From the Prehistory Art’s spirals to a projection of eternity

https://www.poetryformentalhealth.org
Summary
The spirals were present in the Neolithic megaliths from many places of the Earth.
On the other hand the spirals are present not only in dreams but also in modern approaches to sub-consciousness, like hypnosis or psychedelic experiences that are giving us a sense of belonging to something greater and that are uniquely joining the microcosm with the macrocosm by going from small to big.
According to some thinkers, for instance Marie-Louise von Franz, Carl Jung, Erwin Schrödinger, Aldous Huxley and Mircea Eliade, there is a chance of a collective sub-consciousness which can be a support of a kind of immortality.
The possibility of the hereafter is examined by Carl Jung especially in the Chapter XI “On Life after Death” of his book “Memories, dreams, reflections”.
For those whose Nietzsche’s statement “God is dead” has a profound meaning, a fundamental question would be how it is possible for a "world beyond" to have emerged.
Here is an answer, not necessarily the only or a certain one. Ancient man imagined, intensely desired, practiced multimillennial rituals and above all believed in various forms of heaven. And because of this neurological need, the brain, with its amazing possibilities, may have created at some point the "psychic dough" necessary for the baking of a surviving energetic consciousness.
If the individual psyche manifests itself through an energetic spiral that transcends the standard three-dimensional space as a twisted super-dimension, then such spirals could connect in a collective subconscious, into a Oneness like a some sort of the mythological “Kingdom of Souls”. Such a “curled up” extra-dimension is also
only a theoretical concept of The String Theory which targets Quantum physics. And the quantum physicists Max Planck, Freeman Dyson and Werner Heisenberg have explored the idea that One Consciousness is related to the quantum field.
Who can say that such multi-spiral Oneness is a divine spiritual dimension or not? If there is a Divinity maybe the Oneness is part of the great plan.
Anyway, quantum theory originator Max Planck warned that “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature [because] we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”


Freud: we are convinced of own immortality
Dr. Sigmund Freud is credited with the claim: 'in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality'.
Dr. Carl Jung did not believe in literal immortality but posited that the human psyche and its experiences live on in a greater consciousness after death, viewing death as a natural and final goal of life rather than an end. He saw evidence for the psyche's timeless and non-extended state in conscious life, suggesting something of the human soul remains after the physical body dies. Jung suggested that at death, the individual gradually detaches from the body, and the ego's experiences continue to evolve in a larger, collective consciousness.
In his study "The Psychology of Life After Death", Dr. Ronald K. Siegel summarizes the following: “Jung took the position that the concept of immortality, universally present in the individual's unconscious, plays an important role in 'psychic hygiene'”. So for those who do not believe in any religious form of afterlife the only possibility to achieve this ‘psychic hygiene’, with harmony between conscious and unconscious, remains the belief in a kind of surviving consciousness with the respect for the Evolution laws of Charles Darwin.
Friederich Nietzsche’s "God is dead" signifies the decline of religious belief as the foundation for Western morality and meaning, not a literal event, stating, " is dead! remains dead! And we have killed him!". This declaration, made in, reflects the Enlightenment's scientific progress undermining faith, creating a crisis of nihilism where humanity must find new values, potentially through the, to replace divine authority and create their own purpose, rather than relying on old comforts or collapsing into meaninglessness.
Friedrich Nietzsche warned that the decline of traditional religious and metaphysical beliefs—symbolized by "the death of God"—would plunge Western civilization into a severe crisis of nihilism. He feared this loss of shared, objective meaning would lead to widespread despair, cynicism, and a devaluation of life.
The hope for a kind of afterlife would be an approach against nihilism.
