union with God’s.136 2His “birth trauma,” another valid idea, was also too limited, in that it did not refer to the separation, which was really a false idea of birth.137 3Physical birth is not a trauma in itself. 4It can, however, remind the individual of the separation, which was a very real cause of fear.

8 The idea of “will therapy” was potentially a very powerful one,138 but Rank did not see its real potential because he himself used his mind partly to create a theory of the mind, but also partly to attack Freud. 2His reactions to Freud stemmed from his own unfortunate acceptance of the deprivation fallacy, which itself arose from the separation. 3This led him to believe that his own mind’s creation could stand only if the creation of another’s fell. 4In consequence, his theory emphasized rather than minimized the two-edged nature of defenses. 5This is an outstanding characteristic of his concepts, because it was outstandingly true of him. 6He also misinterpreted the birth trauma in a way that made it inevitable for him to attempt a therapy whose goal was to abolish fear.139 7This is characteristic of all later theorists, who do not attempt, as Freud did in his own form of therapy, to split off the fear.

9 No one as yet has fully recognized either the therapeutic value of fear or the only way in which it can truly be ended. 2When you miscreate, you are in pain. 3The cause and effect principle here is temporarily a real expeditor. 4Actually, Cause is a term properly belonging to God, and Effect, which should also be capitalized, is His Sonship. 5This entails a set of cause and effect relationships which are totally different from those which humanity introduced into the miscreation.

10 The fundamental opponents in the real basic conflict are creation and miscreation. 2All fear is implicit in the second, just as all love is inherent in the first. 3Because of this difference, the basic conflict is one between love and fear.

11 So much, then, for the true nature of the major opponents in the basic conflict. 2Since all such theories lead to a form of therapy in which redistribution of psychic energy results, it is necessary to consider our concept of psychic energy next.140 3In this respect, Freud was more accurate than his followers, who were essentially more wishful. 4Energy can emanate from both creation and miscreation, and the particular ratio between them which prevails at a given point in time does determine the behavior at that time. 5If miscreation did not engender energy in its own right, it would be unable to produce destructive behavior, which it very patently does.
12 Everything that you make has energy because, like the creations of God, it comes from energy and is endowed by its maker with the power to make. 2Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying impulse, but not in terms of the content of what is made. 3This does not deprive what is made of its own creative power. 4It does, however, guarantee that the power will be misused, or used fearfully.

13 To deny this is merely the previously mentioned fallacy of depreciation.141 2Although Freud made a number of fallacies of his own, he did avoid this one in connection with psychic energy. 3The later theorists denied the split-energy concept, not by attempting to heal it, but by reinterpreting it instead of redistributing it.142 4This placed them in the illogical position of assuming that the split which their therapies were intended to heal had not occurred. 5The result of this approach is essentially a form of hypnosis.143 6This is quite different from Freud’s approach, which merely ended in a deadlock.144

14 A similar deadlock occurs when both the power of creation and of miscreation coexist. 2This is experienced as conflict only because the individual feels as if both were occurring at the same level. 3He believes in what he has miscreated in his own unconscious, and he naturally believes it is real because he has made it. 4He thus places himself in a position where the fearful becomes real. 5Nothing but level confusion can result as long as this belief is held in any form.

15 Inappropriate denial and equally inappropriate identification of the real factors in the basic conflict will not solve the problem itself. 2The conflict cannot disappear until it is fully recognized that miscreation is not real, and therefore there is no conflict. 3This entails a full realization of the basic fact that, although you have miscreated in a very genuine sense, you need neither continue to do so nor to suffer from your past errors in this respect.

16 A redistribution of psychic energy, then, is not the solution. 2Both the idea that both kinds must exist and the belief that one kind is amenable for use or misuse are real distortions. 3The only way out is to stop miscreating now, and accept the Atonement for miscreations of the past. 4Only this can reestablish true single-mindedness.145

17 The structure of the psyche follows along the lines of the particular libido concept the theorist employs.146 2Freud’s psyche was essentially a good and evil picture, with very heavy weight given to the evil. 3This is because every time I mentioned the Atonement to him, which was quite often, he responded by defending his theory more and more against it. 4This resulted in his increasingly strong attempts to make the illogical sound more and more logical. 5I was very sorry about this, because his was a singularly good mind, and it was a shame to waste it.

18 However, the major purpose of his incarnation was not neglected. 2He did succeed in forcing recognition of the unconscious into humanity’s calculations about itself, a step in the right direction which should not be minimized. 3Freud was one of the most religious men I have known recently. 4Unfortunately, he was so afraid of religion that the only way he could deal with it was to regard it (not himself) as sick.147 5This naturally prevented healing.

19 Freud’s superego is a particularly interesting example of the real power of miscreation. 2It is noteworthy throughout the whole development of his theories that the superego never allied itself with freedom. 3The most it could do in this direction was to work out a painful truce in which both opponents lost.148 4This perception could not fail to force him to emphasize discontent in his view of civilization.149

20 The Freudian id is really only the more superficial level of the unconscious and not the deepest level at all.150 2This, too, was inevitable, because Freud could not divorce miracles from magic. 3It was therefore his constant endeavor (even preoccupation) to keep on thrusting more and more material between consciousness and the real deeper level of the unconscious, so that the latter became increasingly obscured. 4The result was a kind of bedlam, in which there was no order, no control, and no sense. 5This was exactly how he felt about it.

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