Overcoming Images in Memory

We don't need the 'astro-mental' levels, but illustrating them is very important for understanding the process of the method I am offering, of Analytic Psychocatharsis. Kirpal Singh recommended to first approach the deva or 'astral' level by backing the gaze up to behind the eyes.

He explained, that there is the place where 'light' in the form of 'stars, moon and sun' are perceived. Then the brightest of stars is to be 'pierced' in order to reach the 'master's' SHINES form.

But, there are many hurdles to overcome on the way there. The main difficulty lies in the images and memories that aren't easy to overcome (the image-gazes). Overcoming images in memory requires returning to the ‚main star' each time they occur. It is such memories which constitute an exact reversal of what we have said concerning the 'gaze-image', nothing more than image-gazes, gazes bound to pictures, fixed gazes, interruptive pictures.

These gazes have a libidinal touch to them. These are gazes which are kept based on a desire to gaze, namely psychic objects (objects 'o') of our past or of other relationships. These are not necessarily only erotic image-gazes, and may also be aggressive. But then, in meditation or in yoga, engulfment in all of the other scenes may set in, the actual suspense of which might not even have been experienced. Their desireful or aggressive character emerges.

Because every picture, even every perception, contains a 'point of the subject', a spot of one's own desire, which you don't see yourself.1 Would you see it the gaze would tip over in a perverse or aggressive form. Famous examples are M. Foucault's and Lacan's analyses to the picture 'Las Meninas' by Velazquez.

The authors show, that Velazquez was bothered by latent (non- manifested) pedophilia that unconsciously drove him to paint the infanta Margherita in extreme frequency. The potential 'view under her clothes' was obviously the image-gaze that fixated him without him being conscious of it.2

 

1 Lacan, J., Seminaire XIII, in which the author shapes a diagram for the field of vision and includes the pleasure in looking.

2 Here again another indication that Velasquez was by no means pedophile, but only latently, unconsciously. In any case, this deals with the forbidden and repressed look, just as when a child is refused by its mother - a special case, as it is understood to be an exceptionally strong 'image gaze', since it is forbidden.