What is an 'Image'? (Part 1)

I'd like to talk a little bit and hopefully fill out what we really mean, or at least what I mean, when I use words like 'image,' 'fantasy,' 'mythos' -- what I predominantly mean when I use words like 'image,' 'fantasy,' 'mythos,' what's included in that meaning, in what an image is, and also particularly the kinds of direction, inclination, way of relating. So I want to begin to fill that out and talk about it and shape it a little bit. In the opening talk, if you remember, I sort of enumerated, listed, went through a list of relatively familiar uses of the imagination in life and practice that many of you will be familiar with, or at least have heard of. There's a range there. There's really a range in how imagination gets used in different instances, or by different people, in certain practices.

So just briefly, again, to reiterate: there's the whole use of imagination for visioning, whether it's visioning the future of a retreat centre like Gaia House and where it wants to be in twenty years' time, whether it's visioning a zero-carbon future for society. There's the use of the imagination in the contemplation of death and the contemplation of the body parts that the Buddha teaches, instructs, in the mindfulness discourse, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. There's the use of imagination, taking any object that may not have any significance at all, like a candle or a stone or anything else, and looking at it, and then visualizing it internally just for the purposes of quietening the mind, gathering the focus for developing concentration.

Then there's, for example, the use of the imagination in practices like mettā or compassion, where we imagine in some way, however we can, a so-called benefactor, or friend, or a so-called neutral person, and we imagine this person, there's the image of them, and it's really just an aid. The imagination there is just an aid to cultivating this quality in our heart, so that it's got an object and we can direct the mettā. In that way, our heart's quality of mettā, that quality is cultivated, is nourished through that practice using the imagination. And then there's the use of an image of, say, Kuan Yin, or Jesus, or Mary, or Tārā, could be anything, some kind of figure or deity, and really what's happening there, or a big part of what's happening is we hold that image in the imagination, and it starts to resonate with the qualities of compassion, let's say, if it's Kuan Yin or Jesus. And in that way, those qualities, those same qualities that that deity or that figure embodies, manifests, expresses, those qualities get empowered in our heart. So oftentimes the imagination is used for that purpose, in that direction.

Then there are instances in the Pali Canon where the Buddha recommends a practice called recollection of the Buddha, which, again, involves imagination. And that can bring inspiration when there's a lack of inspiration or energy, when there's lack of energy. So it's serving that purpose. Some of you will be familiar with using an image or a memory to trigger feelings of well-being, feelings of joy or happiness, even, or energy in the body. People often use that as a little trick when they're doing samādhi practice, and it's completely fine. The image then can be let go of in those instances once the feeling of rapture or happiness or whatever is established a little bit. That becomes the focus. So the image is just a stepping-stone to something else. And then there's the possibility of using the imagination to come into dialogue with, for example, the inner critic, the superego, some critical inner character, letting it constellate as an image, as an imaginal figure -- can be very, very fruitful to work with that kind of oppressive inner psychic structure.

Just as an aside: I've mentioned this in other talks, other retreats, but we tend to think, "Oh, dialoguing with images and having relationships with imaginal figures will make me crazy." Psychologists who actually investigate this stuff find it's the opposite, find people who suffer, say, from schizophrenia or psychotic delusions tend to have vague imaginal presences which they don't actually relate to. Rather, they turn away from them. Similarly with the inner critic, oftentimes we're turning away from the inner critic rather than turning towards it and establishing, entering into a relationship. So the craziness, if we can even use that word, or the mental disturbance, comes more from not being in relationship, from turning away from relationship, from the vagueness, the lack of sensitivity and filling out the relationship. And the healing comes through actually turning towards and relating, and entering into relationship with an imaginal figure.

And then there are other psychotherapeutically functioning images, all kinds that might help support one's personal growth and personal healing, for example in Gestalt psychology or psychosynthesis and other modern psychotherapeutic traditions. And then there's the whole realm of extrasensory perception, etc.

So all of that's very fine, and in a way, we're open to all of that here, and you using all of that as much or as little as you like. And we made the point, as well, in the opening talk, and just to repeat it again, always, in any of those cases, in each and any of those cases, there's always a conception, a way of conceiving of the images that's involved. So for example, in the candle, as I said, it's just insignificant what it actually is for the most part, or stone or whatever. In the visioning of Gaia House's future, we're talking about something very practical; that's part of the conception. Or the contemplating of death, we're talking about this material decay, etc. So there's a great range in the conceiving of the images, and there's always conceiving involved, and always included in that conceiving is the direction and purpose and the particular kinds of use of the image. So that's a general, fundamental point that's really important to realize. Again, we'll make the point that we are free to conceive of and use images however we want, really, and certainly on this retreat I'm open to most things, let's say, but we have freedom there.

Now, as I said, in this talk tonight, what I really want to expand a little bit on, fill out for us a little bit, is what do we mean -- on this retreat, what do I mean when I use words like 'image,' 'fantasy,' 'mythos'? So what do I include in the meaning of those words when I use them, or predominantly when I use them? Because, to be honest, like many words, I will use them sloppily at times and more precisely at others. But this is really what I mean, mostly -- yeah, let's say 'mostly.' So what I include in that meaning, and also the particular inclination that I'm most interested in developing. This is what I'm really interested in in relation to this work when I use the word 'image.'

There are quite a few aspects here. Let's just start, if you recall the imagination exercise we did, the brief imagination exercise from this afternoon, and I hope that one of the conclusions that you realized from that was that an image, as I might use that word, is not necessarily visual. This is absolutely fundamental. It's not necessarily visual. It may be, and that's fine, but it may not be. So it may be aural. It may be that the image is predominantly or includes something that we hear. We hear a voice in the inner ear, so to speak, in the imagination, and we perhaps even dialogue. So it's maybe entirely aural or partly aural, auditory.