Eliade showed his openness to the possibility of immortality
Historian Mircea Eliade, who had a three years experience in India, showed his openness to the possibility of immortality especially in the article "Folklore as an instrument of knowledge" (Revista fundațiilor regale - 1937)
Here is an eloquent and conclusive quote from this article: "The problem of death, in our opinion, can be attacked from a new point of view, if we take into account the above facts and conclusions. First of all, it is appropriate to ask ourselves how valid the positivist argument against the hypothesis of the survival of the "soul" can still be, when we have a suitably large number of cases (levitation, incombustibility) that prove the autonomy of man within the framework of physical and biological laws. Positivists have generally denied the possibility of the survival of the soul, based on the laws of organic life (the brain-consciousness relationship, the condition of the cell, etc.). But these laws of organic life are sometimes suspended; for example, in the case of meat that the embers do not injure. It is true that the circumstances in which incombustibility is achieved are exceptional; but equally exceptional is the fact of death. The brain-consciousness correlation may be perfectly valid in the human condition, but no one can tell us whether it is not annulled at the moment of death. Since we have no kind of «document» on this irreversible fact, death, within the limits of normal human experience, we can turn our attention to folkloric beliefs. We are justified in doing so; because, if the series of folkloric beliefs is verified at point a, d, c, d... we have the right to believe that it could also be verified at point n, o, p".
The full article can be read on the website of the "Mihai Eminescu" University Library in Iași, at https://dspace.bcu-iasi.ro/handle/123456789/45825?show=full
‘Energetic conception of the soul' at Ioan Petru Culianu
But for the purposes of our article, a quote from the article “Great is the kingdom of the mind. The study of religion as a salutary experience by Ioan Petru Culianu” by Eduard Iricinschi (https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/mareata-e-imparatia-mintii/) is quite important, with an emphasis on the energetic conception of the soul, possibly as a kind of energetic spiral which is present also in Buddhism and Hindu culture. "In his bachelor's thesis, Culianu takes up and refines the understanding of the pragmatic aspects of the ecstatic experience, of an extraordinary nature, in Ficino and Kristeller, but addresses the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Mircea Eliade and Charles Richet, to provide the necessary interpretative framework for an 'energetic conception of the soul'. On an epistemological level, Eliade's writings, together with Jung's analytical psychology, Heidegger's philosophy and the existentialist echoes in Kristeller's work, provided Culianu with a method of interpreting religious facts in an 'energetic' key: expressions of supramundane realities that could have been accessible to curious but also patient, ascetic but also imaginative researchers of spiritual worlds," states Eduard Iricinschi.
The first living cell, a great miracle
A fundamental miracle is the very appearance of the first living cell in conditions in which organic substances must have aligned extraordinarily favorably, for the emergence of life.
So why hasn't another miracle of the same magnitude happened?
It is a problem of belief to think about an afterlife based on Evolutionary Law. And some clues might come from the Neolithic Spirals.
Let's say there are one in a thousand billion chances, but on what basis can you say with absolute certainty that some kind of afterlife based on the laws of evolution has not or will never appear?
This essay aims to explore such a tiny possibility but which can offer a shred of hope for those who are seeking a higher meaning of life.
Modern thinkers of the world have glimpsed a possibility of the individual soul's "imprinting" of a great universal consciousness, transcending time.
Nikola Tesla said: "My brain is just a receptor, in the Universe there is a nucleus from which we obtain knowledge, power and inspiration. I have not penetrated the secrets of this nucleus, but I know that it exists". Aldous Huxley emphasized the "collective subconscious" in his book "The Gates of Perception. Heaven and Hell", which he concludes, by the way, with a plea for the survival of individual souls in a "congregation" of all souls. Rupert Sheldrake was a supporter of the idea of ​​a collective subconscious, as well as the famous Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, the parent of the current of analytical psychology based on the subconscious collective. The basic idea is that maintaining an imprint of the individual soul on the horizon of a collective subconscious independent of temporal boundaries would practically ensure a kind of "immortality".
A fundamental question would be how it is possible, strictly under the conditions of Darwin's evolutionism, for a "world beyond" to have emerged.
Here is a possible answer, not necessarily the only or a certain one. Ancient man imagined, intensely desired, practiced multimillennial rituals and above all believed in various forms of heaven. And because of this neurological need, the brain, with its amazing possibilities, may have created at some point the "psychic dough" necessary for the baking of a surviving consciousness, just as the ancestral biological brain designed and made each new organ: eye, nose, ear...
