In this article I have drawn at length on Jung's writings in Collected Works vol 18 (The Symbolic Life) and on Terence McBride's (President of the C G Jung Society of Sydney from 1981-93) comments in 1988 on the Australian Bicentennial celebrations in 1988. I have then tried to relate these comments to the current challenge facing Australian over the Mabo court case and decision which overturned the view in Australian Law that Australia was uninhabited at the time of white settlement.

The Symbolic Life

Almost anything can be a symbol, a bird, a tree, a word, a visual image, a sound, a smell, a hat stand or even some-one else's body. The word symbol derives from the Greek, meaning `to throw together'. Jung's use of the term symbol was very different from it's common usage meaning, and far closer to its Greek origins. Jung used the term symbol to mean that which at a given time is the best possible representation of something which remains essentially unknowable. No given object or image is necessarily a symbol. It may be more accurate when we use the term `symbol' if we understood it as though it were an experience. The symbol is always for Jung a spontaneous living reality, an event that happens to one. Almost any thing can be at some times a symbol, and at other times have no symbolic content at all. To say the cross or the Olympic `symbol' are symbols is more often than not inaccurate. Mostly they are signs, known objects or images conveying a known meaning. It is only when they spontaneously invoke an experience of something beyond the obvious or already consciously known, that they are indeed symbols connecting us to `the mystery of the resurrection' or the `Olympic spirit'.

Put simply Jung's term `the symbolic life' refers to that sense of occasion when a person experiences her or his existence as serving a reality beyond the mundane, and having meaning beyond the purely personal. This is a numinous experience which takes one beyond the obvious and establishes a paradoxical state of unity of the material and immaterial, when the apparently mutually exclusive realities of the physical and psychic worlds are `thrown together'. Such experiences, when they occur in a cultural context, imbue the whole life with a sense of meaning.

They are connected in both directions, to the body of the church as community (the material world) and to the mysterious reality of Christ/God (the immaterial world). It is not able to be held onto but only lived while it lasts.

Jung is insistent throughout his writing that symbols and psychic events are spontaneous occurrences which happen to individuals. That is to say we cannot produce them at will. We cannot manufacture a symbolic life simply because we feel something is lacking. Neither can the group have a symbolic or psychic experience. It may be the container or giver of context through which individual experience is given deeper meaning, through which those not experiencing directly may vicariously partake of others' experiences, but no more. No matter how assiduously we repeat `the tried and true' rituals they are no guarantee of reconnection to the lost sense of `at-oneness' which symbolic experiences frequently bring to us. Jung puts it in this way:

In Jung's view all experience is individual. This implies a matrix or collective reference point within which symbolic experiences must be grounded for any sense of community or collective unity to be possible. For Jung such a matrix is composed of what he referred to as `cultural symbols'. These form a collectively activated numinous core or focus to which individual numinous experiences are attracted, and within which they are held or contained. Such `cultural symbols' are the basis of all collective mythological and religious traditions and may be seen as accretions or accumulations of individual experiences.

Whilst individuals are the direct carriers of symbolic experience they need the containment and release that cultural symbols are able to provide. People cannot live in a state of permanent symbolic experience or the practical requirements of life would never be met. It is through a viable collective symbolic life that individuals are able to find release which frees them to continue `normal' life outside the grip of the numinosity which accompanies symbolic experiences. Without a viable cultural matrix people are condemned either to being continually overwhelmed by symbolic material, or continually denying the symbolic in life in order to focus on practical life concerns.

Through cultural symbols the individual experience is knitted into the cultural matrix, and the cultural matrix is continually renewed. If the cultural matrix has a basis in, and therefore a place for, the irrational, for the symbolic and psychic, then such experiences will not alienate and separate the individual. Rather they will be his or her entry in to the `participation mystique' of containment, of a sense of community and continuity in which life has both individual and collective meaning. The following quotes from Jung indicate how he saw this process:

The matrix of `cultural symbols' which forms what Jung often referred to as the `collective consciousness' takes many and varied forms, and what follows is an examination of the two ends of a spectrum of forms which this matrix takes. On the one hand there is the highly spiritualised end which eschews the physical realm, and in which the matrix takes the form of abstract realities, mobile and universal in their form. On the other hand there is the soul oriented end of the spectrum in which the realm of matter itself is an essential part of the matrix, and where forms are attached to localities and natural objects. If we use the analogy of a sailing boat to represent either a culture, or an individual, we might consider this spectrum as reaching from the height of sail to the depth of keel. Here the sail would be the element of spiritual values and the keel the connection to soul values as related to the earth and matter. The precedent for the association of the sail with the spiritual orientation is strong in Western thinking as the connection of air and wind with the spirit is well known, The connection of soul and the earth or matter is less well established. In an article published in 1927 Jung refers to the soul as:

"a system of adaptation determined by the conditions of an earthly environment"

"the conditioning of the soul by the earth"

CW vol 10 pp29-30 paras 49 and 52

(in these case the German `seele' is taken to mean soul instead o

f mind which some sources suggest is a

more accurate translation.) I have taken these statements of Jung's as my precedent. So let us examine these two extremes.