Another example of that, apart from voices and dialogues, another example would be that some people, many people, in fact, as the meditation deepens for them, as the mind becomes a bit more still, they start to hear a kind of high-pitched buzzing sound. This has different names in different traditions. Some people call it the nāda sound, which nāda just means 'sound' in Sanskrit, so it's the 'sound sound,' the nāda sound. People give it no significance at all, or give it great, cosmic, spiritual significance, or something in between. Some people are irritated by it, some people love it. You can use it in different ways.

But one of the ways which is possible is actually, when this sound arises, or if it arises (it doesn't arise for everyone), one option is actually to deliberately hear it as, for example, the compassion of the cosmic Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Someone who was practising loving-kindness and compassion, and someone for whom that sort of language and that sort of conception or image, they were very comfortable with that, and then this sound was arising, I suggested, "Well, you could hear this sound" -- which, as it goes on, feels like it's actually permeating. It doesn't actually feel like it's originating in the head. The sense of it is that it permeates the air, the atmosphere, the space. And so, in that case, there's a deliberately incorporating that sound, and deliberately hearing it as the compassion, the pervasive, cosmic compassion of the Buddhas and the cosmic bodhisattvas. So the sound itself becomes an image. It was just a sound before, and we were hearing it this way or that way, or irritating or not interested or whatever, but potentially, we can have a different relationship with it where it becomes an image (in the sense that I mean it), because it becomes imbued with meaning and depth and resonance, etc. So the sound, a pure sound if you like, or just a simple sound, becomes an image.

So it doesn't have to be visual; could be aural predominantly or partly. It could also be mostly in the body. The image is not visual, not aural, but mostly in the body. We're putting a lot of emphasis on the energy body, and sometimes that energy body can feel, for example, that it fills with energy, fills with power. A feeling, an energetic feeling of power comes into the energy body. And then an image from that body sense can come, but it's more a body sense image, for example, of a powerful animal or a wrathful deity or a demonic figure from some kind of cosmology or something. It might not be seen; it's more felt. The body actually feels its way into the inside of that powerful animal or deity.

I remember some time ago, I think I was doing walking meditation on the lawn (I can't remember) when it started, but a series of images where this tiger appeared. Now, it was partly visual in this case, but predominantly it had a very different dominant sense to it. This tiger was, by its nature, a very sensuous creature, so it was a sensuous tiger. It had a very direct, sensuous relationship with its own body.

I sort of entered into that tiger and its bodily experience, so that rather than the vision being the primary modality there, the primary sense modality, the body was the primary sense modality. And this tiger, as I said, was very sensuous, very much enjoying its body, its heaviness, its strength, its slowness, its power. There was pleasure in that, in the sense of its body, even the way it rested on the thick trunk of a tree. It was oozing this enjoyment of the sensuousness of its body.

So I was really entering into that, and it wasn't really strong or vivid as an image, but I stayed with it, and it developed gradually over time. It was interesting that I did, because it had two other sort of chapters to it. One was it started to eat my intestines, sort of devour my entrails, which felt incredibly healing. So instead of me being identified with the tiger, it then approached me and ate my intestines, which was wonderful and a very healing feeling. Later (which I won't really go into now; I may come back to this), it's as if that quality of physical sensuousness then started to inform and imbue my perception of nature in a very particular way. I don't mean, "Ah, the sense of the breeze on the cheek," or the feet, the step of the bare feet on the grass or whatever. I mean 'sensuous' in a more erotic sense. But we'll come back to that perhaps later. The point is really that the image was predominantly a body sense of sensuality, and also that it developed.

Sometimes an image is not even any kind of sense object of any of the five senses at all. This is quite interesting, and perhaps quite common. It doesn't have to be sight, sound, smell, taste, touch necessarily. I had a dream some time ago, and in the last sort of portion of this dream, I was playing a grand piano outside somewhere, in a war-torn country. There was a big wall, and the piano was next to the wall, 20-25 feet high. And I could tell that the wall was about to be bombed by an aircraft, drop a bomb or missiles at it or something. But I was playing this music, and there was this feeling, despite the impending bombing, that "It's really okay, because of the music." And there was this absolutely beautiful music. I don't know what it was; I'd never heard it before. The psyche is so creative from its depths, to conjure the most extraordinary beauty.

This music was filling the space -- beautiful, beautiful music. And it's okay that the wall will be bombed, and maybe I will even die there, because there was music. Somehow this music, in this strange sort of dreamlike fashion, had a physical directionality to it, like a jagged arrow in the direction I was supposed to follow anyway, the physical direction. Being bombed or being burned or even dying -- it was okay. And then the words came, in the dream, "Because it's the music that matters," and that really touched me. It's the music that matters, matters more than anything else.

So I took that image and I worked with it in the meditation in the morning. It's not really a visual image. It sort of peeled itself away, the image. "It's the music that matters." That phrase became kind of pregnant with meaning and depth and resonances. Peeled itself away from the visual images in the dream. Peeled itself also away from the music a bit, the specific music of the dream, the auditory. So it was not a visual image. It was not even a particularly aural image at that point. But more going into this sense of music, music mattering, and something about that: what is it? What was 'music'? Hard to put your finger on or totally describe in words. It's a symbol, an image, and a lot to do with beauty.

