The Great Self Within - Introduction

Deep within every human are blueprints, what we can also call "hard wiring," for the calm and positive mature person. We can refer to these human potentials as archetypes, or "primordial images."

On the level of the deep unconscious the psyche of each of us is grounded in what C.G. Jung called the "collective unconscious", made up of instinctive patterns and energy configurations and passed down to us genetically through the generations of our species. These archetypes provide the foundations of our behaviours: our thinking, our feeling and our characteristic human reactions. They are the deep well of knowledge that artists, poets, sages and religious prophets are so close to. They can easily be directly related to the instincts in other animals.

Most of us are familiar with the fact that baby ducks soon after they are hatched attach themselves to whoever or whatever they see walking by at the time. This marvel of nature is called imprinting. It means that the newly hatched duckling is hard wired for "mother," or "caretaker." It doesn't have to learn - from the outside, what a caretaker is, it already knows. The archetype for caretaker kicks in soon after the duckling arrives in the world and that works really well most of the time. There are times however when the ducking meets a “mother” in those first few moments of life that is not able to adequately care for it. Even so, although those in the outer world may not live up to the instinctive expectations of the duckling (they may not even be ducks!), the archetype for caretaker forms the duckling's behaviour.

Humans are similar; we are hardwired for "mother" and "father" and most other human relationships, as well as all forms of the human experience of the world. And, even though people in the outside often don’t live up to our archetypal expectations, the archetype is nonetheless there. It is constant and universal in all of us. Like the duckling that mistakes the farm cat for its mother, we mistake our actual parents for the ideal patterns and potentials within us. There seems to be a large number of these blueprints, and they show up as both male and female. There are archetypes that pattern the thoughts and feelings and relationships of both men and women. Also, in every man there is a feminine sub-personality called the Anima, made up of the feminine archetypes. And in every woman there is a masculine sub-personality called the Animus, made up of the masculine archetypes. All human beings can access the archetypes, to a greater or lesser degree. We do this, in fact, in our interrelating with one another.