Moral States of Mind

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The purpose of ethics is to enable the person to survive the resentment  of social abreaction by creating ideals : these ideals are usually conservative and right-wing.

The purpose of psychology is to enable the person to survive the resentment  and the bitterness of social abreaction by creating higher ideals : these are usually left-wing.

When ideals are not mature or intense enough then abreaction crushes them.

Human development requires left-wing ideas and idealists. The course of human evolution is a zigzag path through social change. Left-wing individuals arise to initiate social change, then the right-wing backlash fashions society into a new stability.[¹]. The test for the idealist is whether he can retain his faith and his beliefs throughout the periods of social resentments and bitternesses. To do this he will need an understanding of psycho-dynamic psychology theory.

Summary 1

The general trend of evolution is to make most people right-wing.

The process is such that catharsis generates a medley of new and challenging ideas and then resentment treads most of them into dust, leaving only those ideas that society can handle. This right-wing movement of evolution creates mass stability at the expense of creativity : the process of change is resisted very strongly. Creativity is never a mass product – creativity arises in individuals, not in crowds. The higher development of the modern individual means that he always emerges from the crowd to the left of tradition ; the problem that he faces is that of retaining his left-wing sympathies.

As a corollary to these ideas, there is a pronounced effect caused by the resistance to change : most people change only a little in a lifetime. In order to explain the great differences between most people and the comparatively few idealists who arise in each generation, I use a theory of reincarnation. In my view, it takes countless incarnations on Earth for the person to evolve his character and personal identity. [²]

Morality centres on ideas of good and evil. During abreaction the immorality of the catharsis eventually leads to social respectability. Virtues arise from vices and hence morality from immorality. This dialectical effect leads to a peculiar outcome. The relative aspect of morality tends to keep good and evil separate, but the dialectical aspect links them together. The relative aspect of morality features our conscious ideas about good and evil; in contrast, the dialectical aspect of morality features our subconscious ideas about them. This inter-twining causes the moral confusions of a society in the process of change.

Circles

There is a complication to the above ideas. Not only are good and evil relative to each other, but they are also circular in operation. Virtues arise from vices, but also vices arise from virtues. Good arises from evil, and evil arises from good.

How is evil created from good ?
In two main ways.

a). A Sense of  Injustice
First of all, for a spiritual idealist, goodness depends on the person’s conscious (or subconscious) interpretation of justice. A person’s views on justice are subconscious when he cannot articulate them and prefers to rely on his feelings as his way of responding to injustice. 

Forms of goodness become the branches of a sense of justice. Justice can be derived either from nobility of character or else from resentment and righteous anger. Goodness can be practised and maintained only so long as justice is maintained. When justice is felt to be denied to oneself then goodness can slide into badness. Injustice to ourself can bring out our bad side. When justice is derived from nobility of character then injustice can make us repudiate social concerns: goodness deteriorates into selfishness and the refusal to help others. When justice is underpinned by resentment then goodness decays into revenge, or into self-hate or dis-illusionment (if we feel that we have failed).

b). The Process of  Repression
The second way of creating evil from good is through the repression of aspects of the person’s character that he does not like.

Repression is an adequate and effective method in low-stress societies, but not in high-stress ones. Anything that is repressed still influences a person. In low-stress societies a person can usually ignore those unwanted influences. However, a high-stress society means that the mind of the person is subjected to high levels of stress, and this stress affects not only the conscious mind but also the subconscious mind as well. Hence the influences of the subconscious mind increase in strength. When the stress on the person becomes great enough to overcome his moral restraints then those moral repressions eventually lead that person to act out his negative aspects. The person becomes that which he has repressed.

Consider antithetical thoughts – these represent the start of this process! [³]. Here the subconscious unpleasant idea is beginning to force itself into normal consciousness. As the process intensifies, the person may begin to suffer some form of neurosis.  Neurosis is the progression of evil from good. We decide to be morally good and repress ‘evil ’ desires and ideas. Probably after a number of incarnations, and in suitable circumstances when the level of anxiety becomes too intense, these repressed desires have become powerful enough to force their way into normal consciousness and we become that evil : that is, our ‘good’ conscious desires (as idealism or as morality) cease, or become identified with the subconscious mind. In the latter case we cease to distinguish between good and evil when it suits our subconscious desires. So morality declines.

In the Middle Ages the persecution and crucifixion of heretics and witches gave full reign to the moralistic Inquisitor to indulge all his sadism and sexual obsessions on the person of the accused.

Times when morality is in decline go hand-in-hand with debauchery and excessive sensuality. When after such a period of moral decline a new reign of moral purity ensues, this only sets the scene for the next scenario of  ‘immorality’ that will inevitably follow ‘purity’. The reason for this oscillation in standards is that social abreaction is variable and unpredictable, so that the morality created from it is always immature and unstable.

Three Ways

The circle of good and evil works in three ways :

1). What we repress, that we become.
This occurs in suitable circumstances, when the underlying anxiety is intense enough
to force its way through the repression.

2). What we express, that we become.

3). When justice is lacking then goodness turns into badness.
When justice is felt to be fair and impartial and non-vindictive then badness can be
rehabilitated into goodness.

