The Collective Unconscious

Clouds brood; the atmosphere is heavy; there is a sense of impending rain. The afternoon is moving into twilight. Small New Holland honey-eaters knowingly flash their bright yellow wing-patch as they scoot just above the lawn to play hide and seek in the trees and shrubs only to reappear moments later.

A few drops of rain make their noisy presence heard on the zincalum roofing. There is stillness in the air. It occurs to me that this act of consciously knowing and observing is a distinctively human attribute. In pondering this idea I am also reminded of the collective unconscious, that part of the mind which we are not aware of, that hidden storehouse of memories, instincts, and experiences common to all humankind that each of us inherit at birth. I recently experienced this as I sat with thousands of others waiting for Carols by Candlelight to begin on a beautiful warm, still, Perth evening, the meandering Swan river barely a hundred metres away, its history hidden somewhere in the tide of geological time.

I wait for the music to begin; a new river of light is slowly emerging, sourced by candles. Naked candles, I notice, are now things of the past; little battery charged candles whose flames change colour are the things of the present that swell the new awakening river. I sense I am more than simply a part of a crowd, I sense an affinity - the real but abstract idea of humanity: babies, young enthusiastic parents, ageing grandparents, all gathering to celebrate something. Is it an idea? A belief? Is it something more?

I am aware of people with their rugs on the ground, hampers open, food being passed around for sharing. My mind suddenly catapults to a scene on the banks of a river in a fictional world where people gather and picnic…the whole restless mob of us spread out on blankets...in a good world in the midst of our living.

As evening settles itself quietly around us, with the singing and gentle movement of people around me, a new frame of reference emerges in my consciousness, I hear the murmuring of everlastings and see them proudly waving their yellow, pink and white flags against a backdrop of stylised gumtrees, many shedding their rabbit-like skin, daring to greenness against a dry red earth above a blue sky broken by tufts of white cloud.

The landscape opens up further to the broken bones of dead trees that lie scattered across the dusty red carpet, home to scurrying ants and lazing lizards. A post and wire fence, leaning forward in places as it succumbs to age and weariness, boards the paddock. A land of extremes, geologically fascinating, crossed by hundreds of song lines, the pathways of the creator-beings of the Dreamtime, unseen, but nevertheless real, criss-crossing this vast continent.

A dryness hovers across the landscape, there is a hint of a mirage on the bitumen that runs parallel to the fence, a dark scar across this countryside; a landscape changed forever, but it is the roads that throw a lifeline between small farming communities. Further along, the brooding water of a dam lies still as it ponders its history - a part of a 'civilised' landscape that has been divided, re-shaped, parceled out and now packaged for tourists. The sudden applause of the crowd drags me back to the sea of waving candles and the familiar sound of a well-known Carol.

I have often felt the force of this shared experience, especially in those moments of mindfulness, usually when the air is still and even noise becomes a part of the silence... sitting on a beach, beneath a brooding sky pondering the approaching cyclone over a thousand kilometres to the north, with dark and ominous clouds above me.

The waves crash, sand is churned, the water becomes a course sandy mix with shards of swirling seaweed blasted to freedom by the naked power of the ocean. I instinctively know this swirling water is not a place to be despite its calling, Siren-like - daring me to attempt that dive into its washing machine frenzy.

I remain still on the cool sand, contemplating the awesome power of this ocean and suddenly feel my insignificance against this recognisable force. I instinctively move further back from the shoreline. I wonder if those present along the coastal shoreline of Australia over twenty thousand years ago also sensed the approaching might of nature as the great rising of the seas began. Witnessed by generations of coastal Aboriginals, the rising water flooded the coastal plains and valleys, severing Australia from New Guinea in the north and Tasmania in the south. This massive event shaped the site of what was to become every capital city except Canberra. 

As I continue to remain motionless I recognise that shared feeling of human experience – a sense of awe. Through what has become an archetypal idea, millennia become the present moment; the now becomes greater than itself.

Dusk is approaching when I turn my back on the ocean, now calmer and more at peace with itself. I walk across the cool sand towards the buildings and shops, a landscape changed from my childhood, but still holding familiar lines. Shadows of past buildings impose themselves on my imagination.

As I climb the steps to the broad walk and join others and ease myself back into suburbia, I glance back at the darkening sea comfortable with the Fish Lamb’s idea in the novel Cloudstreet that we all battle in the same corridor that time makes for us.