The Spiritual Orientation (Yang)

The highly spiritualised orientation tends more and more to eschew or devalue the physical realm and sees it often in such terms as `a veil of suffering' or `realm of the devil/demi-urge'. This is the place in which we are trapped or into which we have fallen, and from which we need escape or release. At best it is seen as a realm that we have dominion over and can manipulate to our own ends, at worst as one we would be best to transcend (deny??) altogether. It is also interesting to look at the form the cultural symbols take in such an orientation. In the extreme there can be an almost complete lack of experience of the symbolic in connection with matter. The word or some other abstract form may become the primary symbolic form, and there is a sort of materialistic minimalism in the use of physical objects in the religious life. An example of this is the Protestant view of Catholicism as somewhat idolatrous because Catholics are seen as praying to and worshipping statues of Christ and Mary. Another example occurred at the 1991 World Council of Churches conference. A Korean woman delegate to that conference made her presentation to the gathered delegates by lighting candles, burning incense and dancing. By this she sought to incorporate her traditional Korean culture with the expression of her Christian faith. This presentation created a furore amongst some more orthodox delegates who attacked what she had done vigorously. The woman however consistently declined to enter into an intellectual debate and simply re-affirmed her need to present her own experience.

At this end of the spectrum the cultural symbols are often highly abstract in form and mobile (literally able to be carried around); a bare cross, the bible itself, or the Ten Commandments or Eight Precepts of Buddhism are examples. The highly refined quality of these gives them a universality and mobility which allows the individual to feel self contained and free to move about in his or her world without ill effect and fear.It may however cut the person off from the every-day experiential source of such symbols, eventually making them less and less accessible to a broad grouping of individuals. Thus the numinosity and impact of such symbols can be reduced more and more and experiential knowing may be reduced to a belief in the symbols as signifying other people's, often past, experiences. Thus a symbol is reduced to a sign, and personal religious experience is reduced to belief in the efficacy of what has gone before.

Within such a framework it is no surprise that sublimation or over spiritualisation is the most likely way to deal with the life of matter and the body, and that belief replaces personal religious experience. Hence it is often the case that direct religious experience is confined to fewer and fewer individuals, and may even be invalidated if it comes upon one not considered suitable. As fewer and fewer individuals partake in the symbolic life the danger is that the grounding of the cultural symbols in direct numinous experience may become narrower and narrower, to the point where its collective validity may really be in doubt. This is not to say that the archetypal reality itself is not real or accessible but that its expression via the cultural symbols may no longer activate the archetypal core in the individual, or be able to provide a receptacle for individual religious experience. Jung points out that when this happens there are very real and potentially harmful consequences at a collective level, he says:

One aspect of the shadow of this spiritual orientation can be seen in unconscious compensatory processes whereby the material realm is raised to a status of being unconsciously worshipped or feared. In such attitudes the consciously devalued material realm is unconsciously carrying a deep significance. Whilst it is seen as a passive reality which we are free to manipulate to our own ends, the success of these manipulations nevertheless determines our sense of ultimate worth both collectively and individually. Whether it be via the success of scientific endeavour, business ventures, or `New Age' affirmations, the outcomes which determine success are ultimately of a material nature rather than to do with a moral, ethical or spiritual value. This amounts to a form of unconscious concretism or literalism, via which the material reality is reasserting its need for a place of equal value and autonomy in our world view. I will return to this and other shadow aspects later.

The Soul Orientation (Yin)

The soul oriented end of the spectrum, which includes the realm of matter in its experience of the numinous is quite a different proposition. Here the numinosity of the symbolic is much more directly connected to the physical realm. The cultural symbols rather than being highly abstracted forms are most often experienced via natural objects and phenomena such as the elements, the sun, moon and stars, aspects of the landscape, animals and plants. Thus places and plants become sacred and animals and phenomena become the active agents of the archetypal realm. These are quite concrete, earthly realities which are charged with numinosity and meaning, and which demand an entirely different relationship than is required in the spiritual orientation with its notions of eschewal of and dominion over the material world.