Statement (1)  indicates that karma (or psychological causality) resides in the subconscious mind. The major repressions of the subconscious mind eventually come to dominate consciousness  – this is one way by which karma is put into action. So by purifying our subconscious mind we thereby settle our karma.

Statements (1) and (2)  are acts of commission.

Within acts of omission, consider love and hate (these are complementary emotions). The religious mentality is puzzled by why devils exist, if god is love. The answer can be simple. From statement (3), for an entity without a developed ethical code, then when love and justice are denied to it so it turns into a ‘devil ’. If love is denied then hate comes into the ascendancy.

To illustrate my view of karma I give two examples.

For a religious example, the austere ascetic may gravitate to sensuality and /or sexuality. Consider the life of Luther, who thought that sexual desire could not be conquered. Hence he eventually married a nun much younger than himself.

For a sexual example, consider Victorian England. This was a time of rigid sexual repression. The intensity of this repression gave rise eventually to the intensity of sexual freedom of the 1960s. This effect indicates that what is repressed intensely enough in one era may become part of normal consciousness in a later era.

Statement (2) applies to the cultivation of personality traits, whether good or bad ones. This is the training of the subconscious mind, whether done voluntarily or involuntarily. Morality is a conditioning process.

A person either conditions himself through ethical training, or is conditioned by society. Either way, the person has to learn self-control.

Statement (1) works on the individual through his own subconscious mind. Whereas statement (2) works on the individual through his social relationships, and the effects on him of other people’s subconscious minds.

Each person has to learn a better way of handling unpleasant desires and emotions than by either repressing them or by expressing them in any of his relationships.

My formula for handling the subconscious mind
I neither repress nor express negative states of mind in social company, but am just aware of them ; then later I allow them expression in phantasy when I am on my own. This formula allows me to acknowledge such states of mind without causing social chaos ; this way I learn to accept myself for what I am, with few delusions.

If we put statements (1) and (2) together we get the circularity of good and evil :

Statement (1) is : good leads to evil.
Repressing ‘evil ’ can make a ‘good’ person eventually become bad or evil.

Statement (2) is : spiritual idealism can turn evil into good.
This is the process of sublimation, through social practices. [4]

This circularity is strongly affected by the concepts of justice that the person ascribes to, whether they are based on equity or on revenge.

The traditional Eastern way of avoiding problems associated with statement (1) is to live in solitude, or else to live in an ashram where a group of devotees can act as a buffer between the teacher and the outside world. These ways enable the subconscious mind to fade in intensity, since the negative influences impinging on it from society are reduced. This makes control of it easier.

Oscillations

There is another factor affecting the relativity of good and evil. The cycles of the subconscious mind are superimposed on the oscillations of the unconscious mind (which is the collective mind). These oscillations are caused by the changes in feelings.

Feeling is of three kinds: the positive feeling, the negative one and the neutral one. This is the Buddhist understanding and I verified this fact directly during the time when I used to practise meditation. In the past, some moral theorists believed that the neutral feeling is only an equal mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant feelings, so that the net effect is zero. But meditational awareness disproves this assumption. The three feelings are the basis of all emotions. [5].

In my model of consciousness, there are three main levels of mind : there is the 'surface' mind which we are fully aware of and which we use in our daily activities (what we consider to be normal consciousness), and then each person has a subconscious mind that is unique to him /her, and then there is the unconscious or collective mind that is the same for everyone. Feelings originate from the unconscious mind.

Feelings are always changing. In the practice of meditation their rising into consciousness, then their moment of peak effectiveness, and then their decline can be noticed and followed. Since feelings are the base of emotions, so their continuous movement of change means that emotions are always changing too. Except during periods of concentration, the movement of thought reflects the movement of emotion, since any emotion is always associated with ideas. The mind of the individual is in a state of constant flux, and the origin of this flux lies in the perpetual process of change in feelings.

All emotions (except equanimity) arise from the two feelings of positivity and negativity, or pleasure and displeasure.  ( The negative feeling is unique, in that it gives rise only to detachment and equanimity). The process of change can be likened to a perpetual oscillation between the positive and negative poles of feeling ; the intensity of the feeling varies in magnitude over time. This oscillation occurs in the unconscious mind.

In diagrammatic form the process of change can be likened to a travelling wave (for example, the ripples caused by dropping a stone in water), or a sine wave, or a radio carrier wave. The wave is illustrated by diagram 1. The blue vertical axis represents the intensity of the wave above or below the point 0. And the blue horizontal axis represents the value of time from the point 0.

The positive and negative feelings alternate in their direct influence on consciousness, with the intensity of them varying over time. However, since they are always present in the unconscious mind, the individual can consciously dip down into the unconscious mind and choose a particular feeling to centre on (an act of auto-suggestion). This choice will produce conflict if the person tries to focus on a good emotion whilst the negative feeling is dominant in the unconscious mind.

This oscillating waveform of feeling (within the unconscious mind) has superimposed on it the current states of emotion, and hence of desires and beliefs (or thoughts in general). Here we have three layers of activity. Feelings and emotions come from the unconscious mind, and thoughts from both the subconscious and the conscious minds. In pictorial terms, thoughts are like a radio-station’s output superimposed on a carrier wave.