The symbol here of music that came alive and had so much depth had to do with beauty, had to do with a sense almost of life as music, and a sense of, with it, a devotional sense, of aligning, devoting, letting go into that, devoting my life to that. Life as beauty, as music, this mystery, and that being the important thing, and the devotion to that, the loving that, the expressing that also and communicating that to others, this music. I don't mean just literal music; I mean this music and everything that that means symbolically -- beauty and more. It's impossible to fully express. But prioritizing that, aligning with it, devoting to it, letting go into it, communicating it, expressing it. That was so beautiful and rich and pregnant and deep as an image that was not, did not really belong to any sense, any of the five senses. It was a symbol. It was very alive, very meaningful and soulful.

But all of this is really to make the point for imaginal practice that when images come, we need to notice, "What is the primary or the dominant sense avenue of this image for me?" And actually to trust that. So if it feels like it's primarily auditory, or through the body or whatever, however I know or perceive that image, I trust that. I notice and I trust the primary or the dominant sense avenue. And again, perhaps it was clear from the little exercise we did this afternoon that it's not necessary for the sensual detail of, the sensory detail of the image to be that clear. It may be, and maybe that's important in some instances, but the kind of pixel resolution or whatever it's called on computer screens, that's actually not that important often. Sometimes it is, but usually it's not. And sometimes it's not even necessary that it's a clear, defined object. The image-sense is very, very potent and very deep and meaningful without actually crystallizing or constellating as a clear object: "This is the image. I see that image as an object, or I hear it as a sound object," or whatever. So what I want to include in the word 'image' is something broader than certainly just a visual object.

Secondly, it's not necessary, as is probably clear from many of these examples, it's not necessary that we dialogue with images. Sometimes some people are familiar with work in therapy, etc., where you dialogue with an image. It's not necessary at all. I mean, an image may involve or invite dialogue, and that's interesting. Sometimes that dialogue seems to happen at a sort of normal pace that one would normally dialogue with someone. Sometimes it happens slow enough that a person can even write the dialogue down as it's happening. So it may involve dialogue; it may be in that kind of way. Or I find, and other people find, sometimes it involves dialogue, but it's a sort of intuited dialogue. You couldn't possibly write it down that fast, and you couldn't possibly even speak that fast. It's just we intuit what this imaginal figure is saying to us, and our response, etc. So it may involve dialogue or it may not. An image may not. It does not have to.

Are you assuming, perhaps, that it's better if it does? So that's an interesting assumption: "I assume that it's better if I can dialogue with this image." Maybe I even assume that the longer the dialogue, the better. Or better even if the image just gives a monologue to me, just imparts its wisdom as a sort of very wise speech, and I absorb that and listen. Maybe, all these things. Maybe. But just careful of the assumptions around that, or notice at least what the assumptions are.

Ibn 'Arabi was a great Islamic mystic, sage, and scholar, in fact, I think. I think he was in the twelfth century; I'll have to check that. But he talked about specific kind of images that he was interested in, and he said:

They do not answer ['they' meaning the imaginal figures] in articulate speech, because then their discourse would be other than their essence, other than their person; no, their apparition, their coming is identical to their discourse; it is [their] discourse itself, and the discourse is their visible presence.^[1]

Okay, so he's emphasizing visible; we don't have to. But the point is that for him, the dialogue is something that actually shouldn't be there, because the image itself is what needs to be expressed. It's not that the image comes and expresses something extra. So we can be broader and include: sometimes there's dialogue, sometimes there isn't. Doesn't have to be, and it can happen in different ways. But really important to know, and again, I hope the examples make this clear, that other ways of interacting, apart from verbal dialogue, other ways of interacting, communicating, and knowing an image, an imaginal figure, may be more appropriate than dialogue, so talking or listening to an image. It may be more that the love, the flow of love, or even the flow of eros, the flow of some kind of sexual interaction or connection with the image, is much more appropriate than verbal dialogue. It may be. But again, just to include, to expand our sense of what is included in imaginal work.

One thing that's really key for me when I use these words, image/fantasy/mythos, one thing that's really characteristic that I want to stress is a quality of soulfulness, that the image has or feeds or nourishes within us soulfulness. I'm going to devote a whole talk at least to what I mean by that and the importance of that, but let's say for now what this word 'soulfulness' means is resonances -- the energetic, emotional, psychological resonances of that image in our being. The image is pregnant with these resonances, energetically, emotionally, psychologically.

It's full of meaningfulness, pregnant with meaningfulness, which is an interesting word. I use that word deliberately, in contradistinction to the word 'meaning' or in differentiation from the word 'meaning.' So I don't mean, "The image means X or it means Y." I mean it's full of meaningfulness, a sense of meaningfulness that I can't quite box in or explain or get to the bottom of. Meaningfulness, multiple resonances. We're touched. There's a sense of beauty. Beauty is also a part of soulfulness. A sense of depth, a sense of enchantment. This is all characteristic of this quality of soulfulness, which itself is characteristic of images in the way that I want to use that word, 'image,' or 'mythos' or 'fantasy.'

Understanding, then, feeling like I fully understand this image, is not necessary. Sometimes a person doesn't feel like they understand at all, and yet something is touched, deeply touched, or there's a deep sense of beauty or enchantment or meaningfulness, even, without understanding. The resonances are there, the soulfulness is there.

Also, an image is not understood concretely, in the sense that I mean 'image.' We're not really taking them concretely. I once was talking, many years ago, to a woman. She was a kind of evangelical Christian, but she was very lovely, and we were talking. She mentioned to me, "I saw God's cloak, his majestic cloak," in her prayers the day before or something like that. I can't remember. But there was something in the way she was talking about it that made me feel that she was actually taking this really concretely, that somewhere or other there was a God, and he had this cloak, and it was exactly as she saw it. There was some sense that she wasn't quite understanding: this is imaginal reality, if we use that word. And that's different than concrete reality.