With the realm of matter as the source of cultural symbols and one's personal religious experience an entirely different situation pertains. In this attitude one becomes intimately and intricately bound to the realm of matter and in particular to one's immediate environment. Rather than being an objectified reality which one can treat as separate from oneself the immediate environment is ones sustaining reality, and one is part of it. It provides the immediate experience of being nurtured both physically and psychically. Here the `land' is an immediate subjectively experienced reality at both physical and psychic levels, and to mistreat it would be akin to sacrilege. Furthermore separation from one's known locality leads to a sense of alienation and loss of soul. In this situation one can see clearly that people are far more bound to specific localised areas as the symbolic life is so much more bound to actual known natural objects. These objects may be less mobile, and have known cyclic processes of change via which human life is referenced. Seasonal cycles, animal migrations and vegetational changes are clearly linked and humans can either feel secure and contained within these patterns when they go according to expectations, or threatened and punished by them at other times.

This situation too can have its darker or negative side, in the form of superstition, fear and magical thinking which characterises much of `primitive' attitudes (which of course are not found exclusively in so called `primitive societies). When, at a day to day level, there is ignorance of the autonomy of elemental forces from human (religious) activity or lack of it, we face a difficult relationship to these realities. To ascribe all negative outcomes of elemental or natural phenomena (be it lack of food, dangerous storms or disease etc) to lack of appropriate behaviour on human terms places humanity in an invidious position. It leaves people at the mercy of apparently capricious and even malicious deities, which if not properly propitiated are felt as likely to continue what may be perceived as clearly punitive treatment of humanity. Harking back for a moment to the spiritual orientation one sees a shadow of this experience in much `New Age' positivism which has a strong unconscious magical thinking quality, and in superstitious reactions to synchronistic phenomena. Here too there is a form of literalism which is dangerous and difficult for humanity. If all physical phenomena are superstitiously ascribed psychic meaning a state of fearful paranoia can develop in which even the smallest actions are fraught with import beyond their real significance.

The Split and Its Consequences.

It is undeniable that these two orientation of human experience of the numinous have become increasingly split from each other, particularly in the Western world. In the West this development has its roots around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and has been strengthening ever since. In the past 100 years we have seen Christianity experiencing it's serious decline in ability to hold the numinous for a majority of people and with such a decline in the viability of our primary cultural matrix, serious consequences are to be expected. Of this Jung says:

Two parallel phenomena seem to be part of how this is manifested in the West and may provide a way of examining this development. As the numinosity was leached more and more out of peoples' experience of the material realm these two streams of activity seemed to develop side by side.

On the one hand the material world became more and more to be seen as that which by dint of their divinely given `dominion' over it, humans could wrest from the `devil of ignorance' and manipulate to their own ends. One sees here the beginnings of what Jung calls our `God almightiness', where in our rationalistic attempts to know the world in it's entirety and to see behind the curtain of every mystery, we take to ourselves the attributes of God. This is a collective inflation. In this increasingly rationalistic view of the world and life as a whole, the individual sense of meaning and connection within a containing collective life is more and more reduced. The denial of the reality of the psyche cuts people off from the `symbolic life' and leads to an inevitable externalisation of culture. Mythic and religious systems are reduced to the point where they may indeed die. As Jung said:

He pointed out over and over that people contained within a living mythic system, where the myth felt personally related to the individual's life, seem less prone to neurosis and psychological disturbances of all kinds. To quote him:

Western rationalism has become the new (spiritual) belief system but because it denies the reality of the psyche, the `symbolic life' has been driven into unconsciousness. As Jung has pointed out this does not mean that the energies associated with it no longer exist, it means instead that they will be lived unconsciously. These are the energies associated with the yearning and quest for meaning and also those to do with a sense of purposeful connection with one's fellow human beings, at least. I say at least because as we have seen in looking at the other end of the spectrum of expression of the `symbolic life', the whole of creaturehood, and even the vegetable world and the planet itself can be experienced as part of what we serve.

