In some limestone areas, rivers flow across the landscape and disappear into the ground. The entrance to a system of underground cavities is called a ponor. Think of it as a sinkhole with passageways connected to a cave system.
Ponors and sinkholes form when the roofs of limestone caves collapse, opening a passage to the surface. Chance flows of streams in the area result in “lost creeks” and “lost rivers.” The disappearing streams usually reemerge from some cave opening at a lower elevation, often where the underground flow becomes a tributary to a larger regional river.
Freud, Jung, and a number of a priori philosophers have argued for a mental process that is the antithesis of a “lost stream.” In their views, the rivers emerge as though the mental ponor is an opening through which the flow counters the pull of gravity. The mental stream originates in the cave and emerges to run on the surface.
Those who hold such a view are at least partially correct. The instinct of animals appears to be an example. Too young to learn from parents and relatives, young animals have instinctive behaviors that ensure survival by welling up. But the human ponor seems to work both ways. Water both emerges from the deep and enters from the surface, as we know from our dreams.
If you have never traveled over or lived in a limestone region, you are probably unfamiliar with the topography known as karst. Ponors and sinkholes make the surface rolling with bowl-shaped dips of sunken land and small hills where no cave roof has collapsed. It is through such a landscape that streams wend their way, sometimes avoiding and sometimes draining into the underground passageways.
Human mental topography mimics this landscape. The stream of consciousness appears to originate at the surface sometimes and at other times below ground. What comes out of the ground is a fluid that has circulated among the recesses of secret cavities, some of which date from before your time. What goes into the ponor of the mind is the stuff of your life, both real and virtual experience, both actual and false memories, both opinion and fact. Find the exit and entrance holes if you really want to understand who you are. Watch what comes out and goes in.
Ponors and sinkholes form when the roofs of limestone caves collapse, opening a passage to the surface. Chance flows of streams in the area result in “lost creeks” and “lost rivers.” The disappearing streams usually reemerge from some cave opening at a lower elevation, often where the underground flow becomes a tributary to a larger regional river.
Freud, Jung, and a number of a priori philosophers have argued for a mental process that is the antithesis of a “lost stream.” In their views, the rivers emerge as though the mental ponor is an opening through which the flow counters the pull of gravity. The mental stream originates in the cave and emerges to run on the surface.
Those who hold such a view are at least partially correct. The instinct of animals appears to be an example. Too young to learn from parents and relatives, young animals have instinctive behaviors that ensure survival by welling up. But the human ponor seems to work both ways. Water both emerges from the deep and enters from the surface, as we know from our dreams.
If you have never traveled over or lived in a limestone region, you are probably unfamiliar with the topography known as karst. Ponors and sinkholes make the surface rolling with bowl-shaped dips of sunken land and small hills where no cave roof has collapsed. It is through such a landscape that streams wend their way, sometimes avoiding and sometimes draining into the underground passageways.
Human mental topography mimics this landscape. The stream of consciousness appears to originate at the surface sometimes and at other times below ground. What comes out of the ground is a fluid that has circulated among the recesses of secret cavities, some of which date from before your time. What goes into the ponor of the mind is the stuff of your life, both real and virtual experience, both actual and false memories, both opinion and fact. Find the exit and entrance holes if you really want to understand who you are. Watch what comes out and goes in.
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