Carl Jung’s synchronicity for ‘significant’ adaptations
Such an idea seems particularly bold, so I appeal, in support of it, to the chapter "Science and the Unconscious" written by Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz for the book "Man and His Symbols". Thus, we find: “Physicist Wolfgang Pauli has pointed out that, due to new discoveries, our idea of ​​the evolution of life requires a revision that could take into account an area of ​​interrelation between the unconscious psyche and biological processes. Until recently, it was assumed that the mutation of species occurred randomly and that a selection took place by which the ‘significant’, well-adapted species survived and the others disappeared. But modern evolutionists have pointed out that the selection of such mutations by pure chance would have lasted much longer than the known age of our planet allows. Jung’s concept of ‘synchronicity’ could be helpful here, because it sheds light on some rarer, ‘limit’ phenomena, some exceptional events, in this way, it is therefore possible to explain how ‘significant’ adaptations and mutations occurred in a shorter time than would have been necessary in the case of random mutations (...) It seems, therefore, that such anomalous accidental phenomena occur when there is a need or a vital need, this fact could further explain why a certain species of animal, under great pressure or in urgent need, could produce significant (but acausal) changes in its external material structure" (Jung 1964: 306).
These would be the neurological premises of the emergence of a possible "afterlife", as a spiral survival of energetic consciousness.
The spiral, in the book "Man and his symbols", coordinated by Carl Jung
In the same book "Man and his symbols" we find the paragraph: "That the Holy Ghost is the power that works for the further development of our religious understanding is not a new idea, of course, but its symbolic representation in the form of a spiral is new. (...) In the dreamer's life these two pictures became real in a way that does not concern us here, but it is obvious that they also contain a collective meaning that reaches beyond the personal. They may prophesy the descent of a divine darkness upon the Christian hemisphere, a darkness that points, however, toward the possibility of further evolution. Since the axis of the spiral does not move upward but into the background of the picture, the further evolution will lead neither to greater spiritual height nor down into the realm of matter, but to another dimension, probably into the background of these divine figures. And that means into the unconscious" (Jung 1964: 226). The image addressed by this paragraph is at the next page 227.
Neolithic spirals symbolizing the immortality
Spirals are found in many Neolithic megaliths such as Newgrange and Knowth - County Meath (both in Ireland), Achnabreck and Pierowall (both in Scotland) and Barclodiad y Gawres (Wales), Cairn Gavrinis (France), Tarxien (Malta), Castelluccio (Sicily), Piodao/Chaz D'Egua (Portugal), Bardal (Norway), La Zarza-La Zarcita (Canary Islands), Galicia (Spain), etc. or on the pottery of Neolithic Cucuteni culture - for instance the Goddess "Venus of Draguseni" statue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newgrange#/media/File:Newgrange,_Meath.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarxien_Temples#/media/File:Entrance_to_apses_of_the_Central_Temple,_Tarxien_Temples.jpg
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Zarza,_La_Zarcita,_Llano_de_la_Zarza,_Fuente_de_Las_Palomas_y_Fajaneta_del_Jarito#/media/Archivo:Asentamiento_pastoril_La_Zarza_petr%C3%B3glifos.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castelluccio_culture#/media/File:Portello_tombale.JPG
https://www.naxos.gr/the-mysterious-speires-of-iraklia/?lang=en
It is illogical to think that people moved and carved huge blocks of stone just for some random ornaments so that the spirals must have had a close connection with their consciousness. A provocative explanation was offered by researchers D. Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, in their book “Inside the Neolithic mind: consciousness, cosmos and the realm of the gods”.
According to this book the spiral is associated with a stage of altered consciousness that leads to visionary experiences.
There are also other authors who see spirals as a symbol of the passage of souls to immortality. Looking at the ancient megaliths scattered throughout the world, there is a general perception that the carved spirals would have reflected eternity.