So in the use of the word 'image,' I don't mean that they be taken concretely -- or literally. An image of a warrior, which is a very common one for me, or has been in the past, or an image of a wanderer, a solitary wanderer, again, has been in the past very common for me. It doesn't literally translate. I would never, I certainly would never join the army [laughs], and I don't think I've ever -- well, not for a very, very, very long time -- ever even hit anyone, except in my early childhood. It's not somewhere I go. The image is not literal, to become a warrior or to go wandering like that, or to go travelling. It's not a literal image. So images in the sense I'm using that word are actually, we could say, metaphorical -- but more than the word 'metaphor' has come to mean for us, because in a way, that word's shrunken a little bit. I mean it even bigger than what the word 'metaphor' means.

We don't decipher images. An image is not a cipher to be deciphered, to be explained: "It means this. Oh, that's what it represents." So there's something here more akin to a poetic image. The poetic images that are most powerful are not images to be deciphered, to be, "Ah, I figured it out, this code." That's a poor poetic image. It's not deep or pregnant and inexhaustible. Poetry that's really touching for us, that stays with us, that's powerful and powerful in its effects, or an image, is alive in the psyche, and it stays alive partly because it's not reducible, because we don't reduce it to, "It means this or that. It represents this or that."

There's a beautiful poem that I love, by Rumi. It begins, "Come to the orchard in spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers." Lovely. "Come to the orchard in spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers." For me, at least in the way I relate to that line of poetry -- and that's important, because this is very subjective, as we're going to talk about with images -- but the orchard, the light, the wine, the pomegranates, etc., the flowers, the elements of that poetic image are not, so to speak, signs for some spiritual facts: "Ah, yes, the light represents this, the wine represents the bliss, and the pomegranate flowers represent God's something-or-other." They're not signs for spiritual facts, nor are they only material. At least in the way I relate, he's definitely not pointing to just a sort of material level of appreciation of nature. There's something, for me, there's something more there that's endlessly pregnant, that line of poetry. There's something that touches in those images deeply, that resonates, that sets up multiple resonances. An image that's alive in this way, or a poetic image that's alive for us, will then influence our perspectives and the way we come into contact with material things or those particular material things as spiritual things.

So the images influence our perspective on the material and the spiritual, but they don't represent those things necessarily, re-present some other things or some other entities. There's something about poetic images, which is really what I'm talking about when I use the word image/mythos. There's a poetic quality. They're open. They're ambiguous. We cannot figure them out completely. And this is really important, because the mystery of the image, its mystery, this sense of not being able to completely figure them out, means that it stays alive for us. It stays alive and works in the psyche, and has its resonances. It's got a vitality to it. So the mystery of the image, of the poetic image, of the imaginal practice image, is part of what keeps it alive. It's also alive, in a way, because of the importance of images for the psyche. The psyche, I think, needs images. It's very important for the psyche, and that's part of what keeps it alive.

I should say, when I use the word 'poetic' image, maybe it's helpful for you, but you know, poetry these days has such a broad range and scope. Different poets or people who read poetry relate very differently to what they consider good or bad, what they're looking for in a poem, what a poem is trying to do or what poetry should be, etc. So depending on what you're into, that may or may not help in understanding what I'm getting at. A poet like Philip Larkin is very, very different in his -- well, in his relationship to poetry, in his relationship to image, and also in his relationship to life, it seems to me, than a poet like T. S. Eliot or Pablo Neruda or George Seferis or something. There's quite a range there. But I hope you can get a little bit of a sense of what I mean when I say poetic image, poetic nature of image. We can also talk about poetic truth. So when Mary Oliver says (I can't remember the exact line, but), "My love for that poet is like a garden in my heart," no one's going to actually look for soil and flowers in her heart. There's a poetic truth to that. We recognize this poetic truth. We resonate with it. It moves us. We don't mistake it for something concretely real.

So this soulfulness is very centrally characteristic, fundamental to the way I'm using the words image/mythos/fantasy, and the more poetic nature of images, metaphorical, not literal, not concrete, ambiguous. Jung, in fact, wrote, "Genuine symbols" -- he's using the word 'symbol' here, but in this instance, he means the same thing as 'image.' Genuine images, "genuine symbols ... are ambiguous, full of half-glimpsed meanings, and in the last resort inexhaustible."^[2] So that's exactly part of the characteristic of what I'm talking about.

We can also make another distinction, or point out that, along these lines, some images or fantasies are what we could call 'narrative,' in contradistinction to these more poetic images or what I would call 'iconic' images. So there are narrative images, or iconic/poetic images. An iconic/poetic image is not so much about the sequential unfolding of events: "This happened. This narrative unfolded in time."

Sometimes an image comes, and it just stays as it is, and there's a sort of resonating with that. It doesn't really go anywhere. It doesn't evolve in time very much at all. Or if it does, it's not so much in its temporal evolution that there's a kind of causal implication: "This happened, and therefore this happened," or "Because this happened, that happened. This happened first, and because of that, that happened." There's not this causal implication in the narrative. This non-sequentiality, non-narrative, non-causally-implicating in time, that's characteristic of more iconic/poetic images. There's a kind of timelessness to them. Usually we tend to certainly read or view, often, one's own life, our own life, in terms of causal implications. I'll get back to this later in the retreat. But with a different sensibility regarding images and their more timeless, atemporal, sort of eternal qualities, that can also begin to come into the way we read and view and see our life as image, as well -- not just in the usual narrative sense, in the usual causally implicating sense.

