The answer is/was incredibly simple. I'd been thinking about John Lennon's tune "I am the eggman" and I had put together that as the song begins with the phrase "I am He" - and continues with "I am the Eggman, I am the Walrus," I understood it to be a reference to the Upanishads and other Eastern texts, which use the phrase "I am he" followed by "I am the Atman. I am the Brahmin." It refers to the individual consciousness as an individual coming to the realization that she or he shares consciousness with others and everyone and everything. So I felt John was cloaking this in comic imagery from Lewis Carroll (Walrus was in Through the Looking Glass if I recall correctly - so was Eggman; Humpty Dumpty in Alice . . .).
I'd also written a lot about links between Lennon and Salvador Dali and Magritte; Lennon can be seen as fulfilling "prophecy" of Magritte and Dali - I proposed that Dali and Lennon went into the same "room" in the Unconscious and some how connected there through the talisman of the white grand piano. But waiting in line I realized that when Lennon said "I am the Eggman" he was likely referring to a painting of Dali's about the "Geopolitical Child" - virtually the global man - the Aquarian - climbing out of an egg and waking in the new world. This is an important painting by Dali and lived and grew in the Unconscious for decades before it went to canvas.
Here are some illustrations.
The white grand piano became the icon of Lennon; it is where he composed his anthem, "Imagine."
Dali painted Grand Pianos for decades, pulling images from the Unconscious:
There are more. Magritte, in 1964, did this, "Son of Man" - from Book of Daniel, signifying the Aquarian would be marked by a green apple - the sign of The Beatles Apple Corp.
This is more significant; it starts with a Knight from the Unconscious:
But what is significant is a long - years long - series Dali did of this Horseman of Death entering consciousness through a Knight and a Tower. There are many but they all go between these two.
If you look at these two pictures above you can see that the Knight with spear has brought something from the Unconscious to the Conscious. And in the Conscious picture (with the dancers - titled Poetry in America), he is no longer a Knight, but a naked man sitting off to the side on the left and the Tower has entered "time" - it has a clock and a deflated "egg" - which is a map of the United States and South American hanging. (Note: No it is probably Africa hanging - the "Egg" in Geopoliticus Child has entered "time" in Poetry of America and is deflated illustrated by the clock and the hanging map. Quite possibly Dali saw the "dual nature" - the two dancers; the wu chi egg entering tai chi as a dance, is a white man and a black man; the "African-American" as the "shadow" in America. By this we mean the unexpressed contents of the psyche. Jung made the point in MDR on his visit to America that the spirit of the African-American and the Native America pervade and inform America. John Hope Franklin, the American historian makes the same point. It is worth noting as well that these paintings are both made in 1943 I believe and are wu chi/tai chi relatives. AS in Tolkien’s Rings story when the quiet quest of Frodo goes on while the world is involved in battle, so this discovery does on beneath the Second World War.)
Here are two of Dali's world/egg pictures, the second, the important Geopolitical Man - Eggman.
This is Baby Map of the World:
It turns into Geopoliticus Child:
This is the Eggman. This is what Lennon referred to when he said, "I am the Eggman" - I am Geopoliticus Child; I am the new man of the world; I am Brahma.
If you go back to look at Poetry of America, the one with the dancers, you can see the content of the Egg. Notice both pictures have a cloth beneath them and something is pouring onto it. It is oil and Coke in Poetry in America. It is blood in Geopoliticus Child. This identifies the pictures as a connected sequence. IN Poetry in America we can see that the dancer on the right has a candle in his head - he is "the Enlightened One" - we can see that Geopoliticus Child is intended to be the Enlightened One. Notice as well that the Enlightened One - dancer on the right - has a hole in his right chest - it is the wound where the Christ was hit with the spear; Geopoliticus Child is the "second Christ" the Aquarian - it is Eggman. Late in live, in pain, Lennon say, "I was the Walrus (Brahma) but now I'm John." Tibetan Buddhists say after Enlightenment, life is a broken glass. He never smiled again for the cameras after India.
