The following are example scenarios for use of MYTHSEEKER. In each, a user approaches to explore personal life-patterns of mythic significance for him or her. These examples in no way exhaust the current or future possibilities of the MYTHSEEKER software system. Place yourself in an appropriate situation!

JUNGIAN ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
SHAMANISM
DISSATISFIED WITH FAITH
NEW PERSONAL DEPTH SYSTEM
CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY
MEDIEVAL MONASTIC CATHOLICISM
THE KABBALAH
EAST INDIAN SPIRITUALITY
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
DEPTH SCIENCE
EXPERIMENTAL DEPTH SYSTEMS

JUNGIAN ARCHETYPAL PSYCHOLOGY
The user has been a student of Jungian archetypal psychology and believes the collective unconscious guides the course of life through emergent, archetypal imagery in dreams and myth. The user views the individuation process as fundamental for life and spiritual progress.
Assessment first establishes a certain sense of closeness to these beliefs, and that the user is a highly visual person preferring soft, diffuse visual textures. Due to complexity and subtlety of analysis, there is interpretation by an analyst or counselor, who is assisted by MYTHSEEKER open-loop assessment processes.
Facilitation indicates an intermediate stage of individuation, and determines an appropriate psychological type involving the four functions of the Jungian typology. It is realized, based on dream analysis, that the user may be helped by visual immersion in a beautiful mandala.
The enactor module creates this virtual reality as delineated previously by the facilitator module. As a result the user experiences a virtual reality with the mandala—a numinous agent—presented in the desired soft and diffuse way. The mandala can pulsate with cyclical rhythms the user finds natural, exhibiting both time rhythms and visual rhythms. The user is enabled to create the virtual mandala with appropriate levels and forms of detail, color, and size, and reflecting the user's dream symbolism as a step toward personal individuation.
The Jungian archetypal understanding is also used to work with the emergence process that underlies all Depth Systems. Thus, in the model, archetypal processes are fundamental simply for having a world; and, viewed as a means of focusing mythic life, the same processes are a Depth System.

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SHAMANISM
The user has participated in shamanic ceremonies and finds the worldview and practices of shamanism to be quite satisfying.
The assessment function determines this, and the user's inclination to solid study as well as proneness to depth of shamanic experience, and notes forms of visual texture, sound patterns, and time flow that are personally congenial.
Facilitation determines that the user wants to explore shamanism more fully, desiring an overview of several traditions followed by experience of chosen enactments. In result, a series of enactments is set up, offering individual and comparative studies of shamanism in the southwestern United States, Alaska, Peru, Siberia, Africa, and including Australian aboriginal Dreamtime experience.
The user experiences these successive enactments in virtual reality making use of appropriate visual and aural experience, also exploring ritual and visionary aspects. Cyclic, repeating time experience is quite natural for the venue of shamanism. All of this is expressed by agents such as power animals, spirit guides, and virtual shamans. The participant can assume these roles—such as Eagle, Snake, or Bear—within an appropriate virtual reality.
On a subsequent visit the user decides to explore ritual experience via enactments using visualization of intense, glowing quartz crystals (agents) and spirit helpers (agents also). The user is enraptured by this and requests referral to an outside source of continuing experience, which he is given. Subsequent sessions take place to study and experience ceremonial and ritual aspects guided by numinous agents.

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DISSATISFIED WITH FAITH
The user has followed a particular but dissatisfying faith (unnamed here) for years, in which the user was raised. The faith requires rigid adherence to a party line and the user believes that another, more living path would be better for his or her actual temperament and natural expressive instincts. The user has realized that an aspect of maturity is to understand one's mortality—the presence of potential death that is present continually. The previous tradition claims that all is love and beauty, that there is no darkness in life, and nothing negative should even be voiced or thought of, let alone performed. The user is not satisfied with this and wants to explore particular alternatives.
MYTHSEEKER assessment records the user's personal data, and the fact of being repelled by his inherited faith. The user decides to experience the attitude toward death and mortality in a number of traditions, exemplified by several Depth Systems.
The facilitator module as a result focuses on a series of enactments giving experience of how the dark side is understood in the chosen systems.
The user experiences all of these in virtual realities, in succession; and perhaps is involved with a virtual teacher agent in each case and is led through appropriate virtual experiences expressed via preferred ways of experiencing visual and sound texture.
The user finds (in this case) deep affinity with a particular Depth System, explores it more fully, and decides to adopt it to continue his or her course of life and exploration.