The current intensity of a person’s mood will therefore be a blend of the individual intensities of prevailing conscious, subconscious, and unconscious factors : this is illustrated by diagram 2. The maroon spikes along the travelling wave represent thoughts.

All thoughts, whether visual ones or verbal ones, oscillate between the varying intensities of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions. People usually like to try to maintain preferred states of mind, such as happiness, excitement, mania, anger, resentment. A ‘good’ emotion, such as joy, and ‘good’ attitudes will be strengthened during the positive half of the carrier wave’s oscillation and weakened during the negative half. ‘Bad’ emotions and attitudes will similarly be strengthened during the negative oscillations and weakened during the positive oscillations. This view implies that sometimes the practice of morality will succeed, and sometimes fail. Sometimes a rogue will be bad, and sometimes good.

The ego in its conscious mind can choose what to focus on, and try to maintain stable conditions, stable states of mind. But this stability is not usually possible because the unconscious mind continually changes. The conscious mind is just a ‘cork’ that bobs up and down on the oscillating waveform of the unconscious mind.

The practice of concentration raises the person above this pattern, but how long the person can maintain concentration depends on his strength of will. Will power holds back the change, rather like the way that a dam across a river holds back the water. But eventually the held-back emotions build up enough in intensity to sweep away the will (and the concentration), leaving the person feeling mentally exhausted.

I assume that the unconscious carrier wave of feeling is universal throughout reality, but the ‘amplitude’ (or maximum intensity) of it differs according to species. The amplitude is minimal in plants and insects, and increases as species sophistication develops. In humanity the amplitude is greater in sensitive and creative people than in ‘average’ people.

I give a psychic representation of the unconscious carrier wave.

In yoga theory there are three channels of psychic activity associated with the spinal cord and its nervous systems. These channels are called Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna. Sushumna is the middle channel that represents the neutral feeling, whilst Ida and Pingala are the outer channels : Ida is the ‘negative’ and Pingala the ‘positive’. The psychic activity of the central nervous systems alternates between Ida and Pingala. The physiological correspondences to the two outer channels are the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, whilst Sushumna lies within the centre of the spinal cord.

Four Modes of Reality

I use a simple scenario in which I place a person's evolution or spiritual development. The person has four major modes of reality acting on him ; these are the modes of ethics, existentialism, dialectics and psychology.

• Ethics. The person needs a purpose in life ; this is a subjective goal that his code of ethics or nobility has to attain.

• Existentialism. The person seeks meaning to his life ; this is the way that he seeks to attain the goal. 

• Dialectics. The structure or form of his search is determined by the pursuit of happiness and its consequences : he finds that happiness cannot be separated from unhappiness. The reason for this is that the influences on the person act in a dialectical manner. Therefore, whatever standards and values that a person has, he has to experience both sides of them, both the good and the bad in them. [6] 

• Psychology. The person’s past karma and present social conditioning have created standards or values for him. They represent the ideas of the age, or the psychological content of society. Being derived from the past they have objective status, since he is rarely free to alter them (unless he explores psycho-analysis).

These modes, when suitably compared, allow me to define a relative ethical practice for contemporary needs. I pair off the subjective modes together and then the objective modes together. This gives the following arrangement :

The subjective component is the existential search for a satisfactory ethical purpose.

The objective component is the process whereby psychological values and standards change in a dialectical manner in order to adjust to the new ideas of the age.

In order to evolve, a person needs to eliminate ignorance, confusion and self-deception as much as his historical circumstances can allow. Whatever morality he may espouse he has to understand the psychological reasons why he endorses it ; only then can he eliminate subconscious desires for power and domination, or of dependency and resentment.

In Summary

A suitable ethical practice that attempts to be in tune with modern times is one that combines process with inquiry.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my other websites are on the Links page.

[¹]. My view on the process of social change is described in the article Language and Society, section 6. [1]

[²]. My ideas on reincarnation are different in some ways from traditional views since I incorporate my understanding of the subconscious mind into it. My ideas are explained in my website Patterns of Spirituality. [2]

[³]. Antithetical thoughts are thoughts that are opposed to, or the antithesis of, other thoughts which the person prefers or which he /she intends to manifest in action. If a person is contemplating the good things in life, then antithetical thoughts may arise and evoke ideas about the nastiness of life. In states of mental disorder, antithetical thoughts are usually described as internal voices.

There is an article on Antithetical Thoughts on my psychology websites The Strange World of Emotion, and Discover Your Mind, and Patterns of Confusion. [3]

[4]. I have an article on Sublimation on my websites Discover Your Mind and The Strange World of  Emotion. [4]

[5]. Emotions are the result of the interaction between feelings and ideas. My definition of emotion is that it is the activity of feeling directed into a mental concept.  The model of emotion that I use is described in the articles on Emotion on my psychology websites. [5]

[6]. Happiness and unhappiness link together. This view is described in the previous article, Morality and Psychology. [6]

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Copyright @2003  Ian Heath
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