In telling a story, some concepts may be unfamiliar to readers, while an in-story explanation may be inappropriate. And invariably some readers will be troubled because of its absence. Here, story considerations dictated that I avoid discussing the psychome or even mentioning it, though it helps greatly in understanding Yunnan ogres. This short section clarifies psychome.
In writing it, I have drawn heavily on the discussion by Alexei Park in his “Psyche and Humanity.” (In Toward a Science of Humanity, edited by Mei-Ti Lomasetewa. Star Press, Deep Harbor, New Home. A.C. 906).
The ogre “psyche” is not a true psyche. It is a pseudo-psyche. On many planets there is what might be called a common psychome,* or mind/spirit pool, for all of that planet’s life. This is the equivalent, in the Sigma Field, of the sum of planetary genomes in the field of physical-biological phenomena. A useful but very limited analogy for the psychome and the planetary genetic sum is the head and tail of a coin. A somewhat closer analogy is the individual psyche of a person, and the person’s physical body.
For most purposes, the planetary psychome is subdivided into lesser psychomes that are more or less separate and distinct. These are the Sigma Field analogs of those gene pools which are capable of mixing. There is a gene pool for all the species and breeds of cattle that are able to hybridize with each other to produce viable offspring; also there is a gene pool for Yunnan ogres. Each has its corresponding psychome.
When an animal dies, its body, including its genes, loses its integrity, and through a sequence of decomposition processes reverts to ions and relatively simple molecules. Much of this goes on in the alimentary tracts of scavengers, from vultures to maggots. The animal’s pseudo-psyche, including its life experiences, also ceases to exist as a separate unit, and is reabsorbed into the species psychome, but the process is far tidier.
In understanding the psychome, it helps to contrast it to the human psyche.
Like all other species, Homo sapiens—humankind—has a psychome, and each person has a pseudo-psyche. It was the collective species memories of the human psychome which, misinterpreted, gave rise to the 20th century concept of “the collective unconscious,” as defined by the psychiatrist, Karl Jung. The human pseudo-psyche, however, is subordinate to the actual human psyche.
The human psyche is a non-biological unit. Its integrity, which is to say its individual identity, survives body death and customarily recycles, reincarnates, to play again. This recycling may be prompt or delayed; it may be here or elsewhere. In an entirely real sense, therefore, the terrestrial biological phenomenon known as a human being is possessed by a non-terrestrial phenomenon, the psyche (or soul). The psyche, through this act of possession, often loses its awareness of being a psyche, and ordinarily loses all memory of existence before the act of possession. It becomes and controls the person it is born to be. The purpose of this strange arrangement seems to be to play (often involved) games, to have physical experiences, and in general to make existence interesting. Homo sapiens has been a possessed species for a very long time, as have suitable species on many other worlds. By contrast, most biological species are not possessed.
*Instead of psychome, I could have used the more descriptive term “spirit pool,” specifying that the animal mind is a function of it. I’ve coined and use the term psychome (psyche = spirit or mind; ome = mass, body or group), analogous to biome, because the term spirit carries too much semantic luggage for many people. Back