On the other hand we see that the unconscious compensatory process, which I briefly touched on earlier, is also occurring. Whilst the world view becomes increasingly rationalistic/scientific and the material world is seen merely as a plaything of the `scientist-priests', the reality of the psyche is denied and a cult of materialism evolves. We live in a sort of modern `cargo cult', but with the probable exception of adolescents, without the numinosity normally attached to such a situation. This pouring of a sense of meaning into the material world and the achievement of material goals, is an unconscious deification of the material realm. It is as though all the lost energies of yearning for and seeking meaning have attached themselves to the very thing we believe to be least divine. Or, as though the material world is calling forth such projections in order once again to attain its necessary equality with the ruling spirit. If the reality of the psyche is denied us we can only experience these energies in unconscious projection into the outer world. In this we are unable to experience need for meaning symbolically and the innate need for a symbolic life must perforce be literalised.

When symbolic experiences cannot be accepted and integrated into the lives of individuals and so of the society, when they have to be rationalised or explained away Jung suggests trouble is at hand:

Whenever we fail to see the symbolic reality of a situation/experience, that is when we are unable to hold the paradoxical reality that every event has a both a physical and a psychic component, we mutilate our relationship to life. In this sense all literalism is mutilation. And our culture is, by its very definition of reality as purely physical, a mutilation of humanity's relationship to life. Any science which attempts to do without the psyche as a correlative factor in human existence is fated to brutalise life. To quote Jung again:

So how are such repressed and neglected energies of the urge to experience life symbolically manifested unconsciously? We can see numerous examples of this in the West. The raising of politics and causes of all kinds to a status akin to what would once have been a `holy war' is a clear example. This is a phenomenon which has accelerated in the past 100 years, the time of Christianity's waning influence. In this development one sees how the sense of meaning and containment comes from serving the cause and the tight knit loyalty to party and ideology which is demanded. This is a form of unconscious tribalism with ideology serving as dogma or tribal lore and party rules and meetings serving on many levels as ritual occasions. Another example would be the fervour of peoples' dedication in following their favourite sporting team. In that state of emotional transport people become extreme to a degree that few would consider normal in everyday life. In both of these situations there is a `participation mystique' more typical of what we who consider ourselves modern, associate with `primitive' religious beliefs. In a state of `participation mystique' the individual identifies with the external reality and is transported beyond him or her self. In the modern example the person participates in sport or politics as a sort of divine drama and is lost to her or himself and the blandness of everyday life for a while, fighting for `the Truth' and against the (evil?) other.

The shadow is often very near to the surface in these situations and can be seen individually in the abuse directed at the other side on a personal level. It also manifests much more frighteningly in collective ways. This is clear to see in terrorist actions of all sorts, and in such things as the `tribal' hooliganism of some English soccer fans. Here one sees clearly where this unconscious numinosity can be a channel for darker energies. To quote Jung once again:

Human beings are in some part of their being essentially tribal, yearning after the completeness and containment that comes with the experience of being part of a whole. For a culture not to be able to provide this experience is deeply destructive to the individual and potentially disastrous for the culture. Once people could always go to the priestess/shaman/priest if an experience of the psyche was too big or they felt a loss of soul and have it attended to. They are now increasingly left without such solace and spiritual guidance. How can we address such matters now when we do not acknowledge the reality of the psyche and when the identity of the tribe is lost in a mass of people so huge that individual value is not possible? People need not only to value themselves but to be valued by the `tribe'.

People are left to deal with these forces and it is a task for which they now have no cultural symbols as tools to aid them. Individuals at the mercy of such forces will fall into dangerous inflations or require them of others on whom they project `god(dess)-like images, stars of screen and music, scientists and politicians. They play God or need others to do so for them.

Part of the modern problem is that the tribe has become so large. With the advent of the global village we no longer live in relatively self contained areas with relative autonomy and a sense of full responsibility for our local environment. Tribes were obviously not unaware of each others' existence and in Aboriginal culture the inter-linking of Dreaming stories over the whole continent is clear evidence of a known interdependence. With the tribe becoming the whole of humanity and with the containing ethos being scientific rationalism, which denies not only the reality of the psyche but the meaningful contribution of individuals to the life of the whole, what is left for us? Its no wonder people cannot feel whole. We are condemned to be bits, and insignificant bits at that, by a culture which sees the only meaningful force in the universe other than the will of human egos, as Chance. The only way left for us to not feel completely abject if we cannot reconnect with the denied reality of a `symbolic life' is to fall into what Jung calls our `God almightiness' and le Guin refers to as playing god....that is to fall into the trap of feeling that as individual egos we must somehow constrain the whole universe to fulfil our desires, or else we have failed.

