life. A psychologist immediately pointed out that the theory made no sense at all: man's central idea is always to 'cut' the umbilical cord and, from then on, the brain or the heart become the more important symbols.
When we're interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena 'signs', the sceptics 'coincidence', and psychologists 'concentrated focus', although I've yet to find out what term historians should use). One night, my adolescent daughter came home with a navel piercing.
'Why did you do that?'
'Because I felt like it.'
A perfectly natural and honest explanation, even for a historian who needs to find a reason for everything. When I went into her room, I saw a poster of her favourite female pop star. She had a bare midriff and, in that photo on the wall, her navel did look like the centre of the world.
I phoned Heron and asked why he was so interested. For the first time, he told me about what had happened at the theatre and how the people there had all responded to a command in the same spontaneous, unexpected manner. It was impossible to get any more information out of my daughter, and so I decided to consult some specialists.
No one seemed very interested, until I found Fran ois Shepka, an Indian psychologist ( Editor's note: the scientist requested that his name and nationality be changed ), who was starting to revolutionise the therapies currently in use. According to him, the idea that traumas could be resolved by a return to childhood had never got anyone anywhere. Many problems that had been overcome in adult life resurfaced, and grown-ups started blaming their parents for failures and defeats. Shepka was at war with the various French psychoanalytic associations, and a conversation about absurd subjects, like the navel, seemed to relax him.
He warmed to the theme, but didn't, at first, tackle it directly. He said that according to one of the most respected psychoanalysts in history, the Swiss analyst Carl Gustav Jung, we all drank from the same spring. It's called the 'soul of the world'. However much we try to be independent individuals, a part of our memory is the same. We all seek the ideal of beauty, dance, divinity and music.
Society, meanwhile, tries to define how these ideals should be manifested in reality. Currently, for example, the ideal of beauty is to be thin, and yet thousands of years ago all the images of goddesses were fat. It's the same with happiness: there are a series of rules, and if you fail to follow them, your conscious mind will refuse to accept the idea that you're happy.
Jung used to divide individual progress into four stages: the first was the Persona the mask we use every day, pretending to be who we are. We believe that the world depends on us, that we're wonderful parents and that our children don't understand us, that our bosses are unfair, that the dream of every human being is never to work and to travel constantly. Many people realise that there's something wrong with this story, but because they don't want to change anything, they quickly drive the thought from their head. A few do try to understand what is wrong and end up finding the Shadow.
The Shadow is our dark side, which dictates how we should act and behave. When we try to free ourselves from the Persona, we turn on a light inside us and we see the cobwebs, the cowardice, the meanness. The Shadow is there to stop our progress, and it usually succeeds, and we run back to what we were before we doubted. However, some do survive this encounter with their own cobwebs, saying: 'Yes, I have a few faults, but I'm good enough, and I want to go forward.'
At this moment, the Shadow disappears and we come into contact with the Soul.
By Soul, Jung didn't mean 'soul' in the religious sense; he speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of all knowledge. Instincts become sharper, emotions more radical, the interpretation of signs becomes more important than logic, perceptions of reality grow less rigid. We start to struggle with things to which we are unaccustomed and we start to react in ways that we ourselves find unexpected.
And we discover that if we can channel that continuous flow of energy, we can organise it around a very solid centre, what Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men