Fiction Zone and Otherworld

[treegod]

These were inspired by some discussions here (and a book I'm reading, see below), so I'm sharing them here.

The Fiction Zone
You pick up a good novel, you press play on your DVD and you get involved with the story. It doesn’t matter if the world represented isn’t real, it doesn’t matter if the characters aren’t real, but you’ll happily enter into it, even invest your emotions as you follow the characters through their own journey. You feel sympathy, empathy, antagonism and worry. You’re fully involved, you are in The Fiction Zone.

And then you put down the book; you switch off the TV, and reality is still there. You’ve suspended your disbelief (it was in space, it was in Middle Earth, it was an alien armada, it was a dragon) momentarily to enter into a new experience, a new perspective, with the imagination as your guide.

You’d not lost your reasoning nor common sense, they just subsided into the background; not gone, but not central. You don’t become delusional, because you have a sense of reality, a good orientation to it, and yet you can enter into another mode of thinking and feeling, in contact with the imagination. This is The Fiction Zone.

The Underworld
I’m reading The Transcendent Function by Jeffrey C. Miller, which talks about “Jung’s model of psychological growth through dialogue with the unconscious”. I came across a bit that mentioned the “otherworld”, not as a place, but as a perspective.

There is one universe, there is no “this world” nor “that world”. Just THIS world, lol. The world, though, isn’t just material, there are Other aspects to it, psychological depths. The Otherworld isn’t hidden behind/beneath/beyond this world, it is just the hidden aspects of this world. When we have glanced something of this hidden perspective connections can be made between things that rational thinking can’t make, intuitive leaps of consciousness we wouldn’t ordinarily consider.

The Otherworld is there with us. We just need to look within and develop “eyes to see”.

[DJ Droood]

I would say that you first example, the fictional world, is passive...it has been constructed for us, hopefully skillfully, and we experience it almost like a guided meditation, if it is good. Your second example is more active and involved...if you make a journey of perception, you are making more decisions and choices...you are the "author" of the experience.

[treegod]

The Fiction Zone, for me, includes when you're making art (i.e. being active) and writing stories. Normally it's passive because not everyone's involved with making art. The most effective Fiction Zone is through Jung's active imagination, we are prompted by symbols that arise from the unconscious and give them artistic expression.

The Otherworld is about how we percieve things. Instinct just reacts. Intellect makes logical connections. Intuition makes extra-logical connections. Not so much what we do, but how we perceive things, though how we perceive things influences our choices and actions.

I see these two as going together, that an intuitive perceptive facilitates active imagination. I suppose that's why I showed them together.

[Michael.Dwr]

Surely when you are creating your Art or writing your Story, you are using the Otherworld example. The person looking at your Art or reading your Story is in the Fiction Zone?

[treegod]

Surely when you are creating your Art or writing your Story, you are using the Otherworld example.

I was about to say yes, that the "otherworld perception" helps facilitate art (I think to some extent this is true). But a thought occurred to me, that intuition comes in the interpretation of art. To create art there's no "special perception" necessary, just a bit of creativity, but to understand where it comes from and what it is trying to say is something else. We can create something but have no insight into it (it's just an "interesting piece of art"), or we can have a sense of its significance via intuitive perception.

Sometimes insight isn't necessary, sometimes something deep down just needs expression. It's significance comes later, or not.

The person looking at your Art or reading your Story is in the Fiction Zone?

The artist (as I know my art, and my conception of the "Fiction Zone") has to enter into the Fiction Zone. Perhaps what I have written above, and even the name I chose "Fiction Zone" are a bit misleading.
For me, to enter into the Fiction Zone is an artistic and creative experience, otherwise I wouldn't be able to create art the way I do.

I think this requires another blog.

[Michael.Dwr]

Then you are saying that your Fiction Zone is not the same as some one watching a film or reading a book! That is a different Fiction Zone!

But to create art or write a book, your must use your imagination, intuition and inspiration (Awen) which to me is the Otherworld!

[treegod]

I'm talking about my own experience, and using my own terminology. I'm not trying to generalise these for everyone, just sharing mine.

For me the Fiction Zone of reading a story and the Fiction Zone of writing it are the same. Both are an immersion in imagination. And the same with meditations (like the ones in the OBOD course). In fiction I can find external symbols that resonate internally, in the same way that mythology does. Fiction can contain mythological and otherworldly significance for me, that is they resonante in some way within me.

The Fiction World and Otherworld, at least what I conceive of above, are the same. It is the unconscious emerging in symbols. What my second blog describes is perception of the Otherworld (which turns out to be just another, deeper, psychological aspect of this world, lol).

But that's me and my thoughts.

[Bart]

If you read the describtions, they are the same. Your intuition, inspiration and your imagination is fed through your unconscious. Which is never passive. Reading a book requires a good writer and a good reader.

However, Jung's unconscious is more than YOUR unconscious, Jung usually refer to the general unconscious. The part that we are all linked in some psychic plane. Which still means that the two planes can be the same, but than my imagination becomes your inspiration.

[Michael.Dwr]

Sorry I misinterpreted what you were trying to say

I think I can understand what you are saying now. But I think you can see that my perspective was different.