So iconic/poetic images have this timeless quality to them, often, in contrast to narrative images. There's something also in these images that's bigger than just the purely personal or the purely historical. They're not necessarily historical at all. Sometimes they may feel like they are, and we sometimes have a sense that the history of our life is mirroring the images rather than the other way around, the images mirroring the history. But again, this kind of shift 180 degrees in the way we're seeing life and images is part of the fruit, part of the beautiful, mysterious fruit that can come from imaginal practice as I'm wanting to incline it. With these iconic/poetic kinds of images, there's this timelessness; this very personal, but more than the personal; more than the historical, not necessarily historical. And there's a depth to them, and they feel fertile, and they seem to have a kind of intentionality. There's something they want. This is something I'm going to come back to in a whole separate talk. And there's a kind of feeling of necessity. There's some necessity. This image, I may not understand it at all, but it feels necessary somehow. It feels right.

So not to make narrative images wrong and poetic images right, but we are leaning towards more the iconic/poetic style rather than the narrative -- although, actually, it's a spectrum, and more or less narrative or non-narrative. There's a spectrum there. Part of what this implies is that images that we have in imaginal practice may not necessarily be very eventful or dramatic. As I said, sometimes not much happens at all, and one's just with a certain image, kind of resonating with that and the sense of the beauty and the complexity of that, the richness of it for the soul. When I first started exploring imaginal practice some years ago, the first -- I don't know how long -- but the images were incredibly eventful: "This happened, and then we moved here, and then this wizard appeared, and then we slayed a dragon, and then ..." Rich in some ways, but as things evolved, actually a lot less eventful and yet much richer. A lot less dramatic in some ways, some of the images, but more soulful.

With that, too, an image doesn't have to be really far out, like, "Wow, that's amazing. Wow, that's so strange." I remember some years ago, I can't remember how many years ago, practising imaginal practice, and a very striking, in some ways striking, image came. It was a sort of empty courtyard, a square courtyard of a monastery, a large courtyard, empty except for four black-robed figures, with their black monastic robes and the black hoods over their heads so you couldn't see their faces. They were pallbearers carrying on a sort of stretcher between them, these four monks, carrying on a stretcher between them an open coffin. In the coffin was a dead baby, and from this dead baby's head, this tree was growing. If you describe it, it's like, "Wow, that's an intense image." And it had a certain intensity to it, I suppose. You would say, "Oh, it looks like a Tarkovsky film or something." But in a way, it didn't really have much resonance in my soul. It may be in the future that it comes back again or something, but it was a kind of far-out image but without really much soulfulness to it.

Compare that with an image I had much more recently of (just on the theme of trees) a low-branched, black bark tree. Not very tall, but quite wide, the height of a person, completely leafless. Pitch black, as if it had been burnt or charred, but I don't think it had. Although it has no leaves and it looks black and leafless, it's not actually that there's anything wrong with it, was the sense. And sometimes that did actually grow from my prone body, my body lying down; sometimes from the body of a close friend. And sometimes from neither, just in the ground. And I was thinking, "I don't understand this at all," but somehow it was making me extraordinarily happy. There was a lot of joy from this tree or in relationship to this tree. It's just there, and I and others in the image visited it just to be around this tree. It was kind of like a pilgrimage. We tended to the tree and watered it. Actually, it didn't even need watering, but it was part of our devotion. So less striking as an image than that sort of dead body, dead baby with a tree growing out of its head, etc., but the second image felt richer for the soul. So maybe an image is far out and has a sort of striking narrative structure to it, but there's not much soulfulness coming out of it. That's not really necessarily what we're interested in, the far-outness. It can be far out; it can not be far out. It can be narrative, or can not be. But it's really the quality of soulfulness that I'm going to emphasize in the other talks -- that's what we're after.

I remember a lovely image from a couple years ago, perhaps (I can't remember exactly when), in meditation. This very silent white horse gently approached me, and it moves its head the way horses do. It wants to get my attention. But not for its sake; it wants to get my attention for my sake, somehow. It wants me to go with it. It wants to carry me. It wants for me to be carried and to travel with it somehow, somewhere. There's such a sense of profound beauty, somehow, in this image, and of intimacy. There's real love there, such exquisite, tender, compassionate love -- actually both ways, from the horse to me, and from me to the horse. That tenderness and peace suffused my being, from this love and from that relating. Now, somehow this horse was supporting me in some very subtle way. I got a sense of support. It was giving me a certain kind of strength. I couldn't even quite say what.

But it was clear this horse doesn't represent this or that, although it did seem to have certain qualities. It was imbued with certain qualities. It seemed to embody, for example, a certain kind of bravery, this horse, but very humble and not in-your-face. Also doggedness, persistence. It was not flashy, though I was aware, I had the intuition, that this horse was capable of great speed, great power, and a very powerful sexuality as well. But the bravery had nothing to do with sort of gaining glory or anything like that, in the human sense.

At one point, he became a magical flying horse, and took me on his back. We were flying, and I stretched my arms out wide in a crucifix pose almost, very, very open. Flying through vast space, everything became translucent. Okay, so that's a bit more far out, that bit! But there's such beauty and depth and soulfulness just in that initial part of the image. Those kinds of qualities are really what I'm wanting to emphasize. So again, it doesn't really represent anything, but it's in the relating, the love -- that's what felt important there. It's not an allegory. It's not reducible to some simple meaning, or definable as this or that. It's the presence of that image, the character, the quality, the intimacy, the contact and the love. And also the interest. This horse was somehow interested in me, this beautiful, silent white horse. And I was interested in it. And it's that, those qualities in the relating, that make for the soulfulness.