Note to Remi on Quaternities - Remi - Of course The Beatles form a quaternity: Paul (Father - brought in to give the "Silver Beatles" structure as it was only a play thing for John and Stu before), John (Son), Ringo (Trickster), George (Psyche - was George who introduced John to the East and Hinduism). Unfortunately my French is not so good and I'm unable to read your site - looks interesting though. Will have my kids translate when they get home. My very oldest ancestors are Parisian I believe (de Coursy) and I feel very at home there.
After India, John actually believed he was "channeling" Jesus; that is why he dressed in white like the Christ after the Transfiguration on the Abbey Road album, their final work together (they walk to right of screen in the picture, "entering the conscious world."). The "Christ" episode is reported by the very reliable journalist Mark Hertsgaard, who writes for The New Yorker and the LA Times in his excellent book, A Day in a Life.
NOTE to Remi RE Quaternity: With Abraham and the Three Visitors and the Christ and the Three Magi, you can see the constellation of Quaternity taking the shape of three + one. IN each case - and this is the same in Taoism with the Three Celestial Ones - the Three represent the agency of the Unconscious while the One is their manifestation in time. (Exactly like Scrooge and the Three Spirits in Dickens' A Christmas Carol - likewise, the Three send Scrooge through a "Transfiguration".) The three humans - like those who channel the gods and the archetypes - are blissfully unaware that they are manifesting life force from the Unconscious. Thus, the "Son" is a manifestation of the Three. 'Twas ever thus.
What I think is the coolest thing about this is that the Third Spirit who visits Scrooge, pictured here, is clearly the Green Man.
Additional Thoughts on Geopoliticus Child and Poetry in America in 1943
The two dancers in Poetry in America represent the “dual nature” of creation; two figures light and dark – like that described in Tao te Ching – the “knights of dark and mysterious consequence” one walks in the Inner world and one walks in the Outer world. “Krishna” means “the dark one” - the one from the Unconscious - and the “Christ” figure here (candle - "enlightened one") is in shadow – thus the “Christ” is the receding figure and the figure of the Unconscious who feeds the conscious dancer, the "New Man". They both appear to be wearing football helmets.
and other secondary images suggest America in 1943 when Poetry in America and Geopoliticus Child were both painted - Eisenhower and Gerald Ford. The "Geopolitics Child" Egg may have cast its skin and morphed into tower clock
when the dream and the naked Knight, now a mortal,
entered “time” – but the Egg - a new unhatched egg - is present again in this picture – with the small figure rising out of the back of the “light” figure.
This is the “new creation” and it is a dance in essence, rising out of an egg.
The football helmets also bring to mind Edinger's thinking about American football in Archetype and the Apocalypse; sports forming a primal outline of a world to come - in effect a pre-civilization matrix. Football is the American matrix forming out of WW II and identifying regions. The U.S. can be seen today as a hole in a donut: the donut is the world around which plays soccer (old aspect of chronos) - 2 billion watched the World Cup. The hole in the center the ones who watch football (new aspect of chronos) - 94 million watched the Super Bowl.
Football program, 1944:
You could look at these two pictures in reverse - Poetry in America coming first, the Tower under the Black Son (the Son in the Unconscious) - the dance of the millennia represented by the passage of the Knights in Dali's pictures over decades, to the moment of the Egg, rising "reborn" out of the Dancers - the Twins which accompany the Awakening. The Geopoliticus Child being the awakening, fully informed by the traditions represented in Poetry in America. I have always thought of this tower as the tower on the campus of U. Michigan, Ann Arbor - the "center of the world" in the "new creation" by the Great Lakes.
IN either case, as an original creative arc, Dali had said that all Dali is one Dali - his work's rise and descent and that of the Surrealist grouping from which it emerged might be seen as rising to this singular moment, 1943. The Knights lead here then they disappear or manifest in the human form holding the staff. It is interesting that this "creation moment" rises from the heat of war and the destruction of Europe.
IN this view, which is probably more likely, the dark "old Christ" would seem worn, used up at the end of journey, yielding to the football player - the "new Christ" in white. Also, things seen in the Unconscious are often only partial as this figure is - and much in all Dali's work is partial. Dreamers, often see Unconscious behind a vein or in highlight, as per the request not to look at God direct or speak his name in all religious traditions and folk lore.
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