Passing Consciousness

by Michael R Hayter · Bristol, GB

This image came to me quite unexpectedly as I thought about the labile and transient nature of consciousness. Our conscious mind floats above a deeper, more unconscious self that lumbers along, almost unnoticed by our consciousness, making its own way and its own decisions - making itself felt only through dreams or intrusive thoughts and feelings during our more mundane daily lives. I guess the image, in the light of these musings, is not that surprising if you equate the elephant with the bigger, more unfathomable unconscious mind, and the rider representing the conscious mind. The empty streets, with the apparently empty buildings, serve to point up the dreamlike passage of the slow-moving elephant (unconsciousness) with its diminutive rider (consciousness). The street, by the way, is a representation of the street on which I lived more than twenty years ago in Stoke Newington in London.