So there's narrative versus iconic or poetic images. And that's an important distinction or spectrum. There's also another spectrum. It's significant, but we're open to the whole range of it, and that is what we might call the spectrum of substantiality of an image. Some images appear very insubstantial. They're almost made of light, their characters. They're not even airy, just energetic, or light bodies, or luminous, very ethereal. And some other images, they have a very earthy, solid sense to them. So all of that is available to us, and all of it is good, but just to notice kind of where an image is on that spectrum. We may come back to that aspect.

It's good to point out, I think, here, that most images need repeating. Occasionally, there's an image that has a big impact but it's just a one-off. So one student told me there was an image of me. I was already alive for her as an image for a while, but then there was a particular image of me approaching her, and my head, in this image, exploding. In the explosion of my head, or through the explosion of my head in the image, it was really transformative in terms of the freedom and the sense of liberation that came with that and stayed at a certain level in her being after that.

But mostly images need repeating. They're not just one-offs. We come back to them. We resonate with them. We stew with them. We invite them back. What's happening here is small movements, cumulative movements. Through practising with an image, gradually a different sensibility happens. Not just through one image, but through whatever images come up, repeating, repeating, gradually a different sensibility. And as I alluded to in the opening talk, gradually a different conception as well as sensibility -- sensibility and conception of practice, of self, of life, of the world. Somehow, through this repeating, and stewing, and resonating, and dwelling with, and feeling, and being sensitive to, a different sensibility and a different conception of practice, self, life, and world. That's really, to me, what's the most important thing: that allowing or opening of this different sensibility, and these different possibilities of conceiving and perceiving self, life, world, and Dharma.

But wrapped up in that, there are questions about pacing, whether we just have this image and then we move to another one. Usually we really want to dwell with an image when it's there, and really focus on it. We're not sort of just drifting with images and daydreaming. We focus with an image. But also there's a question of going back to an image, like coming back to a piece of music that you love and dwelling in the whole vibe and all the resonances that that music brings for you. This is something Thomas Moore said. We'll come back to it. We don't just listen to a piece of music and say, "Oh, I've listened to that before. I don't need to listen to it again." If you love it, you want to listen to it again. You want to be in that atmosphere of that music and what it evokes and what it brings up and what it does, the magic of the music, the magic of the image. So most images need repeating.

It's also important to point out that images -- again, I hope some of the examples make this clear -- images don't only arise in meditation. They don't necessarily arise in meditation. Images can arise anywhere at any time, and that's different from having a hallucination. I hope that's clear. A hallucination means I can't actually tell what's what, what's an image and what's a concrete, solid reality. We're not talking about hallucination. But it's quite possible that images arise, not only in meditation, but anywhere at any time.

One person was telling me that they were listening to a public lecture in a hall, and she felt this lecture rather stupid and a little bit offensive, in fact, what the person was saying. And yet it seemed to her that all the people around her -- in fact, she was correct in this assumption -- most of the people around her seemed to think it was absolutely brilliant and wise. So she was in this situation where she felt that it was quite stupid and a bit offensive, and differing from the opinion of those around her.

And then an image that had arisen for her before of a phoenix -- a very powerful, beautiful bird that had multiple resonances and came in different situations. Suddenly this phoenix came as she was listening to this lecture, and it filled the room. Enormous size. It was this huge phoenix filling this large hall. Magnificent, she said, and completely untroubled by the stupidity of what she was hearing. These are her words. She said this phoenix was so magnificent it didn't condescend to sort of scrap with such folly. She said this phoenix shattered the hall with its sheer beauty. So this was very, very vividly, intensely, powerfully present, as she was sitting there listening with her eyes open. Silent, this phoenix, majestic, noble, immovable, and dignified. So not in silent meditation with the eyes closed. Actually, that's an image that I'm going to return to for another reason later on in the retreat, but the point here is that images don't necessarily arise only in meditation; they can arise any time.

Let's make another distinction, a little more subtle now, a little more involved. An image may or may not have what we might call 'archetypal' or 'mythic' dimensions to it. So this is a little bit more involved. What do we mean here? You get more archetypal or mythic kind of images, if you like, that have that quality, that dimensionality, that aspect, that depth to them, and ones that are not. As an example of a non-archetypal image that was still incredibly potent and incredibly healing, I'll tell you a story that someone related to me. By the way, with all this sharing of other people's images, I always ask the person if they're okay with their image or their story being shared. I would never just go ahead and share something without asking.

So this was in an interview some years ago at Gaia House. The person was on a long personal retreat, work retreat and personal retreat mixture. Something happened in relation to the work, I think. I can't even quite remember what it was. But something happened, and it triggered for her feelings of guilt. She noticed, she could see, she recognized a pattern of a tendency to feel guilty in situations. Something would go wrong, and she would feel guilty.

She recounted to me, very moving, in an interview, she recounted to me that many years before this, she got pregnant to her husband, but she didn't tell him immediately, because he had been diagnosed as being infertile, unable to impregnate or whatever the word is. He was diagnosed as infertile, so she didn't tell him, because that diagnosis of infertility, that infertility had painfully ended his previous marriage. She wanted to be sensitive with it. She didn't want to raise his hopes and then disappoint him if the pregnancy miscarried, as it wasn't yet ten or twelve weeks into the pregnancy. One morning at that time, they woke up, and she wanted to make love. They were lying in bed, and she wanted to make love. They did. And so he was a little late leaving the house.