It is also remarkable that in regressive hypnosis experiences, when you come to stand in front of the essence of your own consciousness-soul, perceptions of spiral vortexes are frequent. https://www.nancyshobe.com/bloghorse/thespiralshareddeath
The brain does an interesting job. Under certain conditions it produces electro-chemical stimuli that cause us pleasure or vice versa. It is very difficult to say what value a strictly energetic-informational afterlife has in which joy is missing. But we have nothing to do, if this is the inheritance from our ancestors. Just as we are not asked whether we want to be born or not. But we live our lives as a result of the decision of our parents.
The "Spiral and The Goddess as a Symbol of Life and Regeneration" by Louis Lagana
In his article, Louis Lagana is saying: “This type of burial is found not just in Malta but also in other cultures and countries. In a logical sense the dead needed possessions to survive in the afterlife. Such funerary customs had some form of connection with their thoughts about afterlife and so their psychic and spiritual attitudes were reflected in their burial rituals”. So the concern for the afterlife is clear. Further, Lagana is referring to the spiral: “One of the first Maltese female artists, who experimented for a long time with these ancient images and symbols, is Josette Caruana. During the nineties, the artist experimented with prehistoric motifs in most of her works. The ‘spiral’ motif and ‘the ancient goddesses’ were important aspects of her earlier works and shown in her personal art exhibition entitled, ‘Frameless’ held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta in 1992. Some of the works in this exhibition were references to Malta’s Neolithic past. The artist relates to the Neolithic temples of Malta as a source of inspiration to make ‘contact with humanity’. For instance ‘the spiral’ as a Neolithic symbol, suggests for the artist the continuation of life”.
In the Cliniques méditerranéennes Journal
Dr. Claudia Infurchia has published, in Cliniques méditerranéennes Journal, an article with the following summary: The article presents a case study from the clinical psychopathological angle, a collection of elements from psychotherapeutic encounters comprising two settings, a drawing-painting workshop for free self-expression, and face-to-face interviews, in a mental health unit. The patient, (in her fifties), painter and writer before her decompensation, is convinced that she is dead and eternal at the same time. The psychiatric diagnosis given is Cotard’s syndrome. The mediation care setting based on the drawing-painting workshop, allows this patient, reluctant to speak, frozen by her illness, to deposit on the canvas, a representation, a spiral. This recurring representation endured for many months will gradually evolve from a deadly repetition compulsion to a representation of life itself. It seems that the constraint to create, theorized by R. Roussillon, present in many artists, allowed this woman, for many years, to avoid the pitfall of psychotic decompensation. But it is possible to think that her creativity and her artistic production were defeated in the face of traumas of great intensity (separation, death). Melancholy recedes when this same representation linked to eternal torment is transformed into a symbol of life.

Reference

Claudia Infurchia. 2024. The spiral: a metaphor for the compulsion repetition? From the “death in the symbolic” to the desire for symbolic immortality. Cliniques méditerranéennes Journal
https://shs.cairn.info/journal-cliniques-mediterraneennes-2024-1-page-249?lang=en
D. Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, 2005. “Inside the Neolithic mind: consciousness, cosmos and the realm of the gods”. Thames and Hudson.
Eduard Iricinschi, 2021. "Great is the kingdom of the mind". Romania: Observator Cultural
https://www.observatorcultural.ro/articol/mareata-e-imparatia-mintii/
Jung Carl, 1964. “Man and his symbols”. New York: Anchor Press - Doubleday.
Louis Lagana, 2023. The "Spiral and The Goddess as a Symbol of Life and Regeneration". Mago Books. S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies
https://www.academia.edu/100594345/The_Spiral_and_The_Goddess_as_a_Symbol_of_Life_and_Regeneration_by_Louis_Lagana
Mircea Eliade 1937. "Folklore as an instrument of knowledge". Iași - “Magazine of Royal Foundation”, Romania
https://dspace.bcu-iasi.ro/handle/123456789/45825?show=full