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NEW PERSONAL DEPTH SYSTEM
The user wants to create a new Depth System—a body of knowledge, wisdom, visual and aural processes that speak in the deepest ways.
One available approach is eclectic, namely to select meaningful enactments from existing Depth Systems, which can then be made available as the user's "own" virtual reality. The user first indicates significant life patterns and texture of experience in the assessment phase. Facilitation then finds related archetypal life shapes and patterns in Depth Systems, suggesting potential enactments. The user can then explore these, gradually to select and cull those that are on target. Experimentation takes place with forms and levels of visualization, shapes and textures of sound, kinds of entities and numinous agents participated with, explanation of individual origin, nature, and destiny.
Another approach is to be in a virtual reality with an amorphous, aware agent radiant with intense luminous light; the user then gives this agent textured shape and sound as desired in ways that are intuitively "right". The virtual reality offering this can have ways of helping to focus and structure visions.
With an authentic approach this can elicit archetypal projection and can evolve into personal meditative enactments. The user is enabled to participate and to experience "new myth" and to shape it in ongoing fashion. This is accomplished by shaping a Personal Depth System.

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CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY
The user adheres to charismatic Christianity and is quite comfortable in this belief system. He comes to MYTHSEEKER to deepen understanding of Old and New Testament scripture and to experience the lives, situations, and beliefs of early patriarchs and church fathers.
Once MYTHSEEKER understands these goals, the shape of the user's life experience is used to suggest particular Biblical figures that could serve as models, and from whom learning could take place in subsequent enactments. Enactments are then determined, to explain and interpret Biblical text, to experience dramatizations of major historical events, and to role-play to learn ways of healing by laying on of hands and praying to the Holy Ghost. The user can be referred via the "leave and return" process to external experience and learning, then return for more enactments.
Enactments can also teach about Bible prophecy, and, if desired, can help trace similarities in other Depth Systems, some of which precede and prefigure Christianity by very long periods. Scenarios include visualizing and hearing virtual reality choirs of angels, with which the user can participate; the creation of the world and other incredible events.

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MEDIEVAL MONASTIC CHRISTIANITY
The user is in a life-crisis, was raised in a Catholic cultural background, and has strong preference for rich visual experience.
The facilitator module realizes the person's closeness to Roman Catholicism (which he affirms), and notes the situation's similarity to the life of a particular Preceptor in the early church. The user then decides to role-play in virtual reality as guided by the Preceptor's experience and virtual presence as a mythic agent. The virtual environment uses the historical time frame of the Church—and shapes visual texture and quality to the user's needs.
Involvement with the consecration of a gothic cathedral, such as Chartres, or a Cistercian chapel, is available, as well as participation with methods of contemplation. The user could also experience Gregorian chant (which is a mythic agent in the form of sound textures) and engage in systems of contemplation. The user changes life practices to incorporate rich, living ritual and contemplation much as that in virtual reality experience.

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THE KABBALAH
The user was raised in reform Judaism, which is felt to be satisfying as a guide through life, and is comforting with its ceremonies, observances, and teachings. However, the user has for years wanted to explore the Kabbalah, the marvelous teaching of inner worlds.
After the assessment function determines preferred ways of experiencing, the facilitation function arranges a series of enactments which are pursued on successive visits. First, the user is given an overview of the Kabbalah, then facets are experienced that appeal most. The user learns of the Etz Chaim—the Tree of Life—visualized with its beautiful, glowing mystic spheres connected by paths of meditation.
A more complex assessment suggests where the user most naturally participates on the meditative path—and a Kabbalistic virtual reality is generated in which the Tree is rotated so as to place near him the appropriate sphere. The user chooses to see orders of angels, hear choruses, and to connect to the depth of the kabbalah—guided in contemplation, shown visualizations, helped to concentrate so as to optimize the potential for inner realization.