Healing the Split

Is it possible to heal this split? Jung certainly gave no definitive answer to this question, though there are indications that he saw evidence of the process at work which may indeed lead to such a healing. In "The Creation of Consciousness" Edward Edinger reports the following scenario:

Elsewhere Jung indicates clearly that he sees the foundations as related to the collective unconscious and the experience of the archetypes, which he says are a living reality which continually influence what we build upon them. In the analogy of the sailing ship, if we have put up too much sail for the depth of keel we could well find ourselves in trouble if the weather turns rough. From this perspective it is evidently vital that we are cognizant of the relationship between what we are conscious of and what remains, or has been relegated to the unconscious. Otherwise we will build in ways inappropriate to our foundations of relationship to the unconscious. With too much sail our ship will capsize.

It has been a feature of European excursion into other regions of the world that such indigenous cultures as existed prior to their arrival were ruthlessly suppressed. Both via the dominant religious and political cultures of Europeans such suppression in many instances has made very difficult the survival of living and healthy aboriginal traditions. That such actions have been justified on the basis of material values is also important to note as it emphasises the materialistic bias of our culture in which as Terence McBride remarked in the January 1988 newsletter:

"..external cultural development usually takes place at the expense of internal culture: times of expansion, material growth and glittering wealth are often paid for dearly with loss of depth, loss of soul and life-meaning."

In the soul oriented cultures many physical and bodily activities such as dance were a vital aspect of the living culture via which relationship to the mysteries of the psychic life were maintained. As an example, dance is an element of the `symbolic life' in which the dancer(s) are intermediaries between inner and outer realities. They do not simply `act as' or represent totemic or dreaming entities, they become channels through which the archetypal energies symbolised by the ancestor/totem/dreaming figure, flow and become immediately present (they are to use the modern term in spiritual circles channelers). This is not a re-enactment but rather an immediate psychic experience /event in which the dancer is inhabited by the soul/spirit of the ancestor/ totem/dreaming being. Thus dancers, singers, artists and storytellers are not performers in the extraverted sense that we normally think of them. What is done is done primarily as a ritual act of invocation and only secondarily for the `audience'. It is in this sense fundamentally a sacred or religious activity, akin to the Holy Communion of Christianity. To quote Terence McBride once again:

The Aborigines, in their experience of the land as also integral to their experience and knowledge of the Dreaming, never developed the split between psyche and physis that so characterises the Western view of reality. It is this lack of splitness which seem at the root of indigenous cultures worldwide not impacting as severely on the environment as Western and Asian cultures have. Sacred places are story places, and places where there is an immediacy about the interpenetration of the material and immaterial worlds. Sacred places however were protected by tribal structure and the `Law', and the importance of the tribe and its function are here significant. The tribe and its structures gave individuals a sense of place and meaningful function which is severely lacking for many of us in modern Western life. It also held responsibility for the land and the sacred places, proper attention to and protection of them.

That we do not fall for naive beliefs about a tribal utopia is vital but that some new conception of how our needs for separateness and unity can be met is urgent. We cannot return to the old `participation mystique' and its unconscious manifestations in modern life are likely to destroy us if we do not address the need to which they point us.

Rather than go on in a theoretical way I would prefer to attempt to bring this discussion into connection with contemporary events in our own lives. At an individual level this means on a simple level that we each in our own unique way honour and attend to the reality of the inner life as we experience it. For many of us this involves a relationship to our dreams for a Sir Lauren van der Post puts it:

However, I intend here to try to address this at a more general level, as events for us as Australians may be seen to be offering an opportunity to look into these matters as a group. Here the individual level of the dream and other symbolic/psychic experiences may or may not find a context and interplay in which a renewed sense of the `symbolic life' as Jung saw it may emerge. Terence McBride in commenting on the Bicentennial celebrations in 1988 remarked that:

"The collective shadow side of the bright Bicentennial celebrations has to do with the white man's relations with the Aboriginal people over the last 200 years. The darker, shadow side of our young history is to be found very much in that area."

I will now attempt to explore how that shadow may be seen in the current situation which has evolved around the Mabo decision, and the attempt to frame legislation to give it more general expression.

