Having faith in the "invisibles"

James Hillman writes in The Soul’s Code: “A passion to cage the invisible by visible methods continues to motivate the science of psychology, even though that science has given up the century-long search for the soul in various body parts and systems. When the searchers failed to find the soul in the places where they were looking, scientistic psychology gave up also on the idea of the soul.

“Great philosophical questions turn on the relations of visible and invisible. Our religious beliefs separate heaven and earth, this life and the afterlife, and our philosophical thinking cuts apart mind and matter, all of which forces a chasm between the visible and the invisible. How to bridge the chasm? What means are there for transporting the unseen into the seen? Or the seen into the unseen?

“There are three traditional bridges: mathematics, music, and myths. The equations of math, the notations on a musical score, and the personifications of myth cross the limbo land between two worlds. They offer a seductive front that seems to present the unknown other side, a seduction that leads to the delusional conviction that math, music, and myths are the other side. We tend to believe that the real truth of the invisible world is mathematical and might be put into a single unified field equation, and/or that it is a musical harmony of the spheres, and /or that it consists in mythical beings and powers, with names and shapes, who pull the strings that determine the visible.

“The three modes transpose the mystery of the invisible into visible procedures we can work with: higher math, musical notations, and mythical images. So enchanted are we by the mystery transposed into these systems that we mistake the systems for the mystery; rather, they are indications pointing toward it. We forget the old lesson, and mistake the finger that points at the moon for the moon itself.

“The long-lasting and ever-renewing vitality of myths has nothing factual behind it.” But, “Usual life, too, is backed by invisibles, those abstractions of high-energy physics that compose all the visible, palpable, and durable stuff we bump into; the invisibles of theology we kneel to; the invisible ideals that take us to war and death; the invisible diagnostic concepts that explain our marriages, our motives, and our madnesses. And what about time; has anyone seen it recently? All these invisibles, which we take so for granted, seem much harder and firmer than the flimsy fantasies of myth.

James Hilllman, The Soul’s Code, 92-96.