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EAST INDIAN SPIRITUALITY
The user wishes to investigate and experience East Indian spirituality. In the general Indian religious tradition there are four recognized stages of life: childhood, student, adult householder, and aged person. Additionally there are major approaches to spiritual experience depending on the personality of the aspirant. These include karma yoga (work or service), jnana yoga (knowledge), raja yoga (psychological), mantra yoga (repeating sacred words of power), and hatha yoga (physical asanas).
The assessment phase for this user identifies the personal factors usable to suggest the life stage and personality structure, plus the fact of being interested or experienced in Indian religion.
The facilitation then designs one or more enactments of particular types. There are many possibilities depending on stage of life and personality structure—which can of course be blended and combined with other situations. Some possibilities: participating with a Vedic sage who teaches and guides; involvement with a numinous diagram or yantras along with chant; being guided through breathing exercises (pranayam) via diagrams with moving points of light; participating with visionary realms of gods and goddesses; participating with creation of worlds and universes; ceremonies that are powerful and beautiful. The user can be involved with these to find intense and abiding meanings in his or her life.

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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
Egyptian mythology has been of intense interest to the client for many years. MYTHSEEKER now offers a way for him to explore how this system might contribute to his Personal Depth System. The experiential systems of the Heliopolis, Memphis, and Thebes initatory centers will be incorporated. As an adjunct the client can experience how the Egyptians viewed world and cosmos.
Virtual reality enactments are available for participation with mythic agents such as Atum, Ptah, Osiris and Isis, and their correspondences with the stellar Duat realm involving Sirius, the Belt of Orion, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Another kind of mythic agent is the Temple as sacred to the Egyptians, and hence enactments involving empowering of such Temples. This will reflect implications of precision geometric alignments discovered for the Giza complex involving the Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaura pyramids, and the Great Sphinx. Other enactments involve initiatory rituals according to the most reliable sources, rituals to gain happiness and legitimate mythic grounding.
The viewpoint of MYTHSEEKER is that Egypt (originally called Kemi) was a high culture with profound spirituality. The client can places elements of special interest into his Personal Depth System building Personal Myth in conjunction with exploring other Depth Systems. Such elements can then be contributed to the World Depth System.

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DEPTH SCIENCE
The user is a research scientist concerned with the nature of physical science. In his work he feels close at times to an essence of existence, but believes science, with its powerful but highly reductionist viewpoint, to be divorced from mythic or spiritual dimensions. MYTHSEEKER assessment identifies the user as an intuitive intellectual according to Jungian typology and Kierseyan temperament analysis. The user becomes involved with enactments giving mythic dimensions of the reality science involves.
The user learns that perspectives of physical science are based on primal myth. According to this, the origin, nature, and destiny of the world and universe involve the Big Bang, followed by structuring of the cosmos, followed perhaps by transition toward a regained quiescent state. In this view fundamental particles are created by the four basic forces, and in turn create all of the physical universe.
MYTHSEEKER involves the client in enactments that are consistent with, but extending beyond, science theory and methodology. These enactments show that the science framework operates psychologically like a mythology when it shapes one's worldview; that science is not opposed to mythic views of world and cosmos; that meditation can be based on repeatability and predictability of inner experience. He comes to understand that eminent scientists such as Einstein, Schrodinger, Eddington, Haldane, Sheldrake, Newton, and Kepler have found deeper reality through combining science (mechanism) with purpose (meaning) and its unfolding. The user realizes that current views involving e.g. general relativity and quantum mechanics are symbolism and metaphor working with the deep transformations that all systems of myth approach.
In result he realizes his work to be participation with the mystery of existence using fundamental symbolism and methodology of physical science. Thus the client becomes open to a fuller lifepath combining scientific understanding with mythic experience. He can build a Personal Depth System and contribute chosen elements to the World Depth System.

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EXPERIMENTAL DEPTH SYSTEMS
It is possible to offer users an array of Depth Systems especially crafted for experimental, visionary, exploratory worlds. The primary requirement is that the systems must observe and reflect the MYTHSEEKER qualitative model of world-emergence.
One form of experimental Depth System could explore existential themes in one or more Depth Systems, themes such as human mortality, courage, death and rebirth.
Another form of experimental Depth System relates to primeval awareness and experience of the human race extending back to the proto-human, capturing the immense scope and sweep thereof; or involvement with visionary spiritual realms spoken of by various traditions; or past lives experience.
Still another form of Depth System creates worlds based on current theories of consciousness, such as quantum physics processes; or viewing present modes of consciousness as influenced by future stages of the human race and the kinds of world-awareness that would ensue; or worlds exploring the domains of machine intelligence interplaying with human needs. Existential theories of the spatialization of time, and other modal interchanges, can be experienced and explored.
Depth Systems can be developed for integrated mythic performance art using agents to explore extended mythic realms.

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This page last updated on August 26, 1998