Mabo and an Australian Context

If in this situation we can see the potential for renewal of the `symbolic life' for all Australians, it may well be a vital turning point for Australian culture as a whole. If somehow we (non indigenous and indigenous Australians) can see in it the source not only of reconciliation of all the different cultural groupings in this country, but also a way towards cultural renewal in the broadest sense, then we are in a time of real hope. As Jung observed this seems utterly necessary:

It is of course absolutely necessary in this attempt not to fall into the all too common attitude of idealising Aboriginal people as the `noble savage' saviours in whom we seek redemption from our own malaise. Aboriginal people seem clearly to want a blending of cultures, but one in which the need to preserve their traditions as living realities/ rather than as records of dead or bygone history, is theirs to explore to the fullest. To quote Terence McBrides January 1988 newsletter article:

"The aboriginal culture which the `First Settlers' found in Australia was a deeply introverted one. They had developed no great material culture - they lived adequately off the land and with dignity in the simplest of conditions, and had very few possessions....and he quotes Galarrwuy Yunipingu the chairman of the Northern Land Council, as follows..... `We want our ceremonies. We want our language. We want our stories to be told to our children. We want to sing. We want to dance....(because) we want to talk to our land, and the land to talk to us"

Here we hear strong echoes of Jung as I quoted him earlier and it is important to recall that the land and nature speak to a people through individual experiences in the day to day life. Dianne Bell describes this as follows:

If we can only find through Mabo a way to make a real and valued place for those of all cultures who need and seek to live the `symbolic life' we may be investing in the health and wellbeing both physical and psychic of all Australians. Initially this may need to take the form of a real commitment of all Australians to making space both physical and psychic for Aboriginal Australians to re-establish and/or renew their relationship to the `symbolic life' as they experience it. This involves a radical shift in values for non Aboriginal Australians for it requires acceptance of an investment of both time and physical resources in a way that is quite alien. Jung speaking of the Aborigines from his reading (in 1939) remarked that they:

It also involves allowing a situation to develop in which the re-emergence of the `symbolic life' in the here and now is possible. A simple reconstruction of old traditions will not suffice in this matter as an indigenous Hawaiian experience attests to. Missionaries banned the Hula in Hawaii and now in its rediscovery the Hawaiian dancers point out that they are not simply re-enacting the old dances but recomposing them in the context of things that are happening in the present. This is a redreaming process, in which the `symbolic life' is renewed and it will of necessity involve the total situation in the present, including the presence of other cultural influences. Such processes involve the spontaneous emergence of symbolic material which in itself cannot be constrained within socio-political structures, and cannot be legislated for (or against), for as Jung pointed out, "symbols are the living facts of life." The Aborigines too will be confronted by this truth in the process which they seem to desire of Mabo, but they appear to recognise this more clearly than non aboriginal people.

If we truly seek the possibility of such a process of reconnection it will of necessity involve a sacrifice of physical resources as is the case with all investment. It is normal at the outset of a business venture to outlay resources which are being invested in the future productivity and profitability of the venture and even to expect short term losses. What we are being called to see here is the need for investment across the chasm of disbelief created by our cultural denial of the reality of the psyche. We need to invest physical resources in the possibility of a future psychic renewal and it is hard to imagine for many of us that this is a viable and necessary risk to take. It is here that we need to broaden our horizons, to see where the psychic resources of the land and Aboriginal people have been plundered to feed what Jung refers to as Western man's inability to rest until "he has infected the whole world with his own greedy restlessness." If we can see this we may begin to perceive the full extent of the opportunity that Mabo represents for all Australians.

For non aboriginal Australians to entrust their cultural renewal to the Aboriginal people who have long carried their shadow is a `big ask'. Yet psychologically we know that it is in the ability to face the shadow and withdraw its projections from others, that individual renewal is to be found. Unless we address this shadow of our culture our individual and collective distress can only increase. Can we believe that they are not motivated by the same "greedy restlessness" which so characterises our treatment of them? Can we resist naively seeing them as `noble savage' saviours? We can no longer expect to be contained in a `participation mystique', for once one is conscious of the processes which we have been discussing such an avenue is no longer available. Jung commented that he could see the value of his Pueblo friend's belief that he was the `son of Father Sun'. He said he wished he could be a Pueblo, but he just could not do it. Symbols cannot be invented, they happen, and so we cannot simply create a new myth as some would like to believe, but must surrender to the chaotic processes of engagement with the unconscious, both personal and collective. We must do this without the container and safety net of organised religions or belief systems, which must include politics and science. No belief system which offers us such complete security that all questions seem answered can be anything but a diversion from the real challenge.

It remains to be seen whether we can commit our resources individually and collectively to this provocative and challenging process. Will we capsize due to running too much sail or languish in the doldrums with so much keel that we cannot move? We will need to attend to our own inner lives and to the psychic life of the culture, so that a renewal of cultural symbols sufficient to embrace the growing diversity of Australian culture may be possible. It will demand a degree of mutual good will and psychological maturity which will plumb the depths of soul and heights of spirit for all concerned. The future of the good ship Australia rests with this struggle.