She wanted to say, as he left, "Drive carefully, because we need you" -- 'we' meaning her and the baby in her belly, in her womb. "Drive carefully because we need you." She wanted to say that as he left, but she didn't. Now, he actually had a habit of driving fast anyway, and now, because they had made love in the morning, he was later than usual this morning. He drove too fast, and he got into an accident. And later the police and the witnesses said it was actually his fault; he was driving too fast. He was killed in the accident. He died. This person, this student recounting this, she was absolutely heartbroken, and felt unable then to mother the child on her own, and she decided to have an abortion. That decision, too -- she actually felt painful guilt come and remain for years on both accounts, both that she had delayed him, that she didn't say "drive carefully," and also that she had the abortion.

And then in meditation one day, she was doing predominantly mettā practice at that point, but in the meditation she told the baby, the baby that was aborted, she told the baby "sorry," and that she really hoped that it would find a loving mother and father. She explained that she had wanted to spare it the pain of not having a father, which is how she had grown up, as her father had died when she was just two.

The child, in the image, responded to her. This is someone who does get quite a lot of dialogue in their images, voices. The child told her, with love, with a lot of love, that it felt sad about it, but it was okay and it was at peace. So it was very, very significant. She explained to me, and later, in a different session -- perhaps the next day or a few days later; I can't remember -- she thought to herself, "What if I had spoken those words out loud to my husband?" And then spontaneously, in the image, he turned back and came back, and they had an intimate, deep conversation in the image. Later still, the image of him arose spontaneously, and he was joyously, happily, getting into her -- this is her word -- her 'frizzy' cabriolet sports car. And that was the image, of him joyously getting in the car. She was trying to do mettā practice, so she tried to come back to the mettā practice, and refocus on the mettā meditation and the phrases of the mettā, but then she decided to just give attention and sensitivity to that image of her husband, and him getting into the car, and having the conversation. That was incredibly helpful and healing, very, very profoundly healing.

So what is happening in an image like that? She was under no illusion that her husband and her baby weren't dead. She certainly wasn't avoiding feelings. There had been plenty of grief, and she was okay with the grief. Somehow, this re-imagining of it that occurred, semi-spontaneously, somehow that was mysteriously and deeply healing. It's a very beautiful and important and touching example, but it's an example of what I would call a non-archetypal kind of image.

Sometimes there are images that are sort of a little bit ambiguous. So for example, the subtle body, the energy body, there may be an image of that subtle body being on fire, of fire shooting from various energy centres or shooting from the hands, or the image is of the body roaring. In itself, that's not necessarily archetypal. But it could easily go towards archetypal images -- fire, and roaring, and great power. It could move towards that very easily.

Other images, for instance, that solitary wanderer, or the warrior image that I've alluded to on different occasions, people often say, "Oh, those are archetypal images." There's an archetypal image of the wanderer or the warrior. But what does that word really mean, when we use that word 'archetypal'? I want to go into this a little bit. So again, Jung, who I think originated that word in its psychological usage, said, he wrote, "Archetypes are typical forms of behaviour which ... naturally present themselves as ideas and images. [By way of these effects, we discover that they have] an organizing influence on the contents of consciousness." So they're typical forms of behaviour which naturally present themselves as ideas and images. By way of these effects -- the ideas and the images -- we discover that they have an organizing influence on the contents of consciousness. Literally, the word 'archetype' is from the Greek, and it means something like 'first moulded' or 'original,' like when you make -- is it like a lithograph print, or some kind of print in art? It's the first thing, and then there are copies of that. So literally, it means something like that.

But what's characteristic of the way Jung means it, uses that word, is that rather than being itself an image, an archetype is not an image in his usage; it's rather what shapes images and shapes ideas. It's a shaper of images, and a shaper, a former of images and ideas, rather than itself being a specific shape or form. What that means is that an archetype, in his usage, archetypes are actually not directly knowable. You never actually encounter an archetype; it's just the sort of, as he puts it, "the organizing structure," to shape this or that image, or this or that behaviour, or this or that perspective or idea.

That's one aspect, at least of Jung's meaning of archetypes. Another aspect is also to realize that archetypes interpenetrate. They're not separable. This is also very important. And again, quoting Jung, he wrote, "The fact is that the single archetypes are not isolated from each other in the unconscious." Actually, you know, we're going to steer away from using that word, 'unconscious,' because I think it takes things in a certain direction. It has too much baggage for us. I want to not use it, and allow things to open up in a different way. But he writes, anyway, "The fact is that the single archetypes are not isolated from each other, but are in a state of contamination of the most complete mutual interpenetration and interfusion."

So they interpenetrate, they mix. You don't get one pure archetype. Sometimes what's very common for people is a tendency to want a neat classification, actually of all kinds of things -- Dharma concepts, "This means that," and "What does this exact term mean when the Buddha uses it this way?", the links of dependent origination -- but also in regard to archetypes. So the tendency to really want to define things very neatly and separate everything, maybe that tendency itself is kind of archetypal. As Jung says, archetypes shape ideas, perspectives. So wanting a neat classification, taxonomy of things is also potentially an archetypal thing. It's very, very common, but it's a little bit mistaken somehow, because they're always interacting, interpenetrating, mixing, these archetypes.

