Karma – A question of agency – Marlene ff Mullen
The predicament of being a human being can be summed up in the statement that we do not coincide with our biological existence. Our psychic life is not wholly instinctually regulated. Our psychic life is co-regulated by thinking processes. Thought processes depend on language. Language for the speaking being presumes a subject that thinks/speaks about something and acts in relation to the desire expressed in this relation. In other words language allows for the fundamental notion of experience itself; there is a subject related to an object of experience. If all of existence is a manifestation of consciousness that pervades all of creation, there remains the question of what is the relationship between consciousness and creation. Different spiritual traditions have approached the question of the relation between consciousness and its creation in a variety of ways. The core questions centre around whether the ultimate reality is radically One (Brahman) or is it Two (Purusha – Prakriti) and if Two how do they relate. The question of this relation brings us to the question of Karma. If from the perspective of pure consciousness nothing can be harmed and both perpetrator and victim abide within consciousness, how do we think about accountability, subjective responsibility and the possibility of redemption. It is with these questions that this presentation will occupy itself.
Marlene ff Mullen obtained her yoga diploma from the Irish Yoga Association (IYA) in 1990. She became a tutor on the IYA Teacher Training Course in 1992 and tutored on five of the Association’s teacher training courses. She has represented the IYA three times at the EUY Congress and has studied with Jenny Beeken, Donna Holleman and Patabi Jois. Marlene has a BA in philosophy and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis and an M.Sc. in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She is a registered practitioner with the Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland and a member of the Irish Circle of the Lacanian Orientation.
Website: http://www.slinabande.ie E-mail: slinabande@gmail.com