Let's make a distinction. For Jung, an archetype is something that's first. It's kind of primordial. It has its roots in sort of the dawning of humanity and pre-consciousness evolving into consciousness, and its dawning in our biological evolution and all that, partly. There's something first or primordial in time about it. So compare that meaning with James Hillman's sort of twist on the term, if you like, or evolution of the term. Here it's more that we sort of decide to view an image -- 'decide' is maybe too strong a word -- but we orient towards an image and view it as archetypal. So there's an adjective. Rather than an archetype, we view an image as archetypal. This is saying something more about the image, about its value, rather than its origins, if you like, in time or something like that. We view an image as archetypal. Listen to this. James Hillman writes:

[Any image termed] 'archetypal' is immediately valued as universal, trans-historical, basically profound, generative, highly intentional, and necessary.^[3]

I'll read that again as it's quite a dense sentence. "[Any image termed] 'archetypal' is immediately valued." So it's about value, and 'immediate' means without anything coming between. "Immediately valued" in the actual sense of the image itself. "Immediately valued as universal." It's what I said before, this beyond purely personal. It doesn't just apply to me. It's "trans-historical" -- it's beyond time; it doesn't have its roots in history. It doesn't correlate necessarily to coming from something historical, in my personal history or otherwise. "Basically profound" -- we're giving it some kind of sense of it's fundamental in the psyche, and deep, deep. Its roots are deep. "Basically profound." "Generative" means that it generates. As I said, it generates ideas, perspectives, emotions, other images, attitudes, all that. It's generative of all kinds of things. It's "highly intentional." This is what I alluded to earlier; it wants something, it has a direction for us. And it's necessary, he says. There's this sense of necessity to the image when it has this archetypal sense to it.

In other words, or elaborating on that a little bit, it's the relationship with the image, the love from and to and in the whole image, that's part of its archetypal nature. There's a sense of blessing that comes often with images that we see as archetypal, some kind of blessedness or blessing with them, to them. They seem to make a demand of us, and I'm going to talk much more about that aspect of demand. And they seem to open us up. 'Archetypal' implies something's opening us up to, you could say, other dimensions of our being, beyond just the ones that we're usually conscious to. There's something giving us, opening us up, to a sense of our own depth or, let's put it better, the depth of the psyche.

Wrapped up in this meaning of 'archetypal' as an adjective actually is what I alluded to earlier: that when we see something in life, or an event in life, or a thread in our life, or an image, when we see that experience as archetypal, in a way, we're placing it in a kind of cosmology with regard to -- let's use the word 'gods,' but I want to explain more what I mean by that, both 'cosmology' and 'gods' and what that might mean. But there's a sense of another dimension or depth to it, and we're placing it in a larger cosmology of significance, of meaningfulness, of beauty, of place. It has place, and depth in that place. This might sound perplexing at this point. I'm hopefully going to talk more about it on this retreat, but there is something in that that's very alive. It's not abstract, and it's not clunky. We'll come back to it later. It's not some kind of abstract philosophical idea. It's a sense as well.

Now, that's certainly not something we can prove. In fact, none of this is stuff we can prove. It's impossible. It would be impossible to prove that the image actually makes demands of me of some kind or other (that I'll go into more). Impossible certainly to prove this other cosmology involving what we could label, in quotation marks almost, 'gods.'

But we sense somehow this archetypal value, these qualities imbuing certain images, and that makes them archetypal. So we sense this as part of the soulfulness, part of the texture, if you like, of the image -- not so much the sensual texture, but the meaningfulness, soul-texture of the image. We sense an image's archetypal value, but -- and I really want to emphasize this -- we're also recognizing that we are giving it that archetypal value. There's no, in a way, truth claim here. To me this is quite a sophisticated philosophical point: I can sense an image's archetypal value, and I will, in all these different ways I've just elaborated, but I'm also recognizing, in a way, that I'm giving it that value. That archetypal value of an image, the archetypal quality or characteristics of an image, do not come independent of the way of relating to it, the psyche's relationship to it.

All this implies that the view, the way of relating, the way of looking at an image, is included in what we mean by the word 'image.' So 'image' actually includes, in the way that I mean the word 'image,' it actually includes a certain way of relating to it, that gives it this archetypal value and then senses that archetypal value in it. But I recognize I'm giving it that, the mind is giving it that. It's not inherently, independently existing. It's still empty. It's still a dependent arising. But in the word 'image,' I'm including in that a certain way of relating, way of looking, a certain view of it, and that's included in the very concept of image and the very idea of image.

So when we talk about archetypes, the point of that word, or archetypal, the point of that word and the value of it is not in categorizing, "Oh, it's this archetype or that archetype," or analysing which archetype is this coming from. It's more emphasizing a way of looking, or ways of looking, that give, certainly, or find, or sense, discover vitality, an aliveness to the image and what it does for us, that give and discover meaningfulness. Again, that doesn't mean 'meaning.' Meaningfulness, vitality, depth, divinity if we dare use that word (and I'll expand on what we possibly mean by that later on). Vitality, meaning, depth, divinity -- in short, ways of looking that are soulmaking. I'll explain what I mean by that tomorrow, hopefully. I'll fill that word out. So that's the point and the value of using words like 'archetypal.' It's pointing to ways of looking, relationships that open up another depth and richness and dimension for the soul, for the psyche.

So with all of that, we are open to all of this, as I said, but for the purposes of this retreat, what I want to emphasize more, what we're more interested in, is the more iconic/poetic end of things, those kind of images that are like icons or more poetic as opposed to narrative, and more archetypal in the way that I just outlined, that have more soulfulness to them. And that's partly why I was ambivalent about the exercise earlier in the afternoon, because while it's a good exercise perhaps for some people, much of that probably didn't have much soulfulness in it. What we're more interested in is more iconic kind of images, poetic, archetypal, soulful images.

Let's pause here for a little while, otherwise it's too much to take in. And then we'll continue in a little while.